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or sliding glass door, merely a porthole, perhaps ten feet above the surface of the ocean. It was intact.
    Beck took some deep breaths and sat silently looking at nothing in particular until he was sure his stomach would behave. He was a veteran of the East German Stasi, the most feared secret police organization on the planet until it fell apart in the collapse of Communism. Heinrich Beck’s Stasi résumé was a secret, one he didn’t share with anyone.
    His specialty was interrogations. He had learned from experts and enjoyed the work. Inflicting pain on others was one of life’s grandest pleasures.
    Hadn’t done any of that for over twenty-five years, though. These days Heinrich Beck made a living smuggling cocaine. He had two kilos of the stuff hidden in the air ducts leading into and out of this cabin, perfectly safe from any cursory search by a curious maid or lazy policeman.
    Now Heinrich Beck sat assessing his chances of getting to Doha and delivering the coke. What would the pirates do to him if they found the stuff? Confiscate it, obviously, but he doubted they would kill him. He would deny he knew anything about it, claim a crewman must have hidden it in his cabin.
    He thought about how the denial would go.
    Yes, he could pull it off with these people, he thought. With Herman Stehle, who owned the coke and had entrusted him to deliver it, loss of the drugs would be a different story. Stehle had the money and contacts to make it in the international narcotics trade, perhaps the most lucrative and homicidal on the planet. Beck certainly didn’t. Stehle gave him the stuff and told him who to deliver it to. Beck was merely a mule; he didn’t even see the money.
    He had done a half dozen deliveries for Stehle, most to the Mideast, two to China.
    Innocence was slippery stuff. Dozens of people had tried it on Heinrich Beck, and he remembered how it was with those who actually were not guilty of the crimes of which they were accused, how they acted, the looks on their faces, the perspiration on their skin, the smell of them. They weren’t truly innocent, of course—no one is innocent—but merely not guilty.
    He wondered if Stehle would believe him if he said that pirates stole the stuff.
    These pirates. Beck had seen them swagger around with their weapons, shooting here and there, enjoying themselves hugely. He hadn’t seen them kill anyone, but doubtlessly they could and would if the spirit moved them. Bang. Watch the blood splatter and the look on the victim’s face as he died. Smell the fear.
    It would give the shooter such a sense of power. Almost orgasmic.
    Beck felt warm as he thought about it.
    Power. The power of life and death.
    Heinrich Beck lit a cigarette and sat watching the smoke rise toward the return duct where the coke was stashed. It swirled a little and dissipated, but the duct sucked it up nonetheless.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    The capture of a cruise ship by Somali pirates was headline news worldwide, or would be when Europe and America woke up. The Pentagon received the Flash message from Task Force 151 so knew of it first. The bald facts went from the Pentagon’s duty officers to the White House night staff and assorted other government agencies within minutes.
    Jake Grafton was sound asleep at home when he received a call from the CIA situation room. Half awake, he grunted three or four times as he tried to absorb the story.
    “The director wants to meet with you and the other department heads at seven thirty.”
    “Fine,” Jake said and hung up.
    His wife, Callie, had awakened. The incident would certainly not be a secret long, he knew, so he said, “Task Force 151 reports Somali pirates have captured a cruise ship in the Gulf of Aden. About five hundred passengers and three hundred fifty crewmen.”
    Callie came wide awake. “Isn’t Toad Tarkington in command of that task force?”
    “Yes.”
    Toad had served as Jake’s aide for years when Jake was on active duty in the navy. After