Deep Six dp-7 Page 24

  The helicopter rose fifty feet in the air and then banked off toward Charleston Bay. “Okay, which way?” asked the pilot.

  “I can’t be sure. It was dark and I was lost.”

  “Can you give me a landmark?”

  “About five miles from Charleston; I crossed a river.”

  “From what direction?”

  “West, yes, the dawn was breaking ahead of me.”

  “Must be Stono River.”

  “Stono, that’s it.”

  “Then you were traveling on State Highway 700.”

  “I turned onto it about half an hour before the bridge.”

  The sun had heaved itself above the horizon and was filtering through the blue summer haze that hung over Charleston. The helicopter climbed to nine hundred feet and flew southwestward until the highway unreeled beyond the cockpit windows. The pilot pointed downward and Suvorov nodded. They followed the outbound traffic as the South Carolina coastal plain spread beneath them. Here and there a few cultivated fields lay enclosed on all sides by forests of long-leafed pines. They passed over a farmer standing in a tobacco field who waved his hat at them.

  “See anything familiar?” the pilot asked.

  Suvorov shook his head helplessly. “The road I turned off of might be anywhere.”

  “What direction were you facing when you met the highway?”

  “I made a left turn so I must have been heading south.”

  “This area is called Wadmalaw Island. I’ll start a circular search pattern. Let me know if you spot something.”

  An hour slipped by, and then two. The scene below transformed into a maze of creeks and small rivers snaking through bottomland and swamps. One road looked the same as another from the air. Thin ribbons of reddish-brown dirt or potholed asphalt slicing through dense overgrowth like lines on the palm of a hand. Suvorov became more confused as time wore on, and the pilot lost his patience.

  “We’ll have to knock off the search,” he said, “or I won’t have enough fuel to make Savannah.”

  “Savannah is in the state of Georgia,” Suvorov said, as though reciting in a school class.

  The pilot smiled. “Yeah, you got it.”

  “Our departure point for the Soviet Union?”

  “Only a fuel stop.” Then the pilot clammed up.

  Suvorov saw it was impossible to draw any information out of the man, so he turned his attention back to the ground.

  Suddenly he pointed excitedly over the instrument panel. “There!” he shouted above the engine’s roar. “The small intersection to the left.”

  “Recognize it?”

  “I think so. Drop lower. I want to read the sign on that shabby building sitting on the corner.”

  The pilot obliged and lowered the helicopter until it hovered thirty feet over the bisecting roadways. “Is that what you want?” he asked. “ ‘Glover Culpepper— gas and groceries’?”

  “We’re close,” said Suvorov. “Fly up the road that leads toward that river to the north.”

  “The Intracoastal Waterway.”

  “A canal?”

  “A shallow canal that provides an almost continuous inshore water passage from the North Atlantic States to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. Used mostly by small pleasure boats and tugs.”

  The helicopter beat over the tops of trees, whipping leaves and bending branches with the wash from its rotor blades. Suddenly, at the edge of a wide marshy creek, the road ended. Suvorov stared through the windshield.

  “The laboratory, it must be around here.”

  “I don’t see anything,” the pilot said, banking the craft and studying the ground.

  “Set us down!” Suvorov demanded nervously. “Over there, a hundred meters from the road in that glade.”

  The pilot nodded and gently eased the helicopter’s landing skids into the soft grassy earth, sending up a swirl of dead and moldy leaves. He set the engine on idle with the blades slowly turning and opened the door. Suvorov leaped out and ran stumbling through the underbrush back to the road. After a few minutes of frantic searching he stopped at the bank of the creek and looked around in exasperation.

  “What’s the problem?” asked the pilot as he approached.

  “Not here,” Suvorov said dazedly. “A warehouse with an elevator that dropped down to a laboratory. It’s gone.”

  “Buildings can’t vanish in six hours,” said the pilot. He was beginning to look bored. “You must be on the wrong road.”

  “No, no, this has to be the right one.”

