"Dr. Foxx, Professor Tracy is waiting for you in the library. Please follow me." The white-haired porter whispered just loud enough for Foxx to hear him. The Brook was a club that prided itself on its exclusive quiet. Its heavy stone walls and shrouded windows were meant to keep out all the street noise of midtown Manhattan.

Foxx walked a few paces behind the porter up a carpeted staircase, then down a mahogany-paneled corridor. On the walls were oil portraits of the Vanderbilts, Morgans, Wideners, Roosevelts, and other founding members of the Brook. Foxx felt slightly intimidated by the gauntlet of domineering faces. The library, with its floor-to-ceiling rows of dusty books, was a welcome relief.

Bronson Tracy was standing on a small fenced-in platform on top of a ladder, absorbed in his search for a missing volume. He turned around abruptly as he sensed a visitor, and gestured with a hand motion that he would be right down.

Foxx noticed that even the rungs of the library ladder were padded with carpeting as Tracy climbed down it with long strides. From his craggy face, he guessed that Tracy was in his mid-fifties. Though he was quite tall, Tracy did not seem conscious of his height.

"Sorry to drag you here, Foxx," Tracy said in a cultivated accent that distinguished him as a Boston Brahmin. "Just wanted to finish some work before dinner, and with the traffic, I didn't know what time you'd get here."

"It's quite an impressive library." Foxx found himself whispering, though there was no one else in the room. "Do you spend much time here?"

"The Brook is my working habitat in New York. So quiet you can hear a pin drop. You should think of joining, Foxx.

"I don't get to New York that often," Foxx demurred. He was not a joiner, and anyway he doubted that he would be accepted. He had only met Tracy a month before, at the colloquium on "Political Succession in the Age of Bureaucracy" at Pierson College at Yale. Tracy was the only political scientist there that seemed to understand the distinction he tried to make between the traditional army putsch and the modern coup d'etat. Foxx was quite surprised by his quick grasp of a problem that he himself had been laboring over for months. Despite his trendy appearance and impeccable credentials as a traditional political scientist, Tracy seemed to appreciate his ideas on the mechanics of power better than most of the postwar generation political scientists. He must have impressed Tracy as well, since Tracy had invited him to attend his present seminar on "Praetorian Politics in the Nuclear Age," which was being sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Understand you spent some time in Venezuela working for Rockefeller," Tracy murmured as he lit his pipe.

"In a manner of speaking. I was sent to Venezuela at the beginning of the war to do political analysis for the Office of Information. Rockefeller was Coordinator of Information, but I didn't have much time to see him..."

"Spent the whole war there?" Tracy was adept at eliciting information.

"From 1942 through 1947."

"My understanding is that Rockefeller was doing a bit of psych-ops warfare---or whatever they call it."

"He called it that. All I was involved in was writing news releases. We fed them to the wire services. They reported them as news."

"Aren't you being a bit modest, Foxx? I understand you received a personal commendation from Rockefeller?"

"The stories were, of course, designed to provoke a reaction against the Nazis in South America..." Foxx hesitated, wondering how Tracy knew so much about his wartime service record. He and his small staff in Caracas not only had written more than 90 percent of the "hard" news in South America, they had carefully designed it to manipulate the actions of every country on that continent. The ease with which this sort of disinformation could be put onto the news wires had given him many of his ideas on the vulnerability of government to coups.

"Yes, of course," Tracy said, cutting short his inquiry. "Let's have something to eat."

The oval dining room, like the club itself, was small and intimate. Rather than individual tables, there was a common table. Tracy quietly introduced Foxx to the other members at the table. Their names all sounded like endowed buildings at Harvard.

A waiter wheeled over a cart with a side of roast beef on it. Tracy nodded, and the waiter cut off an end piece for him. "Do you like your beef rare, or well done, Foxx?" Tracy asked.

