Clive Cussler - Deep Six

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

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

“We need someone who has the President’s trust.”

“Oscar Lucas,” Emmett said.

“Good thinking,” Oates snapped, looking up. “As head of the Secret Service, he’s got the run of the place.”

“Someone will have to brief Dan and Oscar face-to-face,” Emmett advised.

“I’ll handle it,” Brogan volunteered.

“You have a plan?” asked Oates.

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

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

“And what was that?” asked Oates.

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

Loren was sweating. She had never sweated so much in her life. Her evening gown was damp and plastered against her body like a second skin. The little windowless cell felt like a sauna and it was an effort just to breathe. A toilet and a bunk were her only creature comforts, and a dim bulb attached to the ceiling in a small cage glowed continuously. The ventilators, she was certain, were turned off to increase her discomfort.

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

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

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

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

A man ducked his head as he passed through the small doorway. He was turned out in a cheap business suit that looked to her several decades out of fashion.

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

“No, I don’t think I will,” she said defiantly. “Who are you?”

“My name is Paul Suvorov. I represent the Soviet government.”

Contempt flooded into Loren’s voice. “Is this an example of the way Communists treat visiting American VIP’s?”

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

“Please explain,” she demanded, glaring at him.

He gave her an uncertain look. “I believe you know.”

“Why don’t you refresh my memory.”

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

“So were several other passengers,” Loren snapped icily.

“Yes, but they were too far away to see a familiar face.”

“And you think I wasn’t.”

“Why can’t you be reasonable, Congresswoman. Surely you can’t deny you recognized your own colleagues.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Congressman Alan Moran and Senator Marcus Larimer,” he said, closely watching her reaction.

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

“Moran and Larimer, they’re both here too?”

He nodded. “In the next cell.”

“This must be an insane joke,” she said, stunned.

“No joke,” Suvorov said, smiling. “They are guests of the KGB, same as you.”

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

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

“You carry no influence, not here on board the Leonid Andreyev,” said Suvorov in a cold, disinterested voice.

“When my government hears of this—”

“They won’t,” he interrupted. “When the ship leaves Jamaica on its return voyage to Miami, Captain Pokof-sky will announce with deep regret and sympathy that Congresswoman Loren Smith was lost overboard and presumed drowned.”

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

“I’m taking them to Russia.”

“But you’re going to kill me,” she said, more as a statement than a question.

“They represent senior members of your government. Their knowledge will prove quite useful once they’re persuaded to provide it. You, I’m sorry to say, are not worth the risk.”

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

Suvorov’s eyes narrowed. He reached over and tore the dress from in front of her and casually tossed it outside the doorway. “Very nice,” he said. “Perhaps if we were to negotiate, I might find a reason to take you with me to Moscow.”

“The most pathetic trick in the world,” Loren spat contemptuously. “You’re not even original.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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