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By Root 1445 0

again, from a headache that he seemed to acquire just from walking into the Oval Office. It was surprising that the Saudis had been so long in authorizing the call from their Prince/Minister-Without-Portfolio. Maybe they'd just hoped to wish it away, a characteristic not exactly unique to that part of the world. Yes, I'm watching the TV now. At the bottom of the display, like the captioning for the hearing-impaired, was a dialogue box being typed by intelligence specialists at the National Security Agency. The rhetoric was a little flowery, but the content was clear to everyone in the room. Adler, Vasco, and Goodley had come in as soon as the feed arrived, liberating Ryan from his reading, if not his headache.

This is very unsettling, if not especially surprising, the Prince said over the encrypted line.

There was no stopping it. I know how it looks to you, Your Highness, the President said tiredly. He could have indulged in coffee, but he did want to get some sleep tonight.

We are going to place our military at a higher state of readiness.

Is there anything you want us to do? Ryan asked.

For the moment, just to know that your support has not changed.

It hasn't. I've told you before. Our security commitment to the Kingdom remains the same. If you want us to do something to demonstrate that, we're ready to take whatever steps seem reasonable and appropriate. Do you-

No, Mr. President, we have no formal requests at this time. That statement was delivered in a tone that made Jack's eyes flicker off the speakerphone and to his visitors.

In that case, might I suggest that you have some of your people discuss options with some of mine?

It must be kept quiet. My government has no wish to inflame the situation.

We'll do what we can. You can start talking to Admiral Jackson-he's J-3 in the-

Yes, Mr. President, I met him in the East Room. I will have our working-level people contact him later today.

Okay. If you need me, Ali, I'm always at the end of the phone.

Thank you, Jack. I hope you will sleep well. You'll need it. We all will. And the line went dead. Ryan killed the button on the phone to make sure.

Opinions?

Ali wants us to do something, but the King hasn't decided yet, Adler said.

They'll try to establish contacts with the UIR. Vasco took up the conversation. Their first instinct will be to get a dialogue going, try to do a little business. The Saudis will take the lead. Figure Kuwait and the rest of the lesser states will let them handle the contacts, but we'll be hearing from them soon, probably through channels.

We have a good ambassador in Kuwait? the President asked.

Will Bach, Adler said, with an emphatic nod. Career FSO. Good man. Not real imaginative, but a good plugger, knows the language and culture, lots of friends in their royal family. Good commercial guy. He's been pretty effective as a middleman between our business-people and their government.

Good deputy chief of mission to back him up, Vasco went on, and the attaches there are tops, all spooks, good ones.

Okay, Bert. Ryan took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. Tell me what happens next.

The whole south side of the Gulf is scared shitless. This is their nightmare come true.

Ryan nodded and shifted his gaze. Ben, I want CIA's assessment of the UIR's intentions, and I want you to call Robby and see what kind of options we have. Get Tony Bretano into the loop. He wanted to be SecDef, and I want him to start thinking about the non-admin part of the job.

Langley doesn't have much of a clue, Adler pointed out. Not their fault, but that's how it is. And so their assessment would present a range of potential options, from theater nuclear war-Iran might have nukes, after all-to the Second Coming, and three or four options in between, each with its theoretical justification. That way, as usual, the President had the chance to choose the wrong one, and it wouldn't be anyone's fault but his own.

Yeah, I know. Scott, let's see if we can establish some contacts with the UIR, too.

Extend the olive branch?

You got it, the President agreed.