They reached Cabrillo’s cabin. He paused before opening the door. “Tell them to stand by in the op center. The pilot should be here soon.”

While the wheelhouse several decks above them looked functional, it was nothing more than window dressing for marine inspections and pilots. The wheel and throttle controls were computer linked to the high-tech operations center that was the real brains of the ship. It was from there that all thrust and maneuvering instructions were issued, and it was from there, too, that the array of deadly weapons secreted throughout the decrepit-looking scow was controlled.

The Oregon might have started out as a lumber carrier schlepping timber along America’s West Coast and to Japan, but after Juan’s team of naval architects and craftsmen were finished with her, she was one of the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering and covert-operations vessels ever conceived.

“Will do, Chairman.” Linda said, and she headed down the passage.

Following a rather hairy duel with a Libyan warship several months earlier, they had found it necessary to dock the ship for extensive repairs. No fewer than thirty artillery shells had penetrated her armor. Juan couldn’t fault his ship. Those shells had been fired at less than point-blank range. He’d used the opportunity to redo his cabin.

All the expensive woodwork had been stripped out, either by the Libyan guns or carpenters. The walls were now covered in something akin to stucco that wouldn’t crack as the ship flexed. The doorways were modified so they were arched. Additional arched partisans were added, giving the seven-hundred-square-foot cabin a cozy feeling. With its decidedly Arabesque décor, the rooms looked like the set of Rick’s Café Américain from Casablanca , Juan’s favorite movie.

He tossed the wig onto his desk and snatched up the handset of a repro Bakelite phone.

“Lang, Juan here. How are you doing?”

“Apoplectic.”

“Your normal frame of mind. What’s up?”

“First of, tell me where you are.”

“Santos, Brazil. That’s São Paulo’s port city, in case you didn’t know.”

“Thank God, you’re close,” Overholt said with a relieved sigh. “And just so you know, I helped the Israelis snatch a Nazi war criminal from Santos back in the sixties.”

“Touché. Now, what’s going on?” By the tone of Overholt’s voice, Juan knew he had something big for them, and he could feel the first feathery traces of adrenaline in his veins.

“Six hours ago, a satellite was launched from Vandenberg atop a Delta III rocket for a low-earth polar orbit.”

That one sentence alone was enough for Cabrillo to deduce that the rocket had failed someplace over South America, since polar shots fly south from the California Air Force base, that it was carrying sensitive spy gear which might not have burned up, and that it most likely had crashed in Argentina since Lang was calling the best covert operatives he knew.

“The techs don’t know yet what went wrong,” Overholt continued. “And that really isn’t our problem anyway.”

“Our problem,” Juan said, “is that it crashed in Argentina.”