"Ben Bova - Remember, Caesar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

BEN BOVA

REMEMBER, CAESAR ...


We have never renounced the use of terror.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

She was alone and she was scared.

Apara Jaheen held her breath as the two plainclothes security guards walked past
her. They both held ugly, deadly black machine pistols casually in their hands
as they made their rounds along the corridor.

They can't see you, Apara told herself. You're invisible.

Still, she held her breath.

She knew that her stealth suit shimmered ever so slightly in the glareless light
from the fluorescents that lined the ceiling of the corridor. You had to be
looking for that delicate little ripple in the air, actively seeking it, to
detect it at all. And even then you would think it was merely a trick your eyes
played on you, a flicker that was gone before it even registered consciously in
your mind.

And yet Apara froze, motionless, not daring to breathe, until the two men --
smelling of cigarettes and after-shave lotion -- passed her and were well down
the corridor. They were talking about the war, betting that it would be launched
before the week was out.

Her stealth suit's surface was honeycombed with microscopic fiber optic vidcams
and pixels that were only a couple of molecules thick. The suit hugged Apara's
lithe body like a famished lover. Directed by the computer built into her
helmet, the vidcams scanned her surroundings and projected the imagery onto the
pixels.

It was the closest thing to true invisibility that the Cabal's technology had
been able to come up with. So close that, except for the slight unavoidable
glitter when the sequin-like pixels caught some stray light, Apara literally
disappeared into the background.

Covering her from head to toe, the suit's thermal absorption layer kept her
infrared profile vanishingly low and its insulation subskin held back the
minuscule electromagnetic fields it generated. The only way they could detect
her would be if she stepped into a scanning beam, but the wide-spectrum goggles
she wore should reveal them to her in plenty of time to avoid them.

She hoped.

Getting into the president's mansion had been ridiculously easy. As instructed,
she had waited until dark before leaving the Cabal's safe house in the miserable
slums of the city. Her teammates drove her as close to the presidential mansion
as they dared in a dilapidated, nondescript faded blue sedan that would draw no
attention. They wished her success as she slipped out of the car, invisible in
her stealth suit.

"For the Cause," Ahmed said, almost fiercely, to the empty air where he thought
she was.

"For the Cause," Apara repeated, knowing that she might never see him again.

Tingling with apprehension, Apara hurried across the park that fronted the
mansion, unseen by the evening strollers and beggars, then climbed onto the
trunk of one of the endless stream of limousines that entered the grounds. She
passed the perimeter guard posts unnoticed.

She rode on the limo all the way to the mansion's main entrance. While a pair of
bemedaled generals got out of the limousine and walked crisply past the saluting
uniformed guards, Apara melted back into the shadows, away from the lights of
the entrance, and took stock of the situation.

The guards at the big, open double doors wore splendid uniforms and shouldered
assault rifles. And were accompanied by dogs: two big German shepherds who sat
on their haunches, tongues lolling, ears laid back.

Will they smell me if I try to go through the doors? Apara asked herself.
Muldoon and his technicians claimed that the insulated stealth suit protected
her even from giving off a scent. They were telling the truth, as they knew it,
of course. But were they right?

If she were caught, she knew her life would be over. She would simply disappear,
a prisoner of their security apparatus. They would use drugs to drain her of
every scrap of information she possessed. They would not have to kill her
afterward; her mind would be gone by then. Standing in the shadows, invisible
yet frightened, she tongued the cyanide capsule lodged between her upper right
wisdom tooth and cheek. This is a volunteer mission, Muldoon had told her.
You've got to be willing to give your life for the Cause.

Apara was willing, yet the fear still rose in her throat, hot and burning.

Born in the slums of Beirut to a mother who abandoned her and a father she never
knew, she had understood from childhood that her life was worthless. Even the
name they had given her, Apara, meant literally "born to die."

It was during her teen years, when she had traded her body for life itself, for
food and protection against the marauding street gangs who raped and murdered
for the thrill of it, that she began to realize that life was pointless,
existence was pain, the sooner death took her the sooner she would be safe from
all fear.

Then Ahmed entered her life and showed her that there was more to living than
waiting for death. Strike back! he told her. If you must give up your life, give
it for something worthwhile. Even we who are lost and miserable can accomplish
something with our lives. We can change the world!

Ahmed introduced her to the Cabal, and the Cabal became her family, her teacher,
her purpose for breathing.

For the first time in her short life, Apara felt worthwhile. The Cabal flew her
across the ocean, to the United States of America, where she met the pink-faced
Irishman who called himself Muldoon and was entrusted with her mission to the
White House. And decked in the stealth suit, a cloak of invisibility, just like
the magic of old Baghdad in the time of Scheherazade and the Thousand and One
Nights.

