Night Probe!

Published:1982

Clive Cussler

Night Probe

In gratitude to Jerry Brown, Teresa Burkert, Charlie Davis, Derek Susan Goodwin, Clyde Jones, Don Mercier, Valerie Pallai-Petty, Bill Shea and Ed Wardwell, who kept me on the track.

Prologue

MAY 1914

UPSTATE NEW YORK

Streaks of lightning signaled a threatening thunderstorm as the Manhattan Limited hurtled over the ballasted rails piercing the New York countryside. Coal smoke burst from the locomotive's stack in a drumstick plume that dusted the stars stippling the night sky. Inside the cab, the engineer slipped a silver Waltham watch from the pocket of his coveralls, sprung the lid and studied the face in the glow from the firebox. It was not the approaching storm that worried him, but the relentless crawl of time that sought to rob him of his precious schedule.

Gazing out the right side of the cab, he watched the creosote ties sweep under the eight huge driving wheels of the 2-8-0 Consolidation-type locomotive. Like the captain of a ship who lived with his command, he had been at the same throttle for three years. He was proud of 'Gallopin' Lena,' as he affectionately called the 236,000 pounds of iron and steel. Built by Alco's Schenectady Works in 1911, she was burnished in gloss black with a red stripe and her number 88 neatly hand-painted in gold.

He listened to the steel wheels pounding out a moving rhythm against the rail joints, felt the momentum of the locomotive and the seven cars that followed.

Then he pulled the throttle up another notch.

In the seventy-foot private Pullman that brought up the rear, Richard Essex sat at a desk in the vestibuled library. Too tired to sleep and bored with the tedium of the trip, he composed a letter to his wife to pass the time.

He described the ornate interior of the car, the elaborately carved Circassian walnut, the handsome brass electrical lamps, the red velvet revolving chairs and the potted palms. He even mentioned the beveled mirrors and ceramic tile floors in the lavatories of the four spacious sleeping compartments.

Behind him in a richly paneled observation parlor, five army guards in civilian dress played cards, the smoke from their cigars drifting in a blue cloud toward the brocade ceiling, their rifles laid casually about the furniture. Occasionally a player would lean over one of the brass spittoons dotting the Persian carpet. It was perhaps the highest level of luxury any of them had ever enjoyed, Essex speculated. The palatial transportation must have cost the government nearly seventy-five dollars a day, and all for the movement of a scrap of paper.

He sighed and finished his letter. Then he sealed it in an envelope, which he stuffed inside his breast pocket. Sleep still evaded him, so he sat and stared through the arched bay windows at the darkened landscape, listening for the wail of the engine's whistle just before a village depot or country crossing flashed past. Finally he stood up, stretched and walked to the elegant dining room, where he sat down at a mahogany table covered by a snowy cloth enhanced by crystal glasses and silver service. A glance at his watch told him it was a few minutes before two in the morning.

"What is your pleasure, Mr. Essex?" A black waiter had appeared as if by magic.

Essex looked up and smiled. "I know it's quite late, but I wonder if I might get a light snack."

"Happy to oblige, sir. What would you like to order?"

"Something that will help me close my eyes."

The waiter flashed a toothy grin. "May I suggest a small bottle of Pommard burgundy and a nice hot bowl of clam bouillon."

"That will be fine, thank you."

Later, as he sipped his wine, Essex couldn't help wondering if Harvey Shields was also finding sleep so elusive.

Harvey Shields was experiencing a nightmare.

His mind refused to accept any other explanation. The shriek of steel and the cries of agony and terror beyond the darkness that smothered him were too hellish for reality. He struggled to retreat from the devilish scene and drift back into a peaceful sleep, but then the pain began gnawing at his senses and he realized it was no dream.

Somewhere below he could hear the rush of water as though it was surging through a tunnel, followed by a gust of wind that squeezed the breath from his lungs. He tried to open his eyes, but the lids felt glued shut. He was not aware that his head and face were coated with blood. His body was gripped in an immovable fetal position against cold, un giving metal. An acrid electrical smell stung his nostrils and combined with the increasing pain to prod him onto a higher plateau of consciousness.

He tried to move his arms and legs, but they refused to respond. A strange silence settled around him, broken only by the murmur of lapping water. He made another attempt at breaking clear of the unseen vise that clutched him. He took a great breath and then exerted every muscle in his limbs.

Suddenly an arm tore free and he gasped as a jagged piece of metal sliced his forearm. The agony swept him to complete awareness. He wiped the congealing wetness from his eyes and gazed about what had once been his stateroom aboard the Canadian luxury liner bound for England.

The large mahogany dresser was gone, as was the writing desk and the nightstand. Where the deck and starboard bulkhead should have been was a massive cavity, and across the twisted edge there was only the fog-shrouded darkness and the black water of the St. Lawrence River. It was as if he was looking into a bottomless void. Then his eyes caught and focused on a soft reflection of white and he knew he was not alone.

Almost within touching distance a young girl from the next stateroom was buried in the debris with only her head and one pale shoulder protruding from the broken ceiling. Her hair was golden and rained in loose strands nearly three feet long. Her head was twisted at a grotesque angle and blood seeped from her lips, streaming down her face and slowly dyeing her cascading hair crimson.

Shields' initial shock receded and a spreading sickness took its place. Until now the specter of death had not crossed his mind, but in the lifeless corpse of the girl he could read his own diminishing future. Then a sudden thought burst inside him.

In despair his eyes vainly probed the debris for the hand case he had never let out of his sight. It was gone, swallowed up in the wreckage. Sweat erupted from his every pore as he fought to extricate his torso from its prison. The effort was fruitless, there was no feeling below his chest and he knew with fearful certainty that his back was crushed.

Around him the great liner was in its death throes, rapidly listing and settling into the cold water that would forever be its grave. Passengers, some in evening dress, most in sleeping clothes, were milling about the slanting decks trying to climb into the few lifeboats that were launched or leaping into the cold river, clutching anything that would float. Only minutes remained before the ship would take her final plunge a scant two miles from shore.

"Martha?"

Shields stiffened and turned his head toward the faint cry that sounded from beyond the demolished partition separating him from the inside corridor. He listened intently, and then it came again.

"Martha?"

"In here," Shields shouted. "Please help me."

There was no reply, but he heard sounds of movement through the pile of rubble. Soon a fallen piece of the ceiling was pushed aside and a face with a gray beard poked through.

"My Martha, have you seen my Martha?"

The intruder was in a state of shock and his words came hollow and without inflection. His forehead was badly lacerated and his eyes darted about frantically.

"A young girl with long blond hair?"

"Yes, yes, my daughter."

Shields motioned toward the body of the girl. "I'm afraid she's gone.

The bearded man feverishly forced a larger opening and crawled through. He approached the girl, his face numb with un comprehension and lifted the bloodstained head, smoothing back the hair. For several moments he did not utter a sound.

"She did not suffer," Shields offered gently.

The stranger did not reply.

"I'm sorry," Shields murmured. He could feel the ship listing sharply to starboard. The water was rising faster from below and there was little time left. He had to penetrate the father's grief and somehow persuade him to rescue the hand case.

"Do you know what happened?" he began.

"Collision," the answer came vagbely. "I was on deck. Another ship came out of the fog. Buried her bow in our side." The father paused, took out a handkerchief and dabbed the blood from the dead girl's face. "Martha begged me to take her to England. Her mother was reluctant, but I gave in. Oh God, if only I'd known…..." His voice trailed off.

"There is nothing you can do," Shields said. "You must save yourself."

The father turned slowly and looked at him with unseeing eyes. "I killed her," he whispered hoarsely.

Shields was not getting through. Anger smoldered within him and ignited in a flame of desperation.

"Listen!" he cried. "Lost in the wreckage is a travel case with a document that must reach the Foreign Office in London!" He was shouting now. "Please find it!"

The water swirled in small eddies a few feet away. The flood that would engulf them was only seconds away. The rising tide was stained with the slime of oil and coal dust while the night air outside was torn by the screams of a thousand dying souls.

"Please listen to me while there is still time," Shields begged. "Your daughter is dead." He was beating at the restricting steel with clenched fists, uncaring of the pain as his skin shredded away. "Leave before it's too late. Find my travel case and take it with you. Give it to the captain, he'll know what to do."

The father's mouth trembled open. "I cannot leave Martha alone…... she fears the dark He muttered as though he were speaking at an altar.

It was the deathblow. There was no moving the grief-stunned father as his mind entered delirium. He bent over his daughter and kissed her on the forehead. Then he dissolved into a fit of uncontrolled sobbing.

Strangely, the fury of frustration fell away from Shields. With the acceptance of failure and death, fear and terror no longer held meaning. In the few short moments left he slipped beyond the boundaries of reality and saw things with abnormal clarity.

There came an explosion deep in the bowels of the ship as her boilers burst. She rolled over on her starboard side and slid stern first onto the waiting riverbed. From the moment of the collision in the darkness of early morning until she vanished from view of the mass of humanity struggling to stay afloat in the icy water, less than fifteen minutes had elapsed.

The time was 2:10 a.m.

Shields did not try to fight it, to hold his breath staving off the inevitable for a few more seconds. He opened his mouth and gulped in the foul-tasting water, gagging as it poured down his throat. Into the airless tomb he sank. The choking and the suffering passed quickly, and his conscious mind blinked out. And then there was nothing, nothing at all.

A night bred in hell, thought Sam Harding, ticket agent for the New York Quebec Northern Railroad, as he stood on the platform of his station and, watched the poplar trees bordering the track lean horizontal under the battering gusts of a violent windstorm.

He was experiencing the end of a heat wave that had baked the New England states; the hottest May since 1880, proclaimed Wacketshire's weekly newspaper in red-letter Bodoni typeface. Lightning hurtled through the predawn sky in jagged patterns, accompanied by a twenty-four-degree drop in temperature in one hour. Harding caught himself shivering at the sudden change as the breeze whipped at his cotton shirt, dampened by sweat from the oppressive humidity.

Down on the river he could see lights from a string of barges as they nosed their way against the downstream current. One by one their dim yellow glows blinked off and then on again as the barges passed under the foundation piers of the great bridge. Harding's station sat on the outer perimeter of the town, village really, where the tracks of the railroad bisected in a cross. The main trunk ran north to Albany while the branch line swung east over the Deauville-Hudson River bridge to Columbiaville before forking south to New York City.

Though no drops had fallen, there was a definite smell of rain in the air. He walked over to his Model T Ford depot hack, untied a number of small cords under the edge of the roof and rolled down the leatherette side curtains over the oak side panels. Then he fixed them into place with the Murphy fasteners and reentered the station.

Hiram Meechum, the Western Union night man, was hunched over a chessboard, engage ding his favorite pastime of playing another telegrapher down the line. The panes in the windows rattled from the wind, keeping cadence with the staccato of the telegraph key screwed to the table in front of Meechum. Harding picked up a coffeepot from a kerosene stove and poured himself a cup.

"Who's winning?"

Meechum looked up. "I drew Standish down in Germantown. He's a damn tough customer." The key danced and Meechum moved one of the chess pieces. "Queen to knight four," he grunted. "It don't exactly look encouraging."

Harding pulled a watch from a vest pocket and studied the dial, knitting his eyebrows thoughtfully. "The Manhattan Limited is twelve minutes late."

"Probably behind schedule because of the storm," Meechum said. He tapped out his next move, placed his feet on the table and leaned his chair back on two legs awaiting his opponent's response.

Every clapboard on the station's walls creaked as a fire bolt scorched the sky and struck a tree in a nearby pasture. Harding sipped at the steaming coffee and unconsciously stared at the ceiling, wondering if the lightning rod atop the roof was in good order. A loud clang from the telephone bell above his rolltop desk broke his thoughts.

"Your dispatcher with news on the Limited," Meechum predicted with unconcern.

Harding bent the swinging arm of the telephone upward to his standing position and pressed the small, circular receiver to his ear. "Wacketshire," he answered.

The dispatcher's voice from Albany was barely discernible through the storm-induced static on the circuit. "The bridge can you see the bridge?"

Harding turned toward the east window. His vision carried no further than the end of the platform in the darkness. "Can't see. Have to wait for the next lightning flash."

"Is it still standing?"

"Why wouldn't it be standing?" Harding replied irritably.

"A tugboat captain just called from Catskill and raised hell," the dispatcher's voice crackled back. "Claims a girder dropped off the bridge and damaged one of his barges. Everyone here is in a panic. The agent in Columbiaville says the Limited is overdue."

"Tell them to relax. She hasn't reached Wacketshire yet."

"You sure?"

Harding shook his head in disbelief at the dispatcher's simpleminded question. "Dammit! Don't you think I'd know if a train passed my station?"

"Thank heavens we're in time." The relief in the dispatcher's tone came over the line despite the interference. "The Limited has ninety passengers on board not counting the crew and a special government car carrying some big-shot official to Washington. Flag it down and inspect the bridge at first light."

Harding acknowledged and hung up. He lifted a shuttered lantern with a red lens off a hook on the wall, shook it to see if the tank held kerosene and lit the wick. Meechum peered over his chess pieces questioningly.

"You flagging the Limited?"

Harding nodded. "Albany says a girder fell off the bridge. They want it checked before a train crosses over."

"Want me to light the semaphore lantern for you?"

A high- pitched whistle pierced the wind outside. Harding cocked an ear, measuring the sound. It came again only slightly louder.

"No time. I'll flash it down with this-"

Suddenly the door opened and a stranger stood on the threshold, his eyes ferreting the interior of the station. He was built like ajockey, rail-thin and short. A mustache was blond as was the hair that showed beneath the Panama straw hat cocked on his head. The clothes indicated a fastidious dresser; Weber and Heilbroner English-cut suit with silk stitching, the razor creased pants stopping evenly above a pair of two-tone brown suede and leather shoes. His most eye-catching feature, however, was a Mauser automatic pistol held in a slim, effeminate hand.

"What in hell's going on?" Meechum mumbled in awe.

"A holdup, gentlemen," the intruder said with the tiniest hint of a smile. "I thought it was obvious."

"You're crazy," snapped Harding. "We've got nothing to rob."

"Your station has a safe," said the stranger, nodding toward the steel box standing on high castors in one corner of Harding's office area. "And safes contain valuable commodities, like payrolls perhaps?"

"Mister, robbing a railroad is a federal offense. Besides, Wacketshire is a farming community. There's no payroll shipments. Hell, we don't even have a bank."

"I'm in no mood to debate the economics of Wacketshire." The long hammer on the Mauser was pulled back. "Open the safe.

The whistle tooted again, much closer this time, and Harding knew from experience the sound came only a quarter mile up the track. "Okay, whatever you say, right after I flag the Limited."

The gun went off and Meechum's chessboard exploded, scattering the pieces about the linoleum floor. "No more stupid talk about stopping trains. I suggest you get on with it."

Harding stared at the robber, his eyes stricken with sudden horror. "You don't understand. The bridge might be out."

"I understand that you're trying to be clever."

"I swear to God-"

"He's telling the truth Meechum cut in. "A warning just came over the line from Albany about the bridge."

"Please listen to us," Harding pleaded. "You could be murdering a hundred people." He paused, his face pale as the headlamp from the approaching engine beamed through the window. The whistle shrilled no more than two hundred yards away. "For God's sake-"

Meechum snatched the lantern from Harding's hand and lunged for the open doorway. The gun blasted again. A bullet thudded into his hip and he crashed to the floor a foot short of the threshold. He rolled to a kneeling position and cocked his arm to throw the lantern onto the track outside. The man in the straw hat grabbed his wrist and in the same motion brought the pistol barrel down on Meechum's head and kicked the door shut.

Then he whirled on Harding and snarled, "Open that damned safe." Harding's stomach heaved at the sight of Meechum's blood spreading on the floor, and then he did as he was told. He clutched the combination dial, sick with helplessness as the train roared by on the track not twenty feet behind him, the lights from the Pullman coaches casting flickering reflections through the panes of the station windows. In less than a minute the clack from the last car's wheels on the rails had died away and the train was gone, heading up the grade to the bridge.

The tumblers dropped into place and Harding twisted the bolt arm, swung the heavy door open and stepped aside. Inside were a few small, unclaimed packages, old station logbooks and records, and a cashbox. The robber scooped up the box and counted out the contents.

"Eighteen dollars and fourteen cents," he said indifferently. "Hardly a munificent sum, but it should keep me eating for a few days."

He neatly folded the bills in a leather breast wallet and dropped the change in a pants pocket. Casually tossing the emptied cashbox on the desk, he stepped over Meechum and faded into the storm.

Meechum moaned and stirred. Harding knelt and lifted the telegrapher's head. "The train…...?" Meechum murmured.

"You're bleeding pretty bad," said Harding. He pulled a red bandana from his hip pocket and pressed it against the flowing wound.

Clenching his teeth against the burning agony of two injuries, Meechum stared dully at Harding. "Call the east bank…... see if the train is safe."

Harding eased his friend's head to the floor. He grabbed for the phone and threw back the extension arm, opening the transmitter circuit. He shouted into the mouthpiece but silence was his only reply. He closed his eyes for a moment and prayed, then tried again. The line to the other side of the river was dead. Feverishly he turned the selector wheel on the Cummings-Wray sender and called the dispatcher at Albany. All he heard was static.

"I can't get through." He could taste the bitterness in his mouth. "The storm has disrupted the circuits."

The telegraph key began to click. "The telegraph lines are still open," muttered Meechum. "That's Standish with his chess move."

Painfully he dragged his body to the table and reached up and broke in on the incoming message, tapping out an emergency line clearance. Then both men momentarily stared at each other, fearful of what they might learn in the morning light that was beginning to tint the eastern sky. The wind poured through the doorway and scattered loose papers and whipped at their hair.

"I'll alert Albany," Meechum said finally. "You see to the bridge."

As if in a dream, Harding jumped to the track bed, his panic mushrooming, and ran recklessly over the uneven rail ties. Soon his breath came in great gasps and his heart felt like it was thumping out of his rib cage. He topped the grade and hurried under the girders of the west bank's flanking span toward the center of the Deauville-Hudson bridge. He tripped and sprawled, gashing a knee on a rail spike. He picked himself up and stumbled on. At the outer edge of the center span, he stopped.

An icy nausea coursed through his body as he stood in numbed abhorrence and gazed through unbelieving eyes.

There was a great empty gap in the middle of the bridge. The center truss had vanished into the cold, gray waters of the Hudson River 150 feet below. Vanished too was the passenger train carrying a hundred men, women and children.

"Dead…... all dead!" Harding cried in helpless rage. "All for eighteen dollars and fourteen cents."

Part I

ROUBAIX'S GARROTE

FEBRUARY 1989

WASHINGTON, D.C.

There was nothing unusual about the man slouched in the back seat of a nondescript Ford sedan driving slowly through the streets of Washington. To the pedestrians who scurried in front of the car at stop lighted intersections, he might have been a paper salesman being driven to work by his nephew. No one paid the slightest notice to the White House tag on the license plates.

Alan Mercier was a plump, balding character with a genial Falstaff face that masked a shrewd analytical mind. No clotheshorse, he was addicted to ever-rumpled, bargain-priced suits with white linen handkerchiefs stuffed sloppily in the breast pocket. They were trademarks that political cartoonists exaggerated with keen enthusiasm.

Mercier was no paper salesman. Recently appointed national security adviser to the country's new president, he was still unrecognized in the public eye. Widely respected in the academic community, he had built a reputation as a canny forecaster of international events. At the time he came under the eye of the President, he was director of the World Crisis Projection Commission.

