Chapter One
4:30 A.M., Saturday, October 25, Miami, Florida
Dennis Cavendish became aware that he was drifting toward consciousness and forced himself to open his eyes, demanded his brain kick into high gear. Too much was going to happen today for him to allow himself the luxury of a slow awakening, or even another round with the pair of warm, lush redheads flanking him. He pulled himself to a sitting position, then gave the woman on his left a light slap on her well-shaped behind.
"Time to go."
He shook the other womans shoulder, and both began to make small murmurs, indicating that waking them would not be an easy task. He climbed over one of them, took a moment to stretch his pleasantly aching muscles, then ripped the covers off both women. The chill in the air-conditioned room sent them into fetal crouches.
He flipped on one of the lamps next to the bed. "I said its time to go."
One of the women pushed herself upright on one elbow, brushing hair out of her eyes with her other hand. "Is something wrong? What time is it?" She looked at him blearily, her eye makeup smudged.
"Its four-thirty and you have to go. Ive got work to do," Dennis lied smoothly. "Get your friend to wake up. You have to be out of here in five minutes. There will be a car waiting for you when you get downstairs."
Still confused and squinting, the woman nevertheless pushed her companion until she woke up. With barely a word spoken between them, the women threw on most of their clothes, and Dennis escorted them to the elevator door in the living room of his condo. They departed with wary, friendly waves. The moment the door slid shut, Dennis went to the shower to brace himself for the day ahead.
Forty-five minutes later Dennis was airborne, the engines of his Lear jet screaming as his pi lot executed a steep takeoff from Miami International Airport. He would be on the ground on his island, Taino, in twenty minutes. Not long after that he would be in a small submarine headed four thousand feet to the bottom of his slice of the Caribbean. It wouldnt be a joy ride; it would be the last trip to see the dream of his lifetime while it still belonged just to him: Atlantis, the first fully staffed habitat ever built at that depthand the operations center for the newest and best means of changing the way the world worked.
In a few hours, Atlantis would begin to retrieve methane hydrate crystals from beneath the seafloor and introduce the world to the next, arguably the only, clean fuel that the planet had to offer.
From entertaining the first glimmer of a thought to watching the last beams being sunk into place, Dennis had known that this was what life was about. This was the brass ring, the golden goose; attaining this kind of power was what every hackneyed cliché referred to, what every fairy tale was about, what every emperor and despot had ever dreamed ofthe power to make the world change at one persons command. He was that person.
He picked up his phone and punched a single number. Less than a minute later, he heard a sleepy female voice, that of Victoria Clark, his secretary of national security and chief paranoiac. The woman whose job it was to keep him safe and happy.
"Hi, Dennis."
"Hi, Vic.Im on my way to the island. Meet me at my office in half an hour."
"Is something wrong? Is everyone with you?"
The thought of dragging the senior executives of some of the worlds major corporations out of bed and onto a plane before dawn made him smile. "No, Im alone. I want to get the day going. Its going to be unforgettable, Vic. Lets get em, tiger. See you in thirty."
"Wait. Dont hang up."
Dennis could tell by the soft noises in the background that she was pushing herself to sitting position, getting focused. It rarely took Vic this long to focus on anything, but then, he didnt usually get her up in the middle of the night.
Vic was his workhorse, his closest confidante, and the person who knew more of his secrets than anyone. She was the person he trusted the mostat least thats what he told people. The reality was that Dennis trusted no one but himself.
He had to let people into his circle, but he knew the closer he let them get, the more they had on him, the more he was worth to them. The market price of betrayal was something that never lost value, and Vic was the one person who could command the highest fee for betraying him.
Betrayal was a lesson hed learned the hard way and, as such lessons do, it had altered his thinking in an instant. Since the first time Dennis had been stabbed in the back by someone he trusted, the degree of closeness and his level of real trust in a person had moved along opposing axes. As one went up, the other went down. Treating betrayal as a "when" rather than an "if" made life much easier.
It was his only gospel, and it worked.
"Dennis, you need to fly with your guests. You need to be there with them"
"Ive been with them for two days nonstop. Ill see them when they get in, in a few hours. Look, I want to go straight down to the habitat when I get there, okay? With you."
"I"
"Not interested in all the many reasons you cant or wont go there, Vic," he interrupted. "Youre going."
Dennis disconnected before she could reply and sat back to sip his coffee.
In less than twenty- four hours, the world would be a different place. Victoria Clark was one of the few people who knew just how different it would be, and she was going to be at his side today. All day. Today of all days the risk was inordinately high.
4:30 A.M., Saturday, October 25, Miami, Florida
Lieutenant Colonel Wendy Watson lay naked on the rough sheets, staring at the shifting patterns of light playing on the cheap popcorn ceiling of an apartment that wasnt hers. Being there, next to a man shed only met three months ago, a man who had changed her life and its purpose, was an atypical move for her. And that was a word shed rarelymake that never known to be applied to herself. If there was one word that shed heard used to describe her more than any other, despite all the obstacles shed overcome in her life, despite everything shed accomplished, that word was "typical."
It wasnt a fair description nor was it an accurate one. That didnt matter to the many people who had uttered it, under their breath derisively or more loudly with intimations of expectations met, upon hearing what Wendy Watson had done, was doing, or was intending to do. Shed heard it when shed graduated at the top of her class from the most prestigious public high school in Connecticut. When shed graduated at the top of her class from the United States Air Force Academy. When shed been selected to train for the elite Combat Search and Rescue force. When it was announced shed received enough commendations to make her the most highly decorated female air force officer serving in Afghanistan.
She hadnt heard it when she refused the offer to become a flight instructor in favor of resigning from the military. But the hated word had quickly resumed its place as a staple in her life when she became the chief pi lot for the Climate Research Institute.
The institute was a small, quiet, privately funded think tank and the plaything of the occasionally flamboyant and perpetually eccentric D