The Navy began airlifting the people whom their rescue operation had pulled from the water, flying them to naval air stations and hospitals nearest their homes. These were the first to be interviewed, and their conflicting stories blamed the explosion on everything from a floating mine of World War Two, to a cargo of weapons and munitions being smuggled by the Russians into Central America.
The Soviet diplomatic missions across the United States reacted badly by accusing the U.S. Navy of carelessly launching a missile at the Leonin Andreyev: a charge that had good play in the Eastern bloc countries but was generally shrugged off elsewhere as a crude propaganda ploy.
The excitement rose to a crescendo over a human interest story not seen since the sinking of the Andrea Doria in 1956. The continued silence from the Chalmette infuriated the reporters and correspondents.
There was a mad rush to charter boats, airplanes and helicopters to meet the ship as she neared the coast. Fueled by the Korean captain's silence, speculation ran rampant as the tension built. Investigations into the cause were being demanded by every politician who could contrive an interview.
The Chalmette remained obstinate to the end. As she entered the main channel, she was surrounded by a wolf pack of buzzing aircraft and circling pleasure yachts and fishing boats crawling with reporters blasting questions through bullhorns. To their utter frustration, the Korean seamen simply waved and shouted back in their native tongue.
Slowly approaching the docking terminal at Dodge Island in the Port of Miami, the Chalmette was greeted by a massive crowd of over a hundred thousand people surging against a police cordon blocking the entrance to the pier. A hundred vineo and film cameras recorded the scene as the giant container ship's mooring lines were dropped over rustin-, bollards, gangways were rolled against the hull, and the survivors stood at the railings, astounded at the turnout.
Some appeared overjoyed to see dry land once again, others displayed solemn grief for husbands or wives, sons or daughters, they would never see again. A great hush suddenly fell on the mass of spectators. It was later described by an anchorman on the evening TV news as "the silence one experiences at the lowering of a coffin into the ground."
Unnoticed in the drama, a host of FBI agents dressed in the uniforms of immigration officials and customs inspectors swarmed aboard the ship, confirming the inentities of the surviving passengers and crewmen of the Leonin Andreyev, interrogating each on the whereabouts of Congresswoman Smith, and searching every foot of the ship for any sign of her.
Al Giordino questioned the people whose faces he recalled seeing in the lifeboat. None of them could remember what happened to Loren or the Oriental steward after climbing aboard the Chalmette. One woman thought she saw them led away by the ship's captain, but she couldn't be sure. To many of those who had narrowly escaped death, their minds conveniently blanked olit much of the catastrophe.
The captain and his crew claimed to know nothing. Photos of Loren provoked no recognition. Interpreters interrogated them in Korean, but their stories were the same. They never saw her. Six hours of in-depth search -turned up nothing. At last the reporters were allowed to scramble onboard. The crew were acknowledged heroes of the sea. The image harvested by Bougainville Maritime and their courageous employees, who braved a sea of blazing oil to save four hundred souls, was a public relations windfall, and Min Koryo made the most of it.
It was dark and raining when Giordino wearily made his way across the now emptied dock and entered the customs office of the terminal.
He sat at a desk for a long time staring out into the rainsoaked murk, his dark eyes mere shadows on his face.
He turned and looked at the telephone as though it was the enemy.
Hyping his courage by a drink of brandy from a half-pint bottle in his coat pocket and lighting a cigar he had stolen from Admiral Sandecker, he dialed a number and let it ring, almost hoping no one would answer.
Then a voice came on.
Giordino moistened his lips with his tongue and said, "Forgive me, Dirk. We were too late. She was gone."
The helicopter came in from the south and flashed on its landing lights. The pilot settled his craft into position, and then lowered it onto the roof of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The side door dropped open and Lee Tong stepped out. He swiftly walked over to a privately guarded entrance and took an elevator down to his grandmother's living quarters.
He bent down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. "How was your day, aunumi?"
"Disastrous," she said tiredly. "Someone is sabotaging our bank records, shipping transactions, every piece of business that goes through a computer. What was once a study in efficient management procedures is now a mess."
Lee Tong's eyes narrowed. "Who can be doing it?"
"Every trail leads to NUMA."
