“One or two,” Cohn said. “But go on.”

  “Syed finally broke radio silence and called home. The stowaways had the radio room bugged and knew the jig was up, so they took over the ship. They locked the crew in a hold, sent out a fake distress call, left a bomb behind to cover their tracks, then transferred to the yacht Syed saw.”

  “And then vanished.”

  McPherson grimaced. “Something like that.”

  “Okay,” Cohn said. “Question: was the nuke aboard the Rabah Jamila?”

  “I don’t know,” McPherson said. “Until we have a clear vector for it from Raipur to Da Nang, I hesitate to say it was. On the other hand, if this was nothing but a diversion, it’s been one hell of an impressive one.”

  “Agreed,” Cohn said, nodding. “That’s the way Vaughn’s reading it, too, or at least that’s the tone I get from his report. Putting aside the critical question of where the nuke actually is, that still leaves us with two big questions. Number one: where is the yacht now?”

  McPherson shrugged. “Probably the bottom of the East China Sea.”

  “Why?”

  McPherson frowned at him. “What do you mean, why? Because they were already aboard another ship, or submarine, or seaplane, and didn’t need it anymore.”

  “Except that Vaughn says there weren’t any seaplanes or submarines in the area at the time.”

  “Maybe something slipped in without the surveillance planes spotting it.”

  “Maybe,” Cohn said. “But again, why sink it? Who knew to even give it a second glance?”

  “Well . . . ” McPherson took a long sip from his cup. The coffee didn’t seem to be helping today. “Try this. The yacht took them to another ship. Maybe a different freighter than the three the Navy tagged, because the yacht could travel a lot faster than a dinghy or longboat from the Rabah Jamila itself.”

  “Good so far,” Cohn encouraged. “So then why sink it?”

  “Because its presence would have shown us where they went,” McPherson said. “They knew we’d be out there pretty quick and would take a look at any ship close at hand.”

  Cohn gave him a brittle smile. “Exactly,” he said. “Which brings us to question number two. Why did they send that distress signal?”

  McPherson gazed into the other’s intense eyes. “That,” he said quietly, “is a damn good question.”

  “It made a certain amount of sense before,” Cohn went on. “We assumed it was someone from the crew who sent the mayday, with the boarders subsequently overpowering him and sending a message of their own to the Chinese. But now we know the crew didn’t get anywhere near the radio room before they were locked up. Ergo, both signals had to have been sent by the stowaways. Why?”

  McPherson looked out at the dark clouds. “They wanted us out there,” he said slowly. “That’s the only explanation. Us and the Chinese both.”

  “I agree. But again, why? Especially since they already had a bomb set to send the ship to the bottom?”

  “Maybe that’s why,” McPherson suggested. “If they could convince us the nuke was aboard, we might think it went down with the ship. That would also explain why they didn’t bother to clean up the evidence they’d left behind in the containers.”

  “Then you’re saying the Chinese CitationJet was a feint,” Cohn said. “And you must also be saying that the nuke actually disappeared from Raipur five days before the Indians thought it did, hidden in one of the containers that was loaded at Vishakhapatnam.”

  “That’s not entirely impossible,” McPherson pointed out. “Remember, Rao said it was only when they took radiation readings that they realized the bomb casing was empty. What if the original thieves left a radiation source inside the casing big enough to fake the proper readings? In that case, what the Indians thought was the actual theft was in fact a second team infiltrating for the purpose of removing the decoy source.”

  “Interesting thought,” Cohn murmured, frowning into his coffee cup. “If that’s true, there’s not a chance in hell of tracking the bomb.”

  “Actually, I don’t think that’s very likely,” McPherson confessed. “I just bring it up for completeness. From Rao’s report it didn’t sound like anyone even penetrated the weapon storage area during the first security disturbance.”

  “At least not that they know about,” Cohn said with a snort. “So with the sinking of the Rabah Jamila we were supposed to believe that the nuke had disappeared? Joy and rapture all around, and everyone relaxes until the thing goes off somewhere?”

