“It’s from naval intelligence. A Soviet naval force headed by the missile cruiser Sokolov is moving towards the Straits of Hormuz. This is from a recon patrol from the Nimitz,” General Baker said in an awed voice, as though he were in church.

For a long moment no one said anything. Each man sat stunned and somehow alone, as though they were in the presence of sudden death. The secretary of state put a cigarette between his lips but forgot to light it. Gary Allen’s aristocratic face was drawn and pale.

“Well, Mr. Allen. Do you still think the Kremlin tie-in is pure speculation?” Bob Harris’s caustic voice cut rudely through the silence.

The national security advisor got up awkwardly and walked over to the illuminated map. He stared at the narrow inverted blue vee of the Straits of Hormuz like a man in a trance. At last he turned to face them. His eyes were stunned, like a cow that’s been killed by a blow to the head from a pneumatic hammer but doesn’t know yet that it is dead.

“The president will have to be told at once,” he said through bloodless lips.

General Baker crossed to a bank of black telephones on a side table and picked up one of the receivers.

“I’d better alert the Joint Chiefs. What about the Rapid Deployment Force?” he asked to the room at large.

“Tell them to go to Defcon Three Ready status,” Wallace said. Baker looked questioningly at Allen who nodded his assent.

“The Marines too,” Allen said quietly. “And we’ll want a spy ship of the Liberty class in the Red Sea to monitor the Yemenis,” he added.

Baker nodded and punched a button on the phone. He began talking in an urgent undertone. Allen went to a separate red phone and hesitated a moment before picking it up.

“Everything seems to depend on the data from this Scorpion of yours,” he said to Page, obviously worried.

“Just who the hell is this Scorpion anyway?” Wallace snapped irritably.

“He’s an independent. But the boys tell me he’s virtually a legend in Arabia,” Page said.

“The president will want to know all about him. You know how he is about data on personalities,” Allen remarked with a wry smile.

Page nodded. The daily DIA-CIA intelligence report on leading political figures and their sexual peccadillos was said to be the president’s favorite bedtime reading.

“Is he an American?” Allen asked.

“Bob?” Page looked questioningly at Harris, leaning back in his chair until it tilted precariously.

“He’s an American, all right. Born in Palos Verdes, California.”

“What makes him such an expert on the Arabs anyway?” asked Wallace, his brow wrinkled to show his distaste at having to place any reliance on one of the CIA hotshots, particularly an independent, whom he often irritably referred to as “wild men” within the privacy of his State Department office.