Cyclops

"Why bother?" asked Pitt. "All islands and reefs within the blimp's fuel range were covered by the initial search. I'd only be covering the same trail."

"They might have missed something."

"Like maybe Cuba?"

Sandecker shook his head. "Castro would have claimed LeBaron overflew Cuban territory under instructions from the CIA and flaunted the blimp's capture to the world. No, there has to be another answer."

Pitt walked over to the corner windows and gazed longingly down at a fleet of small sailboats that were holding a regatta on the Anacostia River. The white sails gleamed against the dark green water as they raced toward the buoy markers.

"How do we know where to concentrate?" he asked without turning. "We're looking at a search grid as large as a thousand square miles. It would take weeks to cover it properly."

"I have all my husband's records and charts," said Jessie.

"He left them behind?"

"No, they were found in the blimp."

Pitt silently watched the sailboats, his arms crossed in front of him. He tried to probe the motives, penetrate the intrigue, lay out the safeguards. He tried to segregate each into an orderly niche.

"When do we go?" he asked finally.

"Sunrise tomorrow morning," Sandecker replied.

"You both still insist I lead the fishing expedition?"

"We do," Jessie said flatly.

"I want two old hands for my crew. They're both on NUMAs payroll. Either I get them or I'll walk."

Sandecker's face clouded. "I've already explained=

"You've got the moon, Admiral, and you're asking for Mars. We've been friends long enough for you to know I don't operate on a halfassed basis. Put the two men I need on leaves of absence too. I don't care how you do it."

Sandecker wasn't angry, wasn't even annoyed. If there was one man in the country who could pull off the unthinkable, it was Pitt. The admiral had no more cards to play, so he folded.

"All right," he said quietly. "You've got them."

"There's one more thing."

"Which is?" Sandecker demanded.

Pitt turned around with a bleak smile. His gaze went from Jessie to the admiral. Then he shrugged and said, "I've never flown a blimp."

<<14>>

"Appears to me you're making an end run behind my back," said Sam Emmett, the outspoken chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The President looked across his desk in the Oval Office and smiled benignly. "You're absolutely right, Sam. I'm doing exactly that."

"I give you credit for laying it on the line."

"Don't get upset, Sam. This in no way reflects any displeasure with you or the FBI."

"Then why can't you tell me what this is all about?" Emmett asked, holding his indignation in check.

"In the first place, it's primarily a foreign affairs matter."

"Has Martin Brogan at CIA been consulted?"

"Martin has not been called in. You have my word on it."

"And in the second place?"

The President was not about to be pushed. "That's my business."

Emmett stiffened. "If the President wishes my resignation--"

"I don't wish anything of the sort," the President cut in. "You're the ablest and best-qualified man to head up the bureau. You've done a magnificent job, and I've always been one of your biggest boosters. However, if you want to pick up your marbles and go home because you think your vanity has been dented, then go right ahead. Prove me wrong about you."

"But if you don't trust=

"Wait just a damned minute, Sam. Let's not say anything we'll be sorry about tomorrow. I'm not questioning your loyalty or integrity. No one is stabbing you in the back. We aren't talking crime or espionage. This matter doesn't directly concern the FBI or any of the intelligence agencies. The bottom line is that it's you who has to trust me, at least for the next week. Will you do that?"

Emmett's ego was temporarily soothed. He shrugged and then relented. "You win, Mr. President. Status quo. I'll follow your lead."

The President sighed heavily. "I promise I won't let you down, Sam."

"I appreciate that."

"Good. Now let's start at the beginning. What have you got on the dead bodies from Florida?"

The tight uneasiness went out of Emmett's expression, and he noticeably relaxed. He opened his attaché case and handed the President a leather-bound folder.

"Here is a detailed report from the Walter Reed pathology lab. Their examination was most helpful in giving us a lead for identification."

The President looked at him in surprise. "You identified them?"

"It was the analysis of the borscht paste that opened the door."

"Borscht what?"

"You recall that the Dade County coroner fixed death by hypothermia, or freezing?"

"Yes."

Yes."

"Well, borscht paste is a god-awful food supplement given to Russian cosmonauts. The stomachs of the three corpses were loaded with the stuff."

"You're telling me that Raymond LeBaron and his crew were exchanged for three dead Soviet cosmonauts?"

Emmett nodded. "We were even able to put a name on them through a defector, a former flight surgeon with the Russian space program. He'd examined each of them on several occasions."

"When did he defect?"

"He came over to our side in August of '87."

"A little over two years ago."

"That's correct," Emmett acknowledged. "The names of the cosmonauts found in LeBaron's blimp are Sergei Zochenko, Alexander Yudenich, and Ivan Ronsky. Yudenich was a rookie, but Zochenko and Ronsky were both veterans with two space flights apiece."

"I'd give my next year's salary to know how they came to be inside that damned blimp."

"Regrettably, we turned up nothing concerning that part of the mystery. At the moment, the only Russians circling the earth are four cosmonauts on board the Salyut 9 space station. But the NASA people, who are monitoring the flight, say they're all in good health."

The President nodded. "So that eliminates any Soviet cosmonaut on a space flight and leaves only those on the ground."

"That's the odd twist," Emmett continued. "According to the forensic pathology people at Walter Reed, the three men they examined probably froze to death while in space."

The President's eyebrows raised. "Can they prove it?"

"No, but they say several factors point in that direction, starting with the borscht paste and the analysis of other condensed foods the Soviets are known to consume during space travel. Also evident were physiological signs the men had breathed air of a high oxygen constant and spent considerable time in a weightless environment."

"Wouldn't be the first time the Soviets have launched men into space and failed to retrieve them. They could have been up there for years, and fell to earth only a few weeks ago after their orbit decayed."

"I'm only aware of two instances where the Soviets suffered fatalities," said Emmett. "The cosmonaut whose craft became tangled in the shrouds of its reentry parachute and slammed into Siberia at five hundred miles an hour. And the three Soyuz crewmen who died after a faulty hatch leaked away their oxygen."

"The disasters they couldn't cover up," said the President. "The CIA has recorded at least thirty cosmonaut deaths since the beginning of their space missions. Nine of them are still up there, drifting around in space. We can't advertise the fact on our end because it would jeopardize our intelligence sources."

"We-know-but-they-don't-know-we-know kind of affair."

"Precisely."

"Which brings us back to the three cosmonauts we've got lying here in Washington," said Emmett, clutching his briefcase on his lap.

"And a hundred questions, beginning with, Where did they come from?"

"I did some checking with the Aerospace Defense Command Center. Their technicians say the only spacecraft the Russians have sent aloft large enough to support a manned crew-- besides their orbiting station shuttles-- were the Selenos lunar probes."

At the word "lunar" something clicked in the President's mind. "What about the Selenos probes?"

"Three went up and none came back. The Defense Command boys thought it highly unusual for the Soviets to screw-up three times in a row on simple moon orbiting flights."

"You think they were manned?"

"I do indeed," said Emmett. "The Soviets wallow in deception. As you suggested, they almost never admit to a space failure. And keeping the buildup for their coming moon landing clouded in secrecy was strictly routine."

"Okay, if we accept the theory the three bodies came from one of the Selenos spacecraft, where did it land? Certainly not through their normal reentry path over the steppes of Kazakhstan."

"My guess is somewhere in or around Cuba."

"Cuba." The President slowly rolled the two syllables from his lips. Then he shook his head. "The Russians would never allow their national heroes, living or dead, to be used for some kind of crazy intelligence scheme."

"Maybe they don't know"

The President looked at Emmett. "Don't know?"

"Let's say for the sake of argument that their spacecraft had a malfunction and fell in or near Cuba during reentry. About the same time, Raymond LeBaron and his blimp show up searching for a treasure ship and are captured. Then, for some unfathomable reason, the Cubans switch the cosmonauts' bodies for LeBaron and his crew and send the blimp back to Florida."

"Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"

Emmett laughed. "Of course, but considering the known facts, it's the best I can come up with."

The President leaned back and stared at the ornate ceiling. "You know, you just might have struck a vein."

A quizzical look crossed Emmett's face. "How so?"

"Try this on for size. Suppose, just suppose, Fidel Castro is trying to tell us something."

"He picked a strange way to send out a signal."

The President picked up a pen and began doodling on a pad. "Fidel has never been a stickler for diplomatic niceties."

"Do you want me to continue the investigation?" Emmett asked.

"No," the President answered tersely.

"You still insist on keeping the bureau in the dark?"

"This is not a domestic matter for the justice Department, Sam. I'm grateful for your help, but you've taken it about as far as you can go."

Emmett snapped his attaché case shut and rose to his feet. "Can I ask a touchy question?"

"Shoot."

"Now that we've established a link, regardless of how weak, to a possible abduction of Raymond LeBaron by the Cubans, why is the

President of the United States keeping it to himself and forbidding his investigative agencies to follow up?"

"A good question, Sam. Perhaps in a few days we'll both know the answer."

Moments after Emmett left the Oval Office, the President turned in his swivel chair and stared out the window. His mouth went dry and sweat soaked his armpits. He was gripped by foreboding that there was a tie between the Jersey Colony and the Soviet lunar probe disasters.

<<15>>

Ira Hagen stopped his rental car at the security gate and displayed a government ID card. The guard made a phone call to the visitors center of the Harvey Pattenden National Physics Laboratory, then waved Hagen through.

He drove up the drive and found an empty space in a sprawling parking lot crowded by a sea of multicolored cars. The grounds surrounding the laboratory were landscaped with clusters of pine trees and moss rock planted amid rolling mounds of grass. The building was typical of tech centers that had mushroomed around the country. Contemporary architecture with heavy use of bronze glass and brick walls curving at the corners.

An attractive receptionist, sitting behind a horseshoe-shaped desk, looked up and smiled as he walked through the lobby. "May I help you?"

"Thomas judge to see Dr. Mooney."

She went through the phone routine again and nodded. "Yes, Mr. Judge. Please enter the security center to my rear. They'll direct you from there."

"Before I go in, can I borrow your men's room?"

"Certainly," she said, pointing. "The door on the right beneath the mural."

Hagen thanked her and passed under a massive painting of a futuristic starship soaring between a pair of spectral blue-green planets. He went into a stall, closed the door, and sat down on the toilet. Opening a briefcase, he removed a yellow legal pad and turned to the middle. Then, writing on the upper back of the page, he made a series of tiny cryptic notes and diagrams on the security systems he'd observed since entering the building. A good undercover operative would never put anything down on paper, but Hagen could afford to run fast and loose, knowing the President would bail him out if his cover was blown.

A few minutes later he strolled out of the restroom and entered a glass-enclosed room manned by four uniformed security guards, who eyeballed an array of twenty television monitors mounted against one wall. One of the guards rose from a console and approached the counter.

"Sir?"

"I have an appointment with Dr. Mooney."

The guard scanned a visitor list. "Yes, sir, you must be Thomas Judge. May I see some identification, please?"

Hagen showed him his driver's license and government ID. Then he was politely asked to open the briefcase. After a cursory search the guard silently gestured for Hagen to close it, asked him to sign a "time in and out" sheet, and gave him a plastic badge to clip on his breast pocket.

"Dr. Mooney's office is straight down the corridor through the double doors at the end."

In the corridor, Hagen paused to put on his reading glasses and peer at two bronze plaques on the wall. Each bore the raised profile of a man. One was dedicated to Dr. Harvey Pattenden, founder of the laboratory, and gave a brief description of his accomplishments in the field of physics. But it was the other plaque that intriqued Hagen. It read:

In memory of

Dr. Leonard Hudson

1926-1965

Whose creative genius is an

inspiration for all who follow.

Not very original, Hagen thought. But he had to give Hudson credit for playing the dead-man game down to the last detail.

He entered the anteroom and smiled warmly at the secretary, a demure older woman in a mannish navy-blue suit. "Mr. Judge," she said, "please go right in. Dr. Mooney is expecting you."

"Thank YOU."

Earl J. Mooney was thirty-six, younger than Hagen had expected when he studied a file on the doctor's history. His background was surprisingly similar to Hudson's-- same brilliant mind, same high academic record, even the same university. A fat kid who went thin and became director of Pattenden Lab. He stared through pine-green eyes under thunderous eyebrows and above a Pancho Villa moustache. Dressed casually in a white sweater and blue jeans, he seemed remote from intellectual rigor.

He came from behind the desk, scattered with papers, notebooks, and empty Pepsi bottles, and pumped Hagen's hand. "Sit down, Mr. Judge, and tell me what I can do for you."

Hagen lowered his bulk into a straight-back chair and said, "As I mentioned over the phone, I'm with the General Accounting Office, and we've had a legislative request to review your accounting systems and audit research funding expenditures."

"Who was the legislator who made the request?"

"Senator Henry Kaltenbach."

"I hope he doesn't think Pattenden Lab is mixed up in fraud," said Mooney defensively.

"Not at all. You know the senator's reputation for smelling out misuse in government funding. His witch-hunts make good publicity for his election campaign. Just between you and me, there're many of us at GAO who wish he'd fall through an open manhole and stop sending us out chasing moonbeams. However, I must admit in all fairness to the senator, we have turned up discrepancies at other think tanks."

Mooney was quick to correct him. "We prefer to think of ourselves as a research facility."

"Of course. Anyway, we're making spot checks."

"You must understand, our work here is highly classified."

"The design of nuclear rocketry and third-generation nuclear weapons whose power is focused into narrow radiation beams that travel at the speed of light and can destroy targets deep in space."

Mooney looked at Hagen queerly. "You're very well informed."

Hagen shrugged it off. "A very general description given to me by my superior. I'm an accountant, Doctor, not a physicist. My mind can't function in the abstract. I flunked high school calculus. Your secrets are safe. My job is to help see the taxpayer gets his money's worth out of government-funded programs."

"How can I help you?"

"I'd like to talk to your controller and administration officials. Also, the staff that handles the financial records. My auditing team will arrive from Washington in two weeks. I'd appreciate it if we could set up someplace out of your way, preferably close to where the records are kept."

"You'll have our fullest cooperation. Naturally, I must have security clearances for you and your team."

"Naturally."

"I'll take you around personally and introduce you to our controller and accounting staff."

"One more thing," said Hagen. "Do you permit after-hours work?"

Mooney smiled. "Unlike nine-to-five office people, physicists and engineers have no set hours. Many of us work around the clock. I've often put in thirty hours at a stretch. It also helps to stagger the time on our computers."

"Would it be possible for me to do a little preliminary checking from now until, say, about ten o'clock this evening?"

"I don't see why not," Mooney said agreeably. "We have an all night cafeteria on the lower level if you want to grab a bite. And a security guard is always nearby to point out directions."

"And keep me out of the secret areas." Hagen laughed.

"I'm sure you're familiar with facility security."

"True," Hagen admitted. "I'd be a rich man if I had a dime for every hour I put in auditing different departments of the Pentagon."

"If you'll come this way," said Mooney, heading for the door.

"Just out of curiosity," Hagen said, remaining in his chair. "I've heard of Harvey Pattenden. He worked with Robert Goddard, I believe."

"Yes, Dr. Pattenden invented several of our early rocket engines."

"But Leonard Hudson is unfamiliar to me."

"A pretty bright guy," said Mooney. "He paved the way by design engineering most of our spacecraft years before they were actually built and sent aloft. If he hadn't died in his prime, there's no telling what he might have achieved."

"How did he die?"

"Light-plane crash. He was flying to a seminar in Seattle with Dr. Gunnar Eriksen when their plane exploded in midair and dropped into the Columbia River."

"Who was Eriksen?"

"A heavy thinker. Perhaps the most brilliant astrophysicist the country ever produced."

A tiny alarm went off in Hagen's mind. "Did he have any particular pursuit?"

"Yes, it was geolunar synoptic morphology for industrialized peoplement."

"Could you translate?"

"Of course." Mooney laughed. "Eriksen was obsessed with the idea of building a colony on the moon."

<<16>>

Ten hours ahead in time, 2 A.M. in Moscow, four men were grouped around a fireplace that warmed a small sitting room inside the Kremlin. The room was poorly lit and had a morbid feel about it. Cigarette smoke mingled with that of a single cigar.

Soviet President Georgi Antonov stared thoughtfully at the undulating flames. He had removed his coat after a light dinner and replaced it with an old fisherman's sweater. His shoes were off and his stocking feet casually propped on an embroidered ottoman.

Vladimir Polevoi, head of the Committee for State Security, and Sergei Kornilov, chief of the Soviet space program, wore dark wool suits, custom-tailored in London, while General Yasenin sat in full bemedaled uniform.

Polevoi threw the report and photographs on a low table and shook his head in amazement. "I don't see how they accomplished it without a breach of secrecy"

"Such an extraordinary advance seems inconceivable," Kornilov agreed. "I won't believe it until I see more proof"

"The proof is evident in the photographs," said Yasenin. "Rykov's report leaves no room for doubt. Study the detail. The two figures standing on the moon are real. They're not an illusion cast by shadows or created by a flaw in the scanning system. They exist."

"The space suits do not match those of American astronauts," Kornilov retorted. "The helmets are also designed differently."

"I won't argue over trivials," said Yasenin. "But there is no mistaking the weapon in their hands. I can positively identify it as a surface-to-air missile launcher of American manufacture."

"Then where is their spacecraft?" Kornilov persisted. "Where is their lunar rover? They couldn't just materialize out of nowhere."

"I share your doubts," said Polevoi. "An absolute impossibility for the Americans to put men and supplies on the moon without our intelligence network monitoring the progress. Our tracking stations would have detected any strange movement entering or coming from space."

"Even stranger yet," said Antonov, "is why the Americans have never announced such a momentous achievement. What do they gain by keeping it a secret?"

Kornilov gave a slight nod. "All the more reason to challenge Rykov's report."

"You're all overlooking one important fact," said Yasenin in a level tone. "Selenos 4 went missing immediately after its scanners recorded the figures in the photographs. I say our space probe was damaged by rocket fire which penetrated the hull, drained away the capsule's pressure, and killed our cosmonauts."

Polevoi looked at him, startled. "What cosmonauts?"

Yasenin and Kornilov exchanged bemused looks. "There are some things even the KGB doesn't know," said the general.

Polevoi looked squarely at Kornilov, "Selenos 4 was a manned probe?"

"As were Selenos 5 and 6. Each craft carried three men."

He turned to Antonov, who was calmly puffing on a Havana cigar. "You knew about this?"

Antonov nodded. "Yes, I was briefed. But you must remember, Vladimir, not all matters concerning space fall under state security."

"None of you wasted any time running to me when your precious moon probe fell and vanished in the West Indies," Polevoi said angrily.

"An unforeseen circumstance," Yasenin patiently explained. "After its return from the moon, control could not be established for Selenos 4's earth reentry. The engineers at our space command wrote it off as a dead lunar probe. After orbiting for nearly a year and a half, another attempt was made to establish command. This time the guidance systems responded, but the reentry maneuver was only partially successful. Selenos 4 fell ten thousand miles short of its touchdown area. It was imperative we keep the deaths of our cosmonaut heroes secret. Naturally the services of the KGB were required."

"How many lost cosmonauts does that make?" asked Polevoi.

"Sacrifices must be made to ensure Soviet destiny," Antonov murmured philosophically.

"And to cover up blunders in our space program," Polevoi said bitterly.

"Let's not argue," cautioned Antonov. "Selenos 4 made a great contribution before it impacted in the Caribbean Sea."

"Where it has yet to be found," Polevoi added.

