Stephanie left the White House and rode in a cab back to the Mandarin Oriental where she showered, changed clothes, and grabbed something to eat. She’d managed just a few hours of sleep, her mind reeling from what she’d read in the file Danny had provided. The Soviet Union had been intently interested in the 20th Amendment to the Constitution. So intent that they’d even provided it with a nickname. The zero amendment. What that meant the old memo had not explained, but other memos in the file noted that references to the term appeared repeatedly in Soviet communiqués back in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, all linked directly to Yuri Andropov himself. Then in 1984 references to the term vanished. American intelligence paid close attention to when subject matters blossomed and wilted, as both events were significant. Analysts spent whole careers pondering why something started, then equally as much time on why it may have stopped. Linking subject matters was the Holy Grail of intelligence work and here the connection had been provided to Cotton when Vadim Belchenko, in his dying breaths, said “Fool’s Mate”
