America

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A television reporter and photographer were waiting outside Jake's building when he arrived. He sat in the car with Flap Le Beau watching them. They hadn't seen him yet. "Uh-oh," he said.

"What are you going to do?"

"If I ignore them it will look like I've got something to hide."

"That's the spirit. This is Washington. Deny, deny, deny."

"I'll go a long way following that advice."

"Don't hold anything up in front of your face. And don't let them see the handcuffs. That stuff prejudices the jury."

"Your name was on that list too. Want to come over and hold a joint conference, tell them how we're going to invest our newfound riches?"

"Out," Flap said, jerking his thumb. "I'll hurry over to my office and watch you on the news."

As Jake got out of the car he adjusted the pistol under the blouse of his blue uniform so it wouldn't fall out.

The reporter was a woman, and she had the drill perfected. He heard her say into the microphone as he walked toward the door, "Here comes Admiral Grafton now."

She shouted, "Admiral Grafton, Admiral Grafton!"

Jake walked over, trying to look innocent. How do you do that?

"Admiral Grafton, this morning a London newspaper printed a story that said you and a number of other American military officers have huge accounts with the Jouany firm. Would you comment on that?"

"I don't have an account with any of the Jouany firms. I have never invested a dollar with them. There's been some mistake."

"So you're denying that Antoine Jouany owes you over three and a half million dollars?"

"Yep, I'm denying it. He doesn't owe me a penny."

"How about the other officers on the list?"

"I can't speak for them," he said, and turned toward the door to the building.

She asked another question anyway, "Have you been subpoenaed yet by the House subcommittee?"

Jake kept going. Oh, boy! A congressional subpoena. That would get today off to a rollicking start.

Sonny Killbuck was waiting upstairs with a pile of computer-generated maps and photos taken by reconnaissance satellites. Ilin, Barrington-Lee, and Mayer were in the outer office going over software with two NASA experts. They were still trying to determine why the SuperAegis launch went awry. Jake doubted if the reason would ever be determined, but it gave them something to do. Fortunately, telephone service had yet to be restored, so reporters weren't ringing the phone off the hook.

"Two of Heydrich's salvage ships are working wrecks," Killbuck told Jack. "One is in the Maldives, and the other is docked in Nice. Verified with satellite photography."

"That missile didn't make it halfway around the world to the Maldives. It would have had to achieve orbitable velocity to get that far. It went in the Atlantic, someplace."

"I agree," said Captain Killbuck. He pointed out likely ships, ships that had cranes and thrusters and sufficient deck space to be used for salvage work. One of them, a cable layer, was in Cadiz.

"What's it doing there?"

"Who knows? We can find out, but it will take awhile."

"I think the satellite is on a seamount or continental shelf. Without a salvage ship, they can't work helmeted divers in deep water. I would bet it's where scuba divers can get to it, say less than a hun-

dred feet. The divers could come out of the sub, open the missile, take out the satellite."

"They can't get it into the sub," Killbuck objected. "The airlock opening is too small."

"That's right. But maybe they could put a cable on it, tow it, take it someplace where it can be raised by a ship with a crane. At night. What we've got to do is find that ship."

"Why did they need the minisub?"

Jake Grafton took his time with that one. "I don't know that they needed the minisub. It was on America when they stole it, but I think the target was really America. They needed a sub that a small crew could man. As you know, America is more computerized than any other American submarine. And it's stealthy. If they had had any other boat, they'd be dead after a sea battle with two Los Angeles-class attack boats."

"I think they'll use the minisub to go back and forth between another ship and the submarine."

"I think so too," the admiral said. "They know all about radar and IR recon satellites. And they know we're looking. What they need is a ship that they can get the minisub into."

Killbuck made a note. Then he asked, "What do you think they will do with America after they have the satellite?"

"You know the answer to that. They'll abandon her. Submerged."

"So they'll use the minisub to get the people out?"

"I doubt it," Jake said. "Those fifteen men killed six American sailors and stole a submarine. They fired missiles that killed more than six hundred more Americans. They sank La Jolla and killed her crew. They're the most wanted men on Earth. Whoever is behind this doesn't want those men to ever talk to prosecutors or sit on a witness stand. I have this sneaking suspicion that USS America will be their tomb."

The foreign liaison types, Ilin included, went to lunch at noon. Jake hadn't spoken to Ilin since immediately after Jadot was killed. He had been avoiding the man. Jake had nothing to use as a lever to pry whatever Ilin knew from him, so there was no point talking. They were past the point of idle chitchat.

He was sitting at his desk staring out the window when Toad and Carmellini came in carrying a pizza. "Want a piece, sir?" "A couple, if you can spare them."

"Normally we wouldn't, but since you're regular navy.." As they opened the box on Jake's conference table, Toad said, "We got lucky this morning. A Beltway bandit has a former FBI agent as their security guy. He keeps the prints of everyone who gets access to the inner sanctum in a card file. He found this." Toad handed Jake a copy of the access card.

"Zelda Hudson. Hudson Security Services." He read the address in Newark aloud, then put the card on his desk. "No photo?"

"I was saving the best for last." Toad whipped another sheet of paper from his pocket. This was a sheet of copy paper with the photo reproduced on it. A white woman with regular features and a mass of dark hair. She looked as if a smile would transform her face, make her radiant.

"Well?" Jake said, looking at Carmellini. "It's her, all right. Sarah Houston, Zelda Hudson." As he worked on the pizza, Jake thought about it. "Maybe we ought to wait to find out what Krautkramer finds in that CIA West Side apartment."

"I don't care what he finds," Carmellini retorted. "We have a name and address. We even called information and got the phone number of Hudson Security in Newark. I called and asked for her. I recognized her voice. Didn't say anything, just hung up." "What did she say?" Toad asked with his mouth full. " 'Hello.' "

"That's it? You can recognize women with two syllables?" "How many does it take before you figure out it's your wife?" "The degree of familiarity is a bit different, but your point is well taken." Toad turned his attention to Jake. "What say Tommy and I take a car and zip up Jersey way this afternoon. Maybe we can have a little talk with this woman."

