Ghost Ship

The secretary of defense paced the operations room.

It was taking longer than she had expected and hoped for Sam Reilly to show up. It seemed impossible to believe that after all the man had been through, he could have drowned simply jumping into the ocean.

She had played out the series of unfortunate events that had led them to Sam’s catastrophic position. There had been more than a dozen possible outcomes, but in none of them, or in her wildest dreams, did jumping into the calm waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea and drowning appear.

Her personal cell phone rang.

Few people had direct access to her.

She took a couple steps to the empty end of the room and accepted the call. “Yes?”

It was Tom Bower. “What the hell went wrong?”

She paused. Took a deep breath. It wasn’t like Tom to lose his control. If she let him go too much further, he might just take everything past the point of no return. “Excuse me?”

“You said you would protect him!”

“I did, and I will… to the best of my abilities.”

“No. That’s not what you said before. You said you’d get him out of it!”

“I did… or at least I’ve tried my best. Good God, Tom, you know he’s my best operative, and one of my closest allies. The last thing I wanted to see was Sam get killed. That’s why I took the risk in the first place and tried to get him out of it. Do you think I would have tried, if I had any other options left to me?”

That gave Tom some pause. He knew the truth. “Then who the hell screwed it up?”

“It doesn’t matter whose mistake it was. The fact is, we’re at the location where we’re at, and now we need to work out what to do about it — if anything can be done.”

“No,” Tom’s voice was emphatic. “I need to know, who screwed up!”

The secretary of defense exhaled. “You’re not going to like the truth.”

“Don’t give me that. I deserve to know. We’re talking about my closest friend. So I’m going to ask you again, who screwed up?”

She nodded to herself, certain that Tom wouldn’t be dismissed easily. “Sam Reilly did.”

“How?”

“When we erased his memory, we had no idea his instincts would kick in… he was supposed to be taken into protective custody by the Italian police and charged with murder until we were able to get this whole mess sorted out.”

“So what went wrong?”

“We didn’t take into account that Sam’s instincts, developed over a lifetime of overcoming life and death challenges, were sharp. They couldn’t be subdued like his memories, which were so easily wiped clean.”

Tom said, “He ran…”

“Yes.”

“And the others?”

“They tried to catch him… but, Sam’s instincts kicked in again…”

Tom’s voice showed a wry sense of pleasure. “How many were killed?”

“Two… that we know of. Possibly three.”

“It was a mistake to think you could control the situation.”

“Listen here, Tom Bower, I did control the scene. I tipped the Italian police chief to be there. We mobilized a SEAL team… and besides, you yourself were there to retrieve him if things went wrong.”

Tom said, “So then, if you had everything under control, why did I just get a phone call from Sam saying that he’d nearly been killed?”

“You did?” she said, excitedly. “He’s alive?”

“Yes. No thanks to you!”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. An ex-girlfriend’s place, still within Vernazza.”

“All right, we’ll send a retrieval team in to bring him out now!”

“I told him we could have the Globemaster III with a team on board on a disused airstrip on La Spezia.”

“And he will be there?”

“He’ll be there. Will our team be there in time?”

She mentally checked where the aircraft would be by now. It was circling the coast of Cinque Terra. It wouldn’t take them long to get clearance to land at La Spezia. If Sam could reach them, she would make sure they were in there to greet him. “Yes. They will be there.”

“Good. Don’t screw it up this time.”

The secretary of defense bit back at his insolence. He was a good friend of Sam Reilly’s, and was understandably agitated. She didn’t try to reprimand him for it. “One more thing, Tom.”

“What?”

“Is he armed?”

Tom thought about that seriously. He sighed. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Good. I wouldn’t like to think of him inadvertently killing one of his own.”

“No. But then again, I don’t like to consider what would happen if one of the others reach him first.”

“How could they?” The Secretary asked. “Nobody knows where he is.”

“All right, Genevieve and I will head into town, just to keep a look out while he gets out.”

The Secretary frowned. “Is that really a good idea?”

“Probably not. But I’m not taking chances this time round.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

The Secretary ended the call.

Craig Martin, the director of the CIA, a heavyset man with a surly disposition, approached her. He wore an expression of mulish obstinacy. “Any news, Madam Secretary?”

She nodded. “He’s staying at an ex-girlfriend’s house in Vernazza.”

The lines in his face deepened. “Do we know who the girl is?”

“Yes. It’s Dr. Catarina Marcello.”

“Good God! That can’t be a coincidence.”

“It would be highly unlikely.”

Martin grimaced. “So he knows the truth then?”