"What about that butcher Dorsett?" snapped the Russian, anger reddening his face. "He cannot go unpunished for murdering people representing the Foundation."
"I agree," said the Indian. "Vengeance must take the highest priority."
"A mistake to act harshly," cautioned the chairman. "Not a wise move to call attention to ourselves by getting carried away with revenge. One miscalculation in executing Dorsett and our activities will become open to scrutiny. I think it best to undermine Arthur Dorsett from another direction."
"Our chairman has a point," said the Dutchman, his English slow but sufficient. "The better course of action for the present would be to contain Dorsett and then move in when he falters, and make no mistake, a man of his character cannot help but make a grand mistake sometime in the near future."
"What do you suggest?"
"We stand on the sidelines and wait him out."
The chairman frowned. "I don't understand. I thought the idea was to go on the offensive."
"Unloading his diamond supply will obliterate Dorsett's reserve assets," explained the Dutchman. "It will take him at least a year before he can raise gemstone prices and take his profits. In the meantime we keep a grip on the diamond market, maintain our stockpiles and follow Dorsett's lead by buying up control of the remaining colored gemstone production. Compete with him. My industrial spies inform me that Dorsett has concentrated on gems better known to the public while overlooking the rarer stones."
"Can you give us an example of rarer stones?"
"Alexandrite, tsavorite, and red beryl come to mind."
The chairman glanced at the others around the table. "Your opinions, gentlemen?"
The British publisher leaned forward with clenched fists. "A bloody sound idea. Our diamond expert has hit on a way to beat Dorsett at his own game while turning temporarily decreased diamond values to our advantage."
"Then do we agree?" asked the chairman with a smile that was far from pleasant.
Every hand went up, and fourteen voices gave an affirmative yea.
CATASTROPHE IN PARADISE
Honolulu, Hawaii
A sandy-haired marine sergeant sat in a pair of sunbleached shorts and a red-flowered aloha shirt and drank a can of beer while a movie cassette tape in the VCR played on a television set. He slouched sumptuously on a couch that he had scrounged from one of the two luxury hotels on the Hawaiian island of Lanai that was being remodeled. The movie was an early John Wayne epic, Stagecoach. A virtual-reality headset that he had purchased from a Honolulu electronics store encompassed his head.
After connecting the headset into the VCR, he could "enter" the television screen and mingle with the actors during scenes from the movie. He was lying beside John Wayne on the top of the stagecoach during the climactic chase scene, shooting at the pursuing Indians, when a loud buzzer cut into the action.
Reluctantly, he removed the set from his head and scanned four security monitors that viewed strategic areas of the classified facility he guarded. Monitor three showed a car approaching over a dirt road leading through a pineapple field to the entry gate. The late morning sun glinted off its front bumper while the rear bumper pulled a trail of dust.
After several months of bleak duty, the sergeant had his routine down to a fine science. In the three minutes it took for the car to travel up the road, he changed into a neatly pressed uniform and was standing at attention beside the gate that barred access through a tunnel into the open core of the long-extinct volcano.
On closer scrutiny he saw that it was a Navy staff car. He stooped and peered in the side window.
"This is a restricted area. Do you have permission to enter?"
The driver, in the whites of a Navy enlisted man, motioned a thumb over his shoulder. "Commander Gunn in the back has the necessary entry papers."
Proficient, businesslike, Rudi Gunn had wasted no precious time in seeking permission to dismantle the huge dish antenna in the middle of the Palawai volcano on Lanai. Unraveling the convoluted thread through the bureaucracy to track down the agency that held jurisdiction over the antenna and then confronting the department that operated the space communications facility would be a month-long expedition in itself. The next chore, an impossible one, would be to find a bureaucrat willing to take responsibility for allowing the dish to be taken down and temporarily loaned to NUMA.
