Deep Six

75

House Speaker Alan Moran, his face wreathed in a confident smile, circulated around the East Room of the White House conversing with his aides and inner circle of advisers while awaiting final word of the trial taking place on the floor of the Senate.

He greeted a small group of party leaders and then turned and excused himself as Secretary of State Douglas Oates and Defense Secretary Jesse Simmons entered the room. Moran came over and held out his hand, which Oates ignored.

Moran shrugged off the snub. He could well afford to. “Well, it seems you’re not of a mind to praise Caesar, but you haven’t a prayer of burying him either.”

“You’ve just reminded me of an old gangster movie I saw when I was a boy,” Oates said icily. “The title fits you perfectly.”

“Oh, really? What movie was that?”

“Little Caesar.”

Moran’s smile turned into a sinister glare. “Have you come with your resignation?”

Oates pulled an envelope partway out of his inside breast pocket. “I have it right here.”

“Keep it!” Moran snarled. “I won’t give you the satisfaction of bowing out gracefully. Ten minutes after I take the oath I’m holding a press conference. Besides assuring the nation of a smooth succession, I intend to announce that you and the rest of the President’s Cabinet planned a conspiracy to set up a dictatorship, and my first order as chief executive is to fire the whole rotten lot of you.”

“We expected no less. Integrity was never one of your character traits.”

“There was no conspiracy and you know it,” Simmons said angrily. “The President was the victim of a Soviet plot to control the White House.”

“No matter,” Moran replied nastily. “By the time the truth comes out, the damage to your precious reputations will have been done. You’ll never work in Washington again.”

Before Oates and Simmons could retort, an aide rushed up and spoke softly in Moran’s ear. He dismissed his enemies with a snide look and turned away. Then he stepped to the center of the room and raised his hands for silence.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “I’ve just been informed that the Senate has voted for conviction by the required two-thirds. Our beleaguered President is no longer in office and the Vice Presidency is vacant. The time has come for us to put our house in order and begin anew.”

As if on cue, Chief Justice Nelson O’Brien rose from a chair, smoothed his black robes and cleared his throat. Everyone crowded around Moran as his secretary held what was dubiously touted as his family Bible.

Just then Sam Emmett and Dan Fawcett came through the doorway and paused. Then they spied Oates and Simmons and approached.

“Any word?” Oates asked anxiously.

Emmett shook his head. “None. General Metcalf ordered a communications blackout. I haven’t been able to reach him at the Pentagon to find out why.”

“Then it’s all over.”

No one replied as they all turned in unison and stood in powerless frustration as Moran raised his right hand to take the oath of office as President, his left hand on the Bible.

“Repeat after me,” Chief Justice O’Brien intoned like a drumroll. “I, Alan Robert Moran, do solemnly swear…”

“… that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States,” O’Brien droned on.

Suddenly the room behind Oates went quiet. The prompting of the oath by the Chief Justice went unanswered by Moran. Curious, Oates turned around and looked at the crowd. They were all staring in frozen wonder at Vice President Vincent Margolin, who walked through the doorway preceded by Oscar Lucas and flanked by General Metcalf and Admiral Sandecker.

Moran’s upraised arm slowly fell and his face turned ashen. The silence smothered the room like an insulating cloud as Margolin stepped up to the Chief Justice, the stunned audience parting for him. He gave Moran a frigid look and then smiled at the rest.

“Thank you for the rehearsal,” he said warmly. “But I think I can take over from here.”

76

SAL CASIO WAS WAITING in the vast lobby of the World Trade Center when Pitt came slowly through the entrance. Casio looked at him in stark appraisal. He couldn’t remember when he’d seen any man so near the edge of physical collapse.

Pitt moved with the tired shuffle of a man who had endured too much. He wore a borrowed foul-weather jacket two sizes too small. His right arm hung slack while his left was pressed against his chest, as if holding it together, an^l his face was etched in a strange blending of suffering and triumph. The eyes burned with a sinister glow that Casio recognized as the fires of revenge.

“I’m glad you could make it,” Casio said without referring to Pitt’s haggard appearance.

“It’s your show,” said Pitt. “I’m only along for the ride.”

“Only fitting and proper we be together at the finish.”

“I appreciate the courtesy. Thank you.”

Casio turned and guided Pitt over to a private elevator. Pulling a small push-button transmitter from his pocket, he punched the correct code and the doors opened. Inside was an unconscious guard who was bound with laundry cord. Casio stepped over him and opened a polished brass door to a circuit panel with the words LIFTONIC ELEVATOR QW-607 engraved on it. He made an adjustment in the settings and then pushed the button that read “100.”

The elevator rose like a rocket and Pitt’s ears popped three times before it slowed and the doors finally opened onto the richly furnished anteroom of Bougainville Maritime Lines Inc.

