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PART ONE

COIL

CHAPTER 1

THE TEENAGE BOY WAS DYING ALONE NO ONE KNEW and only one would have cared He lay, skeletal fro palliasse in the corner of a filthy room in an abandoned block The slu scheton, DC, of which the city is not proud and which tourists never visit

If the boy had known his death was going to start a war, he would neither have understood nor cared That is what drug abuse does to a young mind It destroys it

THE LATE-SUMMER DINNER at the White House was small by the standards of presidential hospitality Just twenty diners in ten couples sat down after drinks in an antechahteen were most impressed to be there

Nine of these were n Wars, that nationwide body that concerns itself with the welfare of those who have worn the uniform of any of the Armed Forces

The nine years to 2010 had produced a huge nuhanistan, injured or trau his thanks for what his nine guests from the VFW had been able to do So they and their spouses were invited to dine where the legendary Abraham Lincoln once ate They had had the private tour of the apartuided by the First Lady herself, and were seated beneath the attentive gaze of the htly ean to cry

She an to tremble The table was circular, and the First Lady was on the far side She glanced up fro quietly down the cheeks of the waitress

The e his President, followed her gaze and began to ently to a nearby waiter to take the tureen before there was a disaster, and eased the elderly wo door to the pantry and kitchen As the pair disappeared froy to the retired general on her left, rose and followed

In the pantry, the waitress was by now sitting, her shoulders shaking, , “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” The expression on the face of themood One does not break down in front of the Chief Executive

The First Lady gestured to hi Then she stooped over the weeping woe of her apron and still apologizing

In response to a couple of gentle questions, waitress Maybelle explained her extraordinary lapse The police had found the body of her only grandson, the boy she had raised since his father died a the rubble of the Trade Center nine years earlier when the child was six