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  "Three," said Ryder as he eased the Rolls onto the road and headed back toward their hotel.

  "That explains it."

  Ryder looked at him blankly through the mirror. "Care to explain it to me?"

  "Simple," said Max leaning forward and grabbing another Coors. "You've forgotten basic biology."

  "I think the sun fried your brains," his friend muttered.

  "You expect me to convince Kelly Madison to spend a month alone with me on a private island, right?"

  "You're a quick study, Brody, I'll give you that."

  "Just the two of us, working day and night?"

  "Not to mention a staff of PAX agents masquerading as servants."

  "It's not going to work."

  "I don't see the problem."

  "If our Miss Madison looked like Tugboat Annie, there wouldn't be a problem."

  "You telling me you can't keep your hormones on a leash, Max?"

  "It's not my hormones I'm worried about."

  "Then what is it?"

  The whole bizarre poolside conversation raced through Max's overheated brain. "I don't think I can carry this off, O'Neal. I don't know if I can do it."

  Ryder's grin faded. "This is a hell of a time to get cold feet, pal. You've had five years to get used to your new life--why fizzle out now?"

  "Because it didn't seem real before."

  "It didn't seem real before!" Ryder punched the steering wheel with his fist. "You've spent five years in Rolls-Royces and private jets and hobnobbing with royalty and you didn't bat an eye. I mean I saw that duchess cut in last month when you were dancing with the princess."

  Max opened another Coors. "That's different," he mumbled.

  "Different? What the hell do you mean, 'different'? You can dance with the Princess of Wales but you can't talk to a woman next to a swimming pool?"

  "Ease up, O'Neal," Max snapped. "I'm not planning to live with the Princess of Wales." "A small point," Ryder said, obviously chastened, "but an important one."

  "Damned straight it's important." Max took a sip of beer, shrugged, then dumped it into the ice bucket. "Maybe you guys get your jollies changing people's lives around, but this is brand new to me."

  Ryder yanked the wheel to the right and pulled off onto the shoulder of the road, tires kicking up clouds of red Hawaiian gravel.

  "If you have something to say, then say it, man," O'Neal snapped. "If this is leading up to your great escape, so help me, I'm gonna--"

  Max, who had been thinking of exactly that, backed down in the face of his friend's towering rage. "Hey, I'm not going anywhere," he said, wondering if Ryder would run him over if he leaped out of the limousine and headed for the rain forest. "I said I'm in this until the bitter end, didn't I?"

  An expression Max remembered from long ago crossed Ryder's face. "You've been known to get out when the going got rough," O'Neal said quietly. "If you're going to skip out on me, do it now. Once you strike a deal with her, it's out of our hands."

  Out of our hands? Max thought with a laugh.

  It had been out of his hands from the moment he and Ryder had that brawl in the parking lot of Pedro's a thousand years ago.

  The night Max Brody died and Maximilian Steel was born.

  Of course, if he thought about it, Max Brody actually died one night back on the Mekong Delta--along with a red-haired kid who'd had the misfortune to look to him for help.

  Max Brody wasn't much help to anybody.

  Ryder had been right about one thing: Millstone, New Jersey had gotten along fine without him. PAX had stepped in at the flight school and kept things running and he doubted if one single person had bothered to ask whatever happened to good ol' Max. It was enough to make a man stop and think but since thinking was something Max tried to avoid, it didn't bother him all that much.

  There was something exciting about shedding your skin the way other men shed their ties at the end of the day. One minute he'd been Max Brody with the requisite social security number and driver's license and membership card for the video store in town and the next minute he was nobody at all.

  The PAX Organization, an international anti-terrorist group that his old pal O'Neal quite amazingly was part of, erased his old identity from computer terminals across the country and within twenty-four hours it was as if he'd never existed.

  Within three weeks he'd almost forgotten it himself.

  The plan was simple--at least the part of it he understood seemed to be. PAX operated on a need-to-know basis, releasing only that part of the truth an associate required to function effectively.

