Cyclops

LeBaron smiled tightly. "Not a title I'm fond of."

"You're not an easy man to locate."

"My wife has told me how you saved her life. I wish to thank you." "According to General Velikov, the rescue is only temporary"

LeBaron's smile vanished. "What did he tell you?"

"He said, and I quote, `You all have to die.' "

"Did he give you a reason?"

"The story he handed me was that we had stumbled into a most sensitive Soviet military installation."

A pensive look crossed LeBaron's face. Then he said, "Velikov was lying. Originally this place was built to gather communications data from microwave transmissions around the U.S., but the rapid development of eavesdropping satellites made it obsolete before it was completed."

"How do you know that?"

"They've allowed me the run of the island. Something impossible if the area was highly secret. I've seen no evidence of sophisticated communications equipment or antennas anywhere. I've also become friendly with a number of Cuban visitors who let slip bits and pieces of information. The best I can figure is that this place is like a businessmen's retreat, a hideaway where corporate executives go to discuss and plan marketing strategy for the coming year. Only here, high-ranking Soviet and Cuban officials meet to create political and military policy."

It was difficult for Pitt to concentrate. His left kidney hurt like hell and he felt drowsy. He staggered over to the commode. His urine was pink with blood, but not very much, and he didn't feel the damage was serious.

"We had best not continue this conversation," said Pitt. "My cell is probably bugged."

LeBaron shook his head. "No, I don't think so. This level of the compound wasn't constructed for maximum security detention because there is no way out. It's like the old French penal colony at Devil's Island-- impossible to escape from. The Cuban mainland is over twenty miles away. The water teems with sharks, and the currents sweep out to sea. In the other direction the nearest landfall is in the Bahamas, a hundred and ten miles to the northeast. If you're thinking of escape, my advice is to forget it."

Pitt gingerly settled back on his bed. "Have you seen the others?"

"Yes.

"Their condition?"

"Giordino and Gunn are together in a room thirty feet down the corridor. Because of their injuries they've been spared a visit to room number six. Until now, they've been treated quite well."

"Jessie?"

LeBaron's face tensed very slightly. "General Velikov has graciously allowed us a VIP room to ourselves. We're even permitted to dine with the officers."

"I'm glad to hear you've both been spared a trip to room six."

"Yes, Jessie and I are lucky our treatment is humanly decent."

LeBaron's tone seemed unconvincing, his words spoken in a flat monotone. There was no light in his eyes. This wasn't the man who was famous for his audacious and freewheeling adventures and flamboyant fiascos in and out of the business world. He seemed completely out of character with the prodigious dynamo whose advice was sought by financiers and world leaders. He struck Pitt as a beaten farmer, forced off his land by an unscrupulous banker.

"And the status of Buck Caesar and Joe Cavilla?" Pitt asked.

LeBaron shrugged sadly. "Buck eluded his guards during an exercise period outside the compound and tried to swim for it, using the trunk of a fallen palm tree as a raft. His body, or what was left after the sharks were through with it, drifted onto the beach three days later. As for Joe, after several sessions in room six, he went into a coma and died. A great pity. There was no reason for him not to cooperate with General Velikov."

"You've never paid a visit to Foss Gly?"

"No, I've been spared the experience. Why, I can't say. Perhaps General Velikov thinks I'm too valuable as a bargaining tool."

"So I've been elected," said Pitt grimly.

"I wish I could help you, but General Velikov ignored all my pleas to save Joe. He is equally cold in your case."

Pitt idly found himself wondering why LeBaron always referred to Velikov with due respect to the Russian's military rank. "I don't understand the brutal interrogation. What was to be gained by killing Cavilla? What do they hope to get out of me?"

"The truth," LeBaron said simply.

Pitt gave him a sharp look. "The truth as I know it is, you and your team searched for the Cyclops and vanished. Your wife and the rest of us went after the shipwreck in hopes we could get a clue as to what happened to you. Tell me where it rings false."

LeBaron wiped newly formed sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. "No use in arguing with me, Dirk, I'm not the one who doesn't believe you. The Russian mentality thinks there is a lie behind every truth."

"You've talked with Jessie. Surely she explained how we happened to find the Cyclops and land on the island."

LeBaron visibly winced at Pitt's mention of the Cyclops. He suddenly seemed to recoil from Pitt. He picked up his canvas bag and pounded on the door. It swung open almost immediately and he was gone.

Foss Gly was waiting when LeBaron entered room six. He sat there, a brooding evil, a human murder machine immune to suffering or death. He smelled of decayed meat.

LeBaron stood trembling and silently handed over the canvas bag. Gly rummaged inside and drew out a small recorder and rewound the tape. He listened for a few seconds to satisfy himself that the voices were distinct.

"Did he confide in you?" asked Gly.

"Yes, he made no attempt to hide anything."

"Is he working for the CIA?"

"I don't believe so. His landing on the island was merely an accident."

Gly came from behind the desk and grabbed the loose skin on the side of LeBaron's waist, squeezing and twisting in the same motion. The publisher's eyes bulged, gasping as the agony pierced his body. He slowly sank to his knees on the concrete.

Gly bent down until he stared with frozen malignancy scant inches from LeBaron's eyes. "Do not screw with me, scum," he said menacingly, "or your sweet wife will be the next one who pays with a mutilated body."

<<32>>

Ira Hagen threw Hudson and Eriksen a curve and bypassed Houston. There was no need for the trip. The computer on board his jet told him all he needed to know. A trace of the Texas phone number in General Fisher's black book led to the office of the director of NASAs Flight Operations, Irwin Mitchell, alias Irwin Dupuy. A check of another name on the list, Steve Larson, turned up Steve Busche, who was director of NASAs Flight Research Center in California.

Nine little Indians, and then there were four. . .

Hagen's tally of the "inner core" now read:

Raymond LeBaron....Last reported in Cuba.

General Mark Fisher....Colorado Springs.

Clyde Booth....Albuquerque.

Irwin Mitchell....Houston.

Steve Busche....California.

Dean Beagle (?)....Philadelphia. (ID and location not proven)

Daniel Klein (?)....Washington, D.C. (ditto)

Leonard Hudson....Maryland. (location not proven)

Gunnar Eriksen....Maryland. (ditto)

His deadline was only sixty-six hours away. He had kept the President advised of his progress and warned him that his investigation would be cutting it thin. Already, the President was putting together a trusted team to gather up members of the "inner core" and transport them to a location the President had yet to specify. Hagen's ace card was the proximity of the last three names on the list. He was gambling they were all sitting in the same basket.

Hagen altered his routine and did not waste time renting a car when his plane landed at Philadelphia International Airport. His pilot had called ahead, and a Lincoln limousine was waiting when he stepped down the stairway. During the twenty-four-mile drive along the Schuylkill River to Valley Forge State Park, he worked on his report to the President and formulated a plan to speed the discovery of Hudson and Eriksen, whose joint phone number turned out to be a disconnected number in an empty house near Washington.

He closed his briefcase as the car rolled past the park where George Washington's army had camped during the winter of 1777-78. Many of the trees still bore golden leaves and the rolling hills had yet to turn brown. The driver turned onto a road that wound around a hill overlooking the park and was bordered on both sides by old stone walls.

The historic Horse and Artillery Inn was built in 1790 as a stagecoach stop and tavern for colonial travelers and sat amid sweeping lawns and a grove of shade trees. It was a picturesque three-story building with blue shutters and a stately front porch. The inn was an original example of early limestone farm architecture and bore a plaque designating it as listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Hagen left the limousine, climbed the steps to the porch furnished with old-fashioned rockers, and passed into a lobby filled with antique furniture clustered around a cozy fireplace containing a crackling log. In the dining room he was shown to a table by a girl dressed in colonial costume.

"Is Dean around?" he asked casually.

"Yes, sir," answered the girl brightly, "The Senator is in the kitchen. Would you like to see him?"

"I'd be grateful if he could spare me a few minutes."

"Would you like to see a menu in the meantime?"

"Yes, please."

Hagen scanned the menu and found the list of early American dishes to be quite tempting. But his mind didn't really dwell on food. Was it possible, he thought, that Dean Beagle was Senator Dean Porter, who once chaired the powerful Foreign Relations Committee and narrowly lost a presidential primary race to George McGovern? A member of the Senate for nearly thirty years, Porter had left an indelible mark on American politics before he had retired two years ago.

A baldheaded man in his late seventies walked through a swinging door from the kitchen, wiping his hands on the lower edge of an apron. An unimpressive figure with a grandfatherly face. He stopped at Hagen's table and looked down without expression. "You wish to see me?"

Hagen came to his feet. "Senator Porter."

"Yes.

"My name is Ira Hagen. I'm a restaurateur myself, specializing in American dishes, but not nearly as creative as your recipes."

"Leo told me you might walk through my door," Porter said bluntly.

"Won't you please sit down."

"You staying for dinner, Mr. Hagen?"

"That was my plan."

"Then permit me to offer you a bottle of local wine on the house."

"Thank you."

Porter called over his waitress and gave the order. Then he turned back to Hagen and looked him solidly in the eye. "How many of us have you tagged?"

"You make six," Hagen answered.

"You're lucky you didn't go to Houston. Leo had a reception committee waiting for you."

"Were you a member of the `inner core' from the beginning, Senator?"

"I came on board in 1964 and helped set up the undercover financing."

"I compliment you on a first-rate job."

"You're working for the President, I take it."

"Correct."

"What does he intend to do with us?"

"Eventually hand out the honors you all so richly deserve. But his main concern is stopping your people on the moon from starting a war."

Porter paused when the waitress brought over a bottle of chilled white wine. He expertly pulled the cork and poured one glass. He took a large sip and swished the wine around in his mouth and nodded. "Quite good." Then he filled Hagen's glass.

"Fifteen years ago, Mr. Hagen, our government made a stupid mistake and gave away our space technology in a sucker play that was heralded as a `handshake in space'. If you remember, it was a much publicized joint venture between American and Russian space programs that called for our Apollo astronauts to team up and meet with the Soyuz cosmonauts in orbit. I was against it from the beginning, but the event occurred during the détente years and my voice was only a cry in the wilderness. I didn't trust the Russians then and I don't trust them now. Their whole space program was built on political propaganda and damned little technical achievement. We exposed the Russians to American technology that was twenty years ahead of theirs. After all this time Soviet space hardware is still crap next to anything we've created. We blew four hundred million dollars on a scientific giveaway. The fact we kissed the Russians' asses while they reamed ours only proves Barnum's moral about `one born every minute.' I made up my mind to never let it happen again. That's why I won't stand dumb and let the Russians steal the fruits of the Jersey Colony. If they were technically superior to us, there is no doubt in my mind they would bar us from the moon."

"So you agree with Leo that the first Russians to land on the moon must be eliminated."

"They'll do everything in their power to grab every scientific windfall from our moon base they can touch. Face reality, Mr. Hagen. You don't see our secret agents buying Russian high technology and smuggling it to the West. The Soviets have to rely on our progress because they're too stupid and nearsighted to create it on their own."

"You don't have a very high regard for the Russians," said Hagen.

"When the Kremlin decides to build a better world rather than divide and dictate to it, I might change my mind."

"Will you help me find Leo?"

"No," the senator said simply.

"The least the `inner core' can do is listen while the President pleads his case."

"Is that why he sent you?"

"He hoped I could find all of you while there is still time."

"Time for what?"

"In less than four days the first Soviet cosmonauts land on the moon. If your Jersey Colony people murder them their government might feel justified in shooting down a space shuttle or the space lab."

The senator looked at Hagen, his eyes turning to ice. "An interesting conjecture. I guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

<<33>>

Pitt used the catch from his watchband as a screwdriver to remove the screws holding the hinges to the wardrobe. He then slid the flat side of one hinge between the door latch and the strike. It was a near perfect fit. Now all he had to do was wait until the guard showed up with his dinner.

He yawned and lay on the bed, his thoughts turning to Raymond LeBaron. His image of the famous publisher-tycoon was chipped and cracked. LeBaron did not measure up to his hard reputation. He gave the appearance of a man who was running scared. Not once did he quote Jessie, Al, or Rudi. Surely they would have relayed a message of encouragement. There was something very fishy about LeBaron's actions.

He sat up at the sound of the door latch turning. The guard entered, holding a tray in one hand. He held it out to Pitt, who set it on his lap.

"What gourmet delight have you brought this evening?" Pitt inquired cheerfully.

The guard gave a distasteful twist of his lips and shrugged indifferently. Pitt couldn't blame him. The tray held a small loaf of doughy, tasteless bread and a bowl of god-awful chicken stew.

Pitt was hungry, but more important he needed to keep his strength. He forced the slop down, somehow managing to keep from gagging. Finally he passed the tray back to the guard, who silently took it and then pulled the door closed as he stepped into the corridor.

Pitt leaped from the bed, dropped to his knees, and slipped one of the wardrobe hinges between the latch and the doorjamb, preventing the bolt from passing through the strike into the catch. In almost the same motion he pressed his shoulder against the door and tapped the second hinge on it to imitate the click of the latch snapping into place.

As soon as he heard the guard's footsteps fade down the corridor he eased open the door slightly, peeled a piece of tape from a bandage covering a cut on his arm, and stuck it over the latch shaft so the door would remain unlocked.

Removing his sandals and stuffing them into his waistband, he eased the door closed, taped a hair across the crack, and soundlessly padded down the empty corridor, pressing his body close against the wall. There was no sign of any guards or security equipment.

Pitt's first goal was to find his friends and plan an escape, but twenty yards down the corridor he discovered a narrow, circular emergency shaft with a ladder that led upward into darkness. He decided to see where it went. The climb seemed endless and he realized it was taking him past the upper levels of the underground facility. At last his groping hands touched a wooden cover above his head. He leaned his upper back against it and slowly applied pressure. The cover creaked loudly as it lifted.

Pitt sucked in his breath and froze. Five minutes came and went and nothing happened, nobody shouted, and when he finally eased the cover high enough, he found himself looking out across the concrete floor of a garage containing several military and construction vehicles. The structure was large, eighty by a hundred feet and perhaps fifteen feet to a ceiling supported by row of steel girders. The parking area was dark, but there was an office at one end whose interior was brightly lit. Two Russians in Army fatigues were sitting at a table playing chess.

Pitt snaked from the exit shaft, skirted behind the parked vehicles, and crawled under the windows of the office until he reached the main entry door. Coming this far from his cell was surprisingly easy but now defeat had arrived where he least expected it. The door was electric. There was no way he could activate it without alerting the chess players.

Staying in the shadows, he moved along the walls searching for another entrance. In his mind he knew it was a lost cause. If this building was on the surface it was probably another covered mound with the large vehicle entry door as the only means of getting in and out.

He made a complete circuit of the walls and returned to the spot where he started. Disheartened, he was about to give up when he looked upward and spotted an air vent mounted on the roof. It appeared large enough to squeeze through.

Pitt quietly climbed on top of a truck, reached over his head, and pulled himself onto a support girder. Then he inched his way about thirty feet to the vent and squirmed his way to the outside. The rush of fresh, humid air felt invigorating. He guessed that the dying wind of the hurricane was only blowing at about twenty miles an hour. The sky was only partially overcast and there was a quarter moon that provided enough visibility to vaguely make out objects within a hundred feet.

His next problem was to get beyond the high wall enclosing the compound. The guardhouse by the gate was manned, so there would be no repeat of his entry two nights ago.

In the end, luck came to his aid once again. He walked along a small drainage culvert that passed under the wall. He ducked under but was brought up short by a row of iron bars. Fortunately they were badly rusted from the tropical salt air and he easily bent them apart.

Three minutes later Pitt was well clear of the installation, jogging through the palm trees lining the sunken road. There were no signs of guards or electronic surveillance cameras and the low shrubs helped conceal his silhouette against the light-colored sand. He ran at an angle toward the beach until he was up against the electrified fence.

Eventually, he came to the section damaged by the hurricane. It had been repaired, but he knew it was the correct spot because the fallen palm tree that had caused the break was lying nearby. He dropped to his knees and began scooping the sand from under the fence. The deeper he dug the more the walls of his trench kept sliding and filling in the bottom. Nearly an hour passed before he formed a crater deep enough for him to wiggle on his back through to the other side.

His shoulder and kidney ached and he was sweating like a soaked sponge. He tried to retrace his steps to the landing site by the rocks on the beach. None of the landscape seemed the same under the dim light of the moon, not that he could recall how it looked when beaten flat by hurricane winds and with his eyes mostly closed.

Pitt wandered up and down the beach, probing between the rock formations. He was almost ready to give up and quit when his eye caught the moon's glint on an object in the sand. His hands reached out and touched the fuel tank of the inflatable boat's outboard motor. The shaft and propeller were buried in the sand about thirty feet from the high-tide line. He dug away the damp sand until he could pull the motor free. Then he hoisted it over his shoulder and began walking down the beach away from the Russian compound.

Pitt had no idea where he was going or where he was going to hide the motor. His feet dug into the sand and the burden of sixty pounds made it tough going. He had to stop every few hundred yards and rest.

He had walked about two miles when he met a weed-covered road that passed through several rows of deserted and decaying houses. Most of them were little more than shacks and they nestled around a small lagoon. It must have once been a fishing village, Pitt thought. He could not know it was one of the settlements whose residents had been forcefully uprooted to the mainland during the Soviet takeover.

He gratefully shrugged off the motor and began rummaging in the houses. The walls and roofing were made from corrugated iron sheets and scrap wood. Little of the furnishings remained. He found a boat pulled up on the beach, but any hope of using it was crushed. The bottom was rotted away.

Pitt considered building a raft, but it would take too long, and he couldn't run the risk of putting together something under the double handicap of working in darkness with no tools. The end result would not offer much peace of mind in rough water.

The luminous dial on his watch read 1:30. If he wanted to find and talk to Giordino and Gunn, he'd have to get a move on. He wondered what to do about fuel for the outboard motor, but there was no time to search now. He calculated it would take him a good hour to regain his cell.

He found an old cast-iron bathtub lying outside a collapsed shed. He placed the outboard motor on the ground and turned the tub upside down over it. Then he threw some tires and a rotting mattress on top and walked backward, brushing sand over his footprints with a palm frond until he stood a good seventy-five feet away.

Sneaking back in went more smoothly than sneaking out. All he had to remember was to restraighten the bars in the culvert. Belatedly, he wondered why the island compound wasn't crawling with security guards, but then it came to him that the area was constantly overflown by American spy planes whose cameras had the uncanny ability to produce photographs that could read the name on a golf ball from ninety thousand feet.

The Soviets must have figured it was better to trade heavy security for the appearance of a lifeless, abandoned island. Cuban dissidents fleeing Castro's government would ignore it and any Cuban exile commandos would certainly bypass it for the mainland. With no one landing and no one escaping, the Russians had nothing to guard against.

Pitt dropped through the air ventilator and stealthily made his way back across the garage and down the exit shaft. The corridor was still quiet. He checked his door and saw the hair was still in place.

His plan now was to find Gunn and Giordino. But he didn't want to crowd his luck. Although their imprisonment was lax, there was always the problem of a chance discovery. If Pitt was caught outside his cell now, it would spell the end. Velikov and Gly were sure to keep him tightly locked away if they didn't outright execute him.

