“He asked me to keep him informed on a daily basis about what I was doing. I climbed the water tower every night at Bonefish Key to get a phone signal.”

“Every detail?” Austin asked.

“Yes,” Lee said. “I even called him when we stopped at Los Angeles and told him that we were coming to Pohnpei.”

“That explains how Chang and his buddies knew we were here.”

“Oh, no, you don’t think . . .”

Austin shrugged.

“Our mission is top secret,” he said. “Only a few trusted people knew we were coming here. But Chang must have had someone on our tail from the second we landed. How well do you know Dr. Huang?” he asked. “Could he be an informant?”

“I met him at Harvard, and he was quite helpful finding me employment.” She thought about Huang’s failure to fight her exile and his deceptive manner in bringing her into the medusa research. “Dr. Huang is a brilliant but fearful man. It would take only a little threat to bend him to someone’s will.”

“Someone or something like the Triad.”

Her mood darkened.

“Yes,” she said. “But it is my fault for letting him deceive me.”

“You did a favor for someone you thought was an old friend,” he said. “I’d suggest that you keep Dr. Huang in the dark from now on.”

The distant whup-whup of rotor blades from over the lagoon announced the imminent arrival of the helicopter from the Concord. The Seahawk set down moments later. Austin and Lee climbed in, and the chopper lifted off. It was less than an hour, but it seemed like days to Austin, before the helicopter was setting down for a landing on the aft deck of the Concord.

Captain Dixon helped Lee off the helicopter, and said, “Welcome to the Concord, Dr. Lee. Your government has been trying to get in touch with you.”

“We were somewhat delayed in Pohnpei,” she said.

“Quite all right,” he said. “I told your people that you were on the way. We’ve got a teleconferencing setup you can use. I’ll have my communications officer take you there.”

While Dixon stepped off to the side to use his hand radio, Lee turned to Austin.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Kurt. Thank you for an interesting day.”

“My pleasure,” he said. “Perhaps on our next tour of Nan Madol, we can spend more time above water.”

“That would certainly be different,” she said with a smile.

The communications officer arrived minutes later and led Lee to her teleconference. Dixon welcomed Austin back to the Navy cruiser, and said he would show him on a chart where Zavala had disappeared. On the way to the bridge, the captain said aircraft in the vicinity had made several sweeps around the atoll, but there was no sign of Zavala or the helicopter.

“No debris or oil slick?” Austin asked.

“Nothing,” Dixon said. “But we’ll keep looking.”