"God damn it!" Ryan swore. "This came in through State?"

"Correct, sir. Director Cabot's orders to use a fax line. He wanted to save transcription time."

"Didn't Sam Yamata bother to explain about date-lines and time-zones?"

"Fraidnot."

There was no sense swearing further at the man from the Japan Department. Ryan read through the pages again. "Well, what do you think?"

"I think the Prime Minister is walking into an ambush."

"Isn't that too damned bad?" Ryan observed. "Messenger this down to the White House. The President's going to want it PDQ."

"Right." The man left. Ryan dialed up operations next. "How's Clark doing?" Jack asked, without preamble.

"Okay, he says. He's ready to make the plant. The monitor aircraft are all standing by. We know of no changes in the PM's schedule."

"Thanks."

"How long are you going to be in?"

Jack looked outside. The snow had already started. "Maybe all night."

It was developing into a big one. The eastbound cold-weather storm from the Midwest was linking into a low-pressure area coming up the coast. The really big snow storms in the D.C. area always came in from the south, and the National Weather Service was saying six-to-eight inches. That prediction was up from two-to-four only a few hours earlier. He could leave work right now, then try to fight his way back in the morning, or he could stay. Staying, unfortunately, looked like the best option.

Golovko was also in his office, though the time in Moscow was eight hours ahead of Washington. That fact did not contribute to Sergey's humor, which was poor.

"Well?" he asked the man from the communications-intelligence watch staff.

"We got lucky. This document was sent by facsimile printer from the U.S. Embassy Tokyo to Washington." He handed the sheet over.

The slick thermal paper was covered mainly with gibberish, some discrete but disordered letters, and even more black-and-white hash from the random noise, but perhaps as much as twenty percent was legible English, including two complete sentences and one full paragraph.

"Well?" Golovko asked again.

"When I delivered it to the Japanese section for comment, they handed me this." Another document was passed. "I've marked the paragraph."

Golovko read the Russian-language paragraph, then compared it to the English - "It's a fucking translation. How was our document sent in?"

"By embassy courier. It wasn't transmitted because two of the crypto machines in Tokyo were being repaired, and the Rezident decided it was unimportant enough to wait. It ended up in the embassy bag. So, they are not reading our ciphers, but they got this anyway."

"Who's working this case - Lyalin? Yes." Golovko said, almost to himself. He next called the senior watch officer for the First Chief Directorate. "Colonel, this is Golovko. I want a Flash-priority to Rezident Tokyo. Lyalin to report to Moscow immediately."

"What's the problem?"

"The problem is, we have another leak."

"Lyalin is a very effective officer. I know the material he's sending back."

"So do the Americans. Get that message off at once. Then, I want everything we have from THISTLE on my desk." Golovko hung up and looked at the major standing in front of his desk. "That mathematician who figured this all out - good God, I wish we'd had him five years ago!"