Perching a pair of Ben Franklin specs on a bubble nose, he laid a briefcase across his lap and opened it. The underside of the lid held a visual display screen, and a keyboard console, bordered by two rows of colored lights, lay across the bottom. He typed out a combination of numbers and waited a brief moment while the signal was bounced by satellite to his corner office at the White House. There a computer, programmed by his aides, whirred into life and began relaying his workload for the day.

The incoming data arrived in code and was electronically deciphered in milliseconds by the battery-operated microprocessor on his lap, the final text reading out in green lowercase letters across the screen.

First came the correspondence, followed by a series of memos from his security council staff. Next came the daily reports from various governmental agencies, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of Central Intelligence. He quickly digested them to memory before erasing their contents from the microprocessor's storage unit. All except two.

He was still lingering over them when his car swung through the west gate of the White House. His eyes mirrored a curious perplexity. Then he sighed, pressed the off button and closed the case.

As soon as he arrived in his office and settled behind his desk, he dialed a private number at the Department of Energy. A man's voice answered in the middle of the first ring. "Dr. Klein's office."

"This is Alan Mercier. Is Ron available?"

There was a slight pause, and then the voice of Dr. Ronald Klein, the secretary of energy, came on the line. "Morning, Alan. What can I do for you?"

"I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes today."

"My schedule is pretty tight."

"This is important, Ron. You name the time."

Klein wasn't used to being pushed, but the cement tone of Mercier's voice implied the security adviser was not about to be put off. He held his palm over the phone's mouthpiece while he checked with his administrative assistant. Then he came back on the line.

"How does between two thirty and three sound?"

"No problem," replied Mercier. "I have a lunch meeting at the Pentagon, so I'll swing by your office on the way back."

"You did say it was important."

"Let's put it another way," Mercier said, pausing for effect. "After I ruin the President's day, I'm going to screw up yours."

In the oval office of the White House, the President sat back from his desk and closed his eyes. He allowed his mind to wander from the pressures of the day for a minute or two. For a man who had been inaugurated to the nation's highest office only a few weeks before, he looked overly worn and tired. The election campaign had been long and exhausting, and he had yet to fully recover from it.

He was small in stature, with brown hair streaked with white and thinning; his features, once cheerful and crinkling, were set and solemn. He reopened his eyes as a sudden winter sleet rapped the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. Outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, the traffic crawled at a sloth like pace as the pavement turned to ice. He longed for the warmer climate of his native New Mexico. He wished he could escape on a camping trip to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Santa Fe.

This man had never set out to become President. Never driven by blind ambition, he had served in the Senate during twenty years of conscientious effort and a solid record of accomplishments that did little toward making him a household name.

Nominated as a dark horse by his party's convention, he was elected by a wide popular margin when an investigative reporter dug up a series of shady financial dealings in is opponent's past. "Mr. President?" He looked up from his reverie at the sound of his aide's voice. "Yes?"

"Mr. Mercier is here for your security briefing."

"All right, send him in." Mercier entered the room and seated himself across the desk. He passed over a heavy folder.

"How goes the world today?" the President asked with a thin smile.

"Pretty grim, as always," replied Mercier. "My staff has completed the projections on the nation's energy reserves. The bottom line isn't exactly encouraging."

"You're not telling me anything I didn't know. What's the latest outlook?"

"The CIA gives the Middle East another two years before their fields scrape bottom. That will leave the world's known oil supply at less than fifty percent of demand. The Russians are hoarding their depleted reserves, and the Mexican offshore bonanza fell short of expectations. And as for our own oil deposits…..."

"I've seen the figures," replied the President. "The hectic exploration several years ago brought in a few small fields at best."

Mercier surveyed the interior of a folder. "Solar radiation, windmills, electric autos, they're partial solutions of a sort. Unfortunately, their technology is at about the same state as television during the nineteen forties."

"A pity the synthetic fuel programs got off to such a slow start.

"The earliest target date before the oil-shale refineries can take up the slack is four years away. In the meantime, American transportation is up the polluted creek without locomotion."

The President cracked a faint smile at Mercier's rare display of dry humor. "Surely there is some hope on the horizon."

"There's James Bay."

"The Canadian power project?"

Mercier nodded and reeled off the statistics. "Eighteen dams, twelve powerhouses, a work force of nearly ninety thousand people, and the re channeling of two rivers the size of the Colorado. And, as the Canadian government literature states, the largest and most expensive hydroelectric project in the history of man."

"Who operates it?"

"Quebec Hydro, the provincial power authority. They began work on the project in nineteen seventy-four. The price tag has been pretty hefty. Twenty-six billion dollars, the major share coming from New York money houses."

"What's the output?"

"Over a hundred million kilowatts, with double that coming in the next twenty years."

"How much flows across our borders?"

"Enough to light fifteen states."

The President's face tensed. "I don't like being so heavily dependent on Quebec for electricity. I'd feel more secure if our nation's power came from our own nuclear plants."

Mercier shook his head. "The sad fact is our nuclear facilities provide less than a third of our requirements."

"As usual we dragged our feet," the President said wearily.

"The lag was partly due to escalating construction costs and expensive modifications," Mercier agreed. "Partly because the demands on uranium have put it in short supply. And then, of course, there were the environmentalists."

The President sat in thoughtful silence.

"We banked on endless reserves that do not exist," Mercier continued. "And while our country consumed itself into a corner, the neighbors to the north went ahead and did something about it. We had no option but to tap their source."

"Are their prices in line?"

Mercier nodded. "The Canadians, bless their souls, have kept rates on a par with our own power companies."

"A glimmer of sunshine after all."

"There's a catch."

The President sighed.

"We have to face the unpleasant fact," Mercier went on, "that Quebec expects to pass a referendum for full independence by summer."

"Prime Minister Sarveux has slammed the door on the Quebec separatists before. You don't think he can do it again?"

"No, sir, I don't. Our intelligence sources claim that Premier Guerrier of the Parti quebecois has the votes to make it stick next time around."

"They'll pay a high price to break away from Canada," the President said. "Their economy is alre+dy in chaos."

"Their strategy is to rely on the United States to prop up their government."

"And if we don't?"

"They can either raise electrical rates to an outrageous level or pull the plug," Mercier answered.

"Guerrier would be a fool to shut off our power. He knows we'd retaliate with massive economic sanctions."

Mercier stared bleakly at the President. "Might take weeks, even months before the Quebeckers felt the pinch. In the meantime our industrial heartland would be paralyzed."

"You paint a bleak picture."

"That's only the background scene. You're familiar, of course, with the FQS."

The President winced. The so-called Free Quebec Society was an underground terrorist movement that had assassinated several Canadian officials. "What about them?"

"A recent CIA report claims they're Moscow-oriented. if they somehow gained control of the government, we'd have another Cuba on our hands."

"Another Cuba," the President repeated in an expressionless tone.

"One with the capacity to force America to its knees."

The President rose from his chair and walked to the window, staring at the sleet building on the White House grounds. He was silent for nearly half a minute. Finally he said, "We cannot afford a power play by Quebec. Especially in the months ahead." He turned and faced Mercier, his eyes grieved. "This country is broke and up to its ears in hock, Alan, and just between you and me and these walls, it's only a matter of a few years before we have no choice but to cut the stalling and declare national bankruptcy."

Mercier sagged into his chair. For a heavy man he appeared curiously hunched and shrunken. "I'd hate to see that occur during your administration, Mr. President."

The President shrugged resignedly. "From Franklin Roosevelt on, every chief executive has played a game of tag, pinning a multiplying financial burden on the office of his successor. Well the game is about to be called, and I'm it. If we lost electrical power to our northeastern states for twenty days or longer, the repercussions would be tragic. My deadline for the announcement of a new deflated currency would have to be drastically reduced. I need time, Alan, time to prepare the public and the business community for the ax. Time to make the transition to a new money standard as painless as possible. Time for our shale refineries to halt our dependence on foreign oil.

"How can we restrain Quebec from doing anything foolish?"

"I don't know. Our choices are limited."

"There are two options when all else fails," Mercier said, a thin line of tension forming around his mouth. "Two options as old as time to save an economy from sinking down the drain. One is to pray for a miracle."

"And the second?"

"Provoke a war."

At precisely 2:30 in the afternoon, Mercier entered the Forrestal Building on Independence Avenue and took the elevator to the seventh floor. Without fanfare he was ushered into the plush office of Ronald Klein, the secretary of energy.

Klein, a scholarly-looking man with long white hair and a large condor nose, unwound his slim six-feet-five-inches frame from one end of a littered conference table and came over to shake Mercier's hand.

"So what's this matter of dire importance?" asked Klein, skipping the cordial small talk.

"More odd than dire," replied Mercier. "I ran across a request from the General Accounting Office for data concerning the expenditure of six hundred and eighty million dollars in federal funding for the development of a doodlebug."

"A what?"

"Doodlebug," answered Mercier matter-of-factly. "That's a pet name given by geological engineers to any offbeat tool that's supposed to detect underground minerals."

"What's it got to do with me?"

"The money was earmarked for the Energy Department three years ago. There's been no accounting of it since. It might be wise to have your staff make a probe as to its whereabouts. This is Washington. Mistakes of the past have a nasty habit of falling on the heads of current officeholders. If the former energy secretary blew a staggering sum of money on a white elephant, you'd better be prepared with the facts in case some freshman congressman gets it in his head to grab headlines with an investigation."

"I'm grateful for the warning," Klein said sincerely. "I'll get my people busy sweeping the closets."

Mercier rose and extended his hand. "Nothing is ever simple."

"No," Klein said smiling. "It's never that."

After Mercier left, Klein walked over to a fireplace mantel and stared idly at a new log on the soot-coated grate, head bent, hands shoved in the side pockets of his coat.

"How incredible," he murmured to the empty room, "that anyone can lose track of six hundred and eighty million dollars.

The generator room of the James Bay hydroelectric project stunned the senses of Charles Sarveux as he surveyed the twelve square acres carved out of solid granite four hundred feet underground. Three rows of huge generators, five stories high and driven by water turbines, hummed with millions of kilowatts of electricity. Sarveux was suitably impressed, and displayed it to the pleasure of the Quebec Hydro Power directors.

This was his first visit to the project since his election as Prime Minister of Canada, and he asked all the expected questions.

"How much electrical energy does each generator produce"

Percival Stuckey, the chief director, stepped forward. "Five hundred thousand kilowatts, Prime Minister."

Sarveux nodded and made a slight facial expression of approval. It was the appropriate gesture, a skill that had proved beneficial during his campaign for office.

A handsome man in the eyes of men as well as women, Sarveux could probably have won a contest over John F. Kennedy or Anthony Eden. His light blue eyes possessed a mesmeric quality and his sharp-cut facial features were enhanced by a thick mass of gray hair loosely styled in a fashionable but casual look. His trim, medium-height body was a tailor's dream, and yet he never called upon the services of tailors, preferring to buy his suits off the racks of department stores. It was only one of many twists of character precisely carried off so Canadian voters could identify with him.

A compromise candidate between the Liberals, the Party for Independent Canada and the French-speaking Party quebecois, he had walked a political tightrope his first three years of office, managing to keep his nation from falling apart at its provincial borders. Sarveux looked upon himself as another Lincoln, fighting to preserve unity and keep his house from dividing. It was only his threat of armed force that kept the radical separatists in check. But his plea for a strong central government was falling on a growing sea of deaf ears.

"Perhaps you would like to see the control center," suggested director Stuckey.

Sarveux turned to his principal secretary. "How is our time?"

Ian Jeffrey, a serious-faced man in his late twenties, checked his watch. "We're running tight, Prime Minister. We should be at the airport in thirty minutes."

"I think we can squeeze our schedule," Sarveux smiled. "It would be a pity if we missed anything worthwhile."

Stuckey nodded and motioned toward an elevator door. Ten floors above the generator chamber Sarveux and his entourage stepped out in front of a door marked SECURITY CARD PERSONNEL ONLY. Stuckey removed a plastic card that hung on a cord around his neck and inserted it in a slot beneath the -door handle. Then he turned and faced the others.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but due to the narrow confines of the control center, I can only allow the Prime Minister and myself to enter."

Sarveux's security people started to protest, but he waved them to silence and followed Stuckey through the door and down a long corridor where the card process was repeated.

The power plant's control center was indeed small, and spartan as well. Four engineers sat in front of a console laced with a forest of lights and switches, peering at a panel of dials and gauges embedded in the facing wall. Except for a row of television monitors hanging from the ceiling, the only other fixtures were the chairs occupied by the engineers.

Sarveux looked around consideringly. "I find it incredible that such an awesome display of power is controlled by only four men and a modest amount of equipment."

"The entire plant and the transmission stations are operated by computers two floors beneath us," explained Stuckey. "The project is ninety-nine percent automated. What you see here, Mr. Sarveux, is the fourth-level manual monitoring system that can override the computers in the event of a malfunction."

"So humans still have a degree of control." Sarveux smiled.

"We're not obsolete quite yet." Stuckey smiled back. "There are a few areas left where electronic science can't be fully trusted."

"Where does this wealth of power terminate?"

"In a few days, when the project is fully operational, we'll service the whole of Ontario, Quebec and the northwestern United States."

A thought began to germinate in Sarveux's mind. "And if the impossible occurred?" Stuckey looked at him. "Sir?"

"A breakdown, an act of God, sabotage."

"Nothing short of a major earthquake could put the power facilities entirely out of commission. Isolated damage or breakdown can be bypassed by two safety backup systems. If those fail, we still have manual control here in the booth."

"What about an attack by terrorists?"

"We've planned for exactly such a threat," said Stuckey confidently. "Our electronic security system is a marvel of advanced technology, and we have a five-hundred-man guard force to back it up. An elite division of assault troops couldn't reach this room in two months."

"Then someone here could cut the power."

"Not someone, singular." Stuckey shook his head resolutely. "It takes every man in this room, including myself, to close off the energy flow. Two, even three cannot do it. We each have a separate procedure unknown to the others that is built into the systems. Nothing has been overlooked." Sarveux wasn't so sure.

He held out his hand. "A most impressive tour. Thank you."

Foss Gly had been meticulous in selecting the means and place for killing Charles Sarveux. Every drawback, however remote, had been taken into account and met with a counteraction. The angle of the plane's ascent was carefully measured, as was its speed. Many long hours were spent in practice sessions until Gly was satisfied that the gears of the plot meshed with exacting precision.

The site chosen was a golf course, one mile beyond the southwest end of the James Bay Airport's main runway. At that point, according to Gly's careful reckoning, the Prime Minister's government plane would have reached an altitude of 1500 feet at a speed of 180 knots per hour. Two British-manufactured hand-held Argo ground-to-air missile launchers, stolen from the army arsenal at Val Jalbert, were to be used for the attack. They were compact, weighing thirty pounds each when loaded, and easily concealed in a hiker's backpack when dismantled.

The entire plan, as calculated from start to finish, was a classic in efficiency. No more than five men were required, including three waiting on the golf course disguised as cross-country skiers, and one lookout on the observation balcony of the terminal building, with a concealed radio transmitter. After the heat-seeking missiles were launched at the target, the attack group was to ski casually toward the deserted clubhouse and leave in a four-wheel-drive station wagon, guarded by the fifth man who would be waiting in the parking lot.

Gly searched the sky with a pair of binoculars while his fellow conspirators assembled the launchers. A medium snow was falling, cutting his sight to a third of a mile.

It proved a mixed blessing.

The white curtain would shield their actions but leave them precious few seconds to aim and fire at a fast-moving object during the brief interval when it was visible. A British Airways jet passed over and Gly timed its passage before it was swallowed up by the weather. Barely six seconds. Not good, he thought grimly. Their chances of two direct hits were razor thin.

He brushed the snow from a great mass of light sandy hair and lowered the binoculars, revealing a square, ruddy face. On first glance it was attractive in a boyish way. There were congenial brown eyes and a firm-cut chin, but on closer inspection it was the nose that upstaged the other features. Large and misshapen from numerous breaks suffered during brutal back-alley fights, it squatted between his cheeks with a strange beauty to its ugliness. For some inexplicable reason women thought it attractive, even sexy.

The tiny radio in the pocket of his down jacket beeped to life. "This is Dispatch to Field Foreman."

He pressed the transmit button. "Go ahead, Dispatch."

Claude Moran, a reed-thin, pockmarked Marxist who worked as a secretary for the governor-general, adjusted his earpiece receiver and began talking softly into,a lapel microphone while gazing through the observation balcony viindow at the flight line below.

"I have that load of pipe, Field Foreman. Are you ready to receive it?"

"Say when," replied Gly.

"The truck will be along shortly, as soon as the dock crew unloads a shipment from the States."

The innocent-sounding conversation was contrived to throw off anyone who happened to be tuned to the same frequency. Gly interpreted Moran's double-talk as meaning the Prime Minister's plane was second in tine for takeoff behind an American Airlines passenger jet.

"Okay, Dispatch. Let me know when the truck leaves the dock."

Personally, Gly felt no hatred toward Charles Sarveux. To him the Prime Minister was only a name in the newspapers. Gly was not even Canadian.

He was born in Flagstaff, Arizona, the result of a drunken coupling between a professional wrestler and a county sheriffs teenage daughter. His childhood was a nightmare of suffering and whippings dealt by his grandfather. In order to survive, Gly became very strong and hard. The day came when he beat the sheriff to death and fled the state. After that it had always been a fight to stay alive. He began by rolling drunks in Denver, led a ring of auto thieves in Los Angeles, hijacked gasoline tank trucks in Texas.

Gly did not look upon himself as a mere assassin. He preferred to be called a coordinator. He was the man who was called in when all others failed, a leader of specialists; he had a reputation for cold-blooded efficiency.

On the observation platform, Moran inched his face as close as he dared to the window before his breath fogged the glass. Sarveux's aircraft appeared to be dissolving into the falling snow on the taxi lane leading to the start of the runway. "Field Foreman."

"Yes, Dispatcher."

"Sorry, but I cannot see my way clear of paperwork to give you an exact time for the pipe arrival."

"Understood," Gly answered. "Check with me after lunch."

Moran did not acknowledge. He took the escalator down to the main lobby and walked outside, where he hailed a cab. In the back seat he allowed himself the luxury of a cigarette and wondered what high appointment in the new Quebec government he should demand for his services.

On the golf course, Gly turned to the men aiming the missile launchers. Their eyes were pressed against the sighting lenses as each kneeled on one knee in the snow.

"One more takeoff to target," he cautioned them.

Nearly five minutes dragged by before Gly heard a set of jet engines roaring in the distance as they strained to lift their burden off the snowy asphalt. His eyes tried to penetrate the white wall in anticipation of seeing the red-and-blue insignia of the American airliner flash into view.

Too late, it dawned on him that aircraft belonging to heads of state took preference over commercial flights. Too late, the sight of the familiar red-and-white Canadian maple leaf burst through the blanket of snow.

"It's Sarveux!" he shouted. "Fire, for God's sake, fire!"

The two men pressed their firing buttons no more than a second apart. The first jerked his sights in the general direction of the plane, but his missile soared up and arched too far behind the tail structure for its heat-seeking mechanism to lock on target. The second man fired with more deliberation. He led the cockpit windows by a hundred yards before he let loose.

The explosive head, locking on to the exhaust of the outer starboard engine, homed in and struck aft of the turbine. To the men on the ground it seemed the muted explosion. came long after the plane had vanished from sight. They waited for the sounds of a crash, but the fading whine of the engines remained unbroken. Quickly, they dismantled the launchers and skied to the parking lot. They were soon mingling with the southbound traffic on the James Bay-Ottawa highway.

