Project Daedalus

  Chapter Nine

  Monday 12:08 a.m.

  The massive hulk of Daedalus I was being towed slowly through the hangar doors, now open to their full 250-foot span. As it rolled out, the titanium-composite skin glistened in the fluorescent lights of the hangar, then acquired a ghostly glow under the pale moonlight. First came the pen-sharp nose containing the navigational gear, radar, and video cameras for visible light and infrared; next the massive ramjet-scramjets, six beneath each swept-back, blunt wing; and finally the towering tail assembly, twin vertical stabilizers positioned high and outboard to avoid blanketing from the fuselage. The tow-truck drivers and watching technicians all thought it was the most beautiful creation they had ever seen.

  This would be Yuri Androv's last scheduled test flight before he took the vehicle hypersonic. In four more days. He wore a full pressure suit and an astronaut-style life-support unit rested next to him. As he finished adjusting the cockpit seat, he monitored the roll-out on his liquid crystal helmet screens, calling up the visual display that provided pre-takeoff and line-up checks of the instruments. Not surprisingly, the numbers were nominal-all hydraulic pressures stable, all temperatures ambient. As usual, the Japanese technicians had meticulously executed their own preflight prep, poring over the vehicle with their computerized checklists. Everything was in the green.

  All the same, this moment always brought a gut-tightening blend of anticipation and fear. This was the part he dreaded most in any test flight-when he was strapped in the cockpit but without operational control. He lived by control, and this was one of the few times when he knew he had none. It fed all the adrenaline surging through him, pressed his nerves to the limit.

  He flipped a switch under his hand and displayed the infrared cameras on his helmet screens, then absently monitored the massive white trucks towing him onto the darkened tarmac. The landing lights along the runway were off; they would be switched on only for final approach, when, guided by the radar installation, their focused beams would be invisible outside a hundred-yard perimeter of the nose cameras.

  The asphalt beneath him, swept by the freezing winds of Hokkaido, was a special synthetic, carefully camouflaged. He knew it well. Two nights earlier he'd come out here to have a talk with the project kurirovat, Ivan Semenovich Lemontov, the lean and wily Soviet officer-in-charge. Formerly that post had belonged to the CPSU's official spy, but now party control was supposed to be a thing of the past. So what was he doing here?

  Whatever it was, the isolated landing strip had seemed the most secure place for some straight answers. As they strolled in the moonlight, the harsh gale off the straits cutting into their skin, he'd demanded Lemontov tell him what was really going on.

  By the time they were finished, he'd almost wished he hadn't asked.

  "Yuri Andreevich, on this project you are merely the test pilot. Your job is to follow orders." Lemontov had paused to light a Russian cigarette, cupping his hands against the wind to reveal his thin, foxlike face. He was a hardliner left over from the old days, and occasionally it still showed. "Strategic matters should not concern you."

  "I was brought in late, only four months ago, after the prototypes were ready for initial flight testing. But if I'm flying the Daedalus, then I want to know its ultimate purpose. The truth. Nobody's told me anything. The only thing I'm sure of is that all the talk about near-space research is bullshit. Which means I'm being used." He had caught Lemontov's arm and drew him around. The officer's eyes were half hidden in the dark. "Now, dammit, I want to know what in hell is the real purpose of this vehicle."

  Lemontov had grunted, then pulled away and drew on his cigarette. Finally he spoke: "Yuri Andreevich, sometimes it's wiser to leave strategy to the professionals. You do your job and I'll do mine."

  Yuri remembered how he'd felt his anger boil. He'd begun to suspect that certain CPSU hardliners like Lemontov, together with the military or the KGB, had their own plans for the vehicle. But what were they up to?

  "Look, I'm doing my job. So how about a little openness, a little glasnost? This is not supposed to be like the old days."

  Lemontov had drawn a few paces ahead on the tarmac, walking briskly, with the quick energy that had brought him to his powerful party post. Finally he'd slowed and waited for Yuri to catch up. He had made a decision and he had made it quickly. That was characteristic.

  "Yuri Andreevich, in a way you represent part of our 'technology exchange' with Mino Industries. You have an indispensible role to play here. This whole program depends on you."

  "I'm well aware of that." However, it hadn't answered his questions.

  "Then you should also be aware of something else. This undertaking is a small, but highly crucial, part of something much larger. Nothing less than the fate of the Soviet Union in the next century rests on whether Project Daedalus succeeds."

