“Good evening, Mrs. Chandler,” the guard said, nodding back and offering her an electronic notepad. “Would you sign in, please?”

  She took the stylus and wrote her name on the pad, feeling her usual twinge of nervousness as she did so. They used versions of these things everywhere these days, and she’d signed in on Sand/Star’s system a hundred times without incident. But she could never quite shake the feeling that, sooner or later, her scrawl was going to land outside the computer’s built-in tolerances and be declared a forgery. She didn’t know what would happen then, but her mental image involved hooting alarms, flashing lights, and large men in security uniforms.

  She finished writing and handed back the pad and stylus. No alarms or lights went off, and the guard merely nodded. “Thank you,” he said as the gate swung open in front of her. “Have a good evening.”

  “Thank you,” she said, closing her window and easing on the gas. At least it wasn’t raining, which was the normal state of affairs in the Bay Area in January. Rainwater couldn’t do those electronic pads any good.

  Building D was one of the smaller structures of the Sand/Star complex, a building that had been further subdivided into a warren of small facilities for minor researchers, underfunded projects, or for what James called “crapshoot ideas”: concepts which probably wouldn’t pay off at all but would reap tidy sums if they did. In the three years James had worked here Angie had often wondered which category his Tarnhelm project fell into. Possibly all three.

  Most of the building’s parking lot was empty, but a glance at the scattering of cars that remained showed her that all six members of the project were still here. Pulling in beside Dr. Wendell Fowler’s beat-up Ford Bronco, she headed to the main door. Another uniformed guard at a reception desk inside the lobby buzzed her in; another scrawl on an electronic pad, and she was on her way to James’s third-floor complex.

  She opened the door to the main lab area to find what her mother would have referred to as a four-man whirlypit. In the center of the room, folded haphazardly over four lab tables pushed together, was a mass of thick black cloth; black, but with an odd luminescence where the overhead fluorescent light struck the edges of its folds. On different sides James’s three lab techs were hunched over the mass on stools, examining the material with a variety of instruments. Circling the whole group like an impatient vulture was Dr. Fowler, scowling and muttering under his breath as he glared at his tablet, scrolling through pages with quick swipes of his fingers. None of the lab techs looked very happy, either.

  “Have I come at a bad time?” Angie asked hesitantly, pausing just inside the doorway.

  “No, no, come on in,” Fowler said, his glare still on his tablet. “James and Barbara are in the office—he’ll be out in a sec. Damn it all. Jack, are you sure it isn’t there?”

  “If it is, it’s hiding,” Jack Burke growled, moving a device like an oversized magnifying glass slowly over his section of the cloth. “No breaks at all.”

  “Ah-ha!” Ramon Esteban called abruptly, leaning closer to the material. “I got it. Here it is, Wendell.”

  Fowler was already at his side, peering over his shoulder. “Give that man a cigar,” he said. “Better yet, give him a patch kit.”

  “Got it,” Scott Kingsley said, getting up from his stool and crossing to a crowded equipment table against the wall. Slapped down in the middle of the equipment, Angie saw, were two half-eaten pizzas and three two-liter bottles of soda. “Evening, Mrs. Chandler,” Kingsley added, throwing her a friendly grin. “How’s the world of high finance?”

  “Fine, thank you,” Angie said, walking up to the mound of cloth, an odd sensation in her throat. So here it was. After months of experimentation, aggravation, headaches, and blind alleys, here it finally was. “Is this the Cloak?”

  “This is it,” Fowler said proudly as he came to her side. “This is Mama Bear, actually—Papa Bear and the two Baby Bears are in there.” He pointed to the open door leading into the group’s main office, where Angie could see a shoulder-high stack of similar material piled in a corner. “They’re finally ready to go.”

  “And in the traditional nick of time, too,” Burke added, reaching over his shoulders for a long stretch. “After everything James went through to get the Army to come take a look, it would have been highly embarrassing to have to postpone the demo.”