The outboard engine burst into flame and the turbine blades broke loose and sprayed through the cowling, striking the inboard engine like shrapnel, slicing fuel lines and mangling the second-stage compressor.

Inside the cockpit the fire-warning bell sounded and the pilot, Ray Emmett, closed the throttle and pushed the button activating the freon fire extinguishers. His copilot, Jack May, began running through the emergency procedure checklist.

"James Bay Tower, this is Canada One. We have a problem here and are turning back," Emmett said in a calm monotone.

"Are you declaring an emergency?" the controller asked routinely.

"Affirmative."

"We will clear runway twenty-four. Can you make standard approach?"

"Negative, James Bay," answered Emmett. "I have two engines out, one on fire. I suggest you get out equipment."

"Fire, rescue equipment rolling, Canada One. You are cleared to land. Good luck."

The men in the control tower, knowing the pilot of Canada One was under severe stress, would not break his concentration with further talk. They could only stand by helplessly and await the outcome.

The aircraft was stalling and Emmett eased its nose down, increasing the airspeed to 210 knots, and turned into a wide, shallow bank. Fortunately the snow lessened and visibility rose to two miles, and he could see the flat farmland below and the beckoning end of the runway.

Back in the aft executive cabin, the two Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who guarded the Prime Minister twenty-four hours a day, went into action as soon as they felt the impact from the missile. They securely belted Sarveux to his seat and began building a mountain of loose cushions around his body. Up forward, his secretarial staff and the ever-present contingent of news reporters stared nervously at the smoldering engine that looked as though it was about to melt off the wing.

The hydraulic system was lost. May switched to manual. The pilots struggled together with the stiffened controls as the ground relentlessly reached up from below. Even at full throttle the two port engines were hard pressed to hold the giant airliner aloft. They were falling past the six-hundred-foot level now and still Emmett did not lower the landing gear, holding until the last possible moment to maintain what precious airspeed he still had.

The plane passed over the greenbelt surrounding the airport. It was going to be close. At two hundred feet Emmett dropped the wheels. Through the metronome sweep of the windshield wipers the ten-thousand-foot ribbon of runway twenty-four seemed to widen in slow motion. Then they swept over the leading lip of the asphalt, the tires no more than six feet from the ground. Emmett and May pulled the control yoke back with all their strength. A gentle landing would have been a miracle, any landing at all was a wonder. The impact came hard, jarring every rivet in the aluminum skin and blowing three tires.

The shattered starboard engine broke free of its mounts, and in a freakish gyration struck the ground and rebounded against the underside of the wing, ripping through the structural elements and gouging into the outer fuel cell. Five thousand gallons of jet fuel burst into a ball of flame that engulfed the right side of the aircraft.

Emmett threw the two good engines into reverse thrust and fought the plane's tendency to yaw to the left. Bits and pieces of rubber from the blown tires flayed away in shredded frenzy. Thirty feet of the blazing wing spun off and hurtled onto a taxi lane, narrowly missing a parked airliner. Not far behind, the fire trucks charged after the plane, sirens and red lights flashing.

Down the runway the dying plane rolled, like a fiery meteor leaving a tail of burning debris. Flames tore at the fuselage, which began to melt away. Inside, the heat grew to inferno proportions. The passengers were seconds away from burning alive as the insulation began to char, and clouds of smoke swirled down the aisle. One of the Mounties pulled open the emergency door opposite the fire while the other unclasped the Prime Minister's safety belt and unceremoniously shoved him toward the opening.

Ahead, in the main compartment over the wing, people were dying, their clothes smoldering as the intense heat seared their lungs. Ian Jeffery staggered screaming into the cockpit before he fell unconscious to the floor. Emmett and May took no notice; they were too busy fighting to keep the disintegrating plane on a straight course as it thundered down the rapidly diminishing runway.

The Mounties popped the emergency escape chute, but it flapped uselessly toward the tail of the aircraft after a piece of red-hot debris punctured its air sack. They turned and saw with horror that the forward bulkhead was torching itself into oblivion. Frantically, one of them snatched a blanket and wrapped it around Sarveux's head. "Hold on to it!" he yelled. Then he heaved the Prime Minister through the hatch.

The blanket saved Sarveux's life. He landed on a shoulder, dislocating it, and cartwheeled across the coarse surface of the runway, the blows about his head absorbed by the blanket. His legs splayed out and the left tibia twisted and snapped. He tumbled nearly thirty meters before skidding to a stop, his suit shredded in tatters that slowly stained crimson from a mass of skin abrasions.

Emmett and May died at the controls. They died with forty two other men and three women as two hundred tons of aircraft erupted into a fiery coffin of orange and red. The forward momentum of the great shaft of flame scattered wreckage over a quarter of the runway. The fire fighters attacked the holocaust, but the tragedy was finished. Soon the blackened skeleton of the plane was buried under a sea of white foam. Asbestos-suited men probed the smoldering remains, forcing down the bile that rose in their throats when they came across roasted forms that were barely recognizable as human.

Sarveux, dazed and in shock, lifted his head and stared at the disaster. At first the paramedics did not identify him. Then one kneeled and studied his face.

"Holy Mother M'ary!" he gasped. "It's the Prime Minister!"

Sarveux tried to answer, tried to say something meaningful. But no words came. He closed his eyes and gratefully accepted the blackness that enveloped him.

Flashbulbs flared and television cameras aimed their hooded lenses at the delicate features of Danielle Sarveux as she moved through a sea of reporters with the silent grace of a ship's figurehead.

She paused in the doorway of the hospital lobby, not from timidity but for effect. Danielle Sarveux did not simply enter a room, she inundated it like a monsoon. There was an inexpressible aura about her that made women stare in open admiration and envy. Men, she overpowered. World leaders and elder statesmen often regressed to self-conscious schoolboys in her presence.

To those who knew Danielle well, her cold poise and granite confidence were irritating. But to the great mass of people she was their symbol, a showcase almost, who proved that Canada was not a nation of homespun lumbedacks.

Whether hosting a social function or rushing to her injured husband's bedside, she dressed in a fashion that was showy elegance. She glided between the reporters, self-possessed and sensuous in a beige tip-tied crepe de chi ne with modest leg slit and a natural gray karakul jacket. Her raven hair swept downward in a cascade over the front of her right shoulder.

A hundred questions were shouted in chorus and a forest of microphones thrust at her, but she serenely ignored them. Four gargantuan Mounties forged a path to the hospital elevator. On the fourth floor the medical chief of staff stepped forward and introduced himself as Dr. Ericsson.

She looked at him, holding back the dreaded question. Ericsson anticipated her apprehension and smiled his best professional smile of reassurance. "Your husband's condition is serious, but not critical. He suffered abrasions over fifty percent of his body but there are no major complications. Skin grafts will take care of the heavy tissue loss on his hands. And, considering the degree and number of fractures, the surgery by a team of orthopedic specialists was very successful. It will be a matter of perhaps four months, however, before he can be up and about."

She read the evasion in his eyes. "Can you promise me that in time Charles will be as good as new?"

Cornered, Ericsson was forced to concede: "I must confess the Prime Minister will have a slight but permanent limp."

"I suppose you call that a minor complication."

The doctor met her eyes. "Yes, madame, I do. The Prime Minister is a most fortunate man. He has no complicated internal injuries, his mind and bodily functions are unimpaired, and the scars will eventually fade. At worst he will require the use of a cane."

He was surprised to see her mouth tighten in a grin. "Charles with a cane," she said in a cynical tone. "God, that's priceless."

"Pardon, madame?"

The limp will be worth twenty thousand votes was the reply that ran through her head, but with chameleon ease she transformed her facial expression back to that of the concerned wife. "Can I see him?"

Ericsson nodded and led her to a door at the end of the corridor. "The anesthetic from the operation has not entirely worn off yet, so you may find his speech a bit vague. He will also be experiencing some pain, so please keep your visit as brief as possible. The floor staff has made up an adjoining room if you wish to stay nearby during his recovery."

Danielle shook her head. "My husband's advisers think it best if I remain at the official residence where I can assist in carrying on the duties of office under his name."

"I understand." He opened the door and stood aside. The bedside was surrounded by several doctors and nurses and a vigilant Mountie. They all turned and separated as she approached.

The smells of antiseptic and the sight of Sarveux's unbandaged, reddened and raw arms made her feel nauseated. She hesitated a moment. Then he recognized her through half opened eyes and his lips curved into a slight smile. "Danielle," he said, his voice slightly slurred. "Forgive me for not embracing you."

For the first time she saw Sarveux without the armor of his pride. She had never considered him vulnerable before and Could not relate the broken, immobile body lying on the bed to the vain man she had lived with for ten years. The waxen face tempered with pain was not the face she knew. It was like looking at a stranger.

Hesitantly, she moved in and kissed him softly on both cheeks. Then she brushed the tumbled gray hair from his forehead, unsure of what to say.

"Your birthday," he said, breaking her silence. "I missed your birthday."

She looked confused. "My birthday is still months away, dearest."

"I meant to buy you a gift-" She turned to the doctor. "He's not making any sense."

Ericsson shook his head. "The lingering effects of the anesthetic."

"Thank God it was I who was hurt and not you," Sarveux rambled feebly. "My fault."

"No, no, nothing was your fault," Danielle said quietly.

"The road was icy, snow covered the windshield, I couldn't see. Took the curve too fast and stepped on the brakes. A mistake. Lost control…..."

Then she understood. "Many years ago he was in an auto accident," Danielle explained to Ericsson. "His mother was killed.

"Not unusual. A drugged mind often takes one back in time.

"Charles," she said. "You must rest now. I'll be back in the morning."

"No, don't go." Sarveux's eyes looked past her shoulder to Ericsson. "I must talk to Danielle alone."

Ericsson thought a moment and then shrugged. "If you insist." He looked at Danielle. "Please, madame, no more than two minutes."

When the room was cleared, Sarveux started to say something, but then his body tautened in a spasm of pain. "Let me get the doctor," she said, frightened.

"Wait!" he moaned through clenched teeth. "I have instructions.

"Not now, my dearest. Later when you are stronger."

"The James Bay project."

"Yes, Charles," she said humoring him. "The James Bay project."

"The control booth above the generator chamber…... increase the security. Tell Henri."

"Who?"

"Henri Villon. He'll know what to do."

"I promise, Charles."

"There is great peril for Canada if the wrong people discover" Suddenly his face contorted and he pressed his head deep into the pillow and moaned.

Danielle was not strong enough to watch his suffering. The room began to spin. She put her hands to her face and stepped back.

"Max Roubaix." His breath was coming in short gasps. "Tell Henri to consult Max Roubaix."

Danielle could stand no more. She turned and fled into the corridor.

Dr. Ericsson was sitting at his desk studying Sarveux's charts when the head nurse entered the office. She set a cup of coffee and a plate of doughnuts beside him. "Ten minutes till show time, doctor."

Ericsson rubbed his eyes and glanced at his wristwatch. "I suppose the reporters are getting restless."

"More like murderous," the nurse replied. "They'd probably tear down the building if the kitchen didn't keep them fed." She paused to unzip a garment bag. "Your wife dropped off a clean suit and shirt. She insisted you look your best when you face the TV cameras to announce the Prime Minister's condition."

"Any change?"

"He's resting comfortably. Dr. Manson shot him with a narcotic right after Madame Sarveux left. A beautiful woman, but no stomach."

Ericsson picked up a doughnut and idly stared at it. "I must have been mad to allow the Prime Minister to talk me into administering a stimulant so soon after the operation."

"What do you suppose was in his mind?"

"I don't know." Ericsson stood up and removed his coat. "But whatever the reason, his delirious act was most convincing.

Danielle slipped out of the chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce and peered up at the resident mansion of Canada's leader. In her eyes the three-story stone exterior was cold and morbid, like a setting of an Emily BrontE novel. She passed through the long foyer with its high ceiling and traditional furnishings and climbed the wide circular staircase to her bedroom.

It was her haven, the only room in the house Charles had allowed her to redecorate. A shaft of light from the bathroom outlined a raised hump lying on the bed. She closed the door to the hall and leaned against it, a fear mingled with a warmth that suddenly ignited within her stomach. "You're crazy to come here," she murmured.

Teeth gleamed in a smile under the dim light. "I wonder how many other wives across the land are saying that very line to their lovers tonight."

"The Mounties guarding the residence."

"Loyal Frenchmen who have suddenly been struck blind and deaf."

"You must leave."

The hump unfolded into a shape of a nude man who stood up on the bed. He held out his hands. "Come to me, ma nymphe."

"No…... not here." The throaty tone in her voice gave away an awakening passion. "We have nothing to fear."

"Charles lives!" she suddenly cried out. "Don't you understand? Charles still lives!"

"I know," he said without emotion.

The bedsprings creaked as he stepped to the floor and padded across the carpet. He possessed a formidable body; the huge, swollen muscles, symmetrically formed layer by layer over years of disciplined exercise, rippled and strained beneath his skin. He reached up, ran a hand through his hair and removed it. The skull was shaven, as was every inch of his body. The legs, chest, and pubic area glistened bare and smooth. He took her head between iron hands and pressed her face against the pectoral muscles of his chest. She inhaled the fragrant musky scent from the light coating of body oil he always applied before they made love.

"Do not think of Charles," he commanded. "He no longer exists for you."

She could feel the bestial power oozing from his pores. Her head was swimming as a burning desire for this hairless animal consumed her. The heat between her legs flared and she went limp in his arms.

The sun seeped through the half-open drapes and crept over the two figures entwined on the bed. Danielle lay with her breasts enfolding the nude head, her black hair fanned on the pillow. She kissed the smooth pate several times and then released it.

"You must go now," she said.

He stretched an arm across her stomach and turned the bedside clock to the light. "Eight o'clock. Still too early. I'll leave around ten." Her eyes took on an apprehensive intensity. "Reporters are swarming everywhere. You should have left hours ago when it was dark."

He yawned and sat up. "Ten in the morning is a very respectable hour for an old family friend to be seen at the official residence. No one will notice my late departure. I'll be lost in the crowd of solicitous members of Parliament who are beating a path here this minute to offer their services to the Prime Minister's wife in her moment of anguish."

"You're a capricious bastard," she said, pulling the twisted bedclothes around her shoulders. "Warm and loving one moment, cold and calculating the next."

"How quickly women change their moods the morning after. I wonder if you would be half so shrewish if Charles had died in the crash?"

"The job was botched," she snapped angrily.

"Yes, the job was botched." He shrugged.

Her face took on a cold determined look. "Only when Charles lies in the grave will Quebec become an independent socialist nation."

"You want your husband dead for a cause?" he asked skeptically. "Has your love turned to such hatred that he has become nothing to you but a symbol to be eliminated?"

"We never knew love." She took a cigarette from a box on the nightstand and lit it. "From the beginning, Charles' only interest in me was a need for a political asset. My family's social standing provided him with entrde to society. I've supplied him with some sterling polish and style. But I've never been anything to Charles except a tool to enhance his public image."

"Why did you marry him?"

She drew on the cigarette. "He said he was going to be Prime Minister someday, and I believed him."

"And then?"

"Too late, I discovered Charles was incapable of affection. I once sought a passionate response. Now I cringe every time he touches me."

"I watched the news conference at the hospital on television. The doctor who was interviewed told how your anxiety and concern for Charles touched the hearts of the medical staff."

"Pure theatrics." She laughed. "I'm pretty good at it. But then I've had ten years of rehearsal."

"Did Charles have anything interesting to say during your visit?"

"Nothing that made any sense. They had just wheeled him out of the surgical recovery room. His mind was still numb from the anesthetic. He spoke mostly gibberish, raked up the past, a memory of an auto accident that killed his mother."

Danielle's lover slid out of bed and stepped into the bathroom. "At least he didn't babble away defense secrets."

She inhaled on the cigarette and let the smoke trickle from her nostrils. "Maybe he did."

"Go on," he said from the bathroom. "I can hear you."

"Charles instructed me to tell you to increase security at James Bay."

"Sheer nonsense." He laughed. "They have twice the amount of guards required to cover every square inch as it is."

"Not the whole project. Only the control booth."

He came to the doorway, wiping his bald head with a towel. "What control booth?"

"Above the generator chamber, I think he said."

He looked puzzled. "Did he elaborate?"

"Then Charles mumbled something about 'great peril for Canada if the wrong people discover'. "

"Yes, discover what?"

She made a helpless gesture. "He broke off because of the pain."

"That was all?"

"No, he wanted you to consult with somebody called Max Roubaix."

"Max Roubaix?" he repeated, his expression skeptical. "Are you certain that was the name he used?"

She stared at the ceiling, thinking back, then she nodded. "Yes, I'm positive."

"How odd."

Without further elaboration he reentered the bathroom, stood in front of a large full-length mirror and struck a pose known in muscle control jargon as a vacuum. Exhaling and sucking in his rib section, he expanded his rib cage, straining until the network of blood vessels seemed to erupt beneath the skin's surface. Next he did a side chest shot, left hand on right wrist, arm against upper torso.

Henri Villon studied his reflection with critical concern. His physique was as ideal as physically possible. Then he stared at the chiseled features of the face, the Roman-style nose, the indifferent gray eyes. When he dropped all expression the features became hard, with a satanic twist to the mouth. It was as though a savage was lurking beneath the sculptured marble of a statue.

The wife and daughter of Henri Villon, his Liberal party colleagues and half the population of Canada would never in their wildest fantasies have believed he was leading a double life. A respected member of Parliament and minister of internal affairs in the open, he walked the shadows as the veiled head of the Free Quebec Society, the radical movement dedicated to the full independence of French Quebec.

Danielle came up behind him, a sheet wrapped around her, toga-fashion, and traced his biceps with her fingers. "Do you know him?"

He relaxed and took a deep breath, slowly exhaling. "Roubaix?"

She nodded.

"Only by reputation."

"Who is he?"

"Better to ask that question in the past tense," he said, taking the brown-haired wig with graying sides and neatly placing it on his scalp. "If my memory serves me, Max Roubaix was a mass murderer who swung from the gallows over a hundred years ago."

FEBRUARY 1989

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Heidi Milligan seemed out of place among the students grouped about the tables of the Princeton University archive reading room. The neatly tailored uniform of a navy lieutenant commander adorned a svelte body measuring six feet from manicured toenails to the roots of her naturally ash-blond hair.

To the young men in the room she was a welcome distraction from their studies. She knew instinctively that she was being stripped to her skin in their imaginations. But since she'd passed thirty, she'd become indifferent, though not too indifferent.

"Looks like you're on another allnighter Commander."

Heidi looked up into the ever-smiling face of Mildred Gardner, the matronly head archivist of the university. "Allnighter?"

"Late study. In my day we called it burning the midnight oil."

Heidi leaned back in her chair. "I've got to steal whatever time I can to work on my dissertation."

Mildred blew the bangs of her nineteen-fortyish pageboy hairstyle out of her eyes and sat down. "An attractive girl like you can't spend all your nights studying. You should find yourself a good man and live it up once in a while."

"First I'll get my doctorate in history, then I'll live it up."

"You can't get passionate with a piece of paper that says you're a Ph.D."

"Maybe the sound of Dr. Milligan turns me on," Heidi laughed. "If I'm to advance my career in the navy, I'll need the credentials."

"Sounds to me like you like to compete with the opposite sex."

"Sex has nothing to do with it. My first love is the navy. What's wrong with that?"

Mildred made a gesture of surrender. "No profit in arguing with a stubborn female, and hardheaded sailor to boot." She rose and looked down at the documents scattered on the table. "Anything I can pull from the shelves for you?"

"I'm researching Woodrow Wilson papers that deal with the navy during his administration."

