Any onlookers would have been very curious and concerned to see the man washed up onto the beach in northern Scotland in October by the freezing North Sea tide. Likewise the woman who stepped lightly across a black pebble beach from the perilously cold waters near Seward, Alaska, or the dangerous-looking man who navigated the ice to stumble ashore in Petropavlovsk, in the Kamchatka region of eastern Russia.

That said, in the haze of swimmers enjoying the year-round warmth of the beach at Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, quite a few people noticed the woman who swam ashore between the man-made rock islands preserving the beaches near the marina. However, the few that did were more focused on her striking figure and the revealing bikini she was wearing than the slightly strange black bag she was carrying.

Bill and Mandy Tubbington, on a late summer holiday in Guernsey with their two children were among the few who noted the slight but strong-looking man swim ashore there. Bill assured his wife and kids that because this man was carrying a bag he must be a scuba diver returning from a dive. Mandy recognized her husband’s tone as the one he put on when he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but did not make anything of it, as she was quietly enjoying the sight of the swimmer’s bum as he walked up the beach toward the car park, his hair drying surprisingly quickly in the wind.

Leaving the beach later that day, neither of them would have the presence of mind to think of the man when they discovered that their rental car was missing. Especially as they would hear from the police within ten minutes of calling them that it had already been found, twenty miles away on the other side of the island, locked and unharmed, at the ferry terminal linking the island to nearby France.

Without any evidence of a break-in anywhere on the car, the police would not waste much sleep on the investigation.

Chapter 7: Improbable vs. Immovable

In the same building as the conference room where Neal and Laurie West had reviewed their report not two weeks ago for General Pickler, Neal sits, alone now, reviewing his notes. He is back on the run-down, outdated civilian side again, seemingly so far from the state of the art equipment and brusque but efficient air force officers.

This part of the building is not maintained by the deep pockets of the US Air Force, but instead by the ever-shrinking coin purse of the university’s physics department. Though the PCs are actually provided by their government-backed neighbors, it is clear that this part of the building represents the place that the colonel sends his outdated and unwanted PCs to die.