Shock Wave

DIAMONDS... THE GRAND ILLUSION

January 30, 2000

Gladiator Island, Tasman Sea

The Dorsett manor house sat in the saddle of the island, between the two dormant volcanoes. The front overlooked the lagoon, which had become a bustling port for the diamond mining activities. Two mines in both volcanic chutes had been in continuous operation almost from the day Charles and Mary Dorsett returned from England after their marriage. There were those who claimed the family empire began then, but those who knew better held that the empire was truly launched by Betsy Fletcher when she found the unusual stones and gave them to her children to play with.

The original dwelling, mostly built from logs, with a palm frond or palapa roof, was torn down by Anson Dorsett. It was he who designed and built the large mansion that still stood after being remodeled by later generations until eventually taken over by Arthur Dorsett. The style was based on the classical layout-a central courtyard surrounded by verandas from which doors opened onto thirty rooms, all furnished in English colonial antiques. The only visible modern convenience was a large satellite dish, rising from a luxuriant garden, and a modern swimming pool in the center courtyard.

Arthur Dorsett hung up the phone, stepped out of his office-study and walked over to the pool where Deirdre was languidly stretched on a lounge chair, in a string bikini, carefully absorbing the tropical sun into her smooth skin.

“You’d better not let my superintendents see you like that,” he said gruffly.

She slowly raised her head and looked down over a sea of skin. “I see no problem. I have my bra on.”

“And women wonder why they’re raped.”

“Surely you don’t want me to go around wearing a sack,” she said mockingly.

“I have just gotten off the phone with Washington,” he said heavily. “It seems your sister has vanished.”

Deirdre sat up, startled, and lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. “Are your sources reliable? I personally hired the best investigators, former Secret Service agents, to keep her under surveillance.”

“It’s confirmed. They bungled their assignment and lost her after a wild ride through the countryside.”

“Maeve isn’t smart enough to lose professional investigators.”

“From what I’ve been told, she had help.” Her lips twisted into a scowl. “Let me guess Dirk Pitt.”

Dorsett nodded. “The man is everywhere. Boudicca had him in her grasp at our Kunghit Island mine, but he slipped through her fingers.”

“I sensed he was dangerous when he saved Maeve. I should have known how dangerous when he interrupted my plans to be airlifted off the Polar Queen by our helicopter after I set the ship on a collision course toward the rocks. I thought we were rid of him after that. I never imagined he would pop up without warning at our Canadian operation.”

Dorsett motioned to a pretty little Chinese girl who was standing by a column supporting the roof over the veranda. She was dressed in a silk dress with long slits up the sides. “Bring me a gin,” he ordered. “Make it a tall one. I don’t like skimpy drinks.”

Deirdre held up a tall, empty glass. “Another rum collins.”

The girl hurried off to bring the drinks. Deirdre caught her father eyeing the girl’s backside and rolled her eyes. “Really, Daddy. You should know better than to bed the hired help. The world expects better from a man of your wealth and status.”

“There are some things that go beyond class,” he said sternly.

“What do we do about Maeve? She’s obviously enlisted Dirk Pitt and his friends from NUMA to help her retrieve the twins.”

Dorsett pulled his attention from the departing Chinese servant. “He may be a resourceful man, but he won’t find Gladiator Island as easy to penetrate as our Kunghit Island property.”

“Maeve knows the island better than any of us. She’ll find a way.”

“Even if they make it ashore”-he lifted a finger and pointed through the arched door of the courtyard in the general direction of the mines-“they’ll never get within two hundred meters of the house.”

Deirdre smiled diabolically. “Preparing a warm welcome seems most appropriate.”

“No warm welcome, my darling daughter, not here, not on Gladiator Island.”

“You have an ulterior plan.” It was more statement than question.

He nodded. “Through Maeve, they will, no doubt, devise a scheme to infiltrate our security. Unfortunately for them, they won’t have the opportunity of exercising it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We cut them off at the pass, as the Americans are fond of saying, before they touch our shore.”

“A perceptive man, my father.” She stood up and hugged him, inhaling his smell. Even when she was a little girl he had smelled of expensive cologne, a special brand he imported from Germany, a musky, no-nonsense smell that reminded her of leather briefcases, the indefinable scent of a corporation boardroom and the wool of an expensive business suit.

He reluctantly pushed her away, angry at a growing feeling of desire for his own flesh and blood. “I want you to coordinate the mission. As usual, Boudicca will expedite.”

“I’ll bet my share of Dorsett Consolidated you know where to find them.” She smiled archly at him. “What is our timetable?”

“I suspect that Mr. Pitt and Maeve have already left Washington.”

Her eyes squinted at him under the sun. “So soon?”

“Since Maeve hasn’t been seen at her house, nor has Pitt set foot in his NUMA office for the past two days, it goes without saying that they are together and on their way here for the twins.”

“Tell me where to set a trap for them,” she said, a sparkle of the feline hunter in her eyes, certain her father had the answer. “An airport or hotel in Honolulu, Auckland or Sydney?”

He shook his head. “None of those. They won’t make it easy for us by flying on commercial flights and staying at secluded inns. They’ll take one of NUMA’s small fleet of jet transports and use the agency’s facilities as a base.”

“I didn’t know the Americans had a permanent base for oceanographic study in either New Zealand or Australia.”

“They don’t,” replied Dorsett. “What they do have is a research ship, the Ocean Angler, which is on a deepsea survey project in the Bounty Trough, west of New Zealand. If all goes according to plan, Pitt and Maeve will arrive in Wellington and rendezvous with the NUMA ship at the city docks this time tomorrow.”

Deirdre stared at her father with open admiration. “How could you know all this?”

He smiled imperiously. “I have my own source in NUMA, who I pay very well to keep me informed of any underwater discoveries of precious stones.”

“Then our strategy is to have Boudicca and her crew intercept and board the research ship and arrange for it to disappear.”

“Not wise,” Dorsett said flatly. “Boudicca has learned that Dirk Pitt somehow traced the cleanup of the derelict ships to her and our yacht. We send one of NUMA’s research ships and its crew to the bottom and they’ll know damned well we were behind it. No, we’ll treat that matter more delicately.”

“Twenty-four hours isn’t much time.”

“Leave after lunch and you can be in Wellington by supper. John Merchant and his security force will be waiting for you at our warehouse outside of the city.”

“I thought Merchant had his skull fractured on Kunghit Island.”

“A hairline crack. Just enough to make him insane for revenge. He insisted on being in on the kill.”

“And you and Boudicca?” asked Deirdre.

“We’ll come across in the yacht and should arrive by midnight,” answered Dorsett. “That still leaves us ten hours to firm up our preparations.”

“That means we’ll be forced into seizing them during daylight.”

Dorsett gripped Deirdre by the shoulders so hard she winced. “I’m counting on you, Daughter, to overcome any obstacles.”

“A mistake, thinking we could trust Maeve,” Deirdre said reproachfully. “You should have guessed she would come chasing after her brats the first chance she got.”

“The information she passed on to us before disappearing was useful,” he insisted, angrily. Excuses for miscalculation did not come easily to Arthur Dorsett.

“If only Maeve had died on Seymour Island, we wouldn’t have this mess.”

“The blame is not entirely hers,” said Dorsett. “She had no prior knowledge of Pitt’s intrusion on Kunghit. He’s cast out a net, but any information he might have obtained cannot hurt us.”

Despite the minor setback, Dorsett was not overly concerned. His mines were on islands whose isolation was a barrier to any kind of organized protest. His vast resources had shifted into gear. Security was tightened to keep any reporters from coming within several kilometers of his operations. Dorsett attorneys worked long hours to keep any legal opposition at bay while the public relations people labeled the stories of deaths and disappearances throughout the Pacific Ocean as products of environmentalist rumor mills and attempted to throw the blame elsewhere, the most likely target being secret American military experiments.

When Dorsett spoke it was with renewed calm. “Twenty-three days from now any storm raised by Admiral Sandecker will die a natural death when we close the mines.”

“We can’t make it look as though we’re admitting guilt by shutting down our operations, Daddy. We’d open ourselves to a mountain of lawsuits by environmentalists and families of those who were killed.”

“Not to worry, Daughter. Obtaining evidence that proves our mining methods cause underwater ultrasonic convergence that kills organic life is next to impossible. Scientific tests would have to be conducted over a period of months. In three weeks’ time, scientists will have nothing to study. Plans have been made to remove every nut and bolt from our diamond excavations. The acoustic plague, as they insist on calling it, will be yesterday’s headlines.”

The little Chinese girl returned with their drinks and served them from a tray. She retreated into the shadows of the veranda as soundlessly as a wraith.

“Now that their mother has betrayed us, what will you do with Sean and Michael?”

“I’ll arrange for her never to see them again.”

“A great pity,” Deirdre said as she rolled the icy glass over her forehead.

Dorsett downed the gin as if it were water. He lowered the glass and looked at her. “Pity? Who am I supposed to pity, Maeve or the twins?”

“Neither.”

“Who then?”

Deirdre’s exotic-model features wore a sardonic grin. “The millions of women around the world, when they find out their diamonds are as worthless as glass.”

“We’ll take the romance out of the stone,” Dorsett said, laughing. “That, I promise you.”

Wellington, observed Pitt through the window of the NUMA aircraft, couldn’t have rested in a more beautiful setting. Enclosed by a huge bay and a maze of islands, low mountains with Mount Victoria as the highest peak, and lush, green vegetation, the port boasted one of the finest harbors in the world. This was his fourth trip in ten years to the capital city of New Zealand, and he had seldom seen it without scattered rain showers and gusting winds.

Admiral Sandecker had given Pitt’s mission his very reluctant blessing with grave misgivings. He considered Arthur Dorsett a very threatening man, a greedy sociopath who killed without a shred of remorse. The admiral cooperated by authorizing a NUMA aircraft for Pitt and Giordino to fly, with Maeve, to New Zealand and take command of a research ship as a base of operations for the rescue, but with the strict condition that no lives be risked in the attempt. Pitt gladly agreed, knowing the only people at risk, once the Ocean Angler stood a safe distance off Gladiator Island, would be the three of them.

His plan was to use an underwater submersible to slip’ into the lagoon, then land and help Maeve reclaim her sons before returning to the ship. It was, Pitt thought bemusedly, a plan without technicalities. Once on shore, everything hinged on Maeve.

He looked across the cockpit at Giordino, who was piloting the executive Gulfstream jet. His burly friend was as composed as if he were lounging under a palm tree on a sandy beach. They had been close friends since that first day they had met in elementary school and got ten into a fistfight. They played on the same high school football team, Giordino as a tackle, Pitt as quarterback, and later at the Air Force Academy. Blatantly using his father’s influence-George Pitt happened to be the senior Senator from California-to keep them together, Dirk and Al had trained in the same flight school and flown two tours with the same tactical squadron in Vietnam, When it came to the ladies, however, they differed. Giordino reveled in affairs, while Pitt felt more comfortable with relationships.

Pitt rose from his seat, moved back into the main cabin and stared down at Maeve. She had slept fitfully during the long and tedious flight from Washington, and her face looked tired and drawn. Even now her eyes were closed, but the way she constantly changed position on the narrow couch indicated she had not yet crossed over the threshold into unconscious slumber. He reached over and gently shook her. “We’re about to land in Wellington,” he said.

Her indelible blue eyes fluttered open. “I’m awake,” she murmured sleepily.

“How do you feel?” he asked with gentleness and concern.

She roused herself and nodded gamely. “Ready and willing.”

Giordino flared the aircraft, dropping smoothly till the tires touched and smoked briefly on contact with the ground. He taxied off the runway onto the flight line to ward the parking area for transient and privately owned aircraft. “You see a NUMA vehicle?” he shouted over his shoulder at Pitt in the back.

The familiar turquoise and white colors were not in sight. “Must be late,” said Pitt. “Or else we’re early.”

“Fifteen minutes early by the old timepiece on the instrument panel,” replied Giordino.

A small pickup truck with a flight-line attendant in the bed motioned for Giordino to follow them to an open parking space between a line of executive jet aircraft Giordino rolled to a stop when his wingtips were even with the planes on either side of him and began the procedure for shutting down the engines.

Pitt opened the passenger door and set a small step at the end of the stairs. Maeve followed him out and walked back and forth to stretch her joints and muscles, stiff and tensed after the long flight. She looked around the parking area for their transportation. “I thought someone from the ship was going to meet us,” she said between yawns.

“They must be on their way.”

Giordino passed out their traveling bags, locked up the aircraft and took cover with Pitt and Maeve under one wing while a sudden rain squall passed over the airport. Almost as quickly as it appeared, the storm moved across the bay, and the sun broke through a rolling mass of white clouds. A few minutes later, a small Toyota bus with the words HARBOR SHUTTLE painted on the sides splashed through the puddles and stopped. The driver stepped to the ground and jogged over to the aircraft. He was slim with a friendly face and dressed like a drugstore cowboy.

“One of you Dirk Pitt?”

“Right here,” Pitt acknowledged.

“Carl Marvin. Sorry I’m running late. The battery went dead in the shore van we carry aboard the Ocean Angler, so I had to borrow transportation from the harbormaster. I do hope you weren’t inconvenienced.”

“Not at all,” said Giordino sourly. “We enjoyed the typhoon during intermission.”

The sarcasm flew over the driver’s head. “You haven’t been waiting long, I hope.”

“No more than ten minutes,” said Pitt.

Marvin loaded their bags in the back of the shuttle bus and drove away from the aircraft as soon as his passengers were seated. “The dock where the ship is moored is only a short drive from the airport,” he said cordially. “Just sit back and enjoy the trip.”

Pitt and Maeve sat together, held hands like teenagers and talked in low tones. Giordino settled into the seat in front of them and directly behind the driver. He spent most of the drive studying an aerial photo of Gladiator Island that Admiral Sandecker had borrowed from the Pentagon.

Time passed quickly and they soon turned off the main road into the bustling dock area, which was quite close to the city. A fleet of international cargo vessels, representing mostly Asian shipping lines, were moored beside long piers flanked by huge storage buildings. No one paid any attention to the wandering course taken by the driver around the buildings, ships and huge cargo cranes. His eyes watched the passengers in the rearview mirror almost as often as they were turned on the piers ahead.

“The Ocean Angler is just on the other side of the next warehouse,” he said, vaguely gesturing at some unseen object through the windshield.

“Is she ready to cast off when we board?” asked Pitt.

“The crew is standing by for your arrival.”

Giordino stared thoughtfully at the back of the driver’s head. “What’s your duty on the ship?” he asked.

“Mine?” said Marvin without turning. “I’m a photographer with the film crew.”

“How do you like sailing under Captain Dempsey?”

“A fine gentleman. He is most considerate of the scientists and their work.”

Giordino looked up and saw Marvin peering back in the rearview mirror. He smiled until Marvin refocused his attention on his driving. Then, shielded by the back rest of the seat in front of him, he wrote on a receipt for aircraft fuel that was pumped aboard in Honolulu before they headed toward Wellington. He wadded up the paper and casually flipped it over his shoulder on Pitt’s lap.

Talking with Maeve, Pitt had not picked up on the words that passed between Giordino and the driver. He casually unfolded the note and read the message:

Pitt leaned forward and spoke conversationally without staring suspiciously at the driver. “What makes you such a killjoy?”

Giordino turned around and spoke very softly. “Our, friend is not from the Ocean Angler.”

“I’m listening.”

“I tricked him into saying Dempsey is the captain.”

“Paul Dempsey skippers the Ice Hunter. Joe Ross is captain of the Angler.”

“Here’s another inconsistency. You and I and Rudi Gunn went over NUMA’s scheduled research project, and assigned personnel before we left for the Antarctic.”

“So?”

“Our friend up front not only has a bogus Texas accent, but he claims to be a photographer with the Ocean Angler’s film crew. Get the picture?”

“I do,” Pitt murmured. “No film crew was recruited to go on the project. Only sonar technicians and a team of geophysicists went on board, to survey the ocean floor.”

“And this character is driving us straight into hell,” said Giordino, looking out the window and toward a dockside warehouse just ahead with a large sign across a pair of doors that read:

True to their fears, the driver swung the bus through the gaping doors and between two men in the uniforms of Dorsett Consolidated security guards. The guards quickly followed the bus inside and pushed the switch to close the warehouse doors.

“In the final analysis, I’d have to say we’ve been had,” said Pitt.

“What’s the plan of attack?” asked Giordino, no longer speaking in a hushed voice.

There wasn’t time for any drawn-out conference. The bus was passing deeper into the darkened warehouse. “Dump our buddy Carl and let’s bust out of here.”

Giordino did not wait for a countdown. Four quick steps and he had a chokehold on the man who called himself Carl Marvin. With unbelievable speed, Giordino swung the man from behind the steering wheel, opened the entry door of the bus and heaved him out.

As if they had rehearsed, Pitt jumped into the driver’s seat and jammed the accelerator to the carpeted floorboard. Not an instant too soon, the bus surged forward through a knot of armed men, scattering them like leaves in the wake of a tornado. Two pallets holding cardboard boxes of electrical kitchen appliances from Japan sat directly in front of the bus. Pitt’s expression gave no hint that he was aware of the approaching impact. Boxes, bits and pieces of toasters, blenders and coffeemakers burst into the air as though they were shrapnel from an exploding howitzer shell.

Pitt swung a broadside turn down a wide aisle separating tiers of stacked crates of merchandise, took aim at a large metal door and crouched over the steering wheel. With a metallic clatter that sent the door whirling from its mountings, the Toyota bus roared out of the warehouse onto the loading dock, Pitt twisting the wheel rapidly to keep from clipping one leg of a towering loading crane.

This part of the dockyard was deserted. No ships were moored alongside, loading and unloading their cargo holds. A party of workers repairing a section of the pier were taking a break, sitting elbow to elbow in a row on a long wooden barricade that stretched across an access road leading from the pier as they ate their lunch. Pitt lay on the horn, spinning the wheel violently to avoid striking the workers, who froze at the sight of the vehicle bearing down on them. As the bus slewed around the barricade, Pitt almost missed it entirely, but a piece of the rear bumper caught a vertical support and spun the barricade around, slinging the dockworkers about the pier as if they were on the end of a cracked whip.

“Sorry about that!” Pitt yelled out the window as he sped past. .

He regretted not having been more observant, and belatedly realized the phony driver had purposely taken a roundabout route to confuse them. A ploy that worked all too well. He had no idea which way to turn for the entrance to the highway leading into the city.

A long truck and trailer pulled in front of him, blocking off his exit. He frantically cramped the steering wheel in a crazy zigzag to avoid smashing into the huge truck There was a loud metallic crunch, followed by the smashing of glass and the screech of tortured metal as the bus sideswiped the front end of the truck. The bus, its entire right side gouged and smashed, bounced wildly out of control. Pitt corrected and fishtailed the shattered vehicle until it straightened. He pounded the steering wheel angrily at seeing fluid spraying back over the newly cracked windshield. The impact had sprung the radiator from its mounts and loosened the hoses to the engine. That wasn’t the only problem. The right tire was blown and the front suspension knocked out of alignment.

“Do you have to hit everything that comes across your path?” Giordino asked irritably. He sat on the floor on the undamaged side of the bus, his huge arms circled around Maeve.

“Thoughtless of me,” said Pitt. “Anyone hurt?”

“Enough bruises to win an abuse lawsuit,” said Maeve bravely.

Giordino rubbed a swelling knot on one side of his head and gazed at Maeve woefully. “Your old man is a sneaky devil. He knew we were coming and threw a surprise ply.”

“Someone at NUMA must be on his payroll.” Pitt spared Maeve a brief glance. “Not you, I hope.”

“Not me,” Maeve said firmly.

Giordino made his way to the rear of the bus and stared out the window for signs of pursuit. Two black vans careened around the damaged truck and took up the chase “We have hounds running up our exhaust pipe.”

“Good guys or bad?” asked Pitt.

“I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings, but they ain’t wearing white hats.”

“You call that a positive identification?”

“How about, they have Dorsett Consolidated Mining logos painted on their doors.”

“You sold me.”

“If they come any closer, I could ask for their driver’s license.”

“Thank you, I have a rearview mirror.”

“You’d think we’d have left enough wreckage to have a dozen cop cars on our tails by now,” grumbled Giordino. “Why aren’t they doing their duty and patrolling the docks? I think it only fitting they arrest you for reckless driving.”

“If I know Daddy,” said Maeve, “he paid them to take a holiday.”

With no coolant, the engine rapidly heated up and threw clouds of steam from under the hood. Pitt had almost no control over the demolished vehicle. The front wheels, both splayed outward, fought to travel in opposite directions. A narrow alleyway between two warehouses suddenly yawned in front of the bus. Down to the final toss of the dice, Pitt hurled the bus into the opening. His luck was against him. Too late he realized the alleyway led onto a deserted pier with no exit except the one he passed through.

“The end of the trail,” Pitt sighed.

Giordino turned and looked to the rear again. “The posse knows it. They’ve stopped to gloat over their triumph.”

“Maeve?”

Maeve walked to the front of the bus. “Yes?” she said quietly.

“How long can you hold your breath?”

“I don’t know; maybe a minute.”

“Al? What are they doing?”

“Walking toward the bus, holding nasty-looking clubs.”

“They want us alive,” said Pitt. “Okay, gang, take a seat and hold on tight.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Maeve.

“We, love of my life, are going for a swim. Al, open all the windows. I want this thing to sink like a brick.”

“I hope the water’s warm,” said Giordino as he unlatched the windows. “I hate cold water.”

To Maeve, Pitt said, “Take several deep breaths and get as much oxygen as you can into your bloodstream. Exhale and then inhale as we go over the side.”

“I bet I can swim underwater farther than you,” she said with gutsy resolve.

“Here’s your chance to prove it,” he said admiringly.

“Don’t waste time waiting for an air pocket. Go out the windows on your right and swim under the pier as soon as the water stops surging inside the bus.”

Pitt reached behind the driver’s seat, unzipped his overnight bag, retrieved a nylon packet and stuffed it down the front of his pants, leaving a larger-than-life bulge.

“What in the world are you doing?” asked Maeve.

“My emergency goody bag,” explained Pitt. “I never leave home without it.”

“They’re almost on us,” Giordino announced calmly.

Pitt slipped on a leather coat, zipped it to his collar, turned and gripped the wheel. “Okay, let’s see if we can get high marks from the judges.”

He revved up the engine and shifted the automatic transmission into sow. The battered bus jerked forward, right front tire flapping, steam billowing so thick he could hardly see ahead, gathering speed for the plunge. There was no railing along the pier, only a low, wooden horizontal beam that acted as a curb for vehicles. The front wheels took the brunt of the impact. The already weakened front suspension tore away as the wheelless chassis ground over it, the rear tires tearing rubber as they spun, pushing what was left of the Toyota bus over the side of the pier.

The bus seemed to fall in slow motion before the heavier front end dropped and struck the water with a great splash. The last thing Pitt remembered before the windshield fell inward and the seawater surged through the open passenger door was the loud hiss of the overheated engine as it was inundated.

The bus bobbed once, hung for an instant and they sank into the green water of the bay. All Dorsett’s security people saw when they ran to the edge of the dock and looked down, was a cloud of steam, a mass of gurgling bubbles and a spreading oil slick. The waves created by the impact spread and rippled into the pilings beneath the pier. They waited expectantly for heads to appear, but no indication of life emerged from the green depths.

Pitt guessed that if the docks could accommodate large cargo ships the water depth had to be at least fifteen meters. The bus sank, wheels down, into the muck on the bottom of the harbor, disturbing the silt, which burst into a rolling cloud. Pushing away from the wheel, he stroked toward the rear of the bus to make sure Maeve and Giordino were not injured and had exited through a window. Satisfied they had escaped, he snaked through the opening and kicked into the blinding silt. When he burst into the clear, visibility was better than he had expected, the water temperature a degree or two colder. The incoming tide brought in fairly clean water, and he could easily distinguish the individual pilings under the pier. He estimated visibility at twenty meters.

He recognized the indistinct shapes of Maeve and Giordino about four meters in front, swimming strongly into the void ahead. He looked up, but the surface was only a vague pattern of broken light from a cloudy sky. And then suddenly the water darkened considerably as he swam under the pier and between the pilings. He temporarily lost the others in the shadowy murk, and his lungs began to tighten in complaint from the growing lack of air. He swam on an angle toward the surface, allowing the buoyancy of his body to carry him upward, one hand raised above his head to ward off imbedding something hard and sharp in his scalp. He finally surfaced in the midst of a small sea of floating litter. He sucked in several breaths of salty air and swung around to find Maeve and Giordino bobbing in the water a short distance behind him.

They swam over, and his regard for Maeve heightened when he saw her smiling. “Show-off,” she whispered, aware that voices could be heard by the Dorsett men above. “I bet you almost drowned trying to outdistance me.”

“There’s life in the old man yet,” Pitt murmured.

“I don’t think anyone saw us,” muttered Giordino. “I was almost under the dock before I broke free of the silt cloud.”

Pitt motioned in the general direction of the main dock area. “Our best hope is to swim under the pier until we can find a safe place to climb clear.”

“What about boarding the nearest ship we can find?” asked Giordino.

Maeve looked doubtful. Her long blond hair floated in the water behind her like golden reeds on a pond. “If my father’s people picked up our trail, he’d find a way to force the crew to turn us over to him.”

Giordino looked at her, “You don’t think the crew would hold us until we were under the protection of local authorities?”

Pitt shook his head, flinging drops of water in a spiral. “If you were the captain of a ship or the commander in charge of dock police, would you believe a trio of half drowned rats or the word of someone representing Arthur Dorsett?”

“Probably not us,” Giordino admitted.

“If only we could reach the Ocean Angler.”

“That would be the first place they’d expect us to go,” said Maeve.

“Once we were on board, Dorsett’s men would have a fight on their hands if they tried to drag us off,” Pitt assured her.

“A moot point,” Giordino said under his breath. “We haven’t the foggiest idea where the Ocean Angler is berthed.”

Pitt stared at his friend reproachfully. “I hate it when you’re sober minded.”

“Has she a turquoise hull and white on the cabins above like the Ice Hunter?” asked Maeve.

“All NUMA ships have the same color scheme,” Giordino answered.

“Then I saw her. She’s tied to Pier 16.”

“I give up. Where’s Pier 16 from here?”

“The fourth one north of here,” replied hid.

“How would you know that?”

“The signs on the warehouses. I noticed number 19 before I drove off of Pier 20.”

“Now that we’ve fixed our location and have a direction, we’d best get a move on,” Giordino suggested. “If they have half a brain they’ll be sending down divers to look for bodies in the bus.”

“Stay clear of the pilings,” cautioned Pitt. “Beneath the surface, they’re packed with colonies of mussels. Their shells can cut through flesh like a razor blade.”

“Is that why you’re swimming in a leather jacket?” asked Maeve.

“You never know who you’ll meet,” Pitt said dryly.

Without a visual sighting, there was no calculating how far they had to go before reaching the research ship. Conserving their strength, they breaststroked slowly and steadily through the maze of pilings, out of sight of Dorsett’s men on the dock above. They reached the based Pier 20, then passed beneath the main dockyard thoroughfare, which connected to all the loading docks, be, fore turning north toward Pier 16. The better part of as hour crept by before Maeve spotted the turquoise hull reflected in the water beneath the pier.

“We made it,” she cried out happily.

“Don’t count your prize money,” Pitt warned her. “The dock might be crawling with your father’s muscle patrol.”

The ship’s hull was only two meters from the pilings. Pitt swam until he was directly beneath the ship’s boarding ramp. He reached up, locked his hands around across member that reinforced the pilings and pulled himself out of the water. Climbing the slanting beams until he reached the upper edge of the dock, he slowly raised his; head and scanned the immediate vicinity. .

The area around the boarding ramp was deserted, but a Dorsett security van was parked across the nearest entry onto the pier. He counted four men lined across an open stretch between stacks of cargo containers and several parked cars alongside the ship moored in front of the Ocean Angler.

He ducked below the edge of the dock and spoke to Maeve and Giordino. “Our friends are guarding the entrance to the pier about eighty meters away, too far to stop us from making it on board.”

No more conversation was necessary. Pitt pulled both of them onto the beam he was standing on. Then, at his signal, they all climbed over the beam that acted as a curb, dodged around a huge bollard that held the mooring lines of the ship, and with Maeve in the lead, dashed up the boarding ramp to the open deck above.

When he reached the safety of the ship, Pitt’s instincts began working overtime. He had erred badly, and the mistake couldn’t be undone. He knew when he saw the men guarding the dock begin walking slowly and methodically toward the Ocean Angler as if they were out for stroll through the park. There was no shouting or confusion. They acted as though they had expected them quarry to suddenly appear and reach the sanctuary of the ship. He knew when he looked over decks devoid of human activity that something was very, very wrong. Someone on the crew should have been in evidence on a working ship. The robotic submersibles, the sonar equipment, the great winch for lowering survey systems into the depths were neatly secured. Rare was the occasion when an engineer or scientist wasn’t fussing with hi prized apparatus. And he knew when a door opened from a companionway leading to the bridge and a familiar figure stepped out onto the deck that the unthinkable had happened.

