Epilogue

Understand and Forgive

Day Last

The winter was retreating on all fronts, leaving behind mist and puddles of thawed water. Synoptics predicted two weeks of partly cloudy sky and low pressure, probable precipitations, and western wind of 5 to 10 miles per hour. Quite comfortable for March if you get used to it.

"Why is it so hot, huh!? Why is it so hot!? Aren't you hot, no!?"

"I'm not," Branson answered, watching Stan wiping his face with a condescending smile hidden behind a raised collar of his pale-beige raincoat. "But I'm not running in circles. I think if you stop running—"

"I won't!" Blather stated with the resoluteness of a drug-addict. "It's easy for you to say! You're fine! You have nobody on that plane!"

"Don't start it," Trevor winced, having nothing to counter it with. Nor did he want to. What he really wanted was to live without any discussions or arguments for as long as possible. And, of course, without any funerals, which were in abundance as of late, and every time he was obliged to personally try to console someone. Marjorie Jackson who lost her husband and nephew, Constance Lennox who lost her fiancé, newly widowed Veronica Blunt, Ida O'Brian, Monica Lockwood, Sally Henderson, Faith Harper, Jennifer Tibbs… or Jennifer Harper and Faith Tibbs… or Harper was a bachelor, and Faith was his sister… Oh my, and there was a time when he was proud of his memory for the people… In short, Trevor needed something bright and optimistic. That's why, when he found out the date of the reunion of Stan Blather with his family who were being kept under protection all this time, Trevor volunteered to attend. Nobody objected. You can't truly object to the Deputy Director of the United States Secret Service and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom…

"May I ask you a question, Trevor?"

"Go for it," Branson allowed, disturbed by Stan's sudden mood swing.

"Forgive me for everything. For your friend, for—"

"Don't apologize, Stan. It's not your fault. Your refusal would have changed nothing. They would have simply killed you and picked the next man on the list. So everything would have been the same."

"Not necessary! The next one could have refused, too! And the next one! And every one on the list! And there would have been nothing!"

"Nonsense. Of three hundred people, there would surely be the one who agreed. So you did everything right. You couldn't have known. Then again, it's your job—"

"It was. Not anymore."

Branson lifted his eyebrows. "They didn't take you back? You, the recipient of the National Headliner Award?"

"Why? They did. As the news director, in place of Jefferson!"

"Is it bad?"

"Bad!?" Stan cackled. "It's fantastic! I couldn't even dream of it!"

"Why did you resign, then?"

"I didn't! But…" Stan took a deep breath, as if prior to jumping off a trampoline. "But I will!"

"Well, you know better. What are you planning to do next?"

Blather expected a furious debate and didn't understand the question at once. "What do you mean 'what'? Well, I mean, I'll find something! I know! I'll write a book!"

"About us?"

"About us!"

"Interesting."

"Oh, go to heck!"

"No, it's really interesting! Have you come up with a title already?"

Blather's anger gave way to pride. "I have! Several, even! But I haven't chosen one yet! Turns out, it's so hard! You must take so many things into account! Sense load, vividness, garishness, and, most important, originality and uniqueness! Those are paramount! Otherwise you'll write your book, publish it, get paid for it — and then the plaintiffs attack! Pay, they'll say, for using the title of my great-grandfather published five hundred years ago, and there you have it!"

"Yeah, plaintiffs are bad news," Branson nodded, shrugging involuntarily. Although in the end he was fully acquitted, the seemingly endless sequence of hearings, interrogations, and debates cost him so many nerve cells and gray hairs that he swore off never to use the word 'court' and all related notions without a dire need.

"Yes, yes! You're an experienced man, you know what I mean! Maybe you could help me? Well, with choosing the title?"

"I don't think so. I'm not quite a writer, you know…"

"But that's even better! You'll tell your opinion as a consumer! What's better, 'The Hunt for the Black Table' or 'Ten Days That Shook the World'? Or something simpler, say, 'Special Report'? How do you like it: 'Stan Blather's Special Report — twenty weeks as New York Times Number One Best Seller!' Sounds good, eh?"

"It does. Will you write about animals, too? Then it will be a real bomb."

Blather hung his head and looked away.

"Will you?" Trevor asked again dryly. He had to tell Blather about all the episodes of the First Chipmunk and his friends' involvement he was aware of to make Stan agree to lie about Dougherty and all the rest, but the agent had no intention of publicizing it widely…

"No," Stan said in a low voice. "It would be a bomb, yes, but I don't need them anymore. One is more than enough."

"That's why you're leaving TV?"

"Because of this, too."

"And why else?"

"As if you don't know!"

"I think I do."

"Why asking, then?"

"I want to hear it from you."

"Okay! Listen! I don't want to!"

"What?"

"Nothing! I have absolutely no desire to have any relation to it! Hypocrites! Liars! Intriguers! Because of them, I went through so much I wish them all to burn in heck!"

"If it's so bad, why didn't you leave earlier? Or didn't you see all that before?"

"But I really didn't! You want to ask why? And I'll tell you: because I was no celebrity! When you are a gray mediocrity, nobody sees or needs you! And when you become a star and get an award to boot, everybody becomes literally brutalized!"

"Who could have thought, they seem to be such pleasant people…" Branson couldn't refrain from a sarcastic remark.

"Exactly!" Blather confirmed, failing to notice mockery. "You believe them, you trust them, and then… I don't want to! I won't! I'm fed up!"

"You think something should be changed?"

"'Something'!? Everything must be changed there! We can't live like that anymore!"

"And it's easier to change something if you are a star or a mediocrity?"

Stan smelled some catch. "What is this about?"

"Just asking for your opinion."

"Well, if my opinion, then… then…" Blather felt he knew what answer Trevor was expecting of him, and badly wanted to give another, but he couldn't for it would be a lie and a stupid thing, and he declared war on those. "Then a star!"

"That's why you must stay."

"Somehow I knew you'd say that!"

"Because you are smart and know that I'm right."

"I'm also experienced and I know that one man can never change anything!"

"When Jackie Stewart started campaigning for increasing safety measures during Formula One races, everybody said the same. But now it's one of the safest sports. Make your own conclusions."

"Huh! He probably was some champion or the like!"

"Yes, he was. And it helped him greatly. And you are much more famous and influential than he was at his time, so it would be even easier for you!"

"I doubt it."

"Don't doubt it, try it."

"It's easy for you to say…"

"I'm saying what I know. Remember, I was going to resign, too, and you kept talking me out of it?"

"Yes, but that was a long time ago…"

"But it was! And here I am, still in the Service and with no intentions to leave!"

"You were promoted!"

"You, too, as far as I can see."

"It's not quite the same thing…"

"It is."

"Oh, you…!" Stan looked back at the agents standing by the cars by which they had arrived here, but concluded they were no help against Branson. "Why can't you let it go? I made up my mind! There's no turning back! Change the topic!"

Trevor nodded obediently. "As you wish. Did you hear Logan's speech?"

"Are you nuts!? I'm its chief promoter! Didn't you watch that 'Nightfall Conversation'!?"

"Don't boil up, it was a rhetorical question. Of course I watched the 'Conversation' and applauded every word of yours. But words are not enough. You need to work hard, work every single day in the spot where you can be of most use. I am, for instance, not bad a Secret Service agent. And you, Stan, are a natural-born journalist. Thus the conclusion is—"

"To heck with the conclusion! I won't return to that stinking fund!"

"It's not a stinking fund while you are there. At least, not a hopeless one. Do your job, advocate new principles, serve as a living example, and you'll see how everything will start changing for the better. Or you won'™ but then, at least, you'll know you have tried. But I think you'll make it. The people will turn to you, listen to you. There certainly will be imitators and followers, for every single person cannot be a rascal purely by statistics and probability theory. Every large organization always has sensible and responsible people. On the other hand, very often those people are shoved into secondary roles and say nothing out of fear of being eaten by the aggressive majority. That's why they need a leader. An example. A beacon. Stan Blather."

The news director was silent for a moment, then sniffed. "I am… touched…"

"I tried. So what's your decision?"

"I… I don't know…"

"And if I ask you as my friend?"

"And you… you will?"

"Consider I'm doing it already."

"Then…" Stan swallowed a lump forming in his throat. "Then I'll stay."

"Thank you."

"No, thank you! You know, Trevor, I never told you, well, I mean, I've never thought about it before, but actually I… I'm happy to have a friend like you!"

"Same here, Stan," Branson said, although the word 'friend' made him feel the same as the word 'court'. Although, no. Worse. For John Blunt meant much more to him…

…

"This is robbery!" Gyllenhaal said a week ago when Trevor, in the process of his relocation to the new working place at the Secret Service's central office came to him with the statement signed by the Director concerning the transfer in the same direction of fully restored of their posts and rights Mark Rosewater, William Thornton, Gregory Chang, and Eugene Flowers. Gyllenhaal himself had already recovered from his wound, too, although his right arm was still in sling. Trevor had his own theory about it, though… "Not only are you leaving yourself, you take all the best people with you! And when? When we suffered the heaviest losses in history! Now I see why they call you 'Black Hole'!"

Trevor shrugged. "It's not me, it's politics." His nickname had already surfaced when he and his new direct superior discussed jeremiads of their New York field office and police departments of New Jersey and New York concerning transfer under Trevor's command of special agent Rustin Parr, patrol officer Neil Robertson and Detective Derek Muldoon, respectively. "North West H Street had its share of losses and perturbations, too, so they don't really need me alone there. You'll have to manage somehow with those my successor will select. Have you already decided who it will be?"

"I want to propose Carl to them. He's experienced and capable, although no match for you!"

"Wise choice. What about John?"

The head of the Presidential Protective Division sighed and took off his sling which he threw in the lower drawer of his desk. Trevor awarded himself with a virtual doughnut. He suspected from the start that Gyllenhaal put it on when his secretary told him about Trevor's coming, to make an impression of sick, weak, and unable to part with those who his former subordinate mentioned during their previous conversation. Little did he know that everything was already arranged and approved on the very top… "Everything was confirmed."

"Absolutely everything?" Trevor asked in a cheerless voice.

"Absolutely. Judge for yourself," Gyllenhaal went on bending his fingers. "He's from the Middle West — that's one. His father's name is David — that's two. On that day he was in New York along with us, preparing for the Summit. We lived, as you remember, in different suites, and at the end of the corridor there was an exit to the fire ladder descending into the backyard, so he could easily leave and return unnoticed, plus the hotel was just a couple of blocks away from that intersection — that's three. He had been to the Jacksons' house and knew about Sammy's photo wearing the CIA shirt — that's four. On the day, that is, on the night of the attempt on Blather's life the computer of one of our employees was used in her absence by an unidentified party to access the Internet and gather information about the ship Naina, at that time seized by the pirates, and John was in the building at the time — that's five—"

"Anybody could do that!" Trevor exclaimed, happy to have a chance to raise a single objection.

"You're right, of course. But only someone linked to the Black Table could need to hack into someone else's PC at night to read about the Ukrainian — Ukrainian, that's important! — ship carrying weapons — that's even more important since it echoes the Kolchuga-gate! And taking into account everything mentioned above—"

"Those are collateral evidence only!"

"You know better than me that in cases like this you never have any other."

"Yes, I know, but…" Trevor moved his palm down his face. "Darn, he was my best friend!"

"Yes, nobody else would have insisted so eloquently in the President's presence to assign this case specifically to you—"

"Yes! Exactly…!"

"—and nobody else would have asked you to drop this case presumably because there was a call from the White House about you."

Branson wilted again. "This is true, too…"

"And you still doubt after all this? You usually arrive at the right conclusions much faster!"

Trevor got up and went to the window with a view at the Washington Monument. He had arrived at all the needed conclusions a long time ago, but still couldn't put up with those. John was the last man he could suspect; even Gyllenhaal was higher in the list of possible suspects. But it was hardly a reason for doubt. Considering how mighty and masterful their enemies were, it looks more like an aggravation… "If he is officially acknowledged to be 'David', how will it affect his family?"

"Well, if the version that John wanted to cancel everything is correct—"

"It's a good version, but it's a version of Berg and Davenport, and it's inconvenient to refer to them now. Then again, there's no proof, only suppositions, and gossip and rumors is the last thing his wife and children need now."

"I share your opinion," Gyllenhaal nodded. "There's another option. As you know, the case materials mention such names that their publication would lead to the dissolution of the Federation. So the decision was made to classify them. Not for too long, fifty years at most, just for the passions to settle and everything could be judged weightedly. So, if his case is included in the corpus, then people will find out about his involvement… okay, okay, sorry, his hypothetical involvement, only in half a century…"

"Perfect!"

