Andrei Androv was both an idealist and a pragmatist. In Russia you had to be. That education began almost half a century earlier when, as a student, he had been on hand to assist in the first free flight of a Russian-made liquid fuel rocket, at an army base just outside Moscow. He had experienced the exhilaration of a new frontier, and plunging himself into the new science of rocketry, he had become a self-taught expert who published theoretical works read and praised by men three times his age.Ironically, therefore, Andrei Petrovich Androv had not enjoyed the luxury of being ignored, as the American rocket pioneer Goddard had been. Joseph Stalin, always paranoid, decided that the rocket researchers' "fireworks" were "dangerous to the country." Consequently, Andrei Petrovich Androv was arrested, interrogated at Butyrskaya Prison in Moscow, and dispatched on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to a convict coal mine on the Pacific coast.Eventually the political winds shifted. As a recognized rocket expert, he was part of the 1946 Soviet team that shipped German scientists and V-2 launchers back to Russia. Finally, under Khrushchev, he rose to genuine prominence, since that general secretary believed that only rockets, not manned aircraft, had the range to drop bombs on the U.S. Nikita S. Khrushchev put Andrei Androv in charge of all Soviet rocketry, and Andrei Androv put Russia in space.He'd been in charge of constructing the sprawling Baikonur Cosmodrome, near Tyuratram in Kazakhstan, central Asia, still the world's largest space center. From it he orbited the world's first satellite, Sputnik, and the world's first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin. He knew the byways of that top-secret facility almost better than he knew his own living room—the gantry systems, the fueling apparatus, the clean rooms, the rocket assembly areas, the sectors where satellites were readied. Most recently, in 1987, he had been in charge of the successful first test launch of the most powerful vehicle the world had ever seen—the Energia, propelled by liquid hydrogen engines capable of lifting a hundred-ton space platform into orbit.Also during that time his only son, Yuri Andreevich, had become the Soviet Union's leading test pilot. Yuri was rarely home, and then, nine years ago, Andrei Androv's wife had died of pneumonia. Isolated in the long, snowy nights at Baikonur, he'd consoled himself with string quartets, his studies of classical Greek, and his designs, his dreams of the ultimate space vehicle.But he knew Russia would never be able to build it alone. Soviet computer and materials technology already was slipping behind those of the West.He grimaced to think how his country had been brought to today's humiliating state of affairs, reduced to bargaining with foreigners like Arabs in a medina. Eventually, though, pragmatism had overruled all. Underlying this bizarre new alliance was one simple reality: the USSR needed Japanese high technology desperately. And it needed that technology now.It had begun two years earlier, when the president himself had paid a surprise secret visit to the space complex at Baikonur, supposedly to review the Energia launch schedule. That, however, was merely the official excuse. He actually had an entirely different agenda.Without saying why, he had invited his old friend Andrei Petrovich Androv to join him at the secluded hunting lodge where he was staying—to talk, one-on-one, about the future of Soviet science. As that long snowy evening wore on, wind whistling through the log walls and pine smoke clouding the air, their conversation had turned to hard truths and blunt language.In vino, Veritas. By midnight, the uniformed bodyguards outside were stamping their heavy boots to keep warm, and Andrei Petrovich and Mikhail Sergeevich were both drinking vodka directly from the bottle, had flung its tinfoil cap onto the rough-hewn boards of the cabin's floor. By then, too, the revered Andrei Petrovich Androv was boldly speaking his mind."Mikhail Sergeevich, time has run out for Russia. There is nothing to buy, almost nothing to eat, and prices are soaring. There is so much corruption you will not leave a Russian hospital alive unless you've bribed everyone, right down to the drunken orderlies. And those bribes can't be money. Who wants rubles? They are worthless. These days you have to bribe with vodka." He'd laughed sadly, then picked up an old copy of Pravda there by the fireplace, waved it in the air, and tossed it into the crackling flames. "When we start cooperatives, they are immediately taken over by our new mafia, Russia's ruble millionaires. Everything—""Perestroikawill succeed in time, Andrei Petrovich," the president had insisted perfunctorily, still not having explained why they were meeting. "We are moving as rapidly as circumstances will permit. The bureaucracy—""Perestroika!" Androv had roared back. "Have you heard the latest joke from Moscow?Perestroikais like a country where everyone is switching from driving on the left side to the right side—gradually. Our half-measure concessions to a market economy have produced the worst of both systems. We now have a land with socialist initiative and capitalist conscience." He paused to laugh again, then sobered. "And soon, very soon, we're going to find ourselves in the technological Third World. We need a vision. Even more, we need hard currency, and Western technology now. And we need massive amounts. Nothing less can save us."That was when the president had nodded silently, then lifted a top-secret document from his black leather briefcase. He explained that it was a proposal from a consortium of foreigners. He wanted Andrei Androv's honest assessment."Read this, Andrei Petrovich," he said, passing it over, "and tell me what you think. It may well be a terrible thing even to consider, but I must know your view. You, my old friend, are one of the few men I know I can trust. This proposal, can it work?"As he squinted by the flickering light of the fire, Andrei Petrovich Androv almost couldn't believe what he was reading. Among other things, the dream he had dreamed so long was there, his for the taking. The dream of a bold venture in space achieved with a whole new level of technology.Along with it, the Soviet Union would receive everything it needed. The foreigners would provide billions and billions in long-term, low-interest loans and a flood of subsidized consumer goods to erase the pain of perestroika, providing the president with the badly needed financing, not to mention popular support, he needed to bring it off. But there were price tags, several of them. The first would be total access to all Soviet space and propulsion technology. That component would actually make sense technically, but the others were higher, much higher. Could it be done? Should it be done?"What do you think, Andrei Petrovich?" the president had finally spoken, his voice a whisper above the snap of embers and the howl of wind. "Do we dare?"The room had fallen silent for a long moment. Was this some kind of trap? he almost wondered, like the old days. No, he'd quickly concluded, this time Russia was different. He would have to trust Mikhail Sergeevich. Most of all, though, he was holding his life-long ambition in his hand. At last he replied, hope mingled with apprehension."I think we have no choice." He had looked up at the president's troubled eyes. "You have no choice.""Unfortunately, I think you are right." He had sighed and turned his gaze to the blackness outside the snow- banked window. "Ve tyomnuyu noch, ya znayu. Yes, Andrei Petrovich. On this dark night, I finally know what we must do."After one final vodka, they had set about devising the scenario that would change the world forever. . . .The airflow around the model continued to accelerate, while laser holograms of its complex aerodynamics were now being converted by the computer into multi-colored graphic art. Androv watched the wall-size liquid crystal display screen in the control room begin generating a vivid depiction of the streams whirling past the model, simulating the incremental stages of hypersonic climb. It was like watching a hallucination, he thought, as colors swirled around the fuselage of an object seemingly composed of 3-D lines and curves."We are now at Mach 6, Comrade Doktor Androv." The voice of a Soviet technician interrupted his thoughts. "The laser data show that the supersonic wave drag peaks at Mach 3.8, then subsides. Your new canard foreplanes appear to be working, at least for this portion of the flight envelope."Androv studied the screen, noncommittal. "Thus far it would appear to be so. Perhaps the SX-10 was correct. All the same, at Mach 7, I want to switch on the enhancer, then capture those data and analyze them to be doubly sure."The hypersonic enhancer permitted wind-tunnel burst tests at far higher velocities than a conventional facility could achieve. More high tech."There could still be a problem," Androv continued, "when the vortex of air currents shed from the nose of the fuselage encounters the shock waves from the wings, particularly around Mach 11." He turned to Ikeda. "Those vortexes have been responsible for significant damage to several American space shuttles during reentry phase. I need to see the data.""As you wish." The director walked to the thick glass window that looked out onto the model suspended in the airstream. The crew of technicians hovered over the controls, watching for any signs of vibration. He studied the screens for a few moments, then spoke quietly to the head of the technical team, an intense young man in spectacles. This lieutenant turned and passed the order to his colleagues, who nodded gravely and stationed themselves at the switches.Above the roar, a brilliant arc of electricity suddenly exploded just in front of the nose of the model, adding an additional burst of pressure at Mach 6 to the velocity already passing across. It was a blinding, microsecond pulse that momentarily boosted simulated vehicle velocity to Mach 13. The lasers registered the data, then passed it directly, via microwave link, into the memory banks of the powerful SX-10 operating hundreds of miles away.Seconds later the turbulence data appeared in visual form on the liquid crystal screen above them. As the colored numbers flashed, a cheer went up from the normally somber technicians."Still no sign of any wave drag outside the theoretical envelope, not even at Mach 13," the young head-technician beamed."Just as we simulated," Ikeda noted quietly.This time even the grave Androv smiled. "I must congratulate all of you." He was rising from his chair, the central one facing the main controls."Then I will order the modification installed," Ikeda nodded, "if you formally authorize it.""Authorized. I think you are right. Perhaps we are ready for a hypersonic test flight." Androv reached to switch off his turntable. "I would like to go down to the hangar now myself, in fact. Perhaps celebrate this moment with a glass of tea.""Of course." Ikeda spoke quickly to his Japanese technicians, then followed the Russian out the door.The hallways were a connected maze of brilliantly lighted and scrupulously clean tunnels. They moved down the main corridor to the central checkpoint, then turned and entered the South Quadrant, passing the various assembly sections. Those sectors were mostly quiet now, since the final work had been completed several weeks earlier.Androv said nothing as they walked toward the doorways connecting the South Quadrant with the underground hangar. He merely whistled a portion of the third movement of the A Minor quartet, Beethoven's hymn of thanksgiving in the Greek, Lydian mode. He recalled that the English writer Aldous Huxley had once suggested that particular movement was proof of God's existence.Was there a God? He wasn't sure. The only miracles he