"Hungarian state television, General."
"How secret can it be, then?"
"We don't know what it is. So technically it's still a secret weapon. But the existence of the weapon is no secret."
The general groaned, and drained another cup of cappuccino.
"Next," he said.
"NRO here, General. The South Koreans are also claiming development of a weapon hitherto unknown to the modern world."
"They what?"
"I'm quoting from Seoul Shinmum. That's the chief newspaper in Seoul. Their source is the CIA."
"That's a lie!" the CIA duty officer exploded.
"The Korean CIA," the NRO man clarified.
"Continue," said the general.
"It's called Ch'onmach, which is a kind of flying horse in Korean mythology. We don't know what it is or what it does, I regret to say."
"Damn it, find out!"
"Yes, sir."
• "Sir, this is CIA again. A report just crossed my desk. According to Tokyo Shimbun, the Japanese are announcing a defensive device they call Kuroi Obake."
"What does that mean?"
"We came up with 'Black Goblin,' sir."
"I meant the other word."
"Shimbun? That's 'newspaper.'"
"The same word means 'newspaper' in Korean and Japanese?"
"It's not exactly the same word. It's just similar. Want me to fact check it for you?"
"No!"
"Yes, General."
The JCS chair let out a caffeine sigh. "By the way, does anyone have an update on the Mexican crisis?"
"I do," a helpful voice said.
"And who is this?"
"Chattaway. NRO."
"Go ahead, Mr. Chattaway."
"Our latest satellite imaging shows the Mexicans have not moved in the last twenty-four hours."
"Thank you," the general said in a frosty voice. "I already have that intelligence on my desk."
"Never hurts to reconfirm, as they say over at State."
"That will be all," said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before he hung up. A fresh cup of coffee was suddenly at his elbow. He sniffed it before tasting. It smelled like boysenberry fudge swirl, but when he tasted it he decided it was probably cranberry mocha.
Whatever it was, it was going to have to pass for breakfast. There was a lot to do.
Chapter Twenty-nine
If the president of Macedonia—a country referred to insistently as FYR Macedonia by the hostile world and the spineless United Nations—understood one thing, it was the value of a trademark.
Men had gotten wealthy all over the world prior to the emergence of multinational corporations by having the foresight to trademark the name of a famous foreign—usually American—product in the days when American products were confined to America. As the great corporations expanded, they found no serious competition for their colas or their breakfast cereals, just grubby little men who came crawling out of the woodwork bearing legal papers and claiming to have registered the trademark of Pepsi Cola or some such in their native land.
The mighty American companies, having a product and no right to their own name in an alien land, did what their lawyers told them they must do. Buy their own trademark at a dear price or cede rich new market territories to these competitors.
This was the problem the president of Macedonia faced in the wake of the breakup of embattled, fractured Yugoslavia. Suddenly there was no Yugoslavia. Just Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, all of whom quickly and with great relish began tearing chunks off one another's territories until there was no hope of putting the pieces back together again. Ever.
To survive in this vacuum, the president of what was then the Yugoslavian province of Macedonia understood that he would need a name. One to conjure with. For his patch of the former Yugoslavia lay at the crossroads of the Balkans and was subject to being gobbled up by Greece, Turkey, Albania or Bulgaria, all of whom historically had designs on the area or on their nationals living within it.
And so naturally he chose the name Macedonia, taking the ancient Macedonian symbol of a sixteen-pointed sunburst star—the Sun of Vergina—as its flag.
There seemed no reason not to. No one else was using it. No one had before expressed a problem with a province called Macedonia—even though the historical Macedon of Alexander sprawled over what were today four separate modern nations.
So with the stroke of a pen Macedonia reemerged as a nation once again.
And suddenly a country with untrained conscripts, no tanks or warplanes and no war chest was perceived as a dire threat to mighty Greece and a natural ally of Greece's Balkan rivals, Bulgaria and Albania and Turkey, who themselves didn't get along.
Greece closed it borders. Bulgaria courted Macedonia. Everyone coveted it. To keep order, five hundred U.S. soldiers had to be imported as a protective buffer—which everyone knew might become the tripwire to a new Balkan conflict that could lead to a third great European war.
Applying for admittance to the United Nations, Macedonia was forced to accept the official designation Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, whose disputed flag was the only member state flag in history ever to be barred from flying before the UN Buildings.
It was a slap in the face. The prince among ancient nations was reduced to being the geographical equivalent of the singer formerly known as Prince.
And with the world nervously eyeing this toothless upstart nation, the President of Macedonia had begun to conclude he might better have taken the name Lower Slobovia. That trademark was no longer in force, he understood.
Until his ambassador called from New York City.
"I am flying home at once. You must recall me."