Project Cyclops

Chapter Twenty

"My God," the President muttered, settling the red phone into its cradle. "They did it. The bastards detonated one of them. NSA says their SIGINT capabilities in the Med just went blank. An electromagnetic pulse."

"I don't believe it," Morton Davies declared. Sitting on the edge of his hard chair, the chief of staff looked as incredulous as he felt. "We're tracking their helicopter with one of the AWACS we brought up from Rijad. The minute they set down, we're going to pick them up, rescue Mannheim and any other hostages, and nail the bastards. They know they can't get away, so why…?"

"He'd threatened to nuke the island," Hansen went on, "but I assumed that had to be a bluff. Why in hell would he want to go ahead and do it? It didn't buy him anything at this stage."

Edward Briggs was on a blue phone at the other end of the Situation Room, receiving an intelligence update from Operations in the Pentagon. As he cradled the receiver, he looked down, not sure how to tell Johan Hansen what he had just learned. Mannheim.

"What's the matter, Ed? I don't like that look. What did—?"

"Mr. President." He seemed barely able to form the words. "Our people just got a better handle on… It wasn't Andikythera."

"What?" Hansen jerked his head around, puzzlement in his deep eyes. "What do you mean? Good Christ, not Souda Bay! Surely they didn't—"

"The detonation. Our AWACS flying out of southern Turkey monitored it at around fifteen thousand feet. As best they can tell. They still—"

"What!"

“They say it looked to be about seventy miles out over the eastern Med, in the direction of Cypress. Which is exactly where they were tracking—"

"You mean…" His voice trailed off.

'That's right," Briggs said finally. "They think it was the helicopter. The one they were flying out. An old Sikorsky S-61 series, we believe. It—"

"What are you saying?" Hansen found himself refusing to believe it. 'That those idiots nuked themselves?" What the hell was the Pentagon talking about?… My God. Isaac was—

"Doesn't exactly figure, does it?" Briggs nodded lamely. “The electromagnetic pulse knocked out all our non-hardened surveillance electronics in the region, but Souda's intel section was hard-wired into our backup SAT-NET and they claim they triangulated it. Everything's sketchy, but that seems to be what happened."

"I can't believe it," Hansen said, running his hands over his face. They were trembling. “The whole situation must have gotten away from him. That's… the only way. It must have been a macabre accident. Christ!"

"A damned ghastly one," Briggs agreed. "But I think you're right."

"It's the only explanation that makes any sense," Hansen went on. "He probably decided to take one of the bombs with him, hoping to try this again, and something went haywire." He suddenly tried a sad smile. "You know, I warned that son of a bitch he didn't know what he was doing, that he'd probably end up blowing himself up. Truthfully, I didn't really think it would actually happen, though." He turned back to Briggs. "The Pakistanis said the weapons they had were about ten or fifteen kilotons. How big is that, Ed, in English?"

"Okay," Briggs said, pausing for effect, "that would be like a medium-sized tactical, I guess." Truthfully he wasn't exactly sure.

"Well," Hansen mused, "I'm still convinced they intended it for Souda Bay. And if they'd succeeded… but as it stands, I guess it was more like a small upper-atmosphere nuclear test. A tactical nuke, you say? The very term is an obscenity. But, you know, NATO had those all over Germany not so long ago, on the sick assumption that the German people couldn't wait to nuke their own cities." After a long moment, during which a thoughtful silence held the room, Hansen continued. "Tell me, Ed. What kind of impact would a weapon like that actually have at that altitude?"

"My guess is the effects will be reasonably contained." He was doing some quick mental calculus. "Okay, if you were directly under it, you'd have been about three miles away, so you'd have taken a shock wave that would have knocked out windows. And maybe produced some flash burns. But we had the region cleared of civilian traffic, so maybe we're okay on that score."

"What about fallout?" Hansen asked.

