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 struggle 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 adrenaline 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 help her to sleep. She must have some qualms about what she’s 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 5:00 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 Serviceagents. 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 bleary-eyed 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 swivelled 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 cross 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.