knew of on this earth were performed by men. He was on the verge of performing one himself.The history of space exploration had been played out entirely in his lifetime. He himself had been the architect of much of that progress. But putting a man into space remained an expensive and dangerous proposition. Launch vehicles still exploded with alarming regularity. Man was trapped on this planet. God was still in the heavens.Man's hope of reaching God at will required a special creation, one that could taxi off a runway just like a normal aircraft, then accelerate to hypersonic speeds, reaching low-earth orbit. An air-breathing space vehicle. Its potential for the peaceful exploration of near-earth space defied imagination.Peace. All his life, Andrei Petrovich Androv had worked in the shadow of war. Now, at last, he had created the ultimate symbol of peace.The entry to the hangar was secured, but when the guards saw Dr. Androv and the project director approaching, they saluted and punched in the codes on the locks. Moments later the heavy steel doors slid aside, revealing the brilliant lights of the hangar. It was cavernous, over a hundred feet high, with gantries now standing idle along the walls. White-coated technicians swarmed over the two prototypes, checking the final seals, while others were on twenty-foot-high trucks servicing the engines.Looming above them were what appeared to be two giant prehistoric birds, streaks of gleaming silver over three hundred feet in length, with pen-sharp noses that dipped rakishly downward. Androv paused to admire them a moment, marveling in spite of himself. The long, sleek lines swept back in a clean curve, without the interruption of a windshield. The "cockpit," in fact, was deep inside the nose, where shock waves would not impact the computer guidance system. From the nose its lines burgeoned into a sharp, clean fan, and beneath the two abbreviated wings were suspended twelve massive turboramjet-scramjets. They had already been certified at Mach 4.5. In ten days one of these vehicles would achieve the ultimate. Mach 25, seventeen thousand miles per hour.The Americans had code-named their fledgling designfor a hypersonic space plane—still at least a decade away— the X-30. But no such mundane designation would satisfy Andrei Petrovich Androv, devoted disciple of the ancients. He had long believed the Americans were high-tech vulgarians with no poetry in their soul, no sense of history.Across the towering tail assembly of both aircraft was an insignia that symbolized the joining of two of the world's great superpowers, a double ax. And along their titanium-composite fuselage was lettered a single word, in Cyrillic characters. Andrei Androv had insisted on that name, in celebration of the first human ever to soar above the earth, the dream of ancient man. Now, he had declared, four thousand years later, there was another dream, his dream, a hypersonic vehicle that could loft man directly into space from anywhere on the planet.He had dreamed that dream. And the Mino Industries Group had permitted him to pick the name for the creation that would realize it, for the miracle that would master time and space, the earth itself . . .DAEDALUSThursday 9:16a.m.Yuri Androv stood at the far end of the flood-lit hangar, staring up at the underbelly ofDaedalus Iand thinking. This morning's run-up in the centrifuge had gone well. At last he was convinced there was no physiological barrier to hypersonic flight, at least none he couldn't handle. The scramjets had all been put through their paces at the aero-propulsion facility. On the test stand, at least, they met their specifications.Yes, he was thinking, this plane just might do it. He would ease through the Mach 4.8 barrier slowly, then convert to scramjet geometry, switch to liquid hydrogen, and go full throttle. It was scary, sure, but you only lived once. Fuck the danger.The prospect was exhilarating and chilling. He looked up, again awed. Even for someone who'd seen and flown them all, this was an inspiring creation. Not only was it easily the most technologically advanced flight vehicle in the world, it also was stunningly beautiful.Right now, however, there were two simple problems: first, without a hypersonic test flight nobody could really be sure it would do what it was supposed to; second, as of now both prototypes still belonged to Mino Industries and would continue to belong to Mino Industries until the final treaty and agreement were signed.Actually, taking theDaedalushypersonic might be the least of the project's worries. That was the part he knew how to handle. The unknowns lay in another direction entirely, the strategic direction.Strategically, he still didn't trust Russia's new partner. From what he'd heard, the conditions demanded in return for all their high technology had been heavy, and that was just the short-term price. The long-term cost might be even greater. Was the Soviet Union about to become the financial and technological captive of a shadowy group of foreigners, men whose identities remained, even now, shrouded in secrecy? Was this a Faustian bargain?Just then he noticed the doors at the far end of the hangar slide open and two men in white lab coats enter. Perfect timing, he thought. Even at that distance he knew immediately who they were: the joint venture's two top technical officers: his father, Andrei Petrovich Androv, and Taro Ikeda, the project director for the Japanese team. The men held equal authority. Supposedly. But in fact all the real decisions on this project were being made by somebody else entirely. The shots were actually being called from a skyscraper in Tokyo, by a mysterious CEO known as Tanzan Mino.Now Ikeda and the elder Androv were headed his way. As he watched Ikeda, he felt himself involuntarily stiffen. Perhaps his unease about the man was his intuitive, right brain working, trying to tell him something. But what? All communications with the CEO were channeled through Ikeda. Fair enough, he told himself, he was accustomed to secrecy. Maybe Japanese industrialists were as careful about protecting their asses as the Sovietnomenklaturawere. Maybe it was just part of the landscape here too. But still . . ."Strastvitya, Yuri Andreevich." Ikeda smiled, extending his pale hand as he simultaneously bowed. "Kak pashaviatye?""Khoroshau. Spahcebo." He shook Ikeda's hand, then nodded toward his father. "If this is a good time, I'd like to discuss the scramjet power-up sequence with Dr. Androv for a few moments.""If it's anything serious, then perhaps we should all confer with the prime contractors," Ikeda responded smoothly. "Right now, in my office. In fact, I was just on the phone with—""No need to bring them in. Just a few technical items, nothing more.""Yuri Andreevich." Ikeda smiled and bowed again, his eyes trying to display a warmth they clearly did not possess. "Every issue here is of importance to us all. If—""Not every nut and bolt," he interrupted. "I just have some sequencing questions, that's all."Ikeda bowed once more, quickly. "You know we are all depending on you. No one in Japan has the experience to take up a plane like this. At least not at this stage of the project. So be aware that any matter weighing upon the success of your test flight, or your safety—" he flashed another quick, concerned smile "—is naturally of gravest concern to me, and to the CEO.""Then you should be glad to hear the power-up simulation in the centrifuge this morning took me right through Mach 9.8 with no problems. Which means the scramjet ignition sequence looks like a go.""Congratulations." Ikeda nodded."One last thing. I'll be sending a memo to Engineering about a modification of the cockpit, to permit more latitude in the seat. Nothing major. I think we could still reduce vascular stress in the high-G regime."Andrei Androv noticed the look of concern on his son's face. "Yuri, you seem troubled. This morning, did anything—?""Of course, send Engineering your memo by all means,"Ikeda interjected. "I'll personally see it's taken care of. We want nothing to go wrong. Not even the smallest—""Good. That's all I want." Yuri turned and wrapped his arm around his father's aging shoulders, gently urging him in the direction of the trucks stationed beneath the silver nose of Daedalus I. He wanted to get rid of Ikeda so he could talk. After they moved a few feet, he yelled back over his shoulder. "But wait on the decision till you read my memo.""As you wish." Ikeda nodded farewell. "I'll be in my office until 1300 hours if we need contractor input."Which meant, Yuri knew, that no further communication with him was permissible after that time. Technical consultations were only held during mornings. Afternoons he seemed to have other pressing matters to attend to."Yuri, the run-up in Number One went well this morning. I think we've finally eliminated the supersonic wave drag." The elder Androv was heading over to check the hydraulic lifts supporting the landing gear and its heavy 22-ply retractable tires. Then he glanced back and smiled. "I'm beginning to believe in miracles. We might just succeed.""If those damned scramjets up there," he pointed skyward, "actually achieve ignition when they're supposed to.""I've studied the static-test data carefully. At the propulsion facility they routinely achieved ignition at Mach 4.8. The numbers were there and they looked all right. Temperature regime, pounds thrust, all the rest."What's really happening, Yuri thought suddenly, is they've taken our engineering design and built it. But what if we're just being used somehow, having our brains picked, our expertise stolen? Then what?He said nothing, though, just listened quietly as the older man continued."Also, the new ceramic composite they've come up with for the fuel injection struts was heated to thirty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit and repeatedly stress-tested. Those data were particularly impressive. You know, the struts have always been the Achilles heel for a scramjet, since the fuel has to be injected directly through them into the combustion chamber. They have to withstand shock waves, and thermal stresses, far beyond anything ever encountered in a conventional engine. Nobody else has ever come up with a material that can do it. Not us, not the Americans, not anybody. But now, their high-temperature materials and liquid air cycle have finally made the scramjet concept a reality. The last roadblock is gone." He looked up, still marveling. "All we or the Americans can do is make engineering drawings of those engines, just pictures.""I hope you're right. But when we switch over from JP-7 to liquid hydrogen, nobody knows what can happen. It's never been done before.""Are you really worried?" The old man studied him."Damned right I am. Who wouldn't be?" He looked around at the milling Japanese technicians, then lowered his voice. "And I'll tell you something else. There're other things around here worrying me too, maybe even more. Something about this project is starting to feel wrong.""What do you mean?" Andrei stared."I'm beginning to suspect ... I don't know. So far it's just a sense, but—""Yuri, let me tell you a hard fact," the elder Androv interjected. "Like it or not, this project is the only chance the Soviet Union has to ever own a vehicle like this.""That may be true, but if we—""Remember the sad fate of the TU-144," he went on, "the supersonic passenger plane we built based on some engineering drawings for the Concorde we managed to get hold of. We copied it, but we got it wrong, and in 1973 we had that horrible tragedy at the Paris Air Show, when it crashed in a ball of fire. That was the end of it. We failed, and it was humiliating. The Soviet Union couldn't even build a supersonic passenger jet. The real truth is, we didn't have the computers we needed to design it." He looked up, smiling. "But now, all that