"How horribly dull. Why that subject?"

"I guess you might say I'm intrigued by covering an untapped sideline of history."

"You mean subject matter no male has had the foresight to research before."

"You said it, not me."

"I don't envy the guy who marries you," said Mildred. "He'd come home from work and have to arm-wrestle. The loser cooking dinner and doing the dishes."

"I was married. Six years. To a colonel in the Marine Corps. I still carry the scars."

"Physical or mental?"

"Both."

Mildred dropped the subject and picked up the fiberboard case that housed the documents, and checked the file number. "You're in the ball park. This file contains the bulk of Wilson's naval correspondence."

"I've pretty much exhausted them," said Heidi. "Can you think of any avenue I might have missed?"

Mildred stared into space a moment. "A slim possibility. Give me ten minutes."

She returned in five, carrying another document case. "Unpublished material that hasn't been Cataloged yet," she said with a pontifical grin. "Might be worth a look."

Heidi scrutinized the yellowed letters. Most were in the President's own hand. Advice to his three daughters, explanations of his stand against Tammany Hall to William Jennings Bryan during the Democratic convention of 1912, personal messages to Ellen Louise Axson, his first wife, and Edith Boning Gait, his second.

Fifteen minutes before closing time Heidi unfolded a letter addressed to Herbert Henry Asquith, the Prime Minister of Britain. The paper appeared creased in irregular lines as though it had once been wadded up. The date was June 4, 1914, but there was no mark of acknowledgment, which suggested that the letter had never been sent. She began to read the neatly styled script.

Dear Herbert,

With the formally signed copies of our treaty seemingly lost and the heated criticism you are receiving from members of your cabinet, perhaps our bargain was never meant to be. And since formal transfer did not transpire, I have given my secretary instructions to destroy all mention of our pact. This uncustomary step is, I feel, somewhat reluctantly, warranted as my countrymen are a possessive lot and would never idly stand by knowing with certainty that

A crease ran through the next line, obliterating the writing. The letter continued with a new paragraph.

At the request of Sir Edward, and with the concurrence of Bryan, I have recorded the funds deposited to your government from our treasury as a loan.

Your friend,

WOODROW WILSON

Heidi was about to set the letter aside because there was no reference to naval involvement when curiosity pulled her eyes back to the words "destroy all mention of our pact."

She hung on them for nearly a minute. After two years of in-depth study, she felt she had come to know Woodrow Wilson almost as well as a favorite uncle, and she'd discovered nothing in the former President's makeup to suggest a Watergate mentality during his years in public office.

The ten- minute warning sounded for the closing of the archives. She quickly transcribed the letter on a yellow legal pad. Then she checked in both file cases at the front desk. "Run on to anything useful?" asked Mildred. "A trail of smoke I didn't expect," replied Heidi vaguely. "Where do you go from here?"

"Washington…... the National Archives."

"Good luck. I hope you make a hit."

"Hit?"

"Discover a previously overlooked treasure of information." Heidi shrugged. "You never know what might turn up."

She had not planned to pursue the meaning of Wilson's odd letter.

But now that she had the door open a crack, she decided it was worth a further peek.

The Senate historian leaned back in his chair. "I'm sorry, commander, but we don't have room up here in the Capitol attic to store congressional documents."

"I understand," said Heidi. "You specialize in old photographs."

Jack Murphy nodded. "Yes, we maintain quite an extensive collection of government-related pictures going back as far as the eighteen forties." He idly fiddled with a paperweight on the desk. "Have you tried the National Archives? They have a massive storehouse of material."

"A wasted effort," Heidi shrugged. "I found nothing that related to my search."

"How can I help?"

"I'm interested in a treaty between England and America. I thought perhaps a photo might have been taken during the signing."

"We carry a wealth of those. The president has yet to be born who didn't call in an artist or photographer to record a treaty signature.

"All I can tell you is that it took place during the first six months of nineteen fourteen."

"I can't recall such an event off the top of my head," said Murphy, with a thoughtful look. "I'll be glad to make a search for you; might take a day or two. I have several research projects ahead of yours."

"I understand. Thank you."

Murphy hesitated, then stared at her, a quizzical look in his eyes. "It strikes me odd that no mention of an Anglo-American treaty can be found in official archives. Do you have a reference to it?"

"I found a letter written by President Wilson to Prime Minister Asquith in which he alludes to a formally signed treaty."

Murphy rose from his desk and showed Heidi to the door. "My staff will give it a try, Commander Milligan. If there is a photograph, we'll find it."

Heidi sat in her room at the Jefferson Hotel, peering into a cosmetic case mirror at a crow's-foot that edged a widened eye. All things considered, she had accepted the merciless encroachment of age, and was keeping her youthful-looking face and a body that had yet to see an ounce of fat.

In the last three years she had weathered a hysterectomy, a divorce and a tender May-December affair with an admiral twice her age who recently died from a heart attack. Yet she still looked as vibrant and alive as when she graduated from Annapolis, fourteenth in her class.

She leaned closer to the mirror and studied a pair of Castilian brown eyes. The right one had a small imperfection at the bottom of the iris, a small pie-shaped splash of gray. Heterochromia ifidis was the highfalutin term an ophthalmologist gave her when she was ten years old, and schoolmates had taunted her about possessing an evil eye. From then on she reveled in being different, especially later when boys found it appealing.

Since the death of Admiral Walter Bass she had felt no urge to search out and emotionally involve herself with another man. But before she realized what she was doing, the blue uniform was hanging in the closet and she was standing in the elevator in a bias-cut, coppery-colored slip dress of silk, piped in saffron that plunged devilishly low in back and front and was dashed with a silk flower at a V far below her breasts. Besides a matching purse, her only other accessory was a long feather and jeweled earring that dangled to her shoulder. For warmth against Washington's bleak winter air, she buried herself in a notch-collared greatcoat of dark brown-and-black synthetic fox.

The doorman sighed at the exhilarating view and opened the door to a cab.

"Where to?" asked the driver without turning.

The simple question took her by surprise. She had made up her mind to go out on the town; she hadn't planned where. She paused, and then opportunely her stomach growled.

"A restaurant," she blurted. "Can you recommend a nice restaurant?"

"What do you feel like eatin', lady?"

"I'm not sure."

"Steak, Chinese, seafood? You name it."

"Seafood."

"You got it," said the driver, punching the button on the digital meter. "I know just the place. Overlooks the river. Very romantic."

"Just what I need." Heidi laughed. "It sounds perfect."

Already the evening was a bust. Sitting by candlelight and sipping wine while watching the Capitol's lights sparkling on the Potomac River with no one to talk to only served to deepen her solitude. A woman dining by herself still seemed an odd sight to some people. She caught the discreet stares of the other diners and guessed their thoughts to pass the time. A date who's been stood up? A wife on the make? A hooker taking a dinner break? The latter was her favorite.

A man came in and was seated two tables behind her. The restaurant was dimly lit and all she could tell about him as he passed was that he was tall. She was tempted to turn around and give him an appraising gaze, but could not overcome her inbred standards of modesty.

Suddenly she sensed a presence standing at her side, and her nostrils picked up the vague scent of a mari's shaving cologne.

"I beg your pardon, gorgeous creature," a voice whispered in her ear, "but could you see it in your heart to buy a poor, destitute wino a glass of muscatel?"

Startled, she cringed and looked up, her eyes wide.

The intruder's face was shadowed and indistinct. Then he came around and sat down opposite her. His hair was thick and black and the candlelight reflected a pair of warm sea-green eyes. His face was weathered and darkened by the sun. He stared at her as if anticipating a greeting, his features cool and expressionless, and then he smiled and the whole room seemed to brighten.

"Why, Heidi Milligan, can it be you don't remember me?" She trembled as a tide of recognition swept over her. "Pitt! Oh my God, Dirk Pitt!"

Impulsively she placed her hands on his temples and pulled him toward her until their lips touched. Pitt's eyes took on a bemused look, and when Heidi released him, he sat back and shook his head.

"Amazing how a man can misjudge a woman. All I expected was a handshake."

A blush tinted Heidi's cheeks. "You caught me in a weak moment. I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself, and when I saw a friend…... well, I guess I got carried away."

He held her hands in a gentle grip and the smile faded. "I was saddened to hear of Admiral Bass's passing. He was a good man."

Her eyes grew dark. "The end was painless. After he went into a coma he just slipped away."

"God only knows how the Vixen affair might have turned out if he hadn't volunteered his services."

"Remember when we met?"

"I came to interview the admiral at his inn near Lexington, Virginia, where he retired."

"And I thought you were some government official who wanted to badger him. I treated you dreadfully."

Pitt paused and stared at her. "You two were very close."

She nodded. "We lived together for nearly eighteen months. He came from the old school, but he wouldn't consider marriage. Said it was stupid for a young woman to tie herself to a man with one foot in the grave."

Pitt could see the tears. beginning to form and he quickly changed the subject. "If you don't mind my saying, you're the image of a high-school girl on her first prom date."

"The perfect compliment at the perfect moment." Heidi straightened and peered around the tables. "I don't mean to take you away from anything. You're probably meeting someone."

"No, I'm stag." He smiled with his eyes. "I'm between projects and decided to relax with a quiet supper."

"I'm glad we met," she said shyly.

"You have but to give the command, and I'm your slave till dawn."

She looked at him and the sights and sounds of the dining room faded into the background.

She stared demurely down at the table setting. "I'd like that very much."

When they entered Heidi's hotel room, Pitt tenderly picked her up and carried her to the bed.

"Do not move," he said. "I'll do everything."

He began to undress her, very slowly. She couldn't remember ever having a man undress her so completely, from her earrings to her shoes. He made as little contact with his fingers as possible and the anticipation mushroomed inside her to an exquisite agony.

Pitt was not to be hurried. She wondered how many other women he had sweetly tortured like this. The passion began to reflect in Pitt's depthless eyes and it excited her to an even higher level.

Suddenly his lips came down onto hers. They were warm and moist. She responded as his arms tightened around her hips and pulled her to him. She seemed to dissolve and a moan escaped her throat.

Just when the blood felt as though it would burst inside and her muscles pulsated uncontrollably, she opened her mouth to scream. It was then Pitt penetrated her and she came and came in a sweeping rage of pleasure that never seemed to end.

The most luxurious hour of sleep comes not in the beginning or middle but just prior to awakening. It is then that one dream falls upon another in a kaleidoscope of vivid fantasies. To be interrupted by the ringing of a telephone and thrust back to conscious reality is as tormenting as the scraping of fingernails across a blackboard.

Heidi's agony was compounded by an accompanying knock on her hotel room door. Her mind fogged from sleep, she lifted the receiver and mumbled, "Hold on a minute, please." Then she slid from bed and stumbled halfway across the room before realizing she was naked.

Grabbing a terrycloth robe from her suitcase, she threw it over her shoulders and cracked the door. A bellhop slipped around the barrier with the ease of an eel and set a large vase of white roses on a table. Still in a haze, Heidi tipped him and returned to the phone. "Sorry for the delay. This is Commander Milligan."

"Ah, Commander," came the voice of Jack Murphy, the Senate historian, "did I wake you?"

"I had to get up anyway," she said, disguising the urge-to-kill tone in her voice.

"I thought you'd like to know your request triggered a recollection in my mind. So I ran a search last night after closing time and came up with something most interesting."

Heidi rubbed the cobwebs from her eyes. "I'm listening."

"There were no photographs on file of a treaty signing during nineteen fourteen," said Murphy. "I did find, however, an old shot of William Jennings Bryan, who was Wilson's secretary of state at the time; his undersecretary, Richard Essex; and Harvey Shields, identified in a caption only as a representative of His Majesty's government, entering a car."

"I fail to see a connection," said Heidi.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to mislead you. The photograph itself tells us very little. But on the back there is a small penciled notation in the lower left corner that is barely legible. It gives the date, May twentieth, nineteen fourteen, and says: "Bryan leaving White House with North American Treaty." Heidi clutched the phone. "So it really existed."

"My guess is it was only a proposed treaty." Murphy's pride at successfully meeting a challenge was obvious in his tone. "If you would like a copy of the photograph we must charge a small fee."

"Yes…... yes, please. Could you also make an enlargement of the writing on the back?"

"No problem. You can pick up the prints anytime after three o'clock."

"That will be terrific. Thank you."

Heidi hung up the phone and lay back on the bed, happily basking in the feeling of accomplishment. There was a connection after all. Then she remembered the flowers. A note was attached to one of the white roses.

You look ravishing out of uniform. Forgive me for not being near when you awoke.

Dirk

Heidi pressed the rose against her cheek and her lips parted in a lazy smile. The hours spent with Pitt returned as though observed through a pane of frosted glass, the sights and sounds fusing together in a dreamy sort of mist. He was like a phantom who had come and gone in a fantasy. Only the touch of their bodies lingered with clarity, that and a glowing soreness from within.

With reluctance she forced the reverie from her mind and picked up a Washington phone directory from the nightstand. Holding a long fingernail beneath a tiny printed number, she dialed and waited. On the third ring a voice answered.

"Department of State, can I help you?"

Shortly before two o'clock in the afternoon, John Essex pulled up his coat collar against a frigid north breeze and began to check the trays of his raft-culture grown mollusks. Essex's sophisticated farming operation, situated on Coles Point in Virginia, planted seed oysters, tending and cultivating them in ponds beside the Potomac River.

The old man was engrossed in taking a water sample when he heard his name called. A woman bundled in the blue overcoat of a naval officer stood on the pathway between the ponds, a pretty woman, if his seventy-five-year-old eyes were focusing properly. He packed his analysis kit and approached her slowly.

"Mr. Essex?" She smiled warmly. "I phoned earlier. My name is Heidi Milligan."

"You failed to mention your rank, Commander," he said, correctly identifying the insignia on her shoulder boards. Then his lips widened in a friendly smile. "I won't hold that against you. I'm an old friend of the navy. Would you like to come up to the house for a cup of tea?"

"Sounds marvelous," she replied. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Nothing that can't wait for warmer weather. I should be indebted to you for most likely saving me from a case of pneumonia."

She turned up her nose at the odor that pervaded the air. "It smells like a fish market."

"Are you an oyster lover, Commander?"

"Of course. They form pearls, don't they?"

He laughed. "Spoken like a woman. A man would have praised their gastronomic qualities."

"Don't you mean their aphrodisiac qualities?"

"An undeserved myth."

She made a sour face. "I'm afraid I never developed a fondness for raw oysters."

"Fortunately for me, many people do. Last year the ponds around us yielded over fifteen thousand tons per acre. And that was after extraction of the shells."

Heidi tried to look fascinated as Essex went on about the spawning and cultivation of oysters while leading her up a gravel path to a colonial brick house nestled in a grove of apple trees. After settling her comfortably on a leather couch in his study, he produced a pot of tea. Heidi studied him carefully as he poured.

John Essex had twinkling blue eyes and prominent high cheekbones on the part of his face that showed; the bottom half was hidden in a luxuriant white mustache and beard. His body had no senior citizen fat. Even when he was dressed in old coveralls, mackinaw jacket and Wellington boots, the courtly manner that once graced the American embassy in London was still apparent.

"Well, Commander, is this an official visit?" he asked, handing her a cup and saucer.

"No, sir, I'm here on a personal matter."

Essex's eyebrows raised. "Young lady, thirty years ago I might have interpreted that as a flirtatious opening. Now, I'm sad to say, you've only excited an old derelict's inquisitive nature."

"I would hardly call one of the nation's most respected diplomats an old derelict."

"Times gone by." Essex smiled. "How may I be of service?"

"In doing research for my doctorate, I ran across a letter written by President Wilson to Herbert Asquith." She paused to pull a transcript from her purse and pass it to him. "In it he refers to a treaty between England and America."

Essex donned a pair of reading spectacles and read the letter twice. Then he looked up. "How can you be sure it's genuine?"

Without answering, Heidi handed him the two photographic enlargements and waited for a reaction.

William Jennings Bryan, portly and grinning, was bending to enter a limousine. Two men stood behind him in seemingly jovial conversation. Richard Essex, dapper and refined, wore a broad smile, while Harvey Shields had his head tilted back in a belly laugh, displaying two large protruding upper teeth, or what dentists termed an over bite surrounded by a sea of gold inlays. The chauffeur who held open the car door stood stiffly unamused.

Essex's face remained impassive as he studied the enlargements. After several moments he looked up. "What is it you're fishing for, Commander?"

"The North American Treaty," she replied. "There is no hint of it in State Department records or historical archives. I find it incredible that all trace of such an important document can be so thoroughly lost."

"And you think I can enlighten you?"

"The man in the picture with William Jennings Bryan is Richard Essex, your grandfather. I traced your family tie in the hope that he may have left you papers or correspondence that might open a door."

Essex offered a tray of cream and sugar Heidi took two lumps. "I'm afraid you're wasting your time. All of his personal papers were turned over to the Library of Congress after his death, every scrap."

"Never hurts to try," Heidi said dejectedly.

"Have you been to the library?"

"I spent four hours there this morning. A prolific man, your grandfather. The volume of his posthumous papers is overwhelming."

"Did you conduct a search of Bryan's writings also?"

"I drew a blank there too," Heidi admitted. "For all his religious integrity and inspiring oratory, Bryan was not a prodigious author of memoranda during his service as secretary of state.

Essex thoughtfully sipped his tea. "Richard Essex was a meticulous man, and Bryan leaned on him like a crutch to draft policy and prepare diplomatic correspondence. Grandfather's papers reflect an almost pathological attention to detail. Little passed through the State Department that didn't have his mark on it."

"I found him to be an obscure sort of person." The words came out before Heidi knew she had spoken them.

Essex's eyes clouded. "Why do you say that?"

"His record as undersecretary for political Affairs is well documented. But there's no accounting for Richard Essex the man. Of course I found the usual condensed Who's Who type of biography, listing his birthplace, parents and schools, all in neat chronological order. But nowhere did I see a definitive description of his personality or character, his likes and dislikes. Even his papers are written in the third person. He's like the subject of a portrait the artist forgot to flesh out."

"Are you suggesting he did not exist?" Essex asked sarcastically.

"Why, no," Heidi said sheepishly. "Quite obviously you're the living proof."

Essex stared into his teacup as though seeing a vague picture on the bottom. "It's true," he said finally. "Besides his day-today observations of State Department procedure and a few photos in the family album, little remains of my grandfather's memory."

"Can you recall him from your childhood?"

Essex solemnly shook his head. "No, he died a young man of forty-two, the same year I was born."

"Nineteen fourteen."

"May twenty-eighth, to be exact."

Heidi shot him a stunned look. "Eight days after the treaty signing at the White House."

"Think what you will, Commander," Essex said patiently. "There was no treaty."

"Surely you can't discount the evidence?"

"Bryan and my grandfather paid innumerable visits to the White House. The scribbling on the back of the photograph is undoubtedly an error. As to the letter, you've merely misconstrued its meaning."

"The facts check out," Heidi persisted. "The Sir Edward that Wilson writes of was Sir Edward Grey, Britain's foreign secretary. And a loan to Britain one week prior to the date on the letter for one hundred and fifty million dollars is a matter of record."

"Granted that was a,large sum at the time," Essex said knowledgeably. "But prior to World War One, Great Britain was grappling with a program of social reform while purchasing armaments for the approaching conflict. Simply put, she needed a few bucks to tide her over until laws for higher taxation could be passed. The loan can hardly be called irregular. By today's international standards it would be considered a rather routine negotiation.

Heidi stood up. "I'm sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Essex. I won't take up any more of your afternoon."

The twinkle returned in his eyes. "You can trouble me anytime."

