America

CHAPTER FOUR

Kolnikov and Turchak were poring over the cruise-missile universal target databases in the computer when Rothberg finally yawned and asked permission to find a bunk to sleep in. Kolnikov nodded his assent. Boldt went with him. For the first time since they seized America, the two Russians were alone.

"While they sleep, we must collect all the weapons," Kolnikov whispered.

"But the boat! Who will watch it?"

"We will leave it on autopilot."

Turchak's eyes widened. With no one to monitor the performance of the computers that formed the autopilot, there was no safety margin whatsoever. "Oh, man. Why don't we just shoot ourselves now and get it over with? This really is Russian roulette."

"We must get the guns."

"We may have to kill Heydrich."

Kolnikov grunted.

"You and I could run the boat," Turchak admitted. "The automation is quite extraordinary. We could not respond quickly to anything, and there would be no safety margin — none — which makes my flesh crawl. The first casualty, the first equipment failure, and we will be dead men. With people on watch in the reactor and engine room, we have a little breathing room. Someone on the sonar will help enormously. We will need all the people we have if we need to reload a torpedo tube. Still, we know so little. A tiny fire, an electrical problem. . we'll be dead."

"That is the risk we agreed to take," Kolnikov insisted.

"Talking about risks on dry land is not the same as living them."

They stood looking at the displays. Finally Kolnikov shook his head. "There is no way to undo what we have done. We must go forward."

"I know. I know! All of this frightens me — that is the honest truth. I wish—"

Turchak left the thought hanging. After a bit he asked, "What are we going to do with the guns?"

"Jettisoning them through an empty torpedo tube would be best. I don't want them aboard."

Kolnikov checked the navigation display. The boat was five hundred feet deep, running southeast at four knots. Except for the grunting of some distant whales, the sea was silent, empty in all directions, surface and subsurface. A few minutes ago there had been the telltale signature of noise from an airplane passing overhead, a jet running high. It was gone now.

Kolnikov pulled the pistol from his belt, checked that the safety was on, and went forward.

Pistols and rifles were strewn carelessly near the sleeping men. The two Russian officers picked up every firearm they saw. One man was sleeping with his pistol belt and holster still wrapped around his waist, so Kolnikov put his pistol against the man's forehead and waited for him to awaken. In seconds his eyes came open. Kolnikov undid the buckle and pulled the belt from under the man.

They had an armful of guns by the time they reached the torpedo room. All four of the tubes were empty. They put the guns in number one, then proceeded to the engine room in the aft end of the boat. Three men were awake there, checking lubrication levels and monitoring the turbines. Kolnikov held a pistol on them while Turchak took their weapons and carried them forward. Kolnikov followed.

When they had the tube closed for the second time, Turchak asked, "Where's Heydrich?"

"I don't know. He must have been in one of the heads when we went by." Or in the aux machinery room, cold storage…

"And Steinhoff?"

"I don't know."

"Someone may have told them we are confiscating the weapons."

Kolnikov and Turchak gripped their pistols tightly as they approached the door of the control room.

The two Germans were there, examining the control panels.

Steinhoff turned, saw that the Russians had pistols out, and immediately decided to jerk his automatic from its holster.

Kolnikov shot him once. Steinhoff sagged to the deck and lay there moaning.

Heydrich stood frozen with his back to Kolnikov, his hands half raised.

"May I turn around?"

"Not yet."

Turchak inched forward, pulled the pistol from Heydrich's holster, and patted him down for more weapons. He also had a pistol in his pocket, which Turchak transferred to his own pocket.

Turchak put the guns in the torpedo tube while Kolnikov sat in the control room with his pistol pointed at Heydrich and Steinhoff moaned softly and writhed on the deck. Heydrich made no move to examine the man, see how badly he was hurt.

When the guns had been flushed from the tube into the sea, Kolnikov remarked, "Take your friend to berthing and put a bandage on him." He pocketed the pistol.

Heydrich jerked Steinhoff off the deck and slung him over his shoulder, oblivious of his wound.

"The game isn't over, Kolnikov."

