Deep Six (36 page)

THE PILOT SET THE HELICOPTER
on the ground at a small airport on the Isle of Palms near Charleston. He went through the standard shutdown procedure, running the engine at low RPM’s until it cooled down. Then he climbed out, lined up one of the rotor blades and tied it to the tail boom.

His back and arms ached from the long hours in the air, and he did stretching exercises as he walked to a small office next to the landing pad. He unlocked the door and stepped inside.

A stranger sat in the tiny lobby area casually reading a newspaper. To the pilot he looked to be either Chinese or Japanese. The newspaper was lowered, revealing a shotgun with a pistol grip and twin sawed-off barrels that ended barely four inches in front of the shells.

“What do you want?” asked the pilot stupidly.

“Information?”

“You’re in the wrong place,” said the pilot, instinctively raising his hands. “We’re a helicopter ambulance service, not a library.”

“Very witty,” said the Oriental. “You also carry passengers.”

“Who told you that?”

“Paul Suvorov. One of your Russian friends.”

“Never heard of the guy.”

“How odd. He sat next to you in the co-pilot’s seat for most of yesterday.”

“What do you want?” the pilot repeated, the fear beginning to crawl up his spine.

The Oriental smiled wickedly. “You have ten seconds to tell me the precise destination where you flew Suvorov and two other men. If at the end of that time you feel stubborn, I shall blow away one of your knees. Ten seconds later you can bid goodbye to your sex life.” He enforced his request by releasing the safety on the shotgun. “Countdown begins . . . now.”

Three minutes later the Oriental stepped from the building and locked the door. Then he walked to a car parked nearby, climbed behind the wheel and drove toward a sandy road leading to Charleston.

The car was barely out of sight when a torrent of orange flame gushed through the thin roof of the pilot’s office and spiraled into the white overcast sky.

Pitt spent the day dodging reporters and police detectives. He hid in a quiet pub called the Devil’s Fork on Rhode Island Avenue and sat in a cushiony leather seat in a quiet corner staring pensively at a half-eaten Monte Cristo sandwich and a third Manhattan, a drink he seldom ordered.

A pert blond waitress in a micro-skirt and mesh stockings stopped by his table. “You’re the most pitiful person in the place,” she said with a motherly smile. “Lose your best girl or your wife?”

“Worse,” said Pitt sadly. “My car.”

She laid a look on him reserved for Martians and weirdos, shrugged and continued her rounds of the other tables.

Pitt sat there idly stirring the Manhattan with a cherry, scowling at nothing. Somewhere along the line he had lost his grip on things. Events were controlling him. Knowing who tried to kill him provided little satisfaction. Only the Bougainville hierarchy had the motive. He was getting too close. No brilliance required in solving that mystery.

He was angry at himself for playing adolescent computer games with their financial operation while they ran in a tougher league. Pitt felt like a prospector who’d discovered a safe full of currency in the middle of the Antarctic and no place to spend it. His only leverage was that he knew more than they thought he knew.

The enigma that nagged him was Bougainville’s unlikely involvement with the
Eagle.
He knew of no motive for the sinking and murders. The only tie, and a slim one at that, was the overabundance of Korean bodies.

No matter; that was the FBI’s problem, and he was glad to be rid of it.

The time had come, he decided, to get rolling, and the first step was to marshal his forces. No brilliance required in that decision either.

He rose and walked over to the bar. “Can I borrow your phone, Cabot?”

The bartender, a pixie-faced Irishman, name of Sean Cabot, gave Pitt a doleful glare. “Local or long distance?”

“Long distance, but don’t cry in your cash register. I’ll use a credit card.”

Cabot nodded indifferently and set a telephone on the end of the bar away from the other customers. “Too bad about your car, Dirk. I saw her once. She was a beauty.”

“Thanks. Buy yourself a drink and put it on my tab.”

Cabot filled a glass with ginger ale from the dispenser and held it aloft. “To a Good Samaritan and a bon vivant.”