"What are you going to say to her?" "Stolen any submarines lately? Hired any killers?" Jake finished his slice of pizza before he spoke. "We'll wait for Krautkramer. He might want to put a wiretap on their phones. Maybe he won't want to do anything until he's had a wiretap in place for a while. If he wants to talk to her, perhaps he'll let us tag along."

Toad didn't argue. He knew who called the shots.

Tom Krautkramer showed up at quarter to one. He listened in silence to Carmellini's report, looked at the copies of the fingerprint card and photo, then said, "These were the prints in the West Side apartment. A cleaning service had been in there, but they missed a few prints. Apparently someone put some bum info into the computer in Clarksburg."

"Wonder who?" Toad said innocently.

"I'd like you to tap her phones," Jake said, "as soon as you can get a judge to sign something. And I want to interview her. Today if possible. Will you come?"

"Let's go by my office and I'll dictate an affidavit. One of the guys can fill out the rest of the form and get it to the judge. With luck, we can have her phones tapped in about six hours."

"Maybe we should wait and interview her tomorrow, after the taps are on," Jake said, tugging at his ear.

"That would certainly be normal procedure," the agent agreed, "but I had another blast from the director this morning. Max effort. The president has given us our marching orders. He wants that submarine found and put out of action. That's priority one, so the airlines can fly and the economy can level out. Jailing those responsible is priority two."

"If you put them in the can and they ultimately get off because you don't have a good case, you'll hear about it then," Toad objected. "You know this town."

"Can this woman lead you to the submarine?"

"Maybe," Jake said. "Let's go."

An hour and a half later when Krautkramer came out of the FBI building and climbed into the car with Jake, Toad, and Carmellini, he looked at them with new respect. "Hudson Security Services has forty telephone lines," he said. "I talked to the judge, and he'll sign the warrant, but monitoring forty lines is going to be a major operation. We're going to have to bring in assets from all over."

"We've all been hoping for a break," Jake said. "Maybe this is it." Toad was behind the wheel. Jake tapped him on the shoulder. "Let's go to Newark."

An ambulance and a small sedan belonging to U.S. Customs were waiting when the Gulfstream V taxied up in front of the Teterboro executive terminal and shut down its engines. As the door opened and the linemen maneuvered a stairway against the plane, a customs officer and an immigration officer got out of the sedan and strolled over. They were joined by a paramedic.

A man in a business suit came down the stair with a handful of passports. "Monsieur Schlegel wishes to thank you for your hospitality," he said in a French accent.

The immigration officer flipped through the passports, stamping each of them. "Which one is the sick woman?"

"This one," the man said, indicating a passport. "The ambulance will transport her to the hospital."

"Anything to declare?" asked the customs official respectfully.

"Nothing, Monsieur. We will only be here a few hours. The woman is a relative of Monsieur Schlegel and needs to see a specialist. We will be leaving this evening after the consultation."

The immigration officer nodded at the paramedic, who climbed the ladder and disappeared into the plane. In less than a minute he came to the door and waved at his colleague, who removed a stretcher from the ambulance and carried it up the stairs into the plane.

The group on the tarmac were joined by an official of the FAA. He went up the stairs to talk to the pilots. When he came back down, the immigration and customs officers were driving away.

"Thank you for allowing us to land," the Frenchman said to the FAA man.

"Humanitarian emergencies justify some risks," the FAA official replied. "Your embassy explained everything. We're delighted to be of assistance, but I wanted your pilots and Monsieur Schlegel to realize that there is some danger. If there is another attack by missiles armed with electromagnetic warheads, control of the aircraft could be lost. The consequences could be catastrophic."

"Monsieur Schlegel appreciates the danger. Still, the lady is very ill, and risks must be taken."

Soon the paramedics carried a stretcher from the plane. The man who followed them was in his late fifties or early sixties — it was difficult to say — of medium height, with wide shoulders and a flat stomach. On his right cheek was a faint shadow of a dueling scar. He was wearing an exquisitely tailored blue silk suit, hand-painted tie and custom-made leather shoes. He looked every inch the billionaire accustomed to command.

Three other men followed him. They waited respectfully while he whispered to the woman on the stretcher, then all of them watched the paramedics place the stretcher in the waiting ambulance.

Schlegel nodded to the FAA man, then, followed by his entourage, walked toward a stretch limo that had pulled up between the plane and the terminal. The four men got into the limo, which followed the ambulance toward the gate in the perimeter fence.

"Did you have a nice flight?" the FAA man asked the Frenchman who remained.

"Very nice. Never has it been so easy to get into the New York area. The controllers let us descend across Manhattan. The sky, it is empty."

A look of irritation crossed the FAA man's face. "Yes," he acknowledged, "completely empty."

"Why do you want out of the CIA, anyway?" Toad Tarkington asked Tommy Carmellini. They had just crossed the Delaware Bridge and were on the New Jersey Turnpike headed north. Carmellini hemmed and hawed, and finally produced a metal cigar canister from his pocket. At least, it looked like a cigar canister, complete with the logo of a well-known cigar company. It was, however, a bit larger in diameter.

"I invented this," Carmellini said, "and they won't give me any royalties or pay me for it. They're just a small-caliber bunch."

Jake held out his hand and Tommy passed it to him. "Don't turn the cap," he advised. "That's the fuse."

"It's an explosive device?"

"That's right. An electromagnetic grenade, or E-grenade."

"And you carry it around in your pocket?"

"Well, yeah. I gotta carry it somewhere. Won't do me any good if it's at home when I need it."

"What if it pops?" Jake passed it on to Krautkramer, who gave it a cursory glance and handed it back to Carmellini.

"That would ruin my day," Carmellini acknowledged. "And put every electronic device within fifty feet out of commission, including this car. We'd be walking. And if that pistol in your pants goes bang, you too are going to have a problem."

"You're not supposed to notice that."

"Right."

"I can't believe this," Krautkramer said, sticking his fingers in his ears. "Here I am riding around with a bunch of guys armed to the teeth with illegal weapons."

"Hey, this is America," Toad said, as if that explained everything.