humiliation will be undone."Yuri suddenly realized his father was being swept up in his dreams. The same way he sometimes got lost in those damned string quartets, or reading Euripides in the original Greek. He was going off in his fantasy world again. He couldn't see that maybe he was being used."Have you ever wondered where this project is going to lead? Where it has to lead?""It will lead the way to peace. It will be a symbol of cooperation between two great nations, demonstrating that the human spirit can triumph.""Moi otyets, it could just as well 'lead the way' to something else entirely. Don't you realize what's happening here? We're giving away our thruster engineering, Russia's leading technology. It's the one area where we still lead the world. We've just handed it over . . . for the price of one fucking airplane. And even if we eventually get our hands on these prototypes, we can't build more without begging the materials from them. We can't fabricate these composite alloys in the Soviet Union.""But this is a joint venture. Everything will be shared." He smiled again, his face gnome-like beneath his mane of white hair. "It will also give us both a chance to overcome the lead of Europe and America in commercial passenger transport in the next century. That's what this is all about. The future of nonmilitary aviation, it's right here.""Do you really believe that?" He stifled a snort of incredulity. "Don't you see what this vehicle really is? Let me tell you. It's the most deadly weapons delivery system the world has ever seen. And we're showing them how to build it, even testing it for them to make sure it'll perform.""The Daedalus will never be a military plane. I would never have participated if I thought—""Exactly. That's what they want us to believe. But it sure as hell could be. And Mino Industries will be the only company on earth that can actually build more of them." He sensed it was useless to argue further. Nothing mattered to Andrei Petrovich Androv except what he wanted to believe. At this point, nothing could be done to expose the dangers, because nobody on the Soviet team would listen.Or maybe there was something. Why not make a small revision in the test flight? Once he was aloft, what was anybody going to do? He would be up there, alone. If he could get around their flight computer, he might just show the world a thing or two. He'd been thinking about it for weeks now."All right." He turned back. "If this thing is supposedly ready to fly, then I'll fly it. But get ready for some surprises.""Yuri, what are you planning?""Just a small unscheduled maneuver." The hell with it, he thought. "They've got seven days, and then I take it up . . . and power-in the scramjets. I'm ready to go. Tell Ikeda to prepare to have liquid hydrogen pumped into the tanks.""But that's not how we've structured the test schedule." Andrei examined him, startled. Yuri had always been fiery, but never irrational. "We need ten—""Fuck the schedule. I'm going to take this vehicle hypersonic in a week, or they can get themselves another test pilot." He turned away. "Reschedule, or forget it. We don't have much time left. Once all the agreements are signed—""Yuri, I don't like this." His eyes were grave. "It's not—""Just tell them to getDaedalus Iprepped. I think these bastards that call themselves Mino Industries have a whole agenda they're not telling us about. But I'm about to rearrange their timetable."ChapterSixThursday 2:51a.m.A very wet, very annoyed Michael Vance rapped on the door of Zeno Stantopoulos's darkenedkafeneion. He'd walked the lonely back road into Iraklion in the dark, guiding himself by the rain-battered groves of plane trees, olive, and wild pear, trying to figure out what in hell was happening.To begin with, members of the intelligence services of major nations didn't go around knocking each other off; that was an unwritten rule among spooks. Very bad taste. Maybe you tried to get somebody to talk with sodium pentathol or scopolamine, but guns were stupid and everybody knew it. You could get killed with one of those things, for godsake.So this operation, whatever it was, was outside the system. Good. That was the way he had long since learned to work.There was a lot on his mind, and the walk, the isolation, gave him a chance to think over some of the past. In particular, the austere Cretan countryside brought to mind an evening five years ago when he'd traveled this little-used route with his father, Michael Vance, Sr. That occasion, autumn brisk with a first glimmering of starlight, they'd laughed and joked for much of the way, the old man occasionally tapping the packed earth sharply with his cane, almost as though he wanted to establish final authority over the island and make it his, once and for all. Finally, the conversation turned serious."Michael, don't tell me you never miss academic life," his father had finally brought himself to say, masking the remark by casually brushing aside yet another pale stone with his cane. "More and more, your theory about the palace is gaining credence. You may find yourself famous all over again. It's an enviable position.""Maybe one turn in the snake pit was enough," he smiled. "Academia and I form a sort of mutual disrespect society.""Well," his father had gone on, "the choice is yours, but you know I'll be retiring from Penn at the end of this term. Naturally there'll be some vicious in-house jockeying to fill my shoes, but if you'd like, I could probably arrange things with the search committee."Vindicated at last, he'd realized. It seemed the only sin in academia greater than being wrong was being right too soon. But the small-minded universe of departmental politics was the last thing he wanted in his life. These days he played in the big time."I'm afraid I'll have to pass.""I suppose university life is too limiting for you now," the old man had finally said, grudgingly but admiringly.He'd said that, and nothing more. Two months later he'd had a second stroke and retired permanently. These days he grew orchids in Darien, Connecticut, and penned impassioned longhand letters to the Times every day or so, just to keep his capacity for moral outrage honed.Vance had definitely gone his own way. First he'd published a book that rocked the scholarly world; then he'd compounded that offense by walking out on the brouhaha that followed and going free-lance, starting his own business. Next he'd become involved with the Washington intelligence community, and finally he'd begun working with the Association of Retired Mercenaries. It was a universe so alien to his father it might as well have been on Mars. But if the old man was disappointed that Michael Vance, Jr., hadn't turned out the way he'd planned, he still took pride in his son.Now, though, Stuttgart and the restoration of Phaistos would have to be put on hold till the latest game with Novosty was sorted out. The protocol. It was still running through his mind. Could there be some sort of alliance cooking between the Soviets and the Japanese mob? What in hell . . . ?"Michael, she is here." A hoarse whisper emerged as the rickety wooden door of thekafeneionedged open. Zeno tugged down his nightshirt and carefully edged it wider, squinting out at the street. "Come in. Quickly. Before you are seen."So his guess had been right: she was avoiding the hotel. Good move. Smart and typical of Eva. She was handling this one exactly right.He stepped through the door. "Where is she now?""She's in back. Adriana gave her something to make her sleep." Zeno was pulling out a chair from one of the empty tables. The room was shrouded in darkness, and the stale odor of the kitchen permeated the air. "She was not herself, Michael. What happened? She claimed someone was trying to murder her. At the palace. Did you two—?""We tried throwing a party, but it started getting crowded." He looked around. "I could use some of thatrakiof yours. I just had a close encounter with a guy you wouldn't sit down next to on a bus. He refused to leave politely so . . . I had to make him disappear. Bad scene.""You killed him?""He was shooting, at Eva and me. Very unsociable." He glanced toward the back of the darkened room. "Zeno, our party guest tonight was—you're not going to believe this— a Japanese hood. Tell me something. Is the Yakuza trying to get a foothold in Crete? You know, maybe buying up property? That's their usual style. It's more or less how they first moved in on Hawaii.""Michael, this country is so poor, there's nothing here for gangsters to steal." He laughed. "Let me tell you a secret. If a stranger came around here and tried to muscle me, or any of my friends, he would not live to see the sun tomorrow. Even the Sicilian Cosa Nostra is afraid of us. Crete is still a small village in many ways, in spite of the crazy tourists. We tolerate strangers, even open our homes to them if they are well behaved, but we know each other's secrets like a family. So, to answer your question, the idea of a Japanese syndicate coming here is impossible to imagine. You know that as well as I do.""That's what I thought. But I saw akobunfrom the biggest Yakuza organization in Japan tonight. I know because I had a little tango with their godfather a few years back. Anyway, what's one of his street men doing here, shooting at Eva and me?" He paused as the implications of the night began to sink in. "This scene could start to get rough.""You did nothing more than anybody here would have done." He looked pensive in the dim light. "Years ago, when the colonels and their junta seized Greece, I once had to—" He hesitated. "Sometimes we do things we don't like to talk about afterwards. But you always remember the eyes of a man you must kill. You dream about them.""Our party lighting was pretty minimal. It was too dark to make out his eyes.""Then you are luckier than you know." He glanced away. "This was not somebody you knew from another job, Michael? Perhaps the mercenary group you sometimes—""Never saw the guy before in my life, swear to God. Anyway, I think it was Eva he really wanted. But whatever's going on, I have to get her out of Crete now, before whoever it is finds her again.""I agree." He was turning toward the living quarters in the rear. "You should stay here tonight, and then tomorrow we can get you both passage on the car ferry to Athens, off the island. I will take care of everything. Tickets, all of it." He returned carrying two tumblers ofraki. After setting them on the table, he continued. "I am very worried for her, Michael. And for you. We all make enemies, but—" He took a sip from his glass. "By the way, do you have a pistol?""Not with me." He reached for the glass, wishing it was tequila—straight, with a twist of lime—and he was back on the Ulysses, trimming the genoa. "That's a mistake I may not make again soon.""Then I will arrange for one. Like I said, everything. I have many friends. Do not worry." He drank again. "By the way, she asked me go to the hotel and get something for you. She seemed to think it was important. One of your modern American inventions. She had it locked in the safe at the desk. And she gave me money to pay for her room." He sighed. "Why would she waste money on a hotel when she could have stayed here with us?""What is it?""I think it's a computer, though it's barely the size of a briefcase. Part of the new age that mercifully has passed us by. I have it in back, with the rest of her things." His voice disappeared into the darkened kitchen. Moments later he reappeared carrying Eva's laptop. With a worried look he settled it gingerly on the table. "Do you have any idea why she had this with her?""I think she may have something stored in here." He settled it on the table and flipped up the top. Then he felt along the side for the switch, and a second later the screen glowed blue. After the operating system was in place, he punched up the files.A long line of names filled the screen, arranged alphabetically. But nothing seemed right. It was a stream of unclassified NSA memos, and then a lot of personal letters. He resisted the temptation to call them up and delve into her private life. How many men . . . ?Stick to business. Save the fun for later. Where's the file?Then he noticed the very first alphanumeric."Ackerman."Hold on, he thought, wasn't that the name of the NSA guy she said gave her the disk? He highlighted the file on the screen and hit Retrieve. An instant later it appeared.Yep, this one had to be it. Clearly an NSA document, very carefully stored.