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 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 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.
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 FBI. 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 secretary of state.
«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.
LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
Now we get serious again.
The scientific effort to determine if life exists elsewhere in the universe has been ridiculed by politicians, pundits, and even some scientists. When NASA established a department dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, for example, Harvard biologist George Gaylord Simpson quipped that it was the first time in the history of science that an organization had been put together to study a subject before evidence of its subject matter had been found.
Politicians have turned SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence) into a well-publicized whipping boy. However small the funds allocated for SETI, some representative or senator loudly proclaims that it’s a vast waste of money and gets Congress to cancel the appropriation. It is only through the private efforts of activist groups such as the Planetary Society that astronomers have been able to continue the search.
No extraterrestrial life has yet been found, although in 1996 NASA scientists reported that microscopic structures inside a meteorite that originated on Mars may be the fossilized remains of 3.5-billion-year-old Martian bacteria.
Radio telescopes have not detected any intelligent signals, although they have barely begun to scratch the surface of the problem. There are billions of stars and thousands of millions of wavelengths to be examined.
Our spacecraft have landed on the Moon, Mars, and Venus; others have flown past all the planets of our solar system except distant most Pluto. The Moon is, as we expected, airless, waterless and lifeless. Mars is a frigid desert, although there is some hope that life may have arisen there, only to be extinguished by the planet’s increasing aridity. Venus is an utterly barren oven, with surface temperatures hot enough to melt aluminum and a heavy choking atmosphere of carbon dioxide.