number of very important people were closeted
with the President. Their reactions to the United Nations report were
quite otherwise than those Oswald was experiencing.

"It's the exact timing, and the detail of execution that scares me,
Mr. President," the Undersecretary of State was saying. The Secretary
himself was coming in by jet, and would join them immediately on
arrival.

"It implies a technology that we can't touch even in our wildest
dreams. I've talked to the CIA chief himself, and the reports from our
operatives are beyond question. The epidemic was not only real, it was
widespread. The pest-sub was as real as this chair I'm sitting on, and
its crew near death to the man, and no question about it.

"If they can fight a bacterial war and produce an overnight cure at
the same time ... we're at their mercy. There is no bomb ever
developed--or that can be developed--to touch the power of what
they've just demonstrated."

The President ran his fingers through his hair. His face looked more
drawn than any man had yet seen it. Yet he smiled.

"We're not suing for peace terms yet," he said, and turned to the
nation's foremost biologist, sitting quiet in a nearby chair.

"What's your reaction?" he asked.

"We've always known," the answer came despondently, "that
bacteriological warfare is far deadlier than any bomb--if there were
any protection from its effects for the victor. We had a strain of
bacteria once, for which we had an immunization course, and we
developed it far enough along the line to realize that, even though
you immunized every man, woman and child in this country in advance
of releasing it in another part of the world, mutant strains would
eventually wipe out this nation as well as those we fought."

"How about mutant strains of the Suez bacteria?" the President asked,
then answered himself. "No, they've produced an antidote. An antidote,
if our reports are correct, that works overnight." He shook his head
slowly.

"The ultimatum should come very soon now," the President said.

* * * * *

"It is the timing. I do not understand the timing." The big man in the
Kremlin was allowing himself an appearance of indecision that he did
not often indulge before underlings.

Of course, there was but the one underling, and any audience that
proved to have a later-embarrassing potential could be silenced with
ease. Still, it was unusual, and the lieutenant who served a