The President looked annoyed.

  “For heaven’s sake,” he said, “it’s Seedy Sidi I’m supposed to be scaring, not my own Secretary of Defense. Of course I’m not asking the Pentagon to launch an immediate attack on anybody. If we have to take armed action in this matter, it will only be after we’ve exhausted all other possible means of containment. I have a lot to do myself, first. I’m going to contact the major allies, I’m going to discuss it with the Secretary-General at the UN, we’ll have to get the Hill and the media lined up, we’re going to have to generate at least a reasonable percentage of support in the polls—”

  “How long will all that take, Mr. President?” Ray Stanley inquired.

  The President shrugged.

  “A week? Two? It shouldn’t take very long. You and Eulie and my national security adviser will all be involved in it. The one thing I must stress is that this is all completely off the record for the moment. I’m going to give Sidi sufficient time, without public pressure, to come around; and at the same time, I’m going to be building that ‘carefully planned response’ you advocate, Arthur. I think that with a combination of careful diplomacy and a little garden-variety psychology, I can persuade him to give up any wild ideas he has, without going to a public confrontation that might create a lot of headaches. Therefore, this is all completely quiet for the moment.”

  “Our people at State are going to be wondering, Mr. President,” Ray Stanley said.

  The President nodded. “Tell your immediate people, sure, but keep it minimal. I don’t want to hear about it on the evening news.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” the Secretary said with a smile.

  “I’ve said it before,” his deputy observed. “A couple of dozen million times. It rarely does any good.”

  “This time it had better,” the President said in a tone that was not amused. “Otherwise some heads will roll in the department—in any department that violates the ban. Okay, Defense? CIA? NSC?”

  They all nodded soberly.

  “As for you boys on the spot,” the President said, “we’ll be in constant communication, so stay alert. I want you to see Sidi tomorrow, Bill, and tell him that we are taking immediate steps to isolate Greater Lolómé and organize the strongest possible international pressure—”

  “Until he does what?” Ambassador Bullock inquired. “What’s the requirement?”

  “That he cooperate fully with an immediate inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency and renounce any further territorial ambition in Lesser Lolómé.”

  “He won’t like that,” Bill Bullock said. “What if he refuses?”

  “He won’t refuse,” the President said with calm and utter confidence. “And you, Arthur, tell The Mouse to keep calm. We aren’t going to abandon him.”

  “He will be relieved to hear that,” Arthur Reeves Burton said, so smoothly that no one could tell whether he was genuinely agreeing or being politely skeptical.

  The President looked a little odd for a second but decided to avoid friction and accept his words as endorsement.

  “Good,” he said. “Thank you both for your input and support.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” they said in unison, and went off the line.

  “Okay, Jaime,” he said, “you stay with me for a bit and we’ll do a little planning. The rest of you have a good evening and we’ll be in touch first thing in the morning.” His eye fell on the Vice President, trying hard to be a good sport but still looking somewhat crestfallen. “Oh, and Hank, of course, you stay too. You can tell me how to go about handling the Senate.”

  “Yes, sir!” the Vice President said, looking relieved and pleased.

  “Give my love to Dolly, Ray.” the President said. “You can still make her dinner, after all.”

  The Secretary of State smiled.

  “With pleasure,” he said. “And congratulations on your handling of Sidi. I think you have him analyzed correctly.”

  * * *

  In the limousine which would drop Eulie off at her home in Georgetown before taking the Secretary along to Dolly’s beautiful old house near Dumbarton Oaks, she turned squarely to him and said sternly, “Ray Stanley, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You do not!”

  “Do not what?” he inquired blandly.

  “You know what. Think the President has Sidi analyzed correctly. Or handled him effectively. Why do you say things like that?”

  He smiled.

  “He’s the President. And I’m his Secretary of State. I can’t be too harsh.”

  “I almost told him myself,” she said, “except he would have expected a sour note from me. You have enough prestige to disagree and make him pay attention.”

  “It’s a matter of not expending one’s capital too fast or too freely,” he said. “I may need to tell him something later, if this doesn’t work out.”

  “But I thought you were against putting too much pressure on Sidi,” she said. “Why the reversal?”

  “I’m not reversing,” he protested mildly. “I’m just waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

  “I might have known. What do I tell the others? They’ll be calling me.”

  “Tell them basically what was decided,” he said. “That we’re organizing a ‘carefully planned response’ in the hope that it will defuse the situation before it ever becomes public and requires some more drastic action. That’s good diplomacy, isn’t it?”

  3

  Home from Dolly’s, listening to Mary’s even breathing beside him in their big canopied four-poster bed in their spectacular Potomac-view apartment in Washington Harbor, he again was not so sure, either of his own ability to contribute to solutions of the world’s problems, or of the course the President seemed determined to follow with Sidi.

