Sandecker looked as if the question surprised him. "I'm open to suggestions."

"I've got one. Call in the Royal Canadian Mounties."

"I'm sure you can do it without their help." Sandecker showed his even teeth in a crocodile smile. "You have carte blanche."

"I'd rather have the Mounties," Zavala said. "If they're busy, a contingent of Special Forces might do."

"I don't blame Joe for being doubtful," Austin said, coming to his partner's aid. "As the Trouts and I know, Oceanus shoots first and asks questions later."

"It would take too long to go through the red tape necessary to in- volve the Canadian military or police. As for Special Forces, we would need presidential authority to trespass on Canadian turf. I don't see that coming."

"In that case, I'd like to make a proposal," Austin said. He related his conversation with Aguirrez.

Sandecker puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. "Let me see. You'd like to use the resources of this Basque, who may or may not be a terrorist, to carry out a NUMA mission in a foreign country?" Sandecker said.

"If we can't use the U.S. Marines or the Mounties, he might be all we have."

"Hmm," Sandecker said. "Can he be trusted?"

"He can be trusted to do whatever he can to find his relics. Beyond that I can't say, other than to remind you that he saved my life on two occasions."

Sandecker tugged at his precisely trimmed beard. The idea of using the Basque appealed to the admiral's unconventional side, but he was reluctant to lose control of the situation. On the other hand, he had complete confidence in Austin and his team.

"Use your best judgment," Sandecker said. "There's something else," Austin said. He told them about the overnight closing of the museum exhibition and the accident in- volving Senator Graham.

"But I know Graham well," Sandecker said.

Gunn nodded. "And guess what his commerce committee has been involved in lately? Legislation trying to close loopholes that would allow biofish to be shipped into the U.S."

"Quite a coincidence, isn't it?" Austin said. "Especially since he was returning from a party hosted by Oceanus."

"Are you suggesting," Sandecker said, "that this exhibition was an elaborate cover for an assassination crew?"

"It fits. With Graham out of the way, those loopholes may never be closed."

"I agree. There are certainly enough party hacks around to raise the possibility of bribes," said Sandecker, who had a low opinion of Congress.

Austin said, "Oceanus has cleared away a major obstacle. I think they're about to make their move."

Sandecker rose from his seat and glanced around the table with his cold blue eyes. "Then it's high time we made ours/9 he said.

When Austin returned to his office, a message was waiting for him from the captain of the NUMA research vessel William Beebe, work- ing with the Danes in the Faroe Islands. Call immediately, the mes- sage said, and left a phone number.

"I thought you'd want to know," the captain said, when Austin reached him. "There's been an accident out here. A research vessel working with a Danish scientist named Jorgensen blew up some- how. They lost eight people, including the professor."

Austin had forgotten about Jorgensen's plans to continue his re- search near the Oceanus plant. Now he recalled warning the profes- sor to be careful.

"Thank you, Captain," he said. "Any idea what caused the expio- sion :-

"The lone survivor said something about a helicopter in the area before the explosion, but she didn't make sense. She was the one who suggested that we call you, in fact. Seems she was on the boat as a guest of the professor. Name was Pia something."

"She's a friend of mine. How is she?"

"Few broken bones, some burns. But the doctors expect that she'll pull through. Sounds like a tough lady."

"She is. Could you give her a message?"

Of course.

"Tell her I'll be over to see her as soon as she's feeling better." "Will do."

Austin thanked the captain and hung up. He stared into space, his jaw muscle working, his blue-green eyes at the topaz level on Moh's scale of hardness. He was thinking of Jorgensen's horsy smile and pia's kindness. Barker, or Toonook, or whatever his name was, had made the mistake of his life. By killing the professor and injuring Pia, he had made it personal.

THE SINGLE-ENGINE floatplane flew low, looking like a toy against the vastness of the Canadian wilderness. Therri Weld sat next to the pilot in the front passenger seat, where she had a good view of the ranks of sharp, pointed treetops, any one of which could have ripped the belly out of the fuselage.

The first part of the flight had been spent in white-knuckled ter- ror. Therri had not been reassured when she saw the pair of fuzzy dice hanging in the cockpit. But as the flight proceeded without a hitch, she had concluded that the pilot, an enormous, grizzled man whose name was Bear, actually seemed to know what he was doing.

"Don't get up here very often," Bear shouted over the roar of the engine. "Too remote for most of the 'sportsmen' who come up to go hunting and fishing. Their idea of roughing it is staying at a lodge with inside plumbing." Bear pointed through the windshield at the featureless terrain. "Coming up on Looking Glass Lake. It's really two lakes joined by a short connector. Locals call it the Twins, al- though one's bigger than the other. We'll drop down on the little guy

in a few minutes."

"All I see is trees and more trees," said Marcus Ryan, who sat be- hind the pilot.

"Yeah, bound to find trees in these parts," Bear said, with a cheer- ful grin. He glanced over to see if Therri appreciated the joke on Ryan. She smiled gamely, but her heart wasn't in it. She would have felt far more confident if Ben Nighthawk were with them. Her calls to his apartment had gone unanswered. She'd wanted to keep trying, but Marcus had been in a hurry to get rolling.

"You can pull out if you want to," Ryan had said. "Chuck and I can go it alone, but we've got to move fast because the plane's wait- ing for us." Therri barely had time to pack before Ryan picked her up. Before long, they were piling into the SOS executive jet with Chuck Mercer, the former first mate of the Sea Sentinel. With his ship on the bottom, Mercer was eager to see action.

Therri would have been more enthusiastic if she didn't think Ryan was making up his strategy as he went along. Thanks to the infor- mation from Ben, Ryan knew where to go. Ben had told him the name and location of the lake. It was Ben, too, who had given him Bear's name.

The bush pilot used to be a drug smuggler and was known to work with no questions asked, if the money was right. He hadn't even blinked when Marcus had spun a cock-and-bull tale about doing a documentary film on native culture and wanting to observe Ben's village without being seen.

Bear was usually discreet, but he had become careless living in a community where everyone was aware of his past. He'd let a few Words slip about his job for SOS while he was fueling up the plane. He could not have known that sharp ears were listening, or that un- friendly eyes were watching as his plane took off and headed into the interior.

The lake loomed up suddenly. Therri glimpsed water shimmer- ing in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun. Seconds later, the plane dropped as if it had hit a downdraft. She felt her heart in her mouth, then the plane bottomed out and slid into a gradually angled trajectory. The floats skimmed the lake's surface a short distance be- fore the plane settled into the water and slowed.