Chapter Four
7:02 a.m.
When Vance caught his first clear sight of Andikythera's sheltered inlet, the storm had passed over in the night and Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" was displaying all her splendored glory. With only a slight effort he had altered his course and reached the island. Now, as he rowed in through the still, turquoise waters, only light surface ripples lapped against his Switlik. As quickly as it had come, the turmoil in the seas had vanished. He hoped it was a good omen.
He looked down and realized the water was so crystalline he could see the bottom, now at least ten meters below. Although he had visited many islands, he had never seen anything more perfect than Andikythera. Despite being bone-tired and soaked to the skin, conditions that exacerbated his anger, the sight of the island momentarily buoyed his spirits. It reminded him of a thousand Caribbean mornings, the feeling of rebirth and renewal.
Andikythera had always been private, and never more so than now. It was an industrial site these days, pure and simple. No ferries deposited tourists here, no fishing boats docked in the mornings. Nothing but granite cliffs surrounded the secrets held inside.
The heavy construction equipment, the prefabricated buildings, the facility's high-tech components, all had come through this harbor. Now, however, the dock was deserted; the off-loading cranes and giant mechanical arms highlighted against the morning sky stood idle. Everything had been delivered, was in place, and was humming. The only vessel now tied up was a sailing yacht, Bill's twenty-eight-foot Morgan, leased specially so he could keep his hand in while here. Great boat. . . .
Abruptly he stopped rowing.
Think a minute, he told himself. You can't risk using the inlet. No way.
On the right and left sides of the harbor, steep crags of white granite speckled with scrub cypress guarded the shore, while the towering cliffs of the north mirrored the coastline of a thousand Greek islands. Unlike the postcard photos for sale everywhere on the tourist islands—featuring topless Swedish blondes and trim Italian playboys, gold chains glinting—this was the real Greece, harsh and severe. Only a few seabirds swirling over the near shore, adding their plaintive calls to the silence-breaking churn of surf pounding over the rocks, broke the silence.
He studied the island, trying to get his bearings. Just as Bill had said, it appeared to be about three miles long, maybe a couple of miles wide. As though balancing the radar-controlled mountain at one end, at the opposite terminus stood the launch vehicles, now just visible as the tip of two giant spires, gleaming in the early sunshine like huge silver bullets. And somewhere beneath this granite island, he knew, was the heart of the Cyclops, SatCom's computer-guided twenty- gigawatt laser. . . .
There was no sign of anybody monitoring his approach. The early light showed only pristine cliffs, cold and empty.
Careful now. First things first.
He rowed under a near cliff, then slipped off the yellow raft and into the knee-deep waters of the near shore, still dazzlingly clear. It reminded him again of the Caribbean. Maybe Bill unconsciously had an island there in mind when he decided to move everything here.
The water was cold, refreshing as he moved in. He collected what he needed from the raft and stood a minute wondering what to do with it. Then inspiration struck. It only weighed sixty-five pounds, so why not use it?
It was a standard Switlik, which meant inflation had been automatic. The deflation would take a while, so he started it going as he hefted the heavy yellow hulk and headed up the hill. He wanted it empty, but not entirely.
The security Dimitri Spiros had installed was high-tech and good. He had not gone to the trouble of burying cables all around the place with magnetic anomaly detectors. That would have required blasting through a lot of granite and did not really seem worth the tab. Instead he had surrounded the place with a chain-link fence and topped that with free-spinning wheels of razor wire known as Rota-Barb, which prevented an intruder from smothering the cutting edges with cloth. Then, just to make sure, across the top and at several levels below, he had added lines of Sabretape with an enclosed fiber-optic strand. A pulse of light was transmitted through the length of the tape, and if it was disturbed, detectors at a central guard location would know immediately when and where.
Now Vance had to try to penetrate a system he had actually been involved, indirectly, in setting up. The ultimate irony.
The jagged granite tore at his hands as he struggled up, picking his way through the clusters of scrub cedar that clung to the steep ascent and dragging the Switlik by its nylon straps. The cliff rose a good two hundred feet and was almost sheer, but he located enough niches to haul himself forward. Finally, exhausted and hands bleeding, he pulled himself over the top. Then he dragged up the remains of the raft.