“How nice to see you again, Mr. Pitt,” said John Merchant, snidely. “You never give up, do you?”

Pitt, in those first few moments of bitter frustration, felt an almost tangible wave of defeat wash over him. The fact that they had been effortlessly and completely snared, that Maeve was trapped in the arms of her father, that there was every likelihood that he and Giordino would be murdered, was a heavy pill to swallow.

It was all too painfully obvious that with advance warning from their agent inside NUMA, Dorsett’s men had arrived at the Ocean Angler first, and through some kind of subterfuge had temporarily subdued the captain and crew and taken over the ship just long enough to trap Pitt and the others. It had all been so predestined, so transparent that Arthur Dorsett had been certain to do something beyond the bounds of the ordinary, as a backup strategy in the event that Pitt and Giordino had slipped through his fingers and somehow come on board. Pitt felt he should have predicted it and come up with an alternate plan, but he’d underestimated the shrewd diamond tycoon. Pirating an entire ship while it was docked within stone’s throw of a major city had not crossed Pitt’s mind.

When he saw a small army of uniformed men appear from their hiding places, some with police clubs, a few leveling rubber-pellet guns, he knew hope was lost. But not irretrievably lost. Not so long as he had Giordino at his side. He looked down at Giordino to see how he was reacting to the terrible shock. As far as he could tell, Giordino looked as though he was enduring a boring classroom lecture. There was no reaction at all. He stared at Merchant as though measuring the man for a coffin, a stare, Pitt observed, that was strangely like the one with which Merchant was appraising Giordino.

Pitt put his arm around Maeve, whose brave front began to crumble. The blue eyes were desolate, the wide, waxen eyes of one who knows her world is ending. She bowed her head and placed it in her hands as her shoulders sagged. Her fear was not for herself but for what her father would do to her boys now that it was painfully obvious she had deceived him.

“What have you done with the crew?” Pitt demanded of Merchant, noting the bandage on the back of his head.

“The five men left on board were persuaded to remain in their quarters.”

Pitt looked at him questioningly. “Only five?”

“Yes. The others were invited to a party in their honor by Mr. Dorsett, at Wellington’s finest hotel. Hail to the brave explorers of the deep, that sort of tiring. As a mining company, Dorsett Consolidated has a vested interest in whatever minerals are discovered on the seafloor.”

“You were well prepared,” said Pitt coldly. “Who in NUMA told you we were coming?”

“A geologist, I don’t know his name, who keeps Mr. Dorsett informed of your underwater mining projects He’s only one of many—who provide the company with inside information from businesses and governments around the world”

“A corporate spy network.”

“And a very good one. We’ve tracked you from the minute you took off from Langley Field in Washington.”

The guards who surrounded the three made no move to restrain them. “No shackles, no handcuffs?” asked Pitt.

“My men have been commanded to assault and maim only Miss Dorsett should you and your friend attempt to escape.” Merchant’s teeth fairly gleamed under the sun between his thin lips. “Not my wish, of course. The orders came direct from Ms. Boudicca Dorsett.”

“A real sweetheart,” Pitt said acidly. “I’ll bet she tortured her dolls when she was little.”

“She has some very interesting plans for you, Mr. Pitt.”

“How’s your head?”

“Not nearly injured enough to keep me from flying over the ocean to apprehend you.”

“I can’t stand the suspense. Where do we go from here?”

“Mr. Dorsett will arrive shortly. You will all be transferred to his yacht.”

“I thought his floating villa was at Kunghit Island.”

“It was, several days ago.” Merchant smiled, removed his glasses and meticulously polished the lenses with a small cloth. “The Dorsett yacht has four turbocharged diesel engines connected to water jets that produce a total of 18,000 horsepower that enable the 80-ton craft to cruise at 120 kilometers an hour. You will find Mr. Dorsett is a man of singularly high taste.”

“In reality, he probably has a personality about as Interesting as a cloistered monk’s address book,” said Giordino readily. “What does he do for laughs besides count diamonds?”

Just for a moment, Merchant’s eyes blazed at Giordino and his smile faded, then he caught himself and the lifeless look returned as if it had been applied by a makeup artist.

“Humor, gentlemen, has its price. As Miss Dorsett can tell you, her father lacks a fondness for satiric wit. 1 venture to say that by this time tomorrow you will have precious little to smile about.”

Arthur Dorsett was nothing like Pitt had pictured him. He expected one of the richest men in the world, with three beautiful daughters, to be reasonably handsome, with a certain degree of sophistication. What Pitt saw before him in the salon of the same yacht he’d stood in at Kunghit Island was a troll from Teutonic folklore who’d just crawled from an underworld cave.

Dorsett stood a half a head taller than Pitt and was twice as broad from hips to shoulders. This was not a man who was comfortable sitting behind a desk. Pitt could see from whom Boudicca had gotten the black, empty eyes. Dorsett had weathered lines in his face, and the rough, scarred hands indicated that he wasn’t afraid of getting them dirty. The mustache was long and scraggly with a few bits of his lunch adhering to the strands of hair. But the thing that struck Pitt as hardly befitting a man of Dorsett’s international stature was the teeth that looked like the ivory keys of an old piano, yellowed and badly chipped. Closed lips should have covered the ugliness, but oddly, they never seemed to close, even when Dorsett was not talking.

He was positioned in front of the driftwood desk with the marble top, flanked by Boudicca, who stood on his left, wearing denim pants and a shirt that was knotted at her midriff but, oddly, buttoned at the neck, and Deirdre, who sat in a patterned-silk chair, chic and fashionably dressed in a white turtleneck under plaid shirt and skirt. Crossing his arms and sitting on his desk with one foot on a carpeted deck, Dorsett smiled like a monstrous old hag. The sinister eyes examined every detail of Pitt and Giordino like needles, probing every centimeter from hair to shoelaces. He turned to Merchant, who was standing behind Maeve, his hand resting inside a tweed sport coat on a holstered automatic slung under one arm.

“Nicely done, John.” He beamed. “You anticipated their every move.” He lifted a matted eyebrow and stared at the two men standing before him, wet and bedraggled, turned his eyes to Maeve, stringy damp hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks, grinned hideously and nodded at Merchant. “Not all went as you expected, perhaps? They look like they fell in a moat.”

“They delayed the inevitable by trying to escape into the water,” Merchant said airily. The self-assurance, the pomposity, were mirrored in his eyes. “In the end they walked right into my hands.”

“Any problems with the dockyard security people?”

“Negotiations and compensation came off smoothly,” Merchant said buoyantly. “After your yacht came alongside the Ocean Angler, the five crewmen we detained were released. I’m confident that any formal complaint filed by NUMA officials will be met with bureaucratic indifference by local authorities. The country owes a heavy debt to Dorsett Consolidated for its contribution to the economy.”

“You and your men are to be commended.” Dorsett nodded approvingly. “A liberal bonus will be forthcoming to all involved.”

“That is most kind of you, sir,” Merchant purred.

“Please leave us now.”

Merchant stared at Pitt and Giordino warily. “They are men who should be watched carefully,” he protested mildly. “I do not advise taking chances with them.”

“You think they’re going to try and take over the yacht?” Dorsett laughed. “Two defenseless men against two dozen who are armed? Or are you afraid they might jump overboard and swim to shore?” Dorsett motioned through a large window at the narrow tip of Cape Farewell, on New Zealand’s South Island, which was rapidly disappearing in the wake behind the yacht. “Across forty kilometers of sea infested with sharks? I don’t think so.”

“My job is to protect you and your interests,” said Merchant as he slid his hand from the gun, buttoned his sport coat and stepped quietly toward the door. “I take it seriously.”

“Your work is appreciated,” Dorsett said, abruptly becoming curt with impatience.

As soon as Merchant was gone, Maeve lashed out at her father. “I demand you tell me if Sean and Michael are all right, unharmed by your rotten mine superintendent.”

Without a word, Boudicca stepped forward, reached out her hand in what Pitt thought was a show of affection, but brought it viciously across Maeve’s cheek, a blow with such force it almost knocked her sister off her feet. Maeve stumbled and was caught by Pitt as Giordino stepped between the two women.

Shorter by half, Giordino had to look up into Boudicca’s face as if he were staring up at a tall building. The scene became even more ludicrous, because he had to peer up and over Boudicca’s bulbous breasts. “There’s a homecoming for you,” he said drolly.

Pitt was familiar with the look in his friend’s eye. Giordino was a keen judge of faces and character. He saw something, some infinitesimal oddity that Pitt missed. Giordino was taking a risk that in his estimation was justified. He grinned slyly as he looked Boudicca up and down. “I’ll make you a wager,” he said to her.

“A wager?”

“Yes. I’ll bet you don’t shave your legs or your armpits.”

There was a moment of silence, not borne by shock but more from curiosity. Boudicca’s face suddenly twisted with fury, and she pulled back her fist to strike. Giordino stood complacently, expecting the blow but making no move to dodge or ward it off.

Boudicca hit Giordino hard, harder than most Olympic boxers. Her balled fist caught Giordino on the side of the cheek and the jaw. It was a savage blow, a damaging roundhouse blow, not one that was expected from a woman, and it would have knocked most men off their feet, cold. Most men would have been unconscious for twenty-four hours, most, that is, that Boudicca had ever struck in ungoverned fury. Giordino’s head snapped to one side and he took a step backward, shook his head as if to clear it and then spat out a tooth onto the expensive carpet. Incredibly, against all comprehension, he stepped forward until he was under Boudicca’s protruding bosom again. There was no animosity, no expression of vengeance in his eyes. Giordino simply gazed at her reflectively. “If you had any sense of decency and fair play, you’d let me have a turn.”

Boudicca stood in confused amazement, massaging a sore hand. Uncontrolled outrage was slowly replaced with cold animosity. The look came into her eye of a rattlesnake about to strike with deadly purpose. “You are one stupid man,” she said coldly.

Her hands lashed out and clamped around Giordino’s neck. He stood with his fists clenched at his sides, making no move to stop her. His face drained of all color and his eyes began to bulge and still he made no effort to defend himself. He stared at her without any malice at all.

Pitt well remembered the strength in Boudicca’s hands; he still had the bruises on his arms to attest to it. At a loss as to Giordino’s out-of-character display of passivity, he moved away from Maeve in readiness to kick Boudicca in a kneecap, when her father shouted.

“Release him!” Arthur Dorsett snapped. “Do not soil your hands on a rat.”

Giordino still stood like a statue in a park, when Boudicca released her grip around his throat and stepped back, rubbing the knuckles she had scraped on his face.

“Next time,” she snarled, “you won’t have my father to save your filthy hide.”

“Did you ever think of turning professional?” Giordino rasped hoarsely, tenderly touching the growing discoloration marks around his neck. “I know this carnival that could use a geek—”

Pitt put his hand on Giordino’s shoulder. “Let’s hear what Mr. Dorsett has to say before you sign up for a rematch.”

“You’re wiser than your friend,” said Dorsett.

“Only when it comes to averting pain and associating with criminals.”

“Is that what you think of me? That I’m a common criminal?”

“Considering that you’re responsible for murdering hundreds of people, an unqualified yes.”

Dorsett shrugged imperviously and sat down behind his desk. “Regrettably, it was necessary.”

Pitt felt feverish with anger against Dorsett. “I can’t recall a single justification for cold-bloodedly cutting short the lives of innocent men, women and children.”

“Why should you lose sleep over a few deaths, when millions in the third world die every year from famine, disease and war?”

“It was the way I was brought up,” said Pitt. “My mother taught me life was a gift.”

“Life is a commodity, nothing more.” Dorsett scoffed. “People are like old tools that are used and then thrown away or destroyed when they have no more purpose. I pity men like you who are burdened with morals and principles. You are doomed to chase a mirage, a perfect world that never was and never will be.”

Pitt found himself staring at stark, unfettered madness. “You’ll die chasing a mirage too.”

Dorsett smiled humorlessly. “You’re wrong, Mr. Pitt. I will grasp it in my hands before my time comes.”

“You have a sick, warped philosophy of life.”

“So far it has served me very well.”

“What’s your excuse for not stopping the mass killing caused by your ultrasonic mining operations?”

“To mine more diamonds, what else?” Dorsett stared at Pitt as though he were studying a specimen in a jar. “In a few weeks I will make millions of women happy by providing them with the most precious of stones at a cost a beggar can afford.”

“You don’t strike me as the charitable type.”

“Diamonds are really nothing but bits of carbon. Their only practical asset is they happen to be the hardest substance known to man. This alone makes them essential for the machining of metals and drilling through rock. Did you know the name `diamond’ comes from the Greek, Mr. Pitt? It means indomitable. The Greeks, and later the Romans, wore them as protection from wild beasts and human enemies. Their women, however, did not adore diamonds as women do now. Besides driving off evil spirits, they were used as a test for adultery. And yet when it comes to beauty, you can get the same sparkle from crystal.”

As Dorsett spoke of diamonds his stare didn’t falter, but the throbbing pulse in the side of his neck gave away his deep feeling on the subject. He talked as if he had suddenly risen to a higher plane that few could experience.

“Are you also aware that the first diamond engagement ring was given by Archduke Ferdinand of Austria to Mary of Burgundy in the year 1477, and the belief that the ‘vein of love’ runs directly from the brain to the third finger of the left hand was a myth that came out of Egypt?”

Pitt stared back with unconcealed contempt. “What I’m aware of is the current glut of uncut stones being held in warehouses throughout South Africa, Russia and Australia to inflate false values. I also know the cartel, essentially a monopoly directed by De Beers, fixes the price. So how is it possible for one man to challenge the entire syndicate and cause a sudden, drastic drop of prices on the diamond market?”

“The cartel will play right into my hands,” said Dorsett contemptuously. “Historically, whenever a diamond-producing mining company or nation tried to go around them and merchandise their stones on the open market, the cartel slashed prices. The maverick, failing to compete and finding itself in a no-win situation, eventually returned to the fold. I’m counting on the cartel to repeat their act. By the time they realize that I’m dumping millions of diamonds at two cents on the dollar with no regard for earnings, it will be too late for them to react. The market will have collapsed.”

“What percentage is there in dominating a depressed market?”

“I’m not interested in dominating the market, Mr. Pitt. I want to kill it for all time.”

Pitt noticed that Dorsett didn’t gaze right at him but fixed his eyes impassively on a point behind Pitt’s head as if seeing a vision only he could see. “If I read you correctly, you’re cutting your own throat.”

“It sounds that way, doesn’t it?” Dorsett lifted a finger at Pitt. “Exactly what I wanted everyone to think, even my closest associates and my own daughters. The truth of the matter is that I expect to make a great sum of money.”

“How?” Pitt asked, his interest aroused.

Dorsett allowed a satanic grin to display his grotesque teeth. “The answer lies not in diamonds but in the colored gemstone market.”

“My God, I see what this is all about,” said Maeve as if witnessing a revelation. “You’re out to corner the market on colored stones.”

She began to shiver from her wet clothing and a swearing dread. Pitt removed his soggy leather jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

Dorsett nodded. “Yes, Daughter. During the last twenty years, your wise old father has stockpiled his diamond production while quietly buying up claims to the major colored gemstone mines around the world. Through a complex formation of front corporations I now secretly control eighty percent of the market.”

“By colored gemstones,” said Pitt, “I assume you mean rubies and emeralds.”

“Indeed, and a host of other precious stones, including sapphire, topaz, tourmaline and amethyst. Almost all are far more scarce than diamonds. The deposits of tsavorite, red beryl or red emerald, and the Mexican fire opal, for example, are becoming increasingly difficult to find. A number of colored gemstones are so rare they are sought by collectors and are very seldom made into jewelry.”

“Why haven’t the prices of colored stones matched that of diamonds?” asked Pitt.

“Because the diamond cartel has always managed to push color into the shadows,” Dorsett told him with the fervor of a zealot. “For decades, De Beers has spent enormous sums of money in high-powered research to study and survey international markets. Millions were spent advertising diamonds and creating an image of eternal value. To keep prices fixed, De Beers created a demand for diamonds to keep pace with the mushrooming supply. And so the web of imagery capturing a man showing his love for a woman through the gift of a diamond was spun through a shrewd advertising campaign that reached its peak with the slogan, ‘Diamonds are forever.’” He began to pace the room, gesturing with his hands for effect. “Because colored gemstone production is fragmented by thousands of independent producers, all competing and selling against each other, there has been no unified organization to promote colored stones. The trade has suffered from a lack of consumer awareness. I intend to change all that after the price of diamonds plunges.”

“So you’ve jumped in with both feet.”

“Not only will I produce colored stones from the mines,” declared Dorsett, “but unlike De Beers, I will cut and merchandise them through the House of Dorsett, my chain of stores on the retail market. Sapphires, emeralds and rubies may not be eternal, but when I’m through, they will make any woman who wears them feel like a goddess. Jewelry will have achieved a new splendor. Even the famous Renaissance goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini proclaimed the ruby and emerald more glorious than diamonds.”

It was a staggering concept, and Pitt carefully considered the possibilities before he asked, “For decades women have bought the idea that diamonds have an undeniable tie to courtship and a lifetime relationship. Do you really think you can switch their desire from diamonds to colored stones?”

“Why not?” Dorsett was surprised that Pitt could express doubt. “The notion of a diamond engagement ring did not take hold until the late 1800s. All it takes is a strategy to revamp social attitudes. I have a top creative advertising agency with offices in thirty countries ready to launch an international promotional campaign in unison with my operation to send the cartel down the drain. When I’m finished, colored stones will be the prestige gems for jewelry. Diamonds will merely be used for background settings.”

Pitt ’s gaze traveled from Boudicca to Deirdre and then Maeve. “Like most men, I’m a poor judge of women’s inner thoughts and emotions, but I know it won’t be easy convincing them that diamonds are not a girl’s best friend.”

Dorsett laughed dryly. “It’s the men who’ buy precious stones for women. And as much as they want to impress their true love, men have a higher regard for value. Sell them on the fact that rubies and emeralds are fifty times more rare than diamonds, and they’ll buy them.”

“Is that true?” Pitt was skeptical. “That an emerald is fifty times more rare than a comparable diamond?”

Dorsett nodded solemnly. “As the deposits of emeralds dry up, and they will in time, the gap will become much higher. Actually, it could safely be said of the red emerald, which comes only from one or two mines in the state of Utah, that it is over a million times as rare.”

“Cornering one market while destroying another, there has to be more in it for you than mere profit.”

“Not `mere profit,’ my dear Pitt. Profits on a level unheard of in history. We’re talking tens of billions of dollars.”

Pitt was incredulous at the staggering sum. “You couldn’t achieve that kind of money unless you doubled the price of colored gemstones.”

“Quadrupled would be closer to the truth. Of course, the raise would not take place overnight, but in graduated price hikes over a period of years.”

Pitt moved until he was standing directly in front of Dorsett, peering up closely at the taller man. “I have no quarrel with your desire to play King Midas,” he said with quiet steadiness. “Do what you will with the price of diamonds. But for God’s sake shut down the ultrasonic excavation of your mines. Call your superintendents and order them to stop all operations. Do it now before another life is lost.”

There came a strange stillness. Every pair of eye, turned toward Dorsett in expectation of an outburst of wrath at being challenged. He stared at Pitt for long seconds before turning to Maeve.

“Your friend is impatient. He does not know me, does not recognize my determination.” Then he again faced Pitt. “The assault on the diamond cartel is set for February twenty-second, twenty-one days from now. To make it work I need every gram, every carat, my mines can produce until then. Worldwide press coverage, advertising space in newspapers and time on television is purchased and scheduled. There can be no change, there will be no change in plans. If a few rabble die, so be it.”

Mental derangement, Pitt thought, those were the only words to describe the eerie malignity in Dorsett’s coalblack eyes. Mental derangement and total indifference to any thought of remorse. He was a man totally without conscience. Pitt felt his skin crawl from just looking at him. He wondered how many deaths Arthur Dorsett was accountable for. Long before he began excavating diamonds with ultrasound, how many men had died who stood in his way to becoming rich and powerful? He felt a sharp chill at knowing the man was a sociopath on the same level as a serial killer.

“You will pay for your crimes, Dorsett,” Pitt said calmly but with a cold edge in his voice. “You will surely pay for the unbearable grief and agony you have caused.”

“Who will be the angel of my retribution?” Dorsett sneered. “You, maybe? Mr. Giordino here? I do not believe there will be ordained retaliation from the heavens. The possibility is too remote. The only certainty I can bank on, Mr. Pitt, is that you won’t be around to see it.”

“Execute the witnesses by shooting them in the head and throwing their bodies overboard, is that your policy?”

“Shoot you and Mr. Giordino in the head?” There was no trace of emotion, of any feeling in Arthur Dorsett’s voice. “Nothing so crude and mundane, nor so merciful. Thrown in the sea? Yes, you may consider that a foregone conclusion. In any event, I will guarantee you and your friend a slow but violent death.”

After thirty hours of pounding through the sea at incredible speeds, the powerful turbodiesels fell off to a muffled throb, and the yacht slowed and began to drift amid a sea of gentle swells. The last sight of the New Zealand shoreline had long since disappeared in the yacht’s wake. To the north and west dark clouds were laced with forks of lightning, the thunder rumbling dully across the horizon. To the south and east there were no clouds and thunder. The skies were blue and clear.

Pitt and Giordino had spent the night and half the next day locked in a small supply compartment aft of the engine room. There was barely enough room to sit on the deck with knees drawn up to their chins. Pitt kept awake most of the time, the clarity of his mind heightened, listening to the revolutions of the engines, the thump of the swells. Casting aside all thoughts of restraint, Giordino had wrenched the door off its hinges only to be confronted by four guards with the muzzles of their automatic weapons pushed into his navel. Defeated, he promptly dropped off to sleep before the door was rehung.

Angered and blaming only himself for their predicament, Pitt was very self-critical, but no fault could really be attached to him. He should have out-thought John Merchant. He had been caught with his guard down because he miscalculated their fanatic desire to lure Maeve back into their clutches. He and Giordino were mere sideline pawns. Arthur Dorsett considered them little more than a minor annoyance in his insane crusade for an absurd accumulation of wealth.

There was something weird and ominous about their unmoving concentration on such a complex plan to ensnare a daughter and eliminate the men from NUMA. Pitt wondered dimly why he and Giordino had been kept alive, and he had no sooner done so when the damaged door creaked open and John Merchant stood leering on the threshold. Pitt automatically checked his Doxa watch at seeing his nemesis. It was eleven-twenty in the morning.

“Time to board your vessel,” Merchant announced pleasantly.

“We’re changing boats?” asked Pitt.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I hope the service is better than on this one,” said Giordino lazily. “You will, of course, take care of our luggage.”

Merchant dismissed Giordino with a brisk shrug. “Please hurry, gentlemen. Mr. Dorsett does not like to be kept waiting.”

They were escorted out onto the stern deck, surrounded by a small army of guards armed with a variety of weapons designed to inflict bodily harm but not kill. Both men blinked in the fading sunlight just as the first few raindrops fell carried ahead of the advancing clouds by a light breeze.

Dorsett sat protected under an overhang in a chair at a table laden with several savory dishes laid out in silver serving bowls. Two uniformed attendants stood at his elbow, one ready to pour at the slightest indication that his wineglass required refilling, the other to replace used silverware. Boudicca and Deirdre, seated on their father’s left and right, didn’t bother looking up from their food as Pitt and Giordino were brought into their divine presence. Pitt glanced around for Maeve, but she wasn’t to be seen.

“I regret that you must leave us,” said Dorsett between bites of toast heaped with caviar. “A pity you couldn’t have stayed for brunch.”

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to boycott caviar?” said Pitt. “Poachers have nearly driven sturgeon to extinction.”

Dorsett shrugged apathetically. “So it costs a few dollars more.”

Pitt turned, his eyes staring over the empty sea, starting to look ugly from the approaching storm. “We were told we were to board another boat.”

“And so you shall.”

“Where is it?”

“Floating alongside.”

“I see,” Pitt said quietly. “I see indeed. You plan to set us adrift.”

Dorsett rubbed food from his mouth with a napkin with the savoir-faire of an auto mechanic wiping his greasy hands. “I apologize for providing such a small craft, one without an engine, I might add, but it’s all I have to offer.”

“A nice sadistic touch. You enjoy the thought of our suffering.”

Giordino glanced at two high-performance powerboats that were cradled on the upper deck of the yacht. “We’re overwhelmed by your generosity.”

“You should be grateful that I’m giving you a chance to live.”

“Adrift in a part of the sea devoid of maritime traffic, directly in the path of a storm.” Pitt scowled. “The least you should do is supply pen and paper to make out our last wills and testaments.”

“Our conversation has ended. Good-bye, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Giordino, bon voyage.” Dorsett nodded at John Merchant. “Show these NUMA scum to their craft.”

Merchant pointed to a gate in the railing that was swung open.

“What, no confetti and streamers?” muttered Giordino.

Pitt stepped to the edge of the deck and stared down at the water. A small semi-inflatable boat bobbed in the water beside the yacht. Three meters in length by two meters wide, it had a fiberglass V-hull that appeared sturdy. The center compartment, however, would barely hold four people, the neoprene outer flotation tube taking up half the boat. The craft had mounted an outboard engine at one time, but that had been removed. The control cables still dangled from a center console. The interior was empty except for a figure in Pitt’s leather jacket huddled in one end.

Cold rage swept Pitt. He took Merchant by the collar of his yachting jacket and cast him aside as easily as if he’d been a straw scarecrow. He stormed back to the dining table before he could be stopped. “Not Maeve too,” he said sharply.

Dorsett smiled, but it was an expression completely lacking in humor. “She took her ancestor’s name, she can suffer as her ancestor did.”

“You bastard!” Pitt snarled with animal hate. “You fornicating scab-!” That was as far as he got. One of Merchant’s guards rammed the butt of his automatic rifle viciously in Pitt’s side, just above the kidney.

A tidal wave of agony consumed Pitt, but sheer wrath kept him on his feet. He lurched forward, grabbed the tablecloth in both hands, gave a mighty jerk and wrenched it into the air. Glasses, knives, forks, spoons, serving dishes and plates filled with gourmet treats exploded over the deck with a great clatter. Pitt then threw himself across the table at Dorsett, not with the mere intent to strike him or choke him to death. He knew he’d have one, and only one, chance at maiming the man. He extended his index fingers and jabbed just as he was smothered in guards. A maddened Boudicca slung her hand down in a ferocious chop to Pitt’s neck, but she missed and caught him on the shoulder. One of Pitt’s fingers missed its target and scraped over Dorsett’s forehead. The other struck home, and he heard an agonized primeval scream. Then he felt the blows raining on him in every bone of his body, then nothing as the crazy melee snapped into blackness.

Pitt woke and thought he was in some bottomless pet or a cave deep in the earth. Or at least in the depths of some underground cavern where there was only eternal darkness. Desperately, he tried to feel his way out, but it was like stumbling through a labyrinth. Lost in the throes of a nightmare, doomed to wander forever in a black maze, he thought vaguely. Then suddenly, for no more than the blink of an eye, he saw a dim light far ahead. He reached out for it and watched it grow into dark clouds scudding across the sky.

“Praise be, Lazarus is back from the dead.” Giordino’s voice seemed to come from a city block away, partially drowned out by the rumble of traffic. “And just in time to die again, by the look of the weather.”

As he became fully conscious, Pitt wished he could return to the forbidding labyrinth. Every square centimeter of his body throbbed with pain. From his skull to his knees, it seemed every bone was broken. He tried to sit up, but stopped in mid-motion and groaned in agony. Maeve touched his cheek and. cradled his shoulders with one arm. “It will hurt less if you don’t try to move.”

He looked up into her face. The sky-blue eyes were wide with caring and affection. As if she were weaving a spell, he could feel her love falling over him like gossamer, and the agony slipped away as if drawn from his veins.

“Well, I certainly made a mess of things, didn’t I?” he murmured.

She slowly shook her head, the long blond hair trailing across his cheeks. “No, no, don’t think that. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”

“Merchant’s boys worked you over pretty good before throwing you off the yacht. You look like you were used for batting practice by the Los Angeles Dodgers.”

Pitt struggled to a sitting position. “Dorsett?”

“I suspect you may have fixed one of his eyes so he’ll look like a real pirate when he slips on his eye patch. Now all he needs is a dueling scar and a hook.”

“Boudicca and Deirdre carried him inside the salon during the brawl,” said Maeve. “If Merchant had realized the full extent of Father’s injury, there is no telling what he might have done to you.”

Pitt’s gaze swept an empty and ominous sea through eyes that were swollen and half closed “They’re gone?”

