THE VOICE OF THE BRITISH TORNADO FB fighter pilot crackled over the intercom.

“Welcome to the beautiful island of Cyprus, birthplace of Aphrodite, goddess of love.”

Austin sat behind the pilot in the seat normally occupied by the supersonic plane’s weapons system operator. The plane made a circle over the British Air Force base near the old Roman city of Curium before it dropped out of the sky in a quick descent. As the jet’s landing gear thumped on the tarmac, Austin gazed out at the runway lights after the ninety-minute flight from England and wondered at how small the planet had become.

Hours earlier he had hitched a ride on a CIA helicopter to Albany. From there, an executive jet transported him to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where the Blackbird was housed in a special hangar, and flown only at night.

The SR-71 had been developed as a long-range strategic reconnaissance aircraft that could fly at speeds of more than Mach 3.2 and reach an altitude of eighty-five thousand feet. The flattened fuselage, bluer than black, was more than one hundred feet long, excluding the five-foot-long nose probe. Two vertical stabilizers rose from the rear of the plane like twin shark fins. One of the 32,500-pound thrust engines could power an ocean liner.

Austin was given a high-protein meal of steak and eggs, a medical exam, and fitted out for a special suit similar to those used on the space shuttle. As he suited up, he breathed in pure oxygen to filter gases out of his body. A van took him to the barn where the plane was kept and he was buckled into a specially built passenger seat. The plane rendezvoused with a tanker seven minutes after taking off. Less than two hours later, it landed at a British RAF base in England.

Flagg had arranged for the fighter to transport Austin on the last leg of the trip because it would be less obvious than a U.S. Air Force plane in Cyprus, where the British had long maintained a military foothold.

A car drove out onto the tarmac and paced the fighter jet until it stopped. Three men dressed in black slacks, turtlenecks, and berets got out of the car to greet Austin as he climbed from the plane.

“Good evening, Mr. Austin,” said the group’s leader, a swarthy Greek American who identified himself as George. He said he had been brought in from Athens to rendezvous with agents from Cairo and Istanbul. A fourth man, who was attached to the American embassy in Nicosia, and was familiar with the island, had gone ahead to scout out the situation.

“Are you armed?” George said.

Austin patted a bulge in the front of his jacket. While Austin was flying to Maryland, Flagg had had someone from Langley pick up a change of clothes and the Bowen revolver from Austin’s boathouse and deliver it to Andrews.