what they should have known, what every leopard does know, is that
they were not the only, nor indeed the most powerful predator in the
bush. The stir created by a kill may be tolerated once by the pride of
lions living nearby. But soon both predator and prey are aware of
their existence, ready to act upon it, and even the distraction of a
rogue elephant, crashing blindly through the brush, can't hide its
presence for long.

Their fight had only just begun.

III

The morning of June 17, on the eve of his scheduled press conference to
address the issue, Edgar Stone sat behind his desk in the Oval Office,
staring blankly at his fourth attempt to draft a reply to General
Hayes. Dark circles pulled at his eyes and sinuses; his head felt like
a warm stone that wouldn't think. Half an hour earlier, after
listening to his top advisers swear at each other with the same
arguments they had been postulating for months, he had done something
he would not have dreamed of in other circumstances. He had told them
all to "Shut up," and unceremoniously shown them the door.

For the first time in his presidency he was taking matters into his own
hands, with more than a few regrets and second thoughts. He had slept
badly or not at all for three nights running, and felt neither brave,
nor noble, nor even competent to make such a choice. In his current
frame of mind he was incapable of realizing the human or historical
significance of the crisis that lay before him, and at the moment this
was not what mattered. Unlike Hayes, he didn't give a damn what people
thought once he was dead, or even out of office. What mattered now was
that his tolerance for bullshit had been long since used up---that he
was furious at being put in such a position.

And somewhere, very deep inside himself he knew, though he shrank from
the knowledge, that something very wrong had happened, that the damage
was far from over, and that he was partly to blame. And he knew one
more thing, despite the rhetoric that he had spouted for two decades:
offensive war, unduly considered, was the basest and most shameful of
human endeavors, never justifiable, and rarely, in the end,
accomplishing anything.

Because for all his faults, and these he possessed in abundance, Edgar
Stone was not insane.

He bowed very low, crumpling the paper before him in both hands. Shook
his head mournfully. He pushed the com-button on his desk and summoned
a secretary,