“Are you ready, Commander?” Captain Dougherty asked.

“Yes.” But ready for what? He had handled difficult intelligence assignments in the past, but never anything as crazy as this. He was expected to track down an unknown number of unknown witnesses from unknown countries. What are the odds against that? Robert wondered. I feel like the White Queen in Through the Looking-glass. “Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Well, this was all six of them.

“I have orders to take you directly to your apartment and then to Andrews Air Force Base,” Captain Dougherty said. “There’s a plane waiting to …”

Robert shook his head. “I have to make a stop at my office first.”

Dougherty hesitated. “Very well. I’ll go there with you and wait for you.”

It was as though they didn’t trust him out of their sight. Because he knew that a weather balloon had crashed? It made no sense. He surrendered his badge at the reception desk, and walked outside, into the chill breaking dawn. His car was gone. In its place was a stretch limousine.

“Your car will be taken care of, Commander,” Captain Dougherty informed him. “We’ll ride in this.”

There was a high-handedness about all this that Robert found vaguely disturbing.

“Fine,” he said.

And they were on their way to the offices of Naval Intelligence. The pale morning sun was disappearing behind rain clouds. It was going to be a miserable day. In more ways than one, Robert thought.

Ottawa, Canada, 2400 Hours

His code name was Janus. He was addressing the twelve men in the heavily guarded room of a military compound.

“As you have all been informed, Operation Doomsday has been activated. There are a number of witnesses who must be found as quickly and as quietly as possible. We are not able to attempt to track them down through regular security channels because of the danger of a leak.”