The contractor's head turned. "You know, Mr. Chambers, as you get older you have to watch the coffee intake."

"You two going at it again?" Admiral Mancuso rejoined them after shaving in the nearby head.

"I think Jonesy was planning to hit Banzai Beach this afternoon." Captain Chambers chuckled, sipping at his decaf. "He's getting bored with the exercise."

"They do take a while," SubPac confirmed.

"Hey, guys, we're validating my product, aren't we?"

"If you want some insider information, yeah, I'm going to recommend you get the contract." Not the least reason for which was that Jones had underbid IBM by a good 20 percent.

"Next step, I just hired two guys from Woods Hole. That never occurred to the suits at Big Blue."

"What do you mean?"

"We're going to decode whale talk, now that we can hear it so much better. Greenpeace is going to love us. The submarine mission for the next decade: making the seas safe for our fellow mammals. We can also track those Jap bastards who hunt them."

"What do you mean?" Chambers asked.

"You want funding? I have an idea that'll keep it for you."

"What's that, Jonesy?" Mancuso asked.

"The Woods Hole guys think they have the alarm calls for three species identified: for humpback, fins, and seis. They got them by listening in with hydrophones while they were hanging out with whalers. I can program that for active—it's in the freq range we transmit on. So what we can do is have subs trail along with the whalers and broadcast the call, and guess what? The whalers won't find shit. No whale in his right mind will get within twenty miles of another whale screaming that he's being mugged. Not much solidarity in the cetacean community."

"You turning tree-hugger on us?" Chambers wondered. But he thought about it and nodded slowly.

"All those people have to tell their friends in Congress is that we're doing good scientific work. Okay? Not that they love us, not that they approve of our power plants, just that we're doing good work. What I'm giving you guys is a mission for the next ten years." Jones was also giving his company work for at least that long, but that was beside the point. Mancuso and the submarine community needed the work. "Besides, I used to enjoy listening to them when we were on Dallas."

"Signal from Asheville," a communications specialist reported from the door. "They have acquired their target."

"Well, they're pretty good," Jones said, looking down at the plot. "But we're still the big kid on the block."

Air Force One floated into the usual soft landing at Sheremetyevo Airport one minute early. There was a collective sigh as the thrust-reversers cut in, slowing the heavy aircraft rapidly. Soon everyone started hearing the click of seat belts coming off.

"What woke you up so early?" Cathy asked her husband.