Boyd recognized her voice instantly. It was the mysterious agent for an even more mysterious security firm that used cons to bring down big-time criminals. She and her partner, Nick, had given him the best, and most lucrative, roles of his career, even if it was always for an audience of one, who usually ended up in prison.

"You have impeccable timing, as usual," Boyd said. "I'm in."

"You don't even know what the job is, what the risks are, or what we're paying."

"What's my role?"

"You'll be the captain of a research vessel on the high seas."

"Captain Phillips meets Horatio Hornblower," he said.

"If you say so."

"You know I'd do anything for you, Woody."

"Woody?" Kate asked.

"I'm on my way," Boyd said, ending the call.

"What do you mean, you're 'on your way'?" Dr. Landry said. "We're still shooting. We aren't finished yet."

"Sorry, but Woody Allen needs me in New York for a part. You of all people should appreciate that I can't ignore a Woody emergency." Boyd smiled at his own wit, took a bow, and walked off the set.

A flying saucer from an alien world had crashed into a tree in the backyard of a tract home in Newport Beach, California. The silver s.p.a.cecraft, scorched from its fiery descent through the earth's atmosphere, was lodged precariously in the tree's branches. An escape ladder ran down along the tree trunk to a perfectly manicured lawn where a dozen excited six-year-olds were lined up to get inside the saucer. At the head of the line, scrambling up the ladder, was deliriously happy Bobby Nickerson, Jr., who still had birthday cake all over his face and couldn't wait to get into his Best Birthday Present Ever.

"Freaking amazing," said Bobby, Sr., admiring his son's flying saucer. "It's the treehouse to end all treehouses."

"I hope not, or I'm out of business," said Tom Underhill, who'd spent the past six weeks building it.

It was thanks to innovative treehouses like the flying saucer that Tom was written up as one of Southern California's visionary entrepreneurs. Problem was, not many people could afford a $50,000 indulgence for their kids. He certainly couldn't for his two kids. The treehouse he'd built for them was pretty basic. The only special feature was a fireman's pole for a quick escape.

Bobby, Sr., shook Tom's hand, thanked him again, and then cut to the front of the line to climb up into the treehouse himself.

Tom stayed for a while and watched everyone enjoy his creation. He had cake and ice cream. He took a couple balloons for his kids, waved goodbye to the Nickersons, and showed himself out of the backyard. He reached the street where he'd parked his pickup and was surprised to see Nick.

"Now you're going to have to come back next year and build Hogwarts for that kid," Nick said to Tom.

"That's my fiendish plot," Tom said with a grin, thinking if anybody knew about fiendish plotting, it was Nick. A year or so ago, Nick had come along out of nowhere and saved Tom's house from foreclosure. In return, Tom had helped Nick transform a derelict Palm Springs McMansion into a Mexican drug lord's fortified compound. It was part of an outrageous con to trick a sleazy Beverly Hills lawyer into revealing where his fugitive client was hiding. It was the most fun Tom had ever had.

"I could use your help on a new job," Nick said.

"I was hoping you'd say that."

"How would you like to go to Portugal, transform a cargo boat into a research vessel, and build me a remotely operated deep-sea submersible rover with cameras, lights, and claws, and the high-tech command center that runs it?"

"I would," Tom said. "But I don't know anything about building a robotic sub."

"It doesn't have to work," Nick said. "It only has to look amazing."

"That I can do," Tom said, already feeling a shot of adrenaline hitting his bloodstream. He could tell his wife he'd been hired to build a treehouse in Portugal for some rich guy. He'd learned from Nick that the best lies were the ones that were substantially truthful. She wouldn't argue if the money was right and he wasn't away too long, because the money wasn't exactly flowing in from the treehouse business.

"I take it we're tricking another very bad man," Tom said.

"The worst," Nick said. "We're taking down a s.a.d.i.s.tic monster."

"Is what we're doing illegal?"

"As far as I know, I don't think there are any laws against tricking a killer into being captured by law enforcement. But I wouldn't put it on your resume."

"When do you need me?"

"Right away. You'll have three weeks to build everything and we'll pay you a hundred thousand dollars. Tax free."

"Now, that is illegal."

"I won't tell anyone if you won't," Nick said.

The $150 million 3-D movie version of the 1970s TV series The Man from Atlantis starred an unknown Australian actor as a water-breathing man who washes up on Santa Monica beach after an earthquake in the Pacific. He becomes a secret agent for the United States government, and in his quest to find the lost city of Atlantis, the fish with a license to kill stops a super-villain from destroying the world with his earthquake-making machine.

Critics loathed the movie, but it grossed nearly $400 million at the box office, and it won an Academy Award for its incredible computer-generated underwater effects, designed by Rodney Smoot and his team at Magical Realism VFX.