(NSCID No. 37896) Page 1 of 28Dept: Rl/SIGINTClassification: TOP SECRETAuthorization: Dept/H/O/D onlyAnalyst: Eva BorodinInit: EKBEncryption: PES/UNKNOWN Reference: ClassifiedDAEDALUS PROTOCOLThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Mino Industries Group, hereinafter referred to as the Parties;MINDFUL of their obligation to strive for technological progress in both nations,CONVINCED that the technical and financial agreements specified in this Protocol will serve the long-range strategic interests of both Parties,CONSCIOUS that the success of Project Daedalus will lead to increased cooperation and mutual understanding between the peoples of the USSR and Japan,HAVE HEREBY AGREED AS FOLLOWS:Article I4659830481867394210786980498673261559798093 0291870980798578367251426478966596983748586 7030945896970980549381738405401290487571092 3836142543495019294766477810298378578576924 8598504821273850956070971070901613386089274 765608021834860 . . .That was it. The stream of numbers filled three pages, and then came Article II. Thus it went, for ten articles. As he scrolled up page after page, he realized that the numbers continued for the rest of the document.She was right. Outside of occasional repetitions, there seemed to be no real pattern. He'd seen a lot of encryptions in the old days, but this one didn't look like anything standard.He sat staring at the screen. Mino Industries Group. That explained theMino-gumigoon. The godfather was planning his biggest play yet, global.But what was it? What was in the deal? This was something he had to see.Eva had said she tried the Data Encryption Standard, the DES system, and got nowhere. Which meant NSA had been foiled. How had he done it?DES was a procedure whereby data were passed through a series of eight S-boxes, actually mathematical operations, that when combined with a unique user key converted it into what appeared to be alphanumeric garbage. The receiver also had a copy of the key, which could be used in combination with the same set of mathematical operations to convert it back.He knew that back when DES was being invented by IBM, the National Security Agency had purposely sabotaged Big Blue's original plan to make it uncrackable. NSA had insisted that the key, a string of zeroes and ones, be limited to 56 bits, rather than the proposed 128 bits, which would have made the system so complex it would have been safe forever. The reason, of course, was that NSA didn't want an unbreakable cipher loose on the planet; after all, their primary business was reading other people's mail. IBM didn't know it at the time, but the smaller key was already a pushover for NSA's Cray supercomputers, which could try a trillion random keys per second and routinely crack any 56-bit DES encryption in the world in half a day.Anybody familiar with the intelligence business was well aware of that. Which was, obviously, why somebody had turned to NSA.But Eva said she'd tried the usual random-key procedure and got nowhere. So what was the answer?His head was buzzing from the raki now, but he kept turning over in his mind the possibility that she'd been looking in the wrong place. Trying to find the DES key when in fact this encryption used some entirely different scheme.He rubbed at his temples and tried to run the scenario backward.Project Daedalus. The more he thought about it, the more . . ."Zeno." He looked up from the screen. "Do you still have that copy of Realm of the Spirit?" He'd sent the old Greek an autographed first edition the week it came out."Your book, Michael? Of course I have it. I treasure it. It's in the bedroom, in back.""Mind getting it for me? I feel like a little light reading.""At four in the morning? Michael, I think—""You know how it is when your mind gets filled up with garbage at bedtime.""You should be getting some sleep, like Eva. Tomorrow we have to—""I need to relax a little first. And I need that book. There's a chart in the appendix guaranteed to put anybody to sleep.""Very well." He sighed, drank off the last of hisraki, and pulled himself erect. "Sometimes you can be as headstrong as your father."As quiet settled over the room, Vance continued to stare at the screen. Why did he have a hunch he was right on this one? Could he really crack a cypher with a 486 portable when NSA's Cray supercomputers had bombed?Maybe. Stranger things had happened. The samurai swordsmen said you needed to know your opponent's mind. Here, in the waning hours before dawn in the middle of Crete, he was feeling a curious oneness with whoever had devised this random-looking string of numbers. He'd created number strings just like this himself, back before the CIA had come into his life."Here it is, Michael. Adriana said Eva is still asleep. I don't know what she gave her, perhaps one of her old wives potions." He chuckled quietly. "That's one of the reasons I love her so much. When you get ancient like I am, it's good to be married to a nurse."Vance took the book and, in spite of himself, weighed it in his hand. What was it? maybe two pounds? The glistening dust jacket, unusual for a university book back in those days, was still pristine. He smiled, realizing it was unread."Thanks." He finally remembered Zeno. "This should do the trick. Now why don't you go on to bed? I'll just stretch out here on a table when I get sleepy.""Michael, sometimes I think you are a madman." He shrugged, then turned to hobble back toward the bedroom. "Just don't answer the door, whatever you do.""Get some sleep. I'll be doing the same.""Then good night. May God give you rest." He was gone.Vance barely nodded, since he was already turning to the appendix of the book and switching on the dim overhead light. The volume brought back a world long lost for him. Now he wanted it back, if only for a moment.He flipped to Appendix C. There he'd reproduced, as a dutiful scholar should, the standard numerical correlates for the syllabary of Linear B.Mycenaen Syllabary (after Ventris, 1953)da qa sa je o ra01 16 31 46 61 76ro za qo pu pte ka02 17 32 47 62 77pa zo ti du ta qe03 18 33 48 63 78The numbers continued on to ninety. He checked the files and, sure enough, she had a Lotus data management system on the hard disk. He quickly structured a format for his matrix, then began coding in the sounds. The setup was simple, but the next part would need some programming. The numbers in the protocol had to be converted to sounds. It looked easy, but what if they'd been deliberately garbled somehow? He'd be no better off than before.Think positive.As he finished coding in the grid, he could hear the tentative stirrings of early morning Iraklion outside. Trucks were starting up, birds coming alive. He began noticing the lack of sleep, but he pushed it aside and took another sip ofraki. Just keep going, he told himself. You're about to find out if great minds really do think alike. . . ."Darling, what in the world are you doing with my computer?" The voice was like a whisper over his shoulder."How about checking to see if you've got any video games?" He turned around, startled in spite of himself. What had woken her? She was probably wired. "Eva, why did you take off tonight? And what was that nonsense you were yelling at me?""Maybe it wasn't nonsense. Alex said you were working for him. He said you two were partners. It's not really true, is it?" She slumped into a chair. She was wearing a light dressing gown, her hair tousled. With a groan she rubbed at her eyes. "I don't need this.""You can forget about Alex. He's playing way over his head. It's always bad judgment to underestimate the other team's strengths." He reached for her. "You've just got to decide who you trust. You might start with Zeno. He's offered to help me get you out of Crete.""And go where?" She moved against him. "Michael, they found me here. They'll find me anywhere.""Not if we turn this scene around and take the action to them. But that's the next move. Right now, you just have to be out of Crete while I do a little checking. How about flying to Miami, grabbing a plane down to Nassau, then—""You're going to get me on the Ulysses or die trying, aren't you."He decided to let the crack pass. It was true, however. If she ever saw it, he was sure she'd start to understand."You know," she went on, "this afternoon I was merely worried. Now I'm actually frightened. Guess I'm not as brave as I thought. I'm sorry about tonight, running off like that.""Not the first time I've had a woman give me the gate." He laughed, then reached out and stroked her hair, missing the long tresses of the old days. "Now, you can help me out with something. Does the name Yakuza mean anything to you?""What are you talking about?" She studied him, puzzled."I probably shouldn't tell you this, maybe it'll just upset your morning, but that wiseguy who broke up our party last night was a Japanese hood. From theMino-gumisyndicate. Back home they're Numero Uno. They run Tokyo and Osaka and they've got half the Liberal Democratic Party in their pocket. Then there's the old CIA connection, from days gone by.""How do you know?""After you took off, our friend dropped in again. Uninvited as usual. That's when Novosty finished him off with his Uzi and I got a closer look.""Alex killed—! My God, that makes three.""By actual count. He's gone a little trigger happy in his old age. That or he's very, very scared." He rubbed at the scratch on his neck, remembering. "What if it's the Japanese mob that's behind this? They have the funding, that's for sure. Among other things, they run consumer loans in Japan, legalized loan sharking. They've got more money than God.""This is too much. I don't know anything about . . ." She rose, trembling. "I'll go with you to Nassau, Michael. Let's take the Ulysses and just disappear in the middle of the Atlantic.""It's a deal." He beamed. "But first we've got to answer some questions. You say the Yakuza are not part of anything you know about?""I'm only vaguely aware they exist.""And you don't know who runs Mino Industries?""Never heard of it before.""It's a bunch of nice, clean-cut mobsters. Problem is, one of the owner'skobun, street men, tried to kill us tonight. Maybe we're finally getting a little light at the end of the tunnel." He looked her over. Eva was always beautiful in the mornings. There was something wanton about her this time of day. "Come here a minute."He took her and cradled her in his arms, then brushed his lips against her brow. "You okay?""I think so." She took a deep breath."Never knew you to quit just because things got tough." He drew her around. "You're the cryptography expert. Why don't we try to find out what kind of phonetics Ventris's numerical correlates for Linear B would produce from these numbers?""What are you talking about?" She rubbed at her eyes.
Andrei Androv was both an idealist and a pragmatist. In Russia you had to be. That education began almost half a century earlier when, as a student, he had been on hand to assist in the first free flight of a Russian-made liquid fuel rocket, at an army base just outside Moscow. He had experienced the exhilaration of a new frontier, and plunging himself into the new science of rocketry, he had become a self-taught expert who published theoretical works read and praised by men three times his age.