"That is her building," said the man sitting in the back of the limo with Willi Schlegel. He pointed. His name was Crozet. "Hudson Security Services. Apparently legit. I have made the acquaintance of several of the women who work there, talked to them in bars and gymnasiums. The office is on the top floor. The rest of the building is an open, empty warehouse. The only access to the top floor is an elevator."

"Is she in there?"

"Yes, sir. She went to lunch at noon and returned an hour later."

"Fire escapes?"

"There is a hole in the floor, and a rope. A person using it would end up on the ground floor inside the building. There is a back door made of steel, which can be opened only from the inside; it opens onto a loading dock in the alley behind the building. The building is a flagrant violation of the local building code."

"Access to the roof?"

"Yes, from the offices. A ladder that can be pulled down, then a door allows access to the roof. However, there is no way off the roof, so anyone up there would have to be lifted off by a ladder truck or helicopter."

"So what do you propose?"

"I think some smoke grenades in the adjoining building, which is a warehouse for furniture donated to charity. The fire department would then, I believe, evacuate the adjacent buildings as a precau-tion.

"She may not come out."

"If she doesn't, I thought that I and one of the men might go in from the roof. A helicopter can land us there while the evacuation is under way. I have made arrangements with the pilot of a television news helicopter. He will earn a fast ten thousand dollars."

"The door on the roof?"

"Plastique. A small charge should do it."

Willi Schlegel looked up and down the street. "And the timing?"

"We will meet the helicopter at three." Crozet looked at his watch. "In thirty-seven minutes. If the smoke grenades go into the windows of the furniture warehouse then, the operation should go off reasonably well. Two of the men should be on the street in case she comes out with the employees, one in back in the alley."

"Is she armed?"

"I could never ask that question of the women. I was afraid of arousing suspicions. It is possible."

"You have the necessary equipment?"

"Yes. I thought this the best plan."

"Bon. Brief the men and begin."

"Ms. Hudson, there's a fire in the building next door." The secretary made the announcement, since the main entrance intercom was on her desk. "The fire department wants us to evacuate, just in case."

Zelda Hudson glanced at the security monitor. The fireman was wearing a slicker and the usual fire helmet. The side of a pumper truck and men flaking out fire hoses were also visible.

Fire was one of the hazards inevitable with a high degree of physical security, a fact that Zelda Hudson knew well. She had bribed a building inspector to get an occupancy permit when she bought the building and put in offices. He had wanted an external fire escape installed on the back side of the building, and she refused. If the people in the building could go down it, burglars could come up.

Well, there was no help for it now. "Everyone out," she called over the hum of voices. "Five in the elevator at a time. Zip, would you supervise?"

The employees were already queueing up. In short order the first load went down.

On the monitor she could see smoke billowing from the next building, which shared a common wall. That wall was two-foot-thick masonry and wouldn't burn unless the temperature in the furniture warehouse rose to spectacular levels, but with the fire department at the door, what choice was there?

She looked around at the computers, which were still on-line. Hers and Zip's were the important ones, the ones that they could not afford to lose. On the other hand, better to lose them than to let the FBI get their hands on them. She and Zip had one-ounce charges of plastique inside each computer nestled against the hard drives, with fuses rigged to a battery in case the law cut off the power. All she had to do was push a button under her desk.

She heard the helicopter as the last of the employees boarded the elevator for the trip down. Zip stayed behind. He came over to her desk.

"Aren't you going too?"

"What's the helicopter doing up there?"

"Probably a news chopper getting some footage for the five o'clock news."

"Zip, it could be—"

"Naw," he said. "That place next door is a firetrap. It's a miracle it hasn't gone up before this. What we need is a place in the suburbs. We can afford it."

The whopping of the helicopter was getting louder. It sounded as if the thing were right on the roof.

"Come on," he said. "Let's clear the building, just in case."

"You go ahead." She waved toward the elevator.

"Hell, this isn't a raid!"

"This building is brick and stone. The only thing that could burn is the floor beams, and not unless the fire was downstairs. Go on, leave me here."

Zip went over to the elevator and pushed the button. He was waiting for it to come up when an explosion rocked the office. He looked up, in time to see the door to the roof disintegrate and two men charge through the smoke onto the landing. The noise from the helicopter flooded the room. One of them stepped onto the wooden stairway, which was rigged with counterweights. As the stairway took his weight, the bottom began descending toward the floor.

Zelda pushed the button under her desk and felt the whump as the charges in her computers detonated simultaneously, bulging the boxes. The screens went black, and smoke began oozing from one of them.

"Freeze!" the man coming down the ladder shouted. He had a weapon in his hand.

Zip went for him. The man chopped down with the pistol and dropped Zip in a heap at the foot of the stairs. "You bastard," Zelda screamed and charged him. The second man was right behind the first. Together they wrapped her up and put her on the floor. As one man held her down the other produced a small box. In seconds he had a hypodermic needle in his hand. He grabbed an arm, squeezed it, and jabbed the needle in.

Zip stirred, tried to rise.

When he gathered his wits, he saw one of the intruders climbing the stairs to the roof with Zelda draped over his shoulder. Vance rose, swayed, and went for the stairs.

He didn't even see the karate chop that dropped him like a rotten log. Or the foot that smashed into his ribs.

The pilot of the television helicopter was stunned when he saw one of his passengers carrying a woman toward the passenger door. No one had said anything about another passenger. The guy gently put her in the backseat before he could object. She appeared to be unconscious. The second man came running over and climbed in beside the pilot. "Go," he shouted.

"What's with the woman?" For the very first time, the possibility of being involved in a serious crime occurred to the pilot, and he didn't want any part of it.

"Smoke inhalation. Land us at the hospital helo pad." Relief flooded the pilot. "Which hospital?" "Mercy General."

The pilot checked the wind and engine while the rotor RPM rose, then lifted the collective.

There was an ambulance waiting at the helo pad. Two uniformed paramedics came over and unloaded the woman while the helicopter idled. Afterward the pilot wondered why the man sitting beside him didn't use the radio to notify the hospital that a smoke inhalation victim was inbound, but he assumed that someone must have notified them on a two-way radio. Perhaps the police.