"Not so fast. There's one 'but': his case must be closed. Unfortunately, there are still some questions…"

"How many?"

"Many enough. But only one truly crucial: who sent the letter from the Reed Medical Center? Well, if it existed. If you remember, Davenport—"

"I do remember," Trevor said sharply. "At first his ideas seemed idiotic to me, but the more I think of them—"

"Wait a second!" Gyllenhaal squinted unpleasantly. "You read the letter and watched the video file together. You insisted on it all this time. Or was it all my imagination?"

Branson closed his eyes and rocked on his heels twice. This was the threshold. The moment of truth. The point of no return. Despite all the coincidences Gyllenhaal listed and he found on his own, despite even the extenuating circumstance of a hypothetical desire to surrender the entire organization, Trevor didn't believe his old friend was guilty. He didn't want to believe, he physically couldn't believe it. That's why he insisted that John wouldn't be mentioned in Stan's speech. He needed not coincidences but substantial evidence. Had Salinger been able to give him the case materials, he would have immediately played the recordings of his and Blunt's conversations with Brightman and the CIA representatives for Blather and asked whether he recognized 'David's' voice. But now it was too late to do it. As the time passes, the human memory dulls, and the voice could have been changed from the start… In short, if it were for him, Trevor Branson, to decide, he would leave everything as it was, hoping that sooner or later he would obtain irrefutable proof of his friend's guiltiness or innocence. But it was not as much about Blunt as the First Chipmunk, the assassin mouse, the Newfoundland who saved Blather, the bat who stopped Marauder, the fly that watched over him and theirs, most probably, numerous friends, whose voluntary help allowed him to survive and save his country.

Trevor badly wanted to tell the world about them, but he realized that the world wouldn't understand nor forgive him this logical but not quite rational in the common sense of the word explanation of all the mysteries and would either put Trevor into a mental asylum, or declare total war against small animals, or both. Trevor didn't want to go to an asylum, and he had no intention of repaying his saviors with evil. There was only one way: to cover the truth, attributing the deeds of his small assistants to accidents or other people. Up to now, everything favored it. Jim Morrison, who deduced the rodents' presence in the Blather's house, perished. The traps in the Westwoods' house were attributed to Saul, and Trevor's escape from arrest — to a piece of plaster timely falling from the ceiling, for after Sanchez's bullet hit it, the ceiling became damaged, and the FBI agents had washed themselves and their clothes numerous times since then. Stealing of materials from Horizon was blamed on Weber, sneaking the recording into the UN HQ — on Dougherty. In short, everything was covered. Except one thing. The letter to the Capitol from Walter Reed Army Medical Center…

"Did John receive any letters from the Reed Center on the day of his death?" Trevor asked, driven by a hunch.

"No," Gyllenhaal answered. "We checked it. Of course, it could have been deleted…"

"I doubt it," Branson sighed deeply and turned away from the window. "I want to change my statement. It's time to tell the truth…"

During that and two following days Branson five times, twice for Gyllenhaal and three times for the members of the Presidential Investigation Committee, repeated the same thing: he saw the letter that was allegedly sent from Walter Reed Medical Center to the Director for the Public Relations of the Capitol Tourist Center only as two separate files, the text and the video, on his partner and friend John Blunt's laptop. According to John Blunt, he had accidentally destroyed the letter on the PR Director's computer and was afraid to be made to answer for the destruction of evidence. So he, John Blunt, asked him, Trevor Branson, for the sake of their old friendship, to help him and confirm that the original letter of the same contents had really existed. The electronic version of the letter included in the case materials was created by Blunt later, according to him, by sending the similar letter from his wife's mailbox to his own mail address and replacing service metadata of the received message with those matching the removed letter. Through all this time he, Trevor Branson, had no reason to doubt the sincerity of John Blunt's words and indeliberateness of the mistakes he had made. But, in the light of the newly revealed circumstances, he, Trevor Branson, found it impossible to hide the truth anymore and hoped that the venerable members of the Committee would understand him and take his giving it all up and his previous merits into account…

They understood, and they took.

The Blunt case was closed and sent to archive for at least 50 years. From this moment on, he was officially named not only the primary candidate for the role of 'David', but also the primary suspect in cases of the cassette stolen from the Capitol, of the letter sent from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and of the murder of the head of SD NCS CIA Reginald MacMillan.

Now and forever, there was no place left in the official version for the First Chipmunk and the mouse assassin who vanished without a trace.

Forgive me, Johnny…

…

"THEY'RE COMING, TREVOR! THEY'RE COMING!"

Returning to reality, Branson followed Blather's finger with his eyes and saw a silvery Gulfstream approaching. The plane made the last turn before glide path so low that, having a good eye-sight, it was possible to count its side windows and hatches. Its gears had barely touched the landing strip when Blather was already walking towards it, and his movements grew faster as the plane was slowing. If the news director observed this pattern closely, he would fly himself, but he stopped just in time waiting for the engines to shut down and the ladder to lower. In full accordance with the rules, the first one to appear from the hatch was Dahlstrom, but the first to step on the ladder was Stan Blather Junior who somehow squeezed past the agent despite wearing an anorak and a backpack.

All the agents tensed instinctively, but no gunshots or grenade launches came, and the happy reunion of father and son did happen. One by one, they were joined by the rest of the Blathers, first by daughters, Alice and Patricia, and then by their mother, Jessica. There was plenty of joy, screaming, and tears, both caused by not believing it was over and tiredness, for both Stan and his family had changed a dozen of sanctuaries each. Trevor felt ashamed for forcing them to make another long drive to Maplewood, to the new house bought and furnished at the WBC expense. But his schedule was so dense he couldn't allow to go so far to the north, so he arranged for the Gulfstream to take the Blathers from Nevada not to the McGuire AFB just fifty miles south of Maplewood as it was planned initially, but to the airfield in College Park, Maryland, where, a very long time ago, John met him flying via the helicopter from New York…

But that was pure and forced coincidence, for it was much easier to maintain a security perimeter here than at Dulles or Reagan Airports, and the civilian airplanes were too rarely allowed onto the Joint Base Andrews. The reason was different. Branson's presence at the family reunion, whose head he had saved from certain death on numerous occasions, was his in absentia answer to the phrase Evan Berg had thrown at him during the trial: 'Just look at him! Everybody around him was dying, and he still lives! Isn't it a shame!?' Now the agent could rightfully answer him: 'No! I'm not ashamed! It was worth it! Moments like this one are worth going all-in with everything you have at least from time to time, for they are truly priceless…'

"Deputy Director Branson, sir!" Dahlstrom saluted him. "I'm very glad to see you! Congratulations on your promotion! Are you going with us?"

"Thanks, Carl. No, I'm not, so you're still in charge. Were they a big trouble to you?"

"I had worse."

"Good enough. Keep it up. Oh, by the way, would you like to move to the central office by any chance?"

Dahlstrom smiled. "I knew you'd ask. Thanks for the offer, but no. I like it more in Presidential Protection."

"That's exactly the answer I expected. But I was obliged to ask. When you're finished here, go visit Gyllenhaal, he's got an offer for you. Good luck!"

Shaking grateful Carl's hand and glancing one more time at Blathers entangled into a ball of happiness, Trevor turned around and walked towards his car. They took his faithful Marauder from him, instead giving him a pompous black Cadillac DTS with a personal driver, special agent Bernie Johns, who had spent this entire time reading a centerfold of The Washington Post. Trevor would have asked anyone else to turn at least a page for the sake of appearances, but his driver had a right to hold the newspaper even upside down if he wanted to. Even after plastic surgery a lacerated scar on his right cheek looked very non-appetizing. Well, an ordinary case. With such a mark, one couldn't work undercover nor even question witnesses, so all that remained was a non-public but very important position where injury was a big advantage, for a beaten man was worth two or more unbeaten.

"To the office, sir?" The driver asked when the passenger took his seat behind him. Branson planned to go there from College Park, but gradually he was gripped by another idea. Memories are good stimuli for actions, but you can't change them no matter how hard you try, that's why we're both their masters and servants. It's much more productive to create the future which isn't set yet, and thus can become the one we want. Or not, which, again, depends on one's patience and diligence. Watching the Blathers, Trevor thought he had been patient long enough, and either he asked for the hand of Marjorie Jackson, nee Walsh, today, or he would never find the family happiness. Of course, Marjorie could refuse, and out of the best intentions, so that nobody would have a reason to raise the topic of Trevor murdering her husband out of jealousy again. Branson didn't care about gossip. Let them talk. Marjorie's understanding was more than enough…

"Is something wrong, sir?" The driver delicately reminded him of his presence.

"No, Bernie, it's okay. Go to Claremont, address is—"

"Twenty-third South street, 4803?"

"Correct," Trevor raised his eyebrow in surprise. "How do you know?"

"That's my job, sir!" Bernie Johns, previously known as Brad Johnson, smiled and started the engine.

"They are beautiful, aren't they?"

"They are the most beautiful in the world!" Chip embraced his wife even tighter and bent his head slightly sideways to look at two tiny children lying on a little double bed from a different angle.

Just as Foxglove predicted, in due time Gadget gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, a chipmunk and a mouse, Crisp and Digit. Digit was an exact copy of her Mom, except dark eyes inherited from her father, while blue-eyed Crisp got the shape and color of his nose from Dale which didn't come as a big surprise for those aware of genetic collisions that made their existence possible, although Monterey Jack did allow himself a couple of jokes about it. The Aussie was not at the HQ at the moment, having left along with Zipper to Alaska where he knew a couple of reindeer herds and could be of assistance to Dale and Foxglove with their mission to organize autonomous volunteer cell that would function in a similar way to the WaGuS who proved their capability. Tammy and Sparky were also absent, having gone to meet the squirrel's father who lived separately from the family, so after quite some time Chip and Gadget were finally by themselves. And the children, of course.

"I always knew you'd be a perfect mom," Chip whispered in his beloved one's ear quietly so as not to wake the new generation up.

Gadget giggled nervously. "Thanks…" It would be logical to answer 'And I knew you'd be a great dad!', but Gadget couldn't say that without first discussing one important thing with Chip. Now, when they were alone, it was a perfect time for that… "You know, Chip, I just wanted to tell you, you just take it easy, in short, I must admit something to you—"

"I know. So I'll say outright: whatever happens, I'll love and bring them up as if they were my own."

Even after that electric shock Gadget didn't feel so dumbfounded. "You… Golly, you… So you…" Failing to produce a finished sentence, Gadget tore herself off Chip and ran out of their room. The chipmunk checked whether the balcony was closed shut and how tightly the children were muffled, silently counted to twenty, and went searching. He would have heard the rapping of the front door or screeching of the hangar gates, so he limited himself to the HQ. Not finding Gadget in her workshop, Chip went to the kitchen where his wife was sitting at the dinner table. She was sitting absolutely still, resting her elbows on the table and covering her face with her paws, and making no sound at all. Chip silently sat opposite her, put his bent arms on the table, lowered his head, and started carefully examining his fingers, tediously waiting for her to speak up. He wanted to neither hurry her up nor drive her into a corner with an untimely phrase. The price of an error was extremely high. Let her begin. She needed to speak her mind out, not him…

"Forgive me, Chip," Gadget finally spoke without taking her paws off her face. "I want you to understand me. And to forgive me. Although I'll understand if you won't forgive me, for I understand it's hard to forgive such a thing. And even harder to understand. But you should at least understand. If not forgive, then understand… Oh gosh, what I'm talking about…"

Gadget fell silent again. The first attempt to come up with a sensible introduction failed. She wanted to do it the best way. Wanted to explain everything. But only confused it even further. Probably it would be better without any introduction. Yes, she should try that. It should be easier this way…

And she started talking…

…

A lone ray of light floated along dark asphalt, warning the Rangermobile's passengers about any obstacles on their way in advance. A powerful flashlight inserted into a special slit exactly in the middle of the skateboard base was covered with a sloped casing which absorbed heat and prevented the seats located right above it from becoming red-hot. It rose only slightly above the floor and didn't impede talking at all, but Gadget and Dale said nothing for quite some time. They sat upright, looking straight ahead, and thinking each of his or her own. That is, actually, about the same thing…

Dale was the first to break the silence, "I shouldn't have come."

"No, why, you came right on time."

"Oh come on, it was clear you were getting along already."

The mouse sighed bitterly. "And his behavior was another proof that it was only an illusion."

