Flood Tide dp-14
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Julia soon came to realize that Pitt's home made no allowances for a woman's touch. It was the sanctuary of an intensely private man who adored and admired women but who could never be fully controlled by them. He was the kind of man women were drawn to, had wild adventures and amorous affairs with, but never married.
She smelled coffee coming from the kitchen but saw no sign of Pitt. She sat up and set her bare feet on a wood-plank floor. Her dress and underwear were neatly hung in an open closet, dried and pressed. She padded across the plank floor into the bathroom and smiled at herself in the mirror when she found a tray with an unopened new toothbrush, women's moisturizers, bath gels, body oils, makeup accessories and an assortment of feminine hairbrushes. Julia could not help but wonder how many women had stood and looked into the same mirror before her. She showered inside of what looked like an upended copper tank, toweled and dried her hair with a blow-dryer. After she dressed, Julia stepped into the empty kitchen, helped herself to a cup of coffee and moved out onto the balcony.
Pitt was down on the main floor in coveralls replacing the shattered windshield on the Duesenberg. Before she greeted him, Julia's gaze swept over the immaculate machinery on the spacious floor below.
She did not recognize the makes of the classic cars parked in even rows, nor did she recognize the Ford Trimotor aircraft and the Messerschmitt 262 jet plane sitting side by side at one end of the hangar. There was a large, old-fashioned Pullman car sitting on a short section of track, while behind it a small bathtub with an outboard motor stood perched on a small platform beside a strange-looking craft that resembled the upper half of a sailboat that had been tied to the buoyancy tubes of a rubber boat. A mast rose from the middle with what seemed like palm fronds woven into a sail. “Good morning,” she called down.
He looked up and gave her a killer smile. “Nice to see you, lazybones.”
“I could have stayed in bed all day.” “No chance of that,” he said. “Admiral Sandecker called while you were in dreamland. He and your boss want our bodies at a conference in one hour.”
“Your place or mine?” Julia asked in a humorous tone. “Yours, the INS headquarters office.” “How did you ever clean and press my silk dress?” “I soaked it in cold water after you fell asleep last night and hung it to dry. This morning I lightly ironed it through a cotton towel. As far as I can tell, it looks good as new.”
“You're quite a guy, Dirk Pitt,” she said. “I've never known a man so thoughtful, or innovative. Do you perform the same services for all the girls who sleep over?”
“Only exotic ladies of Chinese descent,” he answered. “May I fix breakfast?”
“Sounds good. You'll find whatever you need in the fridge and on the upper cupboards to your right. I already made coffee.”
She hesitated as Pitt began removing the fragmented mirror on the side-mounted spare tire. “I'm sorry about your car,” she said sincerely.
Pitt merely shrugged. “The damage is nothing I can't fix.” “Truly, she's a lovely car.”
“Fortunately, the bullets failed to strike any vital parts.” “Speaking of Qin Shang's thugs ...”
“Not to worry. There are enough hired guards patrolling outside to stage a coup on a third-world country.”
“I'm embarrassed.”
Pitt looked up at Julia leaning on the balcony railing and saw that her face was genuinely red with chagrin. “Why?”
“My superiors at INS and fellow agents must know I spent the night and are probably making snide remarks behind my back.”
Pitt looked up at Julia on the balcony and grinned. “I'll tell anybody who asks that while you slept, I spent the night working on a rear end.”
“That's not funny,” she said reprovingly.
“Sorry, I meant to say differential.”
“That's better,” Julia said, turning flippantly with a toss of her ebony hair and strutting into the kitchen, having enjoyed Pitt's teasing of her.
Accompanied by two bodyguards in an armored sedan, Pitt and Julia were driven to her sorority sister's apartment so she could change into attire more fitting for a government agent. Then they were taken to the stark-looking Chester Arthur Building on Northwest I Street, which housed the headquarters of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They entered the beige seven-story stone structure with its blackened windows from the underground parking area and were escorted up an elevator to the Investigations Division where they were met by Peter Harper's secretary, who showed them into a conference room.