He felt he had to risk it. There might not be another opportunity. Any sound echoed throughout the concrete corridor. He would be able to hear footsteps in plenty of time to regain his cell if he didn't probe too far.

The room next to his was a paint locker. He searched it for a few minutes but found nothing useful. Two rooms across the corridor were empty. The third held plumbing supplies. Then he unlatched another door and found himself staring into the surprised faces of Gunn and Giordino. He quickly slipped inside, careful to keep the door's bolt from engaging.

"Dirk!" Giordino cried.

"Keep it down," Pitt whispered.

"Good to see you, buddy."

"Have you checked this place for ears?" Pitt asked.

"Thirty seconds after they pitched us in," answered Gunn. "The room is clean."

It was then Pitt saw the dark shades of purple around Giordino's eyes. "I see you've met with Foss Gly in room six."

"We had an interesting conversation. Pretty much one-sided, though."

Pitt looked at Gunn but saw no marks. "What about you?"

"He's too smart to beat my brains out," said Gunn with a taut smile. He pointed to his broken ankle. The cast was gone. "He gets his kicks by twisting my foot."

"What about Jessie?"

Gunn and Giordino exchanged grim looks. "We fear the worst," said Gunn. "Al and I heard a woman's screams late in the afternoon as we stepped out of the elevator."

"We were coming from an interrogation by that slimy bastard Velikov."

"Their system," explained Pitt. "The general uses the velvet glove and then turns you over to Gly for the iron fist treatment." He angrily paced the tiny room. "We've got to find Jessie and get the hell out of here."

"How?" asked Giordino. "LeBaron has paid a visit and made a point of stressing the hopelessness of escaping the island."

"I don't trust rich and reckless Raymond as far as I can throw this building," said Pitt acidly. "I think Gly has beaten him into jelly."

"Agreed."

Gunn twisted to his side in his bunk, favoring the broken ankle. "How do you intend on leaving the island?"

"I found and stashed the outboard motor for insurance if I can't steal a boat."

"What?" Giordino stared at Pitt incredulously. "You walked out of here?"

"Not exactly a garden stroll," Pitt replied. "But I scouted an escape route to the beach."

"Stealing a boat is impossible," Gunn said flatly.

"You know something I don't."

"My smattering of Russian came in handy. I've begun developing a prison grapevine through the guards. I was also able to glean a few details from Velikov's papers in his office. One item of interesting information is that the island is supplied at night by submarine."

"Why so complicated?" muttered Giordino, "Seems to me surface transportation would be more efficient."

"That calls for docking facilities that can be seen from the air," explained Gunn. "Whatever is going on around here, they want to keep it damned quiet."

"I'll second that," said Pitt. "The Russians have gone to a lot of work to make the island look deserted."

"No wonder it shook them up when we walked through the front door," Giordino said thoughtfully. "That explains the interrogation and torture."

"All the more reason to make a break and save our lives."

"And alert our intelligence agencies," Gunn added.

"When do you plan to cut out?" asked Giordino.

"Tomorrow night, right after the guard brings dinner."

Gun gave Pitt a long, hard stare. "You'll have to go it alone, Dirk."

"We came together, we'll leave together."

Giordino shook his head. "You can't carry Jessie and us on your back too."

"He's right," said Gunn. "Al and I are in no condition to crawl fifty feet. Better we stay than foul your chances. Take the LeBarons and swim like hell for the States."

"I can't risk taking Raymond LeBaron into our confidence. I'm positive he would inform on us. He lied up a storm claiming the island is nothing but a businessmen's retreat."

Gunn shook his head in disbelief. "Whoever heard of a retreat run by the military that tortured its guests."

"Forget LeBaron." Giordino's eyes went black with fury. "But for God's sake, save Jessie before that son of a bitch Gly kills her."

Pitt stood there confused. "I can't go off and leave you two behind to die."

"If you don't," said Gunn gravely, "you'll die too, and no one will be left alive to tell what's happening here."

<<34>>

The mood was somber but softened by the long gap in time. No more than one hundred people had assembled for the early morning ceremony. In spite of the President's presence, only one network bothered to send a television crew. The small crowd stood quietly in a secluded corner of Rock Creek Park and listened to the conclusion of the President's brief address.

". . . and so we have gathered this morning to pay belated tribute to the eight hundred American men who died when their troopship, the Leopoldville, was torpedoed off the port of Cherbourg, France, on Christmas Eve of 1944."

"Never has such a wartime tragedy been denied the honor it deserved. Never has such a tragedy been so completely ignored."

He paused and nodded toward a veiled statue. The shroud was pulled away, revealing a solitary figure of a soldier, standing brave with grim determination in the eyes, wearing a GI overcoat and full field gear with an M-1 carbine slung over one shoulder. There was a pained dignity about the life-sized bronze fighting man, heightened by the wave of water that lapped around his ankles.

After a minute of applause, the President, who had served in Korea as a lieutenant in an artillery company of the Marine Corps, began pumping hands with survivors of the Leopoldville and other veterans of the Panther Division. As he worked his way toward the White House limousine he suddenly stiffened when he shook the hand of the tenth man in line.

"A moving speech, Mr. President," said a recognizable voice. "May we talk in private?"

Leonard Hudson's lips were spread in an ironic smile. He bore no resemblance to Reggie Salazar the caddy. His hair was thick and gray and matched a Satan-style beard. He wore a wool turtleneck sweater under a tweed jacket. The flannel slacks were a dark coffee color and the English leather shoes were highly polished. He looked as though he had stepped out of a cognac ad in Town & Country magazine.

The President turned and spoke to a Secret Service agent who stood less than a foot from his elbow. "This man will be accompanying me back to the White House."

"A great honor, sir," said Hudson.

The President stared at him for a moment and decided to carry on the charade. His face broke into a friendly grin. "I can't miss an opportunity to swap war stories with an old buddy, can I, Joe?"

The presidential motorcade turned onto Massachusetts Avenue, red lights flashing, sirens cutting the rush-hour traffic sounds. Neither man spoke for nearly two minutes. At last Hudson made the opening play.

"Have you recalled where we first knew each other?"

"No," the President lied. "You don't look the least bit familiar to me."

"I suppose you meet so many people. . ."

"Frankly, I've had more important matters on my mind."

Hudson brushed aside the President's seeming hostility. "Like throwing me in prison?"

"I thought something more along the lines of a sewer."

"You're not the spider, Mr. President, and I'm not the fly. It may look like I've walked into a trap, in this case a car surrounded by an army of Secret Service bodyguards, but my peaceful exit is guaranteed."

"The old phony bomb trick again?"

"A different twist. A plastic explosive is attached to the bottom of a table in one of the city's four-star restaurants. Precisely eight minutes ago Senator Adrian Gorman and Secretary of State Douglas Oates sat down at that table for a breakfast meeting."

"You're bluffing."

"Maybe, but if I'm not, my capture would hardly be worth the carnage inside a crowded restaurant."

"What do you want this time?"

"Call off your bloodhound."

"Make sense, for Christ's sake."

"Get Ira Hagen off my back while he can still breathe."

"Who?"

"Ira Hagen, an old school chum of yours who used to be with the justice Department."

The President stared unseeing out the window as if recalling. "Seems like a lifetime since I've talked to Ira."

"No need to lie, Mr. President. You hired him to track down the `inner core.' "

"I what?" The President acted genuinely surprised. Then he laughed. "You forget who I am. With one phone call I could have the entire capabilities of the FBI, CIA, and at least five other intelligence services on your ass."

"Then why haven't you?"

"Because I've questioned my science advisers and some pretty respected people in our space program. They agreed unanimously. The Jersey Colony is a pipedream. You talk a good scheme, Joe, but you're nothing but a fraud who sells hallucinations."

Hudson was caught off base. "I swear to God, Jersey Colony is a reality."

"Yes, it sits midway between Oz and Shangri-la."

"Believe me, Vince, when our first colonists return from the moon, your announcement will fire the imagination of the world."

The President ignored the presumptuous use of his first name. "What you'd really like me to announce is a make-believe battle with the Russians over the moon. Just what is your angle? Are you some kind of Hollywood publicity flack who's trying to hype a space movie, or are you an escaped mental patient?"

Hudson could not suppress a flash of fury. "You idiot!" he snapped. "You can't turn your back on the greatest scientific achievement in history."

"Watch me." The President picked up the car phone. "Roger, pull up and stop. My guest is getting out."

On the other side of the glass divider, the Secret Service chauffeur raised one hand from the wheel and nodded in understanding. Then he notified the other vehicles of the President's order. A minute later the motorcade turned onto a quiet residential side street and stopped at the curb.

The President reached over and opened the door. "The end of the line, Joe. I don't know what your fantasy is with Ira Hagen, but if I hear of his death, I'll be the first to testify at your trial that you threatened his life. That is, of course, if your execution hasn't already been carried out for committing mass murder in a swank restaurant."

In an angry daze, Hudson slowly climbed from the limousine. He hesitated, bent half in, half out of the car. "You're making a terrible mistake," he said accusingly.

"It won't be a new experience," the President said, dismissing him.

The President leaned back in his seat and smiled smugly to himself. A masterful performance, he thought. Hudson was off balance and building barricades on the wrong streets. Moving up the unveiling of the Leopoldville memorial by a week was a shrewd move. An inconvenience to the veterans who attended perhaps, but a boon to an old spook like Hagen.

Hudson stood on a grassy parkway and watched the motorcade grow smaller before turning on the next cross street, his mind confused and disoriented. "Goddamned mud-brained bureaucrat!" he shouted in frustration.

A woman walking her dog on the sidewalk gave him a distasteful look indeed.

An unmarked Ford van eased to a stop, and Hudson climbed inside. The interior was plush with leather captain's chairs spaced around a highly polished redwood table. Two men, impeccably dressed in business suits, looked at him expectantly as he slipped tiredly into a chair.

"How did it go?" asked one.

"The dumb bastard threw me out," he said in exasperation. "Claims he hasn't seen Ira Hagen in years and couldn't care less if we killed him and blew up the restaurant."

"I'm not surprised," said an intense-looking man with a square red face and a condor nose. "The guy is pragmatic as hell."

Gunnar Eriksen sat with a dead pipe stuck between his lips. "What else?" he asked.

"Said he believed the Jersey Colony was a hoax."

"Did he recognize you?"

"I don't think so. He still called me Joe."

"Could be an act."

"He was pretty convincing."

Eriksen turned to the other man. "How do you read it?"

"Hagen is a puzzle. I've closely monitored the President and haven't detected any contact between them."

"You don't think Hagen was brought in by any of the intelligence directors?" asked Eriksen.

"Certainly not through ordinary channels. The only meeting the President has had with any intelligence people was a briefing by Sam Emmett of the FBI. I couldn't get my hands on the report, but it had to do with the three bodies found in LeBaron's blimp. Beyond that, he's done nothing."

"No, he's most certainly done something." Hudson's voice was quiet but positive. "I fear we've underestimated his shrewdness."

"In what way?"

"He knew I would make contact again and warn him to call off Hagen."

"What brought you to that conclusion?" asked Condor Nose.

"Hagen," replied Hudson. "No good undercover operative calls attention to himself. And Hagen was one of the best. He had to have a good reason for advertising his presence by that phone call to General Fisher and his little face-to-face chat with Senator Porter."

"But what was the President's purpose in forcing our hand if he made no demands, no requests?" asked Eriksen.

Hudson shook his head. "That's what scares me, Gunnar. I can't see for the life of me what he had to gain."

Unnoticed in the downtown traffic, an old dusty camper with Georgia license plates kept a discreet distance behind the van. In the back, Ira Hagen sat at a small dining table with earphones and a microphone clamped to his head and uncorked a bottle of Martin Ray Cabernet Sauvignon. He let the opened bottle sit while he made an adjustment with the voice-tone knob on a microwave receiving set that was plugged into reel-to-reel tape decks.

Then he raised his headset to expose one ear. "They're fading. Close up a bit."

The driver, wearing a fake scraggly beard and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap, replied without looking back. "I had to drop off when a taxi cut in front of me. I'll make up the distance in the next block."

"Keep them in sight until they park."

"What's going down, a drug bust?"

"Nothing that exotic," replied Hagen. "They're suspected of working a traveling poker game."

"Big deal," grunted the driver without realizing the pun.

"Gambling is still illegal."

"So is prostitution and it's a helluva lot more fun."

"Just keep your eyes glued on the van," Hagen said in an official tone. "And don't let it get more than a block away."

The radio crackled. "T-bone, this is Porterhouse.'

"I hear you, Porterhouse."

"We have Sirloin in visual but would prefer a lower altitude. If he should happen to merge with another similar-colored vehicle under trees or behind a building, we could lose him."

Hagen turned and stared upward from the camper's rear window at the helicopter above. "What's your height?"

"The limit for aircraft over this section of the city is thirteen hundred feet. But that's only half the problem. Sirloin is heading for the Capitol mall. We're not allowed to fly over that area."

"Stand by, Porterhouse. I'll get you an exemption."

Hagen made a call over a cellular telephone and was back to the helicopter pilot in less than a minute. "This is T-bone, Porterhouse. You are cleared for any altitude over the city so long as you do not endanger lives. Do you read?"

"Man, you must carry some kind of heavy weight."

"My boss knows all the right people. Don't take your eyes off Sirloin."

Hagen lifted the lid of an expensive picnic basket from Abercrombie & Fitch and pried open a can of goose liver path. Then he poured the wine and returned to listening in on the conversation ahead.

There was no doubt that Leonard Hudson was one of the men in the van. And Gunnar Eriksen was mentioned by his first name. But the identity of the third man remained a mystery.

Hagen was dogged by an unknown. Eight men of the "inner core" were accounted for, but number nine was still lost in the fog. The men in the van were heading. . . where? What kind of facility housed the headquarters for the Jersey Colony project? A dumb name, the Jersey Colony. What was the significance? Some connection with the state of New Jersey? There must be something that could be comprehended, that might explain how none of the information on the establishment of the moon base ever came to the attention of a high government official. Someone with more power than Hudson or Eriksen had to be the key. The last name on the "inner core" list perhaps.

"This is Porterhouse. Sirloin has turned northeast onto Rhode Island Avenue."

"I copy," answered Hagen.

He spread a map of the District of Columbia on the table and unfolded a map of Maryland. He began tracing a line with a red grease pencil, extending it as they crossed from the District into Prince Georges County. Rhode Island Avenue became U.S. Highway 1 and swung north toward Baltimore.

"Got any idea where they're heading?" asked the driver.

"Not the slightest," replied Hagen. "Unless. . ." he muttered under his breath. The University of Maryland. Not twelve miles from downtown Washington. Hudson and Eriksen would hang close to an academic institution to take advantage of the research facilities.

Hagen spoke into the mike. "Porterhouse, keep a sharp eye. Sirloin may be heading for the university."

"Understood, T-bone."

Five minutes later the van turned off the highway and passed through the small city of College Park. Then after about a mile it pulled into a large shopping center, anchored on both ends by well known department stores. The several acres of parking space were filled with shoppers' cars. All conversation had died inside the van, and Hagen was caught off guard.

"Damn!" Hagen swore.

"Porterhouse," came the voice of the helicopter pilot.

"I read you."

"Sirloin just pulled under a big projection in front of the main entrance. I have no visual contact."

"Wait until he appears again," ordered Hagen, "and then stay on his tail." He rose from the table and stepped behind the driver. "Pull up on his ass."

"I can't. There are at least six cars between him and me."

"Did anybody get out and enter the stores?"

"Hard to tell in the crush of people. But it looked like two, maybe three heads ducked out of the van."

"Did you get a good look at the guy who was picked up in town?" asked Hagen.

"Gray hair and beard. Thin, about five nine. Turtleneck, tweed coat, brown pants. Yeah, I'd recognize him."

"Circle the parking lot and watch for him. He and his pals may be switching cars. I'm going inside the shopping mall."

"Sirloin is moving," announced the helicopter pilot.

"Stick with him, Porterhouse," said Hagen. "I'm going off the air for a while."

"I read you."

Hagen jumped out of the camper and rushed through the crowd of shoppers into the interior mall. It was like looking for three needles hidden inside a straw in a haystack. He knew what Hudson looked like, and he had obtained photographs of Gunnar Eriksen, but either one or both might still be in the van.

Frantically he rushed from store to store, searching the faces, staring at any male head that showed above the mob of female shoppers. Why did it have to be a weekend, he thought. He could have shot a cannon through the mall at this early hour on a weekday and not hit anybody. After nearly an hour of fruitless searching, he went outside and stopped the camper.

"Spot them?" he questioned, knowing the answer.

The driver shook his head. "Takes me almost ten minutes to make a full circuit. The traffic is too thick and most of them drive like zombies when they're looking for a parking space. Your suspects could have easily come out another exit and driven off while I was on the opposite side of the building."

Hagen pounded his fist against the camper in frustration. He had come so close, so damned close, only to stumble at the finish line.

<<35>>

Pitt solved the problem of sleeping without the constant glare from the fluorescent light by simply climbing on top of the wardrobe and disconnecting the tubes. He did not wake up until the guard brought him breakfast. He felt refreshed and dug into the thick gruel as if it were his favorite dish. The guard seemed upset at finding the light fixture dark, but Pitt simply held up his hands in a helpless gesture of ignorance and finished his gruel.

Two hours later he was escorted to General Velikov's office. There was the expected interminable wait to crack his emotional barriers. God, but the Russians were transparent. He played along by pacing the floor and acting nervous.

The next twenty-four hours were, to say the least, critical. He was confident that he could escape the compound again, but he could not predict any new obstacles that might be thrown in his way, or whether he would be capable of physical exertion after another interview with Foss Gly.

There could be no postponement, no falling back. He had to somehow leave the island tonight.

Velikov finally entered the room and studied Pitt for several moments before addressing him. There was a noticeable coldness about the general, an unmistakable toughness in his eyes. He nodded for Pitt to sit on a hard chair that hadn't been in the room during the last meeting. When he spoke, his tone was menacing.

"Will you sign a valid confession to being a spy?"

"If it will make you happy."

"It will not pay you to act clever with me, Mr. Pitt."

Pitt could not contain his anger and it overpowered his common sense. "I do not take kindly to scum who torture women."

Velikov's eyebrows raised. "Explain."

Pitt repeated Gunn's and Giordino's words as though they were his. "Sound carries in concrete hallways. I've heard Jessie LeBaron's screams."

"Have you now?" Velikov brushed at his hair in a practiced gesture. "It seems to me you should see the advantages of cooperating. If you tell me the truth, I might see my way clear to relax the discomfort of your friends."

"You know the truth. That's why you've reached a dead end. Four people have given you identical stories. Doesn't that seem odd to a professional interrogator like yourself? Four people who have been physically tortured in separate sessions, and yet give the same answers to the same questions. The utter lack of depth in the Russian mentality equals your fossilized infatuation with confessions. If I signed a confession for espionage, you'd demand another for crimes against your precious state, followed up with one for spitting on a public sidewalk. Your tactics are as unsophisticated as your architecture and gourmet recipes. One demand comes on the heels of another. The truth? You wouldn't accept the truth if it rose up out of the ground and bit you in the balls."