The chipmunk jumped up on his seat. "What are you talking about? What illusion? He dotes upon you!"

Gadget pursed her lips. "Yeah, right. When he directed laser sight at me, it was especially evident!"

"Laser sight?" Dale asked again, digressing for a moment to drive around a gutter the grating of which was viciously stolen by someone.

"Yes! Mounted on the electro gun! Just think about it, he made it in case my chip switches on again!"

"Far-sighted…" The chipmunks said carelessly.

"WHAT!?" Gadget became outraged. "You, too!?"

"Sorry! It's just that you, that is, the MAP, caused us so much trouble!"

"But that's not the reason to forbid me to work with electrical equipment!"

"Of course!" Dale supported her eagerly. "But you mustn't get angry at him! He just worried about you! He didn't want anything to happen to you!"

The inventor snorted. "What can happen to me in my own workshop?"

"How do I know? When we went to that Nimnul's wretched lab, we thought it would be nothing, and then what?"

"And what then?"

Dale slowed down to have time to see the road signs. "You didn't see him," he continued after choosing the direction.

Gadget wanted to snort again, but her friend's gravely gloomy tone made her serious. "And… and how… how was it?"

"Very painful and sad. He kept speaking about you, remembering you, even repeating your name in his sleep."

"How do you know?"

"Just happened to lie on the upper bunk."

"Oh, yeah, how could I forget it…"

Dale switched off the light so that the police patrol wouldn't see them. He kept to side streets where there were no pedestrians after dark, and the only passing cars were police Chargers whose paired headlights coated by sewer steam brought up unpleasant associations with cat eyes.

When they resumed driving, he spoke again, "At first after your funeral, that is, your send-off ceremony, we didn't work. We couldn't, just couldn't. None of us could, especially him. Then we started, gradually, but it was clear he didn't settle down. Just drove the splinter deeper. And when you turned out to be alive, he swore he'd never lose you again and thrash anyone who tried to hurt you. And he did just that, you know…"

"What!?" Gadget bulged her eyes and perked up her ears. "He thrashed someone!? And whom!?"

"A hit rat. Back on that stage. It ran after you, and he caught its head with his sweater — FFROOFPHTTK! — then pulled the sleeves — URRNHHH — and then punched it to the head — BANG! BASH! WHOOPIE! He beat it to pulp! When we were shoving it into the box, it didn't even squeak! Real hardcore! Even Monty wouldn't have achieved such a result!"

"I see," Now the mouse had a whole picture. "That's when it started…"

"What started?" Dale couldn't follow her.

"His bitterness."

"Oh, come on!" The chipmunk laughed and waved off, almost driving into a garbage packet standing slightly further away from the edge of the walkway than it should. "What bitterness! He always liked to plant a bonk or two! I would have smashed anyone for you, too!"

"Thank you."

"Uhm… You're welcome!"

Gadget looked askew at him. "Is something wrong?"

"No-no, everything's fine!" To prove it, Dale smiled, winked, moved his lower jaw, drummed against the steering wheel, and whistled the opening chord of 'The Red Badger of Courage' TV series theme song.

Confused, Gadget remained silent until they reached the intersection of Suffolk Street and Delancey Street, and only when the Rangermobile turned towards the Williamsburg Bridge she asked, "Are you jealous of me?"

Now it was Dale's turn to take a time-out to gather his thoughts and maneuver the Rangermobile into a narrow passage between interior concrete hammer-stone of incidental trestle of the bridge and the barrier of bicycle-pedestrian gallery running through its center, which led them to the service gallery running along the bridge's subway line. There was no danger of missing a turn, being run over or noticed by the humans here, so the chipmunk blocked the steering wheel with a special clamp and turned to his passenger. "What did you ask? I didn't hear well…"

"Are you jealous of me?" The mouse repeated.

Dale expected she would seize the opportunity he graciously offered to drop this topic, but she didn't, and now he was the one to have to look for a way out. "No, I… As if… Is it so… Well… What gave you that idea?"

"I don't know. I got an impression of it. Even though I know how you love Foxglove—"

The word Dale let slip was stronger than a wolfram crow-bar but, fortunately, quiet enough to be drowned by the subway train rumbling above them.

"Sorry, come again?"

"No, it's me who should be sorry! Let's discuss it some other time, okay?"

"No, Dale!" The mouse said firmly. "You're my friend and I want to know! What happened?"

"You don't want to know," the chipmunk made a Jedi gesture with his right hand, but it helped only partially.

"Okay! I don't want to! But I must know it! Spill it out!"

Dale looked ahead hopefully, but the end of the bridge was too far away, the water was too far below, and there were no places to hide and run away in the service gallery which was basically a gutter deeper than human height and only slightly wider than the Rangermobile. He had to comply. "But don't tell anyone, okay?"

"I won't if you ask!"

"Good. In short…" Dale fell silent and listened to a rhythmic tapping of the skateboard wheels against the gaps between segments of a steel grating which covered the gallery's floor. "In short, I don't love her. And I never did. Never."

"Oh my!" No force in the world could drag Gadget by her tail from this topic now. No, she was not a fan of digging into someone else's private life, but Dale's words contradicted the objective reality available to her so drastically it could be considered a fundamental science problem. "How could that be? You're soul mates!"

"Yeah, we were. We were real friends even. I flew on the glider with her, helped her with her rituals. I enjoyed being with her, I even had fun, but no more than that. But nothing was enough for her. And so she thought: catchers keepers. And bewitched me."

Gadget hiccupped. "Golly! Why do you think so!?"

"Well, I think she thought that. Maybe she planned it from the start. Or maybe she took Barbra Streisand's song on the radio for the instruction manual…"

"No-no! I'm talking about bewitching!"

"Ha, but that's obvious! Would I behave like an idiot otherwise…! Oh, darn! I almost forgot…!" Dale grabbed the steering wheel and pressed the acceleration pedal into the board. The fan roared, the Rangermobile darted forward and climbed the beam set under almost critical an angle which joined the bottom of the gutter with a service gallery running along the railway which gradually rose from beneath the bridge to the level of the Human second floor. After the corridor's naked walls the view of the night city was a feast for eyes, but the rodents were too preoccupied to enjoy it.

"Did you behave like an idiot?" Gadget wondered quizzically when the Rangermobile stopped bobbing up. "As for me, I saw no deviations from your norm…"

"Oh, come on! Everything was one big deviation! If I were sane, I'd never tell Chip that 'those days of jealousy are far behind us for I'm into Foxy, now…' Oh gosh! I shiver every time I remember it! Just like now! BR-R-R-R…!"

"Everything can be explained rationally—"

"Yes! And I explained it already! She bewitched me! Cassandra said so!"

Gadget had nothing to counter the word and authority of the mystic moth, but she still had her doubts. "She said exactly so? Word for word? Maybe you interpreted it wrong? When she's in trance—"

"She was in no trance!"

"Alright, alright!" The inventor said pacifyingly. "Please, tell me how it happened."

"It was a month ago or so. Me and Foxglove…" The chipmunk paused because they reached the first subway station after the bridge, so he had to return the clamp to its normal position and shed some sweat to take the Rangermobile through two consecutive pairs of right angle turns. When they were left behind, Dale resumed from where he stopped. "…went to the fair to unwind, I wanted to show her a mirror room and get the super prize at the force meter. I didn't know if Cassandra was there or in another town, but I made a deal with Foxglove in advance that we wouldn't go to her. Just for the safety's sake, you know… But as soon as we got there, she, I mean, Foxglove, behaved like Monty at a cheese plant! And then she flew! I barely grabbed her by her leg, and then — WHOOP! — and we're in Cassandra's tent! Foxglove explained later that she sensed magic and couldn't control herself. But I didn't know that! I thought: 'She'll eat her now!' Cassandra thought the same, apparently, for she fluttered about, hid behind her lamp and looked from there with eyes as large as that lamp! Do you believe me?"

"I do, I do! Don't get distracted! What was next?"

"Next? Next she, well, Cassandra, saw me and knew everything was fine. Or not that scary. But she still looked at us strangely. I thought it was okay. Well, she is a moth, she's got her instincts… Well, she told us the future a bit, but without spirit and just some trifles, and then she said she wanted to tell me fortunes, and since it's personal, Foxglove would need to wait behind the door. Or how that thing is called in tents, yeah. So, we are alone, and she says: 'Dear, she bewitched you!' I said: 'What?' And she said: 'That! I see your aura, you've got a turbulent hole in your biofield, and there's a vortex over your head, you're completely tangled… entangled…' I don't remember other things! In short, she gave me an address of her praying mantis friend, a big specialist for all that, and he fixed that. Like, stitched, removed, severed, tied up and whatnot. And that's it."

Gadget was about to say 'I can't believe that!', but asked instead, "And what about Foxglove?"

"Foxglove is Foxglove…" Dale said gloomily.

"No, but… Didn't she find out about it? She's, uhm, a mystic…"

"And that mantis was a super mystic! Somehow he did so that for her I'm still bewitched, but not for myself. He said it would be safer this way. Well, that is, I asked him about it, and then he said it. Well, I did it so. Asked him to do that. I wanted to try how it works out. I shouldn't have…"

"Something else happened?" Gadget switched to whisper for some reason, and Dale answered the question he heard. "Happy, yeah. She loves me and thinks I love her, too. And I don't love her but pretend I do or she'll find out and bewitch me again, this time stronger, and no mantis will help me. That's basically it."

"Golly…" The surrealism of the events went through the roof, but Gadget still tried to reason logically. "Maybe you shouldn't be afraid? You should have some defense after unwitching! Immunity!"

"Maybe I should," Dale was so disheartened he didn't mind the 'cursed' word. "But that mantis measured my suggestibility threshold as the lowest of the lowest. I have none, you can even say. Even Chip had bewitched me with his Rama Lama Ding-Dong…"

The mouse giggled involuntarily.

"Nothing to be proud of, yeah," Dale commented.

"Sorry…"

"Oh, forget it. It was a great practical joke."

"To tell the truth, I thought it was you playing a joke on us!"

"Why?"

"Because you can't seriously believe such things!"

"You can. I do, for instance! I believe in the Red Badger of Courage, in Sureluck Jones, in the spy game…"

Gadget looked away to hide her embarrassment. "Yeah… I'm really sorry for that…"

"No-no, why?" Dale objected heartily. "Don't apologize! I was not offended at all! On the contrary, I enjoyed it greatly!"

"I understand. Chip also thought it was for real."

"Eh…" Dale sensed a catch and slowed down instinctively. "So it wasn't for real or what?"

"No, it was part of an image, a game. Forgive me if I disappointed you."

"No problem…" Having lost his heart-warming illusion, Dale drooped again, but he wouldn't be Dale had he not found another reason for optimism. "Still your fake kiss was better than all true Foxglove's kisses taken together!"

"Dale, don't—"

"Why? It's true! Since I became disenchanted, I can't even think of kissing her! It's hard for me to even stand by her side!"

"Well, she did do a wrong thing—"

"That's not the point. She smells of insects like I don't know! And her locator? It's hurting my tender ears!"

"Says the Iron Goose fan…"

"The Iron Goose songs have sense at least, and hers is just bam-bam-bam, like a stick against a bucket!"

"So that's why you were shy of her at first?"

"This, too! But most of all because of her pushiness! I loved you, and she kept thrusting herself on me—"

"WHAT!?" Gadget turned to Dale with her whole body, almost tearing the safety belt out. "WHAT DID YOU SAY!?"

"What I always wanted to do but never did… Where are we now?"

"Between 'Van Sicklen Avenue' and 'Cleveland Street'. Golly, Dale , I don't know what to say…"

"Now you know. Although it doesn't matter. You love Chip."

"Yes, Dale," the mouse nodded. "It so happened, that, well… I mean, of course, you are brave, clever, strong and kind. No, I mean it! I like you very much! But I love Chip. I'm sorry."

"No problem, I understand it all. He's the leader, he's stronger and smarter than me, and it wasn't him who goofed up in Paris. Sure thing."

"Yeah, sure thing," Gadget repeated, twisting the ring on her finger absentmindedly. "Too sure even…"

"NO!" Dale shouted, stopping the vehicle and covering her paws with his. "Don't do that! Not that, no!"

"What's wrong!?" Gadget backed off, staring at her friend in surprise with perfectly circular eyes.

"I… Oh!" Dale jerked his paw back as if from kryptonite. "Are you hurt? Forgive me, I didn't want to!"

"No-no, it's okay! I'm alright! And what did you want to do?"

"I thought you wanted to take it off. Your ring."