Six men were already present in the room: Admiral San-decker; Chief Commissioner Duncan Monroe and Peter Harper of the INS; Wilbur Hill, a director with the Central Intelligence Agency; Charles Davis, special assistant to the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Al Giordino. They all rose to their feet as Pitt and Julia entered the room. All, that is, except Giordino, who simply nodded silently and gave Julia an infectious smile. Introductions were quickly made before everyone settled in chairs around a long oak table.
“Well,” said Monroe to Pitt, “I understand you and Ms. Lee had an interesting evening.” The tone of his voice strongly suggested a double meaning.
“Harrowing would be closer to the truth,” Julia answered quickly, prim and proper in a white blouse and blue business suit with the skirt cut just above her shapely knees.
Pitt stared evenly at Harper. “Things might have gone smoother if our hired bodyguards hadn't tried to send us to the morgue.”
“I deeply regret the incident,” said Harper seriously. “But circumstances went beyond our control.”
Pitt noticed that Harper looked far from sheepish. “I'd be interested in knowing the circumstances,” he came back coldly.
“The four men Peter hired to protect you and Ms. Lee were murdered,” revealed Davis of the FBI. A tall man who sat half a head above the other men around the table, he had the eyes of a Saint Bernard that had just come across a garbage can behind a barbecue-steak restaurant.
“Oh God,” murmured Julia. “All four?”
“Because then” concentration was focused on observing Mr. Perlmutter's residence they left themselves vulnerable for an assault."
“I regret their deaths,” said Pitt. “But it doesn't sound like they operated as true professionals.”
Monroe cleared his throat. “A full investigation is under way, of course. Initial analysis suggests that they were approached and murdered by Qin Shang's men, who posed as city police officers checking on reports of suspicious behavior in the neighborhood.”
“You have witnesses?”
Davis nodded. “A neighbor across the street from Mr. Perlmutter reported seeing a patrol car and four uniformed officers entering the vans and driving them away.”
“After shooting the bodyguards with silenced weapons,” Harper added.
Pitt looked at Harper. “Can you identify the men who attacked me at the hangar?”
Harper glanced at Davis, who turned up his palms in a dismayed gesture. “It seems their bodies disappeared on the way to the morgue.”
“How is that possible?” demanded Sandecker explosively.
“Don't tell me,” Giordino said sarcastically, “an investigation is under way.”
“That goes without saying,” replied Davis. “All we know is that they went missing after being unloaded from the ambulances at the morgue. We were lucky, however, in obtaining a make on one of your assassins when a paramedic pulled off a glove so he could try for a pulse. The corpse's hand lay flat on your polished hangar floor and left a set of three fingerprints. The Russians identified the killer for us as a Pavel Gavrovich, a former high-level Defense Ministry agent and assassin. For a marine engineer with NUMA to take out a professional hit man, Mr. Pitt, a man who had killed at least twenty-two people that we know of, is a polished achievement.”
“Professional or not,” said Pitt quietly, “Gavrovich made the mistake of underestimating his prey.”
“I find it incredible that Qin Shang can
make fools of the entire United States government with such ease,” said San-decker acidly.
Pitt sat back and stared down as if seeing something beneath the surface of the conference table. “He couldn't. Not unless he had inside help from the Justice Department and other agencies of the federal government.”
Wilbur Hill of the CIA spoke for the first time. He was a blond man with a mustache, the pale blue eyes set widely apart, as if he could observe movements off to his sides. “I'll likely get into trouble for saying this, but we have strong suspicions that Qin Shang's influence reaches into the White House.”
“As we speak,” said Davis, “a congressional committee and Justice Department prosecutors are looking into tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent contributions by the People's Republic of China that were funneled into the President's future election campaign through Qin Shang.”
“When we met with the President,” said Sandecker, “he spoke as if the Chinese were the greatest scourge on the country since the Civil War. Now you tell me his fingers are in Qin Shang's wallet.”