  Like Bill Bullock, Ray Stanley felt that there had been an even more arrogant intransigence in Sidi’s tone, an even more adamant and hardline response, than in their previous encounters with him. For all the President’s confidence in his own powers to con, cajole, and ultimately convince and/or coerce his opponents, the Secretary of State was not so positive that they were going to work this time. Thanks to his sinister friend or friends, Sidi apparently did have bombs now and—at least to hear him talk—the restraints such an awesome responsibility ought to impose upon leaders of nations were no longer of controlling importance to him. More important now seemed to be the fulfillment of his own imperialistic ambitions toward Lesser Lolómé, with all the ramifications a successful conquest would have upon the world’s oil trade, and not least, the further deterioration of America’s standing in the eyes of other nations.

  Domination of a key segment of the world’s oil was obviously of vital economic interest to the President of Greater Lolómé and so, too, the Secretary could concede, was the sentimental ambition to reunite what British map-drawers had put asunder so long ago. But underlying those ambitions was an even more sinister and implacable motivation: to tear down and if possible destroy the power, prestige, and ability to influence world events, of the United States of America.

  This was now, unhappily, a dominant motivation of many leaders of the world’s peoples, and the Secretary had to acknowledge, unhappily, that what seemed sinister and implacable to him seemed only right and fitting to them. No matter the great triumphs of World War II, the contributions to saving civilization from the onslaughts of Hitler and subsequent tyrants, no matter the endless record of overwhelming generosity to nations and peoples in need, no matter the carrying high, however imperfectly, of the banners of human freedom and decency.

  No nation in all of history, he firmly believed, had ever had a higher quotient of idealism or offered more unstintingly of hope and assistance to humankind. No nation had ever lived to see its motives so besmirched, its purposes so lied about, its efforts turned so glibly into mockery and hate. America had ventured great things and often failed them greatly. It was the failures that leaders like Sidi (and many ostensibly far less sinister and far more friendly) had used to instill in their peoples’ contempt and hatred for America, and used also as a springboard for their jealous and vindictive attempts to undercut, thwart, and ultimately bring down the bumbling if good-hearted giant of the West.

  They simply did not admit the existence of the good heart, or the generosity or the decency. The hate was too much; by the end of the twentieth century it all had gone on too long. Vengeance upon America was too convenient a concealment for their own corruptions, too easy a means to achieve their own ruthless ambitions.

  If they could bring America down, the Secretary thought gloomily now, there would be celebrations in many places, some expected but some quite surprising, around the globe; but what would be left of freedom and decency, and who would man the barricades, then? And what would happen to the world’s helpless individuals in the great vacuum of power left behind?

  He sighed heavily and rolled over, trying at three AM to lure elusive sleep. As always, he knew it would elude him until its own good time, which frequently of late was not until the first light of dawn began to creep over the uneasy capital of “the world’s sole remaining superpower.” What did it profit “the world’s sole remaining superpower” if its enemies and even many of its professed friends were secretly jealous and resentful of its influence, and inclined to be rather happily gratified when it slipped and stumbled?

  Nor were they all foreigners who felt that way, he reflected unhappily. His conversations at Dolly’s had been quite typical.

  Dolly herself was still, at eighty-three, a vivacious, charming white-haired patrician beauty after four decades as “one of Washington’s leading political hostesses—if not the leading one,” as the Post’s society editor put it. As the widow of a former Senate majority leader, Bob Munson of Michigan, she had always been at the center of political Washington’s ever-churning social life. “Administrations come and administrations go,” the society editor had written. “Dolly Munson, infinitely gracious, infinitely well informed—and infinitely in the thick of it—goes on forever.”

  And so she did, entertaining at her enormous house near Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown at least once and sometimes, particularly when a new administration came in, as many as three and four times a week. Her parties were often an indication of the prevailing political winds in the capital, valued not only because being able to say “I’m going to Dolly’s” was an instant indicator of where you stood on the constantly changing ladder of political preference, but also an infallible indicator of where the power centers might be shifting at any particular time. In recent months she had put an increasing emphasis on top leaders from the Hill and top figures in the media. Both were always in demand at political Washington’s parties, but somehow Dolly’s guest lists always seemed the most significant. Certainly to be on one was still one of the most avidly sought accolades in Washington. Tonight had been no exception.

  When he had arrived, a little late after the limousine dropped Eulie off on nearby R Street and deposited him at Dolly’s, he had found several of those he had expected. He was “out of uniform,” he explained to Dolly, because he had not had time to change to the inevitable black tie.

  “That’s all right,” she had said with her comfortable laugh. “Mary’s already arrived alone, and that’s one flag up to our friends of the media. Now you arrive in ‘civilian clothes,’ and that’s another. Obviously you’ve been at some late meeting. And obviously an important meeting. What’s up?”

  “Dolly, dear,” he said, kissing her on the cheek, “as always, you smell like a million dollars.”

  “I have several,” she said with a chuckle. “Don’t change the subject. What’s up, I said.”

  “Just some routine matters in the department,” he said blandly.

  “Where I’m sure you keep a change of clothes,” she said, linking her arm in his and drawing him into the crowded living room. “Which you didn’t use. So you probably came from the White House. What’s got the NSC excited at this late hour?”

  “Dolly,” he said, “you’re too much. Be a good girl and someday I may tell you.”

  “Might as well tell me now,” she said. “This foursome will have it out of you in no time.”