"But I didn't…"

"Good! Great! Don't! It will kill him! You're his everything! Do you understand?"

"I do," Gadget slapped her friend's shoulder to calm him. "Don't worry. Let's go."

"Yes-yes, just a sec," Dale released the pedal of the brakes that held the Rangermobile in place, but then pressed it again and looked at Gadget. "By the way, don't you want to go back?"

"No, I don't."

"Listen, he surely had cooled down by now and—"

"It's not about him. I must think about a couple of things. Away from him. Alone. Let's go, or the battery runs out."

"As you wish," Dale released the brakes again after rotating the steering wheel toward the station entrance. Ground-level subway stations were a great way to move about the city, but this line went north-west, and the Rescue Rangers needed to travel south, to Jamaica Bay and the aircraft boneyard on the outskirts of John F. Kennedy International airport, split in two by narrow Bergen Basin. Fortunately, at this hour of night the platform was deserted, and nobody was around to be surprised by the skateboard with a fan, which appeared from under the barrier with a 'No Trespassing!' sign and used the baby carriage ramp to drive down to the walkway.

"What do you want to think about, if it's not a secret?" Dale asked when they drove deep into a comfortable darkness of empty side streets.

Actually, it was exactly a secret, but after Dale's revelations Gadget felt uneasy keeping mum or making silly excuses, plus Dale, being involved into it, had the right to know everything, so she sighed and said, "We can't have children."

Dale shuddered. "Who 'we'?"

"Me and Chip."

"What!? I don't get it! Wait! And your analysis!? It lied or what!?"

"No, it didn't lie. I made a wrong analysis. I mean, it was correct, but not quite. I analyzed the wrong samples. That is, one wrong sample. That's as if I wanted to get a neutron, but made the two deuterium atoms collide instead. Get it?"

"No."

"You need tritium for a neutron!"

"What's TM?"

"Not TM! Tritium! Superheavy hydrogen! With two neutrons!"

"And where's the third?"

"What third?"

"If it's tritium, it must have something third. I mean, if there are only two newtons."

"What— Oh golly, what are we talking about?"

"The analysis!" Dale helped her gladly, for he hated nuclear physics and everything else he had no idea about.

"Oh, yeah. Back when that episode with body exchange surfaced, I was so shocked I ran to check myself, but I had to compare myself with someone, and since I exchanged bodies with you, I chose your data from the base, And I got a positive result, And I thought I was compatible with Chip."

"And where's the catch?"

"I'm not."

"How!?"

"Just like that. I'm compatible with you, but not with him."

"But why? We're both chipmunks! That is, micemunks! Chipmice!"

"I thought so, too. But, apparently, I received too big a portion of genetic material from you. One, maybe two extra percent. But it was enough for my chromosomes to reject Chip's. That is, I'm not even a mousemunk, but something smaller, like, more specific…"

"DaleGadget?"

"Yeah, something like that. And you're not a mousemunk, but GadgetDale. That is, me and you are compatible species. That is, specimens. But me and Chip are not. So if I could have children, then from you only. And you only from me, respectively…"

"Not that I wanted them from anyone else…"

"…Of course, if you and Foxglove go through my Gene Splicer—"

"YOUR WHAT!?"

"Oh, darn…" The mouse realized she said too much and bit her tongue and lowered her ears, but there was no way back, so she went on with a sigh, "Foxy mentioned one day that she dreamt of having something like a modemizer to make you and her genetically compatible. I said I helped Nimnul to fix it and more or less have an idea of how it functioned, so it shouldn't be a problem. Well, word for word, and she made me promise I'd build this thing and present it to you at your wedding. That's it. Not that I made any big progress towards it, and your wedding looks like a distant perspective, too…"

"I really hope so," Dale sighed. "Although I'm not sure. I still don't know how to tell her about it."

"I don't know how to tell Chip, either. He wants children so much, he's so worried…"

"Of course! I would be worried, too! And Monty is even more worried! He's got a theory that you can't get pregnant because of his presence, and he seriously considers moving back to Australia! But it looks like it's not his fault…"

"It's not," Gadget agreed gloomily. "It's my fault…"

"No! It's Nimnul's fault! And his buggy modemizer's!"

"No, Dale! I'm the one to blame! I must have checked everything through and through before talking to Chip! If only you saw his face when he heard we could have children…! Golly, what I have done…"

"It's not your fault!" Dale repeated stubbornly. "And if I understand it, he'll understand it, too! And he'll forgive you! And everything will be alright! Hear me?"

"I do, Dale, I do hear you…" Gadget wiped her nose with her sleeve and squeezed her friend's paw in gratitude. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Feel free to turn to me if need be."

"Well, that's exactly what I did."

"Yes, I appreciate it…"

When they were approaching the aircraft boneyard, the sky in the east was growing gray already, and a fresh breeze from the Bay made loose hull pieces and sticking out ends of reinforcing bars to creak ominously. Since the five Rangers' historical meeting almost everything changed here except Mitchell which seemed to be completely forgotten. Actually it was quite the opposite: it was remembered too well. Back in the previous century, the headmaster of Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum asked the airport directorate to give the bomber to them to serve as an exhibit, but the airport named so high a price as if they were asked to build ten new such aircrafts from scratch. The museum people would have shrugged off a long time ago, but then they studied this aircraft's long and heroic battle history and decided to get it whatever the cost. The negotiations dragged on, nobody was eager to back away, and Mitchell kept standing there like a sentinel, unrelieved in spite of all the terms having long run out. The Rescue Rangers were more than happy with it.

"Here we are!" Dale announced stopping the Rangermobile in front of Mitchell's nose. While Gadget climbed up to open the entrance hatch, the chipmunk moved both suitcases and the tool box to the furrow marking the boundaries of the lowered lid of the aforementioned hatch.

"Where should I take all this?" He asked when the mouse appeared from the opening.

"The tools upstairs… No-no, let me! And place the suitcases by the threshold, I don't need them yet!" Grabbing her tools, Gadget vanished in the depth of the hull and returned empty-handed when both suitcases were already inside the plane. "Thanks for your help!"

"Don't mention it!" Dale shook his paws off and wiped them against his Hawaiian shirt. "Anything else?"

"I don't think so…"

"Are you sure you don't want to go back to the HQ?"

"I'm sure I don't."

"Okay, then, I'll be off! Bye!"

"Wait!" Gadget shouted, and Dale instead of a U-turn made a full circle. "Listen…"

"Everything you told me will stay between us!" The chipmunk promised.

"It's not about that…" The mouse plucked at her collar, studied nails on her toes and, gathering resolve, asked, "Can you stay?"

"I'd be happy to…" Dale looked eastward doubtfully. "But Foxglove will wake up soon…"

"She's asleep? AT NIGHT?"

"How could I have come otherwise? Yes, she's asleep. She trains my way of life. But she's still far from ideal, and she usually wakes up at dawn, so…"

"Well, there's still some time until dawn…"

"But it'll take me some time to return…"

"Please, Dale!" Gadget stepped down on the lower edge of the hatch. "I know you're in a hurry, but… You see, when I was leaving the HQ, I imagined it all differently. I forgot how large my plane is and how… dark. I wanted, really wanted to be alone, but now I'm… I'm scared of being alone. Please, stay here. For a little, until I get used to it. Please…"

Dale looked at the mouse's tender figure in the blue overalls which seemed infinitely vulnerable and fragile against the enormous bomber and the black maw of the hatch leading inside the hull, and he felt she was needing him like never before. And he knew he not just couldn't but had no moral right to refuse her now. And, to tell the truth, he didn't want to refuse her and could never want to…

"Okay," he nodded. "I'll be back. Just move the car behind the wheel…"

…

"…He drove the Rangermobile off and we went to the cockpit. Everything was neglected there. of course, but I managed to start the generator feeding the dashboard illumination. We just sat there, looking at the stars, talking… And then the lights went off. I said it must be because of the generator, went on speculating aloud how to fix it, got carried away… And then he kissed me suddenly. He said he couldn't help it, that he always dreamed of interrupting my train of thought this way, he apologized, and I… I dunno… Something swept over me, and… and I kissed him back, and… And, that's basically it…" Gadget summed it up, taking her paws off her face and staring at her husband with her eyes paled by tears. "Everything happened so that… That now… GOLLY, CHIP! SAY SOMETHING! DON'T BE SILENT! WHY ARE YOU SILENT!? WHY!?"

Indeed, Chip had said nothing through this entire time, only seldom breaking the silence by scratching his nails against the table. But now, when Gadget spilled it all out, he was obliged to answer her, and not somehow, but correct, that is, without repeating any mistake he had made that night. And he had to do it on his very first attempt. His only attempt.

"I love you."

"W-what?" That was the last thing the mouse expected to hear.

"I love you," Chip repeated.

"W-what is this for?"

"For everything. I want you to know that I love you like before. Like I loved you always. On the day we met, or back then in Washington, or on that night, or after it. Nothing changed for me."

Gadget was silent. She was preparing for a loud argument, and she was disoriented by her husband's gentle voice. She desperately needed a fulcrum, and the one who searches is usually the one who asks… "When did you find out?"

Chip silently congratulated himself with a won battle. The complete victory was still far away, but the fact that Gadget asked about the circumstances of the case and didn't hurl her own conjectures and interpretations at him, allowed to hope for overall success. "On that very day."

Gadget expected to hear one of three possible answers: 'when Foxglove found you're pregnant', 'after you mood swings at Horizon', or 'when you became sick during flight to Masirah'. She would also meet the answer 'after Dale's first contrived joke' more or less calmly. But Chip's words shocked her. "Golly, Chip… How?"

"You see," Chip coughed, "your husband may be a jealous paranoiac, but he's not an idiot. First, you smelled of him. Second, when two only specimens of different sexes of a unique biological species happen to be alone, natural processes occur and…"

"Golly… You…"

"No, medical computer."

"But the file is password-protected—"

"Exponent with an accuracy of ten digits after decimal."

The mouse dropped her head on her paws and groaned, "I knew it was too obvious…"

"It depends. It took me the entire night to guess it."

"You spent several hours guessing my favorite number? I can't believe it…"

"I lacked patience to reach the tenth digit."

That sounded plausible, so Gadget closed this question and asked another one, more burning. "So you knew everything from the start? And when I tried to explain it to you, you interrupted me deliberately? And I was so glad about it… Golly, but why? Why did you do that to me…?"

"I chickened out."

"You what?"

"Chickened out," Chip lowered his eyes, ashamed. "I was afraid of talking about it. I didn't know what to say and how to say it. You were right not to press on this topic, for I don't know what I would have done. But I think it would have been something bad, something very wrong. And I would have lost you. And I can't live without you. I'm sorry it turned out this way. I'm ready to spend my whole life standing on my knees before you. I can start right now."

And Chip started deliberately moving down from his chair. He was indeed prepared to kneel down, but he expected he wouldn't need to. And he was right.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" Gadget ran up to him and pulled him back on his chair by force. "Chip, you… Golly, you really wanted…? You would really do that!?"

"Yes," Chip confirmed without doubts. "For you — anything. You're the best. I won't say banal things like 'in the world', 'in nature' and so on. You're simply the best. In general. Trust me, I have whom to compare with, for you aren't the first girl in my life…"

"Wow…" The mouse thought it would be wiser to sit. "And who was the first? Do I know her? Not Tammy, I hope?"

"No, of course not! It was a long time ago, before the Rescue Rangers, in the days of my and Dale's wild musical youth. At the time, we performed periodically at the Acorn Club, and there was a singer, a chipmunk girl named Claire who preferred to be called Clarissa. We were young and foolish back then, and she was beautiful and knew how to behave and what to do… In short, we had a huge fight, I won and I thought I conquered her heart… And then turned out she romanced everyone. Dale, other musicians, so I was just a passing-by boy for her… It was very hard for me. I wanted to kill myself, went to jump off the bridge, met Dale there, and in the end we realized she wasn't worth it. Well, that is, we decided that no females at all were worth it, but then we met you and knew we were mistaken."

"I'm worth jumping off the bridge?" Gadget couldn't decide whether it was good or bad, for she felt like after Dale's tale about Foxglove.

"You are worth giving your life for," Chip paraphrased. "And they are," he pointed at the ceiling, meaning the children sleeping upstairs. "Actually, that's why I behaved so. I just couldn't do otherwise."

"Golly, Chip," the inventor rested her chin on her fists. She understood her husband and knew he was right, but couldn't accept it fully. Sticking the dart into Ferrante's foot is one thing. Knowing what was hiding behind the facade of your happiness was another… "How did it happen? How did we come to this?"