"Well, at that altitude the radioactive contamination should be mostly trapped in the upper atmosphere and take several days to start settling. By that time, it'll probably be diluted to the point it'll be reasonably minimal. Nothing like Chernobyl. Hell, I don't know the numbers, Mr. President, but then again he was over some fairly open waters. Besides, like I said, we had a quarantine on all civilian air and sea traffic — guess we see now what a good idea that was — so maybe we can be optimistic."

"The bloody fools just committed hara-kiri, and took Isaac with them." He found himself thinking about the warning his aged father had given him that the job of President would age him half a lifetime in four years. He now felt it had happened in two days.

"There's more," Morton Davies said, clicking off a third phone and glancing at the computerized map now being projected on the giant screen at the end of the room. "SatCom's laser-powered rocket did go up. That's all they know for certain, but they think it's going into orbit. Whatever the hell that means."

"What about the Deltas?" Hansen asked finally, remembering all the planning. "And the assault? Did they—?"

"Right. Good question." He beamed. "JSOC Command reports that the Deltas are on the island now and have it secured. They even retrieved the bomb that those bastards were planning to put on SatCom's rocket. They managed to get it removed before the launch."

"How?"

"I haven't heard yet, but at least we can take pride in the fact that this country's antiterrorist capabilities got a full-dress rehearsal. And they were up to the job."

The President nodded gravely, not quite sure what, exactly, had been proved. That America could go in with too little, too late? If so, it was sobering insight.

"All right, Morton, get Caroline in here first thing in the morning. I want her to schedule a television speech for tomorrow night. Prime-time. I don't know what I'll say, other than our Special Forces minimized the loss of life. It's going to sound pretty lame."

"And what about the money? Is that going to get mentioned?"

Hansen laughed. "Not in a million years. That money's going to be traced and retrieved today, or else. The Swiss know when to play ball. And by the way, nobody here knows anything. About any of this. No leaks, or off-the-record briefings. And I mean that. The less said, the better."

"That might apply to the whole episode, if you want my opinion," Davies observed.

"You know, Morton, yes and no." He turned thoughtful. "Maybe some good can come of this disaster after all. It might just be the demonstration we all needed to start the process of putting this nuclear madness to rest, once and for all. The genie managed to slip out of the bottle for a couple of days, and now we see how it can happen. I think it's time we got serious about total disarmament and on-site inspection."

Edward Briggs always knew Hansen was a dreamer, but this time he was going too far. He did not like the idea of America scrapping its nuclear arsenal, even if everybody else did the same. "That's going to mean a lot of wheeling and dealing, Mr. President. It's going to be a hard sell in some quarters."

Right, Hansen thought. And the hardest sell of all was going to be the Pentagon. "Well, dammit, nothing in this world is easy. But this is one move toward sanity that may have just gotten easier, thanks to that idiot on the island. I'm going to rework that speech I've got scheduled for the General Assembly. We lined up the Security Council, including the Permanent Members, for the right reasons once before. I'm going to see if we can't do it again. This time I think we've got an even better reason."

"All right, we can evacuate them on a Huey," Eric Nichols was saying. “They'll take care of them on the Kennedy, courtesy of the U.S. government. But just who the hell are you?"

He was in the upper level of the SatCom living quarters, talking to a man in a black pullover who was packing a pile of Greek balaclavas into a crate. What in blazes had gone on? He had arrived in the lead Huey, to find one of the Apaches crash-landed, only one SatCom space vehicle left, and the Deltas on the ground, futilely searching for terrorists. But instead of terrorists, they had only come across this group of men in black pullovers, who had surrendered en masse. Turned out they were friendlies. And now this guy had just asked for a Huey to take out a couple of their ranks who had been shot up, one pretty badly.

"My name is Pierre Armont," replied the man. He seemed to be the one in charge, and he had a French accent.

"I mean, who the hell are you? And all these guys? CIA?" Nichols couldn't figure any of it. Two minutes after he landed, a shock wave pounded the island. Then when he tried to radio the Kennedy, to find out what in good Christ had happened, he couldn't get through. There was no radio traffic, anywhere. He had a sinking feeling he knew what that meant. And now, these clowns. They didn't look like regular military, but there was something about the way they moved…

"We're civilians," Armont said cryptically. "And we're not here. You don't see us."