Ironically, therefore, Andrei Petrovich Androv had not enjoyed the luxury of being ignored, as the American rocket pioneer Goddard had been. Joseph Stalin, always paranoid, decided that the rocket researchers' "fireworks" were "dangerous to the country." Consequently, Andrei Petrovich Androv was arrested, interrogated at Butyrskaya Prison in Moscow, and dispatched on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to a convict coal mine on the Pacific coast.
Eventually the political winds shifted. As a recognized rocket expert, he was part of the 1946 Soviet team that shipped German scientists and V-2 launchers back to Russia. Finally, under Khrushchev, he rose to genuine prominence, since that general secretary believed that only rockets, not manned aircraft, had the range to drop bombs on the U.S. Nikita S. Khrushchev put Andrei Androv in charge of all Soviet rocketry, and Andrei Androv put Russia in space.
He'd been in charge of constructing the sprawling Baikonur Cosmodrome, near Tyuratram in Kazakhstan, central Asia, still the world's largest space center. From it he orbited the world's first satellite, Sputnik, and the world's first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin. He knew the byways of that top-secret facility almost better than he knew his own living room—the gantry systems, the fueling apparatus, the clean rooms, the rocket assembly areas, the sectors where satellites were readied. Most recently, in 1987, he had been in charge of the successful first test launch of the most powerful vehicle the world had ever seen—the Energia, propelled by liquid hydrogen engines capable of lifting a hundred-ton space platform into orbit.
Also during that time his only son, Yuri Andreevich, had become the Soviet Union's leading test pilot. Yuri was rarely home, and then, nine years ago, Andrei Androv's wife had died of pneumonia. Isolated in the long, snowy nights at Baikonur, he'd consoled himself with string quartets, his studies of classical Greek, and his designs, his dreams of the ultimate space vehicle.
But he knew Russia would never be able to build it alone. Soviet computer and materials technology already was slipping behind those of the West.
He grimaced to think how his country had been brought to today's humiliating state of affairs, reduced to bargaining with foreigners like Arabs in a medina. Eventually, though, pragmatism had overruled all. Underlying this bizarre new alliance was one simple reality: the USSR needed Japanese high technology desperately. And it needed that technology now.
It had begun two years earlier, when the president himself had paid a surprise secret visit to the space complex at Baikonur, supposedly to review the Energia launch schedule. That, however, was merely the official excuse. He actually had an entirely different agenda.
Without saying why, he had invited his old friend Andrei Petrovich Androv to join him at the secluded hunting lodge where he was staying—to talk, one-on-one, about the future of Soviet science. As that long snowy evening wore on, wind whistling through the log walls and pine smoke clouding the air, their conversation had turned to hard truths and blunt language.
In vino, Veritas. By midnight, the uniformed bodyguards outside were stamping their heavy boots to keep warm, and Andrei Petrovich and Mikhail Sergeevich were both drinking vodka directly from the bottle, had flung its tinfoil cap onto the rough-hewn boards of the cabin's floor. By then, too, the revered Andrei Petrovich Androv was boldly speaking his mind.
"Mikhail Sergeevich, time has run out for Russia. There is nothing to buy, almost nothing to eat, and prices are soaring. There is so much corruption you will not leave a Russian hospital alive unless you've bribed everyone, right down to the drunken orderlies. And those bribes can't be money. Who wants rubles? They are worthless. These days you have to bribe with vodka." He'd laughed sadly, then picked up an old copy of Pravda there by the fireplace, waved it in the air, and tossed it into the crackling flames. "When we start cooperatives, they are immediately taken over by our new mafia, Russia's ruble millionaires. Everything—"
"Perestroikawill succeed in time, Andrei Petrovich," the president had insisted perfunctorily, still not having explained why they were meeting. "We are moving as rapidly as circumstances will permit. The bureaucracy—"
"Perestroika!" Androv had roared back. "Have you heard the latest joke from Moscow?Perestroikais like a country where everyone is switching from driving on the left side to the right side—gradually. Our half-measure concessions to a market economy have produced the worst of both systems. We now have a land with socialist initiative and capitalist conscience." He paused to laugh again, then sobered. "And soon, very soon, we're going to find ourselves in the technological Third World. We need a vision. Even more, we need hard currency, and Western technology now. And we need massive amounts. Nothing less can save us."
That was when the president had nodded silently, then lifted a top-secret document from his black leather briefcase. He explained that it was a proposal from a consortium of foreigners. He wanted Andrei Androv's honest assessment.
"Read this, Andrei Petrovich," he said, passing it over, "and tell me what you think. It may well be a terrible thing even to consider, but I must know your view. You, my old friend, are one of the few men I know I can trust. This proposal, can it work?"
As he squinted by the flickering light of the fire, Andrei Petrovich Androv almost couldn't believe what he was reading. Among other things, the dream he had dreamed so long was there, his for the taking. The dream of a bold venture in space achieved with a whole new level of technology.
Along with it, the Soviet Union would receive everything it needed. The foreigners would provide billions and billions in long-term, low-interest loans and a flood of subsidized consumer goods to erase the pain of perestroika, providing the president with the badly needed financing, not to mention popular support, he needed to bring it off. But there were price tags, several of them. The first would be total access to all Soviet space and propulsion technology. That component would actually make sense technically, but the others were higher, much higher. Could it be done? Should it be done?
"What do you think, Andrei Petrovich?" the president had finally spoken, his voice a whisper above the snap of embers and the howl of wind. "Do we dare?"
The room had fallen silent for a long moment. Was this some kind of trap? he almost wondered, like the old days. No, he'd quickly concluded, this time Russia was different. He would have to trust Mikhail Sergeevich. Most of all, though, he was holding his life-long ambition in his hand. At last he replied, hope mingled with apprehension.
"I think we have no choice." He had looked up at the president's troubled eyes. "You have no choice."
"Unfortunately, I think you are right." He had sighed and turned his gaze to the blackness outside the snow- banked window. "Ve tyomnuyu noch, ya znayu. Yes, Andrei Petrovich. On this dark night, I finally know what we must do."
After one final vodka, they had set about devising the scenario that would change the world forever. . . .
The airflow around the model continued to accelerate, while laser holograms of its complex aerodynamics were now being converted by the computer into multi-colored graphic art. Androv watched the wall-size liquid crystal display screen in the control room begin generating a vivid depiction of the streams whirling past the model, simulating the incremental stages of hypersonic climb. It was like watching a hallucination, he thought, as colors swirled around the fuselage of an object seemingly composed of 3-D lines and curves.
"We are now at Mach 6, Comrade Doktor Androv." The voice of a Soviet technician interrupted his thoughts. "The laser data show that the supersonic wave drag peaks at Mach 3.8, then subsides. Your new canard foreplanes appear to be working, at least for this portion of the flight envelope."
Androv studied the screen, noncommittal. "Thus far it would appear to be so. Perhaps the SX-10 was correct. All the same, at Mach 7, I want to switch on the enhancer, then capture those data and analyze them to be doubly sure."
The hypersonic enhancer permitted wind-tunnel burst tests at far higher velocities than a conventional facility could achieve. More high tech.
"There could still be a problem," Androv continued, "when the vortex of air currents shed from the nose of the fuselage encounters the shock waves from the wings, particularly around Mach 11." He turned to Ikeda. "Those vortexes have been responsible for significant damage to several American space shuttles during reentry phase. I need to see the data."
"As you wish." The director walked to the thick glass window that looked out onto the model suspended in the airstream. The crew of technicians hovered over the controls, watching for any signs of vibration. He studied the screens for a few moments, then spoke quietly to the head of the technical team, an intense young man in spectacles. This lieutenant turned and passed the order to his colleagues, who nodded gravely and stationed themselves at the switches.
Above the roar, a brilliant arc of electricity suddenly exploded just in front of the nose of the model, adding an additional burst of pressure at Mach 6 to the velocity already passing across. It was a blinding, microsecond pulse that momentarily boosted simulated vehicle velocity to Mach 13. The lasers registered the data, then passed it directly, via microwave link, into the memory banks of the powerful SX-10 operating hundreds of miles away.
Seconds later the turbulence data appeared in visual form on the liquid crystal screen above them. As the colored numbers flashed, a cheer went up from the normally somber technicians.
"Still no sign of any wave drag outside the theoretical envelope, not even at Mach 13," the young head-technician beamed.
"Just as we simulated," Ikeda noted quietly.
This time even the grave Androv smiled. "I must congratulate all of you." He was rising from his chair, the central one facing the main controls.
"Then I will order the modification installed," Ikeda nodded, "if you formally authorize it."
"Authorized. I think you are right. Perhaps we are ready for a hypersonic test flight." Androv reached to switch off his turntable. "I would like to go down to the hangar now myself, in fact. Perhaps celebrate this moment with a glass of tea."
"Of course." Ikeda spoke quickly to his Japanese technicians, then followed the Russian out the door.
The hallways were a connected maze of brilliantly lighted and scrupulously clean tunnels. They moved down the main corridor to the central checkpoint, then turned and entered the South Quadrant, passing the various assembly sections. Those sectors were mostly quiet now, since the final work had been completed several weeks earlier.
Androv said nothing as they walked toward the doorways connecting the South Quadrant with the underground hangar. He merely whistled a portion of the third movement of the A Minor quartet, Beethoven's hymn of thanksgiving in the Greek, Lydian mode. He recalled that the English writer Aldous Huxley had once suggested that particular movement was proof of God's existence.
Was there a God? He wasn't sure. The only miracles he knew of on this earth were performed by men. He was on the verge of performing one himself.
The history of space exploration had been played out entirely in his lifetime. He himself had been the architect of much of that progress. But putting a man into space remained an expensive and dangerous proposition. Launch vehicles still exploded with alarming regularity. Man was trapped on this planet. God was still in the heavens.