At the door Heidi turned. "One other thing. The library has a complete set of your grandfather's monthly desk diaries except the final one for May. It appears to be missing."

Essex shrugged. "No great mystery. He died before he completed it. Probably lost in the shuffle when they cleaned out his office.

Essex stood at the window until Heidi's car disappeared into the trees. His shoulders drooped. He felt very tired and very old. He walked over to an ornately carved antique credenza and twisted the head of one of the four vacant-eyed cherubs adorning the corners. A small, flat drawer swung out from the bottom edge, a bare inch above the carpet. Inside rested a thin leather bound book, its engraved cover cracked with age.

He sank into an overstuffed chair, adjusted his spectacles and began reading. It was a ritual, performed at varied intervals over the years. His eyes no longer saw the words on the pages; he had memorized them long ago.

He was still sitting there when the sun was gone and the shadows had stretched and melted into blackness. He clutched the book to his breast, his soul agonized by dread, his mind torn by indecision.

The past had caught up with a lonely old man in a darkened room.

Lieutenant Ewen Burton-Angus slipped his car into a parking stall at the Glen Echo Racquet Club, hoisted his tote bag from the passenger seat and hunched his shoulders against the cold. He hurried past the empty swimming pool and snow-coated tennis courts toward the warmth of the clubhouse.

He found the club manager seated at a table beneath a glass case stacked with rows of trophies. "Can I help you?" asked the manager.

"Yes, my name's Burton-Angus. I'm a guest of Henry Argus."

The manager scrutinized a clipboard. "Right, Lieutenant Burton-Angus. Sorry, sir, but Mr. Argus called and said he couldn't make it. He told me to tell you he tried to catch you at the embassy, but you'd already left."

"A pity," said Burton-Angus. "As long as I'm here, do you have a racquetball court available where I can practice?"

"I had to reshuffle the reservations when Mr. Argus canceled. However, there is another gentleman who is playing alone. Perhaps you can pair up."

"Where can I find him?"

"He's seated in the bar. His court won't be free for another half hour. His name is Jack Murphy."

Burton- Angus found Murphy nursing a drink by a picture window overlooking the Chesapeake Canal. He introduced himself. "Do you mind awfully having an opponent?"

"Not at all," said Murphy with an infectious smile. "Beats playing alone, providing you don't smear the court with me."

"Small chance of that."

"You play much racquetball?"

"Actually, squash is more my game."

"I'd guess that from your British accent." Murphy gestured to a chair. "Have a drink. Plenty of time before our court is free."

Burton- Angus welcomed the opportunity to relax and ordered a gin. "Beautiful countryside. The canal reminds me of one that runs near my home in Devon."

"Travels through Georgetown and into the Potomac River," Murphy said in his best tour-guide fashion. "When the water freezes in winter the local residents use it for skating and ice fishing."

"Do you work in Washington?" asked Burton-Angus.

"Yes, I'm the Senate historian. And you?"

"Aide to the naval attachd for the British embassy."

A detached expression crossed Murphy's face and it seemed to Burton-Angus that the American was staring right through him.

"Is something wrong?"

Murphy shook his head. "No, not at all. You being navy and British reminded me of a woman, a commander in the U.S. Navy who came to me searching for data concerning a treaty between our two countries."

"No doubt a trade treaty."

"I can't say. The strange part is that except for an old photograph, there is no record of it in Senate archives."

"A photograph?"

"Yes, with a notation about a North American Treaty."

"I'd be happy to have someone probe the embassy files for you."

"Please don't bother. It's not that important."

"No bother at all," insisted Burton-Angus. "Do you have a date?"

"On or about May twentieth, nineteen fourteen."

"Ancient history."

"Probably only a proposed treaty that was rejected."

"Nonetheless, I'll have a look," said Burton-Angus as his drink arrived. He held up the glass. "Cheers."

Sitting at his desk in the British embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, Alexander Moffat looked and acted like the archetype of a government official. With his hair trimmed short with an immaculately creased left-hand part, a ramrod spine and precise correctness in speech and mannerism, he and thousands of counterparts throughout the foreign service could have been stamped from the same cookie cutter. His desk was barren of all clutter; the only objects resting on its polished surface were his folded hands.

"I'm dreadfully sorry, Lieutenant, but I find nothing in the records department mentioning an Anglo-American treaty in early nineteen fourteen."

"Most peculiar," said Burton-Angus. "The American chap who gave me the information seemed reasonably certain such a treaty either existed or at least had been in the talk stage."

"Probably has his year wrong."

"I don't think so. He's the Senate historian. Not the type to muck up his facts and dates."

"Do you wish to pursue the matter?" asked Moffat in an official tone.

Burton- Angus clasped his hands thoughtfully. "Might be worth a check with the Foreign Office in London to clear the fog.

Moffat shrugged indifferently. "A vague clue to an unlikely event three-quarters of a century ago would hardly have a significant bearing on the present."

"Perhaps not. Still, I promised the fellow I'd see what I could find. Shall I make a formal request for an inquiry, in writing?"

"Not necessary. I'll phone an old school chum who heads up the signals department and ask him to have a run at the old records. He owes me a favor. Should have an answer this time tomorrow. Don't be disappointed if he fails to turn up anything."

"I won't," said Burton-Angus. "On the other hand, you never can tell what might be buried in Foreign Service archives."

Peter Beaseley knew more about the Foreign Office than any other man in London. As chief librarian in charge of records for over thirty years, he considered the entire history of British international affairs his private domain. He made a specialty of ferreting out policy blunders and scandalous intrigues, by diplomats past and present, that had been swept under the carpet of secrecy.

Beaseley ran a hand through a few strands of white hair and reached for one of several pipes littering a large circular tray. He sniffed at the official-looking paper on his desk as a cat might sniff at an uninviting meal.

"North American Treaty," he said aloud to the empty room. "Never heard of it."

In the minds of his staff it would have been a pronouncement from God. If Peter Beaseley had never heard of a treaty, it obviously did not exist.

He tit the pipe and idly watched the smoke. The year 1914 signaled the end of vintage diplomacy, he mused. After World War I the aristocratic elegance of international negotiation was replaced by mechanical maneuvers. It had become a shallow world indeed.

His secretary knocked and poked her head around the door. "Mr. Beaseley."

He looked up without really seeing her. "Yes, Miss Gosset."

"I'm going to lunch now."

"Lunch?" He took his watch from a vest pocket and gazed at it. "Oh yes, I'd lost all track of time. Where are you going to eat? Do you have a date?"

The two unexpected questions in sudden succession caught Miss Gosset by surprise. "Why, no, I'm eating quite alone. I thought I would try that new Indian restaurant on Glendower Place."

"Good, that settles it," Beaseley grandly announced. "You're lunching with me."

The invitation was a rare honor and Miss Gosset was surprised.

Beaseley caught her blank expression and smiled. "I have an ulterior motive, Miss Gosset. You may consider it a bribe. I need you to assist me in searching for an old treaty. Four eyes are faster than two. I don't want to waste too much time on this one."

She barely had time to slip on her coat before he hustled her outside and waved down a taxi with his umbrella.

"Sanctuary Building, Great Smith Street," Beaseley instructed the driver.

"With five buildings scattered about London crammed with old Foreign Office records," she said, adjusting a scarf, "it's a mystery to me how you know where to look."

"Correspondence dealing with the Americas during the year nineteen fourteen are shelved on the second floor of the east wing in the Sanctuary Building," he stated flatly.

Properly impressed, Miss Gosset remained silent until they reached their destination. Beaseley paid the driver, and they entered the lobby, showing their official credentials and signing in with the commissionaire. They took a rickety old elevator to the second floor. He walked unerringly to the correct section. "You check April. I'll take May."

"You haven't told me what we're looking for," she said inquiringly.

"Any reference to a North American Treaty."

She felt there was more she needed to know, but Beaseley had already turned his back and was poring through a huge leather binder that held reams of yellowed official documents and department memoranda. She resigned herself to the inevitable and tackled the first volume of April 1914, wrinkling her nose at the musty odor.

After four hours, to the accompaniment of Miss Gosset's protesting stomach, they had turned up nothing. Beaseley replaced the binders and looked thoughtful.

"Excuse me, Mr. Beaseley, but about lunch?" He looked at his watch. "I'm dreadfully sorry. I paid no attention to the time. Will you allow me to make that dinner?"

"I gratefully accept," sighed Miss Gosset.

They were signing out when Beaseley suddenly turned to the commissionaire.

"I'd like to examine the official secrets vault," he said. "My clearance allows me entry."

"But not the young lady," said the uniformed commissionaire, smiling politely. "Her pass only covers the library."

Beaseley patted Miss Gosset on the shoulder. "Please be patient a little longer. This shouldn't take but a few minutes."

He followed the commissionaire down three flights of stairs to the basement and up to a large iron door in a concrete wall. He watched as a pair of heavy brass keys turned the oiled tumblers of two immense antique padlocks without the least sound. The commissionaire pushed the door open and stood aside.

"I'll have to lock you in, sir," he said, parroting the book of regulations. "There is a telephone on the wall. Just ring three two when you wish to leave."

"I'm aware of the procedure, thank you."

The file containing classified matter from the spring of 1914 was only forty pages thick and held no earth-shattering revelations. Beaseley was reinserting it in its slot when he noticed something odd.

Several of the files on each side protruded nearly half an inch from the rest of the neatly spaced row. He pulled them out.

Another file had somehow been shoved behind the others, keeping them from fitting evenly. He opened the cover. Across the title page of what looked to be a report were the words "North American Treaty."

He sat down at a metal table and began to read.

Ten minutes later, Beaseley had the look of a man who had been tapped on the shoulder in a cemetery at midnight. His trembling hands could scarcely punch out the correct telephone call buttons.

Heidi checked her boarding pass and looked up at the television monitor displaying the departure time of her flight.

"Another forty minutes to kill," she said.

"Time enough for a farewell drink" Pitt replied.

He steered her across the busy lobby of Dulles Airport to the cocktail lounge. Businessmen with loosened collars and wrinkled suits packed every corner. Pitt scrounged a small table and ordered from a passing waitress. "I wish I could stay," she said wistfully.

"What's to stop you?"

"The navy frowns on officers who jump ship."

"When is your leave up?"

"I have to report to the Naval Communications Station in San Diego by noon tomorrow for assignment to sea duty."

He looked into her eyes. "It seems our romance is a victim of geography."

"We didn't give it much chance, did we?"

"Perhaps it was never meant to be," said Pitt.

Heidi stared at him. "That's what he said!"

"Who?"

"President Wilson in a letter."

Pitt laughed. "I'm afraid you've lost me."

"I'm sorry." She waved away the thought. "It was nothing."

"Sounds to me like your research is getting to you."

"Complications," she said. "I was sidetracked. It happens in research. You delve into one subject and find a fascinating bit of information that takes you on a totally different course."

The drinks came and Pitt paid the waitress. "You're sure you can't request an extension."

She shook her head. "If only I could. But I've used up all my accumulated leave time. It will be six months before I'm eligible again" Then suddenly her eyes came alive. "Why don't you come with me? We could have a few days together before I sail."

Pitt took her hand. "Sorry, dear heart, but my schedule won't permit it. I'm leaving myself, for a project in the Labrador Sea."

"How long will you be gone?"

"A month, maybe six weeks."

"Will we see each other again?" Her voice became soft.

"I'm a firm believer that good memories should be relived."

Twenty minutes later, after finishing their second drink, Pitt escorted Heidi to her boarding gate. Already the waiting area had cleared and the attendant behind the check-in counter was announcing the final call.

She set her purse and cosmetic case on a vacant chair and looked up at him through expectant eyes. He responded by kissing her. Then he tilted back his head and grinned. "There goes my macho reputation."

"How so?"

"As soon as word gets around that I was seen kissing a sailor, I'm through."

"You clown." She pulled his head down and kissed him long and hard. Finally she released him and blinked back the tears. "Goodbye, Dirk Pitt."

"Goodbye, Heidi Milligan."

She picked up her bags and walked toward the boarding ramp. Then she paused as though remembering something and returned. Fishing in her purse, she pulled out an envelope and pushed it into his hand.

"Listen! Read these papers," she said urgently. "They explain what's been sidetracking me. And…... Dirk…... There may be something here. Something important. See what you think. If you feel it's worth pursuing, call me in San Diego." Before Pitt could reply, she had turned and was gone.

They say that after death, there is no more idyllic setting in which to await eternity than the graveyard of an English village. Nestled about the parish church in timeless tranquillity, the headstones stand moss-covered and mute, their carved names and dates eroded and seldom readable farther back than the nineteenth century.

Outside of London, in the tucked-away village of Manuden, a solitary bell tolled for a funeral. It was a chilly but beautiful day, the sun skirting rolling masses of pearl-tinted clouds.

Fifty or sixty people clustered about a flag-draped military coffin as the local vicar delivered the eulogy.

A regal- looking woman in her early sixties heard none of it. Her attention was focused on a man who stood alone, several paces away from the outer edge of the mourners.

He must be sixty-six, she thought. His black, carelessly brushed hair was sprinkled with gray and had receded slightly. The face was still handsome, but the ruthless look had softened. With a slight tinge of envy she noted that he maintained a trim and fit shape, while she had tended to spread. His eyes were aimed at the church steeple, his thoughts distant.

Only after the coffin was lowered into the ground and the crowd had dispersed did he step forward and stare into the grave as though piercing a window to the past.

"The years have treated you well," she said, coming up behind him.

He turned and recognized her presence for the first time. Then he smiled the old engaging smile she recalled so well and kissed her on the cheek.

"How incredibly, you look even more sensuous than I remembered."

"You haven't changed," she laughed, self-consciously patting her gray hair with its few remaining sandy strands. "The same old flatterer."

"How long has it been?"

"You left the service twenty-five years ago."

"God, it seems two centuries at least."

"Your name is Brian Shaw now."

"Yes." Shaw nodded at the coffin waiting for the diggers to cover it. "He insisted I take a new identity when I retired."

"A wise move. You had more enemies than Attila the Hun. The SMERSH agent who assassinated you would have become a Soviet hero."

"No need to worry any longer." He smiled. "I doubt if my old adversaries are still alive. Besides, I'm an old has-been. My head isn't worth the price of a liter of petrol."

"You never married." It was a statement, not a question.

He shook his head. "Only briefly, but she was killed. You remember."

She flushed slightly. "I guess I never really accepted you as having a wife."

"And you?"

"A year after you left. My husband worked in the cryptographic analysis section. His name is Graham Huston. We live in London and manage nicely with our pensions and the profits of an antique shop."

"Not quite like the old days."

"Are you still living in the West Indies?"

"It became rather unhealthy, so I came home. Bought a small working farm on the Isle of Wight."

"I can't picture you as a gentleman farmer."

"Ditto for you selling antiques."

The grave diggers appeared from a pub across the road and took up their shovels. Soon the dirt was slapping against the wooden top of the coffin.

"I loved that old man," Shaw said wistfully. "There were times I wanted to kill him, and there were times I wished I could have embraced him as a father."

"He had a special affection for you too," she said. "He always fussed and worried when you were on an assignment. The other agents he treated more like chess pieces."

"You knew him better than anyone," he said softly. "A man has few secrets from his secretary of twenty years."

She gave a slight, perceptible nod. "It used to annoy him. I came to read his thoughts on many occasions."

Her voice faltered and she could no longer bear to look at the grave. She turned away, and Shaw took her arm and led her from the churchyard. "Have you time for a drink?"

She opened her handbag, picked out a tissue and sniffled into it. "I really must be getting back to London."

"Then it's goodbye, Mrs. Huston."

"Brian." She uttered the sound as if it stuck in her throat, yet she refrained from speaking his real name. "I will never get used to thinking of you as Brian Shaw."

"The two people we were died long before our old chief," Shaw said gently.

She squeezed his hand and her eyes were moist. "A pity we can't relive the past."

Before he could answer she pulled an envelope from her purse and slipped it into the side pocket of his overcoat. He said nothing, nor did he appear to notice.

"Goodbye, Mr. Shaw," she said in a voice he could hardly hear. "Take care of yourself."

A cold evening sleet lashed London as the diesel engine of a black Austin cab knocked to an idle in front of a large stone building in Hyde Park. Shaw paid the driver and stepped out to the pavement. He stood for a few moments, ignoring the particles of wind-driven ice that pelted his face, staring up at the ugly edifice where he had once worked.

The windows were dirty and streaked and the walls bore soot and pollution from half a century of neglect. Shaw thought it odd that the building had never been sandblasted as had so many others around the city.

He climbed the steps and entered the lobby. A security guard matter-of-factly asked to see his identification and checked his name against a list of scheduled appointments.

"Please take the lift to the tenth floor," said the guard. "Someone will meet you."

The lift trembled and rattled as it always had, but the operator was gone, replaced by a panel of buttons. Shaw stopped the lift on the ninth floor and walked into the corridor. He found his old office and opened the door, expecting to see a secretary busily typing in the front area and a man sitting at his desk in the rear.

He was numbed to find the two rooms empty except for a few pieces of dusty litter.

He shook his head sadly. Who was it who said you can't go home again?

At least the stairway was where it was supposed to be, even though the security guard was no longer there. He climbed to the tenth floor and stepped out behind a blond girl, wearing a loose-fitting knit dress, who was facing the lift.

"I believe you're waiting for me," he said.

She whirled around startled. "Mr. Shaw?"

"Yes, sorry for the delay, but since this is a bit like old home week I thought I'd take a nostalgic tour."

The, girl looked at him with ill-concealed curiosity. "The brigadier is waiting for you, please follow me." She knocked on the familiar door and opened it. "Mr. Shaw, sir."

Except for a different desk and the man rising behind it, the bookcases and fixtures were the same. At last he felt as though he was on home ground.

"Mr. Shaw, do come in."

Brigadier General Morris V. Simms extended a hand that was firm and dry. The peacock-blue eyes had a fluid friendliness to them, but Shaw wasn't fooled. He could feel their gaze reading him like a computerized body scan.

"Please be seated."

Shaw sat in a tall-armed chair that was hard as marble. A rather unimaginative ploy, he thought, designed to place the brigadier's callers with an uncomfortable handicap. His former chief would have cursed such amateurish pettiness.

He noticed that the desk was untidy. Files were carelessly piled, several of their headings facing upside down. And there were indications of dust. Not spread evenly on the desk top, but in places where dust was not supposed to be. The upper rims of the In and Out baskets, under the receiver of the telephone, between the edges of papers protruding from their file covers.

Suddenly Shaw saw through the sham.

First there was the missing elevator operator who used to ensure that visitors went where they were sent. Then the missing security guards who had patrolled the stairways and acted as receptionists on every floor. Then there was his deserted office.

His former section of the British Secret Intelligence Service was no longer in this building.

The whole scene was a mock-up, a stage erected to act out a play for his benefit.

Brigadier Simms dropped stiffly into his chair and stared across at Shaw. There was no giveaway expression on the smooth soldier's face. It was as inscrutable as a jade Buddha.

"I suppose this is your first trip to the old haunt since you retired."

Shaw nodded. "Yes." He found it strange to sit in this room opposite a younger man.

"Must look about the same to you."

"There's been a few changes."

Simms' left eyebrow lifted slightly. "You no doubt mean in personnel."

"Time clouds one's memory," Shaw replied philosophically.

The eyebrow slipped back into place. "You must be wondering why I asked you to come?"

"Having an invitation stuck in my pocket during a funeral struck me as a bit theatrical," said Shaw. "You could have simply posted a letter or called on the telephone."

Simms gave him a frosty smile. "I have my reasons, sound reasons.