You can do it, she told herself as she clung to the shadows outside the White
House's main entrance. They are all counting on you: Muldoon and his technicians
and Ahmed, with his soulful eyes and tender dear hands.

When the next limousine disgorged its passengers, a trio of admirals, Apara
sucked in a deep breath and walked in with them, past the guards and the dogs.
One of the animals perked up its ears and whined softly as she marched in step
behind the admirals, but other than that heart-stopping instant she had no
trouble getting inside the White House. The guard shushed the animal, gruffly.

She followed the trio of admirals out to the west wing, and down the stairs to
the basement level and a long, narrow corridor. At its end, Apara could see, was
a security checkpoint with a metal detector like the kind used at airports,
staffed by two women in uniform. Both of them were African-Americans.

She stopped and faded back against the wall as the admirals stepped through the
metal detector, one by one. The guards were lax, expecting no trouble. After
all, only the president's highest and most trusted advisors were allowed here.

Then the two plainclothes guards walked past her, openly displaying their
machine pistols and talking about the impending war.

"You think they're really gonna do it?"

"Don't see why not. Hit 'em before they start some real trouble. Don't wait for
the mess to get worse."

"Yeah, I guess so."

They walked down the corridor as far as the checkpoint, chatted briefly with the
female guards, then came back, passing Apara again, still talking about the
possibility of war.

Apara knew that she could not get through the metal detector without setting off
its alarm. The archway-like device was sensitive not only to metals, but sniffed
for explosives and x-rayed each person stepping through it. She was invisible to
human eyes but the x-ray camera would see her clearly.

She waited, hardly breathing, until the next clutch of visitors arrived.
Civilians, this time. Steeling herself, Apara followed them up to the checkpoint
and waited as they stopped at the detector and handed their wristwatches, coins,
and belts to the women on duty, then stepped through the detector, single-file.

Timing was important. As the last of the civilians started through, holding his
briefcase in front of his chest, as instructed, Apara dropped flat on her
stomach and slithered across the archway like a snake speeding after its prey.
Carefully avoiding the man's feet, she got through the detector just before he
did.

The x-rays did not reach the floor, she had been told. She hoped it was true.

The alarm buzzer sounded. Apara, on the far side of the detector now, sprang to
her feet.

"Hold it, sir," said one of the uniformed guards. "The metal detector went off."

He looked annoyed. "I gave you everything. Don't tell me the damned machine
picked up the hinges on my briefcase."

The woman shrugged. "Would you mind stepping through again, sir, please?"

With a huff, the man ducked back through the doorway, still clutching his
briefcase, and then stepped through once more. No alarm.

"Satisfied?" he sneered.

"Yes, sir. Thank you," the guard said tonelessly.

"Happens now and then," said her partner as she handed the man back his watch,
belt and change. "Beeps for no reason."

"Machines aren't perfect," the man muttered.

"I guess," said the guard.

"Too much iron in your blood, Marty," joked one of the other men.

Apara followed them down the corridor, feeling immensely relieved. As far as her
information went, there were no further security checkpoints. Unless she bumped
into someone, or her suit somehow failed, she was safe.

Until she tried to get out of the White House. But that wouldn't happen until
she had fulfilled her mission. If they caught her then, she would simply bite on
the cyanide capsule, knowing that she had struck her blow for the Cause.

She followed the civilians into a spacious conference room dominated by a long,
polished mahogany table. Most of the high-backed leather chairs were already
occupied, mainly by men in military uniforms. There were more stars around the
table than in a desert sky, Apara thought. One bomb in here and the U.S.
military establishment would be decapitated, along with most of the cabinet
heads.

She pressed her back against the bare wall next to the door as the latest
arrivals went around the table, shaking hands.

They chatted idly for several minutes, a dozen different conversations buzzing
around the long table. Then the president entered from the far door and they all
snapped to their feet.

"Sit down, gentlemen," said the president. "And ladies," she added, smiling at
the three female cabinet members who sat together at one side of the table.

The president looked older in person than she did on television, Apara thought.
She was not wearing so much makeup, of course. Still, the president looked
vigorous and determined, her famous green eyes sweeping the table as she took
her chair at its head. For an instant those eyes looked directly at Apara, and
her heart stopped. But the moment passed. The president could not see Apara any
more than the others could.

The president's famous smile was absent as she sat down. Looking directly at the
chairman of the joint chiefs, she asked the general, "Well, are we ready?"

"In twenty-four hours," he replied crisply. "Troop deployment is complete, the
naval task force is on station and our full complement of planes is on site,
ready to go."

"Then why do we need twenty-four hours?" the president demanded.

The general's silver eyebrows rose a centimeter. "Logistics, ma'am. Getting
ammunition and fuel to the front-line units, setting our communications codes.
Strictly routine, but very important if we want the attack to come off without a
hitch."

The president was not pleased. "Every hour we delay means more pressure from the
U.N."

