War of Eagles by Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, Jeff Rovin

will use this against me.”
    “Then you are desperate.”
    Le took two quick puffs, then reached for his phone. “I am motivated,” he replied.
    “What will you say to them when you meet?”
    “I will reason with them,” he replied. “That is what I do.”
    “Please. If you must, call them now but see them tomorrow,” Li-Li urged. “If you sit together tonight, they will say nothing or throw charges at one another. You will simply be a mediator.”
    “What will I be tomorrow?”
    “More in control of the situation,” she replied. “They will wonder why you waited to see them.”
    “They will wonder with good reason. I myself don’t see the sense of it,” Le protested.
    The prime minister was not comfortable playing these psychological games. His success in politics was due to evenhandedness. He possessed a tireless devotion to the party but a willingness to allow that what worked in the twentieth century could not be cleanly adapted to the twenty-first.
    Still, Li-Li was correct. These were very different circumstances. Chou and Tam Li had always fought for position and influence, but they had never resorted to murder or attacks on one another’s holdings.
    But silence? he thought. The prime minister regarded his wife. How does one turn silence into a perfect weapon? he asked himself. Silence is like clay. Others can read into it what they wish. The question Le had to ask himself was whether his wife was correct, and the men would perceive it as strength. Or whether he was right, and they would regard it as weakness. He continued to look across the table. Li-Li looked back. Her sweet face was visible through the snaking smoke of their cigarettes, through the fainter mist of their tea. Her eyes were impassive, the thin lips of her mouth pulled in a firm yet delicate line. Le did not know for certain what she was thinking. He assumed it was critical of haste.
    You assume the worst based on her silence. That supported what his wife had been saying about the value of silence. But you know her, he reminded himself. You already know how she feels.
    Unfortunately, the men he was dealing with would regard his silence as indecision. He had to confront them.
    Le crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and picked up his telephone. He scrolled through the stored listing of cell phone numbers.
    “You are calling them,” his wife said.
    “Yes.”
    “To meet when?”
    “Now,” he replied.
    “To reason with them?”
    “At first.”
    Li-Li stubbed out her own cigarette. “They will not listen. And what will you do if it fails?”
    Le Kwan Po regarded her before accessing the first number. “Three nations suffered covert attacks today. As the prime minister of China, I have ways of passing information to those nations. Information such as the names of the people who organized the bombings. I need never soil my hands.”
    Li-Li smiled as she rose. “I like that reasoning,” she said as she left the small kitchen area to give her husband privacy.

FIFTEEN
    Arlington, Virginia Monday, 2:44 P.M.
    Since his days as a military commander in Vietnam, Mike Rodgers maintained that there were two phases to any operation. This belief was borne out during his tour of duty at Op-Center, where the general was both deputy director under Paul Hood and commander of the elite rapid deployment military unit Striker. It was also proving to be true at Unexus.
    The first stage of a project was the booster phase. Whether it was a military incursion, a research program, or even a business deal, it always started with heavy lifting. Someone had to have and then sell an idea. Once it was successfully off the ground, it entered the pitch-and-yaw phase. That was a time of fine-tuning. The project had a life of its own. All the creator could do at that point was make sure it did not crash or self-destruct.
    In science, the pitch-and-yaw rockets were on different sides. That was how the projectile kept its balance. In every other venture, opposing