  “I only see trees and swamp”—he hesitated and pointed—”and that decrepit old houseboat on the other side of the creek.”

  “A boat!” Suvorov said as though having a revelation. “It must have been a boat.”

  The pilot gazed down into the muddy water of the creek. “The bottom here is only three or four feet deep. Impossible to bring a vessel the size of a warehouse, requiring an elevator, in here from the waterway.”

  Suvorov threw up his hands in bewilderment. “We must keep searching.”

  “Sorry,” the pilot said firmly. “We haven’t the time or the fuel to continue. To keep our appointment we’ve got to leave now.”

  He turned without waiting for a reply and walked back to the helicopter. Slowly Suvorov followed him, looking for all the world like a man deep in a trance.

  * * *

  As the helicopter lifted above the trees and swung toward Savannah, a gunnysack curtain in the window of the houseboat was pulled aside to reveal an old Chinaman peering through an expensive pair of Celestron 11 x 80 binoculars.

  Satisfied he had read the aircraft’s identification number on the fuselage correctly, he laid down the glasses and dialed a number on a portable telephone scrambling unit and spoke in rapid Chinese.

  44

  “Got a minute, Dan?” Curtis Mayo asked as Dan Fawcett got out of his car in the private street beside the White House.

  “You’ll have to catch me on the run,” Fawcett replied without looking in Mayo’s direction. “I’m late for a meeting.”

  “Another heavy situation in the Situation Room?”

  Fawcett sucked in his breath. Then, as calmly as his trembling fingers would permit, he locked the car door and picked up his attache case.

  “Care to comment?” Mayo asked.

  Fawcett marched off toward the security gate. “I shot an arrow in the air…”

  “It fell to earth, I know not where,” Mayo finished, keeping step. “Longfellow. Want to see my arrow?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “This one is going to land on the six o’clock news.”

  Fawcett slowed his pace. “Just what are you after?”

  Mayo took a large tape cassette from his pocket and handed it to Fawcett. “You might like to view this before air time.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Call it professional courtesy.”

  “Now that’s news.”

  Mayo smiled. “Like I said, view the tape.”

  “Save me the trouble. What’s on it?”

  “A folksy scene of the President playing farmer. Only it isn’t the President.”

  Fawcett drew up and stared at Mayo. “You’re full of crap.”

  “Can I quote you?”

  “Don’t get cute,” Fawcett snapped. “I’m in no mood for a slanted interview.”

  “Okay, straight question,” said Mayo. “Who is impersonating the President and Vice President in New Mexico?”

  “Nobody.”

  “I’ve got proof that says otherwise. Enough to use it as a news item. I release this and every muckraker between here and Seattle will crawl over the White House like an army of killer ants.”

  “Do that and you’ll have a dozen eggs on your face when the President stands as close to you as I am and denies it.”

  “Not if I find out what sort of mischief he’s been up to while a double played hide-and-seek down on the farm.”

  “I won’t wish you luc
k, because the whole idea is outlandish.”

  “Level with me, Dan. Something big is going down.”

  “Trust me, Curt. Nothing off limits is happening. The President will be back in a couple of days. You can ask him yourself.”

  “What about the sudden burst of secret Cabinet meetings at all hours?”

  “No comment.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Who’s your source for that little gem?”

  “Somebody who’s seen a lot of unmarked cars entering the sub-basement of the Treasury Department in the dead of night.”

  “So the Treasury people are burning the midnight oil.”

  “No lights go on in the building. My guess is they’re sneaking into the White House through the utility tunnel and congregating in the Situation Room.”

  “Think what you like, but you’re dead wrong. That’s all I have to say on the subject.”

  “I’m not going to drop it,” Mayo said defiantly.

  “Suit yourself,” Fawcett replied indifferently. “It’s your funeral.”

  Mayo dropped back and watched as Fawcett walked through the security gate. The presidential adviser had put up a good front, he thought, but that’s all it was, a front. Any doubts Mayo might have entertained about sinister maneuvers emanating behind the walls of the nation’s executive branch were swept away.

