The baleful look in her eyes concealed her good humor. "Yeah, at about two every morning. See you Monday."

Goodley got back in his chair after the other two left "Okay, you can yell at me now."

Jack waved for him to light up "What do you mean?"

"For bringing up a dumb idea."

"Dumb idea, my ass. You were the first to suggest it. You've been doing good work."

"I haven't found beans," the Harvard scholar grumbled.

"No, but you've been looking in all the right places."

"If this stuff was for real, how likely is it that you'd be able to confirm through other sources?" Goodley asked.

"A little better than even money, maybe sixty percent, tops. Mary Pat was right. This guy's been giving us stuff we can't always get somewhere else. But you're also correct he stands to profit from being right. I have to run this one down to the White House before the weekend starts. Then I'm going to call fake Kantrowitz and Eric Andrews and get them to fly in here for a look-see next week. Got any particular plans for the weekend?" Jack asked.

"No."

"You do now. I want you to sweep through all your notes and do us a position paper, a good one." Ryan tapped his desk "I want it here Monday morning."

"Why?"

"Because you're intellectually honest, Ben. When you look at something, you really look."

"But you never agree with my conclusions!" Goodley objected.

"Not very often, but your supporting data is first-rate. Nobody's right all the time. Nobody's wrong all the time, either. The process is important, the intellectual discipline, and you have that locked down pretty tight, Dr Goodley. I hope you like living in Washington. I'm going to offer you a permanent position here. We're setting up a special group in the DI. Their mission will be to take contrarian positions, an in-house Team-B that reports directly to the DDI. You'll be the number-two man in the Russian section. Think you can handle it? Think carefully, Ben," Jack added hastily "You'll take a lot of heat from the A-Team Long hours, mediocre pay, and not a hell of a lot of satisfaction at the end of the day. But you'll see a lot of good stuff, and every so often someone's going to pay attention to you. Anyway, the position paper I want will be your entrance exam - if you're interested. I don't give a good goddamn what your conclusions are, but I want something I can contrast with what I'm going to get from everybody else. You game or not?"

Goodley squirmed in his seat and hesitated before talking. Christ, was this going to abort his career? But he couldn't not say it, could he? He let out his breath, and spoke. "There's something you should know."

"Okay."

"When Dr Elliot sent me here -"

"You were supposed to critique me. I know." Ryan was very amused. "I did a pretty good job of seduction, didn't I?"