Project Daedalus

Chapter One

"You're lucky I love this spot," Vance said, gazing out over the city. "Nothing else on the planet could have got me up this early in the morning."

"It's the one place I thought I could persuade you to meet me." The bearded man sighed, his dark eyes grim. The accent was Russian, the English flawless. "I have a problem, a very big problem."

"The Cold War's over, Alex, or maybe you hadn't heard." He strolled on, tugging his trench coat tighter. "What have we got left to talk about?"

"Please. We both did what we had to."

"I still do. Life's too short for anything else." He turned back. "Now how about telling me what's on your mind."

Vance was firm-muscled and lean, with the leathery skin of a man who drank his tequila straight and preferred spending his days in the sun, two habits that also had bestowed a network of threadlike smile lines at the corners of his sea-blue eyes. Aleksei Ilyich Novosty had phoned him at the Athenaeum Inter-Continental half an hour earlier, begging to meet him, saying it was of the utmost importance. A cab was downstairs. The driver had taken him to the old flea market at Monastiraki Square, where Alex's own black limo waited. But now Novosty was playing games, and the days for KGB games were supposed to be in the distant past. What did the man want?

"My friend, give me a moment…." Novosty wiped his brow, manicured nails glistening, then looked up and pointed. "By the way, I've always believed that one is the most exquisite female in the world. That one there. What do you think?"

"Sexy, plenty of style." Vance swept his eyes over the figure, loving how the cloth was shaped by her breast, the vague hint of thigh as one leg brushed against the gauze of her tunic. "But the lady next to her's a looker too. Always seemed a tough call."

Above them, the stone caryatids smiled down, their pale faces timeless and ethereal. They were Greek statues that served as columns for the south porch of the Erechtheum, the Ionic temple standing across from the Doric Parthenon. Down below the steep north wall of the Acropolis, the dark-glazed rooftops of Athens, city of Pericles, droused mutely in the early haze.

"Yes, perhaps you're right." Novosty brushed awkwardly at his patchy stubble, searching for an opening. He knew Vance never made the first move, always waited for the other side to show its cards. "Michael, I… is it true you occasionally still take an assignment? I mean, outside the usual work for ARM. I made some inquiries in Geneva last week. The word is—"

"Hang on. I think you're getting your team colors mixed. I work for the other side, remember?" He stooped and picked up a handful of the grainy red soil at their feet, massaging it in his fingers and wondering why it had taken him so long to get back here, to Greece. This was where he belonged. This was the place, the ancient people, he still dreamed about. But could he fit in again after so many years away? Yes, he'd make it work.

Michael Vance, Jr., had the sangfroid of one who moved easily among the decision-makers of two continents. He was to the manner born — Yale — and he'd long since concluded it was the way man was meant to live. In years past he'd been a field archaeologist, and a good one; then he'd had a brief consulting stint for the CIA. These days, he lived at the Nassau Yacht Club marina, where he moored his restored forty-four-foot Bristol racing yacht, the Ulysses, headquarters for his three-boat charter operation. He was mortgaged to the hilt, but he didn't really care. When things got tight, he could always take on a quick money job for the Association of Retired Mercenaries, ARM.

"The situation is not necessarily what you're thinking," Novosty pressed. "So perhaps you would consider—"

"Whatever it is, the answer's still no. The next three weeks are going to be spent working on a tan."

Why tell Alex the facts? Today he was in Athens for only a few hours, a stopover on the way to Crete. He glanced at his watch — an old Eterna Chronomatic, the 1946 classic he loved — and calculated that the flight for Iraklion left in less than four hours. This time tomorrow morning he would be looking in on the crew from the University of Stuttgart's dig for the German Historical Society, part of the restoration of a Minoan palace near Crete's southern shore. Novosty and all he stood for were the last thing he needed right now.

"Then at least let's have coffee," the Russian said finally, pointing. "I brought some. There in the bag."

Vance needed it, to cut his hangover. Without a word he turned to the marble steps, pried open the white paper, and reached in.

"Plastic." Dismay filled his voice as he lifted out one of the smooth Styrofoam cups and examined it, like an insect. "This nails it. Game over. Our side won all the chips. Now even Greek coffee comes American style." He frowned as he pried the white lid from the cup. "What's left?"

"It's everywhere. Perhaps they'll wrap these statues in cellophane next, who knows."

"I fear the worst." He took a sip, relishing the first hit of the dawn. It was dark and sweet, the real thing despite the container.

"Michael, please… at least hear me out." He reached for a cigarette, extracting it filter-first from his trench coat.

"I have a serious personal problem, and I don't know where else to turn."

Could it be true? Vance examined him more closely. The beard wasn't the only change. The left side of his gray coat bulged as he searched for his lighter. Alex had never bothered to carry his own protection. At least never before.

He knew Alex Novosty was part of KGB's T-Directorate, Russia’s special organization for high-tech theft. In the old days he operated out of Sophia, arranging the laundering of underground Soviet funds by mingling them with the flight capital and drug money that made its way between Turkey's Ziraat Bank, the Vatican's Istituto per le Opere di Religione, and Geneva no-questions fronts with names like the Banco di Roma per la Svizzera.

The truth was, Michael Vance, Jr., and Aleksei Ilyich Novosty had, over the years, often traveled the same paths. They used the same organizations and contacts — Novosty to conceal illicit monies, Vance to expose them.

"You know, I always enjoyed our games." Novosty looked out over Athens, his voice trailing off. "But, as you say, that was the old days. The world's changed. Now perhaps we can just be two professionals. Do some business."

He seated himself on a block of marble, still slightly moist with morning dew, and withdrew a wrinkled clipping. It was from The Times of London. "Here, read this, please."

Vance glanced down at it, then realized he had already read it on the Reuters satellite news service. He had looked it over, stored it in his news-update computer file, and promptly forgotten about it.

Vance looked up. "The home team at play. Some ministry shell game, probably. Little budget scam. What's it got to do with you?"

"My friend, this thing is no game." Novosty crumpled his cup. In his other hand, the cigarette remained unlit. "I was… involved. Of course, I didn't know then. But if Dzerzhinsky Square finds out I stupidly let myself be—" He flicked his black Italian lighter, then inhaled. "KGB will post me to Yakutsk piece by piece. In very small boxes."

Vance stared into his dark eyes, trying to gauge the truth. None of it added up. "Alex, you're one of the sharpest guys in the business. So, assuming this is straight, why in hell would you let yourself even get close to it? The thing had to be some internal play."

For a moment the bearded man said nothing, merely smoked quietly on his cigarette. The sun was beginning to illuminate the cloud bank in the east, harbinger of the midday Athens shower. "Perhaps I… yes, it was an unknown, but what is life without unknowns? The job looked simple, Michael. I just had to launder it. Easy enough. Of course, if I had realized…" Again his voice trailed into the morning haze.

"So what's the inside story?"

Novosty drew once more on his cigarette. Finally he spoke. "All right. The number of twenty million rubles? Of course it's 'disinformation.' Typical. The real amount, naturally, is classified. There is even a formal directive, signed by Chief, First Directorate Gribanov."

"Guess KGB still has enough clout to write the rules."

"The old ways die hard. They, and the military, are fighting a rearguard action to protect their turf — just as your CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense are doing now. Which is why they are so concerned about this. If they don't get to the bottom of it, they will once again be proved incompetent… . as well as over-funded." He scratched at his beard. "More to the point, this operation went around them. That's a very bad precedent, if you understand what I'm saying. And the money, Michael, was almost three times what they admitted. In dollars it was over a hundred million."

"Nice chunk of change." Vance whistled quietly.

"Even now, though, I have to admit it was brilliant. Flawless. Viktor Fedorovich Volodin, first secretary of the State Committee for Sakhalin, Far Eastern District, got authority signed off, got his passport stamped vyezdnye, or suitable for travel, and then wired the sixty million rubles not to the district, but to the state bank of Poland, with instructions for conversion. A lot of money, yes, but it was not unprecedented. And he did it late Friday, around two in the afternoon, after all the nomenklatura had left for their weekend dachas. By Monday morning he was in Warsaw, to clarify the 'mistake.' Next the money was sent to my old bank connection in Sophia… by then, of course, it's zlotis.… I just assumed it was something KGB wanted laundered." He paused. "They claim sometimes things have to be handled outside the nomenklatura, to avoid the paperwork bottleneck."

"So how much did you end up cleaning?"

"All of it," he sighed. "I converted it to deutsche marks, then bought pounds sterling and used those to acquire British gilts, the long-term government bonds. They're currently parked in a dummy account at Moscow Narodny Bank, in London." The momentary lilt drained from his voice. "But now, now what can I do? The funds are just sitting there, waiting. But if I show up and try to wire them out, I'm probably as good as dead."

"The man who's tired of London is tired of life."

"Michael, the moment I'm seen in London, I may not have a life. I think KGB already suspects I was somehow connected. If they find me, they will turn me into sausages. I'm trapped. You've got to help me move it again, make the trail just disappear." He tossed away his cigarette and immediately reached into his overcoat for another.

"Seems to me the first thing you ought to do is try and locate Comrade Volodin. Maybe let a couple of your boys have a small heart-to-heart with him. Little socialist realism. Give him some incentive to straighten it out himself."

"Michael, first directorate is already combing the toilets of the world for him. He's vanished. The ministry of defense, and the GRU—"

"The military secret service."

"Exactly. The minute either of them finds him, the man's a corpse." He shrugged, eyes narrowing. "If I don't find him first."

Vance listened, wondering. "That's a very touching story. You could almost set it to music. Only trouble is, the punch line's missing. There's got to be more — too much money's involved. So who else is in on this? South Africa? Israel? Angola?"

"What do you mean? I've told you everything I know. Volodin, the bastard, used me as part of his swindle. But now he's lost his nerve and run, disappeared, and left me to face—"

"Sure, that's all there is to it." He cut in, laughing. "Incidentally, you take your standard cut up front? Back at the beginning?"

"Michael, please, I am a businessman. Of course. The usual percentage. But now—"

"Like you say, it's a problem."

He turned to stub out his cigarette. "A nightmare. Think about it. A hundred million dollars U.S. That's starting to be real money, even for the USSR. Not even the czars ever managed to steal so much."

Vance looked him over. Novosty was telling the story backward, inside out. "Look, whenever somebody gives me only half a setup, I just—"

"Michael, no one knows better than you all the ways money can be moved in this world. Those funds must be made to just vanish from London, then reappear another place with no trail. I have already arranged for a bank, far away. After that the money can be returned, anonymously. What other solution is there?" He hesitated painfully. "You know, I have no friends I have not bought — the definition of a tragic life. But I remember you always were a man who kept his word. I can trust you. Besides, where else can I turn?"

"Alex, forget it. I've already got all the fun I can handle." Vance sipped his coffee, now down to the black grounds and undissolved sugar. It was both bitter and sweet, contradictory sensations against his tongue.

Just like Novosty's tale, part truth and part lie. Alex had no intention of returning the money, for chrisake. He was probably in the scam with Volodin. And now the hounds were baying. The main problem was, who were the hounds?

"Michael, do us both a favor. Help me move it." He pressed. "I'll take care of the rest. And I'll even give you half the two million that was my commission. Just take it. Gold. Tax free. It's yours. You'll be set for life. All you have to do is arrange to transfer the money to another bank I will tell you. I have an account already waiting, everything, but I can't do it myself. They're too close to me."

A million dollars, he thought. Christ, with that you could pay off the four hundred thousand mortgage on the boats, free and clear. You'd also be helping Alex out of a jam, and the man looked like he could use all the help he could get. He stared out toward the encircling mountains, now swathed in fleecy clouds….

No. The deal had too many unknowns. The whole point of working for yourself was you could pick and choose your jobs. If you ever started going with the highest bidder, you were a fool. Guys who did that didn't last in this business.

"Afraid I'll have to pass. There're plenty of other…"

That was when he absently glanced down at the early sun glinting off the windows of Athens. In the parking lot below, a tan, late-model Audi had just pulled in. He watched as it idled. "Incidentally," he said as he thumbed at the car, "friends of yours? More art lovers?"

Novosty took one look and stopped cold.

"Michael, I'm sorry, I really must be going. But… perhaps you might wish to stay here for a few more minutes. Enjoy the women…. Though I hear you like them better in the flesh…." He reached into his breast pocket. "Think about what I've said. And in the meantime, you should have this." He handed over a gray envelope. "It's the original authorization I received from Volodin… when he transferred the funds to the bank in Sophia."

"Look, I'm not—"

"Please, just take it. Incidentally, it probably means nothing, but there's a corporate name there. I originally assumed it was KGB's cover. Who knows…." He continued to urge the envelope into Vance's hand. "I've written the London information you will need on the back. The account at Narodny, everything." He was turning. "Be reasonable, my friend. We can help each other, maybe more than you realize."

"Hold on." Vance was opening the envelope. Then he lifted out a folded page, blue. "Good name for a dummy front. Nice mythic ring."

"What…?" Novosty glanced back. "Ah, yes. From the old story."

"Daedalus."

"Yes, everything about this is a fiction. I realize that now. Of course The Daedalus Corporation does not exist." He paused. "Like you say, it's just a myth."

Vance was examining the sheet, an ice blue reflecting the early light. Almost luminous. Something about it was very strange. Then he massaged it with his fingertips.

It wasn't paper. Instead it was some sort of synthetic composition, smooth like silicon.

Saying nothing, he turned away and extracted a booklet of hotel matches. He struck one, cupped it against the light wind, and with a quick motion touched the flame to the lower corner of the sheet.

The fire made no mark. So his hunch was right. The "paper" was heat resistant.

When he held it up, to examine it against the early sun, he noticed there was a "watermark," ever so faint, an opaque symbol that covered the entire page. It was so large he hadn't seen it at first; it could have been reflections in the paper. He stared a second before he recognized—

"Talk to me." He whirled around. "The truth, for a change. Do you know where I'm headed this afternoon?"

"I confess my people did obtain your itinerary, Michael. But only in order to—"

"When?"

"Only yesterday."

"That was after you got your hands on this, right?"

"Of course. I just told you. That was the original authorization."

"The Daedalus Corporation?"

"That name is only a myth. Nothing but paper." He began walking briskly down the steps next to the Temple of Athena Nike, the Sacred Way, toward his black limousine in the parking lot. "We will finish this later. The final arrangements. I will be in touch."

Vance watched as the black limo backed around and quickly headed toward the avenue. After a few moments, the tan Audi slowly pulled out of the parking lot to follow.

He turned back to look at the temples, sorting through the story. Somebody in this world, this Daedalus Corporation or whomever it represented, had a hundred million dollars coming, dollars now all nicely laundered and ready to go. What did it add up to?

In years past Alex Novosty had moved money with total impunity. So why would he turn up in Athens, bearing an elaborate and patently bogus story, begging for help? It couldn't be for the boys back at Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow. They never went outside with their own problems. Besides, they cleaned money all the time.

Somebody, somewhere, was pulling a fast one.

Don't touch it, he told himself. For once in your life just walk away. It's got to be hot. Bad news all around. Just forget it and go on to Crete.

He could hardly wait. Eva Borodin was meeting him there; a decade-late reunion after all the stormy water under the bridge. Or was it going to be a rematch? Whichever, that was going to be a scene. He had vague hopes they might put together a rerun of years past, only this time with a happy ending.

Still mulling over the pieces of Novosty's puzzle, he turned and headed for the northwest edge of the Acropolis. In the distance stood the ring of mountains that once served as Athens's natural fortress: Parnes, mantled in dark forests of fir; the marble face of Pentelikon; Hymettus, legendary haunt of the honeybee; Aigaleos, its noble twin crests rising up to greet the early sun. And directly below lay the excavated ruins of the ancient Agora, the city center where Socrates once misled the youth of Greece, teaching them to think.

Now Vance needed to think….

Remembering it all later, he realized he'd been in precisely the wrong place to actually witness the accident. He just heard it — the screech of rubber, the sickening crunch of metal. He'd raced to look, but the intersection below was already a carpet of flame.

What had happened? There was a gasoline truck, short and bulky, wheels spinning in the air, its hood crumpled against the remains of an automobile.

He strained to see. Which was it? Alex's limo? The tan Audi?

Then came the explosion, blotting out everything, an immense orange ball that seemed to roll upward into the morning sky like an emerging sun.

Viktor Fedorovich Volodin was amazed he'd managed to make his way this far, from the fiery intersection at the base of the Acropolis all the way down Leoforos Amalias, without his frayed facade of calm completely disintegrating. He bit his lip, using the pain to hold back the panic. Traffic on the avenue was backed up as far as he could see, and firemen were still trying to reach the charred remains of the truck. On his right, the new Zapio conference center and its geometric gardens were shrouded in smoke.

He scarcely noticed. Breathing was impossible anyway, since the diesel fumes of the bus settled in through its broken windows and drove out all oxygen.

How had it come to this? He'd spent his entire life in the party apparatus of Sakhalin, rubber-stamping idiotic economic plans concocted in Moscow, trying to survive the infighting and intrigue of the oblast's State Committee. Then one day a personal aide of none other than the president, Mikhail Sergeevich himself, had secretly made an offer that sounded too good to be true. Help transfer some funds, do it for the Motherland….

It would be simple. KGB would never know.

Nobody told him he'd be stepping into a nightmare. And now his worst fears had come true. To see your driver crushed alive, only inches away, then watch him incinerated. They were closing in.

Fsyo kanula ve vyechnost, he thought, kak ve prizrachnoy skazke. Everything is gone now, like a fairy tale.

He crouched down in the torn plastic seat as the ancient city bus bumped and coughed its way into the center of Syntagma Square. Around him were packed the usual morning commuters gripping briefcases and lunch bags, cursing the delays and blaming the incompetents in Parliament. The air was rank with sweat.

Finally the vehicle shuddered to a halt. End of the line. He rose, trembling, and worked his way to the forward exit, then dropped off. As his feet touched down on the warm pavement, he quickly glanced right and left, searching the crowded midmorning street for any telltale signs that he'd been followed.

There was nobody, he concluded with relief. The milling Greeks didn't seem to notice he was there, or care. They were too busy complaining about the traffic, the smog, the latest round of inflation. Business as usual in Athens, the timeless city. This place, he told himself, should have been the perfect location to hide, to just disappear. Novosty was supposed to handle the final delivery.

Maybe the crash had been an accident. Fate. Sud'ba. Things happened that way.

He was sweating heavily now, whether from fear or the early morning sun he wasn't sure. Already it was a nascent ball of fire in the east, promising to bake the asphalt of the square by noon.

He stepped over the curb and onto the sidewalk. The outdoor cafes were all thronged with workers and tourists having a quick coffee before taking on the city this spring day. He felt his knees tremble slightly and realized he only wanted to collapse. Any table would do. Just melt into the crowd, he told himself, then nothing can happen. Nichevo nye sluchitsya.

He wiped at his brow and settled nervously into the first empty chair, plastic and dirty, hoping to look like just another tourist. The cafe, he noted, was Papaspyrou, in front of the American Express office. Perfect. Above all else, he wanted to pass for an American. But he was still trying to get it right. How did they look?

"Elleniko kafe, my friend? Greek coffee?"

He jumped at the sound of the voice over his shoulder, seizing the side of the table.

The voice was speaking English, he finally realized. Maybe he did look American!

It was an accident, he kept telling himself. The truck couldn't have — Relax. Novosty made the arrangement with the American, didn't he? You saw him hand over the letter. Now the trail will just vanish. KGB will never be able to stop it.

He turned, casually flashed an empty smile for the small, gray-haired waiter standing behind him, tray in hand, white towel over the sleeve of his tailored but frayed brown suit.

"Sure, thanks."

You're better every day, he told himself. You're even starting to get the accent right now. Keep working on it. The twang. And learn to saunter. The shoulders. Americans walk looser, swing their arms, seem not to have a care in the world. Learn to slouch. Act like you own the world, even if you no longer do.

He'd been secretly practicing for weeks, getting ready to disappear after his part was over. Of course, he'd originally planned to go back home afterward. But that was before he had a taste of this. The good life, the freedom. For that matter, maybe he'd go to America. Why not? He'd heard how it worked. Defection, so the stories went, could be very rewarding. They'd open the golden gates for him at Langley.

The tiny cup of murky black coffee appeared in front of him, together with the usual glass of tepid water. He reached for the water eagerly and drank it down. Something, anything, to moisten the cotton in his mouth.

There, that was better. Now the hard part: something to quiet his mind.

The cup rattled against the saucer as he gingerly picked it up. He could still see the cab of the truck coming out of nowhere, hurtling down on them, still feel the horror. Odd, but he couldn't remember anyone at the wheel. He wanted a face, but none was there.

His own driver, the Afghanistan veteran Grigor Yanovich, had tried to swerve, but he hadn't been quick enough. He'd caught the first impact, the grind of metal that whipped the tan Audi around, flung open the door…

Grigor, thirty years old, must have died without ever knowing what happened, if not from the impact, then from the wall of flaming gasoline that swept over the seat.

He marveled at his own luck, the hand of chance that flung him from the car only a second ahead of the explosion. He remembered skidding across the pavement on his back, then tumbling into the grassy ditch that separated Amalias Avenue from the tiny side road of Thrassilou. Some of the raw gasoline had drenched his sleeve, but he'd been safely out of the way, his face down, when the explosion came.

It could have been an accident. He swiped at his brow and told himself that anything was possible.

Don't be a fool. They're closing in. How much do they know?

He sipped at the gritty coffee and scanned the street.

Just get through the next few days, he told himself. Once the transfer's complete, your part's over.

He was reaching for his small white cup when he noticed the woman, striding directly toward his table, smiling, catching his eye. The way she was swinging her brown leather purse, the jaunty thrust of hips beneath the suede skirt, the carefully groomed auburn hair — all marked her as American. Rich American. Probably headed into American Express to cash a thousand or so in traveler's checks. America…

He lounged back in his chair with a rakish air. He was, he knew, an attractive man. He had deep blue eyes, sandy hair, a practiced smile, a trim figure far younger than his fifty-six years. He'd divorced his wife Natasha three years ago, after she discovered his lunchtime liaisons with one of the girls in the State Committee typing pool. He had experience handling women.

Three weeks in Athens, he thought, and maybe my luck is about to change. If you can get her, the nightmare could be over for a while. You can't go back to the hotel now; they may be watching. But if she's got a room somewhere? What better way to hide out till the transfer is complete?

He was still trying to make his ragged mind function. Now was the time for a "pick-up" routine. The lonely traveler… Kak grussno mnye, tak zhalostno mnye … no, damn, not the sentimental Russian, think American.

But where? He'd heard of New York, San Francisco, Miami, even Chicago. But what if she was from one of those places?

All the careful preparation and he still didn't dare put himself to the test. So what would he say? Canada? Australia?

Her eyes held his, interest growing as she continued to approach. They were darkened with kohl, sensual, inviting. And she was still smiling, even as she placed her hand on the chair across from him.

Was this how the women…? America was the Promised Land.

"Etot stolnik osvobodetsya, Viktor Fedorovich?"

It took a second for the language to register. She was speaking Russian, calmly inquiring if the table was free, but his mind was rejecting it, refusing to accept the implications.

"Perhaps you'd like to buy me a kofye, Comrade. I prefer it very sweet." Now she was settling her purse on the table, adjusting her tight skirt in preparation to sit. "Or would you rather take me shopping. I could help you spend some of the money."

He'd never seen her before in his life.

Your part will be routine. Somewhere in the back of his mind echoed the voice of the president's personal aide, the brisk young Muscovite who had come to his dacha that snowy evening last October. We will take care of any risks.

It had all been a lie. Every word. They must have known where he was every minute.

Then he spotted the two men approaching from opposite sides of the square. The suits that didn't quite fit, the trudging gait. Why must they always look like the stupid, brutal party hacks they are, he thought bitterly. The incompetent bastards.

Who betrayed me? Was it Novosty? Did he do this, to get them off his trail?

So be it. First I'll kill her, and then I kill him.

Seething, he pulled his body erect while his right hand plunged for the snap on the holster at his belt. Simple. He'd just shoot her on the spot, then make a run for it. Through the cafe, out the back. They wouldn't dare start anything here, in the middle of Athens, that would cause an international "incident." The snap was open. He thumbed up the leather flap and realized the holster was empty.

The crash. It must have jarred loose. His new Walther automatic had been incinerated, along with the Audi. His life began to flash before his eyes. Make a run for it, he heard his mind saying, commandeer the first taxi, any taxi. He shoved back from the table, sending his chair clattering across the patched sidewalk.

She reached into her leather purse, now lying atop the table, next to his coffee. He heard the click of a safety sliding off. "Don't be impetuous, Viktor Fedorovich. You've been such a good boy this last week, showing us the sights. The perfect tour guide. But now your little vacation is over. We must talk."

"About what?"

She smiled. "Whatever you think we need to hear."

"I don't know anything." He could feel the cold sweat on his palms.

"Viktor Fedorovich." She brushed at her auburn hair as she continued in Russian. "You have the most valuable commodity in the world, knowledge. That makes you even richer than you think you are now."

They didn't try to kill me this morning, he suddenly realized. It was Alex they were— Is he planning to double- cross everybody? No, that's insane. He'd never get away with it. He has to deliver the payment.

KGB wants me alive, he thought with a wave of relief. They think I'm the one who knows where it is.

His pulse raced. "What do you want?"

"We need you to answer certain questions. But not here. At a place where it's quieter."

The two men were loitering closer now, only a few feet away, one on each side of the table. The first was overweight, with bushy eyebrows and pockmarked cheeks. He could be Ukrainian. The other was medium height, wearing a cheap polyester suit, balding and sallow. Neither looked as though he had smiled in the last decade.

"Where do you want to go?"

"We will take a stroll in the park." She gestured toward Amalias Avenue. On the other side was Ethnikos Kipos, the National Garden. Then she smiled again. "We thought you would like to take the morning air."

She rose, purse in hand, and tossed a wad of drachmas onto the wooden table. The coffee drinkers around them did not look up from their newspapers and tourist maps.

As they made their way past the Olympic Airways office on the corner and across the avenue, she said nothing. Her silence is deliberate, he told himself, part of a trick to unnerve me.

It was working. He was learning something about himself he'd never before known. He was learning he was a coward.

That was the reality. He wouldn't hold out. He'd tell them everything he knew, because they would hurt him badly. He couldn't bear pain; they probably knew that. And then they'd kill him anyway because he couldn't tell them the one thing they wanted to know. He didn't know it himself.

Viktor Fedorovich Volodin realized he was about to die. All the years of pointless intrigue in the party, the fudging of production figures, the father-in-law who'd made his existence wretched, it all added up to a lifetime of nothing but misery, with the payoff a bullet. Rasstrel, a KGB execution.

They were entering the national garden, a mirage of green in the desert of asphalt and cement that is central Athens. Its informal walkways were shady lanes of quiet and cool that seemed miles away from the smoke and glare and heat of the avenues.

Finally she spoke. "We're running out of time, and patience, Viktor Fedorovich. Let's start with the money. Where have you deposited it? Next, we want to know the names of everyone—"

"It — it's — I don't know where it is now."

"You're lying." She did not break her pace. "The time for that is over."

"But I don't have it. Someone else—" He heard himself blurting out the truth. "He's in charge of everything."

