"You were planning just to murder all your helpers anyway, right?" He settled into a sculptured chair next to a console, as casually as he could manage. "Neatness. Guess I should have thought of that."
"You should have thought of a lot of things, Mr. Vance."
"And how about you? Did the ransom money come through? I assume this operation had a price tag attached."
He laughed. "Of course the money came through. All eight hundred million. What do you take me for?"
"Respectable chunk of change. So why in hell are you going to still launch an A-bomb?" Even Vance was impressed by his perfidy. "That's not very sporting."
"I'm not a sporting person."
“That's hardly a news flash." He felt his outrage spilling over. "Mind telling me the target?"
"Not at all. I'm going to incinerate the U.S. air and naval base at Souda Bay. The Americans don't care anything about civilians, as they have shown any number of times, but they are very attached to their Sixth Fleet."
"Jesus, you're totally mad." It was worse than he had imagined. "You're going to kill hundreds, thousands. How in hell can you do that?"
"Easily. As a matter of fact, it's as good as done. In a few minutes." He checked his watch, then glanced up and examined Vance a moment. "It looks like Jean-Paul did a fairly good job. I should have told him to just finish it."