Ahead, just in front of the towering communications mountain, he discerned ARM's industrial security installation, a ten-foot-high chain-link fence interwoven with fiber optics. Beyond it on a helicopter pad sat Bill's new Agusta, a hot 109 Mark II with all the latest modifications, including two 450-hp Allison engines. It sat there, its blue trim like ice, a ghostly apparition against the lightening sky.
Poised alongside was a brooding hulk that dwarfed the Agusta—a Soviet Mi-24D, one of its stubby wings a tangled mass of metal.
So the bastards were here. He'd guessed right.
He saw no guards around it, but who knew.
He would find out soon enough, but one thing was sure: it must have a radio on board. The U.S. Navy would be very interested in identifying the location of its hostile. Maybe he should just switch on the Hind's cockpit IFF, let it start broadcasting. If the ship that was attacked had been interrogating the Hind, there'd probably be knowledge somewhere of the codes it was transmitting.
Easy. Just take it easy. Go in behind the chopper, handle the fence, and then rush the thing from the back. If anybody's guarding it, you'll be taking them from their blind side.
Grasping the Switlik, with the Walther tucked firmly into the waist of his soaked trousers, he dashed for the corner of the fence behind the Hind. He was barefoot, the way he always sailed, and the granite felt sharp and cutting under his feet. But being barefoot was going to help him take the fence.
Okay, he thought, the fiber-optic alarm system is going to blow, no matter what. Just get in and get on the radio quick, then worry about what comes next.
He knew the only way to defeat a Rota-Barb system was at the corners, where the spinning rolls of wire intersected at a right angle. As he approached the corner, he looked up and checked out his chances. Yep, with the Switlik to smother the barbs it might just be possible.
He looped one of the nylon straps, then leaned back and heaved the raft up onto the top of the fence. It caught and was hanging there but—just as he had hoped—the strap passed over and down the other side. Next he reached through, seized it, and tied it securely to the heavy chain links of the fence. Now it would hold the raft in place as he climbed from the outside.
Holding the hand straps of the raft, he clambered up and made it to the top. Then he rolled himself into the rubber and pushed over. A second later he dropped shoulder-first onto the asphalt of the landing pad. Home.
The razor wire had shredded the raft, and the fiber-optic security system would have detected the entry, but he was in. If any guards were left alive, they probably had other things to worry about.
Or so he hoped.
At that instant he thought he heard a sound, and whirled back. No, he had only caught the chirp of a morning bird, somewhere in the cluster of trees down toward the shore. The island again seemed as serene as a paradise.
He crouched a moment, grasping the Walther, then shoved a round into the chamber. The early morning light showed the Hind in all its glory. It was dark green, with a heavy, retractable landing gear—a magnificent machine. And a lethal one. Originally intended as an antitank weapon, the Mi-24 had quickly become a high-speed tool for air-to- ground combat. To re
duce vulnerability to ground fire, its makers substituted steel and titanium for aluminum in critical components and replaced the original blade-pocket design with fiberglass-skinned rotors. . . .
The only defect of this particular example was the absence of the starboard auxiliary wing, including the rocket pod. Its arrival and accurate landing here spoke volumes for the flying skills of whoever had been at the controls. If the weapons operator had possessed comparable talent, Vance reflected, he might not be standing here now.
But, he noted again, it had Israeli markings. Had the Israelis really attacked a U.S. frigate? That made no sense. For one thing, they couldn't have flown a Hind this far without refueling. Its combat radius was only about a hundred miles.
Then he looked more closely and realized that the Israeli Star of David in a circle of white had merely been papered on. So it was a false-flag job. Which more than ever left open the question—who the hell were they?
Gripping the Walther, he slid open the door to the cargo bay and examined the darkened interior. It was empty save for a few remnants of packing crates. He climbed in and checked them over. They had been for weapons. He saw some U.S. markings on one: a crate of M79 grenade launchers. Another had contained Czech ZB-26 light machine guns, with spare boxes for C-Mag modifications, giving them 100-round capability.
Jesus! If these were just the discarded crates, what else did these guys have?
