“It was hardly like this. I had, with two others, to break into a building in the middle of the Arabian desert and photograph the unmanned radar installation inside. The installation turned out not to be unmanned, and we had a bit of a tussle, had to kill a man, and one of ours took a bullet in the foot during the struggle. It was a long walk back to our Land Rover, taking turns carrying him.”

“Odd business for a woman,” he said.

“Well, you’ve got women in the Royal Marines these days, though I don’t see any on this little jaunt.”

“We’ve got some very good women. Pure accident that none came along. Best, ah, person for the job, and all that.”

Whatever you say, she thought. “Just out of curiosity, who ordered you not to go ashore tonight?”

“My wife,” he said. “Well, not really, it was more like the PM, who obviously thinks I’m too old for this sort of thing. He was happy for me to use my own yacht, though. If something should go wrong, he won’t lose a vessel, or have it identified as belonging to the government.”

“You’re going ashore anyway, aren’t you?” she asked.

Sir Ewan grinned. “I thought about it, but if anything should go wrong, my presence would greatly increase the embarrassment level for the government. I suppose I’ll stay aboard and let you and the men have all the fun!”

A large wave slid under them with a hiss as it passed.

Sir Ewan seemed to doze, with the mug held in both hands, so Carpenter stopped talking. She glanced at her watch. Three hours to go.

BOB KINNEY SAT at his desk while various members of his team came and went.

“What time are they going ashore?” Kerry Smith asked.

“Dead of night,” Kinney replied. “I don’t have an hour.”

“Dead of night is pretty soon,” Kinney said. “They’re five hours ahead of us.”

“I know.”

“I wish I were with them.” Smith sighed.

“God, I don’t. There’s half a gale in the North Sea tonight, which makes it good for the operation, but I wouldn’t want to be out there in a small boat.”

“You must be getting old, Bob,” Smith said, the first time he had ever been so familiar with his superior.

Kinney looked at him sharply, then nodded. “Too old for that,” he said. “Not too old to kick your ass.”

Smith held up his hands in surrender. “No argument there, boss.”

“That’s better,” Kinney said.

“I still can’t believe that we’re going to crack this thing because the president went to the prime minister, and the prime minister sent in the marines. Does this sort of thing happen often?”

“Not often, but it happens.”

“I wish we were following this thing by satellite,” the young agent said.

“It’s a dark and stormy night. We’ll know soon enough, just relax.”

“You’re not relaxed,” Smith said.

“Oh, shut up, Kerry. Go get me some coffee and one of those awful doughnuts.”

Smith got up and left the office.

WILL ENTERED the situation room, and everyone present stood. “Be seated, please.” He looked around the room at the collection of military and National Security Council faces. “Any word about anything?”

General Moore spoke up. “They’re due to go ashore any time now. Nobody knows how long this is going to take, but they’ll have to be off the island well before dawn.”

“Well, unless you people actually want to stay up and wait for news, I suggest you leave a skeleton crew here and get some sleep. That’s what I’m going to do, and I don’t want to know what happened until I wake up in the morning. If they get a name and address, fax it directly to Kinney at the FBI. Good night.”

They stood again as he left the room.

Will got on the elevator, yawning.

35

THEY WERE LESS THAN a mile from the island before Carpenter saw it, briefly illuminated by a flash of lightning. Sealand was a low, black collection of rocks, with no vegetation visible in the lightning flashes.

Sir Ewan opened the hatch and shouted, “Four men on deck to inflate the dinghy!”

The lights below were extinguished; four men clambered into the cockpit and began unrolling the rubber boat, which had been lashed to the stern pulpit.

“And switch off those nav lights!” Sir Ewan called down. “I want a man at the nav station to warn me of any vessel that comes within two miles of us!”

“Aye, aye, sir!” someone called back.

Sir Ewan turned and directed the men with the dinghy. “Plug the tube in right there,” he said, pointing to a port in the side of the cockpit. The tube was plugged in, a switch filled, and the electric pump began quickly inflating the rubber boat.

Carpenter hung back on the opposite side of the cockpit and watched the sixteen-foot pile of rubber become a boat.

“Team on deck,” Sir Ewan shouted down the hatch, and two other dark shapes joined them. The dinghy was slipped over the side, and, while two men held the bow and stern close to the yacht, the others began jumping into it, timing the boat’s rise with the waves. They were hove to with the storm jib aback, and the yacht’s wind shadow made a fairly calm area to leeward.

Carpenter looked down into the heaving dinghy and launched herself toward it, putting her faith in the Royal Marines’ desire to manhandle a woman. She was caught and lowered into the boat with only a minimum of groping. Four men began paddling toward the island.

At first there seemed no place to land, but as they progressed, a shallow bay opened behind a point of land, and when they were a couple of hundred yards out, a flash from the sky illuminated a short jetty.

“Thank God for the lightning,” the sergeant said. “Otherwise we’d have to use our torches and probably get spotted.” “We were told there wouldn’t be sentries,” Carpenter said. “Don’t believe everything you’re told,” the sergeant replied. “Just be ready to handle it.”

They came up on the leeward side of the jetty, and two marines jumped out and made the dingy fast. From that point, no one issued orders; everyone did as he had been instructed.

While the men fanned out to their assigned positions, Carpenter and Roofer followed the sergeant toward the only light. It began to rain heavily, and the light seemed to blink on and off as they approached, finally becoming steady as the outline of a portable building became visible.

Carpenter hunched up her slicker and pulled its hood tight around her head, for shelter and better visibility. She and the sergeant ran to a window and looked inside. Through the rain-spotted glass they could see the dimensions of a large room, lit by a single lamp on a desk. A single figure, a young woman, sat at the desk. “Looks good,” Carpenter said.

“Not yet,” the sergeant replied. “Check the other windows.”

They ran around to the other side of the building and found another window lit. Inside, a large lump of a man was slumped over a desk, apparently asleep, illuminated by a single lamp and the glow from a computer screen.

“Double trouble,” the sergeant said. “I can only use the blowpipe on one at a time, and they’re in different rooms.”

“I’ve got my compressed air pipe,” Carpenter said. “I’ll take one.”

The sergeant thought for a moment. “I’ll take the guy, you take the woman. We’ll go in as quietly as we can and try to sneak up on them.”

Carpenter shook her head. “The woman is in profile to the door. As soon as we go in, she’s bound to see us. And as soon as we open the door, she’ll hear the weather outside. Let me go in first and close the door behind me. Give me five seconds, or until I’m well past the office door. I’ll take care of her, then you can do the man.”

The sergeant shrugged. “Why not?”

Roofer spoke up. “What do you want me to do?”

“Stay outside. Don’t come in until I call you,” the sergeant said.