Velikov sat silent and examined Pitt with the contempt only a Slav could show to a Mongol. "I'll ask you again to cooperate."

"I'm only a marine engineer. I don't know any military secrets."

"My only interest is what your superiors told you about this island and how you came to be here."

"What are the percentages? You've already made it clear my friends and I are to die."

"Perhaps your future can be extended."

"Makes no difference. We've already told you all we know."

Velikov drummed his fingers on the desktop. "You still claim you landed on Cayo Santa Maria purely by chance?"

"I do."

"And you expect me to believe that of all the islands and all the beaches in Cuba Mrs. LeBaron came ashore at the exact spot-- without any prior knowledge, I might add-- where her husband was residing?"

"Frankly, I'd have a tough time believing it too. But that's exactly how it happened."

Velikov glared at Pitt, but he seemed to sense an integrity that he could not bring himself to approve. "I have all the time in the world, Mr. Pitt. I'm convinced you're withholding vital information. We'll talk again when you're not so arrogant." He pushed a button on his desk that summoned the guard. There was a smile on his face, but there was no satisfaction, no hint of pleasure. If anything, the smile was sad.

"You must excuse me for being so abrupt," said Foss Gly. "Experience has taught me that the unexpected produces more effective results than lengthy anticipation."

No word had been spoken when Pitt entered room six. He had taken only one step over the threshold when Gly, who was standing behind the half-opened door, struck him in the small of his back just above the kidney. He gasped in agony and nearly blacked out but somehow remained standing.

"So, Mr. Pitt, now that I have your attention, perhaps there is something you wish to say to me."

"Did anybody ever tell you you're a psycho case?" Pitt muttered through pressed lips.

He saw the fist lashing out, expected it, and rolled with the punch, reeling backward into a wall and melting to the floor, feigning unconsciousness. He tasted the blood inside his mouth and felt a numbness creeping over the left side of his face. He kept his eyes closed and lay limp. He had to feel his way with this sadistic hulk of slime, assess Gly's reaction to answers and attitude, and predict when and where the next blow would strike. There would be no stopping the brutality. His only objective was to survive the interrogation without a crippling injury.

Gly went over to a dirty washbasin, filled a bucket of water, and splashed it on Pitt. "Come now, Mr. Pitt. If I'm any judge of men, you can take a punch better than that."

Pitt struggled to his hands and knees, spit blood on the cement floor, and groaned convincingly, almost pitiable. "I can't tell you any more than I already have," he mumbled.

Gly picked him up as if he were a small child and dropped him in a chair. Out of the corner of one eye Pitt caught Gly's right fist coming at him in a vicious swing. He rode the impact as best he could, catching the blow just above the cheekbone under the temple. For a few seconds he absorbed the stunning pain and then pretended to pass out again.

Another bucket of water and he went through his moaning routine. Gly leaned down until they were face to face. "Who are you working for?"

Pitt raised his hands and clutched his throbbing head. "I was hired by Jessie LeBaron to find out what happened to her husband."

"You landed from a submarine."

"We left the Florida Keys in a blimp."

"Your purpose in coming here was to gather information on the transfer of power in Cuba."

Pitt furrowed his brow in confusion. "Transfer of power? I don't know what you're talking about."

This time Gly struck Pitt in the upper stomach, knocking every cubic inch of wind from him. Then he calmly sat down and watched the reaction.

Pitt went rigid as he fought for breath. He felt as if his heart had stopped. He could taste the bile in his throat, feel the sweat seep from his forehead, and his lungs seemed to be twisted in knots. The walls of the room wavered and swam before his eyes. Gly looked to be smiling wickedly at the end of along tunnel.

"What were your orders once you arrived on Cayo Santa Maria?"

"No orders," Pitt rasped.

Gly rose and approached to strike again. Pitt drunkenly came to his feet, swayed for a moment, and began to sag, his head drooping to one side. He had Gly's measure now. He recognized a weak point. Like most sadists, Gly was basically a coward. He would flinch and be thrown off his track if he was evenly matched.

Gly flexed his body to swing, but suddenly froze in stunned astonishment. Bringing up his fist from the floor and pivoting his shoulder, Pitt threw a right-hand cross that carried every ounce of power he could muster. He connected with Gly's nose, mashing the cartilage and breaking the bone. Then he followed up with two left jabs and a solid hook to the body. He might as well have attacked the cornerstone of the Empire State Building.

Any other man would have fallen flat on his back. Gly staggered back a few feet and stood there with his face slowly reddening in rage. The blood streamed from his nose but he took no notice of it. He raised one fist and shook it at Pitt. "I'll kill you for that," he said.

"Stick it in your ear," Pitt replied sullenly. He grabbed the chair and threw it across the room. Gly merely smashed it aside with his arm. Pitt caught the shift of the eyes and realized his whiplash speed was about to lose out to brute strength.

Gly tore the washbasin from the wall, literally ripped it from its plumbing, and lifted it over his head. He took three steps and heaved it in Pitt's direction. Pitt jumped sideways and ducked around in one convulsive motion. As the sink sailed toward him like a safe falling from a high building, he knew his reaction came a split second too late. He threw up his hands instinctively in a hopeless gesture to ward off the flying mass of iron and porcelain.

Pitt's salvation came from the door. The latch caught the main crush from one corner of the washbasin and was smashed out of its catch. The door burst open and Pitt was knocked backward into the hallway, crashing in a heap at the feet of the startled guard. A shooting pain in his groin and right arm compounded the agonies already piercing his side and head. Gray-faced, waves of nausea sweeping over him, he shook away the beckoning unconsciousness and came to his feet, his hands spread on the wall for support.

Gly tore the sink from the doorway where it had become jammed and stared at Pitt with a look that could only be described as murderous. "You're a dead man, Pitt. You're going to die slowly, an inch at a time, begging to be put out of your agony. The next time we meet I'll snap every bone in your body and tear your heart out."

There was no fear in Pitt's eyes. The pain was draining away, to be replaced with elation. He had survived. He hurt, but the way was clear.

"The next time we meet," he said vengefully, "I'll carry a big club."

<<36>>

Pitt slept after the guard helped him back to his cell. When he woke up it was three hours later. He lay there for several minutes until his mind slowly shifted into gear. His body and face were an unending sea of contusions, but no bones were broken. He had survived.

He sat up and swung his feet to the floor, waiting for a few moments of dizziness to pass. He pushed himself to his feet and began doing stretching exercises to ease the stiffness. A wave of weakness swept over him, but he willed himself to reject it, continuing the drill until his muscles and joints became limber.

The guard came and went with dinner, and Pitt adroitly jammed the latch again, a maneuver he had honed so there would be no fumbling, no last-minute bungle. He paused, and hearing no footsteps or voices, stepped into the corridor.

Time was a luxury. There was too much to accomplish and too few hours of darkness to manage it. He regretfully wished he could say his farewells to Giordino and Gunn, but every minute he lingered in the compound depleted his odds of success. The first order of business was to find Jessie and take her with him.

She was behind the fifth door he tried, lying on the concrete floor with nothing under her but a dirty blanket. Her naked body was completely unmarked, but her once lovely face was grotesquely swollen with purplish bruises. Gly had shrewdly worked his evil by humiliating her virtue and brutalizing a beautiful woman's most valued asset-- her face.

Pitt bent over and cradled her head in his arms, his expression tender, but his eyes insane with rage. He was consumed with revenge. He shook with a madness for savage vengeance that went far beyond anything he had experienced before. He gritted his teeth and gently shook her awake.

"Jessie. Jessie, can you hear me?"

Her mouth trembled open as her eyes focused on him. "Dirk," she moaned. "Is it you?"

"Yes, I'm taking you out of here."

"Taking. . . how?"

"I've found a way for us to escape the compound."

"But the island. Raymond said it's impossible to escape from the island."

"I've hidden the outboard motor from the inflatable boat. If I can build a small raft=

"No!" she whispered adamantly.

She struggled to sit up, a look of concentration crossing the swollen mask that was her face. He lightly gripped her by the shoulders and held her down.

"Don't move," he said.

"You must go alone," she said.

"I won't leave you like this."

She shook her head weakly. "No. I would only increase your chances of getting caught."

"Sorry," Pitt said flatly. "Like it or not, you're coming."

"Don't you understand," she pleaded. "You're the only hope for saving all of us. If you make it back to the States and tell the President what's happening here, Velikov will have to keep us alive."

"What does the President have to do with this?"

"More than you know."

"Then Velikov was right. There is a conspiracy."

"Don't waste time conjecturing. Go, please go. By saving yourself you can save all of us."

Pitt felt an overwhelming surge of admiration for Jessie. She looked like a discarded doll now, battered and helpless, but he realized her outer beauty was matched by an inner one that was brave and resolute. He leaned over and kissed her lightly on puffed and split lips.

"I'll make it," he said confidently. "Promise me you'll hang on till I get back."

She tried to smile, but her mouth couldn't respond. "You crazy clown. You can't return to Cuba."

"Watch me."

"Good luck," she murmured softly. "Forgive me for messing up your life."

Pitt grinned, but the tears were welling in his eyes. "That's what men like about women. They never let us get bored."

He kissed her again on the forehead and turned away, his tanned fists white-knuckled by his side.

The climb up the emergency-shaft ladder made Pitt's arms ache, and when he reached the top he rested for a minute before pushing the lid aside and crouching in the darkness of the garage. The two soldiers were still engaged in a game of chess. It seemed to be a nightly routine to pass the boring hours of standby duty. They seldom bothered to glance at the vehicles parked outside their office. There was no reason to anticipate trouble. They were probably mechanics, Pitt reasoned, not security guards.

He reconnoitered the garage area-- tool benches, lubrication racks, oil and parts storage, trucks, and construction equipment. The trucks had spare five-gallon fuel cans attached to their beds. Pitt lightly tapped the cans until he found one that was full. The rest were all half empty or less. He groped around a tool bench until he found a rubber tube and used it to siphon gas from one of the truck's tanks. Two cans containing ten gallons were all he could carry. The problem he faced now was getting them through the vent in the roof.

Pitt took a towrope that was hanging from one wall and tied the ends to the handles on the gas cans. Holding the middle in a loop, he climbed to the support girders. Slowly, watching to see that the mechanics kept their attention on the chess game, he pulled the cans to the roof one at a time and pushed them ahead of him into the vent.

In another two minutes he was lugging them across the yard into the culvert that ran under the wall. He quickly spread the bars apart and hurried outside.

The sky was clear and the quarter-moon floated in a sea of stars. There was only a whisper of wind and the night air was cool. He fervently hoped the sea was calm.

For no particular reason he skirted the opposite side of the road this time. It was slow going. The heavy cans soon made his arms feel as though they were separating at the joints. His feet sank into the soft sand, and he had to stop every two hundred yards to catch his breath and allow the growing ache in his hands and arms to subside.

Pitt tripped and sprawled on the edge of a wide clearing surrounded by a thick grove of palm trees, so thick their trunks almost touched each other. He reached out and swept around with his hands. They touched a metal network that blended into the sand and became nearly invisible.

Curious, he left the gas cans and crawled cautiously around the edge of the clearing. The metal grid rose two inches off the ground and extended across the entire diameter. The center dropped away until it became concave like a bowl. He ran his hands over the trunks of the palm trees circling the rim.

They were fake. The trunks and fronds were constructed out of aluminum tubes and covered with realistic sheathing made from sanded plastic. There were over fifty of them, painted with camouflage to deceive American spy planes and their penetrating cameras.

The bowl was a giant dish-shaped radio and television antenna and the bogus palm trees were hydraulic arms that raised and lowered it. Pitt was stunned at the implication of what he had accidentally discovered. He knew now that buried under the sands of the island was a vast communications center.

But for exactly what purpose?

Pitt had no time to reflect. But he was determined more than ever to get free. He continued walking in the shadows. The village was farther than he remembered. He was a mass of sweat and panted heavily from exhaustion when he finally stumbled into the yard where he'd hidden the outboard motor under the bathtub. He thankfully dropped the gas cans and lay down on the old mattress and dozed for an hour.

Although he could not afford the time, the short rest refreshed him considerably. It also allowed his mind to create. An idea crystallized that was so incredibly simple in concept he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it before.

He carried the gas cans down to the lagoon. Then he returned for the outboard. Looking through piles of trash, he located a short plank that showed no rot. The last chore was the hardest. Necessity was the mother of invention, Pitt kept telling himself.

Forty-five minutes later, he had dragged the old bathtub from its resting place in the yard down the road to the water's edge.

Using the plank as a transom, Pitt bolted the outboard to the rear of the tub. Next he cleaned out the fuel filter and blew out the lines. A piece of tin bent in a cone served as a funnel to fill the outboard's tank. By holding his thumb over the bottom hole he could also use it for a bailing can. His final act before stuffing a rag plug in the drain was to knock off the bathtub's four webbed feet with an iron bar.

He pulled at the starter cord twelve times before the motor sputtered, caught, and began to purr. He shoved the tub into deeper water until it floated. Then he climbed in. The ballast weight of his body and the two full gas cans made it surprisingly stable. He lowered the propeller shaft into the water and pushed the gear lever to Forward.

The oddball craft slowly moved out into the lagoon and headed for the main channel. A shaft of moonlight showed the sea was calm, the swells no more than two feet. Pitt concentrated on the surf. He had to pass through the breaking waves and place as much distance between himself and the island by sunrise as possible.

He slowed the motor and timed the breakers, counting them. Nine heavies crashed one behind the other, leaving a long trough separating the tenth. Pitt pushed the throttle to Full and settled in the stern of the tub. The next wave was low and crashed immediately in front of him. He took the impact of the churning foam bow-on and plowed through. The tub staggered, then the propeller bit the water and it surged over the crest of the following wave before it curled.

Pitt let out a hoarse shout as he broke free. The worst was over. He knew he could only be discovered by sheer accident. The bathtub was too small to be picked up by radar. He eased up on the throttle to conserve the motor and the fuel. Dragging his hand in the water, he guessed his speed at about four knots. He should be well clear of Cuban waters by morning.

He looked up at the heavens, took his bearings, picked out a star to steer by, and set a course for the Bahama Channel.

<3>SELENOS 8

October 30, 1989

Kazakhstan, USSR

<<37>>

With a fireball brighter than the Siberian sun, Selenos 8 rose into a chilly blue sky carrying the 110-ton manned lunar station. The super rocket and four strap-on boosters, generating 14 million pounds of thrust, threw out a tail of orange-yellow flame 1,000 feet long and 300 feet wide. White smoke burst around the launch pad and the rumble from the engines rattled glass twelve miles away. At first it lifted so ponderously that it hardly seemed to be moving at all. Then it picked up speed and thundered skyward.

Soviet President Antonov observed the liftoff from an armored glass bunker through a pair of large binoculars mounted on a tripod. Sergei Kornilov and General Yasenin stood beside him, intently monitoring voice communications between the cosmonauts and the space control center.

"An inspiring sight," Antonov muttered in awe.

"A textbook launch," Kornilov said. "They'll reach escape velocity in four minutes."

"Does all go well?"

"Yes, Comrade President. All systems are functioning normally. And they are exactly on track."

Antonov gazed at the long tongue of flame until it finally vanished. Only then did he sigh and step away from the binoculars. "Well, gentlemen, this space spectacular should take the world's eyes off the next American shuttle flight to their new orbital station."

Yasenin nodded in agreement and gripped Kornilov's shoulder. "My congratulations, Sergei. You stole the Yankee triumph for the Soviet Union."

"No brilliance on my part," said Kornilov. "Because of orbital mechanics, our lunar launch window happened to be open for an advantageous shot several hours ahead of their scheduled launch."

Antonov stared into the sky as if mesmerized. "I assume American intelligence isn't privy to the fact our cosmonauts are not what they seem."

"A flawless deception," Yasenin said without reservation. "The switch of five space scientists for specially trained soldiers shortly before liftoff went smoothly."

"I hope we can say the same about the crash program to replace test equipment with weapons," said Kornilov. "The scientists whose experiments were canceled nearly caused a riot. And the engineers, who were ordered to redesign the interior of the station to accommodate new weight factors and weapon storage requirements, became angry at not being told the reason behind the last-minute changes. Their displeasure will most certainly be leaked."

"Don't lose any sleep over it," Yasenin laughed. "The American space authorities will suspect nothing until communication with their precious moon base goes dead."

"Who is in command of our assault team?" asked Antonov.

"Major Grigory Leuchenko. An expert on guerrilla warfare. The major won many victories against the rebels in Afghanistan. I can personally vouch for his qualities as a loyal and outstanding soldier."

Antonov nodded thoughtfully. "A good choice, General. He should find the lunar surface little different from that of Afghanistan."

"There is no question that Major Leuchenko will conduct a successful operation."

"You forget the American astronauts, General," said Kornilov.

"What about them?"

"The photographs demonstrate they have weapons too. I pray they are not fanatics who will wage a strong fight to protect their facility."

Yasenin smiled indulgently. "Pray, Sergei? Pray to whom? Certainly not to any God. He won't help the Americans once Leuchenko and his men begin their attack. The outcome is a foregone conclusion. Scientists cannot stand up against professional soldiers trained to kill."

"Do not underrate them. That's all I have to say."

"Enough!" Antonov said loudly. "I'll hear no more of this defeatist talk. Major Leuchenko has the double advantage of surprise and superior weaponry. Less than sixty hours from now the first real battle for space will begin. And I do not expect the Soviet Union to lose it."

In Moscow, Vladimir Polevoi sat at his desk in the KGB center on Dzerzhinski Square, reading a report from General Velikov. He did not glance up as Lyev Maisky strode into the room and sat down without an invitation. Maisky's face was common, blank and one-dimensional like his personality. He was Polevoi's deputy head of the First Chief Directorate, the foreign operations arm of the KGB. Maisky's relations with Polevoi were restrained, but they complemented each other.

Finally, Polevoi's eyes bored through Maisky. "I'd like an explanation."

"The LeBarons' presence was unforeseen," Maisky said tersely.

"Mrs. LeBaron and her crew of treasure hunters, perhaps, but certainly not her husband. Why did Velikov take him from the Cubans?"

"The general thought Raymond LeBaron might be a useful pawn in negotiations with the U.S. State Department after the Castros were removed."

"His good intentions have made for a dangerous game," said Polevoi.

"Velikov assures me that LeBaron is kept under strict security and fed false information."

"Still, there is always a small chance LeBaron might discover the true function of Cayo Santa Maria."

"Then he would simply be erased."

"And Jessie LeBaron?"

"My personal thoughts are that she and her friends will prove useful dupes in laying the blame for our projected disaster on the CIA's doorstep."

"Has Velikov or our resident agents in Washington uncovered any plans by American intelligence to infiltrate the island?"

"Negative," Maisky answered. "A check on the blimp's crew showed none have current ties with the CIA or the military."

"I want no screw-ups," said Polevoi firmly. "We're too close to success. You pass my words on to Velikov."

"He shall be instructed."

There was a knock on the door and Polevoi's secretary entered. Without a word she handed him a paper and left the room.

Sudden anger reddened Polevoi's face. "Damn! Speak of a threat, and it becomes a reality."

"Sir?"

"A priority signal from Velikov. One of the prisoners has escaped."