He turned and moved up the gray metal steps to the cockpit, a raised bubble above the weapons station. Nice. He settled himself, looking out the bulletproof windscreen at the first tinge of dawn breaking over the island. His first impulse was to crank her up and fly her out. He resisted it.
Switching on the IFF would be a chore; he was not even sure he knew how. He could, however, get on the airwaves.
The pilot's flight helmet was stashed on the right-hand panel where it had been tossed. He picked it up and slipped it on, then clicked on the electronics. The helicopter's main panel and screens glowed to life, a patchwork of green and red lights and LEDs. He flicked more switches overhead and the infrared and radar systems came on-line, their displays like Christmas-tree lights briskly illuminating one by one in rows.
Now for the radio.
It was Soviet-made, of course, with heavy metal knobs and a case that looked as though it could withstand World War III. He clicked it on and began scanning through the aviation channels, checking to see if anybody was out there. Maybe . . .
Nothing, except a few routine exchanges of civilian pilots. Well, he thought, could be it takes a while for the news of major world events to get down to the trenches. Word would circulate soon enough. The military channels, however, would be another matter.
The Hind had them all. He clicked over to the frequencies and began scanning. There were a lot of scrambled communications; the radio traffic was sizzling. He figured the Sixth Fleet was on full alert.
Except they didn't know where to look for their hostile.
He remembered that the military emergency channel was
121.50 megahertz. He punched it in, then unhooked the black mike and switched to transmit. The green diodes blinked to red.
7:09 a.m.
Jean-Paul Moreau, who had perfect command of English, was catching the BBC on a small Sony ICF-PR080 in Command Central, keeping abreast of the news. The World Service was just winding up its morning broadcast, circumspect as always.
". . . A reminder of the main story: there are unconfirmed rumors emanating from the southern Aegean that an American naval vessel, the USS Glover, was attacked by a helicopter gunship late last evening, with considerable damage and loss of life. It is said the gunship was Israeli. No confirmation or denial of this report has yet been issued by the government in Tel Aviv. And that's the end of the news from London. . . ."
"Guess we had a hit." He laughed, then switched frequencies and started monitoring the military channels.
Ramirez had also heard the broadcast, with satisfaction. The attack would soon blossom into a world event, with accusations flying. After that had played its course, he would drop his bombshell.
Now it was daylight. Time to begin phase three of the operation.
It had been a productive night. The first order of business had been to off-load their hardware. In addition to the Uzis they had carried in, they had broken out a compliment of AK-47s. The Germans had also brought out and limbered up a crate of MK760 submachine guns, fully automatic with folding stocks, as well as some Czech mortars and grenade launchers.
That was finished by 0300 hours, after which the men caught catnaps, rotating to keep at least three on guard at all times. Now that the test had gone off successfully, most of the facility staff was lounging at the blank terminals, dazed.
Ramirez, however, had no intention of letting the SatCom staff become rested. He looked over the room at the young engineers, all of whom were showing the first signs of hostage behavior. They were frightened, stressed, tired—already in the early stages of "hostile dependency." Soon they would melt, become totally pliable. But to achieve that, they could not be allowed to get enough sleep. Food also had to be kept to a minimum.
Most importantly, all telephone and computer linkages with the outside world had been cut—with the exception of one. The single telephone remaining was on the main desk down at the other end of Command. Otherwise, Peretz had methodically shut down everything, including the telemetry equipment located up on the mountain. While they would need to reactivate it later on, for the moment they could keep it on standby.
Peretz had proved reliable so far, Ramirez told himself. The man was seasoned and competent, unlike the young Muslims who acted first and thought later. An operation like this required precision, not unbridled impetuosity, which was why he valued the Israeli so highly. . . .As he surveyed Command, he decided it was time for champagne. He had brought a small bottle, a split of Dom. . . . But what was champagne without the company of a beautiful woman. He turned toward Miss Andros—
"Merde!"
His meditations were interrupted by the startled voice of Moreau.
"There's a Mayday on one-twenty-one point five megahertz. It's so close, I think someone is transmitting from here on the island."
Ramirez cursed, while the buzz in Command subsided. Then Moreau continued.
"In English. He's talking about the Glover, and he's giving our location."
"Probably one of the guards." Ramirez paused, thinking. "But how could he know about the Glover?"
