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weight to the end of it. It will not bend down to touch the contact, closing the circuit, firing the cap that fires the charge, until it has started oscillating in rough water. That would be efficient, because the whole device could be selfcontained and would take only a moment to place below decks. It could have been placed there while they were gassing up at Pier 66.
    What if out in the channel somebody came from the opposite direction, throwing a big wash? Okay, so it was a little more sophisticated, perhaps. It had a counting device, a cogwheel arrangement. On the twentieth big lift and drop, or the fiftieth, bah-room!
    And maybe it had been stowed aboard weeks before Norma and Evan arrived. Maybe a fake factory rep inspecting the new sniffer Meyer had installed had brought it aboard back in January, tucked it into the recess aft of one of the tanks.
    When the mind starts that kind of spinning, sleep becomes impossible. So I wrenched my thoughts away from explosives and thought about Annie Renzetti, about all her sweetness and unexpected strength. I reinvented her, bit by bit, portion by portion, and went trotting down after her, into sleep.

Four
    THE NEXT morning came with a black sky low enough to touch, and about the time I heard Meyer in the shower, the two men from Washington returned. The big natty one with the white hair and red cheeks was Warner Housell, and he called himself a staff person on Senator Derregrand's AntiTerrorist Committee, and the terrier type with the hair-piece and the hearing aid was Rowland Service, a specialist from the Treasury Department.
    They both carried dark brown dispatch cases with brass hardware. I told them Meyer would be out in a few minutes, and would they like coffee, and they said they would, no sugar no cream. They were less friendly with each other than they had been the previous afternoon.
    Meyer came out wearing a bathrobe and a headache, and after I had introduced him, he poured himself some coffee and put a chip of ice in it so he could get to it quicker.
    Warner Housell asked the questions. Since he had last called on me, he had briefed himself on Meyer's career, and he was properly respectful. He just took a few quick dabs at Meyer's background and then said, "How did you get involved in the Santiago conference?"
    "I was invited by the chairman. Dr. Isling from the London School of Economics. I imagine there was some sort of selection process, but I don't know what it was. It was an interesting group."
    "Had you been associated with any of the members before?"
    "Only very indirectly. Good people. Academics with a good sense of what is practical, of what might actually work."
    "Are you aware of and have you expressed any opinions in your speeches or your writings about the way the military regime treats dissidents?"
    "I've expressed no opinions except to friends, like Travis McGee here. Yes, I've been aware of the reports of violations of human rights."
    He turned to me. "Can you recall any such opinions expressed by Dr. Meyer?"
    "Not in his exact words. We've discussed what he calls the Shah of Iran paradox. When you crush a rebellion by killing people who are trying to overthrow your government and install their own, at what point are you violating their human rights, and at what point are they violating yours? The Shah let Khomeini escape to Paris. And Batista let Castro leave the country. At what point on the scale are people dissidents, and at what point does it become armed rebellion?"
    Meyer nodded at me approvingly. Warner Housell took notes. "Now then," he said, "are you aware of any threat on your life as a result of the Santiago conference? Any threat, no matter how indirect?"
    "I didn't expect any, so I really wasn't being observant. No strange letters, phone calls, confrontation. Nothing."
    "Mr. Service, for reasons of his own, considers this a fruitless line of interrogation. Your turn, Mr. Service."
    Rowland Service took out a small notebook and, in