"General, you told me that we'd get something useful from this. What did we get?"

"Sir, it may be significant that there's all that work going on at Alyesk."

"But you don't know what the work is!"

"No, sir, we don't," Borstein admitted rather sheepishly.

"Could they be readying those missiles for launch?"

"Yes, sir, that is a possibility."

"My God."

"Robert," the National Security Advisor said, "I am getting very frightened."

"Elizabeth, we don't have time for this." Fowler collected himself. "We must maintain control of ourselves, and control the situation. We must. We must convince Narmonov -"

"Robert, don't you see? It's not him! That's the only thing that makes sense. We don't know who we're dealing with!"

"What can we do about it?"

"I don't know!"

"Well, whoever it is, they don't want a nuclear war. Nobody would. It's too crazy," the President assured her, sounding almost like a parent.

"Are you sure of that? Robert, are you really sure? They tried to kill us!"

"Even if that's true, we have to set it aside."

"But we can't. If they were willing to try once, they will be willing to try again! Don't you see?"

Just a few feet behind him, Helen D'Agustino realized that she'd read Liz Elliot correctly the previous summer.

She was as much a coward as a bully. And now whom did the President have to advise him? Fowler rose from his chair and headed for the bathroom. Pete Connor trailed along as far as the door, because even Presidents are not allowed to make that trip alone. "Daga' looked down on Dr Elliot. Her face was - what? the Secret Service agent asked herself. It was beyond fear. Agent D'Agustino was every bit as frightened herself, but she didn't - that was unfair, wasn't it? Nobody was asking her for advice, nobody was asking her to make sense of this mess. Clearly, none of it made sense at all. It simply didn't. At least no one was asking her about it, but that wasn't her job. It was Liz Elliot's job.

"I got a contact here," one of the sonar operators said aboard Sea Devil One-Three. "Buoy three, bearing two-one-five blade count now single screw - nuclear submarine contact! Not American, screw's not American."

"Got him on four," another sonarman said. "This dude's hauling ass, blade count shows over twenty, maybe twenty-five knots, bearing my buoy is three-zero-zero."

"Okay," the Tacco said, "I have a posit. Can you give me drift?"

"Bearing now two-one-zero!" the first one responded. "This guy is moving!"

Two minutes later, it was clear, the contact was heading straight for USS Maine.

"Is this possible?" Jim Rosselli asked. The radio message had gone from Kodiak straight to the NMCC. The commander of the patrol squadron didn't know what to do and was screaming for instructions. The report came in the form of a RED ROCKET, copied off also to CINCPAC, who would also be requesting direction from above.