'First thing tomorrow morning.'

'Several copies. Keep another set. Are you coming back to Manhattan tomorrow?'

'I don't know yet,' Tess said. 'I still have things to check.'

Then send the other copies to me. Federal Express.' Craig gave his office address at One Police Plaza. 'There's one other problem.'

'I'm not sure I want to hear it.'

'After the Fire Department put out the blaze, when they thought it was safe, they let me search the torched apartment. That building has concrete floors. There wasn't any risk of my falling through or of anything else having fallen through.'

'I don't know what you're getting at,' Tess said nervously.

'I had to use a pole to move sections of the toppled ceiling and walls. But I knew where to look, so it didn't take me long to clear the spot I wanted.'

'What spot? What are you-?'

'Where the bookcase was,' Craig said. 'Where the statue stood on the bookcase. The books were destroyed, as you'd expect. So was the bookcase. Just ashes. But the statue was made of marble, and marble doesn't burn. It might crack from heat, but… I kept looking. The statue couldn't have fallen through the concrete floor, and when it toppled from the bookcase, it couldn't have rolled very far. It's gone, Tess. The statue's gone! Whoever torched the apartment must have taken it when they left. I don't know what the hell's happening, but I want you to promise me. Swear it. Be careful!'

SEVEN

East of Maine. The North Atlantic.

The United States Coast Guard cutter Sea Wolf, out of Portland, continued its speedy mission through a moderately choppy sea.

Clouds obscured the moon and stars, intensifying the night, although even in daylight the Sea Wolfs destination was still too far away to have allowed for a visual identification. On the cutter's bridge, Captain Peter O'Malley could see his objective as a blip on the radar, however, and its implications made him frown.

'Distance: fourteen thousand yards,' a crewman said. 'Looks like air reconnaissance was right, Captain. Its course is erratic. Minimal speed.'

O'Malley nodded. Six hours earlier, a group of Air Force F-15 fighter pilots practising night maneuvers in a military corridor off the New England coast had noticed the blip on their radar screens. Its unusual behavior had prompted the flight group's leader to radio his commander at Loring Air Force Base near Limestone, Maine, and request permission to contact the vessel. Permission was granted, but all attempts to communicate with the vessel had failed.

'Identify yourself.'

No response.

'Do you need assistance?'

No response.

After repeated efforts, the group's leader had requested further permission to change course and descend for a visual inspection. Again, permission was granted. After all, the vessel's radio silence combined with its puzzling, slow, random course and its proximity to United States waters justified concern. At a cautious distance, using intense-magnification night-vision apparatus, the flight group's leader determined that the vessel was a massive fishing trawler. English lettering on the stern indicated that the trawler's name was the Bronze Bell, its home port Pusan, South Korea. The English lettering wasn't unusual – many Oriental commercial ships used English identification symbols when operating in Western waters.

What was unusual, indeed disturbing, however, was that in addition to its erratic sluggish approach toward US waters, the trawler displayed no lights, not even the mandatory signal lights that maritime law required during night voyages to prevent converging vessels from failing to see each other and colliding.

The troubled commander at Loring Air Force Base insisted on confirmation. The equally troubled flight group leader repeated that the trawler was totally – 'I mean, absolutely'-dark. The situation became delicate, the potential for an international incident disturbing. A misjudgment could destroy careers.

If the approaching foreign vessel had been military in nature, the United States military would have gone on alert. But since the vessel was civilian, it required a less severe response. The Air Force immediately contacted the Coast Guard, and since O'Malley's cutter was the nearest government vessel in the area, the Sea Wolf was at once dispatched to investigate.

Now, five hours after having received his orders, O'Malley – a red-haired, twenty-year veteran with a home in Portland and a wife and daughter whom he loved very much – continued to frown at the blip on the radar screen.

'That's it, Captain,' a crewman said. 'She just crossed the two-hundred mile boundary. She's in our waters.'

'And drifting.' O'Malley sounded as if his best friend had died.

'That's what it looks like, Captain.'

'And still no response to our radio messages.'

'Affirmative, Captain.'

O'Malley sighed. 'Battle stations.'

The crewman pressed the alarm. 'Aye, aye, Captain.' Through the cutter's hull, the alarm sounded muffled but effectively shrill. Below, it would be excruciating, the rest of the crew snapping into action. 'You think there'll be trouble?'

'That's the problem, isn't it?' O'Malley said.

'Excuse me, Captain?'

'What should I think? Trouble? For sure. Obviously something's wrong. The question is whose trouble – ours or that trawler's? I guarantee this. My dear departed mother, God rest her soul, didn't raise her son to be a dummy.'

'I second that opinion, Captain.'

'Thank you, Lieutenant.' O'Malley allowed himself to grin despite his nervous preoccupation. 'And I promise you, I'll do everything in my power to insure that every mother's son in my command lives to see his family again.'

'We already know that, Captain.'

'I appreciate your confidence, but it won't get you a better rating on your duty report.'

The lieutenant chuckled.

'I want a boarding party,' O'Malley said.

'Yes, Captain.'

'Armed.'

'Yes, Captain.'

'Get the Zodiac ready.'

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

O'Malley continued to frown toward the radar. Thirty minutes later, the Sea Wolf's night-vision screen revealed the enormous South Korean trawler wallowing in waves a thousand yards ahead, its bulky outline made eerily green by the monitor.

The lieutenant straightened, cocking his head. The Air Force wasn't exaggerating, sir. I've never seen a darker ship.'

'I want every gun manned,' O'Malley said.

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

'Still no response to our radio messages?'

'Afraid not, sir.'

'Pull portside and hail them on the bullhorn.'

O'Malley nervously waited as a communications officer crouched protectively beside a housing on the deck and blurted questions through the bullhorn.

'Ahoy, Bronze Bell!'

'Ahoy! Please, respond!

'You have entered United States waters!'

'Please, respond!

'Ahoy, do you need assistance?'

'Fuck it,' O'Malley said. 'Get a team in the Zodiac. Make sure they're fully armed, Berettas, M-sixteens, and for God's sake, make sure they're fully protected from our deck when they cross to the trawler. The fifty-caliber machineguns. The forty-millimeter cannons. The works.'

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

The Zodiac, a rubber outboard-motor-powered raft, sped toward the Bronze Bell, its seven-member team holding M-16s at the ready. In the dark, as they reached the trawler and threw grappling hooks connected to rope ladders over the trawler's side, O'Malley said a quiet prayer for their safety and mentally made the Sign of the Cross.

The team shouldered their rifles, unholstered their pistols, jacked a round into each firing chamber, and clambered briskly up the rope ladders, disappearing over the side.