They had died at the hands of mass murderers. There was no sign of gunshot or knife wounds. Despite the myth, death by drowning is not a pleasant way to die. Only fire can be more horrible. When sinking rapidly into the deep, the eardrums burst, water rushes into the nostrils, causing incredible sinus pain, and the lungs feel as if they are seared by hot coals. Nor was death swift. The terror as they were bound, transported to the middle of the lake in the dead of night and then thrown, he guessed, from under the center cabin of the mysterious twin-hulled black boat, their screams muffled by the black water. They were innocently trapped in some unknown conspiracy, and died terribly and in agony.

Orion Lake was more than a picture of idyllic, charming scenery, much more. It was a graveyard.

ALMOST THREE THOUSAND MILES TO THE EAST, A SPRING drizzle fell over the heart of the city as a black limousine rolled silently over the wet, empty streets. The darkened windows rolled up, its occupants unseen, the car seemed as if it was part of a nocturnal funeral procession carrying mourners to a cemetery.

The dominant capital in the world, Washington had a benign aura of antiquated grandeur. This was especially true late at night when the offices were dark, the phones stopped ringing, the copy machines went mute and the distortions and exaggerations stopped coursing through the halls of the bureaucracy. Its political transient residents had all gone home to sleep with visions of campaign fund-raisers dancing in their heads. But for the lights and minimal traffic, the city took on a look of an abandoned Babylon or Persepolis.

Neither of the two men in the passenger compartment spoke as the driver, seated at the wheel in front of the closed divider window, efficiently steered the limousine over the rain-slicked asphalt that mirrored the streetlights along the sidewalks. Admiral James Sandecker stared out the window, his eyes staying unfocused as the driver turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue. His mind was lost in thought. Dressed in expensive sport coat and slacks, he didn't look the least bit tired. When the call came from Morton Laird, the President's chief of staff, he was hosting a late-night supper for a group of visiting oceanographers from Japan in his office suite atop the NUMA building across the river in Arlington, Virginia.

Slight of build from jogging five miles a day and exercising in the NUMA employees' health center, Sandecker looked much younger than a man homing in on sixty-five years of age. The respected director of NUMA since its founding, he had built a federal bureau of ocean sciences that was the envy of every maritime nation in the world. Spirited and gutsy, he wasn't a man to take no for an answer. Thirty years in the Navy, highly decorated, he was picked by a former president to head up NUMA when there wasn't a dime in funding nor congressional approval. In fifteen years, Sandecker had stepped on many toes, made any number of enemies, but persevered until no member of Congress dared suggest he resign in favor of a political lackey. Egocentric yet simple, he vainly dyed the gray that was seeping into his flaming red hair and Vandyke beard.