In any event, the two men got out and one shook his hand. They went over to the ambulance and were helping the paramedics put the woman on a gurney when the helo lifted off.

At Teterboro the customs and immigration officials were properly respectful. The immigration man flipped through the passports, jotted down the numbers, then handed them back. While he was doing that, Willi Schlegel bent over the woman on the stretcher, ensured she was okay, then motioned for the men of the entourage to carry it onto the plane. The ambulance drove away.

"How is she?" the customs man asked the uniformed flight attendant who had talked to him when the plane arrived.

"I do not believe the prognosis was good," the attendant confided, "but Monsieur Schlegel doesn't tell me much. I merely overheard."

The customs man nodded. He knew about class status among the filthy rich, or he thought he did.

As the plane taxied out, the two government employees got in their car and drove out through the gate.

Five minutes later the Gulfstream lifted off, and when it reached a thousand feet, made a right turn to a northeast heading, on course for the North Atlantic and Europe.

When the carload from Washington arrived in front of Hudson Security Services, the fire department was putting their equipment away.

"What happened?" Jake asked one of the firemen.

"Some smoke in that furniture warehouse," the man replied, nodding his head. "No fire. The captain said he thinks someone fired a couple of smoke grenades through one of the windows."

An ambulance crew was wheeling a gurney from the Hudson building. A man, conscious. Jake looked at his face, which looked like a slab of raw meat. This was where he hit the floor.

"What happened to him?" he asked the attendant.

"Someone beat the hell out of him. He's bleeding internally, got a collapsed lung."

"Zelda Hudson? Where is she?"

"Ask him. He was talking to the cops."

Jake addressed the man on the gurney. "Where's Zelda?"

"They snatched her. Came in the door from the roof. Kicked me."

"Who're they?"

"Schlegel, I think. I don't know. Maybe Schlegel."

"What's your name?"

"Zip Vance."

The security door was propped open, so Jake went in. All four of the Washington crew rode up in the elevator. Eight people, half women, were standing around looking lost. One of them sobbed out the story to Jake and Tom Krautkramer. Two men came in through the door to the roof, kidnapped Zelda, flew away in a helicopter.

"And look," the woman wailed, pointing at Zelda's computers. "They destroyed six of the computers, three on that desk and three on the other one."

It didn't take long for Krautkramer to discover that the computers had been destroyed by a self-destruct system. He whispered his findings to Jake, who just nodded, then he used the telephone.

"Looks like we're a day late and a dollar short," Toad said.

"Maybe." Jake crossed his arms.

When Krautkramer finished his telephone call, he said, "I've called our field office to get people over here. We've had an alleged kidnapping and we're on the scene. Doesn't get any better than that. Maybe you'd better go back to Washington without me."

"I want to talk to Vance," Jake said. "You want to come along?"

"Tell him we'll come by in a few hours. I want to question these employees first, learn just what it is these people really did here."

"You don't mind if we question Vance first?"

"Find the sub, the president said."

Jake shook hands and headed for the elevator.

In the hospital room, Tommy Carmellini was jarred by the crispness of Jake and Toad's blue uniforms and gold sleeve rings against the white of the sheets and off-white walls. The doctor and nurse hovered nearby, adjusting the IV drips, checking the leads on the heart and respiration monitor.

Vance had four broken ribs and a collapsed lung, the doctors said. They were worried about infection. They had given him a painkiller to take the edge off, yet not enough to impair his impulse to breathe.

Every breath Vance took hurt severely. Still, he wanted to talk, to share the load, and Jake Grafton was the man he picked. When Grafton wasn't angry or lost in thought, he looked like your father might have when you were small, a man you could tell things to because he would understand.

With the medical team out of the room, Vance's story poured out a phrase at a time between rasping breaths. Occasionally Jake asked a question when Vance paused, unsure what to say next.

"It was Schlegel, Willi Schlegel, who snatched her. No, I didn't see him, but it had to be. She didn't really double-cross him, you understand, but she had sold the sub's services to Jouany without bothering to tell Willi. I knew that would piss him off — and she did too — but she did it anyway. I told her not to, but she did it because the money was so good.

"Money was the way she kept score. We — each of us — have more money than we can ever spend, but she wanted more. Wanted a huge fortune. Wanted to be somebody, you know?

"Yeah, we got into people's computers, stole stuff, sold it to folks who paid us major money. Then we went back to the people we had ripped off, told them we had been doing a study of their security system, wowed them with a few things we had learned, and got a contract to tighten up their system to keep the common hackers out.

"Of course it was illegal, but it wasn't really wrong. Ideas belong to whoever can use them, not just to the person who was first through the door of the patent office. That's what the Internet is all about. And for whatever it's worth, a lot of the stuff we swiped and sold hadn't been patented. Or copyrighted.

"Yes, we sold some stuff to the Russians. They were always anxious to buy but rarely had the money we wanted. Me, I would have given them the stuff for whatever they could pay, but like I said, Zelda wanted money. Occasionally they would come up with the bucks Zelda demanded, if the stuff we had to sell was cutting edge. Usually it was. But her main clients were the Europeans, EuroSpace. Willi Schlegel. He had money, real money, and he knew the value of what we had to offer.

"I love her, sure. What can I say? You don't always get to pick whom you fall in love with. She is brilliant. Has these magnificent insights. Truly a first-class mind. But wanted money, a lot of it. For some reason money impressed her. Never understood that.

"Yes, she put the satellite in the water. Worked with Kerr on the software, figured out how to do it, hacked into the NASA system and made the changes. Then, when the rocket was in the water, went in and deleted her changes.

"She recruited the Blackbeard team. Kolnikov refused to take her seriously at first, then finally he did. She had been in the CIA computer and knew all about the Blackbeard operation, the plan to steal a Russian sub. She told Ilin and had him tell the director of the CIA that he knew. That made Kolnikov available, after he had had the training.

"She hacked into the navy's communications system and screwed with Cowbell. There is no technical challenge beyond her. Maybe ordinary rules aren't made for people that smart.