Foxx pointed to the rare side of the beef. The waiter smiled indulgently, as though Foxx had made an extraordinary request, and cut him a blood-red piece. He garnished it with a small baked potato. Decanters of red wine were already on the table. Foxx noticed that although the members of the Brook sat around the same table, they made a point of not talking to, or even looking at, each other. They might as well be seated at separate tables, he thought.

"I've been involved in something that I thought might be of interest to you," Tracy began.

"At Yale?" Foxx asked. He had heard that Tracy was being considered as the next master of Pierson College there.

"No, in Washington. I've taken a temporary leave from Yale to work out a problem for the State Department."

"What kind of problem?"

"The State Department is concerned that its diplomats are not prepared for the sort of crisis that might occur these days. We're attempting to design a few simulated crises. It's a sort of board game for diplomats."

"Board game?" Foxx had always been intrigued by games. He had basing a seminar on one. The idea of the State Department using them to simulate the real world piqued his interest.

"Well, it's not exactly like Monopoly," Tracy explained, slowly pouring a glass of wine for Foxx. "It's called the Game of Nations. The diplomats who play the game are each assigned some special role. For instance, they might play a king, an intelligence chief, or what-have-you. They have to respond to a hypothetical crisis that we design for them. It's all adjudicated by a computer."

"Fascinating..." Foxx began.

Tracy interrupted: "Does your teaching contract at Harvard allow you to consult?"

"Yes, as long as it's only part-time."

"Then why not try your hand at designing a scenario for us. The pay is probably better than at Harvard." He added precisely, "One hundred dollars a day and travel expenses to Washington."

"What kind of crisis would you want?"

Tracy nodded good-bye to one of the men who was sitting across the table from him. Then he turned back to Foxx. "You teach a course on coup d'etat, don't you?"

"It's really on political pathology, but it includes analyzing coups." Foxx looked around. The dining room was empty, except for himself and Tracy.

"What about designing a coup? I would, of course, give you the basic parameters. You could work it out in, say, thirty-six moves. The game is based on thirty-six moves."

Tracy looked at his watch with some concern. "I had no idea of the time. I hope you don't mind if I rush off."

After leaving the Brook, Foxx walked from Fifty-fourth Street up Madison Avenue to Eighty sixth, peering into the galleries along the way. He looked at paintings, sculptures, furnishings, carpets, and advertisements, as well as at other window shoppers. It was a visual feast for him.

He stayed that night at the Croyden Hotel. In the morning he had to wait fifteen minutes for the receipt for his breakfast, which he needed in order to get reimbursed by the Council on Foreign Relations. Then he rushed to get to La Guardia Airport to catch his plane.

During the bumpy flight back to Cambridge, Foxx reflected on Tracy's offer. Designing scenarios for some State Department game sounded like a fairly juvenile idea. But the consulting fee Tracy had offered him would help him finance the research he needed for his book. And, with the Arabella situation, he might need alternative employment. In any case, organizing these hypothetical scenarios would also give him a chance to work out some of the theories he had been developing on coup d'etat. The most important consideration was, however, the connection. Tracy could be very helpful in finding him a job at Yale if Harvard failed to promote him.

He had decided to accept the offer even before his plane landed on the runway at Logan Airport.

When he got back to his office, he found two notes slipped under his door. Both were from wayward students. The first, Brixton Steer, wrote:

"Dear Professor Foxx, I have a problem. Would it be possible to write a paper for you in lieu of taking the Midterm exam on December 16? My father wants me to be with the family in Teheran for Xmas (which would mean leaving Cambridge December 15). If this would be permissible, I would like to write a paper on the 'Politics of Usurpation in the Middle East,' and do research on it over the Xmas recess."

Foxx could see that young Steer already knew how to get a leverage out of being the Ambassador to Iran's son. "Excused from exam. Look forward to reading your paper," Foxx scribbled on the bottom of the note.

The second note was from Arabella. "You missed our tutorial. When can I have a make-up assignment, I'm will do whatever you suggest (Pathological Politics, if that is what you want to call it). Can't wait. Can't Wait. Can't Wait. Arabella."

Three "cant waits!" He realized how much trouble he was in now.