  "What do you mean?" Yuri had watched him walk on, feeling his own impatience growing.

  Lemontov had turned back again, brusquely. "This hypersonic spacecraft is the symbol, the flagship, of a new Soviet alliance with the most technologically advanced nation on earth. Even a 'flyboy' like you should be able to grasp that. Through this alliance we eventually will find a way to tap all of Japan's new technology. The world of the future-advanced semiconductors, robots, biotechnology, superconductivity, all of it-is going to be controlled by Japan, and we must have access to it."

  Yuri had listened in silence, once more feeling he was being fed half-truths. Then Lemontov lowered his voice.

  "Yuri Andreevich, by forming what amounts to a strategic alliance with Mino Industries, we will achieve two objectives. We will gain access to Japanese technology and capital, to rejuvenate Soviet industry and placate our people. And we will strike a preemptive blow against the peril of a new China on our borders in the next century."

  "China?" Yuri had studied him, startled.

  "My friend, don't be fooled by summits and talks of reconciliation. Neither we nor China care a kopeck about the other. Think about it. In the long run, China can only be our nightmare. If America had to look across its Canadian border and see China, they too would be terrified. China has the numbers and, soon, the technology to threaten us. It's the worst nightmare you or I could ever have." Lemontov had paused to crush out his cigarette, grinding it savagely into the asphalt. "We must prepare for it now."

  The hardliners have just found a new enemy, Yuri had realized. The Cold War lives!

  "Like it or not," Lemontov had continued, "and just between us I'm not sure I do like it, we have no choice but to turn to Japan in order to have an ally in Asia to counter the new, frightening specter of a hostile China rising up on our flank."

  "So how does Daedalus figure into all this?"

  "As I said, it is the first step in our new alliance. From now on our space programs will be united as one." He had sighed into the icy wind. "It will be our mutual platform for near-earth space exploration."

  "With only peaceful intent?" Yuri had tried to study his eyes, but the dark obscured them.

  "I've told you all you need to know." A match had flared again as he lit another cigarette. In the tiny blaze of light he gave a small wink. "Even though the Daedalus could easily be converted to a . . first-strike platform, we naturally have no intention of outfitting these prototypes, or later production models, for any such purpose. The Japanese would never agree."

  What had he been saying? That the hardliners were planning to seize the vehicles and retrofit them as first- strike bombers? Maybe even make a preemptive strike against China? Were they planning to double-cross the Japanese?

  What they didn't seem to realize was that these vehicles didn't need to be retrofitted. Daedalus was already faster and more deadly than any existing missile. It couldn't be shot down, not by America's yet-to-be-built SDI, not by anything. And speed was only part of the story. What about the vehicle's other capabilities?

  He switched his helmet screens momentarily to the infrared cameras in the nose and stud
ied the runway. Infrared. Pure military. And that was just the beginning. There also was phased-array radar and slit-scan radar, both equipped for frequency hopping and "squirt" emissions to evade detection. And how about the radar altimeter, which allowed subsonic maneuvering at low altitudes, "on the deck"? Or the auxiliary fuel capacity in the forward bay, which permitted long-distance sustained operation?

  No "space platform" needed all this radar-evasive, weapons-systems management capability. Or a hyper-accurate inertial navigation system. Kick in the scramjets and Daedalus could climb a hundred thousand miles straight up in seven minutes, reenter the lower atmosphere at will, loiter over an area, kick ass, then return to the untouchable safety of space. There was enough cruise missile capacity to take out fifty hardened sites. It could perform troop surveillance, deploy commandos to any firefight on the globe in two hours . . . you name it. He also suspected there was yet another feature, even more ominous, which he planned to check out tonight.

  While the Soviet military was secretly drooling to get its hands on this new bomber, sending the cream of Soviet propulsion engineers here to make sure it worked, they already had been outflanked. Typical idiocy. What they'd overlooked was that these two planes still belonged to Mino Industries, and only Mino Industries had access to the high-temperature ceramics and titanium composites required to build more. Tanzan Mino held all the cards. He surely knew the capabilities of this plane. Everything was already in place. Mino Industries now owned the ultimate weapon: they had built or subcontracted every component. Was Lemontov such a dumb party hack he couldn't see that?

  All the more reason to get the cards on the table. And soon.

