“He wanted to know what she intends to announce,” the younger Giancola continued, then shrugged. “I had to tell him I don’t really know. I don’t think that was what he wanted to hear.”

“No, I doubt it was,” Arnold agreed. He swiveled his chair gently from side to side for two or three seconds, gazing at his brother contemplatively, then shrugged. “I haven’t seen a draft of her speech, but based on a few things she’s said to me over the last week or so, I have a pretty shrewd notion of what she plans to say, and I can’t say I’m exactly thrilled by it.”

“You think she’s going to talk about the negotiations with the Manties, don’t you?” Jason said.

“I think that’s exactly what she’s going to talk about,” Arnold acknowledged. “And I think she’s going to tell Congress—and the voters—that she intends to pursue an actual peace treaty with considerably more vigor. Which is why there’s no way in Hell Theisman’s news conference was a coincidence.”

“I was afraid that was what she was going to say,” Jason admitted. He sighed. “She’s taking your position away from you.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know.” Arnold snorted. “It has to be Pritchart, too. She’s a much better political tactician than Theisman. Besides, Theisman was our best ally as far as timing the announcement of the new fleet elements was concerned. He was so obsessed with maintaining operational security that we could have counted on him to keep his mouth shut until we were completely ready to go public. No, it was Pritchart. She overruled him, and now, like you say, she plans to co-opt my position on the negotiations.”

“Is there anything we can do about it?” Jason asked.

“Not that I can think of right off the top of my head.” Arnold’s voice was sour. “I’m beginning to wonder if maybe she didn’t deliberately let me entirely commit myself on the issue. Maybe she was just giving me enough rope to be sure I hung myself with every insider in Nouveau Paris. Everyone we’ve talked to knows exactly where I stand, and now that she’s going to very publicly give me what I wanted all along, it cuts the legs right out from under any opposition to her I could mount.”

He tipped his chair even further back and gazed up at the ceiling, eyes slightly unfocused in thought, and Jason watched him silently. He knew better than to interrupt his brother when he was thinking that hard, so he found himself a chair and sat down to wait it out.

It took a while, but finally Arnold’s eyes dropped back into focus, and he smiled at Jason. It was unkind, but true, that Jason wasn’t exactly the sharpest stylus in the box. He was loyal, energetic, and enthusiastic, but on his best day, no one had ever accused him of having an excess of intellect. There were times when he let his enthusiasm get the better of him, and he was entirely capable of putting his foot squarely into his mouth. And, to be honest, he had a way of asking irritating questions—the sort which either had no answer at all, or whose answer was so blatantly obvious any moron ought to know what it was without asking. But at the same time, there was something about him, something about those selfsame irritating questions, which had a way of striking sparks in Arnold’s own thinking. It was as if the need to figure out how to explain things to his brother caused his own thoughts to gel magically.