"And from the Europeans," said one of the civilians. Apara recognized him as the
secretary of defense.

"The French are complaining again?"

"They've never stopped complaining, madam president. Now they've got the
Russians joining the chores. They've asked for an emergency meeting of NATO."

"Not the general assembly?"

The secretary of defense almost smiled. "No, ma'am. Even the French realize that
the U.N. can't stop us."

A murmur of suppressed laughter rippled along the table. Apara felt anger. These
people used the United Nations when it suited them, and ignored the U.N.
otherwise.

The secretary of state, sitting at her right hand, was a thickset older man with
a heavy thatch of gray hair that flopped stubbornly over his forehead. He held
up a blunt-fingered hand and the table fell silent.

"I must repeat, madam president," he said in a grave, dolorous voice, "that we
have not yet exhausted all our diplomatic and economic options. Military force
should be our last choice, after all other possibilities have been foreclosed,
not our first choice."

"We don't have time for that," snapped the secretary of defense. "And those
people don't respect anything but force, anyway."

"I disagree," said state. "Our U.N. ambassador tells me that they are willing to
allow the United Nations to arbitrate our differences."

"The United Nations," the president muttered.

"As an honest broker--"

"Yeah, and we'll be the honest brokee," one of the admirals wisecracked.
Everyone around the table laughed.

Then the president said, "Our U.N. ambassador is a well-known weak sister. Why
do you think I put him there in New York, Carlos, instead of giving him your
portfolio?"

The secretary of state was not deterred. "Invading a sovereign nation is a
serious decision. American soldiers and aircrew will be killed."

The president glared at him. "All right, Carlos, you've made your point. Now
let's get on with it."

One of the admirals said, "We're ready with the nuclear option, if and when it's
needed."

"Good," snapped the president.

And on it went, for more than an hour. The fundamentalist regime of Iran was
going to be toppled by American military power. Its infiltration of other Moslem
nations would end, its support of international terrorism would be wiped out.

Terrorism, Apara growled silently. They speak of using nuclear weapons and they
call the Iranians terrorists.

And what am I? she asked herself. What is the Cabal and the Cause we fight for?
What other weapons do we have except terror? How can we straggle for a just
world, a world free of domination, unless we use terror? We have no armies, no
fleets of ships or planes. Despite the lies their media publish, we have no
nuclear weapons and we would not use them if we did.

Apara felt sure of that. The guiding precept of the Cause was to strike at the
leaders of oppression and aggression. Why kill harmless women and children? Why
strike the innocent? Or even the soldiers who merely carry out the orders of
their leaders?

Strike the leaders! Put terror in their hearts. That was the strategy of the
Cabal, the goal of the Cause.

Brave talk, Apara thought. Tonight we will see if it works. Apara glided along
the wall until she was standing behind the president. She looked down at the
woman's auburn hair, so perfectly curled and tinted. The president's fingernails
were perfect, too: shaped and colored beautifully. She's never chipped a nail by
doing hard work, Apara thought.

I could kill her now and it would look to them as if she had been struck down by
god.

But her orders were otherwise. Apara waited.

The meeting broke up at last with the president firmly deciding to launch the
attack within twenty-four hours.

"Tell me the instant everything's ready to go," she said to the chairman of the
joint chiefs.

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "We'll need your positive order at that point."

"You'll get it."

She rose from her chair and they all got to their feet. Like a ghost, Apara
followed the president through the door into a little sitting room, where two
more uniformed security guards snapped to attention.

They accompanied her down the corridor to the main section of the mansion and
left her at the elevator that went up to the living quarters on the top floor.
Apara climbed the stairs; the elevator was too small. She feared the president
would sense her presence in its cramped confines.

Unseen, unsensed, Apara tiptoed through the broad upstairs hallway with its
golden carpet and spacious windows at either end. There were surveillance
cameras discreetly placed up by the ceiling, but otherwise no obvious security
up at this level -- except the electronic sensors on the windows, of course.

The president lived alone here, except for her personal servants. Her husband
had died years earlier, during her election campaign, in an airplane crash that
won her a huge sympathy vote.

Apara loitered in the hallway, not daring to rest on one of the plush couches
lining the walls, until a servant bearing a tray with a silver carafe and
bottles of pills entered the president's bedroom. Apara slipped in behind her.

The black woman turned her head, frowning slightly, as if she heard a movement
behind her or felt a breath on the back of her neck. Apara froze for a moment,
then edged away as the woman reached for the door and closed it.

The president was showering, judging by the sounds coming from the bathroom.
Legs aching from being on her feet for so many hours, Apara went to the far
window and glanced out at the darkened garden, then turned back to watch the
servant deposit the tray on the president's night table and leave the room,
silent and almost as unnoticed as Apara herself.