  “I can’t think why else they would make sure both we and the Chinese were there to watch the ship sink,” McPherson said. “In fact, it may be that the Zhardi CitationJet has its own set of evidence pointing to the Rabah Jamila for Beijing’s benefit. I wish I knew what the Chinese knew.”

  “We’ll see what we can find out.” Cohn leaned forward slightly. “Let’s try something different. You game for a dip into the grand conspiracy pool?”

  McPherson felt a tingle run through him. How in hell could Cohn know . . . ? “Grand conspiracy pool?” he asked politely.

  “Don’t bother,” Cohn advised, favoring McPherson with a slightly brittle smile. “I’m well aware of my reputation among you more down-to-earth, reality-based sorts. But you have to admit that flights of fancy do occasionally get you where you want to go.”

  “I don’t have to admit anything when my head feels like this,” McPherson said. “But go ahead.”

  “Try this,” Cohn said, gazing intently at McPherson. “Assumption: the stowaways never intended that bomb to go off.”

  McPherson felt his eyes narrow. “You’re not reading your own reports, Larry. That bomb stayed in one piece purely through the grace of God and a single faulty wire.”

  “Or perhaps through a carefully disabled wire and far less divine intervention,” Cohn countered. “No, wait, think about it. It’s solely because it didn’t go off that we have all this wonderful evidence of North Korean involvement. Evidence that, as you pointed out, any terrorist or merc worth his salt should have destroyed before jumping ship.”

  “We already knew North Korea was involved,” McPherson reminded him. “Syed’s call home, remember?”

  “No, Syed said they were South Korean agents,” Cohn corrected. “It wasn’t until we got into those containers that we had any proof of a North Korean connection. Supposed proof, anyway.”

  McPherson pursed his lips. This wasn’t nearly as ridiculous as it sounded. “And the yacht?”

  “We know Syed saw it,” Cohn said. “Got a very good look at it, in fact. Knowing that he’d be describing it to us, since they knew the bomb wasn’t going to go off, they went ahead and scuttled it to make us waste time looking for it.”

  McPherson drained the last of his coffee. “So instead of wanting us to think the nuke went down with the Rabah Jamila, they really want us to think North Korea is involved when it isn’t?”

  “It just gets more and more complicated, doesn’t it?” Cohn conceded. “Frankly, I have no idea which direction to jump. The one thing that is clear is that whichever way this goes, we’ve wound up spending the bulk of our attention on East Asia.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed that,” McPherson said. “You think the nuke may actually have gone the other direction?”

  “Or somewhere less obvious,” Cohn said. “Vaughn’s theory about using a tactical nuke as a deer gun to get hold of bigger nukes is a disturbing one. The Chinese aren’t the only ones with nuclear arsenals outside their borders.”

  McPherson nodded soberly. “We are, too.”

  “Or they could take a trip to Israel or South Africa,” Cohn added.

  “Or Pakistan or China.”

  “Or India itself.”

  “Now, wouldn’t that be cute?” McPherson said thoughtfully. “All this sound and fury, just to draw everyone’s attention away from India.”

  “And we already know whoever’s behind this does enjoy playing cute,” Cohn pointed out. Behind him on the desk the phone rang, and he reached over to tap a button. “Yes?”

  “Minister Rao is on line three, sir,” the secretary’s voice came over the speaker. “He wants to discuss the report you sent him.”

  “Thank you,” Cohn said, throwing a look at McPherson as he hopped off his corner and circled back to his chair. “This should be interesting,” he said, sitting down and pushing a button. “Cohn.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Cohn,” Rao’s firm voice boomed. Like Cohn, he sounded a lot more alert than McPherson felt. Unlike Cohn, of course, he had a reasonable excuse: it was only early evening in New Delhi. “I’ve finished the report you sent two hours ago.”

  “And your conclusions?”

  “It’s distressingly incomplete,” Rao said bluntly. “I trust you have an update since it was prepared?”

