"By the way, you did notice that Khrushchev's last batch of tapes pretty much proved Nick Bledsoe wrong on some of his points - one other thing."

"Yes?"

"Let's say that John Kennedy had hard intel in the spring of 1961, really good stuff that Khrushchev wanted to change the system. In '58, he'd effectively gutted the Red Army, and he was trying to reform the Party. Let's say that Kennedy had hard stuff on that, and he was told by a little bird that if he cut the Russkies a little slack, maybe we could have had a rapprochement in the 60s. Glasnost, say, thirty years early. Let's say all that happened, and the President blew the call, decided for political reasons that it was disadvantageous to cut Nikita a little slack That would mean that the 1960s were all a great big mistake. Vietnam, everything, all a gigantic screwup."

I don't believe it. I've been through the archives. It's not consistent with everything we know about -"

"Consistency in a politician?" Ryan interrupted. "There's a revolutionary concept."

If you're saying that really happened - "

"It was a hypothetical," Jack said with a raised eyebrow. Hell, he thought, the information was all out there for anyone who wanted to pull it together. That it had never been done was just another manifestation of a wider and more troubling problem. But the part that worried him was right in this building. He'd leave history to historians until, someday, he decided to rejoin their professional ranks. And when will that be, Jack?

"Nobody'd ever believe it."

"Most people believe that Lyndon Johnson lost the New Hampshire primary to Eugene McCarthy because of the Tet Offensive, too. Welcome to the world of intelligence, Dr Goodley. You know what's the hard part of recognizing the truth?" Jack asked.

"What's that?"

"Knowing that something just bit you on the ass. It's not as easy as you think."

"And the breakup of the Warsaw Pact?"

"Case in point," Ryan agreed. "We had all kinds of indicators, and we all blew the call. Well, that's not true, exactly. A lot of the youngsters in the DI - Directorate of Intelligence." Jack explained unnecessarily, which struck Goodley as patronizing "- were making noise, but the section chiefs pooh-poohed it."

"And you, sir?"

"If the Director's agreeable, we can let you see some of that. Most of it, in fact. The majority of our agents and field officers got faked out of their jockstraps, too. We all could have done better, and that's as true of me as it is of anybody else. If I have a weakness, it's that I have too tactical a focus."

"Trees instead of the forest?"

"Yep," Ryan admitted. "That's the big trap here, but knowing about it doesn't always help a whole hell of a lot."

"I guess that's why they sent me over." Goodley observed.

Jack grinned. "Hell, that's not terribly different from how I got started here. Welcome aboard. Where do you want to start, Dr Goodley?"