There was one wooden chair in the bedroom and Apara sat on it gratefully,
knowing that she would leave no telltale indentation on its hard surface. She
felt very tired, sleepy. The adrenalin had drained out of her during the long
meeting downstairs. She hoped the president would finish her shower and get into
bed and go to sleep quickly.

It was not to be. The president came out of the bathroom soon enough, but she
sat up in bed and read for almost another hour before finally putting down the
paperback novel and reaching for the pills on the night table. One, two, three
different pills she took, with sips of water or whatever was in the carafe the
servant had left.

At last the president sank back on her pillows, snapped her fingers to turn off
the lights, and closed her eyes. Apara waited the better part of another hour
before stirring off the chair. She had to be certain that the president was
truly, deeply asleep.

Slowly she walked to the side of the bed. She stared at the woman lying there,
straining to hear the rhythm of her breathing through the insulated helmet.

Deep, slow breaths. She's really sleeping, Apara decided. If the thought of
invading another country and killing thousands of people bothered her, she gave
no indication of it. Maybe the pills she took helped her to sleep. She must have
some qualms about what she was going to do.

Apara realized she was the one with the qualms. I can leave her here and get out
of the mansion undetected, she told herself.

And the Cause, the purpose of her life, would evaporate like dew in the hot
desert sun. Muldoon would be despairing, Ahmed so furious that he would never
speak to her again. They would know she was unreliable, a risk to their own
safety.

Strike! she told herself. They are all counting on you. Everything depends on
you.

She struck.

By seven-fifteen the next morning the White House was surrounded by an armed
cordon of U.S. Marines. No one was allowed onto the grounds, no one was allowed
to leave the mansion.

Apara had already left; she simply walked out with the cleaning crew, a few
minutes after five A.M.

The president summoned her secretary of state to the oval office at eight sharp.
It was early for him, and he had to pass through the gauntlet of Marines as well
as the regular guards and secret service agents. He stared in wonder as more
Marines, in their colorful full-dress uniforms, stood in place of the usual
servants.

"What's going on?" he asked the president when he was finally ushered into the
oval office.

She looked ghastly: her face was gray, her eyes darting nervously. She clutched
a thin scrap of paper in one hand.

"Never mind," the president said curtly. "Sit down."

The secretary of state sat in front of her desk. He himself felt blearyeyed and
rumpled, this early in the morning.

Without preamble, the president asked, "Carlos, do you seriously think we can
settle this crisis without a military strike?"

The secretary of state looked surprised, but he quickly regained his wits. "I've
been trying to tell you that for the past six weeks, Alicia."

"You think diplomacy can get us what we want."

"Diplomacy and economic pressures, yes. We can even get the United Nations on
our side, if we call off this military strike. It's not too late, you know."

The president leaned back in her chair, fiddling with that scrap of paper,
trying to keep her hands from trembling. Unwilling to allow her secretary of
state to see how upset she was, she swiveled around to look out the long windows
at the springtime morning. Birds chirped happily among the flowers.

"All right," she said, her mind made up. "Tell Muldoon to ask for an emergency
session of the Security Council. That's what he's been after all along."

A boyish grin broke across the secretary of state's normally dour face. "I'll
phone him right now. He's still in New York."

"Do that," said the president. Then she added, "From your own office."

"Yes, ma'am!"

The secretary of state trotted off happily, leaving the president alone at her
desk in the oval office. With the note still clutched in her shaking hand.

I'll put the entire White House staff through the wringer, she said to herself.
Every damned one of them. Interrogate them until their brains are fried. I'll
find out who's responsible for this...this...

She shuddered involuntarily.

They got into my bedroom. My own bedroom! Who did it? How many people in this
house are plotting against me?

They could have killed me!

I'll turn the note over to the secret service. No, they screwed up. If they were
doing their job right this would never have happened. The attorney general. Give
it to the F.B.I. They'll find the culprit.

Her hands were shaking so badly she could hardly read the note.

Remember Caesar, thou art dust.

That's all the note said. Yet it struck terror into her heart. They could have
killed me. This was just a warning. They could have killed me just as easily as
leaving this warning on my pillow.

For the first time in her life, she felt afraid.

She looked around the oval office, at the familiar trappings of power, and felt
afraid. It's like being haunted, she said to herself.

In his apartment in New York, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations nodded
as he spoke to the president's security advisor.

"That's good news, Carlos!" said Herbert Muldoon, with a hint of Irish lilt in
his voice. "Excellent news. I'm sure the president's made the right choice."

He cut the connection with Washington and immediately punched up the number of
the U.N.'s secretary general, thinking as his fingers tapped on the keyboard:

It worked! Apara did the job. Now we'll have to send her to Tehran. And others,
too, of course. The mullahs may be perfectly willing to send young assassins to
their deaths, but I wonder how they'll react when they know they're the ones
being targeted.