  Cohn made a face at McPherson across the desk. “I’m afraid not, sir,” he said. “We still haven’t finished searching the possible transfer vessels. For that matter, we’re still searching the Rabah Jamila itself. It’s possible that the stowaways jumping ship was simply more misdirection.”

  “And that the weapon is still aboard the ship?” Rao asked thoughtfully. “Interesting. If true, that would imply Japan was the ultimate destination, not North Korea.”

  “Possibly,” Cohn agreed. “At this point I’m not ready to commit to any particular destination or target. Bear in mind that we still don’t even know what the Rabah Jamila’s true involvement is in all this.”

  “Its involvement is with the weapon,” Rao insisted. “Perhaps its purpose was to allow the Chinese to look like innocent bystanders by offering them an opportunity to cooperate with you. You said the CitationJet which took the weapon from India is still in China, did you not?”

  “Yes, it is,” Cohn confirmed.

  “Do we know where the Rabah Jamila is headed after Tokyo?” McPherson asked, a sudden thought striking him.

  “I’d have to check,” Cohn said.

  “It is bound for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski,” Rao said, sounding suddenly thoughtful. “That is an interesting possibility, Director McPherson. You think the weapon will be taken by plane to Tokyo, then reloaded aboard the Rabah Jamila there for further transport?”

  “Possibly,” McPherson said. In point of fact, he hadn’t gotten nearly that far in his own thinking. But now that Rao mentioned it, it made a certain lopsided sense. “With the Rabah Jamila having just gone through the wringer, who’d give it a second glance?”

  “While meanwhile, we’re still busy looking at Japan and the Korean Peninsula,” Cohn rumbled.

  “Perhaps,” Rao said. “What of this sailing yacht, the Eureka, which your Navy plane saw in the region of the Rabah Jamila that night? Could it be involved?”

  “I don’t see how,” Cohn said. “For one thing, it was fully rigged for sailing, while the yacht Captain Syed saw wasn’t. More importantly, we have satellite photos of it both before and after the incident, and it was never closer than eighty miles.”

  “What if it were traveling under power? Most sailing yachts also have engines.”

  “Still no chance,” Cohn assured him. “The Eureka is a displacement monohull, and that kind of ship can’t do more than twenty or twenty-five knots, no matter what kind of engines it’s got. The design simply doesn’t allow for higher speed.”

  “Yes,” Rao murmured. “Of course, that assumes the Pakistanis are telling the complete truth about the incident. Would it be possible for representatives from my government to speak directly to the captain and crew?”

  “That would be up to them,” Cohn said. “The ship’s back on a slow course for Tokyo while we continue our search, but it should arrive in port in a couple of days. If you’d like, I’ll ask the President to see if he can arrange things with the Pakistani government.”

  “I would appreciate that,” Rao said. “One question still remains. If not to the yacht the Pakistani captain claims he saw, where exactly did the stowaways go?”

  “That’s another good question, sir,” Cohn acknowledged. “There were three freighters close enough for them to have transferred to in the time allotted, but so far none of them has shown evidence of such a move. We know which other ships were in the area, and have them under surveillance. If necessary, we’ll broaden our search to them.”

  “I want these men found, Mr. Cohn,” Rao said firmly. “They are our only direct link to the organization plotting against us.”

  “We’ll find them,” Cohn promised.

  “Good,” Rao said. “Please keep me informed of further developments.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cohn said. “Good-bye, Minister.”

  There was a click as Rao hung up. Cohn keyed off from his end, then turned back to face McPherson. “He’s getting impatient.”

  “I don’t blame him,” McPherson said. “What’s our next move?”

  “We keep doing what we’re doing,” Cohn said with a sigh. Suddenly he didn’t look nearly as fresh as he had a few minutes ago. “We search ships, examine satellite photos, dig into communications, and patrol the sea.”

  He turned to gaze out the window. “And I think I’ll have them take another look at the Rabah Jamila bomb.”