'The hell I don't. What in blazes do you mean?" Nichols didn't like wiseacres who played games. The problem was, these guys clearly weren't desk jockeys, the one type he really despised. No, they seemed more like a private antiterrorist unit, and he didn't have a ready-made emotion for that.

"As far as you and the U.S. government are concerned, we don't exist," Armont continued. "It's better if we keep things that way."

Nichols looked around and examined their gear, trying to figure it. The stuff was from all over the place — German, British, French, Greek, even U.S. And not only was it from all over the globe, it was all top notch, much of it supposedly not available to civilians. Where… and then it hit. "You're the jokers we were trying to keep from coming in."

"You did a pretty good job of slowing us down." Armont nodded.

"Not good enough, it would seem." He laughed, a mirthless grunt. "You're a crafty bunch of fuckers. I'll grant you one thing, though. At least you knew enough not to put up with micromanaging from the other side of the globe. You ended up doing exactly what we would have if anybody had let us. Vietnam all over again." He was reaching into his pocket for a Montecristo. He pulled out two. "Care to join me? Castro may not be able to run a country for shit, but he can still make a half-decent cigar."

"Thank you," Armont said, taking it. He hated cigars.

"By the way, I'm Eric Nichols."

"I know," Armont said. "JSOC." He had followed Nichols's career for years, always with an idea in the back of his mind. "I also know you've got one more year till retirement, but you don't seem like the retiring type."

Nichols stared over the lighted match he was holding out and smiled. "Tell me about it." Then he looked around at the men of ARM, the pile of balaclavas and MP5s, vests of grenades. And discipline, plenty of discipline. It was a sight that did his heart good. "Your boys look like they've been around."

"In a manner of speaking." Whereupon Pierre Armont proceeded to give Major General Eric Nichols an overview of the private club known as the Association of Retired Mercenaries. Including the financial dimension.

Nichols nodded slowly, taking deep, thoughtful puffs on his Montecristo. He was already way ahead of the conversation. "I think we might need to have a talk when all this is over. A look into the future."

"It would be my pleasure," Armont said. "Dinner in Paris, perhaps. I know the perfect restaurant." He did. Les Ambassadeurs, in the Hotel Crillon. French, though not too French. Rough-hewn Americans like Nichols always got slightly uneasy when there was more than one fork on the table and the salad came last.

"Sounds good to me," Nichols said. "Just as long as I won't be getting any asshole phone calls from the Pentagon while we talk."

"I can virtually guarantee it," Armont replied. "But in the meantime, we do need a favor or two from you. For starters, we would much prefer to just be numbered among the civilians here." He smiled. “That is, after all, what we are. Civilians with toys."

"And some pretty state-of-the-art ones at that," Nichols said, looking around again. "But I sometimes have problems with my vision, can't always be sure what I'm seeing. Like right now, for instance. I can't seem to see a damned thing."

"Oh, and one other favor," Armont continued, nodding in silent appreciation. "We took one of the terrorists alive, a certain Jean-Paul Moreau, who is wanted in a string of bank robberies all over France. It's Action Directe's idea of fund-raising. We'd like to remove him back to Paris. There're some… parties there who will pony up enough bounty to cover the costs of this operation and make us whole. How about it? For purposes of your mission debriefing, can you just say the precise number of hostiles remains to be fully established? When we get back to Paris, he's going to fall out of a bus on the rue de Rivoli and be captured." He paused, hoping. The Americans might not go for this one. "We would be particularly grateful. And so would several financial institutions I could name."

Nichols drew again on his Cuban cigar, starting to like this Frog a lot. "Why the hell not? If you're not here, then I can't very well know who you take out, can I? Never heard of the guy."

"Thank you very much," Armont said, and he meant it. This was indeed a man he could work with. "I'm glad we see the situation eye to eye."