We'll find out soon.




BEN BOVA

REMEMBER, CAESAR ...


We have never renounced the use of terror.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

She was alone and she was scared.

Apara Jaheen held her breath as the two plainclothes security guards walked past
her. They both held ugly, deadly black machine pistols casually in their hands
as they made their rounds along the corridor.

They can't see you, Apara told herself. You're invisible.

Still, she held her breath.

She knew that her stealth suit shimmered ever so slightly in the glareless light
from the fluorescents that lined the ceiling of the corridor. You had to be
looking for that delicate little ripple in the air, actively seeking it, to
detect it at all. And even then you would think it was merely a trick your eyes
played on you, a flicker that was gone before it even registered consciously in
your mind.

And yet Apara froze, motionless, not daring to breathe, until the two men --
smelling of cigarettes and after-shave lotion -- passed her and were well down
the corridor. They were talking about the war, betting that it would be launched
before the week was out.

Her stealth suit's surface was honeycombed with microscopic fiber optic vidcams
and pixels that were only a couple of molecules thick. The suit hugged Apara's
lithe body like a famished lover. Directed by the computer built into her
helmet, the vidcams scanned her surroundings and projected the imagery onto the
pixels.

It was the closest thing to true invisibility that the Cabal's technology had
been able to come up with. So close that, except for the slight unavoidable
glitter when the sequin-like pixels caught some stray light, Apara literally
disappeared into the background.

Covering her from head to toe, the suit's thermal absorption layer kept her
infrared profile vanishingly low and its insulation subskin held back the
minuscule electromagnetic fields it generated. The only way they could detect
her would be if she stepped into a scanning beam, but the wide-spectrum goggles
she wore should reveal them to her in plenty of time to avoid them.

She hoped.

Getting into the president's mansion had been ridiculously easy. As instructed,
she had waited until dark before leaving the Cabal's safe house in the miserable
slums of the city. Her teammates drove her as close to the presidential mansion
as they dared in a dilapidated, nondescript faded blue sedan that would draw no
attention. They wished her success as she slipped out of the car, invisible in
her stealth suit.

"For the Cause," Ahmed said, almost fiercely, to the empty air where he thought
she was.

"For the Cause," Apara repeated, knowing that she might never see him again.

Tingling with apprehension, Apara hurried across the park that fronted the
mansion, unseen by the evening strollers and beggars, then climbed onto the
trunk of one of the endless stream of limousines that entered the grounds. She
passed the perimeter guard posts unnoticed.

She rode on the limo all the way to the mansion's main entrance. While a pair of
bemedaled generals got out of the limousine and walked crisply past the saluting
uniformed guards, Apara melted back into the shadows, away from the lights of
the entrance, and took stock of the situation.

The guards at the big, open double doors wore splendid uniforms and shouldered
assault rifles. And were accompanied by dogs: two big German shepherds who sat
on their haunches, tongues lolling, ears laid back.

Will they smell me if I try to go through the doors? Apara asked herself.
Muldoon and his technicians claimed that the insulated stealth suit protected
her even from giving off a scent. They were telling the truth, as they knew it,
of course. But were they right?

If she were caught, she knew her life would be over. She would simply disappear,
a prisoner of their security apparatus. They would use drugs to drain her of
every scrap of information she possessed. They would not have to kill her
afterward; her mind would be gone by then. Standing in the shadows, invisible
yet frightened, she tongued the cyanide capsule lodged between her upper right
wisdom tooth and cheek. This is a volunteer mission, Muldoon had told her.
You've got to be willing to give your life for the Cause.

Apara was willing, yet the fear still rose in her throat, hot and burning.

Born in the slums of Beirut to a mother who abandoned her and a father she never
knew, she had understood from childhood that her life was worthless. Even the
name they had given her, Apara, meant literally "born to die."

It was during her teen years, when she had traded her body for life itself, for
food and protection against the marauding street gangs who raped and murdered
for the thrill of it, that she began to realize that life was pointless,
existence was pain, the sooner death took her the sooner she would be safe from
all fear.

Then Ahmed entered her life and showed her that there was more to living than
waiting for death. Strike back! he told her. If you must give up your life, give
it for something worthwhile. Even we who are lost and miserable can accomplish
something with our lives. We can change the world!

Ahmed introduced her to the Cabal, and the Cabal became her family, her teacher,
her purpose for breathing.

For the first time in her short life, Apara felt worthwhile. The Cabal flew her
across the ocean, to the United States of America, where she met the pink-faced
Irishman who called himself Muldoon and was entrusted with her mission to the
White House. And decked in the stealth suit, a cloak of invisibility, just like
the magic of old Baghdad in the time of Scheherazade and the Thousand and One
Nights.

You can do it, she told herself as she clung to the shadows outside the White
House's main entrance. They are all counting on you: Muldoon and his technicians
and Ahmed, with his soulful eyes and tender dear hands.