  So far the plan was on track. He had demanded that the schedule be moved up, and Ikeda had reluctantly agreed. In four days Yuri Androv would take Daedalus into the region of near space using liquid hydrogen, the first full hypersonic test flight. And that's when he intended to blow everybody's neat scenario wide open.

  He felt the fuselage shudder as the trucks disengaged from the eyelets on the landing gear. Then the radio crackled.

  "This is control, Daedalus I. Do you read?"

  "Daedalus I. Preflight nominal."

  "Verified. Engine oil now heated to thirty degrees Celsius. Begin ignition sequence."

  "Check. Daedalus I starting engines." He scanned through the instrument readings on his helmet screens, then slipped his hand down the throttle quadrant and pushed the button on the left. He could almost feel the special low-flashpoint JP-7-originally developed for the high-altitude American SR-71 Blackbird-begin to flow from the wing tanks into the twelve turboramjets, priming them. Then the ground crew engaged the engines with their huge trolley-mounted starters. As the rpm began to surge, he reminded himself he was carrying only 2,100,000 pounds of fuel and it would burn fast.

  He switched his helmet screens to the priority-one display and scanned the master instrument panel: white bars showing engine rpm, fuel flow, turbine inlet temperature, exhaust temperature, oil pressure, hydraulics. Then he cut back to the infrared cameras and glanced over the tarmac stretching out in front of him. Since the American KH-12 satellite had passed twenty minutes earlier, flight conditions should now be totally secure.

  For tonight's program he was scheduled to take the vehicle to Mach 4, then terminate the JP-7 feeds in the portside outboard trident and let those three engines "unstart," after which he would manually switch them to scramjet geometry, all the while controlling pitch and yaw with the stability augmentation equipment. That would be the easy part. The next step required him to manually switch them back to turboramjet geometry and initiate restart. At sixty-three thousand feet. Forty minutes later he was scheduled to have her back safely in the hangar chocks, skin cooling.

  Nothing to it.

  He flipped his helmet screens back and looked over the readouts one final time. Fuel pressure was stable, engine nozzle control switches locked in Auto Alpha configuration, flaps and slats set to fifteen degrees for max performance takeoff. He ran through the checklist on the screen: "Fuel panel, check. Radar altimeter index, set. Throttle quadrant, auto lock."

  The thrust required to take Daedalus I airborne was less than that needed for a vertically launched space shuttle, since lift was gained from the wings, but still he was always amazed by the G-forces the vehicle developed on takeoff. The awesome power at his fingertips inspired a very deceptive sense of security.

  "Chase cars in place, Yuri. You're cleared for taxi. Ne puzha, ne pera!"

  He started to respond, thinking it was the computer. But this time there was no computer. He'd deliberately shut it down. If he couldn't get this damned samolyot off a runway manually, he had no hopes for the next step. The voice was merely Sergei, in flight control.

  "Power to military thrust." He paused, toes on the brakes, and relished the splendid isolation, the pure energy at his command as Daedalus began to quiver. Multibillions at his fingertips, the most advanced . . .

  Fuck it. This was the fun part.

  "Brake release."

  In full unstick, he rammed the heavy handles on the throttle quadrant to lock, commanding engines to max afterburner, and grinned ear to ear as the twelve turboramjets screamed instantly to a million pounds of thrust, slamming him against the cockpit supports.

  Sunday 7:29 p.m.

  "We are now cruising at twenty-nine thousand feet. However, the captain has requested all passengers to please remain seated, with their seat belts fastened." The female voice faltered as the plane dropped through another air pocket. "We may possibly be experiencing mild turbulence for the next hour."

  Michael Vance wanted a drink, for a lot of reasons. However, the service in first class was temporarily suspended, since attendants on the British Airways flight to London were themselves strapped into the flip-down seats adjacent to the 757's galley. The turbulence was more than "mild." What lay ahead, in the skies and on the sea below, was nothing less than a major storm.

  Why not, he sighed? Everything else in the last four days had gone wrong. He'd been shot at, he'd killed a mobster, and Eva had been kidnapped.

  Furthermore, the drive back to Athens, then down to the port of Piraeus to put Zeno onto the overnight ferry to Crete, had been a rain-swept nightmare. Yet another storm had blown up from the Aegean, engulfing the coast and even the mountains. When they finally reached the docks at Piraeus, the old Greek had just managed to slip onto the boat as it was pulling out, his German rifle wrapped in a soggy bundle of clothing.

