Clive Cussler - Iceberg

A satisfied smile touched his lips. "Thank you, Mr. Rondheim. Your memory serves you well."

There was something about Pitts tone that made Rondheim uneasy. "The pleasure is mine, Major." He didn't like the smile on Pitt's face-he didn't like it at all.

Pitt suffered for another half hour as rondheim continued to awe the audience with his vast repertoire of verse. At last the program was over. The doors were opened and the crowded room drained into the main salon, the women escorted onto the terrace to engage in small talk and sip a sweet alcoholic concoction passed about by the servants, the men directed to the trophy room for cigars and one hundred-year-old Rouche brandy.

The cigars were carried into the room within a sterling silver case and presented for everyone's selection except Pitt. He was blithely ignored. After the lighting ritual, each man holding his cigar over a candle, warming it to the desired temperature, the servants passed around the Rouche brandy, the heavy, yellowbrown fluid in exotically designed snifter glasses. Again Pitt was left empty-handed.

Apart from himself and Oskar Rondheim, Pitt counted thirty-two men gathered around the flames crackling in the immense fireplace at the end of the trophy room. The reaction to Pitts presence, as expressed by the faces, was interesting. No one even noticed him.

For a fleeting moment he pictured himself a ghost with no substance that had just walked through the wall and was waiting for a sance to begin so that he could put a spiritual appearance. Or so he thought. He could have imagined all sorts of strange scenes, but there was no imagining the blunt, circular gun barrel that was pressing into his spine.

He didn't bother to see whose hand held the gun.

It would have made little difference. Rondheim answered any doubt.

"Kirsti!" Rondheim stared behind Pitt. "You are early. I didn't expect you for another twenty minutes."

Von Hummel produced a handkerchief, mopped a brow that soaked the monogrammed linen and asked: "The girl he arrived with, has she been readied?"

"Miss Royal has been made quite comfortable," Kirsti said, staring right through Pitt. There was something in her tone that left him with a feeling of doubt.

Rondheim came over and took the gun from her hand as though he was a concerned parent. "Guns and beauty do not go together," he scolded. "You must allow a man to guard the major."

"Oh, I rather enjoyed it," she said in a throaty tone. "It's been so long since I've held one."

"I see no reason to delay any further,"$ Jack Boyle said. "Our timing is complex. We must proceed at once."

"There is time," Rondheim said tersely.

A Russian, a short, stocky man with thinning hair, brown eyes and a limping gait, stood and faced Rondheim. "I believe you owe us an explanation, Mr. Rondheim. Why is this man," he nodded in Pitt's direction, "being treated like a criminal? You told myself and the other gentlemen here he is a newspaperman and that it would not be wise to speak too freely with him. Yet, that is the fourth or fifth time tonight you have referred to him as Major."

Rondheim studied the man before him, then set down his glass and pushed the button on a telephone.

He didn't lift the receiver or talk into it, only picked up his glass and sipped at the remaining contents.

"Before your questions are answered, Comrade Tamareztov, I suggest you look behind you."

The Russian called Tamaretov swung around.

Everyone swung around and looked to their rear. Not Pitt, he didn't have to. He kept his eyes straight ahead at a mirror that betrayed several,bar-looking, expressionless men in black coveralls, who suddenly materialized at the opposite end of the room, all-17 automatic rifles braced in the firing position.

A round-shouldered, heavy character in his middle seventies, with blue knifing eyes deep set in a wizened face, grasped F. James Kelly by the arm. "You invited me to join you tonight, James. I think you know what this is all about."

"Yes, I do." When Kelly spoke, the pained look in his eyes was plainly visible. Then he turned away.

Slowly, very slowly, almost unnoticed, Kelly, Rondheim, Von Hummel, Marks and eight other men had grouped themselves on one side of the fireplace, leaving Pitt and the remaining guests standing opposite the flames in utter bewilderment. Pitt noted, with a touch of uneasiness, that all the guns were aimed at his group.

"I'm waiting, James," the old blue-eyed man said, his voice commanding.

Kelly hedged, looked rather sadly at Von Hummel and Marks. He waited expectantly. They finally nodded back, assuring him of their approval.

"Have any of you heard of Hermit Limited?"

The silence in the room became intense. Nobody spoke, nobody answered. Pitt was coolly calculating the chances of escape. He gave up, unable to bring the odds of success below fifty to one.

"Hermit Limited," Kelly went on, "is international in scope, but you won't find it on any stock exchange because it is vastly different in administration from any business you're familiar with. I don't have time to go into all the details of its operation, so just let me say that Hermit's main goal is to achieve control and take possession of South and of Central America."

"That's impossible," shouted a tall, raven-haired man with a pronounced French accent. "Absolutely unthinkable."

"It's also good business to do the impossible," Kelly said "What you've suggested is not business, but political power madness." Kelly shook his head. "Madness maybe, but political power with selfish and inhuman motives, no." He searched the faces on the other side of the fireplace.

They were all blank with disbelief.

"I am F. James Kelly," he said softly. "In my lifetime I have amassed over two billion dollars in assets."

No one present doubted him. Whenever the Wall Street Journal listed the one hundred wealthiest men in the world, Kelly's name always stood at the top.

"Being wealthy carries tremendous responsibilities.

As many as two hundred thousand people depend on me for their living. If I was to fail financially tomorrow, it would cause a recession that would be felt from one end of the United States to the other, not to mention the many countries around the world that depend upon my subsidiary companies for a high percentage of their local economies. Yet, as these gentlemen around me can testify, riches do not guarantee immortality. Very few of the rich are remembered in the history books."

Kelly looked almost ill as he paused. No one in the room did anything but breathe until he continued.

"Two years ago I began thinking about what I would leave after I was gone. A financial empire fought over by parasitic business associates and relatives, who had only Counted the days till my funeral so they could grab the spoils. Believe me, gentlemen, it was a pretty dismal thought. So I considered methods to distribute my assets in ways that would benefit mankind. But how? Andrew Carnegie built libraries, John D. Rockefeller set up foundations for science and education.

What would do the most good for the peoples of the world regardless of white, black, yellow, red, or brown skins? Regardless of nationalities? If I had listened to my human emotions, it would have been an easy decision to use my money to assist the Cancer Crusade, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army or any one of the thousand medical centers or universities around the country.

But was it really enough? Somehow it sounded too easy.

I decided upon a different direction-one that would have a lasting impact on miwons of people for hundreds of years."

"So you plotted to use your resources to become the self-proclaimed messiah of the poverty-stricken Latin nations," Pitt said.

Kelly offered Pitt a condescending smile. "No, you're quite mistaken, Major-ah-"