Before he stepped out, Casio paused and repro-grammed the elevator circuitry with his transmitter. Then he turned and stepped out onto the thick carpet.

“We’re here to speak with Min Koryo,” Casio announced mundanely.

The woman eyed them suspiciously, particularly Pitt, and opened a leather-bound journal. “I see nothing in Madame Bougainville’s schedule that shows any appointments this evening.”

Casio’s face furrowed into his best hurt look. “Are you sure?” he asked, leaning over the desk and peering at the appointment book.

She pointed at the blank page. “Nothing is written—”

Casio chopped her across the nape of the neck with the edge of his palm, and she fell forward, head and shoulders striking the desktop. Then he reached inside her blouse and extracted a vestpocket.25-caliber automatic pistol.

“Never know it to look at her,” he explained, “but she’s a security guard.”

Casio tossed the gun to Pitt and took off down a corridor hung with paintings of the Bougainville Maritime fleet. Pitt recognized the Pilottown, and his weary expression hardened. He followed the brawny private investigator up an intricately carved rosewood circular staircase to the living quarters above. At the top of the landing Casio met another ravishing Asian woman who was leaving a bathroom. She was wearing silk lounging pajamas with a kimono top.

Her eyes widened and in a lightning reflex she lashed out with one foot at Casio’s groin. He anticipated the thrust and shifted his weight ever so slightly, catching the blow on the side of his thigh. Then she flashed into the classic judo position and buried several rapid cuts at his head.

She would have done more damage to an oak tree. Casio shook off her attack, crouched and sprung like an offensive back coming off the line. She spun to her left in an impressive display of feline grace but was knocked off balance by his shoulder. Then Casio straightened and smashed through her defense with a vicious left hook that nearly tore off her head. Her feet left the floor and she flew into a five-foot-high Sung Dynasty vase, breaking it into dust.

“You certainly have a way with women,” Pitt remarked casually.

“Lucky for us there’s still a few things we can do better than they can.”

Casio motioned toward a large double door carved with dragons and quietly opened it. Min Koryo was propped up in her spacious bed, browsing through a pile of audit reports. For a moment the two men stood mute and unmoving, waiting for her to look up and acknowledge their intrusion. She looked so pathetic, so fragile, that any other trespassers might have wavered. But not Pitt and Casio.

Finally she lifted her reading glasses and gazed at them, showing no apprehension or fright. Her eyes were fixed in frank curiosity.

“Who are you?” she asked simply.

“My name is Sal Casio. I’m a private investigator.”

“And the other man?”

Pitt stepped from the shadows and stood under the glow from the spotlights above the bed. “I believe you know me.”

There was a faint flicker of surprise in her voice, but nothing else. “Mr. Dirk Pitt.”

“Yes.”

“Why have you come?”

“You are a slimy parasite who sucked the life out of untold innocent people to build your filthy empire. You’re responsible for the death of a personal friend of mine and also for that of Sal’s daughter. You tried to kill me, and you ask why I’m here?”

“You are mistaken, Mr. Pitt. I am guilty of nothing so criminal. My hands are unstained.”

“A play on words. You live in your museum of Oriental artifacts, shielded from the outside world, while your grandson did your dirty work for you.”

“You say I am the cause of your friend’s death?”

“She was killed by the nerve agent you stole from the government and left on the Pilottown.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said gently. The politeness and sympathy were without a trace of irony. “And you, Mr. Casio. How am I to blame for your daughter?”

“She was murdered along with the crew of the same ship, only then it was called the San Marino.”

“Yes, I recall,” said Min Koryo, dropping all pretense. “The girl with the stolen money.”

Pitt stared into the old woman’s face, examining it. The blue eyes were bright and glistening, and the skin was smooth, with only a bare hint of aging lines. She must have truly been a beautiful woman once. But beneath the veneer Pitt detected ugliness, a cesspool locked in ice. There was a black malignity inside her that filled him with contempt.

“I suppose you’ve smashed so many lives,” he said, “you’ve become immune to human suffering. The mystery is how you got away with it for so long.”

“You have come to arrest me?” she asked.

“No,” Casio answered stonily. “To kill you.”

The piercing eyes blazed briefly. “My security people will come through the door any second.”

“We’ve already eliminated the guard at the receptionist’s desk and the one outside your door. As to others”— Casio paused and pointed a finger at a TV camera mounted above her bed—”I’ve reprogrammed the tapes. Your guards at the monitors are watching whatever occurred in your bedroom a week ago last night.”

“My grandson will hunt you both down, and your punishment will not be quick.”

“Lee Tong is dead,” Pitt informed her, relishing every syllable.