"You are lying, again. You are the one who embezzled the funds." She was walking by his side as they entered a secluded alleyway of hedges, the other two trailed only inches behind. There was no escape. "The criminal is you, Viktor Fedorovich."

"No, he — I–I don't know anything." How true was that? he asked himself. He knew where the money was supposed to go, but he didn't know what it was for, at least not specifically. That part had been classified. He had the small picture but not the big one.

"If you know nothing, then telling us everything you do know should not take very long." The calm, the assurance in her voice sent chills through him. He knew he would talk and they knew it too. "However, the more you have to say, the longer we can linger."

The early morning park, with its manicured footpaths and wandering cats, was empty except for a few gardeners trimming hedges, watering the grass, collecting loose papers. The sounds of the avenue were rapidly receding. Now the two men had moved directly alongside, one by each arm. He realized they were both taller than he was, and they smelled.

"Wait. I don't know where it's deposited now; I wasn't supposed to know. But there's still time. I can help—"

They were entering a long arbor, a high trellis bright with obscuring red flowers, when the first blow came into his left side, directly in his kidney. He groaned and sagged, breath gone, while the man on the right slipped an arm around and held him erect.

"Yes, Viktor Fedorovich," the woman continued tonelessly, "you will help us, because you will want to die long before we let you. So, shall we try again? Where is the money?"

"It's… I don't know, exactly. But—"

He gasped and sagged again as another blow came. Already he wasn't sure how much more pain he could tolerate. How long before he would just blurt out everything he knew?

A third blow, and his knees crumpled. He had never known the meaning of pain, or fear, until this moment.

Why not just tell them? his frightened mind was pleading. Alex has already set it up with the American.

"You are worse than a mere criminal," she went on, dark eyes filling with anger. "You are a traitor. You will tell us every detail of your involvement, from the very beginning."

How much did they really know? he wondered. Were they bluffing?

They were bluffing, he quickly concluded. Otherwise she wouldn't be asking him things she should already know.

If you talk, you'll jeopardize everything. The most important thing now is to keep KGB from discovering the scenario. If they do, they still could stop it.

Of course they were alarmed. They should be. In the New Russia being born, there was no place for them.

But I can't endure pain. I'll talk if there's pain.

He felt a surge of resolve. Whatever else happens, he told himself, I won't be the one responsible for making it fail. I can't let them know any more than they do now. I've—

Another blow struck him in the side and he felt his knees turn to butter. None of the gardeners in the park seemed aware that a man was about to be beaten to death. To them the four foreigners were merely huddled together as they strolled, enjoying the dubious beauty of modern Athens.

Another blow came and he wheezed. "Please, let me just—"

He'd been gathering his strength for this moment. Now he lunged forward, shutting out the stab of pain in his side, and wrenched at her open purse. The two men reached for him but not before he had it in his grasp. His hand plunged in as he rolled to the ground.

They were on top of him now, shoving his face against the loose pebbles of the walkway, but they were too late. He felt the smooth metal of the grip. It was what he wanted.

He recalled the triumphant words Fyodor Dostoyevski had uttered upon being released from prison. "Freedom, new life, resurrection…. What a glorious moment!"

Ya nye boyuc za sebya! he thought with joy. I have no more fear….

He heard the shot, faintly, as the bullet ripped through the back of his mouth and entered his brain. Viktor Fedorovich Volodin died with serene final knowledge. Daedalus, whatever it was, was still safe. And he was free.

Chapter Two

"Michael, you look marvelous. It's so good to see you again. I really mean that. The years have treated you well." Eva Borodin leaned back against the gray fabric of the Saab's headrest and appraised him.

"You don't look half bad yourself." Vance smiled to himself as he returned the favor. Vintage Eva, ladling on the flattery. But she was smashing, just as he remembered — the coal-black hair, the smoldering eyes, the high Slavic cheekbones. Then, too, her every gesture was spiked with the promise of Olympic sensuality; he remembered that as well. Everything about her spoke of a time and place far away, where there were no rules. Eva, the eternal Eva. With a Ph.D. "Everything's just the same."

That part wasn't entirely true. There had been some changes, probably for the better. Instead of a plunging neckline and a fortune in gold accessories, she was wearing a blue silk blouse, form-fitting designer jeans with an eighty-dollar scarf for a belt, and lambskin boots. Far more demure than the old Eva. What had happened to the dangling turquoise earrings, enough musky perfume to obscure radar, at least one endangered fur draped somewhere?

The years had definitely mellowed her. The Slavic passion seemed curbed today, the same way her hair had been trimmed down to a pageboy. Maybe, he thought, this was her new look: the Russian aristocrat of the nineties.

"No, Michael, I'm different now. Or I'm trying to be."

She laughed, flashed her come-on smile, and tried to toss her missing hair.

Whoops, he thought. Sure, you've changed.

"Being formally promoted to director of SIGINT brings responsibilities," she continued.

"Congratulations."

"It was two years ago."

"Well, congratulations anyway." He was beginning to wonder if she really had mellowed. Back in the old days her Russianness was her way of making a statement. An identity. How much could she change, want to change? She'd always been a firebrand: throwing things was her preferred mode of communication. Not to suggest she wasn't verbal: she was always passionately happy to see him, passionately sad when bad things happened, passionately angry when she didn't get her way. Everything she said was flirtatious, carrying a sexual innuendo. Sometimes he thought she made Jean Harlow sound like Jeane Kirkpatrick.

"Your call caught me a little off guard." He glanced over. "I never expected to hear from you again after you disappeared into the labyrinth of NSA." He knew she'd been with the National Security Agency for eight years now, but he hadn't heard that she'd been promoted to director of Soviet satellite intercepts. Of course, NSA didn't spend a lot of money on press releases. Still it was no surprise. Eva knew her stuff when it came to the Soviets, their satellites, their codes. "I must say, though, this is a hell of a long way to come for a catch-up chat."

"It's been way too many years since we've seen each other. I've missed you."

"Hope you mean that." Did she? he wondered. Even if she did, that wasn't the real reason she'd come. He knew her too well.

"Guess you'll have to try and find out," she said, her voice holding an instinctive, automatic invitation.

"Guess I will." Already it felt like the old days. How did she know so precisely where all his buttons were? The only thing I'm sure of so far today is that this morning's little accident was no accident." He'd told her about seeing Novosty, but not what they'd talked about. Why drag her into it? Besides, she'd known about Alex a lot longer than he had. Just one more piece of the past that didn't need to be stirred up. "Somebody got taken out. The question is, Who? We both know Novosty's a survivor, old school, but…"

"I probably shouldn't say this, Michael, but I assume you're aware he's KGB, part of T-Directorate." Her voice had grown serious. "That executive VP slot he has with Techmashimport is just his cover. We've had a file of intercepts on him for years."

"Of course I know about him. Good old Alex and I go back a while. You're slightly out of date concerning my most recent fun and games."

"All right. I mean, I wouldn't even bring it up, but I think you should be warned. KGB's in a big turmoil, looking for something…" She paused. "Whenever this happens, there're plenty of stray arrows sure to be flying. Just stay out of the crossfire. A word to the wise."

"I may already be in it. Thanks to Novosty's little 'welcome aboard' breakfast." He remembered the letter Alex had given him. "But I'm beginning to think I'd damn well better find out."

She looked around sharply. "What happened? Did he say something?"

"If you believe him, somebody in Moscow mislaid a few million dollars. Darndest thing."

"It's better left alone, darling."

"I'm on vacation, remember?" He winked at her. "With better things to do."

"I should hope so." She leaned back again and studied his profile. "Well, at long last it's happened. I finally have to admit I need you for something." Her long, dark lashes fluttered. Warming me up, he thought. Now we're getting down to business. "Which is why I wanted to meet you here."

They were five minutes out of Iraklion, on an unpaved back road he loved, headed for the palace at Knossos, and so far she'd done nothing but hint about what was on her mind. Everything was still a puzzle. For one thing, she never needed anybody. She was the stalwart Russian who'd ended their affair eleven years earlier just as casually as she had begun it. This afternoon, though, she seemed to be deliberately keeping the lid on, holding back. Uncharacteristic.

"The truth is," she went on, "I've been thinking about us, the old times, and the palace."

She'd called him in Nassau four days earlier, wanting to get together. It was the old Eva, darling this and darling that. When he said he was going to Crete, she'd grown strangely silent. Then she'd said — in a curious, tiny, voice—"Why don't I just meet you there? In fact, that's sort of why I rang…."

"So why's the palace suddenly so important to you?" He examined her, still trying to read her mood. "I need to go back out today. Try and brush up a bit. But that place was part of our problem back when, not part of the solution."

She didn't answer. Instead she shifted the conversation sideways. "Speaking of the palace, I suppose I should congratulate you on finally being proved right. Did the Stuttgart team really ask you to look in on their dig?"

"Call it the ultimate capitulation," he grinned. "Remember, they were the ones who led the critical fusillade when the book first came out. That makes it doubly sweet."

"Right. I also remember that book of yours caused such a stink that no serious university would consider hiring you. Which, I assume, is why you ended up a part-time spook. Probably it was the only job you could get."

"You're closer to the truth than you know." He laughed, wondering for the ten-thousandth time if he should have stuck out the academic slings and arrows. No, the secret truth was he was bored with the university regimen. He yearned for the real world. He knew it then and he knew it now.

"Then the next thing I heard, you were down in the Bahamas, goofing off and renovating some old yacht." She looked him over once more, shaking her head. "What did you end up christening it? The Fuck Everybody?"

"Crossed my mind. But then I chickened out and called her the Ulysses." He leaned back and reflected momentarily on the forty-four-foot Bristol racing sloop he'd restored, having picked it up for a song at a customs-house sale on Bay Street. Formerly the possession of a Colombian in the export business, it had a hull of one and three-quarter inch planked cedar, with a trim beam, did an easy fifteen knots in a decent breeze. He loved her. He'd installed a fortune in electronics, including a Micrologic Commander LORAN and a Navstar satellite navigation system. "It started out as a hobby, and three boats and a mortgage later it ended up a business."

"And what do you do down there all day? Just sit around and drink margaritas?"

"Sure. About once a month." He reached up and adjusted the open top of the car. "Hate to admit it, but on a typical day I'm usually out of bed by sunrise. Check the weather, then maybe take a short swim to get the oxygen flowing. After that I go to work. The 'office' is up forward in the Ulysses. My main discovery is that chartering is pretty much like any other business. Mostly problems."

It was. There were always tourists who came to Nassau thinking they wanted more than the standard hotels, topless shows, and casinos on Paradise Island and Cable Beach. They wanted a taste of what it was like sailing through the Family Islands, away from the glitz, a feeling for the real Caribbean. Or so they thought. That was until they discovered the hard way that the real thing included broiling sun, jellyfish stings, nosy sharks, hangovers, seasickness, close-quarters quarrels with spouses and significant others, snapped fishing lines, generator failures, unexpected weather…

"And you manage to do okay, right?"

"Nobody ever got rich in the charter business, at least the kind I'm in. If you're not running high-priced South American produce, you have to do it for love, not money."

His real livelihood, which he didn't bother to mention, came from elsewhere. In between managing Bahamian skippers and crews he also kept a hand in another occupation. In years past he'd served as a financial consultant for the CIA, helping monitor the flow of illicit drug and terrorist money passing through the banking laundries of Geneva and the Caribbean. When the Company finally formed its own section to handle that work, he'd moved on and hired out his expertise to a free-lance organization called ARM, the Association of Retired Mercenaries. They were retired, all right, but only from the antiterrorist units of a half dozen European nations. They still saw plenty of covert action, squelching those terrorist activities European governments wanted dealt with outside official channels. He was their money man and they paid him well, which was how he kept his three vessels shipshape and lived a yachtsman's life of "ease."

"So after all these years, you ended up doing exactly what you wanted." She looked at him admiringly. "A lot of people would probably envy you that."

"I like taking my own risks, if that's what you mean."

"Well, all the same I suspect you're secretly very pleased with the fact you've been invited back to Crete. I always thought you'd return to archaeology sooner or later. If I know you, you couldn't stay away forever."

Was she right? Even now he didn't know. "One thing's for sure. Crete's a world apart."

That was an understatement. As he glanced back at the road, it was now blocked entirely by a herd of sheep, their shaggy brown fleeces suspended above dark, spindly legs. Around them the silence of the Cretan countryside was rent by bleats and the jangle of bells. The flock milled and darted about their rented Saab, but failed to move on down the road. Why bother? The shepherd, in dark hat and coat, lounged sidesaddle on his burro, oblivious, while his black-shawled wife trudged in his dusty wake, bringing up the rear. Strangers came, gazed upon the wonders of his land, then departed; he, possessor of donkey, sheep, and wife, would remain. And prevail. His weathered face contained all the worthwhile knowledge in the world. The parched hills and verdant valleys of Crete belonged to him alone. Now and forever.

"Okay," he went on, "you're here, I'm here. Now how about telling me what's going on?"

"That's just it. I don't know for sure. Everybody at NSA claims I'm starting to see things." She paused to examine a long red fingernail. "So don't you say it too. I need some moral support."

"Maybe I'd better hear this first."

"Michael, I… I don't want to talk about it yet. It's just—"

"Well, give me a hint at least."

"A few days back I decoded part of a transmission…" She leaned over and started to turn on the radio, then changed her mind and straightened. "Look, I just need you to help me get my thoughts organized."

"Is that why you came all the way here? To organize your thoughts? You'll forgive me if I'd hoped for a little more." In spite of himself, he felt mildly annoyed. The truth was, he'd been looking forward to a reunion that wasn't about business. "You know, I sort of had the idea you wanted to… well, maybe try and piece things back together." He looked her over. "Being with you wasn't exactly the worst experience of my life."

She sighed wistfully and smoothed back her hair. "Fixing Humpty Dumpty is tough work, darling. We both know that. It's been a long time. Life's never that simple."

"Maybe not for you. But it seems very simple to me. We just lose the past. Pretend it never existed." He felt his pique growing. "Or then again, screw it. What are we doing here anyway?"

Could it really work a second time around? he asked himself. Why not? Through all those years after things fell apart, he'd never once stopped remembering her. Her mind, her body, her excitement.

Those memories dogged him now as they drove down the road he knew so well, had traveled so many times in his long-ago life. At times the ancient palace here on Crete had seemed almost a second home. After the publication of his book about it, Realm of the Spirit — to universal denunciations — he even began to dream about it. He thought he'd never come back, and now here he was with Eva. Life took strange turns sometimes.

Eleven years ago in New Haven when he'd decided to work for himself, he'd actually been saying good-bye to this world and all it stood for. Back then it had seemed a golden moment to give academia the bird.

Had it all come full circle now? Fortunately he'd kept up with the journals when he had the chance, tried to stay on top of what was happening. With any luck he'd have the pleasure of watching a lot of academics eat crow. All he had to do was just deal with whatever was bugging Eva and then get on down to Phaistos. He hoped the Stuttgart crew wouldn't realize he was over a decade out of date.

"You know," she was searching in her purse, then stopped herself and looked up, "I always remember the palace when I think of you. It sort of tied us together."

"Best I remember, it's what finally drove us apart. It turned into our 'irreconcilable difference.' "

"Maybe you're right, and it was dumb of me. Given the lousy luck I've had with men, you're probably the best thing that ever came along. After that flap over your book, I let you get away."

"Hold on a second. You announced you had to live your own life, and I was getting too emotionally involved in my work and it would be better all around if we just shook hands and called it quits. No hard feelings."

"It wasn't quite like that." She laughed her alluring laugh, the one he remembered so well.

"Oh, no?"

"Okay, maybe it was a little like that." Out came the sunglasses. The old Eva again. "But I was changing, Michael, more every day. It was time to try and make it on my own."

That was definitely what she'd decided to do. He'd always thought she broke things off because she was obsessed with finishing her own Ph.D. Self-centered and self-indulgent, that's what he'd called her at the time, just another pampered Russian blue blood. Only years later did he realize how self-centered he'd been. Maybe she'd been right; maybe they weren't ready for each other yet.

She sighed, and then her voice came as a whisper. "You know, after you called this morning and told me about that nightmare with Alex, I just drank some retsina and went back to bed." She put on the shades, adjusted them, and looked his way. He thought they went well with her new forties hairstyle. "Michael, I know things I shouldn't. And the things I should know, I don't. The worse part of all is, none of it makes any sense." Her eyes seemed to soften behind the tinted plastic. "Do you remember the first time you and I talked about this place?"

"Like it was yesterday." Who could forget? It was just after Realm was published, relating his theory that the palace, whatever it may have been originally, had eventually become a ceremonial necropolis, an abode of the dead. "We ended up having a terrific argument over the book. Nobody wanted to believe me, including you."

"Come on, darling, it wasn't my opinion you cared about. It was your father's. The revered holder of Penn's Edelstein Chair of Classical Antiquities. Supposedly the world's living expert on Minoan Crete."

Did he really care what the old man thought? he wondered. Not in the way she meant. He would have liked it, though, if everybody had gotten along a little better. Michael Vance, Sr., never quite knew what to make of Eva's Slavic intensity, since it contrasted so vividly with his own up-tight Anglo-Saxon instincts. That was a repressive family strain Mike had fought — successfully, he hoped — to undo all his life. Eva had looked to be the perfect soul mate in that battle. She was born unrepressed.

Her own father, Count Serge Borodin, was president emeritus of the Russian Nobility Association in America, exiled aristocracy. They were a people apart. He recalled in particular a Russian Orthodox wedding they'd all attended once. The operative assumption that sunny afternoon in Oyster Bay was that the czar had been a living god, the Romanovs the world's last surviving cherubim. He still remembered the black-hatted Orthodox prelates and the incense and the tinny balalaikas and all the counts and countesses drunk and dancing and crying at the same time. Growing up in the middle of that, she had to be exuberant.

"You'd gone off on your own and set the world of archaeology on its ear," she continued. "Typical Michael. But your father refused to stick up for you when all the shit came down. I guess I didn't support you very well either, I admit now. I'm truly sorry, darling, looking back."

"No big deal. I could handle it."

"Sure." She reached over and patted his thigh. "You handled it just great. You were disgusted. At me, at him, at all the 'stuffed-shirt' academics who never went out on a dig and got their hands dirty. You practically dragged me here to show me you were right. You were obsessed with the palace, admit it."

"It wasn't that bad." He looked over at her. "Was it?"

"Let's not talk about it anymore, all right?" She sighed. "Christ."

"Fine with me." He was pulling off the main road, heading into the flower-lined trail, the arcade of magenta bougainvillea that led down toward the palace. "By the way, I brought along some ouzo." He indicated a pint bottle in his coat. "What's a picnic without a little rocket fuel?"

"You think of everything."

"I also think we should park up here, dodge the tour-bus mayhem. Keep the funny hats and loudspeakers to a minimum."

"Yes, please. Besides, I could use the air." She inhaled deeply.

Around them the few lingering white sprays of almond blossoms seemed like remnants of late spring snow, while the ground itself was blanketed with wild orchids, lavender and pink anemones, white narcissus. He watched as she climbed out of the car, then stopped to pluck a waxy yellow prickly pear flower, next an orange-blue Iris cretica. He loved the flowers of Crete, and the afternoon was fragrant with the scent of jasmine and lemon blossoms. Ahead, down the hill, was the parking lot for the palace, with two tour busses in attendance, one just pulling out.

"How long has it been since we were last here together?" She brushed her dark bangs back from her brow as she squinted into the waning sun, sniffing at her cactus flower.

"It's beginning to seem like forever. But I think it's about — what? — almost twelve years now."

"And how old is the palace supposed to be? I've gotten a little rusty."

"The latest theory going is that it was destroyed about fourteen hundred B.C. So we're talking roughly three and a half thousand years since it was last used."

"Guess our little decade doesn't count for much in the grand scheme."

"Time flies." He remembered how she'd been back then, that day so long ago when she had been in her mid-twenties, as inviting as the brazen ladies-in-waiting of the palace frescoes, and even more voluptuous. Mais, ce sont des Parisiennes, a dazzled French scholar had marveled. She was like that. Perfect sensuality. For a while he'd forgotten all about archaeology and just concentrated on beauty.

The place where all this occurred was the Palace of Knossos, lovingly restored in the early part of the twentieth century by the wealthy English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. There an almost modern civilization had flowered to magnificent heights, then mysteriously vanished. The path leading to the palace down the hill was becoming wider as they walked, opening on the distant olive groves in the valley. The vista was stunning, probably the reason it had been built here.

He looked over and noticed she was digging in her purse again. This time she drew out a pack of Dunhills. He watched while she flicked a gold lighter, the one he'd given her as a present so long ago, emblazoned with a lapis lazuli skull and crossbones. At the time, the hint had worked. She'd quit.

"The return of the death wish? When did you start that again?"

"Last week." She defiantly took a puff.

"Any particular reason?"

"No, darling, I just did it." She exhaled. "I'm wound up. I'm… I'm scared. Michael, for godsake, how many reasons am I supposed to need?"

"Hey, lighten up." He'd quit a month after they met, but it hadn't been a big deal. "I've mellowed out from the old days. Life is like most other things — a lot more fun when you don't take it too seriously."

They were moving across the empty parking lot, headed for the entrance to the palace. It had once been a twelve-hundred-room labyrinth, perhaps deliberately confusing. Now the upper courtyard and chambers lay exposed to the sky, their massive red-and-ocher columns glistening in the waning sunlight. The columns tapered downward, as though tree trunks had been planted upside down to prevent resprouting.

It was a poetic place to meet Eva again, he thought. And thoroughly bizarre as well. She'd gotten her Ph.D. in linguistics, specializing in ancient Aegean languages, then a few months later she'd surprised everybody by accepting a slot at the National Security Agency, that sprawling electronic beehive of eavesdropping that lies midway between Washington and Baltimore, on the thousand acres of Fort Meade. It'd seemed a startling about-face at the time, but maybe it made sense. Besides, it was that or teaching.

NSA was a midsized city, producing among other things forty tons of classified paper trash a day. Its official insignia, appropriately, was a fierce eagle clasping a key — whether to unlock the secrets of others or to protect its own was unclear. Eva's particular branch, SIGINT — for signals intelligence — was an operation so secret NSA refused even to admit it existed. Employing ten acres of mainframe computers, Eva's SIGINT group monitored and analyzed every Russian transmission anywhere: their satellite downlinks, the microwave telephone networks within the Soviet Union, the chatter of civilian and military pilots, missile telemetry far above the Pacific, the split-second bursts of submarines reporting to base, even the limousine radiophone trysts between Politburo members and their mistresses. The instant an electromagnetic pulse left the earth, no matter its form or frequency, it belonged to the giant electronic ears of the NSA.

So why shouldn't Eva end up as the agency's top Russian codebreaker? She was a master at deciphering obscure texts, and she'd spoken Russian all her life. Who better to make a career of cracking secret Soviet communications. Her linguistics Ph.D. was being used to real purpose.

"I want you to help me think some, love," she went on. "I know it may sound a little bizarre, but I'd like to talk about some of the legends surrounding this place. You know, try and sort out fact and fiction."

Now they were headed side by side down the stairway leading into the central court, an expanse of sandstone and alabaster tile glinting golden in the pale sun. On their left a flight of stairs seemed to lead out, but in fact they led right back in again. The deceptions of the palace began at the very entrance.

"The truth is, about all we have is stories, though sometimes stories can be more true than so-called history. The standard version is that this area was where the athletes performed ritual somersaults over the sacred bulls."

The restored frescoes around them showed corridors crowded with lithe Minoan priestesses, eyes rounded with green malachite, faces powdered white, lips a blood red. They all were bare-breasted, wearing only diaphanous chemises, while their jewels glistened in the sunshine as they fanned themselves with ostrich plumes.

There were no frescoes, however, of the powerful, bloodthirsty King Minos.

"Michael," she called out, her voice echoing off the hard walls, "you know, this place has always felt a little sinister to me. None of the lightness and gaiety in those frescoes seems real."

"That's part of what made me start wondering if the Minoans hadn't somehow managed to make a monkey out of every ponderous scholar on the planet." They were moving down the monumental grand staircase, three restored flights of which had originally been five, toward the rooms called the royal chambers. "Maybe the reason this place had no walls or fortifications was because you only came here when you were dead. Who the hell knows."

Whatever the truth was, the eerie feeling of the palace seemed to make the ancient stories even more vivid. The legends told that King Minos's wife, Pasiphae, had a burning passion for one of the sacred white bulls he kept, so she arranged for his chief architect, Daedalus, to design a hollow wooden cow for her covered over with a hide. She concealed herself inside and, as luck would have it, lured one of the beasts. The progeny of that union was equally beastly — the Minotaur, a monster with a human body and a bull's head.

Now they were rounding a final corner in the twisting maze of stairs. Directly ahead was the boudoir of the queen. The past welled up for him.

The frescoes over the alabaster arches showed bold blue dolphins pirouetting in a pastel sea dotted with starfish and sea urchins. And just beneath them stood the famous bathroom of the queen, connected to the vast drainage complex of the palace, great stone channels curved in precise parabolas to control and dampen turbulence. Daedalus was an engineer-architect who had mastered the science of fluid dynamics thousands of years before the invention of wind tunnels and supercomputers.

"My favorite spot. The bedroom." He slipped the small bottle of ouzo from his trench coat pocket. In the dank of the palace's lower depths, he needed its warmth. "I've had unspeakably erotic thoughts about this place — now it can be told — with you no small part of them." He handed her the bottle. "Want a hit of high octane?"

"Glad to know I've had a place in your memory all these years, even if it was X-rated." She took the bottle with a knowing smile, then drank. "It's like licorice."

He laughed. "Blended with JP-7."

"Michael," she continued, looking around, "maybe this is the very room where Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur. What do you suppose?"

"That would fit the story." He moved on, his eyes still adjusting to the shadows. "The only thing the legends actually say is that King Minos ordered Daedalus, resident genius, to create a secret labyrinth in the cellar of the palace to keep the beast. But nobody's ever located it."

"You know, I think the labyrinth was no myth. It was real, only it was here. All around us. We're in it now." She handed back the bottle. "It was this whole sinister palace, this realm of the dead. After all these years, I finally think maybe you were right."

Vindicated at last? Had even Eva come around? But why didn't he feel any satisfaction? Instead he found himself aware of the old chill, the almost occult intuition that had first told him the palace wasn't the happy playground everybody supposed it was. Once more it felt like death.

But now something else was entering his senses. Was it imagination? In the encroaching dark the lower levels of the palace seemed to be totally deserted, with only a couple of persistent German tourists arguing out near the parking lot, and yet…

They weren't alone. He could feel it. He knew it. Was it the spirits of the dead?

No, it was far more real. Someone was with them, somewhere. In the shadows. They were being watched.

He looked at Eva, trying to make out her eyes in the semidarkness. Did she sense it too? That somebody was nearby, waiting, maybe listening?

"Darling, let's talk some more about the myth of Daedalus. In the version I remember he—"

"Not much more to the tale. After a while a Greek prince called Theseus arrived, to brave the labyrinth and do battle with the man-eating Minotaur. When he showed up, King Minos's beautiful daughter, Ariadne, instantly fell in love with him, naturally."

"I love myths. They're always so realistic."

