Chris Cook fought the urge to look around for eavesdroppers. It would have been far too theatrical. Instead he sipped at his cup, looking southwest towards the Kennedy Center. "There have been informal contacts."

"With whom?"

"Koga," Cook said quietly. If Adler couldn't play the game properly, then at least he could.

"Ah. Yes, that is the logical person to speak with."

"Seiji, if we play this right, we can both come out of this heroes." Which would be the ideal solution for everyone, wouldn't it?

"What sort of contacts?" Nagumo asked.

"All I know is that it's very irregular. Now, I need to ask you, is Koga leading the opposition you're reporting to?"

"He is one of them, of course," Nagumo replied. It really was the perfect bit of information. The Americans were conceding very little, and now the reason was clear: they hoped that Goto's fragile parliamentary coalition would collapse in the combination of time and uncertainty. And all he had to do was to break the Americans' spirits and thus win his country's position…yes, that was elegant. And Chris's prediction on the heroic end-game would be half-right, wouldn't it?

"Are there others?" Cook asked. The reply was predictable and automatic.

"Of course there are, but I don't dare to reveal their names to you."

Nagumo was thinking the scenario through now. If the Americans were banking on the political subversion of his country, then it had to mean that their military options were weak. What splendid news that was.

The first KC-10 tanker staged out of Elmendorf, linking up with the C-5 just east of Nome. It required a few minutes to find air smooth enough for the evolution, and even then it was tricky performing what had to be the most unnatural act known to man, a pair of multi-hundred-ton aircraft linking in midair like mayflies. It was all the more dangerous in that the C-5 pilot couldn't actually see much more than the nose of the tanker and had to fly in close formation for twenty-five minutes. Worst of all, the tail-mounted engine of the three-engine KC-10 threw its jet exhaust directly on the T-shaped tail of the Galaxy, creating a strong and continuous buffet that required constant control corrections. That, the pilot thought, sweating inside his flight suit, is why they pay us so much. Finally the tanks were topped off and the planes broke free, the Galaxy taking a shallow dive while the tanker turned right. Aboard the transport, stomachs settled back down as the flight path took them west across the Bering Strait. Another tanker would soon lift off from Shemya and would also enter Russian air space. Unknown to them, another American aircraft had already done so, leading the secret procession to a place marked on American air-navigation charts as Verino, a town on the Trans-Siberian Railroad that dated back to the turn of the century.