Clive Cussler - Deep Six

After another half-hour he came to a bridge spanning a waterway called the Stono River. He’d never heard of it. From the high point of the bridge, the lights of a large city blinked in the distance. Off to his right the lights suddenly halted and the entire horizon went pure black. A seaport, he swiftly calculated. Then the headlights fell on a large black-and-white directional sign. The top line read CHARLESTON 5 MILES.

“Charleston!” Suvorov said aloud in a sudden burst of jubilation, sifting through his knowledge of American geography. “I’m in Charleston, South Carolina.”

Two miles farther he found an all-night drugstore with a public telephone. Keeping a wary eye on Larimer and Moran, he dialed the long-distance operator and made a collect call.

A lone cloud was drifting overhead, scattering a few drops of moisture when Pitt slipped the Talbot beside the passenger departure doors of Washington’s Dulles International Airport. The morning sun roasted the capital city, and the rain steamed and evaporated almost as soon as it struck the ground. He lifted Loren’s suitcase out of the car and passed it to a waiting porter.

Loren unwound her long legs from the cramped sports car, demurely keeping her knees together, and climbed out.

The porter stapled the luggage claim check to the flight ticket and Pitt handed it to her.

“I’ll park the car and baby-sit you until boarding time.”

“No need,” she said, standing close. “I’ve some pending legislation to scan. You head back to the office.”

He nodded at the briefcase clamped in her left hand. “Your crutch. You’d be lost without it.”

“I’ve noticed you never carry one.”

“Not the type.”

“Afraid you might be taken for a business executive?”

“This is Washington; you mean bureaucrat.”

“You are one, you know. The government pays your salary, same as me.”

Pitt laughed. “We all carry a curse.”

She set the briefcase on the ground and pressed her hands against his chest. “I’ll miss you.”

He circled his arms around her waist and gave a gentle squeeze. “Beware of dashing Russian officers, bugged staterooms and vodka hangovers.”

“I will,” she said, smiling. “You’ll be here when I return?”

“Your flight and arrival time are duly memorized.”

She tilted her head up and kissed him. He seemed to want to say something more, but finally he released her and stood back. She slowly entered the terminal through the automatic sliding glass doors. A few steps into the lobby she turned to wave, but the blue Talbot was pulling away.

On the President’s farm, thirty miles south of Raton, New Mexico, members of the White House press corps were spaced along a barbed-wire fence, their cameras trained on an adjoining field of alfalfa. It was seven in the morning, Mountain Daylight-Saving Time, and they were drinking black coffee and complaining about the early hour, the high-plains heat, the watery scrambled eggs and burned bacon catered by a highway truck stop, and any other discontents, real or imagined.

Presidential Press Secretary Jacob (Sonny) Thompson walked brightly through the dusty press camp prepping the bleary-eyed correspondents like a high school cheerleader and assuring them of great unrehearsed homespun pictures of the President working the soil.

The press secretary’s charm was artfully contrived — bright white teeth capped with precision, long sleek black hair, tinted gray at the temples, dark eyes with the tightened look of cosmetic surgery. No second chin. No visible sign of a potbelly. He moved and gestured with a bouncy enthusiasm that didn’t sit well with journalists, whose major physical activities consisted of pounding typewriters, punching word processors and lifting cigarettes.

The clothes didn’t hurt the image either. The tailored seersucker suit with the blue silk shirt and matching tie. Black Gucci moccasins coated lightly with New Mexico dust. A classy, breezy guy who was no dummy. He never showed anger, never let the correspondents’ needles slip under his fingernails. Bob Finkel of the Baltimore Sun slyly suggested that an undercover investigation revealed that Thompson had graduated with honors from the Joseph Goebbels School of Propaganda.

He stopped at the CNN television motor home. Curtis Mayo, the White House correspondent network newscaster, sagged in a director’s chair looking generally miserable.

“Got your crew set up, Curt?” Thompson asked jovially.

Mayo leaned back, pushed a baseball cap to the rear of a head forested with billowy silver hair and gazed up through orange-tinted glasses. “I don’t see anything worth capturing for posterity.”

Sarcasm ran off Thompson like rainwater down a spout. “In five minutes the President is going to step from his house, walk to the barn and start up a tractor.”

“Bravo,” Mayo grunted. “What does he do for an encore?”

Mayo’s voice had a resonance to it that made a symphonic kettledrum sound like a bongo: deep, booming, with every word enunciated with the sharpness of a bayonet.

“He is going to drive back and forth across the field with a mower and cut the grass.”

“That’s alfalfa, city slicker.”

“Whatever,” Thompson acknowledged with a good-natured shrug. “Anyway, I thought it would be a good chance to roll tape on him in the rural environment he loves best.”

Mayo leveled his gaze into Thompson’s eyes, searching for a flicker of deception. “What’s going down, Sonny?”

“Sorry?”

“Why the hide-and-seek? The President hasn’t put in an appearance for over a week.”

Thompson stared back, his nut-brown eyes unreadable. “He’s been extremely busy, catching up on his homework away from the pressures of Washington.”

Mayo wasn’t satisfied. “I’ve never known a President to go this long without facing the cameras.”

“Nothing devious about it,” said Thompson. “At the moment, he has nothing of national interest to say.”

“Has he been sick or something?”

“Far from it. He’s as fit as one of his champion bulls. You’ll see.”

Thompson saw through the verbal ambush and moved on along the fence, priming the other news people, slapping backs and shaking hands. Mayo watched him with interest for a few moments before he reluctantly rose out of the chair and assembled his crew.

Norm Mitchell, a loose, ambling scarecrow, set up his video camera on a tripod, aiming it toward the back porch of the President’s farmhouse, while the beefy sound man, whose name was Rocky Montrose, connected the recording equipment on a small folding table. Mayo stood with one booted foot on a strand of barbed wire, holding a microphone.

“Where do you want to stand for your commentary?” asked Mitchell.

“I’ll stay off camera,” answered Mayo. “How far do you make it to the house and barn?”

Mitchell sighted through a pocket range finder. “About a hundred and ten yards from here to the house. Maybe ninety to the barn.”

“How close can you bring him in?”

Mitchell leaned over the camera’s eyepiece and lengthened the zoom lens, using the rear screen door for a reference. “I can frame him with a couple of feet to spare.”

“I want a tight close-up.”

“That means a two-X converter to double the range.”

“Put it on.”

Mitchell gave him a questioning look. “I can’t promise you sharp detail. At that distance, we’ll be giving up resolution and depth of field.”

“No problem,” said Mayo. “We’re not going for air time.”

Montrose looked up from his audio gear. “Then you don’t need me.”

“Roll sound anyway and record my comments.”