Deep Six

  "The President disappears for ten days and after his return falls off the deep end."

  "Huckleberry Finn," Brogan said slowly.

  "Judging from the President's behavioral patterns over the past twenty-four hours," Mercier said thoughtfully, "the evidence looks pretty conclusive."

  "Has Dr. Lugovoy surfaced yet?" Oates asked.

  Emmett shook his head. "He's still missing."

  "We've obtained reports from our people inside Russia on the doctor," Brogan elucinated. "His specialty for the last fifteen years has been mind transfer. Soviet intelligence ministries have provided enormous funding for the research. Hundreds of Jews and other dissidents who vanished inside KGB-operated mental institutions were his guinea pigs. And he claims to have made a breakthrough in thought interpretation and control."

  "Do we have such a project in progress?" Oates inquired.

  Brogan nodded. "Ours is code-named 'Fathom,' which is working along the same lines."

  Oates held his head in his hands for a moment, then turned to Emmett. "You still haven't a lead on Vince Margolin, Larimer and Moran?"

  Emmett looked embarrassed. "I regret to say their whereabouts is still unknown."

  "Do you think Lugovoy has performed the mind-transfer experiment on them too?"

  "I don't believe so," Emmett answered. "If I were in the Russians' shoes, I'd keep them in reserve in the event the President doesn't respond to instructions as programmed."

  "His mind could slip out of their grasp and react unpredictably," Brogan anded. "Fooling around with the brain is not an exact science.

  There's no way of telling what he'll do next."

  "Congress isn't waiting to find out," said Mercier. "They're out hustling for a place to convene so they can start impeachment proceedings."

  "The President knows that, and he isn't stupid," Oates responded.

  "Every time the House and Senate members gather for a session, he'll send in troops to break it up. With the armed forces behind him, it's a no-win situation."

  "Considering the President is literally being told what to do by an unfriendly foreign power, Metcalf and the other joint Chiefs can't continue giving him their support," said Mercier.

  "Metcalf refuses to act until we produce absolute proof of mind control," Emmett anded. "But I suspect he's only waiting for a ripe excuse to throw his lot in with Congress."

  Brogan looked concerned. "Let's hope he doesn't make his move too late."

  "So the situation boils down to the four of us devising a way to neutralize the President," Oates mused.

  "Have you driven past the White House today?" Mercier asked.

  Oates shook his head. "No. Why?"

  "Looks like an armed camp. The military is crawling over every inch of the grounds. Word has it the President can't be reached by anybody. I doubt even you, Mr. Secretary, could walk past the front door."

  Brogan thought a moment. "Dan Fawcett is still on the inside."

  "I talked to him over the phone," Mercier said. "He presented his opposition to the President's actions a bit too strongly. I gather he's now persona non grata in the Oval Office."

  "We need someone who has the President's trust."

  "Oscar Lucas," Emmett said.

  "Good thinking," Oates snapped, looking up. "As head of the Secret Service, he's got the run of the place."

  "Someone will have to brief Dan and Oscar face to face," Emmett advised.

  "I'll handle it," Brogan volunteered.

  'You have a plan?" asked Oates.

  ,: Not off the top of my head, but my people will come up with something."

  "Better be good," said Emmett seriously, "if we're to avoid the worst fear of our Founding Fathers."

  'And what was that?" asked Oates.

  "The unthinkable," replied Emmett. "A dictator in the White House."

  LOREN WAS SWEATING. She had never sweated so much in her life.

  Her evening gown was damp and plastered against her body like a second skin. The little windowless cell felt like a sauna and it was an effort just to breathe. A toilet and a bunk were her only creature comforts, and a dim bulb attached to the ceiling in a small cage glowed continuously. The ventilators, she was certain, were turned off to increase her discomfort.

  When she was brought to the ship's brig, she had seen no sign of the man she thought might be Alan Moran. No food or water had been given to her since the crew locked her up, and hunger pangs were gnawing at her stomach. No one had even visited her, and she began to wonder if Captain Pokofsky meant to keep her in solitary confinement until she wasted away.

  At last she decided to abandon her attempt at vanity and removed her clinging dress. She began to do stretching exercises to pass the time.

  Suddenly she heard the muted sound of footsteps outside in the passageway. Muffled voices spoke in a brief conversation, and then the door was unlatched and swung open.

  Loren snatched her dress off the bunk and held it in front of her, shrinking back into a corner of the cell.

  A man ducked his head as he passed through the small doorway.

  He was turned out in a cheap business suit that looked to her several decades out of fashion.

  "Congresswoman Smith, please forgive the condition I was forced to put you in."

  "No, I don't think I will," she said defiantly. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Paul Suvorov. I represent the Soviet government."

  Contempt flooded into Loren's voice. "Is this an example of the way Communists treat visiting American VIPs?"

