Though the four of them doubted they would sleep at all, they had eventually closed the connection and made the show of going to bed. They had concluded that the implications of what they had seen were too fundamental to be handled that night, or over the radio, no matter how secure the connection might be. They would bring the King’s Transom back into harbor tomorrow and formulate a plan.

In light of the situation, James’ navy instincts had told him to follow some old, battle ready habits. In the days of the Napoleonic wars, captains had been under strict orders to keep important documents in a weighted bag on their person, ready to throw overboard if they were captured.

While the need to throw documents overboard to protect them from falling into enemy hands had long since passed, a primal fear in James now made him do quite the opposite. For half an hour after the call ended, he had carefully loaded an orange dry bag with copies of their findings: including photos, a printed account of the mission, in cipher, and an encrypted DVD of all the files. He finished it with a personal note addressed to Madeline which he hoped would see the package to the right hands, then stood and left his cabin.

On board a deep-sea vessel such as this one, all life vests were equipped with an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, or EPIRB. The vests were designed to aid the recovery of anyone unfortunate to be washed overboard in the extreme seas the King’s Transom was designed to face. Grabbing one of the vests from one of many racks around the boat, James attached the now sealed dry bag to it, knotting its straps securely through the bag’s handle.

He then walked forward to the bow of the ship, where the ship’s two anchors were stored safely in their deep lockers. At sea there was little reason to come to the wet, wind-swept bow of the ship, so James was alone when he laid the vest and its ward on the deck. He then laid a nearby, coiled rope on top of it, making sure the vest remained in no way actually attached to the deck, and returned to his cabin.

Chapter 15: An Indiscretion

Lieutenant Commander Richard Moore had not known any more of the details of this mission than the many previous covert missions he had been assigned to. Admittedly though, the location of this one had proven much nicer, and, frankly, so had the company.

After he had received his typically uninformative orders from Admiral Packenham he had read them with his usual haste. They never contained any important information anyway. He just hoped he picked up something more concrete on the base’s grapevine. But the grapevine had been disturbingly quiet on this one, so he and his crew had gone to sea even blinder than usual.