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By Root 846 0

of emotion at the answer to his question. One of the nice things about Clark, Ritter thought to himself, was that he was the only man in the Agency who could discuss these topics calmly and dispassionately - and really mean it. There were quite a few for whom such talk was an interesting intellectual exercise, unprofessional speculation, really, gotten consciously or subconsciously from reading spy fiction. Gee, wouldn't it be nice if we could… It was widely believed in the general public that the Central Intelligence Agency employed a goodly number of expert professionals in this particular field. It didn't. Even the KGB had gotten away from such things, farming this kind of work out to the Bulgarians - regarded by their own associates as uncouth barbarians - or genuine third-parties like terrorist groups in Europe and the Middle East. The political cost of such operations was too high, and despite the mania for secrecy cultivated by every intelligence service in the world, such things always got out eventually. The world had gotten far more civilized since Ritter had graduated from The Farm on the York River, and while he thought that a genuinely good thing, there were times when a return to the good old days beckoned with solutions to problems that hadn't quite gone away.

"How hard would it be?" Ritter asked, interested.

"With the proper backup and some additional assets - it's a snap." Clark explained what special assets were needed. "Everything they've done plays into our hands. That's the one mistake they've made. They're conventional in their defensive outlook. Same old thing, really. It's a matter of who determines the rules of the game. As things now stand, we both play by the same rules, and those rules, as applied here, give the advantage to the opposition. We never seem to learn that. We always let the other side set the rules. We can annoy them, inconvenience them, take away some of their profit margin, but, hell, given what they already make, it's a minor business loss. I only see one thing changing that."

"Which is?"

"How'd you like to live in a house like that one?" Clark asked, handing over one of his photographs.

"Frank Lloyd Wright meets Ludwig the Mad," Ritter observed with a chuckle.

"The man who commissioned that house is growing quite an ego, sir. They have manipulated whole governments. Everyone says that they are a government for all practical purposes. They said the same thing in Chicago during Prohibition, that Capone really ran the town - just one city, right? Well, these people are on their way to running their own country, and renting out others. So let's say that they do have the de facto power of a government. Factor ego into that. Sooner or later they're going to start acting like one. I know we won't break the rules. But it wouldn't surprise me if they stepped outside them once or twice, just to see what they might get away with. You see what I mean? They keep expanding their own limits, and they haven't found the brick wall yet, the one that tells them where to stop."

"John, you're turning into a psychologist," Ritter noted with a thin smile.

"Maybe so. These guys peddle addictive drugs, right? Mostly they do not use the stuff themselves, but I think they're getting themselves hooked on the most powerful narcotic there is."

"Power."

Clark nodded. "Sooner or later, they're going to OD. At that point, sir, somebody's going to think seriously about what I just proposed. When you get into the majors, the rules change some. That's a political decision, of course."

He was master of all he surveyed. At least that was the phrase that came to mind, and with all such aphorisms it could be both true and false at the same time. The valley into which he looked did not all belong to him; the parcel of land on which he stood was less than a thousand hectares, and his vista included a million. But not one person who lived within his view could continue to live were he to decide otherwise. That was the only sort of power that mattered, and it was a form of power that he had exercised on occasions