"I don't know where she put the satellite. She never told me and I never asked. At some point I realized that I didn't want to know. Maybe I got scared, I don't know….

"Ilin tried to warn her. She decided to eliminate the worst threat, you. She hired a hitman she had used once before when the mob tried to move in on us. They didn't know what we were doing, but they knew we were making major money doing it, so they tried to muscle in. She hired the guy, and he killed the mob guy. You've probably got it as an unsolved someplace.

"I don't want her dead. You understand? Schlegel will kill her. He agreed to pay her a hundred million to put the satellite in the water, and he's paid just ten. He agreed to pay another hundred million when it's recovered. He'll kill her instead, so she can't talk. And he won't have to pay.

"I never really wanted money. I wanted Zelda, and to get her I thought I would have to play her game. She never set out to hurt anyone; it was the game. You see that, don't you?"

Jake Grafton may have looked like a father figure, but Carmellini noted that he didn't nod, didn't say yes just to please Vance.

"Life doesn't often work out the way it should." Even Vance seemed to realize that he had been rationalizing.

The doctor came in then, listened to Vance's chest with a stethoscope. "You gentlemen must leave. He's talked too long as it is. His right lung…"

"Thank you, doctor. Thank you, Zip."

"You save her, Admiral. If we go to jail, that will be okay. Maybe when we get out Zelda and I will have another chance at life. We've screwed this one up pretty badly."

There was a pay phone at the nurses' station twenty feet from Vance's room, and Jake used it. "This is Jake Grafton calling for General Le Beau."

"He's in a meeting, sir." "Get him out of it."

Sixty seconds later he heard Flap's voice.

"We were about an hour and a half too late, General," Jake said. "Zelda Hudson was the brains behind the loss of SuperAegis and the theft of America. Someone kidnapped her out of her office this afternoon. They went to a fair amount of trouble to pull it off. Her partner got kicked a time or two and is in the hospital. He confessed to me. He thinks the man behind the kidnapping is Willi Schlegel, the number two at EuroSpace. According to Vance, he paid these two to put SuperAegis in the water."

There was a moment of silence as the marine digested this news. "What now?" he said.

"Well, they didn't kill her. They took her from her building in a helicopter. The FBI will chase the chopper down, but they'll be long gone when they find it. I doubt that she's still in the area. These guys are French. I think it likely she's on her way to Canada by car or plane. Or Europe by plane. I recommend we get the FBI and immigration people involved. Search every car and truck crossing into Canada. Ask the FAA if anything flew out of the northeastern United States headed for Canada or Europe. It's possible they took a plane VFR without filing a flight plan, so we need to know if anything is in the air. Anything at all."

"When will you get back here?" Flap asked. "As fast as we can drive, sir." "I'll make it happen."

CHAPTER TWENTY

A few strokes on the keyboard of the FAA computer revealed that the Gulfstream that left Teterboro was registered in France to EuroSpace. As the large corporate jet winged its way across the Atlantic, the U.S. Air Force launched two AWACS planes from bases in Germany.

Night had fallen when the Gulfstream changed its destination from Paris to Lisbon, Portugal. The AWACS Sentrys arrived on the scene as the Gulfstream taxied to the Lisbon executive terminal. Tracking the vehicles that left the terminal with side-looking radar proved a challenge, but when one of the vehicles went to the waterfront, Jake and Flap Le Beau grinned at each other. In front of them was a listing of the vessels in Lisbon harbor. One of them was a cruise ship, Sea Wind, owned by a German corporation in which the majority stockholder was… Willi Schlegel.

"It fits," Flap Le Beau said. "Don't most cruise ships have cranes and dock-level openings for loading supplies?"

"The ones I'm familiar with do," Jake agreed.

"They could pull something aboard at night, perhaps rig an awning so that the activity there can't be observed by anyone leaning over a railing or by a satellite in space."

Flap called a travel agent he knew, got him after dinner, sent him back to his office. An hour later the man called back.

"Sea Wind is sailing the day after tomorrow from Lisbon. Her published itinerary calls for stops in the Azores, the Madeiras, Las Palmas in the Canaries, and Casablanca, before returning to Lisbon." "Is she full?"

"Not according to the computer. There are still cabins available, but they're damn pricey and the damn prices are all double occupancy. This is sorta a gourmet cruise for rich retirees."

"Give me five cabins, five American couples. We'll call you with names in a couple hours."

"How about in the morning?" "Okay. But reserve them now."

The man wanted a credit card to hold the cabins, so Flap pulled out his wallet and used his own. "Just a deposit," he told his travel agent friend. "I don't have the credit limit to handle that amount."

"Hell, man," Jake told him when he hung up, "you're filthy rich.

Use some of that money Jouany owes you."

"Yeah, right."

"You're not really planning on going yourself, are you?" "I certainly am." Flap gave Jake the commandant's stare. "Well, you're kinda famous," the admiral told him. "Black commandant and all that. Suppose one of these cruisers is a retired marine. He'll recognize you immediately."

"I'll take care of it," Flap said, in a tone that implied it was time to change the subject.

Jake did. "Maybe we ought to have State call the U.S. embassy in Lisbon. If the CIA could verify that Schlegel is on that ship I would feel a lot better about this."

"Okay." Flap picked up the phone and made the call. "If he is aboard," Flap said after he hung up, "we'll know in a few hours. That would prove to me that USS America is in the eastern Atlantic. If we get that verification, what say we call the president and tell him to turn on American air travel? America isn't going to fire any more missiles at the United States from there." "I hope you're right," Jake said, "because if you aren't…" "Jacob Lee Grafton, we've been betting our heinies for a lot of years. One more big bet won't make any difference."

"You're the man," Grafton said with a grin. "Call Camp David and tell the big honcho it's safe to come home."

"I'll give them an opinion. While I'm at it, you call the air force and tell them I want a plane to get me and nine other fools to Lisbon in the morning." Aye aye, sir.