"Well, he dumped her later, so I guess he did turn out to be a creep. But anyway, she persuaded Daedalus to give him a ball of string. He attached it to the door of the labyrinth and unwound it as he went in. After he killed the beast, he followed the twine back out, and escaped. With Ariadne. Unfortunately, when Minos discovered what had happened, he was so mad he locked the great chief architect in a tower. But Daedalus managed to get out, hoping to escape from the island. However, it wasn't going to be easy, since Minos had clamped down on all the harbors, having the ships searched. That's when Daedalus declared, 'Minos may control the land and the sea, but he doesn't control the regions above.' And he constructed some wings, attached them to his shoulders with wax, and soared away into space. First human ever. Up till then, only the gods could just leave the earth anytime they wanted."

"What?" She'd stopped dead still.

"Daedalus. You remember. The first person to fly, mankind's ago-old dream. In fact, a few years back some Americans duplicated the feat with a human-powered glider. They made it from here on Crete over to the island of—"

"No, you said 'space.' "

"Did I?" He smiled. "Call it poetic license. But why not? Back in those days I guess the skies themselves could be considered outer space, if they even knew such a thing existed." Then he looked at her and sobered. "What's—?"

"It's — it's just something that's been in the back of my mind." She moved on.

With a shrug, he took another drink of the ouzo and followed her on down the hall toward the famous Throne Room. He was bracing himself now for what was next.

Its walls were decorated with frescoes of the massive Minoan body shields, shaped as a figure-eight, that signified the men's quarters of Knossos. And incised in stone above King Minos's wide alabaster throne was his fearsome emblem of authority, symbol of his domination of the ancient world.

There it was. He looked around, reassuring himself that it was everywhere, just as he'd remembered. He'd also been right about something else. It was precisely the same, right down to the smooth curves of the blade, as the "watermark" that had been on the sheet of "paper" Alex had given him. Almost four thousand years old, it was the insignia of the new Daedalus Corporation.

The Minoan double ax.

The dusk was settling majestically over Tokyo, after a rare smogless day. The view was particularly inspiring from the fifty-fifth-floor penthouse of the granite-clad Mino Industries building. The corner office was an earth-tone tan, carpeted in a thick wool shag the color of elm bark. The heavy doors at the far end of the office were emblazoned with a two-bladed ax, and in the center of the wide expanse between the door and the single desk, on a gleaming steel pedestal, stood a meter-long model of an airplane more advanced than any the world had yet seen.

The temperature of the room was kept at a constant 59 degrees Fahrenheit, a frigid comfort-accommodation for the tawny, eight-foot snow leopard named Neko now resting on a pallet beside the window, gazing down. Remnant of an endangered species, she'd been rescued as a starving, motherless cub during an expedition in the Himalayas and raised for the past six years as a pampered pet of the penthouse's owner.

Along the sound-proof walls were gilt-framed photographs of a Japanese executive jogging with Jimmy Carter in Tokyo, golfing with Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, receiving an accolade from Linus Pauling in San Francisco, dining with Henry Kissinger in Paris. He was the same man now sitting behind the massive slate desk.

"You believe he was an American?" Tanzan Mino, president and CEO of the Daedalus Corporation, a paper creation of the Mino Industries Group, adjusted his pale silk tie and examined the subordinate now standing before him. He had just turned seventy-three, but the energy in his youthful frame made him seem at least a decade younger, perhaps two.

"Hai, Mino-sama." The other man, in a dark suit, bowed. "We have reason to believe the Russian has… they were seen exchanging an envelope."

"And your people failed to intercept either of them?"

The man bowed again, more deeply. "An attempt was made, but unfortunately the Soviet escaped, and the American… my people were unsure what action to take. We do know the funds have not been deposited as scheduled."

Tanzan Mino sighed and brushed at his silver temples. His dark eyes seemed to penetrate whatever they settled upon, and the uncomfortable vice-president now standing in front of him was receiving their full ire.

Back in the old days, when he directed the Mino-gumi clan's operations at street level, finger joints were severed for this kind of incompetence. But now, now the organization had modernized; he operated in a world beholden to computers and financial printouts. It was a new age, one he secretly loathed.

He'd been worried from the start that difficulties might arise. The idiocy of Japan's modern financial regulations had driven him to launder the payoffs thoroughly. In the old days, when he was Washington's man, controlling the Liberal Democratic Party, no meddling tax agency would have dared audit any of his shadow companies. But after a bastard maverick named Vance — with the CIA, no less! — had blown the whistle on his and the Company's clandestine understanding…

He had arranged the initial financing for the project, as well as the political accommodations, with letters of credit, promissory notes, and his word. And, eventually, if need be, the full financing could be raised by partial liquidation of his massive real estate holdings in Hawaii.

But the near-term expenses — and the necessary payoffs in the LDP — that was different. In Japanese kosaihi, the "money politics" of gifts and outright bribes, secrecy was everything. He remembered how he'd had to arrange for the mighty Yoshio Kodama, a powerbroker who had once shared his virtual ownership of the Japanese Diet and the Japanese press, to accept responsibility for the CIA-Lockheed bribe affair. It was a close call. That had involved a mere twelve million of American cash to Japanese politicians, but it had changed the rules forever. These days— particularly after the Recruit debacle had disgraced the LDP yet again — money had to be laundered and totally untraceable.

Promises had been made, schedules signed off, the veil of total secrecy kept intact. Everything was arranged. The Soviets, incompetents that they were, had no inkling of the larger plan.

Now it all came down to the funds. He needed the money at once.

He turned in his chair, pressed a gray button on his desk, and watched the window blinds disappear into their frame. Neko rose from her languorous pose, stretched her spotted white fur, and gazed down. This was the panoramic view she loved almost as much as he did, for her perhaps it was the memory of a snowy Himalayan crest; for him it was the sprawl of Tokyo, the elegant peak of Mount Fuji to the west, the bustling port of Yokohama to the south. From this vantage atop the powerful financial world of Japan, Tanzan Mino wanted two final triumphs to crown his career. He wanted to see Japan become the twenty-first century's leader in space, and he wanted his country finally to realize its historic wartime objective: economic domination of the continent of Asia, from Siberia to Malaysia, with freedom forever from the specter of energy and resource dependence. The plan now in motion would achieve both.

He revolved again in his chair, ignored the subordinate standing before his desk, and studied the model. It was a perfect replica, one-hundredth the actual size, of the spaceplane that would revolutionize the future, the symbol that would soon signify his country's transcendence in the high-tech age to come.

Then his gaze shifted.

"You were 'unsure what action to take'?" He leaned back, touching his fingertips together, and sadness entered his voice. "You know, there was a time when I thought Japan might still one day recapture the spirit we have lost, the spirit of bushido. In centuries gone by, a samurai never had to ask himself 'what action to take.' He acted intuitively. Instinctively. Do you understand?"

"Hai, wakarimasu." The man bowed stiffly.

"I am prepared to funnel trillions of yen into this project before it is over. Legitimate, clean funds. So the sum now in question is almost inconsequential. However, it is the bait we need to set the trap, and it must be handled exactly as I have specified."

"Hai, Mino-sama." Again he bowed.

"The next time you stand before me, I want to hear that the laundered Soviet funds have been deposited in the Shokin Gaigoku Bank as agreed. You have one week." He slowly turned back to the window. "Now, must I tell you what you have to do?" The man bowed low one last time. He knew exactly.

Chapter Three

"Michael! And Eva! Again, after so long. Pos iste! What a surprise!" The old Greek's sunburned face widened into a smile, his gray mustache opening above his last good teeth. "Parakalo, you must come in for a glass of raki and some of Adriana's meze. She would never forgive me."

They'd dropped by the hotel, then come here. Although Zeno's small taverna was in the center of Iraklion, its facade was still country style, covered with an arbor. A bare electric bulb hung incongruously in the middle of the porch, penetrating the dull glow of dusk now settling over the square called Platia Eleftherias, where the evening's volta was just beginning. Once the chaste promenade of eligible young women, it was now a deafening flock of motorscooters, with girls in tight jeans riding on their backs. And the watchful mothers of old were conspicuously absent. Times had indeed changed since his last time here.

"Zeno." Vance shook his hand, then accepted his warm embrace. As he was driving, he'd been wondering what the old Greek would think about the sudden reappearance of Eva. They hadn't been here together since that last trip, well over a decade ago. "Still pouring the meanest raki in this town?"

"But of course. Never that tequila you like, Michael." He chuckled with genuine pleasure, recalling that Vance could down his high-potency version of ouzo like a native. "Ah, you know, Michael, your father would never touch it. You, though…"

He beckoned them through the kafeneion's doorway, leading the way with a limp. The interior was dark, redolent of Greek cigarettes and retsina wine. Overwhelming it all were the smells of the kitchen — pungent olive oil and onions and garlic and herbs, black pepper and oregano. Although lighting was minimal, around the rickety wooden tables could be seen clusters of aging Greeks drinking coffee and raki and gossiping. The white clay walls resounded with the clacks of komboloi worry beads and tavli, Greek backgammon.

"But then," Zeno continued, "that last trip, your birthday present to him. On his retirement. Do you remember? When we three were sitting at that very table, there in the corner. He called for a bottle of my raki and shared a glass with me. We both knew it was our good-bye." His eyes grew misty with emotion. "Yes, coming here finally with his famous son was a kind of benediction, Michael. He was passing the torch to you, to continue his work."

This last was uttered with a slightly censorious tone. But it quickly evaporated as he turned and bowed to Eva, then took her hand in a courtly gesture. The old Greeks in the room would have preferred no women save an obedient mate in their male sanctuary, but traditional hospitality conquered all. "It is so good to see you two back together." He smiled warmly as he glanced up. "Welcome once again to our humble home."

She bowed back, then complimented him in turn, in flawless Greek.

"So beautiful, and so accomplished." He beamed. "You still are the treasure I remember. You are a goddess." He kissed her hand. "As I've told Michael before, you could well be from this island. No, even more. You could be Minoan. You bear a fine resemblance to the 'parisiennes' of the palace. Did he ever tell you?"

"Not often enough." She flashed him her sexiest smile. "But then he never had your eye for women."

"Ah," the old man blushed, "I have more than an eye. If I were thirty years younger, you and I—"

"Zeno, before you drown Eva in that legendary charm, let me bring her up to date," Vance laughed. "She is now in the presence of the man who has probably become the richest tavern owner in all of Crete."

It was true. Zeno Stantopoulos had indeed become a wealthy man, in many ways. His father had once farmed the land on which now stood the unearthed palace at Knossos. The handsome sum Sir Arthur Evans paid for the site was invested in bonds, which he then passed on to Zeno just before the war. Zeno had the foresight to convert them to gold and hide it in Switzerland during the German occupation of Crete. After the war, he used it to purchase miles and miles of impoverished olive groves in the south, which he nursed back to full production. These days oil went up, oil went down, but Zeno always made a profit.

His real wealth, however, was of a different kind. Zeno Stantopoulos knew everything of importance that happened on Crete. His kafeneion was the island's clearinghouse for gossip and information.

"Don't listen to him, madam." He winked and gestured them toward the wide table in back, near the kitchen. It was known far and wide as the place of honor, the location where Zeno Stantopoulos held court. It had also been the nerve center of the Greek resistance during the Nazi occupation, when Zeno had done his share of killing and dynamiting. The limp, however, came from the fifties, when he was imprisoned and tortured by the right-wing colonels for organizing popular resistance against them.

"Come, let us celebrate with a glass of my raki." He turned again to Eva. "I should remind you. You once called it liquid fire."

He clapped for Adriana, who squinted through the kitchen door, her black shawl wrapped tightly about her shoulders. When she finally recognized them, she hobbled forward, her stern Greek eyes softening into a smile.

"Neither of you has changed." Eva gave her a hug. "You both look marvelous."

"Time, my friends, time. That has changed," Zeno went on. "I use a cane now, for long walks. The way Michael's father did his last time here. When I saw him I thought, old age must be God's vengeance on us sinners. And now it has happened to me." He smiled, with a light wink. "But I will tell you a secret. Ask Adriana. I do not yet need a cane for all my exercise." He nodded affectionately in her direction. "I can still make this beauty wake up in the mornings singing a song."

It was true, Vance suspected. Adriana had hinted more than once that every night with him was still a honeymoon.

"Ah, Michael," he sighed, "I still miss seeing your beloved father on his summer trips here. Together you two inspired our soul. The ancient soul of Crete."

At that point Adriana bowed and announced she must return to the kitchen, where she was putting the final touches to her proprietary version of kalamarakia, fried squid.

Her peasant face hid well her peasant thoughts. Almost. Vance had known her long enough to read her dark eyes. She didn't quite know what to make of Eva's reappearance yet. Speaking passable Greek, it was true, which counted for much, but she still wore no wedding band. Adinato!

"Michael, don't let Adriana stuff you." Zeno watched her disappear, then turned. "To your health." He clicked their small glasses together. "Eis hygeian."

"Eis hygeian." Vance took a sip, savoring the moment. Seeing old friends again, real friends, was one of life's most exquisite pleasures.

"And tell me, how long will you two be visiting with us this time?" Zeno's Cretan hospitality flowed unabated. "Perhaps longer than the last? Have you finally decided to come back to stay, maybe make us famous all over again?"

"Can't speak for Eva, but I've been asked to look in on the new German excavation down at Phaistos. A project to try and restore the palace there, the way Evans reconstructed Knossos." He glanced over. She was now sipping the tepid raki with the gusto she normally reserved for ice-cold Stolichnaya. "Tonight, though, we're just tourists. Here to see you two again."

At that moment, Adriana reappeared from the kitchen bearing an enormous oak tray. With a flourish she laid before them fried squid and goat cheese and stuffed grape leaves and octopus and wooden bowls of melidzanosalata, her baked eggplant puree flavored with garlic, onions and herbs, not forgetting her speciality, pink taramasalata made of mullet roe and olive oil.

"Incidentally, we were just out at Knossos, the palace, this afternoon." Vance took a bite of kalamarakia while she looked on approvingly.

"Ah, of course, the palace," Zeno smiled. "I love it still. I probably should go more myself, if only to remember the days of my childhood, during the restoration. But with all the tour buses…." He chewed on a sliver of octopus as he glanced out toward the music in the street. "Perhaps it should be better cared for these days. But, alas, we are not as rich now as King Minos was." He shrugged and reached for a roll of dolmadakia. "Still, we are not forgotten. Today, perhaps, we count for little in the eyes of the world, but your book brought us fleeting fame once again. Scholars from everywhere came—"

"Hoping to prove me wrong." Vance laughed and took another sip of raki.

"What does it matter, my friend. They came." He brightened. "Even today. Just to show you. Today, there was a man here, right here, who was carrying your famous work on the palace. He even—"

"Today?" Vance glanced up. Had he been right?

"Yes, this very day. Outside in the arbor. He even sampled some of Adriana's meze." He nodded at her. "I did not like him, and only our friends are welcome inside, book or no book."

"Was he going out to Knossos?" Eva interjected suddenly, staring. "To the palace?"

"He asked about it. Why else have the book?" He shrugged again, then examined the octopus bowl, searching for a plump piece. "You know, Michael, I could never finish that volume of yours entirely. But your pictures of the frescoes—" He paused to chew his octopus, then smoothed his gray mustache and turned again to Eva, "the frescoes of the women. I love them best of all. And every now and then I see a woman here in life who looks like them. Not often, but I do. And you are one of those rare creatures, my Eva. I swear you are Minoan." He turned back. "Look at her, Michael. Is it not true?"

"Zeno," Eva reached for his gnarled hand. "It's not like you to forget. My people are Russian, remember. From the Steppes."

"Ah, of course. Forgive me. But you see, that only goes to prove it." He nodded conclusively. "The Minoans, we are told, came from central Asia thousands of years ago. The 'brown-haired daughter of Minos' was an oriental beauty, just as you are. I'm sure of it. Look at the frescoes."

"Zeno, tell me." Vance reached to pour more raki into their glasses. "The man you mentioned just now. Was he Greek?"

"No, he was a foreigner." He chewed thoughtfully. "I've never seen anyone quite like him. He had a strange way of speaking. In truth, Michael, I did not like him at all. Not a bit."

"What exactly did he say?"

"It wasn't that. It was something else. I don't know."

"And he went? To the palace?"

"I saw him hire a taxi, that was all. But whether he went there or somewhere in the south, only God could know." He looked away. "Perhaps tomorrow I could find out."

"Did this man have a beard?" He pressed.

"No, the thing I remember most was that part of one finger was missing. Curious. I focused on that. But his features, his features were almost Asian I would say." He paused, then turned and asked Adriana to fetch another bottle of raki. "Perhaps his accent was from that part of the world." He looked back at Eva. "I suppose you would have known, my marvelous Eva, my Minoan queen."

His eyes lingered on her a moment longer, then he rose. "Enough. Now we must all have something for dinner. I'm sure you do not want to spend the rest of the night trapped here with a crippled old Greek."

He disappeared into the kitchen to select the pick of the day's catch. And that smoky evening they dined on the island's best—barbounia, red mullet, which Adriana grilled with the head and served with wedges of Cretan lemon. Afterward came a dessert of grapes and soft, fresh myzithra cheese blended with dark honey from the mountains near Sfakii. Then at the end she brought forth her own soumada, a rich nectar made of pressed almonds.

After more raki, Zeno was persuaded to get out his ancient bouzouki, tune it, and play and sing some traditional songs. The music grew faster and more heated, and then— with only the slightest urging — Eva cleared away the tables and began to dance. Her Russian gypsy movements seemed almost Greek.

When they finally broke away the time was nearly midnight; the volta had long-since disbanded; the sky above had changed from a canopy of island stars to a spring torrent. And Michael Vance and Eva Borodin were very, very drunk.

"You know, there was something special about us in the old days," Vance said as they weaved down the rain-washed street toward the hotel. "How we used to be. All we did was eat, drink, and talk. And make love. Tonight it's three down and one to go."

"You're pretty smashed, darling." Eva laughed and looked him over. "A girl learns to watch out for deceptive advertising."

He slipped his arm around her. Eleven years, and in a way, this was like it was all happening over again.

"I never shirk from a challenge."

"I'll drink to that." Her voice indicated the challenge would not be overly daunting. "Do we have any—?"

"There's still that bottle of ouzo in the car."

She stopped dead still, her hair plastered against her upturned face, and ran her hands down her body. "Minoan, that's what Zeno said. What if it's true?" She turned back. "What if I have the same hot blood as the queen who vamped a bull? Imagine what that would be like."

"As best I remember, you could probably handle it."

She performed another Russian gypsy whirl in the glistening street. "I want to be Minoan, Michael. I want to soar through time and space. Leap over bulls, maybe even…" She twirled again, drunkenly.

"Then why not do it? The queen's bedroom." He stopped and stared at the Galaxy Hotel, ultramodern and garish, now towering upward in the rain. The pool was closed, but the disco still blared. "The hell with everything. I'm taking you back there. Tonight."

Parked next to the lobby entrance was their rented Saab. He paused and looked in at the half bottle of ouzo lying on the seat, then reached and pulled her into his arms. "Come on. And get ready."

"Is that a promise?" She curled around and met his lips.

"Time's a wastin." He kissed her again and began searching for his keys.

She was unsteadily examining the darkened interior of her purse. "I think I've got an emergency candle in here. We'll use it for light. Just enough."

"I just hope I'm not too wrecked to drive in the rain."

"You'd better not be. I know I am."

"Who cares? Let's just go for it." He was unlocking the car and helping her in, loving the feel of her body, her scent. He'd decided he was ready for anything and anybody, including some mysterious stranger carrying his book.

The night was brisk, with flares of spring lightning over the mountains. As the Saab weaved through the narrow streets leading out of town, Eva climbed up and drunkenly unlatched its sunroof to let in the rain. By the time they reached the winding country road, headlights piercing the downpour, the wind was rushing around them, wild and free.

When they pulled into the parking lot of Knossos it was deserted, and they easily discovered an opening in the guard fence. The palace lay before them.

"Piece of cake." He took her hand and helped her through the wire. "I propose a toast right here. To the past and to the future."

"If I drink much more of this, I may not be around to see the future, but I'll die happy." She reached for the slippery bottle.

As they moved through the abandoned central court, eerie in the rain, he could almost hear the roars of the crowd four thousand years past, see the spotted bulls charging the nubile athletes. A heavy gust flickered her candle, adding mystery to the shadows dancing across the enigmatic women of the frescoes.

"Now I really do feel Minoan." She headed down the grand staircase, brandishing the light. Then she called out, her voice resounding down the maze of windy hallways, "I am the queen. I am Pasiphae. Where's my white bull?"

"Eva, you're drunk," he yelled after.

"I'm intoxicated. It's different." She laughed, low in her throat. "I'm intoxicated by the palace. The thought of my bull, the eternal male." Her voice echoed more. "Know about eternal males, darling? They're like eternal females, only harder." She grinned at him, then proceeded, tracing the wide marble steps.

As she floated down, carrying the candle, the moist air was scented with jasmine, alive with the music of crickets. They rounded the last curving steps, and the ornate vista of the queen's bedroom spread before them, its blue dolphins cavorting in their pastel sea.

He walked over and patted the alabaster portico. "Hard as this, your eternal male? This is a real test for the eternal female bottom."

She threw herself down, then reached and ran a drunken readiness check across his wet thigh. "I'm ready for something hard inside me." Her voice was strange, detached and ethereal.

"When did you start talking like that?" He loved it. "Not even in the old days—"

"When I became Minoan, darling. When I became the blood relation of Queen Pasiphae."

She wiggled out of her soaked brown dress and tossed it onto the floor. As he watched her begin to sway before the fresco of the dolphins, he had the definite feeling time was in a warp, that the flow of centuries was in reverse. Maybe Eva was none other than Pasiphae reborn. The room was perfumed and serene, perfect for a queen.

Then she bent down and carefully stationed her candle on the stone. Looking up she said, "Let me have some more of that ouzo. I love being here. It's shocking and wonderful."

No, this was most assuredly the modern Eva. As she moved against him, her body felt the way he remembered it. Riper now perhaps, with a voluptuousness slightly more toward Rubens than Botticelli, but the skin of her breasts, her thighs, was soft as ever. And the dark triangle was still luxuriant, redolent with her scent.

"Do it. Hard. Like a bull. I want to know what she felt." She drew back across the stone as he drove inside her. "Yes"

While rain slammed against the courtyard above, the ancient, foreboding room began to engulf and rule their senses; the feel of her perfumed nipples against him was hard and urgent. It was an erotic moment outside of time.

Now her head thrashed from side to side as quivering orgasms rippled through her, starting in her groin and welling upward as she arched and flung back her hair. Then she drew up, clinging, as though trying to consume him, herself, in a rite of pure bacchanalian frenzy. Her breath had become labored, not gasps of pleasure, but the need of one seeking air.

Eva, Eva, he suddenly caught himself thinking, you're here for release, escape. I know you too well. You're not really in this room anymore. You want to be but you're not. You're somewhere in a realm of beasts and magic and the bloodthirsty Minotaur.

But yet, yet… somehow he'd never felt closer…

A final convulsion brought them together and then she fell back, dazed. The candlelight flickered across the alabaster, sending ghostly apparitions against the fresco of the dolphins. Still trying to catch her breath, she reached out and seized the bottle of ouzo, drank from it thirstily, then flung herself once more against the stone. After another long moment, she pulled him to her.

"Michael, hold me." She snuggled into his arms. "Oh, darling, just hold me."

He drew her against him, and the touch of her skin was erotic beyond anything he remembered….

But the palace… it was intruding darkly, insinuating its presence. Now it surrounded them like a tomb, ominous as death. Finally he turned her face up and examined her dark eyes. They were flooded with fear.

"Look, you've got to tell me what's going on. I want to know the real reason you're here, and I want to know it now. I'd somehow begun to hope it was for us, but—"

"That's part of it, darling. Truly." She kissed him deeply on the mouth, then reached and began fishing in her purse for the battered pack of Dunhills, trying to regain her bravado. "God, that was hot. I do love being here with you."

"You're stalling. Whenever you don't—"

"You're right." She took out a cigarette, flicked her lighter, and drew a lungful of smoke. "Now I see why Pasiphae was such a number. This room does something to you."

"Not bad for starters."

She looked down, then smiled. "No, darling, you're just bluffing. I remember that well enough. Plenty of time for a cigarette."

"Some things improve with age." He studied her beautifully disheveled form. Now more than ever he realized she was scared. "Goddammit, enough. Talk to me."

"All right." She sighed, then leaned back on the ledge of the portico. "Well, to begin at the beginning, I've been seeing somebody lately."

"Make you a deal," he interrupted. "You spare me your stories and I'll spare you mine. This doesn't really seem the moment to start swapping indiscretions."

"I'll bet you've got plenty to swap yourself." She looked him over.

"Hold on a minute." Sure, there'd been women in and out of his life. He wasn't a priest. Besides, he liked women.

"Darling, relax." She patted his thigh. "We're both adults. You said you wanted to hear this, so for godsake listen. His name was Jerry Ackerman and… it started back about nine months ago. Since he was new, he'd drop by my office now and then. You know, to learn the ropes."

"What kind of ropes, exactly?"

"Really, Michael. Anyway, he wasn't exactly world class in the boudoir, if that makes you feel any better. Though needless to say I never told him that. Our little scene tonight would have blown his Brooklyn mind. Now does that preserve your precious male ego? He was just nice, and interesting."

"Was?"

"I'll get to that." She was tracing small circles on the alabaster. "Week before last he dropped off a computer disk at my office. Said he couldn't figure it out. And it was old, maybe two weeks. Which was unusual, especially for satellite intercepts, which this was. Normally we get them the same day. So I ran it through my desk station, figuring it couldn't be that big a deal." She paused nervously, then went on. "Well, the first part was encoded using one of the standard Soviet encryption systems we've had cracked for years, and it had a lot of proper names. But the rest of it was just a string of numbers. No matter what I tried, I got nothing but garbage."

"Really? I thought Fort Meade's football field of Cray supercomputers could crack anything."

"I thought so too. But this encryption was either so clever, or so simple, nothing seemed to click. I couldn't do it. I even began to wonder, maybe it's not a cipher at all. Maybe it's just some obscure foreign language. So I matrixed it against some we have in the data base. And, love, we've got them. A zillion megabytes of memory. Serbo-Croatian, Urdu, Basque…" She drew on her cigarette, sending a glow into the dark. Above them the rain continued to pound. "But I still couldn't find anything that would crack it."

"Doesn't sound like you." He drew her around and kissed her. "Half the time you're too smart for your own good."

"Apparently not smart enough." She hugged him back automatically, then continued. "When I told Jerry I couldn't break the encryption, he suddenly got very nervous. Said okay, then he'd just take it and try again himself. So I asked him to sign it out on my log. Just routine. And that's when he started acting strange. At first he refused, but finally he did it when I said, 'It's like this, sweet buns. No tickee, no washee.' By then he'd stopped coming over to my place and things had gotten a little strained at the edges, to put it mildly. So I didn't think too much about it at the time."

"Don't start telling me more about—"

"Michael, that was the last time anybody saw him. He just vanished. That night. There was even something in the paper. 'Mysterious disappearance.' The apartment where he lived had been dismantled. Top to bottom. Somebody must have thought he was holding out."

"And?"