Her questions were rhetorical, but Chip answered, "Maybe circumstances were stronger than us. I don't know. But I do know what didn't happen to us. We didn't part, didn't stop loving each other, didn't stop being husband and wife. I think it's enough to say that we won. Agreed?"

"Not quite," Gadget looked at him frowningly. "What about Dale? What will happen to him? If Foxglove finds out—"

"She knows already."

Another bolt from the blue. "What!? He told her!?"

"Yes. In my presence, on the night before their departure. First I talked to him, then to her, then we three together…"

"So that's why you stayed so long in her 'magic tent'…"

"Exactly."

"And… and how did it go?"

"Everybody survived. Although, truth be told, it was unpleasant. But they managed to understand and forgive one another, at least verbally. And then we'll see how it goes. Alaska is large, problems are aplenty, everything must be created from scratch, a lot of work to do, and it brings people closer."

"So it wasn't just a random idea of yours?"

"Surely not. It's high time for us to start expanding to the North, plus there are no fanfic writers there, I double checked. An ideal variant."

"You think they'll make it?"

"I hope so," Chip shrugged. "At least, they'll remain good friends and partners. They're a good team, no hypnosis can hinder that. Although, between us, I won't be surprised if in the end Dale himself asks Foxglove to bewitch him back. Blissful ignorance is so in his style…"

Gadget frowned. "You're unjust towards him, Chip!"

"Yes, sorry, I know, you're right. Especially since I assisted it with the 'bat bait' and other things. I hope I managed to atone for it at least partially."

"Yes, I noticed how you covered him up, assigned them to different teams… You did great."

"Thanks, although I wouldn't say so. In the end I almost lost him. I was lucky he didn't have time to breath too much gas. His death would've been on my conscience."

"So it was what I thought it was?"

"Yes. He honestly thought that if he took your secret to the grave, it would be better for everyone. Decided to put an end to everything at once, so to speak. What a fool… Fortunately, he isn't good at hiding his thoughts. I've long known he came up with something like that, waited for it all the time, but he held out for so long I started losing my vigil and… and there you go. But since everything's fine, let's forget it and live on. What do you say?"

"So you don't think it's the end?"

"Come again?"

"Well, that the Rescue Rangers will go separate ways and stop being a team?"

Chip smiled tenderly. "Don't be silly! Of course not! It's only the beginning! For Dale and Foxy, for me and you, but mainly for them!" He pointed at the ceiling again, but this time Gadget wasn't pacified by him mentioning the children.

"What will we do about Crisp being a copy of Dale?"

"Nothing. They are officially recognized relatives. You and Dale did exchange bodies, we even have a camera recording. And genetic analysis will confirm you are compatible with him."

"But not with you."

"So what? I'm sure you'll be able to program the analyzer to produce a different result…"

Gadget's eyes widened. "Chip, but… but that's forgery!"

"The letter exposing Snow, Ferrante, and MacMillan was forgery, too."

"No, that's totally different… Golly… You… You thought it all through in advance, didn't you!?"

The correct and expected answer would only make things worse, so Chip asked a discouraging question, "Do you hate me for this?"

Indeed, Gadget felt like punched in her abdomen. "No, I… Well, not as much, but… Listen, it's difficult…"

"You think it was easy for me?" It wasn't quite fair of him, for an opposite for 'difficult' was 'simple' which more clearly conveyed the mathematical aspect of Gadget's words, not 'easy' which moved the conversation into the plane of feelings and morals. But Chip thought that if Gadget could allow herself to jump from point to point and substitute notions during their argument, he could do that, too. After all, he was doing it all for her…

"No, but… That is… I don't mean that… No, I could, but… But we can't do that!"

"We can. I had a lot of time to think it over and I came to the conclusion that this is the best way."

"What's the best way? Live in a lie?"

"Children need a father."

"That's not an answer!"

"Alright, let's make it a family motto."

"Are you mad!? Or don't you really see it!? You know how many ill-wishers we have!? If they nose out something, they'll have leverage to press on us, threaten us, blackmail us!"

"Then we'll tell everything. Logical?"

"No… I… Darn… Logical, yes. Alright, let's suppose so. And rumors, gossip, what about those?"

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a darn. Gossipers gonna gossip even if you roll out a red carpet for each of them. Let them talk. What's really important is that we understand, forgive, and love one another. Remember, I promised to love you and care about you despite anything? So now I swear to love you even stronger than before. And at the same time I swear to respect you and your passions. You're a genius worth much more than two doctorates in absentia. I'm sorry to have allowed my ego to get the upper hand. I'm so afraid of losing you again that I lose my head sometimes. But it won't happen again."

Gadget was silent. Chip reached across the table and touched a silky skin on the edge of her ear. The mouse mumbled and moved her ears, driving her husband's fingers away, but he was insistent, and in the end she took his paw in his and rubbed her cheek against it. Chip stood up and went around the table, and Gadget embraced him and pressed her head to his chest, and he kissed the top of her head, then again, then moved lower, and when he reached her forehead Gadget rose, and he kissed her lips, and she kissed him back, and the nightmare that began on that November night sank into oblivion. They still had many questions to each other, but almost, if not all, had been said already, and they found one another again, like back then in the terrarium shattered by the fire extinguisher. There was no more need to lie, come up with excuses and pretexts, calculate what and how to tell their friends, manipulating their opinion, like the characters of 'Dallas' TV series did, the first 54 episodes of which Chip had methodically watched when Dale bet he would never determine who shot J.R. in the season 2 finale. Yes, they almost ruined their happiness totally with their own hands, words and silence, actions and inactions. But it was all history now. They were together, enjoying their closeness and bathing in each other's warmth and tenderness, and nothing could separate them…

Well, almost.

"What's up?" Chip asked when Gadget shielded his lips off with her fingers and leaned back, listening to something.

"Digit woke up," she said in a few seconds. "Must be hungry. And Crisp, too, it looks like. I must go."

"Are you sure?" Chip bent his neck so that his right ear was directed upwards. "I hear nothing!"

"But I do. That is, I know. That is, I know I'll soon hear. Trust me."

"I trust you…" Chip sighed and stepped back, allowing her wife to go to the door. "I wonder if it will haunt us always now?"

"For some time, at least!" The mouse said happily and kissed him on his nose. "Don't worry, I'll be quick!"

"I take you at your word! By the way, how about you put on that dress on your way back?"

Gadget grew embarrassed and moved her paws along her belly and hips. "I dunno if it fits. I grew so fat after pregnancy…"

"Ridiculous!" Chip objected flatly. "Even if you did change, it's only for the better! So I'm waiting!"

"Alright, then!" Gadget promised with a smile and ran upstairs. When her footsteps were no longer heard, Chip went to the window, put his hands behind his back and observed the park waking up from the long night and even longer winter hibernation with a feeling of a duty fulfilled. He had nothing he could blame himself for. He spoke sincerely, from his heart, almost impromptu. Adjusted for the fact that the best impromptu is the one prepared in advance. Still, he was very nervous, for this conversation was like a blade running. Slightly further to one side, and Gadget wouldn't have understood him. To another, and she would have understood him better than he wanted her to.

He didn't lie about that night. He just didn't tell the entire truth. Everything he told her represented the facts, but many important things were only briefly mentioned, and some others were left out altogether. Although there were also purely objective reasons for that. For instance, he couldn't remember when he changed his pajamas for the jacket previously owned by Geegaw Hackwrench. Gadget gave it to him in Washington to replace the one lost during the Peace Summit and, although she never said that, it was much more than a friendly gesture. It was a symbol that from that moment on Chip was the only man in her life. She didn't even think of taking it from him before leaving for her old house. Had he realized it, everything would have gone differently. But he hadn't realized, hadn't appraised it, and she left with Dale…

Chip was absolutely sincere with her in all, except one thing. He had guessed the password much faster, for, having tried first variants that occurred to him like '12345', 'qwert', 'Chip' and 'Geegaw', he thought that Gadget was too clever to choose something that obvious for password. And he was right. The password was Gadget's favorite number — exponent with an accuracy of ten digits after decimal. It wasn't enough to fetch the needed document from the machine's memory, though, for it understood only binary code input from the keyboard. That's when Tammy came to his aid, who kept a notepad in an unlocked drawer of her desk with the list of all primary commands, so an hour after Gadget's departure Chip knew everything he needed. Then he put on his jacket — or maybe he was already wearing it, he didn't remember it clearly, went down to the garage, got into the gyrotank and drove to the aircraft boneyard.

Being twice as wide as the Rangermobile, the gyrotank couldn't travel through the subway service galleries, but it could attach itself to the train which Chip did on the nearest subway station '96th Street' of Line A which connected Upper Manhattan with John F. Kennedy International Airport. He moved faster than his friends, but they had a head start and arrived before him. Chip didn't hear their conversation by the hatch, but when he saw the Rangermobile parked in a deep shadow behind the left gear, he understood everything and even more than that. He was simultaneously mature enough to know what was going on inside, fair enough to admit his defeat, and clever enough to turn it into his victory. Driving the gyrotank backwards behind the nearest transport aircraft so that it couldn't be seen from the path, Chip put his head on the steering wheel and got so carried away with developing the strategy of his further behavior that he didn't notice falling asleep, exhausted by the nervous and sleepless night's upheaval. When he woke up almost at noon, Dale had already left, so he silently picked up his wife and her things and returned to the HQ. And then Blather's show was aired…

A fan of tearful melodramas and comic books about fearless and blameless heroes embodying all the good character traits, would be terrified by Chip's logic. But the chipmunk had his own concept of good and evil. Most of all, he valued the skill to achieve your goals owing not to luck or your opponent's folly, but to cold and sensible calculation leaving no chances to accidents. For him, the measure of good and evil were not means but end. He would have never been able to intercept the dart fired at Gadget with his own body, had he not calculated its trajectory and the spot on the balustrade he should have jumped off to stand between the deadly weapon and his beloved one. Jumping down, he knew his chances of survival were pretty much non-existent. But saving Gadget was worth it. Back then, the end more than justified the means. On that Autumn morning, it justified them even more. In the end, Gadget was not the one who dreamt of children…

…

"…Whatever it may be, his behavior clearly indicates some connection between him and that mouse…"

…

Blather's words, suddenly surfacing in his memory, made Chip smile. Yes, the reporter's astuteness could be applauded. Not only his, though…

…

"BRAD! THEY'RE HERE! FIRST CHIPMUNK AND HIS GIRLFRIEND!"

…

Why did he say so?

Because he knew. It's obvious!

Yes, but how?

Chemist told him. That is, the CIA Director Elliot Pryce. He was MacMillan's superior, knew everything…

Even the color of Gadget's hair?

Of course! They report everything to their superiors! In any case, he could always get the case where everything was written in full…

But it couldn't have the info on our relationship…

Stop it! Chip commanded the detective inside him. But it didn't stop and kept poisoning the chipmunk's existence with uncomfortable questions. Why did that bandit say 'his girlfriend'? Why not 'the mouse assassin', 'the MAP', or 'that darned mouse'? How did he know of their romance…?

He didn't know that! He didn't! He couldn't! No human knows that! Chip yelled at himself, and immediately corrected himself: no, not quite, one human knew it for sure…

And at that very moment the heart of one very special chipmunk skipped a beat with a very bad feeling.

At first glance, it was an ordinary conference room with an oblong wide table, comfortable armchairs, a wall-wide PDP and all the other attributes of the meeting of the board of directors of any corporation that respected themselves and were respected by the others. The second glance would note the absence of windows, compensated with panoramic photos and additional ventilation grates, and the third would recognize the four men and one woman in business attire sitting around the table as the acting heads of the government and security institutions of the United States of America, while a keen ear would catch the residual vibration of noise generators behind the walls, the floor and the ceiling. Knowing all this, the unclouded mind would conclude that the history of the world was being made in this room, protected from eavesdropping and unauthorized access with all thinkable and unthinkable means.

And this conclusion would be very close to the truth.

"Lady and gentlemen, I'm infinitely happy to see you!" The chairman greeted the assembly. "Today we're meeting in a slightly unusual cast. Aside from Mister Carlyle who left us prematurely and, I shall add, heroically, we're lacking Lawrence who asked me to say he is terribly sorry for being absolutely unable to leave his office. I think, taking into account the previous accomplishments and present titanic workload which our dear Attorney General is carrying on his shoulders now, we'll be happy to understand and forgive him."