"Somebody at least ought to come out of this cluster-fuck whole," Nichols reflected wistfully. "Jesus, what a disaster."

Armont had turned to watch as the Deltas began easing Dimitri onto a metal stretcher. He seemed alert, and he even tried to lift a hand and wave. Armont waved back and shouted for him to take it easy. "By the way, that Greek civilian over there is named Spiros. He runs a security business out of Athens and never leaves town, which is why he wasn't here."

"Got it." Nichols nodded. "Guess a lot of things didn't happen today." He looked around. "But I've still got one question. We've already counted about half a dozen dead hostiles. So if nobody was here, then who exactly took down all these terrorist motherfuckers?"

"Well," Armont explained, "we both know Delta Force doesn't exist either. So maybe this Greek sunshine gave them terminal heatstroke and they all just shot themselves."

"Yeah," Nichols concurred with a smile, "damnedest thing."

"Georges, what do you think?" Cally asked. "Can it be saved?"

"Well, first the good news. The Fujitsu is okay." He wheeled around from the workstation. Command was a shambles, but he had managed to find one auxiliary terminal that would still function. That workstation, and the lights, were on, but not much else. "It was buried deep enough in the bedrock that it escaped the EMP, the electromagnetic pulse, from the blast. If we'd lost our sweetheart, we'd be dead in the water."

"Any telemetry?"

"Yep." He smiled. "The tapes were on. We had Doppler, almost from liftoff. The Cyclops computed our acceleration from it, and the results look to be right on the money. The not-so-good news is that the last telemetry we recorded, just before the bomb went off and the Cyclops crashed, showed that VX-1 was about three minutes away from capturing orbit. I think we probably made it, but I still can't say. However, since Big Benny was already reducing power, getting ready to shut it off anyway, maybe, just maybe we got lucky."

She sighed. "When will you know for sure?"

"Right now I'm trying to get Arlington on-line and tied into here. I'm hoping we can patch into their satellite receiving station. Anyway, I should know in a few minutes, assuming the vehicle is still sending back telemetry."

"Care to venture a guess?" She collapsed into a chair next to him. This was the first time she had been in Command for several hours and it seemed almost strange. Whereas the staff over at Launch Control had opened the champagne immediately after lift-off, still not fully aware of all the behind-the-scenes drama, the Command technicians were too shell-shocked to think, and they were only now slowly drifting back in. Not the people in Launch, though. All they knew for sure was that they had done their job, even if the gantry had collapsed for some mysterious reason. VX-1 left the pad without a hitch. They had a success.

"Well, if I had to lay odds," Georges went on, "I'd guess we captured orbit, but it's going to be erratic. However, if we can get the Cyclops up and running again, maybe we can do a midcourse correction." He tapped something on the keyboard. "Yet another first for the never-say-die SatCom team."

She had to laugh. "You look pretty cool, Soho, for somebody who just lived through World War Three."

He tried unsuccessfully to smile. "Hey, don't go by appearances. I tried to open a Pepsi just now and my hands were shaking so badly I finally just gave up and went to the water fountain. Cally, I'm a wreck. I'm still quivering. God." He pulled at his beard, then absently added, "I'm going to shave this off. What do you think? It isn't me."

"It never was." She had refrained from telling him that earlier, but now he seemed to want to talk about trivia, maybe just to take his mind off all the heaviness around. And there were two new things she did not want to tell him. The first was that millions of dollars were riding on his every keystroke. The second was that she was thinking a lot right now about somebody else.

"Mike, I can't believe it," Bates said, hanging up the phone. The one in his office was among the few still working, and it had been ringing off the wall. "Know who that was?"

Vance had not been paying heavy-duty attention. He had been thinking about the woman out there now talking to the computer hacker with the scraggly beard.

"What? Sorry, Bill, I wasn't listening."

"Hey," he laughed. "Your mental condition isn't what it might be. Tell you the truth, you look like a guy who just mixed it with a twenty-horsepower fan, and lost. You really ought to go over to medical and get your face looked after."