Shaw decided to remain aloof. He didn't like Simms and he saw no reason to be anything but civil. "You obviously didn't request my presence for a section reunion."

"No," Simms said, pulling out a bottom drawer and casually resting a highly polished shoe on it. "Actually I'd like to put you back in harness."

Shaw was stunned. What in hell lwas going on? He was amazed to feel a wave of excitement course through him. "I can't believe the service is so hard up it has to recall decrepit old agents from the rubbish heap."

"You're too hard on yourself, Mr. Shaw. You were perhaps the best the service ever recruited. You became something of a legend in your own time."

"A canker that led to my forced retirement."

"Be that as it may, I have an assignment that fits your talents like a glove. It requires a mature man with brains. There will be no call for physical agility or bloodletting. It's purely a case for investigative skill and wits. Despite your qualms about age, I have little question that a man of your experience can bring it off."

Shaw's mind was whirling. He was finding it difficult to make sense of Simms' statements. "Why me? There must be an army of other agents who are better qualified. And the Russians. They never throw out their files. The KGB will have me pegged an hour after I resurface."

"This is the era of electronic brains, Mr. Shaw. Section heads no longer sit in stuffy old offices and make opinionated decisions. All data on current assignments are now fed into computers. We leave it to their memory banks to tell us which agent is best suited to send out. Apparently they took a dim view of our present crop. So we programmed a list of retirees. Your name popped out at the top. As to the Russians, you are not to worry. You won't be dealing with them."

"Can you tell me what it is I'm so ideally suited for?"

"A watchdog job."

"If not the Russians, then who?"

"The Americans."

Shaw sat silent, not sure he heard right. Finally he said, "Sorry, Brigadier, but your robots made a mistake. Granted, I've never thought the Americans as civilized as the British, but they're a good people. During my years in the service I formed many warm relationships with them. I've worked closely with men in the CIA. I refuse to spy on them. I think you better find someone else."

Simms' face reddened. "You're overreacting. Listen to the facts, Mr. Shaw. I'm not asking you to steal classified information from the Yanks; only keep an eye on them for a few weeks. Not to sound maudlin, but this is a matter which could very well threaten Her Majesty's government."

"I stand rebuked," said Shaw. "Please continue."

"Thank you," Simms replied haughtily. "All right, then. Routine investigation into something called the North American Treaty. A rusty can of worms the Americans have dug up. You're to learn what they know and if they intend to do anything about it."

"Sounds vague. What exactly is this treaty business?"

"I think it best if you weren't privy to its ramifications just yet," Simms said without elaboration.

"I understand."

"No, you don't, but that's neither here nor there. Care to give it a go?"

Shaw was torn momentarily by indecision. His reflexes had faded, his strength was half what it once had been. He could not read without glasses. He could still bring down a grouse at fifty yards with a shotgun, but he had not fired a pistol in twenty years. Shaw did not dodge the fact that he was an aging man.

"My farm…...?"

"Run by a professor of agronomy in your absence." Simms smiled. "You'll find us more liberal with our purse strings than during your day. I might add that the eighty acres you've been dickering for that border your farm will be purchased in your name, courtesy of the service, when you finish the assignment."

Times had changed, but the section's efficiency, had not. Shaw was never aware he was under surveillance. He was indeed getting old. "You make it extremely difficult to say no, Brigadier."

"Then say yes."

The old line "In for a penny, in for a pound" ran through Shaw's mind. Then he shrugged and spoke with the old selfassurance. "I'll give it a try."

Simms rapped the desk with his fist. "Jolly good." He pulled open a drawer and threw an envelope in front of Shaw. "Your airline tickets, traveler's checks and hotel reservations. You'll go under your new identity, of course. Is your passport in order?"

"Yes," replied Shaw. "It will take me a fortnight to clean up my affairs."

Simms waved a hand airily. "Your plane leaves in two days. Everything will be taken care of. Good hunting."

Shaw's face tensed. "You were pretty damned sure of me."

Simms' lips spread into a toothy smile. "I was betting on an old warhorse who yearns for one more battle."

It was Shaw's turn to smile. He wasn't going to exit looking insipid.

"Then why the clandestine crap?"

Simms stiffened. His face took on a cornered look. He said nothing.

"The masquerade," snapped Shaw. "This building hasn't been used for years. We could have just as easily met on a park bench."

"It was that obvious?" Simms said in a quiet voice.

"You might as well have posted a sign."

Simms shrugged. "Perhaps I went to extremes, but the Americans have an uncanny way of knowing what goes on in British intelligence circles. Besides, it was necessary to see if you still possessed your powers of perception."

"A test."

"Call it what you will." Simms rose to his feet and walked around the desk. He offered his hand to Shaw. "I am sincerely sorry to have mucked up your schedule. I do not relish depending on someone who is out of his prime, but I am a blind man in a fog and you are my only hope to guide me out."

Ten minutes later, Brigadier Simms and his secretary stood side by side in the lift as it rattled down to the lobby. She was adjusting a rain cap on her head while Simms seemed deep in thought. "He was a strange one," she said.

Sims looked up. "I'm sorry."

"Mr. Shaw. He moves like a cat. Gave me a fright the way he sneaked up behind me when I was expecting him to step out of the lift."

"He came up the stairs?"

"From the ninth floor," she said. "I could tell from the pause in the indicator."

"I rather hoped he'd do that," said Simms. "Makes it comforting to know he hasn't lost his devious touch."

"He seemed a friendly old fellow."

Simms smiled. "That friendly old fellow has killed over twenty men."

"Would have fooled me."

"He'll need to fool a lot of people," Simms muttered. The lift door clanked open. "He has no idea of the massive stakes riding on his shoulders. It may well be we have thrown the poor bastard to the sharks."

An officer in a Royal Navy uniform stepped forward as Brian Shaw cleared airport customs. "Mr. Shaw?"

"Yes, I'm Shaw."

"Lieutenant Burton-Angus, British embassy. Sorry about not seeing you through customs; I was held up in traffic. Welcome to Washington."

As they shook hands, Shaw cast a disapproving eye at the uniform. "A bit open, aren't we?"

"Not at all." Burton-Angus smiled. "If I suddenly showed up at the airport in mufti, someone might think I was playing cloak and dagger. Better to appear routine."

"Which way to the luggage claim?"

"Not necessary. Actually, I'm afraid your stay in the capital city has been cut rather short."

Shaw got the picture. "When does my plane leave and where am I going?"

"You depart for Los Angeles in forty minutes. Here is your ticket and boarding pass."

"Shall we discuss it?"

"Of course." Burton-Angus took Shaw by the arm. "I suggest we talk while mingling with the crowd. Makes it difficult for an eavesdropper, human or electronic."

Shaw nodded in understanding. "Been in the service long?"

"General Simms recruited me six years ago." Burton-Angus steered him to the book section of a gift shop. "You know of my involvement with your job."

"I read the report. You're the chap who discovered the first clue to the treaty from the Senate historian."

"Jack Murphy." Burton-Angus nodded.

"Were you able to get any more information out of him?" Shaw asked.

"General Simms thought it best not to press him. I told Murphy London had no record of the treaty."

"He bought it?"

"He had no reason not to."

"So we write Murphy off and begin somewhere else," said Shaw.

"The reason you're going to Los Angeles," Burton-Angus told him. "Murphy became aware of the treaty when a naval officer, a woman, made an inquiry. He found an old photograph and made her a copy. One of our people burglarized his office and scanned the file on research requests. The only female naval officer whose name appeared was a Lieutenant Commander Heidi Milligan."

"Any chance of reaching her?"

"Commander Milligan is communications officer on board an amphibious landing transport vessel bound for the Indian Ocean. It sailed from San Diego two hours ago."

Shaw stopped. "With Milligan out of reach, where does that leave us?"

"Fortunately, her ship, the U.S. S. Arvada, is under orders to lay over in Los Angeles harbor for three days. Something to do with modifications to the automated steering system."

They walked on. Shaw looked at the lieutenant with a growing respect. "You're very well informed."

"Part of the job." Burton-Angus shrugged modestly. "The Americans have few secrets from the British."

"That's a comforting thought."

Burton- Angus flushed slightly. "We better move along to the concourse. Your plane departs at gate twenty-two."

"Since there's been a change of plan," said Shaw, "I'd be interested in learning my new instructions."

"I thought it obvious," Burton-Angus replied. "You have approximately seventy-two hours to find out what Commander Milligan knows."

"I'll need help."

"After you've settled into your hotel, you'll be contacted by a Mr. Graham Humberly, a rather well-heeled Rolls-Royce dealer. He'll arrange for you to meet Commander Milligan."

"He'll arrange for me to meet Commander Milligan," Shaw repeated, his tone sarcastic.

"Why, yes," said Burton-Angus, momentarily taken back by Shaw's evident skepticism. "Humberly is a former British subject. The man cultivates an enormous channel of important contacts, particularly in the U.S. Navy."

"And he and I are going to march up the gangplank of an American naval vessel, waving the Union Jack and whistling "Brittania rules the waves," and demand to interrogate a ship's officer."

"If anybody can do it, Humberly can," Burton-Angus said resolutely.

Shaw drew deeply on his cigarette and stared at the lieutenant.

"Why me?" he asked stonily.

"The way I understand it, Mr. Shaw, you were once the most able operative in the service. You know your way around Americans. Also, Humberly is planning on introducing you as a British businessman, an old friend from his Royal Navy days who also achieved fleet rank. Naturally, you're the right age."

"Sounds logical."

"General Simms is not expecting miracles. But we've got to go through the motions. The best we can hope from Milligan is that she proves to be a stepping-stone."

"One more time," Shaw said. "Why me?"

Burton- Angus stopped and looked up at the televised departure schedules. "Your plane is on time. Here are your tickets. Don't worry about the luggage. It's been taken care of."

"I assumed as much."

"Well I guess what it came down to was your past record of ah…... shall we say, successful dealings with members of the opposite sex. General Simms thought it an asset. Of course, the fact that Commander Milligan recently had an intimate affair with an admiral twice her age rolled the dice in your favor."

Shaw gave him a withering stare. "Just goes to show what you've got to look forward to someday, laddy."

"Nothing personal." Burton-Angus smiled wanly. "You say you've been in the service six years?"

"And four months, to be more precise."

"Did they teach you how to detect a surveillance blind?"

Burton- Angus' eyes narrowed questioningly. "The class was mandatory. Why do you ask?"

"Because you flunked," Shaw said. He let it sink in a moment and then tilted his head to the left. "The man with the metal attachd case, staring innocently at his watch. He's been glued to us since we left the customs exit. Also, the stewardess in the Pan American uniform about twenty feet behind. Her airline is on another concourse. She's his backup. They'll have a third eye lurking ahead of us. I haven't fixed him yet."

Burton- Angus visibly paled. "Not possible," he muttered. "They can't be on to us."

Shaw turned and showed his ticket and passed it to the girl at the boarding entrance. Then he refaced the lieutenant.

"It would seem," he said in his best sardonic voice, "that the British have few secrets from the Americans."

He left Burton-Angus standing there looking like a drowning man.

Shaw sat back in his seat, relaxed, and felt in the mood for champagne. The stewardess brought him two small bottles with plastic glasses. The labels said California. He would have preferred a Tattinger, brut reserve vintage. California bubbly and plastic glasses, he mused. Would the Americans ever become civilized?

After he had polished off one bottle, he took stock. The CIA had put the finger on him the instant he boarded the plane in England, just as he knew General Simms knew they would.

Shaw was worried not at all. He operated better when things were out in the open. Skulking around alleys like an unperson was never to his liking. He felt exhilarated to be doing what he had once done so well. His senses had not left him-a shade slower perhaps, but still sharp enough. He Was playing his kind of game and he reveled in it.

The dingy gas station stood on a corner in the industrial outskirts of Ottawa. Erected soon after the Second World War, it was a square steel structure with one island containing three gas pumps that were scarred from years of hard use and badly in need of new paint. Inside the office, cans of oil and mummified flies littered dusty shelves while the windows, streaked with grime, displayed faded signs advertising some long forgotten tire sale.

Henri Villon turned his Mercedes-Benz sedan in over the driveway and stopped at the pumps. An attendant in grease stained coveralls stepped out from under a car on the lube rack and approached, wiping his hands on a rag. "What'll it be?" he asked with a bored expression.

"Fill it, please," answered Villon.

The attendant eyed an elderly man and woman sitting on a nearby bus bench, and then spoke in a tone they could not fail to overhear. "Five gallons is the government limit, you know, the oil shortage being what it is."

Villon nodded silently and the attendant pumped the gas. When he finished he went around to the front of the car and pointed. Villon pulled the release lever and the attendant raised the hood.

"You better take a look at your fan belt. She looks pretty worn."

Villon got out of the car and leaned on the fender opposite the attendant. He said in an undertone, "Do you have any idea of the unholy mess your bungling has caused?"

Foss Gly stared back across the engine. "What's done is done. The weather closed in at the last minute and the first missile lost the target. It's that simple."

"It's not that simple!" Villon snapped back. "Nearly fifty people killed for nothing. If the air safety inspectors discover the true cause of the crash, Parliament will be in an uproar demanding investigations into every organization, including the Boy Scouts. The news media will cry for blood after they learn twenty of their top political journalists were murdered. And the worst of it is, the Free Quebec Society will be suspected by all."

"No one will trace the blame to the FQS." Gly's voice was cold and final.

"Damn!" Villon struck the fender with his fist. "If only Sarveux had died. The government would be in confusion and we could have made our move on Quebec."

"Your buddies in the Kremlin would have loved that."

"I won't be able to count on their support if we have another setback of this magnitude."

Gly extended a hand toward the engine as though he was working on it. "Why get cozy with the reds? Once they get their hooks in you, they never let loose."

"Not that it concerns you, but a government along Communist lines is Quebec's only hope of standing alone."

Gly shrugged indifferently and continued to pretend to work on the engine. "What do you want from me?"

Villon considered. "No percentage in panic. I think it best if you and your team of specialists, as you call them, continue your cover employment as usual. None of you are French, so it's doubtful you'll come under suspicion."

"I can't see the percentages in waiting around to get caught."

"You forget that since I am minister of internal affairs, all security matters pass through my office. Any leads pointing to you will be quietly lost in bureaucratic red tape."

"I'd still feel safer if we left the country."

"You underestimate events, Mr. Gly. My government is cracking at the seams. The provinces are snapping at one another's throats. The only question is, When will Canada shatter? I know it's coming, Charles Sarveux knows it, and so do those English stiff-necks who out speech each other in that old stone relic by the Thames River. Soon, very soon, Canada, as the world knows her, will be no more. Believe me, you will be lost in the chaos."

"Lost and out of a job."

"A temporary situation," said Villon, his tone heavy with cynicism. "As long as there are governments, financial corporations and wealthy individuals who can afford your special bag of dirty tricks, Mr. Gly, your kind will never be forced to sell vacuum cleaners for a living."

Gly gave an indolent twist to his head and changed the subject "How can I get in touch with you in case of a problem?"

Villon moved around the front of the car and clutched Gly's upper arm in an iron grip. "Two things you must remember. First, there will be no more problems. And second, under no circumstances are you to attempt contact with me. I cannot run the slightest risk of being tied to the FQS."

Gly's eyes closed for a brief instant of surprise and pain. He sucked in a breath and flexed the bicep as Villon increased the pressure. The two men stood there, neither giving an inch. Then, very slowly, a taut grin of satisfaction began to stretch Gly's lips and he glared into Villon's eyes.

Villon released his grasp and smiled grimly. "My compliments. Your strength and dimensions very nearly match mine."

Gly fought back an urge to massage the stabbing pain in his arm. "Lifting weights is as good a way as any to kill time between assignments."

"One can almost detect a faint resemblance between our facial features," said Villon, climbing behind the wheel of the Mercedes. "Except for your repulsive nose, we might be taken for brothers."

"Stick it in your ear, Villon!" The belligerence in Gly's voice was unmistakable. He glanced at the old couple still perched on the bench waiting for a bus, and then at the meter on the gas pump. "That'll be eighteen sixty."

"Charge it!" Villon snarled, and drove off.

Villon buttered a slice of breakfast toast and read the caption on page two of his morning newspaper.

NO LEADS IN TERRORIST ATTACK ON PRIME MINISTER'S PLANE

Foss Gly had covered his tracks well. Villon kept his hand on the investigation, and he knew that with each passing day the scent grew colder. He subtly used the influence of his office to play down any connection between the assassins and the FQS unless definite proof was found. So far things were working smoothly.

His satisfaction faded to a chill as Villon thought of Gly. The man was nothing but a savage mercenary whose god was a fat price. There was no telling how a mad dog like Gly might run if he wasn't held on a tight leash.

Villon's wife came to the doorway of the breakfast room. She was a pretty woman with dark brown hair and blue eyes. "There's a phone call for you in the study," she said.

He entered the study, closed the door and picked up the phone. "This is Villon."

"Superintendent McComb, Sir," in a voice as deep as a coal pit. "I hope I'm not interrupting your breakfast."

"Not at all," Villon lied. "You're the officer in charge of. Mounted Police records?"

"Yes, Sir," McComb replied. "The file you requested on Max Roubaix is on the desk in front of me. Shall I make a copy and send it to your office?"

"Not necessary," said Villon. "Please give me the basics over the phone."

"It's a bit bulky," McComb hedged.

"A five- minute capsule will do." Villon smiled to himself. He could almost imagine McComb's state of mind. No doubt a family man who was irritated as hell at having to leave a warm bed and a warm wife and a Sunday sleep-in to dig through old dusty records to Satisfy the whim of a cabinet minister.

"The pages are over a hundred years old, so they're written in hand script, but I'll do my best. Let's see now, Roubaix's early life is sketchy. No date of birth. Listed as an orphan who drifted from family to family. First official record is age twelve. He was up before a local constable for killing chickens."

"You did say chickens?"

"Snipped off their heads with wire cutters in wholesale lots. He worked off damages to the farmer whose stock he had decimated. Then he moved to the next town and graduated to horses. Cut the throats of half a herd before he was apprehended."

"A juvenile psychopath with a bloodlust.

"People simply wrote him off as the village idiot in those days," said McComb. "Psychotic motivation was not in their dictionaries. They failed to understand that a boy who slaughtered animals for the hell of it was only one step away from doing the same to humans. Roubaix was sentenced to two years in jail for the horse blood bath, but because of his age, fourteen, he was allowed to live with the constable, working off his time as a gardener and houseboy, Not long after his release, people in the surrounding countryside began to find bodies of tramps and drunks who had been strangled."

"Where did all this take place?"

"A radius of fifty miles around the present city of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan."

"Surely Roubaix was arrested as a prime suspect?"

"The mounties didn't work as fast in the nineteenth century as we do now," McComb admitted. "By the time Roubaix was tied to the crimes, he had fled into the virgin forests of the Northwest Territory and didn't turn up again until Riel's rebellion in eighteen eighty-five."

"The revolt by the descendants of French traders and Indians," said Villon, recalling his history.

"Metis, they were called. Louis Riel was their leader. Roubaix oined Riel's forces and enshrined himself in Canadian legend as our most prolific killer.

"What about the time he was missing?"

"Six years," McComb replied. "Nothing recorded. There was a rash of unsolved killings attributed to him, but no solid evidence or eyewitness accounts. only a pattern that hinted of the Roubaix touch.

"A pattern?"

"Yes, all the victims were done in by injuries inflicted to the throat," said McComb. "Mostly from strangulation. Roubaix had turned away from the messy use of a knife. No great fuss was made at the time. People had a different set of moral codes then. They looked upon a scourge who eliminated undesirables as a community benefactor."

