Jason sat up straighter as Arnold smiled at him. He knew that expression, and his flagging spirits perked up instantly.

“I think, Jase, that I’ve been coming at this the wrong way ever since Theisman opened his mouth,” Arnold said thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking about the way Pritchart is about to try to take over my own position and squeeze me out. But when you come right down to it, she can’t. Not as long as I’m Secretary of State. She can try to take credit for any success our negotiations might achieve, and she can try to convince the public that she’s the one who decided to take a firmer position with the Manties. But in the end, I’m the one who’s going to be carrying out those negotiations.”

“So she’s going to have to share at least some of the credit for any successes with you,” Jason said, nodding slowly.

“Well, yes, she is,” Arnold agreed. “But that isn’t really what I was thinking about.” Jason looked confused, and Arnold grinned. “What I was thinking about,” he explained, “was that any communication with the Manties is going to pass through my office. Which means that what I really need to be concentrating on is the opportunity that offers to put my own little imprint on things.”

Jason still looked less than totally enlightened, and Arnold decided not to be any more specific. Not yet. In fact, he almost wished he hadn’t said as much as he already had, given Jason’s propensity for occasionally blurting out things at inconvenient moments.

Fortunately, Jason was accustomed to leaving the heavy intellectual lifting to him. It wasn’t really necessary to explain things at this point. Indeed, it might be just as well not to explain them at all. Jason was very good at carrying out instructions, as long as those instructions were specific and uncomplicated, so perhaps it would be wisest not to burden him with more than he absolutely needed to know.

Jason was also accustomed to the way Arnold wandered off into his own thoughts, and he was perfectly content to sit and wait in companionable silence for however long it took for Arnold to complete the process and remember his presence. Which was just as well, since Arnold was very busy thinking indeed just now.

Yes, indeed. He’d been overlooking his greatest single advantage all along. Or, no, not “overlooking” it precisely. He just hadn’t realized how big an advantage it truly was if he handled it properly. But now that it had occurred to him, he could see all sorts of possibilities. The public might be gulled into believing any new, assertive negotiating stance was Eloise Pritchart’s idea, not Arnold Giancola’s. But whatever the public might be prepared to think, Arnold knew that, in the end, and despite any confidence she might project through her much anticipated speech, Pritchart lacked the intestinal fortitude to go to the mat with the Manties if that was what success required. If it came down to going to eyeball-to-eyeball with the real possibility of a resumption of hostilities, Pritchart—and Theisman—would blink and let the damned Manties walk all over them all over again.