  “And it works?” Angie asked, the odd sensation taking on a twinge of unreality. “It really works?”

  “Sure does,” Fowler said, sounding like a proud father. “No, go ahead—you can touch it. It won’t break.”

  Carefully, Angie ran her fingertips down the material. Despite its almost satiny sheen, the cloth’s texture was hard and cold and rather stiff.

  “Maybe we could fire it up and give her a private show,” Esteban suggested. He was digging into the black surface with something that looked like a dentist’s probe as Kingsley stood over him holding a set of long, thin fibers.

  “Better yet, come to the demo tomorrow,” Fowler invited. “The Army people will be here for James’s presentation at ten, and we’ll then head out to the Calaveras Reservoir site about eleven. Come for all or part of it.”

  Angie gazed at the cloth. She could do it, she knew. They weren’t that busy at the bank, and after having spent most of her evening there trying to get the new computer system up and running they definitely owed her. Anyway, it wasn’t like loan approvals were a matter of life or death.

  They most certainly weren’t something of massive historical importance. But to see the first public demonstration of her husband’s creation . . .

  Behind her, the door to James’s private office opened, and she turned to see him stroll out into the main lab, an almost idiot grin on his face.

  His arm draped casually across Barbara Underwood’s shoulders.

  The sense of history in the making vanished in a puff of green-edged smoke. “Hello, James,” she said quietly.

  His eyes focused on her. “Oh, hi, hon,” he said. For another second his arm stayed where it was. Then, a little too hastily, he let it slide off Barbara’s shoulders back to his side. “What are you doing here?”

  “We had to work late,” she said, her face warming. Dr. Barbara Underwood was, according to James, an absolute genius at optics and software development, exactly the qualities the project had needed when he’d taken her on four months ago.

  Unfortunately, she was also everything Angie wasn’t: tall, blonde, vivacious, well-endowed. And Caucasian.

  A flood of suppressed memories rose to the surface. The first-grade bully who’d saved his chief animosity for her. The more subtle high-school prejudices she’d had to endure despite laws that were supposed to stop such things. Her parents’ not-so-subtle warnings that a marriage outside her own kind was doomed to failure. “I thought you might be done and we could drive home together,” she finished awkwardly.

  “Sorry, but I don’t think I’m getting out of here tonight,” James said, leaving Barbara’s side and coming over to her. “There’s still way too much paperwork that has to be organized before the demo.”

  “I see,” Angie murmured.

  James hesitated, then took her hand. “Come here,” he said, pulling her toward the office. “Wendell, as soon as you’re finished checking Mama Bear, fold ‘er up and start on Papa Bear. Hopefully, he won’t have sprung any new leaks.”

  “Right,” Wendell said, crossing to where Barbara and Burke were talking quietly together as they worked on the leftover pizza. “Let me know when you’re finished there, Ramon.”

  James led Angie into the office, stopping just inside the door. “I know this has been a strain for you,” he said in a quiet voice, taking both her hands in his. “And I know I’ve been something of a stranger lately. But it’ll all be over soon. I promise.”

  “I know,” Angie murmured. Behind him, the surface of his huge metal desk was nearly invisible beneath the mass of scattered papers and Cloak test equipment, with the humming workstation and the four laptops rising out of the chaos like islands in a sea of flotsam.

  But Angie’s attention wasn’t on the desk or its contents. It was, instead, on the military cot in the back of the office. The cot where James had spent the night more times than she cared to remember over the past few weeks.

  Sleeping. Alone. Or so he’d said.

  “Dr. Chandler?”

  She turned, annoyed at the interruption but at the same time welcoming it. Kingsley was standing outside the office, a mostly-eaten slice of veggie pizza in his hand. “Sorry to intrude,” he apologized. “I just wanted to warn you there are only two slices of pepperoni left, in case you wanted to get to them before Ramon does.”

  “Thanks,” James said. “No, wait, don’t run off. You told me once you could handle an eighteen-wheeler, right?”

