'Paul, I -'

She froze in the doorway of the study, gripping the tray, knowing in an instant that it was all gone. She walked slowly across the room and set the tray on the edge of the desk. She looked at the familiar, handsome face, the thick brown hair laced with silver, the well-shaped head lolling against the back of the high-backed desk chair.

Then she forced herself to look at the small, neat hole a few centimetres above his ear. There was hardly any blood, but it was so dark, a bleak desolate pit that reminded her of all she had struggled to leave behind. The hole was in such an odd place. Not the temple, but higher, further back. Perhaps he had flinched, his spirit rebelling even as his finger tightened on the trigger. The small silver-plated twenty-two calibre pistol still dangled from his forefinger. Such a trivial weapon to still such a vibrant life.

A month ago he was fired with enthusiasm for this project which he had begun before they had met. He had been working on it in Vienna. Then the depression set in, ever deepening. Now something had pushed him over the edge. She examined the scattered pages on the desk. They were filled with incomprehensible calculations. What had the letters and numbers meant to him? she wondered. Which among them triggered this ultimate retreat? She felt what they meant to her — the end of a freedom too good to last.

In the stillness of the room, the faint flutter shouted at her. Her eyes locked on him. Yes!! There it was again! She knelt by his side, placed two fingers on his throat, and nearly fainted with relief at the weak irregular beat that massaged her fingertips.

At midmorning Isaacs concentrated on the report he had received from Saris the previous afternoon concerning new arms stashes in eastern Mozambique. The photographs were unmistakable, but the big question went unanswered. Whose were they? Baris's group had concluded they were not an unadvertised ploy by the Marxist government, nor did they belong to the active guerrilla movement. They seemed to mark a new force whose motives and intentions were a cipher. Boswank had to get somebody in on the ground.

A commotion in the outer office caught his attention. He heard Kathleen announce over the intercom and through the door as it crashed open, 'Mr Deloach to see you.'

Earle Deloach raced across the room and leaned with his fists on Isaacs's desk, highly distraught, eyeglasses askew on his round face, a lock of normally slicked-back hair dangling over his temple. He passed a hand fitfully at the errant strand, causing more disarray.

'They've blown it up!' he shouted.

Isaacs rose quickly and circled his desk.

'Who's blown up what?' he asked as he closed the connecting door.

'My FireEye! The Russians! They blew it up!' 'Here, sit down Bark,' said Isaacs, firmly. He guided Deloach by the elbow into a chair. 'Nosy what are you talking about?' he asked, regaining his own chair. 'Are you sure? What did they do?'

'One of their satellites — Cosmos... Cosmos 2112 — from a couple of hundred miles away, must have been a laser. Didn't just fry a few circuits; we have photos from one of our other satellites. FireEye's gone! Vaporized!'

'Oh, damn!' exploded Isaacs, wrenched by a decidedly schizophrenic reaction. His gut knotted with the instant realization that this was the Russians' idea of a justifiable reaction to the Novorossiisk affair. The first step into the abyss of a new unknown mode of war. War in space. At the same time a quiet professional voice inside him gave grudging praise. Clever bastards, this voice said, the Cosmos 2112 was one of the recently launched satellites they had not been able to categorize. It had been camouflaged well. He had convinced himself that it was, after all, a recon satellite. A working laser! Well, they tipped their hand there, might be some profit to be had, anyway. Aloud to Deloach he said, 'Why would they pick on FireEye? Because it's our latest?'

'Well,' Deloach looked chagrined, 'we decided to have a quick look at the Novorossiisk after all.'

Isaacs leaned forward intently. 'We?' But he already knew.

'Yes, uh, Kevin and I got to talking after the meeting with the Del yesterday morning. No one seemed to have any ideas, so we thought it couldn't hurt to at least take a look. I had an orbit change worked up to minimize manoeuvring fuel and we slid the orbit a little.'

And afterwards, thought Isaacs, it would have slid to a station over Tomsk. That underhanded son-of-a-bitch!

'So you manoeuvred over towards the Med,' said Isaacs in a biting tone, 'and the Russians chose to regard that as an aggressive act, and they raised the ante out of sight by blowing FireEye out of the sky with a laser we didn't even know existed.

'Good Lord, Earle! Do you know what you've done? Not only lost a seventy-seven million dollar satellite, but drawn us into a whole new kind of war we've been desperately trying to avoid.'

'How was I to know?' Deloach cried, hysterically defensive. 'We've looked at their carriers before, all the time.'

'Hey, okay,' Isaacs calmed his voice. 'The Novorossiisk was special, but you couldn't know they would react this way. The important thing now is to prevent any escalation and to find out what really did happen to the Novorossiisk so we can defuse the whole thing.

'Earle, thanks for filling me in. The Director will want a meeting. We'll work it out.' He rose and Deloach stood in turn.

'Okay,' said Deloach with resignation, 'but dammit, the gear on FireEye was a work of art. It's like losing a baby.'

'We know that, Earle, but you can do it again. The next generation will be even better.'

As Isaacs ushered him out, Deloach's mind was already turning over a couple of the sweet ideas he'd been forced to omit from FireEye when the budget was drawn. He could do it better and cheaper now.

Isaacs returned to his seat in gloom. This was bad all around. They still did not know what had happened to the Novorossiisk. There would be strong quarters in the Pentagon plotting retaliation to the Soviet attack. And in his own nest, McMasters would be sending up smoke screens all over the Agency to hide his tremendous error. If the crunch came, Isaacs knew, McMasters would even sacrifice Deloach, his unwitting ally. That would be a tragedy. For all his faults, Deloach was too good at what he did best.

Two days later Isaacs sat at his desk, forehead cradled in his hands, intently reading the report before him. Every few minutes he would lower his right hand to turn a loose— leaf page and then replace it on his head, thumb to temple, fingers shading his eyes. Across from his desk, Vincent Martinelli sat, legs crossed, reading the same report. Boswank had done his job. The report, fresh from the translator, was taken directly from the file of the Soviet Admiralty. Isaacs finished first and leaned back gazing at the ceiling, mulling what he had read, waiting for Martinelli.

After a few minutes, Martinelli looked up. 'What do you make of that? Sure as hell something more going on than a match in a gas tank. There's nothing in here about a spacebased weapon, though.'

'Someone higher up must have reached that conclusion after reading this,' Isaacs said. 'Let's see how the thinking may have gone. There is widespread agreement from the hands on the flight deck that there was some kind of noise, a hissing, growing in intensity, and coming apparently from overhead.'

'That's no reason to think whatever it was came from something in orbit.'

'Granted, but it is a peculiar precursor. I can't think of anything offhand to account for it.'

'You've got me there.'

'Then the fire breaks out,' Isaacs continued, 'apparently a punctured fuel tank and a spark.'

Martinelli squinted in concentration. 'I'd say the fire was incidental, granted one of them may have sparked the fire, but the punctures themselves are the odd bit.'