The fishing boat was trawling with three noisemakers. They weren't tremendously loud, but each of them emitted a steady, high-pitched sound. When the Revelation sonar in passive mode picked up the echoes of the sound off the shallow bottom, the effect was the same as if the noisemakers had been searchlights. The multiple noisemakers created a three-dimensional effect, eliminating many of the shadows on the irregular bottom and allowing any man-made item, such as the third stage of the SuperAegis launch vehicle, to be seen and recognized. That was the theory, anyway.

"So where the hell is it?" Heydrich demanded.

"You missed your calling," Turchak told him from his station at the helm, without turning around. "With that tone of voice, you should have been a czar."

"I don't know where the hell it is," Kolnikov replied icily. "If I did, we would simply motor over to it and let you perform your heroics. Now why don't you find a seat in the back of the control room and watch people who know more about it than you do look for your missing third stage?"

They had been looking for a day. Almost ten hours. Kolnikov scrutinized the Revelation screens with care. The sonar wasn't designed for the task he was trying to perform with it, and the computer presentations were often murky, difficult to make out. Heydrich and the divers were there in the control room in addition to the normal crew. They were sitting in chairs or standing, occasionally moving around from pure frustration, all the time concentrating fiercely on the Revelation screens.

The shallow seamount over which USS America crawled was the top of an ancient volcano. There was some controversy, Kolnikov recalled, a few years back over whether one of these seamounts was the legendary Atlantis, covered by the sea. The volcano that made this seamount was old when the world was young. The cone had penetrated the surface and been eroded to nearly level by wind, rain, and surf. Then at some time during the geological past, the island sank beneath the waves. Or the sea rose. Whichever, the top of the ancient volcano was today about fifteen square miles in area and submerged to a depth of ninety feet.

Fifteen squares miles was a lot of area. If the SuperAegis third stage had made it here. Vladimir Kolnikov tried to curb his impatience. The noisemakers being towed by the fishing boat could not be heard at any great distance, but if he used active sonar and radiated a pulse, that could be heard. For hundreds of miles.

Trying to find the third stage of the rocket was like looking for a needle by candlelight. And other submarines might be out there, sharks angling for a torpedo shot. He could never discount that possibility. He glanced over his shoulder at Eck, who was searching for other submarines and trying to optimize the Revelation pictures. When he tired, this operation would have to be temporarily suspended. Boldt could check for other subs, but he couldn't do two things at once.

Weird shapes abounded on top of the seamount. There were ancient shipwrecks, at least one modern one, fantastic coral shapes, eroded rock…. Here and there the sub passed over the gloom of a deep fissure that was impenetrable to Revelation in the passive mode. The first problem had occurred when the fishing boat had turned at the end of the first pass and started back. The radius of the turn had been so large that a segment of the seamount's surface would be left unexamined.

Kolnikov decided to risk the underwater telephone, which used sound. It could be heard at about fifty miles by Los Angeles—class subs. If there were any out there. But if the missing third stage was in one of the areas that were being missed, it would never be found. Kolnikov bit the bullet and handed Heydrich the telephone headset. The fishing boat was plodding along now with GPS precision. "How long to search this entire seamount?" Heydrich asked. "Since we must rest and sleep, I would say another day, at least." The weather forecast that Boldt had downloaded when he raised the communications mast said a storm was brewing to the south. An area of low pressure drifting off Africa would become a tropical depression, then perhaps a hurricane.

Fortunately, the storm was well south, and in any event America should have recovered the satellite and be gone by the time it got seriously wound up. Storms were tricky. In these shallows the motion of the swells from a serious storm might rock America. That wouldn't be a problem if she were properly ballasted and making enough way to have full control with the planes, but at three knots she was so slow that the planes had little effect. No, Kolnikov thought, he didn't want to be caught at slow speed in these shallows if a serious storm happened by.

Where was the satellite?

Kolnikov glanced at Heydrich, wondering how long his patience would last if the satellite didn't turn up soon. He had sat in the back of the control room since the boat left Long Island Sound — when he wasn't locked up or sleeping; never a soft and fuzzy type, now Heydrich seemed to have an edge, an urgency about him. Perhaps it was the storm to the south.

Yes, the storm. Recovering the satellite. That was it.

The passenger list for the trip to Lisbon presented something of a problem. Flap's first thought was that he and Jake and eight of the toughest marines in the corps would go to Europe and kick butt. Upon further reflection, he realized that in addition to Jake Grafton he needed Sonny Killbuck's submarine expertise, Tommy Carmel-lini's knowledge of Zelda Hudson, and of course, Toad Tarkington. That was five men, and unless they were accompanied by five women, they certainly weren't going to melt into the cruise ship crowd.

Jake thought Callie would want to go — he knew she would want to go — and Toad's wife, Rita Moravia, was home. Jake Grafton nodded enthusiastically and said, "You bet," whenever Rita's name was mentioned. Flap thought his wife might go even though she got seasick in a bathtub — she and Callie could schmooze their way through the passenger list. Flap needed two more women, and he knew whom he wanted. He talked to his chief of staff, and soon two of the toughest drill instructors in the corps had volunteered.

As the group waited to board the plane at Andrews, a man from the State Department — or perhaps he was CIA, he didn't say — arrived with ten passports. All brand-new, U.S. government — issue fakes. Each passport had the proper photo and birthday, but the name and rest of the information were bogus.

Callie didn't like her photo. Rita didn't like her new name— Betty — and Mrs. Le Beau was appalled that the fake passport contained her real birthday. "I don't see why they couldn't have taken five years off," she said to Callie, who shared the sentiment.

The woman marine who was supposed to pretend she was Car-mellini's significant other looked him up and down, then told him, "I've got a boyfriend who could break every bone in your body." "Izzatright?"

"Keep your hands to yourself, lover boy, and think pure thoughts. No funny business."

Her name was Lizzy and she was from Oklahoma. When she wasn't on duty, she worked out in the gym. She had won some amateur bodybuilding competitions and thought she might try professional wrestling when this enlistment was up. Carmellini thought that if bone breaking were on the menu, Lizzy wouldn't need her boyfriend's help.

The airplane that was to fly the group to Lisbon was a civilian Gulfstream, much like the one that EuroSpace owned. Flap thought a military airplane would jeopardize the mission and insisted on a civilian-registered plane. The air force chartered one.

