There was no answer. Chiarini was already out of the office and Bear started firing up his computer.

Forty minutes later President Lynn Turner Dillon walked into the Situation Room, elegant and poised as ever, with not a hair out of place. As the door was closed behind her by the Secret Service agent on guard, she exuded the energy and freshness that a daily combination of gym and Pilates sessions ensured.

Standing up with all the others as she entered, Bear felt an almost physical sense of the power she gave off. The graver this crisis became, the more assured became her leadership.

I know how lonely command in war can be, he thought. But, dammit, she’s just thriving on it. What was the saying? Cometh the hour, cometh the man? This time it was firmly cometh the woman . . . and what a woman.

With the President seated, MacWhite, the tall, lean former Special Forces general, who looked as if he’d be more at home riding the range somewhere out West than inside the Washington beltway, led the President through the agenda. They would start with the intelligence update before considering the strategic options.

MacWhite let the Int briefer run through a series of PowerPoint slides: the latest positions of the Russian Baltic Fleet at sea; Russian troop dispositions in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, calculated at upward of 200,000 men and climbing; estimated strengths of the Forest Brothers—initially some thousands, but already rumored to be climbing toward their 1950s apogee of about 50,000 men and women under arms, including many Russian speakers who had remained loyal to the Baltics and had been outraged by this assault on their much-prized freedom—and the latest digest of attacks against their Russian occupiers. This was followed by an analysis of Russian strength levels in Ukraine and Kaliningrad. For once, the Middle East was relegated to another meeting.