The face altered. Now the blood flowed out of it and it became a pale yellow. But not with the emotions of shock and hurt, Pitt thought. She was waiting, waiting for something. Then the flicker of expectancy vanished as quickly as it had come.

“I do not believe you,” she said at last.

“He sank with the laboratory barge after I shot him.”

Casio moved around to the side of the bed. “You must come with us now.”

“May I ask where you’re taking me?” The voice was still soft and gracious. The blue eyes remained set.

They didn’t notice her right hand move beneath the covers.

Pitt never really accounted for the instinctive move that saved his life. Maybe it was the sudden realization that the TV camera was not exactly shaped like a camera. Maybe it was the complete absence of fear in Min Koryo, or the aura that she was in firm command, but as the beam of light stabbed out from above her bed, he pitched himself to the floor.

Pitt rolled to his side, tugging the automatic from his coat. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the laser beam sweep the room, cutting through furniture, scorching the draperies and wallpaper with a needle-thin spear of energy. The gun was in his hands, blasting away at the electron amplifier. At his fourth shot, the beam blinked out.

Casio was still standing. He reached out toward Pitt and then stumbled and fell. The laser had cut through his stomach as neatly as a surgeon’s scalpel. He twisted over on his back and stared up. Casio was seconds away from death. Pitt wanted to say something, but he couldn’t get the words out.

The case-hardened old investigator raised his head; his voice came in a rasping whisper. “The elevator… code four-one-one-six.” And then his eyes went sightless and his breathing ceased.

Pitt took the transmitter from Casio’s pocket, rose and trained the automatic just ten inches from Min Koryo’s heart. Her face was locked in a fearless smile. Then Pitt lowered the gun and reached under the covers and silently lifted her out of the bed into her wheelchair.

She made no move to resist, spoke no words of defiance. She sat, wizened and mute, as Pitt pushed her into the corridor and onto a small lift that lowered them to the office floor. When they reached the reception lobby, she noted the unconscious security guard and looked up at him.

“What now, Mr. Pitt?”

“The final curtain for Bougainville Maritime,” he said. “Tomorrow your rotten business will be no more. Your Oriental art objects will be given away to museums. A new tenant will come in and redecorate your offices and living quarters. In fact, your entire fleet of ships will be sold off. From now on the name of Bougainville will be nothing but a distant memory in newspaper microfilm files. No friends or relatives will mourn you, and I’ll personally see that you’re buried in a potter’s field with no marker.”

At last he had broken through and her face revealed a searing hate. “And your future, Mr. Pitt?”

He grinned. “I’m going to rebuild the car you blew up.”

She weakly lifted herself from the wheelchair and spat at him. Pitt made no move to wipe away the spittle. He simply stood there and grinned wickedly, looked down and saw the evil viciousness erupt as she cursed him in Korean.

Pitt pressed the code numbers Casio had given him into the transmitter and watched as the doors to Liftonic QW-607 opened.

But there was no elevator, only an empty shaft.

“Bon voyage, you diabolic old crone.”

Then he shoved the wheelchair into the vacant opening and stood listening as it clattered like a pebble down a well, echoing off the sides of the shaft until there was the faint sound of impact a hundred stories below.

Loren was sitting on a bench in the concourse as he came through the main door of the Trade Center. She came toward him and they met and embraced. They clung together without saying anything for a few moments.

She could feel the fatigue and the pain in him. And she sensed something more. A strange inner peace that she had never known was there. She kissed him lightly several times. Then she took his arm and led him to a waiting taxi.

“Sal Casio?” she asked.

“With his daughter.”

“And Min Koryo Bougainville?”

“In hell.”

She caught the distant look in his eyes. “You need rest. I’d better check you into a hospital.”

Suddenly the old devilish look flashed on his face. “I had something else in mind.”

“What?”

“The next week in a suite in the best hotel in Manhattan. Champagne, gourmet dinners sent up by room service, you making love to me.”

A coquettish expression gleamed in her eyes. “Why do I have to do all the work?”

“Obviously I’m in no condition to take command.”

She held on to him comfortingly. “I suppose it’s the least I can do after you saved my life.”

“Semper Paratus,” he said.

“Semper what?”

“The Coast Guard motto. Always Ready. If their rescue helicopter hadn’t arrived over the barge when it did, we’d both be lying on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.”

They reached the taxi and Loren held on to Pitt as he stiffly entered and sank into the seat. She eased in beside him and kissed his hand while the driver sat patiently looking out his windshield.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“The Helmsley Palace Hotel,” Pitt answered.

Loren looked at him. “You’re getting a suite at the Helmsley?” she said.

“A penthouse suite,” he corrected her.

“And who’s going to pay for this opulent interlude?”

Pitt looked down at her in mock astonishment. “Why, the government, of course. Who else?”