"The Deltas are probably still over there. If I showed up, I might just get arrested. Don't think I could handle an interrogation right now. Better to hide out for a while longer." The fact was, he still felt too disoriented to think about how he must look. He hurt all over, and he almost didn't care.

"Whatever you say." Bates shrugged. "Anyway, that guy on the phone just now was a Jap by the name of Matsugami. He just happens to run NASDA."

"What's that?" Vance asked, trying to clear his mind enough to remember the initials. The information was back there somewhere, but he just couldn't reach it.

"You really are out of it, buddy. You of all people ought to know perfectly well it's their National Space Development Agency. He says they're disgusted with all the failures they've been having with the American and European commercial rockets. He wants to talk about a contract for SatCom to put up their next three broadcast satellites. That means we get to haggle for six months while they try to trim my foreskin, but I think we'll get the job. Laser propulsion is suddenly the hottest thing since Day-Glo condoms. That bastard who took us over just gave us a billion dollars of publicity." He laughed. "I'd almost like to kiss what's left of his ass, except it's probably somewhere in the ozone about now."

"Well, congratulations."

"Wait till Cally hears about this. She just may go into orbit herself."

"You've been on the phone for an hour." After Peretz was carried out, he had collapsed onto the couch in Bates’ office and tried to go to sleep, but the goings-on had made it impossible. Bates had been talking nonstop. "What else is happening out there in the world Ramirez was planning to nuke?"

"He did nuke it. He just didn't manage to nuke it the place he intended." Bates leaned back in his chair. "Well, it turns out good news travels fast. Since VX-1 is up, our two prime banks in Geneva are suddenly engaged in intimate contact between their lips and my nether parts. 'Roll over your obligations? Mais oui, Monsieur Bates. Certainement. Avec plaisir. Will you need any additional capitalization? We could discuss an equity position.' The cocksuckers. It was almost a shame to piss away that weapon on empty space. I could have thought of a much better use."

"Hallelujah." He felt his spirits momentarily rise, though not his energy. "Maybe this means all that stock you paid me for the boat will end up being worth the paper it's printed on. Truthfully, I was beginning to worry."

“Told you it'd all work out," he grinned. "No faith. Come on, amigo, I've got to break the news to the troops." He strode to the door, or the opening that was left after the C-4 had removed the door, and surveyed the remains of Command. The technicians and systems analysts were filing back in, but mostly it was a scene of purposeful lethargy. The horror of the last day and a half had taken a terrible toll. Eyes were vacant, hair unkempt, motions slow and aimless. Several of those who had previously quit smoking were bumming cigarettes.

He whistled with two fingers, and the desultory turmoil froze in place. "Okay, everybody," he said, his voice not quite a shout. "It's official. We're back in business. You've all still got a job."

The glassy-eyed stares he received back suggested nobody's thoughts had extended that far yet. Nobody was in a particular mood to let themselves think about the future.

“That's the good part," Bates went on, oblivious. “The other news is there won't be bonuses or stock dividends this year. We'll be lucky just to service our debt. But anybody who hangs in there for twelve months gets half a year's pay extra, as a bonus. I'll do it out of my own pocket if I have to. And if you play your cards right, we could be talking stock options, too."

There were a few smiles and thumbs-up signs, more to hearten Bates, whom they revered, than to celebrate. Nobody had the capacity left to feel particularly festive. At the same time, nobody was about to abandon ship. Not now, now that they were needed more than ever.

Vance was leaning on the wall behind him, watching it all and thinking. Okay, so Bill was about to be rich, and SatCom had gotten enough free publicity to last into the next century. But the real notoriety should be going to the question that had haunted the world for four decades: what would happen if terrorists got their hands on a nuclear device? This time the consequences — although intended to be devastating — had in fact been peripheral, an inconsequential detonation somewhere halfway into space. But the question that still hung over the world was, what would happen the next time? It was a question Bill Bates had too much on his mind today to think about. Maybe he never would.