“Tried to run us over before they cut and ran to beat the storm,” said Giordino. “Lucky for us the neoprene floats on our raft, and without an engine that’s all you can call it, rebounded off the yacht’s bows. As it was, we came within a hair of capsizing.”

Pitt refocused his eyes on Maeve. “So they left us to drift like your great-great-great-grandmother, Betsy Fletcher.”

She stared at him oddly. “How did you know about her? I never told you.”

“I always investigate the women I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“And a short life it’ll be,” said Giordino, pointing grimly to the northwest. “Unless my night-school class in meteorology steered me wrong, we’re sitting in the path of what they call in these parts a typhoon, or maybe a cyclone, depending how close we are to the Indian Ocean.”

The sight of the dark clouds and the streaks of lightning followed by the threatening rumble of thunder was enough to make Pitt lose heart as he peered across the sea and listened to the increasing wind. The margin between life and death had narrowed to a paper’s, thickness. Already the sun was blotted out and the sea turned gray. The tiny boat was minutes away from being swallowed by the maelstrom.

Pitt hesitated no longer. “The first order of the day is to rig a sea anchor.” He turned to Maeve. “We’ll need my leather jacket and some line and anything that will help create a drag to keep us from capsizing in heavy seas.”

Without a word, she slipped out of the coat and handed it to him while Giordino rummaged in a small storage locker under a seat. He came up with a rusty grappling hook attached to two sections of nylon line, one five meters, the other, three meters. Pitt laid open the jacket and filled it with everyone’s shoes and the grappling hook, along with some old engine parts and several corroded tools Giordino had scrounged from the storage locker.

Then he zipped it up, knotted the sleeves around the open waistband and collar and tied the makeshift bundle to the shorter nylon line. He cast it over the side and watched it sink before tying the other end of the line solidly to the walk-around console mounted with the useless controls for the missing outboard engine.

“Lie on the floor of the boat,” ordered Pitt, tying the remaining line around the center console. “We’re in for a wild ride. Loop the line around your waists and tie off the end so we won’t lose the boat if we capsize and are thrown in the sea.”

He took one last look over the neoprene buoyancy tubes at the menacing swells that swept in from a horizon that lifted and dropped. The sea was ugly and beautiful of the same time. Lightning streaked through the purple-black clouds, and the thunder came like the roll from a thousand drums. The tumult fell on them without pity. The full force of the gale, accompanied by a torrential rain, a drenching downpour that blocked out the sky ant turned the sea into a boiling broth of foam, struck them less then ten minutes later. The drops, whipped by a wind that howled like a thousand banshees, pelted them so hard it stung their skin.

Spray was hurled from wave crests that rose three meters above the troughs. All too quickly the waves reached a height of seven meters, broken and confused, striking the boat from one direction and then another. The wind increased its shrieking violence as the sea doubled its frightening onslaught against the frail boat and its pitiful passengers. The boat was stewing and corkscrewing violently as it was tossed up on the wave crests before being plunged into the troughs. There was no sharp dividing line between air and sea. They couldn’t tell where one began and the other left off.

Miraculously, the sea anchor was not torn away. It did its duty and exerted its drag, preventing the sea gone berserk from capsizing the boat and throwing everyone into the murderous waters from which there was no return. The gray waves curled down upon them, filling the boat’s interior with churning foam, soaking them all to the skin, but tending to pull the center of gravity deeper in the water, giving an extra fraction of stability. The twisting motion and the choppy rise and fall of the boat whirled their cargo of seawater around their bodies, making them feel they were being whipped inside a juice blender.

In a way, the size of the tiny craft was a blessing. The neoprene tubes around the sides made it as buoyant as a cork. No matter how violent the tempest, the durable hull would not burst into pieces, and if the sea anchor held, it would not capsize. Like the palms that leaned in the wind from gale-force winds, it would endure. The next twenty-four minutes passed like twenty-four hours, and as they hung on grimly to stay alive, Pitt found it hard to believe the storm had not overwhelmed them. There was no word, no description for the misery.

The never-ending walls of water poured into the boat, leaving the three of them choking and gasping until the boat was thrust up and onto the crest of the next swell. There was no need for bailing. The weight of the water filling the interior helped keep them from capsizing. One second they were struggling to keep from floating over the sides of the tubes, the following second preparing for the next frenzied motion, as they fell into a trough, to keep from being slung into the air.

With Maeve between them, each with one arm-protectively draped over her body, Pitt and Giordino braced their feet against the sides for support. If one of them was thrown froth the boat, there could be no chance of rescue. No soul could survive alone in the writhing sea. The downpour cut visibility to a few meters, and they would quickly be lost to view.

During a flash of lightning, Pitt looked over at Maeve. She looked convinced that she had been dropped into hell and must have been suffering the torment of the damned from seasickness. Pitt wished he could have consoled her with words, but she could never have heard him over the howl of the wind. He cursed the name of Dorsett. God, how terrible it was to have a father and sisters who hated her enough to steal away her children and then try to murder her because she was good and kind and refused to be a part of their criminal acts. It was horribly wrong and unfair. She could not die, he told himself, not as long as he still lived. He gripped her shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze. Then he stared at Giordino.

Giordino’s expression was stoic. His apparent nonchalance under such hell reassured Pitt. Whatever will be, will be, was written in his eyes. There was no limit to the man’s endurance. Pitt knew that Giordino would push himself beyond the depths of understanding, even die, long before he would let loose his grip on the boat and Maeve. He would never surrender to the sea.

Giordino’s friend of thirty years looked as though he could go on forever. Giordino ceased to be amazed by Pitt’s fortitude and love for adversity. Pitt thrived on disaster and calamity. Oblivious to the frenzied pounding by the swells, he did not look like a man waiting for the end, a man who felt there was nothing he could do against the furies of the sea. His eyes gazed into the sheets of rain and froth that lashed his face, strangely remote. Almost as if he were sitting high and dry in his hangar apartment, his mind seemed concentrated elsewhere, disembodied and in a vacuum. Pitt was, Giordino had thought on more than one occasion while they were in or under the sea, a man utterly at home in his own element.

Almost as if their minds worked together simultaneously, Giordino looked to see how Pitt was faring. There were two kinds of men, he thought. There were those who saw the devil waiting for their soul and were deathly afraid of him. And there were those who mired themselves in hopelessness and looked upon him as a relief from their worldly misery. Pitt was of neither kind. He could stare at the devil and spit in his eye.

Darkness came and passed, a night of torment that never seemed to end. They were numbed by the cold and constantly soaked. The chill cut through their flesh like a thousand knives. Dawn was a deliverance from hearing the waves roar and break without seeing them. With a sunrise shrouded by the convulsive clouds, they still grimly hung onto life by the barest of threads. They longed for daylight, but it finally came in a strange gray light that illuminated the terrible sea like an old black-and-white motion picture.

Despite the savagery of the turbulence, the atmosphere was hot and oppressive, a salty blanket that was too thick to breathe. The passage of time had no relation to the dials of their wristwatches. Pitt’s old Doxa and Giordino’s newer Aqualand Pro were watertight to two hundred meters deep and kept on ticking, but saltwater had seeped into Maeve’s little digital watch and it soon stopped.

Not long after the sea went on its rampage, Maeve buried her head against the bottom of a flotation tube and prayed that she might live to see her boys again prayed that she would not die without giving them fond memories of her, not some vague recollection that she was lost and buried in an uncaring sea. She agonized over their fate in the hands of her father. At first she had been more frightened than at any other moment in her life, the fear like a cold avalanche of snow that smothered her. Then gradually it began to subside as she realized the arms of the men about her back and shoulders never let up their pressure. Their self-control seemed extraordinary, and their strength seemed to flow inside her. With men such as these protecting her, a spark grew and nurtured the imperceptible but growing belief that she just might still be alive to see another dawn.

Pitt was not nearly so optimistic. He was well aware that his and Giordino’s energy was waning. Their worst enemies were the unseen threats of hypothermia and fatigue. Something had to give, their tenacity or the storm’s violence. The constant effort to keep from drowning had taken all they had to give. The fight had been against all odds, and total exhaustion was just around the comer. And yet, he refused to see the futility of it all. He clung to life, drawing on his dwindling reserve of strength, holding tight as the next wave engulfed them, knowing their time to die was fast approaching.

But Pitt, Maeve and Giordino did not die.

By early evening there was an easing of the wind, and the jumbled seas began to diminish shortly after. Unknown to them, the typhoon had veered off its earlier course from the northwest and suddenly headed southeast toward the Antarctic. The wind velocity noticeably slackened, down from over 150 kilometers to a little below 60, and the seas curtailed their madness, the distance between the wave crests and the troughs decreasing to no more than 3 meters. The rain thinned into a light drizzle that became a mist, hovering over the flattened swells. Overhead, a lone gull materialized from nowhere, before darkness swept the seas again, and circled the little boat, screaming as if in stunned surprise at seeing it still afloat.

In another hour, the sky was clear of clouds, and the wind was hardly strong enough to sail a sloop in. It was as if the storm were a bad dream that struck in the night and vanished with the soft light of day. They had won only one battle in a war with the elements. The savage seas and the cruel winds had failed to take them into the depths. What the great whirling storm could not destroy with its murderous fury, it rewarded with clemency.

It seemed almost mystical, Maeve thought. If they were destined to die, they never would have lived through the storm. We were kept alive for a purpose, she decided staunchly.

No word passed among the fatigued and battered trio huddled in the boat. Consoled by the calm in the wake of the departed tempest, exhausted beyond endurance, they entered a region of utterly uncaring indifference to their circumstances and fell into deep sleep.

The swells retained a mild chop until the next morning, a legacy of the storm, before the seas became as liquid smooth as a millpond. The mist had long since faded, and visibility cleared to the far reaches of empty horizons. Now the sea settled down to achieve by attrition what it had failed to achieve by frenzied intensity. They slowly awoke to a sun they had sorely missed for the last forty-eight hours but that now burned down on them with unrelenting severity.

An attempt to sit up sent waves of pain through Pitt’s body. The battering from the sea was added to the injuries he had suffered from John Merchant’s men. Blinking against the dazzling glare of the sun’s reflection on the water, he very slowly eased himself to a sitting position. There was nothing to do now but lie in the boat and wait. But wait for what? Wait in the forlorn hope that a ship might appear over the horizon on a direct course toward them? They were drifting in a dead part of the sea, far from the shipping lanes, where ships rarely sailed.

Arthur Dorsett had picked their drop-off point cleverly. If through some divine miracle they survived the typhoon, then thirst and starvation would take them. Pitt would not let them die, not after what they had been through. He took an oath of vengeance, to live for no other reason but to kill Arthur Dorsett. Few men deserved to die more. Pitt swore to overlook his normal codes and standards of ethics and morality should he and Dorsett ever meet again. Nor did he forget Boudicca and Deirdre. They too would pay for their depraved treatment of Maeve.

“It’s all so quiet,” said Maeve. She clung to Pitt, and he could feel her trembling. “I feel like the storm is still raging inside my head.”

Pitt rubbed caked salt from his eyes, comforted in a small degree at feeling that the swelling had gone down. He looked down into the intensely blue eyes, drugged with fatigue and misted by deep sleep. He watched as they stared at him, and they began to shine. “Venus arising from the waves,” he said softly.

She sat up and fluffed out her salt-encrusted blond hair. “I don’t feel like Venus,” she said, smiling. “And I certainly don’t look like her.” She pulled up her sweater and gently touched the red welts around her waist, put there by the constant friction of the safety line.

Giordino slipped open an eye. “If you two don’t quiet up and let a man sleep, I’m going to call the manager of this hotel and complain.”

“We’re going for a dip in the pool and then have some breakfast on the lanai,” said Maeve with intrepid brightness. “Why don’t you join us?”

“I’d rather call room service,” Giordino drawled, seemingly exhausted by the mere act of speaking.

“Since we’re all in such a lively mood,” said Pitt, “I suggest we get on about the business of survival.”

“What are our chances of rescue?” asked Maeve innocently.

“Nil,” answered Pitt. “You can bet your father dropped us in the bleakest part of the sea. Admiral Sandecker and the gang at NUMA have no idea what happened to us. And if they did, they wouldn’t know where to look. If we’re to reach our normal life expectancy, we’ll have to do it without outside help.”

Their first task was to pull in the steadfast sea anchor and remove their shoes and the tools and other items from Pitt’s jacket. Afterward, they took an inventory of every single item, seemingly useless or not, that might come in handy for the long haul ahead. At last, Pitt removed the small packet that he had shoved down his pants just before driving the bus over the side of the dock.

“What did you find with the boat?” he asked Giordino.

“Not enough hardware to hang a barn door. The storage compartment held a grand total of three wrenches of various sizes, a screwdriver, a fuel pump, four spark plugs, assorted nuts and bolts, a couple of rags, a wooden paddle, a nylon boat cover and a handy-dandy little number that’s going to add to the enjoyment of the voyage.”

“Which is?”

Giordino held up a small hand pump. “This, for pumping up the flotation tubes.”

“How long is the paddle?”

“A little over a meter.”

“Barely tall enough to raise a sail,” said Pitt.

“True, but by tying it to the console, we can utilize it as a tent pole to stretch the boat cover over us for shade.”

“And lest we forget, the boat cover will come in handy for catching water should we see rain again,” Maeve reminded them.

Pitt looked at her. “Do you have anything on your person that might prove useful?”

She shook her head. “Clothes only. My Frankenstein sister threw me on the raft without so much as my lipstick.”

“Guess who she’s talking about,” Giordino muttered.

Pitt opened the small waterproof packet and laid out a Swiss army knife, a very old and worn Boy Scout compass, a small tube of matches, a first aid kit no larger than a cigarette package, and a vest-pocket .25 caliber Mauser automatic pistol with one extra clip.

Maeve stared at the tiny gun. “You could have shot John Merchant and my father.”

“Pickett stood a better chance at Gettysburg than I did with that small army of security guards.”

“I thought you looked awfully well endowed,” she said with a sly smile. “Do you always carry a survival kit?”

“Since my Boy Scout days.”

“Who do you intend to shoot in the middle of nowhere?”

“Not who, but what. A bird, if one comes close enough.”

“You’d shoot a defenseless bird?”

Pitt looked at her. “Only because I have this strange aversion to starving to death.”

While Giordino pumped air into the flotation tubes before working on a canopy, Pitt examined every square centimeter of the boat, checking for any leaks or abrasions in the neoprene floats and structural damage to the fiberglass hull. He dove overboard and ran his hands over the bottom but found no indication of damage. The craft appeared to be about four years old and had apparently been used as a shore boat when Dorsett’s yacht moored off a beach without a dock. Pitt was relieved to find it slightly worn but in otherwise excellent shape. The only flaw was the missing outboard engine that no longer hung on the transom of the boat.

Climbing back on board, he kept them busy all day with odd little jobs to take their minds off their predicament and growing thirst. Pitt was determined to keep their spirits up. He had no illusions as to how long they could last. He and Giordino had once trekked through the Sahara Desert without water for nearly seven days. That was a dry heat; here the heavy humidity sucked the life out of them.

Giordino rigged the nylon cover as shield from the burning rays of the sun, draping it over the paddle he had mounted on the control console and tying it down over the high sides of the flotation tubes with short lengths cut from the nylon line. He sloped one edge so that any rainwater it caught would flow and drop into an ice chest Maeve had found under one seat. She cleaned the grime from the long unused ice chest and did her best to straighten up the interior of the boat to make it liveable. Pitt used his time to separate the strands from a section of nylon line and knot them into a fishing line.

The only food source within two thousand kilometers or more was fish. If they didn’t catch any, they would starve. He fashioned a hook from the prong of his belt buckle and tied it to the line. The opposite end was attached to the center of one of the wrenches so he could grip it in both hands. The quandary was how to catch them. There were no earthworms, trout flies, bass plugs or cheese around here. Pitt leaned over the flotation tubes, cupped his hands around his eyes to shut out the sunlight and stared into the water.

Already, inquisitive guests were congregating under the shadow of the raft. Those who plow through the sea on ships and boats powered by big engines with roaring exhausts and thrashing propellers often complain that there is no life to be seen in the open ocean. But for those who float close to the surface of the water, drifting soundlessly, it soon becomes a window, opening on the other side on citizens of the deep, who are far more numerous and varied than the animals who roam the solid earth.

Schools of herringlike fish, no larger than Pitt’s little finger, darted and wiggled under the boat. He recognized pompano, dolphins, not to be confused with the porpoise and their larger cousins, the dorado, with their high foreheads and long fin running down the top of their multicolored iridescent bodies. A couple of large mackerel glided in circles, occasionally striking at one of the smaller fish. There was also a small shark, a hammerhead, one of the strangest inhabitants of the sea, each of his eyes perched on the end of a wing that looked like it was jammed into his head.

“What are you going to use as bait?” asked Maeve.

“Me,” said Pitt. “I’m using myself as a gourmet delight for the little fisheys.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Watch and learn.”

Maeve stared in undisguised awe as Pitt took his knife, rolled up a pant leg, and calmly carved off a small piece of flesh from the back of his thigh. Then he imbedded it on the improvised hook. It was done so matter-of-factly that Giordino did not notice the act until he saw a few drops of blood on the floor of the boat.

“Where’s the pleasure in that?” he asked.

“You got that screwdriver handy?” Pitt inquired.

Giordino held it up. “You want me to operate on you too?”

“There’s a small shark under the boat,” Pitt explained. “I’m going to entice it to the surface. When I grab it, you ram the screwdriver into the top of his head between the eyes. Do it right and you might stick his pea-sized brain.”

Maeve wanted no part of this business. “Surely you’re not bringing a shark on board?”

“Only if we get lucky,” Pitt said, tearing off a piece of his T-shirt and wrapping it around the small gouge in his leg to staunch the bleeding.

She crawled to the stern of the boat and crouched behind the console, happy to get out of the way. “Mind you don’t offer him anything to bite on.”

With Giordino kneeling beside him, Pitt slowly lowered the human bait into the water. The mackerel circled it, but he jiggled the line to discourage them. A few of the tiny scavenger fish darted in for a quick nibble, but they quickly left the scene as the shark, sensing the small presence of blood, homed in on the bait. Pitt hauled in on the line every time the shark came close.

As Pitt worked the hook and bait slowly toward the boat, Giordino, his upraised arm poised with the screwdriver held dagger-fashion, peered into the deep. Then the shark was alongside, ashen gray on the back, fading to white on the belly, his dorsal fin coming out of the sea like a submarine raising its periscope. The screwdriver swung in an arc and struck the tough head of the shark as he rubbed his side against the flotation tubes. In the hand of most other men, the shaft would never have penetrated the cartilaginous skeleton of the shark, but Giordino rammed it in up to the hilt.

Pitt leaned out, clamped his arm under the shark’s belly behind the gills and heaved just as Giordino struck again. He fell backward into the boat, cradling the one-and-a-half-meter hammerhead shark in his arms like a child. He grabbed the dorsal fin, wrapped his legs around the tail and hung on.

The savage jaws were snapping but found only empty air. Maeve cringed behind the console and screamed as the bristling triangular teeth gnashed only centimeters away from her drawn-up legs.

As if he were wrestling an alligator, Giordino threw all his weight on the thrashing beast from the sea, holding down the body on the floor of the boat, scraping the inside of his forearms raw on the sandpaper like skin.

Though badly injured, the hammerhead displayed an incredible vitality. Unpredictable, it was aggressive one minute and oddly docile the next. Finally, after a good ten minutes of futile thrashing, the shark gave up and lay still. Pitt and Giordino rolled off and caught their breath. The writhing fight had aggravated Pitt’s bruises, and he felt like he was swimming in a sea of pain.

“You’ll have to cut him,” he gasped to Giordino. “I feel as weak as a kitten.”

“Rest easy,” Giordino said. There was a patience, a warm understanding in his voice. “After the beating you took on the yacht and the pounding from the storm, it’s a wonder you’re not in a coma.”

Although Pitt had honed the blades on his Swiss army knife to a razor edge, Giordino still had to grip the handle with both hands and exert a great deal of muscle in slicing through the tough underbelly of the shark. Under Maeve’s guidance as a professional marine zoologist, he expertly cut out the liver and made an incision in the stomach, finding a recently eaten dorado and several herring. Then Maeve showed him how to slice the flesh from inside the skin efficiently.

“We should eat the liver now,” she advised. “It will begin decaying almost immediately, and it is the most nutritious part of the fish.”

“What about the rest of the meat?” asked Giordino, swishing the knife and his hands in the water to remove the slime. “It won’t take long to spoil in this heat.”

“We’ve got a whole ocean of salt. Slice the meat into strips. Then string it up around the boat. As it dries, we take the salt that has crystallized on the canopy and rub it into the meat to preserve it.”

“I hated liver when I was a kid,” said Giordino, somewhat green around the gills at the thought. “I don’t think I’m hungry enough to eat it raw.”

“Force yourself,” said Pitt. “The idea is to keep physically fit while we can. We’ve proven we can supply our stomachs. Our real problem now is lack of water.”

Nightfall brought a strange quiet. A half-moon rose and hung over the sea, leaving a silvery path toward the northern horizon. They heard a bird squawking in the star-streaked sky, but couldn’t see it. The cold temperatures common to the southern latitudes came with the disappearance of the sun and eased their thirst a little, and their minds turned to other things. The swells beat rhythmically against the boat and lulled Maeve into thoughts of a happier time with her children. Giordino imagined himself back in his condominium in Washington, sitting on a couch, an arm draped around a pretty woman, one hand holding a frosty mug of Coors beer and his feet propped on a coffee table as they watched old movies on television.

After resting most of the afternoon, Pitt was wide awake and felt revitalized enough to work out their drift and forecast the weather by observing the shape of the clouds, the height and run of the waves and the color of the sunset. After dusk he studied the stars and attempted to calculate the boat’s approximate position on the sea. Using his old compass while locked in the storage compartment during the voyage from Wellington, he noted that the yacht had maintained a southwest heading of two-four-zero degrees for twenty minutes short of thirty hours. He recalled John Merchant saying the yacht could cruise at 120 kilometers an hour. Multiplying the speed and time gave him a rough distance traveled of 3,600 kilometers from the time they left Wellington until they were set adrift. This he estimated would put them somewhere in the middle of the south Tasman Sea, between the lower shores of Tasmania and New Zealand.

The next puzzle to solve was how far were they driven by the storm? This was next to impossible to estimate with even a tiny degree of accuracy. All Pitt knew for certain was that the storm blew out of the northwest. In forty-eight hours it could have carried them a considerable distance to the southeast, far from any sight of land. He knew from experience on other projects that the currents and the prevailing winds in this part of the Indian Ocean moved slightly south of east. If they were drifting somewhere between the fortieth and fiftieth parallels, their drift would carry them into the desolate vastness of the South Pacific, where no ship traveled. The next land fall would be the southern tip of South America, nearly thirteen thousand kilometers away.

He stared up at the Southern Cross, a constellation that was not visible above thirty degrees north latitude, the latitude running across North Africa and the tip of Florida. Described since antiquity, its five bright stars had steered mariners and fliers across the immense reaches of the Pacific since the early voyages of the Polynesians. Millions of square miles of loneliness, dotted only by the islands, which were the tips of great mountains that rose unseen from the ocean floor.

However he figured it, no matter how strong their desire to survive, and despite any good luck they might receive, the odds were overwhelming against their ever setting foot on land again.

Hiram Yaeger swam deep in the blue depths of the sea, the water rushing past in a blur as if he were in a jet aircraft flying through tinted clouds. He swept over the edge of seemingly bottomless chasms, soared through valleys of vast mountain ranges that climbed from the black abyss to the sun-glistened surface. The seascape was eerie and beautiful at the same time. The sensation was the same as flying through the void of deep space.

It was Sunday and he worked alone on the tenth floor of the deserted NUMA building. After nine straight hours of staring steadily at his computer monitor, Yaeger leaned back in his chair and rested his tired eyes. He had finally put the finishing touches on a complex program he had created using image-synthesis algorithms to show the three-dimensional propagation of sound waves through the sea. With the unique technology of computer graphics, he had entered a world few had traveled before. The computer-generated drama of high-intensity sound traveling through water had taken Yaeger and his entire staff a week to calculate. Using special-purpose hardware and a large database of sound-speed variations throughout the Pacific, they had perfected a photorealistic model that traced the sound rays to where convergence zones would occur throughout the Pacific Ocean.

The underwater images were displayed in extremely rapid sequence to create the illusion of motion in and around actual three-dimensional sound-speed contour maps that had been accumulated over a thirty-year study period from oceanographic data. It was computer imaging taken to its highest art form.

He kept an eye on a series of lights beginning with yellow and advancing through the oranges before ending in deep red. As they blinked on in sequence, they told him how close he was coming to the point where the sound rays would converge. A separate digital readout gave him the latitude and longitude. The piece de resistance of his imagery was the dynamic convergence-zone display. He could even program the image to raise his viewpoint above the surface of the water and show any ships whose known courses were computed to bisect that particular sector of the ocean at a predictable time.

The red light farthest to his right flashed, and he punched in the program to bring the image out of the water, revealing a surface view of the convergence point. He expected to see empty horizons of water, but the image on the viewing screen was hardly what he’d imagined. A mountainous landmass with vegetation filled the screen. He ran through the entire sequence again, beginning from the four points around the ocean that represented Dorsett Consolidated’s island mines. Ten, twenty, thirty times he reran the entire scenario, tracing the sound rays to their ultimate meeting place.

Finally satisfied there was no mistake, Yaeger sagged wearily in his chair and shook his head. “Oh my God,” he murmured. “Oh my God.”

Admiral Sandecker had to force himself not to work on Sundays. A hyper-workaholic, he ran ten kilometers every morning and performed light workouts after lunch to work off excess energy. Sleeping but four hours a night, he put in long, grueling days that would inflict burnout on most other men. Long divorced, with a daughter living with her husband and three children on the other side of the world in Hong Kong, he was far from lonely. Considered a prime catch by the older single women of Washington, he was inundated by invitations to intimate dinners and parties of the social elite. As much as he enjoyed the company of ladies, NUMA was his love, his passion. The marine science agency took the place of a family. It was spawned by him and bred into a giant institution revered and respected around the world.

Sundays, he cruised along the shores of the Potomac River in an old Navy double-ender whaleboat he had bought surplus and rebuilt. The arched bow brushed aside the murky brown water as he cut the wheel to dodge a piece of driftwood. There was history attached to the little eight-meter vessel. Sandecker had documented her chronology from the time she was built in 1936 at a small boatyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and then transported to Newport News, Virginia, where she was loaded on board the newly launched aircraft carrier Enterprise. Through the war years and many battles in the South Pacific, she served as Admiral Bull Halsey’s personal shore boat. In 1958, when the Enterprise was decommissioned and scrapped, the aging double-ender was left to rot in a storage area behind the New York Shipyard. It was there Sandecker found and bought the worn remains. He then beautifully restored her with loving care until she looked like the day she came out of that boatyard in New Hampshire.

As he listened to the soft chugging from the ancient four-cylinder Buda diesel engine, he reflected on events of the past week and contemplated his actions for the week to follow. His most pressing concern was Arthur Dorsett’s greed-inspired acoustic plague, which was devastating the Pacific Ocean. This problem was closely followed by the unanticipated abduction of Pitt and Giordino and their subsequent disappearance. He was deeply troubled that neither dilemma was blessed with even a clue toward a solution.

The members of Congress he had approached had refused his pleas to take drastic measures to stop Arthur Dorsett before his guilt was ironclad. In their minds there simply was not enough evidence to tie him to the mass deaths. Reasoning that was fueled by Dorsett’s highly paid lobbyists. Par for the course, thought a frustrated Sandecker. The bureaucrats never acted until it was too late. The only hope left was to persuade the President to take action, but without the support of two or more prominent members of Congress, that was also a lost cause.

A light snow fell over the river, coating the barren trees and winter-dead growth on the ground. His was the only boat in sight on the water that wintry day. The afternoon sky was ice blue and the air sharp and quite cold. Sandecker turned up the collar of a well-worn Navy peacoat, pulled a black stocking cap down over his ears and swung the whaleboat toward the pier along the Maryland shore where he kept it docked. As he approached from upriver, he saw a figure get out of the warm comfort of a four-wheel-drive Jeep and walk across the dock. Even at a distance of five hundred meters he easily recognized the strange hurried gait of Rudi Gunn.

Sandecker slipped the whaleboat across the current and slowed the old Buda diesel to a notch above idle. As he neared the dock, he could see the grim expression on Gunn’s bespectacled face. He suppressed a rising chill of dread and dropped the rubber bumpers over the port side of the hull. Then he threw a line to Gunn, who pulled the boat parallel to the dock before tying off the bow and stern to cleats bolted to the gray wood.

The admiral removed a boat cover from a locker, and Gunn helped him stretch it over the boat’s railings. When they finished and Sandecker stepped onto the dock, neither man had yet spoken. Gunn looked down at the whaleboat.