Maisky made a nervous movement with his hands. "It is impossible. There are no boats on Cayo Santa Maria, and if he is foolish enough to swim, he'll either drown or be eaten by sharks. Whoever it is won't get far."

"His name is Dirk Pitt, and according to Velikov he's the most dangerous of the lot."

"Dangerous or not--"

Polevoi waved him to silence and began pacing the carpet, his face reflecting deep agitation. "We cannot afford the unexpected. The deadline for our Cuban adventure must be moved up a week."

Maisky shook his head in disagreement. "The ships would never reach Havana in time. Also, we can't change the dates of the celebration. Fidel and every high-ranking member of his government will be on hand for the speechmaking. The wheels of the explosion are set in motion. Nothing can be done to alter the timing. Rum and Cola must either be called off or continue as scheduled."

Polevoi clasped and unclasped his hands in an agony of indecision. "Rum and Cola, a stupid name for an operation of such magnitude."

"Another reason to push on. Our disinformation program has already begun spreading rumors of a CIA plot to launch devastation in Cuba. The phrase `Rum and Cola' is patently American. No foreign government would suspect it as being hatched in Moscow."

Polevoi shrugged in assent. "Very well, but I don't want to think about the consequences if this Pitt fellow by some miracle survives and makes it back to the United States."

"He is already dead," Maisky announced boldly. "I am sure of it."

<<38>>

The President leaned into Daniel Fawcett's office and waved. "Don't get up. Just wanted you to know I'm going upstairs for a quiet lunch with my wife."

"Don't forget we have a meeting with the intelligence chiefs and Doug Oates in forty-five minutes," Fawcett reminded him.

"I promise to be on time."

The President turned and took the elevator to his living quarters on the second floor of the White House. Ira Hagen was waiting for him in the Lincoln suite.

"You look tired, Ira."

Hagen smiled. "I'm behind on my sack time."

"How do we stand?"

"I've accounted for the identities of all nine members of the `inner core.' Seven are pinpointed. Only Leonard Hudson and Gunnar Eriksen remain outside the net."

"You haven't picked up their trail from the shopping center?"

Hagen hesitated. "Nothing that panned out."

"The Soviet moon station was launched eight hours ago," said the President. "I can't delay any longer. Orders will go out this afternoon to round up as many of the `inner core' as we can."

"Army or FBI?"

"Neither. An old buddy in the Marine Corps has the honors. I've already supplied him with your list of names and locations." The President paused and stared at Hagen. "You said you accounted for the identities of all nine men, Ira, but your report only gave eight names.

Hagen seemed reluctant, but he reached inside his coat and withdrew a sheet of folded paper. "I was saving the last man until I could be absolutely certain. A voice analyzer confirmed my suspicions."

The President took the paper from Hagen's hand, unfolded it, and read the single hand-printed name. He removed his glasses and wearily wiped the lenses as if he didn't trust his eyes. Then he slipped the paper into his pocket.

"I suppose I knew all along but couldn't bring myself to believe his complicity."

"Do not judge harshly, Vince. These men are patriots, not traitors. Their only crime is silence. Take the case of Hudson and Eriksen. Pretending to be dead all these years. Think of the agony that must have caused their friends and families. The nation can never compensate them for their sacrifices or fully comprehend the rewards of their accomplishment."

"Are you lecturing me, Ira?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

The President suddenly became aware of Hagen's inner struggle. He understood that his friend's heart wasn't in the final confrontation. Hagen's loyalty was balanced on a razor's edge.

"You're holding out on me, Ira."

"I won't lie to you, Vince."

"You know where Hudson and Eriksen are hiding."

"Let's say I have a damned solid hunch."

"Can I trust you to bring them in?"

"Yes."

"You're a good scout, Ira."

"Where do you want them delivered, and when?"

"Camp David," the President replied. "Eight o'clock tomorrow morning."

"We'll be there."

"I can't include you, Ira."

"The decent thing to do on your part, Vince. Call it a repayment of sorts. You owe it to me to be in on the finish."

The President considered that. "You're right. It's the very least I can do."

Martin Brogan, director of the CIA, Sam Emmett of the FBI, and Secretary of State Douglas Oates came to their feet as the President entered the conference room with Dan Fawcett on his heels.

"Please be seated, gentlemen," the President said, smiling.

There were a few minutes of small talk until Alan Mercier, the national security adviser, entered. "Sorry for being late," he said, quickly sliding into a chair. "I haven't even had time to think of a good excuse."

"An honest man," Brogan said, laughing. "How disgusting."

The President poised a pen above a note pad. "Where do we stand on the Cuban pact?" he asked, looking at Oates.

"Until we can open a secret dialogue with Castro, it's pretty much on the back burner."

"Is there a remote possibility Jessie LeBaron might have gotten through with our latest reply?"

Brogan shook his head. "I feel it's very doubtful she made contact. Our sources have had no word since the blimp was shot down. The consensus is she's dead."

"Any word at all from the Castros?"

"None."

"What do you hear from the Kremlin?"

"The internal struggle going on between Castro and Antonov is about to break out in the open," said Mercier. "Our people inside the Cuban war ministry say that Castro is going to pull his troops out of Afghanistan."

"That clinches it," said Fawcett. "Antonov won't stand idle and allow that to happen."

Emmett leaned forward and folded his hands on the table. "It all goes back to four years ago when Castro begged off making even a token payment on the ten billion dollars owned to the Soviet Union on loans constantly `rolled over' since the nineteen-sixties. He painted himself into an economic corner and had to knuckle under when Antonov demanded he send troops to fight in Afghanistan. Not simply a few small companies, but nearly twenty thousand men."

"What estimate does the CIA have of casualties?" asked the President, turning to Brogan.

"Our figures show approximately sixteen hundred dead, two thousand wounded, and over five hundred missing."

"Good lord, that's better than twenty percent."

"Another reason the Cuban people detest the Russians," Brogan continued. "Castro is like a drowning man, sinking between a leaking rowboat whose crew is pointing a gun at him and a luxury yacht whose passengers are waving champagne bottles. If we throw him the rope, the crew in the Kremlin will blast him."

"Actually, they're planning on blasting him anyway," Emmett added.

"Do we have any idea how or when the assassination will take place?" asked the President.

Brogan shifted in his chair uneasily. "Our sources have been unable to turn up a timetable."

"Their security on the subject is as tight as anything I've ever seen," said Mercier. "Our computers have failed to decode any data from our space listening systems tuned to the operation. Only a few bits and pieces that fail to give us a concrete fix on their plans."

"Do you know who is in charge of it?" the President persisted.

"General Peter Velikov, GRU, considered something of a wizard at third-world government infiltration and manipulation. He was the architect of the Nigerian overthrow two years ago. Fortunately, the Marxist government he set up didn't last."

"Is he operating out of Havana?"

"He's secretive as hell," replied Brogan. "The perfect image of the man who isn't there. Velikov hasn't been seen in public in the past four years. We're dead certain he's directing the show from a hidden location."

The President's eyes seemed to darken. "All we have here is vague theory that the Kremlin plans to assassinate Fidel and Raul Castro, fix the blame on us, then take over the government using Cuban stooges who receive their orders straight from Moscow. Come now, gentlemen, I can't act on what-ifs. I need facts."

"It's a projection based on known facts," Brogan explained heavily. "We have the names of the Cubans who are on the Soviet payroll and waiting on the sidelines to assume power. Our information fully supports the Kremlin's intent to murder the Castros. The CIA makes the perfect scapegoat because the Cuban people have not forgotten the Bay of Pigs or the agency's fumbling plots to assassinate Fidel by the Mafia during the Kennedy administration. I assure you, Mr. President, I have given this every priority. Sixty agents on every level in and out of Cuba are concentrating on penetrating Velikov's wall of secrecy."

"And yet we can't reach Castro for an open dialogue to help each other."

"No, sir," said Oates. "He's resisting any contact through official channels."

"Doesn't he realize his time may be running out?" asked the President.

"He's wandering in a vacuum," Oates replied. "On one hand he feels secure in knowing the great mass of Cubans idolize him. Few national leaders can command the awe and affection he enjoys from his people. And yet on the other, he cannot fully comprehend the dead seriousness of the Soviet threat on his life and government."

"So what you're telling me," said the President gravely, "is that unless we can make an intelligence breakthrough or get someone into Castro's hideout who can make him listen to reason, we can only sit back and watch Cuba sink under total Soviet domination."

"Yes, Mr. President," said Brogan. "That is exactly what we're telling you."

<<39>>

Hagen was doing some browsing. He wandered through the mall of the shopping center, casually eyeing the merchandise in the stores. The smell of roasted peanuts reminded him that he was hungry. He stopped at a gaily painted wagon and bought a bag of roasted cashews.

Resting his feet for a few minutes, Hagen sat on a couch in an appliance store and watched an entire wall of twenty television sets all tuned to the same channel. The pictures showed an hour-old rerun of the space shuttle Gettysburg as it lifted off from California. Over three hundred people had been launched into space since the shuttle's first flight in 1981, and except for the news media, nobody paid much attention anymore.

Hagen wandered up and down, pausing to gawk through a large window at a disk jockey spinning records for a radio station that was located in the mall. He rubbed shoulders with the crowds of female shoppers, but he concentrated on the occasional man. Most seemed to be on their lunch break, probing the counters and racks, usually buying the first thing they saw, in contrast to the women, who preferred to keep searching in the forlorn hope they could find something better at a cheaper price.

He spotted two men eating submarine sandwiches at a fast-food restaurant. They were not carrying any purchase bags, nor were they dressed like store clerks. They wore the same casual style as Dr. Mooney at the Pattenden Lab.

Hagen followed them into a large department store. They took the escalator down to the basement, passed through the shopping area, and entered a rear hallway marked with a sign that read "Employees Only."

A warning bell went off inside Hagen's head. He returned to a counter stacked with bed sheets, removed his coat, and stuck a pencil behind one ear. Then he waited until the clerk was busy with a customer before picking up a pile of sheets and heading back into the hallway.

Three doors led to stock rooms, two to restrooms, and one was marked "Danger-High Voltage." He yanked open the latter door and rushed inside. A startled security guard sitting at a desk looked up. "Hey, you're not supposed to be--"

That was as far as he got before Hagen threw the sheets in his face and judo-chopped him on the side of the neck. There were two security guards behind a second door, and Hagen put them both down in less than four seconds. He crouched and whipped around in anticipation of another threat.

A hundred pairs of eyes stared at him in blank astonishment.

Hagen was confronted by a room that seemed to stretch into infinity. From wall to wall it was filled with people, offices, computer and communications equipment. For a long second, he stood stunned by the vastness of it all. Then he took a step forward and grabbed a terrified secretary by the arms and lifted her out of a chair.

"Leonard Hudson!" he snapped. "Where can I find him?"

Fear shone from her eyes like twin spotlights. She tilted her head to the right. "Th-the office w-with the blue d-door," she stammered.

"Thank you very much," he said with a broad smile.

Hagen released the girl and walked swiftly through the hushed complex. His face was twisted with malevolence, as if daring anyone to stop him.

No one made the slightest attempt. The growing crowd of people parted like the Red Sea as he passed down a main aisle.

When he came to the blue door, Hagen stopped and turned around, surveying the brain trust and communications center of the Jersey Colony program. He had to admire Hudson. It was an imaginative cover. Excavated during the construction of the shopping center, it would have attracted little or no suspicion. The scientists, engineers, and secretaries could come and go amid the shoppers, and their cars simply melted into hundreds of others in the parking lot. The radio station was also a work of genius. Who would suspect they were transmitting and receiving messages from the moon while broadcasting Top 40 records to the surrounding college community.

Hagen pushed inside the door and entered what seemed to be a studio control booth.

Hudson and Eriksen sat with their backs to him, staring up at a large video monitor that reflected the face and shaven head of a man who stopped speaking in midsentence and then said, "Who is that man behind you?"

Hudson made a cursory glance over his shoulder. "Hello, Ira." The voice mirrored the eyes. Hagen could almost hear the cracking of ice cubes. "I wondered when you'd show up."

"Come in," said Eriksen in an equally frigid tone. "You're just in time to talk to our man on the moon."

<<40>>

Pitt had cleared Cuban waters and was well into the main shipping lane of the Bahama Channel. But his luck was running out. The only ships that came within sight failed to spot him. A large tanker flying the Panamanian flag steamed by no more than a mile away. He stood as high as he dared without tipping over the tub and waved his shirt, but his little vessel went unnoticed by the crew.

For a watch officer on the bridge to aim his binoculars at the precise spot at the precise instant when the bathtub rose out of a trough and climbed the crest of a swell before dropping from sight again was a bet no self-respecting bookie would make. The awful truth plagued Pitt, he made too small a target.

Pitt's movements were becoming mechanical. His legs had gone numb after rolling around the sea in the cramped bathtub for nearly twenty hours, and the constant friction of his buttocks against the hard surface had raised painful blisters. The tropical sun beat on him, but he wore a good tan and the least of his problems was sunburn.

The sea remained calm, but still it was a continuous effort to keep the bow of the tub straight into the swells and bail out the water at the same time. He had emptied the final drops from the fuel cans into the outboard motor before refilling them with seawater for ballast.

Another fifteen or twenty minutes, that was all he could expect the motor to keep running before it starved for gas. Then it would be all over. Without control, the tub would soon swamp and sink.

His mind began to slip away-- he hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. He fought to stay awake, steering and bailing with leaden arms and water-wrinkled hands. For hour after endless hour his eyes swept the horizon, seeing nothing that was traveling toward his tiny area of the sea. A few sharks had bumped the bottom of the slow-moving tub. One made the mistake of coming too close to the spinning propeller and got his fin chewed up. Pitt eyed them with a detached air. He dumbly planned to beat them out of a meal by opening his mouth and drowning, before realizing it was a stupid thought and brushing it aside.

The wind gently began to rise. A squall passed overhead and deposited an inch of water in the tub. It wasn't the cleanest, but it was better than nothing. He scooped up a few handfuls and gratefully gulped it down, feeling refreshed.

Pitt looked up at the shimmering horizon to the west. Night would fall in another hour. His last spark of hope was dying with the setting sun. Even if he somehow kept afloat, he could never be seen in the darkness.

Hindsight, he mused. If only he'd stolen a flashlight.

Suddenly, the outboard sputtered and then caught again. He slowed the throttle as much as he dared, knowing he was only pushing off the inevitable by a minute or two.

Pitt fought off the cloud of morale collapse and steeled himself to bail until his arms gave out or a wave struck the drifting, helpless little tub on the beam and swamped her. He emptied one of the gas cans of seawater. When the tub sank, he reasoned, he would use the can as a float. So long as he could move a muscle, he wasn't about to give up.

The faithful little outboard coughed once, twice, and then died. After hearing the beat of the exhaust since the night before, Pitt felt smothered by the abrupt silence. He sat there in a doomed little craft on a vast and indifferent sea under a clear and cloudless sky.

He kept her afloat for another hour into the twilight. He was so tired, so physically exhausted that he missed a small movement five hundred yards away.

Commander Kermit Fulton pulled back from the periscope eyepiece, his face wearing a questioning expression. He looked across the control room of the attack submarine Denver at his executive officer. "Any contact on our sensors?"

The exec spoke into one of the control room phones. "Nothing on radar, skipper. Sonar reports a small contact, but it stopped about a minute ago."

"What do they make of it?"

The answer was slow in coming and the question was repeated.

"Sonar says it sounded like a small outboard motor, no more than twenty horsepower."

"There's something mighty peculiar out there," said Fulton. "I want to check it out. Slow speed to one-third and come left five degrees."

He pressed his forehead against the periscope eyepiece again and increased the magnification. Slowly, wonderingly, he pulled back. "Give the order to surface."

"You see something?" asked the executive officer.

He nodded silently.

Everyone in the control room stared at Fulton expectantly. The exec took the initiative. "Mind letting us in on it, skipper?"

"Twenty-three years at sea," said Fulton, "and I thought I'd seen almost everything. But damned if there isn't a man up there, almost a hundred miles from the nearest land, floating in a bathtub."

<<41>>

Since the blimp's disappearance, Admiral Sandecker had rarely left his office. He buried himself in work that soon lost all meaning. His parents, though quite elderly, were still alive, and so were his brother and sister. Sandecker had never really tasted personal tragedy before.

During his years in the Navy, he was infected with dedication. There was little time for a deep relationship with a woman, and he counted few good friends, mostly Navy acquaintances. He built a wall around him between superiors and subordinates and walked the middle ground. He made flag rank before he was fifty, but he was stagnating.

When Congress approved his appointment as chief of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, he came back to life. He formed warm friendships with three unlikely people, who looked up to him with respect but treated him no differently than the man on the next bar stool.

The challenges facing NUMA had drawn them together. Al Giordino, an extrovert who took a strange glee in volunteering for the dirtiest projects and stealing Sandecker's expensive cigars. Rudi Gunn, driven to accomplish nothing less than perfection, a natural at organizing programs, who couldn't make an enemy if he tried. And then there was Pitt, who had done more than anyone to revive Sandecker's creative spirit. They soon became as close as father and son.

Pitt's freewheeling attitude toward life and his sarcastic wit trailed behind him like a comet's tail. He couldn't enter a room without livening it up. Sandecker tried but failed to blot out the memories, to unchain himself from the past. He leaned back in the desk chair and closed his eyes and gave in to the sorrow. To lose all three of them at one time stunned him beyond comprehension.

While Pitt was in his thoughts, the light blinked and a muted chime came from his private phone line. He massaged his temples briefly and picked up the receiver.

"Yes?"

"Jim, is that you? I got your private number from a mutual friend at the Pentagon."

"I'm sorry. My mind was wandering. I don't recognize the voice."

"This is Clyde. Clyde Monfort."

Sandecker tensed. "Clyde, what's up?"

"A signal from one of our attack subs returning from the Jamaican landing exercise just came across my desk."

"How does that concern me?"

"The sub's commander report's picking up a castaway no more than twenty minutes ago. Not exactly standard procedure for our nuclear sub forces to take strangers on board, but his guy claimed he worked for you and got pretty nasty when the skipper refused to allow him to send a message."

"Pitt!"

"You got it," answered Monfort. "That's the name he gave. Dirk Pitt. How'd you know?"

"Thank God!"

"Does he check out?"

"Yes, yes, he's bona fide," Sandecker said impatiently. "What about the others?"

"No others. Pitt was alone in a bathtub."

"Say again."

"The skipper swears it was a bathtub with an outboard motor."

Knowing Pitt, Sandecker didn't doubt the story for a second. "How soon can you have him picked up by helicopter and dropped at the nearest airfield for transport to Washington?"

"You know that's not possible, Jim. I can't have him cleared and released until after the sub docks at its base in Charleston."

"Hang on, Clyde. I'll call the White House on another line and get the authorization."

"You got that kind of clout?" Monfort asked incredulously.

"That and more."

"Can you tell me what's going down, Jim?"

"Take my word for it. You don't want to get involved."

They gathered at a White House dinner party to honor the Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, who was on a goodwill tour of the United States. Actors and labor leaders, athletes and billionaires, they all shed their opinions, their differences, and mingled like neighbors at a Sunday social.

