The Camp David detachment opened the chopper's door. An enclosed HMMWV pulled up to it so that the President and his party didn't have to get too cold. The flight crew watched them pull away, then checked for damage.

"Thought so."

"Metering pin?" The major bent down to look. "Sure enough." The landing had just been hard enough to snap the pin that controlled the hydraulic shock-absorber on the right-side landing gear. It would have to be fixed.

"I'll go check to see if we have a spare," the crew chief said. Ten minutes later, he was surprised to learn that they didn't. That was annoying. He placed a phone call to the helicopter base at the old Anacostia Naval Air Station to have a few driven up. Until it arrived, there was nothing that could be done. The aircraft could still be flown in an emergency, of course. A fire-team of Marine riflemen stood close guard on the helicopter, as always, while another squad walked perimeter guard in the woods around the landing pad area.

"What is it, Ben?"

"Does this place have a dorm?" Goodley asked.

Jack shook his head. "You can use the couch in Nancy's office if you want. How's your paper coming?"

"I'm going to be up all night anyway. I just thought of something."

"What's that?"

"Going to sound a little crazy - nobody ever checked to make sure that our friend Kadishev actually met with Narmonov."

"What do you mean?"

"Narmonov was out of town most of last week. If there was no meet, then the guy was lying to us, wasn't he?"

Jack closed his eyes and cocked his head to one side. "Not bad, Dr Goodley, not bad."

"We have Narmonov's itinerary. I have people checking on Kadishev's now. I'm going all the way back to last August. If we're going to do a check, it might as well be a comprehensive one. My position piece might be a little late, but this hit me last - this morning, actually. I've been chasing it down most of the day. It's harder than I thought."

Jack motioned to the storm outside. "Looks like I'm going to be stuck here a while. Want some help?"

"Sounds good to me."

"Let's get some dinner first."

Oleg Yurievich Lyalin boarded his flight to Moscow with mixed feelings. The summons was not all that irregular.

It was troublesome that it had come so soon after his meeting with the CIA Director, but that was probably happenstance. More likely, it had to do with the information he'd been delivering to Moscow about the Japanese Prime Minister's trip to America. One surprise he had not told CIA concerned Japanese overtures to the Soviet Union to trade high-technology for oil and lumber. That deal would have upset the Americans greatly only a few years earlier, and marked the culmination of a five-year project that Lyalin had worked on. He settled into his airline seat and allowed himself to relax. He had never betrayed his country, after all, had he?