"Well, it just so happened I still had it in computer memory, though that's a blatant violation of security procedures. Anyway, the next day I called Control and said what's with a certain file? Gave them the NSCID number. And they said, 'We have no record of that number.' Quote. They'd never heard of it. So it must have been a free-lance job for somebody outside. Whoever it was must have paid Jerry, or maybe blackmailed him, into getting me to take a crack at it. Which is why it was two weeks old. It wasn't NSA material at all. Somebody else wanted it, and I'm known far and wide as Ms. Give-Her-the-Tough-Ones."

"You always were the best."

"Right." She laughed, then reached into her purse and retrieved a three and a half inch gray computer disk. "And here it is. A complete copy. I've also got it stored on the eighty-meg hard drive of my Zenith Turbo 486 laptop back at the hotel." She tossed it to him. "Jerry's file. That's the good news. The bad news is, it's still encrypted."

He turned it in his fingers. Welcome to the new age, he thought, when thousands of pages can be packed onto a high-density disk the size of a casette tape.

She took out a compact from her purse and powdered her nose in the light of the candle, then turned and searched the stone for her crumpled dress. He thought he heard a sound from the hallway outside, but then decided it was just more thunder.

"So now what?" She finally found the dress and drew it loosely on, managing not to secure the bustline. "I've tried and tried to crack it, but nothing seems to click. After the preamble, there's nothing on there but a long string of numbers. Whatever it is, it's not any of the standard encryption systems." She reached to take it back. "Why am I telling you all this?"

"Because we've agreed, no more games."

"Darling, there're actually two reasons why I shouldn't. One is I hate to drag you into it, and the other… well, there's more."

"I'm waiting."

"Whatever's on here is part of something bigger. I know that because of the preamble, the section I can read." She pushed ahead, nervousness in her voice. "Anyway, that's when I decided I had to talk to you. About some of the things you used to work on."

He inhaled. "What are you talking about?"

"There were some proper names."

"I don't get—"

"In the preamble. One was 'Daedalus.' And another was 'Mino.' So I thought, why not talk to Michael? It sounded like something that you'd… I don't know… maybe you could help me think. Anyway, I finally decided to take a chance and ring you."

"Great. Nice to finally learn exactly where I fit in." He lay silent for a moment, trying to suppress his annoyance. Finally he told himself, Be constructive.

"All right, tell me what you think it's all about."

"Well." She paused again, as though unsure. Finally she spoke, her voice faint above the rain. "Did you know the Soviet Union and Japan never actually signed a peace treaty after World War Two?"

"It's because the Soviets kept some Japanese islands, right? Seem to recall they were the Kuriles, and also the southern half of Sakhalin."

"Japan calls those the Northern Territories, and they've refused to sign because of them." She reached over and adjusted the candle, surveying the dark around them. The gloom was almost Stygian. "Well, hang on to your diplomatic pouch, because I think they're about to sign. Maybe as the first step toward… I'm still not sure what."

He caught his breath. "How did you find out about this?"

"Intelligence. I've been handling our intercepts. But we still haven't put together a briefing package for the president, and State. It just seems so implausible nobody wants to be the one to sign off on it. Besides, nothing's settled. Among other things, the Japanese Diet would eventually have to vote to approve it, and nothing's come through diplomatic channels. It's being closely handled by somebody big and anonymous over there. Anyway, my hunch is a vote in the Diet would be a squeaker. Your average Japanese man on the street still isn't too enthusiastic about the Soviets."

He leaned back to think. Given today's global realities, a deal like that had to be the tip of some gigantic iceberg. In diplomacy, there was always give and take.

"And you believe whatever's on this disk is somehow connected to the treaty?"

"That's precisely what I believe," she sighed. "The treaty has a secret protocol involved. It's hinted at in the intercepts, but never described. And I've got a feeling, somehow, that this is it."

"Doesn't sound like something that would delight Washington." He pondered. "On the other hand, what could the U.S. do anyway? The American military is a hell of a lot more worried about losing its bases in Japan, not to mention NSA's Soviet and Chinese listening posts, than the Japanese are about giving up our so-called protection. There's not a damned thing the U.S. could do about it."

"I'd guess whoever's behind this fully realizes that." She paused, letting a roll of thunder from above die away. "But the protocol… nobody has any idea what's in it, not even the KGB. I also know that from our intercepts."

"This is getting more interesting by the minute."

"Well, stay tuned. There's more still. As it happens, I'm also on NSA's oversight panel, the Coordinating Committee. We assemble briefing packages that bring together reports from all the departments, including PHOTOINT, photo intelligence from satellite surveillance."

"The 'spy in the sky' recon? Big Bird, KH-12, radar imaging?"

"Well, we review all of that, sure. But think about it. The Soviets have surveillance satellites too. And p.s., their Cosmos series can now relay down digital imagery in real time." She paused. "It's classified, but put two and two together. If NSA intercepts Soviet voice and data communications…"

"Stealing pictures from their spy satellites?" He knew about it. "Why not? All's fair in love and war, I think the saying goes."

"Okay, just pretend you dreamed it up." She sighed. "Now, from here on it gets a little off-the-wall. So off-the-wall everybody at NSA refuses to take it seriously. The committee keeps wanting to study everything, but I think time's running out. Something's going to happen any day now, but—"

"Something bad?" He tried to make out her eyes in the dark, wondering what she was still holding back.

"Michael, I shouldn't…" She reached over and took another cigarette out of her purse. "Anyway, the reason I wanted you here was to help me find some answers. Before somebody decides to try and make me disappear too. Like Jerry." She flicked at her lighter three times before it finally flared.

Maybe, he thought, she had good reason to be afraid. He remembered the odd sense that afternoon that they were being watched. And then Zeno mentioning a stranger carrying his book. It was beginning to seem less and less like a coincidence.

"But, Jesus," she went on. "Now they've found me. And I've drawn you into it. I'm really—"

"Just relax." Mainly now he wanted to calm her down. "Nobody's found—"

"Don't you see? Alex. Just happens to call you this morning as you were on your way here to see me. Don't flatter yourself. That call was about me. Which means he knows I've got…" Her hand quavered as she dropped the lighter back into her purse. "There's already been one murder—"

"Hey, slow down. Take it easy. Novosty's never scared me, even when he's tried. Just—"

"It's not him I'm worried about. Michael, if even a TDirectorate sleaze like Alex knows, then who else…" The darkened room fell silent.

"You'd better tell me all of it. Everything." Again he paused, thinking he heard a sound from somewhere in the dark. But it was impossible. Nobody could have followed them here.

"All right." She let the words tumble out, finally. "Yes, we intercept all the Soviet satellite photos. Just the way you thought." She exhaled, then rose and paced the room a moment, its walls now ghostly in the candlelight. "Well, lately for some strange reason their Soyuz series always seems to have a temporary malfunction whenever they pass over one certain spot on the globe. Almost as though somebody were turning off their KFA-1000 high-resolution cameras. I kept noticing it, but nobody else in PHOTOINT thought it was anything but a coincidence. Still, it got me wondering. What if somebody over there is pulling a number on the KGB, or the GRU? Keeping them from seeing something. So I had some of our own photos of that grid sent over, from the new KH-12."

"Where was it?"

"Well, it wasn't necessarily where you'd think. It was the Japanese island of Hokkaido. And the high-resolution grid missing was just the northern tip."

"So?"

"I went back and checked a series of KH-12 recon photos, taken over the last two years. There's something new there now, Michael. Just this last year or so. It's been partly camouflaged, but I think it's a new runway. Or launch facility. Or something. And the radar maps show some funny surface irregularities. At least I think they do. Nobody else at NSA…" She looked away. "But put it together. Maybe that's part of the treaty somehow, their secret protocol. Some joint—"

"A launch facility? Eva, that's impossible. The Japanese space program is all down on Tanegeshima Island, south of Tokyo. The island of Hokkaido is way up north. There's nothing up there but Holsteins and hay fields."

But, he thought suddenly, it's also just across from Sakhalin. The Soviet Far East. The place the party secretary who embezzled…

"This isn't hay fields, darling, believe me." Her voice seemed to drift out and blend with the rain. "Something you said this afternoon, that's what made it click. About the first man to leave the earth and soar into space…"

"You mean—"

"I didn't ask for this. Oh, Christ, how did I…" She paused again, uncertain. "You know, I finally think I've figured out what's happening, why it's so secret — the treaty, the protocol, cutting out their own intelligence. It's partly about space, all right. Has to be. Something's cooking, something they're eventually going to spring on the world like the first Sputnik."

"You still haven't decoded the damned thing."

"Okay, I'm guessing. But how's this? Somebody at the top, in the USSR, has decided to go for a giant gamble. To save their system, they've been forced to turn to some nutcakes in Japan who can loan them billions. And this project is part of it. The Soviets once cut a deal with Nazi Germany to buy time, so why not? The leadership needs time now desperately."

"And you think—?"

"Project Daedalus. That's the code name in the preamble. Think about it. You know what I believe? To get the money and technology they desperately need, the Russians have had to cave in and do the unthinkable. Form a new alliance. Michael, they're about to start rearming Japan."

Chapter Four

"Hai, so deshoo," Taro Ikeda, project director, bowed into the red telephone receiver, using that breathy, clipped speech all Japanese reserve for their superiors. "Kore wa honto ni muzakashi desu. It has been difficult, but they have finally agreed on the revised schedule. In nine days—"

He paused to listen, then continued. "Hai, so. There is no other way. Hai. The Diet will never approve the treaty unless there is some dramatic symbol of the advantages of the alliance."

He halted. "Hai, security has been maintained here. With deepest respect, the problem would seem to be with your—" He paused again.

Now tiny beads of sweat were glistening on his brow. "Hai, we are ready. The vehicle is… hai." He bowed again. "Of course, there will be no delay. The revised schedule is firm. Hai, Mino-sama, we—" He was bowing ever more rapidly into the phone. "Hai, we have pushed them as hard as we can." He bowed even deeper. "Hai, by tomorrow's report. Of course, Mino-sama. Thank you, domo arigato gozaimashita…."

The line, a high-security satellite link connecting the Hokkaido facility to the Mino Industries Building in the Ueno section of Tokyo, had gone dead. Tanzan Mino, CEO of Mino Industries Group, had other matters to concern himself with.

Taro Ikeda repressed a tremble. The technical part, the project here on Hokkaido, was going well; what was happening on the Tokyo end? First the delay of the funds, and now a rumored breach of security. KGB had intercepted the protocol. That was the word from his informant close to the CEO in Tokyo.

Shigata ga nai, he thought; sometimes things can't be helped.

Taro Ikeda was proud he had been personally selected by the CEO to be project director for the top secret Hokkaido operation. He was fifty-four years of age, a graduate of Tokyo University Law School, a twenty-five-year veteran, now retired, of MITI, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. He was, in short, a mover in the New Japan and he looked it — elegantly graying temples, tailored silk suits, a small mustache to set off his high cheeks. At one time he had been the inside choice for MITI vice minister, before the CEO offered him a chance to fulfill a vision no official source in the ministry could ever admit existed.

Overall, he told himself, the CEO should be pleased. He had carried out his own responsibilities flawlessly. And MITl was providing an unofficial umbrella of technical support, covering any unexpected requirements. Through this project the CEO had set into motion a plan that would soon alter dramatically Japan's place in the equation of world power.

Bushido, the Way of the Warrior. The element of surprise. No one outside Mino Industries knew what was really planned, not even the prime contractors for the project. Security every step of the way. And now the drama was ready, the curtain poised. Only a few more days, and a technological miracle would soar upward from the earth, symbolizing the first step in the realization of Japan's age-old ambition. The world would know the twenty-first century had arrived, the Japanese century. Mino Industries had made it possible.

The CEO's sense of timing was impeccable. Only last week he had approved Taro Ikeda's final briefing to Noburu Takahashi, executive director of the National Space Development Agency. NASDA, through contracts to the Space Systems Division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, was in charge of the major hardware of the Japanese rocket program. Takahashi was also an executive of the new Daedalus Corporation, an unofficial "consultant."

Together they had traveled to the agency's space center on Tanegeshima, the island six hundred miles south of Tokyo, to monitor the shakedown launch of Japan's new H-2 rocket series. Although that vehicle was far superior to both the American Titan 34D and the European Ariane 4, it was a technological dinosaur compared to this project. This was unlike anything the world had ever seen.

The project had begun over two years earlier, when he was still director of MITI's Kokuki Buki-ka, the Aircraft and Ordnance Section. An "anonymous" scenario — conceived by the CEO of Mino Industries Group, Tanzan Mino — had arrived on his desk, detailing a revolutionary proposal. Every director in MITI had received a copy.

The eventual "consensus"? It was too visionary, would aggravate Japan's already delicate relationship with America. The Liberal Democratic Party could never be seen to embrace such a project publicly.

Accordingly, MITI's parliamentary vice minister turned it down. Officially. But that was merely tatame, his "public face." Afterward the classified moves, the real moves, began. Perhaps, it was hinted, if the idea were "explored" outside regular government channels…. Top-secret feelers were sent to the Soviets.

With a green light, Tanzan Mino had immediately created the Daedalus Corporation, hiring away Taro Ikeda and forty-seven of his MITI aerospace engineers, the best and brightest, from Kokuki Buki-ka. Start-up financing had been provided by the CEO personally, with some matching contributions by the top executives of Japan's major zaibatsu, industrial groups. The scenario was an easy sell, since they all realized its payoff would be staggering. The only requirement was that it remain top secret until the appropriate moment, when the Diet would be formally notified. By that time, however, there would be no turning back. Everything would have to go forward as a package.

Under the CEO's direction, Taro Ikeda and his forty- seven MITI engineers had relocated here on Hokkaido to oversee a secret, fast-track project. Forty-seven. Perhaps, he sometimes mused, that number was no coincidence. Perhaps it was an unconscious act of historical resonance. Forty-seven brilliant young technicians, just like the forty-seven ronin, the samurai of the famous legend. Those ronin had bided their time for many years, living in obscurity and ignominy until the moment when they rose up in triumph.

Bushido. You must always make your opponent do battle on your own terms. And today money and technology were Japan's most powerful weapons. Why not use them strategically, the CEO had argued. The time had come to engage other unsuspecting nations with concentrated strength, in a forcible move to achieve Japan's long-term objectives. The Way of the Warrior.

Taro Ikeda surveyed his office, his personal command center. The space was appointed like the headquarters of a field marshall: a deep metallic gray with video screens along one wall permitting him continuously to monitor activities in every sector of the facility. And across the top of his black slate desk was marshalled a line of gray telephones with scramblers, each a secure direct line to the offices of one of the project's prime contractors.

The first was to Nagoya, to the head office of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Theirs was the initial contract let by the CEO after the project financing was in place. Indeed, Mitsubishi's Nagoya Aircraft Works was the ideal choice to manufacture the air-breathing turboramjets-scramjets for the vehicle. That conglomerate had produced over fifty thousand aircraft engines during the great Pacific war, and, more recently, their new Komaki North plant was responsible for the powerful oxygen-hydrogen engines that composed the first stage of the giant H-2 booster. The phone on his desk connected him directly to the office of Yoshio Matsunami, Mitsubishi's general manager for space systems. The massive scramjets for this project had been manufactured in Nagoya under a veil of total secrecy, then static-tested at their aeropropulsion test facility and individually shipped here to Hokkaido in unmarked railcars.

Another line connected him to the head office of Nissan's aeronautical and space division in Tokyo, already in charge of all solid rocket boosters for the Japan Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science. The CEO had hired their senior propulsion engineers to resolve problems connected with air-breathing combustion of liquid hydrogen.

The third connection was to Hitachi City, sixty miles from Tokyo. Hitachi, Limited manufactured the booster cases for the new H-2 vehicle, and their extensive experience with composite alloys at high-temperatures made them the obvious choice to create the hypersonic airframe.

There were other lines as well. The vehicle's inertial- guidance system and flight controls — both based on advanced Soviet designs — had been produced at Japan's National Aerospace Laboratory. Preliminary wind-tunnel tests had been assigned to the Kakuda Propulsion Center, whose rocket-engine development facilities were already being used to support NASDA's program in oxygen-hydrogen thruster R&D.

The last high-security line connected him directly to Tsukuba Space Center at Tsukuba Science City, forty miles from Tokyo, the nerve center for all Japanese manned space-flight research. Their clean-rooms and deep-space tracking facilities were comparable to any in the world, and their Fujitsu SX-10 supercomputer — which, with 128 processors for parallel processing, performed nine billion calculations per second — could provide realtime simulation of a complete hypersonic flight profile.

Feeling impatient now to begin the day, Taro Ikeda settled back and reached for the phones. Each contractor would give him a quick morning update, and then he would outline any further component tests or retrofitting as required. In truth, these exchanges had long since become scarcely more than rituals, since the project was all but completed. The major components had already been designed, delivered, and assembled. The contractors had been paid, the reports and evidence of their participation declared top secret and locked away from any possible prying eyes. All traces of the project had been safely secured.

There was, he reminded himself, only one major problem remaining. As part of the initial scenario, the Soviets had agreed to provide a laundered payment of one hundred million American dollars, to be used for Tanzan Mino's "incidental expenses" in the Liberal Democratic Party hierarchy. To avoid another Recruit-bribe fiasco like the one that brought down the prime minister in 1989, the money had to be scrupulously clean and totally untraceable.

But the funds had not arrived.

How the Soviets had secured the hard currency required outside of regular government channels, he could not imagine. There were even reports the money had been secretly "embezzled" from certain slipshod ministries. That it was, in fact, hot money.

But if those funds didn't come through within eight days, fully laundered, the project would have to be put on hold, as a matter of strategy, and precaution. The treaty could not be placed before the Diet unless passage was assured. Promises had to be kept.

What had happened to the money? Whatever it was, he thought with a worried sigh, the CEO had better solve it and soon. If he didn't, the whole project might have to be put on hold until next year's session of the Diet, and their secrecy would probably be impossible to maintain for another whole year. A disaster.

He had just completed the last call when he noticed a flashing alert on the main computer terminal, advising him that the morning's hypersonic test in Number One was scheduled to begin at 0800 hours. He grunted and typed in an acknowledgment. In his view it was a waste of time, overkill. The SX-10's simulation had already taken them further than they needed to go. But, all right, humor the Soviet team. It would only require a morning.

His contractor briefings now out of the way, he transferred all communication channels to the computer modems that lined the walls, then rose and walked back to the small alcove at the rear of his office. He paused a moment to calm his thoughts, then slid aside the shoji screens to reveal what was, for him, the most important room in the facility.

Here in the North Quadrant the CEO had constructed a traditional teahouse, tatami-floored with walls and ceiling of soft, fresh cedar and pine. In this refuge Taro Ikeda performed an essential morning ritual, the brief meditation that quieted his spirit. He knew well the famous adage of swordsmanship, that the true master lives with his mind in a natural state.

The challenge ahead would require all the discipline of a samurai warrior, the Way of Zen. And the first rule, the very first, was your mind must be empty, natural, unattached, in order to succeed.

As he seated himself on the reed surface of the tatami, zazen-style, he methodically began clearing his mind. The moment was sacred.

But then, drifting through unasked, came an admonition of the great Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. "Intelligence is everything. You must know your opponent's plan even before he knows it himself."

It was true. The security for this project had been airtight, except for one minor breach. Someone in the Tokyo office had stupidly transmitted the final protocol over an unsecured satellite channel. It had been intercepted by Soviet intelligence.

Fortunately, the Russian blunderers had been unable to decipher the encryption. But someone — either in the KGB or the GRU — had been so desperate he had secretly enlisted the assistance of the U.S. National Security Agency's top cryptographer. It was a brilliant move, because NSA's supercomputers might eventually be able to break the code.

When Tanzan Mino learned of the breach, he had given orders that the NSA expert be neutralized, quickly, and the protocol retrieved. If it became public knowledge prematurely, the entire scenario could be destroyed. Now, happily, the NSA individual had been identified. The rest would be easy. An unfortunate price to pay, but a simple solution.

With that thought to comfort him, he gazed at the polished natural woods of the teahouse and let his mind drift into perfect repose.

The first round went wide, nicking the edge of the dolphin fresco. Vance listened, startled, at the explosion, at first thinking it was a sharp crack of thunder from outside. Then he heard the bullet sing into the dark, a high-pitched hiss. For a moment he wondered if he was dreaming, his mind adrift in the bloody myths of the palace. Then a second explosion flared from the direction of the archway, grazing his neck.

"Eva!" He threw his body across hers, slamming her against the alabaster portico. His free hand slapped awkwardly at the candle, crushing out the last sputter of flame. As he swung around, the empty ouzo bottle clattered into the dark, spinning, its revolving sound a beacon. Get it, he thought, and stretched across the stone to grope in the dark. Finally he felt the smoothness of the glass gliding at the edge of his reach. Slowly, carefully, his fingers circled the neck and he pulled it toward him.

The room was black now, its silence deep as a tomb. Then the gun flamed once more, and again, the two rounds ricocheting off the ancient walls somewhere around them. After that, silence returned, no sound except for the heave of breathing, whose he wasn't sure.

As he reached to quiet her, she whispered. "Michael, they want me." She tried to struggle up. "You've got to let—'"

"No." He forced her back, whispering. "We can't leave when the party's just beginning."

Still grasping the neck of the bottle, he moved silently across the floor. The stone slabs were icy, while the night music of the rain seemed to come from another world.

He pressed against the wall, feeling for the doorway until he sensed a shadow slip past, slowly edging into the room. The muzzle of a pistol glinted against the flare of lightning outside, and he realized it was no more than a couple of feet away.

Now.

He swung the empty bottle with all his might, aiming for the tip of the muzzle.

The impact coursed up his arm as the bottle splintered against the metal. The intruder's startled intake of breath was masked by the clatter of the weapon against the stone floor.

He'll reach for it, Vance told himself. Lots of luck, pal.

He brought the fractured bottle upward with all his strength, aiming for the face. Although the figure was still formless, he let instinct guide his hand. The rough feel of shirt fabric brushed past his fingers and then the softness of flesh. A scream of surprise pierced the dark. Bingo.

Got the neck, he thought, and with a twist he drove the shattered bottle in. A warm wetness gushed against his hand.

I hit an artery. Blind luck.

The figure stumbled backward into the dim passageway. In a flash of lightning Vance saw hands clawing at a neck. Then came the sound of stumbling footsteps, retreating, and again silence.

Still gripping the sticky neck of the bottle, he bent down and began to search the floor. Near his feet he felt a hot muzzle and followed it upward to the still-warm grip. It was, he realized, a 9mm Baretta. He kept an identical chrome-plated model on the Ulysses.

All right, chum, now we'll have a rerun.

Grasping it with both hands, in firing position, he turned and peered out the open archway. The glimmers of distant lightning showed nothing but stone walls and an empty passageway. All he could discern was the vertical shaftway connecting the many levels of the palace.

He pressed against the cold stone wall and edged into the hallway leading toward the steps. Then he felt a sharp sensation against the ball of his left foot and reached down. A spent cartridge shell, still warm, lay up-ended on the icy floor.

Pasiphae, he suddenly found himself thinking. It's as though Eva had lured the killer here, to this very room, like the white bull. And now he, they, who knows how many? want to kill us both. Somebody realized she knows too much.

He tried to control his breathing, straining to hear as the adrenaline continued to pump. From the staircase up above, the crickets had resumed their high-pitched medley. He listened as they chorused, the sounds of centuries past, their hymn to the rain. There was nothing else.

No, faint sounds… far above, maybe in the central court. Men were arguing. It was a heated exchange. He heard them grow louder, and with that the metallic click of another automatic weapon being readied. He waited, holding his breath, as the voices became even more animated.

What had happened? There must have been two, maybe even more.

Good time to find a new place to party.

He turned back to the silent room. It was, he suddenly realized, too silent. He felt his way back to the alabaster portico and reached across.

"Eva."

The quiet that followed told him he had been right; she'd panicked, run. No, he thought, she only wants to save you. She thinks she drew them here, and now she's trying to lure them away. Bad time to leave. Just when things were getting interesting.

He reached down and felt for the right-hand pocket of his trousers, still lying crumpled in a pile on the floor. Finally he slid his hand in and searched. The keys were gone. She had taken them, slipped away, left nothing. No trace. Only the smashed candle remained.

Annoyed, he located a box of hotel matches in his shirt and struck one. The room was empty, totally bare, its dolphins frisking alone in their placid sea. Across, on the other side, was the passageway leading through the queen's "bathroom." Beyond it lay the labyrinthine twists of the palace hallways. Perhaps by now Eva had found her way out and escaped. From the maze of Daedalus?

He tried to think as he finished donning his wet clothes in the dark. Eva clearly had gotten too close to somebody's plans. Where would she go?

Cautiously he moved out and began to mount the marble staircase, his rubber soles noiseless against the steps. The automatic was beginning to feel comfortable, even though it had nearly taken his life only minutes before. But he never trusted life to a chunk of metal, no matter how efficient.

Above him the voices still quarreled, and he found himself straining to catch the language. What was it? Greek? no, maybe Russian. Whatever it was, a fierce argument was raging. Again he tried to guess how many there were. He checked the metal clip and decided he had enough rounds to take them all — if he had to.

But that was getting ahead of the game. If she had eluded them, then why bother? The best thing would be to try to slip past the courtyard, get through the fence, maybe join her at the car. Then they could move the party back to the hotel, keep the momentum….

He moved carefully on through the hall of the procession, edging along the wall. Against his back he could feel the cold frescoes of the cup bearers, locked in their sterile march through time.

Then he heard another voice, this time female.

"Pazdolba! Delaetye vcyo, shto vam yugodno — mnye vcyo…"

It was Eva yelling in rapidfire Russian. Arguing, shouting orders? He couldn't make it out.

Now he edged through the final archway, grasping the Baretta. At that moment an eruption of gunfire splintered the silence, a fiery burst in the rainy night, while Eva was yelling for it to stop. It was over as quickly as it had come, but she was still screaming, swearing actually.

Whoever was there, they were no more than thirty feet away. But she was still safe. He could hear her curses, now half muffled in the storm.

Gingerly he edged on out through the entryway and stood at the edge of the courtyard, Baretta cocked and ready. A lighter blossomed in the rain, was brought upward to a cigarette, and momentarily framed a face.

Alex Novosty.

He was holding what appeared to be an Uzi, peering down at the glistening stones. Sprawled across from him were two bodies, both in dark raincoats. Now he was saying something to Eva in Russian, but she was staring past him, toward the entryway where Vance stood. In a flare of lightning their eyes locked, and he saw in hers anger and disbelief.

At that moment the flame of the lighter was cut short, but not before Novosty whirled and followed her gaze.

Instinctively Vance threw himself against the inside wall of the processionway. An instant later, the Uzi blazed again, drowning the sound of Novosty's challenge. He held his own automatic, barely breathing, while the rounds ricocheted against the stone walls. Was Eva part of it? What in hell…

Then her voice rose again, through the dark, a mixture of Russian and English. She was screaming at Novosty. Finally she called out.

"Michael." A pause, then her voice cracked. "You may as well stop the charade."

Charade? That wasn't the game they'd been playing. He decided to wait. The moment seemed part of a giant contest where none of the players wore team colors.

"Michael, old man, terribly sorry about that." This time the voice was Alex's. "It's been a trying night."

"Novosty," he yelled back. "I've got an automatic too, chum. Touch one hair of her head and you're history. I swear to God. Now let her go, and then we'll talk."

