As the weary NUMA people debarked, they were ushered into the bus. Pitt and Stacy were the last to exit. A uniformed guard held out his arm, blocking their way, and directed them to the car where Admiral Sandecker and Giordino were already standing.
Pitt pushed aside the guard's arm and walked over to the bus. "Goodbye," he said to Plunkett. "Keep your feet dry."
Plunkett fairly mashed Pitt's hand. "Thank you for my life, Mr. Pitt. When next we meet, the drinks are on me."
"I'll remember. Champagne for you, beer for me."
"God bless."
When Pitt approached the black car, two men were holding up their gold shields to Sandecker's face, identifying themselves as agents of the federal government.
"I am operating under presidential order, Admiral. I'm to backstop and transport you, Mr. Pitt, Mr.
Giordino, and Ms. Fox to Washington immediately."
"I don't understand," said Sandecker irritably. "What's the rush?"
"I can't say, sir."
"What about my NUMA team? They've been working on an underwater project under extreme conditions for four months. They deserve time to rest and relax with their families."
"The President has ordered a news blackout. Your NUMA people, along with Dr. Plunkett and Salazar, will be escorted to a safe compound on the windward side of the island until the blackout is lifted. Then they're free to go at government expense wherever you direct."
"How long will they be cooped up?" Sandecker demanded.
"Three or four days," replied the agent.
"Shouldn't Ms. Fox be going with the others?"
"No, sir. My orders are she travels with you."
Pitt stared at Stacy shrewdly. "You been holding out on us, lady?"
A strange little smile came to her lips. "I'm going to miss our tomorrow in Hawaii."
"Somehow I doubt that."
Her eyes widened slightly. "We'll have another time, perhaps in Washington."
"I don't think so," he said, his voice suddenly turning cold. "You conned me, you conned me up and down the line, beginning with your phony plea for help in Old Gert."
She looked up at him, a curious mixture of hurt and anger in her eyes. "We'd have all died if you and Al hadn't shown up when you did."
"And the mysterious explosion. Did you arrange that?"
"I have no idea who was responsible," she said honestly. "I haven't been briefed."
"Briefed," he repeated slowly. "Hardly a term used by a freelance photographer. Just who do you work for?"
A sudden hardness came into her voice. "You'll find out soon enough." And then she turned her back on him and climbed in the car.
Pitt only managed three hours sleep on the flight to the nation's capital. He drifted off over the Rocky Mountains and woke as the dawn was breaking over West Virginia. He sat in the back of the Gulfstream government jet away from the others, preferring his thoughts to conversation. His eyes looked down at the USA Today paper on his lap without really seeing the words and pictures.
Pitt was mad, damned mad. He was irritated with Sandecker for remaining close-mouthed and sidestepping the burning questions Pitt had put to him about the explosion that caused the earthquake. He was angry with Stacy, certain now the British deep-water survey was a combined intelligence operation to spy on Soggy Acres. The coincidence of Old Gert diving in the same location defied all but the most astronomical odds. Stacy's job as a photographer was a cover. She was a covert operative, pure and simple. The only enigma left to solve was the initials of the agency she worked for.
While he was lost in his thoughts, Giordino walked to the rear of the aircraft and sat down next to him.
"You look beat, my friend."
Pitt stretched. "I'll be glad to get home."
Giordino could read Pitt's mood and adroitly steered the talk to his friend's antique and classic car collection. "What are you working on?"
"You mean which car?"
Giordino nodded. "The Packard or the Marmon?"
"Neither," replied Pitt. "Before we left for the Pacific, I rebuilt the engine for the Stutz but didn't install it."
"That nineteen thirty-two green town car?"
"The same."
"We're coming home two months early. Just under the wire for you to enter the classic car races at Richmond."
"Two days away," Pitt said thoughtfully. "I don't think I can have the car ready in time."
"Let me give you a hand," Giordino offered. "Together we'll put the old green bomb on the starting line."
