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thirty-eight—but, being a civilian, he’d never experienced war. The last war in China was just the winter before last, he thought. Most Americans knew little of it, as the video was scarce, but Greg had researched it thoroughly. It had been one of his several claims to fame at DIA: calling for a Crisis Action Team well before the war’s outbreak when all of his colleagues’ attention had been on the Middle East and Southern Africa. It was inevitable, he had written, that the resurgent China, whose economy grew at double-digit rates, would be attracted to Siberian natural resources to the north, which were held increasingly tenuously by Russia, a declining European imperial power.
    Pavel had been called back from Washington in the last Russo-Chinese War, but was sitting out this second round safely ensconced as military attaché at Russia’s Washington embassy. I wonder if hewishes he were there now, with his comrades? Lambert thought. With General Razov?
    â€œAnd so Greg tried to lift the car out of the mud with his bare hands. ‘It’s only a fucking Fiat,’ ” Jane said in a mock, deep-voiced imitation as she regaled them with the distorted tale of their honeymoon. “He could hardly walk for a week. We found a little inn in the middle of Nowheresville, France, and I propped him up in bed and we read books. He was useless. Completely useless,” she said, turning to Greg. “I swear,” she continued, “with so much testosterone running loose in this world, I don’t know how it is that our two countries didn’t get into a war all those years.”
    In the silence that followed, Greg looked at Pavel, and then Pavel’s eyes drifted to the television that hung over the bar. “What is he going to say?”
    Greg glanced at the screen. A special bulletin had interrupted the CBS broadcast. “Pavel, can I . . . can we talk?”
    â€œSo you didn’t come here to see your long lost wife?” Jane said. “That explains it.”
    Pavel and Greg were close friends, but it was not the first time that the friendship had been used for professional reasons. Always before, however, there had been a cooperative spirit in the games they played, as befitted the strange alliance their countries had forged during and after the first Russian war with China, in which the U.S. had provided substantial logistical assistance. Greg always asked the questions that Pavel wanted to answer, or vice versa, and each reported the “contact” up the chain of command. “Back channel” communications, they were called. Having become a part of such a channel himself quite by coincidence, Greg had come to realize how important those lines of communication were. But things had been strained since the military coup in Moscow in early spring and the U.S. deployment to Eastern Europe in response that had so inflamed the Russian nationalists, and Greg had shied away from asking tough questions after the first flurry of activity, sensing Pavel’s desire to avoid the subject.
    â€œSure,” Pavel said. “Go ahead.”
    Greg looked over at Jane and Irina, who sat there, expectant. “Pavel, we have intelligence to indicate that there were high-level contacts over the last few days between the North Koreans and your Defense Ministry in Moscow.” Pavel’s face remained blank. “Any communications traffic,” Greg continued, supplying the source—technical means—in hopes of trading for more, “might create an appearance of impropriety at a time when American lives are at risk.”
    Pavel cleared his throat and said, “As you know, Greg, we haveregular relations with North Korea and utilize their road grid in the north for resupply of our forces in Occupied China.”
    Nothing, Greg thought with a flash of anger. “Did you have advance warning of the North Korean attack, Pavel? If you did, we’re