Gunn eliminated the useless red tape by merely having NUMA's printing department dummy up an official-looking requisition form in triplicate, authorizing NUMA to relocate the antenna to another site on the Hawaiian island of Oahu for a secret project. The document was then signed by several workers in the printing department, on lines under lofty fictitious titles. What normally would have taken the better part of a year, before being officially denied, took less than an hour and a half, time mostly spent in setting the type.
When Gunn, wearing his uniform as a commander in the Navy, was driven up to the gate outside the tunnel entrance and produced his authorization to dismantle and remove the antenna, the sergeant in command of the deserted facility was dutifully cooperative. He was even more cooperative after assessing the exquisite form of Molly Faraday sitting next to Gunn in the backseat. If he had any thought of calling a superior officer for official confirmation it quickly melted as he stared at a convoy of large flatbed trucks and a portable crane that followed in the tracks of the staff car. Authority for an operation of this magnitude must have come from the top of the ladder.
"Good to have some company," the sergeant said with a wide smile. "It gets pretty boring up here with nary a soul to talk to while I'm on duty."
"How many are you?" asked Molly sweetly through the rear window.
"Only three of us, ma'am, one for each eight-hour shift."
"What do you do when you're not on guard duty?"
"Lay on the beach mostly, or try and pick up single girls at the hotels."
She laughed. "How often are you able to leave the island?"
"Every thirty days. Then five days leave in Honolulu, before returning to Lanai."
"When was the last time an outsider visited the facility?"
If the sergeant realized he was being interrogated, he didn't show it. "Some guy with National Security Agency credentials came and poked around about four months ago. Hung around less than twenty minutes. You're the first to visit since him."
"We should have the antenna down and out of here sometime late tonight," said Gunn.
"May I inquire, sir, where it's going to be reassembled?"
"What if I told you it was going to be scrapped?"
"Wouldn't surprise me in the least," said the sergeant. "With no repair or maintenance in the last few years, the old dish is beginning to look like it's been worked over by the elements."
Gunn was amused at seeing the marine stalling while enjoying the opportunity to talk to a stranger.
"May we pass through and get to work, Sergeant?"
The sergeant snapped a salute and quickly pressed a button that electronically swung open the gate.
After the staff car passed out of sight into the tunnel, he watched and waved to the drivers of the trucks and crane. When the last vehicle disappeared inside the volcano, he closed the gate, entered the guard compound and changed back into his shorts and aloha shirt before releasing the pause button on his VCR. He adjusted his virtual-reality headset and reversed the cassette tape until he rejoined John Wayne in blasting away at the Indians.
"So far so good," Gunn said to Molly.
"Shame on you for telling that nice young boy you were junking the antenna," she chided him.
"I merely said, `what if?' "
"We get caught forging official documents, painting a used car to look like an official Navy vehicle and stealing government property . . ." Molly paused and shook her head in wonder. "They'll hang us from the Washington Monument."
"I'll gladly pay the price if we save nearly two million people from a horrible death," said Gunn without regret. I
"What happens after we deflect the acoustic wave?" she asked. "Do we return the antenna and reassemble it?"
"I wouldn't have it any other way." He stared at her, as if surprised she asked the question, before smiling devilishly. "Unless, of course, there's an accident and we drop it on the bottom of the sea."
Sandecker's end of the project was not going one-tenth as well. Despite relying heavily on the Navy's old admiral buddy system, he could not convince anyone with command authority to temporarily loan him the aircraft carrier Roosevelt and her crew. Somewhere along the chain of command between the President and the Admiral in Command of Pacific Fleet Operations someone had spiked his request.
The admiral was pacing the office of Admiral John Overmeyer at Pearl Harbor with the ferocity of a bear who'd lost its cub to a zoo. "Damn it, John!" snapped Sandecker. "When I left Admiral Baxter of the Joint Chiefs, he assured me that approval to use the Roosevelt for the deployment of an acoustic reflector was a done deal. Now you sit there and tell me I can't have her."
Overmeyer, looking as sturdy and vigorous as an Indiana farmer, threw up his hands in exasperation.
"Don't blame me, Jim. I can show you the orders."