"Dirk Pitt."
"He's the prime suspect."
"No more," said Lee Tong reassuringly. "Pitt is dead."
She looked up, her aged eyes questioning. "You know that for a fact?"
He nodded. "Pitt was onboard the Leonin Andreyev. An opportune stroke of luck. I watched him die."
"Your Caribbean mission was only half favorable. Moran lives."
"Yes, but Pitt is out of our hair and the Leonin Andreyev evens the score for the Venice and the gold."
Min Koryo suddenly lashed out at him. "That slimy scum Antonov tricked us out of one billion dollars in gold and cost us a good ship and crew, and you say the score is even?"
Lee Tong had never seen his grandmother so furious. "I'm enraged too, aunumi, but we're hardly in a position to declare war on the Soviet Union."
She leaned forward, her hands clasped so tightly around the armrests of her wheelchair that the knuckles showed through the delicate skin. "The Russians don't know what it's like to have terrorists striking at their throats. I want you to mount bombing attacks against their merchant fleet, especially their oil tankers."
Lee Tong put his arm around her shoulder as he would a hurt child.
"The Hebrew eye-for-an-eye proverb may satisfy the vindictive soul, but it never ands to the bank account. Do not blind yourself with anger."
"What do you expect?" she snapped. "Antonov has the President and the gold where his Navy can salvage it. We allowed Lugovoy and his staff to leave with the President. Years of planning and millions of dollars wasted, and for what?"
"We have not lost our bargaining power," said Lee Tong. "Vice President Margolin is still secure at the laboratory. And we have an unexpected bonus in Congresswoman Loren Smith."
"You abducted her?" she asked in surprise.
"She was also onboard the cruise ship. After the sinking, I arranged to have her flown off the Chalmette to the laboratory."
"She might prove useful," Min Koryo conceded.
"Don't be disheartened, aunumi," said Lee Tong. "We are still in the game. Antonov and his KGB bedfellow Polevoi badly underestimated the Americans' pathological devotion to individual rights. Instructing the President to close Congress to increase his powers was a stupid blunder. He will be impeached and thrown out of Washington within the week."
"Not so long as he has the backing of the Pentagon."
Lee Tong inserted a cigarette in the long silver holder. "The Joint Chiefs are sitting on the fence. They can't keep the House from meeting forever. Once they've voted for impeachment, the generals and admirals won't waste any time in swinging their support to Congress and the new chief executive."
"Which will be Alan Moran," Min Koryo said, as if she had a bad taste in her mouth.
"Unless we release Vincent Margolin."
"And cut our own throat. We'd be better off making him disappear for good or arrange to have his body found floating in the Potomac River."
"Listen, aunumi," said Lee Tong, his black eyes glinting. "We have two options. One, the laboratory is in perfect working order.
Lugovoy's data is still in the computer disks. His mind-control techniques are ours for the taking. We ca
n hire other scientists to program Margolin's brain. This time it will not be the Russians who control the White House, but Bougainville Maritime."
"But if Moran is sworn in as President before the brain-control transfer is accomplished, Margolin will be of no use to us."
"Option two," said Lee Tong. "Strike a deal with Moran to eliminate Margolin and pave his way to the White House."
"Can he be bought?"
"Moran is a shrewd manipulator. His political power base is mortared with underhanded financial dealings. Believe me, aunumi, Alan Moran will pay any price for the Presidency."
Min Koryo looked at her grandson with great respect. He possessed an almost mystical grasp of the abstract. She smiled faintly.
Nothing excited her merchant blood more than reversing a failure into a success. "Strike your bargain," she said.
"I'm happy you agree."
"You must move the laboratory facility to a safe place," she said, her mind beginning to shift gears. "At least until we know where we stand. Government investigators will soon fit the pieces together and concentrate their search on the Eastern Seaboard."
"My thoughts also," said Lee Tong. "I took the liberty of ordering one of our tugs to move it out of South Carolina waters to our private receiving dock."
Min Koryo nodded. "An excellent choice."
"And a practical one," he replied.
"How do we handle the congresswoman?" Min Koryo asked.