Pitt didn’t feel like a Good Samaritan and even less like a bon vivant as he punched Out the numbers on the phone. He gave his credit card number to the operator and waited for a voice to answer.

“Casio and Associates Investigatahs.”

“This is Dirk Pitt. Is Sal in?”

“One moment, sah.”

Things were looking up. He’d been accepted into the receptionist’s club.

“Dirk?” came Casio’s voice. “I’ve been calling your office all morning. I think I’ve got something.”

“Yes?”

“A hunt through maritime union files paid dividends. Six of the Korean seamen who signed on the
San Marino
had prior crew tickets. Mostly with foreign shipping lines. But all six had one thing in common. At one time or another they sailed for Bougainville Maritime. Ever hear of it?”

“It figures,” said Pitt. Then he proceeded to tell Casio what he found during the computer search.

“Damn!” Casio exclaimed incredulously. “Everything fits.”

“The maritime union, what did their records show on the Korean crew after the
San Marino
hijacking?”

“Nothing, they dropped from sight.”

“If Bougainville history ran true to form, they were murdered.”

Casio fell silent, and Pitt guessed what was running through the investigator’s mind.

“I owe you,” Casio said finally. “You’ve helped me zero in on Arta’s killer. But it’s my show. I’ll take it alone from here.”

“Don’t give me the vengeance is mine martyr routine,” Pitt said abruptly. “Besides, you still don’t know who was directly responsible.”

“Min Koryo Bougainville,” said Casio, spitting out the name. “Who else could it be?”

“The old girl might have given the orders,” said Pitt, “but she didn’t dirty her hands. It’s no secret she’s been in a wheelchair for ten years. No interviews or pictures of her have been published since Nixon was President. For all we know, Min Koryo Bougainville is a senile, bedridden vegetable. Hell, she may even be dead. No way she scattered bodies over the seascape alone.”

“You’re talking a corporate hit squad.”

“Can you think of a more efficient way to eliminate the competition?”

“Now you’re insinuating she’s a member of the Mafia,” grunted Casio.

“The Mafia only kill informers and each other. The evil beauty of Min Koryo’s setup is that by murdering crews in wholesale lots and stealing vessels from other shipping lines, she built her assets with almost no overhead. And to do it she has to have someone organize and orchestrate the crimes. Don’t let your hate blind you to hard-core reality, Sal. You haven’t got the resources to take on Bougainville alone.”

“And you do?”

“Takes two to start an army.”

There was another silence, and Pitt thought the connection might have been broken.

“You still there, Sal?”

“I’m here,” Casio finally said in a thoughtful voice. “What do you want me to do?”

“Fly to New York and pay a visit to Bougainville Maritime.”

“You mean toss their office?”

“I thought the term was ‘breaking and entering.’ “

“A cop and a judge use different dictionaries.”

“Just employ your talents to see what you can find of interest that doesn’t show up in the computers.”

“I’ll bug the place while I’m at it.”

“You’re the expert,” said Pitt. “Our advantage is that you’ll be coming from a direction they won’t suspect. Me, I’ve already been marked.”

“Marked?” asked Casio. “How?”

“They tried to kill me.”

“Christ!” muttered Casio. “How?”

“Car bomb.”

“The bastards!” he rasped. “I’ll leave for New York this afternoon.”

Pitt pushed the telephone across the bar and returned to his booth. He felt better after talking to Casio, and he finished the sandwich. He was contemplating his fourth Manhattan when Giordino walked up to the table.

“A private party?” he asked.

“No,” Pitt said. “A hate-the-world, feel-sorry-for-yourself, down-in-the-dumps party.”

“I’ll join it anyway,” Giordino said, sliding into the booth. “The admiral’s concerned about you.”

“Tell him I’ll pay for the damage to the parking lot.”