  She gestured to Senator Wilson, engaged in an obviously animated chat with James Van Rensselaer Burden, Able Montague, and that “demon newshen,” as Time anachronistically referred to her, Sally Holliwell, TV congressional correspondent and doyenne of one of the less hectic weekly talk shows, Capitol Perspective.

  All four swung around to stare up at him with lively interest as he came down the three steps to the living room level and gently disengaged himself from Dolly’s arm.

  “All right for you, then,” she said lightly. “It will just have to be a secret—for the moment. Meanwhile, I’ll throw you to the tender mercies of these four sharpies. We’ll eat in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you so much,” he said with an easy laugh. “For not siccing them onto me. For being so discreet. For being so—Dolly.”

  “That’s me,” she said cheerfully as she moved off toward Boo and Joan Cohn-Bourassa, talking busily with the Iraqi ambassador and the deputy head of mission of the embassy of Iran.

  “What’s the secret, Ray?” Willie Wilson inquired. “Is it something we should know?”

  “You,” he said amicably. “Not these three vultures.”

  Able Montague immediately put on his you-can’t-fool-me expression, Sally Holliwell looked suitably aggressive, and Jimmy Van, always conscious of his dignity, still managed to look down his patrician nose and permit a gleam of condescending curiosity to enter his studiously impersonal glance. Sally had come up through the ranks of the wire services, the Post and the Times before being lured away by television; Able was a little Irish bulldog grown grizzled in the capital’s cutthroat media competition; Jimmy Van never let you forget that he was a descendant of a distinguished family and a product of Groton and Harvard, even though the world was now in a condition in which Groton and Harvard were rather low on the list of humanity’s major concerns. They were not that low in Washington, where “some breeding still counts, thank God, though God knows how much longer,” as Jimmy expressed it with a superior and rather delicate sigh to his colleagues.

  “You obviously came here in a hurry, Mr. Secretary,” Sally observed with a knowing air. “You sure you don’t want to tell us something?”

  “I’m sure I don’t want to tell you anything,” Ray Stanley said, still amicably.

  “Maybe Joanie Bourassa knows,” Able said, shrewd little eyes sparkling with the challenge of the chase. “She and Boo are usually pretty well informed.”

  “What’s to know?” the Secretary inquired innocently. “I was working a little late at the department so I just came right over.”

  “Without changing?” Jimmy Van inquired in his customary languid, semi-British drawl, precious but concealing a shrewd mind. “That’s not like our perfect model of a perfect Secretary. No, Ray, you can’t fool us. Something is definitely Up.”

  “And who better to ferret it out than the media’s finest, whom I see before me,” the Secretary remarked. He made a split-second calculation: the administration did, after all, “have to get the media lined up,” as the President put it, and these were powerful players. “Well, I’ll tell you—” he began in a casual voice, having learned from many years of experience that one can say almost anything in a crowded room and get away with it, if the manner is conversational enough.

  Senator Wilson held up a warning hand, handsome white head cocked quizzically to one side, expression warning. “Are you sure you want to do this, Ray? I thought you said it was just for my ears.”

  “Don’t worry, Willie,” the Secretary said with a chuckle. “I’ll only tell them what I want them to know.”

  “He means that, gang,” Able Montague said. “Is that a challenge, or is it a challenge?”

  “It’s a challenge,” Sally Holliwell said.

  “We shall pursue it with the utmost vigor to the ends of the earth,” Jimmy Van promised with mock solemnity. His expression became serious. “What’s the latest doom-and-gloom, then, Mr. Secretary? It must be something portentous, to make you arrive late and disheveled at Dolly’s.”

  “Late,” Ray Stanley said with a smile. “Never, I hope, disheveled. Our friend Sidi may be causing trouble again.”

  They were all suddenly serious and intent.

  “Oh?” Able Montague inquired. “How so?”

  “And how soon?” Sally Holliwell inquired, and added, not entirely in jest, “We have to tape the weekend show tomorrow afternoon. Will he do his damage in time for us to get it in?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Ray Stanley said, “but he may oblige pretty soon, the way it looks.”

  “Tell him to speed it up,” she said, half-wry, half-serious. “These things are all better if they happen a little before deadline.”

  “As most well-informed international brigands are aware, these days,” Jimmy Van observed. “They usually cooperate, don’t they?”

  “Not always Sidi,” she said. “He’s a wild card.”

  “And about to get wilder, I take it,” Senator Wilson said. “What’s prompting this latest furor? I assume he’s threatening The Mouse again?”

  “Oh, yes,” the Secretary said. “What else would he be doing?”

  “Thereby threatening our oil supplies,” Jimmy Van said in a spiteful tone. “The be-all and end-all of our foreign policy in the region.”

  “So why do you think this is any more serious than any other time?” Able inquired. “Why is it serious enough to warrant an NSC meeting?”

  “I didn’t say there was an NSC meeting,” the Secretary objected.

  Able looked knowing and followed the same deductive line Dolly had.

  “Oh, come now. Late arrival in mufti—no time to stop at home or the department and change—must have come from somewhere important enough to disrupt normal schedule, namely, 1600 Pennsylvania—only excuse for 1600 Pennsylvania this time of night, NSC meeting. Right?”