"Maybe he's in the Hind, monitoring the radio," Helling said, rubbing at his balding skull. "We—"
"You brought backup. Time to use it." Ramirez turned and beckoned for the three ex-Stasi: Schindler, Maier, and Sommer. It was time for the three monkeys to start earning their keep. "Go out to the chopper," he barked to them in German, "and handle it. You know what to do."
They nodded seriously and checked their Uzis. They knew exactly.
7:23 a.m.
The transmit seemed to be working, and he was getting out everything he knew—the location of the Hind, the fake nationality, the attack on the frigate. But was anybody picking it up? The heavy Soviet radio was rapidly drawing down its batteries, but he figured it was now or never. Get it out quick and hope, he thought. Pray some Navy ship in this part of the Aegean will scan it and raise the alarm.
He was still trying to piece it all together when he spied the figures, approaching from far down the central walkway. Three men dressed in black, looking just like a hit squad. He had not expected so fast a response, and for a second he was caught off guard. They must have been monitoring the radio.
If you had any sense, he told himself, you'd have expected that. You're about to have some really lousy odds.
The Hind was armored like a tank, he knew, and even the bubbles over the cockpit and the weapons station were supposedly bulletproof. How bulletproof, he guessed, he was about to learn.
With the three men still a distance a
way, he realized he had only one choice. Although he had never actually flown a Hind, this seemed an ideal time to try and find out how difficult it was.
Probably harder than he knew. He reached up and flicked on the fuel feeds, then pushed the starter. To his surprise, there came the sound of a long, dull whine that began increasing rapidly in intensity and frequency. The main rotor had kicked on—he could tell from the vibration—and the tail stabilizer, too, if the rpm dials were reporting accurately.
All right, he told himself, the dial on the right side of the panel is rotor speed. Keep it in the green. And over to the left is engine speed. Come on, baby. Go for the green. Red line means you crash and burn. Pedals, okay. But this isn't like a regular airplane; the stick is cyclic, controls the angle of your blades.
The instruments were now on-line—temperature, fuel gauges, pressure, power output. The two Isotov turboshafts were rapidly bringing up rpm now, already past three thousand. He grabbed hold of the collective, eased back on the clutch, and felt the massive machine shudder, then begin to lift off.
As the three men breached the gate leading into the asphalt-paved landing area, a fusillade of automatic-weapons fire began spattering off the bubble windscreen, leaving deep dents in the clear, globelike plastic.
So far, so good, he thought. It's holding up to manufacturer's specs.
Now for the power. It's controlled by the collective, but when you increase power you increase torque, so give her some left pedal to compensate.
The Hind had started to hover, and now he moved the columns to starboard, bringing it around. He could not reach the weapons station, but the 12.7mm machine gun in the nose had an auxiliary fire control under the command of the pilot.
With his hand on the stick, he activated the fire button. He might not be able to hit anything, but he'd definitely get somebody's attention. . . .
The machine gun just below him erupted, a deadly spray that knocked sparks off the hurricane fence surrounding the pad as the chopper slowly revolved around. Somewhere now off to his left came a new burst of automatic fire. He found himself in a full-scale firefight, trapped like a tormented bull in a pen.
But the Hind was up and hovering . . . and also beginning to slip sideways because of the damaged wing. He grappled with the collective pitch lever in his left hand, trying to regain control, but he didn't have the experience. The chopper was now poised about ten feet above the ground, its engines bellowing, nosing around and drifting dangerously.
He'd lost control. As it tilted sideways, the fence began coming up at him, aiming directly for the nose bubble. Even more unnerving, though, was the heavyset terrorist in a black pullover who was standing directly in front of the bubble and firing his Uzi point-blank. Worse still, he was handling it like second nature.
The plastic splintered with a high-pitched shriek as the rounds caught it head-on. The curvature had helped before, but now the gunman was able to fire straight into it. The game was about to be up.
He ducked for the floor of the cockpit just as the bubble windscreen detonated, spewing shards of plastic both outward and inward. Now the helicopter was coming about and lifting off again, pulling up strands of the wire fence that had gotten tangled in the landing gear.