There were no objections, and the chairman smiled. "Thank you for your unity. It's a pleasure to see what we lack so much in our everyday lives. It's an even bigger pleasure to know that, despite all the setbacks, our ranks not only close but also widen. Of course, the new Vice President is still, quite expectedly, under too much scrutiny from the press to be let into our work, so I'll do it later. Now I have a great pleasure to introduce the man who came here for the first and, God grant, far from the last time, and who is already not only interim but a full-fledged Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Meet Robert Patrick Cunningham!"

Cunningham rose and bowed politely. The woman clapped loudly several times, the men contented themselves with welcoming nods.

"Tell us something about yourself, Robert," the chairman asked. Everyone, including Cunningham, laughed. Waving his palm to indicate the 'question' was dismissed, the man at the head of the table went on, "How do you like it here?"

The CIA Director nodded. "Pretty much. Although ,to be honest, I expected more. We have such a room, too. It's a tad smaller, but it's basically the same. I'm even slightly disappointed."

"Alas," the chairman made a helpless gesture, "all perfect things will be similar in one way or another, But I think we'll still manage to surprise you. Although, I must admit, considering your adventures, that won't be easy…"

Cunningham didn't object to that statement. His career rise would make an adventure novel's hero envious. Through all his life he had moved the career ladder slowly and steadily, without any rush, step by step, the next one of which would be the fifth topmost position in the National Clandestine Service's hierarchy. Unfortunately, this position was occupied by Leroy Mortimer Jackson who had too much weight to depose him and loved his work too much to accept the invitation from another agency. That's why Archibald Snow was transferred to his squad — to kill two birds with one explosion. They didn't take into account that Jackson was a childhood friend of Trevor Fitzgerald Branson, deputy head of the Presidential Protective Division. In the end everything turned out much better than Robert and his curators expected, although that rascal Pryce, to his credit, did expose Cunningham. And if it hadn't been for Branson and Blather, Pryce would have surely made Robert talk, and everybody in this room would have to follow Dominic Carlyle's example…

"…and we all are very thankful to you for that!" The chairman finished enumerating Cunningham's achievements.

"Enormously thankful!" a bald man sitting opposite Robert said. He had a tightly skinned high-cheekboned face and protruding ears, and occupied the position of the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. "Apparently, you acted too hastily in Ferguson's case, for Branson found out of his involvement after his death, not before."

"It's not my fault his initials matched the parts of the word 'Godfather'." Robert spoke calmly, but it was apparent he was insulted by the Secretary's remark.

"Nobody blames you," the chairman soothed him. "We couldn't have known for sure and acted according to the worst possible scenario. We're all doing it, that's why we're still alive. Objections? Perfect. In that case, allow me to consider the introductory part over and move on to the daily agenda. The five full members present mean we have a quorum, which is very good for we need to make several important decisions. Let's start with the international situation review, and Ayran is the first alphabetically. Donald, the floor's yours."

A stately black-haired 76-year old man who looked no older than 50, sitting to the chairman's left, took thin-rimmed glasses out of his jacket's breast pocket and bent over the paper sheets in front of him. "Currently the Ayranians are prepared for war like never before. The First Army regiments, namely two infantry, one armored, and one airborne division are put into medium alert, while regiments of the Second Army, namely three infantry, two armored and one mechanized infantry division are put into operational readiness on the threshold of, as the official sources say, large-scale combat exercise 'Shield of the East'. The number of aircrafts simultaneously airborne increased two times in the last month, the number of the Navy surface ships in the open sea — by 50 percent, submarines — three times. In particular, at the moment all Ayranian Kilo class subs are on the combat patrol."

Donald turned over the page which he had looked at just once before. Had he read everything written on it, his speech would have lasted half an hour or even longer, but one had to be laconic during these meetings, not to mention that the full texts of the reports were always distributed among the participants beforehand.

"Nevertheless, my analysts and myself agree that Ayran won't start a war in the near future. Last month they conducted a series of small-scale exercises with limited forces, but even on that level they couldn't fully achieve all their goals due to communication and coordination issues. They had no such issues back in autumn, so we can confidently conclude that the loss of the Mainstay very negatively impacted their operational capabilities. At the moment they are negotiating with India about leasing of their similar aircrafts, but Indian Mainstays are equipped with a different radar complex, integrating which into the Ayranian combat information systems will take significant time. The damaged Mainstay is still in Orumiya, since the Russians refused to repair it, citing the newly imposed UN sanctions which weren't in effect when the plane was sold. I'll remind you that earlier they refused to supply the promised Gargoyle-B air defense systems under the same pretext, which were about to protect the air space around the Ayranian strategic facilities, primarily its capital city and the Buschir nuclear power plant, which will also directly affect the Ayranian's willingness, most of all moral, to start the combat operations. In short, Operation Mountain Pass," here Donald allowed himself to drop the templates of business lexicon, "is cool stuff indeed!"

"Pryce and Simpson were very smart guys," Cunningham agreed. He still felt constrained, but his neighbor's finishing phrase urged him to relax somewhat. "But without our trademark—"

"Our former trademark," the chairman corrected him softly.

"Yes-yes, of course," Robert agreed. After the Black Table had become 'not an enemy but only the enemy's tool' in public mind, the members of the organization decided to donate this name to their direct action section and come up with another name for themselves, the think tank, to honor some other piece of the furniture from their conference room of even the room itself. Preliminary they settled on the variant 'Green Room', but it hadn't been officially ratified yet… "Without our former trademark they would have achieved nothing!"

"They achieved nothing anyway," Donald objected. "Yes, they made the first move, but it was us who led the game to victory. Although it wasn't too hard, I must say. The Russians win the wars, but lose the games."

"And information campaigns!" The woman who was sitting exactly opposite of him and to the chairman's right said.

"Oh, that's not worth even mentioning…"

"You're wrong! Wrong! In this case they would have easily gotten away with it had it not been for Blather! They had nothing to trump him with! And they still don't! And all others, too! And we must take advantage of it! He's a much better candidate to be our 'spill tank' than WikiLeaks!"

"I think it's too bold a statement," the Secretary of Homeland Security disagreed.

"No, Michael, it's not! On the contrary! Even my friends from Reporters Without Borders told me they got 'Blather Symptom'!"

"'Syndrome', maybe?" The chairman offered.

"Maybe. If not 'symptom', then definitely 'syndrome'! Do you know what it is!? How about you, Robert!?" She turned to the newcomer. "Do you know what it is!?"

"'Blather Syndrome'?" Cunningham shook his head. "Never heard of it…"

"Then listen! It's when everybody, everyone is assessed by their agreement with Blather!"

"Strange," Robert was surprised. "I heard the journalists don't really like him…"

"Nobody says anything about liking! He's just very convenient! Who will risk opposing him now!? Nobody! Who will dare to say a bad word about him?! No one! He's the idol, see!? They envy him, wish him bad, revile and curse him behind his back! But behind his back! And in public everything's quite different! He's officially a hero! And you don't attack a hero! Your own friends will be the first to say: 'What, you went against Blather!? Tally-ho! Tally-ho!' He's not just an authority! He's the weapon! The tool of deterrent! The tool of control! Oh gosh, every time I remember we wanted to kill him, I get sick!"

"Interesting observation," Cunningham acknowledged.

"Extraordinarily interesting," the chairman agreed. "We'll surely return to this issue and not just once, I think, but today we have a slightly different agenda, so let's get back to international affairs. Looks like we've dealt with Ayran — just saber rattling and bluffing. The next is Akbarnistan, and that's the Department of State's diocese. Madeleine, we're listening to you very attentively."

"And you're right to do so!" Her age allowed the Secretary of State to use no papers or glasses, so she reclined in her chair, adjusted her thick black hair with a trained motion, and put her arms on her stomach, fingers intertwined. "Our worst fears are coming true! J'Quai presented his 'New Industrial Policy' to the Parliament for discussion!"

"Ignoring your warnings, I presume?"

"Yes! That is, no! Worse! He's absolutely sure everybody will win from that!"

"Young, naive," Donald commented condescendingly.

"It's not the word! He really believes in all this! He sees it as his role, his fate, his destiny! He's a fanatic, a real fanatic!"

"His energy lacks a worthy cause…" the chairman sighed dreamily.

"We tried," Cunningham reminded them. "Our sniper even shot a bodyguard right next to him. Not to mention the attempts on his life organized by al-Zubayri. How could anyone remain pacifist after all that?"

"They don't give Nobel Prize Awards to people for no reason," the Secretary of Homeland Security observed thoughtfully.

Madeleine's eyes sparkled up. "Hey, that's a great idea! Let's organize another one for him!"

"What for?" The chairman asked.

"I'll explain! The Nobel Prize is awarded in Oslo! In Norway! If we kill him during the award ceremony and make it look like security people were involved, the Norwegians will be in a hot pan! And if we offer them to pay for our silence with the Statoil shares…"

"You're an inventive soul, Madeleine!" Donald complimented her.

"That's why we cherish you!" The chairman smiled. "Basically, the idea is okay, but it would be just a little too smart. That's bad, too, we can overdo something. It's easier and more reliable to do it in Akbarnistan, especially since their security forces are in a complete disarray now. Am I quoting you right, Robert?"

"Absolutely!" Cunningham confirmed. "They are fighting al-Hasib's legacy in full swing, for his methods and leadership style 'suddenly' turned out to be a 'bloody echo of Haddahm's times of utter terror'. I'm quoting Chairman J'Quai, by the way. So it's not too hard to kill him, there's even no need to activate the Black Table."

"Thank goodness!" The Secretary of Homeland Security rejoiced. "We're waging the war against the Black Table, and only yesterday I reported to our citizens on our phenomenal successes on this front, and if the Black Table kills someone else so soon, my ratings will suffer greatly!"

"Why?" The Secretary of State was genuinely surprised. "On the contrary! The citizens will understand how important your fight against this global evil is, and the Congress will be obliged to increase the funding of this righteous cause!"

"If you milk a cow too often, it'll lose its temper," the chairman cooled her zeal. "The Black Table will strike again when too many people start asking questions about the need to continue fighting against it. Not to mention that they had already killed the leader of Akbarnistan, and there are others who want to do the same. I think some late al-Zubayri's lieutenant who survived the Patak Massacre will be more than eager to avenge his dear commander's death. What do you think?"

"Yes, it's a good scenario," Cunningham nodded.

"It should work," Donald joined.

"I'm all yea," Michael repeated.

"Alright, you won!" Madeleine conceded.

"Let's vote," the chairman announced. "Those who support the elimination of Chairman J'Quai by al-Zubayri's supporters, please raise your hands. Thank you. Unanimously. The decision is made."

"Poor country!" The Secretary of State shook her head. "The leaders die one after another! Looks like it's really cursed!"

Her ecstatic cynicism caused an uproar, so the chairman graciously allowed a whole minute for exchange of wits, after which he raised his hand. "So, the international section of the agenda is completed, let's move to the interior. Michael, please."

"I'll be brief," the Secretary of Homeland Security forewarned. "The situation is fully under control. Just as we planned, Branson invited several of our people into his team, so we'll know of all his activities which are plenty at the moment. In case of emergency, we have our devoted agent next to him with unambiguous instructions. That's all from my side."

"So you decided to kill him!?" The Secretary of State's eyes widened. "After everything he had done for us?!"

"We've given him the Medal of Freedom already," Donald said. "We owe him nothing more."

"A dozen of those medals would be too little! Then again, we voted!"

"Please, Madeleine, don't be so nervous," the chairman intruded. "We're perfectly aware that were it not for Branson, we wouldn't have even tenth of our current presence in the bodies of power of all the levels. His idea of Blather as the second Gangidze was ingenious, and I'm envious and even slightly ashamed that I haven't thought of it myself. But that's exactly the problem. Branson, fortunately and unfortunately at the same time, is very clever and sagacious, and he can suspect something. We must be prepared both morally and materially for that. Remind me, Michael, what possible scenarios do we have?"

"The murder by Evan Berg who escaped from jail, the murder by the vengeful Black Table, and the death due to natural causes," the Secretary enumerated obediently.

"As for, murder out of revenge is quite natural cause of death!" The Secretary of State jested.

"Madeleine, you're in great form today!" The chairman praised her when he stopped laughing. "Well, let's consider the Branson question solved, at least for the time being. But we still need to make a decision concerning the next item. There is no separate reporter on it, because it has been discussed already. Yes-yes, Michael, you got it right, I'm talking about the First Chipmunk and his team. Have you had any success?"