  "Not under ordinary circumstances, but you gave us no choice."

  "Please explain," she demanded, glaring at him.

  He gave her an uncertain look. "I believe you know."

  "Why don't you'refresh my memory."

  He paused to light a cigarette, carelessly tossing the match in the toilet. "The other evening when the helicopter arrived, Captain Pokofsky's first officer observed you standing very close to the landing area."

  "So were several other passengers," Loren snapped icily.

  :'Yes, but they were too far away to see a familiar face."

  'And you think I wasn't."

  "Why can't you be reasonable, Congresswoman. Surely you can't deny you recognized your own colleagues."

  'I don't know what you mean."

  ,: Congressman Alan Moran and Senator Marcus Larimer," he said, closely watching her reaction.

  Loren's eyes winened and suddenly she began to shiver in spite of the stifling heat. For the first time since she was made a prisoner, indignation was replaced by despair.

  "Moran and Larimer, they're both here too?"

  He nodded. "In the next cell."

  "This must be an insane joke," she said, stunned.

  "No joke,"

  " Suvorov said, smiling. "They are guests of the KGB, same as you.

  Loren shook her head, unbelieving. Life didn't happen this way, she told herself, except in nightmares. She felt reality drifting slowly from her grasp.

  " I have diplomatic immunity," she said, "I demand to be released."

  "You carry no influence, not here on board the Leonin Andreyev," said Suvorov in a cold, disinterested voice.

  "When my government hears of this-"

  " They won't," he interrupted.

  "When the ship leaves Jamaica on its return voyage to Miami, Captain Pokofsky will announce with deep regret and sympathy that Congresswoman Loren Smith was lost overboard and presumed drowned."

  A numbing hopelessness seized Loren. "What will happen to Moran and Larimer?"

  "I'm taking them to Russia."

  "But you're going to kill me," she said, more as a statement than a question.

  "They represent senior members of your government. Their knowledge will prove quite useful once they're persuaded to provide it.

  You, I'm sorry to say, are not worth the risk."

  Loren almost said, As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I know as much as they do, but s
he recognized the trap in time and remained silent.

  Suvorov's eyes narrowed. He reached over and tore the dress from in front of her and casually tossed it outside the doorway.

  "Very nice," he said. "Perhaps if we were to negotiate, I might find a reason to take you with me to Moscow."

  "The most pathetic trick in the world," Loren spat contemptuously.

  "You're not even original."

  He took a step forward, his hand lashing out and slapping her on the face. She staggered back against the steel bulkhead and sagged to her knees staring up at him, her eyes blazing with fear and loathing.

  He grasped her by the hair and tilted her head back. The conversational politeness disappeared from his voice. "I always wondered what it would be like to screw a high-ranking capitalist bitch."

  Loren's answer was to swiftly reach out and grab him in the groin, squeezing with all her might.

  Suvorov gasped in agony and swung his fist, connecting with her left cheekbone just below the eye. Loren fell sideways into the corner while Suvorov clutched himself and paced the tiny cubicle like a mad animal until the stabbing ache subsided. Then he brutally picked her up and threw her onto the bunk.

  He leaned over her and ripped off her underclothes. "You rotten bitch!" he snarled. "I'm going to make you wish for a quick death."

  Tears of agony coursed from Loren's eyes as she teetered on the verge of unconsciousness. Vaguely, through the mist of pain, she could see Suvorov slowly take off his belt and wrap it around his hand, leaving the buckle free and swinging. She tried to tense her body for the coming blow as his arm lifted upward, but she was too weak.

  Suddenly Suvorov seemed to grow a third arm. It snaked over his right shoulder and then locked around his neck. The belt dropped to the deck and his body stiffened.

  Shock swept across Suvorov's face, the shock of disbelief, then horror at the full realization of what was happening, and the torment as his windpipe was slowly and mercilessly crushed and his breathing choked off. He struggled against the relentless pressure, throwing himself around the cell, but the arm remained. In a sudden flash of certainty, he knew he would never live to feel the pressure ease. The terror and the lack of oxygen contorted his face and turned it reddish-blue. His starving lungs struggled for air and his arms flailed in frantic madness.

  Loren tried to raise her hands over her face to shut out the horrible sight, but they refused to respond. She could only sit frozen and watch in morbid fascination as the life seeped out of Suvorov; watch his violent thrashings subside until finally the eyes bulged from their sockets and he went limp. He hung there several seconds, supported by the ghostly arm until it pulled away from his neck and he fell on the deck in a heap.

  Another figure loomed in Suvorov's place, standing inside the cell's doorway, and Loren found herself staring into a friendly face with deep green eyes and a faint crooked grin.

  "Just between you and me," said Pitt, "I've never believed that rot about getting there is half the fun."

