Kane’s head was spinning. He slumped in his chair as he tried to digest the implications of Casey’s last statement. He thought about Lois Mitchell and the other members of the Bonefish Key lab staff who had gathered to send him off on the B3 dive. He rallied after a moment, reminding himself that he was a scientist who dealt with facts, not suppositions.

Straightening up in his chair, Kane said, “How long before we can check out the lab itself?”

“The Concord is sending down a remote-operated vehicle,” Casey said. “All we can do at this point is to wait for them to report in.”

“I hope the Navy is doing more than sitting on its hands,” Coombs said. “Have you tracked the source of the missile?”

The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. Coombs was one of those ubiquitous young staff aides who looked as if he had been punched out of white dough with a cookie cutter. He was as clean-cut as a West Point grad, although his closest brush with a uniform had been as an Eagle Scout. He had cultivated an all-purpose facial expression of quiet competence that failed to hide a barely restrained arrogance. During his naval career, Casey had frequently encountered clones of the White House man, with their inflated sense of power, and had learned to cloak his disdain under a polite veneer.

He prefaced his answer with a pleasant smile.

“The Navy can walk and chew gum at the same time, Mr. Coombs. We’ve reconstructed the probable trajectory of the missile, and we’ve got planes and ships vectoring in on the launch position.”

“The White House isn’t interested in trajectories or vectors, Lieutenant. Has the source of the launch been tracked? If it was launched by a foreign power, this could have serious international repercussions.”

“The missile could have come from a ship, a sub, or a plane, sir, that’s all we know. Pretty much a crapshoot at this time. We’d welcome suggestions as to how to proceed, sir.”

Coombs was too well practiced in the art of passing the buck to take the bait.

“I’ll leave that up to the Navy,” he said, “but I can tell you one thing: this has all the earmarks of a well-organized and well-financed plan.”

“You won’t get any argument from me on that score,” Kane said. “About the same time the Proud Mary was being attacked, an attempt was made to sabotage the bathysphere dive.”

Kane waited for the noisy reaction to subside and then laid out the details of the attack on the sphere.