Top Hook. Gordon Kent

Island.

      The Cessna 180 held steady at 5600 feet. At the controls, Rose Siciliano flew with the unconscious ease of a seasoned pilot—helicopters, now heading for astronaut training. Next to her, her husband glanced over the gauges and listened briefly to the Quonset tower. That was mostly the way it went—she flew and he kibitzed and ran the radio. Now, he put his hand on her knee, and her hand came down to cover his, and she flashed him a grin.

      “It’s been a great couple of years,” he said.

      She nodded, looked aside. Below, the Rhode Island coast was spread out for them on a sparkling day, Quonset Naval Air Station in her near foreground as they came around for their approach. They had been here two years and now they were leaving—both lieutenant-commanders, both at the Naval War College, both taking a quiet tour after some very hairy sea duty. And in two weeks it would be over.

      “Gonna miss it,” he said.

      “You bet.” Her normally husky voice was even a shade raspier. She had had their second child here. They had been happy. “Like real people,” she growled. Like civilians, she meant. Now, it was off to the CIA’s “Ranch” for him, astronaut training for her. Great moves for both of them, exactly what they wanted, but—She squeezed his hand. “We’ll look back on it,” she said.

      “Hey!” He squeezed her leg, laughed. “Come on! Life is good. What can go wrong? We’re us.”

      She grinned again, then leaned way over to kiss his cheek.

      But what could go wrong? He was LCDR Alan Craik, off to the Ranch, the CIA’s arduous school for spies; she was LCDR Rose Siciliano, off to conquer the stars. What could possibly go wrong?

      He got on the radio, and she banked the plane and descended, and then both of them were absorbed into the routine of headings and altitudes, and they went down and down and around and she brought it in on the center line of the runway, the wheels touching with a bump and squeal, and the ground raced along under her, and she was happy.

      

      Rose learned how fast things could go wrong when they got home. He was already indoors; she had put the car away and gathered up their stuff, and she was standing in the front door of their rented house, looking down the long central corridor at his study. He stood there, back to her, telephone at his ear. She knew that stiff posture and long neck and what they meant: rage.

      Mikey, their seven-year-old, knew it, too. And he knew the Navy. “His detailer,” he said, with the wisdom of a child who had grown up in the Navy. The baby-sitter, also a Navy child, nodded.

      Rose started down the hall. Calls to your detailer were life-changing: your detailer helped plan your career, generated your orders.

      Alan hadn’t said a word yet. She had almost reached him when she heard him say, “Understood,” and he slowly hung up and then gathered the cordless phone and its cradle in one hand and threw it across the study.

      It smashed against the far wall; Rose flinched as bits of plastic flew.

      “Those bastards!” he shouted. His face was contorted with anger. “Those bastards have changed my orders!”

      Going to the Ranch had been a big deal. Their pal Harry O’Neill had urged it. It was a logical step for a hotshot whose squadron days were over, he said—move into the covert world and go where the action was.

      “Why?” she said.

      “How the fuck do I know why? They won’t tell me why!”

      “But—honey—”

      He came down a little, his anger never hot for long. “They’re sending me to some rinky-dink experimental project. Month at sea, then—the detailer doesn’t know.”

      “Tell them you won’t accept the orders!”

      He blew an angry sigh through puffed mouth. “The detailer doesn’t advise it.” He bent to pick up the telephone and tried to fit two broken pieces of plastic together. “Not going to the Ranch, Rose—It’s as if they don’t trust me all of a sudden.” He stood there, holding the pieces as if they were emblems of his helplessness. “All of a sudden, I’m a pariah.” He looked up at her in anguish. “Why?”

      Tar sticks.

      “Oh, shit.” He sat on the stair. “I’ve got to be in Trieste, Italy, in four days. I’m going to miss my own fucking graduation from the War College!”

      Venice.

      Efremov was dead.

      Anna had awakened to feel his body cooling in their bed, the bed she had shared with him for five years.

      She had checked for a pulse, respiration, but they were last acts of friendship, quite separate from hope. He was dead. She had left Tehran the same day.

      Now, his death would be known throughout his world. As he had prepared her for so many things, so he had prepared her for this, with suggestions and instructions, a locked box, passports—and computer disks. She had begun the contacts with his former agents even as she had fled Iran.

      She had found safety and anonymity in a youth hostel in Istanbul. She was twenty-six and beautiful, but she looked a mature twenty, and she had bought a passport and a student card from Israel to have a twenty-year-old’s identity. In Istanbul, she had used the cyber-cafés around Hagia Sophia to contact a man who was only a name on a secret file, George Shreed. Shreed had hired the Serbs to kill her in Venice.

      Now, one of them was standing under an arch outside her window. They had found her.

      She was sharing a room, a very expensive room, with a stewardess from Lufthansa. Greta was on vacation and avoiding airlines, and they had met at the Hermés shop near the Doge’s Palace, not entirely by accident—Anna had been looking for cover. Greta wanted adventure, a little romance, a man to last a few days. Anna made herself the ideal companion, which included listening to Greta’s complaints about the man she had picked up.

      “American?”

      “Australian, ma chérie. Rude and a little unwashed. Too rude, in the end.”

      “Mine never made the assignation.”

      “Cowards, all of them.”

      Greta emerged from the shower wearing nothing but a towel on her head. Anna admired her candidly; Greta lacked Anna’s legs and hips, but she was striking, and her breasts were enviable. Greta seemed unaware of Anna’s gaze and collapsed theatrically on her bed.

      “Shopping will cure it. And I want to go to the Rialto.”

      “Is the Gap in Venice any different from the one in London?” Anna had never been to London, but her passport said she had.

      Greta laughed, a silly girl’s laugh. “I know where to shop, here.”

      “You’ll get me in trouble.”

      “Probably.” They both laughed. Greta was very easy to like, Anna thought. She had confidence and enthusiasm that went deeper than the automatic smile of the airline employee. Anna pulled on a top, glanced out the window, half pulled the heavy green drape, and moved from her own bed to the room’s desk with her laptop. Greta began rifling her purse, throwing her passport and wallet on the bed. They caught Anna’s eye, like a signal. She glanced out the window again.

      “Do you have a laptop? Mine keeps freezing on the keyboard.” Actually, it was working quite well. Anna just didn’t want to be tracked.

      “Of course, ma chérie. It is there, by the television. But it is probably the phone lines. They are antique, like everything else in Venice.”

      Anna found the case, slipped down behind the chair next to the television, and connected to the net. The machine was very different from the succession of IBM laptops Efremov had always acquired for