Pitt's expression turned skeptical. "We may not get the chance. Something's going down, Al. When the admiral clams up, the cow chips are about to strike the windmill."
Giordino's lips curled in a taut smile. "I tried to pump him too."
"And?"
"I've had more productive conversations with fence posts."
"The only crumb he dropped," said Pitt, "was that after we land we go directly to the Federal Headquarters Building."
Giordino looked puzzled. "I've never heard of a Federal Headquarters Building in Washington."
"Neither have I," said Pitt, his green eyes sharp and challenging. "Another reason why I think we're being had."
>
If Pitt thought they were about to be danced around the maypole, he knew it after laying eyes on the Federal Headquarters Building.
The unmarked van with no side windows that picked them up at Andrews Air Force Base turned off Constitution Avenue, passed a secondhand dress store, went down a grimy alley, and stopped at the steps of a shabby six-story brick building behind a parking lot. Pitt judged the foundation was laid in the 1930s.
The entire structure appeared in disrepair. Several windows were boarded shut behind broken glass, the black paint around the wrought-iron balconies was peeling away, the bricks were worn and deeply scarred, and for a finishing touch an unwashed bum sprawled on the cracked concrete steps beside a cardboard box full of indescribably mangy artifacts.
The two federal agents who escorted them from Hawaii led the way up the steps into the lobby. They ignored the homeless derelict, while Sandecker and Giordino merely gave him a fleeting glance. Most women would have looked upon the poor man with either compassion or disgust, but Stacy nodded and offered him a faint smile.
Pitt, curious, stopped and said, "Nice day for a tan."
The derelict, a black man in his late thirties, looked up. "You blind, man? What'd I do with a tan?"
Pitt recognized the sharp eyes of a professional observer, who dissected every square centimeter of Pitt's hands, clothes, body, and face, in that order. They were definitely not the vacant eyes of a down-and-out street dweller.
"Oh, I don't know," Pitt answered in a neighborly tone. "It might come in handy when you take your pension and move to Bermuda."
The bum smiled, flashing unblemished white teeth. "Have a safe stay, my man."
"I'll try," Pitt said, amused at the odd reply. He stepped past the disguised first ring of protection sentry and followed the others into the building's lobby.
The interior was as run down as the exterior. There was the unpleasant smell of disinfectant. The green tile floors were badly treadworn and the walls stark and smudged with years of overlaid handprints. The only object in the dingy lobby that seemed well maintained was an antique mail drop. The solid brass glinted under the dusty light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, and the American eagle above the words
"U.S. Mail" was as shiny as the day it was buffed out of its casting. Pitt thought it a curious contrast.
An old elevator door slid open soundlessly. The men from NUMA were surprised to find a gleaming chrome interior and a U.S. marine in dress blues who was the operator. Pitt noted that Stacy acted as though she'd been through the drill before.
Pitt was the last one in, seeing his tired red eyes and the grizzly beginnings of a beard reflected in the polished chrome walls. The marine closed the doors, and the elevator moved with an eerie silence. Pitt could not feel an
y movement at all. No flashing lights over the door or on a display panel indicated the passing floors. Only his inner ear told him they were traveling very rapidly down a considerable distance.
At last the door opened onto a foyer and corridor that was so clean and orderly it would have done a spit-and-polish ship captain proud. The federal agents guided them to the second doorway from the elevator and stood aside. The group passed through a space between the outer and an inner door, which Pitt and Giordino immediately recognized as an air lock to make the room soundproof. As the second door was closed, air was pushed out with an audible pop.
Pitt found himself standing in a place with no secrets, an enormous conference room with a low ceiling, so dead to outside sounds the recessed fluorescent light tubes buzzed like wasps, and a whisper could be heard ten meters away. There were no shadows anywhere, and normal voice levels came almost like shouts. The center of the room held a massive old library table once purchased by Eleanor Roosevelt for the White House. It fairly reeked of furniture polish. A bowl of Jonathan apples made up the centerpiece.