No time to worry about it. He rose up, grasped the collective, and urged more power, trying to compensate for the torque. But the mottled gray behemoth was increasingly unstable, shunting sideways, drifting over the security fence and spiraling upward toward the mountain that bristled with SatCom's communications gear. The gunner holding the Uzi slipped in another clip and raised up to finish him off, but at that instant Vance squeezed the fire button one last time and the man danced a pirouette, disappearing from view.
As he started to spiral in earnest, more automatic fire ricocheted off the fuselage. Then came a sickening whine.
The stabilizer, he thought. They must have hit the damned stabilizer. This is going to be a very short trip.
Panic caught him as the Hind started into autorotation, round and round like a bumper-car ride at an amusement park.
He cut the power—hoping he could bring her down using the energy stored in the blades—then quickly put the right pedal to the floor, held the collective down, and tried to keep rotor speed in the green. He was drifting to the east now, headed for a copse of trees halfway up the mountain.
Not a bad place to set down, he thought, and started to flare the blades with the stick, hoping he could bring her in with the collective. The Hind was still spinning in autorotation, but not yet dangerously. Slowly, slowly . . .
He was about thirty feet above the trees when a splatter of automatic fire erupted from the open doorway. He whirled around to see the terrorist he'd bulldozed into the fence now hanging onto the metal step and trying to pull himself in.
What now . . . !
The man—Vance guessed he was pushing forty, with a face of timeless brutality—was covered with blood and his aim was hampered by trying to hold the Uzi as he fired one-handed, the other hand grasping the step. He was cursing in German. . . .
At that instant the Hind took a sickening dip, and the Uzi clattered onto the doorway pallet as the terrorist relinquished it to try to hold on with both hands.
But he was losing it, his hands slippery with his own blood, and all that held him now was the torn section of his own shirt that had somehow sleeved over the step. Then his grasp gave way entirely, and he dangled for a moment by the shirt before it ripped through and he fell, a trailing scream. He landed somewhere in the trees twenty feet below, leaving only the shirt.
In the meantime the Hind continued spiraling and drifting down, and Vance looked out to see the gray granite of the side of the mountain moving toward him, with only a bramble of trees in between. But at least the chopper's autorotation was bringing him in for a soft crash.
He braced himself as a clump of trees slapped against the side of the fuselage. Then the twelve-ton helicopter plunged into them, its landing gear collapsing as it crunched to a stop. He felt himself flung forward, accompanied by the metallic splatter of the rotor collapsing against the granite, shearing and knocking the fuselage sideways in a series of jolts. As the two turboshaft engines automatically shut down, he held onto the seat straps and reflected that this was his first and probably last turn at the stick of a Hind. And all he'd managed to do was total it.
Heck of a way to start a morning.
The Uzi was still lying on the floor of the cabin, while the shirt of the man he had shot was wrapped around the metal step and lodged beneath the crushed landing gear.
When he reached back and checked to see that the Walther 9mm was still secured in his belt, he noticed that his arm had been lacerated by the jagged plastic of the shattered canopy. He noticed it, but he didn't feel it. He was feeling nothing, only a surge of adrenaline and the certain knowledge he had to get out fast, with the Uzi.
He scooped it up and stumbled through the doorway, to the sound of muted gunfire down the hill, as the other two hoods continued to advance.
He had the German's automatic now, but the last thing he wanted was a shootout. Nonetheless, rounds of fire sang around him as he ripped the black shirt loose from the chopper's step and felt the pockets. One contained what seemed like a small leather packet.
He yanked it out, then plunged in a direction that would bring the Hind between him and the other two assailants. But when he tried to catch his footing in the green bramble of brush, he fell on his shoulder and rolled, feeling a spasm of pain. Christ, this was no longer any fun!
About twenty feet away was an even denser copse of cypress scrub than the one he had crashed in. If he could make that, he told himself, he'd have some cover. He just had to get there in one piece.
Half scrambling, half rolling, he headed for the thicket of trees, occasionally loosing a round of covering fire down the hill. Then he felt the scratchy hardness of the low brush and threw himself into the bramble. Dirt spattered as rounds
of fire—or was it flecks of granite?—ricocheted around him, and then he felt a nick across one shoulder—he was not sure from what. A couple more rounds cut past, but now they were going wide.
