The civil engineers exchanged speaking glances. "If you were ever on a three-month EPAC patrol waiting on a go fast that never came, you'd learn how to cross-stitch, too," Cal told them. There was enough of an edge to his voice that the civil engineers decided that in this case discretion was the better part of valor and retired without comment.

The next morning, to avoid a prolonged farewell Cal timed his arrival at the head of the gangway to coincide with his father's departure. The senator waved from the limousine, and Cal threw him a bone by way of a snappy salute. The senator beamed, was tucked tenderly into the limo, and the long black car moved off in stately fashion. Cal heaved a sigh of relief and got back to work.

He was back at the head of the gangway that afternoon when another batch of what he had come to think of as his refugees left the ship to return to their lives ashore. They had boarded the ship with all they owned in a plastic garbage bag and a thousand-mile stare, and they were leaving with a look of life and returned hope. It was amazing what clean sheets, three squares, a night's sleep in a secure area, and above all air-conditioning could do for your outlook.

He turned from the gangway and found Azizi watching him. "Something up, Azizi?"

Azizi hesitated. "Permission to speak freely, Captain. And without prejudice."

Cal shrugged. "Go for it." He even managed a grin. "What happens on the Aurora Princess stays on the Aurora Princess"

Azizi squared up in a stance that wasn't quite belligerent. "I'd heard about you, sir."

It wasn't what Cal had been expecting, and it wasn't welcome, either. "Lieutenant Commander, I-"

Risking a slap down, Azizi ignored him. "You're quite the golden boy of the U.S. Coast Guard. Callan T Schuyler, child of privilege, old money from Boston, a three-hundred-year American pedigree that includes three signers of the Declaration of Independence, one Civil War general, a Roughrider, and a Navy nurse who was killed by a Japanese kamikaze off Okinawa in World War II. Got the Academy appointment and after graduation all the plum jobs because his dad's a U.S. senator. Got all the ladies because his mom was the most beautiful actress of her day and he got her looks." He stopped, waiting to see how his boss would take such plain speaking.

Cal, resigned, made a come-on motion with his hand. At some point in every duty.station this conversation or one like it had to be endured. He'd learned fast that getting mad only exacerbated any preconceptions people had, and to suffer through and move on.

Azizi took a deep breath. "Smart, nobody denies that, but the general consensus is too lazy to try very hard. And why should you? It's not like you had to work for anything, it was all dropped right into your lap."

He paused again. Cal was frowning a little, but he didn't say anything.

"Your crews love you, especially the women, although in spite of all the rumors you've never been accused of dipping your pen in the company ink. Word in the fleet is that your COs, even if they do wish you'd be a little more enthusiastic, rate your job performance as consistently good. One even called you brilliant after that incident on the Maritime Boundary Line in the Bering Sea-" Azizi stopped obediently when Cal raised a hand, and then resumed."-and you got an award for the volunteer work you put in at the World Trade Center after 9/11. Although you don't like to talk about either, and I hear tell you've had to be reminded to wear the ribbons."

There was a brief silence. "You know a lot about me," Cal said finally, "for a guy I met less than a week ago."

Azizi shrugged. "You're one of those people who get talked about, sir. Have I offended you?"

Cal gave a tired laugh and pulled his cap off to run his hand through his hair. "Like none of that's ever been said before, to my face or behind my back. Tell me something I don't know, Commander."

Azizi looked over Cal's shoulder at the stream of people heading down the gangway; men, women, children, all of them moving with a new sense of purpose in spite of the months and years of rebuilding their city, their community, their homes that lay in front of them. There were infants in arms, toddlers, kids from grade school to high school, parents, grandparents. Some of them had been through the nightmare in the convention center, some had lucked out and survived the deluge after the levees broke in their homes and later been evacuated. Most of them were black, and much had already been made in the national and international press of America 's neglect of its Southern minority population in the destructive wakes of Katrina and Rita.

Azizi was as dark-skinned as half of the people going down the gangway, which, Cal thought, might have been why they were having this conversation.

"They call me Taffy, sir," Azizi said. "Mustafa's a little too much for most Western tongues to get around, and I've never liked Ziz, which is what I get stuck with when I don't tell people I've already got a nickname I can live with."

"Taffy," Cal said, trying it out.

"That's right, sir. Taffy."

After a moment Cal held out his hand. "Hello, Taffy."

"Hello, sir." Their hands met in a firm grip, quickly released before either man could be accused of overt sentiment.

Taffy consulted his clipboard. "One of the water tankers threw a rod this morning. I've got a line on a mechanic but in the meantime I've got a rumor of a couple tankers over in Alabama. I'll need the helo to get the drivers there, and we'll need drivers we can trust-have you ever driven a tanker truck, sir? No? Well, it's fairly easy, once you master the gears and figure out just how high your ass is in the air, you shouldn't have any trouble…"

WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 2006

"So this is a new one, Patrick?"

"It's a new name, sir."

"But the same old faces?"

"Certainly some of them, sir. Lights, please?"

The lights dimmed in the anonymous conference room. Patrick Chisum, special agent newly in charge of the CIA's Joint Terrorism Task Force, tapped a button on his notebook and the PowerPoint program began, a series of head shots interspersed with graphic pictures of bomb scenes, maps, dates, and casualty figures.

"They are calling themselves Abdullah."

"Just Abdullah?" His boss, Harold Kallendorf, sounded a little disappointed. "No Lord High Everything Allah? No Holy Judges, Juries, and Executioners of the Great Satan and All Who Sail in Him? No Fuck You and the Horse You Rode In On Jihad?" He sighed in what everyone hoped was mock disapproval. "Just suck the romance right out of the world, why don't you, Patrick."

There were dutiful chuckles from around the table, as in this group of government officials from the security departments of the FBI, the NSA, Immigration, Customs, the Border Patrol, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard, none held a higher rank than the new director. A dutiful chuckle in response to the ranking man's sallies, no matter how lame, was de rigueur.

"Just Abdullah, sir," Patrick said, having waited patiently until he had regained everyone's attention. He hadn't chuckled, either. He didn't do chuckle. "It means 'servant of God.' The group came first to our attention with the bus bomb in Baghdad at Christmas."

"Remind me of the damages."

"Thirteen dead, over fifty injured, including bystanders."

"Any Americans?"

"No, sir, Iraqis."

"Well, that's a mercy, anyway."

Next to him Khalid stirred. "Yes, sir," Patrick said quickly, and clicked to the next slide before Khalid broke into rash speech. The screen displayed a large graph that resembled a genealogical tree, with head shots next to each name where they were available. Most of the photos were blurry, and most of the names were aliases. Patrick thought it was a perfect illustration of how much they didn't know about Abdullah, which was why he'd included it.