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Peacock before joining her parents in the dining room. Jimmy had always gotten along very well with Ambassador John Peacock. Their families had been friends for many years, and indeed, Jimmy’s parents, who lived in New York, were due to stay at the embassy two weeks from now.
    He waited until they were well into the main course, a superb rib of beef, cooked to perfection and accompanied by a particularly elegant Australian red wine, Clonakilla Shiraz, made up in the Canberra District in the temperate foothills, a couple of hundred miles south of Sydney. John Peacock was a lifelong collector of good wine, and owned an excellent cellar at his home overlooking the harbor in Sydney. As Australian ambassador to the U.S.A., he was expected to serve vintages from his own country, and he rose to the occasion every time.
    Jimmy waited until they were all smoothly into a second glass before broaching the subject that had been on his mind for the past six hours.
    “You ever read anything about a volcano professor in London who managed to get murdered last May, John?”
    “Maybe. What was his name?”
    “Professor Paul Landon.”
    “Now wait a minute. I did notice something about that, because he was coming to speak at two or three universities in Australia—and one of ’em was Monash, in Melbourne, where I went. I think that’s the same guy. I remember it because the Sydney newspaper ran quite a story on his death. Why d’you ask?”
    “Oh, I just ran into some stuff on the Internet today. Seemed such a strange murder, no rhyme or reason. No one has everdiscovered why he was killed. And no one’s ever been charged with anything connected to it.”
    “No. I remember that. He wasn’t just an expert on volcanoes. He was into the whole range of earthly disasters—you know, earthquakes, tidal waves, asteroid collisions, and Christ knows what. As I recall, he was coming particularly to lecture on the effect of a major tidal wave, it’s got some bloody Chinese name…Let me think…chop-sooey, or something. Anyway, it’s a lot of water.”
    Jimmy chuckled. He really liked his future father-in-law, who’d insisted on being called John since Jimmy was a kid at college. “The word we’re groping for is tsunami, ” he said. “Japanese. I’ve been a bit of an expert since about quarter past two this afternoon.”
    “Yes. that’s it,” replied the Ambassador. “It’s when a bloody great hunk of rock falls off a mountain and crashes into the sea causing a fantastic upsurge as it rolls along the ocean floor? Right? Expert?”
    “Yes, I think that’s a fair and thoughtful summation,” said Jimmy, frowning, and putting on what he thought might be a learned voice. “Very well put. I think in future, I’ll address you as Splash Peacock, tsunami authority.”
    Everyone laughed at that. But the Ambassador was not finished. “I’ll tell you something else I remember about that article. The prof was coming to Australia to talk in particular about these bloody great waves that have happened on Pacific islands north of us. That’s the danger spot, right? Your professor, Jimmy, knew a whole lot about one of ’em on New Britain Island off Papua New Guinea. It fell into the ocean and the ole thing developed and drowned about three thousand people on neighboring islands.”
    “For a bloke who can’t say it, you know a whole hell of a lot about tsunamis!” replied Jimmy.
    “Gimme a coupla weeks, I’ll master the word as well,” chuckled John Peacock.
    “So why do you think someone murdered the professor?”
    “Who knows? Could have been just mistaken identity, I suppose.”
    “Maybe,” replied Jimmy. “But the police think it looked like an execution.”
     
    Friday, January 9
    The Pentagon, Washington.
     
    The first memorandums were beginning to arrive from the incoming Administration. Clearly, the new President was planning to impose savage defense cuts, particularly on the Navy. He considered the expenditure of