"True," said Yasenin. "But we retrieved the lunar surface data. That was the main purpose of the mission."

"Don't you think American space surveillance systems tracked its descent and pinpointed the landing position? If they had set their minds on salvaging Selenos 4, they'd already have it sitting hidden away inside a secure facility"

"Of course they tracked the descent trajectory," said Yasenin. "But their intelligence analysts had no reason to believe Selenos 4 was anything but a scientific deep-space probe that was programmed to land in Cuban waters."

"There is a crack in your carefully laid plot," Polevoi argued. "The United States rescue forces made an exhaustive air and sea search for the missing capitalist Raymond LeBaron in the same general area only a few days after Selenos 4 dropped from orbit. I have strong suspicions their search was a decoy to find and retrieve our spacecraft."

"I read your report and analysis of the LeBaron disappearance," said Kornilov. "I disagree with your conclusion. Nowhere did I see that they conducted an underwater search. The rescue mission was soon called off. LeBaron and his crew are still listed as missing in the American press and presumed dead. That event was merely a coincidence, nothing more."

"Then we all agree that Selenos 4 and her cosmonauts lie somewhere on the bottom of the sea." Antonov paused to blow a smoke ring. "The questions we still face are, do we concede the probability the Americans may have a base on the moon, and if so, what do we do about it?"

"I believe it exists," Yasenin said with conviction.

"We cannot ignore the possibility," Polevoi granted.

Antonov stared narrowly at Kornilov. "And you, Sergei?"

"Selenos 8, our first manned lunar landing mission, is scheduled for launch in seven days," he answered slowly. "We cannot scrap the mission as we did when the Americans upstaged us with their Apollo program. Because our leaders saw no glory in being the second nation to set men on the moon we tucked our tail between our legs and quit. It was a great mistake to place political ideology above scientific achievement. Now we have a proven heavy-lift launch vehicle capable of placing an entire space station with a crew of eight men on lunar soil. The benefits in terms of propaganda and military rewards are immeasurable. If our ultimate goal is to obtain permanent preeminence in space and beat the Americans to Mars, we must follow through. I vote we program the guidance systems of Selenos 8 to land the crew within walking distance of where the astronauts stood in the crater and eliminate them."

"I am in complete agreement with Kornilov," said Yasenin. "The facts speak for themselves. The Americans are actively engaged in imperialistic aggression in space. The photographs we've studied prove they've already destroyed one of our spacecraft and murdered the crew. And I believe the cosmonauts in Selenos 5 and 6 met the same fate. They have taken their colonialistic designs to the moon and claimed it for their own. The evidence is unequivocal. Our cosmonauts will be attacked and murdered when they attempt to plant the red star on lunar soil."

There was a prolonged hush. No one spoke his thoughts.

Polevoi was the first to break the pensive silence. "So you and Kornilov propose we attack them first."

"Yes," said Yasenin, warming to the subject. "Think of the windfall. By capturing the American moon base and its scientific technology intact, we'd be advancing our own space program by ten years."

"The White House would surely mount a propaganda campaign and condemn us before the world as they did with the KAL Flight 007 incident," protested Polevoi.

"They will remain quiet," Yasenin assured him. "How can they announce the seizure of something that isn't known to exist?"

"The general has a point," said Antonov.

"You realize we could be guilty of launching a war in space," cautioned Polevoi.

"The United States struck first. It is our sacred duty to retaliate." Yasenin turned to Antonov. "The decision must be yours."

The President of the Soviet Union again turned his gaze to the fire. Then he laid the Havana in an ashtray and looked down in wonder at his trembling hands. His face, ordinarily ruddy, was gray. The omen was plain. The demons outnumbered the forces of good. Once the course was set in motion, it would hurtle forward outside his control. Yet he could not allow the country to be slapped in the face by the imperialists. At last he turned back to the other men in the room and wearily nodded.

"For Mother Russia and the party," he said solemnly. "Arm the cosmonauts and order them to strike the Americans."

<<17>>

Eight introductions and three tiresome conversations after his introduction to Dr. Mooney, Hagen was seated in a small office feverishly pounding an adding machine. Scientists dote on computers and engineers fondle digital calculators, but accountants are a Victorian lot. They still prefer traditional adding machines with thumb size buttons and paper tapes that spit out printed totals.

The controller was a CPA, a graduate of the University of Texas School of Business, and an ex-Navy man. And he had the engraved degrees and photographs of the ships he'd served on displayed on the oak-paneled wall of his office to prove it. Hagen had detected an uneasiness in the man's eyes, but no more than he'd expect from any corporate finance director who had a government auditor snooping around his private territory.

There had been no suspicious look, no hesitation, when he asked to spot-check the telephone records for the last three years. Though his accounting experience with the justice Department was limited to photographing ledgers in the dead of night, he knew enough of the jargon to talk a good line. Anyone who happened to glance in his office and saw him scribbling notes and intently examining the tape on the adding machine would have thought he was an old pro.

The numbers on the tape were exactly that, numbers. But the note scribbling consisted of a methodical diagram of the placement and view angles of the security TV cameras between his office and Mooney's. He also wrote out two names and added several notations beside each one. The first was Raymond LeBaron and the second was Leonard Hudson. But now he had a third, Gunnar Eriksen.

He was certain that Eriksen had faked his death along with Hudson and dropped from the living to work on the Jersey Colony project. He also knew Hudson and Eriksen would never completely cut their ties with Pattenden Laboratory. The facility and its high-powered crop of young scientists were too great an asset to ignore. There had to be an underground channel to the "inner core."

The telephone records for a facility with three thousand employees filled several cardboard cartons. Control had been tight. Everyone who used a phone for any purpose, business or personal, had to keep a diary of the calls. Hagen wasn't about to attempt an examination of each one. That chore would take weeks. He was concerned only with the entries in Mooney's monthly diaries, especially those involving long distance.

Hagen was not psychic, nor was he as exact as some men he knew who had a talent for detecting an irregularity, but he had an eye and a gut instinct for the hidden that seldom failed him.

He copied down six numbers that Mooney had phoned more than once in the past ninety days. Two were itemized as personal calls, four as company calls. Long shots all. Still, it was the only way he might trace a lead to another member of the "inner core."

Playing by the rules, he picked up the phone and punched the Pattenden Lab operator, requesting an open line and promising to record all his calls. The hour was late, and most of the list showed area codes of numbers in the Middle West or in the East Coast. Their time zones were two or three hours ahead and they had likely shut down for the day, but he doggedly began calling anyway.

"Centennial Supply," announced a male in a bored tone.

"Yes, hello, is anyone in this evening?"

"The office is closed. This is the twenty-four-hour order desk."

"My name is judge, and I'm with the federal government," said Hagen, using his cover in case the phone was tapped. "We're doing an audit of the Pattenden Physics Laboratory in Bend, Oregon."

"You'll have to call back tomorrow morning after the office opens."

"Yes, I'll do that. But can you tell me exactly what kind of business Centennial Supply conducts?"

"We supply specialized parts and electronics for recording systems."

"For what applications?"

"Mostly business. Video for recording executive meetings, laboratory experiments, security systems. And executive audio for secretaries. Stuff like that, you know."

"How many employees do you have?"

"Around twelve."

"Thank you very much," said Hagen. "You've been most helpful. Oh, one more thing. Do you get many orders from Pattenden?"

"Not really. Every couple of months they'll order a part to update or modify their video systems."

"Thanks again. Goodbye."

Hagen scratched that one and tried again. His next two calls reached answering machines. One was a chemical lab at Brandeis University in Waltham and the other an unidentified office at the National Science Foundation in Washington. He checked the latter for a follow-up in the morning and tried an individual's number.

"Hello?"

Hagen looked at the name in Mooney's diary. "Dr. Donald Fremont?"

"Yes."

Hagen went through his routine.

"What do you wish to know, Mr. Judge?" Fremont's voice sounded elderly.

"I'm making a spot check of long-distance telephone calls. Has anyone from Pattenden called you in the last ninety days?" Hagen asked, looking at the dates of the calls and playing dumb.

"Why, yes, Dr. Earl Mooney. He was a student of mine at Stanford. I retired five years ago, but we still keep in touch."

"Did you by chance also have a student by the name of Leonard Hudson?"

"Leonard Hudson," he repeated as if trying to recall. "I met him on two occasions. He wasn't in my class, though. Before my time, or I should say before my tenure at Stanford. I was teaching at USC when he was a student."

"Thank you, Doctor. I won't trouble you further."

"Not at all. Glad to help."

Scratch four. The next name from the diary was an Anson Jones. He tried again, well aware it never came easy and that making a gold strike was 99 percent luck.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Jones, my name is judge."

"Who?"

"Thomas Judge. I'm with the federal government, and we're running an audit on Pattenden Physics Laboratory."

"I don't know any Pattenden. You must have the wrong number."

"Does the name Dr. Earl Mooney ring a bell?"

"Never heard of him."

"He's called your number three times in the last sixty days.

"Must be a phone company foulup."

"You are Anson Jones, area code three-zero-three, number five-four-seven

"Wrong name, wrong number."

"Before you hang up, I have a message."

"What message?"

Hagen paused, and then leaped. "Tell Leo that Gunnar wants him to pay for the airplane. You got that?"

There was silence on the other end for several moments. Then finally, "Is this a crank call?"

"Goodbye, Mr. Jones."

Pay dirt.

He called the sixth listing just to be on the safe side. An answering service for a stock brokerage firm answered. A dry hole.

Elation, that was what he felt. He became even more elated as he added to his notes. Mooney was not one of the "inner core," but he was connected-- one of the subordinate officers under the high command.

Hagen tapped out a number in Chicago and waited. After four rings, a woman answered sweetly. "Drake Hotel."

''My name is Thomas Judge and I'd like to confirm a room reservation for tomorrow night."

"One moment and I'll connect you with reservations."

Hagen repeated the request for confirmation with the desk clerk. When asked for a credit card number to hold the room for late arrival, he gave Anson Jones's phone number in reverse

"Your room is confirmed, sir."

"Thank you."

What time was it? A glance at his watch told him it was eight minutes to midnight. He closed the briefcase and wiggled into his coat. Taking a cigarette lighter from one pocket, he slid the interior workings from its case. Next, he removed a thin metal shaft with a dental mirror on one end from a slit in his rear coat flap.

Hagen moved to the doorway. Clutching the briefcase between his knees, he stopped short of the threshold and tilted the tiny mirror up and down the corridor. It was empty. He turned the mirror until it reflected the television monitor above the far end of the corridor. Then he positioned the lighter until it barely protruded around the doorframe and pressed the flint lever.

Inside the security booth behind the main lobby, a screen on one of the TV monitors suddenly turned to snow. The guard at the console quickly began checking the circuit lights.

"I've got a problem with number twelve," he announced.

His supervisor came over from a desk and stared at the monitor. "Interference. The eggheads in the electrophysics lab must be at it again."

Suddenly the interference stopped, only to begin again on another monitor.

"That's funny," said the supervisor. "I've never seen it happen in sequence before."

After a few seconds, the screen cleared, showing nothing but an empty corridor. The two security guards simply looked at each other and shrugged.

Hagen turned off the miniature electrical impulse jammer as soon as he stepped inside and closed the door to Mooney's office. He walked softly over to the window and closed the drapes. He slipped on a pair of thin plastic gloves and turned on the overhead lights.

Hagen was a master at the technique of tossing a room. He didn't bother with the obvious, the drawers, files, address and telephone lists. He went directly to a bookshelf and found what he had hoped to find in less than seven minutes.

Mooney might have been one of the leading physicists in the nation, but Hagen had read him like a pictorial magazine. The small notebook was hidden inside a book entitled Celestial Mechanics in True Perspective by Horace DeLiso. The contents were in a code employing equations. It was Greek to Hagen but he wasn't fooled by the significance. Normally he would have photographed the pages and put them back, but this time he simply pocketed them, fully realizing he could never have them deciphered in time.

The guards were still struggling with the monitors when he stepped up to the counter.

"Would you like me to sign out?" he said with a smile.

The head security guard came over, a quizzical expression on his face. "Did you just come from finance?"

"Yes."

"We didn't see you on the security TV"

"I can't help that," said Hagen innocently. "I walked out the door and through the hallways until I came here. I don't know what else to tell you."

"Did you see anyone? Anything unusual?"

"No one. But the lights flickered and dimmed a couple of times.'

The guard nodded. "Electrical interference from the electro physics lab. That's what I thought it was."

Hagen signed out and walked into a cloudless night, humming softly to himself.

<2>THE CYCLOPS

October 25, 1989

Key West, Florida

<<18>>

Pitt lay with his back pressed against the cool concrete of the airstrip, looking up at the Prosperteer. The sun pushed over the horizon and slowly covered her worn hull in a shroud of pastel orange. The blimp had an eerie quality about it, or so it seemed in Pitt's imagination, an aluminum ghost unsure of where it was supposed to haunt.

He'd been awake most of the time during the flight from Washington to Key West, poring over Buck Caesar's charts of the Old Bahama Channel and retracing Raymond LeBaron's carefully marked flight path. He closed his eyes, trying to get a clear picture of the Prosperteer's spectral wanderings. Unless the gas bags inside the blimp were reinflated from a ship, an extremely unlikely event, the only answer to Raymond LeBaron's whereabouts lay in Cuba.

Something nagged at his mind, a thought that kept returning after he unconsciously brushed it aside, a piece of the picture that became increasingly lucid as he began dwelling on it. And then suddenly it crystallized.

The flight to trace LeBaron's trail was a setup.

A rational and logical conclusion remained a dim outline in a thick mist. The trick was to try to fit it into a pattern. His mind was casting about for directions to explore when he sensed a shadow fall over him.

"Well, well," said a familiar voice, "looks as though Snow White fell for the old apple routine again."

"Either that or he's hibernating," came another voice Pitt recognized.

He opened his eyes, shielded them from the sun with one hand, and looked up at a pair of grinning individuals who stared down. The shorter of the two, a barrel-chested, muscled character with black curly hair and the ironbound look of a man who enjoyed eating bricks for breakfast, was Pitt's old friend and assistant projects director at NUMA, Al Giordino.

AI reached down, grabbed an outstretched hand, and pulled Pitt to his feet as effortlessly as a sanitation worker picking up an empty beer can from park grass.

"Departure time in twelve minutes."

"Our unnamed pilot arrive yet?" Pitt asked.

The other man, slightly taller and much thinner than Giordino, shook his head. "No sign of one."

Rudi Gunn peered through a pair of blue eyes that were magnified by thick-lensed glasses. He had the appearance of an undernourished assistant bookkeeper toiling for a gold watch. The impression was deceptive. Gunn was the overseer of NUMAs oceanographic projects. While Admiral Sandecker waged pitched battles with Congress and the federal bureaucracy, Gunn watched over the agency's day-to-day operation. For Pitt, prying Gunn and Giordino from under Sandecker had been a major victory.

"If we want to match LeBaron's departure time, we'll have to wrestle it aloft ourselves," said Giordino, unconcerned.

"I guess we can manage," said Pitt. "You study the flight manuals?"

Giordino nodded. "Requires fifty hours of instruction and flying time to qualify for a license. The basic control isn't difficult, but the art of keeping that pneumatic scrotum stable in a stiff breeze takes practice."

Pitt couldn't help grinning at Giordino's colorful description. "The equipment loaded on board?"

"Loaded and secured," Gunn assured him.

"Then I guess we might as well shove off."

As they approached the Prosperteer, LeBaron's crew chief climbed down the ladder from the control car. He spoke a few words to one of the ground crew and then waved a friendly greeting.

"She's all ready to go, gentlemen."

"How close are we to the actual weather conditions of the previous flight?" asked Pitt.

"Mr. LeBaron was flying against a five-mile-an-hour head wind out of the southeast. You'll buck eight, so figure on compensating. There's a late-season hurricane moving in over the Turks and Caicos Islands. The meteorological guys christened her Little Eva because she's a small blow with a diameter no more than sixty miles wide. The forecasters think she'll swing north toward the Carolinas. If you turn back no later than 1400 hours, Little Eva's outer breeze should provide you with a nice fat tail wind to nudge you home."

"And if we don't?"

"Don't what?"

"Swing back by 1400 hours."

The crew chief smiled thinly. "I don't recommend getting caught in a tropical storm with fifty-mile-an-hour winds, at least not in an airship that's sixty years old."

"You make a strong case," Pitt admitted.

"Allowing for the head wind," said Gunn, "we won't reach the search area until 1030 hours. That doesn't leave us much time to look around."

"Yes," Giordino said, "but LeBaron's known flight path should put us right in the ballpark."

"A tidy package," Pitt mused to no one in particular. "Too tidy."

The three NUMA men were about to climb on board when the LeBaron limousine pulled up beside the blimp. Angelo got out and smartly opened the passenger door. Jessie stepped into the sun and walked over, looking outdoorsy in a designer safari suit with her hair tied in a bright scarf, nineteen-thirties style. She was carrying a suede flight bag.

"Are we ready?" she said brightly, slipping past them and nimbly hustling up the ladder to the control car.

Gunn gave Pitt a grim look. "You didn't tell us we were going on a picnic."

"Nobody told me either," Pitt said, gazing up at Jessie, who had turned and was framed in the doorway.

"My fault," said Jessie. "I forgot to mention that I'm your pilot."

Giordino and Gunn looked as if they had swallowed live squid. Pitt's face wore an amused expression.

He said, "No kidding."

"Raymond taught me to fly the Prosperteer," she said. "I've logged over eighty hours at the controls and have a license."

"No kidding," Pitt repeated, becoming intrigued.

Giordino failed to see the humor. "Do you also know how to dive, Mrs. LeBaron?"

"Sky or scuba? I'm certified for both."

"We can't take a woman," said Gunn resolutely.

"Please, Mrs. LeBaron," pleaded the crew chief. "We don't know what happened to your husband. The flight might be dangerous."

"We'll use the same communication plan as Raymond's flight," she said, ignoring him. "If we find anything interesting we'll transmit in normal voice. No code this time."

"This is ridiculous," snapped Gunn.

Pitt shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. I'll vote for her."

"You don't really mean it!"

"Why not?" replied Pitt with a sardonic grin. "I firmly believe in equal rights. She has just as much right to get herself killed as we do."

The ground crew stood as silent as pallbearers, their eyes following the old blimp as she lifted into the sunrise. Suddenly she began dropping. They held their breath as the landing wheel touched the crest of a wave. Then she slowly bounced back into the air and struggled to rise.

Someone muttered anxiously, "Lift, baby, lift!"

The Prosperteer agonizingly rose a few feet at a time until she finally leveled out at a safe altitude. The ground crew watched motionless, staring until the blimp became a tiny dark speck above the silent horizon. They stood there when she was no longer in view, instinctively quiet, a sense of dread in their hearts. There would be no volleyball game this day. They all herded inside the maintenance truck, overburdening the air conditioning system, clustering around the radio.

The first message came in at 0700 hours. Pitt explained away the shaky liftoff. Jessie had under compensated for the lack of buoyancy caused by the extra payload Giordino and Gunn had placed on board.

From then on until 1400 hours, Pitt kept the frequency open and maintained a running dialogue, matching his observations with the transcribed report that was recorded during LeBaron's flight.

The crew chief picked up the microphone. "Prosperteer, this is Grandma's house. Over."

"Go ahead, Grandma."

"Can you give me your latest VIKOR satellite position?"

"Roger. VIKOR reading H3608 by T8090."