Jake Grafton's first look at the marine general this morning left him agape. Flap Le Beau had shaved his head and wore a large, bushy mustache and a pair of heavy horn-rimmed glasses. The mustache was glued on, of course, but Flap certainly didn't look the way he did yesterday. Part of the makeover was the civilian clothes, which were at least one size too large. He looked like he had lost weight recently. Jake complimented him on the quick change. "Corina shaved my head last night and we went to the mall for a new outfit. The larger clothes were her idea."

As they waited to board, Flap said, "I've got this sick feeling that we're going to be too late."

"The ocean salvage operations I've seen resemble greased-pig contests," Jake remarked. "Nothing goes as planned. These folks are undertaking a tricky salvage operation with makeshift equipment. I wonder if they've even found the thing." "Surely they know where it is!"

"Zelda Hudson strikes me as a pretty slick operator. So slick, apparently, that Schlegel wanted to get his hands on her."

As they walked out to the plane, Callie said to Flap, "Thanks for including me. This invitation was a godsend. I didn't think I could take another day in that candlelit flat."

"I wouldn't classify this trip as a vacation."

"It is for me! Just watch me enjoy it."

The day was clear as only a September day can be. As the luxury bizjet climbed over the Chesapeake Bay, Jake and Callie leaned against the window trying to spot their Delaware beach. The jet was over New Jersey when it crossed the beach for the first time. It flew over Boston and Nova Scotia before it left North America behind.

Somewhere over the North Atlantic, Callie said to her husband, "I still don't understand why these people are being so sneaky about recovering the satellite. I thought that under international law abandoned ships and things like that belonged to whoever salvaged them."

"You know, I haven't asked the lawyers about that," Jake said. "I'll bet no one else has, either. The satellite was not abandoned — it was lost. Or stolen. And the French government owns some huge minority interest in EuroSpace; they may control it, for all I know. I doubt if the French government wants to go to the edge of the abyss with the Americans over a killer satellite."

The edge of the abyss. Jake thought about that phrase as the jet flew the great circle route to Lisbon. This wasn't, he concluded, a typical hardball business deal for Willi Schlegel. He had been physically present in Newark when Zelda Hudson was snatched — the customs and immigration officers both stated that for a fact. They had seen him and his passport. So Schlegel was betting everything he could steal that satellite and get away with it. Standing trial for kidnapping wasn't on his agenda, either.

Across the aisle, Toad Tarkington was getting reacquainted with his wife, Rita Moravia, who was also in the navy and on leave between assignments. She had arrived home the day before yesterday, hugged the kid and husband, and settled in for a month of domestic bliss. Then Toad informed her he was going on a cruise. "Gotta. It's a nasty job and somebody has to do it."

Rita and Toad were going to spend a week by themselves later that month, so they decided that this would be that week. The babysitter had instructions, her mother would arrive by car that evening, so here they were, on their way to Lisbon.

"Glad you could go with me, hot woman," Toad said. "I've really missed you. I told Admiral Grafton that we planned on spending the whole cruise in bed."

"And what did he say?"

"Just laughed."

"I missed you, Toadman," Rita said. "Hold my hand." And she slipped her hand in his.

In the row behind Toad and Rita, Tommy Carmellini was getting acquainted with Lizzy. "What do you like about pro wrestling?" he asked.

"It's my favorite thing," Lizzy replied. "Aren't you a fan?"

"Alas, no. My schedule…"

"It's life in microcosm. The story lines make me want to cry and laugh at the same time, you know? They're just so… so…"

"Story lines?"

"You're not a marine. What do you do for a living, anyway?"

"Civil service. Paperwork and stuff. Pretty boring. Tell me about the story lines."

Lizzy took a deep breath and began.

Flap Le Beau married later than most of his colleagues. When he finally tied the knot he was past forty and had his first star. The woman he married, Corina, was a college professor who ran a home for troubled youth when she wasn't working her day job. Flap had grown up on the streets — he knew the problems she willingly faced dealing with troubled kids. He became her biggest fan, helped her all he could, then decided they should tie the knot and go through life together. She had been married once before and wasn't anxious for another round of matrimony, but Flap persisted. He knew what he wanted, and she was it. Through sheer perseverance he finally overcame her defenses.

On the way to Portugal he sat in the front of the passenger cabin with Corina and told her about the mission. "Just be yourself," he advised. "You're a college professor who runs a home for kids. That will minimize the acting requirements."

"And who will you be?" Corina asked.

"A retired marine, I think. Collecting those retirement checks every month, fishing, and keeping busy helping you with the kids. We needed a little break, so here we are. That story works, doesn't it?"

"When you retire, are you going to help me?"

"Woman, did you ever have any doubts?"

"No," she admitted, "I never did."

She laughed then, and Flap Le Beau leaned back in his seat and grinned.

Jake Grafton was looking out the window when his wife whispered to him, "Thanks for bringing me along. I appreciate you sharing your burdens."

He squeezed her hand and grinned.

He had explained last night when he invited her to come. "There is some danger involved. I need your help, but this is no vacation. If you don't want to come, I'll understand. We're going to sink a ship. People are probably going to die."

"What do you and Flap think will happen?"

"America will eventually recover the satellite and rendezvous with the cruise ship or a cable layer that's anchored in Cadiz harbor. We have U-2s, Sentry AWACS planes, and recon satellites watching this area continuously. Our job is to call the P-3s on satellite telephones if America slips in under this cruise ship. There're more than a dozen P-3s at Rota, Spain. They'll hunt America using active sonar, then destroy her with torpedoes. Obviously, we'd like to wait until she has recovered the satellite."

"And the satellite?"

"We'll send it to the bottom with America, or thank Willi Schlegel and take it home."

"Why do you think America might rendezvous with the cruise ship?"

He explained that Schlegel had kidnapped Zelda Hudson, and they thought he was aboard this ship. "He's at the vortex of this mess."

Callie was silent for a moment, then asked, "And if something goes wrong?"

"There's a carrier battle group in the Med headed west for Gibraltar and one out of Jacksonville transiting east. The president was firm — do whatever it takes to get the satellite and the sub."