"Get your head out of your ass," the Russian shot back. "This is no game. You can't run this boat without me, but I can certainly run it without you. As far as I'm concerned, you're expendable ballast. At the first sign of disobedience I'll shoot you as quick as I shot Steinhoff."

"You know, I believe you would."

When they were alone, Turchak said, "You should have killed him, gotten it over with."

Vladimir Kolnikov rubbed his face. "We must take split watches, you and I. One man will run the boat while the other sleeps."

When Jake Grafton descended the stairs in the beach house Sunday morning, Toad Tarkington and Janos Ilin were drinking coffee at the window nook while Callie cooked eggs. She had the television in the corner tuned to CNN. Jake kissed her, dropped into a chair at the table.

"You two look chipper this morning," Jake remarked to the men, both,of whom looked slightly rumpled. "Sun and sand seem to agree with you."

Toad eyed the admiral suspiciously as he sipped his coffee.

"We spent yesterday in front of the television," Janos Ilin said, "until we couldn't stand it anymore." He felt his pockets, probably feeling for his cigarettes. He had picked up the fact that Americans didn't smoke indoors.

The Sunday paper lay on the table. The headline screamed, "Sub Stolen." Under it was a photo of the hijackers entering the submarine taken from the television video. To the right was a smaller shot of Kolnikov shooting at the helicopter.

The admiral helped himself to the coffee and cream. He was sipping it when the telephone rang. He picked it up.

"I'm a reporter with—" the voice began. Jake put the telephone back on the cradle.

"So who did it?" Toad demanded.

"Some Russian and German ex-submariners." Jake didn't mention the CIA.

"Wow!"

"Quite amazing," Ilin said. "How in the world could they have learned enough about the submarine—America? — to take it to sea? Aren't submarines extremely complicated?"

"Like a space shuttle."

"Surprising," Ilin said and helped himself to more coffee.

Callie served him an omelet as the group discussed what the thieves might do with a stolen sub. The telephone rang two more times. Each time Callie answered it, said a few words, and hung up. "Reporters," she said.

"I have been asked to assist in the investigation of this matter," Jake said, addressing Ilin. "Since several of the men involved were Russian nationals, I was wondering if you would assist me? On an informal basis, of course."

"Do you know their names?"

"Not yet."

"I assume," Ilin said slowly as he buttered a piece of toast, "that you have discussed this matter with General Blevins?"

"Yes."

"And other people?"

"Of course."

"May I ask who they are?"

"I think I'll reserve that."

Ilin ate the toast before he spoke again.

"The theft of the submarine is certainly a tragedy, but I fail to see how I can be of assistance in investigating that theft."

"Maybe you will have a glimmer as we go along."

"I tell you frankly that I know nothing of submarines. I have never even been aboard one. In fact, to the best of my memory, I have never actually seen one. They are an uncommon sight in Moscow."

"Perhaps," Jake said, also choosing his words carefully, "the news has been so unexpected that you have failed to grasp the implications. If Russian nationals were involved, persons in some quarters might suspect that they are acting on behalf of — or at least on the orders of — the Russian government. The event might have serious implications for U.S.-Russian relations."

"I appreciate that. Yet I fail to see how I can assist you. I know absolutely nothing about submarines or ships or any of that."

"Are you refusing?"

"No. Merely trying to force your expectations down to rational levels and make you air them. Just now I fail to see how I can be of any assistance whatsoever."

"Ah, we'll have to await the event to see if you can aid me. But perhaps you can aid your government. If these… pirates… use the submarine against Russian shipping or naval vessels, the Russian government might be very interested in your observations."

"Perhaps. And it might not. In any event, I tell you flatly that regardless of what I say, the people in Moscow will draw their own conclusions."

"Would you care to call the embassy? Discuss this with someone there?"

Both men knew the Graftons' telephone was nonsecure, and both knew that the American government would record the conversation since it was made to the Russian embassy.

"Perhaps later," Ilin said, refusing to close the door or pass through it. "How do you propose to begin your investigation?"

"The navy will have a plane pick us up at noon at Dover Air Force Base. Callie can drop us there on her way back to Washington. The plane will fly us to Connecticut. The FBI will have an agent there to brief us. They might have learned something about the thieves. No doubt we can also learn something about the stolen submarine."

