After Evans had departed, Douglas reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a pipe and tobacco pouch. Although his office was off-limits to smoking, he stuffed the pipe bowl with tobacco and lit up. With the smoke curling around his head, he leaned back in his chair and let his thoughts drift.

It all still seemed so fantastic. Maybe it was a hoax, as Evans theorized. He dove into the Jefferson file, reading every word this time.

Like many African Americans, Douglas was ambivalent about Thomas Jefferson. He recognized the man’s genius and greatness but found it hard to reconcile that with the fact that Jefferson kept slaves. As he reread the file material, he couldn’t help connect with its author on a human level. Although Jefferson’s correspondence with Lewis showed him as cool and competent, there was no doubt that the man was worried.

Douglas could have been excused if the hand holding the pages shook slightly.

The potential for chaos in today’s world was far greater than Jefferson could ever have dreamed of.

NUMA 7 - The Navigator

Chapter 19

AUSTIN SAT IN HIS STUDY hunting the sea marauders who had hijacked the containership. The magic carpet that carried him over the virtual sea was a satellite-imaging system operated by NUMA. Dubbed NUMASat, the sophisticated system had been developed by the agency’s scientists and technicians to provide instantaneous pictures of the world’s oceans. Satellites circled four hundred miles above the earth in orbits that allowed their cameras and other remote-sensing equipment to transmit information from any point on the globe.

The satellites transmitted optical or infrared pictures of water surface temperature, currents, phytoplankton, chlorophyll, cloud cover, meteorological and other vital data. The system was available free of charge to anyone with a computer, and was heavily used by scientists and nonscientists around the world.

Austin was sitting in front of a twenty-four-inch-wide computer monitor. He was casually dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and sandals. He washed down a couple of aspirin with a beer and punched ENTER on his keyboard. A satellite image of the rugged Newfoundland coast materialized on the screen.

“Okay, Joe,” he said into his speakerphone. “I’m looking at St. John’s and points east.”

“Gotcha.” Zavala had the same image on a computer screen in his NUMA office. “I’ll zoom in.”

A shimmering bluish white rectangle popped up on Austin’s screen, superimposing itself on a section of Atlantic Ocean. Zavala expanded the size of the square. Tiny black specks appeared. The specks grew in size and began to assume the long, slim shape of ships. The time and date in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen indicated that the picture had been taken several days before.

“How close can you go?” Austin said.

“Pick a target.”