"My friend, my friend, I'm not keeping her." The hesitation in his voice belied his attempt at calm. "You don't understand. We have a problem here, very serious. And I am getting wet. Why don't you come out and let's discuss it somewhere dry."

"No way. You and I have a little catching up to do. Let her go. She's not part of it."

"Ah, but she is very much a part of it. Why do you think I am here tonight, risking everything? I need you now, Michael, more than ever. We are all in deep trouble because of her."

As Vance started to respond, he felt a glancing blow against the side of his neck, powerful, numbing. Awkwardly he stumbled forward, cursing his own stupidity. Of course! The man he'd wounded had merely disappeared into the palace labyrinth. He'd been back there somewhere, waiting. Now they'd guided him here with all the shouting.

He felt the Baretta slip from his grasp as his head slammed against the hard plaster of the fresco. His attacker was reaching for the gun, hands slippery with blood. There was hot breath against his face, the gurgle of labored breathing. It was a dying man with nothing to lose.

Now Alex was shouting at Eva through the rain, telling her to run for it.

Good, he thought, and turned to shove his fist into the face of the figure struggling to turn the pistol on him. The weapon fired, a lethal blast next to his ear, but the muzzle was still directed away. The round glanced off the stone archway and ricocheted down the hallway. As their struggle continued, he heard the sound of the Saab, its engine coughing to life.

Too bad. I'll miss the ride back.

With that he brought his knee against the assailant's groin, shoving him against the wall. Even then, though, he still could not see the face; it was darkened or swathed in a black cloth, he couldn't tell which.

Suddenly the passageway flared, and he looked up to see Novosty, rain-soaked, holding his small Italian lighter. In his left hand. In his right was the black metallic shape of the Uzi. Just then the attacker, drenched in blood, finally wrenched away the Baretta and was turning, trying to speak. Vance noticed, absently, that blood streamed from a gash across the side of his neck.

"I am sorry, my friend." Alex was lifting his weapon, calmly and with perfect precision. "Things have become complicated, but do not worry. I have handled it." And the Uzi erupted.

The dying man actually managed to squeeze off a round, a shot that went wild, as the impact of the Uzi slammed him against the wall. Then he fired again, almost a death tremor, and pitched forward.

Vance started to stretch for the pistol as it clattered across the floor toward him, but Novosty's voice sounded through the storm.

"Michael, do us both a favor, just leave it. I've killed enough men tonight. Three. And I knew them all. I am very weary of it, so please…" He was walking over, still holding the Uzi. "Let's have a drink and talk. This is very unsettling to my nerves."

"You and your friends screwed up a perfectly fine evening. You'd better have a good excuse." Vance watched him, very much wanting the pistol in his hands. Should he make a grab for it and take his chances?

"As I tried to tell you just now, it is very complicated."

Novosty was picking up the Baretta, grasping it carefully with a piece of wet cloth he'd ripped from the dead man's shirt. Then he looked up. "Are your prints on this?"

"Sort of figures, doesn't it? I borrowed it from him." He pointed down at the blood-soaked corpse between them.

"So we must clean it," he sighed. "What happened here tonight was a terrible accident, my friend. Obviously. How else can it be explained? There will be an international inquiry. We must now try and simplify the work of whoever has that unpleasant duty."

"You've got some explaining of your own to do. What about Eva?"

"Ah yes, Eva. She should have known better than to come here." He looked up. "Tonight simply need not have happened. It has always distressed me, the imprudence of some women." He sighed again. "I do not know if I can cover up this affair. It may well be the end for me."

"No kidding. Killing those two men out there may dampen your welcome in these parts."

"I regret to say it was necessary. They wanted to take her. But when I reasoned against it, they became suspicious. Which is why I had no choice."

Was Novosty here protecting Eva, he suddenly wondered? After all, there was age-old blood connecting them; Eva Borodin and Alex Novosty went back centuries together, centuries of Russian history. Aristocrats both, they shared family, pain, and glory from an age long before the October Revolution. But would she turn to him for refuge? No, not likely. She'd never be that desperate.

"Like you said this morning, Alex, it's unhealthy in this business to know too much. Tends to spoil all the interesting surprises."

"Yes, I agree. Ignorance is often bliss, I think that's the expression. But having solved one problem, I then faced another. What to do about them? Happily our friend here was available to help. I honestly think he would have died anyway from his neck wound." He glanced up. "Did you do this?"

"Spur of the moment."

"You are still good, Michael." He bent over and examined the severed artery again. "My compliments. You haven't lost it. An excellent job. I believe this incision would have been fatal." He turned back and smiled. "You have a surgeon's touch."

"Are you going to tell me who the hell he is, or do we play twenty questions?"

"He was… a professional acquaintance. This was most regrettable. For everyone. Mine was a distasteful task, I assure you." He sighed once more as he laid both weapons against the wall. "I will trust you, Michael. In turn you must trust me. And help me. We need to move this poor unfortunate to a more plausible location."

Vance now realized what Novosty was planning. He was about to pin the murder of the two outside on a dead man, this one. But who were they? Whoever this one was, one of his hands only had three fingers; the little finger had been cut away just below the knuckle.

"Forget it. I'm not going to help you do anything. I'm going to walk out of here, try and find Eva, and get the hell away from all this. You're a negative influence, Alex."

"My friend, be reasonable." He pointed toward the weapons. "We have work to do. We must remove all the prints from those, yours and mine, then create an accident."

"Look, you broke up a small party I had going here tonight. But now that you've ruined my evening, I damned sure don't plan to help you clean up."

"Michael, neither of us had anything to do with this unfortunate business. You or me. I wasn't even in Greece. It must have been some terrible misunderstanding among men of questionable livelihood. Tempers obviously flared. Who knows? Everybody is dead, so there can be no explanation beyond what appearances suggest." He shrugged and slipped his arms underneath the body. "Incidentally, they told me that Volodin was captured this morning. But he didn't talk. Instead he killed himself. So our situation is still secure."

"You must have a hearing problem. Maybe you ought to get it checked. I just told you it's Eva I'm going to help, not you. You can take the money and—"

"My friend, my friend, you are impetuous. Please. Everything is going as planned. But now we must move quickly." He smiled. "By the way, did you leave anything down below?"

"Just a broken bottle." Vance stared out into the rain.

"Then you might wish to make it disappear." He began dragging the body into the courtyard. "It will have prints. Glass preserves them perfectly."

He's right for once, Vance thought. Rubbing at his neck, a glimmer of pain intruding, he turned and retraced his steps into the dark, into the labyrinth.

As he descended, the chill of the palace enveloped him. He was bored with the place now, its ancient horrors and its modern ones. When the dark became too depressing, he extracted a folder of hotel matches and struck one. Its puny light flared and then expired, almost helpless against the blackness engulfing him.

The sound of crickets followed as he entered the bedroom of the queen once more. He paused a moment in the dark, then struck another match and walked over to the stone bed. There was the neck of the splintered bottle, covered with bloody fingerprints. Novosty was right about one thing: It would have opened a whole new area of inquiry. Nobody at Interpol had his prints on file, at least as far as he knew. But that wasn't good enough. Leave nothing to chance.

Carrying the fractured bottle, he began remounting the steps. This time he wanted the dark, needed it, to clear his mind, to mask the horrors of the palace. The confusion of the shootout swirled in his mind. Alex Novosty had killed three men as calmly as lighting a cigarette. Why? Was it just for the money?

When he emerged, distant lightning glinted on the ancient stones of the courtyard, contrasting brightly with the darkness below. For an instant the palace seemed magical all over again.

And there, perfectly choreographed on the wet pavement, was evidence of a lethal duel. Three bodies lay across from each other, two together and one opposite, gripping a weapon, his neck slashed. Perhaps it looked too pat, but who would know? Things happened that way.

The only participant missing was Aleksei Ilyich Novosty.

He gazed around, but he knew he would see nothing. Yes, Alex had gotten out quickly and cleanly. He'd always been hit and run.

All right, Vance told himself, now it's time to answer a few questions. Who the hell is looking for Eva, and who wants to silence her? Are they the same people?

Carefully, methodically he began to search the pockets of the two men Novosty had killed outside. He knew what he was looking for. The first appeared to be in his fifties, pockmarked cheeks, looked very Russian in spite of it all. He had a small Spanish Llama 9mm compact in a shoulder holster.

The other man was younger, though already balding. His cheeks were drawn, and blood was already staining around the two holes in his cheap polyester suit. His last expression was one of disbelief frozen in time. He's the back-up, Vance told himself, number two. That's always how they work. He should have stayed back home, maybe digging potatoes.

The passports were Bulgarian, a forgery, stamped with a Greek entry visa one week old. Port of entry: Athens. But they had to be KGB. No wonder Novosty was in trouble now. He was playing both sides of the game.

Finally he pulled around the head of the other man, the one swathed in black, the one who had almost killed him twice. This was the one he'd been saving till last, trying to guess.

A bloody, brutal face stared back at him, and through the torn shirt he could see a garish tattoo covering the back and chest. At first he couldn't believe it, so he lit a match and cupped it against the rain while he ripped open the rest of the cloth to be sure. History swirled around him.

Irezumi. The rose-colored dragon-and-phoenix tattoo was regulation issue — insignia of a kobun of the right-wing ultranationalist Mino-gumi, the foremost Yakuza crime syndicate of Japan. He knew it well.

Chapter Five

Andrei Petrovich Androv, director of propulsion systems, gazed out across the windy strait, feeling the chill of the sea air cut through his fur-lined trench coat.

Physically, he was almost mythic, a giant from Grimms' fairy tales. He had a heavy face nature should wish on no man, tousled gray hair, bushy eyebrows eternally cocked in skepticism, and a powerful taste for Beethoven's string quartets, which he played incessantly in the instrument room. He bore, in fact, more than a passing resemblance to that aging, half-mad genius. Now seventy-one, he, too, possessed a monumental mind and was acknowledged worldwide as the founding intellect behind the Soviet space program.

Yes, he was thinking, this location had been ideal. Here in remote Hokkaido they had constructed a high-security facility surrounded by wind-swept wilderness — virgin forests and snow-covered volcanoes. Even for him, a man long used to the harsh winters of Baikonur, the almost Siberian weather along this coast was intimidating. This was the most isolated, austere, and yes, lonely spot he'd ever known.

But it was the perfect site. Mino Industries had insisted, rightly, on this northernmost point of Japan for the facility, here in a national park on Cape Soya, fifty kilometers west of Wakkanai. The facility itself had been constructed entirely underground, excavated beneath this rocky northern coast in order to be secure and invisible to satellite reconnaisance, both Soviet and American. Such excessive precautions, hardly a problem in the New Mexico desert when the first atomic bomb was tested, were the order of the day in this new era of space photography. Nowadays you even had to find ways to mask telltale waste heat expulsion, which always betrayed an unmistakable infrared signature.

In that respect, too, their choice of this spot was strategic, with the freezing currents of the La Perouse Strait between northern Hokkaido and Sakhalin providing a continuous and thermally stable 12 degrees Celsius feed for the heat exchangers. Only the ten-thousand-meter test runway could not be concealed full-time, but it had been carefully camouflaged and was used only at night.

A massive breaker crashed against the rocks at the north end of the shore, sending ice-flecked spray upward into the morning mist. As he watched the freezing cloud and felt its ice collecting on his cheeks, he glanced at his watch. It was seven-forty. He took one last survey of the choppy gray sea and turned back. His daily morning walk down to the shore had achieved its purpose: His mind was as sharp as the icy wind whistling through the rocks. He needed to be at Number One by 0800 hours, when the final test run was scheduled to begin.

As he did every morning, he retraced the concrete steps that led down to the stainless steel entry door leading into the West Quadrant. When he reached it, he inserted a coded plastic card into the slot, pronounced his name into the black microphone flush with the metal doorframe, and signaled the TV eye. Two seconds later a simulated voice from the computer granted him access, the door sliding aside.

He nodded to the guards, then moved on down the long neon-lit, gray hallway. When he reached the unmarked door of Number One, he paused to listen. The whine of the fans was still a high growl as the engineers ran through the warm-up preparatory to bringing its six 25,000-horse- power motors to full power. Contenting himself that vibration in the fan housings remained at acceptable levels, he flashed his ID to the guard, inserted his magnetic card, and shoved open the door.

Without a word, he marched to his desk by the main video panel and slipped a scratched old Melodiya disk onto his ancient turntable. Moments later, the first movement of Beethoven's Quartet in A Minor boomed from the speakers.

"We are ready to switch on the laser field, Doktor Androv." A young Soviet technician approached gingerly. "If you wish, we can direct the holograms here to the master terminal."

"More of your pretty pictures?" He was examining the data on the video screens. Then he nodded. "Da. Ya gotov. When you will."

As he stared at the screens, he again found himself growing pensive. The project was all but finished now. His lifelong dream.

He silently counted their breakthroughs. The new material being used for the leading edges and scramjet struts, a proprietary titanium alloy coated with a ceramic skin, had turned out to be much lighter than aluminum and eight times as strong. Full-scale sections of the leading edges of the wings and the engine struts had been subjected to ten- minute blasts of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit air at Mach 7 in the high-temperature tunnel with no deformation or structural failure.

Then the turboramjet-scramjets, four meters in diameter and nine meters long, had all been given full-scale static tests at the aeropropulsion facility in the south, where they were operated to Mach 8 at temperatures ranging from minus 100 to over 1900 degrees Fahrenheit. Massive refrigeration units and gas heaters had been used to achieve the temperature range, while liquefied air was pumped into the intakes to duplicate a complete hypersonic duty cycle.

Maybe, he thought, they were ready for a full-scale test flight. Only one problem remained: a hint of supersonic wave drag the low-temperature helium wind tunnel had shown could develop behind the leading edges. He had ordered the project director to run a computer simulation examining the performance of two new ceramic spoilers, modified canard foreplanes, and the preliminary results indicated the drag would be effectively damped. Still, he was determined to test that design modification with a full run-up here in Number One, the massive hypersonic tunnel that contained a ten-meter scale model of the vehicle.

As he sat thinking, he neglected to acknowledge the arrival of the project director, now advancing down the concrete steps that led from the steel entry door.

"Dobriy utro, Doktor Androv." Taro Ikeda's good-morning greeting was heavily accented. "Kak pashaviatye?"

"Khoroshau." Andrei Petrovich Androv nodded absently, still engaged in his thoughts. "Dobriy utro."

"Today I have more good news," Ikeda continued as he headed for the coffee urn. "My 0730 briefing included a report that during the night our Tsukuba team completed a simulation of the aerodynamic performance of your suggested modification all the way to Mach 25. Just as you envisioned, leading-edge deformation and vortex bursts were reduced to values well within the acceptable envelope." He looked back. "Which makes me question whether we really need to proceed with this morning's run."

"Your SX-10 only tells us how a fuselage performs if airflows are ideal," Androv replied. "At hypersonic temperatures and velocities air doesn't behave predictably, like a perfect gas. Fluid dynamics models can only give us approximations of actual characteristics." He glanced up from the video control panel, his face determined. "It is my son, Yuri, who will be in the cockpit of these vehicles, and my experience is you never put your faith in simulations. In the hypersonic regime, computer simulations are just guesswork, a shortcut not worth a drozhky driver's fart."

"As you wish," Ikeda replied evenly, taking his first sip of coffee.

In truth, Andrei Androv did not dismiss simulations out of hand. He knew their Fujitsu supercomputer was truly a marvel, capable of replicating the aerodynamic characteristics of a given fuselage component, modifying it, testing it, over and over millions of times, iterating to the optimum design in almost the twinkling of an eye.

In every respect the high technology available here was astonishing. Take their hypersonic wind tunnel. Its laser probes shone thin slices of coherent light through the swirling air currents, revealing complexities otherwise hidden amid whorls of turbulence. These data were then enhanced through holography, which used the laser light to create colored 3-D representations of the flow around the model. Finally those holograms were fed into the supercomputer and analyzed from all angles.

This project would have been impossible anywhere else on earth. But here, the foreign team had created a feather-light hypersonic airframe that used turbo-ramjets for horizontal takeoff and then changed their geometry into fuel-injected supersonic combustion ramjets, or scramjets, which combusted fuel and atmospheric oxygen using an internal shock wave instead of conventional compressors to achieve orbital velocity, Mach 25. It was his dream come true.

"Brief me again on the simulation." Androv turned back to Ikeda. "You say you went all the way to our maximum design objective?"

"We ran through the entire flight profile in real time," the other man replied. "There were no stability problems whatsoever. Either during the power-up or during the switch-over to scramjet engine geometry at Mach 4.8."

"Encouraging, encouraging." Androv turned back to his video panel as the fans continued to accelerate. The violins of the A Minor quartet, his favorite of all Beethoven's late works, washed over the room. "All the same, we must run a complete sequence here for any design alterations."

He then fell silent, studying the screens. Mach 25. That was — yes — almost seventeen thousand miles per hour. A velocity greater than any existing missile. And it was air-breathing!

Their supercomputer's revolutionary aerodynamic design had made it possible. Problem: at velocities higher than Mach 5 unprecedented airflows were required, due to heat buildup in the fuel-injection struts and the shortage of oxygen at rarified altitudes. Solution: the entire underside of the vehicle had been shaped to serve as an extension of the intakes for the twelve massive scramjets. The fuselage of the plane itself was going to act as a giant funnel, scooping in air. And it had appeared to work, at least in the computer. Then finally the Japanese engineers had perfected the liquid-air-cycle process, permitting the cryogenic hydrogen fuel to be used to liquefy a portion of the incoming air and inject it under high pressure into the engine. The final, essential breakthrough.

Andrei Androv was both an idealist and a pragmatist. In Russia you had to be. That education began almost half a century earlier when, as a student, he had been on hand to assist in the first free flight of a Russian-made liquid fuel rocket, at an army base just outside Moscow. He had experienced the exhilaration of a new frontier, and plunging himself into the new science of rocketry, he had become a self-taught expert who published theoretical works read and praised by men three times his age.

Ironically, therefore, Andrei Petrovich Androv had not enjoyed the luxury of being ignored, as the American rocket pioneer Goddard had been. Joseph Stalin, always paranoid, decided that the rocket researchers' "fireworks" were "dangerous to the country." Consequently, Andrei Petrovich Androv was arrested, interrogated at Butyrskaya Prison in Moscow, and dispatched on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to a convict coal mine on the Pacific coast.

Eventually the political winds shifted. As a recognized rocket expert, he was part of the 1946 Soviet team that shipped German scientists and V-2 launchers back to Russia. Finally, under Khrushchev, he rose to genuine prominence, since that general secretary believed that only rockets, not manned aircraft, had the range to drop bombs on the U.S. Nikita S. Khrushchev put Andrei Androv in charge of all Soviet rocketry, and Andrei Androv put Russia in space.

He'd been in charge of constructing the sprawling Baikonur Cosmodrome, near Tyuratram in Kazakhstan, central Asia, still the world's largest space center. From it he orbited the world's first satellite, Sputnik, and the world's first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin. He knew the byways of that top-secret facility almost better than he knew his own living room — the gantry systems, the fueling apparatus, the clean rooms, the rocket assembly areas, the sectors where satellites were readied. Most recently, in 1987, he had been in charge of the successful first test launch of the most powerful vehicle the world had ever seen — the Energia, propelled by liquid hydrogen engines capable of lifting a hundred-ton space platform into orbit.

Also during that time his only son, Yuri Andreevich, had become the Soviet Union's leading test pilot. Yuri was rarely home, and then, nine years ago, Andrei Androv's wife had died of pneumonia. Isolated in the long, snowy nights at Baikonur, he'd consoled himself with string quartets, his studies of classical Greek, and his designs, his dreams of the ultimate space vehicle.

But he knew Russia would never be able to build it alone. Soviet computer and materials technology already was slipping behind those of the West.

He grimaced to think how his country had been brought to today's humiliating state of affairs, reduced to bargaining with foreigners like Arabs in a medina. Eventually, though, pragmatism had overruled all. Underlying this bizarre new alliance was one simple reality: the USSR needed Japanese high technology desperately. And it needed that technology now.

It had begun two years earlier, when the president himself had paid a surprise secret visit to the space complex at Baikonur, supposedly to review the Energia launch schedule. That, however, was merely the official excuse. He actually had an entirely different agenda.

Without saying why, he had invited his old friend Andrei Petrovich Androv to join him at the secluded hunting lodge where he was staying — to talk, one-on-one, about the future of Soviet science. As that long snowy evening wore on, wind whistling through the log walls and pine smoke clouding the air, their conversation had turned to hard truths and blunt language.

In vino, Veritas. By midnight, the uniformed bodyguards outside were stamping their heavy boots to keep warm, and Andrei Petrovich and Mikhail Sergeevich were both drinking vodka directly from the bottle, had flung its tinfoil cap onto the rough-hewn boards of the cabin's floor. By then, too, the revered Andrei Petrovich Androv was boldly speaking his mind.

"Mikhail Sergeevich, time has run out for Russia. There is nothing to buy, almost nothing to eat, and prices are soaring. There is so much corruption you will not leave a Russian hospital alive unless you've bribed everyone, right down to the drunken orderlies. And those bribes can't be money. Who wants rubles? They are worthless. These days you have to bribe with vodka." He'd laughed sadly, then picked up an old copy of Pravda there by the fireplace, waved it in the air, and tossed it into the crackling flames. "When we start cooperatives, they are immediately taken over by our new mafia, Russia's ruble millionaires. Everything—"

"Perestroika will succeed in time, Andrei Petrovich," the president had insisted perfunctorily, still not having explained why they were meeting. "We are moving as rapidly as circumstances will permit. The bureaucracy—"

"Perestroika!" Androv had roared back. "Have you heard the latest joke from Moscow? Perestroika is like a country where everyone is switching from driving on the left side to the right side — gradually. Our half-measure concessions to a market economy have produced the worst of both systems. We now have a land with socialist initiative and capitalist conscience." He paused to laugh again, then sobered. "And soon, very soon, we're going to find ourselves in the technological Third World. We need a vision. Even more, we need hard currency, and Western technology now. And we need massive amounts. Nothing less can save us."

That was when the president had nodded silently, then lifted a top-secret document from his black leather briefcase. He explained that it was a proposal from a consortium of foreigners. He wanted Andrei Androv's honest assessment.

"Read this, Andrei Petrovich," he said, passing it over, "and tell me what you think. It may well be a terrible thing even to consider, but I must know your view. You, my old friend, are one of the few men I know I can trust. This proposal, can it work?"

As he squinted by the flickering light of the fire, Andrei Petrovich Androv almost couldn't believe what he was reading. Among other things, the dream he had dreamed so long was there, his for the taking. The dream of a bold venture in space achieved with a whole new level of technology.

Along with it, the Soviet Union would receive everything it needed. The foreigners would provide billions and billions in long-term, low-interest loans and a flood of subsidized consumer goods to erase the pain of perestroika, providing the president with the badly needed financing, not to mention popular support, he needed to bring it off. But there were price tags, several of them. The first would be total access to all Soviet space and propulsion technology. That component would actually make sense technically, but the others were higher, much higher. Could it be done? Should it be done?

"What do you think, Andrei Petrovich?" the president had finally spoken, his voice a whisper above the snap of embers and the howl of wind. "Do we dare?"

The room had fallen silent for a long moment. Was this some kind of trap? he almost wondered, like the old days. No, he'd quickly concluded, this time Russia was different. He would have to trust Mikhail Sergeevich. Most of all, though, he was holding his life-long ambition in his hand. At last he replied, hope mingled with apprehension.

"I think we have no choice." He had looked up at the president's troubled eyes. "You have no choice."

"Unfortunately, I think you are right." He had sighed and turned his gaze to the blackness outside the snow- banked window. "Ve tyomnuyu noch, ya znayu. Yes, Andrei Petrovich. On this dark night, I finally know what we must do."

After one final vodka, they had set about devising the scenario that would change the world forever….

The airflow around the model continued to accelerate, while laser holograms of its complex aerodynamics were now being converted by the computer into multi-colored graphic art. Androv watched the wall-size liquid crystal display screen in the control room begin generating a vivid depiction of the streams whirling past the model, simulating the incremental stages of hypersonic climb. It was like watching a hallucination, he thought, as colors swirled around the fuselage of an object seemingly composed of 3-D lines and curves.

"We are now at Mach 6, Comrade Doktor Androv." The voice of a Soviet technician interrupted his thoughts. "The laser data show that the supersonic wave drag peaks at Mach 3.8, then subsides. Your new canard foreplanes appear to be working, at least for this portion of the flight envelope."

Androv studied the screen, noncommittal. "Thus far it would appear to be so. Perhaps the SX-10 was correct. All the same, at Mach 7, I want to switch on the enhancer, then capture those data and analyze them to be doubly sure."

The hypersonic enhancer permitted wind-tunnel burst tests at far higher velocities than a conventional facility could achieve. More high tech.

"There could still be a problem," Androv continued, "when the vortex of air currents shed from the nose of the fuselage encounters the shock waves from the wings, particularly around Mach 11." He turned to Ikeda. "Those vortexes have been responsible for significant damage to several American space shuttles during reentry phase. I need to see the data."

"As you wish." The director walked to the thick glass window that looked out onto the model suspended in the airstream. The crew of technicians hovered over the controls, watching for any signs of vibration. He studied the screens for a few moments, then spoke quietly to the head of the technical team, an intense young man in spectacles. This lieutenant turned and passed the order to his colleagues, who nodded gravely and stationed themselves at the switches.

Above the roar, a brilliant arc of electricity suddenly exploded just in front of the nose of the model, adding an additional burst of pressure at Mach 6 to the velocity already passing across. It was a blinding, microsecond pulse that momentarily boosted simulated vehicle velocity to Mach 13. The lasers registered the data, then passed it directly, via microwave link, into the memory banks of the powerful SX-10 operating hundreds of miles away.

Seconds later the turbulence data appeared in visual form on the liquid crystal screen above them. As the colored numbers flashed, a cheer went up from the normally somber technicians.

"Still no sign of any wave drag outside the theoretical envelope, not even at Mach 13," the young head-technician beamed.

"Just as we simulated," Ikeda noted quietly.

This time even the grave Androv smiled. "I must congratulate all of you." He was rising from his chair, the central one facing the main controls.

"Then I will order the modification installed," Ikeda nodded, "if you formally authorize it."

"Authorized. I think you are right. Perhaps we are ready for a hypersonic test flight." Androv reached to switch off his turntable. "I would like to go down to the hangar now myself, in fact. Perhaps celebrate this moment with a glass of tea."

"Of course." Ikeda spoke quickly to his Japanese technicians, then followed the Russian out the door.

The hallways were a connected maze of brilliantly lighted and scrupulously clean tunnels. They moved down the main corridor to the central checkpoint, then turned and entered the South Quadrant, passing the various assembly sections. Those sectors were mostly quiet now, since the final work had been completed several weeks earlier.

Androv said nothing as they walked toward the doorways connecting the South Quadrant with the underground hangar. He merely whistled a portion of the third movement of the A Minor quartet, Beethoven's hymn of thanksgiving in the Greek, Lydian mode. He recalled that the English writer Aldous Huxley had once suggested that particular movement was proof of God's existence.

Was there a God? He wasn't sure. The only miracles he knew of on this earth were performed by men. He was on the verge of performing one himself.

