Crete

EVEN the hills looked ancient. They stretched away mile after mile, bright green under the spring sky, patched with bleached rock where the spare soil had worn away. Over centuries, no, millennia ...

Dan Lenson glanced at his wife. Her head was turned away, blond hair flickering in the warm wind from the open passenger-side window. The breeze smelled of sage, rosemary, cypress, a warm mingled scent blowing off the myrtle-covered hills. Blair had flown in the day before, and he'd left his executive officer in charge while he took two days' leave.

"My wife, the congresswoman," he murmured.

She pressed a finger to his lips. "Don't jinx me, okay? It's by no means a shoo-in."

The rented BMW was headed south, along a winding two-lane coast road lined with rustling olive groves, each a slightly different blue or green. Violet and cream flowers bloomed along the verge, and the blue Mediterranean murmured on their left. No one seemed to build near the water here. Maybe, Dan thought, they remembered ancient disasters. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis ... classical civilization had risen atop a tectonic fault line.

They'd dined the evening before at a restaurant atop one of those myrtle-choked hills. Cheese pies, Cretan rice, slow-cooked wild hare with artichoke hearts, followed with phyllo-dough pastries and candied fruit. He'd told her how the English word candy had come from a town near where they were going: ancient Candia. And she'd told him what she was doing at SAIC, where a shadow cabinet convened when her party was out of national office. She'd tried the raki, and sputtered it out, to the amusement of the other diners.

They'd stayed overnight in Mperetiana, at a hotel overlooking the sea. The bay was so narrow he could look across to the gray speck that was USS Savo Island, moored at the long pier at the naval base. A crane barge lay alongside. It had extracted the remaining missiles aft, both the live ones left from the brief but fierce engagement with an Iranian task force the month before, and the dud rounds damaged in an electrical fire before that. Now the whole magazine, wiring and controls, was being refurbished by a Tiger Team from Norfolk.

But for a few hours, he'd almost forgotten his responsibilities. Renewed passion and ripped-off clothes, along with strange little arguments, quickly extinguished flares of temper. But just as quickly, recurring.

They'd coupled again hungrily this morning, followed by an hour of sleeping in. Showered, and enjoyed a leisu