Janos Ilin helped himself to more coffee. "Admiral, I am sure my government will not object to my tagging along. You understand, I am under no obligation to withhold anything from my government, nor will I." He grinned disarmingly at Jake. "I will of course also report this conversation."

Jake Grafton grinned right back, his best I'm-holding-four-aces look. "Of course."

He was upstairs packing when Callie came up. "Well?"

"I don't know," she said. "He's a master at handling his face."

Jake made a noise.

"So what are you going to let him see?"

"Everything. The technology is compromised anyway." That was an oversimplification, which might or might not prove true. If the submarine could be found and destroyed and the thieves killed, they wouldn't compromise anything. If they hadn't already passed on the secrets. On the other hand, Jake didn't believe that Ilin was a technical expert… in anything. He was an intelligence professional. Showing him a sonar presentation did not mean he could tell Russian engineers anything they would find of value.

"They put Flap Le Beau in charge of the investigation so it won't look like the navy is investigating itself," Jake explained. "He picked me to assist him, and I discussed bringing Ilin along. Having an SVR man involved is unconventional as hell, but… we've never had anyone steal a submarine before."

"So heads will roll?"

"Oh, you bet. Finger-pointing, JAG Manual investigations, courts of inquiry, careers ruined, sackings, courts-martial, at some point a congressional investigation. We're going to get the whole military entertainment experience."

"Do you think the thieves will torpedo the Goddard platform? Maybe shoot a missile at it?"

"At this point I don't know what to think. They might even fire off a missile at Moscow. If they do, at least the Russians will know that we didn't put these guys up to it."

"If they believe that the submarine was really stolen."

"Yeah. If." He got his shirts the way he wanted them, then went to the window and looked out. Ilin was standing in the street smoking a cigarette, drinking another cup of coffee.

"It was a theft, wasn't it?" his wife asked.

Jake glanced at her, a startled expression on his face. Sometimes her insights stunned him. It was almost as if she could read his thoughts. He wondered if Ilin thought him equally transparent.

"I can't imagine that it wasn't, but I want to see the bodies," he said.

He glanced again out the window at Ilin and froze. "The binoculars. Where are the binoculars?" he hissed at Callie. "Quick, get them for me, will you?"

She turned and flew from the room without a word. He heard her run down the steps, then back up. When she dashed into the room carrying the binoculars he was standing on the bed, well back from the window.

He focused the glasses on Ilin. Yep, his lips were moving. He was talking.

Certainly not to himself.

Either he was wired or someone was pointing a directional mike at him.

Jake did his best to scan across the street from his perch on the bed, where he should be essentially invisible from the street. Houses lined the other side of the street, many of them rentals, and vehicles filled every available parking space, the usual state of affairs this close to the beach. One of the parked vehicles was a van, a custom job without back windows. It was unfamiliar to him, but then most of the vehicles were. Who the heck ever noticed cars? From here he couldn't see the license plate.

He lowered the glasses, sat down on the edge of the bed.

He had underestimated Ilin. Underestimated the Russians.

This whole house could be wired. Probably was. The Russians had listened to every word that was said all weekend.

Callie was looking at him with an amused expression. "I wish I had a picture of your face wearing that look," she said.

He took her into the bathroom, turned on the shower and the exhaust fan. Then he put his mouth near her ear. "Ilin is standing alone in the street smoking, drinking coffee, and chattering away. The whole house is probably wired. Someone is listening."

She accepted his assessment without question. "What do you want me to do?"

"Take us to Dover and put us on the plane. Then drive back to Washington. On the way find a pay phone and make a telephone call. Don't use your cell phone. Call from an inside phone, like at McDonald's, so no one can aim a directional mike at you." He gave her a number, told her whom to talk to, what to ask for.

"Oh, God! I am so sorry," Sarah Houston wailed. "What a lover you must think I am! It must be jet lag. I must have fallen asleep in midkiss."

"You were exhausted," Tommy Carmellini said.

"That's never happened to me before. Is it old age? Already? Oh, my God! What you must think! Well, I'm wide awake now. I hope. Give me some hugs and kisses, big guy."

