Herbert sat still for a long moment. He felt drained. He had not gotten everything he had hoped for, but he had gotten something. An uncommon first name, Marcus. A surname, Hawke. The fact that Hwan had attached a “Mr.” to it suggested strongly that it was not a code name, “hawk” without the e. And they were all working for a secretive, tough-to-reach figure who had more than one sister. Possibly young, apparently wealthy.

He unplugged the phone and logged on to the Internet. He forwarded the transcript to Hood and Coffey. Then he did a word search of Marcus, Hawke, sisters.

The words showed up in the same place, but in each case they were unrelated. There was an on-line bookstore with author Nigel Hawke, a biography of Marcus Aurelius, and a novel called The Lost Sisters. There were sports pages with a Hawke’s Bay soccer team, the tennis-playing Williams sisters, and a basketball player named Marcus Fowler.

“It was too much to hope that I might catch a break,” he muttered.

Herbert checked Marcus and Hawke separately. There were over four thousand references for each, too many to check. He decided to add geography to the search. He entered Marcus, Hawke, sisters, Malaysia, then replaced Malaysia with North Korea, North Korea with Indonesia, then Indonesia with Singapore. He still did not get a single link for even two of the entries.

Then Herbert increased his geographical search. He included Australia, followed by New Zealand. What he found in New Zealand was unexpected.

A surprise.

A good one.

TWENTY-NINE - The Celebes Sea Saturday, 12:04 A.M.

TWENTY-NINE

The Celebes Sea Saturday, 12:04 A.M.

Peter Kannaday remained on deck as the Hosannah sailed swiftly toward its rendezvous. He used to love this feeling of his yacht slashing through the water. It made him feel powerful and free. He had seldom done this at night due to the risk of collision. But with the radar and sonar equipment Darling had paid to install, darkness was no longer a problem.

Kannaday leaned against the port-side railing, his legs spread wide to help him keep his balance. He was pouring black coffee from a thermos. His hair was thick with sweat, and the strong wind chilled his scalp. The perspiration on his head and neck was partly from the hot coffee and partly from a sense that he was lost. He was no longer the captain of his fate or even his own ship. The professional seaman was not accustomed to feeling adrift.

Or frightened. But he was that, too.

Kannaday had spent his life on the ocean. Below its surface was nothing but mystery. He had always accepted that. And it was never a problem as long as he stayed above the water. Yet he was just becoming aware of how much of the rest of the world was hidden from view. Some of it was mundane, like hot coffee inside a thermos. Some of it was more threatening.