“Be serious. The old guy is madder than a stepped-on rattler. Raised hell with the Justice Department all morning, demanding they launch an all-out investigation to find out who was behind the bombing. To him, an attack on you is an attack on NUMA.”

“The FBI nosing around my apartment and office?”

Giordino nodded. “No less than six of them.”

“And reporters?”

“I lost count. What did you expect? The blast that disintegrated your car thrust your name in the limelight. Instant celebrity. First bomb explosion the city’s had in four years. Like it or not, old friend, you’ve become the eye of the storm.”

Pitt felt a mild elation at having scared the Bougainville interests enough for them to attempt his removal. They must somehow have learned he was nipping at their flanks, digging deeper into their secrets with each bite. But why the overreaction?

The fake announcement of his discovery of both the
San Marino
and the
Pilottown
no doubt alerted them. Yet it shouldn’t have thrown them into a panic. Min Koryo wasn’t the panicky type—point demonstrated by the fact she did not respond to the doctored story.

How then did they realize he was so close?

Bougainville couldn’t have tied him to the computer penetration and planned his death in such short order. Then the revelation struck him. The notion had been there all the time, but he had pushed it aside, failing to pursue it because it did not fit a pattern. Now it burst like a flare.

Bougainville had linked him to the
Eagle.

Pitt was so engrossed in thought he didn’t hear Giordino telling him he had a phone call.

“Your mind must be a million miles away,” said Giordino, pointing toward Cabot the bartender, who was holding up the bar phone.

Pitt walked over to the bar and spoke in the mouthpiece. “Hello.”

Sally Lindemann’s voice bubbled excitedly over the wire. “Oh, thank heavens I’ve finally tracked you down. I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”

“What’s wrong?” Pitt demanded. “Is Loren all right?”

“I think so, and then maybe not,” said Sally, becoming flustered. “I just don’t know.”

“Take your time and spell it out,” Pitt said gently.

“Congresswoman Smith called me in the middle of the night from the
Leonid Andreyev
and told me to find the whereabouts of Speaker of the House Alan Moran. She never gave me a reason. When I asked her what to say when I contacted him, she said to tell him it was a mistake. Make sense to you?”

“Did you find Moran?”

“Not exactly. He and Senator Marcus Larimer were supposed to be fishing together at a place called Goose Lake. I went there but nobody else knew anything about them.”

“What else did Loren say?”

“Her last words to me were ‘Call Dirk and tell him I need—’ Then we were cut off. I tried several times to reach her again, but there was no answer.”

“Did you tell the ship’s operator it was an emergency?”

“Of course. They claimed my message was passed on to her stateroom, but she made no attempt to reply. This is the damnedest thing. Not like Congresswoman Smith at all. Sound crazy?”

Pitt was silent, thinking it out. “Yes,” he said at last, “just crazy enough to make sense. Do you have the
Leonid Andreyev’s
schedule?”

“One moment.” Sally went off the line for nearly a minute. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

“When does it make the next port?”

“Let’s see, it arrives in San Salvador in the Bahamas at ten
A.M
. tomorrow and departs the same evening at eight
P.M.
for Kingston, Jamaica.”

“Thank you, Sally.”

“What’s all this about?” Sally asked. “I wish you’d tell me.”

“Keep trying to reach Loren. Contact the ship every two hours.”

“You’ll call if you find out anything,” Sally said suspiciously.

“I’ll call,” Pitt promised.

He returned to the table and sat down.

“What was that all about?” Giordino inquired.

“My travel agent,” Pitt answered, pretending to be nonchalant. “I’ve booked us for a cruise in the Caribbean.”

48

CURTIS MAYO SAT AT A DESK
amid the studio mock-up of a busy newsroom and peered at the television monitor slightly to his right and below camera number two. He was ten minutes into the evening news and waited for his cue after a commercial advertising a bathroom disinfectant. The thirty-second spot wound down on a New York fashion model, who probably never cleaned a toilet bowl in her life, smiling demurely with the product caressing her cheek.