J.J. shook his head in disgust as he looked over the shambles that was the gantry. Dr. Andros had just phoned from Command, asked him to undertake a preliminary assessment of the condition of the facility, just to ballpark the extent of damage. The assignment was already depressing him. Still, from what he could see so far, things could have been worse. There was no obvious physical injury to VX-2 or to the transmission antennas up on the hill, though the testing and corrections could take weeks. The gantry was a total loss, no doubt about that, but otherwise the major physical structures on the island appeared unscathed. The main reason, naturally, was that almost everything important — including the superconducting coil and the Fujitsu — was well underground.

The main scene now was all the bodacious helicopters, Hueys, on the landing pad and all the Army commandos milling around. Jesus! How did everybody in Launch Control miss what was really going on? Looking back, the whole thing was fishy from the word go.

Now the Army types were collecting the bodies of the terrorists and acting like they had cleaned up the place all by themselves. Guess that was going to be the official story…

Mr. Bates had already come down to Launch, shook everybody's hand, and thanked the crews for hanging in there. He looked a little shook up, but he wasn't talking like it. Totally upbeat. You had to love the guy. He also delivered the news that as soon as things settled down, SatCom was going to kick some ass in the space business.

Jordan Jaegar looked up at the brilliant Greek sunshine and grinned in spite of himself. Shit, he couldn't wait.

"It's all been handled," Armont was saying. Vance had finally decided to venture out of Bates’ office and see how things were going. The Bates Motel had taken some heavy gunfire around the entrance, but it was still usable, with the ARM team milling around and readying to depart. Down below, the sea had never looked bluer. "Nobody knows anything. Our favorite state of affairs."

Vance was still trying to take it all in. "How's Spiros doing?"

“They took him out on one of the Hueys," Armont said. "Hugo went, too.”

"Are they going to be all right?"

"Hugo's okay. He even knocked back a couple of Guinnesses before he left, saying they would help ease the stabbing pain. Can you believe? As for Dimitri, the Deltas had a medic along, and he gave him a better than fifty-fifty shot. Said nothing vital seemed beyond repair."

“Thank goodness for that at least."

"Poor guy, he felt personally responsible for the whole mess. I think that was why he sort of lost his better judgment there for a second when we rushed Command and got careless."

"It can happen," Vance said. Looking back, he decided he had lost sight of better judgment several times over the past few hours.

The rest of the ARM team was checking out the gear and tying crates, all the while working on their second case of beer. Departure was imminent.

"Well," Vance added finally, "it was a nightmare, start to finish. What more can you say."

"Well, not entirely," Armont observed, a hint of satisfaction creeping into his voice. "Bates is going to let us use the Agusta to fly back to Paris. And when we get there, one of the terrorists who got blown up is going to suddenly reappear. Jean-Paul Moreau."

"Know him well," Vance said, remembering the beating and his sense of hopelessness at the time. "Better not let me see the bastard. He might not make it back to Paris in one piece."

"Well, Michael, that would be very ill-advised. He's worth a small fortune. If the Greeks were to get hold of him, he could piss on the court system here and keep it mucked up for years, so we're taking him straight back to Paris." He paused to glance around. "Nichols is giving us an Apache escort as far as international airspace will permit. But you don't know anything about any of this. Keep your nose clean."

"Nichols?" The name didn't mean anything, but then his mind was still mostly in neutral.

"Major General Eric Nichols. No reason you should know him. Runs the Deltas. Good man, by the way. First rate. I've had my eye on him for a number of years. Could be he'll end up being our first Yank. Well, our second besides you."

"So this was really a recruiting drive." Vance laughed. Suddenly he was feeling almost giddy again, this time from the release of all the stress.

"You take them where you can get them." Armont nodded, then looked around and whistled. "Okay, everybody, bring down the Agusta and start loading the gear. We're gone." He turned back to Vance. "How about you? Coming?"

