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open. Linda Ross stood in the well-appointed hallway beyond. She was the Corporation’s vice president of operations, essentially its number three after Juan and Max. She was pixie cute, with a small, upturned nose, and a panache for varying hair colors. It was jet-black now, and swept passed her shoulders in thick waves.
    Linda was a Navy vet who had done a tour on a guided-missile cruiser as well as spent time as a Pentagon staffer, giving her a unique set of skills that made her perfect for her job.
    “What’s up?” Juan asked as she fell in beside with him. She had to take two steps for every one of his.
    “Overholt’s on the phone. Sounds urgent.”
    “Lang always sounds urgent,” Juan said, removing a set of fake teeth and some wadded cotton from his mouth that were part of his disguise. He wore a fat suit under his wrinkled uniform shirt and a wig of graying hair. “I think it’s his prostate.”
    Langston Overholt IV was a veteran CIA man who’d been around long enough to know where all the skeletons, literal and figurative, were buried, which was why after years of trying to put him to pasture, a succession of politically appointed directors had let him stick around Langley in an advisory capacity. He had also been Cabrillo’s boss when Juan was a field agent, and, when Juan left the Agency, Overholt had been instrumental in encouraging him to found the Corporation.
    Many of the toughest assignments the Corporation had taken on had come from Overholt, and the substantial fees they had collected were paid through black budget appropriations so deeply buried that the auditors for them called themselves the 49ers, after the California gold rush miners.
    They reached Cabrillo’s cabin. He paused before opening the door. “Tell them to stand by in the op center. The pilot should be here soon.”
    While the wheelhouse several decks above them looked functional, it was nothing more than window dressing for marine inspections and pilots. The wheel and throttle controls were computer linked to the high-tech operations center that was the real brains of the ship. It was from there that all thrust and maneuvering instructions were issued, and it was from there, too, that the array of deadly weapons secreted throughout the decrepit-looking scow was controlled.
    The Oregon might have started out as a lumber carrier schlepping timber along America’s West Coast and to Japan, but after Juan’s team of naval architects and craftsmen were finished with her, she was one of the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering and covert-operations vessels ever conceived.
    “Will do, Chairman.” Linda said, and she headed down the passage.
    Following a rather hairy duel with a Libyan warship several months earlier, they had found it necessary to dock the ship for extensive repairs. No fewer than thirty artillery shells had penetrated her armor. Juan couldn’t fault his ship. Those shells had been fired at less than point-blank range. He’d used the opportunity to redo his cabin.
    All the expensive woodwork had been stripped out, either by the Libyan guns or carpenters. The walls were now covered in something akin to stucco that wouldn’t crack as the ship flexed. The doorways were modified so they were arched. Additional arched partisans were added, giving the seven-hundred-square-foot cabin a cozy feeling. With its decidedly Arabesque décor, the rooms looked like the set of Rick’s Café Américain from Casablanca , Juan’s favorite movie.
    He tossed the wig onto his desk and snatched up the handset of a repro Bakelite phone.
    “Lang, Juan here. How are you doing?”
    “Apoplectic.”
    “Your normal frame of mind. What’s up?”
    “First of, tell me where you are.”
    “Santos, Brazil. That’s São Paulo’s port city, in case you didn’t know.”
    “Thank God, you’re close,” Overholt said with a relieved sigh. “And just so you know, I helped the Israelis snatch a Nazi war criminal from Santos back in the