"I seem to remember he became a legend by killing a number of Mounties during Riel's rebellion."

"Thirteen, to be exact."

"Roubaix must have been a very strong man."

"Not really," replied McComb. "Actually he was described as frail of build and rather sickly. A doctor who attended him before his execution testified that Roubaix was tackled by consumption-what we now call tuberculosis."

"How was it possible for such a weakling to overpower men who were trained for physical combat?" asked Villon.

"Roubaix used a garrote made from rawhide not much thicker than a wire. A nasty weapon that cut halfway into his victim's throat. Caught them unaware, usually when they were asleep. Your reputation is well known in body-building circles, Mr. Villon, but I daresay your own wife could choke you away if she slipped Roubaix's garrote around your neck some night in bed."

"You talk as if the garrote still exists."

"It does," said McComb. "We have it on display in the criminal section of the Mountie museum, if you care to view it. Like some other mass killers who cherished a favorite murder weapon, Roubaix lavished loving care on his garrote. The wooden hand grips that attach to the thong are intricately carved in the shape of timber wolvesl It's really quite a piece of craftsmanship."

"Perhaps I'll have a look at it when my schedule permits," said Villon without enthusiasm. He pondered a moment, trying to make sense out of Sarveux's instructions to Danielle in the hospital. It didn't add up. A riddle of ciphers. Villon took a flyer on another tack. "If you had to describe Roubaix's case, how would you sum it up in a single sentence?"

"I'm not sure I know what you're after," said McComb.

"Let me put it another way. What was Max Roubaix?"

There was silence for a few moments. Villon could almost hear the gears turn in McComb's head. Finally the Mountie said, "I guess you could call him a homicidal maniac with a fetish for the stranglehold."

Villon tensed and then relaxed again. "Thank you, superintendent."

"If there is anything else…..."

"No, you've done me a service, and I'm grateful."

Villon slowly replaced the receiver. He looked into space, focusing on the impression of a sickly man twisting a garrote. The stunned expression of incomprehension on the face of the prey. A final glimpse before the bulging eyes turned sightless.

Sarveux's delirious ravings to Danielle suddenly began to make a shred of sense.

Sarveux lay in the hospital bed and nodded as Deputy Prime Minister Malcolm Hunt was ushered into his hospital room. He smiled. "It was good of you to come, Malcolm. I'm well aware of the hell you're going through with the House of Commons."

Out of habit, Hunt held out his hand, but quickly withdrew it on seeing the salve-coated arms of the Prime Minister.

"Pull up a chair and get comfortable," Sarveux said graciously. "Smoke if you care to."

"The effects of my pipe might lose me the medical vote come next election," Hunt smiled. "Thank you, but I'd better pass."

Sarveux came straight to the point. "I have talked with the director of air safety. He assures me that the tragedy at James Bay was no accident."

Hunt's face whitened suddenly. "How can he be positive?"

"A piece of engine cowling was found a half mile beyond the runway," Sarveux explained. "Analysis showed fragments embedded in it that matched a type of rocket used by the army's Argo ground-to-air launcher. An inventory at the Val Jalbert Arsenal discovered two were missing, along with several warheads."

"Good lord." Hunt's voice trembled. "That means all those people on your aircraft were murdered."

"The evidence points in that direction," Sarveux said placidly.

"The Free Quebec Society," said Hunt, turning angry. "I can think of no one else who could be responsible."

"I agree, but their guilt may never be proved."

"Why not?" asked Hunt. "The FQS are either out of touch with reality or complete idiots to think they could get away with it. The Mounties will never permit the terrorists behind a crime of such magnitude to escape unpunished. As a radical movement they are finished."

"Do not be too optimistic, old friend. My attempted assassination does not fall into the same category as the bombings, kidnappings and slayings of the last forty years. Those were carried out by political amateurs, belonging to FQS cells, who were apprehended and convicted. The slaughter at James Bay was conceived and directed by professionals. That much is known by the fact they left no trace of their existence. The best guess by the chief commissioner of the Mounties is that they were hired from outside the country."

Hunt's eyes were steady. "The FQS terrorists might yet push us into a state of civil war."

"That must not come to pass," Sarveux said quietly. "I will not allow it."

"It was you who threatened the use of troops to keep the separatists in line."

Sarveux smiled a dry smile. "A bluff. You are the first to know. I never intended a military occupation of Quebec. Repression of a hostile people would solve nothing."

Hunt reached in his pocket. "I believe I'll have that pipe now."

"Please do."

The two men sat silent while the deputy prime minister puffed his briar bowl to life. Finally he blew a blue cloud toward the ceiling.

"So what happens now?" asked Hunt.

"The Canada we know will disintegrate while we stand helpless to prevent it," answered Sarveux sadly. "A totally independent Quebec was inevitable from the start. Sovereignty association was merely a half-assed measure. Now Alberta wants to go it alone. Ontario and British Columbia are making rumblings about nationhood."

"You fought a good fight to keep us together, Charles. No one can deny you that."

"A mistake," said Sarveux. "Instead of a delaying action, you and I, the party, the nation, should have, planned for it. Too late; we are faced with a Canada divided forever."

"I can't accept your ominous forecast," Hunt said, but the life had gone out of his voice.

"The gap between your English-speaking provinces and my French Quebec is too great to span with patriotic words," said Sarveux, staring Hunt in the eyes. "You are of British descent, a graduate of Oxford. You belong to the elite who have always dominated the political and economic structure of this land. You are the establishment. Your children study in classrooms under a photograph of the Queen. French Quebec children, on the other hand, are stared down upon by Charles de Gaulle. And, as you know, they have little opportunity for financial success or a prominent position in society."

"But we are all Canadians," Hunt protested.

"No, not all. There is one among us who has sold out to Moscow."

Hunt was startled. He jerked the pipe from between his teeth. "Who?" he asked incredulously. "Who are you talking about?"

"The leader of the FQS," answered Sarveux. "I learned before my trip to James Bay that he has made deals with the Soviet Union that will take effect after Quebec leaves the confederation. What's worse, he has the ear of Jules Guerrier."

Hunt appeared lost. "The premier of Quebec? I can't believe that. Jules is French-Canadian to the core. He has little love for communism and makes no secret of his hate for the FQS."

"But Jules, like ourselves, has always assumed we were dealing with a terrorist from the gutter. A mistake. The man is no simple misguided radical. I'm told he holds a high position in our government."

"Who is he? How did you come by this information?"

Sarveux shook his head. "Except to say that it comes from outside the country, I cannot reveal my source, even to you. As to the traitor's name, I can't be certain. The Russians refer to him by various code names. His true identity is a well-kept secret."

"My God, what if something should happen to Jules?"

"Then the Parti QudbA-cois would crumble and the FQS could step into the vacuum."

"What you're suggesting is that Russia will have a toehold in the middle of North America."

"Yes," Sarveux said ominously. "Exactly."

Henri Villon stared through the windows of the James Bay control booth, the grim smile of satisfaction on his face reflected in the spotless glass.

The riddle of Roubaix's garrote lay on the great generator floor below.

Behind him, Percival Stuckey stood in apprehensive confusion. "I must protest this act," he said. "It is beyond decency."

Villon turned and stared at Stuckey, his eyes cold. "As a member of Parliament and Mr. Sarveux's minister of internal affairs, I can assure you this test is of utmost concern to the country, and decency has nothing to do with it."

"It's highly irregular," Stuckey muttered stubbornly.

"Spoken like a true official," Villon said in a cynical tone. "Now then, can you do what your government asks of you?"

Stuckey pondered a moment. "The diversion of millions of kilowatts is quite complex and involves intricate lead and frequency control with correct timing. Though most of the excess power surge will be grounded, we'll still be throwing a heavy overload on our own systems."

"Can you do it?" Villon persisted.

"Yes." Stuckey shrugged in defeat. "But I fail to see the purpose in cutting power to every city between Minneapolis and New York."

"Five seconds," Villon said, ignoring Stuckey's probing remark. "You have only to shut off electrical energy to the United States for five seconds."

Stuckey gave a final glare of defiance and leaned between the engineers seated at the console and twisted several knobs. The overhead television monitors brightened and focused on varied panoramic views of city skylines.

"The contrast seems to lighten as you scan from left to right," noted Villon.

"The darker cities are Boston, New York and Philadelphia." Stuckey looked at his watch. "It's dusk in Chicago and the sun is still setting in Minneapolis."

"How will we know if full blackout is achieved with one city under daylight?"

Stuckey made a slight adjustment and the Minneapolis monitor zoomed to a busy intersection. The image was so clear that Villon could identify the street signs on the corner of Third Street and Hennepin Avenue. "The traffic signals. We can tell when their lights go dark."

"Will Canadian power go off as well?"

"Only in towns near the border below our interconnect terminals."

The engineers made a series of movements over the console and paused. Stuckey turned and fixed Villon with a steady stare. "I will not be held responsible for the consequences."

"Your objections are duly noted," Villon replied.

He gazed at the monitors as a cold finger of indecision tugged his mind, followed by a torrent of last-second doubts. The strain of what he was about to do settled heavily about his shoulders. Five seconds. A warning that could not be dismissed. Finally he cast off all fears and nodded.

"You may proceed." Then he watched as one-quarter of the United States blinked out.

Part II

THE DOODLEBUG

MARCH 1989

WASHINGTON, D.C.

There was a feeling of helplessness, almost fear in Alan Mercier's mind as he worked late into the night, sifting through a stack of military recommendations relating to national security. He couldn't help wondering if the new president was capable of grasping realities. Declaring national bankruptcy was asking for impeachment, no matter how desperately the nation required the act.

Mercier sat back and rubbed his tired eyes. No longer were these simply typewritten proposals and predictions on eight-by ten bond paper. Now they became decisions affecting millions of flesh-and-blood human beings.

Suddenly he felt impotent. Matters of vast consequences stretched beyond his view, his comprehension. The world, the government had grown too complex for a mere handful of men to control adequately. He saw himself being swept along on a tidal wave that was racing toward the rocks.

His depression was interrupted by an aide who entered his office and motioned toward the telephone. "You have a call, Sir, from Dr. Klein."

"Hello, Ron, I take it you don't have enough hours in the day either."

"Right you are," Klein came back. "I thought you might like to know I have a lead on your expensive gizmo."

"What is it exactly?"

"I can't say. No one around here has the vaguest idea."

"You'll have to explain."

"The funding came to the Department of Energy all right. But then it was immediately siphoned off to another government agency."

"Which one?"

"The National Underwater and Marine Agency." Mercier did not respond. He went silent, thinking.

"You there, Alan?"

"Yes, I'm sorry."

"Seems we were only the middleman," Klein went on. "Wish I could give you more information, but that's all I found."

"Sounds devious," mused Mercier. "Why would Energy quietly switch such a large sum of money to an agency concerned with marine science?"

"Can't say. Shall I have my staff pursue it further?" Mercier thought a moment. "No, better let me handle it. A probe from a neutral source might encounter less hassle."

"I don't envy you, tangling with Sandecker."

"Ah, yes, the director of NUMA. I've never met him, but I hear he's a testy bastard."

"I know him," Klein said. "That description is an understatement. You nail his hide on the barn door and I guarantee half of Washington will present you with a medal."

"Talk has it he's a good man."

"The guy is no idiot. He skirts politics but keeps the right company. He won't hesitate to step on feet, 'damn the torpedoes' and all that, to get a job done. No one who ever picked a fight with him came out a winner. If you have evil thoughts in his direction, I suggest you have a strong case."

"Innocent until proved guilty," said Mercier.

"He's also a tough man to catch. Almost never returns his phone calls or sits around his office."

"I'll think of a way to pin him down," Mercier said confidently. "Thanks for your help."

"Not at all," said Klein. "Good luck. I have a feeling you'll need it."

Every afternoon at exactly five minutes to four, Admiral James Sandecker, the chief director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, left his office and took the elevator down to the tenth-floor communications department.

He was a bantam-size man, a few inches over five feet with a neatly trimmed red beard matching a thick head of hair that showed little indication of white. At age sixty-one, he was a confirmed health nut. He nurtured a trim body by downing daily doses of vitamins and garlic pills supplemented by a six-mile morning run from his apartment to the tall, glassed headquarters of NUMA.

He entered the immense, equipment-laden communications room, which covered fifteen thousand square feet and was manned by a staff of forty-five engineers and technicians. Six satellites, dispersed in hovering orbits above the earth, interconnected the agency with weather stations, oceanographic research expeditions, and a hundred other ongoing marine projects around the world.

The communications director looked up at Sandecker's entry. He was quite familiar with the admiral's routine.

"Projection room B, if you please, Admiral."

Sandecker acknowledged with a curt nod and stepped into what appeared to be a small movie theater. He sank into a soft chair and patiently waited until an image began to focus on the screen.

A tall, lanky man three thousand miles away stared out of the screen from piercing eyes. His hair was black and he grinned from a face that looked like a rock that dared ocean surf to crash over it.

Dirk Pitt was sitting tilted back in a chair with his feet planted irreverently on an electronic console. He held up a sandwich that displayed a missing bite and made an open gesture. "Sorry, Admiral, you caught me in the middle of a snack."

"You've never stood on formality before," Sandecker grumbled good-naturedly. "Why start now?"

"It's colder than a polar bear's rectum inside this floating abortion. We burn off a ton of calories just trying to keep warm.

"The Doodlebug is not a cruise ship."

Pitt set the sandwich aside. "Maybe so, but next trip the crew would appreciate a little more thought being given to the heating system."

"How deep are you?"

Pitt consulted a dial. "Seven hundred and thirty feet. Water temperature is twenty-nine degrees. Conditions not exactly conducive to a game of water polo."

"Any problems?"

"None," Pitt answered, his grin still in place. "The Doodlebug is performing like a perfect lady."

"We're running out of time," said Sandecker evenly. "I expect a call from the new president at any moment, demanding to know what we're up to."

"The crew and I will stick around until the fuel is gone, Admiral. I can promise you no more."

"Any mineral contacts?"

"We've passed over large iron deposits, commercially obtainable uranium, thorium, gold and manganese. Almost every mineral except our primary target."

"Does the geology still look promising?"

"Strengthening indications, but nothing that looks like a structural uplift, anticline or salt dome."

"I'm hoping for a stratigraphic trap. It's got the greatest potential."

"The Doodlebug can't produce a paying sandbar, Admiral, only find one."

"Not to change the subject, but keep a sharp eye in your rearview mirror. I can't bail you out if you're caught trespassing on the wrong side of the street."

"I've been meaning to ask you, what's to stop an audience from triangulating my video transmissions?"

"One shot in forty."

"Sir?"

"NUMA's satellite communications network has a direct link with forty other stations. They all receive and instantaneously relay your transmissions. The lag is less than a millisecond. To anyone tuned into this sending frequency your voice and image come from forty different locations around the globe. There is no way they can single out the original."

"I think I can live with those odds."

"I'll leave you to your sandwich."

If Pitt felt pessimistic he didn't show it. He put on a confident face and threw a lazy wave. "Hang loose, Admiral. The law of averages is bound to catch up."

Sandecker watched as Pitt's figure faded from the screen. Then he rose from his chair and left the projection room. He walked up two flights of stairs to the computer section and passed through security. In a glass-enclosed room set away from the rest of the humming machines a man in a white lab coat studied a stack of computer printout sheets. He peered over the rims of his glasses as the admiral approached.

"Good afternoon, doc," greeted Sandecker.

Dr. Ramon King indolently replied by holding up a pencil. He had a light-skinned narrow, gloomy face, with jutting jaw and barbed-wire eyebrows-the kind of face that mirrors nothing and rarely displays a change of expression.

Doc King could afford a sour countenance. He was the creative genius behind the development of the Doodlebug.

"Everything functioning smoothly?" asked Sandecker, trying to make conversation.

"The probe is functioning perfectly," answered King. "Just as it did yesterday, the day before that and the previous two weeks. If our baby develops teething problems, you'll be the first to be notified."

"I'd prefer good news to no news."

King laid aside the printout sheets and faced Sandecker. "You're not only demanding the moon but the stars as well. Why continue this risky expedition? The Doodlebug is a qualified success. It penetrates deeper than we had any right to expect. The doors of discovery it throws open stagger the mind. For God's sake, cut the subterfuge and make its existence known."

"No!" Sandecker snapped back. "Not until I damn well have to."

"What are you trying to prove?" King persisted.

"I want to prove that it's more than a highfalutin dowser."

King readjusted his glasses and went back to scanning the computer data. "I'm not a gambling man, Admiral, but since you're carrying the bulk of the risk on your shoulders, I'll tag along for the ride, knowing full well I'll go on the Justice Department shit list as an accomplice." He paused and peered at Sandecker. "I have a vested interest in the Doodlebug. I'd like to see it make a score as much as anyone. But if something fouls up and those guys out there in the ocean are caught like thieves in the night, then the best you and I can hope for is to be tarred and feathered and exiled to Antarctica. The worst, I don't want to think about."

The Washington athletic community looked askance at Sandecker's running habits. He was the only jogger anyone had ever seen pounding along the sidewalk with an ever-present Churchill-style cigar stub protruding from his mouth.

He was puffing along toward the NUMA building under an early morning overcast sky when a rotund man in a rumpled suit, sitting on a bus bench, looked up over a newspaper.

"Admiral Sandecker, may I have a word with you?"

Sandecker turned out of curiosity, but not recognizing the President's security adviser, he kept his stride. "Call me for an appointment," he panted indifferently. "I don't like to break my pace."

"Please, Admiral, I'm Alan Mercier."

Sandecker stopped, his eyes narrowing. "Mercier?"

Mercier folded the newspaper and stood. "My apologies for interrupting your morning exercise, but I understand you're a hard man to trap for conversation."

"Your office supersedes mine. You could have simply ordered me to come to the White House."

"I'm not fanatical on official protocol," Mercier replied. "An informal meeting such as this has its advantages."

"Like catching your quarry off his home ground," said Sandecker, cannily sizing up Mercier. "A sneaky tactic. I use it myself on occasion."

"According to rumors, you're a master of sneaky tactics."

Sandecker's expression went blank for an instant. Then he burst into a laugh, pulled a lighter from a pocket of his sweat suit and lit the cigar stub. "I know when I'm licked. You didn't ambush me for my wallet, Mr. Mercier. What's on your mind?"

"Very well, suppose you tell me about the doodlebug."

"Doodlebug?" The admiral gave a faint tilt to his head-a movement equivalent to stunned surprise in any other man. "A fascinating instrument. I assume you're familiar with its purpose."

"Why don't you tell me?"

Sandecker shrugged. "I guess you could say it's a kind of water dowser."

"Water dowsers don't cost six hundred and eighty million taxpayer dollars."

"What exactly do you want to know?"

"Does such an exotic instrument exist?"

"The Doodlebug Project is a reality, and a damned successful one, I might add."

"Are you prepared to explain its operation and account for the money spent on its development?"

"When?"

"At the earliest opportunity."

"Give me two weeks and I'll lay the doodlebug in your lap neatly wrapped and packaged."

Mercier was not to be taken in. "Two days."

"I know what you're thinking," said Sandecker earnestly. "But I promise you there is no fear of scandal, far from it. Trust me for at least a week. I simply can't put it together in less."

"I'm beginning to feel like an accomplice in a con game."

"Please, one week."

Mercier looked into Sandecker's eyes. My God, he thought, the man is actually begging. It was hardly what he expected. He motioned to his driver who was parked a short distance away and nodded. "Okay, Admiral, you've got your week."

