Clive Cussler - Deep Six

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I appreciate the courtesy. Thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who are you?” she asked simply.

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

“And the other man?”

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

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

“Yes.”

“Why have you come?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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