Tommy Carmellini knew he wasn't enough of an actor to pull it off. He felt like a real jerk. He had wined and dined her and taken unfair advantage, and alas, sex hadn't been involved. He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. "I've got to be at JFK in two hours," he said. "I'm catching a flight to London. The next time you're in New York, could I have another date?"

"London?" She brightened. "Perhaps we could have dinner this coming week in London. I'm going over on Wednesday."

"Friday?" Tommy asked hopefully, wanting to end it on that note.

"Do you have any aspirin? Or Tylenol?"

There was a small bottle of aspirin in the bathroom cabinet. He remembered seeing it there. He got her two tablets and a glass of water, which she drained.

"Friday, lover," she whispered as she handed him the empty glass.

Sarah was still naked under the sheets — hung over from the drugs — when he threw his toothbrush and shaving gear into his bag and zipped it closed. There was nothing compromising in the apartment, so he didn't need to worry about that.

Tommy kissed her, wished that they. . kissed her again, then rushed for the door. "Friday evening. London. I'll call you. Lock the door on your way out."

She blew him a kiss.

Down on the street he legged it toward Columbus Avenue. He would catch a southbound cab there, although he wasn't going to the airport. He was going to Penn Station to catch a train to Washington, and he had all day to get there. The trains ran practically every hour. On Columbus he slowed to a walk, ambled along thinking about things.

He had plenty of time. What the heck, why not stroll over to Fifth Avenue and look in jewelry store windows?

Two FBI agents met the plane in Connecticut. "Two cars," Jake Grafton told them. He rode with the agent in charge, Tom Kraut-kramer, while Toad Tarkington and Janos Ilin piled in the second car. Krautkramer was a large man of about forty, with a frank, open face and huge, meaty hands.

"Ilin may be wired for sound," Jake said after a look at Kraut-kramer's credentials. He told him about the incident this morning in the street outside Jake's house. "I doubt it, but I want you guys to check him out without letting him know he's being swept. Can you do that?"

"You bet," Krautkramer said. "However, the better way is a thorough, quick search."

"Okay, doctor. Do it." Jake thought about all the things that had been discussed within Ilin's hearing since he reported to the SuperAegis project. There was nothing there that couldn't be shared — indeed, by disclosing it to the foreign liaison officers the American government was indeed sharing the information — but Ilin didn't seem to want to wait to get back to the embassy. He was passing along everything he heard as quickly as he heard it. One assumed that he was passing along only the information that Jake and Toad provided. If he had other sources…

"If he's wired," Jake said, "there is a van somewhere with an antenna that picks up his transmissions. Maybe he isn't wired and they use a directional mike that picks up what he says when he goes outside for smoke breaks. He's probably been doing that since he got to the States. Left to himself Ilin is a three-pack-a-day man. He spends more time outside than a beach lifeguard. Find the van, if there is one."

"Do you want us to stop it? Arrest the occupants?"

"Not yet. What I would really like is for Ilin to chatter away through this sub base visit, then after we leave for Washington, you bust the van and listen to what he had to say."

"That's feasible. We're going to need more people, a lot more. We're already bringing in people to dig into the submarine hijacking; sounds like we may be facing a major counterespionage investigation."

"I don't know what is going on," Jake replied. "Let's get some idea of what Ilin is up to before we go to general quarters."

"It'll take a little time to bring in the right people and equipment."

"Check with Washington. They'll have to assign the priority."

"They already did. General Le Beau has been on the telephone this morning with the director, who called me." Krautkramer glanced at Jake, who was wearing civilian slacks and a sports coat. "That was the first time I ever talked to the director. Who are you, anyway?"

"Just a naval officer."

"Yeah, right!"

"A stolen warship attracts a lot of attention. The next time your telephone rings, the president may be on the other end."

"I hear you. Let me tell you where we are. There were fifteen men in that CIA team; they stayed in one wing of the BOQ while they were here for training, kept pretty much to themselves. Both the CIA and the navy had people with them every minute, and we are talking to those escorts.

"Yet when the CIA dropped the Russian project, they left the team in the BOQ for almost a week while they made up their mind what they wanted to do with them. During that week, indications are that no one paid much attention to them. The stewards say many of the crewmen played pool in the rec room, they watched television, whatever. It is entirely possible they sneaked out. One of them was supposedly seen at the base exchange buying junk food.