Former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter conversed and acted as though they had never left the West Wing. Standing in a corner filled with flowers, Secretary of State Douglas Oates swapped war stories with Henry Kissinger, while the Super Bowl champion quarterback of the Houston Oilers stood in front of the fireplace and peered openly at the breasts of ABC news anchor Sandra Malone.

The President shared a toast with Prime Minister Gandhi and then introduced him to Charles Murphy, who had recently flown over Antarctica in a hot-air balloon. The President's wife came over, took her husband's arm, and pulled him toward the dance floor of the state dining room.

A White House aide caught Dan Fawcett's eye and nodded toward the doorway. Fawcett went over, heard him out, then approached the President. The chain of command was well oiled.

"My apologies, Mr. President, but a courier has just arrived with a congressional bill that requires your signature before midnight."

The President nodded in understanding. There was no bill to sign. It was a code for an urgent message. He excused himself to his wife and went across the hall to a small private office. He paused until Fawcett closed the door before picking up the phone

"This is the President."

"Admiral Sandecker, sir."

"Yes, Admiral, what is it?"

"I have the Chief of Naval Forces in the Caribbean on another line. He has just informed me that one of my people, who vanished with Jessie LeBaron, has been rescued by one of our submarines."

"Has he been identified?"

"It's Dirk Pitt."

"The man must be either indestructible or very lucky," the President said with a touch of relief in his voice. "How soon can we get him here?"

"Admiral Clyde Monfort is holding on the line for authorization to provide priority transport."

"Can you connect me to him?"

"Hold on, sir." There was a second's pause followed by a click.

The President said, "Admiral Monfort, can you hear me?"

"I hear you."

"This is the President. Do you recognize my voice?"

"Yes, sir, I do."

"I want Pitt in Washington as fast as you can possibly get him here. Understood?"

"I read you, Mr. President. I'll see that a Navy jet lands him at Andrews Air Force Base before daybreak."

"Spread a security net on this affair, Admiral. Keep the submarine at sea and place the pilots, or anyone else who comes within a hundred yards of Pitt, under confinement for three days."

There was a slight hesitation. "Your orders will be carried out."

"Thank you. Now please let me speak to Admiral Sandecker."

"I'm here, Mr. President."

"You heard? Admiral Monfort will have Pitt at Andrews before dawn."

"I'll personally be on hand to meet him."

"Good. Take him by helicopter to CIA headquarters in Langley. Martin Brogan and representatives from my office and the State Department will be waiting to debrief him."

"He may not be able to shed light on anything."

"You're probably right," said the President wearily. "I'm expecting too much. I guess I always expect too much."

He hung up and sighed heavily. He collected his thoughts for a moment and then shelved them in a mental niche for later retrieval, a technique mastered sooner or later by every President. Shifting the mind from crisis to trivial routine and back again to crisis like the flick of alight switch was a requirement that went with the job.

Fawcett knew the President's every mood and patiently waited. Finally he said, "It might not be a bad idea if I attended the debriefing."

The President looked up at him sadly. "You'll be going with me to Camp David at sunup."

Fawcett looked blank. "I have nothing on your schedule that includes a trip to Camp David. Most of the morning is taken up by meetings with congressional leaders over the proposed budget."

"They will have to wait. I have a more important conference tomorrow.

"As your chief of staff may I ask who you're conferring with?"

"A group of men who call themselves the `inner core.' "

Fawcett stared at the President, his mouth slowly tightening. "I don't understand."

"You should, Dan. You're one of them."

Before a dazed Fawcett could reply, the President left the office and rejoined the dinner party.

<<42>>

The thump of the landing wheels woke Pitt up. Outside the twin-engined Navy jet the sky was still dark. Through a small window he could see the first streaks of orange spearheading the new day.

The blisters caused by the friction from the bathtub made sitting almost impossible, and he had slept in a cramped position on his side. He felt generally awful, and he was thirsty for something besides the fruit juices forced down his stomach in endless quantities by an overly concerned doctor on the submarine.

He wondered what he would do if he ever met up with Foss Gly again. Whatever fiendish punishment he created in his mind didn't seem excessive enough. The thought of the agony Gly was inflicting on Jessie, Giordino, and Gunn haunted him. He felt guilty for having escaped.

The whine of the jet engines faded and the door was opened. He walked stiffly down the stairs and was embraced by Sandecker. The admiral rarely shook hands, and the unexpected display of affection surprised Pitt.

"I guess what they say about a bad penny is true," said Sandecker hoarsely, groping for words.

"Better to turn up than not," Pitt replied, smiling.

Sandecker took him by the arm and led him over to a waiting car. "They're waiting at CIA headquarters in Langley to question you."

Pitt suddenly stopped. "They're alive," he announced briefly.

"Alive?" said Sandecker, stunned. "All of them?"

"Imprisoned by the Russians and tortured by a defector."

Incomprehension showed on Sandecker's face. "You were in Cuba?"

"On one of the outer islands," Pitt explained. "We've got to apprise the Russians of my rescue as quickly as possible to stop them from--"

"Slow down," Sandecker interrupted. "I'm losing you. Better yet, wait and tell the whole story when we get to Langley. I suspect you may have fallen in the creek and come up with a pocketful of trout."

On the flight across the city it began to rain. Pitt gazed through the plexiglass windshield at the 219 wooded acres surrounding the sprawling gray marble and concrete structure that was the home of America's cloak-and-dagger army. From the air it seemed deserted, no people were visible on the grounds. Even the parking lot was only one quarter full. The only human shape Pitt could detect was a statue of the nation's most famous spy, Nathan Hale, who had made the mistake of getting caught and was hanged.

Two senior officials were waiting at the helipad with umbrellas. Everyone hurried into the building, and Pitt and Sandecker were shown into a large conference room. There were six men and one woman present. Martin Brogan came over and shook Pitt's hand and introduced the others. Pitt simply nodded and promptly forgot their names.

Brogan said, "I hear you've had a rough trip."

"Not one I'd recommend to tourists," Pitt replied.

"Can I get you something to eat or drink?" Brogan offered graciously. "A cup of coffee or breakfast maybe?"

"If you could find a bottle of cold beer. . ."

"Of course." Brogan picked up the phone and said something. "Be here in a minute."

The conference room was plain by business-office standards. The walls were a neutral beige color, the carpet the same, and the furniture looked as though it came from a discount store. No pictures, no decorations of any kind gave it life. A room whose only function was to serve as a place to work.

Pitt was offered a chair at one end of the table, but declined. His rear end did not feel up to sitting just yet. Every eye in the room stared at him, and he began to feel like an inmate at the zoo on a Sunday afternoon.

Brogan gave him a relaxed smile. "Please tell us everything you've heard and observed from the beginning. Your account will be recorded and transcribed. Afterward, we'll go for questions and answers. All right with you?"

The beer came. Pitt took a long pull, relaxed, and then started relating the events from the takeoff in Key West to elatedly seeing the submarine rise out of the water a few yards from his sinking tub. He left out nothing and took his time, going into every detail, no matter how minor, he could recall. It took him nearly an hour and a half, but they listened attentively without question or interruption. When he finally finished, he gently eased his aching body into a chair and calmly watched everyone check over their notes.

Brogan declared a short break while aerial photographs of Cayo Santa Maria, files on Velikov and Gly, and the copies of the transcription were brought in. After forty minutes of study, Brogan kicked off the questioning.

"You carried weapons in the blimp. Why?"

"Projections of the Cyclops' wreck site indicated it lay in Cuban waters. It seemed appropriate to carry a bulletproof shield and a missile launcher for protective insurance."

"You realize, of course, your unwarranted attack on the Cuban patrol helicopter was a breach of government policy." This from a man Pitt remembered as working for the State Department.

"I followed a higher law," said Pitt with a sardonic grin.

"And what law, may I ask, is that?"

"Comes from the Old West, something they called self-preservation. The Cubans fired first, about a thousand rounds, I would judge, before Al Giordino blew it away."

Brogan smiled. He could see Pitt was a man after his own heart. "Our main concern here is with your description of the Russians' installation on the island. You say the island is unguarded."

"Above ground the only guards I saw were stationed at the gate of the compound. None were patrolling the roads or the beaches. The only security measure was an electrified fence."

"That explains why infrared photography hasn't detected any signs of human activity," said an analyst eyeballing the photos.

"Unlike the Russians to step out of character," mused another CIA official. "They almost always give away a secret base by going overboard on security."

"Not this time," said Pitt. "They've gone to opposite extremes and it's paid off for them. General Velikov stated that it was the most sensitive military installation outside the Soviet Union. And I gather that no one in your agency was aware of it until now."

"I admit, we may have been taken in," said Brogan. "Providing what you've described to us is true."

Pitt gave Brogan a cold stare. Then he painfully rose from his chair and started for the door. "All right, have it your way. I lied. Thanks for the beer."

"May I ask where you're going?"

"To call a press conference," Pitt said, addressing Brogan directly. "I'm wasting precious time for your benefit. The sooner I announce my escape and demand the release of the LeBarons, Giordino, and Gunn, the sooner Velikov will be forced to halt their torture and execution."

There was a shocked quiet. None of the people at the conference table could believe Pitt was walking out, none except Sandecker. He sat there and smiled like the owner of a winning ball club. "You'd better pull your act together, Martin. You've just been presented with a top-of-the-line intelligence coup, and if no one in this room can recognize it, I suggest you all find another line of work."

Brogan may have been a brusque egotist, but he was no fool. He quickly rose and stopped Pitt at the doorway. "Forgive an old Irishman who's been burned more times than he can count. Thirty years in this business and you just naturally become a doubting Thomas. Please help us to fit the puzzle together. Then we'll discuss what's to be done for your friends and the LeBarons."

"It'll cost you another beer," Pitt said.

Brogan and the others laughed then. The ice was broken, and the questioning was resumed from all sides of the table.

"Is this Velikov?" asked an analyst, holding up a photograph.

"Yes, General Peter Velikov. His American-accented English was letter perfect. I almost forgot, he had my dossier, including a personality profile."

Sandecker looked at Brogan. "Sounds like Sam Emmett has a mole in his FBI records department."

Brogan smiled sarcastically. "Sam won't be happy to learn of it."

"We could write a book on Velikov's exploits," said a heavy man facing Pitt. "At a later time I'd like you to give me a profile of his mannerisms."

"Glad to," said Pitt.

"And this is the interrogator with the heavy hand, Foss Gly?"

Pitt nodded at the second photograph. "He's a good ten years older than the face in the picture, but that's him."

"An American mercenary, born in Arizona," said the analyst. "You say you two met before?"

"Yes, during the Empress of Ireland project in search of the North American Treaty. I think you may recall it."

Brogan nodded. "Indeed I do."

"Getting back to the layout of the installation," said the woman. "Levels of the compound?"

"According to the elevator indicator, five, all underground."

"Idea as to extent?"

"All I saw was my cell, the hallway, Velikov's office, and a motor pool. Oh, yes, and the entry to the upper living quarters, which was decorated like a Spanish castle."

"Wall thickness?"

"About two feet."

"Quality of construction?"

"Good. No leakage or noticeable cracking of the concrete."

"Type of vehicles in the motor pool?"

"Two military trucks. The rest construction-- a bulldozer, a back hoe, and a cherry picker."

The woman looked up from her notes. "Excuse me. The last one?" "Cherry picker," Pitt explained. "A special truck with a telescoping platform to work at heights. You see them used by tree trimmers and telephone linemen."

"Approximate dimensions of the antenna dish?"

"Difficult to measure in the dark. Approximately three hundred yards long by two hundred yards wide. It lifts into position by hydraulic arms camouflaged as palm trees."

"Solid or grid?"

"Grid."

"Circuitry, junction boxes, relays?"

"Didn't see any, which doesn't mean they weren't there."

Brogan had followed the questions without intruding. Now he held up a hand and stared at a studious-looking man seated halfway down the table. "What do you make of it, Charlie?"

"Not enough technical detail to pinpoint an exact purpose. But there are three possibilities. One is that it's a listening station capable of intercepting telephone, radio, and radar signals across the United States. Two, a powerful jamming facility, just sitting there waiting for a crucial moment, like a nuclear first strike when it is suddenly activated, scrambling all our vital military and commercial communications. The third prospect is that it might have the capability to transmit and feed false information throughout our communications systems. Most worrisome, the size and elaborate antenna design suggests the ability to perform the functions of all three."

The muscles in Brogan's face went taut. The fact that such a supersecret spy operation had been constructed less than two hundred miles from the shores of the United States did not exactly thrill the chief of the Central Intelligence Agency.

"If worse comes to worse, what are we looking at?"

"What I'm afraid we're looking at," answered Charlie, "is an electronically advanced and powerful facility capable of intercepting radio or phone communications and then using time-lag technology to allow a new-generation computerized synthesizer to imitate the callers' voices and alter the conversation. You'd be amazed how your words can be manipulated over a telephone to another party without your detecting the change. As a matter of fact, the National Security Agency has the same type of equipment on board a ship."

"So the Russians have caught up with us," said Brogan.

"Their technology is probably cruder than ours, but it seems they've gone a step further and expanded it on a grander scale."

The woman intelligence official looked at Pitt. "You said the island is supplied by submarine."

"So Raymond LeBaron informed me," said Pitt. "And what little I saw of the shoreline didn't include a docking area."

Sandecker played with one of his cigars but didn't light it. He pointed one end at Brogan. "Appears the Soviets have gone to unusual lengths to throw your Cuban surveillance off the track, Martin."

"The fear of exposure came out during the interrogation," said Pitt. "Velikov insisted we were agents on your payroll."

"Can't really blame the bastard," said Brogan. "Your entrance must have shocked the hell out of him."

"Mr. Pitt, could you describe the people at the dinner party when you entered?" asked a scholarly-looking man in an argyle sweater.

"Roughly I'd say there were sixteen women and two dozen men

"You did say women?"

"I did."

"What type?" asked the only woman in the room.

Pitt had to ask. "Define type."

"You know," she answered seriously. "Wives, nice single ladies, or hookers?"

"Definitely not hookers. Most were in uniform, probably part of Velikov's staff. The ones wearing wedding rings appeared to be wives of the Cuban civilians and military officers who were present."

"What in hell is Velikov thinking?" Brogan asked no one in particular. "Cubans and their wives at a top-secret installation? None of this makes any sense."

Sandecker stared pensively at the tabletop. "Makes sense to me, if Velikov is using Cayo Santa Maria for something besides electronic espionage."

"What are you hinting at, Jim?" asked Brogan.

"The island would make a perfect base of operations for the overthrow of the Castro government."

Brogan looked at him in astonishment. "How do you know about that?"

"The President briefed me," Sandecker replied loftily.

"I see." But it was clear Brogan didn't see.

"Look, I realize this is all highly important," said Pitt, "but every minute we spend speculating puts Jessie, Al, and Rudi that much closer to death. I expect you people to pull out all the stops to save them. You can begin by notifying the Russians that you're aware of their captivity because of my rescue."

Pitt's demand was met with an odd quiet. Nobody except Sandecker looked at him. The CIA people, especially, avoided his eyes.

"Forgive me," said Brogan stonily. "I don't think that would be a smart move."

Sandecker's eyes suddenly flashed with anger. "Watch what you say, Martin. I know there's a Machiavellian plot jelling in your mind. But take warning, my friend. You've got me to deal with, and I'm not about to let my friends be literally thrown to the sharks."

"We're looking at a high-stakes game," said Brogan. "Keeping Velikov in the dark may prove most advantageous."

"And sacrifice several lives for an intelligence gamble?" said Pitt bitterly. "No way."

"Please bear with me a moment," Brogan pleaded. "I'll agree to leak a story saying we know the LeBarons and your NUMA people are alive. Next, we'll accuse the Cubans of imprisoning them in Havana."

"How can Velikov be expected to fall for something he knows is crap?"

"I don't expect him to fall for it. He's no cretin. He'll smell a rat and wonder how much we know about his island. And that's all he can do-- wonder. We'll also muddy the waters by claiming our knowledge comes from photographic evidence showing your inflatable boat washed up on the main island of Cuba. That should take the pressure off our captives and keep Velikov guessing. The piece de resistance will be the discovery of Pitt's body by a Bahamian fisherman."

"What in hell are you proposing?" Sandecker demanded.

"I haven't thought it through yet," Brogan admitted. "But the basic idea is to sneak Pitt back on the island."

As soon as Pitt's debriefing had concluded, Brogan returned to his office and picked up the phone. His call went through the usual batting order of buffers before the President came on.

"Please make it quick, Martin. I'm about to leave for Camp David." "We've just finished interrogating Dirk Pitt."

"Could he fill in any pieces?"

"Pitt gave us the intelligence breakthrough we discussed."

"Velikov's headquarters?"

"He led us straight to the mother lode."

"Nice work. Now your people can launch an infiltration operation." "I think a more permanent solution would be in order."

"You mean offset its threat by exposing its existence to the world press?"

"No. I mean go in and destroy it."

<<43>>

The president had a light breakfast after reaching Camp David. The weather was unseasonably warm, there was Indian summer in the air, and he was dressed in cotton slacks and short-sleeved sweater.

He sat in a large wing chair with several file folders in his lap and studied the personal histories of the "inner core." After reading the last file he closed his eyes, pondering his options, wondering what he would say to the men who were waiting in the camp's main dining room.

Hagen entered the study and stood quietly until the President opened his eyes.

"Ready when you are, Vince."

The President slowly pushed himself from the chair. "Might as well get on with it then."

They were waiting around the long dining table as the President had arranged. No guards were present, none were required. These were honorable men who had no intent to commit crime. They respectfully rose to their feet as he entered the room, but he waved them down.

Eight were present and accounted for-- General Fisher, Booth, Mitchell, and Busche sat on one side of the table opposite Eriksen, Senator Porter, and Dan Fawcett. Hudson was seated by himself at the far end. Only Raymond LeBaron was missing.

They were dressed casually, sitting comfortably like golfers in a clubhouse, relaxed, supremely confident and showing no signs of tension.

"Good morning, Mr. President," greeted Senator Porter cheerfully. "To what do we owe the honor of this mysterious summons?"

The President cleared his throat. "You all know why I've brought you here. So we don't have to play games."

"You don't want to congratulate us?" asked Clyde Booth sarcastically.

"Tributes may or may not be offered," said the President coldly. "That will depend."

"Depend on what?" Gunnar Eriksen demanded rudely.

"I believe what the President is fishing for," said Hudson, "is our blessing for allowing the Russians to claim a share of the moon."

"That and a confession of mass murder."

The tables were turned. They just sat there, eyes with the look of fish in a freezer, staring at the President.

Senator Porter, a fast thinker, launched his attack first. "Execution gangland style or Arsenic and Old Lace poison in the tea? If I may ask, Mr. President, what in hell are you talking about?"

"A small matter of nine dead Soviet cosmonauts."

"Those lost during the early Soyuz missions?" asked Dan Fawcett.

"No," answered the President. "The nine Russians who were killed on the Selenos lunar probes."

Hudson gripped the edge of the table and stared as if he had been electrocuted. "The Selenos spacecraft were unmanned."

"The Russians wanted the world to think so, but in reality they each carried three men. We have one of the crews on ice in the Walter Reed hospital morgue, if you care to examine the remains."