"My men met Nimnul again and showed him the photos of Central Park trees matching the description. He confidently recognized one of them as the headquarters of the rodents which, according to his own words, he had personally visited when he was a fly. After that my men read Nimnul the description of the First Chipmunk's girlfriend you provided, and he instantly said that mouse was a member of the group and their technician. In other words, everything fits. If that lunatic can be trusted, of course…"

"He must be trusted," the chairman said softly but imperiously. "We've thought him to be just a madman for too long. Had I known of his statements when that chipmunk was at the White House, we wouldn't need to plan the cleansing of Central Park now."

Donald coughed nervously. "I don't think it's a good plan…"

"Make a good one, then. You're the Secretary of Defense here or me? Come up with something. Civil defense training, bacteriological threat, or even imitate an alien invasion, but do that. And fast. Presently everyone believes that Branson was saved by the falling plaster, and the CIA was hacked by that bespectacled youth, but it's unclear how long it will last. And it's even less clear how soon those rodents will uncover something else, and they are very resourceful. A preemptive blow is needed. Let's vote. Those who support the combat operation to destroy—"

"I'm against it!" Cunningham shouted.

"I'm sorry, Robert, what?"

"I'm against it!" The CIA Director repeated. He didn't expect such bravery from himself and regretted having interrupted the chairman before the voting itself, for the decision was considered made only when supported by all the present, so he would have an opportunity to explain himself anyway, but now it was too late to back off. "I don't know about the other rodents, but we must preserve the mouse assassin! She's too valuable! Precious!"

"You're mistaken, Robert. She's not the assassin anymore. Her chip is out of order."

"We can't be sure about that!"

"We can. On the very next day after the Peace Summit a self-destruction command was sent to it. But since the mouse is alive, nothing has happened. Which means her chip is out of order, and without it she's just an ordinary mouse."

"No! She's unique! She had phenomenal intellectual potential! That's why she was chosen for the project!"

"I regret to admit the project turned out not very successful."

"What!?" Cunningham was genuinely insulted. "She killed Haddahm! Haddahm himself!"

"And then she almost killed a certain other person."

"All right," Robert retreated. "We won't renew the MAP. But we can find a different use for her! Turn her into anything! She's got an incredible future!"

"I understand and welcome your enthusiasm, Robert, but the MAP proved that using animals, even highly intellectual, but prone to instincts and striving to live their own lives, is enormously risky, and I reasonably refuse to take such risks. Human factors and technical faults are more than enough. I know you're an advocate for saving and resource reuse, and sometimes, like with that submachine gun, it's the best way, but this is evidently not the case. Will you keep objecting?

Cunningham looked around the table, found no understanding, and sighed. "I won't."

"Good. Let's vote. Those who support the combat operation to destroy the First Chipmunk and his team, please raise your hands. …Stop stalling, Robert. …Thank you. Unanimously. The decision is made. Donald, you have five days. I believe in you. Questions, suggestions, requests? Good. Now, lady and gentlemen, I must leave you, they wait for me in Jerusalem and Cairo. The schedule is rich, so I'll inform you of the next meeting's date separately. But don't be hasty to leave, the agenda isn't completed yet. First, Director Cunningham prepared a report on a strategy devised by his elite analytical group, ToMogRaf if I got it right…"

"ToMorgRaf," Robert came to his help. "Tonson, Morgan, and Rafferty."

"I knew I missed something. This letter 'r' is full of problems," the chairman complained, making everybody laugh but Cunningham, who felt ashamed. No matter how you put it, his blunder with the document he created about Pryce's and Simpson's involvement in the abduction of Ferrante was very painful. The document should have reached the press through Andy Weber, but stayed untouched on the CIA server, for the 'R' key on Robert's keyboard tended to stick and he wrote Ferrante's surname wrong. "Am I right to assume that Tonson from ToMorgRaf and Tonson from ReMingTon are the same Tonson?"

"Yes. At first I wanted to do the same to him as I did to Reyes and Ming, but when I found it was him who deduced the Branson's locations and phone numbers of the First Chipmunk's team, I decided to promote him."

"And you were right! The strategy of buying up the assets of the dismantled Horizon Corporation and turning it into an incubator of effective 'persuasion means' stronger than anthrax and non-accountable to the Congress is very impressive!"

"Non-accountability is good!" Donald grinned.

"The less the Congress knows, the better they sleep!" Michael agreed.

"Yes, I liked that detail the most, too," the chairman nodded. "But that's not all. Our charming Madeleine is burning with desire to tell you about her concept of 'shadow Internet' for those discordant and oppressed in anti-democratic rogue states. Both reports are very interesting and topical, and I was deeply impressed with them! Bon listening!"

Shaking the hands of all his four associates, the chairman left through the lock-chamber connecting the room with the rest of the world represented by an anteroom with a guard post, a massive door into the shelter and an autonomous command center to be used during nuclear war, and an express elevator. During his ascent to the height of a ten-storied building, the man went through the session in his mind and decided that everything, as usual, went well. Much better than in the Congress with their debates, amendments, submitting-withdrawing, and the need to sneak between the raindrops which made it impossible to introduce truly effective and progressive measures. Although it would be very naive to expect anything else from the crowd of half a thousand. The rule 'God is on the side of the big battalions' is true directly on the battlefield, but too many Generals in the HQ is a bad omen. The Consuls of Ancient Rome were wise enough to give the full authority to a Dictator, thus avoiding the red tape during the decision-making and preventing the diffusion of responsibility. On the other hand, representative democracy makes the modern 'consuls' too numerous and dependable on public voices, and the people who constantly look backwards quickly cease to understand what's waiting ahead. It's not too evident in bountiful years, but it's unacceptable in years of famine. During those years, a dictator is needed. And if the Consuls don't appoint him, he appoints himself.

Taking out his personal magnetic card from a special slit and turning the express elevator into an ordinary one going no further than three overground and two underground floors of the building above the secret chamber, the man exited the cabin and went to the right along a white corridor. It had several brown doors which were perfectly soundproof and let no sounds out, although people worked behind them literally around the clock. The man had a number of complaints concerning the quality of the results, but he was in a hurry today, so he went straight to his office to pick up the materials he wanted to study during his trip. The room was furnished with love and taste, and there were many significant, interesting and nice items, but the man's favorite was a picture, a smaller-scale version of Emanuel Leutze's 'Washington Crossing the Delaware'. Which was quite natural, for the heroic episode of the American Revolutionary War depicted on it closely resembled the actions he had to take now.

The parallels were numerous and evident. A narrow and oblong wooden boat, after which Washington could have easily named his small crew consisting of only twelve members. There were other boats, too, carrying more people, weapons, even horses, but those were far behind, on the very edge of the scene, as if waiting for their leader's boat to show them the safe way between the ice sheets covering the frozen river. And the Washington's crew sailed forward, towards a coast already visible clearly, combining the purity of their intentions with a careful and unbiased calculation telling them which ice sheets they should avoid, which ones they could unceremoniously push away with their oars, and which ones they should use as battering rams to clear their way off the largest, the sharpest, and the most dangerous pieces. They are moving on with determination and restlessness, with inhuman unyieldingness, but without donkey stubbornness, showing both the speed of reaction and their willingness and, what's even more important, their ability to abandon their working plans and return to the previously discarded solutions that proved more suitable. And they do that in order to hoist the starred-and-striped flag of freedom on the coast won from their enemies…

Exactly like the Black Table.

Lightning-fast and smashing reaction on the failed attempt on Haddahm's life and the death sentence for his stepson and granddaughter. Rapid planning and execution of a complex many-moved combination aimed at derailing the CIA's Operation Slavic Closet, move their own man to the fifth topmost position within the NCS hierarchy, eliminate dangerous witness Doctor Archibald Snow, and blame the media for actively helping the terrorists, thus forcing them to become, although balky, but nevertheless allies, spurred up by an urge to avenge their innocently killed colleague and the Hero Who Told the World The Whole Truth…

It should have worked out nicely.

But it worked out even nicer.

Trevor Branson's active and effective involvement was an unforeseen hindrance, but his theory of Blather as Gangidze-2 proved so interesting and promising it would be a crime not to switch into developing it. Naturally, Miroshnichenko-2 was also required, and this part was to be played by another dangerous opponent, John Blunt. His discrediting would bring the investigation to a big bold full stop, especially since it would be already derailed due to Branson being killed by a sniper aiming at the President of the United States.

But Branson survived while Blunt, on the contrary, perished, so they had to hastily concoct Miroshnichenko-2 out of Branson. For this reason a set of video fragments selected for Blunt was sifted through for the fragments featuring Branson, and he was highlighted instead of Blunt. Initially the documents uncovering Blunt's secret accounts which Trevor had allegedly found before being killed were to be planted into Branson's house, but instead the weapon used to kill Blunt, Lockwood, and O\Brien was put there along with hastily manufactured passports of various countries. Later, when Branson managed to escape, he was carefully sculpted as a ruthless terrorist, and under that pretext his friends and a childhood sweetheart were arrested to make him understand the futility of further resistance and surrender to make their lives easier. But when that didn't happen, and the only thread leading to him was severed with Howard Salinger's unforeseen death, Cunningham offered to turn the tables by making Trevor a hero, and turn Pryce and Simpson hunting him into the enemies which was done with the speed and precision of Swiss clock mechanism…

Silly opponents would laugh at this 'inconsistency', while dull-witted friends would be depressed by it. And that would be their common huge mistake, for it's exactly the ability to adapt to environmental conditions that determines the survivability of any system, be it a biological, an economic, or a political one. The Congress would have never understood it and would have never awarded such a controversial hero as Trevor Branson their Gold Medal, and would have never appointed him to a high position. So he had, despite all the objections, to award him with the Medal of Freedom and arrange the position of the Deputy Director of the US Secret Service for him, for the Black Table needed not only persuaded supporters from the ranks of the law enforcement agents or blind fanatics like that Higgs guy, but also dedicated opponents. Preferably those whose authority and devotion to America were imperturbable, and criticism of whom, even well-grounded, would be equal to admitting one's own guilt in the public eye. If there is 'Blather Syndrome' running rampant among the press, then the policy makers must be infected with 'Branson Syndrome' and use him to remove those who would prove too strong for the Investigation Committee. Move the ice sheets with other ice sheets. Like Washington's soldiers were doing on the famous picture that hung in the West Wing reception area of the White House until the man ordered it into his office, the unusual shape of which gave it the name 'Oval'…

"Mister President?"

George Logan turned to the polite inquiry and smiled widely. "Ah, David, it's you! Long time no see! Your hand is fine, I presume?"

"Perfectly fine, sir," Gyllenhaal extended his palm for a handshake so that his boss could personally ascertain his faithful guard's efficiency. "The motorcade is ready, your wife and daughter promised to come in a minute."

The President laughed. "I know them! Where there's one minute, there can easily be ten! But we must be punctual, so lead on. I hope you didn't forget the route?"

"No, sir," Gyllenhaal proved his words by heading towards the exit to the West Colonnade. Logan cast one more glance at the painting and followed him, never ceasing to be amazed by the skill of the XIX century artist who managed, using just paint and canvas, to formulate the strategic goals of the United States of America for all times and point out universal methods of achieving them, independent from a year or an era.

Back then, in the end of XVIII century, George Washington needed to drive Hessian forces off the land they had no rights for and which the Americans needed for themselves, and his troops moved towards their goal, overcoming and suppressing the resistance of the ice sheets. Today, in the beginning of the XXI century, he, George Logan, needed to assert his country's energy security which invariably depended on the reserves of oil which everybody needed but of which there was too little to satisfy everyone's needs. Which means he needed to spread his influence to the oil-rich regions, overcoming and suppressing the resistance of those trying to do the same or, which was absolutely intolerable, had done it already and was sitting on those riches like dogs in the manger, unable to use them fully and not allowing anyone else to do it…

They didn't help Fareed J'Quai to come to power to have him repay them with oil-black ingratitude, no way…

And he, George Logan, honestly considered Fareed his friend…

Of course, J'Quai could object that you don't install transmitters into USB drives you present to your friends, which, when they come within a certain range of a passive surveillance station disguised as an innocent boulder or a furniture piece, activate similarly to RFID tags and download all the data to the miniature HDDs which are regularly swapped by deliberately infiltrated or recruited people. Not an iPhone, for sure, but not bad either. And Fareed would be right. But that spy drive and a round-the-clock surveillance were only for his own good and for their common, until recently, cause! But since he was going to break their unwritten contract—well, he had a right to do that, too. There are no irreplaceable people. With a very few exceptions, that is…

"Is your hand really fine?" Logan worried, observing Gyllenhaal to push far from the heaviest door in the world slightly less confidently than he would like.