The crew chief quickly plotted the position on a chart. "Prosperteer, you're looking good. I have you five miles due south of Guinchos Cay on the Bahama Bank. Over."

"I read the same, Grandma."

"How are the winds?"

"Judging from the wave crests, I'd say the breeze has picked up to about Force 6 on the Beaufort scale."

"Listen to me, Prosperteer. The Coast Guard has issued a new update on Little Eva. She has doubled her speed and swung east. Hurricane warnings are up throughout the southern Bahamas. If she sticks to her present course, she'll strike the east coast of Cuba sometime this evening. I repeat, Little Eva has swung east and is heading in your direction. Call it a day, Prosperteer, and beat a course for home."

"Will do, Grandma. Turning onto new course for the Keys."

Pitt was silent for the next half hour. At 1435 hours, the crew chief hailed again.

"Prosperteer, come in, please. Over."

No reply.

"Come in, Prosperteer. This is Grandma's house. Do you read?"

Still nothing.

The stifling air inside the truck seemed suddenly to turn cold as fear and apprehension gripped the crew. The seconds crawled past and took forever to become minutes as the crew chief tried desperately to raise the blimp.

But the Prosperteer did not respond.

The crew chief slammed down the microphone and pushed his way outside the truck through the stunned ground crew. He ran over to the parked limousine and feverishly jerked open a rear door.

"They're gone! We've lost them, the same as the last time!"

The man sitting alone in the rear seat simply nodded. "Keep trying to raise them," he said quietly.

As the crew chief hurried back to the radio, Admiral James Sandecker lifted a telephone receiver from a varnished cabinet and placed a call.

"Mr. President."

"Yes, Admiral."

"They're missing."

"Understood. I've briefed Admiral Clyde Monfort of the Caribbean Joint Task Force. He's already put ships and planes on alert around the Bahamas. As soon as we hang up I'll order him to launch a search and rescue operation."

"Please impress upon Monfort the need for speed. I've also been informed the Prosperteer disappeared in the predicted path of a hurricane."

"Return to Washington, Admiral, and do not worry. Your people and Mrs. LeBaron should be sighted and picked up within a few hours."

"I'll try to share your optimism, Mr. President. Thank you."

If there was one doctrine Sandecker believed in with all his heart, it was "Never trust a politician's word." He placed another call on the limousine's phone.

"Admiral James Sandecker. I'd like to speak with Admiral Monfort."

"Right away, sir."

"Jim, is that really you?"

"Hello, Clyde. Good to hear your voice."

"Damn, it's been nearly two years. What's on your mind?"

"Tell me, Clyde, have you been alerted for a rescue mission in the Bahamas?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"The rumor mill."

"News to me. Most of our Caribbean forces are conducting an amphibious landing exercise on Jamaica."

"Jamaica?"

"A little muscle-flexing display of military capability to shake up the Soviets and Cubans. Keeps Castro off balance, thinking we're going to invade one of these days."

"Are we?"

"What in hell for? Cuba is the best advertising campaign we've got running that promotes communism as a big economic bust. Besides, better the Soviet Union throws twelve million dollars a day down Castro's toilet than us."

"You've received no orders to keep an eye on a blimp that left on a flight from the Keys this morning?"

There was an ominous silence on the other end of the line.

"I probably shouldn't be telling you this, Jim, but I did receive a verbal order concerning the blimp. I was told to keep our ships and aircraft out of the Bahama Banks and to put a blackout on all communications coming from the area."

"The order come direct from the White House?"

"Don't press your luck, Jim."

"Thanks for setting me straight, Clyde."

"Any time. Let's get together next time I'm in Washington."

"I'll look forward to it."

Sandecker hung up, his face red with anger, his eyes fired with fury.

"God help them," he muttered through clenched teeth. "We've all been had."

<<19>>

Jessie's smooth, high cheekboned face was tense from the strain of fighting the wind gusts and rain squalls that pounded against the skin of the blimp. Her arms and wrists were turning numb as she orchestrated the throttles and the big elevator pitch control. With the added weight from the rain it was becoming nearly impossible to keep the wallowing airship level and steady. She began to feel the icy caress of fear.

"We'll have to head for the nearest land," she said, her voice uneven. "I can't keep her aloft much longer in this turbulence."

Pitt looked at her. "The nearest land is Cuba."

"Better arrested than dead."

"Not yet," Pitt replied from his seat to the right and slightly behind her. "Hang on a little longer. The storm will sweep us back to Key West."

"With the radio out, they won't know where to look if we're forced to ditch in the sea."

"You should have thought of that before you spilled coffee on the transmitter and shorted its circuitry."

She stole a glance at him. God, she thought, it was maddening. He was leaning out the starboard window, nonchalantly peering through a pair of binoculars at the sea below. Giordino was observing out the port side, while Gunn was taking readings off the VIKOR navigating computer and laying out their course on a chart. Every so often, Gunn calmly examined the stylus markings on the recorder of a Schonstedt gradiometer, an instrument for detecting iron by measuring magnetic intensity. All three men looked at though they didn't have a care in the world.

"Didn't you hear what I said?" she asked in exasperation.

"We heard," Pitt replied.

"I can't control her in this wind. She's too heavy. We've got to drop ballast or touch down."

"The last of the ballast was dumped an hour ago."

"Then get rid of that junk you brought on board," she ordered, gesturing to a small mountain of aluminum boxes strapped to the deck.

"Sorry. That junk, as you call it, may come in handy."

"But we're losing lift."

"Do the best you can."

Jessie pointed through the windshield. "The island off to our starboard is Cayo Santa Maria. The landmass beyond is Cuba. I'm going to bring the blimp around on a southerly course and take our chances with the Cubans."

Pitt swung from the window, his green eyes set and purposeful. "You volunteered for this mission," he said roughly. "You wanted to be one of the boys. Now hang in there."

"Use your head, Pitt," she snapped. "If we wait another half hour the hurricane will tear us to pieces."

"I think I have something," Giordino called.

Pitt moved from his seat over to the port side. "What direction?"

Giordino pointed. "We just passed over it. About two hundred yards off our stern."

"A big one," Gunn said excitedly. "The markings are going off the scale."

"Come about to port," Pitt ordered Jessie. "Take us back over the same course.

Jessie didn't argue. Suddenly caught up in the fervor of the discovery, she felt her exhaustion fall away. She slammed the throttles forward and rolled the blimp to port, using the wind to crab around on a reverse course. A gust slammed into the aluminum envelope, causing a shudder to run through the ship and rocking the control car. Then the buffeting eased and the flight smoothed as the eight tail fins came around and the wind beat from astern.

The interior of the control car was as hushed as the crypt of a cathedral. Gunn unreeled the line from the gradiometer's sensing unit until it dangled four hundred feet below the belly of the blimp and skimmed the rolling swells. Then he turned his attention back to the recorder and waited for the stylus to make a horizontal swing across the graph paper. Soon it began to waver and scratch back and forth.

"Coming up on target," Gunn announced.

Giordino and Pitt ignored the wind stream and leaned farther out the windows. The sea was building and foam was spraying from the wave crests, making it difficult to see into the transparent depths. Jessie was having a tougher time of it now, struggling with the controls, trying to reduce the violent shaking and swaying of the blimp, which behaved like a whale fighting its way up the Colorado River rapids.

"I've got her!" Pitt suddenly shouted. "She's lying north and south, about a hundred yards to starboard."

Giordino moved to the opposite side of the control car and gazed down. "Okay, I have her in sight too."

"Can you detect any sign of derricks?" Gunn asked.

"Her outline is distinct, but I can't make out any detail. I'd say she's about eighty feet under the surface."

"More like ninety," said Pitt.

"Is it the Cyclops?" Jessie asked anxiously.

"Too early to tell." He turned to Gunn. "Mark the position from the VIKOR."

"Position marked," Gunn acknowledged.

Pitt nodded at Jessie. "All right, pilot, let's make another pass. And this time, as we come about into the wind, try to hover over the target."

"Why don't you ask me to turn lead into gold," she snapped back.

Pitt came over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "You're doing great. Stick in a little longer and I'll spell you at the controls."

"Don't patronize me," she said testily, but her eyes took on a warm glow and the tension lines around her lips softened. "Just tell me when to stop the bus."

Very self-willed she was, thought Pitt. For the first time he felt himself envying Raymond LeBaron. He returned aft and put a hand on Gunn's shoulder.

"Use the clinometer and see if you can get a rough measurement of her dimensions."

Gunn nodded. "Will do."

"If that's the Cyclops," said Giordino happily, "you made a damned good guess."

"A lot of luck mixed with a small amount of hindsight," Pitt admitted. "That, and the fact Raymond LeBaron and Buck Caesar aimed us toward the ballpark. The puzzle is why the Cyclops lies outside the main shipping lane."

Giordino gave a helpless tilt to his head. "We'll probably never know."

"Coming back on target," Jessie reported.

Gunn set the distance on the clinometer and then sighted through the eyepiece, measuring the length of the shadowy object under the water. He managed to hold the instrument steady as Jessie fought a masterful battle against the wind.

"No way of accurately measuring her beam because it's impossible to see if she lies straight up or on her side," he said, studying the calibrations.

"And the overall length?" asked Pitt.

"Between five hundred thirty and five hundred fifty feet."

"Looking good," Pitt said, visibly relieved. "The Cyclops was five hundred and forty-two feet."

"If we drop down closer, I might be able to get a more precise reading," said Gunn.

"One more time, Jessie," Pitt called out.

"I don't think so." She lifted a hand from the controls and pointed out the forward window. "A welcoming committee."

Her expression appeared calm, almost too calm, while the men watched in mild fascination as a helicopter materialized out of the clouds a thousand feet above the blimp. For several seconds it seemed to hang there, fastened in the sky like a hawk eyeing a pigeon. Then it swelled in size as it approached and banked around on a parallel course with the Prosperteer. Through the binoculars they could clearly see the grim faces of the pilots and the two pairs of hands grasping the automatic guns that poked through the open side door.

"They brought friends," Gunn said succinctly. He was aiming his binoculars at a Cuban gunboat about four miles away that was planing through the swells, throwing up great wings of sea spray.

Giordino said nothing. He tore the holding straps from the boxes and began throwing the contents on the deck as fast as his hands could move. Gunn joined him as Pitt began assembling a strange looking screen.

"They're holding up a sign in English," Jessie announced.

"What does it say?" Pitt asked without looking up.

" `Follow us and do not use your radio,' " she read aloud. "What should I do?"

"Obviously we can't use the radio, so smile and wave to them. Let's hope they won't shoot if they see you're a woman."

"I wouldn't count on it," grunted Giordino.

"And keep hovering over the shipwreck," Pitt added.

Jessie didn't like what was going on inside the control car. Her face noticeably paled. She said, "We'd better do what they want."

"Screw them," Pitt said coldly. He unbuckled her seat belt and lifted her away from the controls. Giordino held up a pair of air tanks and Pitt quickly adjusted the straps over her shoulders. Gunn handed her a face mask, swim fins, and a buoyancy compensator vest.

"Quickly," he ordered. "Put these on."

She stood there baffled. "What are you doing?"

"I thought you knew," said Pitt. "We're going for a swim."

"We're what?" The dark gypsy eyes were wide, not so much from alarm as astonishment.

"No time for the defense to make a closing argument," Pitt said calmly. "Call it a wild plan for staying alive and let it go at that. Now do as you're told and lie down on the deck behind the screen."

Giordino stared dubiously at the inch-thick screen. "Let's hope it does the job. I'd hate to be around if a bullet finds an air tank."

"Fear not," Pitt replied, as the three men hurriedly strapped on their diving gear. "High-tensile plastic. Guaranteed to stop anything up to a twenty-millimeter shell."

With no hands at the controls, the blimp lurched sideways under the onslaught of a fresh gust and pitched downward. Everyone instinctively dropped to the deck and snatched at the nearest handgrip. The boxes that held the equipment skidded madly across the deck and crashed into the pilots' seats.

There was no hesitation, no further attempt at communication. The Cuban commander of the helicopter, thinking the sudden erratic movement of the blimp meant it was trying to escape, ordered his crew to open fire. A storm of bullets struck the starboard side of the Prosperteer from no more than thirty yards away. The control car was immediately turned into a shambles. The old yellowed windows melted away in a shower of fragments that splashed cross the deck. The controls and the instrument panel were blasted into twisted junk, filling the shattered cabin with smoke from shorted circuitry.

Pitt lay prone on top of Jessie, Gunn and Giordino blanketing him, listening to the steel-nosed shells thump against the bulletproof screen. Then the gunmen in the helicopter altered their aim and concentrated on the engines. The aluminum cowlings were torn and mangled by the devastating fire until they shredded and blew away in the air stream. The engines coughed and sputtered into silence, their cylinder heads shot away, oil spewing out amid torrents of black smoke.

"The fuel tanks!" Jessie heard herself shouting above the mad din. "They'll explode!"

"The least of our worries," Pitt yelled back in her ear. "The Cubans aren't using incendiary bullets, and the tanks are made out of selfsealing neoprene rubber."

Giordino crawled over to the ripped and jumbled pile of equipment boxes and retrieved what looked to Jessie like some kind of tubular container. He pushed it ahead of him up the steeply tilted deck.

"Need any help?" Pitt yelled.

"If Rudi can brace my legs. . ." His voice trailed off.

Gunn didn't require a lecture on instructions. He jammed his feet against a bulkhead for support and clutched Giordino around the knees in a vise grip.

The blimp was totally out of control, dead in the sky, the nose pointing at a forty-degree angle toward the sea. All lift was gone and it began to sink from the sky as the Cubans sprayed the plump, exposed envelope. The stabilizer fins still reached for the clouds, but the old Prosperteer was in her death throes.

She would not die alone.

Giordino wrestled the tube open, pulled out an M-72 missile launcher, and loaded the 66-millimeter rocket. Slowly, moving with great caution, he eased the snout of the bazookalike weapon over the jagged glass left in the frame of the window and took aim.

To the astonished men in the patrol boat, less than one mile away, the helicopter appeared to disintegrate in a huge mushroom of fire. The sound of the explosion burst through the air like thunder, followed by a flaming rain of twisted metal that hissed and steamed when it hit the water.

The blimp still hung there, pivoting slowly on its axis. Helium surged through gaping rents in the hull. The circular supports inside began snapping like dried sticks. As if heaving out her final breath the Prosperteer caved in on herself, collapsing like an eggshell, and fell into the seething whitecaps.

The raging devastation all happened so quickly. In less than twenty seconds both engines were torn from their mounts, and the support beams holding the control car twisted apart, accompanied by a banshee screeching sound. Like a fragile toy thrown on the sidewalk by a destructive child, the rivets burst and the internal structure shrieked in agony as it disintegrated.

The control car kept sinking into the deep, the water flooding through the shattered windows. It was as if a giant hand was pressing the blimp downward until at last she slipped into the depths and disappeared. Then the control car broke free and dropped like a falling leaf, trailed by a confused maze of wire and cable. The remains of the duraluminum envelope followed, flapping wildly like a drunken bat in flight.

A school of yellowtail snappers darted from under the plunging mass an instant before it struck the sea floor, the impact throwing up billowing clouds of fine sand.

Then all was as quiet as a grave, the deathly stillness broken only by the gentle gurgle of escaping air.

On the turbulent surface the stunned crew of the gunboat began sweeping back and forth over the crash sites, searching for any sign of survivors. They only found spreading pools of fuel and oil.

The winds from the approaching hurricane increased to Force 8. The waves reached a height of eighteen feet, making any further search impossible. The boat's captain had no choice but to turn about on a course toward a safe harbor in Cuba, leaving behind a swirling and malignant sea.

<<20>>

The opaque cloud of silt that hid the shredded remains of the Prosperteer was slowly carried away by a weak bottom current. Pitt rose to his hands and knees and looked around the shambles that had been the control car. Gunn was sitting upright on the deck, his back pressed against a buckled bulkhead. His left ankle was swelling into the shape of a coconut, but he sucked on his mouthpiece and raised one hand with the fingers formed in a V

Giordino doggedly pulled himself upright and tenderly pressed the right side of his chest. One broken ankle and probably a few ribs between them, thought Pitt. It could be worse. He bent over Jessie and lifted her head. Her eyes appeared blank through the lens of the face mask. The hollow hiss of her regulator and the rise and fall of her chest indicated her breathing was normal, if a bit on the rapid side. He ran his fingers over her arms and legs but found no sign of a fracture. Except for a rash of black-and-blue marks that would bloom in the next twenty-four hours, she seemed whole. As if to assure him, she reached out for his arm and gave it a firm squeeze.

Satisfied, Pitt turned his attention to himself. All the joints swiveled properly, the muscles functioned, nothing seemed distorted. Yet he didn't escape unscathed. A purplish lump was rising on his forehead, and he noticed a strange stiffening sensation in his neck. Pitt canceled out the discomfort with the consolation that no one appeared to be bleeding. One hairline brush with death was enough for one day, he mused. The last thing they needed now was a shark attack.

Pitt focused on the next problem, getting out of the control car. The door was jammed, small wonder after the beating it had taken. He sat on his buttocks, grasped both hands on the bent frame, and lashed out with his feet. Lashed out was an exaggeration. The water pressure impeded the thrust of his legs. He felt as though he was trying to kick out the bottom of a huge jar of glue. On the sixth attempt, when the balls and heels of his feet could take no more, the metal seal gave and the door swung outward in slow motion.

Giordino emerged first, his head swathed by a surge of bubbles from his breathing regulator. He reached back inside, dug his feet into the sand, braced himself for the chest pain that was sure to come, and gave a mighty heave. With Pitt and Gunn shoving from the inside, a large, unwieldy bundle slowly squeezed through the door and dropped to the sand. Then eight steel tanks containing 104 cubic feet of air were passed out to the waiting hands of Giordino.

Inside the mangled control car Jessie fought to equalize her ears with the water pressure. The blood roared and a stabbing pain burst in her head, blanking out the trauma of the crash. She pinched her nose and snorted furiously. On the fifth try her ears finally popped, and the relief was so marvelous that tears came to her eyes. She clamped her teeth on the regulator's mouthpiece and sucked in a lungful of air. How beautiful it would be to wake up in her own bed, she thought. Something touched her hand. It was another hand, firm and rough-skinned. She looked up to see Pitt's eyes staring at her through his mask, they seemed crinkled in a smile. He nodded for her to follow him.

He led her outside into the vast liquid void. She gazed up, watching her air bubbles hiss and swirl toward the restless surface. Despite the turbulence above, visibility on the bottom was nearly two hundred feet and she could clearly see the entire length of the airship's main carcass lying a short distance from the control car. Gunn and Giordino were nowhere in sight.

Pitt gestured for her to wait by the air tanks and the strange bundle. He checked the compass on his left wrist and swam off into the blue haze. Jessie drifted, weightless, her head feeling light from a touch of nitrogen narcosis. An overwhelming sense of loneliness closed over her, but quickly evaporated when she saw Pitt retuning. He made a sign for her to follow, and then he turned and slowly paddled away. Pounding her feet against the water resistance, she quickly caught up with him.