“If you ever want to sell her, I’ll be the first in line with a checkbook.”

Sandecker looked at him and knew Gunn was hurting inside. “You didn’t drive out here just to admire the boat.”

Gunn stepped to the end of the dock and gazed grimly out over the murky river. “The latest report since Dirk and Al were snatched from the Ocean Angler in Wellington is not good.”

“Let’s have it.”

“Ten hours after Dorsett’s yacht vanished off our satellite cameras—”

“The reconnaissance satellites lost them?” Sandecker interrupted angrily.

“Our military intelligence networks do not exactly consider the Southern Hemisphere a hotbed of hostile activity,” Gunn replied acidly. “Budgets being what they are, no satellites with the ability to photograph the earth in detail are in orbits able to cover the seas south of Australia.”

“I should have considered that,” Sandecker muttered in disappointment. “Please go on.”

“The National Security Agency intercepted a satellite phone call from Arthur Dorsett aboard his yacht to his superintendent of operations on Gladiator Island, a Jack Ferguson. The message said that Dirk, Al and Maeve Fletcher were set adrift in a small, powerless boat in the sea far below the fiftieth parallel, where the Indian Ocean meets the Tasman Sea. The exact position wasn’t given. Dorsett went on to say that he was returning to his private island.”

“He placed his own daughter in a life-threatening situation?” Sandecker muttered, incredulous. “I find that unthinkable. Are you sure the message was interpreted correctly?”

“There is no mistake,” said Gunn.

“That’s cold-blooded murder,” muttered Sandecker. “That means they were cast off on the edge of the Roaring Forties. Gale-force winds sweep those latitudes most of the year.”

“It gets worse,” said Gunn solemnly. “Dorsett left them drifting helplessly in the path of a typhoon.”

“How long ago?”

“They’ve been adrift over forty-eight hours.”

Sandecker shook his head. “If they survived intact, they’d be incredibly difficult to find.”

“More like impossible when you throw in the fact that neither our Navy nor the Aussies’ have any ships or aircraft available for a search.”

“Do you believe that?”

Gunn shook his head. “Not for a minute.”

“What are their chances of being spotted by a passing ship?” asked Sandecker.

“They’re nowhere near any shipping lanes. Except for the rare vessel transporting supplies to a subcontinent research station, the only other ships are occasional whalers. The sea between Australia and Antarctica is a virtual wasteland. Their odds of being picked up are slim.”

There was something tired, defeated about Rudi Gunn. If they were a football team with Sandecker as coach, Pitt as quarterback and Giordino as an offensive tackle, Gunn would be their man high in the booth, analyzing the plays and sending them down to the field. He was indispensable, always spirited; Sandecker was surprised to see him so depressed.

“I take it you don’t give them much chance for survival.”

“Three people on a small raft adrift, besieged by howling winds and towering seas. Should they miraculously survive the typhoon, then comes the onslaught of thirst and hunger. Dirk and Al have come back from the dead on more than one occasion in the past, but I fear that this time the forces of nature have declared war on them.”

“If I know Dirk,” Sandecker said irrefutably, “he’d spit right in the eye of the storm and stay alive if he has to paddle that raft all the way to San Francisco.” He shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his old peacoat. “Alert any NUMA research vessels within five thousand kilometers and send them into the area.”

“If you’ll forgive me for saying so, Admiral, it’s a case of too little, too late.”

“I’ll not stop there.” Sandecker’s eyes blazed with intent. “I’m going to demand that a massive search be launched, or by God I’ll make the Navy and the Air Force wish they never existed.”

Yaeger tracked down Sandecker at the admiral’s favorite restaurant, a little out-of-the-way ale and steak house below Washington, where he was having a somber dinner with Gunn. When the compact Motorola Iridium wireless receiver in his pocket beeped, Sandecker paused, washed down a bite of filet mignon with a glass of wine and answered the call. “This is Sandecker.”

“Hiram Yaeger, Admiral. Sorry to bother you.”

“No need for apologies, Hiram. I know you wouldn’t contact me outside the office if it wasn’t urgent.”

“Is it convenient for you to come to the data center?”

“Too important to tell me over the phone?”

“Yes, sir. Wireless communication has unwanted ears. Without sounding overdramatic, it is critical that I brief you in private.”

“Rudi Gunn and I will be there in half an hour.” Sandecker slipped the phone back into the pocket of his coat and resumed eating.

“Bad news?” asked Gunn.

“If I read between the lines correctly, Hiram has gathered new data on the acoustic plague. He wants to brief us at the data center.”

“I hope the news is good.”

“Not from the tone of his voice,” Sandecker said soberly. “I suspect he discovered something none of us wants to know.”

Yaeger was slouched in his chair, feet stretched out, contemplating the image on an oversized video display computer terminal when Sandecker and Gunn walked into his private office. He turned and greeted them without rising from his chair.

“What do you have for us?” Sandecker asked, not wasting words.

Yaeger straightened and nodded at the video screen. “I’ve arrived at a method for estimating convergence positions for the acoustic energy emanating from Dorsett’s mining operations.”

“Good work, Hiram,” said Gunn, pulling up a chair and staring at the screen. “Have you determined where the next convergence will be?”

Yaeger nodded. “I have, but first, let me explain the process.” He typed in a series of commands and then sat back. “The speed of sound through seawater varies with the temperatures of the sea and the hydrostatic pressure at different depths. The deeper you go and the heavier the column of water above, the faster sound travels. There are a hundred other variables I could go into, dealing with atmospheric conditions, seasonal differences, convergence-zone propagation access and the formation of sound caustics, but I’ll keep it simple and illustrate my findings.”

The image on the viewing screen displayed a chart of the Pacific Ocean, with four green lines, beginning at the locations of the Dorsett mines and intersecting at Seymour Island in the Antarctic. “I began by working backward to the source from the point where the acoustic plague struck. Tackling the hardest nut to crack, Seymour Island, because it actually sits around the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Weddell Sea, which is part of the South Atlantic, I determined that deep ocean sound rays were reflected by the mountainous geology on the seafloor. This was kind of a fluke and didn’t fit the normal pattern. Having established a method, I calculated the occurrence of a more elementary event, the one that killed the crew of the Mentawai.”

“That was off Howland Island, almost dead center in the Pacific Ocean,” commented Sandecker.

“Far simpler to compute than the Seymour convergence,” said Yaeger as he typed in the data that altered the screen to show four blue lines beginning from Kunghit, Gladiator, Easter and the Komandorskie Islands and meeting off Howland Island. Then he added four additional lines in red. “The intersection of convergence zones that wiped out the Russian fishing fleet northeast of Hawaii,” he explained.

“So where do you fix the next convergence-zone inter section?” asked Gunn.

“If conditions are stable for the next three days, the latest death spot should be about here.”

The lines, this time in yellow, met nine hundred kilo meters south of Easter Island.

“Not much danger of it striking a passing ship in that part of the ocean,” mused Sandecker. “Just to be on the safe side, I’ll issue a warning for all ships to detour around the area.”

Gunn moved in closer to the screen. “What is your degree of error?”

“Plus or minus twelve kilometers,” answered Yaeger “And the circumference where death occurs?”

“We’re looking at a diameter anywhere from forty to ninety kilometers, depending on the energy of the sound rays after traveling great distances.”

“The numbers of sea creatures caught in such a large area must be enormous.”

“How far in advance can you predict a convergence zone intersection?” Sandecker queried.

“Ocean conditions are tricky to predict as it is,” replied Yaeger. “I can’t guarantee a reasonably accurate projection beyond thirty days into the future. After that; it becomes a crapshoot.”

“Have you calculated any other convergence sites beyond the next one?”

“Seventeen days from now.” Yaeger glanced at a large calendar with a picture of a lovely girl in a tight skirt sitting at a computer. “February twenty-second.”

“That soon.”

Yaeger looked at the admiral, a polar-cold expression on his face. “I was saving the worst till last.” His fingers played over the keyboard. “Gentlemen, I give you February twenty-second and a catastrophe of staggering magnitude.”

They were not prepared for what flashed on the screen. What Sandecker and Gunn saw on the video screen was an unthinkable event they had no control over, an encircling web of disaster that they could see no way to stop. They stared in sick fascination at the four purple lines that met and crossed on the screen.

“There can be no mistake?” asked Gunn.

“I’ve run my calculations over thirty times,” said Yaeger wearily, “trying to find a flaw, an error, a variable that will prove me wrong. No matter how I shake and bake it, the result always comes out the same.”

“God, no,” whispered Sandecker. “Not there, not of all places in the middle of a vast and empty ocean.”

“Unless some unpredictable upheaval of nature alters the sea and atmosphere,” said Yaeger quietly, “the convergence zones will intersect approximately fifteen kilometers off the city of Honolulu.”

This President, unlike his predecessor, made decisions quickly and firmly without vacillating. He refused to take part in advisory meetings that took forever and accomplished little or nothing, and he particularly disliked aides running around lamenting or cheering the latest presidential polls. Conferences to build defenses against criticism from the media or the public failed to shake him. He was set on accomplishing as much as possible in four years. If he failed, then no amount of rhetoric, no sugarcoated excuses or casting the blame on the opposing party would win him another election. Party hacks tore their hair and pleaded with him to present a more receptive image, but he ignored them and went about the business of governing in the nation’s interest without giving a second thought to whose toes he stepped on.

Sandecker’s request to see the President hadn’t impressed White House Chief of Staff Wilbur Hutton. He was quite impervious to such requests from anyone who wasn’t one of the party leaders of Congress or the Vice President. Even members of the President’s own cabinet had difficulty in arranging a face-to-face meeting. Hutton pursued his job as Executive Office gatekeeper overzealously.

Hutton was not a man who was easily intimidated. He was as big and beefy as a Saturday night arena wrestler. He kept his thinning blond hair carefully trimmed in a crewcut. With a head and face like an egg dyed red, he stared from limpid smoke-blue eyes that were always fixed ahead and never darted from side to side. A graduate of Arizona State with a doctorate in economics from Stanford, he was known to be quite testy and abrupt with anyone who bragged of coming from an Ivy League school.

Unlike many White House aides, he held members of the Pentagon in great respect. Having enlisted and served as an infantryman in the Army and with an enviable record of heroism during the Gulf War, he had a fondness for the military. Generals and admirals consistently received more courteous recognition than dark-suited politicians.

“Jim, it’s always good to see you.” He greeted Sandecker warmly despite the fact that the admiral showed up unannounced. “Your request to see the President sounded urgent, but I’m afraid he has a full schedule. You needn’t have made a special trip for nothing.”

Sandecker smiled, then turned serious. “My mission is too delicate to explain over the phone, Will. There is no time to go through channels. The fewer people who know about the danger, the better.”

Hutton motioned Sandecker to a chair as he walked over and closed the door to his office. “Forgive me for sounding cold and heartless, but I hear that story with frequent regularity.”

“Here’s one you haven’t heard. Sixteen days from now every man, woman and child in the city of Honolulu and on most of the island of Oahu will be dead.”

Sandecker felt Hutton’s eyes delving into the back of his head. “Oh, come now, Jim. What is this all about?”

“My scientists and data analysts at NUMA have cracked the mystery behind the menace that’s killing people and devastating the sea life in the Pacific Ocean.”

Sandecker opened his briefcase and laid a folder on Hutton’s desk. “Here is a report on our findings. We call it the acoustic plague because the deaths are caused by high-intensity sound rays that are concentrated by refraction. This extraordinary energy then propagates through the sea until it converges and surfaces, killing anyone and anything within a radius up to ninety kilometers.”

Hutton said nothing for a few moments, wondering for a brief instant if the admiral had slipped off the deep end, but only for an instant. He had known Sandecker too long not to take him as a serious, no-nonsense man dedicated to his job. He opened the cover of the report and scanned the contents while the admiral sat patiently. At last he looked up.

“Your people are sure of this%”

“Absolutely,” Sandecker said flatly.

“There is always the possibility of a mistake.”

“No mistake,” Sandecker said firmly. “My only concession is a less than five percent chance the convergence could take place a safe distance away from the island.”

“I hear through the congressional grapevine that you’ve approached Senators Raymond and Ybarra on this matter but were unable to get their backing for a military strike against Dorsett Consolidated property.”

“I failed to convince them of the seriousness of the situation.”

“And now you’ve come to the President.”

“I’ll go to God if I can save two million lives.”

Hutton stared at Sandecker, head tilted to the side, his eyes dubious. He tapped a pencil on his desktop for a few moments, then nodded and stood, convinced that the admiral could not be ignored.

“Wait right here,” he commanded. He stepped through a doorway that led to the Oval Office and disappeared for a solid ten minutes. When he reappeared, Hutton motioned Sandecker inside. “This way, Jim. The President will see you.”

Sandecker looked at Hutton. “Thank you, Will. I owe you one.”

As the admiral entered the Oval Office, the President graciously came from around President Roosevelt’s old desk and shook his hand. “Admiral Sandecker, this is a pleasure.”

“I’m grateful for your time, Mr. President.”

“Will says this is an urgent matter concerning the cause of all those deaths on the Polar Queen.”

“And many more.”

“Tell the President what you told me,” said Hutton, handing the report on the acoustic plague to the President to read while the admiral explained the threat.

Sandecker presented his case with every gun blazing. He was forceful and vibrant. He believed passionately in his people at NUMA, their judgments and conclusions. He paused for emphasis, then wound up by requesting military force to stop Arthur Dorsett’s mining operations.

The President listened intently until Sandecker finished, then continued reading in silence for a few more minutes before looking up. “You realize, of course, Admiral, that I cannot arbitrarily destroy personal property on foreign soil.”

“Not to mention the taking of innocent lives,” Hutton added.

“If we can stop the operations of only one of the Dorsett Consolidated mines,” said Sandecker, “and prevent the acoustic energy from traveling from its source, we could weaken the convergence enough to save nearly two million men, women and children who live in and around Honolulu from an agonizing death.”

“You must admit, Admiral, acoustic energy is not a threat the government is prepared to guard against. This is completely new to me. I’ll need time for my advisers on the National Science Board to investigate NUMA’s findings.”

“The convergence will occur in sixteen days,” said Sandecker darkly.

“I’ll be back to you in four,” the President assured him.

“That still leaves us plenty of time to carry out a plan of action,” said Hutton.

The President reached out his hand. “Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention, Admiral,” he said in official jargon. “I promise to give your report my fullest attention.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” said Sandecker. “I couldn’t ask for more.”

As Hutton showed him out of the Oval Office, he said, “Don’t worry, Jim. I’ll personally shepherd your warning through the proper channels.”

Sandecker fixed him with a blistering glare. “Just make damned sure the President doesn’t let it fall through the cracks, or there won’t be anyone left in Honolulu to vote for him.”

Four days without water. The sun’s unrelenting heat and the constant humidity sucked the perspiration from their bodies. Pitt would not let them dwell on the empty vastness that could depress all physical energy and creative thought. The monotonous lapping of the waves against the boat nearly drove them mad until they became immune to it. Ingenuity was the key to survival. Pitt had studied many shipwreck accounts and knew that too many shipwrecked mariners expired from lethargy and hopelessness. He drove Maeve and Giordino, urging them to sleep only at night and keep as busy as possible during daylight hours.

The prodding worked. Besides serving as the ship’s butcher, Maeve tied lines to a silk handkerchief and trailed it over the stern of the boat. Acting as a finely meshed net, the handkerchief gathered a varied collection of plankton and microscopic sea life. After a few hours, she divided her specimens into three neat piles on a seat lid, as if it were some sort of salad-of-the-sea.

Giordino used the harder steel of the Swiss army knife to notch barbs into the hook fashioned from Pitt’s belt buckle. He took over the fishing duties, while Maeve put her knowledge of biology and zoology to work, expertly cleaning and dissecting the day’s catch. Most shipwrecked sailors would have simply lowered the hook into the sea and waited. Giordino skipped preliminary fish seduction. After baiting the hook with the choicer, more appetizing, to fish at any rate, morsels from the shark’s entrails, he began casting the line as if he were a cowboy roping a calf, slowly reeling it in over his elbow and the valley between his thumb and forefinger, jiggling it every meter to give life to the bait. Apparently, finding a moving dinner acted as an enticement to his prey, and soon Giordino hooked his first fish. A small tuna bit the lure, and less than ten minutes later the bonito was reeled on board.

The annals of shipwrecked sailors were rife with tales of those who died of starvation while surrounded by fish, because they lacked the basic skills to catch them. Not Giordino. Once he got the hang of it and sharpened his system to a fine science, he began to pull in fish with the virtuosity of a veteran fisherman. With a net, he could have filled the entire boat in a matter of hours. The water around and beneath the little craft looked like an aquarium. Fish of every size and luminescent color had congregated to escort the castaways. The smallest, vibrantly colored fish came and drew the larger fish that in turn attracted the larger sharks that made an ominous nuisance of themselves by bumping against the boat.

Menacing and graceful at the same time, the killers of the deep glided back and forth beside the boat, their triangular fins cutting the water surface like a cleaver. Accompanied by their entourage of legendary pilot fish, the sharks would roll on their sides as they slid under the boat. Rising on the crest of a swell when the boat was in a trough, they could actually stare down at their potential victims through catlike eyes as lifeless as ice cubes. Pitt was reminded of a Winslow Homer painting, a print of which had hung in a classroom of his elementary school. It was called the Gulf Stream. In the scene a black man was shown floating on a demasted sloop surrounded by a school of sharks, with a waterspout in the background. It was Homer’s interpretation of man’s uneven struggle against natural forces.

The old tried-and-true method devised by castaways and early navigators of chewing the moisture out of the raw fish was a feature of meals, along with the shark meat dried into jerky by the sun. Their sushi bar was also enhanced by two fair-sized flying fish they found flopping in the bottom of the boat during the night. The oily flavor of fresh, raw fish did not win any gourmet awards with their taste buds, but it went a long way in diminishing the agony of hunger and thirst. Their empty stomachs were appeased after only a few bites.

The need to replenish their body fluids was also lessened by dropping briefly over the side every few hours while the others kept a sharp eye’ out for sharks. The cooling sensation generated by lying in wet clothes under the shade of the boat cover helped fight the misery of dehydration as well as the torment of sunburn. It also helped to dissolve the coating of salt that rapidly accumulated on their bodies.

The elements made Pitt’s job of navigating fairly simple. The westerly winds out of the Roaring Forties were carrying them east. The current cooperated and flowed in the same direction. For determining his approximate position, a rough estimate at best, he relied on the sun and stars while using a cross-staff he’d fashioned of two slivers of wood cut from the paddle.

The cross-shaft was a method of determining latitude devised by ancient mariners. With one end of the shaft held to the eye, a crosspiece was calibrated by sliding it back and forth until one end fit exactly between either the sun or star and the horizon. The angle of latitude was then read on notches carved on the stag. Once the angle was established, the mariner was able by crude reckoning to establish a rough latitude without published tables for reference. To determine his longitude-in Pitt’s case, how far east they were being driven-was another matter.

The night sky blazed with stars that became glittering points on a celestial compass that revolved from east to west. After a few nights of fixing their positions, Pitt was able to record a rudimentary log by inscribing his calculations on one end of the nylon boat cover with a small pencil Maeve had fortuitously discovered stuffed under a buoyancy tube. His primary obstacle was that he was not as familiar with the stars and constellations this far south as he was with the ones found north of the equator, and he had to grope his way.

The light boat was sensitive to the wind’s touch and often swept over the water as if it were under sail. He measured their speed by tossing one of his rubber-soled sneakers in front of the boat that was tied to a five-meter line. Then he counted the seconds it took the boat to pass the shoe, pulling it from the water before it drifted astern. He discovered that they were being pushed along by the westerly wind at a little under three kilometers an hour. By rigging the nylon boat cover as a sail and using the paddle as a short mast, he found they could increase their speed to five kilometers, or an easy pace if they could have stepped out of the boat and walked alongside.

“Here we are drifting rudderless like jetsam and flotsam over the great sea of life,” Giordino muttered through salt-caked lips. “Now all we have to do is figure out a way to steer this thing.”

“Say no more,” said Pitt, using the screwdriver to remove the hinges on a fiberglass seat that covered a storage compartment. In less than a minute, he held up the rectangular lid, which was about the same size and shape as a cupboard door. “Every move a picture.”

“How do you plan to attach it?” asked Maeve, becoming immune to Pitt’s continuing display of inventiveness.

“By using the hinges on the remaining seats and attaching them to the lid, I can screw it to the transom that held the outboard motor so that it can swing back and forth. Then by attaching two ropes to the upper end, we can operate it the same as any rudder on a ship or airplane. It’s called making the world a better place to live.”

“You’ve done it,” Giordino said stoically. “Artistic license, elementary logic, idle living, sex appeal, it’s all there.”

Pitt looked at Maeve and smiled. “The great thing about Al is that he is almost totally theatrical.”

“So now that we’ve got a particle of control, great navigator, what’s our heading?”

“That’s up to the lady,” said Pitt. “She’s more familiar with these waters than we are.”

“If we head straight north,” Maeve answered, “we might make Tasmania.”

Pitt shook his head and gestured at the makeshift sail. “We’re not rigged to sail under a beam wind. Because of our flat bottom, we’d be blown five times as far east as north. Making landfall on the southern tip of New Zealand is a possibility but a remote one. We’ll have to compromise by setting the sail to head slightly north of east, say a heading of seventy-five degrees on my trusty Boy Scout compass.”

“The farther north the better,” she said, holding her arms around her breasts for warmth. “The nights are too cold this far south.”

“Do you know if there are landfalls on that course?” Giordino asked Maeve.

“Not many,” she answered flatly. “The islands that lie south of New Zealand are few and far apart. We could easily pass between them without sighting one, especially at night.”

“They may be our only hope.” Pitt held the compass in his hand and studied the needle. “Do you recall their approximate whereabouts?”

“Stewart Island just below the South Island. Then come the Snares, the Auckland Islands, and nine hundred kilometers farther south are the Macquaries.”

“Stewart is the only one that sounds vaguely familiar,” said Pitt thoughtfully.

“Macquarie, you won’t care for.” Maeve gave an instinctive shiver. “The only inhabitants are penguins, and it often snows.”

“It must be swept by colder currents out of the Antarctic.”

“Miss any one of them and it’s open sea all the way to South America,” Giordino said discouragingly.

Pitt shielded his eyes and scanned the empty sky. “If the cold nights don’t get us, without rain we’ll dehydrate long before we step onto a sandy beach. Our best approach is to keep heading toward the southern islands in hopes of hitting one. You might call it putting all our eggs in several baskets to lower the odds.”

“Then we make a stab for the Macquaries,” said Giordino.

“They’re our best hope,” Pitt agreed.

With Giordino’s able help, Pitt soon set the sail for a slight tack on a magnetic compass bearing of seventy-five degrees. The rudimentary rudder worked so well that they were able to increase their heading to nearly sixty degrees. Buoyed by the realization that they had a tiny grip on their destiny, they felt a slight optimism begin to emerge, heightened by Giordino’s sudden announcement.

“We have a squall heading our way.”

Black clouds had materialized and were sweeping out of the western sky as quickly as if some giant above were unrolling a carpet over the castaways. Within minutes drops of moisture began pelting the boat. Then they came heavier and more concentrated until the rain fell in a torrential downpour.

“Open every locker and anything that resembles a container,” ordered Pitt as he frantically lowered the nylon sail. “Hold the sail on a slant with one end over the side of the boat for a minute to wash away the salt accumulation, before we form it into a trough to funnel the rainwater into the ice chest.”

As the rain continued to pour down, they all tilted their faces toward the clouds, opening wide and filling their mouths, swallowing the precious liquid like greedy young birds demanding a meal from their winged parents. The pure fresh smell and pure taste came as sweet as honey to parched throats. No sensation could have been more pleasing.

The wind rushed over the sea, and for the next twelve minutes they reveled in a blinding deluge. The neoprene flotation tubes rumbled like drums as the raindrops struck their skintight sides. Water soon filled the ice chest and overflowed on the bottom of the boat. The life-giving squall ended as abruptly as it had begun. Hardly a drop was wasted. They removed their clothes and wrung the water from the cloth into their mouths before storing any excess from the bottom of the boat in every receptacle they could devise. With the passing of the squall and the intake of fresh water, their spirits rose to new heights.

“How much do you figure we collected?” Maeve wondered aloud.

“Between ten and twelve liters,” Giordino guessed.

“We can stretch it another three liters by mixing it with seawater,” said Pitt.

Maeve stared at him. “Aren’t you inviting disaster? Drinking water laced with salt isn’t exactly a cure for thirst.”

“On hot, sultry days in the tropics, humans have a tendency to pour a stream of water down their throats until it comes out their ears and still feel thirsty. The body takes in more liquid than it needs. What your system really needs after sweating a river, is salt. Your tongue may retain the unwanted taste of seawater, but trust me, adding it to fresh water will quench your thirst without making you sick.”

After a meal of raw fish and a replacement of their body liquids, they felt almost human again. Maeve found a small amount of grease where the engine controls once attached under the console and mixed it with oil she had squeezed from the caught fish to make a sunburn lotion. She laughingly referred to her concoction as Fletcher’s Flesh Armour and pronounced the Skin Protection Factor a minus six. The only affliction they could not remedy was the sores that were forming on their legs and backs, caused by chafing front the constant motion of the boat. Maeve’s improvised suntan lotion helped but did not correct the growing problem.

A stiff breeze sprang up in the afternoon, which boiled the sea around them as they were flung to the northeast, caught in the whim of the unpredictable waves. The leather jacket sea anchor was thrown out, and Pitt lowered the sail to keep it from blowing away. It was like racing down a snowy hill on a giant inner tube, completely out of control. The blow lasted until ten o’clock the next morning before finally tapering off. As soon as the seas calmed, the fish came back. They were seemingly maddened by the interruption, thrashing the water and butting up against the boat. The more voracious fish, the bullies on the block, had a field day with their smaller cousins. For close to an hour the water around the raft turned to blood as the fish acted out their never-ending life-or-death struggle that the sharks always won.

Tired beyond measure from being thrown about in the boat, Maeve quickly fell asleep and dreamed of her children. Giordino also took a siesta, his dreams conjuring up a vision of an all-you-can-eat restaurant buffet. For Pitt there were no dreams. He brushed all feelings of weariness aside and rehoisted the sail. He took a sighting of the sun with his cross-staff and set a course with the compass. Settling into a comfortable position in the stem, he steered the boat toward the northeast with the ropes attached to the rudder.

As so often when the sea was calm, he felt aloof from the problems of staying alive and the sea around him. After thinking and rethinking the situation, his thoughts always returned to Arthur Dorsett. He stirred himself to summon up his anger. No man could visit unspeakable horrors on innocent people, even his own daughter, and not suffer a form of retribution. It mattered more than ever now. The leering faces of Dorsett and his daughters Deirdre and Boudicca beckoned to hum.

There was no room in Pitt’s mind for the suffering of the past five days, for any emotion revolving around the torment of near death, no thought of anything but the primeval obsession for revenge. Revenge or execution, there was no distinction in Pitt’s mind. Dorsett would not, could not be permitted to continue his reign of evil, certainly not after so many deaths. He had to be held accountable.

Pitt’s mind was fixed on not one but two objectives— the rescue of Maeve’s two sons and the killing of the evil diamond merchant.

Pitt steered the tiny craft over the vast sea throughout the eighth day. At sunset, Giordino took over the navigation duties while Pitt and Maeve dined on a combination of raw and dried fish. A full moon rose over the horizon as a great amber ball before diminishing and turning white as it crossed the night sky above them. After several swallows of water to wash down the taste of fish, Maeve sat nestled in Pitt’s arms and stared at the silver shaft in the sea that led to the moon.

She murmured the words from “Moon River.” “Two drifters off to see the world.” She paused, looked up into Pitt’s strong face and studied the hard line of his jaw, the dark and heavy brows and the green eyes that glinted whenever the light struck them right. He had a welt shaped nose, for a man, but it showed evidence of having been broken on more than one occasion. The lines around his eyes and the slight curl of the lips gave him the appearance of someone who was humorous and always smiling, a man a woman could be comfortable with; who posed no threat. There was a strange blend of hardness and sensitivity that she found incredibly appealing.

She sat quietly, mesmerized by him, until he looked down suddenly, seeing the expression of fascination on her face. She made no movement to turn away.

“You’re not an ordinary man,” she said without knowing why.

He stared quizzically. “What makes you say that?”

“The things you say, the things you do. I’ve never known anybody who was so in tune with life.”

He grinned, his pleasure apparent. “Those are words I’ve never heard from a woman.”

“You must have known many?” she asked with girlish curiosity.

“Many?”

“Women.”

“Not really. I always wanted to be a lecher like AI here, but seldom found the time.”

“Married?”

“No, never.”

“Come close?”

“Maybe once.”

“What happened?”

“She was killed.”