No one would have thought it to look at them. They considered themselves moral-minded citizens doing a job for their country. The last thing any of them expected to see in a mirror was the reflection of a cold-blooded killer. To say that the President had his audience in the palm of his hand would be an understatement.

Hagen sat fascinated. This was all news to him.

"If you'll bear with me," the President continued, "I'll indulge in mixing facts with speculation. To begin with, you and your moon colonists have accomplished an incredible achievement. I compliment you on your perseverance and genius, as will the world in the coming weeks. However, you have unwittingly made a terrible error that could easily stain your accomplishment.

"In your zeal to wave the Stars and Stripes you have ignored the international space law treaty governing activities on the moon, which was ratified by the United States, the Soviet Union, and three other countries in 1984. Then you took it upon yourselves to claim the moon as a sovereign possession and, figuratively speaking, posted `Trespassers Will Be Shot' signs. Only you backed it up by somehow destroying three Soviet lunar probes. One of them, Selenos 4, managed to return to earth, where it orbited for eighteen months before control was reestablished. Soviet space engineers attempted to bring it down in the steppes of Kazakhstan, but the craft was damaged and it fell near Cuba instead.

"Under the guise of a treasure hunt, you sent Raymond LeBaron to find it before the Russians. Telltale marks of damage inflicted by your colonists had to be obliterated. But the Cubans beat you both to the downed craft and retrieved it. You weren't aware of that until now, and the Russians still don't know. Unless. . ."

The President hung on the word. "Unless Raymond LeBaron has spilled his knowledge of the Jersey Colony under torture. I have it on good authority he was captured by the Cubans and turned over to Soviet military intelligence, the GRU."

"Raymond won't talk," Hudson said wrathfully.

"He may not have to," the President replied. "A few hours ago intelligence analysts, whom I asked to reexamine Soviet space signals received during Selenos 4's reentry orbits, have discovered that its data on the lunar surface were transmitted to a ground tracking station on the island of Socotra, near Yemen. Do you comprehend the consequences, gentlemen?"

"We comprehend what you're driving at." It was General Fisher who spoke, his voice reflective. "The Soviets may have visual proof of the Jersey Colony."

"Yes, and they've probably put two and two together and figured your people up there had something to do with the Selenos disasters. You can be sure they will retaliate. No calls on the hot line, no messages slipped through diplomatic channels, no announcements in Toss or Pravda. The battle for the moon will be kept secret by both sides. When you total the score, gentlemen, the result is you have launched a war that may prove impossible to stop."

The men seated around the table were shocked and confused, dazed and angry. But they were angry only because of a miscalculation of an event that was beyond their knowledge. The awful truth took several moments to register.

"You speak of Soviet retaliation, Mr. President," said Fawcett. "Do you have any insight on the possibility?"

"Put yourself in Soviet shoes. They were on to you a good week before their Selenos 8 lunar station was launched. If I were President Antonov, I'd have ordered the mission converted from scientific exploration to a military operation. There is little doubt in my mind that when Selenos 8 touches down on the moon twenty hours from now, a special team of Soviet commandos will encircle and attack the Jersey Colony. Now you tell me, can the base defend itself?"

General Fisher looked at Hudson, then turned to the President and shrugged his shoulders. "I can't say. We've never made contingency plans for an armed assault on the colony. As I recall, their only weapons are two handguns and a missile launcher."

"Incidentally, when were your colonists scheduled to leave the moon?"

"They should lift off in about thirty-six hours," answered Hudson.

"I'm curious," said the President. "How do they intend to return through earth's atmosphere? Certainly their lunar transport vehicle doesn't have the capability."

Hudson smiled. "They'll return to the Kennedy spaceport at Cape Canaveral on the shuttle."

The President sighed. "The Gettysburg. Stupid of me not to think of it. She's already docked at our space station."

"Her crew hasn't been advised yet," said Steve Busche of NASA, "but once they get over the shock of seeing the colonists suddenly show up on the transport vehicle, they'll be more than willing to take on extra passengers."

The President paused and stared at the members of the "inner core," his expression suddenly bleak. "The burning question we all have to face, gentlemen, is whether the Jersey colonists will survive to make the trip."

<<44>>

"Do you really expect to get away with it?" Pitt asked.

Colonel Ramon Kleist, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired, rocked on his heels and scratched an itch on his back with a swagger stick. "So long as we can withdraw as a unit with our casualties, yes, I believe the mission can be pulled off successfully."

"Nothing this complicated can go letter perfect," said Pitt. "Destroying the compound and the antenna, plus killing off Velikov and his entire staff, sound to me like you're biting off more than you can chew."

"Your eyewitness observation and our stealth aircraft photos corroborate the light defensive measures."

"How many men make up your team?" asked Pitt.

"Thirty-one including yourself"

"The Russians are bound to find out who trashed their secret base. You'll be kicking a hornet's nest."

"All part of the plan," Kleist said airily.

Kleist stood ramrod straight, his chest threatening to burst from a flowered shirt. Pitt guessed his age as late fifties. He was a medium skinned black, born in Argentina, the only child of a former SS officer who had fled Germany after the war and the daughter of a Liberian diplomat. Sent to a private school in New York, he decided to drop out and make a career in the Marines.

"I thought there was an unwritten agreement between the CIA and the KGB-- we won't waste your agents if you don't waste ours."

The colonel gave Pitt an innocent look. "Whatever gave you the idea our side will do the dirty work?"

Pitt did not reply, only stared at Kleist, waiting.

"The mission will be conducted by Cuban Special Security Forces," he explained. "Their equivalent to our SEALS. Or to be honest, expertly trained exiles dressed in genuine Cuban battle fatigues. Even their underwear and socks will be standard Cuban military issue. Weapons, wristwatches, and other equipment will be of Soviet manufacture. And, just so we keep up appearances, the landing will come from the Cuban side of the island."

"All neat and tidy."

"We try to be efficient."

"Are you leading the mission?"

Kleist smiled. "No, I'm getting too old to leap out of the surf onto beaches. The assault team will be led by Major Angelo Quintana. You'll meet him at our camp in San Salvador. I'll be standing by on the SPUT."

"Say again."

"Special-purpose undersea transport," answered Kleist, "a vessel constructed expressly for missions of this kind. Most people don't know they exist. You'll find it most interesting."

"I'm not what you'd call trained for combat."

"Your job is purely to guide the team into the compound and show them the ventilator access to the garage area. Then you're to return to the beach and stay under cover until the mission is completed."

"Do you have a timetable for the raid?"

Kleist had a pained expression. "We prefer to call it a covert operation."

"Sorry, I've never read your bureaucratic manual on semantics."

"In answer to your question, the landing is set for 0200 four days from now."

"Four days may be too late to save my friends."

Kleist looked genuinely concerned. "We're already working on short notice and cutting our practice exercises razor thin. We need time to cover every uncertainty, every freak event. The plan has to be as airtight as our computer's tactical programs can make it."

"And if there's a human flaw in your plan?"

Any expression of friendly warmth left Kleist's face and was replaced with a cold, hard look. "If there is a human flaw, Mr. Pitt, it is you. Barring divine intervention, the success or failure of this mission will rest heaviest on your shoulders,"

The CIA people were thorough. Pitt was shuffled from office to office, interview to interview, with stopwatch precision. The plans to neutralize Cayo Santa Maria progressed with prairie-fire swiftness. His briefing by Colonel Kleist took place less than three hours after he was interrogated by Martin Brogan. He came to realize there were thousands of contingency plans to invade every island in the Caribbean and every nation in Central and South America. Computerized war games created a series of options. All the covert-operation experts had to do was select the program that came closest to fitting the objective, and then refine it.

Pitt endured a thorough physical examination before he was allowed lunch. The physician pronounced him fit, pumped him full of high-potency vitamins, and prescribed an early bedtime before Pitt's drowsy mind turned to mush.

A tall, high-cheekboned woman with braided hair was assigned as his nursemaid, escorting him to the proper room at the proper time. She introduced herself as Alice, no surname, no title. She wore a soft tan suit over a lace blouse. Pitt thought her rather pretty and found himself wondering what she would look like curled up on satin sheets.

"Mr. Brogan has arranged for you to eat in the executive dining room," she said in perfect tour-guide fashion. "We'll take the elevator."

Pitt suddenly remembered something. "I'd like the use of a telephone."

"Sorry, not possible."

"Mind if I ask why?"

"Have you forgotten you're supposed to be dead?" Alice asked matter-of-factly. "One phone call to a friend or a lover and you could blow the entire operation."

"Yes, `The slip of a lip may sink a ship,' " Pitt said cynically. "Look, I need some information from a total stranger. I'll hand him a phony name.

"Sorry, not possible."

A scratched phonograph record came to Pitt's mind. "Give me a phone or I'll do something nasty"

She looked at him quizzically. "Like what?"

"Go home," he said simply.

"Mr. Brogan's orders. You're not to leave the building until your flight to our camp in San Salvador. He'd have you in a straitjacket before you reached the front door."

Pitt hung back as they walked down a hallway. Then he suddenly turned and entered an anteroom whose door was unmarked. He calmly walked past a startled secretary and entered the inner office. A short man with cropped white hair, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and making strange markings on a graph, looked up in amused surprise.

Pitt flashed his best politician's smile and said, "I beg your pardon, may I borrow your phone?"

"If you work here, you know that using an unauthorized phone is against agency regulations."

"Then I'm safe," said Pitt. "I don't work here."

"You'll never get an outside line," said old White Hair.

"Watch me."

Pitt picked up the phone and asked the operator for Martin Brogan's office. In a few seconds Brogan's private secretary came on the line.

"My name is Dirk Pitt. Please inform Mr. Brogan that if I don't get the use of a telephone in one minute I'm going to cause a terrible scene."

"Who is this?"

"I told you."

Pitt was obstinate. Stoutly refusing to take no for an answer, it took him another twenty minutes of cursing, shouting, and generally being obnoxious before Brogan consented to a call outside the building, but only if Alice stood by and monitored the conversation.

She showed him to a small private office and pointed to the phone. "We have an internal operator standing by. Give her your number and she'll put it through."

Pitt spoke into the receiver. "Operator, what's your name?"

"Jennie Murphy," replied a sexy voice.

"Jennie, let's start with Baltimore information. I'd like the number of Weehawken Marine Products."

"Just a sec. I'll get it for you."

Jennie got the number from the Baltimore information operator and placed the call.

After explaining his problem to four different people, Pitt was finally connected to the executive chairman of the board-- a title generally bestowed on old company heads who were eased out of the corporate mainstream.

"I'm Bob Conde. What can I do for you?"

Pitt looked at Alice and winked. "Jack Farmer, Mr. Conde. I'm with a federal archeological survey and I've discovered an old diving helmet in a shipwreck I hope you might identify."

"I'll do my best. My grandfather started the business nearly eighty years ago. We've kept fairly tight records. Have you got a serial number?"

"Yes, it was on a data plate attached to the front of the breastplate." Pitt closed his eyes and visualized the helmet on the corpse inside the Cyclops. "It read, 'Weehawken Products, Inc., Mark V, Serial Number 58-67-C.' "

"The Navy standard diving helmet," Conde said without hesitation. "We've been making them since 1916. Constructed of spun copper with bronze fittings. Has four sealed glass viewports."

"You sold it to the Navy?"

"Most of our orders came from the Navy. Still do, as a matter of fact. The Mark V, Mod 1 is still popular for certain types of surface-supplied-air diving operations. But this helmet was sold to a commercial customer."

"If you'll forgive me for asking, how do you know?"

"The serial number. Fifty-eight is the year it was manufactured. Sixty-seven is the number produced, and C stands for commercial sale. In other words, it was the sixty-seventh helmet to come out of our factory in 1958 and was sold to a commercial salvage company."

"Any chance of digging back and finding who bought it?"

"Might take a good half hour. We haven't bothered putting the old records on computer disks. I'd better call you back."

Alice shook her head.

"The government can afford the phone service, Mr. Conde. I'll hang on the line."

"Suit yourself."

Conde was as good as his word. He came back in thirty-one minutes. "Mr. Farmer, one of the bookkeepers found what you were looking for."

"I'm ready."

"The helmet along with a diving suit and hose equipment were sold to a private individual. Coincidentally, I knew him. Name was Hans Kronberg. A diver from the old school. Caught the bends more than anybody I ever knew. Hans was badly crippled, but it never stopped him from diving."

"Do you know what became of him?"

"As I recall, he purchased the equipment for a salvage job somewhere around Cuba. Rumor was the bends finally put him away for good."

"You don't remember who hired him?"

"No, it was too long ago," said Conde. "I think he found himself a partner who had a few bucks. Hans's regular diving gear was old and worn. His suit must have had fifty patches on it. He worked hand to mouth, barely earned enough to make a decent living. Then one day he walks in here, buys all new equipment, and pays cash."

"I appreciate your help," said Pitt.

"Not at all. Glad you called. Interesting you should call. May I ask where you found his helmet?"

"Inside an old steel wreck near the Bahamas."

Conde got the picture. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "So old Hans never surfaced. Well, I guess he would have preferred it to passing away in bed."

"Can you think of anyone else who might remember Hans?"

"Not really. All the hard-hat divers from the old days are gone now. The only lead I can think of is Hans's widow. She still sends me Christmas cards. She lives in a rest home."

"Do you know the name of the rest home or where it's located?"

"I believe it's in Leesburg, Virginia. Haven't a clue to the name. Speaking of names, hers is Hilda."

"Thank you, Mr. Conde. You've been a great help."

"If you're ever in Baltimore, Mr. Farmer, drop in and say hello. Got plenty of time to talk about the old days since my sons aced me out of the company helm."

"I'd like that," said Pitt. "Goodbye."

Pitt cut the connection and rang Jennie Murphy. He asked her to call senior citizen rest homes around the Leesburg area until she hit on the one that housed Hilda Kronberg.

"What are you after?" demanded Alice.

Pitt smiled. "I'm looking for El Dorado."

"Very funny."

"That's the trouble with CIA types," said Pitt. "They can't take a joke."

<<45>>

The ford delivery truck rolled up the driveway of the Winthrop Manor Nursing Home and stopped at the service entrance. The truck was painted a bright blue with illustrations of floral arrangements on the sides. Gold lettering advertised Mother's House of Flowers.

"Please don't dally," said Alice impatiently. "You have to be in San Salvador four hours from now."

"Do my best," Pitt said as he jumped from the truck, wearing a driver's uniform and carrying a bouquet of roses.

"A mystery to me how you talked Mr. Brogan into this private excursion."

Pitt smiled as he closed the door. "A simple matter of extortion."

The Winthrop Manor Nursing Home was an idyllic setting for the sunset years. There was a nine-hole golf course, tropical indoor swimming pool, an elegant dining room, and lush landscaped gardens. The main building was designed more along the lines of a five-star hotel than a drab sanatorium.

No ramshackle home for the aged poor, thought Pitt. Winthrop Manor radiated first-class taste for wealthy senior citizens. He began to wonder how the widow of a diver who struggled to make ends meet could afford to live in such luxury.

He came through a side door, walked up to a reception desk, and held up the flowers. "I have a delivery for Mrs. Hilda Kronberg."

The receptionist gave him a direct gaze and smiled. Pitt found her quite attractive, dark red hair, long and gleaming, gray-blue eyes set in a narrow face.

"Just leave them on the counter," she said sweetly. "I'll have an attendant give them to her."

"I have to deliver them personally," Pitt said. "They come with a verbal message."

She nodded and pointed to a side door. "You'll probably find Mrs. Kronberg out by the pool. Don't expect her to be lucid, she drifts in and out of reality."

Pitt thanked her and felt remiss for not making a try for a dinner date. He walked through the door and down a ramp. The glassed-in pool was designed like a Hawaiian garden with black lava rock and a waterfall.

After asking two elderly women for Hilda Kronberg, he found her sitting in a wheelchair, her eyes staring into the water, her mind elsewhere.

"Mrs. Kronberg?"

She shaded her eyes with one hand and looked up. "Yes?"

"My dame is Dirk Pitt, and I wonder if I might ask you a few questions?"

"Mr. Pitt, is it?" she asked in a soft voice. She studied his uniform and the flowers. "Why would a florist's delivery boy want to ask me questions?"

Pitt smiled at her use of "boy" and handed her the flowers. "It concerns your late husband, Hans."

"Are you with him?" she asked suspiciously.

"No, I'm quite alone."

Hilda was sickly thin and her skin was as transparent as tissue paper. Her face was heavily made up and her hair skillfully dyed. Her diamond rings would have bought a small fleet of Rolls-Royces. Pitt guessed her age was a good fifteen years younger than the seventy-five she appeared. Hilda Kronberg was a woman waiting to die. Yet when she smiled at the mention of her husband's name, her eyes seemed to smile too.

"You look too young to have known Hans," she said.

"Mr. Conde of Weehawken Marine told me about him."

"Bob Conde, of course. He and Hans were old poker pals."

"You never remarried after his death?"

"Yes, I remarried."

"Yet you still use his name?"

"A long story that wouldn't interest you."

"When was the last time you saw Hans?"

"It was a Thursday. I saw him off on the steamship Monterey, bound for Havana, on December 10, 1958. Hans was always chasing rainbows. He and his partner were off on another treasure hunt. He swore they would find enough gold to buy me the dream house I always wanted. Sadly, he never came back."

"Do you recall who his partner was?"

Her gentle features suddenly turned hard. "What are you after, Mr. Pitt? Who do you represent?"

"I'm a special projects director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency," he replied. "During a survey on a sunken ship called the Cyclops, I discovered what I believe to be the remains of your husband."

"You found Hans?" she asked, surprised.

"I didn't make positive identification, but the diver's helmet on the body was traced to him."

"Hans was a good man," she said wistfully. "Not a good provider, perhaps, but we had a good life together until. . . well, until he died."

"You asked me if I was with him?" he prompted gently.

"A family skeleton, Mr. Pitt. I'm taken good care o£ He watches over me. I've no complaints. My retreat from the real world is my own choosing. . ." Her voice trailed off and her stare grew distant.

Pitt had to catch her before she retreated into a self-induced shell. "Did he tell you Hans was murdered?"

Hilda's eyes flickered for an instant, and then she shook her head silently.

Pitt knelt beside her and held her hand. "His lifeline and air hose were cut while he was working underwater."

She noticeably trembled. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because it's the truth, Mrs. Kronberg. I give you my word. Whoever worked with Hans probably killed him so he could steal Hans's share of the treasure."

Hilda sat there in trancelike confusion for nearly a minute. "You know about the La Dorada treasure," she said at last.

"Yes," Pitt answered. "I know how it came to be on the Cyclops. I also know Hans and his partner salvaged it."

Hilda began toying with one of the diamond rings on her hand. "Deep down I always suspected that Ray killed Hans."

The delayed shock of understanding slowly fell over Pitt's face. He cautiously played a wild card. "You think that Hans was murdered by Ray LeBaron?"

She nodded.

The unexpected revelation caught Pitt unawares, and it took him a few moments to come back on track. "The motive was the treasure?" he asked softly.

"No. The motive was me." She shook her head.

Pitt did not reply, only waited quietly.

"Things happen," she began in a whisper. "I was young and pretty in those days. Can you believe I was once pretty, Mr. Pitt?"

"You're still very pretty"

"I think you may need glasses, but thank you for the compliment."

