The President ran his fingers through his hair. His face looked more drawn than any man had yet seen it. Yet he smiled.
"We're not suing for peace terms yet," he said, and turned to the nation's foremost biologist, sitting quiet in a nearby chair.
"What's your reaction?" he asked.
"We've always known," the answer came despondently, "that bacteriological warfare is far deadlier than any bomb—if there were any protection from its effects for the victor. We had a strain of bacteria once, for which we had an immunization course, and we developed it far enough along the line to realize that, even though you immunized every man, woman and child in this country in advance of releasing it in another part of the world, mutant strains would eventually wipe out this nation as well as those we fought."
"How about mutant strains of the Suez bacteria?" the President asked, then answered himself. "No, they've produced an antidote. An antidote, if our reports are correct, that works overnight." He shook his head slowly.
"The ultimatum should come very soon now," the President said.
"It is the timing. I do not understand the timing." The big man in the Kremlin was allowing himself an appearance of indecision that he did not often indulge before underlings.
Of course, there was but the one underling, and any audience that proved to have a later-embarrassing potential could be silenced with ease. Still, it was unusual, and the lieutenant who served as combination secretary and backstop for oratory quaked as he listened.
"The timing is all wrong, but the fact is a fact. It must be a fact, or every operative we have should be Siberianized.