"Nothing to worry about, sir. It'll pass. It's not the first time I caught a bullet."

"You mean, after the first bullet you don't fear them anymore?" The President asked half-jokingly, hinting at the episode with Salinger.

"If you want something done, do it yourself," David said calmly.

Gyllenhaal had followed this rule five times in total. When he decided to recruit Blather personally after the attempt with Benjamin failed. Then during the extended counseling, when he used his authority and his past injury against the FBI and the CIA representatives to take the investigation of the Blather case under control of his agency and his deputy. When he summoned Blunt and told him of a call he had allegedly received 'from the very top' asking to restrain Branson who had gone dangerously far. When he prepared for the conversation with Ferrante. And, finally, when he came to the conclusion that the only way to persuade Salinger to give up Branson was to organize false attempt on his own life. In the reporter's case, everything went so smoothly that he decided to continue using his real name, for nobody would ever believe it, and later, during his last meeting with Branson, he even attributed his way to leave the hotel unnoticed to Blunt…

But then all went to the dogs.

First, Branson stubbornly ignored the warnings, and David had to use Ferrante who had worked comparatively short time under him but still could recognize his voice, forcing Gyllenhaal to use voice filtering. Russell was still able to recognize his Midwestern accent, though, and Gyllenhaal thought he would have to eliminate him, but, as the rest of the conversation showed, the CIA tortures and drugs impacted Ferrante's memory badly. And his ability to think rationally, too, for he clearly thought he would be eliminated after completing his job, although nobody was going to do that, and, instead of assassinating Branson, killed three very valuable agents, including two knowledgeable, that is, aware of who was really behind the Black Table and serving not the money but the idea…

Finally, Salinger in a fit of reckless bravery caught bullets which should have hit Gyllenhaal's vest and severed the last thread leading to Branson, after which Cunningham emerged with his idea to turn Branson into a good guy by, among other things, forging the results of ballistic examination of the submachine gun used to kill Salinger. Despite Gyllenhaal's protests, the council agreed to it. In the end, Robert, although not without problems, succeeded and got the position of the CIA Director, and David, having lost, stayed where he was: the 'Assdir' of the Secret Service. Alas, it was fully natural and strictly by the book, just like the President's ritual praise for his loyalty to their cause, deleting the letter to Blunt about Higgs, rapid switching from Miroshnichenko-Blunt to Miroshnichenko-Branson, and his high-quality, although fruitless, idea of leaking the Blather's family whereabouts and Marjorie Jackson's address to the press. After that David, capitalizing on the occasion, once again rose the issue of eliminating Stan who heard his real voice, but got an unambiguous answer that he was not a public politician, so Blather had little chance to accidentally hear and recognize his voice, and if it still troubled him so, he could turn to the CIA speech therapist who knew how to rid people of any accent. Well, that was a valid option, too…

"How is the progress with the security system?" Logan inquired, slowing down and carefully studying buds on one of fancy apple trees growing in the Rose Garden.

"We're working on it, sir. All the sensors are being recalibrated to detect insects and small animals. But I must warn you, there will be plenty of false alarms. There are many squirrels and birds around, and—"

"Get rid of them."

"How, sir?"

"How do I know? Come up with something. Catch the rodents and dispose of them somehow, install birdscarers… There are plenty of ways, really! Who's the security specialist here, me or you?"

"Me, sir."

"Do your job, then!"

"We're doing our job, I assure you. But your daughter and her PETA friends can—"

"My daughter is my concern! Your concern is security!"

"As you say, sir."

"Exactly!" Logan straightened out his jacket angrily and increased his pace. He treated Tress's animal rights protective views with understanding, but the security was far more important. He had no right to lose what he gained for such a lofty price.

Logan went with the Blather operation because the investigation conducted by the Joint Investigation Group threatened to expose the real masterminds behind the Black Table, that is the President of the United States and the most trusted members of his Cabinet. The results of the survey by the Gallup Organization showing the Logan support rating as 73,22% also instilled confidence. It was a very good figure, but it was only enough for one large project, so the healthcare reform, vital for the country but fraught with scandals and upheavals had to be postponed. Still, risks were unprecedented. Even Blather's words that the Black Table was behind the attempt on Logan's life and obvious fakeness of the 'Secret Service agents' IDs, which should have convinced everybody that the President and his administration were being blatantly set up, couldn't guarantee that by the time of the election the rating of the incumbent President would become high enough for re-election. But now, ironically owing to Branson's and Blather's efforts, Logan had his second term in his pocket, as well as the full control over the government and law enforcement agencies, primarily the Intelligence Community, which meant it was time to move from an overture to the dramatic centerpiece—the building of 'The New World Order'.

Of course, it's not necessary to write those words in capitals and quotations, but they better reflect the importance and the scale of the task at hand, in comparison to which all the rest is child's play. In his speech, Blather blamed the organizers of the Black Table in a banal pursuit of profits, and it was so petty it could be considered a criminal insult of their honor and dignity. Money was nothing; a mechanically produced typographic product. The paradigm of world development—that's what is really important these days.

In Washington's times, America was too small to satisfy everybody's desires. Now the entire planet became too small. All more or less knowledgeable people had long realized it couldn't sustain an equally high consumption level for everybody. The rule 'live and let live' works no more, and it's being replaced with 'eat or be eaten, tertium non datur'. Thus the emergence of a hegemon is inevitable who enjoys and lives on all the resources available in nature, while all the rest make do with leftovers from his table, gradually disappearing from the playing field forever…

It wasn't the question of whether it was good or bad; it was inevitable. The question was, who would become the hegemon. Or rather, who would be the first and, thus, the only one, to become it. Of course, none of the primary competitors said it aloud, but their actions were eloquent enough. China was staking out the territory around the Mediterranean, the unfinished Russia was 'concentrating', and thus the USA should hurry up. What's even more regretful, if it hadn't been for the principled moron Pryce who told the whole world the truth about Haddahm's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, the American outpost in the Farsian Gulf region would have appeared a whole year earlier. A year! That's how long Pryce should have been justly grilled on a low fire, not dying of a humanely arranged sudden infarction….

All this was already history, though. Haddahm was long gone, Fareed wouldn't be around soon, too. Maybe it's even for the better that he dared to go forward with that 'New Industrial Policy' of his, for now, without any qualms of conscience, he could be made the first sacrifice to the 'New World Order' based not on an outdated concept of the World Empire, inevitably moving into the past along with its proponents like Pryce, but on a strategy of 'Controlled Chaos'. Yes, it's an oxymoron. Yes, it's dangerous. But it's, unfortunately, the only way to stop the competitors. For if Akbarnistan, Ayran, Egypt and other countries of the Big South stop being China's and Russia's partners and become deadly threats for them, they would have to abandon their hegemonic dreams and try hard to come off with their whole skins and protect their existing boundaries. And thus the USA, far away from the crazed Eurasia and Africa, would get a great head start…

And now the questions time. Will the Congress vote for this? Will the UN Security Council support it? Never! But if China and Russia could be forgiven, for nobody likes losing the fight for survival, how could you understand your own citizens who would wring their hands and wail about the sacred principles of democracy and human rights being trampled over? How could you explain to them that if their country failed to become the hegemon, then in ten or fifteen years the alien soldiers would come to them and put all them, so democracy-loving and human-rights-conscious, against the walls of their own houses, and when they pleaded 'Why? We didn't do anything!', they would get a disdainful answer through set teeth: 'Exactly! You did nothing!'…?

No way. It couldn't be explained. You either understand it and ask no stupid questions, or you don't. The majority belongs to the second group, that's why, for their own good, you must act without minding their opinions, especially since the majority, if you think it through, never really knows what it wants. No problem. It's enough that their President knows it…

"Looks like we're the first, sir!" Gyllenhaal observed.

"Looks that way," Logan agreed, for if his daughter were in the Cross Hall they would have heard her back in the Palm Room. Passing the Central Hall, the men ascended to the Residency's State floor and reached the Cross Hall exactly as Laura and Tress Logan came from the opposite side, from the Entrance Hall, accompanied by two Gyllenhaal's subordinates.

"And I thought I'd have to go looking for you!" The head of the family greeted his darling ones. "How did Tress eat? Did she drink all the milk?"

"To the last drop!" The First Lady said with a smile. "Even asked for a second helping!"

"Second helping? Of milk?" Logan set his face to exaggerated bewilderment. "That's news! Is she feeling well?"

"Very! Tress, tell Daddy what happened!"

"I won't!" The First Daughter stuck out her lip fretfully. "He won't believe it!"

"I will!" George promised, squatting down and looking at his very quickly grown child from below.

"Promise?"

"Promise!"

Tress hesitated mincingly, but then had mercy for her father and said, "Okay! I'll tell you! I had a dream about Chip and his family!"

"He's got family already?"

"Yes! He and his mouse! They have ten children and a big deep burrow!"

"Not a tree…?"

"Burrow!" Tress stomped her foot. "You promised to believe me!"

"But I do! I do! I just thought… Okay, and what does milk have to do with it?"

"They were drinking it! Their whole family! And praised it! And they offered me some! But when I took it, the alarm clock rang! It was unfair! But I still drank the milk! And I'll drink it all the time now!"

"Such a useful dream…"

"What do you think, what does it mean?"

"What? A dream?"

"Yes! What does it mean?"

"Well, I don't know…"

"Don't lie! The President knows everything! You told me yourself!"

Driven into a corner by the childish frankness, Logan gave up. "Yes, you're right! Indeed, I know what your dream means! It means that… that you must drink milk and eat asparagus every day!"

"I won't eat asparagus!" Tress became indignant. "There was no asparagus in my dream!"

"What were they eating, then?"

The girl became confused. "I don't know. I didn't see. Didn't have time to see… But when I see it, I'll tell you! I wish I had a dream about them soon…"

"Of course you will!" The President caressed his daughter's head and stood up to go, but Tress wasn't finished yet.

"Daddy! Dad! Can you find them?"

"Whom? Chip and his girlfriend?"

The First Daughter's eyes sparkled up. "Yes! I want to see them again so much! Please!"

"You were against keeping the animals at the White House," her mother reminded her.

"But I won't keep them! I'll let them go immediately! Honestly! Just find them! Will you find them?"

"I should think about it…" Logan drawled. A thought occurred to him about using Tress to lure the First Chipmunk and the MAP out of their tree house, but he discarded it at once. If those rodents are intelligent enough to use cell phones and email, not to mention hacking into the CIA server, then as soon as they see the First Daughter under their tree, they'll know something is wrong and run away. No, they must be dealt with with a single blow, sudden and crushing…

Someone could think about the word 'ingratitude'. Well, they have their Constitutional rights to think of any words they like. For his part, he, George Logan, also has his Constitutional right to consider their opinion wrong and contradicting the relentless logic of causes and effects. Indeed, these particular rodents helped him and America greatly, but, first, the favor accorded is worth nothing, and second, it's doubtful they really knew whom and what they were really helping. Yes, he personally owes Chip his life, but the life of a single person, even the President, is nothing compared to the future of the people and the country. But chipmunks and mice, even the most intelligent, could hardly understand that.

But, as the practice proved, they could easily prevent him from completing his mission. That's unacceptable. Of course, he, George Logan, would gladly accept them into his service, but you could fight the world terrorism by leading it and directing the attacks away from the American military facilities and cities, how would you handle the rodents? How would you control those living according to animal laws? Someone with completely different notions of honor, justice, and civic duty? Although what civic duty can you talk about in case of the rodents? They probably don't have the vaguest idea that their habitat territory belongs to the United States of America…

Or maybe they do?

Although, what does it matter now? Their time is up. The dawn of the new era is breaking…

"Daddy! What's there to think about for so long!?"

"Okay!" Logan smiled with his most teleradiophotogenic smile. "You win! I'll try to find them!"

"Honestly!?"

"Honestly!"

"Hooray! I love you!"

"And I love you, sunshine! Alright, let's go, they are waiting for us already…"

And all six went to the Beast parked in front of the North Portico. Two Secret Service agents were leading the way, then the Logans went as a tight group, and Gyllenhaal served the trailing vertex of the triangle. When they reached the middle of the Entrance Hall, he raised a lap of his jacket with his microphone to his mouth in one fluid automatic motion and gave his subordinates stationed outside a standard command in which only codenames of the First Family members changed with time. "Attention! Chemist, Charity, and Christmas are coming out! All stations, full alert!"

THE END

for a time being, at least…