  “Three summers driving for my dad when I was in college,” Kingsley confirmed. “Why?”

  “I made arrangements to borrow one, on the assumption that we’d be ready,” James said, letting go of one of Angie’s hands and digging a set of keys from his pocket. “Number 4686, out at the shipping building’s main loading dock. Can you go get it?”

  “Sure,” Kingsley said, taking the keys. “Do I need a note for the gate guard to bring something like that in at this time of night?”

  “You shouldn’t, but I’ll give him a call and let him know,” James said. “If you can maneuver it into the receiving dock, that would be great. Otherwise, just park it anywhere. We’ll load the Cloaks aboard later. Oh, and our cards won’t open the loading dock door, so if you park there you’ll have to come back around to the front to get back in.”

  “Right,” Kingsley said. “Angie, was it raining when you came in?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Well, that won’t last,” he said, stuffing the last of the pizza into his mouth. “Le’ me gra’ my coat,” he added around the mouthful, “ ’n I’ll be ri’ back.”

  He headed back across the lab, circling around the pile of Cloak material on the tables and snagging a brown paper towel from beside the pizza boxes as he continued on into the far office.

  “So you’re going to stay here all night?” Angie asked. She tried to lift her eyes to her husband’s, but somehow wasn’t quite able to get past the vicinity of his chin.

  He sighed. Rather theatrically, she thought. “Don’t do this, Angie,” he warned. “I can’t deal with it right now.”

  She hesitated, feeling her resentment wavering. He had indeed been under a lot of pressure lately. And the reality of a scientist’s life was something she’d known she was getting into when she married him.

  From behind her came a whiff of subtle perfume. “Only one slice of pepperoni left, James,” Barbara said, her voice bright and cheerful and as all-American as the rest of her. “Hello, Angie. How are you?”

  “Just leaving,” Angie said, a flash of fresh resentment yanking her back from the brink of wifely understanding as Barbara turned back to the lab tables. No, of course he didn’t have time to deal with her now. “I’ll see you tomorrow, James.”

  “Angie—wait. Please.”

  She turned away without answering. Wendell was standing behind Esteban, blocking the most direct route out of the room. Grimacing, Angie turned the other direction, taking the long way around the lab tables. She glared at the remnants of the pizza as she passed it, resisting the urge to sweep that last slice of pepperoni onto the floor and smash it under her shoe. Finishing her circle, she slipped through the doorway and escaped out into the deserted hall. None of the others, as near as she could tell, had even noticed she was leaving.

  And not once had James called out to her.

  The guard downstairs checked her out, and the one at the gate did likewise. Somewhere along the way she cooled down; and by the time she was driving down the private road she realized with embarrassment that she’d acted like a child in there. Never in their six years of marriage had James given her any reason to suspect he was cheating, and working late hardly qualified as proof now. Even when he was working late with someone like Barbara Underwood.

  But the house would still be empty when she reached it tonight. So would their bed.

  Ahead in the distance, the stoplight where the Sand/Star drive intersected the highway was red. She let the car coast toward it, trying to decide what to do. It was nearly eight-thirty, the evening already half gone. A right turn and another half hour on rain-slicked roads would take her to their modest house up in Castro Valley. A left turn and a ten minute drive would take her in toward San Jose proper and Greenleaf Center Mall, where her bank branch was located. The branch where she would have to show up for work in eleven and a half hours anyway.

  A group of flashing red lights to her left caught her eye, and she looked to see two police cars and an ambulance tearing north along the highway. They blew past her intersection in convoy and disappeared over a low hill to the right, the reflection of their flashing lights fading into the night. An accident somewhere that direction, obviously. If it was on or near the highway, she could probably add another half hour to her travel time home.