  "Michael, I must hurry." He kissed Vance on both cheeks. "Be safe."

  "You too." He took his hand, then passed him the Llama, half glad to be rid of it and half wondering whether he might need it again. "Here, take this. And lose it."

  "It's final resting place will be in the depths of our wine dark sea, my friend." Zeno pocketed it without a glance. "No one will ever know what we had to do, not even Adriana. But we failed. She is still gone."

  "Don't worry. I'll find her. And thank you again, for saving my life."

  "You would have done the same for me. Now hurry. The airport. Perhaps there's still time to catch her." With a final embrace he disappeared into the milling throng of rain-soaked travelers.

  The downpour was letting up, but the trip still took almost an hour. When he finally pulled in at the aging Eastern terminal, he'd left the car in the first space he could find and raced in. It was bedlam now, with flights backed up by the storm, but he saw no sign of Eva. Where was she? Had she even come here?

  Planes had just started flying again. According to the huge schedule board over the center of the floor, the first departure was a British Air to Heathrow, leaving in five minutes.

  There was no chance of getting through passport control without a ticket, so he'd elbowed his way to the front of the British Airways desk.

  "That flight boarding. Three-seventy-one. I want a seat."

  "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to wait-"

  "Just sell me a ticket, dammit."

>   The harried agent barely looked up. "I'm afraid that's out of the question. Now if you'll just take-"

  "There's a woman who may be on it," he lifted up the empty leather suitcase, "and she left this at the hotel."

  "The equipment is already preparing to leave the gate." He glanced at the screen, then turned to a pile of tickets he was methodically sorting. "So if you'd please-"

  "Let me check the manifest." He'd stepped over the baggage scale, nudging the agent aside. "To make double sure she's aboard. Maybe I can try and locate her in London."

  "Sir!" The young Englishman paled. "You're not allowed to-"

  "Just take a second." Vance ignored his protest and punched up the flight on the computer.

  It was a 757, completely full. And there she was, in seat 18A, second cabin.

  Thank God she'd made it.

  While the outraged British Airways agent was frantically calling for airport security, he scanned more of the file.

  Alex Novosty was aboard too. In the very last row. Christ! He'd even used his own name. His mind must be totally blown.

  Did she know? Did he know? What now?

  With the ticket agent still yelling, he'd quickly disappeared into the crowd, having no choice but to pace a departure lounge for an hour and a half, then take the only remaining London flight of the evening. All right, he'd thought after cooling down, Novosty wants to use you; maybe you can use him.

  But now he suspected things weren't going to be that simple.

  He remembered the two KGB operatives Alex had shot and killed at Knossos. They'd been there to find Eva, which meant they knew she had something. Now he realized that wasn't all they knew.

  Across the aisle in first class sat a tall, willowy woman who radiated all the self-confidence of a seasoned European traveler. She was also elegantly beautiful-with dark eyes, auburn hair, and pursed red lips-and she carried a large brown leather purse, Florentine. She could have been a French fashion model, a high-paid American cosmetics executive, a Spanish diplomat's mistress.

  The problem was, Vance knew, she was none of those things. The French passport he'd seen her brandish at the Greek behind the glass windows at emigration control was a forgery. She was neither French, nor American, nor Spanish. She was an executive vice president with Techmashimport, the importing cover for T-Directorate. KGB.

  Vera Karanova was always a prominent presence at Western trade shows. But there was no trade show in London now, no new high-tech toys to be dangled before the wondering eyes of Techmashimport, which routinely arranged to try and obtain restricted computers, surveillance gear, weapons-systems blueprints.

  So why's Comrade Karanova on this flight? Off to buy a designer dress at a Sloane Street boutique? Catch the latest West End musical?

  How about the simplest answer of all: She's going to help them track Alex Novosty to earth. Or grab Eva. Or both. They're about to tighten the noose.

  So the nightmare was still on. The KGB must have had the airport under surveillance, and somebody spotted Novosty-or was it Eva?-getting on the British Air flight to London. Now they were closing in.

  Does she know me? Vance wondered. My photo's in their files somewhere, surely.

  But she'd betrayed no hint of recognition. So maybe not. He'd always worked away from the limelight as much as possible. Once more it had paid off.

  As the plane dipped and shuddered from the turbulence, he watched out of the corner of his eye as she lifted the fake French passport out of her open leather handbag, now nestled in the empty seat by the window, and began copying the number onto her landing card.