Man's hope of reaching God at will required a special creation, one that could taxi off a runway just like a normal aircraft, then accelerate to hypersonic speeds, reaching low-earth orbit. An air-breathing space vehicle. Its potential for the peaceful exploration of near-earth space defied imagination.
Peace. All his life, Andrei Petrovich Androv had worked in the shadow of war. Now, at last, he had created the ultimate symbol of peace.
The entry to the hangar was secured, but when the guards saw Dr. Androv and the project director approaching, they saluted and punched in the codes on the locks. Moments later the heavy steel doors slid aside, revealing the brilliant lights of the hangar. It was cavernous, over a hundred feet high, with gantries now standing idle along the walls. White-coated technicians swarmed over the two prototypes, checking the final seals, while others were on twenty-foot-high trucks servicing the engines.
Looming above them were what appeared to be two giant prehistoric birds, streaks of gleaming silver over three hundred feet in length, with pen-sharp noses that dipped rakishly downward. Androv paused to admire them a moment, marveling in spite of himself. The long, sleek lines swept back in a clean curve, without the interruption of a windshield. The "cockpit," in fact, was deep inside the nose, where shock waves would not impact the computer guidance system. From the nose its lines burgeoned into a sharp, clean fan, and beneath the two abbreviated wings were suspended twelve massive turboramjet-scramjets. They had already been certified at Mach 4.5. In ten days one of these vehicles would achieve the ultimate. Mach 25, seventeen thousand miles per hour.
The Americans had code-named their fledgling design
for a hypersonic space plane—still at least a decade away— the X-30. But no such mundane designation would satisfy Andrei Petrovich Androv, devoted disciple of the ancients. He had long believed the Americans were high-tech vulgarians with no poetry in their soul, no sense of history.
Across the towering tail assembly of both aircraft was an insignia that symbolized the joining of two of the world's great superpowers, a double ax. And along their titanium-composite fuselage was lettered a single word, in Cyrillic characters. Andrei Androv had insisted on that name, in celebration of the first human ever to soar above the earth, the dream of ancient man. Now, he had declared, four thousand years later, there was another dream, his dream, a hypersonic vehicle that could loft man directly into space from anywhere on the planet.
He had dreamed that dream. And the Mino Industries Group had permitted him to pick the name for the creation that would realize it, for the miracle that would master time and space, the earth itself . . .
DAEDALUS
Thursday 9:16a.m.
Yuri Androv stood at the far end of the flood-lit hangar, staring up at the underbelly ofDaedalus Iand thinking. This morning's run-up in the centrifuge had gone well. At last he was convinced there was no physiological barrier to hypersonic flight, at least none he couldn't handle. The scramjets had all been put through their paces at the aero-propulsion facility. On the test stand, at least, they met their specifications.
Yes, he was thinking, this plane just might do it. He would ease through the Mach 4.8 barrier slowly, then convert to scramjet geometry, switch to liquid hydrogen, and go full throttle. It was scary, sure, but you only lived once. Fuck the danger.
The prospect was exhilarating and chilling. He looked up, again awed. Even for someone who'd seen and flown them all, this was an inspiring creation. Not only was it easily the most technologically advanced flight vehicle in the world, it also was stunningly beautiful.
Right now, however, there were two simple problems: first, without a hypersonic test flight nobody could really be sure it would do what it was supposed to; second, as of now both prototypes still belonged to Mino Industries and would continue to belong to Mino Industries until the final treaty and agreement were signed.
Actually, taking theDaedalushypersonic might be the least of the project's worries. That was the part he knew how to handle. The unknowns lay in another direction entirely, the strategic direction.
Strategically, he still didn't trust Russia's new partner. From what he'd heard, the conditions demanded in return for all their high technology had been heavy, and that was just the short-term price. The long-term cost might be even greater. Was the Soviet Union about to become the financial and technological captive of a shadowy group of foreigners, men whose identities remained, even now, shrouded in secrecy? Was this a Faustian bargain?
Just then he noticed the doors at the far end of the hangar slide open and two men in white lab coats enter. Perfect timing, he thought. Even at that distance he knew immediately who they were: the joint venture's two top technical officers: his father, Andrei Petrovich Androv, and Taro Ikeda, the project director for the Japanese team. The men held equal authority. Supposedly. But in fact all the real decisions on this project were being made by somebody else entirely. The shots were actually being called from a skyscraper in Tokyo, by a mysterious CEO known as Tanzan Mino.
Now Ikeda and the elder Androv were headed his way. As he watched Ikeda, he felt himself involuntarily stiffen. Perhaps his unease about the man was his intuitive, right brain working, trying to tell him something. But what? All communications with the CEO were channeled through Ikeda. Fair enough, he told himself, he was accustomed to secrecy. Maybe Japanese industrialists were as careful about protecting their asses as the Sovietnomenklaturawere. Maybe it was just part of the landscape here too. But still . . .
"Strastvitya, Yuri Andreevich." Ikeda smiled, extending his pale hand as he simultaneously bowed. "Kak pashaviatye?"
"Khoroshau. Spahcebo." He shook Ikeda's hand, then nodded toward his father. "If this is a good time, I'd like to discuss the scramjet power-up sequence with Dr. Androv for a few moments."
"If it's anything serious, then perhaps we should all confer with the prime contractors," Ikeda responded smoothly. "Right now, in my office. In fact, I was just on the phone with—"
"No need to bring them in. Just a few technical items, nothing more."
"Yuri Andreevich." Ikeda smiled and bowed again, his eyes trying to display a warmth they clearly did not possess. "Every issue here is of importance to us all. If—"
"Not every nut and bolt," he interrupted. "I just have some sequencing questions, that's all."
Ikeda bowed once more, quickly. "You know we are all depending on you. No one in Japan has the experience to take up a plane like this. At least not at this stage of the project. So be aware that any matter weighing upon the success of your test flight, or your safety—" he flashed another quick, concerned smile "—is naturally of gravest concern to me, and to the CEO."
"Then you should be glad to hear the power-up simulation in the centrifuge this morning took me right through Mach 9.8 with no problems. Which means the scramjet ignition sequence looks like a go."
"Congratulations." Ikeda nodded.
"One last thing. I'll be sending a memo to Engineering about a modification of the cockpit, to permit more latitude in the seat. Nothing major. I think we could still reduce vascular stress in the high-G regime."
Andrei Androv noticed the look of concern on his son's face. "Yuri, you seem troubled. This morning, did anything—?"
"Of course, send Engineering your memo by all means,"
Ikeda interjected. "I'll personally see it's taken care of. We want nothing to go wrong. Not even the smallest—"
"Good. That's all I want." Yuri turned and wrapped his arm around his father's aging shoulders, gently urging him in the direction of the trucks stationed beneath the silver nose of Daedalus I. He wanted to get rid of Ikeda so he could talk. After they moved a few feet, he yelled back over his shoulder. "But wait on the decision till you read my memo."
"As you wish." Ikeda nodded farewell. "I'll be in my office until 1300 hours if we need contractor input."
Which meant, Yuri knew, that no further communication with him was permissible after that time. Technical consultations were only held during mornings. Afternoons he seemed to have other pressing matters to attend to.
"Yuri, the run-up in Number One went well this morning. I think we've finally eliminated the supersonic wave drag." The elder Androv was heading over to check the hydraulic lifts supporting the landing gear and its heavy 22-ply retractable tires. Then he glanced back and smiled. "I'm beginning to believe in miracles. We might just succeed."
"If those damned scramjets up there," he pointed skyward, "actually achieve ignition when they're supposed to."
"I've studied the static-test data carefully. At the propulsion facility they routinely achieved ignition at Mach 4.8. The numbers were there and they looked all right. Temperature regime, pounds thrust, all the rest."
What's really happening, Yuri thought suddenly, is they've taken our engineering design and built it. But what if we're just being used somehow, having our brains picked, our expertise stolen? Then what?
He said nothing, though, just listened quietly as the older man continued.
"Also, the new ceramic composite they've come up with for the fuel injection struts was heated to thirty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit and repeatedly stress-tested. Those data were particularly impressive. You know, the struts have always been the Achilles heel for a scramjet, since the fuel has to be injected directly through them into the combustion chamber. They have to withstand shock waves, and thermal stresses, far beyond anything ever encountered in a conventional engine. Nobody else has ever come up with a material that can do it. Not us, not the Americans, not anybody. But now, their high-temperature materials and liquid air cycle have finally made the scramjet concept a reality. The last roadblock is gone." He looked up, still marveling. "All we or the Americans can do is make engineering drawings of those engines, just pictures."
"I hope you're right. But when we switch over from JP-7 to liquid hydrogen, nobody knows what can happen. It's never been done before."
"Are you really worried?" The old man studied him.
"Damned right I am. Who wouldn't be?" He looked around at the milling Japanese technicians, then lowered his voice. "And I'll tell you something else. There're other things around here worrying me too, maybe even more. Something about this project is starting to feel wrong."
"What do you mean?" Andrei stared.
"I'm beginning to suspect ... I don't know. So far it's just a sense, but—"
"Yuri, let me tell you a hard fact," the elder Androv interjected. "Like it or not, this project is the only chance the Soviet Union has to ever own a vehicle like this."
"That may be true, but if we—"
"Remember the sad fate of the TU-144," he went on, "the supersonic passenger plane we built based on some engineering drawings for the Concorde we managed to get hold of. We copied it, but we got it wrong, and in 1973 we had that horrible tragedy at the Paris Air Show, when it crashed in a ball of fire. That was the end of it. We failed, and it was humiliating. The Soviet Union couldn't even build a supersonic passenger jet. The real truth is, we didn't have the computers we needed to design it." He looked up, smiling. "But now, all that humiliation will be undone."