Unfortunately, the Oscar wasn't enough to keep Magical Realism afloat. Rodney had sunk every penny he had into the company, but it became a casualty of outsourcing, and Rodney was bankrupted. He'd pink-slipped all his employees, and the bank was about to foreclose on his vast Santa Monica warehouse. Rodney was in the warehouse in the process of removing a poster from his office wall when he was startled to see a man and a woman standing outside his door.

"The bankruptcy auction isn't until next Sat.u.r.day," Rodney said.

"How much would it take to call off the auction, get the bank off your back, and allow you to keep all of this?" Nick asked with a sweep of his arm.

"Five million dollars," Rodney said.

Nick looked at Kate. "I think we can swing that, don't you?"

"It's pricey," she said. "But yes, we can."

Nick smiled and turned back to Rodney. "There you go. You're back in business."

Rodney stared at them, bewildered. "I don't understand."

"We want you to create some visual effects for us," Nick said. "Specifically, an underwater debris field from a Spanish treasure galleon that sank five hundred years ago. Our underwater footage needs to be interactive, allowing the viewer to go wherever he wants."

"So you want me to do the effects for a game," Rodney said.

"A con game," Kate said. "By creating these effects, you'll be helping us capture a fugitive drug lord who has killed a lot of people."

"Are you with the government?" Rodney asked.

"We're with a private security firm," Kate said. "It's important that you understand that we aren't authorized by any government or law enforcement agency to do what we have in mind."

"But it's for the greater good," Nick said. "And you could also put a lot of the people that you fired back to work."

"What exactly do you need me to do?" Rodney asked.

"Create what the camera on a remotely operated underwater vehicle would see on the ocean floor," Nick said. "We'll be watching the feed on monitors in the control room of a salvage vessel and controlling the rover's camera, and robotic arms, with a joystick. We'll be picking up some treasure and bringing it back up, so we've got to see that, too."

"Let me see if I've got this straight," Rodney said. "We'll be free-roaming through a photo-realistic CGI environment, but all you need to see on your monitor is whatever is within the view of the camera on this rover, nothing else."

"That's right," Nick said.

"So you'll only be able to see what the rover's lights illuminate in the murk, and the image only has to be good enough for c.r.a.ppy video resolution," Rodney said, clearly warming to the challenge. "That makes things a lot easier. It'll take at least six weeks to create the effects."

"You have three," Nick said.

"Geez, you're no better than a movie studio. Paying off the bank for the equipment and debt will only be the beginning of the costs," Rodney said. "We'll need to hire about forty people. Code writers. Modelers. Texture artists. Lighting specialists. What'll we tell them that they are working on?"

"A demo for a big investor who's interested in a new role-playing game," Nick said. "We'll have them sign intimidating nondisclosure agreements, so they can't say anything about their work without forfeiting their salaries and facing a terrifying lawsuit."

"Will that NDA protect them from getting arrested with me if this all goes to h.e.l.l?" Rodney asked.

"Yep," Kate said. "It will prove they are innocent dupes who didn't have any idea what they were actually working on."

"All right, then," Rodney nodded, satisfied with her answer. "We've got the code to create the water effect, the ocean floor, and the aquatic life from our work on The Man from Atlantis. That's a huge head start, but we're still going to have to create the lighting effects and build the objects that are illuminated in the debris field and the parts of the rover, like the robot arm, that we'll see from the camera. That will cost about five to seven hundred thousand dollars, but then you're going to need a render farm on your boat."

"What's a render farm?" Nick asked.

"Basically fifty computers strung together to create a supercomputer capable of generating the interactive virtual world in real time," Rodney said. "The good news is, you can buy the whole shebang pre-built in a shipping container, with cooling systems and everything, and have it delivered to your door wherever you are. There are a bunch of companies that do it. Figure another two hundred and fifty thousand for that."

"We'll need you on the boat with us, to run the show and make sure nothing goes wrong," Kate said. "The drug lord we're going after is a s.a.d.i.s.tic killer. If he discovers he's being conned, he won't hesitate to have his men butcher all of us in the most gruesome and painful way possible."

"In other words," Rodney said, "my life, and yours, could depend on how convincing my special effects are."

"Yes, that's right," Kate said.

Rodney grinned. "Cool! How could a true special effects artist possibly resist a challenge like that?"

On a sunny Sat.u.r.day afternoon, Kate and Jake met Nick on the yacht in Marina del Rey to go over the fine points of the plan. Nick had set out a mountain of taco salad, a selection of cigars, and an ice-filled tub stocked with beer.