The white sandy bottom gave way to clumps of coral inhabited by a variety of oddly shaped fish. Their natural bright colors were deadened to a soft gray by the scattering and absorption of the water particles that filtered out the reds, oranges, and yellows, leaving only dull greens and blues. They pedaled their fins, moving only an arm's length above the weird and exotically molded underwater jungle, observed queerly by a crowd of small angelfish, pufferfish, and trumpetfish. The amusing scene reminded Pitt of children watching the huge ballooned cartoon characters that float down Broadway in Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

Suddenly Jessie dug her fingers into Pitt's leg and pointed above and behind. There, swimming in lazy apathy, only twenty feet away, was a school of barracuda. There must have been two hundred of them, none measuring less than four feet in length. They turned as one and began circling the divers while displaying a beady-eyed curiosity. Then, deciding that Pitt and Jessie were not worth lingering over, they flashed away in the wink of an eye and were lost to view.

When Pitt turned back he saw Rudi Gunn materializing out of the smoky blue curtain. Gunn came to a stop and beckoned for them to hurry in his direction. Then he made the V sign of success.

The meaning was clear. Gunn vigorously kicked with one fin, rapidly rising at an angle until he was about thirty feet above the coral landscape, Pitt and Jessie trailing immediately in his wake.

They had traveled nearly a hundred yards when Gunn abruptly slowed and curved his body into a vertical position, one whitened hand held out, slightly bent finger pointing like the grim reaper.

Like a haunted castle looming from the mists of a Yorkshire moor, the phantom shape of the Cyclops rose up through the watery gloom, evil and sinister, as though some unspeakable force lurked within her bowels.

<<21>>

Pitt had dived on many shipwrecks and he was the first man to view the Titanic, but staring at the lost ghost ship of legend left him numb with an almost superstitious awe. The knowledge that she was the tomb for over three hundred men only deepened her malignant aura.

The sunken ship was lying on her port side with a list of about twenty-five degrees, her bow set toward the north. She did not have the look of anything that was supposed to rest on the sea floor, and mother nature had gone to work laying a veil of sediment and marine organisms over the steel intruder.

The entire hull and superstructure were encrusted with sea growth of every imaginable description-- sponges, barnacles, flowery anemones, feathery sea ferns, and slender weeds that gracefully swayed with the current like the arms of dancers. Except for the distorted bow and three fallen derricks, the ship was suprisingly intact.

They found Giordino busily scraping the growth from a small section below the stern railing. He turned at their approach and showed off his handiwork. He had exposed the raised letters that spelled out Cyclops.

Pitt glanced at his orange-faced Doxa diver's watch. It seemed an eternity since the blimp crashed, but only nine minutes had passed from the moment they swam out of the control car. It was imperative that they conserve their air. They still had to search the wreck and have enough left in the spare tanks for decompression. The safety margin would be cut dangerously thin.

He checked Jessie's air gauge and studied her eyes. They looked clear and bright. She was breathing slowly in a comfortable rhythm. She gave him a thumbs-up sign and then threw him a coquettish wink. Her brush with death in the Prosperteer was forgotten for the moment.

Pitt winked back. She's actually enjoying this, he thought.

Using hand signals for communication, the four of them fanned out in a line above the fantail and began prowling her length. The doors of the aft deckhouse had rotted away and the teak deck was heavily worm-eaten. Any flat surface was coated by sediment that gave the appearance of a dusty shroud.

The jackstaff stood bare, the United States ensign having rotted away long ago. The two stern guns pointed aft, mute and deserted. The twin smokestacks stood like sentries over the decaying wreckage of ventilators, bollards and railings, rotting coils of wire and cable still hugging rusting winches. Like a shantytown, each piece of debris offered a nesting place for spiny urchins, arrow crabs, and other creatures of the sea.

Pitt knew from studying a diagram of the Cyclops' interior that searching the stern section was a waste of time. The smokestacks stood over the engine room and its crew quarters. If they were to find the La Dorada statue it would most likely be in the general cargo compartment beneath the bridge and forecastle. He motioned the others to continue their probe toward the bow.

They swam slowly, carefully along the catwalk that stretched over the sprawling coal hatches, skirting around the great clamshell loading buckets and under the corroded derricks that reached forlornly toward the refracted rays from above. It became apparent to them that the Cyclops had died a quick and violent death. The rotting remains of the lifeboats were forever frozen in their davits and much of the superstructure looked as if it had been crushed by a monstrous fist.

The odd boxlike form of the bridge slowly took form out of the blue-green dusk. The two support legs on the starboard side had buckled, but the hull's tilt to port had compensated for the angle. Peculiarly out of kilter with the rest of the ship, the bridge stood on a perfect horizontal plane.

The dark on the other side of the wheelhouse door looked ominous. Pitt switched on his dive light and drifted slowly inside, taking care not to stir up the silt on the deck with his fins. Dim light filtered through the slime-coated portholes on the forward bulkhead. He brushed away the muck from the glass covering the ship's clock. The tarnished hands were frozen at 12:21. He also examined the big upright compass stand. The interior was still watertight and the needle floated free in kerosene, pointing faithfully toward magnetic north. Pitt noted that the ship's heading was 340 degrees.

On opposite sides of the compass, covered over by a colony of sponges that turned vivid red under Pitt's light, were two postlike objects that rose from the deck and fanned out at the top. Curious, Pitt wiped the growth from the port one, revealing a glass face, through which he could barely make out the words AHEAD FULL, HALF, SLOW, DEAD SLOW, STOP, and FINISHED WITH ENGINES. It was the bridge telegraph to the engine room. He noted that the brass arrow was pointing to FULL. He floated over and cleaned the glass on the starboard telegraph. The pointer was locked on FINISHED WITH ENGINES.

Jessie was about eight feet behind Pitt when she let out a garbled scream that lifted the hair on the nape of his neck. He spun around, half thinking she was being dragged away by a shark, but she was gesturing frantically at a pair of objects protruding from the silt.

Two human skulls, muck up to their nose openings, stared through empty eye sockets. They give Pitt the disconcerting feeling he was being watched. The bones of another crewman rested against the base of the helm, one skeletal arm still wedged between the spokes of the wheel. Pitt wondered if one of them might be the pitiful remains of Captain Worley.

There was nothing else to see, so Pitt led Jessie outside the wheelhouse and down a companionway to the crew and passenger quarters. At almost the same time, Gunn and Giordino disappeared down a hatch leading to a small cargo hold.

The layer of silt was shallow in this section of the ship, no more than an inch deep. The companionway led to a long passageway with small compartments off to the sides. Each one contained bunks, porcelain sinks, scattered personal effects, and the skeletal relics of their occupants. Pitt soon lost count of the dead. He paused and added air to his buoyancy compensator to keep his body balanced in a freefloating, horizontal position. The slightest touch from his fins would stir up large clouds of blinding silt.

Pitt tapped Jessie on the shoulder and shone his light into a small head with a bathtub and two toilets. He made a questioning gesture. She grinned around her mouthpiece and made a comical but negative reply.

He accidentally struck his dive light against a steampipe running along the ceiling and momentarily knocked the switch into the Off position. The sudden realm of utter darkness was as total and stifling as if they were dropped into a coffin and the lid slammed shut. Pitt had no wish to remain surrounded by eternal black within the grave of the Cyclops, and he quickly flicked on the light again, exposing a brilliant yellow and red sponge colony that clung to the bulkheads of the passageway.

It soon became obvious they would find no evidence of the La Dorada statue here. They made their way back through the passageway of death and resurfaced on the forecastle deck. Giordino was waiting and motioned toward a hatch that was frozen half open. Pitt squeezed through, clanging his air tanks on the frame, and dropped down a badly eroded ladder.

He swam through what looked like a baggage cargo hold, twisting around the jumbled and decayed rubbish, heading toward the unearthly glow of Gunn's dive light. A pile of unhinged bones passed under him, the jaw of the skull gaping in what seemed in Pitt's imagination a ghastly scream of terror.

He found Gunn intently examining the rotting interior of a large shipping crate. The grisly skeletal remains of two men were wedged between the crate and a bulkhead.

For a brief instant Pitt's heart pounded with excitement and anticipation, his mind certain they had found the most priceless treasure of the sea. Then Gunn looked up, and Pitt saw the bitter disappointment reflected in his eyes.

The crate was empty.

A frustrating search of the cargo hold turned up a startling revelation. Lying in the dark shadows like a collapsed rubber doll was a deep-sea diving suit. The arms were outstretched, the feet encased in Frankenstein-style weighted boots. A tarnished brass diving helmet and breastplate covered the head and neck. Curled off to the side like a dead gray snake was the umbilical line that contained the air hose and lifeline cable. They were severed about six feet from the helmet couplings.

The layer of silt and slime on the diving outfit indicated it had lain there for many years. Pitt removed a knife strapped to his right calf and used it to pry loose the wing nut clamping the helmet's faceplate. It gave slowly at first and then loosened enough to be removed by his fingers. He pulled the faceplate open and aimed the beam of the dive light inside. Protected from the ravages of destructive sea life by the rubber suit and the helmet's safety valves, the head still retained hair and remnants of flesh.

Pitt and his party were not the first to have probed the gruesome secrets of the Cyclops. Someone else had already come and gone with the La Dorada treasure.

<<22>>

Pitt checked his old Doxa watch and calculated their decompression stops. He added an extra minute to each stop as a safety margin to eliminate the gas bubbles from their blood and tissues and prevent the agony of diver's bends.

After leaving the Cyclops, they had exchanged the nearly empty air cylinders for their reserve supply stashed beside the control car and began their slow rise to the surface. A few feet away, Gunn and Giordino added air to their buoyancy compensators to maintain the required depth while handling the cumbersome bundle.

Below them in the watery gloom, the Cyclops lay desolate and cursed to oblivion. Before another decade passed, her rusting walls would begin to collapse inward, and a century later the restless sea floor would cover her pitiful remains under a shroud of silt, leaving only a few pieces of coral-encrusted debris to mark her grave.

Above them, the surface was a turmoil of quicksilver. At the next decompression stop, they began to feel the crushing momentum from the mountainous swells and fought to hang in the void together. There was no thought of a stop at the twenty-foot level. Their air supply was almost exhausted and only death by drowning waited in the depths. They had no alternative but to surface and take their chances in the tempest above.

Jessie seemed composed and unshaken. Pitt realized that she didn't suspect the danger on the surface. Her only thoughts were of seeing the sky again.

Pitt made one final check of the time and motioned upward with his thumb. They began to ascend as one, Jessie hanging on to Pitt's leg, Gunn and Giordino dragging the bundle. The light increased and when Pitt looked up he was surprised to see a whorl of foam only a few feet above his head.

He surfaced in a trough and was lifted by a vast sloping wall of green that carried him up and over the crest of a high wave as lightly as a bathtub toy. The wind shrieked in his ears and sea spray lashed his cheeks. He pulled up his mask and blinked his eyes. The sky to the east was filled with dark swirling clouds, dark as charcoal as they soared over the gray-green sea. The speed of the approaching storm was uncanny. It seemed to be leaping from one horizon to the next.

Jessie popped up beside him and stared through wide stricken eyes at the blackening overcast bearing down on them. She spit out her mouthpiece. "What is it?"

"The hurricane," Pitt shouted over the wind. "It's coming faster than anyone thought."

"Oh, God!" she gasped.

"Release your weight belt and unstrap your air tanks," he said.

Nothing needed to be said to the others. They had already dropped their gear and were tearing open the bundle. The clouds swept overhead and they were hurled into a twilight world drained of all color. They were stunned at the violent display of atmospheric power. The wind suddenly doubled in strength, filling the air with foam and driving spray and shattering the wave crests into froth.

Abruptly, the bundle that they had so doggedly hauled with them from the Prosperteer burst open into an inflatable boat, complete with a compact twenty-horsepower outboard motor encased in a waterproof plastic cover. Giordino rolled over the side, followed by Gunn, and they frantically tore at the motor covering. The savage winds quickly drove the boat away from Pitt and Jessie. The gap began widening at an alarming rate.

"The sea anchor!" Pitt bellowed. "Throw out the sea anchor!"

Gunn barely heard Pitt over the wail of the wind. He heaved a canvas cone-shaped sack over the side that was held open by an iron hoop at the mouth. He then paid it out on a line which he made fast to the bitt on the bow. As the drag on the anchor took hold, the boat's head came around into the wind and slowed its drift.

While Giordino labored over the motor, Gunn threw out a line to Pitt, who tied it under Jessie's arms. As she was towed toward the boat Pitt swam after her, the waves breaking over his head. The mask was torn from his head and the salt spray whipped his eyes. He doubled his effort when he saw that the running sea was carrying away the boat faster than he could swim.

Giordino's muscled arms thrust into the water, closed on Jessie's wrists, and yanked her into the boat as effortlessly as if she were a ten-pound sea bass. Pitt squinted his eyes until they were almost slits. He felt rather than saw the line fall over his shoulder. He could just make out Giordino's grinning face leaning over the side, his great hands winding in the line. Then Pitt was lying in the bottom of the wildly rocking boat, panting and blinking the salt from his eyes.

"Another minute and you'd have been beyond reach of the line," Giordino yelled.

"Time sure flies when you're having fun," Pitt yelled back.

Giordino rolled his eyes at Pitt's cocky reply and went back to laboring over the motor.

The immediate danger facing them now was overturning. Until the motor could be started to provide a small degree of stability, a thrashing wave could flip them upside down. Pitt and Gunn threw over trailing ballast bags, which temporarily reduced the threat.

The strength of the wind was ungodly. It tore at their hair and bodies, the spray felt as abrasive to their skin as if it came from a sand blaster. The little inflatable boat flexed under the stress of the mad sea and reeled in the grip of the gale, but she somehow refused to be tipped over.

Pitt knelt on the hard rubber floorboards, clasping the lifeline with his right hand, and turned his back to the wind. Then he extended his left arm. It was an old seaman's trick that always worked in the Northern Hemisphere. His left hand would be pointing to the center of the storm.

They were slightly outside the center, he judged. There would be no breathing spell from the relative calm of the hurricane's eye. Its main path lay a good forty miles to the northwest. The worst was yet to come.

A wave crashed over them, and then another-- two in quick succession that would have broken the back of a larger, more rigid vessel. But the tough, runty inflatable shook off the water and struggled back to the surface like a playful seal. Everyone managed to keep a firm grip and no one was washed overboard.

At last Giordino signaled that he had the motor running. No one could hear it over the howl of the wind. Quickly Pitt and Gunn pulled in the sea anchor and the ballast bags.

Pitt cupped one hand and yelled in Giordino's ear, "Run with the storm!"

To sheer on a sideways course was impossible. The combined force of wind and water would have flung them over. To head into the thrust of the storm bows-on meant a sure battering they could never survive. Their only hope was to ride in the path of the least resistance. Giordino grimly nodded and pushed the throttle lever. The boat banked around sharply in a trough and surged forward across a sea that had turned completely white from the driving spray. They all flattened themselves against the floorboards except Giordino. He sat with one arm wrapped around a lifeline and gripped the outboard motor's steering lever with his free hand.

The daylight was fading slowly away and night would fall in another hour. The air was hot and stifling, making it difficult to breathe. The almost solid wall of wind-stripped water decreased visibility to less than three hundred yards. Pitt borrowed Gunn's diver's mask and raised his head over the bow. It was like standing under Niagara Falls and staring upward.

Giordino felt icy despair as the hurricane unleashed its full wrath around them. That they had survived this long was just short of a miracle. He was fighting the tumbling sea in a kind of restrained frenzy, struggling desperately to keep their puny oasis from being overwhelmed by a wave. He constantly changed throttle settings, trying to ride just behind the towering crests, warily glancing over his shoulder every few seconds at the gaping trough chasing their stern thirty feet below and behind.

Giordino knew the end was only minutes away, certainly no more than an hour with enormous luck. It would be so easy to swing the boat abeam of the sea and finish it now. He allowed himself a quick look down at the others and saw a broad smile of encouragement on Pitt's lips. If his friend of nearly thirty years felt close to death, he gave no hint of it. Pitt threw a jaunty wave and returned to peering over the bow. Giordino couldn't help wondering what he was looking at.

Pitt was studying the waves. They were piling up higher and more steeply, the wind hurling the foaming white horse at the peaks into the next trough. He estimated the distance between crests and judged that they were packing together like the forward lines of a marching column that was slowing its pace.

The bottom was coming up. The surge was flinging them into shallower water.

Pitt's eyes strained to penetrate the chaotic wall of water. Slowly, as if a black-and-white photograph were being developed, shadowy images began taking shape. The first image that flashed through his mind was that of stained teeth, blackened molars being scrubbed by white toothpaste. The image sharpened into dark rocks with the waves smashing against them in great unending explosions of white. He watched the water shoot skyward as the backwash struck an incoming surge. Then, as the surf momentarily settled, he spotted a low reef extending parallel to the rocks that formed a natural wall in front of a wide, sweeping beach. It had to be the Cuban island of Cayo Santa Maria, he reckoned.

Pitt had no problem visualizing the probabilities of the new nightmare, bodies torn to shreds on the coral reef or crushed on the jagged rocks. He wiped the salt from the mask lens and stared again. Then he saw it, a thousand-in-one chance to survive the vortex.

Giordino had seen it too-- a small inlet between the rocks. He steered for it, knowing he stood a better chance of threading a needle in a thrashing washing machine.

In the next thirty seconds the churning outboard and the storm had carried them a hundred yards. The sea over the reef boiled in a dirty foam and the wind velocity increased to where the driving spray and the darkness made vision almost impossible. Jessie's face went white, her body rigid. Her eyes met Pitt's for an instant, fearful yet trusting. His arm circled her waist and squeezed tight.

A breaker caught and struck them like an avalanche down a mountain. The screw of the outboard raced as it lifted clear of the crest, but its protesting whirr was drowned by the deafening noise of the surf. Gunn opened his mouth to shout a warning, but no sound came. The plunging breaker curled over the boat and smashed down on them with fantastic force. It tore Gunn's hold on the lifeline, and Pitt saw him gyrate through the air like a kite with a broken string.

The boat was driven over the reef, buried in foam. The coral sliced through the rubberized fabric into the air chambers. A field of razor blades couldn't have done it more efficiently. The thickly encrusted bottom swirled past. For several moments they were completely submerged. Then at last the faithful little inflatable wallowed to the surface and they were clear of the reef with only fifty yards of open water separating them from the craggy ramparts, looming dark and wet.

Gunn bobbed up only a few feet away, gasping for breath. Pitt reached way out, grabbed him by the shoulder strap of his buoyancy compensator, and hauled him on board. The rescue didn't come a second too soon. The next breaker came roaring over the reef like a herd of crazed animals running before a forest fire.

Giordino grimly hung on to the motor, which was unfalteringly purring away with every bit of horsepower her pistons could punch out. It didn't take a psychic to know the frail craft was being torn to bits. She was only buoyed up by air still trapped in her chambers.

They were almost within reach of the gap between the rocks when they were caught by the wave. The preceding trough slipped under the base of the breaker, causing it to steepen to twice its height. Its speed increased as it rushed toward the rocky shoreline.

Pitt glanced up. The menacing pinnacles towered above them, water boiling around their foundations like a seething caldron. The boat was thrust up the front of the breaker, and for a brief instant Pitt thought they might be carried over the peak before it broke. But it curled suddenly and toppled forward, striking the rocks opposite the inlet with the shattering crash of thunder, throwing the shredded boat and its occupants into the air, spilling them into the maelstrom.

Pitt heard Jessie scream from far in the distance. It barely pierced his numbed mind, and he struggled to reply, but then everything blurred. The boat fell with such jarring force the motor was ripped from the transom and slung onto the beach.

Pitt remembered nothing after that. A black whirlpool opened up and he was sucked into it.