“There is simply no underestimating the morals of a politician,” Giordino said with a sardonic twist of his lips.
“Be that as it may,” Monroe said gravely, “political ethics are not the job of INS. Our primary concern at the moment is with the huge numbers of illegal Chinese aliens that are being smuggled into the country by Qin Shang Maritime Limited before being killed or enslaved by criminal syndicates.”
“Commissioner Monroe is quite correct,” said Harper. “The duty of INS is to plug the flow, not prosecute murders.”
“I can't speak for Mr. Hill and the CIA,” said Davis, “but the Bureau has been heavily involved with investigating Qin Shang's domestic crimes against the American people for three years.”
“Our inquiries, on the other hand, are focused more on his overseas operations,” offered CIA's Hill.
“An uphill battle on any front,” said Pitt thoughtfully. “If Shang has forces within our own government working against your efforts, it will make all your jobs that much tougher.”
“Nobody here thinks it will be a piece of cake,” said Mon-roe formally.
Julia jumped in. “Aren't we overlooking the fact that besides being an international body smuggler, Qin Shang is a mass murderer. I experienced his ruthlessness firsthand. There is no counting the untold numbers of innocent people and children who lie dead because of his greed. The atrocities his henchmen have committed under his direction are hideous and monstrous. He deals in crimes against humanity. We must put an end to the slaughter, and quickly.”
For a long moment no one said a word. Every man at the table knew of the horrors Julia had witnessed and suffered. Finally, Monroe broke the silence.
“We all understand your feelings, Ms. Lee, but all of us are working under laws and regulations that must be followed. I promise you that every possible effort is being made to stop Qin Shang. As long as I am at the helm of the INS, we won't rest until his operation is destroyed and he is arrested and convicted.”
“I can safely say that goes for Mr. Hill and myself as well,” added Davis.
“Not good enough,” said Pitt quietly, turning every head.
“You doubt our resolve?” asked Monroe indignantly.
“No, but I totally disagree with your methods.”
“Government policy dictates our actions,” Davis said. “All of us must work under guidelines set by the American justice system.”
Pitt's face went dark as a midnight sky. “I saw for myself a sea of dead on the bottom of Orion Lake. I saw the poor wretched souls locked up in cells. Four men died protecting Julia and me—”
“I know what you're driving at, Mr. Pitt,” said Davis. “But we have no evidence directly linking Qin Shang to those crimes. Certainly not enough to call for an indictment.”
“The man is shrewd,” said Harper. “He's shielded himself from direct involvement. Without solid proof that he is in some way responsible, we can't nail him.”
“If he's laughed in your face every step of the way,” said Pitt, “what makes you think he's going to suddenly play dumb and fall into your waiting arms?”
“No man can defy the far-reaching investigative powers of our government indefinitely,” said Hill earnestly. “I promise you that he will be tried, convicted and sentenced quite soon.”
“The man is a foreign national,” said Sandecker. “You arrest him anywhere in the United States and the Chinese government will raise every kind of hell with the White House and State Department. Boycotts, sanctions on trade goods, you name it. No way are they going to let you take their fair-haired boy out of circulation.”
“The way I see it, Mr. Hill,” said Giordino, “you whistle up one of your CIA hit squads and eliminate Shang neatly and cleanly. Problem solved.”
“Despite what many think, the CIA does not do assassinations,” said Hill testily.
“Madness,” muttered Pitt. “Suppose Shang's hit men were successful last night and killed Julia and me. You'd still be sitting here claiming you didn't have enough cold evidence to indict the man who ordered our murders.”
“Unfortunately, that's the way it is,” said Monroe.
“Qin Shang isn't about to stop there,” Julia said in frustration. “He fully intends to kill Dirk. He said as much at his party last night.”
“And I informed him that it's only fair that we play by the same rules,” said Pitt. “He now thinks I've hired a team of assassins to take him out too.”
“You threatened Qin Shang to his face?” Harper asked incredulously. “How could you dare?”
