He stood, popped another ten-pound ring on each side of the overloaded barbell, and returned to his bench press position.

“Premier Deng, then,” Gibson said. “I stand corrected. Now if you’ll excuse me, Admiral.”

He began the next set of fifteen reps.

Li watched through the ninth repetition of the set before turning away and leaving the suite.

Just past 5:40, Deng ordered his submarine to the surface and sent his third official statement to the international media via a single, mass-burst e-mail. In addition to the inclusion of more aggressive language about the antiterror response the PLA had in store, Deng provided a series of attachments with the e-mail missive and indicated that his intelligence unit had now identified definitive evidence of culpability for the nuke strike. The attachments included a series of photographs documenting a meeting held by the chief architects behind the attack, men whom Deng described as the leaders of the international terrorist organization his intelligence officers had managed to infiltrate. The meeting of these leaders had taken place, the statement said, at an undisclosed warm-weather location. As Deng completed his distribution of the e-mail, the countdown clock in the Mobile War Room ticked from 36:00:00 to 35:59:59.

It was six o’clock even as he flipped a switch and watched Admiral Li’s face pop up on the monitor. Li did not appear unduly nervous or agitated.

“Status at T-minus thirty-six hours: all systems go,” he said. “One perimeter breach this time, occurring at sixteen-thirty-eight hours. Vessel: pleasure craft. Passengers from the craft inquired about the resort. Inquiries were fielded by Mr. Gibson and the visitors dismissed. I have not been fully informed of the response strategy, but believe that Mr. Gibson will deploy a two-man surveillance team to dispatch with the visitors as he has done before.”

While Deng could tell that Li was acting differently from usual, he had neither the time, nor the empathy, to bother monitoring Li’s day-to-day mood shifts. Thus, following an initial pause, Deng concluded that Li’s report satisfied him, at least to the degree that he needed satisfaction from his Mango Cay staff and the security perimeter they kept this late in the game.

“See you at oh-six-hundred tomorrow,” Deng said.

Li bowed as Deng zapped him from the screen and ordered the submarine beneath the surface.

That was one hell of a strategy,” Laramie said, “that tried-and-true espionage technique of yours.”

Cooper took the pizza box and nodded for Laramie to lead the way.

“It appears,” he said, “your case has reached the same dead end as mine. Either that, or the cases are one and the same, and between the two of us we lack sufficient IQ to figure the whole deal out.”

They strolled along a grubby asphalt lane in Sainte-Anne, Martinique, about two blocks from the marina that Cooper had picked to moor the Apache. It was almost dark; they’d made the twenty-mile trip from Mango Cay, and Cooper had recommended pizza as a meal Laramie might be capable of keeping down. To his surprise she’d agreed, so he’d taken her to the joint across the road, which he’d heard a little about.

They came down a long dock and climbed aboard the Apache.

“U-238/U-235,” Laramie said.

When Cooper figured out what it was she’d just told him, he said, “Ah.”

“The reason you called me about the memo.”

“Also, I was bored.”

“The uranium could connect our…cases,” she said. “It might be a stretch, but follow me for a second. Your guy, um-”

“Marcel.”

“-could have been exposed to fuel rods on Muscle-boy’s island.”

“Head,” Cooper said. “I think of him as Muscle-head.”

“Head sounds fine. Nuclear power is quiet, of course, and invisible if you run it right, except for maybe steam.”

Cooper thought about this and said, “There was a fog over the woods behind the resort when we were chatting with Muscle-head. Looked the same way when I was out here taking pictures. According to this latest brash theory of yours, the missing dictators, if that’s who Muscle-head is working for, would be using the power plant for what purpose?”

“It’s remotely possible they could be using it to create plutonium, or highly enriched uranium, which they in turn-no, that’s a stretch.”

“In turn what?”

“Used to build a nuclear warhead, which they then detonated in Beidaihe, China.”

Cooper set the pizza box on the Apache’s copilot’s seat. “Definitely a stretch,” he said.

He ducked into the cabin and came out with a pair of ceramic plates, on which he stacked stainless steel utensils, cloth napkins, and a pair of high-ball glasses. He reached into a minifridge and came out with a pair of Budweiser longnecks.

“You’re eating pizza, you need to have beer,” he said.

Laramie was sitting cross-legged on the deck. She tugged on the pizza box until it slid off the seat and landed beside her. She opened the lid.

“Agreed.”

Laramie put a slice on each plate. Cooper found he liked her better over pizza than Caesar salad without the dressing.

“What were you talking about,” she said, “when you mentioned the ‘boys who stopped by for a drink’ at the club?”

Cooper chewed a bite of pizza and slung back some beer. “Believe our friend Muscle-head sent a couple mercenaries my way. They didn’t really plan for me to survive the visit.”

“What happened to-” Laramie thought better of where she was headed and decided to leave the question hanging. “This was after you took the pictures?”

“Yes.”

“So he figured out where you live.”

“Pretty easily.”

“But your boat isn’t registered locally.”

“Paris,” he said.

“So Muscle-head probably has some sophisticated tracking equipment. Or he could have had you followed.”

Cooper nodded. “But he didn’t,” he said.

“You’d have known?”

“The Caribbean is largely flat and featureless.”

“So he may have access to satellite imagery, then,” she said.

“That’d be my guess.”

“What’s he protecting?”

Cooper took a swig of his beer, then shrugged.

Laramie said, “You think Muscle-head’s going to send somebody else to pay us a visit?”

“Didn’t work before.”

“What if he does?”

“Well,” he said, “you may not have noticed that I’m doing so, but I am in fact keeping an eye out.”

Laramie looked at him. “I see.”

Cooper took another bite of pizza, the beginning of his third slice, and said, “I’ve got a riddle for you.”

“Okay.”

“Boat loads up a half-dead wino in Kingston. Sails, as you might put it, five hundred-plus miles east. Stops and drifts for maybe an hour, about five miles west of Mango Cay. Doesn’t head over to the island. Doesn’t come here to Martinique. Just sits, then turns around and goes back. What happened?”

Laramie thought for a moment. Cooper noticed she wasn’t half-bad at putting away pizza-she too had consumed the tip of her third slice.

“The half-dead wino,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Did he come back with the boat?”

“I’m not totally sure, but I think we can assume no.”

“I hate to admit it,” she said, “but for the moment, at least, I’m stumped.”

Cooper went into the cabin, came out with two more beers, set them on the deck, then turned and opened the box where he kept his navigation charts. He pulled out one of the accordion-folded satellite photos Gates had sent him, made some room on the deck by moving aside the pizza box and the plates, unfurled a few folds in the photo, and draped it across the space he’d cleared on the deck.

“SATINT,” he said.

Laramie sort of half-frowned. “No kidding, Columbo.”

“Your dad.”

“Right.”

Cooper pointed at a beetle-size image on one of the squares, the only visible variation from ocean in the huge photo spread.