<<23>>

The man who was the driving force behind the Jersey Colony lay on an office couch inside the concealed headquarters of the project. He rested his eyes and concentrated on his meeting with the President on the golf course.

Leonard Hudson knew damn well the President wasn't about to sit still and wait patiently for another surprise contact. The Chief Executive was a pusher who never left anything to luck. Although Hudson's sources inside the White House and the intelligence agencies reported no indication of an investigation, he was certain the President was figuring a way to penetrate the curtain around the inner core.'

He could almost feel the net being thrown.

His secretary rapped softly on the door and then opened it. "Excuse me for intruding, but Mr. Steinmetz is on the viewer and wishes to talk to you."

"I'll be there in a minute."

Hudson rearranged his thoughts as he laced his shoes. Like a computer, he logged out of one problem and called up another. He didn't look forward to battling with Steinmetz even if the man was a quarter of a million miles away.

Eli Steinmetz was the kind of engineer who overcame an obstacle by designing a mechanical solution and then building it with his own hands. His talent for improvisation was the reason Hudson had chosen him as the leader of the Jersey Colony. A graduate of Caltech with a master's degree from MIT, he had supervised construction projects in half the countries of the world, even Russia.

When approached by the "inner core" to build the first human habitat on lunar soil, Steinmetz had taken nearly a week to make a decision while his mind wrestled with the awesome concept and staggering logistics of such a project. Finally, he accepted, but only on his own terms.

He and only he would select the crew to live on the moon. There would be no pilots or prima donna astronauts in residence. All space flight would be directed by ground control or computers. Only men whose special qualifications were vital in the construction of the base would be included. Besides Steinmetz, the first three to launch the colony were solar and structural engineers. Months later a biologist-doctor, a geochemical engineer, and a horticulturist arrived. Other scientists and technicians followed as their special skills and knowledge were required.

At first Steinmetz had been considered too old. He was fifty-three when he set foot on the moon, and he was fifty-nine now. But Hudson and the other "inner core" members weighed experience over age and never once regretted their selection.

Now Hudson stared into the video monitor at Steinmetz, who was holding up a bottle with a hand-drawn label. Unlike the other colonists', Steinmetz's face sprouted no beard and his head was clean-shaven. His skin had a dusky tint that complemented his slate-black eyes. Steinmetz was a fifth-generation American Jew, but he could have walked unnoticed in a Moslem mosque.

"How's that for self-sufficiency?" said Steinmetz. "Chateau Lunar Chardonnay, 1989. Not exactly a premier vintage. Only had enough grapes to make four bottles. Should have allowed the vines in the greenhouses to mature another year, but we got impatient."

"I see you even made your own bottle," observed Hudson.

"Yes, our pilot chemical plant is in full operation now. We've increased our output to where we can process almost two tons of lunar soil materials into two hundred pounds of a bastard metal or five hundred pounds of glass in fifteen days."

Steinmetz appeared to be sitting at a long flat table in the center of a small cave. He was wearing a thin cotton shirt and a pair of jogger's shorts.

"You look cool and comfortable," said Hudson.

"Our first priority when we landed," Steinmetz said, smiling. "Remember?"

"Seal the entrance to the cavern and pressurize its interior so you could work in a comfortable atmosphere without the handicap of encapsulated suits."

"After living in those damned things for eight months, you can't imagine what a relief it was to get back into normal clothing."

"Murphy has been closely monitoring your temperatures and he says the walls of the cavern are increasing their rate of heat absorption. He suggests that you send a man out and lower the angle on the solar collectors by half a degree."

"I'll see to it."

Hudson paused. "It won't be long now, Eli."

"Much changed on earth since I left?"

"About the same, only more smog, more traffic, more people."

Steinmetz laughed. "You trying to talk me into another tour of duty, Leo?"

"Wouldn't dream of it. You're going to be the biggest-man-on-campus since Lindbergh when you drop out of the blue."

"I'll have all our records packed and secured in the lunar transfer vehicle twenty-four hours before liftoff."

"I hope you don't have a mind to uncork your lunar vino on the trip home."

"No, we'll hold our farewell party in plenty of time to purge all alcoholic residue."

Hudson had been trying to approach his point sideways, but decided it was better to come right out with it. "You'll have to deal with the Russians shortly before you leave," he said in a monotone.

"We've been through this," Steinmetz replied firmly. "There is no reason to believe they'll land within two thousand miles of the Jersey Colony."

"Then seek them out and destroy them. You have the weapons and equipment for such a hunting expedition. Their scientists won't be armed. The last thing they'd expect is an attack from men already on the moon."

"The boys and I will gladly defend the homestead, but we're nest about to go out and shoot down unarmed men who are innocent of any threat."

"Listen to me, Eli," Hudson implored. "There is a threat, a very real one. If the Soviets somehow discover the existence of Jersey Colony, they can move right in. With you and your people returning to earth less than twenty-four hours after the cosmonauts land, the colony will be deserted and everything in it fair game."

"I realize that as well as you," said Steinmetz roughly, "and hate it even worse. But the sad fact is we can't postpone our departure. We've pushed ourselves to the limit and beyond up here. I can't order these men to hang on another six months or a year, or until your friends can whistle up another craft to take us from space to a soft landing on earth. Cross it off to bad luck and the Russians, who leaked their lunar landing schedule after it was too late for us to alter our return flight."

"The moon belongs to us by right of possession," Hudson argued angrily. "Men of the United States were the first to walk on its soil, and we were the first to colonize it. For God's sake, Eli, don't turn it over to a bunch of thieving Communists."

"Dammit, Leo, there's enough moon for everybody. Besides, this isn't exactly a Garden of Eden. Outside this cavern, day and night temperatures can vary as much as two hundred and fifty degrees Celsius. I doubt if even casino gambling could make a go of it here. Look, even if the cosmonauts fall into our colony, they won't strike a gold vein of information. The accumulation of all our data will go back to earth with us. What we leave behind we can destroy"

"Don't be a fool. Why destroy what can be used by the next colonists, permanent colonists, who will need every advantage they can get?"

Viewing the monitor in front of him, Steinmetz could see the flush on Hudson's face 240,000 miles away. "I've made my position clear, Leo. We'll defend Jersey Colony if need be, but don't expect us to form a posse to kill innocent cosmonauts. It's one thing to shoot at an unmanned space probe, but quite another to murder a fellow human being for trespassing on land he has every right to walk on."

There was an uneasy silence after this statement, but it was no less than what Hudson expected from Steinmetz. The man was no coward. Far from it. Hudson had heard reports of many fights and brawls. Steinmetz could be pushed and clubbed to the floor, but when he came to his feet and his rage seethed to a boil, he could fight like ten devils incarnate. Purveyors of his legend had lost count of the backcountry saloon patrons he had mauled.

Hudson broke the spell. "Suppose the Soviet cosmonauts land within fifty miles? Will that prove to you they intend to occupy Jersey Colony?"

Steinmetz shifted in his stone-carved chair, reluctant to make a concession. "We'll have to wait and see."

"Nobody ever won a battle by going on the defensive," Hudson lectured him. "If their landing site is within striking distance and they show every indication of advancing on the colony, will you accept a compromise and attack?"

Steinmetz bowed his shaven head in assent. "Since you insist on putting my back to the wall, you don't leave me much choice."

"The stakes are too high," said Hudson. "You have no choice at all."

<<24>>

The fog in Pitt's brain lifted, and one by one his senses flickered back to life like lights across a circuit board. He struggled to raise his eyelids and focus on the nearest object. For a good half minute he stared at the water-wrinkled skin of his left hand, then at the orange face of his diver's watch as if it were the first time he had ever laid eyes on it.

In the dim twilight the luminescent hands read 6:34. Only two hours since they had escaped from the wrecked control car. It seemed more like a lifetime, and none of it real.

The wind was still roaring off the sea with the speed of an express train and the sea spray combined with rain to beat against his back. He tried to lift himself to his hands and knees, but his legs felt trapped in concrete. He turned and looked down. They were half buried under the sand by the burrowing action of the ebbing surf line.

Pitt lay there for a few more moments, recharging his strength, an exhausted and battered piece of flotsam thrown on the beach. Boulders rose up on either side of him like tenements overlooking an alley. His first really conscious thought was that Giordino had done it, he had steered them through the needle's eye of the rock barrier.

Then somewhere through the howling wind, he could hear Jessie calling faintly. He dug out his legs and forced himself to his knees, staggering under the gale, retching out the saltwater that had been forced into his nose, mouth, and down his throat.

Half crawling, half stumbling across the stinging sand, he found Jessie sitting dazed, her hair limp and stringy on her shoulders, Gunn's head resting in her lap. She looked up at him through lost eyes that suddenly widened in vast relief.

"Oh, thank God," she murmured, her words drowned out by the storm.

Pitt put his arms around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug. Then he turned his attention to Gunn.

He was semiconscious. The broken ankle had swelled like a soccer ball. There was an ugly gash above the hairline, and his body was cut in a dozen places from the coral, but he was alive and his breathing was deep and steady.

Pitt shielded his eyes and scanned the beach. Giordino was nowhere in sight. At first Pitt refused to believe it. The seconds passed and he stood rooted, his body leaning into the offshore gale, eyes peering desperately through the torrential dark. He caught a glimpse of orange in the swirl of a dying breaker, and immediately recognized it as the shredded carcass of the inflatable boat. It was caught in the grip of the backwash, drifting out and then swept in again by the next wave.

Pitt lurched into the water up to his hips, oblivious to the spent breakers that rolled around him. He dove under the tattered boat and extended his hands, feeling around like a blind man. His groping fingers found only torn fabric. Moved by some deep urgency to make absolutely sure, he pulled the boat toward the beach.

A large wave caught him unawares and smashed into his back. Somehow he managed to keep his feet under him and drag the boat into shallow water. As the blanket of foam dissolved and was blown away, he saw a pair of legs protruding from under the collapsed boat. Shock, disbelief, and a fanatical refusal to accept Giordino's death flooded through his mind. Frantically, oblivious to the battering of the hurricane, he tore away the sliced remains of the inflatable, revealing Giordino's body floating upright, his head buried inside a buoyancy chamber. Hope came first to Pitt, then optimism that struck him like a punch in the stomach.

Giordino might still be alive.

Pitt stripped away the interior liner and bent over Giordino's face, afraid deep down it would be a lifeless blue. But there was color, and there was breath-- ragged and shallow, but there was breath. The brawny little Italian had incredibly survived on air that was trapped inside the buoyancy chamber.

Pitt felt suddenly drained to his bones. Physically and emotionally he was spent. He swayed wearily, the wind trying to beat him flat. Only a firm resolve to save everyone drove him on. Slowly, stiffly from a myriad of cuts and bruises, he slid his arms under Giordino and picked him up. The dead weight of Giordino's solid hundred and seventy-five pounds felt like a ton.

Gunn had come around and was huddled with Jessie. He looked up questioningly at Pitt, who was struggling across the windswept beach under Giordino's inert body.

"We've got to find shelter from the wind," Pitt yelled, his voice rasped by the intake of saltwater. "Can you walk?"

"I'll help him," Jessie yelled in reply. She circled both arms around Gunn's waist, braced her feet in the sand, and shoved him upright.

Panting under his load, Pitt made for a line of palm trees bordering the beach. Every twenty feet he glanced back. Jessie had somehow retained her dive mask, so she was the only one who could keep her eyes open and see straight ahead. She was supporting nearly half of Gunn's weight while he gamely hobbled beside her, eyes shut against the stinging sand, dragging his badly swollen foot.

They made it into the trees but received no mercy from the hurricane. The gale bent the tops of the palms almost to the ground, their fronds splitting like paper in a shredding machine. Coconuts were ripped from their clusters, striking the ground with the velocity of cannonballs and just as deadly. One grazed Pitt's shoulder, its husk tearing his exposed skin. It was as though they were running through the no-man's-land of a battlefield.

Pitt kept his head bent down and squinted sideways, watching the ground directly in front of him. Before he knew it he had walked into a chain link fence. Jessie and Gunn drew up beside him and stopped. He stared to the right and then the left, but found no sign of a break. Trying to climb it was out of the question. The fence was at least ten feet high with a thick angle of barbed wire at the top. Pitt also spotted a small porcelain insulator and realized the chain links were wired for electricity.

"Which way?" Jessie cried.

"You lead," Pitt shouted in her ear. "I can hardly see."

She nodded to the left and set off with Gunn limping along at her side. They staggered onward, beaten every step by the unrelenting force of the wind.

Ten minutes later they had covered only fifty yards. Pitt couldn't push on much longer. His arms were going numb and he was losing his grip on Giordino. He closed his eyes and blindly began to count the steps, staying in a straight line by brushing his right shoulder against the fence, certain the hurricane must have cut off the power source.

He heard Jessie shouting something, and he opened one eye in a narrow slit. She was pointing vigorously ahead. Pitt sank to his knees, gently lowered Giordino to the ground, and looked past Jessie. A palm tree had been uprooted by the insane wind and hurled through tire air like some monstrous javelin, landing on the fence and crushing it against the sand.

With appalling abruptness, night closed in and the sky went pitch black. Blindly, they stepped over the flattened fence like sightless drones, reeling and falling, driven on by instinct and some inner discipline that wouldn't allow them to lie down and give up. Jessie gamely kept the lead. Pitt had slung Giordino over a shoulder and held on to the waistband of Gunn's swim trunks, not so much for support as to prevent them from becoming separated.

A hundred yards, then another hundred yards, and suddenly Gunn and Jessie seemed to drop into the ground as if they were swallowed up. Pitt released his grip on Gunn and fell backward, grunting as Giordino's full weight fell across his chest, forcing the air from his lungs. He scrambled from under Giordino and stretched his hand gropingly forward into the dark until he felt nothing there.

Jessie and Gunn had fallen down a steep, eight-foot slope into a sunken road. He could just make out their vague outlines huddled in a heap below.

"Are you injured?" he called.

"We already hurt so much we can't tell." Gunn's voice was muffled by the gale, but not so muffled Pitt couldn't tell it came through clenched teeth.

"Jessie?"

"I'm all right. . . I think."

"Can you give me a hand with Giordino?"

"I'll try."

"Send him down," said Gunn. "We can manage it."

Pitt eased Giordino's limp figure over the edge of the slope and lowered him gently by the arms. The others held him by the legs until Pitt could scramble down beside them and take up the heavy bulk. Once Giordino was stretched comfortably on the ground, Pitt looked around and took stock.

The sunken road provided a shelter from the gale-force wind. The blowing sand had dropped off and Pitt could finally open his eyes. The road's surface was made up of crushed seashells and appeared hard packed and little used. No sign of light was visible in either direction, which wasn't too surprising when Pitt considered that any local inhabitants would have evacuated the shoreline before the full energy of the hurricane struck.

Both Jessie and Gunn were very nearly played out, their breath coming in short, tortured rasps. Pitt was aware his own breathing was fast and labored, and his heart pounding like a steam engine under full load. Exhausted and battered as they were, Pitt reflected, it still felt like paradise to lie behind a barrier that reduced by half the main drive of the gale.

Two minutes later Giordino began to groan. Then he slowly sat up and looked around, seeing nothing.

"Jesus, it's dark," he muttered to himself, his mind crawling from a woolly mist.

Pitt knelt beside him and said, "Welcome back to the land of the walking dead."

Giordino raised his hand and touched Pitt's face in the darkness. "Dirk?"

"In the flesh."

"Jessie and Rudi?"

"Both right here."

"Where is here?"

"About a mile from the beach." Pitt didn't bother to explain how they survived the landing or how they arrived at the road. That could come later. "Where are you hurt?"

"All over. My rib cage feels like it's on fire. I think my left shoulder is dislocated, one leg feels like it was twisted off at the knee, and the base of my skull where it meets the neck throbs like hell." He swore disgustedly. "Damn, I blew it. I thought I could bring us through the rocks. Forgive me for screwing up."

"Would you believe me if I told you we'd all be fish food if it wasn't for you?" Pitt smiled and then gently probed Giordino's knee, guessing that the injury was a torn tendon. Then he turned his attention to the shoulder. "I can't do anything about your ribs, knee, or thick skull, but your shoulder is out of place, and if you're in the mood I think I can manipulate it back where it belongs."

"Seems I recall you doing that to me when we played football in high school. The team doctor raised holy hell. Said you should have let him do it."

"That's because he was a sadist," Pitt said, grasping Giordino's arm. "Ready?"

"Go on, tear it off."

Pitt yanked and the joint snapped into place with an audible pop. Giordino let out a gasp that died into a relieved sigh. Pitt felt around in the dark beside the road until he found a stout branch that had been torn off a small scrub pine, and gave it to Gunn to use as a staff in place of a crutch. Jessie clutched one of Gunn's arms to steady him, while Pitt hoisted Giordino onto his sound leg and supported him with an arm around his waist.

This time Pitt led the way, mentally flipping a coin and heading up the road to their right, plodding close to the high embankment to shelter their progress from the unabating onslaught of the storm. Now the going was easier. No deep sand to wade through, no fallen trees to stumble over, not even the wind-propelled rain to torture them, for the edge of the slope caused it to fly over their heads. Just the graded flat of the road leading off into the stricken darkness.

After an hour had passed, Pitt figured they had hobbled about a mile. He was about to call a rest stop when Giordino suddenly stiffened and stopped so unexpectantly that he lost Pitt's support and toppled to the road.

"Barbecue!" he yelled. "Smell it? Somebody's barbecuing beef."

Pitt sniffed the air. The aroma was faint, but it was there. He lifted Giordino and pushed ahead. The smell of steaks broiling over charcoal grew stronger with every step. In another fifty yards they met with a massive iron gate whose bars were welded in the shape of dolphins. A wall topped by broken glass stretched into the darkness on either side and stood astride a guardhouse. Not surprisingly, in light of the hurricane, it was vacant.

The gate, reaching a good twelve feet toward the ebony sky, was locked, but the outer and inner doors of the guardhouse were open, so they walked through. A short distance beyond, the road ended in a circular drive that passed in front of what seemed in the stormy dark to be a large mound. As they approached, it became a castlelike structure whose roof and three sides were covered over with sandy soil and planted with palmetto trees and native scrub brush. Only the front of the building lay exposed, starkly barren with no windows and only one huge, mahogany door artistically carved with lifelike fish.

"Reminds me of a buried Egyptian temple," said Gunn.

"If it wasn't for the ornate door," said Pitt, "I'd guess it was some kind of military supply depot."

Jessie set them straight. "A subinsulator house. Soil is an ideal insulation against temperatures and weather. Same principle as the sod houses on the early American prairie. I know an architect who specializes in designing them."

"Looks deserted," observed Giordino.

Pitt tried the doorknob. It turned. He eased the door open. The aroma of food wafted out from somewhere within the darkened interior.

"Doesn't smell deserted," said Pitt.

The foyer was paved in tile with a Spanish motif and was lit by several large candles set on a tall stand. The walls were carved blocks of black lava rock and their only decoration was a gruesome painting of a man hanging from the fanged mouth of a snakelike sea monster. They entered and Pitt pulled the door closed behind them.

For some strange reason, the howl of the tempest outside and everyone's weary breathing seemed to add to the deathly stillness of the house.

"Anyone home?" Pitt called out.

He repeated the question twice more, but his only reply was a ghostly silence. A dim corridor beckoned, but Pitt hesitated. Another smell invaded his nostrils. Tobacco smoke. Stronger than the nearlethal gas emitted by Admiral Sandecker's cigars. Pitt was no expert, but he knew that expensive cigars smelled more rotten than the cheap ones. He guessed the smoke must be coming from prime Havanas.

