America

'I know the philosophical implications of finding something in the last place you look, but we've covered about sixty percent of the seamount. The third stage isn't small.'

'I know,' Kolnikov said.

'Heydrich is like a caged lion. After observing him for a week, I think he is slightly insane.'

Kolnikov said dryly, 'Aren't we all?'

Turchak wasn't amused. 'You know what I mean. He's a time bomb with a lit fuse.'

The dining area was packed with people eating a late supper. Everyone had been traveling all day, yet the excitement was contagious. Callie looked around nervously — did she know any of these people? Finally she decided she didn't. While she looked for acquaintances, Jake looked for Willi Schlegel and didn't see him, of course. They needed to find the man. That would be a job for Carmellini.

Callie did the talking for the Graftons and only in response to direct questions. They were retired military — like Flap, they thought that cover story fit best.

The woman sitting beside her was from England, cruised all the time. She and her husband had both lost their spouses and met on a cruise three years ago. Cruises were so romantic, with the moonlight, the dinners, the dancing!

'And how,' she asked Callie in a delightful English accent, 'did you and your husband meet?'

'Oh, I picked him up in a bar,' Callie replied with a wave of her hand.

Jake choked on something and had to leave the table.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sea Wind got under way from Lisbon before most of the passengers were out of bed. Tommy Carmellini was up and strolling the decks when she passed the harbor light and hit her first North Atlantic swell. He wandered along watching the stewards, waiters, sailors, and cleaning personnel bustle about their duties. Fortunately most of these people were men.

The breeze was brisk and the sea was covered with whitecaps— all in all, he thought, another great day to be alive.

The ship itself was something to see, a medium-sized cruise ship about five years old that glistened in the morning sun. It had a rakish bow and stacks, a huge deck pool, and acres of topside deck to stroll. Carmellini covered most of the public areas by breakfast time, strolling, looking, eyeing locks and closed areas, most of which bore the sign, 'Crew Only.' As the passengers began trickling into the dining rooms to feast on every breakfast food item known to man, Carmellini picked the lock of the ship's laundry. In minutes he was back in the passageway carrying a bundle. He went to his stateroom to change into his new outfit.

Lizzy was sound asleep in the double bed. Carmellini had slept on the floor last night. Lizzy was a bit miffed that he didn't make a pass at her. He had no doubt that she would have turned him down, but for the sake of her self-respect she wanted him to make a stab at it. The air was positively frigid when she turned off the light beside her bed.

This morning he dressed in the bathroom, examined himself in the mirror as he savored the motion of the ship in the sea. Sea Wind was equipped with stabilizers, of course, but it still had a subtle motion. Carmellini had noticed that the crewmen habitually walked with their feet wider apart, unconsciously bracing themselves against the ship's motion. He made sure the stateroom door locked behind him and went out on deck practicing that walk.

He walked purposefully, as if he were on an errand, and avoided eye contact with the passengers. One of them, an elderly woman, did put her hand on his sleeve and ask for help with a lounge chair. He placed it where she requested, smiled, avoided her eyes, and walked on.

The first problem, he decided, was finding Sarah Houston. Or Zelda Hudson. Whatever she was calling herself this week. He thought she would be easier to find than Willi Schlegel, who was probably buried in the owner's suite, surrounded by layers of personal staff. God forbid that the owner should have to mingle with common fare-paying passengers.

The crew quarters were the obvious first place to look for Zelda. There were no portholes or personal bathrooms on the decks under the passenger decks. Bunk rooms and lockers. Not many people about because most were busy with ship handling, cleaning, or making and serving breakfast.

Carmellini walked through the passageways as if he owned them, checked likely compartments, finally decided Zelda couldn't be there and left.

Ship's offices? A storeroom? The dispensary/hospital?

He found a guard sitting by the door of the ward in the ship's sick bay, which was equipped to save heart attack victims.

He started to walk by the guard, who stopped him with, 'You not go there,' in a heavy French accent.

Taking a chance, Carmellini asked, 'Has she had breakfast yet?'

'Out.'

'I'm here for the tray.'

The man got up, went in. Tommy got a glimpse of Zelda as the door opened. He took the tray from the guard, nodded, and walked purposefully away.

Zelda could see herself in the mirror. She looked old, she thought.

Well, she felt old.

The bastards would probably kill her. Try as she might, she couldn't see Willi Schlegel handing her a plane ticket home and a check for $190 million. Willi didn't look the type.

They wouldn't shoot her. Another injection, probably. This one fatal. They would put her into a bag or something along with some old tools or pots and pans, then toss her off the fantail with the garbage in the middle of the night while the paying customers slept off the food and drink.

That was how it would be.

The truth was she had miscalculated. Played for all the dough and underestimated Willi Schlegel.

She sat listening to the blowers in the ductwork and the muted sounds of doors, people moving, machinery — the sounds of a ship under way — while she thought about dying, about how it would be.

Zip had warned her. The Zipper.

The guy was actually… Well, the truth of it was that he was the only man who had ever loved her. Plenty of them wanted her body, and plenty more wanted her money, when they realized she had some, yet few wanted a smart woman around very long. Not in this day and age. If only she had been a blonde with big boobs.

What was it her grandmother said? 'Why do you want to be smart? Men are scared by women with brains. Practice being dumb.' How do you do dumb? 'Ask them how things work — men love to talk about things. Ask them to do things for you. Ask them about themselves. Look interested.'

Zip had wanted her, though. He knew how smart she was and liked her for it.

She lifted her arms to the limits of the handcuffs that held her to the chair, then shifted her weight. She sat thinking about Zip, about her grandmother, about everything!

And waiting.

Willi Schlegel also found the waiting difficult. When recovering the satellite had first been proposed seven months ago, he had liked the idea. Heydrich could recover it; EuroSpace could examine and improve upon the technology, perhaps even make a bid for the second generation of SuperAegis. Schlegel knew that there would always be another generation of every modern weapons system, the contracts let long before the first generation was fully deployed. That was the defense business — everything was obsolete in a year or two, research and development never stopped. The demand for new technology meant there were always new profits to be made.

Billions of dollars.

And the people doing the dirty work could be stiffed. Working always through third-party cutouts, putting nothing in writing, he made sure no one had blackmail material.

This time there had been complications. When it became plain that publicly recovering the satellite and keeping it would be unacceptable to the French government, another way had to be found. Ergo,