  ~

  It was, Angie thought morosely as she stared out through the gauzy motel curtain, like being trapped in Act II of a badly done play. A play where the writer couldn’t think of anything else to do, so simply wrote the same scene over again while stalling for time.

  It had started with another long ride through the rain and snow with strangers, this time on a bus instead of in a car with Ross. Another roller-coaster emotional ride, again starting with limp relief at having gotten away, this time from Ross instead of mysterious gunmen, followed by a slow buildup of quiet dread and fear, this time from the realization that any of the other passengers on her bus could in fact be one of those same gunmen.

  Now another motel room, plainer than the one Ross had taken her to. Another motel window for her to stare out of as she, like her imaginary playwright, stalled for time.

  What was she going to do?

  It had seemed so simple on the drive to Reno. She would ditch the Blazer, take a bus back to San Jose, and turn herself in to the police. Certainly they would understand the situation and why she hadn’t come forward sooner.

  But somewhere between the cabin and the Greyhound station the simplicity had started to break down. The gunmen had been waiting for her at the mall, and Ross had suggested they might also be waiting at the police station. Clearly, they couldn’t cover the whole Bay Area . . . but what if they were covering whichever one she went to? Could the police really protect her against further attack?

  Of course, maybe Ross had exaggerated the danger so he could make sure she didn’t leave him. But if that was all he wanted, why hadn’t he cut and run the minute the shooting started? Why had he stuck it out at the risk of his own life? Surely the chance to secretly record her after a shower wasn’t worth that much to him.

  By the time she reached Reno her resolve had eroded enough that she’d bought a ticket to her parents’ town of Monterey instead of San Jose. The Monterey police weren’t involved in this, she reasoned, and should therefore be safe to approach.

  But as the bus lumbered its way through the night, it occurred to her that cops talked to one another, particularly those on murder investigations. The Monterey cops could be as pure as Florida orange juice, but if the gunmen were monitoring police communications, the wrong word to the wrong cop in the South Bay would get her killed.

  She hadn’t slept on the bus, despite the desperate fatigue that had pulled at her eyelids like ten-pound ankle weights. Every time one of the other passengers twitched in his sleep, or tried to strike up a conversation, or got up to go to the tiny bathroom behind her the adrenaline would flood into her bloodstream like an instant double espresso, sending her heart racing and her hand groping for the stolen gun buried at the bottom of her purse. It was a wonder she hadn’t accidentally shot anyone along the way, including herself.

  By the time the bus pulled in a little after eight thirty in the morning, she was so physically and emotionally exhausted that even issues of life and death hardly mattered anymore. She’d taken a cab to a motel near the highway, waited until the driver was out of sight, then trudged to a different motel two blocks away. She’d checked in under a fictitious name, paid for one day with some of Ross’s cash, and was asleep almost before she was fully on the bed.

  She had awakened four hours later to a sore back, a mouth that tasted like something had crawled in there and died, and a brain only marginally more functional than it had been the night before.

  Now, gazing out the window, she still had no idea what to do.

  She looked at her watch. One-thirty. She wondered if Ross was awake yet. Those sleeping tablets were pretty powerful, she knew from recent experience. Coupled with his overall fatigue, he could very well still be asleep.

  She sighed. None of this was making sense. She needed help. She needed advice.

  She needed her dad.

  She turned away from the window and crossed to the token writing desk and the beige motel phone waiting there with its list of fees and dialing instructions. Ross might have been a liar and scum, but he’d been right about one thing: line phones could easily be tapped and traced. Instead, she scooped up her bag and dug out her cell phone. The battery was starting to run low, and the charger was of course back at her house. But there ought to be enough power for at least one more call. She turned it on, pausing as she searched her memory for her parents’ own cell phone number.

  In her hand, the phone trilled.

  She jerked, nearly dropping it. Who in the world—?

  It trilled again, the display indicating a blocked number. Bracing herself, she tapped the switch. “Hello?”

  “Angie, it’s Adam,” Ross’s voice boomed in her ear. “Thank God. Listen—don’t hang up—”