As they walked out through the terminal, bags in hand, Clancy said, “There’s no romance in this work anymore. I must have seen every James Bond movie on TV at one time or another, and he never got held up by bad weather at any airport, not once. Here we’ve got a Gulfstream, one of the classiest aircraft in the world, and it still couldn’t get to us.”

“Nature rules,” Blake said. “Face up to it and shut up. We’ll be on our way in fifteen minutes.”

They rose up very quickly to thirty thousand feet. The crew was air force and their stewardess a young sergeant who introduced herself as Mary.

“Now, what can I get you gentlemen?”

“Well, I know it’s only six-thirty in the morning,” Blake told her, “but for very special reasons I think a bottle of champagne is in order. Could you manage that?”

“I think that could be arranged.” She gave them a dazzling smile and moved down to the galley.

“We didn’t do too badly, did we?” Clancy said. “Considering that the President could have been facedown on the pavement.”

“That he isn’t is due to Major Roper warning us that there was something fishy about Morgan in the first place. But I anticipated taking him alive, Clancy, squeezing the juice out of him.”

“It’s not your fault, Blake. We did everything right. The tooth thing was just unfortunate.”

Sergeant Mary appeared with two glasses of champagne, which they took gratefully.

Blake toasted Clancy. “Let’s hope the President agrees with you.”

In Washington, the rain was even heavier when they arrived, but a limousine was waiting and they were taken through at once and on their way, moving along Constitution Avenue toward the White House. In spite of the weather, there was a sizable crowd of demonstrators, a kind of moonscape of umbrellas against the rain, shepherded by police.