"You drive a tough bargain," said Sandecker, with a sly grin.

Without another word the admiral turned and resumed his morning jog to NUMA headquarters.

Mercier watched the little man grow even smaller in the distance. He seemed not to notice his driver standing patiently beside the car, holding the door open.

Mercier stood rooted, a maddening certainty growing within him that he'd been had.

It had been an exhausting day for Sandecker. After his unexpected meeting with Mercier he fenced with a congressional budget committee until eight in the evening, hawking the goals and accomplishments of NUMA, appealing for, and in a few cases, demanding additional funding for his agency's operations. It was a bureaucratic chore he detested.

After a light dinner at the Army and Navy Club, he entered his apartment at the Watergate and poured himself a glass of buttermilk.

He took off his shoes and was beginning to unwind when the phone rang. He would have ignored it if he hadn't turned to see which line held the incoming call. The red light on the direct circuit to NUMA blinked ominously. "Sandecker."

"Ramon King here, Admiral. We've got a problem on the Doodlebug."

"A malfunction?"

"No such luck," replied King. "Our sweep systems have picked up an intruder."

"Is he closing with our vessel?"

"Negative."

"A chance passing by one of our own subs then," Sandecker suggested optimistically.

King sounded concerned. "The contact is maintaining a parallel course, distance four thousand meters. It appears to be shadowing the Doodlebug.

"Not good."

"I'll have a firmer grasp on the situation when the computers spit out a more detailed analysis of our unknown caller."

Sandecker went silent. He sipped at the buttermilk, his mind meditative. Finally, he said, "Call the security desk and tell them to track down Al Giordino. I want him in on this."

King spoke hesitantly. "Is Giordino acquainted with…... ah, does he…...?"

"He knows," Sandecker assured King. "I personally briefed him on the project during its inception in the event he had to substitute for Pitt. You'd better get on with it. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

The admiral hung up. His worst fear had put in its appearance. He stared at the white liquid within the glass as if he could visualize the mysterious craft stalking the defenseless Doodlebug.

Then he set the glass aside and hurried out the door, unaware that he was still in his stocking feet.

Deep beneath the surface of the Labrador Sea not far from the northern tip of Newfoundland, Pitt stood in stony silence, studying the electronic readout across the display screen as the unidentified submarine skirted the outer fringes of the Doodlebug's instrument range. He leaned forward as a line of data flashed on. Then, suddenly, the display screen blinked out as contact was lost.

Bill Lasky, the panel operator, turned to Pitt and shook his head. "Sorry, Dirk, our visitor is a shy one. He won't sit still for a scan."

Pitt put his hand on Lasky's shoulder. "Keep trying. Sooner or later he's bound to step on our side of the fence."

He moved across the control room through the maze of complex electronic gear, his feet silent on the rubber deck covering. Dropping down a ladder to a lower deck, he entered a small room not much bigger than a pair of adjoining phone booths.

Pitt sat on the edge of a folding bunk, spread a blueprint on a small writing desk and studied the guts of the Doodlebug.

A diving deformity was the less than endearing term that ran through his mind when he first laid eyes on the world's most sophisticated research vessel. It looked like nothing previously built to prowl beneath the seas.

The Doodlebug's compact form lay somewhere south of ludicrous. The best descriptions anybody had come up with were "the inner half of an aircraft wing standing on end" and "the conning tower of a submarine that has lost its hull." In short, it was a slab of metal that traveled in a vertical position.

There was a reason for the unorthodox lines of the Doodlebug. The concept was a considerable leap in submersible technology. In the past, all mechanical and electronic systems had been built to conform within the space limitations of a standard cigar-shaped hull. The Doodlebug's aluminum shell, on the other hand, had been built around its instrument package.

There were few creature comforts for the three-man crew. Humans were essential only for emergency operation or repairs. The craft was automatically operated and piloted by the computer brain center at NUMA headquarters in Washington, almost three thousand miles away.

"How about a little medicine to clear the cobwebs?"

Pitt lifted his head and looked into the mournful bloodhound eyes of Sam Quayle, the electronics wizard of the expedition. Quayle held up a pair of plastic cups and a half pint of brandy, whose remaining contents hardly coated the floor of the bottle.

"For shame," said Pitt, unable to suppress a grin. "You know NUMA regulations forbid alcohol on board research vessels."

"Don't look at me," Quayle replied with mock innocence. "I found this work of the devil, or what's left of it, in my bunk. Must have been forgotten by an itinerant construction worker."

"That's odd," said Pitt.

Quayle looked at him questioningly. "How so?"

"The coincidence." Pitt reached under his pillow and pulled out a fifth of Bell's Scotch and held it up. The interior was half full. "An itinerant construction worker left one in my bunk too."

Quayle smiled and handed the cups to Pitt. "If it's all the same to you, I'll save mine for snakebite."

Pitt poured and handed a cup to Quayle. Then he sat back on the bunk and spoke slowly: "What do you make of it, Sam?"

"Our evasive caller?"

"The same," answered Pitt. "What's stopping him from dropping in and giving us the once-over? Why the cat-and mouse game?"

Quayle took a healthy belt of the Scotch and shrugged. "The Doodlebug's configuration probably won't complete on the sub's detection system. The skipper is no doubt contacting his command headquarters for a rundown on underwater craft in his patrol area before he pulls us over to the curb and cites us for trespassing." Quayle finished his drink and gazed longingly at the bottle. "Mind if I have seconds?"

"Help yourself."

Quayle poured himself a generous shot. "I'd feel much safer if we could pin a name tag on those guys.,"

"They won't come within range of our scan. What beats me is how they can walk such a fine line. They seem to dip in and out as if they were taunting us."

"No miracle," said Quayle, making a face as the Scotch seared his throat. "Their transducers are measuring our probes. They know within a few meters of where our signals die out."

Pitt sat up, his eyes narrowed. "Suppose…... just suppose?"

He didn't finish. He left his quarters at a half run, clawing his way up the ladder to the control room. Quayle took another swallow and followed. Only he didn't run. "Any change?" Pitt asked.

Lasky shook his head. "The uninvited are still playing cagey."

"Gradually fade the probes. Maybe we can draw them closer. When they step into our yard, hit them with every sensing device we've got."

"You expect to sucker a nuclear sub, manned by a first-rate professional crew, with a kindergarten trick like that?" Quayle asked incredulously.

"Why not?" Pitt grinned fiendishly. "I'll bet my snake medicine against yours they'll fall for it."

Quayle looked like a salesman who had just sold a waterfront lot in the Gobi Desert. "You're on."

For the next hour it was business as usual. The men went about their chores of monitoring the instruments and checking the equipment. At last Pitt looked at his watch and gestured in Lasky's direction. "Systems standby," he directed. "Ready systems," Lasky acknowledged. "Okay, nail the bastard!"

The data unit in front of them burst into life and the remote display swept across the screen.

Contact: 3480 meters.

Course: Bearing one zero eight.

Speed: Ten knots.

"He bit the hook!" Quayle couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice. "We've got him!"

Overall length: 76 meters.

Beam (approximate): 10.7 meters.

Probable submerged displacement: 3650 tons.

Power: One water-cooled nuclear reactor.

Design: Hunter-killer.

Class: Amberjack.

Flag: U.S.A.

"It's one of ours," Lasky said with obvious relief "At least we're among friends," Quayle muttered. Pitt's eyes were intent. "We're not out of the woods yet."

"Our snoopy friend has altered his course to zero seven six. Speed increasing," Lasky read aloud from the screen. "He's moving away from us now."

"If I didn't know better," Quayle said thoughtfully, "I'd say he was setting for an attack."

Pitt looked at him. "Explain."

"Several years ago, I was a member of a design team that developed underwater weapons systems for the navy. I came to learn that a hunter-killer sub will come to flank speed and break away from the target prior to a torpedo launch."

"Kind of like firing your six-shooter over a shoulder at the villain while riding out of town at full gallop."

"A fair parallel," Quayle allowed. "The modern torpedo is crammed with ultrasonic, heat and magnetic sensors. Once fired, it goes after a target with ungodly tenacity. If it misses on the first pass, it circles around and keeps trying until it makes contact. That's why the mother sub, figuring the target has weapons of the same capability, gets off the mark early and takes evasive action."

A concerned look came over Pitt's face. "How far to the bottom?"

"Two hundred and thirty meters," Lasky answered.

The metric system had never quite caught on with Pitt. Out of habit he converted the reading to about 750 feet. "And the contour?"

"Looks rough. Rock outcroppings, some fifteen meters high.

Pitt walked over to a small plotting table and studied a chart of the seafloor. Then he said, "Switch us on override and take us down."

Lasky looked at him questioningly. "NUMA control won't take kindly to us cutting off their reins."

"We're here, Washington is three thousand miles away. I think it best if we command the vessel until we know what we're facing."

Confusion showed in Quayle's face. "You don't seriously think we're going to be attacked?"

"As long as there's a one percent probability I'm not about to ignore it." Pitt nodded at Lasky. "Take us down. Let's hope we can get lost in the seafloor geology."

"I'll need sonar to avoid striking an outcropping."

"Keep it locked on the sub," Pitt ordered. "Use the lights and TV monitors. We'll eyeball it."

"This is insane," said Quayle.

"If we were hugging the coast of Siberia do you think the Russians would hesitate to boot us where it hurts?"

"Holy mother of Christ!" Lasky gasped.

Pitt and Quayle froze, their eyes suddenly taking on the fear of the hunted as they stared at the green letters glowing on the display screen.

Emergency: CRITICAL.

New contact: Bearing one nine three.

Speed: Seventy knots.

Status: Collision imminent.

Time to contact: One minute, eleven seconds.

"They've gone and done it," Lasky whispered with the look of a man who had seen his tomb. "They've fired a torpedo at us."

Giordino could almost smell the foreboding, and he could see it in the eyes of Dr. King and Admiral Sandecker as he burst through the door of the computer room.

Neither man acknowledged his arrival or so much as glanced in the direction of the swarthy little Italian. Their full concentration was fixed on the huge electronic display covering one wall. Giordino quickly scanned and absorbed the readout on the impending disaster. "Reverse their forward motion," he said calmly.

"I can't." King lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. "They've switched to control override."

"Then tell them!" Giordino said, his tone suddenly sharp. "No way." Sandecker's words came strained and hollow.

"There's a breakdown in voice transmission from the communications satellite."

"Make contact through the computers."

"Yes, yes," King murmured, a faint gleam of understanding in his eyes. "I still command their data input."

Giordino watched the screen, counting the remaining seconds of the torpedo's run as King spoke into a voice response unit that relayed the message to the Doodlebug.

"Pitt anticipated you," said Sandecker, nodding at the screen. They all felt a brief surge of relief as the forward speed of the submersible began to fall off.

"Ten seconds to contact," said Giordino.

Sandecker grabbed a telephone and bellowed at the shaken operator on duty. "Get me Admiral Joe Kemper, chief of naval operations!"

"Three seconds…... two…... one."

The room fell into hushed silence; all were afraid to speak, to be the first to utter the words that might become the epitaph of the submersible and its crew. The screen remained dark. Then the readout came on.

"A miss," King sighed heavily. "The torpedo passed astern with ninety meters to spare."

"The magnetic sensors can't get a firm lock-in on the Bug's aluminum hull," commented Sandecker. Giordino had to grin at Pitt's reply.

Round one. Ahead on points.

Any bright ideas for round two?

"The torpedo's circling for another try," said King. "What's its trajectory?"

"Appears to be running a flat path."

"Have them turn the Doodlebug on her side, angling to a horizontal plane, keeping the keel toward the torpedo. That will reduce the strike area."

Sandecker got through to one of Kemper's aides, a -lieutenant commander who told him the chief of naval operations was asleep and couldn't be disturbed. The aide might as well have thrown a pie at a freight train.

"You listen to me, sonny," Sandecker said in the intimidating tone he was famous for. "I happen to be Admiral James Sandecker of NUMA and this is an emergency. I strongly suggest you put Joe on the phone or your next tour of duty will be at a weather station on Mount Everest. Now move it!"

In a few moments, Admiral Kemper's yawning voice slurred over the phone. "Jim? What in hell is the problem?"

"One of your subs has just attacked one of my research vessels, that's the problem." Kemper reacted as if he'd been shot. "Where?"

"Ten miles off the Button Islands in the Labrador Sea."

"That's in Canadian waters."

"I've no time for explanations," said Sandecker. "You've got to order your sub to self-destruct their torpedo before we have a senseless tragedy on our hands."

"Stay on the line," said Kemper. "I'll be right back to you."

"Five seconds," Giordino called out.

"The circle has narrowed," King noted.

"Three seconds…... two…... one."

The next interval seemed to drag by as if in molasses while they waited. Then King announced, "Another miss. Only ten meters above this time."

"How close are they to the seafloor?" Giordino asked.

"Thirty- five meters and closing. Pitt must be trying to hide behind a formation of rock outcroppings. It looks hopeless. If the torpedo doesn't get them on the next pass, there's an odd son chance it'll tear a hole in the hull."

Sandecker stiffened as Kemper returned on the line. "I've talked with the chief of arctic defense. He's putting through a priority signal to the sub's commander. I only hope he's in time."

"You're not alone."

"Sorry about the mix-up, Jim. The U.S. Navy doesn't usually shoot first and ask questions afterward. But it's open season on unidentified undersea craft caught that close to the North American shoreline. What was your vessel doing there anyway?"

"The navy isn't the only one who conducts classified missions," said Sandecker. "I'm grateful for your assist." He rang off and gazed up at the screen.

The torpedo was barreling through the depths with murder on its electronic mind. Its detonator head was fifteen seconds away from the Doodlebug.

"Get down," King pleaded aloud. "Twelve meters to the bottom. Lord, they're not going to make it."

Giordino's mind raced in search of options, but none were left. There was no escaping the inevitable this time. Unless the torpedo destructed in the next few moments, the Doodlebug and the three men inside her would lay in the sea forever.

His mouth felt dry as a sand pit He did not count down the seconds this time. In times of stress men perceive strange things that are out of place with unusual clarity. Giordino idly wondered why he hadn't noticed before that Sandecker wasn't wearing any shoes.

"It's going to strike this time," King said. It was a simple statement of fact, no more. His face was drained of all emotion, the skin pale as he raised his hands over his eyes and shut out all sight of the screen.

No sound came over the computers as the torpedo bore in on the Doodlebug. No explosion or shriek of metal bursting into twisted scrap came through the impassive computers. They were immune to the choked-off cries of men dying in the black and icy depths.

One by one the soulless machines shut down. Their lights blinked out and their terminals went cold. They stood silent.

To them, the Doodlebug no longer existed.

Mercier felt no sense of elation about what he must do. He liked James Sandecker, respected the man's candor and forthright manner of organization. But there was no dodging an immediate inquiry into the loss of the Doodlebug. He dared not wait and run the risk of a security breach that would bring the news media circling like vultures. He had to quickly formulate plans for bringing the admiral, and the White House, through the mess without a national outcry.

His secretary's voice came over the intercom. "Admiral Sandecker is here, sir."

"Show him in."

Mercier half expected to see a man haggard from lack of sleep, a man saddened by death and tragedy, but he was mistaken.

Sandecker strode into the room resplendent in gold braid and beribboned uniform. A newly lit cigar was firmly anchored in one corner of his mouth, and his eyes twinkled with their usual gleam of cockiness. If he was going under the magnifying glass, he was obviously going in style.

"Please have a seat, Admiral," said Mercier, rising. "The Security Council meets in a few minutes."

"You mean the inquisition," said Sandecker.

"Not so. The President simply wants to learn the facts behind the Doodlebug's development and place the events of the last thirty-six hours in proper perspective."

"You're not wasting any time. It hasn't been eight hours since my men were murdered."

"That's a bit harsh."

"What else would you call it?"

"I'm not a jury," said Mercier quietly "I want you to know I truly regret that the project didn't work out."

"I'm prepared to shoulder all blame."

"We're not looking for a scapegoat, only the facts, which you've been most reluctant to reveal."

"I've had my reasons."

"We'll be most interested in hearing them." The intercom beeped. "Yes?"

"They're ready for you."

"On our way." Mercier motioned toward the door. "Shall we?"

They stepped into the White House cabinet room. A blue rug matched the drapes and on the north wall a portrait of Harry Truman peered from above the fireplace. The President sat at the center of a huge oval mahogany table, his back to the terrace overlooking the rose garden. Directly opposite, the vice president scratched notes on a pad. Admiral Kemper was present as was Secretary of Energy Dr. Ronald Klein, Secretary of State Douglas Oates and the Director of Central Intelligence, Martin Brogan.

The President came over and greeted Sandecker warmly. "It's a pleasure to see you, Admiral. Please sit down and get comfortable. I believe you know everyone present."

Sandecker nodded and took a vacant chair at the end of the table. He sat alone and distant from the others.

"Now then," the President said for openers, "suppose you tell us about your mysterious Doodlebug."

Dirk Pitt's secretary, Zerri Pochinsky, walked into the computer room with a cup of coffee and a sandwich on a tray. The rims of her hazel eyes were watery. She found it difficult to accept the fact of her boss's death. The shock of losing someone so close had not fully settled about her. It would come later, she knew, when she was alone.

She found Giordino straddling a chair, his elbows and chin nestled on the backrest. He was staring at the row of inert computers.

She sat down next to him. "Your favorite," she said softly. "Pastrami on wheat."

Giordino shook his head at the sandwich but drank the coffee. The caffeine did little to relieve the frustration and anger of having had to watch Pitt and the others die while he stood helpless to prevent it.

"Why don't you go home and get some sleep," Zerri said. "Nothing can be accomplished by staying here."

Giordino spoke as if in a trance. "Pitt and I went back a long way."

"Yes, I know."

"We played high-school football together. He was the shrewdest, most unpredictable quarterback in the league."

"You forget, I've been present when you two reminisced. I can almost give you an instant replay."

Giordino turned to her and smiled. "Were we that bad?"

Zerri smiled back through her tears. "You were that bad."

A team of computer technicians came through the door. The man in charge came over to Giordino. "Sorry to interrupt, but I have orders to break down the project and move the equipment to another section of the departments."

"Erase- the-evidence time, is it?"

"Sir?"

"Did you clear this with Dr. King?"

The man solemnly nodded his head. "Two hours ago. Before he left the building."

"Speaking of home," said Zerri. "Come along. I'll do the driving."

Obediently Giordino rose to his feet and rubbed his aching eyes. He held the door open and gestured for Zerri to exit first. He started to follow her, but suddenly stopped on the threshold.

He came within a hair of missing it. Later, he could never explain why an unfathomable urge made him turn for one final look.

The wink of light was so brief he would have missed it if his eyes hadn't been aimed in the right direction at the right moment. He shouted at the technician who had just switched off the circuits. "Turn them back on!"

"What for?" demanded the technician.

"Damn it, turn the circuits back on!"

One look at Giordino's scowling features was enough. There was no argument this time. The technician did as he was told.

Suddenly the room lost all dimension. Everyone recoiled as though witnessing the birth of some grotesque apparition. Everyone except Giordino. He stood immobile, his lips spreading in a surprised, joyous smile.

One by one, the computers returned to life.

"Let me get this straight," said the President, his face clouded with doubt. "You say this Doodlebug of yours can see through ten miles of solid rock?"

"And identify fifty-one different minerals and metal traces within it," Sandecker replied without blinking an eye. "Yes, Mr. President, I said exactly that."

"I didn't think it was possible," said CIA Director Brogan. "Electromagnetic devices have had limited success measuring the electrical resistivity of underground minerals, but certainly nothing of this magnitude."