Clive Cussler - Deep Six

It was dark and raining when Giordino wearily made his way across the now emptied dock and entered the customs office of the terminal. He sat at a desk for a long time staring out into the rain-soaked murk, his dark eyes mere shadows on his face.

He turned and looked at the telephone as though it was the enemy. Hyping his courage by a drink of brandy from a half-pint bottle in his coat pocket and lighting a cigar he had stolen from Admiral Sandecker, he dialed a number and let it ring, almost hoping no one would answer. Then a voice came on.

Giordino moistened his lips with his tongue and said, “Forgive me, Dirk. We were too late. She was gone.”

The helicopter came in from the south and flashed on its landing lights. The pilot settled his craft into position, and then lowered it onto the roof of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The side door dropped open and Lee Tong stepped out. He swiftly walked over to a privately guarded entrance and took an elevator down to his grandmother’s living quarters.

He bent down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “How was your day, aunumi ?”

“Disastrous,” she said tiredly. “Someone is sabotaging our bank records, shipping transactions, every piece of business that goes through a computer. What was once a study in efficient management procedures is now a mess.”

Lee Tong’s eyes narrowed. “Who can be doing it?”

“Every trail leads to NUMA.”

“Dirk Pitt.”

“He’s the prime suspect.”

“No more,” said Lee Tong reassuringly. “Pitt is dead.”

She looked up, her aged eyes questioning. “You know that for a fact?”

He nodded. “Pitt was on board the Leonid Andreyev. An opportune stroke of luck. I watched him die.”

“Your Caribbean mission was only half favorable. Moran lives.”

“Yes, but Pitt is out of our hair and the Leonid Andreyev evens the score for the Venice and the gold.”

Min Koryo suddenly lashed out at him. “That slimy scum Antonov tricked us out of one billion dollars in gold and cost us a good ship and crew, and you say the score is even?”

Lee Tong had never seen his grandmother so furious. “I’m enraged too, aunumi, but we’re hardly in a position to declare war on the Soviet Union.”

She leaned forward, her hands clasped so tightly around the armrests of her wheelchair, the knuckles showed through the delicate skin. “The Russians don’t know what it’s like to have terrorists striking at their throats. I want you to mount bombing attacks against their merchant fleet, especially their oil tankers.”

Lee Tong put his arm around her shoulder as he would a hurt child. “The Hebrew eye-for-an-eye proverb may satisfy the vindictive soul, but it never adds to the bank account. Do not blind yourself with anger.”

“What do you expect?” she snapped. “Antonov has the President and the gold where his Navy can salvage it. We allowed Lugovoy and his staff to leave with the President. Years of planning and millions of dollars wasted, and for what?”

“We have not lost our bargaining power,” said Lee Tong. “Vice President Margolin is still secure at the laboratory. And we have an unexpected bonus in Congresswoman Loren Smith.”

“You abducted her?” she asked in surprise.

“She was also on board the cruise ship. After the sinking, I arranged to have her flown off the Chalmette to the laboratory.”

“She might prove useful,” Min Koryo conceded.

“Don’t be disheartened, aunumi ,” said Lee Tong. “We are still in the game. Antonov and his KGB bedfellow Polevoi badly underestimated the Americans’ pathological devotion to individual rights. Instructing the President to close Congress to increase his powers was a stupid blunder. He will be impeached and thrown out of Washington within the week.”

“Not so long as he has the backing of the Pentagon.”

Lee Tong inserted a cigarette in the long silver holder. “The Joint Chiefs are sitting on the fence. They can’t keep the House from meeting forever. Once they’ve voted for impeachment, the generals and admirals won’t waste any time in swinging their support to Congress and the new chief executive.”

“Which will be Alan Moran,” Min Koryo said, as if she had a bad taste in her mouth.

“Unless we release Vincent Margolin.”

“And cut our own throat. We’d be better off making him disappear for good or arrange to have his body found floating in the Potomac River.”

“Listen, aunumi ,” said Lee Tong, his black eyes glinting. “We have two options. One, the laboratory is in perfect working order. Lugovoy’s data is still in the computer disks. His mind-control techniques are ours for the taking. We can hire other scientists to program Margolin’s brain. This time it will not be the Russians who control the White House, but Bougainville Maritime.”

“But if Moran is sworn in as President before the brain-control transfer is accomplished, Margolin will be of no use to us.”

“Option two,” said Lee Tong. “Strike a deal with Moran to eliminate Margolin and pave his way to the White House.”

“Can he be bought?”

“Moran is a shrewd manipulator. His political power base is mortared with underhanded financial dealings. Believe me, aunumi, Alan Moran will pay any price for the Presidency.”

Min Koryo looked at her grandson with great respect. He possessed an almost mystical grasp of the abstract. She smiled faintly. Nothing excited her merchant blood more than reversing a failure into a success. “Strike your bargain,” she said.

“I’m happy you agree.”

“You must move the laboratory facility to a safe place,” she said, her mind beginning to shift gears. “At least until we know where we stand. Government investigators will soon fit the pieces together and concentrate their search on the Eastern Seaboard.”

“My thoughts also,” said Lee Tong. “I took the liberty of ordering one of our tugs to move it out of South Carolina waters to our private receiving dock.”

Min Koryo nodded. “An excellent choice.”

“And a practical one,” he replied.

“How do we handle the congresswoman?” Min Koryo asked.

“If she talks to the press she might bring up a number of embarrassing questions for Moran to answer about his presence on board the Leonid Andreyev. He’d be smart to pay for her silence also.”

“Yes, he lied himself into a hole on that one.”

“Or we can run her through the mind-control experiment and send her back to Washington. A servant in Congress could prove a great asset.”

“But if Moran included her in the deal?”

“Then we sink the laboratory along with Margolin and Loren Smith in a hundred fathoms of water.”

Unknown to Lee Tong and Min Koryo, their conversation was transmitted to the roof of a nearby apartment building where a secondary reception dish relayed the radio frequency signals to a voice-activated tape recorder in a dusty, vacant office several blocks away on Hudson Street.

The turn-of-the-century brick building was due to be demolished, and although most of the offices were empty, a few tenants were taking their sweet time about relocating.

Sal Casio had the tenth floor all to himself. He squatted in this particular site because the janitorial crew never bothered to step off the elevator, and the window had a direct line of sight to the secondary receiver. A cot, a sleeping bag and a small electric burner were all he needed to get by, and except for the receiver/recorder, his only other piece of furniture was an old faded and torn lobby chair that he’d salvaged out of a back-alley trash bin.

He turned the lock with his master key and entered, carrying a paper sack containing a corned beef sandwich and three bottles of Herman Joseph beer. The office was hot and stuffy, so he opened a window and stared at the lights across the river in New Jersey.