Sea of Fire

him.'

'Then what are one and possibly two military vessels doing at the waste site?' Hawke asked.

'I have no idea, and I'm not sure it concerns us,' Kannaday said.

'If they discover that Jaafar deposited empty drums of nuclear waste, it could come back to us,' Hawke said.

'They would have to find him first, which is unlikely,' Kannaday said. 'If Jaafar thinks someone is on to him, he will go into hiding. We can warn him on our secure channel.'

'I want to know who's out there,' Hawke repeated.

'And do what, exactly?' Kannaday asked.

'Go after those vessels, if necessary,' Hawke said. 'Do to them what the pirates wanted to do to us.'

A preemptive strike, Kannaday thought. Just what Darling might have suggested. Maybe Hawke was sincerely concerned about the patrol ship. Or maybe he was simply trying to provoke a confrontation with Kannaday. In either case, the captain decided to let him have his head on this one.

'How do you recommend we conduct reconnaissance?' Kannaday asked.

'We need a satellite overview,' Hawke replied. 'We need to see who is there and what they're doing.'

'Marcus, can you do that?' Kannaday asked.

'We can do that through Colonel Hwan,' Marcus said.

'Who is that?' Kannaday asked.

'Colonel Kim Hwan is my uncle's man at the North Korean Reconnaissance Bureau,' Marcus replied. 'The NKRB collects strategic and tactical intelligence for the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces. They also eavesdrop on business rivals when my uncle needs them to.'

'How long will it take to get information from Colonel Hwan?' Kannaday asked.

'We won't know until we contact him,' Marcus said. 'He may be able to get the information through normal channels. If not, he might have to go to the Chinese for access to one of their satellites.'

'Do it,' Hawke said.

Hawke did not bother to ask Kannaday. The captain let that go, too. Kannaday wondered if he was afraid to stop him or letting him run until he hit a reef. He realized now how complacent he had grown as a commander. Maybe he should question this more. Just to flex his muscles.

'You're certain there's no way anyone can eavesdrop on our message or trace the signal?' Kannaday asked.

'It's extremely unlikely,' Marcus replied. 'My uncle has a direct line to Colonel Hwan's cell comm. We'll patch into that and send E-mails directly to him. Hwan can respond to them immediately. No one would have any reason to monitor those communications.'

'And if someone does?' Kannaday asked stubbornly.

'Every message we send is coded and untraceable,' Marcus told him. 'We'll be safe.'

'All right,' Kannaday said. 'Go ahead.'

Marcus accessed the main transmitter in Darwin. He turned to his laptop and accessed the codebook on the hard drive. He looked up Hwan's code name. Once he had that, he took the appropriate diskette from a small safe under the radio stand. He plugged that into the drive.

'Ready,' Marcus said.

Hawke dictated as Marcus typed. The security director had not reacted to Kannaday giving the final okay to contact Hwan. Hawke asked the North Korean colonel to find out who was at the waste site and, if possible, why. While they waited for an acknowledgment, Kannaday watched for any sign of bonding between the two men. A glance. Hawke moving closer to Marcus. Something that might indicate collusion. Both men would benefit by Kannaday making a misstep. Hawke could seize the Hosannah. Marcus could run certain aspects of the mission, show his uncle leadership chops. They did not seem to be connecting in any meaningful way. The captain felt some wind in his sails.

Many paranoids do have enemies, Kannaday reflected. But he wondered whether, more often than not, it was themselves.

'What do we do in the meantime?' Marcus asked.

'We continue to the rendezvous point,' Kannaday said. 'Is everything set with the Malaysian crew?'

'I received a radio message while you were with the boss,' Marcus said. He accessed the notes on his computer. 'They've been crisscrossing the area since we missed our appointment. I told them we had an equipment problem. They are awaiting a new ETA.'

'Tell Captain bin Omar we'll be there at one A.M.,' Kannaday said. 'And thanks for being vague about what happened.'

'I didn't have much choice,' Marcus said. 'It would not have instilled confidence to tell them the truth.'

That was true.

Kannaday asked Marcus to let him know when he had any information. Then he went to the deck to chat with the crewmen who were posing as passengers. There was a great deal of sea traffic offshore. Kannaday knew many of the local skippers who ran pleasure boats. Ironically, if they saw Kannaday, if they waved to him, it helped him stay anonymous. No one thought, Where is Captain Kannaday and what is he up to?

Kannaday walked the deck. The sea air was unusually misty. The droplets felt good on the captain's face. He felt slightly better than he did before. Hawke had a different project to focus on. That kept the pressure off Kannaday. It also did something else.

It gave him time to figure out what to do about the security chief.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Washington, D.C. Friday, 7:17 A.M.

As mayor of Los Angeles and as head of Op-Center, Paul Hood had taken calls from heads of state. During times of crisis he had spoken calmly over the phone with his counterparts in other nations. Even when lives were at risk or lost, Hood had been able to speak without agitation to operatives in the field. He had talked with the wives and mothers of police officers and firefighters who had lost husbands and sons. He had called and visited the families of the Strikers who had perished in the Kashmir conflict.

But Hood was somewhat unnerved when he got around to accessing his personal cell phone messages. Daphne Connors had called at six-fifteen that morning. From the sound of her voice she had just woken up. Or perhaps she was just going to sleep. She often went to client parties that continued late into the night. She reported in a low, smoky voice that she had a dream about him. It had something to do with a stagecoach driver and a tavern owner in the old West. Only Hood was running the saloon and Daphne was running the stage.

Maybe that was true. Or maybe it was a pretext to phone. In either case, the call troubled him. Or rather, it was the tone of Daphne's voice. He had not heard a bedroom voice in years. His former wife, Sharon, had never had one, really. And the one night he spent with Op-Center's former press liaison, Ann Farris, was followed by awkward silence and forced felicity.

Daphne's voice was very feminine, very seductive. It got into Hood's ear, into his mind, into all his nerve endings in a way that made him very uncomfortable. It also made him wonder with dismay whether his discomfort was actually with Daphne. It might be with the idea of anyone getting close. Maybe his marriage had gone just the way he wanted it to. Built around a core of emotional and physical detachment for the sake of stability. It was as if he were running a city government or federal agency.

Hood did not like that thought at all. He chose not to think about it. He had arrived at the office a half hour before, and he was still going through the report from the evening unit. It appeared to have been an uneventful night everywhere except in the Celebes Sea. Hood listened to a call from Lowell Coffey to Hood's evening counterpart, Curt Hardaway. The call had been recorded digitally on Hood's computer.

Coffey reported that the Singaporean patrol ship had discovered an empty concrete block at a nuclear disposal site. The block should have contained radioactive waste. Radiation detectors on board Coffey's ship, an Australian MIC corvette, supported the findings.

'The Singaporeans are not trying to put anything over on us,' Coffey assured Hardaway. 'We are going to try