"How did Liz do?"

"Don't ask. The Boss needed good advice, and he didn't get any from her."

"And you?"

"He didn't listen to me, and that's partly my fault, I guess."

"Hey, it's over."

Jack nodded again. "Yeah."

"Ryan, call for you."

Jack took the phone. "Ryan here. Yeah, okay. Go slower." He listened for several minutes, making notes. "Thanks, John."

"What was that?"

"A confession. Is the helicopter ready?"

"At the pad. On the other side," one of the Secret Service men said.

The helicopter was a VH-60. Ryan climbed aboard and strapped in, along with van Damm and three agents. The chopper lifted off at once. The sky was clearing. The wind was still lively, but there were stars to be seen in the west.

"Where's the Vice President?" van Damm asked.

"Kneecap," an agent replied. "He stays up six more hours till we're sure this is over."

Jack didn't even hear. He had his ear-protectors in, and took the chance to lean back and stare into space. The helicopter even had a bar, he saw. What a nice way to travel.

"They wanted to start a nuclear war?" Chavez asked.

"That's what they said." Clark washed his hands. It wasn't that bad. He'd only broken four of Qati's fingers. It was the way you worked the broken bones that really mattered. Ghosn - they now knew his name - had taken a little more, but both stories were almost identical.

"I heard it, too, man, but -"

"Yeah. Ambitious fuckers, weren't they?" Clark put some ice cubes into a bag and walked back to rest it on Qati's hand. He had his information now, and he was not a sadist. The sensible thing, he thought, was to toss their asses out of the airplane here and now, but that wasn't his job either. Both terrorists were manacled to their seats. Clark took a chair in the back so that he could keep an eye on both. Their luggage was there also. He decided to rummage through it now that he had the time.

"Hello, Ryan," the President said from his chair. "Hi, Arnie."

"Bad day, Bob," van Damm offered.

"Very." The man had aged. It seemed a cliche, but it was true. His skin was sallow, the eyes sitting at the bottom of dark-rimmed wells. Though he was normally a carefully groomed man, Fowler's hair was askew. "Ryan, you have them?"

"Yes, sir, two of our field officers grabbed them in Mexico City. Their names are Ismael Qati and Ibrahim Ghosn. You know who Qati is. We've been after that guy for a long time. He had a piece of the Beirut bombing, two aircraft incidents, lots of other things, mainly to do with Israel. Ghosn is one of his people, evidently an engineer by profession. They were somehow able to fabricate the weapon."

"Whose sponsorship?" the President asked.

"We - our man, that is - had to sweat that out of them. Sir, that's a technical violation -"