Maeve could see that Pitt had never quite bridged the chasm separating sorrow and bittersweet memory. She regretted asking the question and felt embarrassed. She was instinctively drawn to him and wanted to burrow into his mind. She guessed that he was the kind of man who longed for something deeper than a casual physical relationship, and she knew that insincere flirting held no attraction for him.

“Her name was Summer,” he continued quietly. “It was a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry,” said Maeve softly.

“Her eyes were gray and her hair red, but she looked much like you.”

“I’m flattered.”

He was about to ask her about her boys but stopped himself, realizing it would spoil the intimacy of the moment. Two people alone, well, almost alone, in a world of moon, stars and a black restless sea. Devoid of humans and solid ground, thousands of kilometers of fluid nothingness surrounded them. It was all too easy to forget where they were and imagine themselves sailing across the bay of some tropical island.

“You also bear an incredible resemblance to your great-great-great-grandmother,” he said.

She raised her head and gazed at him. “How could you possibly know I look like her?”

“The painting on the yacht, of Betsy Fletcher.”

“I must tell you about Betsy sometime,” said Maeve, curling up in his arms like a cat.

“No need,” he said smiling. “I feel I know her almost as well as you. A very heroic woman, arrested and sent to the penal colony at Botany Bay, survivor of the raft of the Gladiator. She helped save the lives of Captain `Bully’ Scaggs and Jess Dorsett, a convicted highwayman who became her husband and your great-great-great grandfather. After landing on what became known as Gladiator Island, Betsy discovered one of the world’s largest diamond mines and founded a dynasty. Back in my hangar I have an entire dossier on the Dorsetts, beginning with Betsy and Jess and continuing through their descendants down to you and your reptilian sisters.”

She sat up again, a sudden anger in her snapping blue eyes. “You had me investigated, you rat, probably by your CIA.”

Pitt shook his head. “Not you so much as the chronicles of the Dorsett family of diamond merchants. My interest comes under the heading of research, which was conducted by a fine old gentleman who would be very indignant if he knew you referred to him as an agent with the CIA.”

“You don’t know as much about my family as you might think,” she said loftily. “My father and his forefathers were very private men.”

“Come to think of it,” he said soothingly, “there is one member of your cast who intrigues me more than the others.”

She looked at him lopsidedly. “If not me, who then?”

“The sea monster in your lagoon.”

The answer took her completely by surprise. “You can’t mean Basil?”

He looked blank a moment. “Who?”

“Basil is not a sea monster, he’s a sea serpent. There’s a distinct difference. I’ve seen him on three different occasions with my own eyes.”

Then Pitt broke out laughing. “Basil? You call him Basil?”

“You wouldn’t laugh if he got you in his jaws,” she said waspishly.

Pitt shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m listening to a trained zoologist who believes in sea serpents.”

“To begin with, sea serpent is a misnomer. They are not true serpents, like snakes.”

“There have been wild stories from tourists claiming to have seen strange beasties in every lake from Loch Ness to Lake Champlain, but I haven’t heard of any sightings in the oceans since the last century.”

“Sightings at sea do not receive the publicity they used to. Wars, natural disasters and mass murders have pushed them out of the headlines.”

“That wouldn’t stop the tabloids.”

“Sea routes for powered ships are fairly well fixed,” Maeve explained patiently. “The early sailing ships moved in unfrequented waters. Whaling ships, which sailed after whales rather than the shortest distance between ports, often reported sightings. Wind-driven ships also sailed silently and were able to approach a serpent on the surface, while a modern diesel vessel can be heard underwater for kilometers. Just because they’re large doesn’t mean they aren’t shy, retiring creatures, indefatigable ocean voyagers who refuse to be captured.”

“If they aren’t illusions or snakes, then what are they, leftover dinosaurs?”

“Okay, Mr. Skeptic,” she said seriously, a touch of defiant pride in her tone. “I’m writing my Ph.D. thesis on the subject of cryptozoology, the science of legendary beasts. For your information there are 467 sightings confirmed after faulty vision, hoaxes and secondhand reports have been eliminated. I have them all categorized in my computer at the university; nature of sightings, including weather and sea conditions in which sightings took place; geographical distribution, distinguishing characteristics, color, shape and size. Through graphics-rendering techniques I can backtrack the beasts’ evolution. To answer your question, they’ve probably evolved from dinosaurs in a manner similar to alligators and crocodiles. But they are definitely not `leftovers.’ The Plesiosaurs, the species most often thought to have survived as present-day sea serpents, never exceeded sixteen meters, far smaller than Basil, for example.”

“All right, I’ll reserve judgment until you convince me they truly exist.”

“There are six primary species,” she lectured. “The most sightings have been of along-necked creature with one main hump and with head and jaws similar to that of a large dog. Next is one that is always described as having the head of a horse with a mane and saucer-shaped eyes. This creature is also reported to have goatlike whiskers under its lower jaw.”

“‘Goat whiskers,’” Pitt repeated cynically.

“Then there is the variety with a true serpentine body like that of an eel. Another has the appearance of a giant sea otter, while yet another is known for its row of huge, triangular fins. The kind most often pictured has many dorsal humps, an egg-shaped head and big doglike muzzle. This serpent is almost always reported as being black on top and white on the bottom. Some have seal— or turtlelike flippers or fins, some do not. Some grow enormously long tails, others a short stub. Many are described as having fur, most others are silky smooth. The colors vary from yellow-gray to brown to black. Almost all witnesses agree that the lower part of the bodies is white. Unlike most true sea and land snakes, which propel themselves by wiggling side-to-side, the serpent moves by making vertical undulations. It appears to dine on fish, only shows itself in calm weather and has been observed in every sea except the waters around the Arctic and Antarctic.”

“How do you know all these sightings were not misinterpreted?” asked Pitt. “They could have been basking sharks, clumps of seaweed, porpoises swimming in single file, or even a giant squid.”

“In most cases there was more than one observer,” retorted Maeve. “Many of the viewers were sea captains of great integrity. Captain Arthur Rostron was one.”

“I know the name. He was captain of the Carpathia, the ship that picked up the Titanic survivors.”

“He witnessed a creature that appeared in great distress, as if it were injured.”

“Witnesses may be completely honest, but mistaken,” Pitt insisted. “Until a serpent, or a piece of one, is handed over to scientists to dissect and study, there is no proof.”

“Why can’t reptiles twenty to fifty meters in length, with snakelike features, still live in the seas as they did during the Mesozoic era? The sea is not a crystal windowpane. We cannot see into its depths and scan far horizons as on land. Who knows how many giant species, still unknown to science, roam the seas?”

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Pitt said, his eyes smiling. “What category does Basil fall into?”

“I’ve classified Basil as a mega-eel. He has a cylindrical body thirty meters long, ending in a tail with a point. His head is slightly blunt like the common eel’s but with a wide canine mouth filled with sharp teeth. He is bluish with a white belly, and his jet-black eyes are as large as a serving dish. He undulates in the horizontal like other eels and snakes. Twice I saw him raise the front part of his body a good ten meters out of the water before falling back with a great splash.”

“When did you first see him?”

“When I was about ten,” Maeve answered. “Deirdre and I were sailing about the lagoon in a little cutter our mother had given us, when suddenly I had this strange sensation of being watched. A cold shiver shot up my spine. Deirdre acted as if nothing was happening. I slowly turned around. There, about twenty meters behind our stern, was a head and neck rising about three meters out of the water. The thing had two glistening black eyes that were staring at us.”

“How thick was the neck?”

“A good two meters in diameter, as big as a wine vat, as father often described it.”

“He saw it too?”

“The whole family observed Basil on any number of occasions, but usually when someone was about to die.”

“Go on with your description.”

“The beast looked like a dragon out of a child’s nightmare. I was petrified and couldn’t say a word or scream, while Deirdre kept staring over the bow. Her attention was focused on telling me when to tack so we wouldn’t run onto the outer reef.”

“Did it make a move toward you?” Pitt asked.

“No. It just stared at us and made no attempt to molest the boat as we sailed away from it.”

“Deirdre never saw it.”

“Not at that time, but she later sighted it on two different occasions.”

“How did your father react when you told him what you had seen?”

“He laughed and said, ‘So you’ve finally met Basil.’”

“You said the serpent made itself known when there was a death?”

“A family fable with some kernel of truth. Basil was seen in the lagoon by the crew of a visiting whaler when Betsy Fletcher was buried, and later when my great-aunt Mildred and my mother died, both in violent circumstances.”

“Coincidence or fate?”

Maeve shrugged. “Who can say? The only thing 1 can be sure of is that my father murdered my mother.”

“Like Grandfather Henry supposedly killed his sister Mildred.”

She gave him a strange look. “You know about that too.”

“Public knowledge.”

She stared over the black sea to where it met the stars, the bright moon illuminating her eyes, which seemed to grow darker and sadder. “The last three generations of Dorsetts haven’t exactly set virtuous standards.”

“Your mother’s name was Irene.”

Maeve nodded silently.

“How did she die?” Pitt asked gently.

“She would have eventually died, brokenhearted from the abuse heaped upon her by the man she desperately loved. But while walking along the cliffs with my father, she slipped and fell to her death in the surf below.” An expression of hatred became etched on her delicate face. “He pushed her,” she said coldly. “My father pushed her to her death as sure as there are stars in the universe.”

Pitt held her tightly and felt her shudder. “Tell me about your sisters,” he said, changing the subject.

The look of hatred faded, and her features became delicate again. “Not much to tell. I was never very close to either of them. Deirdre was the sneaky one. If I had something she wanted, she simply stole it and pretended it was hers all along. Of the three, Deirdre was Daddy’s little girl. He lavished most of his affection on her, I guess because they were kindred spirits. Deirdre lives in a fantasy world created by her own deceit. She can’t tell the truth even when there is no reason to lie.”

“Has she ever married?”

“Once, to a professional soccer player who thought he was going to live out his life as a member of the jet set with his own set of toys. Unfortunately for him, when he wanted a divorce and demanded a settlement that equaled Australia’s national budget, he conveniently fell off one of the family yachts. His body was never found.”

“It doesn’t pay to accept invitations to go sailing with the Dorsetts,” Pitt said caustically.

“I’m afraid to think about all the people Father has eliminated who stood in his way in fact or in his imagination.”

“And Boudicca?”

“I never really knew her,” she said distantly. “Boudicca is eleven years older than me. Soon after I was born, Daddy enrolled her in an exclusive boarding school, or so I was always told. It sounds odd to say my sister was a total stranger to me. I was nearly ten years old when I met her for the first time. All I really know about her is that she has a passion for handsome young men. Daddy isn’t pleased, but he does little to stop her from sleeping around.”

“She’s one strong lady.”

“I saw her manhandle Daddy once, when he was striking our mother during a drunken rampage.”

“Odd that they all have such a murderous dislike for the only member of the family who is loving and decent.”

“When I escaped the island, where my sisters and I were kept virtual prisoners after Mother died, Daddy could not accept my independence. My earning my own way through university without tapping the Dorsett fortune angered him. Then, when I was living with a young man and became pregnant, instead of opting for an abortion I decided to go the whole nine months after the doctor told me I was having twins. I refused to marry the boy, so Daddy and my sisters severed all my ties to the Dorsett empire. It all sounds so mad, and I can’t explain it. I legally changed my name to that of my great-great-great grandmother and went on with my life, happy to be free of a dysfunctional family.”

She had been racked by wicked forces over which she had no control, and Pitt pitied her while respecting her fortitude. Maeve was a loving woman. He looked into the guileless blue eyes of a child. He swore to himself that he would move heaven and earth to save her.

He started to say something, but out of the blackness he caught sight of the seething crest of a huge wave bearing down on them. The giant swell appeared to break across his entire field of vision. A cold dread gripped the nape of his neck as he saw three similar waves rolling behind the first.

He gave a warning shout to Giordino and flung Maeve to the floor. The swell curled down on top of the boat, inundating it with foam and spray, rolling over and pressing down the starboard quarter as it struck. The opposite side was flung into the air, and the boat twisted sideways as it fell into a deep trough, broadside to the next wall of water.

The second wave rose and touched the stars before surging over them with the force of a freight train. The boat plunged under the black tempest, completely submerged. Overwhelmed by the maddened sea, Pitt ’s only option for staying alive was to grip a buoyancy tube as tightly as possible in a replay of the earlier typhoon. To be cast overboard was to stay overboard. Any legitimate bookmaker would have preferred the odds covering the sharks over drowning.

The little boat had somehow struggled to the surface when the final two waves struck it violently in succession. They wrenched it around in a writhing inferno of raging water. The helpless passengers were plummeted under the liquid wall and immersed again. Then they were sliding down the smooth back of the final wave, and the sea went as calm as if nothing had happened. The tumultuous combers raced past and swept into the night.

“Another precision display of the sea’s temper,” sputtered Giordino, his arms locked in a death grip around the console. “What did we do to make her so mad?”

Pitt immediately released Maeve and lifted her to a sitting position. “Are you all right?”

She coughed for several seconds before gasping, “I expect ... I’ll live. What in God’s name hit us?”

“I suspect a seismic disturbance on the sea bottom. It doesn’t take a quake of great magnitude to set off a series of rogue waves.”

Maeve wiped the wet strands of blond hair out of her eyes. “Thankfully, the boat didn’t capsize and none of us was thrown out.”

“How’s the rudder?” Pitt asked Giordino.

“Still hanging. Our paddle-mast survived in good shape, but our sail has a few rips and tears.”

“Our food and water supply also came through in good shape,” volunteered Maeve.

“Then we came through nearly unscathed,” said Giordino, as though he didn’t quite believe it.

“Not for long, I fear,” Pitt said tautly.

Maeve stared around the seemingly uninjured boat. “I don’t see any obvious damage that can’t be repaired.”

“Nor I,” Giordino agreed after examining the integrity of the buoyancy tubes.

“You didn’t look down.”

In the bright moonlight they could see the grim tension that was reflected on Pitt’s face. They stared in the direction he gestured and suddenly realized that any hope of survival had rapidly vanished.

There, running the entire length of the bottom hull, was a crack in the fiberglass that was already beginning to seep water.

Rudi Gunn was not into sweat and the thrill of victory. He relied on his mental faculties, a regimen of disciplined eating habits and his metabolism to keep him looking young and trim. Once or twice a week, as today, when the mood struck him, he rode a bicycle during his lunch hour, along side Sandecker, who was a jogging nut. The admiral’s daily run took him ten kilometers over one of several paths that ran through Potomac Park. The exercise was by no means conducted in silence. As one man ran and the other rode, the affairs of NUMA were discussed as if they were conversing in an office.

“What is the record for someone adrift at sea?” asked Sandecker as he adjusted a sweatband around his head.

“Steve Callahan, a yachtsman, survived 76 days after his sloop sank off the Canary Islands,” answered Gunn, “the longest for one man in an inflatable raft. The Guinness World Record holder for survival at sea is held by Poon Lim, a Chinese steward who was set adrift on a raft after his ship was torpedoed in the South Atlantic during World War Two. He survived 133 days before being picked up by Brazilian fishermen.”

“Was either adrift during a force ten blow?”

Gunn shook his head. “Neither Callahan nor Poon Lim was hit with a storm near the intensity of the typhoon that swept over Dirk, Al and Miss Fletcher.”

“Going on two weeks since Dorsett abandoned them,” said Sandecker between breaths. “If they outlasted the storm, they must be suffering badly from thirst and exposure to the elements.”

“Pitt is a man of infinite resourcefulness,” said Gunn indisputably. “Together with Giordino, I wouldn’t be surprised if they washed up on a beach in Tahiti and are relaxing in a grass shack.”

Sandecker stepped to the side of the path to allow a woman pushing a small child in a three-wheeled carrier to jog past in the other direction. After he resumed running, he murmured, “Dirk always used to say, the sea does not give up its secrets easily.”

“Things might have been resolved if Australian and New Zealand search-and-rescue forces could have joined NUMA’s efforts.”

“Arthur Dorsett has a long reach,” Sandecker said, irate. “I received so many excuses as to why they were busy on other rescue missions I could have papered a wall with them.”

“There’s no denying the man wields incredible power.” Gunn stopped pedaling and paused beside the admiral. “Dorsett’s bribe money reaches deep into the pockets of friends in the United States Congress and the parliaments of Europe and Japan. Astounding, the famous people who work for him.”

Sandecker’s face turned crimson, not from exertion but from hopelessness. He could not restrain his anger and resentment. He came to a stop, leaned down and gripped his knees, staring at the ground. “I’d close down NUMA in a minute for the chance to get my hands around Arthur Dorsett’s neck.”

“I’m sure you’re not alone,” said Gunn. “There must be thousands who dislike, distrust and even hate him. And yet they never betray him.”

“Small wonder. If he doesn’t arrange fatal accidents for those who stand in his way, he buys them off by filling their Swiss bank safety deposit boxes with diamonds.”

“A powerful persuader, diamonds.”

“He’ll never influence the President with them.”

“No, but the President can be misled by bad advice.”

“Surely not when the lives of over a million people are at stake.”

“No word yet?” asked Gunn. “The President said he’d be back to you in four days. It’s been six.”

“The urgency of the situation wasn’t lost on him—”

Both men turned at the honk of a horn from a car with NUMA markings. The driver pulled to a stop in the street opposite the jogging path. He leaned out the passenger’s window and shouted. “I have a call from the White House for you, Admiral.”

Sandecker turned to Gunn and smiled thinly. “The President must have big ears.”

As the admiral stepped over to the car, the driver handed him a portable phone. “Wilbur Hutton on a safe line, sir.”

“Will?”

“Hello, Jim, I’m afraid I have discouraging news for you.”

Sandecker tensed. “Please explain.”

“After due consideration, the President has postponed any action regarding your acoustic plague.”

“But why?” Sandecker gasped. “Doesn’t he realize the consequences of no action at all?”

“Experts on the National Science Board did not go along with your theory. They were swayed by the autopsy reports from Australian pathologists at their Center for Disease Control in Melbourne. The Hussies conclusively proved that the deaths on board the cruise ship were caused by a rare form of bacterium similar to the one causing Legionnaires’ disease.”

“That’s impossible!” Sandecker snapped.

“I only know what I was told,” Hutton admitted. “The Hussies suspect that contaminated water in the ship’s heating system humidifiers was responsible.”

“I don’t care what the pathologists say. It would be folly for the President to ignore my warning. For God’s sake, Will, beg, plead or do whatever it takes to convince the President to use his powers to shut down Dorsett’s mining operations before it’s too late.”

“Sorry, Jim. The President’s hands are tied. None of his scientific advisers thought your evidence was strong enough to run the risk of an international incident. Certainly not in an election year.”

“This is insane!” Sandecker said desperately. “If my people are right, the President won’t be able to get elected to clean public bathrooms.”

“That’s your opinion,” said Hutton coldly. “I might add that Arthur Dorsett has offered to open his mining operations to an international team of investigators.”

“How soon can a team be assembled?”

“These things take time. Two, maybe three weeks.”

“By then you’ll have dead bodies stacked all over Oahu.”

“Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, you’re in a minority in that belief.”

Sandecker muttered darkly, “I know you did your best, Will, and I’m grateful.”

“Please contact me if you come upon any further information, Jim. My line is always open to you.”

“Thank you.”

“Good-bye.”

Sandecker handed the phone back to the driver and turned to Gunn. “We’ve been sandbagged.”

Gunn looked shocked. “The President is ignoring the situation?”

Sandecker nodded in defeat. “Dorsett bought off the pathologists. They turned in a phony report claiming the cause of death of the cruise ship passengers was contamination from the heating system.”

“We can’t give up,” Gunn said, furious at the setback. “We must find another means of stopping Dorsett’s madness in time.”

“When in doubt,” Sandecker said, the fire returning to his eyes, “bank on somebody who is smarter than you are.” He retrieved the phone and punched in a number. “There is one man who might have the key.”

Admiral Sandecker bent down and teed up at tire Camelback Golf Club in Paradise Valley, Arizona. It was two o’clock in the afternoon under a cloudless sky, only five hours after he had jogged with Rudi Gunn in Washington. After landing at the Scottsdale airport, he borrowed a car from a friend, an old retired Navy man, and drove directly to the golf course. January in the desert could be cool, so he wore slacks and a long-sleeve cashmere sweater. There were two courses, and he was playing on the one called Indian Bend.

He sighted on the green 365 meters away, took two practice swings, addressed his ball and swung effortlessly. The ball soared nicely, sliced a bit to the right, bounced and rolled to a stop 190 meters down the fairway.

“Nice drive, Admiral,” said Dr. Sanford Adgate Ames. “I made a mistake talking you into a friendly game of golf. I didn’t suspect old sailors took a ground sport seriously.” Behind a long, scraggly gray beard that covered his mouth and came down to his chest, Ames looked like an old desert prospector. His eyes were hidden behind blue-tinted bifocals.

“Old sailors do many strange things,” Sandecker retorted.

Asking Dr. Sanford Adgate Ames to come to Washington for a high-level conference was no different from praying to God to conjure up a sirocco wind to melt the polar ice cap. Neither was likely to respond. Ames hated New York and Washington with equal passion and absolutely refused to visit either place. Offers of testimonial dinners and awards wouldn’t budge him from his hideaway on Camelback Mountain in Arizona.

Sandecker needed Ames, needed him urgently. Biting the bullet, he requested a meeting with the soundmeister, as Ames was called among his fellow scientists. Ames agreed, but with the strict provision Sandecker bring his golf clubs, as all discussion would take place on the links.

Highly respected in the scientific community, Ames was to sound what Einstein was to time and light. Blunt, egocentric, brilliant, Ames had written more than three hundred papers on almost every known aspect of acoustical oceanography. His studies and analyses over the course of forty-five years covered phenomena ranging from underwater radar and sonar techniques to acoustic propagation to subsurface reverberation. Once a trusted adviser with the Defense Department, he was forced to resign after his fervent objections to ocean noise tests being conducted around the world to measure global warming. His caustic attacks on the Navy’s underwater nuclear test projects was also a source of animosity at the Pentagon. Representatives of a host of universities trooped to his doorstep in hopes of getting him to join their faculties, but he refused, preferring to do research with a small staff of four students he paid out of his own pocket.

“What do you say to a dollar a hole, Admiral? Or are you a true betting man?”

“You’re on, Doc,” said Sandecker agreeably.

Ames stepped up to the tee, studied the fairway as if aiming a rifle and swung. He was a man in his late sixties, but Sandecker noted that his backswing reach was only a few centimeters off that of a man much younger and more nimble. The ball soared and dropped into a sand trap just past the 200-meter marker.

“How quickly the mighty fall,” said Ames philosophically.

Sandecker was not conned easily. He knew he was being stroked. Ames had been notorious in Washington circles as a golf hustler. It was agreed by those on his sting list that if he hadn’t gone into physics he’d have entered the PGA tour as a professional.

They stepped into a golf cart and started off after their balls with Ames at the wheel. “How can I help you, Admiral?” he asked.

“Are you aware of NUMA’s efforts to track down and stop what we call an acoustic plague?” responded Sandecker.

“I’ve heard rumors.”

“What do you think?”

“Pretty farfetched.”

“The President’s National Science Board agrees,” Sandecker growled.

“I can’t say I really blame them.”

“You don’t believe sound can travel thousands of kilometers underwater, then surface and kill?”

“Output from four different high-intensity acoustical sources converging in the same area and causing death to every mammal within hearing distance? Not a hypothesis I’d recommend advancing, not if I wished to retain my standing among my peers.”

“Hypothesis be damned!” Sandecker burst out. “The dead already total over four hundred. Colonel Leigh Hunt, one of our nation’s finest pathologists, has proven conclusively that the cause of death is intense sound waves.”

“That’s not what I heard from the postmortem reports out of Australia.”

“You’re an old fake, Doc,” said Sandecker, smiling. “You’ve been following the situation.”

“Any time the subject of acoustics is mentioned, I’m interested.”

They reached Sandecker’s ball first. He selected a number three wood and knocked his ball into a sand trap twenty meters in front of the green.

“You too seem to have an affinity for sand traps,” said Ames offhandedly.

“In more ways than one,” Sandecker admitted.

They stopped at Ames’ ball. The physicist pulled a three iron from his golf bag. His game appeared more mental than physical. He took no practice swings nor went through any wiggling motions. He simply stepped up to the ball and swung. There was a shower of sand as the ball lofted and dropped on the green within ten meters of the cup.

Sandecker needed two strokes with his sand wedge to get out of the trap, then two putts before his ball rolled into the cup for a double bogey. Ames putted out in two for a par. As they drove to the second tee, Sandecker began to outline his findings in a detailed narrative. The next eight holes were played under heavy discussion as Ames questioned Sandecker relentlessly and brought up any number of arguments against acoustic murder.

At the ninth green, Ames used his pitching wedge to lay his ball within a club’s length of the hole. He watched with amusement as Sandecker misread the green and curled his putt back into the surrounding grass.

“You might be a pretty fair golfer if you got out and played more often, Admiral.”

“Five times a year is enough for me,” Sandecker replied. “I don’t feel I’m accomplishing anything by chasing a little ball for six hours.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve developed some of my most creative concepts while relaxing on a golf course.”

After Sandecker finally laid a putt in the hole, they returned to the cart. Ames pulled a can of Diet Coke from a small ice chest and handed it to the admiral. “What exactly do you expect me to tell you?” he asked.

Sandecker stared at him. “I don’t give a damn what ivory tower scientists think. People are dying out there on the sea. If I don’t stop Dorsett, more people are going to die, in numbers I don’t care to think about. You’re the best acoustics man in the country. I’m hoping you can steer me on a course to end the slaughter.”

“So I am your final court of appeals.” The subtle change in Ames’ friendly tone was to one that could hardly be called dead sober, but it was unmistakable. “You want me to come up with a practical solution to your problem.”

“Our problem,” Sandecker gently corrected him.

“Yes,” Ames said heavily, “I can see that now.” He held a can of Diet Coke in front of his eyes and stared at it curiously. “Your description of me is quite correct, Admiral. I am an old fake. I worked out a blueprint of sorts before you left the ground in Washington. It’s far from perfect, mind you. The chance of success is less than fifty-fifty, but it’s the best I can devise without months spent in serious research.”

Sandecker looked at Ames, masking his excitement, his eyes alight with a hope that wasn’t there before. “You’ve actually conceived a plan for terminating Dorsett’s mining operations?” he asked expectantly.

Ames shook his head. “Any kind of armed force is out of my territory. I’m talking about a method for neutralizing the acoustic convergence.”

“How is that possible?”

“Simply put, sound-wave energy can be reflected.”

“Yes, that goes without saying,” said Sandecker.

“Since you know the four separate sound rays will propagate toward the island of Oahu and you have determined the approximate time of convergence, I assume your scientists can also accurately predict the exact position of the convergence.”

“We have a good fix, yes.”

“There’s your answer.”

“That’s it?” Any stirrings of hope that Sandecker had entertained vanished. “I must have missed something.”

Ames shrugged. “Occam’s razor, Admiral. Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.”

“The simplest answer is preferred over the complex.”

“There you have it. My advice, for what it’s worth, is for NUMA to build a reflector similar to a satellite dish, lower it into the sea at the point of convergence and beam the acoustic waves away from Honolulu.”

Sandecker kept his face from showing any emotion, but his heart pounded against his ribs. The key to the enigma was ridiculously uncomplicated. True, the execution of a redirection project would not be easy, but it was feasible.

“If NUMA can build and deploy a reflector dish in time,” he asked Ames, “where should the acoustic waves be redirected?”

A wily smile crossed Ames’ face. “The obvious choice would be to some uninhabited part of the ocean, say south to Antarctica. But since the convergence energy slowly diminishes the farther it travels, why not send it back to the source?”

“The Dorsett mine on Gladiator Island,” Sandecker said, tempering the awe in his voice.

Ames nodded. “As good a choice as any. The intensity of the energy would not have the strength to kill humans after making a round trip. But it should put the fear of God in them and give them one hell of a headache.”

This was the end of the line. Pitt thought bitterly. This was as far as any human was expected to go. This was the conclusion of the valiant effort, the future desires and loves and joys of each one of them. Their end would come in the water as food for the fish, the pitiful remains of their bodies sinking a thousand fathoms to the desolate bottom of the sea. Maeve never to see her sons again, Pitt mourned by his mother and father and his many friends at NUMA. Giordino’s memorial service, Pitt mused with a last vestige of humor, would be well attended, with an impressive number of grieving women, any one of whom could have been a beauty queen.

The little boat that had carried them so far through so much chaos was literally coming apart at the seams. The crack along the bottom of the hull lengthened fractionally with every wave that carried the boat over its crest. The buoyancy tubes would keep them afloat, but when the hull parted for good and the pieces went their separate ways, they would all be thrown in the merciless water, clinging helplessly to the wreckage and vulnerable to the ever-present sharks.

For the moment the sea was fairly calm. From crest to trough, the waves rolled just under a meter. But if the weather suddenly became unsettled and the sea kicked up, death would do more than merely stare them in the eyes. The old man with the scythe would embrace them quickly without further hesitation.