He turned to the others. "What do you think?"

"Do we have a choice?" Giordino asked dumbly.

"Two," replied Pitt. "We can either get out of here while we can and take our chances in the hurricane. Then, when it begins to die down, we can try to steal a boat and head back to Florida="

"Or throw ourselves on the mercy of the Cubans," Gunn interrupted.

"That's how it boils down."

Jessie shook her head and stared at him through soft, tender eyes. "We can't go back," she said quietly with no trace of fear. "The storm will take days to die, and none of us is in any condition to survive out there another four hours. I vote we take our chances with Castro's government. The very worst they can do is throw us in jail while the State Department negotiates our release."

Pitt looked at Gunn. "Rudi, how say you?"

"We're done in, Dirk. Logic is on Jessie's side."

"Al, how do you see it?"

Giordino shrugged. "Say the word, pal, and I'll swim back to the States." And Pitt knew he meant it too. "But the honest truth is we can't take much more. It pains me to say this, but I think we'd better throw in the towel."

Pitt looked at them and reflected that he couldn't have been blessed with a better team of people to face an unpleasant situation, and it didn't take a visionary to see things were going to become very unpleasant indeed.

"Okay," he said with a grim smile. "Let's crash the party."

They set off down the corridor and soon passed under an archway that opened onto a vast living room decorated in early Spanish antiques. Giant tapestries hung on the walls, depicting galleons sailing sunset seas or being driven helplessly onto reefs by thrashing storms. The furnishings seemed to have a nautical flair, the room was illuminated by ancient ship's lanterns of copper and colored glass. The fireplace was glowing with a crackling fire that warmed the room to hothouse temperatures.

There wasn't a soul to be seen anywhere.

"Ghastly," murmured Jessie. "Our host has simply dreadful taste in decor."

Pitt held up his hand for quiet. "Voices," he said softly. "Coming from that other archway between those two suits of armor."

They moved into another corridor that was dimly lit by candle holders every ten feet. The sounds of laughter and obscure words, from both male and female, became louder. A light loomed from under a curtain ahead. They paused for a second, and then swung it aside and passed through.

They had entered a long dining hall filled with nearly forty people, who stopped in midconversation and stared at Pitt and the others with the awed expression of a group of villagers meeting their first aliens from space.

The women were elegantly dressed in evening gowns, while half the men wore tuxedos and the other half were attired in military uniforms. Several servants waiting on the table stood stock-still like images on motion picture film that was suddenly freeze-framed. The stunned silence was as thick as a wool blanket. A scene straight out of an early thirties Hollywood melodrama.

Pitt realized he and the rest must have made a shocking picture. Soaking wet, their clothing torn and ragged, bruised and gashed skin, torn muscles, broken bones. Hair plastered down around their heads, they must have looked like drowned rats rejected from a polluted river.

Pitt looked at Gunn and said, "How do you say `Pardon the intrusion' in Spanish?"

"Haven't the vaguest idea. I took French in school."

Then it struck Pitt. Most of the uniformed men were high-ranking Soviet officers. Only one appeared to be from the Cuban military.

Jessie was in her element. To Pitt she couldn't have looked more regal, even if the designer safari suit hung on her body in tatters.

"Is there a gentleman among you who will offer a lady a chair?" she demanded.

Before she received an answer, ten men with Russian-type machine pistols burst into the room and surrounded them in a loose circle, sphinx-faced men whose weapons were aimed at all four stomachs. Their eyes were icy and their lips set in tight lines. There was little doubt in Pitt's mind that they were highly trained to kill on command.

Giordino, with the appearance of a man run over by a garbage truck, painfully pulled himself to his full height and stared back. "Did you ever see so many smiling faces?" he asked conversationally.

"No," said Pitt with the beginning of a to-hell-with-you grin. "Not since Little Big Horn."

Jessie didn't hear them. As if in a trance she shouldered her way through the armed guards and stopped near the head of the table, staring down at a tall, gray-haired man attired in formal evening wear, who stared back at her in shocked disbelief.

She brushed back her wet, tangled hair and struck a sophisticated, feline pose. Then she spoke in a soft, commanding voice. "Be a dear, Raymond, and pour your wife a glass of wine."

<<25>>

Hagen drove nineteen miles east of downtown Colorado Springs on Highway 94 until he came to Enoch Road. Then he turned right and arrived at the main entrance of the Unified Space Operations Center.

The two-billion-dollar project, constructed on 640 acres of land and manned by 5,000 uniformed and civilian personnel, controlled all military space vehicle and shuttle flights as well as satellite monitoring programs. An entire aerospace community mushroomed around the center, covering thousands of acres with residential developments, scientific and industrial parks, high-tech research and manufacturing plants, and Air Force test facilities. In ten short years, what had once been sparse grazing land inhabited by small herds of cattle had become the "Space Capital of the World."

Hagen flashed his security clearance, drove into the parking lot, and stopped opposite a side entrance to the massive building. He did not get out of the car but opened his briefcase and removed his worn legal pad. He turned to a page with three names and added a fourth.

Raymond LeBaron....Whereabouts unknown.

Leonard Hudson....Same.

Gunnar Eriksen....Same.

General Clark Fisher....Colorado Springs.

Hagen's call to the Drake Hotel from Pattenden Lab had alerted an old friend at the FBI, who traced the number of Anson Jones to a classified line at an officer's residence on Peterson Air Force Base outside of Colorado Springs. The house was occupied by four-star General Clark Fisher, head of the joint Military Space Command.

Posing as a pest control inspector, Hagen had been given the run of the house by the general's wife. Fortunately for him, she considered his unexpected arrival as a heaven-sent opportunity to complain about an army of spiders that had invaded the premises. He listened attentively and promised to attack the insects with every weapon in his arsenal. Then, while she fussed around in the kitchen with the hired cook, experimenting with a new recipe for apricot sautéed prawns, Hagen tossed the general's study.

His search revealed only that Fisher was a stickler for security. Hagen found nothing in desk drawers, files, or hidden recesses that could prove beneficial to a Soviet agent or himself. He decided to wait it out until the general left for the evening and then search his office at the space center. As he left by the rear door Mrs. Fisher was talking on the telephone and simply waved goodbye. Hagen paused for a moment and overheard her telling the general to stop off on his way home and pick up a bottle of sherry.

Hagen put the legal pad back in the briefcase and took out a can of diet cola and a thick salami sandwich with sliced dill pickle, wrapped in wax paper with a delicatessen's advertising printed on both sides. The Colorado temperature had cooled considerably once the sun had dropped over the Rocky Mountains. The shadow of Pike's Peak stretched out over the plains, casting a dark veil over the treeless landscape.

Hagen didn't notice the scenic beauty unfolding through the windshield. What disturbed him was that he did not have a firm grip on any member of the "inner core." Three of the names on his list remained hidden, God only knew where, and the fourth was still innocent until proven guilty. No hard facts, only a phone number and a gut instinct that Fisher was part of the Jersey Colony conspiracy. He had to be absolutely certain, and most important, he desperately needed to pick up a thread to the next man.

Hagen stopped his mental wanderings, his eyes focused on the rearview mirror. A man in a blue officer's uniform was passing through the side entrance, the door held open by a five-stripe sergeant, or whatever specialist rating the Air Force gave its enlisted men these days. The officer was tall, athletically built, wore four stars on his shoulders, and was quite handsome in a Gregory Peck way. The sergeant accompanied him across a sidewalk to a waiting Air Force blue sedan and smartly opened the rear door.

Something about the scene snapped a string in Hagen's mind. He sat up straight and turned around to stare boldly out the side window. Fisher was in the act of bending over to enter the backseat of his car, holding a briefcase. That was it. The briefcase wasn't held by the handle as it would normally be carried. Fisher was clutching it like a football, under his arm and against the side of his chest.

Hagen had no qualms against changing his carefully laid out plan in midstream. He improvised on the spot, quickly forgetting about searching Fisher's command office. If his sudden creative spark didn't pan out, he could always go back. He started the engine and moved off across the parking lot behind the general's car.

Fisher's driver pulled across the intersection and turned onto Highway 94 under a yellow light. Hagen hung back until the traffic thinned. Then he ran the red light and accelerated until he was close enough behind the Air Force blue car to make out the driver's face in its rearview mirror. He held that position, watching to see if there was any eye contact. There was none. The sergeant was not a suspicious sort and never checked his tail. Hagen rightly assumed the man had no training in defensive driving tactics against possible terrorist attack.

After a slight bend in the highway the lights of a shopping center came into view. Hagen glanced at his speedometer. The sergeant was cruising along five miles an hour below the posted speed limit. Hagen pulled into the outer lane and passed. He speeded up slightly and then slowed down to turn into the driveway of the shopping center, gambling that one of the stores sold liquor, gambling that General Fisher hadn't forgotten his wife's instructions to buy the bottle of sherry.

The Air Force car drove on past.

"Damn!" Hagen muttered to himself. It struck him that any serviceman would have purchased liquor at his base post exchange, where it was sold for much less than at a retail store.

Hagen was stalled for a few seconds behind a woman trying to back out of a parking slot. When he finally broke free, he burned rubber swinging from the driveway onto the road. Luckily, Fisher's driver had caught a red light at the next intersection and Hagen was able to catch and pass him again.

He pressed the accelerator to the floor, trying to put as much distance as he could between them. In two miles he turned into the narrow road leading to the main gate of Peterson Air Force Base. He showed his security clearance to the Air Policeman standing stiffly, wearing a white helmet, matching silk scarf at the neck, and a black leather side holster that contained a pearl-handled revolver.

"Where can I find the PX?" Hagen asked.

The AP pointed up the road. "Straight ahead to the second stop sign. Then left toward the water tower. A large gray building. You can't miss it."

Hagen thanked him and moved away just as Fisher's car pulled up behind and was smartly waved on through the gate. Taking his time, he stayed within the base speed limit and eased into the post exchange parking area only fifty feet ahead of Fisher. He stopped between a jeep Wagoneer and a Dodge pickup truck with a camper that effectively hid most of his car from view. He slipped from behind the wheel, turning off the lights but keeping the engine running.

The general's car had stopped, and Hagen unhurriedly approached it in a direct line, wondering if Fisher would get out and buy the sherry or send the sergeant to run the errand.

Hagen smiled to himself. He should have known it was a preordained conclusion. The general, of course, sent the sergeant.

Hagen reached the car at nearly the same moment as the sergeant walked through the door into the PX. One quick scan to see if some bored soul waiting in a parked car might be idly staring in his direction or a shopper from the PX pushing a grocery cart close by. The old cliché "The coast is clear" ran through his mind.

Without the slightest hesitation or wasted movement, Hagen slipped a weighted rubber sap from a specially sewn pocket under one arm of his windbreaker, jerked open the rear car door, and swung his arm in a short arc. No words of greeting, no trivial conversation. The sap caught Fisher precisely on the point of his jaw.

Hagen snatched the briefcase from the general's lap, slammed the door, and walked casually back to his car. From start to finish the action had taken no more than four seconds.

As he drove away from the PX toward the main gate he ticked off the timing sequence in his mind. Fisher would be unconscious for twenty minutes, maybe an hour. Give the sergeant four to six minutes to find the shelf with the sherry, pay for it, and return to the car. Another five minutes before an alert was sounded, providing the sergeant even noticed the general had been mugged in the backseat.

Hagen felt pleased with himself. He would be through the main gate and halfway to the Colorado Springs airport before the Air Police realized what had happened.

An early snow started to fall over southern Colorado shortly after midnight. At first it melted when it met the ground, but soon an icy sheet formed, and then a white blanket began to build. Farther east the winds kicked up, and the Colorado Highway Patrol closed off the smaller county roads due to blizzard conditions.

Inside a small, unmarked Lear jet parked at the far end of the airport terminal, Hagen sat at a desk and studied the contents of General Fisher's briefcase. Most of it was highly classified material concerning day-to-day operations of the space center. One file of papers concerned the flight of the space shuttle Gettysburg, which had been launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California only two days before. He was amused to find amid the slots of the briefcase a pornographic magazine. But the champion prize was a black leather book that contained a total of thirty-nine names and phone numbers. No addresses or notations, only names and numbers segregated in three sections. The first section gave fourteen; the second, seventeen; and the third, eight.

None of them struck a chord with Hagen. It was possible they were simply friends and associates of Fisher's. He stared at the third list, the printing beginning to blur before his eyes from weariness.

Abruptly the top name leaped out at him. Not the surname, but the first name.

Startled, shocked that he had missed something so simple, a code so obvious that no one would consider it, he copied the list on his legal pad and matched up three of the names by adding the correct ones.

Gunnar Monroe/Eriksen

Irwin Dupuy

Leonard Murphy/Hudson

Daniel Klein

Steve Larson

Ray Sampson/LeBaron

Dean Beagle

Clyde Ward

Eight names instead of nine. Then Hagen shook his head, marveling at his slow grasp of the conspicuous fact that General Clark Fisher would hardly have included his own name on a telephone list.

He was almost home, but his elation was muted by fatigue. He'd had no sleep in the past twenty-two hours. The gamble to snatch General Fisher's briefcase had paid off with unexpected dividends. Instead of one thread, he held five, all the remaining members of the "inner core." Now all he had to do was match up the first names with the phone numbers and he would have a neat and tidy package.

All this was wishful thinking. He had made an amateur's error by mouthing off to General Clark Fisher, alias Anson Jones, over the telephone from Pattenden Lab. He'd tried to write it off as a shrewd move designed to goad the conspirators into making a mistake and give him an opening. But now he realized it was nothing but cockiness mixed with a healthy dose of stupidity.

Fisher would alert the "inner core," if he hadn't already done so. There was nothing Hagen could do now. The damage was done. He was left with no choice but to plunge ahead.

He was staring blankly into the distance when the aircraft pilot entered the main compartment from the cockpit. "Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Hagen, but the snowstorm is expected to get worse. The control tower just informed me they're going to close down the airport. If we don't take off now, we may not get clearance till tomorrow afternoon."

Hagen nodded. "No sense in hanging around."

"Can you give me a destination?"

There was a short pause as Hagen looked down at his handwritten notes on the legal pad. He decided to leave Hudson until last. Besides, Eriksen, Hudson, and Daniel Klein or whoever, all had the same telephone area code. He recognized the code after Clyde Ward's name and settled on it simply because the location was only a few hundred miles south of Colorado Springs.

"Albuquerque," he said finally.

"Yes, sir," replied the pilot. "If you'll strap yourself in, I'll have us off the ground in five minutes."

As soon as the pilot disappeared into the control cabin, Hagen stripped to his shorts and dropped into a soft berth. He was dead asleep before the wheels left the snow-carpeted runway.

<<26>>

The fear that the President's chief of staff, Dan Fawcett, inspired inside the White House was immense. His was one of the most powerful positions in Washington. He was the keeper of the sanctum sanctorum. Virtually every document or memo sent to the President had to go through him. And no one, including members of the cabinet and the leaders of Congress, gained entry to the Oval Office unless Fawcett approved it.

The times that someone, high-ranking or low, refused to take no for an answer were nonexistent. So he was uncertain how to react as he looked up from his desk into the smoldering eyes of Admiral Sandecker. Fawcett couldn't remember when he had seen a man seething with so much anger, and he sensed that the admiral was exerting every disciplined resource to hold it under control.

"I'm sorry, Admiral," said Fawcett, "but the President's schedule is airtight. There is no way I can squeeze you in."

"Get me in," Sandecker demanded through tight lips.

"Not possible," replied Fawcett firmly.

Sandecker slowly braced his arms and hands sacrilegiously on the paperwork strewn on Fawcett's desk and leaned over until only a few inches separated their noses.

"You tell the son of a bitch," he snarled, "that he just killed three of my best friends. And unless he gives me a damned good reason why, I'm going to walk out of here, hold a press conference, and reveal enough dirty secrets to scar his precious administration for the rest of his term. Am I getting through to you, Dan?"

Fawcett sat there, rising anger unable to overcome shock. "You'll only destroy your own career. What would be the sense?"

"You're not paying attention. I'll run it by you again. The President is responsible for the deaths of three of my dearest friends. One of them you knew. His name was Dirk Pitt. If it wasn't for Pitt, the President would be resting on the bottom of the sea instead of sitting in the White House. Now, I demand to know for what purpose Pitt died. And if it costs me my career as chief of NUMA, then you can damn well let it."

Sandecker's face was so close that Fawcett could have sworn the admiral's red beard had a life force all its own. "Pitt's dead?" he said dumbly. "I haven't heard=

"Just tell the President I'm here," Sandecker cut in, his voice turned to steel. "He'll see me."

The news came so abruptly, so coldly, that Fawcett was startled. "I'll inform the President about Pitt," he said slowly.

"Don't bother. If I know, he knows. We're tuned into the same intelligence sources."

"I need time to find out what this is all about," Fawcett said.

"You don't have time," said Sandecker stonily. "The President's nuclear energy bill is coming up for a vote before the Senate tomorrow. Think what might happen if Senator George Pitt is told the President had a hand in murdering his son. I don't have to paint you a picture of what will happen when the senator stops throwing his weight in support of presidential policies and starts opposing them."

Fawcett was shrewd enough to recognize an ambush looming in the distance. He pushed himself back from the desk, clasped his hands and stared at them for a few moments. Then he stood and walked toward the hallway.

"Come with me, Admiral. The President is in a meeting with Defense Secretary Jess Simmons. They should be wrapping up about now."

Sandecker waited outside the Oval Office while Fawcett entered, pardoned himself, and spoke a few whispered words to the President. Two minutes later Jess Simmons came out and exchanged a friendly greeting with the admiral, followed by Fawcett, who motioned for him to come in.

The President came from behind his desk and shook Sandecker's hand. His face was expressionless, his body loose and composed, and his intelligent eyes locked on the hard, burning stare of his visitor.

He turned to Fawcett. "Would you please excuse us, Dan? I'd like to speak with Admiral Sandecker privately."

Wordlessly Fawcett stepped out and closed the door behind him. The President gestured toward a chair and smiled. "Why don't we sit down and relax."

"I'd rather stand," Sandecker said flatly.

"As you wish." The President eased into an overstuffed armchair and crossed his legs. "I'm sorry about Pitt and the others," he said without preamble. "No one meant for it to happen."

"May I respectfully ask what in hell is going on?"

"Tell me something, Admiral. Would you believe that when I asked for your cooperation in sending out a crew on the blimp it went far beyond a mere hunt for a missing person?"

"Only if there was a solid explanation to back you up."

"And would you also believe that besides looking for her husband, Mrs. LeBaron was part of an elaborate deception to open a direct line of communication between myself and Fidel Castro?"

Sandecker stared at the President, his anger momentarily placed on hold. The admiral was not awed in the least by the nation's leader. He had seen too many Presidents come and go, seen too many of their human frailties. He could not think of one he'd have set on a pedestal.

"No, Mr. President, I can't buy that," he said, his tone sarcastic. "If my memory serves me, you have a very capable Secretary of State in Douglas Oates, who is backed by an occasionally efficient State Department. I'd have to say they're better equipped to communicate with Castro through existing diplomatic channels."

The President smiled wryly. "There are times negotiations between unfriendly countries must deviate from normal standards of statesmanship. Surely, you must believe that."

"I do."

