“Not exactly.” Jenkins brought the wave profile back onto the computer screen. “I've put together a simulation of our wave. It's pretty crude. Even with the best information, wave calculations can be complicated. You've got to factor in stuff like velocity, wave height and destructive force. Then you've got all the coastal features that cause a wave to deflect or diffract. You've got to calculate the effects of backwash from following waves.”

“Sounds impossible.”

“It nearly is. But not totally. A few years ago, scientists used computer-based mathematical modeling techniques to solve the demise of the civilization on Crete. Look, this is a map chart of the Maine coast. That's the harbor. The hardest hit was several miles from here, where some fishermen saw waves breaking over Newcomb's Rocks.”

The chief whistled. “Those cliffs must be fifty feet high.” Jenkins nodded and indicated the chart on the screen. An arrow pointed toward the land. “The main wave force was just to the north of here, so even with my warning, things could have been worse here at the cove. I don't even know if this house would have been safe.”

The chief went pale. “That would have been the whole town.”

Jenkins leaned forward and peered at the computer. “This is amazing. Look at how straight it came in. Almost like a child creating a wave in a bathtub.”

The chief tapped the screen. “Is this where it started?”

“Yeah. It's only an estimate built on circumstantial evidence.”

“I took a course in accident reconstruction. It's amazing what you can tell about speed and impact from skid marks and broken headlights.”

“I'm pretty confident that it originated about a hundred and fifty miles to the east.”

“What are you going to do now?” Jenkins's shoulders ached from tension. “First I'm going to brew up some tea. Then we're going to have us a slam-bang game of chess.”

NUMA 3 - Fire Ice

-13- THE BLACK SEA

As THE FISHING boat Turgut approached the Russian coast, Austin swept the deserted shoreline through the lenses of his Fujinon gyro-stabilized binoculars, alert to any feature out of sync with its surroundings. The barren coast seemed peaceful. Wind and tide had scrubbed the sand clean of footprints. Green tufts of new growth sprouted in the fire-blackened patches of dune grass. It was hard to imagine the deadly game he had played over this tranquil setting only days before.

The beach was about a mile wide, flanked by two headlands like the arms of a sofa. Except for the cliff sculpted by wind and sea into the sharp profile of an old man, the shoreline was unremarkable. A misty curtain hung over the dunes. Austin remembered that the land hidden behind the grassy ridge sloped down to the abandoned buildings, then flattened out in a scraggly plain edged by woods, gradually rising to low rolling hills.