"Then the team left the BOQ. The CIA supposedly knows where they went, but we don't. We're talking to the CIA, but apparently they don't want to tell us much. Yet Saturday they were in the harbor on a tugboat, so they had to be nearby on Friday night. We're trying to find where they spent that night, who they talked to, how they got to the tug pier Saturday morning, find witnesses who saw these people, saw the vehicles that delivered them. The surviving sailors from the sub said there were seventeen people in the hijack crew, so we have an apparent discrepancy. They could also be wrong about that number."

"Okay," Jake said. He glanced in the mirror to see that the other car was still following faithfully.

The day looked like another normal fall Sunday afternoon in New England, families out in cars, people jogging, kids on skateboards and bicycles.

"I assume that the National Security Agency is looking at all communications."

"That's a safe assumption," Jake replied.

"The CIA supplied dossiers on the team that trained here." He patted an attache case that lay on the seat between them. "I thought you might like to look at it."

Jake opened the case, took out the top file. Vladimir Kolnikov.

"We've got a crime artist working with the surviving crew members. He's trying to put together facial sketches of the two men who aren't in the dossiers as a first step to identifying them."

Vladimir Kolnikov. Ex — Russian naval officer, captain first rank. Twenty-five years' service, almost all of it in submarines based on the Kola peninsula. Was driving an illegal taxi in Paris when recruited by the CIA.

Jake looked at Kolnikov's photo. About two hundred pounds, if the rest of him matched the head-and-shoulders shot. Partially balding, with a short haircut, unsmiling, wearing civilian clothes.

He flipped through the other files, scanned them: Turchak, Steeckt, Eck, Gordin, Eisenberg, Boldt…

"There's gotta be more paper than this," Jake said, tossing the files back into the attache case. "There should be security evaluations, background investigations of some sort, reports, all that stuff. Someone decided these men could be trusted, that they weren't SVR agents. Who made that decision? What was it based on?"

"You'll have to talk to the CIA, Admiral. They aren't in the business of sharing information like that with FBI field types."

"I suppose not."

"What questions should we be asking?"

Jake took his time replying. "Who are these people? How did they steal a submarine? If you can figure out what they did, we can analyze our security plans and figure out what we need to do to prevent another theft."

"And kick ass."

"I guarantee you, if people haven't obeyed orders or have used bad judgment, they are going to be in deep trouble. An armed, state-of-the-art capital ship worth two billion dollars just slipped out of Uncle Sam's grasp."

"I understand, sir," Krautkramer said contritely.

"There are specific questions that must also be investigated carefully," Jake continued. "When they realized that America was being boarded, surely one of the officers or chiefs or petty officers — someone — would give the order to kill the reactor, SCRAM it, which means stop the fission reaction by slamming in the control rods. With the reactor subcritical, the sub would be impossible to move very far. Oh, it might go a mile or two on residual steam pressure, but that would be it until the reactor could be restarted, a process that would take hours. Even if the SCRAM order wasn't given, I am amazed that one of the crew didn't hit the button anyway. It was so obviously the right thing to do. Why did this submarine nuke off over the horizon unSCRAMed? And when it did, why wasn't the destroyer authorized to sink it?"

At the naval base, Jake, Toad, and Ilin were met by a captain in uniform, Piechowski, and a chief petty officer, Hyer. They led the visitors into the simulator building.

After the introductions, the captain spoke directly to Jake. "You wanted to see an America — class submarine, but of course there aren't any. America was the first of her class. The next one is a floating shell, two years away from being commissioned. The next best thing is the simulator."

"Okay."

Captain Piechowski and the chief led them into a dark, cavernous room in the rear of the building. The walls were painted black, there were no windows, and the interior seemed to soak up the small spotlights that illuminated a desk and two chairs, the only furniture, which stood in one corner between two large steel cabinets.

"This is it," Piechowski said. The chief unlocked the cabinet and removed five helmets with faceplates. "It's a virtual reality simulator." He gestured around him. "This used to be the base gymnasium."

