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Elliot interrupted. "That Kadishev is our main fallback position. Yes. And if he gets "burned," then we might have no fall-back position. You've made yourself very clear, Marcus. Thank you. I'll work on this myself."

"That should be quite satisfactory," Cabot said, after a moment's pause.

"Fine. Anything else I need to know this morning?"

"No, that's why I came down."

"I think it's time to show you something. Something we've been working on here. Pretty sensitive," she added. Marcus got the message.

"What is it?" the DCI asked guardedly.

"This is absolutely confidential." Elliot pulled a large manila envelope from her desk. "I mean absolutely, Marcus. It doesn't leave the building, okay?"

"Agreed." The DCI was already interested.

Liz opened the envelope and handed over some photographs. Cabot looked them over.

"Who's the woman?"

"Carol Zimmer, she's the widow of an Air Force crewman who got himself killed somehow or other." Elliot filled in some additional details.

"Ryan, screwing around? I'll be damned."

"Any chance we could get more information from inside the Agency?"

"If you mean accomplishing that without any suspicion on his part, it would be very difficult." Cabot shook his head. "His two SPOs, Clark and Chavez, no way. They're very tight. Good friends, I mean."

"Ryan's friendly with bodyguards? You serious?" Elliot was surprised. It was like being solicitous towards furniture.

"Clark's an old field officer. Chavez is a new kid, working as an SPO while he finishes his college degree, looking to be a field officer. I've seen the files. Clark'll retire in a few more years, and keeping him around as an SPO is just a matter of being decent. He's done some really interesting things. Good man, good officer."

Elliot didn't like that, but from what Cabot said, it seemed that it couldn't be helped. "We want Ryan eased out."

"That might not be easy. They really like him on The Hill."

"You just said he's insubordinate."

"It won't wash on The Hill. You know that. You want him fired, the President just has to ask for his resignation."

But that wouldn't wash on The Hill either, Liz thought, and it seemed immediately clear that Marcus Cabot wouldn't be much help. She hadn't really expected that he would be. Cabot was too soft.

"We can handle it entirely from this end, if you want."

"Probably a good idea. If it became known at Langley that I had a hand in this, it might look like spite. Can't have that." Cabot demurred. "Bad for morale."

"Okay." Liz stood, and so did Cabot. "Thanks for coming down."

Two minutes later, she was back in her chair, her feet propped up on a drawer. This was going so well. Exactly as planned. I'm getting good at this

"So?"

"This was published in a Washington paper today." Golovko said. It was seven in the evening in Moscow, the sky outside dark and cold as only Moscow could get cold. That he had to report on something in an American newspaper did not warm the night very much.

Andrey Il'ych Narmonov took the translation from the First Deputy Chairman and read through it. Finished, he tossed the two pages contemptuously onto his desktop. "What rubbish is this?"

"Holtzman is a very important Washington reporter. He has access to very senior officials in the Fowler Administration."

"And he probably writes a good deal of fiction, just as our reporters do."

"We think not. We think the tone of the report indicates that he was given the data by someone in the White House."

"Indeed?" Narmonov pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, cursing the cold that the sudden weather change had brought with it. If there was anything for which he did not have time, it was an illness, even a minor one. "I don't believe it. I've told Fowler personally about the difficulty with the missile destruction, and the rest of this political twaddle is just that. You know that I've had to deal with uniformed hotheads - those fools who went off on their own in the Baltic region. So do the Americans.