“I said, ‘Jolly good show, old chap.’”

THE COAST GUARD CUTTER BROUGHT KANE TO THE MAINLAND, where a car drove him to a business jet waiting at the airport. Kane watched the lights of Bermuda fade in the distance, then turned away from the plane’s window and tried to make sense of the past twenty-four hours. His undersea ordeal had worn him out. His thoughts tripped over one another until, finally, he closed his eyes and dozed off. The jounce of the plane’s landing woke him up, and the pilot’s voice over the intercom informed him that they had touched down at Washington’s Reagan National Airport.

The plane taxied to an off-limits section reserved for VIPs. A strapping young man sporting a military brush cut greeted Kane as he stepped onto the tarmac. Aviator sunglasses shaded the man’s eyes, even though it was nighttime, and his black suit would have sent a conspiracy theorist into a swoon.

“Dr. Kane?” the man asked, as if there were some doubt.

The question irritated Kane, since he was the only passenger on the six-seat plane.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s me. How about you?”

“Jones,” the man said without a change in his expression. “Follow me.”

Jones led the way to a black Humvee, opened the rear door for Kane, then got in front next to the driver, who was also dressed like an undertaker. After leaving the airport, they raced along the George Washington Memorial Parkway as if there was no speed limit, skirted the city, and headed toward Maryland.

Jones had been silent during the drive, but as they entered Rockville he spoke briefly into a hand radio. Kane overheard something about a package being delivered. Minutes later, the Humvee pulled up to a large office building. The sign out front identified the building as the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters. The windows of the FDA were dark except for a few offices lit for cleaning crews.

Jones escorted Kane to a side entrance. They rode an elevator down one level and walked along a hushed corridor to an unmarked door. Jones knocked softly, then opened the door for Kane, who stepped into a nondescript conference room similar to hundreds of other sterile spaces scattered in government edifices around the capital. The room had pale green wall-to-wall carpeting, beige walls decorated with generic artwork, a lectern, and a projection screen. A dozen or so people were seated around a long oak table.

Kane went around the table shaking hands and was greeted with hellos or smiles from everyone except a stranger who identified himself as William Coombs, representing the White House.

Kane sat down in the only unoccupied seat next to a firm-jawed man wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.

“Hello, Max,” he said. “How was your trip from Bermuda?” His name was Charley Casey.

“Fast,” Kane said. “Hard for me to believe that a few hours ago I was a half mile under the ocean.”

“I watched the dive on TV,” Casey said. “Too bad you lost contact with the surface just when things started to get really interesting.”

“Interesting isn’t the word for it,” Kane said. “But it’s nothing compared to the craziness about the lab. Any news?”

The lieutenant shook his head.

“We’re still trying to make contact,” he said, “but there has been no response.”

“Could it simply be a foul-up in the communications system?”

Casey glanced over at Coombs.

“We have reason to believe that there is more involved than a systems failure,” Casey said.

“You might want to bring Dr. Kane up to date on the details as we know them, Lieutenant Casey,” Coombs said.

The lieutenant nodded, opened a folder, and pulled out several sheets of paper.

“We’ve pieced together a scenario based on witness statements. The situation has been confused, and reports are still coming in, but here’s what we have so far. Yesterday, at approximately 1400 hours our time, a cruise missile was launched against the Proud Mary, the lab’s support-and-security ship.”

Kane shook his head in disbelief.

“A missile? That can’t be true!”

“I’m afraid it is true, Max. The missile hit the ship on the port side. No one was killed, but at least a dozen were injured. The Mary is a tough old gal. She stayed afloat and got off a Mayday. The Navy cruiser Concord showed up within hours and rescued the survivors. Repeated attempts were made to contact the Locker. No reply.”

“Maybe the blast damaged the communications buoy,” Kane suggested.

“Negative. The cruiser checked out the buoy and found it undamaged.”

“Where was the lab’s service shuttle when all this happened?”

“A short while before the attack, the submersible had made a run down to the lab to deliver a representative from the company in charge of the Locker’s security. The sub was still on the lab when the missile came in.”

“What about the Locker’s minisubs?” Kane said. “They could be used to evacuate the lab in an emergency. The lab also has escape pods it can use as a last resort.”

“No subs or pods, Max. Our guess is that what happened to the lab was sudden and catastrophic.”

Kane’s head was spinning. He slumped in his chair as he tried to digest the implications of Casey’s last statement. He thought about Lois Mitchell and the other members of the Bonefish Key lab staff who had gathered to send him off on the B3 dive. He rallied after a moment, reminding himself that he was a scientist who dealt with facts, not suppositions.

Straightening up in his chair, Kane said, “How long before we can check out the lab itself?”

“The Concord is sending down a remote-operated vehicle,” Casey said. “All we can do at this point is to wait for them to report in.”

“I hope the Navy is doing more than sitting on its hands,” Coombs said. “Have you tracked the source of the missile?”

The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. Coombs was one of those ubiquitous young staff aides who looked as if he had been punched out of white dough with a cookie cutter. He was as clean-cut as a West Point grad, although his closest brush with a uniform had been as an Eagle Scout. He had cultivated an all-purpose facial expression of quiet competence that failed to hide a barely restrained arrogance. During his naval career, Casey had frequently encountered clones of the White House man, with their inflated sense of power, and had learned to cloak his disdain under a polite veneer.

He prefaced his answer with a pleasant smile.

“The Navy can walk and chew gum at the same time, Mr. Coombs. We’ve reconstructed the probable trajectory of the missile, and we’ve got planes and ships vectoring in on the launch position.”

“The White House isn’t interested in trajectories or vectors, Lieutenant. Has the source of the launch been tracked? If it was launched by a foreign power, this could have serious international repercussions.”

“The missile could have come from a ship, a sub, or a plane, sir, that’s all we know. Pretty much a crapshoot at this time. We’d welcome suggestions as to how to proceed, sir.”

Coombs was too well practiced in the art of passing the buck to take the bait.

“I’ll leave that up to the Navy,” he said, “but I can tell you one thing: this has all the earmarks of a well-organized and well-financed plan.”

“You won’t get any argument from me on that score,” Kane said. “About the same time the Proud Mary was being attacked, an attempt was made to sabotage the bathysphere dive.”

Kane waited for the noisy reaction to subside and then laid out the details of the attack on the sphere.

When Coombs heard about Austin’s rescue dive, he said, “I’ve heard Vice President Sandecker talk about Kurt Austin. He’s some sort of NUMA troubleshooter. From the little I know of the man’s exploits, you would still be at the bottom of the ocean if he had not been on board the Beebe. This thing with the lab is starting to make sense now. Someone wants to destroy our project.”