Yuri suddenly realized his father was being swept up in his dreams. The same way he sometimes got lost in those damned string quartets, or reading Euripides in the original Greek. He was going off in his fantasy world again. He couldn't see that maybe he was being used.
"Have you ever wondered where this project is going to lead? Where it has to lead?"
"It will lead the way to peace. It will be a symbol of cooperation between two great nations, demonstrating that the human spirit can triumph."
"Moi otyets, it could just as well 'lead the way' to something else entirely. Don't you realize what's happening here? We're giving away our thruster engineering, Russia's leading technology. It's the one area where we still lead the world. We've just handed it over . . . for the price of one fucking airplane. And even if we eventually get our hands on these prototypes, we can't build more without begging the materials from them. We can't fabricate these composite alloys in the Soviet Union."
"But this is a joint venture. Everything will be shared." He smiled again, his face gnome-like beneath his mane of white hair. "It will also give us both a chance to overcome the lead of Europe and America in commercial passenger transport in the next century. That's what this is all about. The future of nonmilitary aviation, it's right here."
"Do you really believe that?" He stifled a snort of incredulity. "Don't you see what this vehicle really is? Let me tell you. It's the most deadly weapons delivery system the world has ever seen. And we're showing them how to build it, even testing it for them to make sure it'll perform."
"The Daedalus will never be a military plane. I would never have participated if I thought—"
"Exactly. That's what they want us to believe. But it sure as hell could be. And Mino Industries will be the only company on earth that can actually build more of them." He sensed it was useless to argue further. Nothing mattered to Andrei Petrovich Androv except what he wanted to believe. At this point, nothing could be done to expose the dangers, because nobody on the Soviet team would listen.
Or maybe there was something. Why not make a small revision in the test flight? Once he was aloft, what was anybody going to do? He would be up there, alone. If he could get around their flight computer, he might just show the world a thing or two. He'd been thinking about it for weeks now.
"All right." He turned back. "If this thing is supposedly ready to fly, then I'll fly it. But get ready for some surprises."
"Yuri, what are you planning?"
"Just a small unscheduled maneuver." The hell with it, he thought. "They've got seven days, and then I take it up . . . and power-in the scramjets. I'm ready to go. Tell Ikeda to prepare to have liquid hydrogen pumped into the tanks."
"But that's not how we've structured the test schedule." Andrei examined him, startled. Yuri had always been fiery, but never irrational. "We need ten—"
"Fuck the schedule. I'm going to take this vehicle hypersonic in a week, or they can get themselves another test pilot." He turned away. "Reschedule, or forget it. We don't have much time left. Once all the agreements are signed—"
"Yuri, I don't like this." His eyes were grave. "It's not—"
"Just tell them to getDaedalus Iprepped. I think these bastards that call themselves Mino Industries have a whole agenda they're not telling us about. But I'm about to rearrange their timetable."
ChapterSix
Thursday 2:51a.m.
A very wet, very annoyed Michael Vance rapped on the door of Zeno Stantopoulos's darkenedkafeneion. He'd walked the lonely back road into Iraklion in the dark, guiding himself by the rain-battered groves of plane trees, olive, and wild pear, trying to figure out what in hell was happening.
To begin with, members of the intelligence services of major nations didn't go around knocking each other off; that was an unwritten rule among spooks. Very bad taste. Maybe you tried to get somebody to talk with sodium pentathol or scopolamine, but guns were stupid and everybody knew it. You could get killed with one of those things, for godsake.
So this operation, whatever it was, was outside the system. Good. That was the way he had long since learned to work.
There was a lot on his mind, and the walk, the isolation, gave him a chance to think over some of the past. In particular, the austere Cretan countryside brought to mind an evening five years ago when he'd traveled this little-used route with his father, Michael Vance, Sr. That occasion, autumn brisk with a first glimmering of starlight, they'd laughed and joked for much of the way, the old man occasionally tapping the packed earth sharply with his cane, almost as though he wanted to establish final authority over the island and make it his, once and for all. Finally, the conversation turned serious.
"Michael, don't tell me you never miss academic life," his father had finally brought himself to say, masking the remark by casually brushing aside yet another pale stone with his cane. "More and more, your theory about the palace is gaining credence. You may find yourself famous all over again. It's an enviable position."
"Maybe one turn in the snake pit was enough," he smiled. "Academia and I form a sort of mutual disrespect society."
"Well," his father had gone on, "the choice is yours, but you know I'll be retiring from Penn at the end of this term. Naturally there'll be some vicious in-house jockeying to fill my shoes, but if you'd like, I could probably arrange things with the search committee."
Vindicated at last, he'd realized. It seemed the only sin in academia greater than being wrong was being right too soon. But the small-minded universe of departmental politics was the last thing he wanted in his life. These days he played in the big time.
"I'm afraid I'll have to pass."
"I suppose university life is too limiting for you now," the old man had finally said, grudgingly but admiringly.
He'd said that, and nothing more. Two months later he'd had a second stroke and retired permanently. These days he grew orchids in Darien, Connecticut, and penned impassioned longhand letters to the Times every day or so, just to keep his capacity for moral outrage honed.
Vance had definitely gone his own way. First he'd published a book that rocked the scholarly world; then he'd compounded that offense by walking out on the brouhaha that followed and going free-lance, starting his own business. Next he'd become involved with the Washington intelligence community, and finally he'd begun working with the Association of Retired Mercenaries. It was a universe so alien to his father it might as well have been on Mars. But if the old man was disappointed that Michael Vance, Jr., hadn't turned out the way he'd planned, he still took pride in his son.
Now, though, Stuttgart and the restoration of Phaistos would have to be put on hold till the latest game with Novosty was sorted out. The protocol. It was still running through his mind. Could there be some sort of alliance cooking between the Soviets and the Japanese mob? What in hell . . . ?
"Michael, she is here." A hoarse whisper emerged as the rickety wooden door of thekafeneionedged open. Zeno tugged down his nightshirt and carefully edged it wider, squinting out at the street. "Come in. Quickly. Before you are seen."
So his guess had been right: she was avoiding the hotel. Good move. Smart and typical of Eva. She was handling this one exactly right.
He stepped through the door. "Where is she now?"
"She's in back. Adriana gave her something to make her sleep." Zeno was pulling out a chair from one of the empty tables. The room was shrouded in darkness, and the stale odor of the kitchen permeated the air. "She was not herself, Michael. What happened? She claimed someone was trying to murder her. At the palace. Did you two—?"
"We tried throwing a party, but it started getting crowded." He looked around. "I could use some of thatrakiof yours. I just had a close encounter with a guy you wouldn't sit down next to on a bus. He refused to leave politely so . . . I had to make him disappear. Bad scene."
"You killed him?"
"He was shooting, at Eva and me. Very unsociable." He glanced toward the back of the darkened room. "Zeno, our party guest tonight was—you're not going to believe this— a Japanese hood. Tell me something. Is the Yakuza trying to get a foothold in Crete? You know, maybe buying up property? That's their usual style. It's more or less how they first moved in on Hawaii."
"Michael, this country is so poor, there's nothing here for gangsters to steal." He laughed. "Let me tell you a secret. If a stranger came around here and tried to muscle me, or any of my friends, he would not live to see the sun tomorrow. Even the Sicilian Cosa Nostra is afraid of us. Crete is still a small village in many ways, in spite of the crazy tourists. We tolerate strangers, even open our homes to them if they are well behaved, but we know each other's secrets like a family. So, to answer your question, the idea of a Japanese syndicate coming here is impossible to imagine. You know that as well as I do."
"That's what I thought. But I saw akobunfrom the biggest Yakuza organization in Japan tonight. I know because I had a little tango with their godfather a few years back. Anyway, what's one of his street men doing here, shooting at Eva and me?" He paused as the implications of the night began to sink in. "This scene could start to get rough."
"You did nothing more than anybody here would have done." He looked pensive in the dim light. "Years ago, when the colonels and their junta seized Greece, I once had to—" He hesitated. "Sometimes we do things we don't like to talk about afterwards. But you always remember the eyes of a man you must kill. You dream about them."
"Our party lighting was pretty minimal. It was too dark to make out his eyes."
"Then you are luckier than you know." He glanced away. "This was not somebody you knew from another job, Michael? Perhaps the mercenary group you sometimes—"
"Never saw the guy before in my life, swear to God. Anyway, I think it was Eva he really wanted. But whatever's going on, I have to get her out of Crete now, before whoever it is finds her again."
"I agree." He was turning toward the living quarters in the rear. "You should stay here tonight, and then tomorrow we can get you both passage on the car ferry to Athens, off the island. I will take care of everything. Tickets, all of it." He returned carrying two tumblers ofraki. After setting them on the table, he continued. "I am very worried for her, Michael. And for you. We all make enemies, but—" He took a sip from his glass. "By the way, do you have a pistol?"
"Not with me." He reached for the glass, wishing it was tequila—straight, with a twist of lime—and he was back on the Ulysses, trimming the genoa. "That's a mistake I may not make again soon."
"Then I will arrange for one. Like I said, everything. I have many friends. Do not worry." He drank again. "By the way, she asked me go to the hotel and get something for you. She seemed to think it was important. One of your modern American inventions. She had it locked in the safe at the desk. And she gave me money to pay for her room." He sighed. "Why would she waste money on a hotel when she could have stayed here with us?"
"What is it?"
"I think it's a computer, though it's barely the size of a briefcase. Part of the new age that mercifully has passed us by. I have it in back, with the rest of her things." His voice disappeared into the darkened kitchen. Moments later he reappeared carrying Eva's laptop. With a worried look he settled it gingerly on the table. "Do you have any idea why she had this with her?"
"I think she may have something stored in here." He settled it on the table and flipped up the top. Then he felt along the side for the switch, and a second later the screen glowed blue. After the operating system was in place, he punched up the files.
