Ben already had a good idea on that, of course. If Ryan could not see it coming, that was not his problem, was it?

"So, where do you get the computers?" Bock asked. Fromm was closeted away with his paper and pencils.

"Israel for a start, maybe Jordan or Turkey." Ghosn replied.

"This will be rather expensive." Fromm warned.

"I have already checked out the computer-controlled machine tools. Yes, they are expensive." But not that expensive. It occurred to Ghosn that he had access to hard-currency assets that might boggle the mind of this unbeliever. "We will see what your friend requires. Whatever it is, we will get it."

CHAPTER 13

Process

Why did I ever accept this job?

Roger Durling was a proud man. The upset winner of what was supposed to have been a secure Senate seat, then the youngest governor in the history of California, he knew pride to be a weakness, but he also knew that there was much to justify his.

I could have waited a few years, maybe returned to the Senate and earned my way into the White House, instead of cutting a deal, and delivering the election to Fowler in return for this.

"This' was Air Force Two, the radio callsign for whatever aircraft the Vice President rode on. The implicit contrast with 'Air Force One' made just one more joke that attached to what was putatively the second most important political post in the United States, though not as earthily apt as John Nance Garner's observation: "A pitcher of warm spit." The whole office of Vice President, Durling judged, was one of the few mistakes made by the Founding Fathers. It had once been worse. Originally, the Vice President was supposed to have been the losing candidate who, after losing, would patriotically take his place in a government not his and preside over the Senate, setting aside petty political differences to serve the country. How James Madison had ever been that foolish was something scholars had never really examined, but the mistake had been corrected quickly enough by the 12th Amendment in 1803. Even in an age when gentlemen preparing for a duel referred to each other as 'sir,' that was something that pressed selflessness too far. And so the law had been changed, and the Vice President was now an appendage instead of a defeated enemy. That so many Vice Presidents had succeeded to the top job was less a matter of design than happenstance. That so many had done well - Andrew Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman - was miraculous.

It was in any case a chance he would never have. Bob Fowler was physically healthy and politically as secure as any President had been since Eisenhower? Durling wondered. Maybe even FDR. The important, almost co-equal role for the Vice President that Carter had initiated with Walter Mondale - something largely ignored but highly constructive - was a thing of the past. Fowler did not need Durling anymore. The President had made that quite clear.