"They knew they could not win the war so they looked to the future and the higher good."

"That is what they believed."

"Do you agree with what they did?" Fatima asked. Abayon smiled grimly. She had thrown the gauntlet back at him.

"It was an interesting moral dilemma: betraying your own country in the present to serve its future prosperity. Most would not agree with betrayal."

"And you?" she pressed.

"No. I do not agree with betrayal. I think they admitted defeat before they were defeated. But…"

"But what?"

"Who is to say whose allegiance Chichibu's lay with? What if this secret organization is something more than just an American group? What if it is international? And Chichibu had a higher allegiance?"

"But Yamamoto – " Fatima protested.

"He was a soldier. A man, supposedly of great honor. He – "

"Ah," Abayon said, cutting her off, "there is more to this. Remember, the Americans killed Yamamoto.

The story written in history books is that they broke the Japanese code and knew where he would be flying. So they sent long-range fighters to shoot him down over Bougainville on the eighteenth of April in 1943. But what if the Americans were meant to get that message? It was a mightily convenient intelligence coup otherwise."

"Plots within plots," Fatima said.

"So if Chichibu was part of this secret organization, then Yamamoto might not have been, and they arranged for him to be killed."

"Yes."

Fatima mulled this over.

"So you believe there is a secret organization that crosses – indeed supersedes – national interests and manipulates events?"

"Yes."

"To what end?"

"To further their own end," Abayon said simply.

"I don't know exactly what that is, but from what I've gathered it seems to be the accumulation of wealth for the very few who are members of this group. And the controlling of economies, governments, the military – people, essentially – to maintain their status quo."

"The auction. And my father's mission – which he told me nothing of, of course. Those are designed to draw this group out."

Once more she made it a statement, not a question.

"Yes. Remember, this organization wants what we have in these tunnels. They've wanted it for sixty years."

"That is why you've never used any of it before," Fatima said. Abayon nodded.

"Not only do they want it, but I think they put it here, if the meeting between Lansale and Chichibu is true. Golden Lily was designed from the very beginning by this group. They used the cover of the war to gather their riches."

Fatima mulled that over.

"But…"

"Go ahead," Abayon prompted.

"Why now?"

"Two reasons. One is that I will not be here much longer."

"You look fine – " Fatima began to protest, but Abayon held up a hand, silencing her.

"You have been very observant and wise up until now. Please do not change. I have less than a year to live. So, perhaps it is selfish of me, but I want to find out who I've been shadow-boxing with all these years."

"And the second reason?"

"It's time," Abayon said simply.

"Since 9/11 the gloves have come off. We are entering an age of a new type of conflict, and this group is probably quite aware of that. The Americans came after us the other night and many people died. We can sit and let them come to us or we can go after them. I prefer action over reaction."

Fatima nodded.

"All right. What happened to this Lansale?"

"He managed to make his way back to the United States via diplomatic channels. He then became a career spook, as near as I have been able to find out. Strangely, though, he was photographed in Dallas on the twenty-second of November, 1963, but he always claimed he was never there."

"What is so important about that?"

"Something very significant happened that day."

"What?"

"President Kennedy was assassinated."

CHAPTER 13

Vaughn lay on his back staring up at the stars, savoring the cool night breeze blowing across his soaked clothes and the feel of sand beneath him. They were on the shore of a small, deserted cove on the north side of Jolo Island. As soon as they made landfall, they conducted a quick box reconnaissance of the immediate area, and both were confident they were on an isolated part of the island.

"That was fucked," Tai said.

Vaughn turned his head and looked at her in the moonlight. She was lying next to him, still breathing hard from the long swim to shore. In her hand she had the GPS, which she'd just pulled out of a waterproof bag in her rucksack.

"We're alive," Vaughn noted.

Tai looked up from the GPS screen at the sky.

"It will be dawn soon. We're over ten kilometers from where we're supposed to be."

She pointed.

"Hono Mountain is there."

Vaughn could see a large dark mass in the moonlight towering up into the sky.

"We're way behind schedule," Tai added.

"Is that what bothers you?" Vaughn asked.

"Hell, no," she said angrily.

"Three malfunctions in a row. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit."

They'd hit the water hard, then had to scramble out from underneath the reserve canopy that draped over them. Unspoken between them was the fact that they hadn't worn life vests. They'd been so confident they could make the flight to the island, it was never brought up. For Vaughn, that mistake brought echoes of the designator battery. What saved them was that they followed standing operating procedure and waterproofed the contents of their rucksacks before the jump, which served as flotation devices in the pinch. They'd cut away from the reserve, Vaughn got rid of the harness, and then they tied themselves together using a short length of rope, put their elbows on their floating rucks, and started swimming toward the silhouette of Jolo island. It took them almost an hour to make it.

Tai had explained all the failures to him. Vaughn had to agree with her succinct assessment of what happened to her, but he wanted to wait and let her lay out the obvious.

"Someone was trying to kill me," she finally said.

"You think?"

That earned him a slight smile that momentarily wiped away the tension and anger on Tai's face. Vaughn checked his watch.

"We're overdue on the initial entry report."

He sat up, grabbed his rucksack, and began to open it to get to the satellite radio inside.

Tai put out a hand and stopped him.

"What?" Vaughn asked.

"Someone was trying to kill me," she repeated.

"I know, and – " Vaughn stopped and slowly nodded.

"I see."

He let go of the ruck.

"Why? And who?"

"I don't know."

"The Abu Sayef?"

"I think getting to my chute and disabling it would have been a little hard for them to do."

"Someone tried to kill you," Vaughn said.

"I already said that twice," Tai responded.

"Yes. So, you're dead."

Tai stared at him. Their eyes locked in the moonlight, and she slowly nodded and smiled.

"Very good."

Her smile was not of the pleasant variety.

General Slocum was none too pleased, and he was letting his staff know it. The initial entry report from the recon team was overdue. This raised a lot of questions, none of which anyone knew the answer to. Had the team been compromised, which meant that the entire mission was compromised? Was it equipment failure? Had both jumpers died on infiltration? Or were they too severely injured to make commo?

From behind the one-way glass in the observation room, Royce watched the general lash questions at his staff, none of which could be answered by any of them. It was a fruitless exercise, but one Royce had seen far too many times in his dealings with the military. Von Clausewitz, the great Prussian general, who many military men liked to quote, had once said, "In war, everything is simple, but even the simple is difficult." Royce always remembered that saying when he dealt with the military.