Pitt hunched over the rudder in the stern, listening to the now familiar scrape and splash of the bailer. His intense green eyes, sore and swollen, scanned the horizon as the orb of the morning sun flushed from a golden-orange glow to flaming yellow. He searched, hoping against hope that a hint of land might rise above the clean straight horizon of the sea surrounding them. He searched in vain. No ship, aircraft or island revealed itself. Except for a few small clouds trailing to the southeast a good twenty kilometers away, Pitt’s world was as empty as the plains of Mars, the boat little more than a pinprick on a vast seascape.

After catching enough fish to start a seafood restaurant, hunger was not an anxiety. Their water supply, if conserved, was good for at least another six or seven days. It was the fatigue and lack of sleep caused by the constant bailing to keep the boat afloat that was taking a toll. Every hour was misery. Without a bowl or a bottle of any kind, they were forced to splash the incoming water overboard with their cupped hands until Pitt devised a container from the waterproof packet that held the accessories he had smuggled past the Dorsetts. When tied to a pair of wrenches to form a concave receptacle, it could expel a liter of seawater with one scoop.

At first they labored in four-hour shifts, because Maeve demanded she carry her share of the exertion. She worked gamely, fighting the stiffness that soon attacked the joints of her arms and wrists, followed by agonizing muscle aches. The grit and guts were there, but she did not have the natural strength of either man. The shifts soon were divided and allocated by stamina. Maeve bailed for three hours before being spelled by Pitt, who struggled for five. Giordino then took over and refused any relief until he had put in a full eight hours.

As the seam split farther and farther apart, the water no longer seeped, but rather spurted like a long fountain. The sea pried its way in faster than it could be cast out. With their backs against the wall and no trace of relief in sight, they slowly began to lose their steadfastness.

“Damn Arthur Dorsett,” Pitt shouted in his mind. “Damn Boudicca, damn Deirdre!” The murderous waste, the uselessness of it all made no sense. He and Maeve were no major threat to Dorsett’s fanatical dreams of empire. Alone, they never could have stopped him, or even slowed him down. It was a pure act of sadism to set them adrift.

Maeve stirred in her sleep, murmuring to herself, then lifted her head and stared, semiconscious, at Pitt. “Is it my turn to bail?”

“Not for another five hours,” he lied with a smile. “Go back to sleep.”

Giordino paused from bailing for a moment and stared at Pitt, sickness in his heart from knowing without question that Maeve would soon be torn limb from limb and devoured by the murder machines of the deep. Grimly, he went back to his work, laboring ceaselessly, throwing a thousand and more containerfuls of water over the side.

God only knew how Giordino could keep going. His back and arms must have been screaming in protest. The steel willpower to endure went far beyond the limits of comprehension. Pitt was stronger than most men, but alongside Giordino, he felt like a child watching an Olympic weight lifter. When Pitt had yielded the container in total exhaustion, Giordino took it up as if he could go on forever. Giordino, he knew, would never accept defeat. The tough, stocky Italian would probably die trying to get a stranglehold on a hammerhead.

Their peril sharpened Pitt’s mind. In a final desperate attempt, he lowered the sail, laid it flat in the water, then slipped it under the hull and tied the lines to the buoyancy tubes. The nylon sheet, pressed against the crack by the pressure of the water, slowed the advance of the leakage by a good fifty percent, but at best it was only a stopgap measure that bought them a few extra hours of life. Unless the sea became perfectly calm, the physical breakdown of the crew and the splitting apart of the boat, Pitt figured, would occur shortly after darkness fell. He glanced at his watch and saw that sunset was only four and a half hours away.

Pitt gently grabbed Giordino’s wrist and removed the container from his hand. “My turn,” he said firmly. Giordino did not resist. He nodded in appreciation and fell back against a buoyancy tube, too exhausted to sleep.

The sail held back the flow of water enough so that Pitt actually stayed even for a short time. He bailed into the afternoon, mechanically, losing all sense of time, barely noting the passage of the brutal sun, never wilting under its punishing rays. He bailed like a robot, not feeling the pain in his back and arms, his senses completely numbed, going on and on as if he were caught in a narcotic stupor.

Maeve had roused herself out of a state of lethargy. She sat up and peered dully at the horizon behind Pitt ’s back. “Don’t you think palm trees are pretty,” she murmured softly.

“Yes, very pretty,” Pitt agreed, giving her a tight smile, believing her to be hallucinating. “You shouldn’t stand under them. People have been killed by falling coconuts.”

“I was in Fiji once,” she said, shaking her hair loose. “I saw one drop through the windshield of a parked car.”

To Pitt, Maeve looked like a little girl, lost and wandering aimlessly in a forest, who had given up all hope of ever finding her way home. He wished there was something he could do or say that would comfort her. But there was nothing on God’s sea that anyone could do. His sense of compassion and utter inadequacy left him embittered.

“Don’t you think you should steer more to starboard?” she said listlessly.

“Starboard?”

She stared as if in a trance. “Yes. You don’t want to miss the island by sailing past it.”

Pitt’s eyes narrowed. Slowly, he turned and peered over his shoulder. After nearly sixteen days of taking position sightings from the sun and suffering from the glare on the water, his eyes were so strained that he could only focus in the distance for a few seconds before closing them. He cast his eyes briefly across the bow but saw only blue-green swells.

He turned back. “We can no longer control the boat,” he explained softly. “I’ve taken down the sail and placed it under the hull to slow the leakage.”

“Oh, please,” she pleaded. “It’s so close. Can’t we land and walk around on dry ground if only for a few minutes?”

She said it so calmly, so rationally in her Australian twang, that Pitt felt his spine tingle. Could she actually be seeing something? Reason dictated that Maeve’s mind was playing tricks on her. But a still-glowing spark of hope mixed with desperation made him rise to his knees while clutching a buoyancy tube for stability. At that moment the boat rose on the crest of the next swell and he had a brief view of the horizon.

But there were no hills with palm trees rising above the sea.

Pitt circled his arm around Maeve’s shoulders. He remembered her as robust and spirited. Now she looked small and frail, and yet her face glowed with an intensity that wasn’t there before. Then he saw that she was not staring across the sea but into the sky.

For the first time he noticed the bird above the boat, wings outspread, hovering in the breeze. He cupped his hands over his eyes and gazed at the winged intruder. The wingspan was about a meter, the feathers a mottled green with specks of brown. The upper beak curled and came to a sharp point. To Pitt the bird appeared to be an ugly cousin of the more colorful parrot family.

“You see it too,” said Maeve excitedly. “A kea, the same one that led my ancestors to Gladiator Island. Sailors shipwrecked in southern waters swear the kea shows the way to safe harbors.”

Giordino peered upward, regarding the parrot more as a meal than a divine messenger sent by ghosts to guide them toward dry land. “Ask Polly to recommend a good restaurant,” he muttered wearily. “Preferably one that doesn’t have fish dishes on the menu.”

Pitt did not reply to Giordino’s survivalist humor. He studied the kea’s movements. The bird hovered as if resting and made no attempt at aimlessly circling the boat. Then, apparently catching its second breath, it began to wing away in a southeasterly direction. Pitt immediately took a compass bearing on the bird’s course, keeping it in sight until it became a speck and disappeared.

Parrots are not water birds like the gulls and petrels that range far over the seas. Perhaps it was lost, Pitt thought. But that didn’t play well. For a bird that preferred to sink its claws on something solid, it made no attempt to land on the only floating object within sight. That meant that it was not tired of flying on instinct toward some unknown mating ground. This bird knew exactly where it was and where it was going. It flew with a plan. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was in the midst of flying from one island to another. Pitt was certain it could see something from a higher altitude that the miserable people in the dilapidated boat below could not.

He moved to the control console and pulled himself to his feet, clutching the stand with both hands to keep from being pitched overboard. Again he squinted through swollen eyes toward the southeast.

He had become all too familiar with clouds on the horizon that gave the illusion of land rising from the sea. He was too used to seeing white tufts of cotton drifting over the outer edge of the sea, their uneven shapes and dark gray colors raising false hopes before altering form and gliding onward, driven by winds out of the west.

This time it was different. One solitary cloud on the horizon remained stationary while the others moved past it. It rose from the sea faintly but without any signature of mass. There was no indication of green vegetation because the cloud itself was not a piece of an island. It was formed by vapor rising from sun-baked sand before condensing in a colder level of air.

Pitt restrained any feelings of excitement and delight when he realized the island was still a good five hours’ sail away. There wasn’t a prayer of reaching it, even with the sail spread once more on the mast while the sea poured into the boat. Then his dashed hopes began to reassemble as he recognized it not as the top of an undersea mount that had thrust above the sea after a million years of volcanic activity and then nurtured lush green hills and valleys. This was a low, flat rock that supported a few unidentifiable trees that somehow survived the colder climate this far south of the tropic zone.

The trees, clearly visible, were clustered on the small areas of sand that filled the cracks of the rocks. Pitt now realized the island was much closer than it had seemed at first view. It lay no more than eight or nine kilometers away, the tops of the trees giving the impression of a shaggy rug being pulled over the horizon.

Pitt took a bearing on the island, noting that it precisely matched the kea’s course. Next he checked the wind direction and drift, and determined that the current would carry them around the northern tip. They would have to sail southeast on a starboard tack as Maeve had, amazingly, pictured in her imagination.

“The little lady wins a prize,” Pitt announced. “We’re within sight of land.”

Both Maeve and Giordino struggled to their feet, clung to Pitt and gazed at their distant hope of refuge. “She’s no mirage,” said Giordino with a big grin.

“I told you the kea would lead us to a safe harbor,” Maeve whispered softly in Pitt’s ear.

Pitt did not allow himself to be carried away by elation. “We’re not there yet. We’ll have to replace the sail and bail like hell if we’re to land on its shore.”

Giordino judged the distance separating them from the island, and his expression sobered considerably. “Our home-away-from-home won’t make it,” he predicted. “She’ll split in two before we’re halfway.”

The sail was raised, and any length of line that could he spared was used to tie the splitting hull together. With Maeve at the rudder, Giordino bailing like a crazy man and Pitt sloshing the water in sheets over the side with his bare hands, the ruptured boat set its bow directly toward the small, low-lying island a few kilometers distant. At long last they had visible proof that Pitt’s navigation had paid off.

The mind-drugging fatigue, the overwhelming exhaustion had dropped from Pitt and Giordino like a heavy rock. They entered a zone where they were no longer themselves, a psychological zone where another world of stress and suffering had no meaning. It didn’t matter that their bodies would pay heavily in agony later, as long as their sheer determination and refusal to accept defeat carried them across the gap separating the boat from the beckoning shore. They were aware of the pain screaming from their shoulders and backs, but the awareness was little more than an abstract protest from the mind. It was as if the torment belonged elsewhere.

The wind filled the sail, shoving the boat on a course for the solitary outcrop on the horizon. But the heartless sea was not about to release them from its grip. The current fought them, forking as it ran up against the shore and flowing in a loop past the outer limits of the island, threatening to push them back into the vast nothingness of the Pacific.

“I think we’re being swept around it,” Maeve said fearfully.

Facing forward as he frantically scooped the surging water out of the boat, Pitt seldom took his eyes off the nearing island. At first he thought they were seeing only one island, but as they approached within two kilometers he saw it was two. An arm of the sea, about a hundred meters in width, separated one from the other. He could also make out what appeared to be a tidal current running through the gap between the islands.

By the wind streaks on the surface and the spraying foam, Pitt could tell that the following breeze had shifted even more in their favor, blowing the boat on a sharper angle across the unfriendly current. That was a plus, he thought optimistically. The fact that the water this far south was too cold for coral reefs to form and wait in ambush to tear them to shreds didn’t hurt either.

As he and Giordino fought the incoming water, they became conscious of a sullen thunder that seemed to grow louder. A quick pause, and their eyes locked as they realized that it was the unique sound of surf pounding against rock cliffs. The waves had turned murderous and were drawing the boat ever closer into a fatal embrace. The castaways’ happy anticipation of setting foot on dry land again suddenly turned to a fear of being crushed in a thrashing sea.

Instead of a safe haven, what Pitt saw was a forbidding pair of rocks jutting abruptly from the sea, surrounded and struck by the onslaught of massive breakers. These were not tropical atolls with inviting white sand beaches and waving friendly natives, the stuff of Bali Hai, blessed by heaven and lush plant life. There was no sign of habitation on either island, no smoke, no structures of any kind to be seen. Barren, windswept and desolate they seemed a mysterious outpost of lava rock, their only vegetation a few clusters of low nonflowering plants and strange-looking trees whose growth appeared stunted.

He could not believe that he was in a war with unyielding stone and water for the third time since he had found and rescued Maeve on the Antarctic Peninsula. For a brief instant his thoughts raced back to the near escape of the Polar Queen and the flight from Kunghit Island with Mason Broadmoor. Both times he had mechanical power to carry him clear. Now he was fighting a watery burial on a little waterlogged boat with a sail not much bigger than a blanket.

The master seaman’s first consideration when encountering rough seas, he recalled reading somewhere, was the preservation of the stability of his boat. The good sailor should not allow his boat to take on water, which would affect her buoyancy. He wished that whoever wrote that was sitting beside him.

“Unless you see a stretch of beach to land on,” Pitt shouted at Maeve, “steer for the breach between the islands.”

Maeve’s lovely features, drawn and burned from the sun, became set and tense. She nodded silently, tightly gripped the rudder lines and focused every bit of her strength on the task.

The jagged walls that climbed above the crashing surf looked more menacing with each passing minute. Water was pouring alarmingly into the boat. Giordino ignored the approaching upheaval and concentrated on keeping the boat from sinking under them. To stop bailing now could have fatal consequences. Ten seconds of uninterrupted flow of seawater through the damaged boat and they would sink five hundred meters from shore. Struggling helpless in the water, if the sharks didn’t get them, the surge and rocks would. He kept bailing, never missing a beat, his faith and trust entirely in the hands of Pitt and Maeve.

Pitt studied the cadence of the waves as friction with the bottom slope caused them to rise and slow down, measuring the break of the crests ahead and astern and timing their speed. The wave period shortened to roughly nine seconds and was moving at approximately twenty-two knots. The swells were beating in on an oblique angle to that of the rugged shoreline, causing the waves to break sharply as they refracted in a wide turn. Pitt did not need an old clipper ship captain to tell him that with their extremely limited sail power, there was little opportunity for maneuvering their way into the slot. His other fear was that of backwash swinging off the shoreline of both islands and turning the channel entrance into a maelstrom.

He could feel the pressure of the next wave surging beneath his knees, which were pressed into the bottom of the hull, and he judged its mass by the vibrations as it rumbled under him. The poor boat was being cruelly thrust into a tumult her designers never intended. Pitt did not dare put out the makeshift sea anchor as demanded by most sailors’ manuals when traveling through violent seas. With no engine he believed it in their best interests to run with the waves. The drag of the anchor would most certainly pull the boat apart as the immense pressure from the waves drove them forward.

He turned to Maeve. “Try and keep us in the darkest blue of the water.”

“I’ll do my best,” she replied bravely.

The roar of the breakers came with a steady, rolling beat, and soon they saw as well as heard the hiss of the spray as it burst into the sky. Without direct and manual control, they were helpless; the whims of the restless sea took them wherever it desired. The surge was building ever higher now. On closer inspection the slot between the rock outcroppings seemed like an insidious trap, a silent siren beckoning them to a false refuge. Too late to sail out to sea and around the islands. They were committed and there could be no turning back.

The islands and the frothing witches’ cauldron along their malevolent shores became hidden behind the backs of the waves that passed under the boat. A fresh gust of wind sprang up and thrust them toward a rock-walled cleft that offered their only chance at survival.

The seas became more nervous the nearer they approached. So did Pitt when he calculated the crest of the waves to be almost ten meters in height when they curled and broke. Maeve struggled with the rudder to’ control their course, but the boat did not answer her helm and quickly became unmanageable. They were totally caught in the surge.

“Hold on!” Pitt shouted.

He took a quick glance astern and noted their position in regard to the sea’s vertical movement. He knew that wave speed was highest just before reaching its crest. The breakers were rolling in like huge trucks in a convoy. The boat dropped into a trough, but their luck held as the swell broke just after passing them, and then they were riding on the back of the following wave at what seemed like breakneck speed. The surf was torn up and hurled in every direction as the wind whipped off the crests. The boat fell back only to be struck by the next sea as it rose under them to a height of eight meters, curled and collapsed over their heads. The boat did not broach nor did it pitchpole or even capsize. It landed flat and was thrown downward, crashing into the trough with a huge splash.

They were under a literal wall of hydraulic pressure. It felt as though the boat were being transported underwater by an out-of-control elevator. The total submersion seemed to take minutes, but it could not have lasted more than a few seconds. Pitt kept his eyes open and saw Maeve blurred and looking like a surreal vision in the liquid void, her face remarkably serene, her blond hair flowing up and out behind her. As he watched, she suddenly became lucent and distinct as they broke into the sunshine again.

Three or more seas rolled over them with diminishing force, and then they were through the breakers and into calmer water. Pitt snapped his head around, spitting out the saltwater he had taken in by not closing his mouth tightly, his wavy black hair whipping off the water droplets in glistening streaks.

“We’re through the worst!” he yelled happily. “We’ve gained the channel!”

The surge that swept into the channel had been reduced to rolling waves no higher than the average doorway. Amazingly, the boat was still afloat and in one piece. Through the grinding ferocity of the crashing breakers it still somehow held together. The only apparent damage was to the sail and paddle-mast, which had been torn away but were floating nearby, still attached to the boat by a line.

Giordino had never stopped bailing, even when he was sitting in water up to his chest. He sputtered and wiped the salt from his eyes and continued throwing water over the side like there was no tomorrow.

The hull was now completely cracked in two and barely held together by the hurriedly attached nylon lines and the clamps connecting the buoyancy floats. Giordino finally conceded defeat as he found himself sitting up to his armpits in seawater. He looked around dazedly, his breath labored, his mind deadened by exhaustion. “What now?” he mumbled.

Before Pitt answered, he dipped his face in the water and peered at the bottom of the channel. The visibility was exceptional, though blurred without a face mask, and he could see sand and rock only ten meters below. Schools of vividly colored fish swam about leisurely, taking no notice of the strange creature floating overhead.

“No sharks in here,” he said thankfully.

“They seldom swim through breakers,” said Maeve through a spasm of coughing. She was sitting with her arms stretched out and draped over the stern buoyancy tube.

The current through the channel was carrying them closer to the northern island. Solid ground was only thirty meters away. Pitt looked at Maeve and broke into a crooked grin. “I’ll bet you’re a strong swimmer.”

“You’re talking to an Aussie,” she said coolly, and then added, “Remind me sometime to show you my butterfly and backstroke medals.”

“Al is played out. Can you tow him to shore?”

“The least I can do for the man who kept us out of the mouths of sharks.”

Pitt gestured toward the nearest shoreline. There was no sandy beach, but the rock flattened out into a shelf as it met the water. “The way looks clear to climb on firm ground.”

“And you?” She pulled back her hair with both hands, wringing away the water. “Do you want me to come back for you?”

He shook his head. “I saved myself for a more important effort.”

“What effort?”

“Club Med hasn’t built a resort here yet. We still need all the food supplies we have in hand. I’m going to tow what’s left of the boat and the goodies therein.”

Pitt helped roll Giordino over the half-sunken buoyancy tubes into the water, where he was grasped under the chin lifeguard-style by Maeve. She stroked strongly to shore, pulling Giordino behind her. Pitt watched for a moment until he saw Giordino grin shiftily and lift one hand in a ‘bye wave. The nefarious little devil, Pitt thought. He’s enjoying a free ride.

Splicing and knotting the rigging back into one long nylon line, Pitt attached it to the half-sunken boat and tied the other end around his waist. Then he swam toward shore. The deadweight was too much to simply drag behind him. He would stop in the water, heave on the line, gain a short distance and then repeat the process. The current helped by nudging the boat around in an arc toward shore. After traveling twenty meters, he finally felt firm ground beneath his feet. Now he could use the added leverage to pull the boat onto the rock shelf. He was wearily grateful when Maeve and Giordino both waded in and helped him tow it ashore.

“You recovered quickly,” he said to Giordino.

“My recuperative powers are the marvel of doctors everywhere.”

“I think he suckered me,” said Maeve, feigning hostility.

“Nothing like the feel of terra firma to rejuvenate one’s soul.”

Pitt sat down and rested, too tired to dance for joy at being off the water. He slowly rose to his knees before standing up. For a few moments he had to hold onto the ground to steady himself. The motion of nearly two weeks bobbing about in a small boat had affected his balance. The world spun, and the entire island rocked as if it floated on the sea. Maeve immediately sat back down, while Giordino planted both feet firmly on the rock and clutched a nearby tree with thick foliage. After a few minutes, Pitt rose shakily to his feet and made a few faltering steps. Not having walked since the abduction in Wellington, he found his legs and ankles were unfeeling and stiff. Only after he’d staggered about twenty meters and back did his joints begin to loosen and operate as they should.

They hauled the boat farther onto the rocks and rested for a few hours before dining on their dried fish, washed down by rainwater they found standing in several concave impressions in the rock. Their energies restored, they began to survey the island. There was precious little to see. The whole island and its neighbor across the channel had the appearance of solid piles of lava rock that had exploded from the ocean floor, building over the eons until reaching the surface before being eroded into low mounds. If the water had been fully transparent and the islands viewed down to their base on the seafloor, they might have been compared to the great dramatic spires of Monument Valley, Arizona, rising like island, in a desert sea.

Giordino paced off the width from shore to shore and announced that their refuge was only 130 meters across, The highest point was a flattened plateau no more than 10 meters in height. The landmass curved into a tear shape that stretched north and south, with the windward arc facing the west. From rounded end to spiked point, the length was no more than a kilometer. Surrounded by natural seawalls that defied the swells, the island had the appearance of a fortress under constant attack.

A short distance away, they discovered the shattered remains of a boat that lay high and dry in a small inlet that was carved out of the rock by the sea, evidently driven there by large storm waves. She was a fair-sized sailboat, rolled over on her port side, half her hull and keel torn away from an obvious collision with rocks. She must have been a pretty boat at one time, Pitt imagined, Her upperworks had been painted light blue with orange undersides. Though the masts were gone, the deckhouse looked undamaged and intact. The three of them approached and studied it before peering inside.

“A grand, seaworthy little boat,” observed Pitt, “about twelve meters, well built, with a teak hull.”

“A Bermuda ketch,” said Maeve, running her hands over the worn and sun-bleached teak planking. “A fellow student at the marine lab on Saint Croix had one. We used to island-hop with it. She sailed remarkably well.”

Giordino stared at the paint and caulking on the hull appraisingly. “Been here twenty, maybe thirty years, judging by her condition.”

“I hope whoever became marooned on this desolate spot was rescued,” Maeve said quietly.

Pitt swept a hand around the barrenness. “Certainly no sane sailor would go out of his way to visit here.”

Maeve’s eyes brightened, and she snapped her fingers as if something deep in her memory had surfaced. “They’re called the Tits.”

Pitt and Giordino glanced at each other as if not believing what they had heard. “You did say ‘tits’?” Giordino inquired.

“An old Australian tale about a pair of islands that look like a woman’s breasts. They’re said to disappear and reappear, like Brigadoon.”

“I hate to be a debunker of Down Under myths,” said Pitt facetiously, “but this rock pile hasn’t gone anywhere for the last million years.”

“They’re not shaped like any mammary glands I’ve ever seen,” muttered Giordino.

She gave both men a gouty look. “I only know what I heard, about a pair of legendary islands south of the Tasman Sea.”

Hoisted by Giordino, Pitt climbed aboard the canted hull and crawled through the hatch into the deckhouse. “She’s been stripped clean,” he called out from the inside. “Everything that wasn’t screwed down has been removed. Check the transom and see if she has a name.”

Maeve walked around to the stern and stared up at the faded letters that were barely readable. “Dancing Dorothy. Her name was Dancing Dorothy.”

Pitt climbed down from the yacht’s cockpit. “A search is in order to locate the supplies taken from the boat. The crew may have left behind articles we can put to use.”

Resuming their exploration, it took little more than half an hour to skirt the entire coast of the tear-shaped little island. Then they worked their way inland. They separated and strung out in a loose line to cover more territory. Maeve was the first to spot an axe half buried in the rotting trunk of a grotesquely shaped tree.

Giordino pulled it loose and held it up. “This should come in handy.”

“Odd-looking tree,” said Pitt, eyeing its trunk. “I wonder what it’s called.”

“Tasmanian myrtle,” Maeve clarified. “Actually, it’s a species of false beech. They can grow as high as sixty meters, but there isn’t enough sandy loam here to support their root system, so all the trees we see on the island look like they’ve been dwarfed.”

They continued to search around carefully. A few minutes later Pitt stumbled onto a small ravine that opened onto a flat ledge on the lee side of the island. Lodged in one side of a rock wall, he spied the head of a brass gaff for landing fish. A few meters beyond, they came to a jumbled stack of logs in the form of a hut, with a boat’s mast standing beside it. The structure was about three meters wide by four meters long. The roof of logs intermixed with branches was undamaged by the elements. The unknown builder had raised a sound dwelling.

Outside the hut was a wealth of abandoned supplies and equipment. A battery and the corroded remains of a radio-telephone, a direction-finding set, a wireless receiver for obtaining weather bulletins and time signals for rating a chronometer, a pile of rusty food cans that had been opened and emptied, an intact teakwood dingy equipped with a small outboard motor and miscellaneous nautical hardware, dishes and eating utensils, a few pots and pans, a propane stove and other various and sundry items from the wrecked boat. Strewn around the stove, still discernible, were bones of fish.

“The former tenants left a messy campground,” said Giordino, kneeling to examine a small gas-driven generator for charging the boat’s batteries, which had operated the electronic navigational instruments and radio equipment scattered about the campsite.

“Maybe they’re still in the hut,” murmured Maeve.

Pitt smiled at her. “Why don’t you go in and see?”

She shook her head. “Not me. Entering dark and creepy places is man’s work.”

Women are indeed enigmatic creatures, Pitt thought. After all the dangers Maeve had encountered in the past few weeks, she couldn’t bring herself to walk into the hut. He bent under the low doorway and stepped inside.

After being exposed to bright light for days on end, Pitt’s eyes took a minute or two to become accustomed to the interior darkness of the hut. Except for the shaft of sun through the doorway, the only illumination came from the light seeping through the cracks between the logs The air was heavy and damp with the musty smell of &l and rotted logs.

There were no ghosts or phantoms lurking in the shadows, but Pitt did find himself staring into the empty eye sockets of a skull attached to a skeleton.

It lay on its back in a berth salvaged from the sailboat. Pitt identified the remains as a male from the heavy brow’ above the eye sockets. The dead man had lost teeth. All but three were missing. But rather than having been knocked out of their sockets, they appeared to have’ fallen out.

A tattered pair of shorts covered the pelvis, and the bony feet still wore a pair of rubber-soled deck shoes. There was no flesh evident. The tiny creatures that crawled out of the dampness had left a clean set of bones.

The only indication of the dead man’s former appearance was a tuft of red hair that lay beneath the skull. The skeletal hands were crossed above the rib cage and clutched a leather logbook.

A quick look around the interior of the hut showed that the proprietor had set up housekeeping in an efficient manner, utilizing the fixtures from his stranded boat. The sails from the Dancing Dorothy had been spread across the ceiling to keep out any wind and rain that penetrated the branches laced in the roof. A writing desk held British Admiralty charts, a stack of books on piloting, tide tables, navigation lights, radio signals and a nautical almanac. Nearby there was a standing shelf stuffed with brochures and books filled with technical instructions on how to operate the boat’s electronic instruments and mechanical gear. A finely finished mahogany box containing a chronometer and a sextant sat on a small wooden table beside the bunk. Sitting beneath the table was a hind bearing compass and a steering compass that had been mounted on the sailboat. The steering helm was leaning against a small folding dining table, and a pair of binoculars was tied to a spoke.

Pitt leaned over the skeleton, gently removed the logbook and left the hut.

“What did you find?” asked Maeve with burning curiosity.

“Let me guess,” said Giordino. “A humongous chest full of pirate treasure.”

Pitt shook his head.’ “Not this trip. What I found was the man who sailed the Dancing Dorothy onto the rocks. He never made it off the island.”

“He’s dead?” queried Maeve.

“Since long before you were born.”

Giordino stepped to the doorway and peered inside the hut at the remains. “I wonder how he came to be so far off the beaten track.”

Pitt held up the logbook and opened it. “The answers should be in here.”

Maeve stared at the pages. “Can you make out the writing after all this time?”

