"Where are you taking me?"

"I'll direct your driver as we go, Mr. Hwan. Unless you would care to give me the keys, in which case--"

"I'll let you guide us, thanks. However, I'm required to file an itinerary in case there's a problem, and that's the first thing the Director will ask for when he returns. Give me a general direction."

Kim smiled for the first time and said, "North, Mr. Hwan. We're going north."

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Tuesday, 10:10 A.M.,

Washington, D.C.

Hood felt as though he'd been cut off at the knees, but he didn't dislike the President. He couldn't.

Michael Lawrence wasn't the brightest man who ever held the office, but he had the touch, he had charisma, and that worked on TV and at rallies. The public liked his style. He certainly wasn't the best manager to hold the office. He didn't like getting his hands dirty with the nitty-gritty of running the government: he wasn't a detail man like Jimmy Carter. Trusted aides like Burkow and Lawrence's Press Secretary Adrian Crow had been allowed to create their own little fiefdoms, power bases that won over or alienated other government agencies by rewarding cooperation and success with access to the President and increased responsibilities, punishing failure with backwater assignments and busywork. Even when he was making his rookie failures in foreign policy, this President didn't suffer the kind of bad press that dogged his predecessors: by wining and dining the Press Corps, increasing perks and amenities for reporters, and carefully doling out leaks and exclusives, Crow had put all but a few crusty columnists in her hip pocket. And no one read the Op-Ed pages anyway, she maintained. Sound bites and advertising controlled the voters, not George Will and Carl Rowan.

Lawrence could be ruthless, blind, and stubborn. But if nothing else, he had a vision for the country that was bold and intelligent and was just starting to work. For a year prior to announcing his candidacy, Florida Governor Lawrence had met with industrial leaders and asked if, in exchange for considerable tax breaks and deferments, they would buy into the privatization of NASA with the government managing all launches and facilities, the companies assuming most costs for personnel and R&D. In effect, Lawrence was proposing to boost the space agency's budget nearly threefold without going through Congress. Moreover, government expenses on space would be cut by two billion dollars, money that Lawrence earmarked for crime fighting and education. He also suggested that one third of the new blue-collar work force for NASA be culled from welfare, making for an annual savings of half a billion dollars.

U.S. industry agreed to the plan, and Lawrence's campaign advertisements reminded Americans of the lost glory of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo days, of blue-collar and white-collar workers laboring side by side for a common goal, of high employment and low inflation. He tied them all together, and hammered voters with views of existing spinoffs-- personal computers and calculators, communications satellites and cellular phones, Teflon and portable video cameras and video games-- and with visions of anticipated spinoffs-- medicines to cure cancer and AIDS, space-based generators to convert solar energy into electricity to reduce costs and reliance on foreign oil, and even weather control. During the campaign, every time his opponent argued that the money would be better spent on Earth, Lawrence countered that Earth had become a sinkhole, swallowing up jobs and tax dollars, and that his plan would put an end to that and also end foreign inroads in technological advances that were stealing American jobs.