I worked my way through them and pushed open the smoky glass doors that led to the lab, unchallenged by a pair of Asso guards wearing hard hats stenciled SECURITY. I was privileged personnel, as was everyone with a white face. I sauntered past the turbines to the containment area, the concrete shield and steel shell housing the steam generator, and the reactor rigged to percolate the first kettle of atomic fuel as soon as the awesome ingredients arrived from the States. I moved across the control room banked with dials and switches to enter the executive lounge with its coffee machine, pool table, steel bookcases holding technical journals. I had a mission I was determined to discharge. I was going to liberate another director’s chair as a gift for my father.

When my old man first asked me to enlist in his slugfest with Qazwini, I complied with no excessive display of enthusiasm. But inwardly I beamed with pride and pleasure; it was as if I had swallowed a new toy, and it was hopping around inside me. In the evenings that followed, when we talked and planned and explored not only the military agenda but, ranging far and wide, the riddles of God and man, I wasn’t much taken by his rather peculiar theology, his ruminations of some lost Elysium, but as we raised our bowls and drank our beer, I was happy just being there with him; I was wrapped in delight. Somehow it brought back a wonderful memory of his lifting me high in the air when I was a little boy.

So I wanted to do something for him. Nothing spectacular, if indeed that sort of extravagance had been within my power to disburse, just a little something to let him know that…

“Well…” The voice behind me dripped irony. “So kind of you to spare us a visit.”

Of course it was Grady, seething in a controlled tantrum of affront. Fortunately all the chairs were in place; I hadn’t yet decided between the one with the blue or the green canvas. He wore the remotest of smiles, and he chose to bypass even the most customary of obligatories like How are you?

“I’ve been waiting for you to show up,” he said testily. “I almost sent for you. What’s taking so long with Lipgloss?”

Suddenly, uncomfortably, I realized I had to quit deluding myself—I couldn’t keep it from him forever. If nothing more, I had to tell Grady that the elusive formula for BRITs, according to Lipgloss’s records and Val’s research, resided with Abdul. Of course, as Val had predicted, he like to wet his drawers. I stared at my shoes for fifteen minutes, until his rage diffused into a rant.

“He’s your friend,” he said, “so get it out of him.”

“How?”

“Stroke him with honeyed words. Rub him the right way. Fawn. Grovel. You know.”

“No, I don’t.”