"Eva, when you feed the protocol to the wire services, note that there'll be a transmission of some live video at—" he glanced up at the digital readouts on the screens, "how about at 0800 hours, GMT?"

"That's in twenty minutes."

"Should be enough time, don't you think?"

"Sounds good to me. And to show you I'm brave, I won't even fix my hair."

"You never looked more beautiful, even that night out at

the palace. Don't change a thing." He turned to Androv. "How about doing the talking? First in Russian and then in English? We'll write the English part for you."

"It will be my pleasure, Comrade. My fucking pleasure."

"Daedalus," Vance said, mostly to himself. "He found a way to escape the maze of Mino. We did too. It's easy. You just use your wings and fly."

[Friday 8:47 a.m.]