“The Scorpion has definitely confirmed. There is an imminent assassination and coup against King Salim of Arabia,” Page announced, looking up at them with eyes that were red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

“When and where is this alleged assassination to take place?” asked Secretary of State Wallace. He emphasized the word “alleged” so no one would doubt his position.

Page turned to Bob Harris. “Bob?”

“We don’t know yet. So far all we’ve got is that it’s going to be in a public place, like the Sadat hit, and that it’s going down soon, maybe a matter of days,” Harris said. Despite the late hour, he looked fresh and unrumpled.

“Why not warn King Salim right away?” Wallace asked.

“Great,” Page sighed. “Tell the king his brother might want to kill him, alienate both sides of the royal family, tip our hand to Abdul Sa’ad and maybe make things a hundred times worse.”

“War in Arabia. How could things be worse?” Wallace muttered angrily, loosening his tie. A sure sign that he was furious.

“We could lose. That’s worse,” Page snapped.

“I don’t much like the sound of that word ‘lose,’” drawled Air Force General Baker, liaison from the Joint Chiefs, in his Tennessee twang.

Secretary of State Wallace, whose handsome face had aged so much during the night it was virtually unrecognizable, opened a new pack of cigarettes and lit up. After a heart attack, reported in the press as an ulcer operation, Wallace had been ordered by his doctors to never touch another cigarette. For almost eight months he had succeeded in doing just that, until tonight.

“The president will have to be told at once,” Wallace said.

“Not just yet. You know how he hates to be woken up. Especially when all we have are bits and pieces,” said Gary Allen, the president’s Security Advisor. A tall man in tweeds, with iron-gray hair cropped short, he dipped a doughnut into his coffee for a single precise dunk, then swallowed it after chewing carefully.

“How much more do you need?” Bob Harris challenged brusquely. “You’ve seen the Scorpion’s photos. The whole thing’s got the Kremlin’s size elevens stamped all over it.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Allen replied.

“What about the Scorpion’s reports?” Harris said.

Allen dismissed the reports and photos scattered on the table with an offhand gesture, as though brushing away a fly.

“That’s evidence, not proof,” Allen said.

“What’s the difference?” General Baker asked, puzzled.

“Evidence is suggestive; proof is incontrovertible,” Allen declared pedantically, as if he were still at his lecture rostrum at Yale. Allen’s air of nit-picking arrogance was legendary. When the president had picked him for the job of National Security Advisor, one of his fellow professors had remarked: “Now Allen will be able to give the whole world a grade of C minus.”