When the next limousine disgorged its passengers, a trio of admirals, Apara
sucked in a deep breath and walked in with them, past the guards and the dogs.
One of the animals perked up its ears and whined softly as she marched in step
behind the admirals, but other than that heart-stopping instant she had no
trouble getting inside the White House. The guard shushed the animal, gruffly.

She followed the trio of admirals out to the west wing, and down the stairs to
the basement level and a long, narrow corridor. At its end, Apara could see, was
a security checkpoint with a metal detector like the kind used at airports,
staffed by two women in uniform. Both of them were African-Americans.

She stopped and faded back against the wall as the admirals stepped through the
metal detector, one by one. The guards were lax, expecting no trouble. After
all, only the president's highest and most trusted advisors were allowed here.

Then the two plainclothes guards walked past her, openly displaying their
machine pistols and talking about the impending war.

"You think they're really gonna do it?"

"Don't see why not. Hit 'em before they start some real trouble. Don't wait for
the mess to get worse."

"Yeah, I guess so."

They walked down the corridor as far as the checkpoint, chatted briefly with the
female guards, then came back, passing Apara again, still talking about the
possibility of war.

Apara knew that she could not get through the metal detector without setting off
its alarm. The archway-like device was sensitive not only to metals, but sniffed
for explosives and x-rayed each person stepping through it. She was invisible to
human eyes but the x-ray camera would see her clearly.

She waited, hardly breathing, until the next clutch of visitors arrived.
Civilians, this time. Steeling herself, Apara followed them up to the checkpoint
and waited as they stopped at the detector and handed their wristwatches, coins,
and belts to the women on duty, then stepped through the detector, single-file.

Timing was important. As the last of the civilians started through, holding his
briefcase in front of his chest, as instructed, Apara dropped flat on her
stomach and slithered across the archway like a snake speeding after its prey.
Carefully avoiding the man's feet, she got through the detector just before he
did.

The x-rays did not reach the floor, she had been told. She hoped it was true.

The alarm buzzer sounded. Apara, on the far side of the detector now, sprang to
her feet.

"Hold it, sir," said one of the uniformed guards. "The metal detector went off."

He looked annoyed. "I gave you everything. Don't tell me the damned machine
picked up the hinges on my briefcase."

The woman shrugged. "Would you mind stepping through again, sir, please?"

With a huff, the man ducked back through the doorway, still clutching his
briefcase, and then stepped through once more. No alarm.

"Satisfied?" he sneered.

"Yes, sir. Thank you," the guard said tonelessly.

"Happens now and then," said her partner as she handed the man back his watch,
belt and change. "Beeps for no reason."

"Machines aren't perfect," the man muttered.

"I guess," said the guard.

"Too much iron in your blood, Marty," joked one of the other men.

Apara followed them down the corridor, feeling immensely relieved. As far as her
information went, there were no further security checkpoints. Unless she bumped
into someone, or her suit somehow failed, she was safe.

Until she tried to get out of the White House. But that wouldn't happen until
she had fulfilled her mission. If they caught her then, she would simply bite on
the cyanide capsule, knowing that she had struck her blow for the Cause.

She followed the civilians into a spacious conference room dominated by a long,
polished mahogany table. Most of the high-backed leather chairs were already
occupied, mainly by men in military uniforms. There were more stars around the
table than in a desert sky, Apara thought. One bomb in here and the U.S.
military establishment would be decapitated, along with most of the cabinet
heads.

She pressed her back against the bare wall next to the door as the latest
arrivals went around the table, shaking hands.

They chatted idly for several minutes, a dozen different conversations buzzing
around the long table. Then the president entered from the far door and they all
snapped to their feet.

"Sit down, gentlemen," said the president. "And ladies," she added, smiling at
the three female cabinet members who sat together at one side of the table.

The president looked older in person than she did on television, Apara thought.
She was not wearing so much makeup, of course. Still, the president looked
vigorous and determined, her famous green eyes sweeping the table as she took
her chair at its head. For an instant those eyes looked directly at Apara, and
her heart stopped. But the moment passed. The president could not see Apara any
more than the others could.

The president's famous smile was absent as she sat down. Looking directly at the
chairman of the joint chiefs, she asked the general, "Well, are we ready?"

"In twenty-four hours," he replied crisply. "Troop deployment is complete, the
naval task force is on station and our full complement of planes is on site,
ready to go."

"Then why do we need twenty-four hours?" the president demanded.

The general's silver eyebrows rose a centimeter. "Logistics, ma'am. Getting
ammunition and fuel to the front-line units, setting our communications codes.
Strictly routine, but very important if we want the attack to come off without a
hitch."

The president was not pleased. "Every hour we delay means more pressure from the
U.N."

