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you came on board,” said McCarthy, answering his own question. “You hadn’t joined the intelligence committee staff yet, had you? Well, Mr. Parnelles had just been appointed as chief of the CIA when his man died, and he took it almost as a personal insult. I believe the officer who was killed had had some association with him earlier as well. I believe he may have worked for him at one time, if memory serves.”
     
    “I think he feels responsible for his people,” said Corrine. “I think that’s natural.”
     
    “Yes, dear, that is natural, but you see, there are sometimes more important things to consider.”
     
    “Yes, sir.”
     
    “Tell the Italians. Find a way to do it while preserving our operation. And please, take care of this personally.”
     
    “Yes, Mr. President.”
     
    McCarthy drummed his fingers on his desk. “The wording on the Iran finding—have you finished it?”
     
    “It’s ready,” she said, mentally changing gears. “We’re not on the strongest grounds, Jonathon.”
     
    “Hopefully we won’t need it. Secretary Steele continues to assure me that the Iranians are about to sign the treaty and give up their weapons, just as North Korea has done. It is a solution I much prefer. I just wish that the Secretary of State would get them to move with a little more alacrity.”
     
    Several weeks before, McCarthy had decided that the Iranian nuclear program had progressed to a point where it would have to be dealt with decisively. While his administration had been working behind the scenes to get the Iranians to abandon their program, Iran’s Sunni neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt, had concluded that they needed nuclear weapons to counterbalance their traditional Shiite enemies and had secretly begun to work on a bomb together. If they developed one, McCarthy believed, the odds of nuclear war in the Middle East or of terrorists obtaining the weapons would be astronomical.
     
    The President had therefore decided to force the issue—he would offer aid to Iran and a full normalization of relations if they dropped the project. If they didn’t, he would destroy the infrastructure that supported it.
     
    Estimates by the CIA indicated that the program was still vulnerable to coordinated air strikes but would only remain so for a few more months; the President had set an internal deadline for an agreement at the end of the month, a week away. He’d asked Corrine to draw up a legal argument supporting a first strike. “Something a little more thoughtful than might makes right,” he’d said. McCarthy greatly preferred a peaceful settlement, since an attack would bring very serious and not necessarily predictable repercussions; nonetheless, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East was an even worse choice.
     
    “I can have the draft on your desk in an hour,” Corrine said.
     
    “No, no. I only want to make sure it’s ready.” Ever the poker player, McCarthy was thinking about using the finding as a way of forcing the Iranians to ante up—if they balked at Steele’s proposal, he’d have the finding leaked to convince them he meant business.
     
    And if that didn’t work, then he’d have no alternative but to go ahead with the attack.
     
    “Have you been following the situation in Iran?” McCarthy asked.
     
    “Not as closely as I should,” said Corrine. It was a defensive answer; she had actually been reading every report and briefing available.
     
    “There continues to be resistance to the agreement, especially among the Revolutionary Guard. Talk of a coup.”
     
    “No one seems to think that’s serious.”
     
    “Difficult to assess,” said McCarthy.
     
    He wasn’t sure himself how seriously to take the rumors. Iran and its myriad political players remained largely an enigma.
     
    “You’ll have to excuse me, Miss Alston,” he said, glancing at his watch. “It appears I am running late for my next appointment.”
     
    Already out of her chair,