“It was easy,” Pitt answered casually. “Despite his wealth and power, he still puts his pants on one leg at a time the same as me. I thought it might be nice if he looks over his shoulder like the rest of his intended victims.”
“You're joking, of course,” said Monroe, scorn in his tone. “You don't really conspire to murder Shang.”
Pitt answered in a smooth voice. “Oh, but I do. As they say in the old western movies, it's either him or me, and next time I intend to shoot first.”
Monroe looked worried. He looked across the table at Hill and Davis. Then he focused on Sandecker. “Admiral, I called this meeting in the hope of enlisting Mr. Pitt in cooperating with our operation. But it seems he has become a loose cannon. Since he is under your authority, I strongly suggest you give him a leave of absence. Peter here will arrange for his protection in a safe house on the coast of Maine.”
“What about Julia?” demanded Pitt. “How do you intend to keep her safe from further harm?”
“Ms. Lee is an agent with INS,” said Harper in an official tone. “She will continue to work the case. A team of our agents will stand guard over her movements. I guarantee that she will be safe.”
Pitt stared across the table at Sandecker. “How do you call it, Admiral?”
Sandecker pulled his red Vandyke to a point. Only Pitt and Giordino recognized the wolfish glint in his eyes. “It would appear we have little choice in the matter. A safe house might be the best place for you to lay low until Qin Shang and his criminal activities are terminated.”
Pitt said soberly, “Well, I guess I have little say in the matter. A safe house it is.”
Sandecker wasn't fooled for an instant by Pitt's easy acceptance. He knew his special projects director did not have the slightest intention of leaving the room like a lamb. “Then it's settled.” Suddenly he laughed sharply.
“May I ask what you find so funny, Admiral?” asked Monroe irritably.
“Sorry, Mr. Monroe. But I'm relieved to assume that the INS, the FBI and CIA have no further use for NUMA.”
“That is correct. After your people bungled their underwater investigations of Qin Shang Maritime's facilities in Hong Kong and Sungari, I see it as a wasted effort to involve your agency any further.”
Monroe's cutting words produced no fury, no outrage, nor did they incite wrath. Pitt and Giordino sat there and took it i
n stride, expressing no emotions. Sandecker barely managed to reply to the commissioner's insulting remarks. He settled for clenching his fists out of sight under the table.
Pitt rose to his feet, followed by Giordino. “I know when I'm not wanted.” He grinned at Sandecker. “I'll wait in the car.” He paused to grasp lightly one of Julia's hands, raise it to his lips and kiss it. “Have you ever lain on the beach at Maza-tlan and watched the sunset over the Sea of Cortez?” he whispered in her ear.
She looked self-consciously up and down at the faces around the table, her face reddening. “I've never even been to Mexico.”
“You will,” he promised, “you will.” Then he released her hand and leisurely strolled from the conference room, trailed by Giordino and Sandecker.
Unlike most directors of U.S. governmental agencies, who demanded to be carried around Washington by limousine, Admiral Sandecker preferred to drive himself. After leaving the INS headquarters building, he steered the turquoise Jeep, which was one of the NUMA fleet of transportation vehicles, along the east side of the Potomac River on the Maryland shore. After dropping several miles below the city, he turned off the road and stopped the Jeep in a parking lot next to a small boat dock. Locking the car, Sandecker led the way across the floating wooden dock to a sixty-year-old double-ender whaleboat that had once served as Admiral Bull Halsey's shore boat during the war in the Pacific. After finding it in shabby condition, he had lovingly restored it to its original state. While he turned the handle that kicked the four-cylinder Buda diesel engine to life, Pitt and Giordino cast off the mooring lines. Then they climbed aboard as the little boat chugged out into the river.
“I thought we'd hold a little private talk before we returned to the NUMA building,” Sandecker said above the exhaust as he held the long tiller in the stern under one arm. “As ridiculous as it sounds, I'm leery of conversing in my own office.”