“Yes. The log is well preserved, and the hand wrote boldly.” Pitt sat down on a rock and scanned several pages before looking up. “His name was Rodney York, and he was one of twelve yachtsmen entered in a solo nonstop race around the world, beginning in Portsmouth, England, and sponsored by a London newspaper. First prize was twenty thousand pounds. York departed Portsmouth on April the twenty-fourth, 1962.”

“Poor old guy has been lost for thirty-eight years,” said Giordino solemnly.

“On his ninety-seventh day at sea, he was catching a few hours’ sleep when the Dancing Dorothy struck” Pitt paused to glance up at Maeve and smile— “what he calls the ‘Miseries.’”

“York must not have studied Australian folklore,” said Giordino.

“He quite obviously made up the name,” Maeve said righteously.

“According to his account,” Pitt continued, “York made good time during his passage of the southern Indian Ocean after rounding the Cape of Good Hope. He then took advantage of the Roaring Forties to carry him on a direct course across the Pacific for South America and the Strait of Magellan. He figured he was leading the race when his generator gave out and he lost all contact with the outside world.”

“That explains a lot of things,” said Giordino, staring over Pitt’s shoulder at the logbook. “Why he was sailing in this part of the sea and why he couldn’t send position coordinates for a rescue party. I checked his generator when we came on site. The two-cycle engine that provides its power is in sad shape. York tried to repair it and failed. I’ll give it a try, but I doubt if I can do any better.”

Pitt shrugged. “So much for borrowing York’s radio to call for help.”

“What does he write after being marooned?” demanded Maeve.

“Robinson Crusoe, he was not. He lost most of his food supplies when the yacht struck the rocks and capsized. When the boat was later washed up on shore after the storm, he recovered some canned goods, but they were soon gone. He tried to fish, but caught barely enough to stay alive, even with whatever rock crabs he could find and five or six birds he managed to snare. Eventually, his body functions began to give out. York lasted on this ugly pimple in the ocean for a hundred and thirty-six days. His final entry reads ‘Can no longer stand or move about. Too weak to do anything but lie here and die. How I wish I could see another sunrise over Falmouth Bay in my native Cornwall. But it is not to be. To whoever finds this log and the letters I’ve written separately to my wife and three daughters, please see they get them. I ask their forgiveness for the great mental suffering I know I must have caused them. My failure was not from fault so much as bad luck. My hand is too tired to write more. I pray I didn’t give up too soon.’”

“He needn’t have worried about being found soon after he died,” said Giordino. “Hard to believe he lay here for decades without a curious crew from a passing ship or a scientific party coming ashore to set up some kind of weather data gathering instruments.”

“The dangers of landing amid the breakers and the unfriendly rocks are enough to outweigh any curiosity, scientific or otherwise.”

Tears rolled down Maeve’s cheeks as she wept unashamedly. “His poor wife and children must have wondered all these years how he died.”

“York’s last land bearing was the beacon on the South East Cape of Tasmania.” Pitt stepped back into the hut and reappeared a minute later with an Admiralty chart showing the South Tasman Sea. He laid it flat on the ground and studied it for a few moments before he looked up. “I see why York called these rocks the Miseries,” said Pitt. “That’s how they’re labeled on the Admiralty chart.”

“How far off were your reckonings?” asked Giordino.

Pitt produced a pair of dividers he’d taken from the desk inside and measured off the approximate position he had calculated with his cross-staff. “I put us roughly 120 kilometers too far to the southwest.”

“Not half bad, considering you didn’t have an exact fix on the spot where Dorsett threw us off his yacht.”

“Yes,” Pitt admitted modestly, “I can live with that.”

“Where exactly are we?” asked Maeve, now down on her hands and knees, peering at the chart.

Pitt tapped his finger on a tiny black dot in the middle of a sea of blue. “There, that little speck approximately 965 kilometers southwest of Invercargill, New Zealand.”

“It seems so near when you look at it on a map,” said Maeve wistfully.

Giordino pulled off his wristwatch and rubbed the lens clean against his shirt. “Not near enough when you think that no one bothered to drop in on poor Rodney for almost forty years.”

“Look on the bright side,” said Pitt with an infectious grin. “Pretend you’ve pumped thirty-eight dollars in quarters into a slot machine in Las Vegas without a win. The law of averages is bound to catch up in the next two quarters.”

“A bad analogy,” said Giordino, the perennial killjoy.

“How so?”

Giordino looked pensively inside the hut. “Because there is no way we can come up with two quarters.”

“Nine days and counting—” declared Sandecker, gazing at the unshaven men and weary women seated around the table in his hideaway conference room. What was a few days previously a neat and immaculate gathering place for the admiral’s closest staff members, now resembled a war room under siege. Photos, nautical charts and hastily drawn illustrations were taped randomly to the teak-paneled walls; the turquoise carpet was littered with scraps of paper and the shipwreck conference table cluttered with coffee cups, notepads scribbled with calculations, a battery of telephones and an ashtray heaped with Sandecker’s cigar butts. He was the only one who smoked, and the air-conditioning was turned to the maximum setting to draw off the stench.

“Time is against us,” said Dr. Sanford Adgate Ames. “It is physically impossible to construct a reflector unit and deploy it before the deadline.”

The sound expert and his student staff in Arizona intermingled with Sandecker’s NUMA people in Washington as if they were sitting at the same table in the same room.

The reverse was also true. Sandecker’s experts appeared to be sitting amid the student staff in Ames’ work quarters. Through the technology of video holography, their voices and images were transmitted across the country by photonics, the transference of sound and light by fiber optics. By combining photonics with computer wizardry, time and space limitations disappeared.

“A valid deduction,” Sandecker agreed. “Unless we can utilize an existing reflector.”

Ames removed his blue-tinted bifocals and held them up to the light as he inspected the lenses for specks, Satisfied they were clean, he remounted them on his nose. “According to my calculations, we’re going to require a parabolic reflector the size of a baseball diamond or larger, with an air gap between the surfaces to reflect the sound energy. I can’t imagine who you can find to manufacture one in the short time before the time window closes.”

Sandecker looked across the table at a tired Rudi Gunn, who stared back through the thick lenses of his glasses, which magnified eyes reddened from lack of sleep. “Any ideas, Rudi?”

“I’ve run through every logical possibility,” Gunn answered. “Dr. Ames is right, it is out of the question to consider fabricating a reflector in time. Our only prospect is to find an existing one and transport it to Hawaii.”

“You’ll have to break it down, ship it in pieces and then put it back together,” said Hiram Yaeger, turning from a laptop computer that was linked to his data library on the tenth floor. “No known aircraft can carry some thing of such a large surface area through the air in one piece.”

“If one is shipped from somewhere within the United States, supposing it is found,” insisted Ames, “it would have to go by boat.”

“But what kind of ship is large enough to hold a thing that size?” asked Gunn of no one in particular.

“An oil supertanker or an aircraft carrier,” said Sandecker quietly, as if to himself.

Gunn picked up on the statement immediately. “An aircraft carrier’s flight deck is more than large enough to carry and deploy a reflector shield the size Doc Ames has proposed.”

“The speed of our latest nuclear carriers is still classified, but Pentagon leaks indicate they can cut the water at fifty knots. Ample time to make the crossing between San Francisco and Honolulu before the deadline.”

“Seventy-two hours,” said Gunn, “from departure to deployment at the site.”

Sandecker stared at a desk calendar with the previous dates crossed out. “That leaves exactly five days to find a reflector, get it to San Francisco and deploy it at the convergence zone.”

“A tight schedule, even if you had a reflector in hand,” said Ames steadily.

“How deep does it have to be rigged?” Yaeger asked Ames’ image.

Almost as if she were cued, a pretty woman in her mid-twenties handed Ames a pocket calculator. He punched a few numbers, rechecked his answer and then looked up. “Allowing for the overlapping convergence zones to meet and surface, you should place the center of the reflector at a depth of 170 meters.”

“Current is our number one problem,” said Gunn. “It’ll prove a nightmare trying to keep the reflector in place long enough to bounce the sound waves.”

“Put our best engineers on the problem,” ordered Sandecker. “They’ll have to design some kind of rigging system to keep the reflector stable.”

“How can we be sure that by refocusing the converging sound waves we can return them on a direct channel back to the source on Gladiator Island?” Yaeger asked Ames.

Ames impassively twisted the ends of the mustache that extended beyond his beard. “If the factors that propagated the original sound wave, such as salinity, water temperature and the sound speed, remain constant, the reflected energy should return to the source along its original path.”

Sandecker turned to Yaeger. “How many people are on Gladiator Island?”

Yaeger consulted his computer. “The intelligence reports from satellite photos suggest a population of around 650 people, mostly miners.”

“Slave labor imported from China,” muttered Gunn.

“If not kill, won’t we injure every living thing on the island?” Sandecker asked Ames.

Another of Ames’ students unhesitantly passed a sheet of paper into the acoustics expert’s hands. He scanned it for a moment before looking up. “If our analysis is close to the mark, the overlapping convergence zones from the four separated mining operations scattered throughout the Pacific will drop to an energy factor of twenty-eight percent when they strike Gladiator Island, not enough to maim or cause harm to human or animal.”

“Can you estimate the physical reaction?”

“Headaches and vertigo along with mild nausea should be the only discomforts.”

“A moot point if we can’t set a reflector on site before the convergence,” Gunn said, staring at a chart on the wall.

Sandecker drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “Which puts us back in the starter’s gate before the race.”

A woman in her forties, fashionably dressed in a conservative blue suit, stared contemplatively at one of the admiral’s paintings, the one illustrating the famous World War II aircraft carrier Enterprise during the battle for Midway. Her name was Molly Faraday, and she was a former analyst with the National Security Agency who had jumped over to NUMA at Sandecker’s urging, to be his intelligence agency coordinator. With soft toffee-colored hair and brown eyes, Molly was all class. Her gaze swiveled from the painting to Sandecker and fixed him with a somber look.

“I think I might have the solution to our problems,” she said in a quiet monotone.

The admiral nodded. “You have the floor, Molly.”

“As of yesterday,” she lectured, “the Navy’s aircraft carrier Roosevelt was docked at Pearl Harbor, taking on supplies and making repairs to one of her flight-deck elevators before joining the Tenth Fleet off Indonesia.”

Gunn looked at her curiously. “You know that for certain?”

Molly smiled sweetly. “I keep my toes dipped in the offices of the Joint Chiefs.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Sandecker. “But without a reflector, I fail to see how a carrier at Pearl Harbor can solve our dilemma.”

“The carrier is a side bonus,” explained Molly. “My primary thought was a recollection of an assignment at a satellite information collection center on the Hawaiian island of Lanai.”

“I didn’t know Lanai had a satellite facility,” said Yaeger. “My wife and I honeymooned on Lanai and drove all over the island without seeing a satellite downlink facility.”

“The buildings and parabolic reflector are inside the extinct Palawai volcano. Neither the natives, who always wondered what was going on in there, nor the tourists could ever get close enough to check it out.”

“Besides tuning in on passing satellites,” asked Ames, “what was its purpose?”

“Passing Soviet satellites,” Molly corrected him. “Fortunately, the former Soviet military chiefs had a fetish for guiding their spy satellites over the military bases on the Hawaiian Islands after they orbited the U.S. mainland. Our job was to penetrate their transponders with powerful microwave signals and foul up their intelligence photos. From what the CIA was able to gather, the Russians never did figure out why their satellite reconnaissance photos always came back blurred and out of focus. About the time the Communist government disintegrated, newer space communications facilities made the Palawai facility redundant. Because of its immense size, the antenna was later utilized to transmit and receive signals from deep-space probes. Now I understand that its dated technology has made the facility’s equipment obsolete, and the site, though still guarded, is pretty much abandoned.”

Yaeger jumped right to the heart of the matter. “How large is the parabolic reflector?”

Molly buried her head in her hands a moment before looking up. “I seem to recall that it was eighty meters in diameter.”

“More than the surface area we require,” said Ames. “Do you think the NSA will let us borrow it?” asked Sandecker.

“They’d probably pay you to carry it away.”

“You’ll have to dismantle it and airlift the pieces to’ Pearl Harbor,” said Ames, “providing you can borrow the carrier Roosevelt to reassemble and lower it on the convergence area.”

Sandecker looked squarely at Molly. “I’ll use my powers of persuasion with the Navy Department if you’d work on the National Security Agency end.”

“I’ll get on it immediately,” Molly assured him.

A balding man with rimless glasses, sitting near the end of the table, raised a hand.

Sandecker nodded at him and smiled. “You’ve been pretty quiet, Charlie. Something must be stirring around in your brain.”

Dr. Charlie Bakewell, NUMA’s chief undersea geologist, removed a wad of gum from his mouth and neatly wrapped it in paper before dropping it in a wastebasket. He nodded at the image of Dr. Ames in the holograph. “As I understand this thing, Dr. Ames, the sound energy alone can’t destroy human tissue, but enhanced by the resonance coming from the rock chamber which is under assault by the acoustic mining equipment, its frequency is reduced so that it can propagate over vast distances. When it overlaps in a single ocean region, the sound is intense enough to damage human tissue.”

“You’re essentially correct,” admitted Ames.

“So if you reflect the overlapping convergence zones back through the ocean, won’t some energy reflect from Gladiator Island?”

Ames nodded. “Quite true. As long as the energy force strikes the submerged level of the island without surfacing and is scattered in diverse directions, any prospect of carnage is dramatically decreased.”

“It’s the moment of impact against the island that concerns me,” said Bakewell conversationally. “I’ve reviewed the geological surveys on Gladiator Island by geologists hired by Dorsett Consolidated Mining nearly fifty years ago. The volcanoes on the opposite ends of the island are not extinct but dormant. They have been dormant for less than seven hundred years. No human was present during the last eruption, but scientific analysis of the lava rock dates it some time in the middle of the twelfth century. The ensuing years have been followed by alternating periods of passivity and minor seismic disturbances.”

“What is your point, Charlie?” asked Sandecker.

“My point, Admiral, is that if a catastrophic force of acoustical energy slams into the base of Gladiator Island it just might set off a seismic disaster.”

“An eruption?” asked Gunn.

Bakewell merely nodded.

“What in your estimation are the odds of this happening?” inquired Sandecker.

“There is no way of absolutely predicting any level of seismic or volcanic activity, but I know a qualified vulcanologist who will give you a bet of one in five.”

“One chance of eruption out of five,” Ames said, his holographic image gazing at Sandecker. “I am afraid, Admiral, that Dr. Bakewell’s theory puts our project into the category of unacceptable risk.”

Sandecker did not hesitate a second with his reply. “Sorry, Dr. Ames, but the lives of a million or more residents of Honolulu, along with tens of thousands of tourists and military personnel stationed at bases around Oahu, take priority over 650 miners.”

“Can’t we warn Dorsett Consolidated management to evacuate the island?” said Yaeger.

“We have to try,” Sandecker said firmly. “But knowing Arthur Dorsett, he’ll simply shrug off any warning off as a hollow threat.”

“Suppose the acoustic energy is deflected elsewhere?” suggested Bakewell.

Ames looked doubtful. “Once the intensity deviates from its original path, you run the risk of it retaining its full energy and striking Yokohama, Shanghai, Manila, Sydney or Auckland, or some other heavily populated coastal city.”

There was a brief silence as everyone in the room turned to face Sandecker, including Ames, who was sitting at a desk thirty-two hundred kilometers to the west. Abstractedly, Sandecker toyed with an unlit cigar. What most did not know was that his mind wasn’t on the possible destruction of Gladiator Island. His mind was saddened and angered at the same time over the abandonment of his best friends in a raging sea by Arthur Dorsett. In the end, hate won out over any humane consideration.

He stared at the image of Sanford Ames. “Compute your calculations, Doc, for aiming the reflector at Gladiator Island. If we don’t stop Dorsett Consolidated, and stop them in the shortest time possible, no one else will.”

Arthur Dorsett’s private elevator in the jewelry trade center rose noiselessly. The only evidence of ascent was the progression of blinking floor levels over the doors. When the car eased to a gentle stop at the penthouse suite, Gabe Strouser stepped out into an entryway that led to the open courtyard where Dorsett stood waiting to greet him.

Strouser did not relish his meeting with the diamond maverick. They had known each other since they were children. The close association between the Strousers and the Dorsetts had lasted well over a century, until Arthur cut off any future dealings with Strouser & Sons. The break was not amicable. Dorsett coldly ordered his attorneys to inform Gabe Strouser that his family’s services were no longer required. The axe fell, not with a personal confrontation but over the telephone. It was an insult that badly stung Strouser, and he never forgave Dorsett.

To save his family’s venerable old firm, Strouser had switched his allegiance to the cartel in South Africa, eventually moving his company headquarters from Sydney to New York. In time he rose to become a respected director of the board. Because the cartel was barred from doing business in the United States due to national antitrust laws, they operated behind the coattails of the respected diamond merchants of Strouser & Sons, who acted as their American arm.

He would not be here now if the other board directors had not panicked at the rumors of Dorsett Consolidated Mining’s threat to bury the market in an avalanche of stones at sharply discounted prices. They had to act decisively and fast if they were to avert a disaster. A deeply scrupulous man, Strouser was the only cartel member the board of directors could trust to persuade Dorsett not to shatter the established price levels of the market.

Arthur Dorsett stepped forward and shook Strouser’s hand vigorously. “It’s been a long time, Gabe, too long.”

“Thank you for seeing me, Arthur.” Strouser’s tone was patronizing, but with an indelible tinge of aversion. “As I recall, your attorneys ordered me never to contact you again.”

Dorsett shrugged indifferently. “Water under the bridge. Let’s forget it happened and talk old times over lunch.” He motioned to a table, set under an arbor shielded by bulletproof glass, with a magnificent view of Sydney’s harbor.

The complete opposite of the crude, earthy mining tycoon, Strouser was a strikingly attractive man in his early sixties. With a thick head of well-groomed silver hair, a narrow face with high cheekbones and finely shaped nose that would be the envy of most Hollywood movie actors, he was trim and athletically built with evenly tanned skin, several centimeters shorter than the hulking Dorsett, he had dazzling white teeth and a friendly mouth. He gazed at Dorsett through the blue-green eyes of a cat ready to spring away from the attack of a neighbor’s dog.

His suit was beautifully cut of the finest wool, conservative but with a few subtle touches that made him look fashionably up-to-date. The tie was expensive silk, the shoes custom-made Italian and polished just short of a mirror shine. His cuff links, contrary to what people expected, were not diamonds but made from opals.

He was mildly surprised at the friendly reception. Dorsett seemed to be playing a character in a bad play. Strouser had expected an uncomfortable confrontation. He certainly had not anticipated being indulged. He no sooner sat down than Dorsett motioned to a waiter, who lifted a bottle of champagne from a sterling-silver ice bucket and poured Strouser’s glass. He noted with some amusement that Dorsett simply drank from a bottle of Castlemaine beer.

“When the cartel’s high muck-a-mucks said they were sending a representative to Australia for talks,” said Dorsett, “it never occurred to me they would send you.”

“Because of our former long-standing association, the directors thought I could read your mind. So they asked me to inquire about a rumor circulating within the trade that you are about to sell stones cheaply in an effort to corner the market. Not industrial-grade diamonds, mind you, but quality gem stones.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“You head an empire of thousands, Arthur. Leaks from disgruntled employees are a way of life.”

“I’ll have my security people launch an investigation. I don’t cotton to traitors, not on my payroll.”

“If what we hear has substance, the diamond market is facing a profound crisis,” explained Strouser. “My mission is to make you a substantial offer to keep your stones out of circulation.”

“There is no scarcity of diamonds, Gabe, there never was. You know you can’t buy me. A dozen cartels couldn’t keep my stones out of circulation.”

“You’ve been foolish for operating outside the Central Selling Organization, Arthur. You’ve lost millions by not cooperating.”

“A long-term investment is about to pay enormous dividends,” Dorsett said irrefutably.

“Then it’s true?” Strouser asked casually. “You’ve been stockpiling for the day when you could turn a fast profit.”

Dorsett looked at him and smiled, showing his yellowed teeth. “Of course it’s true. All except for the part about a fast profit.”

“I’ll give you credit, Arthur, you’re candid.”

“I have nothing to hide, not now.”

“You cannot continue to go your own way as if the network didn’t exist. Everybody loses.”

“Easy for you and your pals at the cartel to say when you hold monopolistic control over world diamond production.”

“Why exploit the market on a whim?” said Strouser, “Why systematically cut each other’s throat? Why disrupt a stable and prosperous industry?”

Dorsett held up a hand to interrupt. He nodded to the waiter, who served a lobster salad from a cart. Then he stared at Strouser steadily.

“I am not operating on a whim. I have over a hundred metric tons of diamonds stored in warehouses around the world, with another ten tons ready to ship from my mines as we speak. A few days from now, when fifty percent of them are cut and faceted, I intend to sell them through the House of Dorsett retail stores at ten dollars a carat, on average. The rough stones, I’ll sell to dealers at fifty cents a carat. When I’m finished, the market will tumble and diamonds will lose their luster as a luxury and an investment.”

Strouser was stunned. His earlier impression was that Dorsett’s marketing strategy was for a temporary dip in prices to make a quick profit. Now he saw the enormity of the grand design. “You’ll impoverish thousands of retailers and wholesalers, yourself included. What can you possibly gain by putting a rope around your neck and kicking over the stool?”

Dorsett ignored his salad, swilled his beer and gestured for another before continuing. “I’m sitting where the cartel has sat for a hundred years. They control eighty percent of the world’s diamond market. I control eighty percent of the world’s colored gemstone market.”

Strouser felt as if he were teetering on a trapeze. “I had no idea you owned so many colored gemstone mines.”

“Neither does anyone else. You’re the first outside my family to know. It was a long and tedious process, involving dozens of interlocking corporations. I bought into every one of the major colored stone producing mines in the world. After I orchestrate the demise of diamond values, I plan to move colored stones into the limelight at discounted prices, thereby spiraling the demand. Then I slowly raise the retail price, take the profits and expand.”

“You always were a snatch and trash artist, Arthur. But even you can’t destroy what took a century to build.”

“Unlike the cartel, I don’t plan to suppress competition at the retail level. My stores will compete fairly.”

“You are making a fight nobody can win. Before you can collapse the diamond market, the cartel will break you. We’ll use every international financial and political maneuver ever devised to stop you in your tracks.”

“You’re blowin’ in the wind, mate,” Dorsett came back heatedly. “Gone are the days when buyers have to grovel in your high-and-mighty selling offices in London and Johannesburg. Gone are the days of licking boots to be a registered buyer who has to take what you offer him. No more sneaking through back streets to bypass your well-oiled machinery to purchase uncut stones. No more will international police and your hired security organizations fight sham battles with people you label criminals because they engage in your artificially created myth of smuggling and selling on what your little playmates have concocted as the great and terrible illicit diamond market. No more restrictions to create an enormous demand. You’ve brainwashed governments into passing laws that confine diamond traffic to your channels and your channels only. Laws that forbid a man or woman from legitimately selling a rough stone they found in their own backyard. Now, at long last, the illusion of diamonds as a valued object is only days away from being pronounced dead.”

“You cannot outspend us,” said Strouser, fighting to remain calm. “We think nothing of spending hundreds of millions to advertise and promote the romance of diamonds.”

“Don’t you think I’ve considered that and planned for it?” Dorsett laughed. “I’ll match your advertising campaign budget with my own, pushing the chameleon quality of colored gemstones. You’ll promote the sale of a single diamond for an engagement ring, while I’ll promote the spectrum, a world of fashion touched by colored jewelry. My campaign is based around the theme ‘Color her with love.’ But that’s only the half of it, Gabe. I also plan to educate the great unwashed public about the true rarity, of colored gemstones versus the cheap, overabundant supply of diamonds. The end result is that I will significantly shift the buyer’s attitude away from diamonds.”

Strouser rose to his feet and threw his napkin on the table. “You’re a menace that will destroy thousands of I people and their livelihood,” he said uncompromisingly.

“You must be prevented from disrupting the market.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Dorsett, showing his teeth. “Climb aboard. Switch your allegiance from diamonds to colored stones. Get smart, Gabe. Color is the wave of the future in the jewelry market.”

Strouser fought to control the anger that was seething to the surface. “My family have been diamond merchants for ten generations. I live and breathe diamonds. I will not be the one to turn my back on tradition. You have dirty hands, Arthur, even if they are well manicured. I will personally fight you up and down the line until you are no longer a factor in the market.”

“Any fight comes too late,” Dorsett said coldly.

“Once colored gemstones take over the market, the diamond craze will disappear overnight.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“What do you intend to do when you leave here?”

“Alert the board of directors of what you have up your sleeve so they can plan an immediate course of action to knock the wind out of your scheme before it can be realized. It’s not too late to stop you.”

Dorsett remained sitting and looked up at Strouser. “I don’t think so.”

Strouser missed his meaning and turned to leave. “Since you won’t listen to reason, I have nothing more to say. Good day to you, Arthur.”

“Before you leave, Gabe, I have a present for you.”

“I want nothing from you!” Strouser snapped angrily.

“This, you will appreciate.” Dorsett laughed uncharitably. “On second thought, perhaps you won’t.” He motioned with one hand. “Now, Boudicca, now.”

In one swift motion, the big woman suddenly appeared behind Strouser and pinned his arms to his sides. The diamond merchant instinctively struggled for a minute, then relaxed, staring dazedly at Dorsett.

“What is the meaning of this? I demand that you unhand me.”

Dorsett looked at Strouser and spread his hands disarmingly. “You neglected to eat your lunch, Gabe. I can’t allow you to leave hungry. You might get the idea that I’m inhospitable.”

“You’re crazy if you think you can intimidate me.”

“I’m not going to intimidate you,” Dorsett said with sadistic amusement. “I’m going to feed you.”

Strouser looked lost. He shook his head in disgust and began an unequal struggle to break free of Boudicca’s embrace.

At a nod of Dorsett’s head, Boudicca manhandled Strouser back to the table, grasped him under the chin with one hand and bent his head backward, face up. Then Dorsett produced a large plastic funnel and stuffed the lower end between Strouser’s lips and teeth. The expression in the diamond merchant’s eyes transformed from rage to shock to bulging terror. His muffled cries were ignored as Boudicca tightened her hold around him.

“Ready, Daddy,” she said, leering in cruel anticipation.

“Since you live and breathe diamonds, my old friend, you can eat them too,” said Dorsett as he lifted a small canister shaped like a teapot that had been sitting on the table and began pouring a stream of flawless D-grade, one-carat diamonds down Strouser’s throat while using one hand to pinch the nostrils of his victim shut. Strouser thrashed wildly, his legs kicking in the air, but his arms were locked as tightly as if he were trapped by a python.

Out of sheer terror, Strouser tried desperately to swallow the stones, but there were too many. Soon his throat could hold no more and his body’s convulsions became less frantic as he choked for air and quickly suffocated.

The glaze of death froze his open eyes into an unseeing stare as the glittering stones slowly spilled from the corners of his mouth, rattled across the table and fell to the floor.

Two days off the sea and everyone felt as if raised from the dead. York’s campsite was tidied up and every article and object inventoried. Maeve refused to go in the hut even after they buried Rodney York in a small ravine that was partially filled with sand. A tentlike shelter was built from the old Dacron sails found inside the hut, and they settled down to the day-to-day routine of existence.

To Giordino, the greatest prize was a toolbox. He immediately went to work on the radio and the generator but finally gave up in frustration after nearly six hours of futile labor.

“Too many parts broken or too badly corroded to repair. After sitting all these years, the batteries are deader than fossilized dinosaur dung. And without a generator to charge them, the radio-telephone, direction-finding set and wireless receiver are useless.”

“Can replacements be fabricated with what we’ve got lying about?” asked Pitt.

Giordino shook his head. “General Electric’s chief engineer couldn’t fix that generator, and even if he could, the engine to turn it over is completely shot. There’s a crack in the crankcase. York must not have seen it and run the engine after the oil leaked out, burning the bearings and freezing the pistons. It would take an automotive machine shop to put it back in running order.”

Pin’s first project as resident handyman was to find three small blocks of wood that were straight grained. These he split from a sideboard on the berth that had served as Rodney York’s final resting place. Next, he made a template of everyone’s forehead just above the eyebrows from the stiff paper jackets of novels he found on York’s bookshelf. He marked the template lines on the edge of the wood blocks and trimmed accordingly, cutting out an arched slot for the nose. Holding the blocks tightly between his knees he gouged and smoothed hollows on the inner curl of the wood. Then he removed the excess outer wood and cut two horizontal slits in the hollowed walls. With oil from a can sitting beside the outboard engine, he stained the thinly curled finished product before cutting two holes in the ends and attaching nylon cord.

“There you are, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, passing them out. “Colonel Thadeus Pitt’s spectacular sun goggles, from a secret design revealed on the lips of a dying Eskimo just before he rode off across the Arctic Ocean on the back of a polar bear.”

Maeve adjusted hers over her eyes and tied the cord behind her head. “How clever, they really shut out sun.”