Underneath the table lay a fine old blood-red Persian carpet.
Stacy walked to the opposite side of the table. A man rose and kissed her lightly on the cheek, greeting her in a voice laced with a Texas accent. He looked young, at least six or seven years younger than Pitt. Stacy made no effort to introduce him. She and Pitt had not spoken a word to each other since boarding the Gulfstream jet in Hawaii. She made an awkward display of pretending he was not present by keeping her back turned to him.
Two men with Asian features sat together next to Stacy's friend. They were conversing in low tones and didn't bother to look up as Pitt and Giordino stood surveying the room. A Harvard type, wearing a suit with a vest adorned with a Phi Beta Kappa key on a watch chain, sat off by himself reading through a file of papers.
Sandecker set a course to a chair beside the head of the table, sat down, and lit one of his custom-rolled Havana cigars. He saw that Pitt seemed disturbed and restless, traits definitely out of character.
A thin older man with shoulder-length hair and holding a pipe walked over. "Which one of you is Dirk Pitt?"
"I am," Pitt acknowledged.
"Frank Mancuso," the stranger said, extending his hand. "I'm told we'll be working together."
"You're one up on me," Pitt said, returning a firm shake and introducing Giordino. "My friend here, Al Giordino, and I are in the dark."
"We've been gathered to set up a MAIT."
"A what?"
"MAIT, an acronym for Multi-Agency Investigative Team."
"Oh, God," Pitt moaned. "I don't need this. I only want to go home, pour a tequila on the rocks, and fall into bed."
Before he could expand on his grievances, Raymond Jordan entered the conference room accompanied by two men who wore faces with all the humor of patients just told by a doctor they had Borneo jungle fungus of the liver. Jordan made straight for Sandecker and greeted him warmly.
"Good to see you, Jim. I deeply appreciate your cooperation in this mess. I know it was a blow to lose your project."
"NUMA will build another," Sandecker stated in his usual cocksure way.
Jordan sat down at the head of the table. His deputies took chairs close by and laid out several document files on the table in front of him.
Jordan did not relax once he was seated. He sat stiffly, his spine not touching the backrest of the chair.
His composed dark eyes moved swiftly from face to face as if trying to read everyone's thoughts. Then he addressed himself directly to Pitt, Giordino, and Mancuso, who were still standing.
"Gentlemen, would you care to get comfortable?"
There was silence for a few moments as Jordan spread the files before him in order. The atmosphere was reflective and heavy with the kind of tension and concern that brought about ulcers.
Pitt sat expressionless, his mind elsewhere. He was not mentally geared for heavy talk, and his body was tired from the strain of the last two days. What he desperately wanted was a hot shower and eight hours of sleep, but he forced himself to go along for the ride out of respect for the admiral, who was, after all, his boss.
"I apologize,"
Jordan began, "for any inconvenience that I may have caused, but I'm afraid we are dealing with a critical emergency that can affect the security of our nation." He paused to peer down at the personnel files on the desk in front of him. "A few of you know me and some of you have worked with me in the past. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Giordino, I have you at a disadvantage as I know something about you and you know very little about me."
"Try zilch," Giordino challenged him, avoiding Sandecker's angry stare.
"I'm sorry," said Jordan graciously. "My name is Ray Jordan, and I am empowered by direct presidential order to direct and manage all matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. The operation we're about to launch covers both sides. To explain the situation and your presence here, I will turn this discussion over to my Deputy Director of Operations, Mr. Donald Kern."
Kern was bony-thin, small, and lean. His intensely cool bluegreen eyes seemed to reach into everyone's inner thoughts. All, that is, except Pitt's. It was as if two bullets had met in midair, neither passing through the other, both stopped dead.