  Very unprofessional, he thought. You always memorize the numbers on a forgery. First rule. T-Directorate's getting sloppy these days.

  He waited till she'd finished, then leaned over and ran his hand roughly down the arm of her blue silk blouse.

  "Etes-vous aller a Londres pour du commerce?" He deliberately made his French as American-accented as possible.

  "Comment?" She glanced up, annoyed, and removed his hand. "Excusez moi, que dites-vous?"

  "D'affaires?" He grinned and craned to look at the front of her open neckline. "Business?"

  "Oui . . . yes." She switched quickly to English, her relief almost too obvious.

  "Get over there often?" He pushed.

  "From time to time."

  No fooling, lady. You've been in London four times since '88, by actual count, setting up phony third-party pass-through deals.

  "Just business, huh?" He grinned again, then looked up at the liquor service being unveiled in the galley. The turbulence had subsided slightly and the attendants were trying to restore normality, at least in first class. "What do you say to a drink?"

  She beckoned the approaching steward, hoping to outflank this obnoxious American across the aisle. "Vodka and tonic, please."

  "Same as the lady's having, pal." He gave the young Englishman a wink and a thumbs-up sign, then turned back. "By the way, I'm booked in at the Holiday Inn over by Marble Arch. Great room service. Almost like home. You staying around there?"

  "No." She watched the steward pour her drink.

  "Sorry to hear that. I was wondering, maybe we . . . Do these 'business' trips of yours include taking some time off? Let you in on a secret, just between you and me. I know this little club in Soho where they have live-" he winked, "I got a membership. Tell you one thing, there's nothing like it in Chicago."

  "I'm afraid I'll be busy."

  "Too bad." He drew on his drink, then continued. "Long stay this trip?"

  "If you'll excuse me, Mr. -"

  "Warner. William J. Warner. Friends call me Bill."

  "Mr. Warner, I've had a very trying day. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to attempt to get some rest."

  "Sure. You make yourself comfortable, now."

  He watched as she shifted to the window seat, as far as possible from him, and stationed her leather handbag onto the aisle side. Just then the plane hit another air pocket, rattling the liquor bottles in the galley.

  "Maybe we'll catch up with each other in London," he yelled.

  "Most unlikely." She glared as she gulped the last of her drink, then carefully rotated to the window and adjusted her seat to full recline. Her face disappeared.

  Good riddance.

  After that the flight went smoothly for a few minutes, and Michael Vance began to worry. But then the turbulence resumed, shutting down drink service as their puny airplane again became a toy rattle in the hands of the gods, thirty thousand feet over the Mediterranean, buffeted by the powerful, unseen gusts of a spring storm. For a moment he found himself envying Zeno, who had only the churning sea to face.

  Almost hesitantly he unbuckled his seat belt and pulled himself up, balancing with one hand as he reached in the air to grapple drunkenly with the overhead baggage compartment.

  "Sir," the steward yelled down the aisle, "I'm sorry, but you really must remain-"

  "Take it easy, chum. I just need to-"

  Another burst of turbulence slammed the wings, tossing the cabin in a sickening lurch to the left.

  Now.

  He lunged backward, flinging his hand around to catch the leather purse and sweep it, upended, onto the floor. With a clatter the contents sprayed down the aisle. Comrade Karanova popped alert, reaching out too late to try and grab it. Her eyes were shooting daggers.

  "Ho, sorry about that. Damned thing just . . . Here, let me try and . . ." He bent over, blocking her view as he began sweeping up the contents off the carpeted aisle- cosmetics, keys, and documents.

  The name in the passport was Helena Alsace. Inside the boarding packet was a hotel reservation slip issued by an Athens travel agent. The Savoy.

  Well, well, well. Looks like T-Directorate travels first class everywhere these days. Learning the ways of the capitalist West.

  "Here you go. Never understood why women carry so much junk in their purse." He was settling the bag back onto the seat. "Sure am sorry about that. Maybe I can buy you dinne
r to make amends. Or how about trying out that room service I told you about?"

  "That will not be necessary, Mr. Warner." She reached for the bag.

  "Well, just in case I'm in the neighborhood, what hotel you staying at?"

  "The Connaught," she answered without a blink.

  "Great. I'll try and make an excuse to catch you there."