  What Max needed to know was pretty straightforward: they were going to make him a billionaire and they were going to do it fast.

  For the first year he was with PAX, he saw little beyond the cabin of private jets and classrooms in a thousand different cities around the world. The education he had turned his nose up at years ago was suddenly thrust upon him with the force of a Cruise missile.

  He discovered that Cala di Volpe was the place to sun in Sardinia and Malliouhana whenever he found himself in Anguilla. And who on earth could possibly overlook the Grand Hotel du Cap Ferra in Nice?

  Certainly not Maximilian Steel.

  He knew that K-Paul's in New Orleans had peaked and that the cognoscenti ordered the chocolate cake at Parioli Romanissimo whenever they were in Manhattan. In Bali he dropped by the lush Nusa Dua to tempt both his body and soul.

  To think a trip to Atlantic City used to be a major deal to him.

  He'd always had a talent for languages, thanks to his Brazilian mother, and it became obvious that that talent was part of his appeal because they set out on a crash refresher course in Portuguese so intense that he quickly began thinking in that language and regarding English as a second tongue. An elegant older woman, retired from the organization, worked with him tirelessly to perfect a Brazilian accent and when he asked what they were doing, he was told, "You don't need to know--not yet."

  His old life faded with each day that passed until he could barely remember what it was like to get up each morning in his icy cold flat and have his bare feet touch a battered tile floor and not Persian carpet.

  And if at times he felt like someone's pet dog, perfectly groomed and obedient--well, that would end the moment he finally embarked on his assignment.

  It ended today.

  And now that he'd met the woman involved, he wasn't entirely sure he could pull it off.

  Playing power games had been a trip and a half. Seeing his face plastered across the pages of People and Time and Newsweek the past two weeks was like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In fact, there were times when he had to remind himself that this was a game, that at midnight one night this whole amazing setup would disappear like Cinderella's coach and leave him with nothing but stories.

  He lived and breathed the Portuguese language. He'd immersed himself in the Brazilian culture. He'd even learned to dance the samba after a few false starts. But the moment Kelly Madison fixed those dark blue eyes of hers on him, his confidence did an abrupt about-face. Insecurity was something that woman had obviously never known.

  Let PAX say what they will about his talents. He wouldn't argue with them.

  But there was one thing he was sure about: He may be good, but she was better. A lot better.

  And that's exactly what he told Ryder.

  "Easy for you to talk sitting in the limo, O'Neal. I was there. I didn't say more than three words and she zeroed in on my accent like a laser beam."

  O'Neal frowned. "She knows you're from New Jersey?"

  "New Jersey? Who's talking about New Jersey. She picked right up on the Brazilian accent."

  Ryder threw his head back and roared with laughter. "What's so funny?" Max demanded as Ryder steered the Rolls back onto the roadway.

  "We're in," said Ryder O'Neal. "We're in-like-Flynn."

  And Max listened in surprise as his friend picked up the cellular telephone and proceeded to tell the powers
-that-be that Operation Blue-Eyed Express was officially underway.

  #

  The man named Viktor leaned back in his chair and slid the silver filigree letter opener back and forth between his elegant fingers. The expensively-appointed room was hushed with tension.

  "I do not think our friend here understands the true nature of our business, do you, Andre?"

  Andre, a small and powerfully built man of unknown national origin, nodded. "Perhaps a lesson, sir?"

  The man's cool grey eyes lingered on Sean Ryan a moment longer than comfort would allow before breaking his gaze. "Not yet, Andre. Our friend Mr. Ryan looks as if he may be having a--how do they say it?--a change of heart." So true, comrade, Sean thought, calling upon every trick of the Method to maintain his outward composure, only the change of heart had occurred some fifteen years earlier.

  He opted for meek servitude. "Sir, I am merely concerned with the logistics of the plan described. I no longer have entree to the establishments discussed."

  Presidents and prime ministers rarely extended invitations to grand parties to the man he'd become.

  The man regarded him with interest. "Are you of the belief invitations are necessary?"