"You don't involve yourself with politics, matters of state, Washington social parties, cronies or cliques, do you, Admiral?"

"That's right."

"But if I gave you an order, you'd obey it."

"Yes, sir, I would," Sandecker replied without hesitation. "Unless, of course, it was illegal, immoral, or unconstitutional."

The President considered that. Then he nodded and held out his hand toward a chair. "Please, Admiral. My time is limited, but I'll briefly explain what's going down." He paused until Sandecker was seated. "Now then. . .

"Five days ago a highly classified document written by Fidel Castro was smuggled out of Havana to our State Department. Basically it was a proposal for paving the way for positive and constructive relations between Cuba and America."

"What's so startling about that?" Sandecker asked. "He's been angling for closer ties since President Reagan kicked his ass out of Grenada."

"True," the President acknowledged. "Until now the only agreement we've reached over the bargaining table was a deal raising immigration quotas for dissident Cubans coming to America. This new stance, however, went way beyond. Castro wants our help in throwing off the Russian yoke."

Sandecker looked at him, skeptical. "Castro's hatred of the U.S. is an obsession. Why, hell, he still holds rehearsals for an invasion. The Russians aren't about to be shoved out. Cuba represents their only toehold in the Western Hemisphere. Even if they suffered from a moment of madness and yanked their support, the island would sink in an economic quagmire. Cuba can't possibly stand on its own feet, it doesn't have the resources. I wouldn't buy Fidel's act if Christ himself applauded."

"The man is mercurial," admitted the President. "But don't underestimate his intentions. The Soviets are buried in their own economic quagmire. The Kremlin's paranoia against the outside world has driven their military budget to astronomical heights they can no longer afford. Their citizens' standard of living is the worst of any industrialized nation. Their agricultural harvests, industrial goals, and oil exports have all fallen into the cellar. They've lost the means to continue pumping massive aid to the Eastern bloc countries. And in Cuba's situation, the Russians have reached a point where they're demanding more while supplying less. The days of the billion-dollar aid grants, soft loans, and cheap arms supplies have passed. The free ride is over."

Sandecker shook his head. "Still, if I were in Castro's shoes, I'd consider it a bad trade. There is no way Congress would vote billions of dollars to subsidize Cuba, and the island's twelve million people could barely exist without imported goods."

The President glanced at the clock on the mantel. "I've only got another couple of minutes. Anyway, Castro's greatest fear doesn't come from economic chaos or a counterrevolution. It comes from the slow, steady creep of Soviet influence into every corner of his government. The people from Moscow chip off a little here, steal a little there, waiting patiently to make the right moves until they can dominate the government and control the country's resources. Only now has Castro awakened to the fact that his friends in the Kremlin are attempting to steal the country out from under him. His brother, Raul, was stunned when he became alerted to the heavy infiltration of his officer corps by fellow Cubans who had shifted their loyalty to the Soviet Union."

"I find that surprising. The Cubans detest the Russians. Their viewpoints on life don't mix at all."

"Certainly Cuba never intended to become a Kremlin pawn, but since the revolution thousands of Cuban students have studied in Russian universities. Many, rather than return home and work in a job dictated by the state, a job they might hate or which could lead to a dead end, were swayed by subtle Russian offerings of prestige and money. The canny ones, who placed their future above patriotism, secretly renounced Castro and swore allegiance to the Soviet Union. You have to give the Russians credit. They kept their promises. Using their influence over the Cuban government, they wove their new subjects into positions of power."

"Castro is still revered by the Cuban people," said Sandecker. "I can't see how they could stand by and watch him totally subjugated by Moscow."

The President's expression turned grave. "The very real threat is that the Russians will assassinate the Castro brothers and throw the blame on the CIA. Easy enough to do since the agency is known to have made several attempts on his life back in the sixties."

"And the Kremlin walks through the open door and installs a puppet government."

The President nodded. "Which brings us to his proposed U.S.-Cuban pact. Castro doesn't want to scare the Russians into making their move before we've agreed to back his play to boot them out of the Caribbean. Unfortunately, after making the opening gambit, he has stonewalled all replies from myself and Doug Oates."

"Sounds like the old stick-and-carrot routine to whet your appetite."

"The way I see it too."

"So where do the LeBarons fit into all this?"

"They fell into it," the President said with a touch of irony. "You know the story. Raymond LeBaron flew off in his antique blimp in search of a treasure ship. Actually, he had another target in mind, but that needn't concern NUMA or you personally. As fate would have it, Raul Castro was on an inspection tour of the island's defense command complex outside of Havana when LeBaron was spotted by their offshore detection systems. The thought struck him that the contact might prove useful. So he ordered his guard forces to intercept the blimp and escort it to an airfield near the city of Cardenas."

"I can guess the rest," said Sandecker. "The Cubans reinflated the blimp, hid an envoy on board, who was carrying the U.S.-Cuban document, and sent it aloft, figuring prevailing winds would nudge it toward the States."

"You're close," the President acknowledged, smiling. "But they didn't take any chances on fickle winds. A close friend of Fidel's and a pilot sneaked on board with the document. They flew the blimp to Miami, where they jumped into the water a few miles offshore and were picked up by a waiting yacht."

"I'd be curious to learn where the three bodies in the control cabin came from," Sandecker probed.

"A melodramatic display by Castro to prove his good intentions that I haven't got time to go into."

"The Russians haven't become suspicious?"

"Not yet. Their superior attitude over the Cubans prevents them from seeing anything resembling Latin ingenuity."

"So Raymond LeBaron is alive and well somewhere in Cuba."

The President made an open gesture with his hands. "I can only assume that's his situation. CIA sources report that Soviet intelligence demanded to interrogate LeBaron. The Cubans obliged and LeBaron hasn't been seen since."

"Aren't you going to even try to negotiate LeBaron's release?" asked Sandecker.

"The situation is delicate as it is without throwing him on the bargaining table. When we can nail down and sign the U.S.-Cuban pact, I have no doubt that Castro will take custody of LeBaron from the Russians and turn him over to us."

The President paused and stared at the mantel clock. "I'm late for a conference with my budget people." He stood up and started for the door. Then he turned to Sandecker. "I'll wrap this up quickly. Jessie LeBaron was briefed on the situation and memorized our response to Castro. The plan was to have the blimp return with a LeBaron on board. A signal to Castro that my reply was being sent in the same way his proposal was sent out. Something went wrong. You passed Jess Simmons on your way in. He briefed me on the photos taken by our aerial reconnaissance. Instead of stopping the blimp and escorting it to Cardenas, the Cuban patrol helicopter fired upon it. Then for some unexplained reason the helicopter exploded, and they both crashed into the sea. You must realize, Admiral, I couldn't send rescue forces because of the sensitive nature of the mission. I'm truly sorry about Pitt. I owed him a debt I could never repay. We can only pray that he, Jessie LeBaron, and your other friends somehow survived."

"Nobody could survive a crash in the path of hurricane," Sandecker said caustically. "You'll have to pardon me, Mr. President, but even Mickey Mouse could have put together a better operation."

A pained expression lined the President's face. He started to say something, thought better of it, and pulled open the door. "I'm sorry, Admiral, I'm late for the conference."

The President spoke no more. He walked from the Oval Office and left Sandecker standing confused and alone.

<<27>>

The worst of hurricane Little Eva skirted the island and turned northeast into the Gulf of Mexico. The winds dropped off to forty miles an hour, but another two days would pass before they were replaced by the gentle trade winds from the south.

Cayo Santa Maria seemed empty of any life, animal or human. Ten years earlier, in a moment of generous comradeship, Fidel Castro had deeded the island over to his Communist allies as a gesture of goodwill. He then slapped the face of the White House by proclaiming it as a territory of Russia.

The natives were quietly but forcefully relocated onto the mainland, and engineering units of the GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, or Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff), the military arm of the KGB, moved in and began building a highly secret underground installation. Working in stages and only under cover of darkness, the complex slowly took shape beneath the sand and palm trees. CIA spy planes monitored the island, but intelligence analysis failed to detect any defense installations or heavy shipment of supplies by sea or air. Enhanced photo examination showed little except a few eroding roads that seemingly went nowhere. Only as a matter of routine was the island studied, but nothing ever turned up that indicated a threat to United States security.

Somewhere beneath the wind-beaten island, Pitt awoke in a small sterile room on a bed with a goosedown mattress under a fluorescent light that blazed continuously. He could not recall if he had ever slept in a feather bed, but he found it most comfortable and made a mental note to look around for one, if and when he ever got back to Washington.

Apart from bruises, sore joints, and a slight throb in his head he felt reasonably fit. He lay there and stared at the gray-painted ceiling, recalling the night before-- Jessie's discovery of her husband, the guards escorting Pitt, Giordino, and Gunn to an infirmary, where a female Russian doctor, who was built like a bawling pin, tended to their injuries, a meal of mutton stew in a mess hall that Pitt rated six points below an east Texas truck stop, and finally being locked in a room with a toilet and washbasin, a bed, and a narrow wooden wardrobe.

Slipping his hands under the sheet, he explored his body. Except for several yards of tape and gauze, he was naked. He marveled at the homely doctor's fetish for bandages. He swung his bare feet onto the concrete floor and sat there, pondering his next move. A signal from his bladder reminded him he was still human, so he moved over to the commode and wished he had a cup of coffee. They, whoever they were, had left him his Doxa watch. The dial read 11:55. Since he had never slept more than nine hours in his life, he rightly assumed that it was the following morning.

A minute later he leaned over the basin and splashed cold water on his face. The single towel was coarse and hardly absorbed the moisture. He went over to the wardrobe, pulled it open, and found a khaki shirt and pants on a hanger and a pair of sandals. Before he put them on he removed several bandages over wounds that were already beginning to scab, and flexed the newfound freedom of movement. After he dressed, he tried the heavy iron door. The latch was still locked, so he pounded on the thick metal panel, causing a hollow boom to reverberate around the concrete walls.

A boy who looked no older than nineteen and wearing Soviet army fatigues opened the door and stood back, aiming a machine pistol, no larger than an ordinary household hammer, at Pitt's midsection. He motioned down a long hall to the left, and Pitt obliged. They passed several other iron doors, and Pitt wondered if Gunn and Giordino were behind any of them.

They stopped at an elevator whose doors were held open by another guard. They entered and Pitt felt the slight pressure against his feet as the car rose. He glanced at the indicator above the door and noticed that it showed lights for five levels. A good-sized layout, he thought. The elevator came to a stop and the automatic doors glided open.

Pitt and his guard stepped out into a carpeted room with a vaulted ceiling. The two side walls held shelves stacked with hundreds of books. Most of the books were in English and many of them were by current best selling American authors. A vast map of North America covered the entire far wall. The room looked to Pitt to be a private study. There was a big, antique carved desk whose marble top was strewn with current issues of the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Stacked atop tables on each side of the doorway were piles of technical magazines, including Computer Technology, Science Digest, and the Air Force Journal. The carpet was burgundy red with six green leather chairs spaced evenly about its thick pile.

Maintaining his silence, the guard reentered the elevator and left Pitt standing alone in the empty room.

Must be time to observe the monkey, he mused. Pitt didn't bother to probe the walls for the lens to the video camera. There was little doubt in his mind that it was concealed in the room somewhere, recording his actions. He decided to try for a reaction. He swayed drunkenly for a moment, rolled his eyes upward, and then crumpled onto the carpet.

Within fifteen seconds a hidden door, whose edges perfectly matched latitude and longitude lines of the giant wall map, swung open and a short, trim man in an elegantly tailored Soviet military uniform walked into the room. He knelt down and peered into Pitt's half-open eyes.

"Can you hear me?" he asked in English.

"Yes," Pitt mumbled.

The Russian went over to a table and tilted a crystal decanter over a matching glass. He returned and lifted Pitt's head.

"Drink this," he ordered.

"What is it?"

"Courvoisier cognac with a sharp, biting taste," the Russian officer answered in a flawless American accent. "Good for what ails you."

"I prefer a richer, smoother Remy Martin," said Pitt, holding up the glass. "Cheers."

He sipped the cognac until it was gone, then rose lightly to his feet, found a chair, and sat down.

The officer smiled with amusement. "You seem to have made a quick recovery, Mr. . ."

"Snodgrass, Elmer Snodgrass, from Moline, Illinois."

"A nice Midwestern touch," the Russian said, coming around and sitting behind the desk. "I am Peter Velikov."

"General Velikov, if my memory of Russian military insignia is correct."

"Quite correct," Velikov acknowledged. "Would you care for another cognac?"

Pitt shook his head and studied the man across the desk. He judged Velikov to be no taller than five foot seven, weighing about a hundred and thirty pounds, and somewhere in his late forties. There was a comfortable friendliness about him, and yet Pitt sensed an underlying coldness. His hair was short and black with only a touch of gray at the sideburns and receding around a peak above the forehead. His eyes were as blue as an alpine lake, and the light-skinned face seemed sculptured more by classic Roman influence than Slavic. Dress him in a toga and set a wreath on his head, Pitt imagined, and Velikov could have posed for a marble bust of Julius Caesar.

"I hope you don't mind if I ask you a few questions," said Velikov politely.

"Not at all. I have no pressing engagements for the rest of the day. My time is yours."

A look of ice glinted in Velikov's eyes for an instant and then quickly faded. "Suppose you tell me how you came to be on Cayo Santa Maria."

Pitt held out his hands in a helpless gesture. "No sense in wasting your time. I might as well make a clean breast of it. I'm president of the Central Intelligence Agency. My board of directors and I thought it would be a great promotional idea to charter a blimp and drop redeemable coupons for toilet paper over the length of Cuba. I'm told there's an acute shortage down here. Unfortunately, the Cubans didn't agree with our marketing strategy and shot us down."

General Velikov gave Pitt a tolerant but irritated look. He perched a pair of reading glasses on his nose and opened a file on his desk.

"I see by your dossier, Mr. Pitt-- Dirk Pitt, if I read it right-- that your character profile mentions a drift toward dry wit."

"Does it also tell you I'm a pathological liar?"

"No, but it seems you have a most fascinating history. A pity you aren't on our side."

"Come now, General, what future could a nonconformist possibly have in Moscow?"

"A short one, I'm afraid."

"I compliment your honesty."

"Why not tell me the truth?"

"Only if you're willing to believe it."

"You don't think I can?"

"Not if you adhere to the Communist mania of seeing a CIA plot under every rock."

"Seems you have a high disregard for the Soviet Union."

"Name one thing you people have ever done in the last seventy years to earn a humanity award. What is baffling as hell is why the Russians have never wised up to the fact they're the laughing stock of the world. Your empire is history's most pathetic joke. The twenty-first century is just around the corner and your government operates as though it never advanced past the nineteen-thirties."

Velikov didn't bat an eyelid, but Pitt detected a slight redness in his face. It was clear the general wasn't used to being lectured by a man he looked down upon as an enemy of the state. His eyes examined Pitt with the unmistakable gaze of a judge who was weighing a convicted murderer's life in the balance. Then his gaze turned speculative.

"I'll see that your comments are passed on to the Politburo," he said dryly. "Now if you're through with the speech, Mr. Pitt, I'd be interested in hearing how you came to be here."

Pitt nodded toward the table with the decanter. "I think I'd like that cognac now."

"Help yourself."

Pitt half filled his glass and returned to the chair. "What I'm about to tell you is the straight truth. I want you to understand I have no reason to lie. To the best of my knowledge I am not on any sort of intelligence mission for my government. Do you understand me so far, General?"

"I do."

"Is your hidden tape recorder running?"

Velikov had the courtesy to nod. "It is."

Pitt then related in detail his discovery of the runaway blimp, the meeting with Jessie LeBaron in Admiral Sandecker's office, the final flight of the Prosperteer, and finally the narrow escape from the hurricane, omitting any mention of Giordino's downing of the patrol helicopter or the dive on the Cyclops.

Velikov did not look up when Pitt finished speaking. He sifted through the dossier without a flicker of change in his expression. The general acted as if his mind were light-years away and he hadn't heard a word.

Pitt could play the game too. He took his cognac glass and rose from his chair. Picking up a copy of the Washington Post, he noted with mild surprise that the masthead carried that day's date.

"You must have an efficient courier system," he said.

"Sorry?"

"Your newspapers are only a few hours old."

"Five hours, to be exact."

The cognac fairly glowed on Pitt's empty stomach. The awkward consequences of his predicament mellowed after his third drink. He went on the attack.

"Why are you holding Raymond LeBaron?" he asked.

"At the moment he is a house guest."

"That doesn't explain why his existence has been kept quiet for two weeks."

"I don't have to explain anything to you, Mr. Pitt."

"How is it LeBaron receives gourmet dinners in formal dress, while my friends and I are forced to eat and dress like common prisoners."

"Because that is precisely what you all are, Mr. Pitt, common prisoners. Mr. LeBaron is a very wealthy and powerful man whose dialogue is most enlightening. You, on the other hand, are merely an inconvenience. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"

"It doesn't satisfy a thing," Pitt said, yawning.

"How did you destroy the patrol helicopter?" Velikov asked suddenly.

"We threw our shoes at it," Pitt fired back testily. "What did you expect from four civilians, one of whom was a woman, flying in a forty-year-old gas bag?"

"Helicopters don't blow up in midair for no reason."

"Maybe it was struck by lightning."

"Well, then, Mr. Pitt, if you were on a simple search mission to locate a clue to Mr. LeBaron's disappearance and hunt for treasure, how do you explain the report from the captain of the patrol boat, who stated that the blimp's control car was so shattered by shellfire that no one could have survived, and that a streak of light issued from the blimp an instant before the helicopter exploded, and that a thorough search over the crash site showed no signs of survivors? Yet you all appear like magic on this island in the middle of a hurricane, when the security patrols were taking shelter from the winds. Most opportune, wouldn't you say?"

"How do you read it?"

"The blimp was either remote controlled or another crew was killed by the gunners on board the helicopter. You and Mrs. LeBaron were brought close to shore by submarine, but during the landing everyone was thrown onto the rocks and injured."

"You get a passing grade for creativity, General, but you fail accuracy. Only the landing part is correct. You forgot the most important ingredient, a motive. Why would four unarmed castaways attack whatever it is you've got here?"

"I don't have the answers yet," said Velikov with a disarming smile.

"But you intend to get them."

"I'm not a man who accepts failure, Mr. Pitt. Your story, though imaginative, does not wash." He pressed a button on the desk intercom. "We'll talk again soon."

"When can we expect you to contact our government so they can begin negotiations for our release?"

Velikov gave Pitt a patronizing look. "My apologies. I neglected to mention that your government was notified only an hour ago."

"Of our rescue?"

"No, of your deaths."

For a long second it didn't dawn on Pitt. Then it slowly began to register. His jaw stiffened and his eyes bored into Velikov.

"Spell it out, General."

"Very simple," said Velikov in a manner as friendly as if he were passing the time of day with a mailman. "Whether by accident or by design, you have stumbled onto our most sensitive military installation outside the Soviet Union. You cannot be permitted to leave. After I learn the true facts, you will all have to die."

<<28>>

Indulging in his favorite pastime-- eating-- Hageri stole an hour to enjoy a Mexican lunch of flat enchiladas topped with an egg followed by sopaipillas and washed down with a tequila sour. He paid the check, left the restaurant, and drove to the address assigned to Clyde Ward. His source with the telephone company had traced the number in General Fisher's black book to a public phone in a gas station. He marked the time. In another six minutes his pilot would call the number from the parked jet.

