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the aviation fuel, blasting a hole in the wall between the hangars and sending a fireball towards the welding tanks. The youngest child to die was eleven-year-old Carrie Berlin. Both her parents and older brother, Richard, died, too. Her younger twin brother and sister, Paul and Rebecca, were orphaned.
    By dawn the fires were out, the body bags organized, the missile identified and the grieving had begun. Fifty-eight Americans were dead.
    ****
    Washington, DC, USA*
    'The North Koreans say it was an accident,' said Newman.
    'I don't give a damn what they say,' retorted West. 'They've killed Americans.' West was on his feet, pacing the Oval Office and finding it too small. 'What the hell were they doing flying a missile so close to Tokyo? Because if you tell me it was deliberate, this time next week there won't be any North Korea left.'
    Newman grimaced. 'Someone had to tell you what they said,' she said, standing up. 'As Secretary of State, that job falls to me. If you want to hear the rest of it, I'll continue. If you don't, I'll shut up.'
    West reached for the window behind his desk, pressed his forehead against a chilled pane, tapped his fingers on the glass and listened.
    At forty-two, Newman was one of the youngest secretaries of state ever. She could even have passed for ten years younger, with plenty of brown hair, cut back to just below the ears. She wore a fringe that managed to hide her high forehead and a pair of steel-rimmed glasses that made her poker-playing eyes even more difficult to read. She kept her own counsel, yet spoke her mind forcefully when called upon.
    West had first noticed her when she was a new, young entry to the House of Representatives. He had been in the Senate. Fifteen years on, she was divorced, from a Washington lawyer who had swapped her for a younger blonde lobbyist at precisely the time when Newman's career started outpacing his.
    With West a widower, the press was full of rumours about a relationship with Newman. They liked each other, but just occasionally, like now, when nerves were raw, he was both startled and impressed by the way she held her ground.
    'No, Mary, don't shut up,' said West, softly. 'You're doing what someone has to do.' His back was to the room and his eyes concentrated on the snow on the White House lawn. West gave himself a few seconds, while he disciplined the anger that had chased him to the Oval Office. Since Valerie's death, he had found his temper becoming shorter. Through the glass, speckled around the fresh snow, was the distorted reflection of CNN. The volume was down but the images of grieving relatives, smouldering aircraft hangars, coffins draped in the Stars and Stripes, commentators profiting from hindsight and the non-stop whirl of 24-hour news gnawed against him when he needed clarity of thought.
    'Turn that damn thing off,' he ordered, and it was John Kozerski, the White House Chief of Staff, who tried to shut down the television with a remote. But it was broken, or the batteries were flat. Whatever the reason, West didn't care. He turned in from the window, walked across the room and pulled the plug out of the socket.
    'Sorry, Mary. Yes, please,' he said, indicating for Newman to sit back down on the sofa. He took the armchair at the end of the coffee table where a map of Asia lay open. 'Wrap up what you were saying.'
    'They have asked us to give them time to carry out their own internal investigation,' said Newman, settling back into the sofa. 'They refer us to our own shooting down of an Iranian airliner by mistake from the USS Vincennes in 1988 resulting in the deaths of 290 innocent passengers. They handed over a list of other American mistakes, including the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and atrocities against Iraqi civilians--'
    The President held up his hand. 'Enough. I follow their train of thought, and knowing your politics, Mary, I don't expect you sympathize any more than I do.'
    'No, sir,' said Newman simply.
    On the