Hood laughed. "Because I got the last seat in coach, stuffed between the loudest-snoring humans on earth. Both of whom took off their shoes and passed right out. I can't watch those cropped and edited movies on airplanes, so I just sat there and wrote a thirty-page letter of apology to my family."

"Was Sharon mad or disappointed?" Rodgers asked.

"Both and more," said Hood. He sat back up. "Hell, let's get back to the Russians. I've got a better chance of understanding them, I think."

Rodgers gave him a light swat on the back as they looked at the screen.

"Liz says here that Zhanin isn't an impulsive man," Hood said. " 'He always sticks to his plans, guided by what he feels is moral or right, whether or not it's at odds with prevailing wisdom. See extracts Z-17A and Z-27C from Pravda.' "

Hood brought up the cited newspaper clippings and saw how, in 1986, Zhanin strongly backed the plan of Deputy Interior Minister Abalya to crack down on mobsters who were abducting foreign businessmen in Georgia, even after Abalya was assassinated, and how he earned the enmity of hard liners by refusing to support a law in 1987 that would have banned the use of Lenin look-alikes for what were referred to as 'evenings of mockery.'

" 'A man of integrity,' " Hood read Liz's closing comments, " 'who has been shown to err on the side of risk-taking rather than caution.' "

Rodgers said, "Part of me wonders if that risk-taking would include a military adventure."

"Part of me wonders that too," Hood admitted. "He didn't hesitate to recommend using the militia against gangsters in Georgia."

"True," Rodgers said, "though you can argue that that isn't the same thing."

"How so?"

"Using force to maintain the peace is different from using force to assert one's will," Rodgers said. "There's a point of legality there that, psychologically, would make a big difference to someone like Zhanin."

"Well," Hood said, "this pretty well agrees with what you decided in the Oval Office last night. Zhanin's not the problem. Let's see who else might be, then."

Hood went to the next section of Liz's report. She had playfully titled it Loose Cannons. He began scrolling through the names.

" 'General Viktor Mavik,' " he read, " 'Marshal of Artillery in the Army.' "

"He was one of the officers who planned the attack on the Ostankino television center in 1993," Rodgers said, "defied Yeltsin, and still survived. He's still got powerful friends in and out of government."

"'But he doesn't like acting alone,"' Hood read. "Then there's our friend General Mikhail Kosigan, whom she describes here rather colorfully as 'a real nutburger.' He was Chief Marshal of Artillery and openly defended a pair of officers who had been rebuked and reprimanded by Gorbachev for ordering suicide missions in Afghanistan."