Night Probe! - Clive Cussler

"Actually, I'm interested in you."

Pitt gave him an amused look. "If you're gay, you're wasting your time."

Moon frowned and looked around to see if anyone seated nearby was tuned to their conversation. They were all wrapped up in the bidding. "I'm here on official government business. Can we go someplace private and talk?"

"Give me five minutes," said Pitt. "I'm bidding on the next car.

"Now, if you please, Mr. Pitt," saidsmoon, trying to look commanding. "My business with you is far more important than watching grown men throw money away on obsolete junk."

"I have two hundred and eighty thousand," the auctioneer droned. "Will someone give me three hundred."

"At least you can't call it cheap," said Pitt calmly. "That car happens to be a mechanical work of art, an investment that appreciates from twenty to thirty percent a year. Your grandchildren won't be able to touch it for less than two million dollars."

"I'm not here to argue the future of antiques. Shall we go?"

"Not a chance."

"Perhaps you might curb your obstinacy if I were to tell you I'm here on behalf of the President."

Pitt's expression had turned to stone. "Big goddamned deal. Why is it every punk who goes to work for the White House thinks he can intimidate the world? Go back and tell the President you failed, Mr. Moon. You might also inform him that if he wants something from me to send a messenger boy who can demonstrate a degree of class."

Moon's face turned pale. This wasn't going the way he'd planned, not at all.

"I…... I can't do that," he stammered.

"Tough."

The auctioneer raised his gavel. "Going once…... twice for three hundred and sixty thousand." He paused, scanning the audience. "If there is no further advance…... sold to Mr. Robert Esbenson of Denver, Colorado."

Moon had been cut down, coldly, unmercifully. He took the only avenue left open to him. "Okay, Mr. Pitt, your rules."

The Mercedes was driven off and a four-door, two-tone straw-and-beige convertible took its place. The auctioneer fairly glowed as he described its features.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, number fifteen on your program. A 1950 British-built Jensen. A very rare car. The only model of this particular coach work known to exist. A real beauty. May we open the bidding at fifty thousand?"

The first bid came in at twenty-five thousand. Pitt sat in silence as the price climbed. Moon studied him. "Aren't you going to bid?"

"All in good time."

A stylishly dressed woman in her late forties waved her bidder's card. The auctioneer nodded and ordained her with a smile. "I have twenty-nine thousand from the lovely Ms. O'Leery of Chicago."

"Does he know everybody?" Moon asked, showing a spark of interest.

"Collectors form a loose clique," replied Pitt. "Most of us usually show up at the same auctions."

The bidding slowed at forty-two thousand. The auctioneer sensed the peak had come. "Come now, ladies and gentlemen, this car is worth much, much more." Pitt raised his bidder's card.

"Thank you, sir. I now have forty-three. Will anyone raise it to forty-four?"

Ms. O'Leery, wearing a designer double-breasted wool checked jacket and a slim taupe flannel skirt with a revealing front slit, signaled for an advance.

Before the auctioneer could announce her bid, Pitt's card was in the air. "Now she knows she's got a fight on her hands," he said to Moon.

"Forty- four and now forty-five. Who will make it forty-six?"

The bidding stalled. Ms. O'Leery conversed with a younger man sitting next to her. She seldom showed up with the same consort at two auctions. She was a self-made woman who had built a tidy fortune merchandising her own brand of cosmetics. Her collection was one of the finest in the world and numbered nearly one hundred cars. When the ring man leaned down to solicit a bid, she shook her head and then turned around and winked at Pitt.

"That was hardly the wink of a friendly competitor," observed Moon.

"You should try an older woman sometime," said Pitt as though lecturing a schoolboy. "There's little they don't know about men." An attractive girl maneuvered down Pitt's aisle and asked him to sign the sales agreement.

"Now?" asked Moon hopefully. "How did you get here?"

"My girlfriend drove me down from Arlington."

Pitt came to his feet. "while you round her up, I'll go to the office and settle my account. Then she can follow us."

"Follow us?"

"You wanted to talk in private, Mr. Moon. So I'm going to give you a treat and drive you back to Arlington in a real automobile."

The Jensen rolled effortlessly over the highway toward Washington. Pitt kept one eye out for the traffic patrol and the other on the speedometer. His foot held the accelerator at a steady seventy miles an hour.

Moon buttoned his overcoat up to the neck and looked miserable. "Doesn't this relic have a heater?"

Pitt hadn't noticed the cold seeping in through the cloth top. As long as the engine hummed, he was in his element. He turned a knob on the dashboard and soon a thin wisp of warm air spread through the Jensen's interior. "Okay, Moon, we're alone. What's your story?"

"The President would like you to lead fishing expeditions into the St. "Lawrence and Hudson rivers."

Pitt jerked his eyes off the road and stared at Moon. "You're joking?"

"I couldn't be more serious. He thinks you're the only qualified man to take a stab at finding the copies of the North American Treaty."

"You know about it?"

"Yes, he took me into his confidence ten minutes after you left his office. I'm to act as liaison during your search."

Pitt slowed the car down to the legal speed limit and was silent for several seconds. Then he said, "I don't think he knows what he's asking."

"I assure you the President has looked at it from every angle."

"He's asking the impossible and expecting a miracle." Pitt's expression was incredulous, his voice quiet. "There's no way a piece of paper can remain intact after being immersed in water for three-quarters of a century."

"I admit the project sounds unpromising," agreed Moon. "And yet, if there is one chance in ten million a copy of the treaty exists, the President feels we must make an effort to find it.

Pitt stared down the road that split the Virginia countryside. "Suppose for a minute we got lucky and laid the North American Treaty on his lap? What then?"

"I can't say."

"Can't or won't?"

"I'm only a special aide to the President…... a messenger boy as you so rudely put it. I do what I'm told. My orders are to give you every assistance and see that your requests for funds and equipment are met. What happens if and when you salvage a readable document is none of my business and certainly none of yours.

"Tell me, Moon," said Pitt, a faint smile edged on his lips. "Have you ever read How to Win Friends and Influence People?"

"Never heard of it."

"I'm not surprised." Pitt ran up the rear end of an electric minicar that refused to yield the fast lane and blinked the Jensen's lights. The other driver finally signaled and gave way. "What if I say no deal?"

Moon stiffened almost imperceptibly. "The President would be most disappointed."

"I'm flattered." Pitt drove along, lost in thought. Then he turned and nodded. "Okay, I'll give it my best shot. I presume we're to begin immediately."

Moon simply nodded, vastly relieved.

"Item one on your list," said Pitt. "I'll need NUMA's manpower and resources. Most important, Admiral Sandecker must be informed of the project. I won't work behind his back."

"What you're about to attempt, Mr. Pitt, falls under the trite term of 'delicate situation.' The fewer people who know about the treaty, the less chance the Canadians get wind of it."

"Sandecker must be informed," Pitt repeated firmly.