"First off," Kern opened in a surprisingly deep voice while still trying to read Pitt, "we are all about to become part of a new federal organization consisting of investigators, specialists, support personnel, case review analysts, and field agents assembled for the purpose of defusing a serious threat to a great number of people here and around the world. In short, a MAIT team." He pressed one of several buttons on a desk console and turned to one wall that was backlit and displayed an organizational chart. There was a circle at the top and a larger one beneath. Four smaller circles extended from the bottom one like spider legs.
"The top circle represents the Command Center here in Washington," he lectured. "The lower one is our Information Gathering and Collection Point on the Pacific island of Koror in the Palau Republic chain.
The Resident, who will act as our Director of Field Operations, is Mel Penner." He stopped and glanced pointedly at Penner, who had entered the room with him and Jordan, Penner nodded a red corduroy-wrinkled face and lazily raised a hand. He neither looked around the table at the others nor smiled.
"Mel's cover is acting as a UCLA sociologist studying native culture," Kern added.
"Mel comes cheap." Jordan smiled. "His home and office furnishings include a sleeping cot, a phone, a document shredder, and a work desk that also serves as a dining table and a counter for his hotplate."
Bully for Mel, Pitt thought to himself, fighting to stay awake while half wondering why they took so long to state a case.
"Our teams will carry code names," Kern carried on. "The code will be different makes of automobiles. For example, we at Central Command will be known as `Team Lincoln.' Mel Penner is
`Team Chrysler.' " He paused to tap the appropriate circles on the chart before carrying on. "Mr. Marvin Showalter, who by the way is Assistant Director of Security for the U.S. Department of State, will work out of our embassy in Tokyo and handle any diplomatic problems from the Japanese end. His team code is 'Cadillac.' "
Showalter stood, fingered his Phi Beta Kappa key, and bowed his head. "A pleasure to work with you all," he said politely.
"Marv, you'll inform your critical personnel that our MAIT operatives will be in the field should they spot what may appear to be unauthorized activity. I do not want our situation compromised through embassy cable traffic."
"I'll see to it," Showalter promised.
Kern turned to Stacy and the bearded man sitting next to her. "Miss Stacy Fox and Dr. Timothy Weatherhill, for those of you who haven't been introduced, will head the domestic end of the investigation. Their cover will be as journalist and photographer for the Denver Tribune. They will bèTeam Buick.' " Next he motioned at the two men of Asian ancestry. " `Team Honda' consists of Mr.
Roy Orita and Mr. James Hanamura. They're in charge of the most critical phase of the investigation--
Japan proper.
"Before Don continues the briefing," said Jordan, "are there any questions?"
"How do we communicate?" asked Weatherhill.
"Reach out and touch someone," answered Kern. "Telephone behavior is routine and does not arouse suspicion." He touched another button on the console, and a series of digits appeared on the screen.
"Memorize this number. We'll give you a safe line that will be monitored twenty-four hours a day by an operator who is fully briefed and knows where to reach any of us at any given moment."
"I might add," said Jordan, "that you must check in every seventy-two hours. If you miss, somebody will be dispatched immediately to find you."
Pitt, who was balancing his chair on the rear legs, held up a hand. "I have a question."
"Mr. Pitt?"
"I'd be most grateful if someone will please tell me just what in hell is going on around here."
There was a moment's frozen and incredulous silence. Predictably, everyone around the table with the exception of Giordino stared at Pitt in narrow-eyed disapproval.
Jordan turned to Sandecker, who shook his head and said testily, "As you requested, Dirk and Al were not informed of the situation.
Jordan nodded. "I've been remiss by not having you gentlemen briefed. The fault is mine. Forgive me, gentlemen. You have been treated most shabbily after all you've been through."
Pitt gave Jordan a penetrating gaze. "Were you behind the operation to spy on NUMA's mining colony?"
Jordan hesitated, then said, "We don't spy, Mr. Pitt, we observe, and yes, I gave the order. A British ocean survey team happened to be working in the Northern Pacific, and they cooperated by moving their operation into your area."
"And the surface explosion that blew away the British ship and crew and triggered the earthquake that leveled eight years of intense research and effort, was that your idea too?"