"No," he said, almost not even catching the question. “Think maybe I'll stick around. Make sure Bill is okay. You know, unfinished business."

"Right." Armont laughed. "I think I saw your 'unfinished business,' Michael. Don't you think she might be a little young for you. You're starting to get like me now, middle-aged."

"Well, working for ARM doesn't help, but then you do have a gift for pointing out the obvious." The way he felt, starting over looked tougher all the time.

"On the other hand, why not. As a romantic Frenchman, I can only wish you bonne chance." He patted him on the back. "What more can I say."

“Thanks." Vance had to smile. Armont was gallant to the end, and a man who prided himself on knowing what things mattered in life. "At my age, you need all the luck you can get."

"Merde. In this life you make your own luck." With which pronouncement he shook hands, then yelled for Hans to bring over the list of gear for one last inventory.

It was the end of the day and he could genuinely have used a tequila, double, with a big Mexican lime on the side. Instead, however, he had something else on the agenda. After an early dinner with Bill Bates, he had talked Calypso Andros into a stroll down to the harbor, there to meditate on the events of the past two days. They had agreed in advance not to talk about Isaac Mannheim's death; Cally declared he would have wanted it that way. His life was his legacy.

"I wonder if this island will ever be the same again," she was saying as she leaned back against a rock. "You know, it was peaceful once, before SatCom took over — there actually were sheep, a whole herd — but even then it had a kind of purposefulness that was just the opposite of chaos. We're the ones who disrupted it. SatCom. We remade it in our image, and we tempted fate." She sighed. "God, this whole disaster almost seems like a bad dream now. I wonder if the island will ever know real peace again. There'll always be the memory to haunt everybody."

"You know, when Ulysses came back to his island, he discovered it had been taken over by a bunch of thugs. So he took away their weapons, locked the doors, and straightened things out. It set a good precedent."

"Well, it didn't exactly happen that cleanly this time, but we did get them all. Every last one. And about half of them, you took care of yourself. One way or another."

"Please," he stopped her. "Let's don't keep score. It's too depressing."

"I'm not depressed. At least not about them. They came in here and murdered people right and left. They deserved whatever they got. Good riddance. The human race is better off."

"That's pretty tough," Vance said. "On the other hand, whereas they claimed to be terrorists, they really were just extortionists. At least Ramirez and Peretz were. For them this was all about money. Kidnapping and ransom. So maybe you're right. The penalty for kidnapping is death. They were looking at the max, no matter what court ended up trying them."

"I'd say ARM just spared Greece or somebody a lot of trouble and expense. Performed a public service."

"I suppose that's one way to look at it." He smiled. "But somehow I don't think Pierre's going to get so much as a thank-you note. It never happens. Things always get confused like this at the end, but as long as he and the boys come out whole, they don't care."

His voice trailed off as he studied the sea. Along the coast on either side, the pale early moon glinted off the breakers that crashed in with a relentless rhythm. Yes, a bomb had exploded somewhere up there in space, but the Aegean, even the jagged rocks around the island, still retained their timeless serenity. The Greek islands. He never wanted to leave. Right now, though, he was trying to work up his nerve to talk seriously with Dr. Cally Andros — and the words weren't coming. How to start…?

"Are you still here?" She finally broke his reverie. "Or are you just gazing off."

"Sorry about that." He clicked back. "I was thinking. Wondering if you'd still be interested in… in what we talked about yesterday."

"What?" She looked puzzled, then, "Oh, you mean—"

“Taking a sail with an old, slightly beat-up yacht-charter operator."

"You're beat up, there's no denying it." She laughed. "I hope you keep your boats in better shape." She looked him over and thought again how much he reminded her of Alan. The mistake that affair represented was not one to be repeated blindly. Then again… "But I don't consider you old. Experienced, maybe, but still functioning."

"Is that supposed to mean yes?"

"It's more like a maybe." She touched his hand. "What were you thinking about, exactly?"

"What else? The Odyssey thing." He looked out at the horizon, then back. "Seems to me it deserves another try.