  Sweat broke out on the back of Sean's neck. Where in all holy hell was the help he'd been promised when he confessed his connections? It had been two years since he bared his soul to that embassy operative in Washington--two years since he last saw his daughter.

  The word "trap" skimmed through his brain and he swallowed past a wave of nausea. He was sliding downhill faster than he could draw breath.

  "One would assume--"

  "One assumes nothing!" The man slammed his hand down hard on his desk. "One does as one is told." His smile was feral, evil incarnate. "That is, if you wish your lovely daughter to see the new year."

  How ironic that the scheme that had been concocted to provide for her future might possibly be the instrument of her death.

  "I understand," said Sean quietly. "I am at your command."

  And may you rot in hell for eternity.

  Chapter Four

  Ryder left the Rolls Royce at a private airstrip near the bigger Kahului Airport and left it to Max to fly them over to Hana in a little Cessna that had seen better days.

  "Hey!" Ryder said as Max turned around to grab a pair of sunglasses from the rear of the plane. "Keep your eyes on the road, will you?"

  "White-knuckled flyer?"

  "Not in a nice roomy jet." He glanced at the station-wagon-with-wheels that was currently fifteen thousand feet above sea level. "This thing stinks. No wonder you got into sky diving."

  "I like this little Cessna," Max said with a laugh. "Makes me feel like getting back to my roots."

  "Forget it, friend. Your roots are in Brazil now, remember? Millstone is nothing but someone else's memory."

  "Yeah," said Max. "The Plan. How could I forget?"

  For five years now they'd been filling the guy full of facts and figures, accents and languages, a thousand-and-one bizarre details of a life never lived.

  Who could blame him for thinking about the old days now and again?

  Only there was no time any longer for the old days. "The Plan," as Max called it, had started in earnest the moment Max approached Kelly Madison by the pool of the Kaanapali Inn and there was no margin for error.

  One slip-up and Sean Ryan--and more than likely his lovely daughter, as well--would be dead.

  Fifteen years ago, in a desperate bid to provide some security for his daughter, Sean became a courier for an eastern European government official. His film career had fallen upon hard times as the anti-hero, as portrayed by such disparate types as Eastwood and Hoffman, took over and the days of the swashbuckling adventurer went the way of bobby sox and hi-fis. The money was good. The work was easy.

  The need to help his daughter was great.

  But for whatever reasons--be they conscience or cowardice--Sean had made an attempt a few years ago to contact the CIA but an eastern European contact intercepted his message and substituted one of his own: blow the whistle on us and your daughter dies.

  What the Soviet bloc renegade nation hadn't counted on was PAX. An international anti-terrorist organization of global dimensions, PAX had been investigating threats against U. S. consulates behind the Iron Curtain even before Sean's attempt to escape the clutches of the other side. A scheme to contaminate the United States's ground water was in the planning stages, masterminded by Sean Ryan's contact there.

  Through channels, Ryder had learned of Sean's desperate attempts to break free of this web of espionage and of the threats against his daughter's life.

  And so they created the Maximilian Steel phenomenon whose sole purpose was to draw Kelly into a business agreement that would put both Max and Sean's daughter into constant, daily contact. PAX needed Kelly to become part of Max's life so they could protect her--and so they can tail her each time she flew off to bail her father out of his latest scrape. Max Steel and his power and influence was the draw. Not to mention the fact that he owned some prime real estate in New York and California that bordered on reservoirs vital to Manhattan and L. A., and a private island off the coast of Florida that provided a perfect lookout point to much of the southeastern seaboard.

  All in all, the perfect lure to trap some highly-placed rats--Viktor Maksymenko, if they were very lucky.

  Once it hit the international grapevine that Ryan's daughter was working with the Donald Trump of the global jet set, PAX was certain Sean's eastern bloc contacts would see to it their courier was right there, playing the dutiful father.

  Yet something didn't feel right. It wasn't anything Ryder could put his finger on--not yet, at least--but he'd long ago learned to trust his gut when it came to trouble.