"And from the Europeans," said one of the civilians. Apara recognized him as the
secretary of defense.

"The French are complaining again?"

"They've never stopped complaining, madam president. Now they've got the
Russians joining the chores. They've asked for an emergency meeting of NATO."

"Not the general assembly?"

The secretary of defense almost smiled. "No, ma'am. Even the French realize that
the U.N. can't stop us."

A murmur of suppressed laughter rippled along the table. Apara felt anger. These
people used the United Nations when it suited them, and ignored the U.N.
otherwise.

The secretary of state, sitting at her right hand, was a thickset older man with
a heavy thatch of gray hair that flopped stubbornly over his forehead. He held
up a blunt-fingered hand and the table fell silent.

"I must repeat, madam president," he said in a grave, dolorous voice, "that we
have not yet exhausted all our diplomatic and economic options. Military force
should be our last choice, after all other possibilities have been foreclosed,
not our first choice."

"We don't have time for that," snapped the secretary of defense. "And those
people don't respect anything but force, anyway."

"I disagree," said state. "Our U.N. ambassador tells me that they are willing to
allow the United Nations to arbitrate our differences."

"The United Nations," the president muttered.

"As an honest broker--"

"Yeah, and we'll be the honest brokee," one of the admirals wisecracked.
Everyone around the table laughed.

Then the president said, "Our U.N. ambassador is a well-known weak sister. Why
do you think I put him there in New York, Carlos, instead of giving him your
portfolio?"

The secretary of state was not deterred. "Invading a sovereign nation is a
serious decision. American soldiers and aircrew will be killed."

The president glared at him. "All right, Carlos, you've made your point. Now
let's get on with it."

One of the admirals said, "We're ready with the nuclear option, if and when it's
needed."

"Good," snapped the president.

And on it went, for more than an hour. The fundamentalist regime of Iran was
going to be toppled by American military power. Its infiltration of other Moslem
nations would end, its support of international terrorism would be wiped out.

Terrorism, Apara growled silently. They speak of using nuclear weapons and they
call the Iranians terrorists.

And what am I? she asked herself. What is the Cabal and the Cause we fight for?
What other weapons do we have except terror? How can we straggle for a just
world, a world free of domination, unless we use terror? We have no armies, no
fleets of ships or planes. Despite the lies their media publish, we have no
nuclear weapons and we would not use them if we did.

Apara felt sure of that. The guiding precept of the Cause was to strike at the
leaders of oppression and aggression. Why kill harmless women and children? Why
strike the innocent? Or even the soldiers who merely carry out the orders of
their leaders?

Strike the leaders! Put terror in their hearts. That was the strategy of the
Cabal, the goal of the Cause.

Brave talk, Apara thought. Tonight we will see if it works. Apara glided along
the wall until she was standing behind the president. She looked down at the
woman's auburn hair, so perfectly curled and tinted. The president's fingernails
were perfect, too: shaped and colored beautifully. She's never chipped a nail by
doing hard work, Apara thought.

I could kill her now and it would look to them as if she had been struck down by
god.

But her orders were otherwise. Apara waited.

The meeting broke up at last with the president firmly deciding to launch the
attack within twenty-four hours.

"Tell me the instant everything's ready to go," she said to the chairman of the
joint chiefs.

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "We'll need your positive order at that point."

"You'll get it."

She rose from her chair and they all got to their feet. Like a ghost, Apara
followed the president through the door into a little sitting room, where two
more uniformed security guards snapped to attention.

They accompanied her down the corridor to the main section of the mansion and
left her at the elevator that went up to the living quarters on the top floor.
Apara climbed the stairs; the elevator was too small. She feared the president
would sense her presence in its cramped confines.

Unseen, unsensed, Apara tiptoed through the broad upstairs hallway with its
golden carpet and spacious windows at either end. There were surveillance
cameras discreetly placed up by the ceiling, but otherwise no obvious security
up at this level -- except the electronic sensors on the windows, of course.

The president lived alone here, except for her personal servants. Her husband
had died years earlier, during her election campaign, in an airplane crash that
won her a huge sympathy vote.

Apara loitered in the hallway, not daring to rest on one of the plush couches
lining the walls, until a servant bearing a tray with a silver carafe and
bottles of pills entered the president's bedroom. Apara slipped in behind her.

The black woman turned her head, frowning slightly, as if she heard a movement
behind her or felt a breath on the back of her neck. Apara froze for a moment,
then edged away as the woman reached for the door and closed it.

The president was showering, judging by the sounds coming from the bathroom.
Legs aching from being on her feet for so many hours, Apara went to the far
window and glanced out at the darkened garden, then turned back to watch the
servant deposit the tray on the president's night table and leave the room,
silent and almost as unnoticed as Apara herself.

