“Finally, the Scorpion says this man could be a Cuban,” Harris said through gritted teeth, tapping the photo as if poking Allen’s chest.

“Could be …” Allen snapped derisively.

“The Latin desk says he resembled Pablo Huevas, a senior aide to Fidel Castro,” Harris said quietly.

“Resembles … could be … suggests!” Allen exploded. “Can you imagine the president going on television and trying to convince the world of Soviet aggression with such insubstantial crap?”

“That’s not the point,” Page said.

“What is the point?” General Baker asked, looking around the table for the coffee jug. There was only a trickle left in the jug and he poured it into his cup and swallowed it with a grimace.

“What do we tell the president? That’s the damn point,” Page growled, rubbing his forehead as if he had a headache.

“I’ll tell you what we do. We’ve got the Nimitz task force in that area. We can send in a couple of squadrons of F-14S and bomb the shit out of them,” General Baker declared, a boyish enthusiasm lighting his austere face.

“Bomb who?” Wallace asked wearily.

“Them … the bad guys,” General Baker said lamely.

“Wonderful,” Harris muttered sarcastically.

“Don’t you understand? There are no battle lines here. So far there’s just some talk of an assassination in Riyadh,” Page declared. “According to the Scorpion’s report, there might be Wahabis, army troops and National Guardsmen, Palestinians, Shiites and Christ knows who else involved in this. You can’t even tell the players without a score card and you want to just blast everybody.”

“Not to mention the fact that we don’t even know who to support. Prince Abdul Sa’ad might be better than having chaos in Arabia,” the secretary of state noted.

“Well, we’ve got to do something,” General Baker rumbled, glaring balefully at them.

“Why?” Allen put in. “I mean suppose Abdul Sa’ad wins. So we do business with him. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that he could … cut … off … the goddamn oil,” Harris said, enunciating very carefully, as if he were chiseling each word into stone. “And if we’re right and it is a major Russian move, then that’s exactly what he’s going to do, gentlemen.”

“My God!” Secretary Wallace muttered in a toneless whisper, the enormity of the threat dawning on him.

At that moment, the door opened and Linda the “Honey Pot,” as the White House staff had leeringly nicknamed her, handed General Baker a yellow paper, bending over far enough so that if there were ever any doubt about her bona fides they were erased for ever. But all eyes were on the paper, not on her and she wiggled back out of the door with a vague air of disappointment.

“Oh boy,” the general whistled through his teeth and glanced up at the illuminated map.

“What is it?” the worried secretary of state asked.