The history of space exploration had been played out entirely in his lifetime. He himself had been the architect of much of that progress. But putting a man into space remained an expensive and dangerous proposition. Launch vehicles still exploded with alarming regularity. Man was trapped on this planet. God was still in the heavens.

Man's hope of reaching God at will required a special creation, one that could taxi off a runway just like a normal aircraft, then accelerate to hypersonic speeds, reaching low-earth orbit. An air-breathing space vehicle. Its potential for the peaceful exploration of near-earth space defied imagination.

Peace. All his life, Andrei Petrovich Androv had worked in the shadow of war. Now, at last, he had created the ultimate symbol of peace.

The entry to the hangar was secured, but when the guards saw Dr. Androv and the project director approaching, they saluted and punched in the codes on the locks. Moments later the heavy steel doors slid aside, revealing the brilliant lights of the hangar. It was cavernous, over a hundred feet high, with gantries now standing idle along the walls. White-coated technicians swarmed over the two prototypes, checking the final seals, while others were on twenty-foot-high trucks servicing the engines.

Looming above them were what appeared to be two giant prehistoric birds, streaks of gleaming silver over three hundred feet in length, with pen-sharp noses that dipped rakishly downward. Androv paused to admire them a moment, marveling in spite of himself. The long, sleek lines swept back in a clean curve, without the interruption of a windshield. The "cockpit," in fact, was deep inside the nose, where shock waves would not impact the computer guidance system. From the nose its lines burgeoned into a sharp, clean fan, and beneath the two abbreviated wings were suspended twelve massive turboramjet-scramjets. They had already been certified at Mach 4.5. In ten days one of these vehicles would achieve the ultimate. Mach 25, seventeen thousand miles per hour.

The Americans had code-named their fledgling design for a hypersonic space plane — still at least a decade away— the X-30. But no such mundane designation would satisfy Andrei Petrovich Androv, devoted disciple of the ancients. He had long believed the Americans were high-tech vulgarians with no poetry in their soul, no sense of history.

Across the towering tail assembly of both aircraft was an insignia that symbolized the joining of two of the world's great superpowers, a double ax. And along their titanium-composite fuselage was lettered a single word, in Cyrillic characters. Andrei Androv had insisted on that name, in celebration of the first human ever to soar above the earth, the dream of ancient man. Now, he had declared, four thousand years later, there was another dream, his dream, a hypersonic vehicle that could loft man directly into space from anywhere on the planet.

He had dreamed that dream. And the Mino Industries Group had permitted him to pick the name for the creation that would realize it, for the miracle that would master time and space, the earth itself…

DAEDALUS

Yuri Androv stood at the far end of the flood-lit hangar, staring up at the underbelly of Daedalus I and thinking. This morning's run-up in the centrifuge had gone well. At last he was convinced there was no physiological barrier to hypersonic flight, at least none he couldn't handle. The scramjets had all been put through their paces at the aero-propulsion facility. On the test stand, at least, they met their specifications.

Yes, he was thinking, this plane just might do it. He would ease through the Mach 4.8 barrier slowly, then convert to scramjet geometry, switch to liquid hydrogen, and go full throttle. It was scary, sure, but you only lived once. Fuck the danger.

The prospect was exhilarating and chilling. He looked up, again awed. Even for someone who'd seen and flown them all, this was an inspiring creation. Not only was it easily the most technologically advanced flight vehicle in the world, it also was stunningly beautiful.

Right now, however, there were two simple problems: first, without a hypersonic test flight nobody could really be sure it would do what it was supposed to; second, as of now both prototypes still belonged to Mino Industries and would continue to belong to Mino Industries until the final treaty and agreement were signed.

Actually, taking the Daedalus hypersonic might be the least of the project's worries. That was the part he knew how to handle. The unknowns lay in another direction entirely, the strategic direction.

Strategically, he still didn't trust Russia's new partner. From what he'd heard, the conditions demanded in return for all their high technology had been heavy, and that was just the short-term price. The long-term cost might be even greater. Was the Soviet Union about to become the financial and technological captive of a shadowy group of foreigners, men whose identities remained, even now, shrouded in secrecy? Was this a Faustian bargain?

Just then he noticed the doors at the far end of the hangar slide open and two men in white lab coats enter. Perfect timing, he thought. Even at that distance he knew immediately who they were: the joint venture's two top technical officers: his father, Andrei Petrovich Androv, and Taro Ikeda, the project director for the Japanese team. The men held equal authority. Supposedly. But in fact all the real decisions on this project were being made by somebody else entirely. The shots were actually being called from a skyscraper in Tokyo, by a mysterious CEO known as Tanzan Mino.

Now Ikeda and the elder Androv were headed his way. As he watched Ikeda, he felt himself involuntarily stiffen. Perhaps his unease about the man was his intuitive, right brain working, trying to tell him something. But what? All communications with the CEO were channeled through Ikeda. Fair enough, he told himself, he was accustomed to secrecy. Maybe Japanese industrialists were as careful about protecting their asses as the Soviet nomenklatura were. Maybe it was just part of the landscape here too. But still…

"Strastvitya, Yuri Andreevich." Ikeda smiled, extending his pale hand as he simultaneously bowed. "Kak pashaviatye?"

"Khoroshau. Spahcebo." He shook Ikeda's hand, then nodded toward his father. "If this is a good time, I'd like to discuss the scramjet power-up sequence with Dr. Androv for a few moments."

"If it's anything serious, then perhaps we should all confer with the prime contractors," Ikeda responded smoothly. "Right now, in my office. In fact, I was just on the phone with—"

"No need to bring them in. Just a few technical items, nothing more."

"Yuri Andreevich." Ikeda smiled and bowed again, his eyes trying to display a warmth they clearly did not possess. "Every issue here is of importance to us all. If—"

"Not every nut and bolt," he interrupted. "I just have some sequencing questions, that's all."

Ikeda bowed once more, quickly. "You know we are all depending on you. No one in Japan has the experience to take up a plane like this. At least not at this stage of the project. So be aware that any matter weighing upon the success of your test flight, or your safety—" he flashed another quick, concerned smile " — is naturally of gravest concern to me, and to the CEO."

"Then you should be glad to hear the power-up simulation in the centrifuge this morning took me right through Mach 9.8 with no problems. Which means the scramjet ignition sequence looks like a go."

"Congratulations." Ikeda nodded.

"One last thing. I'll be sending a memo to Engineering about a modification of the cockpit, to permit more latitude in the seat. Nothing major. I think we could still reduce vascular stress in the high-G regime."

Andrei Androv noticed the look of concern on his son's face. "Yuri, you seem troubled. This morning, did anything—?"

"Of course, send Engineering your memo by all means,"

Ikeda interjected. "I'll personally see it's taken care of. We want nothing to go wrong. Not even the smallest—"

"Good. That's all I want." Yuri turned and wrapped his arm around his father's aging shoulders, gently urging him in the direction of the trucks stationed beneath the silver nose of Daedalus I. He wanted to get rid of Ikeda so he could talk. After they moved a few feet, he yelled back over his shoulder. "But wait on the decision till you read my memo."

"As you wish." Ikeda nodded farewell. "I'll be in my office until 1300 hours if we need contractor input."

Which meant, Yuri knew, that no further communication with him was permissible after that time. Technical consultations were only held during mornings. Afternoons he seemed to have other pressing matters to attend to.

"Yuri, the run-up in Number One went well this morning. I think we've finally eliminated the supersonic wave drag." The elder Androv was heading over to check the hydraulic lifts supporting the landing gear and its heavy 22-ply retractable tires. Then he glanced back and smiled. "I'm beginning to believe in miracles. We might just succeed."

"If those damned scramjets up there," he pointed skyward, "actually achieve ignition when they're supposed to."

"I've studied the static-test data carefully. At the propulsion facility they routinely achieved ignition at Mach 4.8. The numbers were there and they looked all right. Temperature regime, pounds thrust, all the rest."

What's really happening, Yuri thought suddenly, is they've taken our engineering design and built it. But what if we're just being used somehow, having our brains picked, our expertise stolen? Then what?

He said nothing, though, just listened quietly as the older man continued.

"Also, the new ceramic composite they've come up with for the fuel injection struts was heated to thirty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit and repeatedly stress-tested. Those data were particularly impressive. You know, the struts have always been the Achilles heel for a scramjet, since the fuel has to be injected directly through them into the combustion chamber. They have to withstand shock waves, and thermal stresses, far beyond anything ever encountered in a conventional engine. Nobody else has ever come up with a material that can do it. Not us, not the Americans, not anybody. But now, their high-temperature materials and liquid air cycle have finally made the scramjet concept a reality. The last roadblock is gone." He looked up, still marveling. "All we or the Americans can do is make engineering drawings of those engines, just pictures."

"I hope you're right. But when we switch over from JP-7 to liquid hydrogen, nobody knows what can happen. It's never been done before."

"Are you really worried?" The old man studied him.

"Damned right I am. Who wouldn't be?" He looked around at the milling Japanese technicians, then lowered his voice. "And I'll tell you something else. There're other things around here worrying me too, maybe even more. Something about this project is starting to feel wrong."

"What do you mean?" Andrei stared.

"I'm beginning to suspect… I don't know. So far it's just a sense, but—"

"Yuri, let me tell you a hard fact," the elder Androv interjected. "Like it or not, this project is the only chance the Soviet Union has to ever own a vehicle like this."

"That may be true, but if we—"

"Remember the sad fate of the TU-144," he went on, "the supersonic passenger plane we built based on some engineering drawings for the Concorde we managed to get hold of. We copied it, but we got it wrong, and in 1973 we had that horrible tragedy at the Paris Air Show, when it crashed in a ball of fire. That was the end of it. We failed, and it was humiliating. The Soviet Union couldn't even build a supersonic passenger jet. The real truth is, we didn't have the computers we needed to design it." He looked up, smiling. "But now, all that humiliation will be undone."

Yuri suddenly realized his father was being swept up in his dreams. The same way he sometimes got lost in those damned string quartets, or reading Euripides in the original Greek. He was going off in his fantasy world again. He couldn't see that maybe he was being used.

"Have you ever wondered where this project is going to lead? Where it has to lead?"

"It will lead the way to peace. It will be a symbol of cooperation between two great nations, demonstrating that the human spirit can triumph."

"Moi otyets, it could just as well 'lead the way' to something else entirely. Don't you realize what's happening here? We're giving away our thruster engineering, Russia's leading technology. It's the one area where we still lead the world. We've just handed it over… for the price of one fucking airplane. And even if we eventually get our hands on these prototypes, we can't build more without begging the materials from them. We can't fabricate these composite alloys in the Soviet Union."

"But this is a joint venture. Everything will be shared." He smiled again, his face gnome-like beneath his mane of white hair. "It will also give us both a chance to overcome the lead of Europe and America in commercial passenger transport in the next century. That's what this is all about. The future of nonmilitary aviation, it's right here."

"Do you really believe that?" He stifled a snort of incredulity. "Don't you see what this vehicle really is? Let me tell you. It's the most deadly weapons delivery system the world has ever seen. And we're showing them how to build it, even testing it for them to make sure it'll perform."

"The Daedalus will never be a military plane. I would never have participated if I thought—"

"Exactly. That's what they want us to believe. But it sure as hell could be. And Mino Industries will be the only company on earth that can actually build more of them." He sensed it was useless to argue further. Nothing mattered to Andrei Petrovich Androv except what he wanted to believe. At this point, nothing could be done to expose the dangers, because nobody on the Soviet team would listen.

Or maybe there was something. Why not make a small revision in the test flight? Once he was aloft, what was anybody going to do? He would be up there, alone. If he could get around their flight computer, he might just show the world a thing or two. He'd been thinking about it for weeks now.

"All right." He turned back. "If this thing is supposedly ready to fly, then I'll fly it. But get ready for some surprises."

"Yuri, what are you planning?"

"Just a small unscheduled maneuver." The hell with it, he thought. "They've got seven days, and then I take it up… and power-in the scramjets. I'm ready to go. Tell Ikeda to prepare to have liquid hydrogen pumped into the tanks."

"But that's not how we've structured the test schedule." Andrei examined him, startled. Yuri had always been fiery, but never irrational. "We need ten—"

"Fuck the schedule. I'm going to take this vehicle hypersonic in a week, or they can get themselves another test pilot." He turned away. "Reschedule, or forget it. We don't have much time left. Once all the agreements are signed—"

"Yuri, I don't like this." His eyes were grave. "It's not—"

"Just tell them to get Daedalus I prepped. I think these bastards that call themselves Mino Industries have a whole agenda they're not telling us about. But I'm about to rearrange their timetable."

Chapter Six

A very wet, very annoyed Michael Vance rapped on the door of Zeno Stantopoulos's darkened kafeneion. He'd walked the lonely back road into Iraklion in the dark, guiding himself by the rain-battered groves of plane trees, olive, and wild pear, trying to figure out what in hell was happening.

To begin with, members of the intelligence services of major nations didn't go around knocking each other off; that was an unwritten rule among spooks. Very bad taste. Maybe you tried to get somebody to talk with sodium pentathol or scopolamine, but guns were stupid and everybody knew it. You could get killed with one of those things, for godsake.

So this operation, whatever it was, was outside the system. Good. That was the way he had long since learned to work.

There was a lot on his mind, and the walk, the isolation, gave him a chance to think over some of the past. In particular, the austere Cretan countryside brought to mind an evening five years ago when he'd traveled this little-used route with his father, Michael Vance, Sr. That occasion, autumn brisk with a first glimmering of starlight, they'd laughed and joked for much of the way, the old man occasionally tapping the packed earth sharply with his cane, almost as though he wanted to establish final authority over the island and make it his, once and for all. Finally, the conversation turned serious.

"Michael, don't tell me you never miss academic life," his father had finally brought himself to say, masking the remark by casually brushing aside yet another pale stone with his cane. "More and more, your theory about the palace is gaining credence. You may find yourself famous all over again. It's an enviable position."

"Maybe one turn in the snake pit was enough," he smiled. "Academia and I form a sort of mutual disrespect society."

"Well," his father had gone on, "the choice is yours, but you know I'll be retiring from Penn at the end of this term. Naturally there'll be some vicious in-house jockeying to fill my shoes, but if you'd like, I could probably arrange things with the search committee."

Vindicated at last, he'd realized. It seemed the only sin in academia greater than being wrong was being right too soon. But the small-minded universe of departmental politics was the last thing he wanted in his life. These days he played in the big time.

"I'm afraid I'll have to pass."

"I suppose university life is too limiting for you now," the old man had finally said, grudgingly but admiringly.

He'd said that, and nothing more. Two months later he'd had a second stroke and retired permanently. These days he grew orchids in Darien, Connecticut, and penned impassioned longhand letters to the Times every day or so, just to keep his capacity for moral outrage honed.

Vance had definitely gone his own way. First he'd published a book that rocked the scholarly world; then he'd compounded that offense by walking out on the brouhaha that followed and going free-lance, starting his own business. Next he'd become involved with the Washington intelligence community, and finally he'd begun working with the Association of Retired Mercenaries. It was a universe so alien to his father it might as well have been on Mars. But if the old man was disappointed that Michael Vance, Jr., hadn't turned out the way he'd planned, he still took pride in his son.

Now, though, Stuttgart and the restoration of Phaistos would have to be put on hold till the latest game with Novosty was sorted out. The protocol. It was still running through his mind. Could there be some sort of alliance cooking between the Soviets and the Japanese mob? What in hell…?

"Michael, she is here." A hoarse whisper emerged as the rickety wooden door of the kafeneion edged open. Zeno tugged down his nightshirt and carefully edged it wider, squinting out at the street. "Come in. Quickly. Before you are seen."

So his guess had been right: she was avoiding the hotel. Good move. Smart and typical of Eva. She was handling this one exactly right.

He stepped through the door. "Where is she now?"

"She's in back. Adriana gave her something to make her sleep." Zeno was pulling out a chair from one of the empty tables. The room was shrouded in darkness, and the stale odor of the kitchen permeated the air. "She was not herself, Michael. What happened? She claimed someone was trying to murder her. At the palace. Did you two—?"

"We tried throwing a party, but it started getting crowded." He looked around. "I could use some of that raki of yours. I just had a close encounter with a guy you wouldn't sit down next to on a bus. He refused to leave politely so… I had to make him disappear. Bad scene."

"You killed him?"

"He was shooting, at Eva and me. Very unsociable." He glanced toward the back of the darkened room. "Zeno, our party guest tonight was — you're not going to believe this— a Japanese hood. Tell me something. Is the Yakuza trying to get a foothold in Crete? You know, maybe buying up property? That's their usual style. It's more or less how they first moved in on Hawaii."

"Michael, this country is so poor, there's nothing here for gangsters to steal." He laughed. "Let me tell you a secret. If a stranger came around here and tried to muscle me, or any of my friends, he would not live to see the sun tomorrow. Even the Sicilian Cosa Nostra is afraid of us. Crete is still a small village in many ways, in spite of the crazy tourists. We tolerate strangers, even open our homes to them if they are well behaved, but we know each other's secrets like a family. So, to answer your question, the idea of a Japanese syndicate coming here is impossible to imagine. You know that as well as I do."

"That's what I thought. But I saw a kobun from the biggest Yakuza organization in Japan tonight. I know because I had a little tango with their godfather a few years back. Anyway, what's one of his street men doing here, shooting at Eva and me?" He paused as the implications of the night began to sink in. "This scene could start to get rough."

"You did nothing more than anybody here would have done." He looked pensive in the dim light. "Years ago, when the colonels and their junta seized Greece, I once had to—" He hesitated. "Sometimes we do things we don't like to talk about afterwards. But you always remember the eyes of a man you must kill. You dream about them."

"Our party lighting was pretty minimal. It was too dark to make out his eyes."

"Then you are luckier than you know." He glanced away. "This was not somebody you knew from another job, Michael? Perhaps the mercenary group you sometimes—"

"Never saw the guy before in my life, swear to God. Anyway, I think it was Eva he really wanted. But whatever's going on, I have to get her out of Crete now, before whoever it is finds her again."

"I agree." He was turning toward the living quarters in the rear. "You should stay here tonight, and then tomorrow we can get you both passage on the car ferry to Athens, off the island. I will take care of everything. Tickets, all of it." He returned carrying two tumblers of raki. After setting them on the table, he continued. "I am very worried for her, Michael. And for you. We all make enemies, but—" He took a sip from his glass. "By the way, do you have a pistol?"

"Not with me." He reached for the glass, wishing it was tequila — straight, with a twist of lime — and he was back on the Ulysses, trimming the genoa. "That's a mistake I may not make again soon."

"Then I will arrange for one. Like I said, everything. I have many friends. Do not worry." He drank again. "By the way, she asked me go to the hotel and get something for you. She seemed to think it was important. One of your modern American inventions. She had it locked in the safe at the desk. And she gave me money to pay for her room." He sighed. "Why would she waste money on a hotel when she could have stayed here with us?"

"What is it?"

"I think it's a computer, though it's barely the size of a briefcase. Part of the new age that mercifully has passed us by. I have it in back, with the rest of her things." His voice disappeared into the darkened kitchen. Moments later he reappeared carrying Eva's laptop. With a worried look he settled it gingerly on the table. "Do you have any idea why she had this with her?"

"I think she may have something stored in here." He settled it on the table and flipped up the top. Then he felt along the side for the switch, and a second later the screen glowed blue. After the operating system was in place, he punched up the files.

A long line of names filled the screen, arranged alphabetically. But nothing seemed right. It was a stream of unclassified NSA memos, and then a lot of personal letters. He resisted the temptation to call them up and delve into her private life. How many men…?

Stick to business. Save the fun for later. Where's the file?

Then he noticed the very first alphanumeric.

"Ackerman."

Hold on, he thought, wasn't that the name of the NSA guy she said gave her the disk? He highlighted the file on the screen and hit Retrieve. An instant later it appeared.

Yep, this one had to be it. Clearly an NSA document, very carefully stored.

That was it. The stream of numbers filled three pages, and then came Article II. Thus it went, for ten articles. As he scrolled up page after page, he realized that the numbers continued for the rest of the document.

She was right. Outside of occasional repetitions, there seemed to be no real pattern. He'd seen a lot of encryptions in the old days, but this one didn't look like anything standard.

He sat staring at the screen. Mino Industries Group. That explained the Mino-gumi goon. The godfather was planning his biggest play yet, global.

But what was it? What was in the deal? This was something he had to see.

Eva had said she tried the Data Encryption Standard, the DES system, and got nowhere. Which meant NSA had been foiled. How had he done it?

DES was a procedure whereby data were passed through a series of eight S-boxes, actually mathematical operations, that when combined with a unique user key converted it into what appeared to be alphanumeric garbage. The receiver also had a copy of the key, which could be used in combination with the same set of mathematical operations to convert it back.

He knew that back when DES was being invented by IBM, the National Security Agency had purposely sabotaged Big Blue's original plan to make it uncrackable. NSA had insisted that the key, a string of zeroes and ones, be limited to 56 bits, rather than the proposed 128 bits, which would have made the system so complex it would have been safe forever. The reason, of course, was that NSA didn't want an unbreakable cipher loose on the planet; after all, their primary business was reading other people's mail. IBM didn't know it at the time, but the smaller key was already a pushover for NSA's Cray supercomputers, which could try a trillion random keys per second and routinely crack any 56-bit DES encryption in the world in half a day.

Anybody familiar with the intelligence business was well aware of that. Which was, obviously, why somebody had turned to NSA.

But Eva said she'd tried the usual random-key procedure and got nowhere. So what was the answer?

His head was buzzing from the raki now, but he kept turning over in his mind the possibility that she'd been looking in the wrong place. Trying to find the DES key when in fact this encryption used some entirely different scheme.

He rubbed at his temples and tried to run the scenario backward.

Project Daedalus. The more he thought about it, the more…

"Zeno." He looked up from the screen. "Do you still have that copy of Realm of the Spirit?" He'd sent the old Greek an autographed first edition the week it came out.

"Your book, Michael? Of course I have it. I treasure it. It's in the bedroom, in back."

"Mind getting it for me? I feel like a little light reading."

"At four in the morning? Michael, I think—"

"You know how it is when your mind gets filled up with garbage at bedtime."

"You should be getting some sleep, like Eva. Tomorrow we have to—"

"I need to relax a little first. And I need that book. There's a chart in the appendix guaranteed to put anybody to sleep."

"Very well." He sighed, drank off the last of his raki, and pulled himself erect. "Sometimes you can be as headstrong as your father."

As quiet settled over the room, Vance continued to stare at the screen. Why did he have a hunch he was right on this one? Could he really crack a cypher with a 486 portable when NSA's Cray supercomputers had bombed?

Maybe. Stranger things had happened. The samurai swordsmen said you needed to know your opponent's mind. Here, in the waning hours before dawn in the middle of Crete, he was feeling a curious oneness with whoever had devised this random-looking string of numbers. He'd created number strings just like this himself, back before the CIA had come into his life.

"Here it is, Michael. Adriana said Eva is still asleep. I don't know what she gave her, perhaps one of her old wives potions." He chuckled quietly. "That's one of the reasons I love her so much. When you get ancient like I am, it's good to be married to a nurse."

Vance took the book and, in spite of himself, weighed it in his hand. What was it? maybe two pounds? The glistening dust jacket, unusual for a university book back in those days, was still pristine. He smiled, realizing it was unread.

"Thanks." He finally remembered Zeno. "This should do the trick. Now why don't you go on to bed? I'll just stretch out here on a table when I get sleepy."

"Michael, sometimes I think you are a madman." He shrugged, then turned to hobble back toward the bedroom. "Just don't answer the door, whatever you do."

"Get some sleep. I'll be doing the same."

"Then good night. May God give you rest." He was gone.

Vance barely nodded, since he was already turning to the appendix of the book and switching on the dim overhead light. The volume brought back a world long lost for him. Now he wanted it back, if only for a moment.

He flipped to Appendix C. There he'd reproduced, as a dutiful scholar should, the standard numerical correlates for the syllabary of Linear B.

The numbers continued on to ninety. He checked the files and, sure enough, she had a Lotus data management system on the hard disk. He quickly structured a format for his matrix, then began coding in the sounds. The setup was simple, but the next part would need some programming. The numbers in the protocol had to be converted to sounds. It looked easy, but what if they'd been deliberately garbled somehow? He'd be no better off than before.

Think positive.

As he finished coding in the grid, he could hear the tentative stirrings of early morning Iraklion outside. Trucks were starting up, birds coming alive. He began noticing the lack of sleep, but he pushed it aside and took another sip of raki. Just keep going, he told himself. You're about to find out if great minds really do think alike….

"Darling, what in the world are you doing with my computer?" The voice was like a whisper over his shoulder.

"How about checking to see if you've got any video games?" He turned around, startled in spite of himself. What had woken her? She was probably wired. "Eva, why did you take off tonight? And what was that nonsense you were yelling at me?"

"Maybe it wasn't nonsense. Alex said you were working for him. He said you two were partners. It's not really true, is it?" She slumped into a chair. She was wearing a light dressing gown, her hair tousled. With a groan she rubbed at her eyes. "I don't need this."

"You can forget about Alex. He's playing way over his head. It's always bad judgment to underestimate the other team's strengths." He reached for her. "You've just got to decide who you trust. You might start with Zeno. He's offered to help me get you out of Crete."

"And go where?" She moved against him. "Michael, they found me here. They'll find me anywhere."

"Not if we turn this scene around and take the action to them. But that's the next move. Right now, you just have to be out of Crete while I do a little checking. How about flying to Miami, grabbing a plane down to Nassau, then—"

"You're going to get me on the Ulysses or die trying, aren't you."

He decided to let the crack pass. It was true, however. If she ever saw it, he was sure she'd start to understand.

"You know," she went on, "this afternoon I was merely worried. Now I'm actually frightened. Guess I'm not as brave as I thought. I'm sorry about tonight, running off like that."

"Not the first time I've had a woman give me the gate." He laughed, then reached out and stroked her hair, missing the long tresses of the old days. "Now, you can help me out with something. Does the name Yakuza mean anything to you?"

"What are you talking about?" She studied him, puzzled.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this, maybe it'll just upset your morning, but that wiseguy who broke up our party last night was a Japanese hood. From the Mino-gumi syndicate. Back home they're Numero Uno. They run Tokyo and Osaka and they've got half the Liberal Democratic Party in their pocket. Then there's the old CIA connection, from days gone by."

"How do you know?"

"After you took off, our friend dropped in again. Uninvited as usual. That's when Novosty finished him off with his Uzi and I got a closer look."

"Alex killed—! My God, that makes three."

"By actual count. He's gone a little trigger happy in his old age. That or he's very, very scared." He rubbed at the scratch on his neck, remembering. "What if it's the Japanese mob that's behind this? They have the funding, that's for sure. Among other things, they run consumer loans in Japan, legalized loan sharking. They've got more money than God."

"This is too much. I don't know anything about…" She rose, trembling. "I'll go with you to Nassau, Michael. Let's take the Ulysses and just disappear in the middle of the Atlantic."

"It's a deal." He beamed. "But first we've got to answer some questions. You say the Yakuza are not part of anything you know about?"

"I'm only vaguely aware they exist."

"And you don't know who runs Mino Industries?"

"Never heard of it before."

"It's a bunch of nice, clean-cut mobsters. Problem is, one of the owner's kobun, street men, tried to kill us tonight. Maybe we're finally getting a little light at the end of the tunnel." He looked her over. Eva was always beautiful in the mornings. There was something wanton about her this time of day. "Come here a minute."