"You also have a quick mind."

She gestured toward the main building. "Did they tell you I was a bit balmy?"

"The receptionist insinuated you weren't quite together."

"A little act I love to put on. Keeps everyone guessing." Her eyes sparkled briefly and then they took on a faraway look. "Hans was a nice man who was seventeen years older than me. My love for him was mixed with compassion because of his crippled body. We had been married about three years when he brought Ray home for dinner one evening. The three of us soon became close friends, the men forming a partnership to salvage artifacts from old shipwrecks and sell them to antique dealers and marine collectors. Ray was handsome and dashing in those days, and it wasn't long before he and I entered into an affair." She hesitated and stared at Pitt. "Have you ever deeply loved two women at the same time, Mr. Pitt?"

"I'm afraid the experience has eluded me."

"The strange part was that I didn't feel any guilt. Deceiving Hans became an exciting adventure. It was not that I was a dishonest person. It was just that I had never lied to somebody close to me before and remorse never entered my mind. Now I thank God that Hans didn't find out before he died."

"Can you tell me about the La Dorada treasure?"

"After graduating from Stanford, Ray spent a couple years tramping through the jungles of Brazil, hunting for gold. He first heard of the La Dorada from an American surveyor. I don't remember the details, but he was sure it was on board the Cyclops when it disappeared. He and Hans spent two years dragging some sort of instrument that detected iron up and down the Caribbean. Finally, they found the wreck. Ray borrowed some money from his mother to buy diving equipment and a small salvage boat. He sailed ahead to Cuba to set up a base of operations while Hans was finishing up a job off New Jersey."

"Did you ever receive a letter or a phone call from Hans after he sailed on the Monterey?"

"He called once from Cuba. All he said was that he and Ray were leaving for the wreck site the next day. Two weeks later, Ray returned and told me Hans had died from the bends and was buried at sea."

"And the treasure?"

"Ray described it as a huge golden statue," she replied. "He somehow raised it onto the salvage boat and took it to Cuba."

Pitt stood, stretched, and knelt beside Hilda again. "Odd that he didn't bring the statue back to the States."

"He was afraid that Brazil, the state of Florida, the federal government, other treasure hunters and marine archeologists would confiscate or tie up the La Dorada in court claims and eventually leave him nothing. Then, of course, there was always the Internal Revenue Service. Ray couldn't see giving away millions of dollars in taxes if he could get around it. So he told no one but me of the discovery."

"What ever became of it?"

"Ray removed a giant ruby from the statue's heart, cut it up into small stones, and sold them piecemeal."

"And that was the beginning of the LeBaron financial empire," said Pitt.

"Yes, but before Ray could cut up the emerald head or melt down the gold, Castro came to power and he was forced to hide the statue. He never told me where he hid it."

"Then the La Dorada is still buried somewhere in Cuba."

"I'm certain Ray was never able to return and retrieve it."

"Did you see Mr. LeBaron after that?"

"Oh my, yes," she said brightly. "We were married."

"You were the first Mrs. LeBaron?" Pitt asked, astonished.

"For thirty-three years."

"But the records say his first wife's name was Hillary and she died some years ago."

"Ray preferred Hillary over Hilda when he became wealthy. Thought it had more class. My death was a convenient arrangement for him when I became ill-- divorcing an invalid was abhorrent to him. So he buried Hillary LeBaron, while Hilda Kronberg withers away here."

"That strikes me as inhumanly cruel."

"My husband was generous if not compassionate. We lived two different lives. But I don't mind. Jessie comes to see me occasionally."

"The second Mrs. LeBaron?"

"A very charming and thoughtful person."

"How can she be married to him if you're still alive?"

She smiled brightly. "The one time Ray made a bad deal. The doctors told him I had only a few months to live. But I fooled them all and have hung on for seven years."

"That makes him a bigamist as well as a murderer and a thief."

Hilda did not argue. "Ray is a complicated man. He takes far more than he gives."

"If I were you I'd nail him to the nearest cross."

"Too late for me, Mr. Pitt." She looked up at him, a sudden twinkle in her eyes. "But you could do something in my place."

"Name it."

"Find the La Dorada," she said fervently. "Find the statue and give it to the world. See that it's displayed to the public. That would hurt Ray more than losing his magazine. But more important, it's what Hans would have wanted."

Pitt took her hand and held it. "Hilda," he said softly, "I'll do my damnedest."

<<46>>

Hudson adjusted the clarity of the image and nodded a greeting at the face staring back. "Eli, I have someone who has asked to talk to you."

"Always happy to see a new face," Steinmetz replied cheerfully.

Another man took Hudson's place beneath the video camera and monitor. He gazed in fascination for a few moments before speaking.

"Are you really on the moon?" he asked finally.

"Show time," Steinmetz said with an agreeable smile. He moved offscreen and lifted the portable camera from its tripod and panned it through a quartz window at the lunar landscape. "Sorry I can't show you earth, but we're on the wrong side of the ball."

"I believe you."

Steinmetz replaced the camera and moved in front of it again. He leaned forward and stared into his monitor. His smile slowly faded and his eyes took on a questioning look. "Are you who I think you are?"

"Do you recognize me?"

"You look and sound like the President."

It was the President's turn to smile. "I wasn't sure you were aware, knowing that I was a senator when you left earth, and newspapers aren't delivered in your neighborhood."

"When the moon's orbit around the earth is in the proper position we can tap into most communication satellites. During the crew's last rest break, they watched the latest Paul Newman movie on Home Box Office. We also devour the Cable News Network programs like starving dogs."

"The Jersey Colony is an incredible achievement. A grateful nation will forever be in your debt."

"Thank you, Mr. President, though it comes as a surprise that Leo jumped the gun and announced the success of the project before our return to earth. That wasn't part of the plan."

"There has been no public announcement," said the President, becoming serious. "Next to you and your colony people, I am the only one outside the `inner core' who is aware of your existence, except maybe the Russians."

Steinmetz stared at him across 240,000 miles of space. "How could they know about the Jersey Colony?"

The President paused to look at Hudson, who was standing out of camera range. Hudson shook his head.

"The Selenos lunar photo probes," answered the President, omitting any reference to them being manned. "One managed to send its data back to the Soviet Union. We think it showed the Jersey Colony. We also have reason to believe the Russians suspect you destroyed the probes from the lunar surface."

An uneasy apprehension showed in Steinmetz's eyes. "You think they plan to attack us, is that it?"

"Yes, Eli, I do," said the President. "Selenos 8, the Soviet lunar station, entered orbit around the moon three hours ago. NASA computers project it to pass up a safe landing site on the face and come down on the dark side in your block of the neighborhood. A risky gamble unless they have a definite objective."

"The Jersey Colony."

"Their lunar landing vehicle holds seven men," the President continued. "The craft requires two pilot-engineers to direct its flight. That leaves five for combat."

"There are ten of us," said Steinmetz. "Two to one, not bad odds."

"Except they'll have firepower and training on their side. These men will be the deadliest team the Russians can field."

"You paint a grim picture, Mr. President. What would you have us do?"

"You've accomplished far more than any of us had any right to expect. But the deck is stacked against you. Destroy the colony and get out before there's any bloodshed. I want you and your people safely back on earth to receive the honors you deserve."

"I don't think you quite realize what we've busted our asses to build here."

"Whatever you've done isn't worth your lives."

"We've all lived with death for six years," said Steinmetz slowly. "A few more hours won't matter."

"Don't throw it all away on an impossible fight," the President argued.

"Sorry, Mr. President, but you're talking to a man who lost his daddy at a little sand spit called Wake Island. I'll put it to a vote, but I already know the outcome. The other guys won't cut and run any more than I will. We'll stay and fight."

The President felt proud and defeated at the same time. "What weapons do you have?" he asked wearily.

"Our arsenal consists of one used rocket launcher, which is down to its last shell, an M-14 National Match rifle, and a twenty-two-caliber target pistol. We brought them for a series of gravity experiments."

"You're outclassed, Eli," the President said miserably. "Can't you realize that?"

"No, sir. I refuse to quit on a technicality."

"What technicality?"

"The Russians are the visitors."

"So what?"

"That makes us the home team," said Steinmetz slyly. "And the home team always has the advantage."

"They've landed!" exclaimed Sergei Kornilov, smashing a fist into one hand. "Selenos 8 is on the moon!"

Below the VIP observation room, on the floor of the Soviet Mission Control Center, the engineers and space scientists burst into wild cheering and applause.

President Antonov held up a glass of champagne. "To the glory of the Soviet Union and the party."

The toast was repeated by the Kremlin officials and high-ranking military officers crowded in the room.

"To our first stepping-stone on our quest of Mars," toasted General Yasenin.

"Here, here!" replied a chorus of deep voices. "To Mars."

Antonov set his empty glass on a tray and turned to Yasenin, his face abruptly serious. "How soon before Major Leuchenko makes contact with the moon base?" he asked.

"Allowing for time to secure the spacecraft systems, make a reconnaissance of the terrain, and position his men for the assault, I would say four hours."

"How far away is the landing site?"

"Selenos 8 was programmed to touch down behind a low range of hills less than three kilometers from where Selenos 4 detected the astronauts," answered the general.

"That seems quite close," said Antonov. "If the Americans tracked our descent, Leuchenko has lost all opportunity for surprise."

"There is little doubt they have realized what we're up to."

"You're not concerned?"

"Our advantage lies in Leuchenko's experience and superior firepower, Comrade President." Yasenin's face wore the expression of a boxing manager who had just sent his fighter into the ring against a one-armed man. "The Americans are faced with a no-win situation."

<<47>>

Major Grigory Leuchenko lay stretched in the fine, gray dust of the moon's surface and stared at the desolate wasteland spread beneath the pitch-black sky. He found the silent and ghostly landscape similar to the arid desert of Afghanistan's Seistan Basin. The gravel plains and rolling mound-shaped hills gave little definition. It reminded him of a great sea of plaster of paris, yet it seemed strangely familiar to him.

He fought off an urge to vomit. He and his men were all suffering from nausea. There had been no time to train for the weightless environment during the journey from earth, no weeks or months to adjust as had the cosmonauts of the Soyuz missions. They were given only a few hours' instruction on how to operate the life-support systems of their lunar suits, a brief lecture on conditions they could expect to find on the moon, and a briefing on the location of the American colony.

He felt a hand squeeze his shoulder through his lunar suit. He spoke into his helmet's internal transmitter without turning.

"What have you got?"

Lieutenant Dmitri Petrov pointed toward a flat valley running between the sloping walls of two craters about a thousand meters to the left. "Vehicle tracks and footprints, converging into that shadow below the left crater's rim. I make out three, maybe four small buildings."

"Pressurized greenhouses," said Leuchenko. He set a pair of boxlike binoculars on a small tripod and settled the wide viewing piece around the faceplate of his helmet. "Looks like vapor issuing out of the crater's sloping side." He paused to adjust the focus. "Yes, I can see it clearly now. There's an entrance into the rock, probably an airlock with access to their interior facility. No sign of life. The outer perimeter appears deserted."

"They could be hiding in ambush," said Petrov.

"Hide where?" asked Leuchenko, sweeping the open panorama. "The scattered rocks are too small to shield a man. There are no breaks in the terrain, no indication of defense works. An astronaut in a bulky white lunar suit would stand out like a snowman in a field of cinders. No, they must be barricaded inside the cave."

"Not a wise defensive position. All to our advantage."

"They still have a rocket launcher."

"That has little effect against men spread in a loose formation."

"True, but we'll have no cover and we can't be sure they don't have other weapons."

"A heavy concentration of fire inside the cave entrance might force their hand," suggested Petrov.

"Our orders are not to cause any unnecessary destruction to the facility," said Leuchenko. "We'll have to move in=

"Something is moving out there!" Petrov cried.

Leuchenko stared through the binoculars. An odd-looking open vehicle had appeared from behind one of the greenhouses and was traveling in their direction. A white flag, attached to an antenna, hung limply in the airless atmosphere. He watched until it stopped fifty meters away and a figure stepped out onto the lunar soil.

"Interesting," said Leuchenko thoughtfully. "The Americans want to parley."

"Might be a trick. A ruse to study our force."

"I don't think so. They wouldn't make contact under a flag of truce if they were acting from a position of strength. Their intelligence people and tracking systems on earth warned them of our arrival, and they must realize they're outgunned. Americans are capitalists. They look at everything from a business viewpoint. If they can't make a fight for it, they'll try to strike a deal."

"You going out?" asked Petrov.

"No harm in talking. He doesn't appear armed. Perhaps they can be persuaded to bargain their lives for an intact colony."

"Our orders were to take no prisoners."

"I haven't forgotten," said Leuchenko tensely. "We'll cross that bridge when we've achieved our objective. Tell the men to keep the American in their sights. If I raise my left hand, give the order to fire."

He handed his automatic weapon to Petrov and rose lightly to his feet. His lunar suit, rifle, and life-support backpack, containing an oxygen recharger and water recharger for cooling, added 194 pounds to Leuchenko's body weight for a total of almost 360 earth pounds. But his lunar weight was only 60 pounds.

He moved toward the lunar vehicle in the half-walking, half-hopping gait typical when moving under the light gravitational pull of the moon. He quickly approached the lunar vehicle and halted about five meters away.

The American moon colonist was leaning unconcernedly against a front wheel. He straightened, knelt on one knee, and wrote a number in the lead-colored dust.

Leuchenko understood and turned his radio receiver to the frequency indicated. Then he nodded.

"Are you receiving me?" the American asked in badly mispronounced Russian.

"I speak English," replied Leuchenko.

"Good. That will save any misunderstanding. My name is Eli Steinmetz."

"You are the United States moon base leader?"

"I head up the project, yes."

"Major Grigory Leuchenko, Soviet Union."

Steinmetz moved closer and they stiffly shook hands. "It seems we have a problem, Major."

"One neither of us can avoid."

"You could turn around and hike back to your lunar lander," said Steinmetz.

"I have my orders," Leuchenko stated in a firm tone.

"You're to attack and capture my colony."

"Yes.

"Is there no way we can prevent bloodshed?"

"You could surrender."

"Funny," said Steinmetz. "I was about to ask the same of you."

Leuchenko was certain Steinmetz was bluffing, but the face behind the gold-tinted visor remained unreadable. All Leuchenko could see was his own reflection.

"You must realize that your people are no match for mine."

"In a knock-down, drag-out firelight you'd win," agreed Steinmetz. "But you can remain outside your landing craft only for a few hours before you must go back and replenish your breathing systems. I reckon you've already used up two."

"We have enough left to accomplish the job," Leuchenko said confidently.

"I must warn you, Major. We have a secret weapon. You and your men will surely die."

"A crude bluff, Mr. Steinmetz. I would have expected better from an American scientist."

Steinmetz corrected him. "Engineer, there's a difference."

"Whatever," said Leuchenko impatiently. As a soldier, he was out of his element in wordy negotiations. He was anxious for action. "It's senseless to carry this conversation any further. You would be wise to send your men out and turn over the facility. I'll guarantee your safety until you can be returned to earth."

"You're lying, Major. Either your people or mine will have to be erased. There can be no losers left to tell the world what happened here."

"You're wrong, Mr. Steinmetz. Surrender and you will be treated fairly."

"Sorry, no deal."

"Then there can be no quarter."

"I expected none," said Steinmetz, his tone grim. "You attack and the waste of human lives will be on your shoulders."

Anger rose within Leuchenko. "For one who is responsible for the deaths of nine Soviet cosmonauts, Mr. Steinmetz, you're hardly in a position to lecture me on human life."

Leuchenko couldn't be certain, but he swore Steinmetz tensed. Without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heels and loped away. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Steinmetz stood there for several seconds before slowly reentering the lunar vehicle and driving back to the colony, trailing a small cloud of gray dust behind the rear wheels.

Leuchenko smiled to himself. In two more hours, three at the most, his mission would be successfully achieved. When he reached his men, he studied the layout of the craggy surface in front of the moon base through the binoculars again. Finally, when he was satisfied there were no American colonists lurking amid the rocks, Leuchenko gave the order to spread out in loose formation and advance. The elite Soviet fighting team moved forward without an inkling that Steinmetz's inventive trap was set and waiting.

<<48>>

After Steinmetz returned to the entrance of Jersey Colony's subterranean headquarters, he leisurely parked the lunar vehicle and shuffled slowly inside. He took his time, almost feeling Leuchenko's eyes probing his every movement. Once out of view of the Russians, he stopped short of the airlock and quickly stepped through a small side tunnel that gradually rose through the crater's interior slope. His passage raised small clouds of dust that filled the narrow shaft, and he had to continually wipe his visor to see.

Fifty steps and a minute later he crouched and crawled into an opening that led to a small shelf camouflaged by a large gray cloth perfectly matched to the surrounding surface. Another suited figure was lying on his stomach, gazing through the telescopic sight of a rifle.

Willie Shea, the colony's geophysicist, did not notice another presence until Steinmetz eased down beside him. "I don't think you made much of an impression," he said with a bare hint of a Boston twang. "The Slavs are about to attack the homestead."

From the elevated vantage point Steinmetz could clearly see Major Leuchenko and his men advancing across the valley. They came on like hunters stalking their prey, making no attempt to use the high ground of the crater's sides. The loose shale would have made the going too slow. Instead, they jumped across the flat ground in zigzag patterns, throwing themselves prone every thirty or forty feet, taking advantage of every boulder, every broken contour of the land. An expert marksman would have found the twisting and dodging figures nearly impossible to hit.

"Put a shot about ten feet in front of the point man," said Steinmetz. "I want to observe their reaction."

"If they're monitoring our frequency, we'll give away our every move," protested Shea.

"They haven't got time to hunt for our frequency. Shut up and shoot."

Shea shrugged inside his lunar suit, peered through the crosshairs of his scope, and squeezed off around. The gunshot was strangely silent because there was no air on the moon to carry the sound waves.

A puff of dust kicked up ahead of Leuchenko and he immediately dropped to the ground. His men followed suit and stared over the sights of their automatic weapons, waiting expectantly for more fire. But nothing happened.

"Did anyone see where it came from?" Leuchenko demanded.

The replies were negative.

"They're sighting for range," said Sergeant Ivan Ostrovski. A hardened veteran of the Afghanistan fighting, he could not believe he was actually in combat on the moon. He swept a pointed finger over the ground about two hundred meters ahead. "What do you make of those colored rocks, Major?"

For the first time Leuchenko spied several boulders scattered in a ragged line across the valley, stained with bright orange paint. "I doubt if it has anything to do with us," he said. "Probably put there for some sort of experiment."

"I think the fire came on a downward angle," said Petrov.

Leuchenko took the binoculars from his hip pack, set them on the tripod, and carefully scanned the side and rim of the crater. The sun was a blazing white but with no air to spread the light an astronaut standing in the shadows of a rock formation would be almost invisible.

"Nothing shows," he said finally.

"If they're waiting for us to close the gap, they must be conserving a small supply of ammunition."

"We'll know in another three hundred meters what kind of reception they've planned," muttered Leuchenko. "Once we come under cover of the greenhouses we'll be out of sight of the cave entrance." He rose to one knee and waved his arm forward. "Fan out and keep alert."