"Who signed them?"
"Admiral George Cassidy, Commanding Officer of the San Francisco Naval District."
"What in hell does some desk jockey who operates ferryboats have to do with anything?"
"Cassidy does not operate ferryboats," Overmeyer said wearily. "He's in command of the entire Pacific Logistics Command."
"He's not over you," stated Sandecker sharply.
"Not directly, but if he decided to get nasty, every transport carrying supplies for all my ships between here and Singapore might be inexplicably delayed."
"Don't stroke me, John. Cassidy wouldn't dare drag his feet, and you damn well know it. His career would go down the drain if he allowed petulance to stand in the way of supplying your fleet."
"Have it your way," said Overmeyer. "But it doesn't alter the situation. I cannot let you have the Roosevelt."
"Not even for a lousy seventy-two hours?"
"Not even for seventy-two seconds."
Sandecker suddenly halted his pacing, sat down in a chair and stared Overmeyer in the eye. "Level with me, John. Who put the handcuffs on me?"
Obviously flustered, Overmeyer could not hold the stare and looked away. "That's not for me to say."
"The fog begins to clear," said Sandecker. "Does George Cassidy know he's being cast as a villain?"
"Not to my knowledge," Overmeyer answered honestly.
"Then who in the Pentagon is stonewalling my operation?"
"You didn't hear this from me."
"We served together on the Iowa. You've never known me to expose a friend's secrets."
"I'd be the last man to doubt your word," Overmeyer said without hesitation. This time he returned Sandecker's stare. "I don't have absolute evidence, mind you, but a friend at the Naval Weapons Testing Center hinted that it was the President himself who dropped the curtain on you, after some unnamed snitch at the Pentagon let your request for an aircraft carrier slip to the White House. My friend also suggested that scientists close to the President thought your acoustic plague theory was off the wall."
"Can't they get it through their collective academic heads that people and untold numbers of sea life have already died from it'?"
"Apparently not."
Sandecker sagged in his chair and expelled a long breath. "Stabbed in the back by Wilbur Hutton and the President's National Science Board."
"I'm sorry, Jim, but word has gone out in Washington circles that you're some kind of fanatical kook.
It may well be that the President wants to force you to resign from NUMA so he can put a political crony in your place."
Sandecker felt as if the executioner's axe was rising. "So what? My career is unimportant. Can't I get through to anyone? Can't I get it across to you, Admiral, that you and every man under your command on the island of Oahu will be dead in three days?"
Overmeyer looked at Sandecker with great sadness in his eyes. It is a difficult thing for a man to believe another is breaking down, especially if that man is his friend. "Jim, to be honest, you terrify me. I want to trust your judgment, but there are too many intelligent people who think your acoustic plague has as much chance of actually occurring as the end of the world."
"Unless you give me the Roosevelt," said Sandecker evenly, "your world will cease to exist on Saturday at eight o'clock in the morning."
Overmeyer shook his head grimly. "I'm sorry, Jim, my hands are tied. Whether I believe your prediction of doom or not, you know damned well I can't disobey orders that come down from my Commander-in-Chief."
"If I can't convince you, then I guess I'd better be on my way." Sandecker came to his feet, started for the door and turned. "Do you have family here at Pearl?"
"My wife and two visiting granddaughters."
"I hope to God I'm wrong, but if I were you, my friend, I'd get them off the island while you still can."
The giant dish was only half dismantled by midnight. The interior of the volcano was illuminated by incandescent brilliance and echoed with the sounds of generators, the clank of metal against metal and the curses of the dismantling crew. The pace remained frantic from start to finish. The NUMA men and women sweated and fought bolted connections that were rusted together from lack of upkeep and repair.
Sleep was never considered, nor were meals. Only coffee as black as the surrounding sea was passed around.
As soon as a small section of the steel-reinforced fiberglass dish was removed from the main frame, the crane picked it up and set it on the flatbed of a waiting truck. After five sections were stacked one on top of the other and tied down, the truck exited the interior of the volcano and drove toward the port of Kaumalapau on the west coast, where the antenna parts were loaded on board a small ship for transport to Pearl Harbor.
