Like many gods and monsters of folklore, this lord of the underworld was known by more than one name. Mountain villagers descended from the Inca called him Supai. Most Bolivian peasants knew him as El Tío. The sly uncle who cast a neutral eye on virtue and sin, caring only for tributes offered. A demon that desperate men had sainted in exchange for his inconstant favors.

The owner of the pleasure yacht knew, and he well understood.

He looked out the bridge’s sweeping windows, past the stations where his helmsman and engineers sat in their epauleted white uniform blouses. Looked out at the sun-stippled water and the crowded international harbor and the fixed oil platforms standing with their tall booms, derricks, and wellheads.

Here was wealth, he thought. Tremendous wealth, all visible right on the surface. But none of it interested him. The treasure that had made his migration to Africa something more than a flight from the wide nets of his pursuers, the continent’s greatest bounty, was the light pulsing through fine veins of glass that ran deep where the sun did not reach.

There was no chance in the world that he would let anyone stop him from tapping it.

“Casimir,” he said, his tone soft. “Are you ready?”

His pilot had a brief exchange in the Bandgabi tribal dialect with a man at the console beside him. Then he nodded.

“Yes,” he said, switching to English. “We’ve completed a modem upload-download test . . . real-time streaming telemetry and multimode sensors are online . . . everything checks.”

“Why haven’t you deployed, then?”

“Gunville. We were waiting for his confirmation.”

“And he’s given it?”

“Just now,” the helmsman said. “His men are in position aboard the Africana.”

The yacht’s owner unlaced his hands and fluttered one in front of him. He was eager to be rid of those glorified utility workers below.

“Take us on to the next stage,” he said. “Please.”

An instant later he felt the mildest of bumps run through the yacht, and focused his eyes on the monitor boards.

The killfish had launched from its chamber.

The deployment chamber in the Chimera’s lower starboard hold was little different from a torpedo tube, but the minisub housed within bore no resemblance to a conventional weapon or remote underwater vehicle. Nor was there was anything conventional about it.

What it looked like before ejection was a metal shoe-box with a considerable distension around the middle, as if it had been overfilled until its sides were pushed outward. As it left the chamber and its lateral, rear, and top stabilizer/orientation fins unfolded, its appearance grew closer to that of a fish with an egg-swollen belly.

Each of these comparisons was appropriate.

The killfish was full and, after a fashion, pregnant.

“What’s holding up Gunville?” Marius said.

“I don’t know,” Cédric replied. They were back on their closed voice link. “Andre told me that he’s gone to the engine room. Some kind of problem.”