For a moment, and no more, he felt himself slide into a spiritual ditch, a little quiet gutter of despair. To simply give up, give in, open his arms to the darkness, shed all responsibility to country, to wife and son, to himself. To end the game—that was all it was, no? Take his piece from the board, watch the board swept clean, a new game set up. Rest. Oddly, coming out of that gutter, he took encouragement and strength from the thought that if indeed they were going to be swept from the board, he could then rest, and there would be an end. Funny how the mind works.

At fifteen minutes after two, he stood at the gate, to one side of a crowd of waiting friends and families. The open double doors brought forth business men and women in trim suits gray and brown and that strange shade of iridescent blue that was so much in fashion, peacock's eyes Francine called it; three young children holding hands and followed by a woman in knee-length black skirt and austere white blouse, and then Harry, clutching a leather valise and looking thinner, older, tired.

"All right," Harry said after they hugged and shook hands. "You have me for forty-eight hours, max, and then the doctor wants me back to blunt more needles. Jesus. You look as bad as I do."

In the small government car, winding through the maze of a bare concrete parking garage, Arthur explained the circumstances of their meeting with the President. "Schwartz is putting aside half an hour in Crockerman's schedule. It's getting very tight. He's supposed to be in New Hampshire this evening for a final campaign rally. Hicks, you and I will be in the Oval Office with him, undisturbed, for that half hour. We'll do what we can to convince him he's wrong."

"And if we don't?" Harry asked. Had his eyes lightened in color? They seemed less brown than tan now, almost bleached.

Arthur could only shrug. "How are you feeling?"

"Not as bad as I look."

"That's good," Arthur said, trying to relax that anonymous something in his throat. He smiled thinly at Harry.

"Thanks," Harry said. "I have an excuse, at least. Is everybody else around here going to look like extras in a vampire movie?"

"What do you weigh now?" Arthur asked. The car moved out into watery sunlight. Snow threatened.

"I'm back to fighting trim. I weigh what I weighed in high school. Graduation day."

"What's the prognosis?"

Harry crossed his arms. "Still fighting."

Arthur glanced at him, did a frank double take, and asked, "Is that a wig?"

"You guessed it," Harry said. "Enough of that shit. Tell me about Ormandy."

The wide double doors to the Oval Office opened and three men stepped out. Schwartz nodded at them. Arthur recognized the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Secretary of the Treasury.