“Damned clever, those Inuits,” said Giordino peering through the eye slits. “Can you make the slits a tad wider? I feel like I’m staring through a crack under a door.”

Pitt smiled and handed Giordino his Swiss army knife. “You, may customize your goggles to your personal taste.”

“Speaking of taste,” Maeve announced beside a small fire she had started with matches from Pitt’s survival kit. “Come and get it. Tonight’s menu is grilled mackerel with cockles I found buried in sand pockets below the tide line.”

“Just when my stomach got used to eating fish raw,” joked Giordino.

Maeve dished the steaming fish and cockles onto York’s old plates. “Tomorrow night’s fare, if there is a marksman in our little group, will be something on the wing.”

“You want us to shoot defenseless little birds?” asked Giordino in mock horror.

“I counted at least twenty frigate birds, sitting on the rocks,” she said, pointing to the north shore. “If you build a blind, they’ll walk by close enough for you to hit them with your little popgun.”

“Roasted bird sounds good to my shrinking stomach, I’ll bring back tomorrow night’s supper or you can hang me by the thumbs,” Pitt promised.

“Can you pull any other tricks out of your hat besides the goggles?” asked Maeve whimsically.

Pitt lay back on the sand with his hands behind his head. “I’m glad you brought that up. After a strenuous afternoon of intense thought, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that we should move on to a more receptive climate.”

Maeve gave him a look of utter skepticism. “Move on?” She glanced at Giordino for moral support, but he gave her a you-never-learn look and continued nibbling on his mackerel. “We have two badly damaged boats that can’t sail across a swimming pool. Just what do you suggest we use for our all-expenses-paid cruise to nowhere?”

“Elementary, my dear Fletcher,” he said expansively. “We build a third boat.”

“Build a boat,” she said, her voice on the edged laughter.

Conversely, Giordino’s expression was intense and serious. “You think there’s a Chinaman’s chance of repairing York’s sailboat?”

“No. The hull is damaged beyond any possibility of repairing with our limited resources. York was an experienced sailor, and he obviously didn’t see any way it could be refloated. But we can, however, utilize the upper deck.”

“Why not make the best of it right here?” Maeve argued. “We’re more resourceful than poor Rodney. Our survival skills are far greater than his. We can catch enough fish and fowl to keep us going until a ship comes by.”

“That’s the problem,” said Pitt. “We can’t survive on what we can catch alone. If Rodney’s missing teeth are any indication, he died from scurvy. A dietary lack of vitamin C and a dozen other nutrients I can think of weakened him until he could no longer function. At that stage of physical erosion, death was just around the corner. If a ship does eventually arrive and put a landing party on shore, they’ll find four skeletons instead of one. I strongly believe it is in our best interests to make every effort to push on while we’re still physically capable.”

“Dirk is right,” Giordino said to Maeve. “Our only chance at seeing city lights again is to leave the island.”

“Build a boat?” demanded Maeve. “With what materials?”

She stood, firmly, gracefully, her arms and legs slim and tan, the flesh taut and young, her head cocked like a wary lynx. Pitt was as captivated as he had been when they were together on board the Ice Hunter.

“A flotation tube from our boat here, the upper works from York’s boat there, throw in a few logs, and pretty soon you’ve got a vessel fit for an ocean voyage.”

“This I have to see,” said Maeve.

“As you wish,” Pitt replied airily. He began drawing a diagram in the sand. “The idea is to connect our boat’s buoyancy tubes under the deck cabin from York’s boat. Then we fashion a pair of beech tree trunks into outriggers for stability and we’ve got ourselves a trimaran.”

“Looks practical to me,” Giordino agreed.

“We need over 130 square meters of sail,” Pitt continued. “We have a mast and a rudder.”

Giordino pointed over to the tent. “York’s old Dacron sails are brittle and rotten with forty years of mildew. The first stiff breeze will crack and blow them into shreds.”

“I’ve considered that,” said Pitt. “The Polynesian mariners wove sails from palm fronds. I see no reason why we can’t weave fully leafed branches from the beech trees to accomplish the same purpose. And we have plenty of extra rigging from the sailboat for shrouds and to lash outriggers to the center hull.”

“How long will it take us to build your trimaran?” asked Maeve, doubt becoming replaced by growing interest.

“I figure we can knock together a vessel and shove oft in three days if we put in long hours.”

“That soon?”

“The construction is not complicated, and thanks to Rodney York, we have the tools to complete the job.”

“Do we continue sailing east or head northeast for Invercargill?” asked Giordino.

Pitt shook his head. “Neither. With Rodney’s navigational instruments and Admiralty charts, I see no reason why I can’t lay a reasonably accurate course for Gladiator Island.”

Maeve looked at him as if he had turned mad, her hands hanging limply at her sides. “That,” she said in bewilderment, “is the craziest notion you’ve come up with yet.”

“May be,” he said, his eyes set and fixed. “But I think it only appropriate that we finish what we set out to do ... rescue your boys.”

“Sounds good to me,” Giordino put in without hesitation. “I’d like a rematch with King Kong, or whatever your sister calls herself when she isn’t crushing car bodies at a salvage yard.”

“I’m indebted to you enough as it is. But—”

“No buts,” said Pitt. “As far as we’re concerned it’s a done deal. We build our hermaphrodite boat, sail it to Gladiator Island, snatch your boys and escape to the nearest port of safety.”

“Escape to safety! Can’t you understand?” Her voice was imploring, almost despairing. “Ninety percent of the island is surrounded by vertical cliffs and precipices impossible to climb. The only landing area is the beach circling the lagoon, and it’s heavily guarded. No one can cross through the reef without being shot. My father has built security defenses a well-armed assault force couldn’t penetrate. If you attempt it, you will surely die.”

“Nothing to be alarmed about,” Pitt said subtly. “Al and I flit on and off islands with the same finesse as we do in and out of ladies’ bedrooms. It’s all in selecting the right time and spot.”

“That and a lot of wrist action,” Giordino added.

“Father’s patrol boats will spot you long before you can enter the lagoon.”

Pitt shrugged. “Not to worry. I have a homespun remedy for dodging nasty old patrol boats that never fails.”

“And dare I ask what it is?”

“Simple. We drop in where they least expect us.”

“Both your brains were boiled by the sun.” She shook her head in defeat. “Do you expect Daddy to ask us in for tea?” Maeve had one remorseful moment of guilt. She saw clearly that she was responsible for the terrible dangers and torment inflicted on these two incredible men who were willing to give up their lives for her twin sons, Michael and Sean. She felt a wave of despondency sweep over her that quickly turned to resignation. She came over and knelt between Pitt and Giordino, placing an arm around each of their necks. “Thank you,” she murmured softly. “How could I be so lucky as to find men as wonderful as you?”

“We make a habit of helping maidens in distress.” Giordino saw the tears welling in her eyes and turned away, genuinely embarrassed.

Pitt kissed Maeve on the forehead. “It’s not as impossible as it sounds. Trust me.”

“If only I had met you what seems like a hundred years ago,” she whispered with a catch in her voice. She looked as if she were about to say more, rose to her feet and quickly walked away to be by herself.

Giordino stared at Pitt curiously. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Do you mind sharing how we’re going to get on and off the island once we arrive offshore?”

“We get on with a kite and a grappling hook I found among York’s gear.”

“And off again?” Giordino prompted, totally confused but unwilling to pursue the subject.

Pitt threw a dried beech log on the fire and watched the sparks swirl upward. “That,” he said, as relaxed as a boy waiting for his bobber to sink at a fishing hole, “that part of the plan I’ll worry about when the time comes.”

Their vessel to escape the island was built on a flat section of rock in a small valley protected from the breeze, thirty meters from the water. They laid out rail-like ways of beech logs to slide their weird creation into the relatively calm waters between the two islands. The demands were not cruel or exacting. They were in better condition than when they arrived and found themselves able to work through the nights, when the atmosphere was coldest, and rest for a few hours during the heat of the day, For the most part, construction went smoothly without major setbacks. The closer they got to completion, the more their fatigue fell away.

Maeve threw herself into weaving two sails from the leafy branches. For simplicity Pitt had decided to step the mast York had salvaged from his ketch, to take a spanker on the mizzen and a square sail on the mainmast. Maeve wove the larger sail for the mainmast first. The first few hours were spent experimenting, but by late afternoon she began to get the hang of it and could weave a square meter in thirty minutes. By the third day, she was down to twenty minutes. Her matting was so strong and tight, Pitt asked her to make a third sail, a triangular jib to set forward of the mainmast.

Together, Pitt and Giordino unbolted and lifted the ketch’s upper deckhouse and mounted it over the forward part of the steering cockpit. This abbreviated section of the ketch was then lashed on top of the buoyancy tubes from their little boat, which now served as the center hull. The next chore was to step the tall aluminum masts, which were reduced in height to compensate for the shorter hull and lack of a deep keel. Since no chain plates could be attached to the neoprene buoyancy tubes, the shrouds and stays to support the masts were slung under the hull and joined at a pair of turnbuckles. When finished, the hybrid craft had the appearance of a sailboat perched on a hovercraft.

The following day, Pitt reset the ketch’s rudder to ride higher in the water, rigging it to a long tiller, a more efficient system for steering a trimaran. Once the rudder was firmly in place and swung to his satisfaction, he attacked the forty-year-old outboard engine, cleaning the carburetor and fuel lines before overhauling the magneto.

Giordino went to work on the outriggers. He chopped down and trimmed two sturdy beech trees whose trunks curved near their tops. Next he placed the logs alongside the hull and extended them out with the curved sections facing forward like a pair of skis. The outriggers were then lashed to cross-member logs that ran laterally across the hull near the bow and just aft of the cockpit and were braced fore and aft. Giordino was quite pleased with himself, after he put a shoulder against the outriggers and heaved mightily, proclaiming them solid and rigid with no indication of give.

As they sat around the fire at dawn, warding off the early morning chill of the southern latitudes, Pitt pored over York’s navigational and plotting charts. At noon he took sights of the sun with the sextant, and later, at night, he shot several stars. Then with the aid of the nautical almanac and the “Short Method” tables that cut trigonometry calculations to bare bones, he practiced fixing his position until his figures accurately matched the known latitude and longitude of the Misery Islands on the chart.

“Think you can hit Gladiator Island on the nose?” Maeve asked him over dinner on the second evening before the launch.

“If not the nose, then the chin,” Pitt said cheerfully. “Which reminds me, I’ll need a detailed map of the island.”

“How detailed?”

“Every building, every path and road, and I’d like it all to scale.”

“I’ll draw you a map from memory as accurately as I can,” Maeve promised.

Giordino chewed on a small thigh from a frigate bird Pitt had managed to shoot with his miniature automatic pistol. “What do you make the distance?”

“Precisely 478 kilometers as the crow flies.”

“Then it’s closer than Invercargill.”

“That’s the beauty of it.”

“How many days will it take to arrive?” asked Maeve.

“Impossible to say,” answered Pitt. “The first leg of the voyage will be the hardest, tacking to windward until we pick up friendly currents and easterly breezes blowing off New Zealand. With no keel to carve the water and prevent them being blown sideways, trimarans are notoriously inept when it comes to sailing into the wind. The real challenge will come after we set off. Without a shakedown cruise we’re in the dark as to her sailing qualities. She may not tack to windward at all, and we may end up being blown back toward South America.”

“Not a comforting thought,” said Maeve, her mind clouded with the appalling implications of a ninety-day endurance trial. “When I think about it, I’d just as soon remain on dry land and end up like Rodney York.”

The day before the launch was one of feverish activity. Final preparations included the manufacture of Pitt’s mystery kite, which was folded and stowed in the deckhouse along with 150 meters of light nylon line from York’s boat that had retained its integral strength. Then their meager supplies of foodstuffs were loaded on board along with the navigational instruments, charts and books. Cheers erupted over the barren rocks when the outboard motor coughed to life after four decades and nearly forty pulls on the starter rope by Pitt, who felt as if his arm was about to fall off.

“You did it!” Maeve shouted delightedly.

Pitt spread his hands in a modest gesture. “Child’s play for somebody who restores antique and classic automobiles. The main problems were a clogged fuel line and a gummed-up carburetor.”

“Nice going, pal,” Giordino congratulated him. “A motor will come in handy during our approach to the island.”

“We were lucky the fuel cans were airtight and none of the contents evaporated after all these years. As it is, the gas has almost turned to shellac, so we’ll have to keep a sharp eye on the fuel filter. I’m not keen on flushing out the carburetor every thirty minutes.”

“How many hours of fuel did York leave us?”

“Six hours, maybe seven.”

Later, with Giordino’s help, Pitt mounted the outboard motor to brackets on the stern section of the cockpit. For a final touch, the steering compass was installed just forward of the tiller. After the woven-mat sails were attached to the mast, gaffs and booms with spiral lacing, the sails were raised and lowered with only a minor bind or two. Then they all stood back and stared at their creation. The boat looked reasonably businesslike, but by no stroke of the imagination could she be called pretty. She sat squat and ugly, the outriggers adding to her look of awkwardness. Pitt doubted whether any boats that ever sailed the seven seas were as bizarre as this one.

“She’s not exactly what you’d call sleek and elegant,” mused Giordino.

“Nor will she ever be entered in the America’s Cup Race,” added Pitt.

“You men fail to see her inner beauty,” said Maeve fancily. “She must have a name. It wouldn’t be fitting if she wasn’t christened. What if we call her the Never Say Die?”

“Fitting,” said Pitt, “but not in keeping with mariners’ superstitions of the sea. For good luck she should have a woman’s name.”

“How about the Marvelous Maeve?” offered Giordino.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Pitt. “It’s corny but cute. I’ll vote for it.”

Maeve laughed. “I’m flattered, but modesty dictates something more proper, say like Dancing Dorothy II.”

“Then it’s two against one,” Giordino said solemnly, “Marvelous Maeve she is.”

Giving in, Maeve found an old rum bottle cast off by Rodney York and filled it with seawater for the launching. “I christen thee Marvelous Maeve,” she said, laughing, and broke the bottle against one of the beech logs lashed to the buoyancy tubes. “May you swim the seas with the speed of a mermaid.”

“Now comes our fitness exercise,” said Pitt. He passed out lines attached to the forward section of the middle hull. Everyone looped one end of a line around their waist, dug in their feet and leaned forward. Slowly, stubbornly, the boat began to slide over the tree trunks laid on the ground like railroad tracks. Still weakened from a lack of proper food and their ordeal, the three quickly used up their depleted strength dragging the boat toward a two-meter precipice rising from the water.

Maeve, as was to be expected by now, pulled her heart out until she could go no further and sagged to her hands and knees, heart pounding, lungs heaving for air. Pitt and Giordino hauled the great deadweight another ten meters before casting off the lines and dropping to the ground ahead of Maeve. Now the boat teetered on the edge of the ends of two beech-log ways that angled down and under the low rolling waves.

Several minutes passed. The sun was a quarter of the way past the eastern horizon, and the sea was innocent of any sign of turbulence. Pitt slipped the rope loop from around his waist and threw it on the boat. “I guess there’s no reason to put off the inevitable any longer.” He climbed into the cockpit, swung the outboard motor down on its hinges and pulled at the starter rope. This time it popped to life on the second try.

“Are you two up to giving our luxury yacht a final nudge over the edge?” he said to Maeve and Giordino.

“After having gone to all this work to stir up my hormones,” Giordino grumbled, “what’s in it for me?”

“A tall gin and tonic on the house,” Pitt replied.

“Promises, promises. That’s sadism of the worst kind,” Giordino groused. He slipped a muscled arm around Maeve’s waist, pulled her to her feet and said, “Push, lovely lady, it’s time to bid a fond farewell to this rockbound hell.”

The two of them moved aft, stiffened their arms, hands against the stern, and shoved with all their remaining strength. The Marvelous Maeve moved reluctantly, then picked up speed as the forward section dipped over the edge onto the ways, and the stern lifted. She hung poised for two seconds, then dove into the water with a heavy splash that flew to the sides, before settling flat on the surface. Pitt’s rationale for starting the outboard motor now became apparent as he had instant control of the boat against the flow of the current. He quickly circled it back to the edge of the low cliff. As soon as the bow gently bumped against the sheer rock, Giordino held Maeve by her wrists and gently lowered her down onto the roof of the deckhouse. Then he jumped and landed on his feet, as agile as a gymnast, beside her.

“That concludes the entertainment part of the program,” said Pitt, reversing the outboard.

“Shall we raise my sails?” asked Maeve, personalizing the pride of her accomplishment.

“Not yet. We’ll motor around to the leeward side of the island where the sea is calmer before we test the wind.”

Giordino helped Maeve step past the deckhouse and into the cockpit. They sat down to rest a moment while Pitt steered the boat through the channel and into the swells sweeping around the north and south end of the two deserted islands. They no sooner reached the open sea than the sharks appeared.

“Look,” said Giordino, “our friends are back. I’ll bet they missed our company.”

Maeve leaned over the side and peered at the long gray shapes moving under the surface. “A new group of followers,” she said. “These are makos.”

“The species with the jagged and uneven teeth only an orthodontist could love?”

“The same.”

“Why do they plague me?” Giordino moaned. “I’ve never ordered shark in a restaurant.”

Half an hour later, Pitt gave the order. “Okay, let’s try the sails and see what kind of a boat we’ve concocted.”

Giordino unfolded the woven-mat sails, which Maeve had carefully reefed in accordion pleats, and hoisted the mainsail successfully while Maeve raised the mizzen. The sails filled, and Pitt eased over the tiller, skidding the boat on a tack, heading northwest against a brisk west wind.

Any yachtsman would have rolled on his deck in laughter if he had seen the Marvelous Maeve bucking the seas. A boat designer of professional standing would have whistled the Mickey Mouse Club anthem. But the peculiar looking sailboat had the last laugh. The outriggers dug into the water and maintained her stability. She responded to her helm amazingly well and kept her bow on course without being swept sideways. To be sure, there were problems to be ironed out with her rigging. But remarkably, she took to the sea as if she had been born there.

Pitt took a final look at the Miseries. Then he looked at the packet wrapped in a piece of Dacron sail that held Rodney York’s logbook and letters. He vowed that if he somehow lived through the next several days he would get York’s final testament to his living relatives, trusting that they would mount an expedition to bring him home again to be buried beside Falmouth Bay in his beloved Cornwall.

On the tenth floor of a modernistic all-glass structure built in the shape of a pyramid on the outskirts of Paris, a group of fourteen men sat around a very long ebony conference table. Impeccably dressed, wielding enormous power, immensely wealthy and unsmiling, the directors of the Multilateral Council of Trade, known simply to insiders as the Foundation, an institution dedicated to the development of a single global economic government, shook hands and engaged in small talk before sitting down to business. Normally, they met three times a year, but this day they met in an emergency session to discuss the latest unexpected threat to their widespread operations.

The men in the room represented vast international corporations and high levels of government. Only one top-ranking member from the South African cartel was entirely involved with the selling of quality diamonds. A Belgian industrialist from Antwerp and a real-estate developer from New Delhi, India, acted as the Foundation’s middlemen for the huge illicit flow of industrial diamonds to the Islamic Fundamentalist Bloc, which was struggling to create its own nuclear destruction systems. Millions of these smaller industrial diamonds were sold underground to the bloc to make the precision instruments and equipment necessary to construct such systems. The larger, more exotic quality diamonds were used to finance unrest in Turkey, Western Europe, Latin America and several of the South Asian countries, or an other hot spot where subversive political organization could play into the hands of the Foundation’s many other interests, including the sale of arms.

All these men were known by the news media, all were celebrities in their chosen fields, but none were identified with membership in the Foundation. That was a sec known only to the men in the room and their close associates. They flew across oceans and continents, weaving their webs in all sorts of strange places, takings toll while amassing unheard-of profits.

They listened with close attention in silence as the’ chosen chairman, the billionaire head of a German banking firm, reported on the current crisis facing the diamond market. A regal man with a bald head, he spoke slowly in fluent English, a language every national around the to understood.

“Gentlemen, because of Arthur Dorsett we are facing a profound crisis in a vital area of our operations. Appraisal of his conduct by our intelligence network points to a diamond market headed into dark waters Make no mistake about it, if Dorsett dumps over a hundred metric tons of diamonds on the retail market street-beggar prices, as he is reported ready to do, this sector of the Foundation will totally collapse.”

“How soon will this take place?” asked the sheik an oil-rich country on the Red Sea.

“I have it on good authority that eighty percent Dorsett’s inventory will be on sale in his chain of recd stores in less than a week,” answered the chairman.

“What do we stand to lose?” asked the Japanese head of a vast electronics empire.

“Thirteen billion Swiss francs for starters.”

“Good God!” The French leader of one of the world’s largest women’s fashion houses rapped his fist on the table. “This Australian Neanderthal has the power to do such a thing?”

The chairman nodded. “From all accounts, he has the inventory to back him.”

“Dorsett should never have been allowed to operate outside the cartel,” said the American former secretary of state.

“The damage is done,” agreed the diamond cartel member. “The world of gems as we know it may never quite be the same again.”

“Is there no way we can cut him off before his stones are distributed to his stores?” asked the Japanese businessman.

“I sent an emissary to make him a generous offer to buy his stock in order to keep it out of circulation.”

“Have you heard back?”

“Not yet.”

“Who did you send?” inquired the chairman.

“Gabe Strouser of Strouser & Sons, a respected international diamond merchant.”

“A good man and a hard bargainer,” said the Belgian from Antwerp. “We’ve had many dealings together. If anyone can bung Dorsett to heel, it’s Gabe Strouser.”

An Italian who owned a fleet of container ships shrugged unemotionally. “As I recall, diamond sales dropped drastically in the early eighties. America and Japan suffered severe recessions and demand dropped, kindling a glut in supply. When the economy turned around in the nineties, prices shot up again. Is it not possible for history to repeat itself?”

“I understand your point,” acknowledged the chairman, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms. “But this time a chill wind is blowing, and anyone who depends on diamonds for a living will be frozen out. We’ve discovered that Dorsett has budgeted over $100 million in advertising and promotion in all the major diamond buying countries. If, as we have come to believe he will, he sells for pennies on the dollar, high diamond values will be a thing of the past, because the public is about to be brainwashed into thinking they are worth little more than glass.”

The Frenchman sighed heavily. “I know my models would certainly look at other luxurious baubles as an eternal investment. If not diamond jewelry, I would have to buy them expensive sports cars.”

“What is behind Dorsett’s odd strategy?” asked the CEO of a major Southeast Asian airline. “Surely, the man isn’t stupid.”

“Stupid like a hyena waiting for a lion to fall asleep after eating only half its kill,” replied the German chairman. “My paid agents throughout the world banking network have learned that Dorsett has bought up seventy, perhaps as high as eighty percent of the major colored gemstone producing mines.”

There was a collective murmur of awareness as the latest information sank in. Every man at the table immediately recognized and assimilated Arthur Dorsett’s grand plan.

“Diabolically simple,” muttered the Japanese electronics magnate. “He pulls the rug from under diamonds before driving the price of rubies and emeralds through the roof.”

A Russian entrepreneur, who ran up a vast fortune by buying shutdown aluminum and copper mines in Siberia for next to nothing and then reopening them using Western technology, looked doubtful. “It sounds to me like— what is that saying in the West?— Dorsett is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Does he really expect to make enough on colored gemstones to make up for his losses on diamonds?”

The chairman nodded to the Japanese, who replied, “At the request of our chairman, I asked my financial analysts to run the figures through our data systems, Astounding as it seems, Arthur Dorsett, the House d Dorsett chain of retail stores and Dorsett Consolidated Mining Limited stand to make a minimum of $20 billion American Perhaps as high as $24 billion, depending on a predicted rising economy.”

“Good Lord,” exclaimed a British subject who owned a publishing empire. “I can’t begin to imagine what I would do with a profit of $24 billion.”

The German laughed. “I would use it to buy out your holdings.”

“You could send me packing to my Devonshire farm for a fraction of that amount.”

The United States member spoke up. A former secretary of state and the acknowledged head of one of America’s wealthiest families, he was the founding father of the Foundation. “Do we have any idea where Dorsett’s diamond inventory is at the present time?”

“With his deadline only a few days away,” answered the South African, “I should guess that the stones not being currently cut are in transit to his stores.”

The chairman looked from the Italian shipping-fleet baron to the Asian airline magnate. “Either of you gentlemen have any knowledge of Dorsett’s shipping procedures?”

“I seriously doubt he would transport his diamonds by sea,” said the Italian. “Once a ship docked in port, he’d still have to arrange transport inland.”

“If I were Dorsett, I’d ship my stones by air,” agreed the Asian. “That way he could distribute immediately in almost any city in the world.”

“We might stop one or two of his planes,” said the Belgian industrialist, “but without knowing flight schedules, it would be impossible to close off the shipments entirely.”

The Asian shook his head negatively. “I think intercepting even one flight is optimistic. Dorsett has probably chartered a fleet of aircraft in Australia. I fear we’re closing the gate after the cows have escaped.”

The chairman turned to the South African representing the diamond cartel. “It appears the great masquerade is over. The artificially created value of diamonds is not forever after all.”

Rather than display any feelings of disillusionment, the South African actually smiled. “We’ve been counted out before. My board of directors and I consider this a minor setback, nothing more. Diamonds really are forever, gentlemen. Mark my words, the price on quality stones will rise again when the luster of sapphires, emeralds and rubies wears off. The cartel will fulfill its obligations to the Foundation through our other mineral interests. We’ll not sit on our thumbs patiently waiting for the market to return.”

The chairman’s private secretary entered the room and spoke to him softly. He nodded and looked at the South African. “I’m told a reply from your emissary to negotiate with Arthur Dorsett has arrived in the form of a package.”

“Odd that Strouser didn’t contact me directly.”

“I’ve asked that the package be sent in,” said the chairman. “I think we’re all anxious to see if Mr. Strouser was successful in his negotiations with Arthur Dorsett.”

A few moments later the secretary returned, holding in both hands a square box tied with a red-and-green ribbon. The chairman gestured toward the South African. The secretary stepped over and set the box on the table in front of him. A card was attached to the ribbon. He opened the envelope and read it aloud:

The South African paused and stared at the box gravely. “That does not sound like Gabe Strouser. He is not a man noted for his levity.”

“I can’t say he’s good at writing limericks, either,” commented the French fashion designer.

“Go ahead, open the box,” pressed the Indian.

The ribbon was untied, the lid lifted and then the South African peered inside. His face blanched and he jumped to his feet so abruptly his chair crashed over backward, He ran, stumbling, over to a window, threw it open and retched.

Stunned, everyone around the table rushed over and inspected the hideous contents of the box. A few reacted like the South African, some reflected shocked horror, others, the ones who had ordered brutal killings during their rise to wealth, stared grimly without displaying emotion at the bloody head of Gabe Strouser, the grotesquely widened eyes, the diamonds spilling from his mouth.

“It seems Strouser’s negotiations were unsuccessful,” said the Japanese, fighting the bile that rose in his throat.

After taking a few minutes to recover, the chairman called in the chief of the Foundation’s security and ordered him to remove the head. Then he faced the members, who had slowly recovered and returned to their chairs. “I ask that you keep what we’ve just seen in the strictest secrecy.”

“What about that butcher Dorsett?” snapped the Russian, anger reddening his face. “He cannot go unpunished for murdering people representing the Foundation.”

“I agree,” said the Indian. “Vengeance must take the highest priority.”

“A mistake to act harshly,” cautioned the chairman. “Not a wise move to call attention to ourselves by getting carried away with revenge. One miscalculation in executing Dorsett and our activities will become open to scrutiny. I think it best to undermine Arthur Dorsett from another direction.”

“Our chairman has a point,” said the Dutchman, his English slow but sufficient. “The better course of action for the present would be to contain Dorsett and then move in when he falters, and make no mistake, a man of his character cannot help but make a grand mistake sometime in the near future.”

“What do you suggest?”

“We stand on the sidelines and wait him out.”

The chairman frowned. “I don’t understand. I thought the idea was to go on the offensive.”

“Unloading his diamond supply will obliterate Dorsett’s reserve assets,” explained the Dutchman. “It will take him at least a year before he can raise gemstone prices and take his profits. In the meantime we keep a grip on the diamond market, maintain our stockpiles and follow Dorsett’s lead by buying up control of the remaining colored gemstone production. Compete with him. My industrial spies inform me that Dorsett has concentrated on gems better known to the public while overlooking the rarer stones.”

“Can you give us an example of rarer stones?”

“Alexandrite, tsavorite, and red beryl come to mind.”

The chairman glanced at the others around the table. “Your opinions, gentlemen?”

The British publisher leaned forward with clenched fists. “A bloody sound idea. Our diamond expert has hit on a way to beat Dorsett at his own game while turning temporarily decreased diamond values to our advantage.”

“Then do we agree?” asked the chairman with a smile that was far from pleasant.

Every hand went up, and fourteen voices gave an affirmative yea.