If you'll pardon my attempt to wax poetic."

She smiled. "Plagiarist. I know that one. And I also know there's another line in it that goes,

Far away. Get it? Or maybe it doesn't even really exist at all."

"Oh, it exists all right. You just have to want to find it." He picked up a pebble and tossed it toward the surf, now rapidly disappearing in the dusk. "So what are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying that maybe Troy was a real place and maybe not. But that's almost beside the point. What it really is is a symbol for that something or somebody we're all looking for. Whatever special it is we each want. Like when I came here to work for SatCom. Space was my Troy. It was what I wanted. And when you tried to re-create the voyage of Ulysses, you were thinking you could make something that was a myth into something that was real. Big impossibility."

"You're saying the search for Troy is actually just an inner voyage, and I got caught up in trying to make it literal. The boat and all."

"Well, that's what myth is really about, isn't it? We make up a story using real, concrete things to symbolize our inner journey."

"You're saying Ulysses could have sailed up a creek, for all it mattered?"

“That's exactly what I'm saying." She leaned back. "Shit, I want a pizza so bad right now I think I'm going crazy."

Vance was still pondering her put-down of his Odyssey rerun, wondering if maybe she wasn't onto something. Maybe he had learned more about himself in two days on the island than he would have learned in two years plying the Aegean.

"All right," she said finally. "I'm sorry. I've busted your chops enough. You asked if I'd like to take a sail, and I said maybe. The truth is, I would, but I've also got a journey of my own in mind."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, before I tell you, maybe I'd better make sure you meant it. For one thing, what are you going to sail in?"

"Good question." Up until that moment he had not given much thought to personal finance. The truth was, he was broke. "I don't know if I can scrape up enough money to build an Odyssey III. It's a problem."

"Well, I'll tell you what I think. I think Bill owes you at least a boat for all you did."

He shrugged, not quite agreeing with her on that point. You don't pitch in to help out an old friend, then turn around and send him an invoice. "Maybe, maybe not. But in any case, it would be minus the ten grand I owe him for the bet I lost."

"Come on" — she frowned—"that's not fair."

"Maybe not, but a deal's a deal. Poseidon was the god of the sea, and the god of anger. This is Greece, so maybe the old gods are still around. Maybe I tempted Poseidon and pissed him off. Anyway, the sea got angry, and that's how it goes. The way of the gods. Ten big ones."

"Well," Calypso Andros said, "speaking of gods, Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty. The Greeks were smart enough to give you a selection. So you ought to think about burning some incense to her next time. Or something. Maybe fall in love. I hear she likes that, too."

"Good suggestion." He glanced over.

"Michael, I feel so rootless," she said finally, leaning against him, strands of hair across his shoulder. "Not close to anybody, really. Now that SatCom doesn't need my mothering any more, I want to try and start a few things over… and the place I want to start is Naxos. My Odyssey."

He just nodded, understanding.

"I want to go back to my old home," she went on, almost a sad confession. "I haven't been there for over twenty years. We had such a beautiful little whitewashed house. Looked out on a bay. It was tiny, but I still sneak back there in my dreams. I want to make sure it survived."

"Don't think you have to worry. The shock wave was probably well dissipated by the time it hit Paros and Naxos. Fact is, I doubt it did any real damage to any of the islands."

“Then why don't we go there together? Your Odyssey and mine."

"It's a done deal."

"Good." She straightened, suddenly becoming businesslike. "Just as soon as we find out about VX-1. If it made orbit and if anything is salvageable. Georges should know by tomorrow morning. Then I want to split for a while."

"It would do us both good. Have to. And you know, since we're definitely going to need some transportation, I think I'm getting an idea." He nodded down toward the twenty-eight-foot Morgan, pristine white, bobbing at anchor in the harbor. "Looks pretty seaworthy to me. Think Bill would mind?"

"With all the SatCom stock I've got now?" She reached out and touched his face. "I'll just fire him if he says a word."