A long line of names filled the screen, arranged alphabetically. But nothing seemed right. It was a stream of unclassified NSA memos, and then a lot of personal letters. He resisted the temptation to call them up and delve into her private life. How many men . . . ?
Stick to business. Save the fun for later. Where's the file?
Then he noticed the very first alphanumeric.
"Ackerman."
Hold on, he thought, wasn't that the name of the NSA guy she said gave her the disk? He highlighted the file on the screen and hit Retrieve. An instant later it appeared.
Yep, this one had to be it. Clearly an NSA document, very carefully stored.
(NSCID No. 37896) Page 1 of 28
Dept: Rl/SIGINT
Classification: TOP SECRET
Authorization: Dept/H/O/D only
Analyst: Eva Borodin
Init: EKB
Encryption: PES/UNKNOWN Reference: Classified
DAEDALUS PROTOCOL
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Mino Industries Group, hereinafter referred to as the Parties;
MINDFUL of their obligation to strive for technological progress in both nations,
CONVINCED that the technical and financial agreements specified in this Protocol will serve the long-range strategic interests of both Parties,
CONSCIOUS that the success of Project Daedalus will lead to increased cooperation and mutual understanding between the peoples of the USSR and Japan,
HAVE HEREBY AGREED AS FOLLOWS:
Article I
4659830481867394210786980498673261559798093 0291870980798578367251426478966596983748586 7030945896970980549381738405401290487571092 3836142543495019294766477810298378578576924 8598504821273850956070971070901613386089274 765608021834860 . . .
That was it. The stream of numbers filled three pages, and then came Article II. Thus it went, for ten articles. As he scrolled up page after page, he realized that the numbers continued for the rest of the document.
She was right. Outside of occasional repetitions, there seemed to be no real pattern. He'd seen a lot of encryptions in the old days, but this one didn't look like anything standard.
He sat staring at the screen. Mino Industries Group. That explained theMino-gumigoon. The godfather was planning his biggest play yet, global.
But what was it? What was in the deal? This was something he had to see.
Eva had said she tried the Data Encryption Standard, the DES system, and got nowhere. Which meant NSA had been foiled. How had he done it?
DES was a procedure whereby data were passed through a series of eight S-boxes, actually mathematical operations, that when combined with a unique user key converted it into what appeared to be alphanumeric garbage. The receiver also had a copy of the key, which could be used in combination with the same set of mathematical operations to convert it back.
He knew that back when DES was being invented by IBM, the National Security Agency had purposely sabotaged Big Blue's original plan to make it uncrackable. NSA had insisted that the key, a string of zeroes and ones, be limited to 56 bits, rather than the proposed 128 bits, which would have made the system so complex it would have been safe forever. The reason, of course, was that NSA didn't want an unbreakable cipher loose on the planet; after all, their primary business was reading other people's mail. IBM didn't know it at the time, but the smaller key was already a pushover for NSA's Cray supercomputers, which could try a trillion random keys per second and routinely crack any 56-bit DES encryption in the world in half a day.
Anybody familiar with the intelligence business was well aware of that. Which was, obviously, why somebody had turned to NSA.
But Eva said she'd tried the usual random-key procedure and got nowhere. So what was the answer?
His head was buzzing from the raki now, but he kept turning over in his mind the possibility that she'd been looking in the wrong place. Trying to find the DES key when in fact this encryption used some entirely different scheme.
He rubbed at his temples and tried to run the scenario backward.
Project Daedalus. The more he thought about it, the more . . .
"Zeno." He looked up from the screen. "Do you still have that copy of Realm of the Spirit?" He'd sent the old Greek an autographed first edition the week it came out.
"Your book, Michael? Of course I have it. I treasure it. It's in the bedroom, in back."
"Mind getting it for me? I feel like a little light reading."
"At four in the morning? Michael, I think—"
"You know how it is when your mind gets filled up with garbage at bedtime."
"You should be getting some sleep, like Eva. Tomorrow we have to—"
"I need to relax a little first. And I need that book. There's a chart in the appendix guaranteed to put anybody to sleep."
"Very well." He sighed, drank off the last of hisraki, and pulled himself erect. "Sometimes you can be as headstrong as your father."
As quiet settled over the room, Vance continued to stare at the screen. Why did he have a hunch he was right on this one? Could he really crack a cypher with a 486 portable when NSA's Cray supercomputers had bombed?
Maybe. Stranger things had happened. The samurai swordsmen said you needed to know your opponent's mind. Here, in the waning hours before dawn in the middle of Crete, he was feeling a curious oneness with whoever had devised this random-looking string of numbers. He'd created number strings just like this himself, back before the CIA had come into his life.
"Here it is, Michael. Adriana said Eva is still asleep. I don't know what she gave her, perhaps one of her old wives potions." He chuckled quietly. "That's one of the reasons I love her so much. When you get ancient like I am, it's good to be married to a nurse."
Vance took the book and, in spite of himself, weighed it in his hand. What was it? maybe two pounds? The glistening dust jacket, unusual for a university book back in those days, was still pristine. He smiled, realizing it was unread.
"Thanks." He finally remembered Zeno. "This should do the trick. Now why don't you go on to bed? I'll just stretch out here on a table when I get sleepy."
"Michael, sometimes I think you are a madman." He shrugged, then turned to hobble back toward the bedroom. "Just don't answer the door, whatever you do."
"Get some sleep. I'll be doing the same."
"Then good night. May God give you rest." He was gone.
Vance barely nodded, since he was already turning to the appendix of the book and switching on the dim overhead light. The volume brought back a world long lost for him. Now he wanted it back, if only for a moment.
He flipped to Appendix C. There he'd reproduced, as a dutiful scholar should, the standard numerical correlates for the syllabary of Linear B.
Mycenaen Syllabary (after Ventris, 1953)
da qa sa je o ra
01 16 31 46 61 76
ro za qo pu pte ka
02 17 32 47 62 77
pa zo ti du ta qe
03 18 33 48 63 78
The numbers continued on to ninety. He checked the files and, sure enough, she had a Lotus data management system on the hard disk. He quickly structured a format for his matrix, then began coding in the sounds. The setup was simple, but the next part would need some programming. The numbers in the protocol had to be converted to sounds. It looked easy, but what if they'd been deliberately garbled somehow? He'd be no better off than before.
Think positive.
As he finished coding in the grid, he could hear the tentative stirrings of early morning Iraklion outside. Trucks were starting up, birds coming alive. He began noticing the lack of sleep, but he pushed it aside and took another sip ofraki. Just keep going, he told himself. You're about to find out if great minds really do think alike. . . .
"Darling, what in the world are you doing with my computer?" The voice was like a whisper over his shoulder.
"How about checking to see if you've got any video games?" He turned around, startled in spite of himself. What had woken her? She was probably wired. "Eva, why did you take off tonight? And what was that nonsense you were yelling at me?"
"Maybe it wasn't nonsense. Alex said you were working for him. He said you two were partners. It's not really true, is it?" She slumped into a chair. She was wearing a light dressing gown, her hair tousled. With a groan she rubbed at her eyes. "I don't need this."
"You can forget about Alex. He's playing way over his head. It's always bad judgment to underestimate the other team's strengths." He reached for her. "You've just got to decide who you trust. You might start with Zeno. He's offered to help me get you out of Crete."
"And go where?" She moved against him. "Michael, they found me here. They'll find me anywhere."
"Not if we turn this scene around and take the action to them. But that's the next move. Right now, you just have to be out of Crete while I do a little checking. How about flying to Miami, grabbing a plane down to Nassau, then—"
"You're going to get me on the Ulysses or die trying, aren't you."
He decided to let the crack pass. It was true, however. If she ever saw it, he was sure she'd start to understand.
"You know," she went on, "this afternoon I was merely worried. Now I'm actually frightened. Guess I'm not as brave as I thought. I'm sorry about tonight, running off like that."
"Not the first time I've had a woman give me the gate." He laughed, then reached out and stroked her hair, missing the long tresses of the old days. "Now, you can help me out with something. Does the name Yakuza mean anything to you?"
"What are you talking about?" She studied him, puzzled.
"I probably shouldn't tell you this, maybe it'll just upset your morning, but that wiseguy who broke up our party last night was a Japanese hood. From theMino-gumisyndicate. Back home they're Numero Uno. They run Tokyo and Osaka and they've got half the Liberal Democratic Party in their pocket. Then there's the old CIA connection, from days gone by."
"How do you know?"
"After you took off, our friend dropped in again. Uninvited as usual. That's when Novosty finished him off with his Uzi and I got a closer look."
"Alex killed—! My God, that makes three."
"By actual count. He's gone a little trigger happy in his old age. That or he's very, very scared." He rubbed at the scratch on his neck, remembering. "What if it's the Japanese mob that's behind this? They have the funding, that's for sure. Among other things, they run consumer loans in Japan, legalized loan sharking. They've got more money than God."
"This is too much. I don't know anything about . . ." She rose, trembling. "I'll go with you to Nassau, Michael. Let's take the Ulysses and just disappear in the middle of the Atlantic."
"It's a deal." He beamed. "But first we've got to answer some questions. You say the Yakuza are not part of anything you know about?"
"I'm only vaguely aware they exist."
"And you don't know who runs Mino Industries?"
"Never heard of it before."
"It's a bunch of nice, clean-cut mobsters. Problem is, one of the owner'skobun, street men, tried to kill us tonight. Maybe we're finally getting a little light at the end of the tunnel." He looked her over. Eva was always beautiful in the mornings. There was something wanton about her this time of day. "Come here a minute."
He took her and cradled her in his arms, then brushed his lips against her brow. "You okay?"
"I think so." She took a deep breath.
"Never knew you to quit just because things got tough." He drew her around. "You're the cryptography expert. Why don't we try to find out what kind of phonetics Ventris's numerical correlates for Linear B would produce from these numbers?"
"What are you talking about?" She rubbed at her eyes.