Jones escorted Kane to a side entrance. They rode an elevator down one level and walked along a hushed corridor to an unmarked door. Jones knocked softly, then opened the door for Kane, who stepped into a nondescript conference room similar to hundreds of other sterile spaces scattered in government edifices around the capital. The room had pale green wall-to-wall carpeting, beige walls decorated with generic artwork, a lectern, and a projection screen. A dozen or so people were seated around a long oak table.
Kane went around the table shaking hands and was greeted with hellos or smiles from everyone except a stranger who identified himself as William Coombs, representing the White House.
Kane sat down in the only unoccupied seat next to a firm-jawed man wearing the uniform of a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.
“Hello, Max,” he said. “How was your trip from Bermuda?” His name was Charley Casey.
“Fast,” Kane said. “Hard for me to believe that a few hours ago I was a half mile under the ocean.”
“I watched the dive on TV,” Casey said. “Too bad you lost contact with the surface just when things started to get really interesting.”
“Interesting isn’t the word for it,” Kane said. “But it’s nothing compared to the craziness about the lab. Any news?”
The lieutenant shook his head.
“We’re still trying to make contact,” he said, “but there has been no response.”
“Could it simply be a foul-up in the communications system?”
Casey glanced over at Coombs.
“We have reason to believe that there is more involved than a systems failure,” Casey said.
“You might want to bring Dr. Kane up to date on the details as we know them, Lieutenant Casey,” Coombs said.
The lieutenant nodded, opened a folder, and pulled out several sheets of paper.
“We’ve pieced together a scenario based on witness statements. The situation has been confused, and reports are still coming in, but here’s what we have so far. Yesterday, at approximately 1400 hours our time, a cruise missile was launched against the Proud Mary, the lab’s support-and-security ship.”
Kane shook his head in disbelief.
“A missile? That can’t be true!”
“I’m afraid it is true, Max. The missile hit the ship on the port side. No one was killed, but at least a dozen were injured. The Mary is a tough old gal. She stayed afloat and got off a Mayday. The Navy cruiser Concord showed up within hours and rescued the survivors. Repeated attempts were made to contact the Locker. No reply.”
“Maybe the blast damaged the communications buoy,” Kane suggested.
“Negative. The cruiser checked out the buoy and found it undamaged.”
“Where was the lab’s service shuttle when all this happened?”
“A short while before the attack, the submersible had made a run down to the lab to deliver a representative from the company in charge of the Locker’s security. The sub was still on the lab when the missile came in.”
“What about the Locker’s minisubs?” Kane said. “They could be used to evacuate the lab in an emergency. The lab also has escape pods it can use as a last resort.”
“No subs or pods, Max. Our guess is that what happened to the lab was sudden and catastrophic.”
Kane’s head was spinning. He slumped in his chair as he tried to digest the implications of Casey’s last statement. He thought about Lois Mitchell and the other members of the Bonefish Key lab staff who had gathered to send him off on the B3 dive. He rallied after a moment, reminding himself that he was a scientist who dealt with facts, not suppositions.
Straightening up in his chair, Kane said, “How long before we can check out the lab itself?”
“The Concord is sending down a remote-operated vehicle,” Casey said. “All we can do at this point is to wait for them to report in.”
“I hope the Navy is doing more than sitting on its hands,” Coombs said. “Have you tracked the source of the missile?”
The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. Coombs was one of those ubiquitous young staff aides who looked as if he had been punched out of white dough with a cookie cutter. He was as clean-cut as a West Point grad, although his closest brush with a uniform had been as an Eagle Scout. He had cultivated an all-purpose facial expression of quiet competence that failed to hide a barely restrained arrogance. During his naval career, Casey had frequently encountered clones of the White House man, with their inflated sense of power, and had learned to cloak his disdain under a polite veneer.
He prefaced his answer with a pleasant smile.
“The Navy can walk and chew gum at the same time, Mr. Coombs. We’ve reconstructed the probable trajectory of the missile, and we’ve got planes and ships vectoring in on the launch position.”
“The White House isn’t interested in trajectories or vectors, Lieutenant. Has the source of the launch been tracked? If it was launched by a foreign power, this could have serious international repercussions.”
“The missile could have come from a ship, a sub, or a plane, sir, that’s all we know. Pretty much a crapshoot at this time. We’d welcome suggestions as to how to proceed, sir.”
Coombs was too well practiced in the art of passing the buck to take the bait.
“I’ll leave that up to the Navy,” he said, “but I can tell you one thing: this has all the earmarks of a well-organized and well-financed plan.”
“You won’t get any argument from me on that score,” Kane said. “About the same time the Proud Mary was being attacked, an attempt was made to sabotage the bathysphere dive.”
Kane waited for the noisy reaction to subside and then laid out the details of the attack on the sphere.
When Coombs heard about Austin’s rescue dive, he said, “I’ve heard Vice President Sandecker talk about Kurt Austin. He’s some sort of NUMA troubleshooter. From the little I know of the man’s exploits, you would still be at the bottom of the ocean if he had not been on board the Beebe. This thing with the lab is starting to make sense now. Someone wants to destroy our project.”
“That’s my take on it too,” Kane said. “The people behind the attack on the lab must have figured that I’d be ripe for the picking in the bathysphere.”
Dr. Sophie Pappas, the sole female member of the scientific board, asked, “Why didn’t the people behind these events wait until you were back on the lab? Instead of two simultaneous attacks, they only would have had to mount one.”
“Good question.” Coombs turned to Kane. “Could the work of the lab go on without you?”
Kane nodded.
“Sure,” he said. “As director, my job is to ride herd on the project. I’m a scientific coordinator now rather than a researcher. Lois Mitchell, my assistant, knows more about the actual nuts and bolts of the project.”
“You’re saying that the project could continue without you, but not without her,” Coombs said.
Kane said, “I have more experience working with the government bureaucracy, but she could easily wrap up this project in days without me. On the other hand, I know enough to reconstitute the work with the scientists remaining at Bonefish Key. It would take time, but I could get things moving again.”
“Not if you’re dead,” Coombs said. “But the lab’s work could continue without you, which means that it may not have been destroyed.”
“Your theory makes sense in a nutty sort of way,” Kane said.
“Thank you. A devious mind is essential at the higher levels of government. Have we informed the Chinese government of the attacks?”
“After the meeting, I’ll contact Colonel Ming, who is my Chinese counterpart on this project,” Lieutenant Casey said. “He’s corrupt as hell, I hear, but well connected. Perhaps he knows something that can help.”
“I hope so. This incident with the lab couldn’t have come at a worse time,” Coombs said. “The other shoe is about to drop.”
Coombs snapped his fingers, and his assistant went over to a large-screen computer at the end of the table and brought up a map of China.