Taking cover behind Papandreou's desk, Harvath blew the door off its hinges in an enormous explosion. Once the smoke had cleared, he rushed forward only to discover that it was totally empty.

The CIA was positive the device was being kept at the villa- most likely in Papandreou's safe, but apparently that location had seemed too obvious.

Knowing that blowing the safe had drawn the attention of the other sniper, Harvath quickly exited the room and began making his way down the hallway, his SR25 up and at the ready.

He passed several rooms, and was about to pass the kitchen when something caught his eye and caused him to back up. In the middle of the kitchen floor was a trapdoor standing wide open. After double-checking the SureFire flashlight mounted to his rifle, Harvath swept into the kitchen and made his way down the stone steps beneath the trapdoor.

The steps led him into a low-ceilinged, rough-hewn corridor illuminated by a string of bare bulbs. From what he could tell, a generator somewhere at the end of the corridor was powering the lights.

Harvath hated tunnels. They provided little cover and had a rather undesirable propensity for funneling enemy fire right at you.

Hugging the wall, he made his way toward a fissure of some sort at the end of the corridor. He was now well beyond the grounds of the villa above and could smell saltwater from somewhere off in the distance.

He entered the fissure and had to crouch to make it through, but when he emerged thirty-five meters later he found himself in a brightly illuminated grotto with a narrow strip of sandy beach. Upon it were parked two heavily armed, high-end Faral-lon DPVs, or Diver Propulsion Vehicles. The lingering doubts Harvath had harbored about Papandreou's innocence were beginning to melt away.

From the far end of the beach, a flash of sparks and a high-pitched, grinding whine caught Harvath's attention. A figure dressed in black was using what appeared to be a circular saw to carve into a metal canister propped between two large rocks. Har-vath's instinct was to call in what he was seeing to Washington, but he had lost all radio contact the minute he had entered the first subterranean passage.

A million questions raced through his mind, the answers to which appeared to be on the beach.

Harvath found a narrow footpath and carefully picked his way down, never once taking his eyes off the figure so intent upon opening the metal canister wedged between the rocks. When his feet hit the sand, Harvath moved forward as silently as a shadow.

With sparks flying and the grinding of metal upon metal, the black-clad figure never noticed Harvath's approach. When the suppressor of Harvath's SR25 was pressed up against the back of the man's wet suit, he let the saw fall to the ground.

Harvath told the man to turn around slowly, and when he did, Harvath was rendered nearly speechless. "Ambassador Avery," he stated. "I don't understand. I thought you were dead."

An aura of shock was replaced by one of dignity and power as the silver-haired ambassador replied, "Obviously I'm not. Who the hell are you?"

"My name's Harvath. I was tasked by the Pentagon to find your killers."

"The Pentagon? They couldn't find their ass with both hands. I suppose you've also been tasked with retrieving the device."

There was something about looking into the eyes of a dead man that caused Harvath to mentally pull back and play it dumb until he could get a handle on what was going on. "The device, sir?"

"Don't bullshit me," commanded Avery. "That's what this is all about. Put your weapon down and give me a hand. We haven't got much time."

"Where's Papandreou?"

Avery was silent and so Harvath repeated, "Where is Papan-dreou, sir?"

"Somebody took him for a swim," said the ambassador, motioning over his shoulder toward the water. "I don't think he's coming back any time soon."

Harvath looked to where the beach dropped off into the deep water of the grotto. Several feet below the surface he could make out the shape of a man wrapped multiple times in what looked like heavy anchor chain. Pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.

"And Nomikos?" asked Harvath. "Let me guess. Someone was just trying to help him clear the wax out of one of his ears."

"Who cares? They were both 21 August. All that matters now is that we get the device out of here ASAP."

The hair on the back of Harvath's neck was standing up. He didn't like this. Steadying his SR25 on the center of the ambassador's chest, he ordered, "Get your hands up where I can see them."

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Taking you into custody."

"No, you're not. I've got an assignment to complete. If you get in my way and fuck this up, I'll make sure you burn for it." "Just the way you did in Athens?"

The ambassador fell silent and the only sound that could be heard throughout the grotto was the steady hum of the generator.

"I ought to put a bullet in you right here," continued Harvath, his mind rapidly cobbling together a picture of what must have happened. "Good men on your detail died. And for what? Money?"

"Lots of money," came a voice from behind. "Twenty-five million and counting."

Harvath turned to see the head of the ambassador's security detail, the agent known as Point Guard. In his hands he carried a fully automatic French FA-MAS with a heat shield over the barrel. The man was enormous-almost twice Harvath's size and was wearing an Infrared reduction suit.

Though he didn't mean to, Harvath laughed.

"What's so funny?" demanded Point Guard.

"I was just thinking of that old joke about the difference between a BMW and a porcupine, except in the case of you and the ambassador, this time the pricks actually were on the outside."

Point Guard stepped up to Harvath and wiped the smile off his face with a butt stroke from the MAS across his jaw.

Harvath saw stars and fell to one knee.

"We've all gotta do what we've all gotta do," said the ambassador as he stripped Harvath of his weapons and equipment and tossed them into the water.

"And in your case," added Point Guard as he kept him covered, "you've gotta join Mr. Papandreou for a little swim."

Harvath spat a gob of blood from his mouth and said, "Probably not a good idea. I just ate before I got here."

"Very funny, wiseass."

"Why don't you tell me how long you've been working for 21 August."

The ambassador smiled. "We don't work for them. They work for us. Our associate, Mr. Papandreou, screwed up very bad a while back and we offered not to turn him in if he would be our eyes and ears inside the organization."

"Did the State Department or CIA know about this?"

"Of course not, Papandreou was too valuable an asset to be shared."

"And he used his friendship with Nomikos to steal the device?" "Yes, but Nomikos was no angel. He was the chairman of 21 August."

Harvath was stunned.

"Papandreou had suspected for quite some time that his cover within the organization was blown," continued Avery. "He knew that they were going to come for him eventually. In fact, I suspect that was why Nomikos showed up here tonight. Looking back on it, we probably should have done away with Papandreou much sooner and gotten out of the country, but we had other loose ends to tie up and hindsight is always twenty-twenty."

"So you and Papandreou put this plan together yourselves? The hit on your detail, your car?"

"We threw a couple of bodies in the car," replied Point Guard, "swapped out our dental records and then firebombed them so only the bullets would survive to tell the tale."

Harvath had to hand it to them. "And the entire trail led right back to 21 August. You skated with the money and the device, ready to start a new life anywhere you choose."