He collapsed into the dense bramble and tried to catch his breath. What next? The Uzi still had a half-full clip. Maybe he could hold them off.
He stilled his breathing and listened, but heard nothing. The mountainside was deathly quiet, so much so he could almost hear the crash of waves on the shore below. It was probably only wishful imagination, but the quiet gave hope he might temporarily be out of danger.
He turned and looked up the mountain, finally able to see it clearly. The near hillside was covered with brush, the only objects visible above the green being the tip of a high-tech jungle. SatCom had a hell of a communications installation. Outlined against the blue sky were huge parabolic antennas used for microwave uplinks, a phased-array transmission system for powering the space vehicles, a myriad of dishes for satellite uplinks and downlinks, and various other antennas used for conventional radio. It was all set inside a high-security hurricane fence with a gray cinderblock control hut at the near corner.
Well, he thought, with that battery of antennas, there's surely a way to do what has to be done next. . . .
This time he wouldn't waste radio access with Maydays.
9:35 a.m.
As the landing announcement sounded through British Air flight 1101 from London to Athens, Isaac Mannheim took off his thick spectacles, wiped them futilely with a greasy handkerchief, settled them back, and stared down. The plane was now on final approach, and he had already taken down his flight bag and stuffed it under the seat in preparation, ready to march off.
Mannheim was professor emeritus at MIT, Department of Engineering, and he retained the intellectual curiosity of a mischievous schoolboy. He had the flowing white hair of a nineteenth-century European philosopher, the burning eyes of a Jules Verne visionary, the single-minded enthusiasm of a born inventor, the discursive knowledge of a Renaissance man, and the self-assurance of a true genius—which he was.
Wearing a tweedy checked suit, a frayed brown overcoat, smudgy horn-rims, and a Boston Red Sox baseball cap, he also looked every bit as eccentric as his reputation said. The baseball cap was tribute to another of his eclectic concerns—the statistics of that particular team. Those he kept on a computer file and subjected to daily updates.
As Issac Mannheim saw it, he was the undisputed father of Project Cyclops; Bill Bates was merely in charge of its delivery room down on Andikythera. It was a half-truth, perhaps, but not entirely untrue either. He had dreamed up the idea and proved in his MIT lab that it could work. The rest, he figured, was merely scaling it up—which any dimwit with half a billion dollars could do with ease. He had already seen to the hard part.
Mannheim liked to check in on his baby every other week, just to make sure that Bates—who was going to make a fortune off his idea—was doing it right. Although the long flight to Athens and then the helicopter ride down to Andikythera were starting to make him feel his seventy-five years, he did not really mind. When you're my age, he'd claim, you don't have time to sit around on your butt all day.
He always flew British Air from London rather than taking a direct Olympic flight from Boston, mainly because he was an Anglophile but also because he wasn't quite sure he trusted Greek maintenance. Isaac Mannheim was old school in all things.
As the tires screeched onto the asphalt, he glanced out the window again, marveling how small the Athens airport was. But then his mind quickly traveled on to other pressing matters: namely, the day's agenda. He was anxious to go over the power-up data number by number with Georges LeFarge. The young French Canadian had been his best student in Cambridge, ten years ago, and Isaac Mannheim was secretly pleased, very pleased, that Georges had been given a leading role in the project. Together, years ago, they had ironed out many of the technical problems in the system. The work back then had been done on a lab bench, and a shoestring, but LeFarge knew everything that could go wrong. With Georges as Director of Computer Systems here, Mannheim knew the project was in good hands, at least the crucial computer part of it.
When the doors opened, he was one of the first to step out of the BA 757 and down the steel stairway onto the runway. He reflected that he'd had a good flight this time, with only an hour layover in Heathrow's infamously crowded Terminal Four. Now, as the airport bus arrived to carry the bleary-eyed London passengers into the Athens terminal, he anticipated getting an early start on the day.
He glanced down toward the far end of the airport, the civilian aviation terminal, expecting to catch sight of Bates’ blue-and-white-striped Agusta helicopter. Funny, he couldn't see it today; usually you could.