Rudi Gunn was standing shirtless, sweating from the humidity of a steamy night, directing a team of men laboring strenuously to disconnect the main hub of the antenna from its base. He was constantly consulting a set of plans for the same type of antenna used in other space tracking facilities. The plans came from Hiram Yaeger, who had obtained them by breaking into the corporate computer system of the company that had originally designed and constructed the huge dishes.
Molly, who had changed into a more comfortable khaki blouse and shorts, sat nearby in a small tent, manning the communications and fielding any problems that arose during the dismantling operation and transportation of parts to the loading dock. She stepped out of the tent and handed Gunn a cold bottle of beer.
"You look like you could use a little something to wet your tonsils," she said.
Gunn nodded thankfully and rolled the bottle across his forehead. "I must have consumed twenty liters of liquid since we got here."
"I wish Pitt and Giordino were here," she said sadly. "I miss them."
Gunn stared absently at the ground. "We all miss them. I know the admiral's heart is torn out."
Molly changed the subject. "How's it look?"
He tilted his head toward the half-dismantled antenna. "She's fighting us every step of the way. Things are going a little faster now that we know how to attack her."
"A shame," she decided after a thoughtful survey of the thirty men and four women who struggled so long and hard to tear apart and move the antenna, their dedication and tireless efforts now seemingly wasted in a magnificent attempt to save so many lives, "that all this may very well come to nothing."
"Don't give up on Jim Sandecker," said Gunn. "He may have been blocked by the White House in securing the Roosevelt, but I'll bet you a dinner with soft lights and music that he'll come up with a replacement."
"You're on," she said, smiling thinly. "That's a bed I'll gladly lose."
He looked up curiously. "I beg your pardon?"
"A Freudian slip." She laughed tiredly. "I meant 'bet.' " r />
At four in the morning, Molly received a call from Sandecker. His voice showed no trace of fatigue.
"When do you expect to wrap up?"
"Rudi thinks we'll have the final section loaded on board the Lanikai--"
"The what?" Sandecker interrupted.
"The Lanikai, a small interisland freighter I chartered to haul the antenna to Pearl Harbor."
"Forget Pearl Harbor. How soon before you'll be out of there?"
"Another five hours." replied Molly.
"We're running tight. Remind Rudi we have less than sixty hours left."
"If not Pearl Harbor, where do we go?"
"Set a course for Halawa Bay, on the island of Molokai." answered Sandecker. "I found another platform for deploying the reflector."
"Another aircraft carrier?"
"Something even better."
"Halawa Bay is less than a hundred kilometers across the channel. How did you manage that?"
"They who await no gifts from chance, conquer fate."
"You're being cryptic, Admiral," Molly said, intrigued.
Just tell Rudi to pack up and get to Molokai no later than ten o'clock this morning."
She had just switched off the portable phone when Gunn entered the tent. "We're breaking down the final section," he said wearily. "And then we're out of here."
"The admiral called," she informed Gunn. "He's ordered us to take the antenna to Halawa Bay."
"On Molokai?" Gunn asked, his eyes narrowed questioningly.
That was the message," she said flatly.
"What kind of ship do you suppose he's pulled out of his hat?"
"A fair question. I have no idea."
"It'd better be a winner," Gunn muttered, "or we'll have to close the show."
There was no moon, but the sea flamed with spectral blue-green phosphorescence under the glint of the stars that filled the sky from horizon to horizon like unending city lights. The wind had veered and swept in from the south, driving the Marvelous Maeve hard to the northwest. The green-and-yellow beech-leaf sail filled out like a woman's tattooed breast, while the boat leaped over the waves like a mule running with thoroughbreds. Pitt had never imagined that the ungainly looking craft could sail so well. She would never win a trophy, but he could have closed his eyes and envisioned himself on a first class yacht, skimming over the sea without a care in the world.