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three major networks, four movie channels, sports, cartoons, transmissions from the American House of Representatives—altogether, fifty-four channels. There’s a TV Guide magazine to help you figure it out.”
     
    “Fifty-four channels!” Helder was stunned.
     
    “Give me your wristwatch,” she said. He handed it to her, and she gave him a massive Rolex Explorer.
     
    “Do you have any other personal jewelry or belongings?” He gave her his wallet and a German cigarette lighter he had traded for years before. He didn’t smoke, but he loved the lighter and hated to see it go.
     
    “Don’t worry,” she said, reading him, “you’ll be given lots of junk like that to keep.” She handed him a small folder.
     
    “Here’s a map of the place.
     
    Anything that’s too far to walk, just grab any bicycle you see. Meals are in any of the half-dozen restaurants on the installation, whenever you like, or you can pick up the phone and order food in your room. There’s a menu in the bedside table drawer.”
     
    Helder stood in silence and gazed at the things around him. He was stunned. He had no experience of a Holiday Inn.
     
    She moved to the door.
     
    “My name is Ragulin; you can call me Trina, if you like.”
     
    “You’re a beautiful girl, Trina,” Helder said, unable to keep the hunger from his voice.
     
    She laughed.
     
    “Oh, all the girls here are beautiful. Those of us in the office are all gymnasts.” She gave him a wry smile.
     
    “Majorov has a special interest in women’s gymnastics.”
     
    She leaned against the door jamb.
     
    “I get off in a couple of hours. I could come back, if you like.”
     
    Helder nodded.
     
    “I would be very pleased if you did,” he said, shakily. He was going to like Malibu.
     
    She smiled again and closed the door. Helder took a deep breath and went immediately to the TV set. A man called Rather was reading the news as if he had experienced all of it. The President of the United States, looking slightly uncomfortable, answered penetrating questions from journalists with chuckles and shrugs. Helder sat down and switched channels. He watched, transfixed, for an hour as an outrageous policeman called Dirty Harry turned San Francisco into a war zone.
     
    Helder was asleep when Trina came back. She woke him up. KATHARINE RULE sat quietly through most of the regular Wednesday morning meeting of EX COM TWO at Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. She took no notes. Later, she would update her files from memory, and she rarely missed anything.
     
    EX COM ONE was official stuff, formed of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), his deputy (DDCI), the Executive Director, and the four Deputy Directors for Operations, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and Administration.
     
    EX COM TWO was, on the other hand, entirely unofficial. It was formed, more or less, of a shifting group of “office” (department) heads from the two sexier directorates. Operations (OPS), the covert arm, and Intelligence (DI), the overt analysis arm, respectively referred to by insiders as the “Company” and the “Agency.”
     
    Any younger officer in either wing would have much preferred, given the choice, to sit on EX COM TWO.
     
    TWO, it was widely acknowledged, ignored domestic politics, didn’t worry about what the president should be told, and didn’t have to restrain itself for the record, since there were no minutes. TWO was where the dirt was, and everybody loved dirt. A member of TWO could dine out in perpetuity on the international gossip that rose from the muck raked at its meetings and still never compromise national security. TWO had the additional attraction of being just about the only place where officers of the Company and the Agency had much to do with each other; indeed, it was about the only time when the two groups felt they worked for the same organization.
     
    At these meetings each member tossed in tidbits (reports