Toad Tarkington looked at Jake, looked at the helmets, pursed his lips to speak, then changed his mind. Ilin took one of the helmets, examined it skeptically.

"Let's put on helmets," Piechowski suggested, "and we'll give you the two-dollar tour. We have a set of gloves we'd like you to wear, Admiral." Chief Hyer helped each man don a helmet and connect it to an electrical cable that led to a large bus on the wall.

When the system came on, the effect was extraordinary. With the helmets on they were standing outside the submarine, which was semitransparent. Captain Piechowski took Jake's arm and led him through the steel hull and ballast tanks and bulkheads to the control room. As Jake stood in the control room looking around, Piechowski went back to escort Ilin. When all of the guests were in the control room, the chief began talking. His voice sounded in their helmet headsets.

"Welcome aboard USS America, the most capable submarine in the world. We will do a complete tour of the ship in a few moments, but first I want to acquaint you with the main features of the control room, including the crown jewel of America, the Revelation sonar system."

The large computer screens on the bulkheads came alive. Forward, on both sides, and in the rear of the room, the screens became windows that allowed the helmeted visitors to look directly into the sea. "We are sixty feet below the surface," their guide told them, "under way at seven knots. If you will look at the starboard screen, you can see the hull of a ship protruding down into the water." He used a pointer to enlarge the ship's hull, which grew in size as the computer zoomed in, until it became recognizable as a warship hull, one with a sonar bulb on its bow. The photonics mast was up, so the camera image was laid over the top half of the sonar picture, and now the superstructure of the warship leapt into view. The chief explained the mast and sonar, demonstrated some of their capabilities, then moved on.

Jake found himself staring at the joystick that controlled the sub.

He reached for it and found that the image moved in his hand, although he could of course feel nothing. He moved the image with his hand, and the submarine reacted.

"Ooh boy!"

"Sensors in the room tell the computer where the helmets are, where you are looking. Sensors also track the position of the gloves."

"So I can touch and manipulate the controls?"

"All the controls, levers, valves, knobs, switches, the works. We train the crew here in the virtual sim, teach normal and emergency procedures."

The captain led them aft to see the reactor and engineering spaces, then forward through the boat, looking at pipes and valves and tanks and torpedoes and cruise missiles. They didn't go through the hatchways, although they could have; they walked through bulkheads and sealed hatches. The visitors examined the sonar hydrophones, looked at the intricacies of the computers and the ship's electrical systems, played with the photonics mast controls, inspected the radio room and torpedo room, walked through the solid mass of cruise missiles standing erect in their launchers, visited the galley and captain's cabin.

Finally their guide suggested they take off their helmets. The submarine disappeared, and the five of them were again standing in the large, dark room. Jake Grafton fought back the urge to reach out to feel for the submarine that had surrounded him just seconds ago.

Janos Ilin had his feet braced wide apart. His hands did move, probably involuntarily, trying to find something to restore his sense of balance.

"Hot damn," muttered Toad Tarkington.

"And that, gentlemen," said Captain Piechowski, "is the submarine the hijackers stole."

"Did you see all those computer consoles in the control room?" Toad Tarkington whispered to his boss.

"Yeah," Jake whispered back. One thing was crystal clear: Someone who knew a lot more than an ad hoc group of German and Russian submariners could learn in a couple of weeks had gone to sea with them in America. The systems would require highly trained experts to operate, and the Russian, Kolnikov, must have known that.

So who was that person?

When the cabdriver dropped Zelda Hudson in front of an old brick warehouse in Newark, he was dubious. "You sure about this address, lady?"

"It's the new economy," she replied, "rising from the ashes of the old."

"Ashes still look pretty cold to me," he said, and got out of the car to help get her bag from the trunk and pull out the airport handle.

After she paid him she said, "Wait for a minute until I get in."

The door was the tip-off that this building was not a crumbling wreck like the others that stood nearby. It was solid steel, inset so that it could not be jimmied, with an inletted cylinder lock. Of course there were no windows on the ground floor; the ones on the second, third, and fourth were covered with wire mesh and steel bars. Small video cameras were mounted unobtrusively high on the corners of the building.