It was odd; they were always here, waiting. Customary promptness was just one more example of how well that young Dr. Andros was handling the project. He chafed to admit it, but she was pretty damned good. Although he had long scoffed at the idea that women could compete successfully with male engineers, he had to admit she was as professional as any male project manager he'd ever worked with.
Carrying his overstuffed black briefcase in his left hand and his tattered nylon flight bag in his right, he waited till the airport bus was almost full before stepping on. Airport buses, he noted as an engineer, operated on the old-time LIFO computer storage principle: last in, first out. No random access.
And he was indeed first out as they pulled into the sheltered awning of the terminal. The Athens morning sun was already burning through the growing layer of brown haze. He thought ruefully how it would look from the south, down around Piraeus, as they flew out. From there Athens seemed to be encased in an ugly brown tomb.
World air quality was yet another of the topics weighing on his mind these days. It was, in fact, a frequent subject of the long letters he addressed to another former student, an average-IQ Danish boy majoring in physics whom he had seen fit to flunk in junior-year thermodynamics. Afterward Mannheim had taken the lad aside and bluntly suggested he might wish to consider a less intellectually demanding career path.
The advice had been heeded, and these days he was doing reasonably well at his cushy new job, down in Washington. Still, Isaac Mannheim felt it necessary to post the boy long typewritten letters from time to time concerning various avenues for self-improvement.
Yes, he had turned out reasonably well after all, considering, but he still needed to work harder. Don't be a slacker, John; nobody ever got ahead that way. The forty-second President of the United States, Johan Hansen, read his old professor's missives, usually written on the back of semi-log graph paper or whatever was handy, and dutifully answered every one of them. Maybe he was afraid he'd get another "F" and a humiliating lecture.
Isaac Mannheim stared around the half-filled terminal, wondering. The SatCom pilot usually met him right at the gate, but today nobody was there. Incompetent Greeks. This one, in fact, was particularly feckless: just out of the Greek Air Force with no real grasp of the value of time.
Or had Dr. Andros forgotten he was arriving? That was hard to imagine, since he had talked with her just before he left Cambridge. One thing you had to say for her, she never forgot appointments. Strange.
No helicopter. No pilot. Damned peculiar. He had no alternative but to phone Dr. Andros on her private line.
He walked over to the booth near the entrance to the terminal lobby and got some drachmas. Then he located a pay phone and placed the call.
She answered on the first ring. Good.
"Cally, what in blazes is going on down there?" He tried to open the conversation as diplomatically as he knew how. "I'm here, sitting on my butt in the Athens airport, as though I had nothing else to do. I don't see Alex anywhere. Or the Agusta. You're going to have to get rid of that boy if this happens again. Where in hell are they?"
A long uncomfortable pause ensued, and it sounded as though she was listening to someone else. Finally she answ
ered in a shaky voice.
"Dr. Mannheim, it's been a very long night here. Maybe you—"
"Well, how did the power-up go? I need to go over the data with Georges right away."
"Dr. Mannheim, maybe—" The phone seemed to go dead. Then she came back on. "The Mark II is temporarily out of service. Can you take the ferry?"
"What! You know perfectly well that damned thing only runs once a week. And that was yesterday. Now what about the Agusta?"
"It's . . . it's just not possible. So—"
'Tell you what, then, I'll just rent one here. It'll cost a few dollars, but I can't wait around all day."
"Isaac, I—" She never used his first name, at least not to him, but he took no notice.
"Don't worry about it. It'll just go into project overhead. Be a tax write-off for Bates." He laughed, without noticeable humor. "He understands all about such things."
'That's awfully expensive," she said, her voice still sounding strange. "Maybe it'd be better to wait—"
"Damn it. I'll be there in a couple of hours."
"Dr. Mannheim . . ." Her voice would have sounded an alarm to most people. But then most people listened. Isaac Mannheim rarely bothered. Especially where women were concerned. You simply did what had to be done. It was that simple, but most women seemed unable to fathom matters of such obvious transparency.
He slammed down the phone and strode out into the morning sunshine. The private aviation terminal was about a half mile down an ill-paved road, but he decided the walk would do him good. The breeze would feel refreshing after the smoky, stuffy terminal. The problem was, Athens was already getting hot. That's why he liked the islands. They were always cooler this time of year.