He took her and cradled her in his arms, then brushed his lips against her brow. "You okay?"

"I think so." She took a deep breath.

"Never knew you to quit just because things got tough." He drew her around. "You're the cryptography expert. Why don't we try to find out what kind of phonetics Ventris's numerical correlates for Linear B would produce from these numbers?"

"What are you talking about?" She rubbed at her eyes.

"You know, in my travels I've discovered something. A great mind often has a touch of poetry. Sometimes, in order to think like the other guy, you need to be a little artistic. So, I wonder… about that cipher."

"You mean—?"

"Just a crazy, early morning idea." He patted the keyboard of the laptop. "What if the mind behind it is using a system no computer in the world would ever have heard of?"

"There's no such thing, believe me."

"Maybe yes, maybe no." He flipped open his book to the central section, a glossy portfolio of photos. He'd shot them himself with an old Nikon. "Take a look at this and refresh your memory."

She looked down at the photo of a large Minoan clay jar from the palace, a giant pithoi, once a container for oil or unguents or water for the bath. Along the sides were inscribed rows of wavy lines and symbols. It was the Minoan written language, which, along with cuneiform and hieroglyphics, was among the oldest in the world. "You mean Linear B."

"Language of King Minos. As you undoubtedly remember, it's actually a syllabary, and a damned good one. Each of these little pictures is a syllable, a consonant followed by a vowel. Come on, this was your thing, way back when. Look, this wavy flag here reads mi, and here, this little pitchfork with a tail reads no." He glanced up. "Anyway, surely you recall that Linear B has almost a hundred of these syllable signs. But Ventris assigned them numbers since they're so hard to reproduce in typeface. For example, this series here, mi-no-ta-ro reads numerically as—" he checked the appendix, "13-52-59-02. Run them together and minotaro reads 13525902. And just like the early Greeks, the Minoans didn't insert a space between words. If somebody was using Linear B, via Ventris' system, the thing would come out looking like an unintelligible string of numbers."

"You don't really—"

"You say you've tried everything else. NSA's Crays drew a blank. Maybe you were looking for some fancy new encryption system when it was actually one so old nobody would ever think of it. Almost four thousand years old, to be exact."

"Darling, that's very romantic. You're improving in the romance department." She gazed at him a second, then flashed a wry smile. "But I can't say the same for the good-sense arena. No offense, but that's like the kind of thing kids write to us suggesting. Nobody employs anything remotely that simple these days."

"I knew you'd think I was crazy. You're not the first." He rose. "But humor me. Just slice those number sequences into pairs and see what they look like phonetically. Something to take your mind off all the madness around here."

"Well, all right." She sighed, then settled unsteadily into the rickety chair he'd just vacated. "Make you a proposition, sweetie. Get me some coffee, nice and strong, and I'll forget I have good sense and play with this a little."

"You're a trooper." He turned and headed for the kitchen. "I remember that about you. Not to mention great in bed."

"We strive for excellence in all things."

Just as he reached the doorway, the kitchen light flicked on. It was Adriana, in blue robe and furry slippers, now reaching up to retrieve her coffee pan.

While Eva was typing away behind him, he leaned against the doorframe in his still-wet clothes to watch a Greek grandmother shuffle about her private domain preparing a traditional breakfast. He suspected no male hand had ever touched those sparkling utensils. The Old World had its ways, yesterday and forever.

While he drowsed against the doorjamb, the aroma of fresh Greek coffee began filling the room. Sarakin. That was the Japanese name for their homegrown loan sharks, the so-called salary-men financiers. He knew that the Yakuza's four largest sarakin operations gave out more consumer loans than all of Japan's banks combined. If you added to that the profits in illegal amphetamines, prostitution, bars, shakedowns of businesses, protection rackets… the usual list, and you were talking multi multibillions. The major problem was washing all that dirty money. They routinely invested in respectable but losing propositions abroad, on the sound theory that one dollar cleaned was worth two unlaundered.

Was that what the Soviet scam was all about? Money from the Japanese mob being laundered through loans to the USSR? What better way to wash it? Nobody would ever bother asking where it came from.

But there was one major problem with that neat scenario. Politically the Yakuza were ultra-rightist hardliners. So why would they expose their money with the Soviets, laundered or not? Particularly now, with so much political instability there — hardliners, reformers, nationalists. Somehow it didn't compute.

"Michael, come here a second." The voice had an edge of triumph.

"What?" He glanced around groggily.

"Just come here and take a look at this." She was staring at the screen.

He turned and walked over, still entranced by the heady, pungent essence of fresh Greek coffee now flooding the room. "Is it anything—?"

"Just look at it and tell me what you think." She leaned back from the screen and shifted the Zenith toward him. The ice-blue letters cast an eerie glow through the dull morning light. The color reflected off his eyes, matching them.

"You did it already?"

"I started with a one-to-one replacement of numbers with letters. But it's sequence-inverted, which means I had to… anyway, what do think so far? Am I a genius or what?"

He drew a chair next to the screen and started to examine it. But at that moment Adriana set a tray of coffee down beside the computer, steaming and fresh, together with dark figs and two bowls of yogurt.

"Kafe evropaiko," she commanded, then thrust a cup into his hand.

"Malista, efcharisto." He absently nodded his thanks, took a sip of the steaming brew, then returned his attention to the screen.

At first he thought he was just groggy, his vision playing tricks, but then the string of letters began to come into focus. Incredible!

"Okay, what about this part here," he asked, pointing to the fourth line, where the letters turned to nonsensical garbage, "and then down here again?"

"That's what I was talking about. The interlacing switches there. It happens every hundred numbers. They started by taking the second fifty digits and interlacing them back into the first fifty. Then they switched the algorithm and interlaced the third fifty digits ahead, into the fourth fifty, but backwards. Then it repeats again."

"You figured all that out just fooling around with it?"

"Darling, I do this for a living, for godsake. After a while you have good instincts." She tapped her fingers nervously on the wooden table, then remembered the coffee and reached for a cup. "Nice little trick. Standard but nice. Every so often you fold the data back into themselves somehow. That way there are no repetitions of number sequences — for words that are used a lot — to give you away. But once you've played with this stuff as much as I have… anyway, it's always the first thing I check for."

"Congratulations."

"Tell me the truth." She looked at him, sipping her coffee. "Can you really still read this? It's been years."

"Memory like an elephant. Though you may have to help me along now and then." He pointed. "Look. I think that word's modern Greek. They've mixed it in where there's not an old word for something." He pushed around the computer. "Want to run the whole data file through your system? Clean it up?"

"My pleasure." She was clearing the screen. "I can't believe it just fell apart like this. The reason our Crays didn't crack it was it's too simple by half."

He reached for his coffee, feeling a surge of satisfaction. His hunch had been dead on. Whoever came up with this idea for an encryption must have been a fan of ancient Greek history, and a knowledgeable one. What better cipher for Project Daedalus communiques than the language Daedalus himself used? They'd taken that four-thousand-year-old tongue, an archaic forerunner of ancient Greek, and then scrambled it using a mathematical algorithm. Mino Industries was communicating with the Soviets using an encoded version of Minoan Linear B.

It was absolutely poetic. It also appeared, upon first examination, to be very naive. Yet upon reflection it turned out to be brilliant. You convert a totally unheard-of language to numbers, throw in a few encryption tricks, and the result is something that would drive all the hotdog DES-oriented supercomputers crazy. All those chips would be trying trillions of keys when there actually was no key. Yes, you had to admit it was inspired.

Except the Daedalus crowd was about to experience a problem, a small headache. Make that a major headache. Because their secret protocol was about to become headlines. He figured that ought to go a long way toward stopping any more shooting.

"Okay. It's humming." She reached for her yogurt. "This time around all the garbage will be gone." She took a bite, then burst out laughing. "You know, this is wonderful, working with you. Darling, I've just decided. Let's do something together, maybe live on the Ulysses for a while. I might even get to like it. It sounds romantic."

"I'm still looking for the romance in life."

"Well, love, you've found it. It's me." She leaned over and kissed him on the lips. "End of quest."

"Thought I'd never hear you say that. But first you have to help me translate this. I'm over a decade out of date. My modern Greek's a little rusty too, and a lot of the technical terms in this look to be transliterated—"

"No, sweetie, that's not the first thing we have to do. The first thing is to make sure you've got a separate copy of anything you're working with. Not in the computer. I'll spare you my horror stories about erased files, hard disks going down, all the rest." She was rising, energized. "Cardinal computer rule number one. Always dupe anything you're working on, no matter how sure you are nothing can go wrong. Believe me."

"Sounds good." He looked up. "What are you doing?"

"I need that disk I showed you tonight. We can use it for the backup. It's in my purse, which I now realize I left in the car when I came in. I was slightly crazy at the time." She was turning. "God, it seems like ages."

"Look, why don't you let me—?"

"You don't know where I parked it. My secret hiding place."

"Maybe we ought to send Zeno, or Adriana—"

"Just sit tight. Only be a minute." She wrapped her coat about her and, before he could protest, disappeared out the door, humming.

She was a marvel. Everything he'd remembered.

"Are you still awake?" Zeno was trudging into the room, still wearing his frayed nightshirt.

"We just solved the riddle of the sphinx, old friend. Except now we have to translate it."

"You should be sleeping, Michael. Go now, catch an hour or so. I will start making arrangements. Get tickets for you both on the car ferry to Athens, a pistol, maybe new passports if you want. We have work to do." He reached and took the cup of coffee Adriana was urging on him.

"All right. As soon as she gets back."

"What?" He froze, then looked toward the back. "What do you mean? I thought she was still asleep."

"She went out to the car, wherever it is."

"I wish she had asked me. I would have been happy—"

"You know how she is. There's no stopping her when she gets rolling."

"This is not good." He turned and called to Adriana to bring his trousers and shoes. "We must find her."

"You're right. It was stupid. Damned stupid." He was getting up. "Let's do it together."

Chapter Seven

The morning air was sharp and she wished she'd grabbed one of Adriana's black knit shawls before going out. Could she pass for one of those stooped Greek peasant women? she wondered. Not likely. She shivered and pulled her thin coat around her.

The rain was over now, leaving the air moist and fragrant, but the early morning gloom had an ominous undertone. They'd found the key to open the first box, but the message inside still had to be translated. What was it? What could possibly be in the protocol that would make somebody want to kill her?

She stared down the vacant street leading away from the square, a mosaic of predawn shadows, and tried to think.

Alex Novosty was the classic middleman, that much was a given. But then she'd known that for years. Yes, she'd known about Alex Novosty all her life — his work for the KGB, his laundering of Techmashimport funds. She knew about it because they were second cousins. Fortunately their family tie was distant enough not to have made its way into NSA's security file, but around the Russian expatriate dinner tables of Brighton Beach and Oyster Bay, Alex was very well known indeed. He was the Romanov descendant who'd sold out to the Soviets, an unforgivable lapse of breeding.

But for all that, he wasn't an assassin. For him to do what he'd done tonight could only mean one thing: he was terrified. Very out of character. But why?

The answer to that wasn't hard: He must be mixed up in Project Daedalus, whatever it was, right up to his shifty eyeballs. But what about Michael? What did Alex want from him?

The answer to that could go a lot of ways. When she first met Michael Vance, Jr., she'd been smitten by the fact he was so different. Always kidding around, yet tough as steel when anybody crossed him. A WASP street fighter. She liked that a lot. He was somebody she felt she could depend on, no matter what.

She still remembered her first sight of Mike as though it were yesterday. She was taking notes on Etruscan pottery in a black notebook, standing in a corner of the Yale art gallery on Chapel Street, when she looked up and — no, it couldn't be. She felt herself just gawking.

He'd caught her look and strolled over with a puzzled smile. "Is my tie crooked, or—" Then he laughed. "Name's Mike Vance. I used to be part of this place. How about you?"

"Vance?" She'd just kept on staring, still not quite believing her eyes. "My thesis adviser at Penn was… you look just like him."

And he did. The same sharp chin, the same twinkle in the blue eyes. Even when he was angry, as Mike certainly had been that day, he seemed to be having fun.

Thus it began.

At first they were so right for each other it seemed as though she'd known Michael Vance for approximately a hundred years, give or take. She'd been one of his father's many ardent disciples, and after finishing her master's at Penn, she'd gone on to become a doctoral candidate at Yale, where she'd specialized in the linguistics of the ancient Aegean languages. She'd known but forgotten that Michael Vance, Sr., had a son who was finishing his own doctorate at Yale, writing a dissertation about Minoan Crete.

That day in the museum he was steaming, declaring he'd dropped by one last time as part of a ritualistic, formal farewell to archaeology. The decision was connected with the hostile reception being given a book he'd just published, a commercial version of his dissertation. As of that day he'd decided to tell academia to stuff it. He'd be doing something else for a living. There'd been feelers from some agency in D.C. about helping trace hot money.

In the brief weeks that followed they grew inseparable, the perfect couple. One weekend they'd scout the New England countryside for old-fashioned inns, the next they'd drive up to Boston to spend a day in the Museum of Fine Arts, then come back and argue and make love till dawn in her New Haven apartment. During all those days and nights, she came very close to talking him out of quitting university life. Close, but she didn't.

He had put off everything for a couple of months, and they had traveled the world — London, Greece, Morocco, Moscow. Once their parents even met, at Count Sergei Borodin's sprawling Oyster Bay home. It was a convocation of the Russian Nobility Association, with three hundred guests in attendance, and the air rang with Russian songs and balalaikas. Michael Vance, Sr., who arrived in his natty bowler, scarcely knew what to make of all the Slavic exuberance.

Shortly after that, the intensity of Michael became too much for her. She felt herself being drawn into his orbit, and she wanted an orbit of her own. The next thing she knew, he'd departed for the Caribbean; her father had died; and she'd gone back to work on her own doctorate.

Michael. He was driven, obsessive, always determined to do what he wanted, just as she was. But the tension that likeness brought to their relationship those many years ago now made everything seem to click. Why? she wondered.

Maybe it was merely as simple as life cycles. Maybe back then they were just out of synch. He'd already survived his first midlife crisis, even though he was hardly thirty. When they split up, she'd been twenty-five and at the beginning of a campaign to test herself, find out what she could do.

Well, she thought, she'd found out. She was good, very good. So now what?

She was relieved to see the car was still parked on the side street, actually a little alley, where she'd left it. Thinking more clearly now, she realized she'd been a trifle careless, stashing the car in the first location she could find and then running for Zeno's.

As she headed down the alley in between the white plaster houses, she suddenly felt her heart stop. Someone was standing next to the Saab, a dark figure waiting. She watched as it suddenly moved briskly toward her.

Alex Novosty.

"What?" She couldn't believe her eyes.

"Budetya ostorozhyi!" He whispered the warning as he raised his hand and furtively tried to urge her back.

"Kak! Shto—?" She froze. "How did you find the car?"

"The hotel. They directed us to a kafeneion near here, but then I noticed your car. I thought…" He moved out of the shadows, quickly, still speaking in Russian. "Just tell me where you have the copies of the protocol, quickly. Maybe I can still handle it."

"Handle what?" That's when she saw the two other men, in dark overcoats, against the shadow of the building.

"The… situation." His eyes were intense. "They want it back, all copies. I've tried to tell them that killing you won't solve anything, but—" He glanced back with a small shiver. "You must tell them Michael has a copy, stall them."

"It's true. He does."

"No! Then say there's a copy back in your office. Just let me try and—"

"Alex, I'm not going to play any more of your games."

"Please," he continued in a whisper, "don't contradict anything I say. Let me do the talking. I'll—"

"You're in it with them, aren't you?" She tried to push past. "Well, you can tell your friends we're onto their 'project.' If anything happens to me, Michael will track them down and personally take them apart. Tell them that."

"You don't understand." He caught her arm. "One of their people was killed tonight."

"The one trying to shoot Michael and me, you mean?" She was trying to calm the quaver in her voice.

"He was killed by the KGB. I had nothing to do with—"

"Is that what you told them?"

"That's the way it happened. There was an argument."

"Over what?"

"Everybody wants you. It's the protocol." His look darkened. "Eva, they are in no mood for niceties."

"Neither am I." She noticed the two men were now moving toward them. One was taller and seemed to be in charge, but they both were carrying what looked like small-caliber automatic weapons.

The protocol, whatever it was, was still in code. She didn't know what she didn't know. How could she bargain?

It was too late to think about it now. Their faces were hard and smooth, with the cold eyes of men who killed on command. My God, she thought, what had Michael said about the Mino-gumi?

The Japanese mob.

The taller man, she was soon to learn, was Kazuo Ina- gawa, who had been a London-based kobun for the Mino-gumi for the past decade. He had a thin, pasty face and had once been first kobun for their entire Osaka organization, in charge of gambling and nightclub shakedowns. Even in the early dawn light, he wore sunglasses, masking his eyes.

The shorter one was Takahashi Takenaka, whose pockmarked face was distinguished by a thin moustache, an aquiline nose, and the same sunglasses.

Alex, she realized, must have lied to them, covering up what really happened out at the palace. Now he was bluffing for his life.

"You can just tell them I don't know anything about it." She felt the cold air closing in.

"Eva, that's impossible. They know you were given the protocol. Now where is it?"

He clearly wanted her to say it was somewhere else. But why bother?

"It's in the car. In my purse." She pointed. "Why don't they just go ahead and take it? By the way, it's still encrypted."

She fumbled in her pockets. "Here's…"

Then she realized she'd left the key in the car. There it dangled, inside the locked door. Her purse rested on the seat across from the driver's side.

"Get it," Inagawa commanded his lieutenant. Takenaka bowed obediently, then turned and tried the door handle, without success.

"So." He frowned.

Inagawa muttered a curse and brutally slammed the butt of his automatic against the curved window. The sound of splintering glass rent the morning air.

Quickly Novosty stepped forward and reached through to unlock the door. Then he pulled it open and leaned in.

Why is he doing it? she wondered. Easy answer: He's trying to keep control of the situation.

Whose side is he really on?

Then he backed out and handed her the brown leather purse while he tried to catch her eye.

She took it, snapped it open, and lifted out the gray computer disk. "There," she said as she handed it to Inagawa, "whatever's on it, you'll have to figure it out for yourself."

"That can't be the only one," Novosty sputtered. "Surely there are other copies."

"That's it, sweetheart."

Inagawa turned it in his hand, then passed it to Takenaka and said something in Japanese. The other man took it, then barked “Hai” and bowed lightly.

"Are you sure this is the only copy?" Inagawa asked.

"The only one."

He nodded to his lieutenant, who began screwing a dark silencer onto the barrel of his automatic.

Oh my God, she thought. They're going to finish the job.

"Wait." Novosty reached for his arm. "She's lying. This is a disk from a computer. There must be other copies."

"Yes." She was finally coming to her senses. "There are plenty of other copies. In my computer. In—"

"Where is it?" Inagawa looked at her.

"It's — it's at the hotel. The Galaxy." She was trying desperately to think. "And then I left another—"

"You're lying. We have been there. They said a tavern keeper came and took all your luggage." He was staring down the street, toward Zeno's place. "They also told us where he could be found. We will go there now."

"My friends," Novosty interrupted again, "it would be most unwise to attempt any violence on a Greek national here. The consequences could be extremely awkward, for all of us."

"We must retrieve it."

"But why not do it the easy way?" He tried to smile. "There's another man here, traveling with her. We should work through him. I know he will deal. He's a professional."

"Who is he?"

"An American. If we hold her, keep her alive, we can use her to make him bring it to us. We can offer a trade."

"No. We will just find him and take it." Inagawa started to move. "Now."

"He's armed, my friends," Novosty continued evenly. "He's also experienced. There would be gunfire, I promise you. If that happened, you could have the entire street here filled with rifles in a minute. You do not know these people as I do. They still remember World War Two and the Resistance. Killing unfriendly foreigners became a way of life some of them have yet to forget."

Alex is bluffing, she thought. Again. Michael doesn't have a gun. Does Zeno? Who knows?

"Let me try and talk to him," Novosty continued. "Surely something can be worked out."

"You will stay here, with us." Inagawa seized his arm, then turned and began a heated exchange with his partner. Again Takenaka bowed repeatedly, sucking in his breath and muttering hai. At last they seemed to arrive at a consensus, though it was the taller man who'd actually made the decision, whatever it was.

"She comes with us."

"Oh, no I don't." She looked at Novosty, who seemed defeated, then back at the Japanese. She suddenly realized she was on her own. Novosty had played all his cards. "If I don't reappear in Washington day after tomorrow, you'll have the entire U.S. National Security Agency looking for me. People know I'm here. So think about that."

"That is not our concern." Inagawa reached for her. "We do not work for the American government." Then he turned to Novosty. "Tell your friend that this woman will be released when we have all copies of the protocol. All. Do you understand?"

"But how can I tell him if you won't let me—?"

"That is your problem."

"Perhaps… perhaps we should just leave a message here," Novosty sputtered. "I'm sure he'll find the car."

"Alex, I'm not going anywhere with these animals." She drew back.

"Don't worry. I'll take care of everything."

"No, I'm not—"

That was all she could say before a hand was roughly clapped against her mouth, her body shoved against the broken window.

Mike Vance and Zeno Stantopoulos searched for over half an hour before they found the Saab. When they did, the left-hand window was broken, and Eva's purse was missing. She was missing too. The only thing remaining was a hastily scrawled note from Alex Novosty.

Chapter Eight

"Vance?" The portly, balding desk clerk studied his computer screen at the Athenaeum Inter-Continental. Here in this teeming marble lobby the new world met the old. "Dr. M. Vance. Yes, we have your reservation."

Good. Novosty had done exactly what he said. The play was going down.

"Welcome back." The man looked up and smiled, his eyes mirroring the green numbers on the screen as he looked over Vance's shoulder. "Our records show you were just with us, four days ago. We still have your old room, if you like."

"That would be fine."

He was back in a city renowned as much for its hospitality as for its mind-numbing brown haze of smog. It was also said to be the safest city in Europe, with a miniscule crime rate. However, Michael Vance did not feel safe as he stood in the lobby of Athens's most luxurious hotel.

"Were you on a bus tour of the Peloponnisos, perhaps?" the clerk continued with a pale smile, his voice trying for perfunctory brightness. "The Mycenean ruins in the south are always—"

"Business." Vance tossed his passport onto the counter. They both knew he didn't look anything like a candidate for a four-day CHAT package tour on a bus. But the man seemed nervous, anxious to make conversation.

"I'll be needing a car in the morning. Early. Is that in your reservation file too?"

"No problem." The clerk ignored, or missed, his impatient tone. "We have a Hertz outlet now, just over there," he pointed, "next to the travel desk. I'm sure they will be happy to arrange for it."

Vance tossed his Amex card onto the counter, then reached for the slate clipboard holding the registration slip. Dusk was falling outside, but here in the warm glow of chandeliers the moment felt like sleepwalking. His mental bearings kept shifting. Nothing was real. He wanted to think it was merely routine, like checking into a thousand other streamlined international hotels, something he'd done more times than he cared to count. But that was wrong; danger lurked somewhere nearby. His senses were warning him.

He kept thinking about Eva. Was she serious about getting back together, sailing on the Ulysses? Maybe he didn't know her as well as he thought, which was troubling for a lot of reasons, not the least being that right now he needed to be able to think exactly the way she did. They'd have to work as a perfectly coordinated team tomorrow, with no rehearsals.

"May I have someone take your bag?" The clerk glanced down at the new leather suitcase sitting on the floor, then reached to ring for a bellhop.

"No." Vance lunged to stop his hand.

Whoa, he lectured himself, chill out. Keep the lid on. Why not just let it happen? Here. Maybe you want them to do it here. Why wait?

The clerk tried to hold his composure. "As you wish. Of course you know your room."

"I can find it." He tried to smile, then thumbed over his shoulder. "You're busy anyway. The tour coming in…"

"Yes." The clerk was shoving across the heavy brass key. "You remember our schedule. Breakfast is served until ten over there in the dining room, eleven in your room."

"Thanks." He picked up the bag, heavy, and turned.

The rental car desk was across the lobby, past the tour group now pouring through the revolving doors. They clearly were just off a Paris flight, chattering in French, brandishing tour badges, and quarreling about luggage with Gallic impatience.

"I need a car for tomorrow. Early."

The dark-haired woman at the desk looked up as he began fishing for his credit card and driver's license. Her Hertz uniform was unbuttoned down the front to display as much of her bosom as Greek propriety, perhaps even the law, would permit. A heavy silver chain nestled between her ample breasts.

"Our pleasure." She swept back her hair as she mechanically shoved forward a typed sheet encased in smudged cellophane. "We have some new Austin subcompacts, or if you want a full-size—"

"What's the best car you've got?" It would be a long drive, over uncertain Greek roads. He wanted to take no chances.

"We do have an Alfa, sir. Only one. A Milano." She absently adjusted the V-neck of her uniform. "For VIPs. I should warn you it's expensive." She bent forward to whisper. "To tell you the truth, ine poli akrivo. It's a rip- off." She leaned back, proud of her new American slang. "Take my advice and—"

"Can you have it here, out front, at six in the morning?"

"I can check." She sniffed, then reached for the battered phone. A quick exchange in Greek followed, then she hung up. "They say it just came in. There should be no problem."

He glanced around the lobby once more as she picked up the charge card and license to begin filling out the form. There was still no sign, no indication. And yet the whole scene felt wrong. Something, something was warning him.

That's what it was. The man standing across the lobby, at the far side next to the elevators. He had a newspaper folded in his hand, but he wasn't reading. He was speaking into it.

Hotel security? Not a chance. For one thing, he wasn't Greek. Although he was too far away to see his face, something about the way he stood gave him away.

Where the hell was Novosty? This wasn't supposed to be the drill.

He suddenly found himself wondering how much clout Alex had left. Maybe Novosty was out of the play. Maybe the rules had changed.

"Could you please hurry that along." He turned back to the dark-haired girl.

"You said you wouldn't be needing the car until tomorrow, sir." Formal now, abrupt.

"I just changed my mind. I'd like it tonight. Right now, as a matter of fact."

"Do you want the insurance? It will be an extra—"

"No. Yes. Look, I don't care. Just let me sign that damned thing and give me the keys."

"Well, give me a chance." She petulantly turned the form toward him and shoved it across the desk. "If you'll just initial here and here," she was pointing with her pen, "and sign there. And did you say you wanted the car now?"

"Immediately."

"I'm afraid that's not possible." She retrieved the form.

"What?"

"It's just—"

"Then give me something else." He glanced toward the man, still speaking into his newspaper, then back. They would make their move any second now. "What's the problem with the car?"

"I'm trying to tell you it just came in. Our people will need at least half an hour to clean it, go over the checklist. So if you'd like to have a cup of coffee in the dining room, I'll call you when—"

"Where is it now?"

"They said it's just been returned. It's probably parked somewhere outside." She gestured toward the glass revolving door. "Across the street. That's where they usually—"

"An Alfa?"

"That's right. Dark blue. But like I said, it's not—"

"Give me the keys."

"They're probably still in it. Our people—"

"Thanks." He reached down for the suitcase.

"Your card, sir, and your license." She pushed the items across with a tight smile, clearly happy to be rid of him.