The five Soviet fighters leaped to their feet and scrambled on. As they reached the orange rocks another shot struck the fine sand in front of them and they flung themselves prone, a jagged line of white figures, face visors flashing in the intense rays of the sun.

Only a hundred meters separated them from the greenhouses, but nausea was draining their energy. They were as tough as any fighting men in the world, but they were combating space sickness in tandem with an alien environment. Leuchenko knew he could count on them to go far beyond their limits of endurance. But if they didn't force their way into the safe atmosphere of the colony within the next hour, there was little chance of them making it back to their landing craft before their life-support systems gave out. He gave them a minute to rest while he made another examination of the ground ahead.

Leuchenko was an old hand at sniffing out traps. He had come within a hair of being killed on three different patrols in ambushes laid by the Afghan rebels, and he had learned the fine art of scenting danger the hard way.

It wasn't what his eyes could see, it was what they couldn't see that rang a warning bell in his head. The two shots didn't fit a wild pattern. They struck him as deliberately placed. A crude warning? No, it had to mean something else, he speculated. A signal perhaps?

The confining pressure suit and helmet irritated him. He longed for his comfortable and efficient combat gear, but fully realizing they could not protect his body from the frying heat and the cosmic rays. For at least the fourth time the bile rose in his throat and he gagged as he forced himself to swallow it.

The situation was hellish, he thought angrily. Nothing was to his liking. His men were exposed in the open. He'd been given no intelligence on the Americans' weapons except the reported rocket launcher. Now they were under attack by small-arms fire. Leuchenko's only consolation was that the colonists seemed to be using a rifle or maybe even a pistol. If they possessed a full automatic firearm, they could have cut down the Soviets a hundred meters back. And the rocket launcher. Why hadn't they tried it before now? What were they waiting for?

What bothered him most was the total lack of movement by the colonists. The greenhouses, equipment, and small laboratory modules sitting around the entrance to the cave appeared deserted.

"Unless you see a target," he ordered, "hold your fire until we reach cover. Then we'll regroup and storm the main quarters inside the hill."

Leuchenko waited until each of his four men acknowledged and then he motioned them on.

Corporal Mikhail Yushchuk was about thirty meters behind and to one side of the man on his left. He stood and began running in a crouching position. He had taken only a few steps when he felt a stinging sensation in his kidney. Then the sudden thrust of pain was repeated. He reached around and grasped the small of his back just below his support system pack. His vision began to blur and his breath came in gasps as his pressurized suit began to leak. He sank to his knees and stared dumbly at his hand. The glove was drenched in blood that was already steaming and coagulating under the roasting heat from the sun.

Yushchuk tried to warn Leuchenko, but his voice failed. He crumbled into the gray dust, his eyes dimly recognizing a figure in a strange space suit standing over him with a knife. Then his world went black.

Steinmetz witnessed Yushchuk's death from his vantage point and issued a series of sharp commands into his helmet's transmitter. "Okay, Dawson, your man is ten feet left and eight feet ahead of you. Gallagher, he's twenty feet to your right and moving forward. Steady, steady, he's cutting right into Dawson. Okay, nail him."

He watched two of the colonists materialize as if by magic and attack one of the Soviets who was lagging slightly behind his comrades.

"Two down, three to go," Steinmetz muttered softly to himself.

"I've got my sights set on the point man," said Shea. "But I can't promise a clean hit unless he freezes for a second."

"Lay another shot, only closer this time to get them on the ground again. Then stay on him. If he gets wise, he could cut our guys down before they could close on him. Blast his ass if he so much as turns his head."

Shea silently aimed his M-14 and pulled off another shot, which struck less than three feet in front of the lead man's boots.

"Cooper! Snyder!" Steinmetz barked. "Your man is flat on the ground twenty feet ahead and to your left. Take him, now!" He paused to scan the position of the second remaining Russian. "Same goes for Russell and Perry, thirty feet directly in front. Go!"

The third member of the Soviet combat team never knew what hit him. He died while hugging the ground for cover. Eight of the colonists were now closing the pincers from the rear of the Russians, whose concentration was focused on the colony.

Suddenly Steinmetz froze. The man behind the leader swung around just as Russell and Perry leaped at him like offensive tackles charging a quarterback.

Lieutenant Petrov spotted the converging shadows as he rose to his feet for the final dash to the greenhouses. He instinctively twisted around in an abrupt corkscrew motion as Russell and Perry crashed into him. A cold professional, he should have fired and brought them down. But he hesitated a split second too long out of astonishment. It was as if the Americans had risen up out of the moon's surface like spectral demons. He managed to snap off a shot that drilled one of his assailant's upper arms. Then a knife flashed.

Leuchenko's eyes were trained toward the colony ahead. He was unaware of the slaughter going on behind him until he heard Petrov gasp out a warning. He spun around and stood rooted in shocked awe.

His four men were stretched out in a lifeless sprawl on the lunar gravel. Eight American colonists had appeared out of nowhere and were rapidly encircling him. Sudden hatred burst within him, and he thrust his weapon into firing position.

A bullet thumped into his thigh and he tilted sideways. Tensed in sudden pain, he squeezed off twenty rounds. Most of them flew wide into the lunar desert, but two found their mark. One of the colonists fell backward and another dropped to his knees clutching his shoulder.

Then another bullet tore into his neck. He held on to the trigger, spewing rounds until the clip ran dry, his shots flying wild.

He cursed as he crumpled limply to the ground. "Damn the Americans!" he shouted inside his helmet. He thought of them as devils who didn't play the game according to the rules. He lay on his back, staring up at the faceless forms standing above him.

They parted as another member of the colonists approached and knelt down beside Leuchenko.

"Steinmetz?" Leuchenko asked weakly. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes, I'm on your frequency," answered Steinmetz. "I can hear you."

"Your secret weapon. . . how did you make your people appear from nothing?"

Steinmetz knew he would be talking to a dead man within seconds.

"An ordinary shovel," he replied. "Since we all have to wear pressurized lunar suits with self-contained life supports, it was a simple matter to bury the men in the soft soil."

"They were marked by the orange rocks?"

"Yes, from a hidden platform on the crater's side I could direct when and where to attack you from the rear."

"I do not wish to be buried here," Leuchenko murmured. "Tell my nation. . . tell them to bring us home someday."

It was close, but Steinmetz got it in. "You'll all go home," he said. "That's a promise."

In Russia a grim-faced Yasenin turned to President Antonov. "You heard," he said through clenched lips. "They're gone."

"They're gone," Antonov repeated mechanically. "It was as though Leuchenko's last words came from across the room."

"His communications were relayed by the two crewmen on the lunar landing craft direct to our space communications center," explained Kornilov.

Antonov moved away from the window overlooking the mission control room and sat down heavily in a chair. For such a large bear of a man he seemed shrunken and withered. He looked down at his hands and shook his head sadly.

"Poor planning," he said quietly. "We threw Major Leuchenko and his men's lives away and achieved nothing."

"There was no time to plan a proper mission," Yasenin offered lamely.

"Under the circumstances, we did all that was possible," added Kornilov. "We still have the glory of the first Soviet men to walk on the moon."

"The luster has already faded." Antonov's voice was leaden with defeat. "The Americans' incredible accomplishment will bury any propaganda value of our achievement."

"Perhaps we can still stop them," Yasenin said bitterly.

Kornilov stared at the general. "By sending up a better prepared fighting force?"

"Exactly."

"Better yet, why not wait until they return?"

Antonov looked at Kornilov with curious eyes. "What are you suggesting?"

"I've been speaking to Vladimir Polevoi. He's informed me that the GRU's listening center in Cuba has intercepted and identified the voice and video transmissions from the American moon colony to a location outside of Washington. He's sending copies of the communications by courier. One of them reveals the scheduled departure of the colonists for earth."

"They're returning?" asked Antonov.

"Yes," replied Kornilov. "According to Polevoi, they intend to link up with the American space station in forty-six hours, then return to the Kennedy spaceport at Cape Canaveral on the shuttle Gettysburg."

Antonov's face brightened. "Then we still have a chance to stop them?"

Yasenin nodded. "They can be destroyed in deep space before they dock at the space station. The Americans wouldn't dare retaliate after we confront them with the crimes they've committed against us.

"Better to reserve our retribution as leverage," said Kornilov thoughtfully.

"Leverage?"

Kornilov smiled enigmatically. "The Americans have a saying, `The ball is in our court.' It is they who are on the defensive. The White House and the State Department are probably drafting a reply to our expected protest this minute. I propose we sidestep the accepted routine and remain silent. Do not play the role of a victimized nation. Instead, we use our leverage and cause an event."

"What kind of event?" asked Antonov, straightening with interest.

"The seizure of the vast amount of data carried by the returning moon colonists."

"By what means?" Yasenin demanded.

The smile left Kornilov's face and his expression went dead serious. "We force the Gettysburg to crash-land in Cuba."

<4>THE GETTYSBURG

November 3, 1989

San Salvador Island

<<49>>

Pitt was going mad. The two days of inactivity were the most agonizing he had ever known. There was little for him to do but eat, exercise, and sleep. He had yet to be called on to participate in the training exercises. Hourly, he cursed Colonel Kleist, who bore Pitt's onslaughts with stoic indifference, explaining with tight-lipped patience that his Cuban Special Forces team could not assault Cayo Santa Maria until he pronounced them fit and ready. And no, he would not speed up the timetable.

Pitt worked off his frustration by taking long swims to the outer reef and climbing a steep rock face whose summit looked out over the surrounding sea.

San Salvador, the smallest of the Bahamas, was known to old mariners as Watling Island, after a zealot buccaneer who flogged members of his crew who did not observe the Sabbath. It is also believed to be the island where Columbus first stepped ashore in the New World. With a picturesque harbor and a lush interior blued by freshwater lakes, few tourists gazing at its beauty would have guessed it contained a huge military training complex and missile observation installation.

The CIA staked out its claim on a remote beach called French Bay at the southern tip of the island. There was no road linking the covert training center with Cockburn Town and the main airport. The only way in or out was by small boat through the surrounding reefs or by helicopter.

Pitt rose shortly before sunrise on the morning of his third day on the island and swam strongly for half a mile, and then worked his way back to shore, free-diving among the coral formations. Two hours later, he walked from the warm water and stretched out on the beach, overwhelmed by a surge of helplessness as he stared over the sea toward Cuba.

A shadow fell across his body, and he sat up. A dark-skinned man stood over him, dressed comfortably in a loose-fitting cotton shirt and shorts. His slick, night-black hair matched an enormous moustache. Sad eyes stared from a face wrinkled from long exposure to wind and sun, and when he smiled his lips barely moved.

"Mr. Pitt?

"Yes."

"We haven't been formally introduced, but I'm Major Angelo Quintana."

Pitt came to his feet and they shook hands. "You're leading the mission."

Quintana nodded. "Colonel Kleist tells me you've been riding him pretty hard."

"I left friends who may be fighting to stay alive."

"I also left friends in Cuba, Mr. Pitt. Only they lost their battle to live. My brother and father died in prison merely because a member of their local block committee, who owed my family money, accused them of counterrevolutionary activities. I sympathize with your problem, but you do not have a monopoly on grief."

Pitt did not offer condolences. Quintana struck him as a man who didn't dwell on sorrow. "As long as I believe there is still hope," he said firmly, "I'm not about to stop pushing."

Quintana gave him an easy smile. He liked what he saw in Pitt's eyes. This was a man who could be trusted when things got tight. A hardnose who did not know the definition of failure.

"So you're the one who made the ingenious escape from Velikov's headquarters."

"A ton of luck played a heavy role."

"How would you describe the morale of the troops guarding the compound?"

"If you mean mental condition, I'd have to say they were bored to the gills. Russians aren't used to the draining humidity of the tropics. Overall they seemed sluggish."

"How many patrolling the island?"

"None that I could see."

"And the guardhouse at the front gate?"

"Only two."

"A canny man, Velikov."

"I gather you respect him for making the island appear deserted."

"You gather right. I would have expected a small army of guards and the usual Soviet security measures. But Velikov doesn't think like a Russian. He designs like an American, refines like a Japanese, and expedites like a German. The man is one shrewd operator."

"So I've heard."

"I'm told you met him."

"We've had a couple of conversations."

"What was your impression of him?"

"He reads the Wall Street Journal."

"That all?"

"He speaks better English than I do. His nails are clean and trimmed. And if he's read half the books and magazines in his library he knows more about the United States and its taxpayers than half the politicians in Washington."

"You're probably the only Westerner running around loose who's ever seen him face to face."

"It was no treat, believe me."

Quintana thoughtfully scraped one toe in the sand. "Leaving such a vital installation so lightly guarded is an open invitation for infiltration."

"Not if Velikov knows you're coming," said Pitt.

"Okay, the Cuban radar network and the Russian spy satellites can spot every plane and boat within fifty miles. An air drop or a landing from the sea would be impossible. But an underwater approach could squeeze under their detection grids with ease." Quintana paused and grinned. "In your case the vessel was too tiny to show up on a radarscope."

"My inventory of oceangoing yachts was marginal," Pitt said lightly. Then he turned serious. "You've overlooked something."

"Overlooked what?"

"Velikov's brain. You said he was a shrewd operator. He didn't build a fortress bristling with landmines and concrete bunkers for one simple reason-- he didn't have to. You and Colonel Kleist are bleeding optimists if you think a submarine or your SPUD, or whatever you call it, can penetrate his security net."

Quintana's eyebrows narrowed. "Go on."

"Underwater sensors," explained Pitt. "Velikov must have ringed the island with sensors on the sea floor that can detect the movement of a submarine's hull against a water mass and the cavitation of its propellers."

"Our SPUT was designed to slip through such a system."

"Not if Velikov's marine engineers bunched the sensing units a hundred yards apart. Nothing but a school of fish could swim past. I saw the trucks in the compound's garage. With ten minutes' warning Velikov could put a security force on the beach that would slaughter your men before they stepped foot out of the surf. I suggest you and Kleist reprogram your electronic war games."

Quintana subsided into silence. His precisely conceived landing plan began to crack and shatter before his eyes. "Our computers should have thought of that," he said bitterly.

"They don't create what they're not taught," Pitt replied philosophically.

"You realize, of course, this means we have to scrub the mission. Without the element of surprise there isn't the slightest hope of destroying the installation and rescuing Mrs. LeBaron and the others."

"I disagree."

"You think you're smarter than our mission computers?"

"I escaped Cayo Santa Maria without detection. I can get your people in the same way."

"With a fleet of bathtubs?" Quintana said sarcastically.

"A more modern variation comes to mind."

Quintana looked at Pitt in deep speculation. "You've got an idea that might turn the trick?"

"I most certainly have."

"And still meet the timetable?"

"Yes.

"And succeed?"

"You feel safer if I underwrote an insurance policy?"

Quintana sensed utter conviction in Pitt's tone. He turned and began walking toward the main camp. "Come along, Mr. Pitt. It's time we put you to work."

<<50>>

Fidel Castro sat slouched in the fighting chair and gazed pensively over the stern of a forty-foot cabin cruiser. His shoulders were harnessed and his gloved hands loosely clutched the heavy fiberglass rod, whose line trailed from a huge reel into the sparkling wake. The dolphin bait was snatched by a passing barracuda, but Castro didn't seem to mind. His thoughts were not on marlin.

The muscular body that once earned him the title "Cuba's best school athlete" had softened and expanded with age. The curly hair and the barbed-wire beard were gray now, but the revolutionary fire in his dark eyes still burned as brightly as it did when he came down from the mountains of the Sierra Maestra thirty years ago.

He wore only a baseball cap, swimming trunks, old sneakers, and sunglasses. The stub of an unlit Havana drooped from one corner of his lips. He turned and shielded his eyes from the brilliant tropical sunlight.

"You want me to cease internacionalismo?" he demanded above the muffled roar of the twin diesels. "Renounce our policy of spreading Cuba's influence abroad? Is that what you want?"

Raul Castro sat in a deckchair, holding a bottle of beer. "Not renounce but quietly bring down the curtain on our commitments abroad."

"My brother the hardline revolutionary. What brought on your aboutface?"

"Times change," Raul said simply.

Cold and aloof in public, Fidel's younger brother was witty and congenial in private. His hair was black, slick, and closely trimmed above the ears. Raul viewed the world from a pixie face through dark, beady eyes. A narrow moustache stretched across his upper lip, the pointed tips ending precisely above the corners of his mouth.

Fidel rubbed the back of one hand against a few drops of sweat that clung to his eyebrows. "I cannot write off the enormous cost in money and the blood of our soldiers. And what of our friends in Africa and the Americas? Do I write them off like our dead in Afghanistan?"

"The price Cuba was paid for our involvement in revolutionary movements outweighs the gains. So we made friends in Angola and Ethiopia. What will they ever do for us in return? We both know the answer is nothing. We have to face it, Fidel, we made mistakes. I'll be the first to admit mine. But for God's sake, let's cut our losses and return to building Cuba into a great socialist nation to be envied by the third world. We'll achieve far more by having them copy our example than by giving them our people's blood."

"You're asking me to turn my back on our honor and our principles."

Raul rolled the cool bottle across his perspiring forehead. "Let's look at the truth, Fidel. We've thrown principles overboard before when it was in the best interests of the revolution. If we don't shift gears soon and vitalize our stagnating economy, the people's discontent might turn to unrest, despite their love for you."

Fidel spat the cigar stub over the boat's transom and motioned to a deckhand for another. "The U.S. Congress would love to see the people turn against me."

"The Congress doesn't bother me half as much as the Kremlin," said Raul. "Everywhere I look I find a traitor in Antonov's pocket. I can't even trust my own security people anymore."

"Once the President and I agree to the U.S.-Cuban pact and sign it, our Soviet fair-weather friends will be forced to release their tentacles from around our necks."

"How can you finalize anything when you refuse to sit down and negotiate with him?"

Fidel paused to light a fresh cigar brought by the deckhand. "By now he's probably made up his mind that my offer to sever our links with the Soviet Union in return for United States economic aid and open trade agreements is genuine. If I appear too eager for a meeting, he'll only set impossible preconditions. Let him stew for a while. When he realizes I'm not crawling over the White House doormat, he'll lower his sights."

"The President will be even more eager to come to terms when he learns of the reckless encroachment by Antonov's cronies into our government."

Fidel held up the cigar to make his point. "Exactly why I have sat back and allowed it to happen. Playing on American fears of a Soviet stooge figureheading a puppet regime is all to our advantage."

Raul emptied the beer bottle and tossed it over the side. "Just don't wait too long, big brother, or we'll find ourselves out of a job."

"Never happen." Fidel's face creased in a cocksure smile. "I am the glue that holds the revolution together. All I have to do is go before the people and expose the traitors and the Soviet plot to undermine our sacred sovereignty. And then, as President of the Council of Ministers, you will announce the cutting of all ties to the Kremlin. Any discontent will be replaced with national rejoicing. With one swing of the ax I'll have cut the massive debt to Moscow and removed the U.S. trade embargo."

"Better be soon."

"In my speech during the Education Day celebration."

Raul checked the calendar on his watch. "Five days from now."

"A perfect opportunity."

"I'd feel better if we could test the President's mood toward your proposal."

"I'll leave it to you to contact the White House and arrange for a meeting with his representatives during the Education Day festivities."