“Any idea what the term means?”

“The best translation I can make of it is ”Black Wind.“ ”

Dirk made a short phone call to Leo Delgado, then reached I Dahlgren, who was drinking a beer in a lounge overlooking Lake i Washington following his morning kayak with the bank teller.

“Jack, you up for a dive tomorrow?” Dirk asked.

“Sure. Spearfishing in the Sound?”

“I've got something a little bigger in mind.”

“King salmon are game for me.”

“The fish I'm interested in,” Dirk continued, “hasn't swum in over sixty years.”

Irv Fowler woke up with a raging headache. Too many beers the night before, the scientist mused as he dragged himself out of bed. Chugging down a cup of coffee and a donut, he convinced himself he felt better. But as the day wore on, the pain seemed to swell, with little relief offered despite his multiple hits on a bottle of aspirin. Eventually, his back joined in the game, sending out waves of pain with every movement he made. By midafternoon, he felt weak and tired, and left early from his temporary office at Alaska State Health and Social Services to drive back to his apartment and rest.

After he downed a bowl of chicken soup, his abdomen started firing off streaks of shooting pain. So much for home remedies, he thought. After several fitful naps, he staggered into the bathroom for another dose of aspirin to help kill the pain. Looking into the glassy-eyed worn and weary face that stared back at him from the mirror, he noticed a bright red rash emerging on his cheeks.

“Damndest flu I've ever had,” he muttered aloud, then fell back into bed in a heap.

Security was tight at the Tokyo Hilton Hotel and guests for the private banquet were required to pass through three separate checkpoints before gaining entry to the lavish dining hall. The Japan Export Association's annual dinner was an extravagant affair featuring the best local chefs and entertainers performing for the country's top business leaders and dignitaries. Executives from Japan's major exporting companies helped sponsor the dinner on behalf of their major trading partners. In addition to key customers, in-country diplomats from all the Western and Asian countries that constituted Japan's primary trading partners were treated as special guests.

The recent assassination of U.S. Ambassador Hamilton and the bedlam at the SemCon factory opening had created a buzz in the crowd and heads turned when the American embassy's deputy chief of mission Robert Bridges entered the room, accompanied by two undercover security men.

Though a career diplomat, Bridges was more at home working policy strategies or conducting business security briefings rather than socializing in mass crowds. Hamilton had been by far the better glad-hander, Bridges thought as he made small talk with a Japanese trade representative. A dinner host soon arrived and escorted him to a small banquet table, where he was seated with a number of European diplomats.

As traditional dishes of sashimi and soba noodles were brought to the tables, a troupe of geisha dancers glided elegantly about a raised stage, dressed in brightly colored kimonos and twirling bamboo fans as they pirouetted. Bridges downed a shot of warm sake to help deaden the pain of listening to the French ambassador drone on about the poor quality of Asian wines while he watched the dancers spin.

As the first course was finished, a litany of corporate executives ok to the stage to promote their self-importance with blustery speeches. Bridges took the opportunity to visit the restroom and, with large bodyguard leading the way, walked down a side corridor and into the men's room.

The bodyguard scanned the tiled restroom, finding only a waiter washing his hands in a sink at the far end. Letting Bridges pass to the urinal, the bodyguard closed the door and stood facing the interior.

The bald waiter slowly finished washing his hands, then turned his back to the bodyguard as he dried his hands from a paper towel rack. When he spun back toward the door, the bodyguard was shocked to see a .25 automatic in the waiter's hand. A silencer was affixed to the muzzle of the small handgun, with the business end pointed directly at the bodyguard's face. Instinctively grabbing for his own weapon, the bodyguard had barely moved his hand when the .25 emitted a muffled cough. A neat red hole appeared just above the bodyguard's left eyebrow and the large man raised up and back momentarily before collapsing to the floor with a thud, a river of red blood running from his head.

Bridges failed to detect the muffled gunshot but heard the bodyguard collapse. Turning to see the waiter pointing the gun at him, Bridges could only mutter, “What the hell?”

The bald man in the waiter suit stared back at him with deathly cold black eyes, then broke into a sadistic grin that revealed a row of crooked yellow teeth. Without saying a word, he squeezed the trigger two times and watched as Bridges grasped his chest and fell to the ground. The assassin pulled a typewritten note out of his pocket and rolled it up tight into the shape of a tube. He then bent over and wedged it into the dead diplomat's mouth like a flagpole. Carefully disassembling his silencer and placing it in his pocket, he gingerly stepped over the two bodies and out the door, disappearing down a hall toward the kitchen.

The fiberglass bow of the twenty-five-foot Parker work-boat plunged through the deep, wide swells, cutting a white foamy path as it rolled through the trough before cresting on the peak of the next wave. Though tiny in comparison to most vessels in the NUMA fleet, the durable little boat, identified on the stern as the Grunion, was ideal for surveying inland and coastal waterways, as well as supporting shallow-water dive operations.

Leo Delgado rolled the helm's wheel to the right and the Grunion quickly nosed to starboard and out of the path of a large red freighter bearing down on them near the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

“How far from the strait?” he asked, spinning the wheel hard to port a moment later in order to take the passing freighter's wake bow on.

Standing alongside in the cramped cabin, Dirk and Dahlgren were hunched over a small table studying a nautical chart of their present position near the entrance to the Pacific Ocean, some 125 miles west of Seattle.

“Approximately twelve miles southwest of Cape Flattery,” Dirk said over his shoulder, then dictated latitude and longitude coordinates to Delgado. The Deep Endeavor's first officer reached over to a keyboard and tapped the position into the small boat's computerized navigation system. A few seconds later, a tiny white square appeared in the upper corner of a flat-screen monitor that hung from the ceiling. At the lower edge of the monitor, a small white triangle flashed on and off, representing the Grunion as it motored into the Pacific. With the aid of a satellite Global Positioning System interface, Delgado was able to steer a path directly toward the marked position.

“Now, you guys are sure Captain Burch isn't going to find out we borrowed his support boat and are burning his fuel just for a pleasure dive?” Delgado asked somewhat sheepishly.

“You mean this is Burch's private boat?” Dirk replied with mock horror.

“If he comes snooping, we'll just tell him that Bill Gates stopped by and offered us a few million stock options if he could take the Grunion out for a spin,” Dahlgren offered.

“Thanks. I knew I could trust you guys,” Delgado muttered, shaking his head. “By the way, how good is your fix on the submarine's location?”

“Came right out of the official Navy report on the sinking that Perlmutter faxed me,” Dirk replied, grabbing the cabin door sill for balance as the boat rolled over a large swell. “We'll start with the position that was recorded by the destroyer after she sank the I-403.”