It is the greatest advance in American defense technology in decades -- an attack submarine capable of incredible underwater speeds. Nothing else in any other nation's naval arsenal even comes close. There is only one problem: A key element of the prototype is missing -- and the man who developed it is dead. At the same time, ships have started vanishing mid-ocean, usually never to be found again, but when they are, sometimes bodies are found aboard...

In Paris, a physicist dies after performing a lab experiment for a beautiful visitor. In the jungles of Malaysia, a mysterious buyer purchases deadly cavitation technology. In Vancouver, a small research submarine is leased for use in the water off New Guinea. And in Tokyo, an intelligence agent tries to understand what it all means.

"As New England swelters in the summer of 1914, Detective Isaac Bell is asked to investigate a cache of missing rifles--only to discover something much more sinister. Whoever broke into this Winchester Factory wasn't looking to take weapons, they wanted to leave something in the shipping crates: a radio transmitter, set to summon a fleet of dreaded German U-boats. Someone is trying to keep American supplies from reaching British shores, and if Bell...

Purports to be the journal of Zoticus de Lesseps, written on an ill-fated 1863 voyage accompanying Captain Nemo to explore the mysteries of the deep sea.