Aboard the USS Anastasia, ONE commenced his duties in the kitchen by chopping a mountain of carrots into matchstick shapes. He was simultaneously fearful and excited - and it had nothing to do with root vegetables. There was also a tinge of smugness in his mood as he marveled at how easy it had been to transport all the raw materials on board. Though there had been one or two tense moments with security, it could not have gone better. With the help of THREE, a petty officer, they had sneaked them in piece by piece, hidden amongst the huge flats of supplies required for the voyage. If any single component were discovered, it be such an innocuous looking thing no one would be suspicious anyway. The explosives themselves had been brought in amongst bags of wild rice, which THREE had immediately removed to a locked storage closet. He then handed the key off to TWO. TWO could now roam the ship at his leisure, to the supply rooms and storage closets, collecting the pieces to build the bomb that would take this iron monstrosity down to the ocean floor.
FOUR, posing as security for the British contingent, walked the boat deck, surveying the situation with concern. For one thing, real security people were everywhere - most of them American. Opportunities would be few. He wasn't going to get much sleep for the next few days, that much was certain.
For FIVE, the work was done. The year long job of finding allies, making introductions, providing training, ensuring the right contacts were made at the right moment - the hours and hours of quiet orchestration - were about to pay off. All that remained was to unpack, settle into Stateroom Two, and watch the it unfold. FIVE looked out of the porthole and mused again on the great lesson of the Titanic - a lesson that had been completely lost in only sixty-five years. Such a pity that the human race is so stupidly forgetful. That cautionary tale - which taught us that we are an intelligent species, but only smart enough to land ourselves in big trouble - was a lesson that was about to be learned again, and this time, by those who needed it most.
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As the big ship rumbled out of its berth, Oscar Goldman took a scratch pad from his breast pocket and flipped through it for perhaps the twentieth time that morning. It was filled with scribbles in point form, frequently capitalized and underlined. Most of them were crossed out, but he was positive there was something he had missed. His capacity for worry was almost bottomless and in recent years bordered on obsessive. Russ, heaving a sigh of relief and rolling his eyes, had disembarked just a few minutes earlier having combed over every detail countless times.
This whole idiotic event had been dreamed up by the new Secretary of State - Douglas Wilson. He had decided that the U.S. and a few select allies - France, Belgium, Great Britain, Holland, Germany and Canada - ought to bring some of their best scientists together for a "Science and Security" summit, where they would discuss the pressures and responsibilities of modern governmental scientific institutions. That part was fine - interesting in fact, but it was Wilson's insistence that they hold the event on a luxury liner on the Atlantic ocean that bothered Oscar. Wilson reasoned that the voyage would be secret, and while on board they could all relax together and discuss issues out of the glare of public scrutiny. As far as the rest of the world knew, the summit was taking place in New York four days later - the day they would disembark. Oscar had protested at length, telling Wilson over and over again that they would be virtually helpless out there, marooned in the middle of the ocean with no quick means of escape, but Wilson dismissed his concerns. Oscar knew if he pushed any further he seriously risked compromising his relationship with the Secretary so he relented and had hardly slept since. He did the best he could - reducing the passenger and crew list to a mere four hundred people, running thorough background checks on every one of the four hundred, and watching all comings and goings while the ship was in port.
To add insult to injury, Wilson had decided Oscar was just the man to give the talk on the third night on the topic of "Defense and Aggression" - the ethical dilemma faced when a country is constantly engaged in improving their defenses. When is it defense and when does it become aggression? It was a difficult issue, one that had haunted Oscar over the years. Sturdy conclusions were hard to come by, so he hoped to fill out his talk with examples in history. He was anxious about it, no question. He wasn't particularly fond of public speaking, and he was so distracted by security concerns that he would have to be careful not to make a complete hash of it.
It had been just under two years since Lisa Galloway posing as Jaime had smashed his heart and his life and his sense of self-worth to tiny bits. To help him cope he installed in his mind an RDC (Recruit Division Commander), modeled on the one who had put him through basic training in the Navy years before. He had hated basic training, but now he was grateful for it. The RDC in his head told him what to think and feel, or, more accurately, what not to feel, and he did his best to obey. The first year he failed miserably. Sometimes the twisting sensation in his battered heart left him inarticulate and sullen for days at a time. On several occasions he had felt so physically sick with loneliness and despair that Russ had to come around to roust him out of bed in the morning. Louise and Rudy had done what they could, listening to him, offering distractions, meals, company and alternate points of view, until finally he had become sick of listening to himself. At that point the RDC began to get through to him. Slowly his life became more manageable, though not any happier. He got himself out of bed in the morning, stopped howling to Louise and Rudy, and gained back some small measure of his dignity.
His one regret was that he had become necessarily distant with Jaime - who deserved only the warmest gratitude from him - because she had the power to overrule his inner RDC in an instant. It was easy to see that this hurt her - he saw it almost every time they spoke. Way back when he had told her that he was going to 'get back to normal', but he had never been able to do it. Only by intense discipline was he able to keep himself locked up tight, safe from all that pain. Louise told him he had become "grim" and that she missed the old Oscar. He told her it was the best he could do.