Knowing all that, she had chosen to come. "I want to help any way I can."

Today over the North Atlantic, with the sun shining in through the windows of the airplane, he squeezed her hand again.

When Zelda Hudson awoke, she was lying in a hospital bed wearing handcuffs. A uniformed nurse was in attendance. When she saw that her patient was awake, the nurse went to a telephone and made a call.

Her head thumped and she felt groggy. And slightly nauseated. Gathering her strength, Zelda tried to move and discovered that she was restrained on the bed with straps. And that she was wearing a catheter.

As she stared at the strange room and the woman in white whom she didn't recognize, the memories came flooding back. The explosion at the roof door, the stair swinging down, the men rushing in as chopper noise filled the room..

She remembered one of the men hitting Zip. Then… nothing.

So where was she?

She started to ask the nurse, then changed her mind. Don't say a word to these people.

A strange hospital, with little doors and metal walls and___Oh,

my God! She was on a ship!

A man came in, sixty-something, tan. She recognized him from his photos. Willi Schlegel. Two other men followed him in. The one in the white coat had a stethoscope draped around his neck.

"Ah, Ms. Hudson. I am Willi Schlegel. Welcome to my world."

She said nothing.

"You must be wondering where you are. You are aboard Sea Wind, which is a luxury liner, or cruise ship, as you Americans call it. We are currently anchored in Lisbon harbor. We will sail tomorrow and eventually rendezvous with USS America, which will transfer the satellite to us. The men aboard America are recovering it now."

Zelda Hudson looked at the doctor, the nurse, the third man,

looked for a friendly face and didn't find one. They're bought and paid for, she thought.

"I thought you should be with us for the glorious moment," Schlegel said, "when the satellite comes aboard. I knew you would want to see it, to savor the moment of our triumph. It was a magnificent operation, and you did it. Of course, you also did many things you weren't supposed to — all those missiles to earn money from Antoine Jouany…" He clucked his tongue.

"You are greedy, Ms. Hudson. A greedy, unpredictable, unreliable genius. For all those reasons I thought you should be here with us, rather than sitting in front of your bank of computers in Newark making mischief."

She wondered if Zip was dead. She started to ask, then changed her mind. This asshole would tell her anything. He probably didn't know the truth. Or care.

Schlegel waited for a moment, waited for her to speak, and when she didn't, he turned away. She waited until he was out of the room before she said to the doctor, "I want off this damn bed and I want to go to the bathroom."

The doctor nodded to the nurse, who began removing the restraints. The man who had entered the room with the doctor stood against the wall and watched.

A Gulfstream is the Cadillac of business jets; people who arrive in one get the same courtesy and respect in Portugal as they do in New Jersey. Portuguese immigration and customs waved a friendly hand and the five couples walked to two stretch limos that the embassy had waiting while the limo drivers — CIA agents — unloaded the baggage and stowed it in the trunks. Since a problem at the airport with customs would have ruined everything, the contents of the luggage were completely benign. The weapons, ammunition, and satellite telephones had arrived under diplomatic cover earlier in the day and were already in the limos.

The scene on the dock was the usual hustle and bustle. Buses, taxis, and limos arrived in a steady stream, officers greeted people and handed out cabin and dining assignments, ship's crewmen checked lists and loaded luggage with a crane into a cargo sponson,

veteran cruisers greeted each other. While Callie ensured their bags were properly tagged, Jake examined the sponson, memorizing its exact location and the location of the hatches leading from it.

The bags containing the weapons and ammo were not checked. Each of the Americans carried one aboard.

A steward led the Graftons to their assigned cabin, which opened onto the promenade deck. The room had a large double bed and a television. Obviously, rank had its privileges: Flap had gotten the Graftons one of the nicest staterooms. Still, the decor reminded Jake of a Holiday Inn. The steward showed them how the fixtures worked, accepted a tip with a smile, and left them alone.

Callie started to speak, but Jake held a finger to his lips. He mouthed the words, "The place may be bugged."

She nodded and sat on the bed while Jake took off his sports coat and donned a shoulder holster. With the water in the bathroom running and talking loudly to his wife, he inserted the loaded magazine in the nine-millimeter automatic, eased the slide back and chambered a round, then holstered the weapon and put the coat back on.

"What do you think?" he asked when he came out.

"It's been a long day and I'm hungry," she said. "Give me a minute and then let's go find something to eat."

After twelve hours in the control room, Kolnikov called it quits for the day. He made a transmission to the fishing boat on the underwater telephone, then steered America off the seamount and submerged to four hundred feet. He took food from the wardroom back to Turchak, who was still at the helm monitoring the autopilot. The rest of the control room crew was eating or in bed — another calculated risk, but they had to have food and rest.

"It may not be on that thing," Turchak said softly, just loud enough for Kolnikov to hear. He nodded in the general direction of the seamount. "Have you considered that?"

"Yes."

"I know the philosophical implications of finding something in the last place you look, but we've covered about sixty percent of the seamount. The third stage isn't small."

"I know," Kolnikov said.

"Heydrich is like a caged lion. After observing him for a week, I think he is slightly insane."

Kolnikov said dryly, "Aren't we all?"

Turchak wasn't amused. "You know what I mean. He's a time bomb with a lit fuse."

The dining area was packed with people eating a late supper. Everyone had been traveling all day, yet the excitement was contagious. Callie looked around nervously — did she know any of these people? Finally she decided she didn't. While she looked for acquaintances, Jake looked for Willi Schlegel and didn't see him, of course. They needed to find the man. That would be a job for Carmellini.

Callie did the talking for the Graftons and only in response to direct questions. They were retired military — like Flap, they thought that cover story fit best.

The woman sitting beside her was from England, cruised all the time. She and her husband had both lost their spouses and met on a cruise three years ago. Cruises were so romantic, with the moonlight, the dinners, the dancing!

"And how," she asked Callie in a delightful English accent, "did you and your husband meet?"

"Oh, I picked him up in a bar," Callie replied with a wave of her hand.

Jake choked on something and had to leave the table.