'So, going back to my question,' said the secretary of state, 'what are we going to tell the world?'

'It's too early.'

'People are going to ask questions.'

'Then make up some answers. You're a politician, aren't you? If we come right out and tell them there's another intelligent species at the bottom of the sea, we're going to kill them with shock.'

'Incidentally,' said the CIA director, turning to Li, 'how would you like us to refer to these deep-sea deviants?'

Li smiled. 'Johanson had a suggestion. Yrr!

'Yrr?'

'He came up with it by accident. His fingers slipped on the keyboard. He says it's as good a name as any, and I agree.'

'OK, Jude.' The President nodded. 'We'll see how this theory shapes up. We have to keep considering all the possibilities, all the options. And if it turns out that we're fighting a battle against these aliens – yrr or whatever you want to call them – we'll fight them and win. We'll declare war on the yrr.' He looked at the others. This is an opportunity for us. A big opportunity. I want you to use it.'

'With God's blessing,' said Li.

'Amen,' mumbled Vanderbilt.

WEAVER

One of the benefits of staying at the Chateau under military occupation was that nothing was ever closed. None of the usual conventions of the catering trade applied. Li had made it clear that everybody, especially the scientists, would be working day and night, and a T-bone steak at four in the morning might be exactly what they needed.

For the past thirty minutes Weaver had been ploughing up and down the pool. It was well past one in the morning. Now, wrapped in a soft towelling bathrobe, with bare feet and wet hair, she padded across the lobby on her way towards the elevators. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Leon Anawak sitting at the hotel bar, which struck her as an unlikely place to find him. Perched forlornly on a stool and eyeing an untouched glass of Coke, he was dipping into a bowl of peanuts, picking one up, then letting it drop.

There'd been no sign of him since their conversation that morning. Maybe he didn't want to be disturbed. A bustle of activity filled the lobby and the adjoining rooms, but the bar was virtually empty. Two men in dark suits were sitting in a corner, talking in hushed tones, while a woman in combats stared at a screen. The west-coast music in the background gave the scene an air of inconsequential ordinariness.

Anawak looked unhappy.

She was just thinking that it might be best to go back to her suite when she found herself walking towards him. Her damp feet left tracks on the parquet floor. 'Hi.'

Anawak turned, his eyes empty.

She stopped. It was the easiest thing in the world to encroach on someone's private space and earn yourself a reputation for interfering. She leaned against the bar and drew the bathrobe closer. There were two stools between them.

'Hi,' said Anawak. His eyes shifted. At last he seemed to see her.

She smiled. 'What. . . urn, what are you doing?' Stupid question. 'You disappeared this morning.'

'Yeah, I'm sorry.'

'Oh, no, don't apologise,' she said. 'I didn't want to disturb you. I just saw you sitting here and I thought-'

Something was wrong. It would be wise to leave him to it.

Anawak roused himself from his paralysis. He reached for his glass, picked it up and put it down again. His eyes moved to the stool beside him. 'Would you like a drink?' he asked.

'Are you sure I'm not disturbing you?'

'No, really, it's fine.' He hesitated. 'My name's Leon – Leon Anawak.'

'I'm Karen. Bailey's on ice, please.'

Anawak summoned the barman and ordered her drink. She took a step closer, but didn't sit down. Her wet hair sent droplets of cold water trickling down her neck and between her breasts. She should drink up and leave, she thought. 'So, how're things?' she asked, and sipped.

Anawak's brow furrowed. 'I'm not sure.'

'Not sure?'

'No. My father died.'

Shit. 'What was wrong with him?' she asked cautiously.

'No idea.'

'You mean the doctors don't know yet?'

'I don't know yet' He shook his head. 'I'm not even sure I want to know.'

He fell silent for a while. Then he said, 'I was in the woods this afternoon, walking. I was out there for hours, trying to… feel something. I thought, there has to be some kind of emotion that goes with a situation like this. But I just felt sorry for myself. He looked her in the eye. 'Do you ever get that feeling, like wherever you are you want to be somewhere else? And then suddenly you realise that it isn't you that wants to get away – the place you're in is pushing you away, telling you, you don't belong there. But it won't tell you where you do belong, so you have to keep running.'

She ran a finger round the rim of her glass. 'I guess you didn't have a very good relationship with your father, then.'

'I didn't have a relationship with him at all.'

'Really?' Weaver frowned.

Anawak shrugged. 'How about you?' he asked. 'What do your parents do?'

'They're dead.'

'Oh… I'm sorry.'

'It's OK. You couldn't have known. They died when I was ten. A diving accident off the coast of Australia. I was in the hotel when it happened. They got caught in a rip. They were experienced divers, but, well… you can never tell with the sea.'

'Did anyone ever find them?'

'No.'

'How did you cope?'

'For a while it was pretty tough. I'd had an amazing childhood. My parents were teachers and loved the water. We went sailing in the Maldives, scuba-diving in the Red Sea, cave diving in the Yucatan. We even dived in Scotland and Iceland. Of course, they never went too deep when I was with them, but there was plenty for me to see. They only left me behind if the dive was going to be dangerous – and then, one day, they never came back.' She smiled. 'But, hey, I turned out OK in the end.'

'True.' He smiled back.

Then he slid off his stool. 'I should probably get some sleep. I'm flying out for the funeral tomorrow.' He hesitated. 'Good night. . . and thanks.'

SHE SAT THERE, looking at her half-drunk Bailey's, remembering her parents and how the hotel staff had come to find her. She had to be brave, the manager had said.

She swished the liquid in her glass. Anawak didn't know just how tough it had been. How her grandmother had tried to look after the disturbed, fearful little girl, whose sorrow had vented itself in rage. At school her grades went downhill, and so did her behaviour. Then there was the bunking off class and bumming around on the streets, smoking her first joint, hanging out with punks, drinking herself into a stupor, and sleeping with anyone who was interested – which they always were. Nicking stuff, being expelled from school, the backstreet abortion, hard drugs, the young offenders' institute. Six months in a home for problem kids. Then all the piercings, the shaved head, the scars. Her mind and her body had been a battleground.

But the accident had done nothing to diminish her love for the sea. The water seemed to exercise a dark fascination, calling to her and summoning her to the depths. It beckoned to her so powerfully that one night she had hitched a lift to Brighton and swum away from the shore. Then, when the lights of the town were almost swallowed by the oily blackness of the moonlit water, she had allowed herself to sink beneath the surface.

Drowning wasn't easy.

She'd floated in the dark waters of the Channel, holding her breath as her heartbeats thundered in her ears. But instead of sapping the life from her body, the sea was showing her: look, see how strong your heart is. She'd shot up to the surface and out of the nightmare that had begun when she was ten years old. A cutter was sailing nearby and picked her up. She was taken to hospital with severe hypothermia. There, she began to make plans for the future. After she'd been discharged, she stared at her body in the mirror for an hour, and decided she never wanted to look like that again. She removed the piercings, stopped shaving her head, tried to do ten press-ups and collapsed. After a week she could do twenty.