"We've gone through a lot together, Bam. We're bound together. Life or death, what affects one of us affects us both."

Gordette was silent for several moments. Then he said grudgingly, "You got some grip, all right. Once you get your hands on a man you don't let go, do you?"

"That's up to you," Doug answered.

"You're crazy, you know that?"

"Maybe," Doug admitted.

"And what about you, lady?" Gordette asked sullenly. "You as crazy as this man here?"

Edith almost snapped out her true feelings. But she realized that Doug had risked his life to save his would-be murderer. And now it all hung on what she had to say.

She swallowed her anger. "If Doug wants you to be with us, that's good enough for me."

"You'd trust me?"

Edith blurted, "Not very far. Not at first, anyway."

For a moment there was silence, then Gordette laughed: a low, ironic chuckle. "Fair enough, I guess. Fair enough."

Edith wished she could see the man's face. Doug's not crazy, she thought. He's wiser than all of us put together. But I wish I could see Gordette's face. I'd feel better about this if I could see his eyes.

PART III: Battle

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But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger…

Shakespeare Henry V

THE HAGUE

"Telephone for you, Senator. The White House."

Jill Meyers looked up from her computer screen. Despite the fact that she had not been a member of the U.S. Senate for nearly six years now, her private secretary still called her 'Senator'.

"Who is it?" she asked warily.

"The President," he replied, in his usual near-whisper.

Jill grinned at her oldest assistant, "I guess I can make time for the President."

Almost instantly the face of an intense young man appeared on her desktop screen. "Justice Meyers? One moment, please, for the President."

His image disappeared and the screen showed the seal of the President of the United States on a royal blue background. The American eagle held a sheaf of arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other: war or peace.

It took more than a moment for the President to come on, of course. The power trip. The President doesn't get on the horn until she's absolutely certain that the party she wants to talk to is already on the line. No flunkies.

Jill glanced up at her private secretary and realized with a pang that he'd been a fresh-faced kid just out of law school when he'd first come aboard as a senatorial aide. We're all getting old, she thought, catching her own reflection in the phone screen. Her face was round and ordinary as a pie pan, she thought, with mousey brown hair as straight and limp as overcooked spaghetti. And still that scattering of freckles across her snub of a nose, like a tomboy version of Huck Finn.

"Jill," said the President, "You're looking very pensive today."