There was one wooden chair in the bedroom and Apara sat on it gratefully,
knowing that she would leave no telltale indentation on its hard surface. She
felt very tired, sleepy. The adrenalin had drained out of her during the long
meeting downstairs. She hoped the president would finish her shower and get into
bed and go to sleep quickly.

It was not to be. The president came out of the bathroom soon enough, but she
sat up in bed and read for almost another hour before finally putting down the
paperback novel and reaching for the pills on the night table. One, two, three
different pills she took, with sips of water or whatever was in the carafe the
servant had left.

At last the president sank back on her pillows, snapped her fingers to turn off
the lights, and closed her eyes. Apara waited the better part of another hour
before stirring off the chair. She had to be certain that the president was
truly, deeply asleep.

Slowly she walked to the side of the bed. She stared at the woman lying there,
straining to hear the rhythm of her breathing through the insulated helmet.

Deep, slow breaths. She's really sleeping, Apara decided. If the thought of
invading another country and killing thousands of people bothered her, she gave
no indication of it. Maybe the pills she took helped her to sleep. She must have
some qualms about what she was going to do.

Apara realized she was the one with the qualms. I can leave her here and get out
of the mansion undetected, she told herself.

And the Cause, the purpose of her life, would evaporate like dew in the hot
desert sun. Muldoon would be despairing, Ahmed so furious that he would never
speak to her again. They would know she was unreliable, a risk to their own
safety.

Strike! she told herself. They are all counting on you. Everything depends on
you.

She struck.

By seven-fifteen the next morning the White House was surrounded by an armed
cordon of U.S. Marines. No one was allowed onto the grounds, no one was allowed
to leave the mansion.

Apara had already left; she simply walked out with the cleaning crew, a few
minutes after five A.M.

The president summoned her secretary of state to the oval office at eight sharp.
It was early for him, and he had to pass through the gauntlet of Marines as well
as the regular guards and secret service agents. He stared in wonder as more
Marines, in their colorful full-dress uniforms, stood in place of the usual
servants.

"What's going on?" he asked the president when he was finally ushered into the
oval office.

She looked ghastly: her face was gray, her eyes darting nervously. She clutched
a thin scrap of paper in one hand.

"Never mind," the president said curtly. "Sit down."

The secretary of state sat in front of her desk. He himself felt blearyeyed and
rumpled, this early in the morning.

Without preamble, the president asked, "Carlos, do you seriously think we can
settle this crisis without a military strike?"

The secretary of state looked surprised, but he quickly regained his wits. "I've
been trying to tell you that for the past six weeks, Alicia."

"You think diplomacy can get us what we want."

"Diplomacy and economic pressures, yes. We can even get the United Nations on
our side, if we call off this military strike. It's not too late, you know."

The president leaned back in her chair, fiddling with that scrap of paper,
trying to keep her hands from trembling. Unwilling to allow her secretary of
state to see how upset she was, she swiveled around to look out the long windows
at the springtime morning. Birds chirped happily among the flowers.

"All right," she said, her mind made up. "Tell Muldoon to ask for an emergency
session of the Security Council. That's what he's been after all along."

A boyish grin broke across the secretary of state's normally dour face. "I'll
phone him right now. He's still in New York."

"Do that," said the president. Then she added, "From your own office."

"Yes, ma'am!"

The secretary of state trotted off happily, leaving the president alone at her
desk in the oval office. With the note still clutched in her shaking hand.

I'll put the entire White House staff through the wringer, she said to herself.
Every damned one of them. Interrogate them until their brains are fried. I'll
find out who's responsible for this...this...

She shuddered involuntarily.

They got into my bedroom. My own bedroom! Who did it? How many people in this
house are plotting against me?

They could have killed me!

I'll turn the note over to the secret service. No, they screwed up. If they were
doing their job right this would never have happened. The attorney general. Give
it to the F.B.I. They'll find the culprit.

Her hands were shaking so badly she could hardly read the note.

Remember Caesar, thou art dust.

That's all the note said. Yet it struck terror into her heart. They could have
killed me. This was just a warning. They could have killed me just as easily as
leaving this warning on my pillow.

For the first time in her life, she felt afraid.

She looked around the oval office, at the familiar trappings of power, and felt
afraid. It's like being haunted, she said to herself.

In his apartment in New York, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations nodded
as he spoke to the president's security advisor.

"That's good news, Carlos!" said Herbert Muldoon, with a hint of Irish lilt in
his voice. "Excellent news. I'm sure the president's made the right choice."

He cut the connection with Washington and immediately punched up the number of
the U.N.'s secretary general, thinking as his fingers tapped on the keyboard:

It worked! Apara did the job. Now we'll have to send her to Tehran. And others,
too, of course. The mullahs may be perfectly willing to send young assassins to
their deaths, but I wonder how they'll react when they know they're the ones
being targeted.

We'll find out soon.