The number of the building was above the door, in peeling paint. Beside the door, bolted to the brick of the building, was a sign that said, in inch-high black letters, "Hudson Security Services." Under the sign was a telephone. She picked it up, pushed the button, waited until it buzzed. "Hi, it's me."

The door unlatched with an audible click.

Zelda Hudson pulled the door open, waved to the cabdriver, and pulled her bag in. She made sure the door locked behind her. To her right was a wire-cage elevator. She used the lever to close the door, then pushed the Up button.

The first three stories of the old warehouse were open, with a magnificent high ceiling supported by a latticework of massive oak beams and trusses, barely visible amid the dusty gloom and cobwebs. The only light was from the dirty, painted-over windows. The thought struck Zelda Hudson, not for the first time, that this building could be renovated into a marvelous place, with lights and modern furniture and walls of glass bricks. She could almost hear the sound system playing jazz and the party laughter.

The top floor, "world headquarters" of Hudson Security Services, looked lived in. Lights hanging from the wooden beams illuminated rows of wooden tables sitting on sawhorses. Covering the tables were computers, monitors, and printers. Servers, storage units, and backup power supplies sat on the floor wherever they would fit. Shelves held boxes of software, developers' kits, and manuals. Over, under, around, and through the clutter ran a veritable jungle of wires bundled with network and power cables. Piles of pizza boxes and mountains of computer paper overflowed from gray plastic garbage cams. Mounted high in the corners of the room were television monitors, which just now were tuned to CNN, MSNBC, and two other twenty-four-hour news networks.

In one corner sat a large caged system with racks of tapes and storage disks housing samples of almost every computer bug extant, as well as Hudson Security's own proprietary designs — Zelda's "unfair competitive advantage," as she liked to say. Ideas and codes came from every source, acquired legitimately from libraries used by the international security industry, from hacking into government activities, and from stealing from some of the most creative elements of the hacker community.

Another system quietly hummed away in another corner, logging every network, computer, and software event seen by the SuperAegis contractor's own security systems. Algorithms would analyze those events without human involvement, searching for irregular activity, and setting off alarms when something was detected. Hundreds of thousands of these recorded events would eventually comprise the "audit trail" for postevent analysis of security breaches and routine security assessments.

Electronically projected on a recently painted section of wall in front of the workstations were duplicates of the very displays watched by the targeted contractor's security managers, complete with the highlighted yellow and red alarms that drew instant attention to suspicious activity.

That was almost the only vertical area within six feet of the floor not covered with politically incorrect posters and cartoons attacking anything and everything, but especially management, inelegant programming, and advertisements hyping "secure systems" that had been broken into and exploited.

Amid this clutter three people sat on folding chairs staring at the television monitors, two women and a man. They wore jeans or shorts, T-shirts, one of the women was smoking, all were young. Zelda's crew. On a normal workday there were a dozen.

No one paid any attention to her as she walked to her desk. She looked at the television to see what had them captivated. For the fifty-second time, CNN was running the video from the Boston television station helicopter. She was just in time to see Kolnikov squirt a burst at the camera.

"Someone hijacked a submarine yesterday morning," the young man told Zelda. He was a tall, pale, intense youth with a scraggly beard. His name was Zip Vance. He had a Ph.D. from Stanford and an IQ close to two hundred. "It's still on every channel," he added. "Been on since yesterday morning."

The four of them watched the coverage for another hour. Little was said. Finally the women said good-bye and took the elevator, leaving Vance alone with Zelda.

"The White House asked for a news hold in the name of national security. The station in Boston told them hell no and put it on the air."

"And the navy?"

"They're moving heaven and earth to get assets out there to find it. So far no luck."

"What do you think?"

Zip Vance grinned. "I think we pulled it off," he said and laughed aloud.

Zelda Hudson joined him in laughter. After a bit, Zip went to the refrigerator in the far corner and returned with a cold bottle of champagne. "I bought this to celebrate," he said, and made a production of popping the cork, which shot away. He didn't bother retrieving it. As they sipped champagne from Styrofoam coffee cups, Zelda kicked off her shoes, put her feet up on her overnight bag, and tousled her long hair.

God, she felt sooo good!

"We did it!" she said, and laughed again.