  He was more determined than ever to damn well find out what was going on.

  Fawcett slid the cassette into a videotape recorder and sat down in front of the TV screen. He ran the tape three times, examining every detail until he knew what Mayo had caught.

  Wearily he picked up a phone and asked for a secure line to the State Department. After a few moments the voice of Doug Oates answered through the earpiece.

  “Yes, Dan, what is it?”

  “We have a new development.”

  “News of the President?”

  “No, sir. I’ve just had a talk with Curtis Mayo of CNN News. He’s onto us.”

  There was a taut pause. “What can we do?”

  “Nothing,” said Fawcett somberly, “absolutely nothing.”

  Sam Emmett left the FBI building in downtown Washington and drove over to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. A summer shower passed overhead, moistening the forested grounds of the intelligence complex and leaving behind the sweet smell of dampened greenery.

  Martin Brogan was standing outside his office when Emmett walked through the anteroom door. The tall ex-college professor offered an outstretched hand. “Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to drive over.”

  Emmett smiled as he took his hand. Brogan was one of the few men around the President he genuinely admired. “Not at all. I’m not a desk man. I jump at any excuse to get off my butt and move around.”

  They entered Brogan’s office and sat down. “Coffee or a drink?” Brogan asked.

  “Nothing, thanks.” Emmett opened his briefcase and laid a bound report on the CIA Director’s desk. “This spells out the Bureau’s findings until an hour ago on the President’s disappearance.”

  Brogan handed him a similarly bound report. “Likewise from Central Intelligence. Damned little to add since our last meeting, I’m sorry to say.”

  “You’re not alone. We’re miles from a breakthrough too.”

  Brogan paused to light a ropelike Toscanini cigar. It seemed oddly out of place with his Brooks Brothers suit and vest. Together the men began reading. After nearly ten minutes of quiet, Brogan’s expression softened from deep concentration to curious interest, and he tapped a page of Emmett’s report.

  “This section about a missing Soviet psychologist.”

  “I thought that would interest you.”

  “He and his entire United Nations staff vanished the same night as the Eagle’s hijacking?”

  “Yes, to date none of them have turned up. Could be merely an intriguing coincidence, but I felt it shouldn’t be ignored.”

  “The first thought that crossed my mind is that this”—Brogan glanced at the report again—”Lugovoy, Dr. Aleksei Lugovoy, may have been assigned by the KGB to use his psychological knowledge to pry national secrets from the abducted men.”

  “A theory we can’t afford to dismiss.”

  “The name,” Brogan said vacantly. “It strikes a chord.”

  “You’ve heard it before?”

  Suddenly Brogan’s brows raised and his eyes widened ever so slightly and he reached for his intercom. “Send up the latest file from the French Internal Security Agency.”

  “You think you’ve got something?”

  “A recorded conversation between President Antonov and his KGB chief Vladimir Polevoi. I believe Lugovoy was mentioned.”

  “From French intelligence?” Emmett asked.

  “Antonov was on a state visit. Our friendly rivals in Paris are quietly cooperative about passing along information they don’t consider sensitive to their national interests.”

  In less than a minute, Brogan’s private secretary knocked on the door and gave him a transcription of the secret tape recording. He quickly consumed its contents.

  “This is most encouraging,” he said. “Read between the lines and you can invent all sorts of Machiavellian schemes. According to Polevoi, the UN psychologist disappeared off the Staten Island ferry in New York and all contact was severed.”

  “The KGB lost several sheep from their herd at one time?” Emmett asked in mild astonishment. “That’s a new twist. They must be getting sloppy.”

  “Polevoi’s own statement.” Brogan held out the transcript papers. “See for yourself.”

  Emmett read the typed print and reread it. When he looked up, a trace of triumph brightened his eyes. “So the Russians are behind the abduction.”