He found the gas station in an industrial area near the rail yards. It was self-serve, selling an unknown independent brand. He pulled up to a pump whose red paint was heavily coated by grime and inserted the nozzle into the car's fuel spout, careful to avoid looking toward the pay phone inside the station's office.

Shortly after landing at the Albuquerque airport, Hagen had rented a car and siphoned ten gallons of fuel from the tank so his pit stop would appear genuine. The trapped air pockets inside the tank gurgled and he screwed on the cap and replaced the nozzle. He entered the office and was fumbling with his wallet when the pay phone mounted on the wall began to ring.

The only attendant on duty, who was in the act of repairing a flat tire, wiped his hands on a rag and picked up the receiver. Hagen tuned in on the one-way conversation.

"Mel's Service. . . Who. . .? There ain't no Clyde here. . . Yeah, I'm sure. You got the wrong number. . . That's the right number, but I've worked here for six years and I ain't never heard of no Clyde."

He hung up and stepped up to the cash register and smiled at Hagen. "How much you get?"

"Ten point two gallons. Thirteen dollars and fifty-seven cents."

While the attendant made change for a twenty, Hagen scanned the station. He couldn't help admiring the professionalism that went into setting up the stage, because that's what it was, a stage setting. The office and lube bay floors hadn't seen a mop in years. Cobwebs hung from the ceilings, the tools had more rust than oil on them, and the attendant's palms and fingernails didn't look as if they had ever seen grease. But it was the surveillance system that astounded him. His trained eye picked out subtly placed electrical wiring that didn't belong in a run-of-the-mill service station. He sensed rather spotted the bugs and cameras.

"Could you do me a favor?" Hagen asked the attendant as he received his change.

"Whatta you need?"

"I've got a funny noise in the engine. Could you take a look under the hood and tell me what might be wrong?"

"Sure, why not. Ain't got much else to do."

Hagen noticed the attendant's designer hair style and doubted if it had ever been touched by the neighborhood barber. He also caught the slight bulge in the pants leg, on the outer right calf just above the ankle.

Hagen had parked the car on the opposite side of the second gaspump island away from the station building. He started the engine and pulled the hood latch. The attendant put his foot on the front bumper and peered over the radiator.

"I don't hear nothin'."

"Come around on this side," said Hagen. "It's louder over here." He stood with his back to the street, shielded from any electronic observation by the pumps, the car, and its raised hood.

As the attendant leaned over the fender and poked his head into the engine compartment, Hagen slipped a gun from a belt holster behind his back and pushed the muzzle between the man's buttocks.

"This is a two-and-a-half-inch-barreled combat magnum .357 shoved up your ass and it's loaded with wad cutters. Do you understand?"

The attendant tensed, but he did not show fear. "Yes, I read you, friend."

"And do you know what a wad cutter can do at close range?"

"I'm aware of what a wad cutter is."

"Good, then you know it'll make a nice tunnel from your asshole to your brain if I pull the trigger."

"What are you after, friend?"

"What happened to your phony jerkwater accent?" Hagen asked.

"It comes and goes."

Hagen reached down with his free hand and removed a small Beretta .38-caliber automatic from under the attendant's pants leg. "Okay, friend, where can I find Clyde?"

"Never heard of him."

Hagen rammed the muzzle of the magnum up against the base of the spine with such force the fabric on the seat of the attendant's pants split and he grunted in agony.

"Who are you working for?" he gasped.

"The `inner core,' " answered Hagen.

"You can't be."

Hagen gave an upward thrust with the snub-nosed gun barrel again. The attendant's face contorted and he moaned as his lower body burned with the jarring pain.

"Who is Clyde?" Hagen demanded.

"Clyde Booth," the attendant muttered through clenched teeth.

"I can't hear you, friend."

"His name is Clyde Booth."

"Tell me about him."

"He's supposed to be some kind of genius. Invents and manufactures scientific gadgets used in space. Secret systems for the government. I don't know exactly, I'm only a member of the security staff."

"Location?"

`The plant is ten miles west of Santa Fe. It's called QB-Tech."

"What's the QB stand for?"

"Quarter Back," the attendant answered. "Booth was an allAmerican football player for Arizona State."

"You knew I would show up?"

"We were told to be on the lookout for a fat man."

"How many others positioned around the station?" asked Hagen. "Three. One down the street in the tow truck, one on the roof of the warehouse behind the station, one in the red van parked beside the western bar and diner next door."

"Why haven't they made their move?"

"Our orders were only to follow you."

Hagen eased the pressure and reholstered his revolver. Then he removed the shells from the attendant's automatic, dropped it on the ground, and kicked it under the car.

"Okay," said Hagen. "Now walk, don't run, back inside the station." Before the attendant was halfway across the station drive, Hagen had turned the corner a block away. He made four more quick turns to lose the tow truck and the van, and then sped toward the airport.

<<29>>

Leonard Hudson stepped out of the elevator that lowered him into the heart of the Jersey Colony headquarters. He carried an umbrella that was dripping from the rain outside, and a fancy briefcase of highly polished walnut.

He looked neither right nor left and acknowledged the greetings from his staff with a curt wave. Hudson was not the nervous type, nor was he a worrier, but he was concerned. The reports coming in from other members of the "inner core" spelled danger. Someone was methodically tracking each of them down. An outsider had breached their carefully devised cover operations.

Now the whole lunar base effort-- the ingenuity, the planning, the lives, the money, and the manpower that had gone into the Jersey Colony-- was in jeopardy because of an unknown intruder.

He walked into his large but austere office and found Gunnar Eriksen waiting for him.

Eriksen was sitting on a couch, sipping a cup of hot coffee and smoking a curved pipe. His round, unlined face wore a somber look and his eyes had a benign glow. He was dressed casually, but unrumpled, in an expensive cashmere sports jacket and a tan V-neck sweater over matching woolen slacks. He would not look out of place selling jaguars or Ferraris.

"You talked to Fisher and Booth," said Hudson, hanging up the umbrella and setting the briefcase beside the desk.

"I have."

"Any idea who it might be?"

"None."

"Strange that he never leaves fingerprints," said Hudson, sitting on the couch with Eriksen and pouring himself a cup of coffee from a glass pot.

Eriksen sent a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. "Stranger yet that every image we have of him on videotape is a blur."

"He must carry some sort of electronic erasing device."

"Obviously not your ordinary private investigator," Eriksen mused. "A top-of-the-line professional with heavy backing."

"He knows his way around, produces all the correct identification papers and security clearances. The story he handed Mooney about being an auditor with the General Accounting Office was first-rate. I'd have swallowed it myself."

"What have we got on him?"

"Only a stack of descriptions that don't agree on anything except his size. They're unanimous in referring to him as a fat man."

"Could be the President has turned an intelligence agency loose on us."

"If that were the case," said Hudson doubtfully, "we'd be looking at an army of undercover agents. This man appears to work alone."

"Did you consider the possibility the President might have quietly hired an agent outside the government?" asked Eriksen.

"The thought crossed my mind, but I'm not completely sold on it. Our friend in the White House is tapped into the Oval Office. Everyone who calls or walks in and out of the executive wing is accounted for. Of course, there's always the President's private line, but I don't think this is the sort of mission he could instigate over the telephone."

"Interesting," said Eriksen. "The fat man started his probe at the facility where we first created the idea of the Jersey Colony."

"That's right," Hudson acknowledged. "He rifled Earl Mooney's office at Pattenden Lab and traced a phone call to General Fisher, even made some remark about you wanting me to pay for the airplane."

"An obvious reference to our advertised deaths," Eriksen said thoughtfully. "That means he's tied us together."

"Then he turned up in Colorado and mugged Fisher, stealing a notebook with the names and numbers of the top people on the Jersey Colony project, including those of the `inner core.' Then he must have seen through the trap we laid to trail him from New Mexico and escaped. We got a small break when one our security men who was watching the Albuquerque airport spotted a fat man arrive in an unmarked private jet and take off again only two hours later."

"He must have rented a car, used some sort of identification."

Hudson shook his head. "Nothing of any use. He showed a driver's license and a credit card from a George Goodfly of New Orleans, who doesn't exist."

Eriksen tapped the ashes from his pipe into a glass dish. "Seems odd he didn't drive to Santa Fe and attempt to penetrate Clyde Booth's operation."

"My guess is he's only on a fact-finding hunt."

"But who is paying him? The Russians?"

"Certainly not the KGB," said Hudson. "They don't send subtle messages over the phone or move around the country in a private jet. No, this man moves fast. I'd say he's running on a tight deadline."

Eriksen stared into his coffee cup. "The Soviet lunar mission is scheduled to set down on the moon in five days. That has to be his deadline."

"I believe you may be right."

Eriksen stared at him. "You realize now that the power behind the intruder has to be the President," he said quietly.

Hudson nodded slowly. "I blinded myself to the possibility," he said in a distant voice. "I wanted to believe he would back the security of the Jersey Colony from Russian penetration."

"From what you told me of your meeting, he wasn't about to condone a battle on the moon between our people and Soviet cosmonauts. Nor would he be overjoyed to learn Steinmetz destroyed three Soviet spacecraft."

"The point that bothers me," said Hudson, "is if we accept the President's interference, why, with all of his resources, would he send only one man?"

"Because once he accepted the Jersey Colony as a reality, he realized our supporters cover his every move, and he rightly assumed we could throw a school of red herrings across our trail to mislead any investigation. A wise man, the President. He brought in a ringer from left field who cracked our walls before we knew what was happening."

"There may still be time to send him on the wrong scent."

"Too late. The fat man has Fisher's notebook," said Eriksen. "He knows who we are and where to find us. He is a very real threat. He started at the tail and now he's working toward the head. When the fat man comes through this door, Leo, the President will surely move to stop any confrontation between the Soviet cosmonauts and our people in the Jersey Colony."

"Are you hinting we eliminate the fat man?" asked Hudson.

"No," Eriksen replied. "Better not to antagonize the President. We'll merely put him on ice for a few days."

"I wonder where he'll turn up next," Hudson pondered.

Eriksen methodically reloaded his pipe. "He began his witch-hunt in Oregon and from there to Colorado and then New Mexico. My guess is his next stop will be Texas, at the office of our man with NASA in Houston."

Hudson punched a number on his desk phone. "A pity I can't be there when we snare the bastard."

<<30>>

Pitt spent the next two hours on his back in bed, listening to the sounds of metal doors being opened and closed, tuning in on the footsteps heard outside his cell. The youthful guard brought lunch and waited while Pitt ate, making sure all the utensils were accounted for when he left. This time the guard seemed in a better humor and was unarmed. He also left the door open during the meal, giving Pitt a chance to study the latch.

He was surprised to see that it was an ordinary doorknob lock instead of a heavy-security or mortice throw bolt. His cell was never meant to serve as a jail. It was mostly likely intended as a storeroom.

Pitt stirred a spoon over a bowl of foul-smelling fish stew and handed it back, more interested in the closing of the door than eating slop that he knew was the first step of a psychological ploy to lower his mental defense mechanisms. The guard stepped back and yanked the iron door shut. Pitt cocked his ear and caught a single, decisive click immediately after the slam.

He knelt and closely examined the crack between the door and the strike. The gap was 1/8 inch across. Then he scoured the cell, searching for an object thin enough to slip between the crack so he could jimmy the latch.

The bunk supporting the down mattress was made of wood with grooved joints. No metal or hard, flat surface there. The faucets and spouts on the sink were ceramic and the plumbing underneath and in the toilet tank offered nothing he could mold with his hands. He got lucky with the wardrobe. Any one of the hinges would work perfectly, except he could not remove the screws with his fingernails.

He was pondering this problem when the door swung open and the guard stood in the entrance. His eyes cautiously scanned the cell for a moment. Then he brusquely motioned Pitt outside, led him through a maze of gray concrete corridors, stopping finally outside a door marked with the numeral 6.

Pitt was roughly shoved into a small boxlike room with a sickly stench about it. The floor was cement with a drain in its center. The walls were painted a dreary shade of red that ominously matched the pattern of stains that were splattered on them. The only illumination came from a dull yellow bulb hanging by a cord from the ceiling. It was the most depressing room Pitt had ever entered.

The only furniture was a cheap, deeply scarred wooden chair. But it was the man seated in the chair that Pitt's eyes focused on. The eyes that stared back were as expressionless as ice cubes. Pitt could not tell the stranger's height, but his chest and shoulders were so ponderous they seemed deformed, the look of a body builder who had spent thousands of hours of sweat and effort. The head was completely shaven, and the face might have been considered almost handsome but for the large misshapen nose that was totally out of place with its surroundings. He was wearing only a pair of rubber boots and tropical shorts. Except for a Bismarck moustache, he looked strangely familiar to Pitt.

Without looking up he began reading off a list of crimes Pitt was accused of. They began with violating Cuban air space, shooting down a helicopter, murdering its crew, working as an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, entering the country illegally. The accusations droned on until they ended at last with unlawful entry into a forbidden military zone. The voice spoke in pure American with a trace of a Western accent.

"How do you respond?"

"Guilty as sin."

A piece of paper and a pen were held out by an enormous hand. "Please sign the confession."

Pitt took the pen and signed the paper against a wall without reading the wording.

The interrogator stared at the signature broodingly. "I think you've made a mistake."

"How so?"

"Your name is not Benedict Arnold."

Pitt snapped his fingers. "By God, you're right. That was last week. This week I'm Millard Fillmore."

"Very amusing."

"Since General Velikov has already informed American officials of my death," said Pitt seriously, "I fail to see any good of a confession. Seems to me it's like injecting penicillin into a skeleton. What purpose can it possibly serve?"

"Insurance against an incident, propaganda reasons, even a bargaining position," answered the interrogator amiably. "There could be any number of reasons." He paused and read from a file on the desk. "I see from the dossier General Velikov gave me that you directed a salvage project on the Empress of Ireland shipwreck in the Saint Lawrence River."

"That is correct."

"I believe I was on the same project."

Pitt stared at him. There was a familiarity, but it wouldn't frame in his mind. He shook his head. "I don't recall you working on my team. What's your name?"

"Foss Gly," he said slowly. "I worked with the Canadians to disrupt your operations."

A scene burst within Pitt's mind of a tugboat tied to a dock in Rimouski, Quebec. He had saved the life of a British secret agent by braining Gly on the head with a wrench. He also remembered with great relief that Gly's back had been turned and he had not seen Pitt's approach.

"Then we've never met face to face," Pitt said calmly. He watched for a faint sign of recognition from Gly, but he didn't bat an eye.

"Probably not."

"You're a long way from home."

Gly shrugged his great shoulders. "I work for whoever pays top dollar for my special services."

"In this case the money machine spits out rubles."

"Converted into gold," Gly added. He sighed and pulled himself to a standing position and stretched. The skin was so taut, the veins so pronounced, they actually looked grotesque. He rose from the chair and looked up, the smooth dome of his head on a level with Pitt's chin. "I'd like to continue the small talk about past events, Mr. Pitt, but I must have the answers to several questions and your signature on the confession."

"I'll discuss whatever subject that interests you when I'm assured the LeBarons and my friends will not be harmed."

Gly did not reply, only stared with a look that bordered on indifference.

Pitt sensed a blow was coming and tensed his body to roll with it. But Gly did not cooperate. Instead, he slowly reached out with one hand and gripped Pitt at the base of the neck on the soft part of the shoulder. At first the pressure was light, a squeeze, and then a gradual tightening until the pain erupted like fire.

Pitt clutched Gly's wrist with both hands and tried to wrench away the ironlike claw, but he might as well have tried to pull a twenty foot oak out of the ground by the roots. He ground his teeth together until he thought they would crack. Dimly through the bursting fireworks in his brain, he could hear Gly's voice.

"Okay, Pitt, you don't have to go through this. Just tell me who masterminded your intrusion on this island and why. No need to suffer unless you're a professional masochist. Believe me, you won't find the experience enjoyable. Tell the general what he wants to know. Whatever you're hiding won't change the course of history. Thousands of lives won't hang in the balance. Why feel your body being pulped day after day until all bones are crushed, all joints are cracked, your sinews reduced to the consistency of mashed potatoes. Because that is exactly what will happen if you don't play ball. You understand?"

The ungodly agony eased as Gly released his grip. Pitt swayed on his feet and stared through half-open eyes at his tormentor, one hand massaging the ugly bruise that was spreading on his shoulder. He realized that whatever story he told, true or fabricated, would never be accepted. The torture would continue until his physical resources finally gave in and numbed to it.

He asked politely, "Do you get a bonus for every confession?"

"I do not work on commission," said Gly with friendly humor.

"You win," said Pitt easily. "I have a low threshold of pain. What do you want me to confess to, attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro or plotting to convert Russian advisers to democrats?"

"Merely the truth, Mr. Pitt."

"I've already told General Velikov."

"Yes, I have your recorded words."

"Then you know that Mrs. LeBaron, Al Giordino, Rudi Gunn, and I were trying to find a clue to the disappearance of Raymond LeBaron while searching for a shipwreck supposedly containing treasure. What's so sinister about that?"

"General Velikov sees it as a front for a more classified mission."

"For instance?"

"An attempt to communicate with the Castros."

"Ridiculous is the first word that comes to mind. There must be easier ways for our governments to negotiate with each other."

"Gunn has told us everything," said Gly. "You were to head the operation to stray into Cuban waters, where you were to be captured by their patrol craft and escorted to the mainland. Once there, you were to turn over vital information dealing with secret U.S.-Cuban relations."

Pitt was genuinely at a loss. This was all Greek to him. "That has to be the dumbest cock-and-bull tale I've ever heard."

"Then why were you armed and able to destroy the Cuban patrol helicopter?"

"We carried no arms," Pitt lied. "The helicopter suddenly exploded in our faces. I can't give you a reason."

"Then explain why the Cuban patrol boat could find no survivors at the crash site."

"We were in the water. It was dark and the seas were rough. They didn't spot us."

"Yet you were able to swim six miles through the violent water of a hurricane, all four of you keeping together as a group, and landing intact on Cayo Santa Maria. How was it possible?"

"Just lucky, I guess."

"Now who's telling a dumb cock-and-bull tale?"

Pitt never got a chance to answer. Without a flicker of warning, Gly swung and rammed a fist into the side of Pitt's body near the left kidney.

The pain and the sudden understanding burst within him at the same time. As he sank into the black pool of unconsciousness he reached out for Jessie, but she laughed and made no effort to reach back.

<<31>>

A deep, resonant voice was saying something, almost in his ear. The words were vague and distant. An army of scorpions crept over the edge of the bed and began thrusting their poisoned tails in his side. He opened his eyes. The bright fluorescent light above blinded him, so he closed them again. His face felt wet and he thought he might be swimming and threw out his arms. Then the voice beside him spoke more distinctly.

"Lie easy, partner. I'm just sponging off your face."

Pitt reopened his eyes and focused them on the face of an older, gray-haired man with soft, concerned eyes in a warm, scholarly face. The eyes met his and he smiled.

"Are you in much pain?"

"It smarts a bit."

"Would you like some water?"

"Yes, please."

When the man stood up, the hair on his head nearly touched the ceiling. He produced a cup from a small canvas bag and filled it from the washbasin.

Pitt clutched his side and eased very slowly to a sitting position. He felt rotten and realized he was ravenously hungry. When was the last time he'd eaten? His drowsy mind couldn't recall. He accepted the water thankfully and quickly downed it. Then he looked up at his benefactor.

"Old rich and reckless Raymond, I presume."