  The Cessna hit an air pocket and next to him, Max laughed as they were buffeted by the changeable winds. He had the wild look in his eye Ryder remembered from the old days, the walking-on-the-edge gleam that five years of intensive training couldn't extinguish.

  What happened to Max in Vietnam had happened to a million other scared kids during those terrible years. He hadn't been trained for the jungle; he'd been trained for crypto communications. He hadn't expected to have an M-16 shoved in his hand or to have someone's life depending upon his judgment.

  But Max Brody didn't believe it and he'd been paying the price for the past seventeen years.

  Ryder's stomach lurched as Max veered from one air pocket to the next. The way Max was flying, Joanna would be a widow long before her time--a prospect that didn't exactly thrill Ryder, since his was the death in question.

  "Can you turn this thing around?" he asked Max who was dutifully seeking calmer skies.

  "On a dime," said Max. "Are we heading for Tahiti or what?"

  "We're going back to Kanapaali."

  Max stared at him. "What the hell for? I did exactly what you wanted: made my first contact with her. Next meeting is Manhattan, just like you guys wanted."

  "Change of plans," said Ryder. "You strike the deal tonight."

  Max shrugged and suddenly the flimsy plane tilted in a turn straight out of Top Gun.

  Not even PAX's grandest plans mattered a damn if they didn't make it back in one piece.

  "Kanapaali," said Max with a grin. "Dead ahead."

  Ryder groaned and closed his eyes, praying that was a bad choice of words and not a premonition.

  #

  "I can't believe it!" The woman's indignant voice floated through the telephone wires. "You had a live one right there and you didn't bother to get his name."

  Kelly, wrapped in a large towel and even larger goosebumps, sat down on the edge of her bed. "I thought you called to wish me a happy Thanksgiving, Natalie, not read me the Riot Act." The hotel air conditioning revved up for another assault and she shivered in anticipation. "If this guy's such a hot prospect, why didn't you get the information when he called the office?"

  Natalie gave one of her patented sighs. "Because he spoke to
the service, Kelly, not to me."

  "The service told him I was in Hawaii?"

  "It's not top secret information, is it?" her assistant countered.

  "Maybe not, but I think the name of my hotel should be."

  There was a long pause, then: "The service doesn't know where you're staying, Kelly."

  "It's either you or the answering service, Nat. No one else knows I'm here."

  "I swear to you on my new Toyota I didn't tell a soul where you are! I'm the one who's been after you to take this vacation. Why on earth would I--"

  "Good Lord, Nat, this isn't the Spanish Inquisition. I'm simply curious how our anonymous businessman managed to track me down."

  "Did he look dangerous?"

  "Gorgeous, yes; dangerous, no."

  "Gorgeous? The man is gorgeous?"

  Kelly thought about his bottle-green eyes, shiny chestnut hair, and body that wouldn't quit. "Yes," she said after a moment. "Gorgeous is definitely the operative word here."

  "So why didn't you make an appointment?"

  "I don't make appointments in a bikini, Nat."

  "You could have put on a robe."

  "I'm on vacation, remember? The vacation you nagged me mercilessly about?"

  Natalie's laugh cut across the miles. "Meeting a gorgeous man is one of the reasons I wanted you to take that vacation in the first place, Kelly. You should learn how to grab opportunity when it pops up on your doorstep."

  Kelly glanced at the clock on the nightstand. "I don't plan to grab anything but Thanksgiving dinner and if you don't let me go, the room service waiter is going to have the surprise of his life." She certainly didn't intend to answer the door in a pale peach bath sheet. "You're having room service Thanksgiving dinner?"

  "You needn't sound so horrified, Natalie. Dining on my balcony watching the sun set over the Pacific is hardly schlepping through the Automat."

  "The point of that vacation was to meet interesting people."

  Kelly thought about the parade of losers, louts, and locos who'd paraded by her the last eight days. "I already have," she said dryly. "I think it's time for a quiet dinner at home."