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By Root 1305 0

have known, Ryan thought. Lee had felt himself trapped into fighting for what was at best a soiled cause because of his perceived duty to his place of birth, and therefore many would curse his name for all eternity, despite his qualities as a man and a soldier. So, Jack, he asked himself, in your case, where do talent and duty and right and wrong and all that other stuff lie? What the hell are you supposed to do now? He was supposed to know. All those people outside the White House's campuslike grounds expected him to know all the time where the right thing was, right for the country, right for the world, right for every working man, woman, and innocent little kid playing T-ball. Yeah, the President thought, sure. You're anointed by the wisdom fairy when you walk in here every day, or kissed on the ear by the muse, or maybe Washington and Lincoln whisper to you in your dreams at night. He sometimes had trouble picking his tie in the morning, especially if Cathy wasn't around to be his fashion adviser. But he was supposed to know what to do with taxes, defense, and Social Security—why? Because it was his job to know. Because he happened to live in government housing at One Thousand six Hundred Pennsylvania Avenue and had the Secret goddamned Service protect him everywhere he went. At the Basic School at Quantico, the officers instructing newly commissioned Marine second lieutenants had told them about the loneliness of command. The difference between that and what he had here was like the difference between a fucking firecracker and a nuclear weapon. This kind of situation had started wars in the past. That wouldn't happen now, of course, but it had once. It was a sobering thought. Ryan took a last puff on his fifth smoke of the day and killed it in the brown glass ashtray he kept hidden in a desk drawer.

"Thanks for bringing me this. Talk it over with State and CIA," he told them again. "I want a SNIE on this, and I want it soon."

"Right," George Winston said, standing for the underground walk back to his building across the street.

"Mr. Gant," Jack added. "Get some sleep. You look like hell."

"I'm allowed to sleep in this job?" TELESCOPE asked.

"Sure you are, just like I am," POTUS told him with a lopsided smile. When they left, he looked at Arnie: "Talk to me."

"Speak to Adler, and have him talk to Hitch and Rutledge, which you ought to do, too," Arnie advised.

Ryan nodded. "Okay, tell Scott what I need, and that I need it fast."

"Good news," Professor North told her, as she came back into the room.

Andrea Price-O'Day was in Baltimore, at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, seeing Dr. Madge North, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

"Really?"

"Really," Dr. North assured her with a smile. "You're pregnant."

Before anything else could happen, Inspector Patrick O'Day leapt to his feet and lifted his wife in his arms for a powerful kiss and a rib-cracking hug.

"Oh," Andrea said almost to herself. "I thought I was too old."

"The record is well into the fifties, and you're well short of that," Dr. North said, smiling. It was the first time in her professional career that she'd given this news to two people carrying guns. "Any problems?" Pat asked.

"Well, Andrea, you are prime-ep. You're over forty and this is your first pregnancy, isn't it?"

"Yes." She knew what was coming, but she didn't invite it by speaking the word.

"That means that there is an increased likelihood of Down's syndrome. We can establish that with an amniocentesis. I'd recommend we do that soon,"

"How soon?"

"I can do it today if you wish."

"And if the test is … ?"

"Positive? Well, then you two have to decide if you want to bring a Down's child into the world. Some people do, but others don't. It's your decision to make, not mine," Madge North told them. She'd done abortions in her career, but like most obstetricians, she much preferred to deliver babies.

"Down's—how and … I mean … " Andrea said, squeezing her husband's hand.

"Look, the odds are very much in your favor, like a hundred to one or so, and those are betting odds. Before you worry