"They just don't understand," Jack said quietly. He stretched, then lit a cigarette. They just don't understand.

"You see, this is all very simple. There is a difference between not knowing anything and understanding that you don't know. We have a crisis, and all the players are reverting to type. The President is thinking like a lawyer, trying to be cool, doing what he knows how to do, running down the evidence and trying to make a case, interrogating the witnesses, trying to reduce everything, playing that game. Liz is fixed on the fact that she might have been blown up, can't set that aside. Well." Ryan shrugged. "I guess I can understand that. I've been there, too. She's a political scientist, looking for a theoretical model. She's feeding that to the president. She has a real elegant model, but it's based on crap, isn't it, Ben?"

"You left out something, Jack," Goodley pointed out.

Ryan shook his head. "No, Ben, I just haven't gotten there yet. Because I can't control my fucking temper, they won't listen to me now. I should have known, I had my warning - I even saw it coming - but I let my temper get the best of me again. And you know the funny part? If it wasn't for me, Fowler would still be in Columbus, Ohio, and Elliot would be teaching shiny young faces at Bennington." Jack walked to the window again. It was dark outside, and the lighted room made it into a mirror.

"What are you talking about?"

"That, gentlemen, is a secret. Maybe that's what they'll put on the stone: "Here lies John Patrick Ryan. He tried to do the right thing - and look what happened." I wonder if Cathy and the kids will make it "

"Come on, it's not that bad," the Senior Duty Officer observed, but all the others in the room felt the chill.

Jack turned. "Isn't it? Don't you see where this is heading? They're not listening to anybody. They're not listening. They might listen to Dennis Bunker or Brent Talbot, but they're both air pollution, little bits of fallout somewhere over Colorado. I'm the closest thing in town to an advisor right now, and I got myself tossed out."

CHAPTER 41

The Field of Camlan

The Admiral Lunin was going too fast for safety. Captain Dubinin knew that, but chances like this did not come along often. This was, in fact, the first, and the captain wondered if it might also be the last. Why were the Americans on a full-blown nuclear alert - yes, of course, a possible nuclear explosion in their country was a grave matter, but could they be so mad as to assume that a Soviet had done such a thing?

"Get me a polar projection chart," he said to a quartermaster. Dubinin knew what he would see, but it wasn't a time for remembrance, it was a time for hard facts. The meter-square sheet of hard paper was on the table a moment later. Dubinin took a pair of dividers and walked them from Maine’s estimated position to Moscow, and to the strategic rocket fields in the central part of his country.