"Not really." Kolhammer smiled. "But go ahead. It reminds me of my old uncle Hans."

"From the death camps?"

"From the death camps," said Kolhammer.

They sat in silence for another minute. It wasn't a companionable stillness. The sun beat down out of an azure sky just as before. The hint of a sea breeze ruffled Einstein's wild hair and took the edge off the day's heat. But a shadow that brought no comfort had fallen over them.

"You find yourself at a loss, Admiral. Faced with evil on so vast a scale, do you think it beyond your capacity to effect change for the good?"

Kolhammer frowned and wiped at his damp brow.

"I made a promise once, that I would never let that sort of thing happen again if I could do anything to avoid it. I just wonder what I'm supposed to do now, what would be best."

Tendrils of blue smoke began to curl away from the bowl of Einstein's pipe. The smell did remind Kolhammer of his great-uncle Hans. The old guy would be in the camp pretty soon. Although he wouldn't be old, of course.

"Have you spoken with Roosevelt?" asked Einstein.

"Yes. They're all aware of the Nazis' programs. They were horrified at the extent of the Holocaust. But I got the impression they'd rather I hadn't brought it up. They said the best way to help the victims was to beat the Germans."

Einstein took that in like a professor considering a gifted student's thesis.

"And you do not agree."

"No, I do not."

"So what are you going to do?"

Before they could say anything more Agent Flint appeared at a run.

"Excuse me Admiral. Professor. But you have to come right away, sir. Your people are calling from Pearl. On your communications device. They've been trying to get you for some time."

"Dead? But how?"

The connection was flimsy. The boosted comm circuits and a large portable dish antenna, presently pointing skyward from the roof of the hotel, provided a real-time vid link, but Captain Karen Halabi appeared on the screen of Kolhammer's flexipad through a shower of static. They'd been trying for a secure link for nearly eighteen hours. He cursed their lack of satellite cover for about the hundredth time. Admiral King and General Eisenhower, however, standing behind him the hotel room, exchanged whispers about the marvel of secure, global communications by "movie phone."

"We're going to have to get on the ball with this stuff," murmured King.

Kolhammer pointedly ignored the chatter behind him and concentrated on the acting Multinational Force commander.

"It's very obvious… oubl… urder," said Halabi, her voice and image jumping as the signal bounced erratically off the troposphere.

"Any suspects yet?" Kolhammer asked loudly.

"Oh yes, thousands of them," Halabi said.

Great, thought Kolhammer. Halabi continued before he could reply.

"There's more, Admiral. The Nuku has been found. It materialized on top of a mountain in New Guinea. About half of it was fused into the rock, but the rest was sticking out, and I'm afraid the Japanese have got their hands on it."

King and Eisenhower suddenly appeared at Kolhammer's shoulder.

"What the hell is this about?" King demanded to know.

Kolhammer held up a hand to fend him off.

"Just a minute, Admiral. Captain Halabi, do we know status of the ship? What weapons and sensor systems were intact?"

Halabi disappeared inside in a small blizzard of static, which lasted for a few seconds. Kolhammer asked her to repeat herself.

"From the picture we… our intelligence analysts don't… they could… retrieved the choppers or most… mast-mounted arrays. They were buried… looks like the ship's CIC would have been cut in half by the edge of the mountain. But that… the forward missile mounts and a lot of incidental technology they… unbolted and walked off with."

"Suffering Christ," spat Admiral King. "Is she saying the Japs have their own missile boats, now? I knew this would happen. I knew those little bastards would get hold of this shit."

"Settle down," said Kolhammer. Turning back to the small screen, he collected his thoughts before going on.

"All right, Captain. You're on the spot. I'll leave the micromanagement of the Nuku to you. But I suggest we lay a world of hurt on that mountain ASAP."

"Already in hand, Admiral. We're just working our way around the lack of GPS now. We've got one catapult patched up, and we should have a strike inbound within four hours."

"Good work. What about Anderson and Miyazaki? What's the situation there?"

Kolhammer ignored King's muttered resentment at the distraction.

"We had a real pissing match with the locals at the crime scene," said Halabi. "Nimitz intervened on our behalf. We got carriage of the forensics-Captain Francois off the Kandahar is handling that. And your Captain Lunn is working with the local DA's office on the investigations."

Sitting on a footstool, hunched over the minicam sending his image back to Pearl, Kolhammer clenched and unclenched his fists.

"Local cops doing the footwork?" he asked.

"I'm afraid so," said Halabi, unconscious of the effect her words had on Admiral King.

"Arrogant fucking limeys," he muttered.

Kolhammer leaned forward and tried to focus on the stuttering video image.

"We got any hand at all in the detective work?"

"Nimitz is leaning on the local PD, but they're… difficult in all… orts of ways. Also, it's no… related, but we've had trouble on shore, a brawl in… tween some of our people and their… It's not connec… to the murders as far as… but it's not helping relations."

Kolhammer chewed his lip as he thought it over.

"What sort of damage are looking at?"

The link to Halabi suddenly cleared.

"A lot of burned buildings and broken heads in town. No deaths that we know of, although one of our guys did get shot. He'll pull through. Funny thing is, the local commanders aren't all that worked up. I get the impression they have to put up with a lot of this stuff."

Kolhammer didn't doubt it. He'd been worried that a confrontation between his sailors and the locals would only be a matter of time. But if Nimitz wasn't raising hell about it, he'd be content to let the matter lie, for the moment. There was no ignoring the killings of two of his officers, however.

"Okay, Captain," he said. "Tread softly on the brawl. If it doesn't bother them, we shouldn't let it bother us. But I'll want a full report for my own benefit, to see if any of our guys are at fault. As for the local cops, lean on the fuckers. If you have to, send a SEAL team through their garbage cans. Maybe they'll dig something up we can use to heavy them. We're not taking any shit over this. Not with two of our own in the morgue."

Halabi nodded once. "Got it."

Kolhammer was aware that the two men behind him had heard everything he'd just said, but he couldn't have cared less what they thought of his tactics.

"Pass on my thanks to Admiral Nimitz for his help," he said. "And contact the other fleet commanders-ours, I mean. I want to convene an O Group tomorrow. Zero eight hundred hours your time. We'll be back in Pearl by then. Keep me updated on the Nuku by compressed data burst in the meantime. I'll handle the fallout at this end."

Halabi said she'd get on it, and they signed off. Kolhammer stood and faced the others.

"I'm sorry about your men, Admiral," said Eisenhower.

"It was a man and a woman," said Kolhammer. "Captain Anderson off the Leyte Gulf, the ship that materialized inside your cruiser. And Miyazaki, the senior Japanese officer. We'd put Anderson and some of her people onto the Siranui."

King took that news without visibly reacting.

"Uh-huh," he said. "Now, what about these fucking Japs in New Guinea? Are we gonna have these bastards all over us with one of those rocket swarms that wiped out Spruance?"