  "Please, just let me . . ." She leaned back again, arms wrapped around her purse, and firmly closed her eyes.

  The Savoy, he thought again. Just my luck. That's where / always stay.

  Monday 9:43 a.m.

  "Michael, I can't tell you how happy I am to hear from you, old man. We must have lunch today." The voice emerged from the receiver in the crisp diction of London's financial district, the City, even though the speaker had been born on the opposite side of the globe. Vance noticed it betrayed a hint of unease. "Are you by any chance free around noon? We could do with a chat."

  "I think I can make it." He took a sip of coffee from the Strand Palace's cheap porcelain cup on the breakfast cart and leaned back. He'd known the London financial scene long enough to understand what the invitation meant. Lunch, in the private upstairs dining rooms of the City's ruling merchant banks, was the deepest gesture of personal confidence. It was a ritual believed to have the magical power to engender trust and cooperation-cementing a deal, stroking an overly inquisitive journalist, soothing a recalcitrant Labor politician. "We had him to lunch" often substituted for a character reference in the City, a confirmation that the individual in question had passed muster.

  "Superb." Kenji Nogami was trying hard to sound British. "What say you pop round about one-ish? I'll make sure my table is ready."

  "Ken, can we meet somewhere outside today? Anywhere but at the bank."

  "Pleasure not business, Michael? But that's how business works in this town, remember? It masquerades as pleasure. We 'new boys' have to have our perks these days, just like the 'old boys.'" He laughed. "Well then, how about that ghastly pub full of public-school jobbers down by the new Leadenhall Market. Know it? We could pop in for a pint. Nobody you or I know would be caught dead drinking there."

  "Across from that brokers club, right?"

  "That's the one. It's bloody loud at lunch, but we can still talk." Another laugh. "Matter of fact, I might even be asking a trifling favor of you, old man. So you'd best be warned."

  "What's a small favor between enemies. See you at one."

  "On the dot."

  As he cradled the receiver and poured the last dregs of caffeine into his cup, he listened to the blare of horns on the Strand and wondered what was wrong with the conversation that had just ended. Simple: Kenji Nogami was too quick and chipper. Which meant he was worried. Why? These days he should be on top of the world. He'd just acquired a controlling interest in the Westminster Union Bank, one of the top ten merchant banks in the City, after an unprecedented hostile takeover. Was the new venture suddenly in trouble?

  Not likely. Nogami had brought in a crackerjack Japanese team and dragged the bank kicking and screaming into the lucrative Eurobond business, the issuing of corporate debentures in currencies other than that of a company's home country. Eurocurrencies and Eurobonds now moved in wholesale amounts between governments, central banks, and large multinational firms. The trading of Eurobonds was centered in London, global leader in foreign exchange dealing, and they represented the world's largest debt market. In addition, Nogami had aggressively stepped up Westminster Union's traditional merchant bank operations by financing foreign trade, structuring corporate finance deals, and underwriting new issues of shares and bonds. He also excelled in the new game of corporate takeovers. None of the major London merchant bankers-the Rothschilds, Schroders, Hambros, Barings- had originally been British, so maybe Kenji was merely following in the footsteps of the greats. Vance did know he was a first-class manager, a paragon of Japanese prudence here in the new booming, go-go London financial scene.

  This town used to be one of Michael Vance's sentimental favorites, a living monument to British dignity, reserve, fair play. But today it was changing fast. After the Big Bang, London had become a prisoner of the paper prosperity of its money changers, who'd been loosed in the Temple. Thanks to them the City, that square mile comprising London's old financial center, would never again be the same. After the Big Bang, the City had become a bustling beehive of brash, ambitious young men and women whose emblem, fittingly, seemed to be the outrageous new headquarters Lloyds had built for itself, a monstrous spaceship dropped remorselessly into the middle of Greek Revival facades and Victorian respectability. It was, to his mind, like watching the new money give the finger to the old. The staid headquarters of the Bank of England up the way, that grand Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, now seemed a doddering dowager at a rock concert.

  All the same, he liked to stay near the City, close to the action. The Savoy, a brisk ten-minute walk from the financial district, was his usual spot, but since that was out of the question this time, he'd checked into the refurbished Strand Palace, just across the street.

  Today he had work to do. He had to get word to the Mino-gumi to back off. And he was tired of dealing with lieutenants and enforcers, kobun. The time had come to go to the top, the Tokyo oyabun. The game of cat and mouse had to stop. Tokyo knew how to make deals. It was time to make one.