  Ahead, the light turned green, and with sudden decision she spun the wheel left. Her dress would stand up to another day of wear, especially if she threw a sweater on over it, and there were toiletries and a change of underwear in the emergency bag James insisted they carry in case they got trapped away from home by an earthquake or mudslide. And of course, she always had her needlepoint with her in case there was nothing good on TV. A motel room would be no less lonely than her house, and it would save her the long commute in the morning.

  She would get a late supper, relax for what was left of the evening, and get as good a night’s sleep as she could have alone. Maybe take one of the sleeping tablets Dr. Bates had prescribed to help with all these long nights without her husband. She didn’t like the things, but she had to admit that they worked. As long as she took it before ten o’clock, she shouldn’t be groggy when she woke up.

  And when she got to work in the morning, she would inform Nora that she’d be taking off at nine-thirty, possibly for the rest of the day. If she was going to put up with Tarnhelm’s aggravations, it was only fair that she be there for its triumphs, too.

  With that settled, she shifted to the right-hand lane and accelerated to the speed limit, or rather as much above the speed limit as she figured she could get away with. And tried to decide whether she was in the mood for Chinese, Thai, or Italian.

  04

  For a long moment Eleven lay motionless on his cot, staring into the darkness of his sea-going apartment, wondering what had snapped him awake. He could hear nothing through the container’s sound insulation; certainly there was nothing to be seen.

  He checked his watch. Just after three in the morning.

  And then suddenly it clicked. The faint but pervasive vibration beneath him was gone.

  The Rabah Jamila had stopped.

  He was crossing the container toward the hook holding his headset when he heard the soft call-up buzz from it. He snagged the headset and slid it in place with one hand, scooping up his MP5 with the other. “What’s happened?” he demanded. “Are we supposed to be stopped?”

  “In the middle of the Taiwan Strait?” Ten growled back. “Not likely. It’s either engine trouble or we’ve run into pirates.”

  Eleven swore under his breath. Not even two days into the voyage and already a complication had reared its ugly head.

  Still, piracy was hardly unknown in these waters, and the plan did take this kind of contingency into account. They should be all right.

  Provided they lived through the next ten minutes. “What’s the move?”

  “We assess the situation,” Ten told him. “Get geared up and switch to radio.”

  “Right.”

  Three minutes later Eleven was ready, clothed in full night camouflage outfit with gloves and pullover head mask, with a compact night-vision monocular over his left eye and the radio headset snugged over his left ear. His suppressed MP5 was slung over his right shoulder, a suppressed Walther P5 riding his right hip. Spare magazines, flares, and grenades lay close to hand in hip pouches. “Ready,” he said.

  “Go out your stern exit,” Ten instructed. “I don’t want either of us popping up top until we find out if someone’s walking the containers.”

  Eleven worked the stern latches, and with a soft pop the hidden exit swung open. Swinging the MP5 around behind his back where it would be out of the way, he drew the Walther and eased outside.

  As his earlier probe had suggested, there was no container immediately aft of his. There was no wind, at least not in this container-sized pit, and only a handful of stars were showing through the mostly cloud-covered sky. For a moment he stood where he was, looking around the handful of container tops within his view and listening hard. Somewhere off to starboard was the engine noise of an approaching ship; closer at hand, also to starboard, he could hear muted voices. One of the voices rose in volume and gave what sounded like a sharp command.

  A command that was definitely not in Urdu.

  There was an access ladder built into the side of the container to his left. Keeping the Walther ready, he climbed cautiously up to where his head was even with the top of the overall container level. From his new vantage point he could see there were two figures walking across the tops of the containers. They were about eighty meters aft of his position, silhouetted against the superstructure lights behind them, looking slightly hunched over. Both carried large flashlights, pointed downward.

  “Two men approaching,” he murmured. “Eighty meters aft. Looks like they’re reading the container markings.”

  “Checking out their prize,” Ten said. “What else?”

  “Ship and voices to starboard,” Eleven said, sliding up into a prone position on top of the container. Keeping an eye on the approaching figures, he crawled across that container and the two beside it to the starboard edge of the stack and looked down.