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Each time I have told you exactly that. I am not a traffic cop, I am not a chauffeur, I am not Admiral Mulligan’s mistress. I have no idea where he is. When he arrives I will be sure to inform you.”
    Before she put down the phone, Kathy O’Brien whispered, “Good-bye, my darling, rude pig.” Slam.
    “ KATHY !!”
    Phone rings. “What?”
    “WELL, WHERE THE HELL IS HE?”
    “As a matter of fact he has just walked through the door…shall I send him in?”
    “Jesus Christ.”
    Admiral Joseph Mulligan, the six-foot-four-inch former commanding officer of a Trident submarine, former C-in-C of the Submarine Force U.S. Atlantic Fleet (SUBLANT), and ex-Navy tight end in the 1966 Army-Navy game, came marching through the door.
    “Hey, Arnie…sorry about the lateness…been sitting in the car on the phone to Norfolk for the last twenty minutes…that damned new cruiser…Jesus, it’s more trouble than it could ever possibly be worth…got any coffee?”
    “Yeah, but I’m not sure you’re getting any. I’m not good at sitting around waiting for disorganized sailors.”
    “Heh, heh, heh.” The big Boston Irishman who occupied the most senior position in the United States Navy chuckled. The two men had known each other for many years. Both of them had commanded Polaris submarines, and they had been through a few scrapes together. As long as Admiral Morgan was the President’s right-hand man on military and national security matters, the Navy was not going to be looking for a new CNO any time soon.
    Just then Kathy O’Brien came in with fresh coffee for them both. Admiral Mulligan thanked her graciouslywhile the boss muttered, “’Bout time…I was better looked after when I was an ensign.”
    “He doesn’t get a whole lot better, does he?” said Joe Mulligan. “No wonder all his wives left him.”
    “No wonder indeed,” said Kathy, smiling as she swept out of the door.
    “Christ, she’s beautiful, Arnie. You better marry her while you’ve still got the chance.”
    “Can’t. She’s rejected me till I retire.”
    “Then you’ve both got a long wait.”
    “Guess so. But I’m hanging in there.”
    “Anyway, old pal, what’s on your mind.”
    “China, what’s on yours?”
    “Cookies. Got any?”
    “Jesus, don’t they feed you at the hellhole you work in?”
    “Only rarely.”
    “KATHY!! COOKIES FOR THE CHIEF.”
    “Okay, Arnie, tell me what’s on your mind, as if I don’t know. It’s that Chinese missile, right?”
    “That’s the one, Joe. And whether anyone likes it or not, we are, in the end, gonna have to do something about it. We can’t have a bunch of fucking coolies running around with a ballistic missile that could flatten L.A.”
    “Well, I agree. Not hardly. But you know, there really is no reason to think they could (a) build one that big, (b) aim the sonofabitch straight, and (c) make sure it goes off bang in Beverly Hills.”
    “Joe, I know that. But you know they’ve been building a brand-new Xia-class ICBM submarine. We’ve just picked it up on the overheads. Damn thing’s conducting surface trials in the northern Yellow Sea right now. They got pictures at Fort Meade. Whatever else, you can bet they didn’t build it for nothing. They built it to carry a missile that could, if required, threaten the USA.”
    “Can’t argue with that, Arnie. But they’re still a long way from firing a missile right across the Pacific Ocean.”
    “Are they? And might I ask how the hell you might know that?”
    “Mainly, old buddy, because they’ve never tested anything like that, and because every shred of intelligence we have says they are simply not that advanced.”
    “If this new fucking Xia-class boat is any good, they won’t have to be that advanced. They could drive the sonofabitch way across the ocean and let one rip a thousand miles off our west coast.”
    “Yeah, I suppose they could. If they owned such a missile.”
    Arnold Morgan stood up and pulled out a cigar from a