As he reached for them, out of the corner of his eye he saw the first movement. The man had stuffed the newspaper, and walkie-talkie, into his trench coat and was approaching across the marble lobby. Just as Vance expected, the garb was polyester, the hair a slicked-up punch-perm, but he still couldn't make out the face.

He didn't need to. He knew who they were. The encounter at Knossos flashed through his mind.

They know I've got a copy of their protocol. And until that gets iced, there's always a chance their secret is no longer a secret. But they can't know we've cracked the encryption. Unless she told them. Which she never would.

No, they couldn't know that yet, which meant he still had the bargaining chip he'd need.

Except for one problem. They were about to try and break the rules. Just like the old days. Maybe they'd forgot he knew how to break rules too.

As he pushed through the milling crowd of French tourists, suitcases and knapsacks piling up near the entrance, he sensed the man was gaining. But only a few feet more and he'd be at the revolving door. Halfway home.

This wasn't going to be easy. There'd be a backup. Probably just outside, at the entrance.

As he reached for the rubber flange of the revolving door, he knew the man was just behind him, maybe two steps. Just right. He turned to see a hand emerge from the polyester suit jacket, grasping a Heckler & Koch KA1 machine pistol, a cut-down version of the MP5.

The barrel was rising, the hard face closing in. But it was the suitcase he wanted.

So why not give it to him?

"Here." He jammed his foot into the revolving door, leaving a small opening, then wheeled around, hoisting the case. The quick turn brought just enough surprise to break his attacker's momentum. As the man involuntarily raised his left hand, Vance caught his right wrist, just back of the pistol's grip, and shoved it forward, into the door. Then he brought up his elbow and smashed it into the attacker's jaw. As the man groaned, he caught his other wrist and shoved him around.

Now.

He rammed his shoulder against the revolving door, closing it and wedging the gun inside.

"Let's keep this simple, okay? No muss, no fuss."

He threw his full weight against the man's body, bending him back around the curved metal and glass of the door. There was a snap and a muted groan as the wrist bones shattered. The machine pistol clattered to the marble floor inside the circular enclosure.

"Sorry about that." Before the attacker could regain his balance, he kneed him into the next revolving partition and rammed it closed. Only one foot remained outside, kicking at an awkward angle across the floor.

Now where's the other one? He glanced around as he drew away. There's sure to be two. Somebody was on the other end of that radio. Novosty? Did he set this up?

He swept up the suitcase and shouldered his way through the auxiliary door on the side. Odd, but the scuffle had gone unnoticed amid the din of the arriving tour. Or maybe Parisians weren't ruffled by anything so everyday as an attempted murder.

Now what?

As he emerged onto the street, he saw what he was looking for. The other assailant was waiting just across the wide entryway, past the jumble of bellboys, taxi drivers, and the last straggle of tourists coming off the bus.

Their eyes met, and the man's right hand darted inside his dark suit jacket.

Use the crowd, Vance thought. Enough hand-to-hand heroics. These guys mean business.

Since the pile of luggage coming off the bus separated them, he had an advantage now, if only for a second or so. Without thinking he seized the straps of a canvas knapsack sitting on the sidewalk with his free hand and flung it with all his strength.

It caught his attacker squarely in the chest, breaking his rhythm and knocking him back half a step. It was only a moment's reprieve, but it was all Vance needed to disappear around the rear of the bus, which was pouring black exhaust into the evening air, blocking all view of the avenue. Maybe he could move fast enough to just disappear.

As he dashed into the honking traffic, headlights half blinding him, he surveyed the street opposite looking for the Alfa.

There? No. There?

A pair of headlights swerved by, inches away, accompanied by honking and a cursing Greek driver. Only a few feet more now and he'd be across.

There. A blue Alfa. It had to be the one.

But it was already moving, its front wheels turning inward as the Hertz attendant backed it around to begin pulling out.

He wrenched open the door and seized a brown sleeve. The arm inside belonged to a young Greek, barely twenty, his uniform grease-covered and wrinkled. He looked up, surprise in his eyes, and grabbed for the door handle.

"Change of plans." Vance heard the Alfa's bumper slam against the car parked behind as the startled attendant's foot brushed against the accelerator.

"Den katalaveno!"

"Out." Vance yanked him around and shoved him toward the asphalt pavement. "And stay down."

Now the bus had begun pulling out from the entryway across the street. Although traffic still clogged the avenue, he was a clear target.

He threw the suitcase onto the seat, then slid in and reached to secure the door. As he pulled it shut, he heard the ping of a bullet ricochetting off metal somewhere. Next came a burst of automatic fire that seemed to splatter all around him.

The young Greek pulled himself up off the pavement and reached…

"Down." Vance waved him away as he shifted the transmission into drive.

At that moment a slug caught the young attendant in the shoulder, spinning him around. He gave a yelp of surprise, then stumbled backward. But now he was out of the way, clear, with what was probably only a flesh wound.

Vance shoved his foot against the accelerator, ramming the rear fender of the car in front, then again, knocking it clear. Another spray of bullets spattered through the back window as he pulled into the flow of traffic.

Your time will come, friend, he told himself. Tomorrow, by God, we finish this little dance.

He finally became aware of the pumping of his own heart as he made his way north up Syngrou Avenue, trying to urge the traffic forward by sheer will.

The thing now was to get out of Athens, take Leoforos Athinon west, then head up the new Highway 1 toward the mountains, lose them in the country, find some place to spend the night. His final destination was only about two hundred kilometers away. He just had to be fresh and ready tomorrow, with everything in place.

But at least he now knew the game had no rules. Maybe knowing that gave him an edge. And so far his timing was still intact. He'd handled it. Maybe not too well, maybe with too much risk, but he'd handled it.

Novosty's note had said there would be a straight swap. But the other team clearly had no intention of bothering with niceties. Fine. That cut both ways.

The place was Delphi, the location Novosty had specified. Heading warily up the Sacred Way, Vance paused for a moment to take in the view. From where he stood, the vista was majestic, overwhelming humanity's puny scale. He'd always loved it. Toward the north the sheer granite cliffs of the Phaedriades Mountains towered almost two thousand feet skyward to form a semicircular barrier, while down below the river Pleistos meandered through mile after mile of dark olive groves. It was an eyeful of rugged grandeur, craggy peaks encircling a harsh plain that stretched as far as the eye could see. Greece in the midday sun: austere, timeless.

His destination, the ancient temple of the Delphic oracle farther up the hill, overlooked this panorama, row center in a magnificient natural amphitheater. The Greek legends told that the great god Zeus had once dispatched two eagles, one flying east and one flying west, to find out where they would meet. They came together at the center of the earth, Delphi, whose main temple, the Sanctuary of Apollo, contained the domelike boulder Omphalos, thereafter named the "navel of the world." Here east and west met.

He'd parked the Alfa on the roadway down below, and now as he stared up the mountainside, past the conical cypress trees, he could just make out the remains of the stone temple where almost three thousand years ago the priestess, the Delphic oracle, screamed her prophesies. She was a Pythia, an ancient woman innocent of mind who lived in the depths of the temple next to a fiery altar whose flame was attended night and day. There, perched on a high tripod poised over a vaporous fissure in the earth, she inhaled intoxicating gases, chewed laurel leaves, and issued wild, frenzied utterances. Those incoherent sounds were translated by priests into answers appropriate to the queries set before her.

Delphi. He loved its remote setting, its sacred legends. Those stories, in fact, told that the god Apollo had once summoned priests from Crete, the ancient font of culture, to come here to create this Holy of Holies.

Was he about to become a priest too? After sending off a telegram to the Stuttgart team, notifying them of a delay in his schedule, he'd journeyed from that island back to Athens via the ANEK Lines overnight car ferry from Iraklion. Not at all godlike. But it had a well-worn forward section it called first class, and it was a low-profile mode of travel, requiring no identity questions. He'd ended up in the bar of the tourist section for much of the trip, stretched out on a stained couch and napping intermittently during the twelve-hour voyage. It had cleared his mind. Then from Piraeus, the port of Athens, he'd taken a cab into the city. After that the hotel and the car.

As he stared up the hill, he had in his possession a wallet with nine hundred American dollars and eighty thousand Greek drachmas, the suitcase, and a Spanish 9mm automatic from Zeno. He also had a translated version of the opening section of the protocol.

His anger still simmering, he continued up the cobbled path of the Sacred Way, toward the exposed remains of the oracle's temple situated halfway up the hill. Nothing was left of the structure now except its stone floor and a few columns that had been re-erected, standing bare and wistful in the sunshine. In fact, the only building at Delphi that had been rebuilt to anything resembling its original glory was the small marble "treasure house" of the Athenians, a showplace of that city's wealth dating from 480 B.C. Today its simple white blocks glistened in the harsh midday glare, while tourists milled around speaking German, French, English, or Dutch. Even in the simmering heat of noon, Delphi still attracted visitors who revered the ancient Greeks as devoutly as those Greeks had once worshipped their own adulterous gods and goddesses.

So where the hell was Novosty? Noon at the Temple of Apollo, his note had said.

He searched the hillside looking for telltale signs of another ambush — movement, color, anything. But there was nothing. Although tourists wandered about, the temple ruins seemed abandoned for thousands of years, their silence almost palpable. Even the sky was empty save for a few swooping hawks.

If Alex is here waiting, he asked himself, where would he be?

Then he looked again at the treasure house. Of course. Probably in there, taking a little respite from the blistering sun. It figured. The front, its columns, and porch were open, and the interior would be protected. Conveniently, the wide steps of the stone pathway led directly past. A natural rendezvous.

In his belt, under his suede jacket, was Zeno's 9mm Llama. It was fully loaded, with fifteen rounds in the magazine plus one up the tube. He reached into his belt and eased off the safety.

Holding it beneath his coat, he continued on up the cobbled pathway toward the front of the treasure house. As he moved into the shade of the portico, he thought for a moment he heard sounds from inside. He stopped, gripping the Llama, and listened.

No, nothing.

Slowly, carefully, he walked up the steps. When he reached the top, he paused, then gingerly stepped in through the open doorway. It was cool and dank inside. And empty. His footsteps rang hollow on the stone floor. Maybe Novosty's dead by now, he thought fleetingly. Maybe his luck finally ran out.

He turned and walked back out to the porch, then settled himself on the steps. In the valley below, beyond the milling tourists, the dark green olive groves spread out toward the horizon.

The protocol. The mind-boggling protocol. Something was afoot that would change the balance of world power. He'd translated the first page of Article I, but it had raised more questions than it answered. All the same, he'd taken action. Today he was ready.

Novosty had to know the score. Had to. But now Vance knew at least part of the story too.

He glanced down at the suitcase. It contained Eva's Zenith Turbo 486, of course, which undoubtedly was why it was such a popular item. But it also had a hard copy of the scrambled text of the protocol, courtesy of a printer Zeno had borrowed from a newspaper office in Iraklion, as well as a photocopy of Vance's partial translation.

They didn't know it yet, but there was another full copy, which he'd transmitted by DataNet to his "office" computer in Nassau. It was waiting there in the silicon memory.

Quite a document. Twenty-eight pages in length, it was the final version of a legally binding agreement that had been hammered out over a long period of time. From the page he'd translated, he could recognize the style. The text referred to the rights and obligations of two distinct entities — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Mino Industries Group.

As he seated himself beneath a lone almond tree and took a last look at the olive groves down below, he was tempted to pull out the translation and reread it one more time. But that was unnecessary; he'd memorized it, right down to the last comma.

That's as far as he'd translated. The rest was still in Minoan Linear B. He took a deep breath, again trying to digest what it meant in the grand scheme of global strategic alliances.

Most importantly, what was the "prototype"? Something was about to appear on the planet that would make its owner unassailable. But what?

Eva's stumbled onto dynamite. Mayday. That means it explodes in less than a fortnight. No wonder Mino Industries wants her out of the way.

Among the clusters of tourists on the road below, a white limousine was pulling to a stop, followed by a gray Saab.

He watched as Novosty emerged from the Saab and glanced up the hill, then started the climb. Nobody got out of the limo.

Vance watched as he slowly made his way along the cobbled path leading up the hill, puffing. He was almost out of breath by the time he reached the top.

"Michael, I'm so glad you could manage to make it." He heaved a sigh as he trudged up the last remaining steps.

"It was the lure of your scintillating company."

"I'm sure." He looked around.

"Is Eva down there? She'd damned well better be."

"She is safe." Novosty sighed again. "It was most unwise for her to have gotten involved in all this, Michael. She is making matters difficult for us all."

"Too bad." He removed the Llama from beneath his coat. "By the way, congratulations on your new clients. Mino Industries. That's a Yakuza front, partner. Guess you know. The CEO was a Class A war criminal. These days he owns the LDP and runs Japan. Alex, you asshole, you're way over your head here. Mino Industries is owned lock, stock, and hardware by the Japanese godfather. His kobun make your KGB look like a Boy Scout troop."

"Michael, please."

"And here I was thinking you'd finished consorting with the criminal element, decided to live clean. Then the next thing I know, your client's gorillas are trying to kill Eva and me. Me, your new partner. Things like that tend to inspire mistrust, and just when we were starting to hit it off so well." He finally stood up, holding the Llama. Novosty was lounging nervously in the sunshine, fishing for a cigarette. "Where's your Uzi? You just may need it."

"Michael, all this has nothing to do with me." His eyes were weary. "I'm operating independently this time."

"Cash and carry. Maybe you should just post your prices, like a cheap cathouse."

"I prefer to think of myself as an expediter. But this time I encountered more difficulties than reasonably could be anticipated. Which is why I need your help now to straighten it out."

"What? The whole shoddy scene? Looks like the KGB's hot on the trail, say maybe about two feet in back of your ass. Or is it your client, who you're about to try and screw out of a hundred million dollars? Incidentally, that's probably a serious miscalculation, health-wise."

"The situation has grown awkward."

"Of course that touching fable about returning the hundred million to Moscow was just the usual 'disinformation.' "

"You are perfectly correct. It will not be returned. But any thought I might have had of keeping it now also seems out of the question." He sighed. "Instead I'm afraid we must—"

"We? Now that's what I call balls of brass." He laughed. "Surely even a fevered imagination like yours can't suppose—"

"Michael, I told you I would split the commission I took for cleaning it. That offer still holds. Fifty-fifty. I might even go sixty-forty. What more can you want? But those funds must be delivered. Given the new situation—"

"Not by me."

"Be a realist, my friend. I no longer have freedom of movement, so now you are my only hope. If those funds aren't transferred within the week, I'd prefer not to reflect on the consequences."

"The consequences to your own neck, you mean." Vance stared at him. "By the way, just out of curiosity, what's the 'prototype'?"

"That's the one thing I cannot possibly discuss, Michael." Novosty caught his breath. "But what if the contract for it is abrogated because of those funds not being delivered, what then? What if the USSR just makes a move to seize it? I fear there could be war, my friend. Bang, the apocalypse." He flicked his lighter. "Even worse though, as you say, both parties to the agreement would probably spend a week devising the most interesting way possible for me to depart this earth."

"If the KGB somehow locates and freezes the embezzled funds before you can finish transferring them, it could scuttle the whole deal. Mino Industries would probably be very annoyed. Not to mention certain parties back home."

"Precisely. You can see we are on a knife edge here. But first things first. You must return Eva's pirate copy of the protocol, please. I beg you. It must disappear. I have promised them that, as an act of good faith. I'm afraid the participants in Tokyo are near to losing patience with me."

"And what about her?"

"She's with them now." He pointed down the hill, to the long white limousine. "Unfortunately, they have taken over the situation."

"Better buckle your seat belt, pal. It's about to be a bumpy afternoon."

"She is safe, don't worry. They have assured me. It is only the protocol they care about. The matter of security. They know you have her only other copy, in the computer. Now please let me just give whatever you have to them. Then let's all try and forget she ever had it."

"You know, those hoods down there tried a little number on me last night in Athens." He hadn't moved. "It took the edge off my evening."

"Michael, I tried to tell them that was imprudent. But they are very concerned about time. Just be reasonable, my friend, and I'm sure everything can be straightened out." He sighed again. "You know, these tactics of kidnapping and such are very distasteful to me as well. But when she told them she didn't have all the material, that you still had a copy, they decided that taking her into their custody was the best way to ensure your cooperation."

"They don't know me very well." He looked down the hill. "Tell your buddies they can go take a jump. Nobody blackmails me. Nobody. I plan to hang on to this little suitcase till she's out of danger. That's how we're going to work things. Tell them it's her insurance. They release her right now, or I'll personally blow their whole deal sky high."

"Tell them yourself, Michael. I'm just here as an observer." He gestured toward the white limo parked below, nestled in among the line of tourist automobiles and busses. "And while you're doing that, perhaps you should ask her if that's her wish as well. They refuse to release her until they recover the materials she had. They are calling it 'protection.'"

He stared down. "You've got a hell of a nerve. All of you. Alex, when this is over—"

"Please. Let's just get this ghastly protocol affair sorted out." He rubbed at his beard. "Then we can all concern ourselves with what's really important. The money."

"Right. I almost forgot."

He scanned the hillside. Was everything set? He'd seen no sign. But then that's how it was supposed to be. The other problem was the tourists, everywhere, complicating the play.

But maybe the tourists would be a help, would make it start out slow. Think. How can you use them? Clearly the other side had hoped for an abandoned place in the middle of nowhere. They had to be off balance now too.

He hesitated a moment, then decided. Go for it. He had the Llama. Just settle it here and now.

He took one last look at the temple as he rose. The Delphic oracle. That's what Eva had been all along. She'd somehow divined the outlines of the story, but after the disappearance of her old lover at the NSA she didn't dare speak it directly. Everything was coded language. So what better place than here on this mountain to finally have a little plain talk?

As they passed down the last stone steps leading to the roadway, he found himself thinking about Mino Industries. Did they really have half a trillion dollars lying around? Not likely. To come up with that kind of money, even in Japan, you'd have to be deeply plugged into legitimate financial circles — pension funds, insurance companies, brokerage houses, banks, all the rest. But still, the Mino-gumi had connections that went wide and deep, everywhere. Their oyabun, Tanzan Mino, had been in the game for a long, long time.

Now, as he approached the limousine, one of its white doors slowly began to open. Then a Japanese emerged, dressed in a black polyester suit. He wore dark sunglasses, and his right wrist was in a cast. The eyes were very familiar. Also, one of his little fingers was missing.

But Vance's gaze didn't linger long on the hands. His attention was riveted on what was in them. Yep, he'd seen it right last night. It was a Heckler & Koch machine pistol. One of those could lay down all thirty rounds in an eight- inch group at thirty yards. World-class hardware.

It figured. The Mino-gumi was known everywhere as the best-run Yakuza syndicate of them all. Hardened criminals, they considered themselves modern-day samurai, upholding some centuries-old code of honor. It was a contradiction only the Japanese mind could fully accommodate.

Heavy-duty connections, Vance told himself, the very best. Which meant Novosty was in even bigger trouble than he probably imagined. The latest rumor in the world of hot money was that Tanzan Mino and his Yakuza had, through dummy fronts, just bought up half of Hawaii. If that were true, it meant he laundered real money these days. Who the hell needed a small-time operator like Alex?

Then the man reached in and caught Eva's arm, pulling her into the midday glare.

Thank God, he thought, she still looks vaguely okay. Will she be able to stay on top of this once it gets moving?

He noticed she was wearing a new brown dress, but her short hair was tangled, her face streaked with pain.

The bastards. They must have worked her over, trying to find out everything she knew.

There were two "representatives," Novosty had said. So the other man was still in the limo, in the driver's seat, covering in case there was trouble.

Good move. Because there was definitely going to be trouble. A lot of it. Tanzan Mino's goons were about to have all the trouble they could handle.

"Michael, oh, Christ." She finally recognized him. "Thank God. Just give them—"

"Can you understand what's going on here?" He raised his hand. "These guys are kobun, professional hit men. They have a very sick sense of humor. They also have no intention of—"

"Please, they have given me their word." Novosty interrupted him, then glanced back. "You can see she is well."

She didn't look well at all. She seemed drugged, standing shakily in the brilliant sunshine, a glazed stare from her eyes, hands twisting at her skirt.

Eva, Eva, he thought, what did they do to you? Whatever it was, it worked. You look defeated, helpless.

"Michael, just let them have the computer." She spoke again, her voice quivering. "They say it's all they want. Then they'll—"

"Eva, it's all a lie. The big lie. So just lighten up and enjoy this. We're not giving them so much as the time of day until they let you go. First tell me, how badly did they rough you up? I want to know."

"Michael, please."

"You will be happy to learn that Dr. Michael Vance is a specialist in international finance," Novosty interrupted, addressing the tall Japanese. "He has kindly offered to serve as my agent in completing the final arrangements for the transfer of funds from London. He will resolve any remaining difficulties. As I said, he is my agent, and it is important that he not be harmed."

"Alex, back off. I haven't agreed to anything." Vance turned to the Japanese. "How's the arm? Hope the damage wasn't permanent."

"Where are the NSA materials." The man ignored Vance's question. His voice was sharp and his English almost perfect. "That is our first order of business."

"Right here." He lifted the suitcase. "I assume we're all going to deal honorably for a change. Eva first, then we talk about this."

"I'm sure Dr. Vance has brought everything you want," Novosty added quickly, glancing over. "Perhaps if he gave the materials to you now, the woman could be released. Then he and I can proceed immediately with the matter of the funds."

"You are not involved," the Japanese snapped back. "We have been authorized to personally handle this breach of security." He stared at Novosty. "The funds, in fact, were your sole responsibility. They were to have been transferred to Shokin Gaigoku Bank in Tokyo over a week ago. You demanded an exorbitant commission, and you did not deliver. Consequently you will return that commission and our London oyabun will handle it himself."

The Mino-gumi probably should have handled it in the first place, Vance thought fieetingly. Alex was definitely out of his depth.

"Just a couple of days more…" Novosty went pale. "I thought I had explained—"

"Your 'explanations' are not adequate." The man cut him off, then pointed to the suitcase in Vance's hand. "Now give us that."

"Why not." He settled the brown leather case onto the asphalt. "It's good business always to check out the merchandise, make sure it's what you're paying for."

"She said it was a portable computer." The man walked over, then cradled the H&K automatic in his bandaged arm while he reached down to loosen the straps. Next he pulled the zipper around and laid open the case.

"What is this?" He lifted out the pile of printed paper.

"Guess she forgot to tell you. We cracked the encryption. I thought maybe you'd like to have a printed version, so I threw one in for free."

He stared at it a second, almost disbelieving, then looked up. "This is a photocopy. Where is the original?"

"Original? You mean that's not—?" Vanced looked at it. "Gee, my mistake. Guess I must have left it somewhere. Sorry you had to drive all the way out here from Athens for nothing."

"Jesus, Michael," Eva blurted. "Don't start playing games with them. They'll—"

"I need all the copies." The man's voice hardened, menacingly. "Where are they?"

"I don't remember precisely. Tell you what, though. You put her on a plane back to the States and maybe my recollection might start improving."

"We are wasting time." The door by the steering wheel opened and the second kobun emerged, also carrying an automatic. He was shorter, but the punch-perm hair and polyester suit appeared to have come from standard issue, just like the sunglasses. He gestured his weapon toward Vance. "There is a simple way to improve your memory. You have exactly ten seconds—"

"My friend, be reasonable," Novosty interrupted, his voice still trying for calm. "There are people here." He motioned toward the crowd of gathering tourists. From their puzzled stares, they seemed to be thinking they were witnessing a rehearsal for some Greek gangster film.

The first man motioned his partner back, then turned to Vance. "You realize we will be forced to kill her right now if you don't produce all originals and copies."

"Don't really think you want to do that." Vance stared at him. "Because if anything happens to her, you're going to be reading about your 'prototype' all over the American newspapers. I can probably even swing some prime-time TV time for you. I'll take care of it personally."

"No one will believe you."

"Don't think so? My guess is the Washington Post will run your entire protocol on page one. I'll see they get a very literal translation into English. Then you won't need this. You can just buy all the copies you want." He picked up the laptop and walked over to where Eva was standing.

"Here, take this, and get back in the car, now. I think these guys have got an attitude problem. So screw them."

"Michael." She reached for the computer.

"Get in that one." He pointed toward Alex's gray Saab. "And take the next plane out of Greece. That place we talked about. Anywhere. Just go."

"We're getting nowhere," the second man barked again. Then he leveled his automatic at Vance's right knee and clicked off the safety. There was a gasp from the gawking tourists, and the crowd began stumbling backward for cover. "We have ways of extracting information."

Oh, shit, he thought, whoa.

The man's voice suddenly trailed off, while a quizzical expression spread through his eyes and a red spot appeared on his cheek. Next his head jerked back and his automatic slammed against the car door, then clattered across the asphalt.

Not a second too soon, Vance thought.

"No," Eva screamed, "what's happening?" She lurched backward, then turned and stumbled for the Saab, carrying the computer.

The first kobun glanced around, then raised the H&K in his left hand, trying to get a grip.

He'll hit the ground and roll, Vance thought, like any pro under fire.

And he did exactly that, with a quick motion over onto his back and then to his feet again, clicking off the safety as he came up.

"You want to kill us both?" Vance was holding his Llama now, trained on the sunglasses that had been crushed by the roll, momentarily distorting the man's line of fire. "Then go for it." He squeezed the trigger.

The walnut stock kicked slightly, but he just kept gripping the satin chrome trigger. Now the gunman's automatic came around, its muzzle erupting in flame. The crowd scattered, shouting in half a dozen languages, terrified.

Vance just kept firing, dull thunks into the figure stumbling backward as the H&K machine pistol erupted spasmodically into the hot, dry air.

"Kill him, Michael. Oh, God! Yes. The bastards." Eva was still yelling as she slammed shut the door of the Saab. Yelling, cursing, screaming. Less than a second later the motor roared to life.

Now Novosty was diving across the pavement, toward the open front door of the limousine.

"Michael, we've got to split up. Get out." He yelled over his shoulder. "I'll have to go to London now. There's nowhere left. They're going to come for the money."

Vance scarcely heard him as he held the Llama steady and kept on squeezing until the magazine was empty and only vacant clicks coursed through his hand.

The screech of tires brought him back. He looked up to see the white limousine careening along the edge of the road, barely avoiding the ditch, its door still open, Novosty at the wheel. Eva was already gone.

He noticed that they'd removed the plates from the limousine, just as he'd done on his rented Alfa. There would be nothing but terrified tourists and two illegally armed, very dead Japanese hoods here when the Greek police finally arrived. The story would come out in a babel of languages and be totally inconsistent.

Christ! he thought. It was supposed to be over by now, and instead it's just beginning. When word of this gets back to Tokyo, life's going to get very interesting, very fast. The Mino-gumi knows how to play for keeps. We've got to blow this thing.

Across, on the hot asphalt, the two Japanese were sprawled askew, sunglasses crumpled. One body was bleeding profusely from the chest, the other from a single, perfect hole in the cheek. The kobun who had come within moments of removing his kneecaps now lay with a small hole in front of one ear and the opposite side of the face half missing.

What a shot!

But why did he wait so long? We had them in the clear. I see now why the Greek Resistance scared hell out of…

"Never look at the eyes, Michael." The voice sounded from the boulders of the hillside above, where the muzzle of a World War II German carbine, oiled and perfect, glinted. "Remember I told you. It gives you very bad dreams."