"I've found a hundred-and-fifty-foot cargo carrier in a boatyard in Lisbon," Jake said, relaxing on the flybridge, a beer in one hand and a half-smoked Cohiba Behike in the other. "It was built in the 1980s and is currently registered in Sierra Leone, where there's only one safety regulation I know of, and it's more of a suggestion, really. They like the boat to be able to float. But no worries, it's been refurbished from top to bottom. She has a working crane for the sub, a cargo hold big enough for your container full of computers, is loaded with all the latest electronics, and can hit a top speed of ten knots. It's a steal at six hundred thousand dollars."

"What's the catch?" Kate asked.

"It's literally a steal," Jake said. "But n.o.body is looking for it anymore. The ship was hijacked in the South China Sea twenty years ago and has been repainted, renamed, and reflagged at least a dozen times since. I've dealt with this ship broker before on plenty of covert jobs. His word is good. We can leave the boat at the backwater wharf where it's docked now while Tom does the remodel and builds the sub. n.o.body will bother us there."

"Perfect," Nick said. "Go to Lisbon and make the deal. There's a million dollars waiting for you in Barnaby Jones's bank account at Barclays."

"Who is Barnaby Jones?" Jake asked.

"You are," Nick said. "I have a fake pa.s.sport and credit cards for you in Barnaby's name."

"I like the way you operate."

"Likewise," Nick said.

Kate inwardly groaned and reached for corn chips. Their little bromance would have been unbearable if not for the food and beer.

"I'll leave in two days," Jake said. "I'd go sooner, but I've got my colonoscopy tomorrow, and at my age, you want to be sure there's nothing in the chimney but soot."

"I'd keep that information on a need-to-know basis," Kate said. "And believe me, there's n.o.body who does. I wish I didn't."

"Tom will fly out with you," Nick said. "He's never been overseas before, so you'll have to hold his hand."

"We have a movie tech genius," Kate said to Jake. "His name is Rodney Smoot, and he'll show up after his team in L.A. is done creating the effects. He'll set up his render farm in the cargo hold. It will be up to you and your guys to get Tom and Rodney whatever materials they need and keep them both out of trouble while they work."

"I've babysat dictators and defectors," Jake said. "I think I can handle a treehouse builder and a guy who makes movies."

"Who have you recruited to help out?" Kate asked.

"On deck, I've got Lou Ould-Abdallah, an exSomali pirate who did a few black ops jobs with me in the South China Sea. He goes by Billy Dee Snipes now."

" 'Billy Dee Snipes'?" Kate said. "What kind of name is that?"

"One that's easier to p.r.o.nounce than Lou Ould-Abdallah," Jake said. "He lives in a seniors-only condo complex in Las Vegas now and hangs out at Treasure Island Casino playing slots to remind himself of the good old days. For down below, I've got Barnacle Bob Baker, the best engineer on the high seas. He's spent so much time in engine rooms that he can't abide fresh air and sunshine. His hands only feel clean to him when they're covered in grease and grime. Bob has been working on the ferry that runs between Dover and Calais because he needs to be in an engine room at sea. The monotony and the lack of risk is grinding him down. He'll gladly do this just for the change of scenery." Jake took a long drag on his cigar and let the smoke slowly curl out of his mouth. "If you're going to convince a drug lord as smart, vicious, and untrusting as Lester Menendez that you've found sunken treasure, it's going to take more than a survey boat, a robot sub, and some pretty pictures. The greedy b.a.s.t.a.r.d will want to take some coins off the ocean floor himself."

"Of course he will," Nick said.

"The coins can't be all nice and shiny, either," Jake said. "They'll have to be caked in hard sediment like they've been down there for centuries."

"That's true," Nick said.

"Where are you going to get coins like that?"

"We're going to steal them."

"That's what I figured, knowing you," Jake said. "But you're taking a huge gamble with my daughter's life that Menendez isn't going to hear about the theft, recognize the stolen goods, and shoot you both in the face."

"He's more likely to cut off our limbs with a chainsaw," Kate said. "And stuff us into an oil drum filled with acid."

"I'd like to avoid that," Nick said. "That's why we're going to steal some sunken treasure still covered with schmutz without anyone noticing it's gone."

"Do you know where and how you're going to do that?"

"I do."

Jake grinned, nodded to himself, and glanced over at Kate. "How did you ever catch this guy?"

"I conned him," she said.

Nick relaxed back into his chair and studied Kate. He'd underestimated her when she was chasing him. Not something he'd ever do again. He'd known she was smart and tenacious. He hadn't counted on her being devious as well. And he hadn't antic.i.p.ated the intensity of the attraction he felt for her.

"She's devious," Nick said. "It's her best quality. It's one of the few things we have in common."