  Kenji Nogami, he figured, was just the man. Nogami, a wiry executive with appropriately graying hair and a smile of granite, was a consummate tactician who'd survived in the global financial jungle for almost three decades. When the Japanese finally got tired of the British financial club playing school tie and bowler hats and "old boy" with them, shutting them out, they'd picked Nogami to handle the hostile takeover of one of the pillars of London's merchant banking community. Japan might still be afraid to go that route with the Americans, who loved to rattle protectionist sabers, but England didn't scare them a whit.

  In years gone by, such attempts to violate British class privilege were squelched by a few of the Eton grads of the City chipping in to undermine the hostile bid. These days, however, nobody had the money to scare off Japan. The game was up. And after the deregulation of Big Bang, wholesale pursuit of profit had become the City's guiding principle. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a game Kenji Nogami and his Shokin Gaigoku Bank could play better than anybody in the world. Nogami saw himself as an advance man for the eventual Japanese domination of the globe's financial landscape. Maybe he was.

  Michael Vance knew him from a wholly different direction, now almost another life. In years gone by, Nogami had traveled with equal ease in two worlds-that of straight money and that of "hot" money. He'd always maintained the cover of a legitimate banker, but insiders knew he'd made his real fortune laundering Yakuza amphetamine receipts and importing small-caliber weapons. It was that second career that now made him the perfect pipeline for a message that needed to be delivered fast.

  Vance finished off the last of the coffee in his cup, then rose and strolled to the window to gaze down on the bustling Strand. The weather looked murky, typical for London.

  Where was Eva now? he wondered. What was she doing? Maybe she'd managed to lose Novosty and get back to thinking about the protocol.

  Well, he had some pressing business of his own, but the first thing was to try and find her.

  Maybe she was wondering right now how to get in touch with him. What places here had they been together, back in the old days? Maybe there was some location . . . the V&A? St. Pauls? or how about a restaurant? What was that one she'd loved so much? The place the IRA shot up a few years back?

  At that moment the white phone beside his bed interrupted his thoughts with its insistent British double chirp. He whirled around, startled.

  Who knew he was here? If it was the KGB, or the Japanese mob, they wouldn't bother ringing for an appointment.

  Finally, after the fifth burst, he decided to reach for it. Probably just the desk, calling about the breakfast things.


  The voice was the last one he expected.

  "Hello, darling."

  "Eva!" He almost shouted. "Where the hell are you?"

  "You really must stop shooting people, you know," she lectured. "You're getting to be a horrible menace to society."

  "What-?"

  "Michael." The voice hardened. "Christ, what a mess."

  "Are you okay?"

  "Yes, I think so." She paused to inhale. "But I'm literally afraid to move. I think KGB got Alex, there in Terminal Four at Heathrow. He was trying to bluff them, though, so maybe he pulled it off. Anyway, they were so tied up I just slipped past."

  "The hell with him. Where are-?"

  "I don't dare take a step outside this room now. Let's meet tonight. Besides, I want to work on translating . . . you know. I rang a scholarly bookshop I used to order from and they're delivering one of Ventris's books. Maybe I can make some headway."

  "I already did a bit of it."

  "I saw that in the files. A whole page." She laughed. "Congratulations."

  "Give me a break. It's been ten years."

  "Well, it looks like you're still able to fake the scholar bit. But just barely."

  "Thanks. What do you think of it so far?"

  "Scary. Very scary. But we have to do more. Enough so we can go public."

  "Exactly. Look, I've got to do a couple of things today. Can you-?"

  "That's fine, because I want to work on this." She sounded businesslike again, her old self. "Something to while away the empty hours. The saga inside my little Zenith has got to be the ticket out of this madness."

  "Maybe, but we need to put some more spin on the scenario. Just to be safe."

  "What?"

  "Not on the phone. Can you just sit tight? Play your game and let me take a shot at mine?"

  "It better be good."

  "That remains to be seen." Who knew how it would go? But if it proceeded as planned, the whole thing could be turned around. "Now where the hell are you?"

  "The place we always stayed, of course. Figuring you'd come here. But you stood me up, naturally. Same old Michael. So this morning I started calling around."

  "You mean you're-?"

  "At the Savoy, sweetie, our love nest of happy times past. Right across the street."