  Brogan nodded in agreement. “From all appearances, but they can’t be in it alone. Not if they’re ignorant of Lugovoy’s whereabouts. Another source is working with them, someone here in the United States with the power to dictate the operation.”

  “You?” Emmett asked wolfishly.

  Brogan laughed. “No, and you?”

  Emmett shook his head. “If the KGB, the CIA and the FBI are all kept in the dark, then who’s dealing the cards?”

  “The person they refer to as the ‘old bitch’ and ‘Chinese whore.’ “

  “No gentlemen these Communists.”

  “The code word for their operation must be Huckleberry Finn.”

  Emmett stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles, and sagged comfortably in his chair. “Huckleberry Finn,” he repeated, enunciating every syllable. “Our counterpart in Moscow has a dark sense of humor. But what’s important, he’s unwittingly given us an eye to shove a sharp stick into.”

  No one paid any attention to the two men seated comfortably in a pickup truck parked in a loading zone by the NUMA building. A cheap plastic removable sign adhered to the passenger’s door advertised GUS MOORE’S PLUMBING. Behind the cab in the truck’s bed, several lengths of copper pipe and an assortment of tools lay in casual disorder. The men’s coveralls were stained with dirt and grease, and neither had shaved in three or four days. The only odd thing about their appearance was their eyes. They never shifted from the entrance to NUMA’s headquarters.

  The driver tensed and made a directional movement with a nod of his head. “I think this is him coming.”

  The other man raised a pair of binoculars wrapped in a brown paper bag with the bottom torn out and gazed at a figure emerging from the revolving glass doors. Then he laid the glasses in his lap and examined a face in a large eleven-by-fourteen-inch glossy photograph.

  “Confirmed.”

  The driver checked a row of numbers on a small black transmitter. “Counting one hundred forty seconds from… now.” He punctuated his words by pushing a toggle switch to the “on” position.

  “Okay,” his partner said. “Let’s get the hell away.”

  Pitt reached the bottom of the broad stone steps as the plumber’s
truck drove past in front of him. He stood a moment to let another car by and began walking through the parking lot. He was seventy yards from the Talbot-Lago when he turned at the honking of a horn.

  Al Giordino drew up alongside in a Ford Bronco four-wheel drive. His curly black hair was shaggy and uncombed and a heavy growth covered his chin. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

  “Sneaking home early?” he said.

  “I was until you caught me,” Pitt replied, grinning.

  “Lucky you, sitting around with nothing to do.”

  “You wrap the Eagle salvage?” Pitt asked.

  Giordino gave a tired nod. “Towed her up the river and pushed her into dry dock about three hours ago. You can smell her death stink a mile away.”

  “At least you didn’t have to remove the bodies.”

  “No, a Navy diving team was stuck with that ugly chore.”

  “Take a week off. You’ve earned it.”

  Giordino spread his Roman smile. “Thanks, boss. I needed that.” Then his expression turned solemn. “Anything new on the Pilottown?”

  “We’re zeroing in—”

  Pitt never finished the sentence. A thunderous explosion tore the air. A ball of flame erupted between the densely packed cars and jagged metal debris burst in all directions. A tire and wheel, the chrome spokes flashing in the sun, flew in a high arc and landed with a loud crunch in the middle of Giordino’s hood. Bouncing inches over Pitt’s head, it then rolled through a landscaped parkway before coming to rest in a cluster of rosebushes. The rumble from the blast echoed across the city for several seconds before it finally faded and died.

  “God!” Giordino rasped in bewildered awe. “What was that?”

  Pitt took off running, dodging between the tightly parked cars, until he slowed and halted in front of a scrambled mass of metal that smoldered and coughed up a cloud of dense black smoke. The asphalt underneath was gouged and melting from the heat, turning into a heavy sludge. The tangled wreck was nearly unrecognizable as a car.

  Giordino ran up behind him. “Jesus, whose was it?”

  “Mine,” said Pitt, his features twisted in bitterness as he stared at the remains of the once beautiful Talbot-Lago.