Kane snatched the thick black wig from his head. With a flick of his wrist, he sent it gliding like a hairy Frisbee toward a nearby table where two men were seated. The wig almost landed in a bowl of avgolemono soup. They glared at Kane, and one man stuffed the hairpiece under the jacket of his dark suit, then went back to his dinner.

Kane burst into laughter.

“Don’t look so worried, Kurt. Those guys are my babysitters. They’re the ones who insisted that I wear the rug out in public.”

Austin gave Kane a tight smile, but he was in no mood for idle talk. In the short time he had known the colorful microbiologist, Austin had almost lost one of his team, seen the B3 project scuttled, and fought an undersea robot a half mile down. He wanted answers, not wig tosses, however skillful. He signaled Stavros by holding two fingers in the air, then turned back to Kane and skewered him with his coral-hued eyes.

“What the hell is going on, Doc?” he asked.

Kane sagged in his chair, as if the wind had gone right out of him.

“Sorry, Kurt. I’ve spent the last few days with those creeps in a safe house subsisting on pizza and Chinese fast food. I’m starting to get a little loopy.”

Austin handed Kane a menu.

“Here’s my antidote for fast food. I’d recommend the psari plaki, fish Athenian-style. Tsatziki and taramosalata for appetizers.”

When Stavros arrived with glasses of ouzo, Austin ordered two of the succulent fish plates. Then he raised his glass. Looking Kane straight in the eye, he said, “Here’s to a discovery that is going to affect every man, woman, and child on the planet.”

“Joe must have told you about my near-death confession.”

“He said the prospect of a watery grave made you forthcoming, up to a point.”

Kane clamped his lips in a smirk.

“I guess I owe you an explanation,” he said.

“I guess you do,” Austin said.

Kane took a blissful sip of ouzo and put his glass down.

“For a couple of years now, I’ve been chairman of a scientific advisory group called the Board on Marine Biology . . . BOMB, for short,” Kane said. “The board includes some of the most brilliant minds in the field of ocean biomedicine. We work with the National Research Council, and advise the government on promising scientific discoveries.”

“And what was your promising discovery, Doc?”

“About a year after I had moved the lab to Bonefish Key, we acquired a rare species of jellyfish related to the sea wasp. We named it the blue medusa because it had an amazingly bright luminescence, but the toxin that the thing produced was what really blew our minds.”

“How so, Doc?”