  NOON, A BRILLIANT AZuiRE SKY with small cottonball clouds nudged by a gentle westerly breeze, found the Leonin Andreyev passing within eighteen miles of Cabo Maisi, the easternmost tip of Cuba.

  Many of the passengers sunbathing around the swimming pools took no notice of the palm-lined coastline on the horizon. To them it was just another one of the hundred islands they had passed since leaving Florida.

  On the bridge, Captain Pokofsky stood with binoculars to his eyes.

  He was observing a small powerboat that was circling from the land on his starboard quarter. She was old, her bow nearly straight up and down, and her hull was painted black. The topsides were varnished mahogany, and the name Pilar was lettered in gold across her transom.

  She looked an immaculately kept museum piece. On the ensign staff at her stern she flew the American stars and stripes in the inverted position of distress.

  Pokofsky walked over to the automated ship's control console and pressed the "slow speed" switch. Almost immediately he could feel the engines reduce revolutions. Then, waiting a few minutes until the ship had slowed to a crawl, he leaned over and pressed the lever for "all stop."

  He was about to walk out on the bridge wing when his first officer came hurrying up the companionway from the deck below.

  "Captain," he said, catching his breath. "I've just come from the brig area. The prisoners are gone."

  Pokofsky straightened. "Gone? You mean escaped?"

  "Yes, sir. I was on a routine inspection when I found the two security guards unconscious and locked up in one of the cells. The KGB agent is dead."

  "Paul Suvorov was killed?"

  The first officer nodded. "From all appearances, he was strangled."

  "Why didn't you call me immediately over the ship's phone?"

  "I thought it best to tell you in person."

  "You're right, of course," Pokofsky admitted. "This couldn't have come at a worse time. Our Cuban security people are arriving to transport the prisoners to shore."

  "If you can stall them, I'm confident a search effort will quickly turn up the Americans."

  Pokofsky stared through the doorway at the closing boat. "They'll wait," he said confidently. "Our captives are too important to leave onboard."

  "There is one other thing, sir," said the first officer. "The Americans must have received help."

  "They didn't break out by themselves?" Pokofsky asked in surprise.

  "Not possible. Two old men in a weakened condition and one woman could never have overpowered two security people and murdered a professional KGB man."

  "Damn!" Pokofsky cursed. He rammed a fist into a palm in exasperation, compounded equally by anxiety and anger. "This complicates matters."

  "Could the CIA have sneaked onboard?"

  "I hardly think so. If the United States government remotely suspected their government leaders were held on the Leonin Andreyev, their Navy would be converging on us like mad bears.

  See for yourself; no ships, no aircraft, and the Guantanamo Bay naval station is only forty miles away."

  "Then who?" asked the first officer. "Certainly none of our crew.

  "It can only be a passenger," Pokofsky surmised. He fell silent, thinking. Utter stillness fell on the bridge. At last he looked up and began issuing orders. "Collect every available officer and form five-man search parties. Divine up the ship in sections from keel to sun deck. Alert the security guards and enlist the stewards. If questioned by the passengers, make up a believable pretext for entering their cabins. Changing the bed linen, repairing plumbing, inspecting fire equipment, any story that fits the situation. Say or do nothing that will cause suspicion among the passengers or set them to asking embarrassing questions. Be as subtle as possible and refrain from violence, but recapture the Smith woman and the two men quickly."

  "What about Suvorov's body?"

  Pokofsky didn't hesitate. "Arrange a fitting tribute to our comrade from the KGB," he said sarcastically. "As soon as it's dark, throw him overboard with the garbage."

  "Yes, sir," the first officer acknowledged with a smile and hurried away.

  Pokofsky picked up a bullhorn from a bulkhead rack and stepped out on the'bridge wing. The small pleasure boat was drifting about fifty yards away.

  "Are you in distress?" he asked, his voice booming over the water.

  A man with a squat body and the skin tone of an old wallet cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted back. "We have people who are quite ill. I suspect ptomaine poisoning. May we come aboard and use your medical facilities?"

  "By all means," Pokofsky replied. "Come alongside. I'll drop the gangway."

  Pitt watched the mini-drama with interest, seeing through the sham. Two men and a woman struggled up the metal stairway, clutching their midriffs and pretending they were in the throes of abdominal agony. He rated them two stars for their performance.

  After a suitable length of time for pseudodoctoring, he reasoned, Loren, Moran and Larimer would have taken their pl
aces in the pleasure boat. He also knew full well the captain would not resume the cruise until the ship was scoured and the congressmen apprehended.

  He left the railing and mingled with the other passengers, who soon returned to their deck chairs and tables around the swimming pools and cocktail bars. He took the elevator down to his deck. As the doors opened and he stepped out into the passageway, he rubbed shoulders with a steward who was entering.