"If she talks to the press she might bring up a number of embarrassing questions for Moran to answer about his presence onboard the Leonin Andreyev. He'd be smart to pay for her silence also."
"Yes, he lied himself into a hole on that one."
"Or we can run her through the mind-control experiment and send her back to Washington. A servant in Congress could prove a great asset."
"But if Moran included her in the deal?"
"Then we sink the laboratory along with Margolin and Loren Smith in a hundred fathoms of water."
Unknown to Lee Tong and Min Koryo, their conversation was transmitted to the roof of a nearby apartment building where a secondary reception dish relayed the radio frequency signals to a voice-activated tape recorder in a dusty, vacant office several blocks away on Hudson Street.
The turn-of-the-century brick building was due to be demolished, and although most of the offices were empty, a few tenants were taking their sweet time about relocating.
Sal Casio had the tenth floor all to himself. He squatted in this particular site because the janitorial crew never bothered to step off the elevator, and the window had a direct line of sight to the secondary receiver. A cot, a sleeping bag and a small electric burner were all he needed to get by, and except for the receiver/ recorder, his only other piece of furniture was an old faded and torn lobby chair that he'd salvaged out of a back-alley trash bin.
He turned the lock with his master key and entered, carrying a paper sack containing a corned beef sandwich and three bottles of Herman Joseph beer. The office was hot and stuffy, so he opened a window and stared at the lights across the river in New Jersey.
Casio performed the tedious job of surveillance automatically, welcoming the isolation that gave him a chance to let his mind run loose. He recalled the happy times of his marriage, the growing-up years with his daughter, and he began to feel mellowed. His long quest for retribution hadfinally threaded the needle and was drawing to a close. All that was left, he mused, was to write the Bougainville epilogue.
He looked down at the recorder while taking a bite out of the sandwich and noted the tape had rolled during his trip to the delicatessen. Morning would be soon enough to rewind and listen to it, he decided. Also, if he was playing back the recording when voices activated the system again, the previous conversation would be erased.
Casio had no way of guessing the critical content on the tape.
The decision to wait was dictated by routine procedure, but the delay was to prove terribly costly.
"May I talk to you, General?"
About to leave for the day, Metcalf was in the act of snapping closed his briefcase. His eyes narrowed in apprehension at recognizing Alan Mercier, who was standing in the doorway.
"Of course, please come in and sit down."
The President's National Security Adviser moved toward the desk but remained standing. "I have some news you aren't going to like."
Metcalf sighed. "Bad news seems to be the order of the day lately. What is it?"
Mercier handed him an unmarked binder holding several sheets of typewritten paper and spoke in a soft, hurried voice. "Orders direct from the President. All American forces in Europe must be pulled out by Christmas. He's given you twenty days to draw up a plan for total withdrawal from NATO."
Metcalf slumped into his chair like a man struck with a hammer.
'It's not possible" he mumbled. "I can't believe the President would issue such orders!"
"I was as shocked as you are when he dropped the bomb on me," said Mercier. "Oates and I tried to reason with him, but it was useless.
He's demanding everything be removed-Pershing and cruise missiles, all equipment, supply depots, our whole organization."
Metcalf was bewildered. "But what about our Western alliances?"
Mercier made a helpless gesture with his hands. "His outlook, one I've never heard him voice before, is to let Europe police Europe."
"But good God!" Metcalf snapped in sudden anger. "He's handing the entire continent to the Russians on a gold tray."
"I won't argue with you."
"I'll be damned if I'll comply."
"What will you do?"
"Go direct to the White House and resign," Metcalf said adamantly.
"Before you act hastily, I suggest you meet with Sam Emmett.
"Why?"
"There is something you should know," Mercier said in a low tone, "and Sam is in a better position to explain it than me."
THE President WAS sitting at a writing table in his pajamas and bathrobe when Fawcett walked into the bedroom.
"Well, did you speak with Moran?"
Fawcett's face was grim. "He refused to listen to any of your proposals."
"is that it?"
"He said you were finished as President, and nothing you could say was of any consequence. Then he threw in a few insults."
"I want to hear them," the President demanded sharply.
Fawcett sighed uncomfortably. "He said your behavior was that of a madman and that you belonged in the psycho ward. He compared you with Benedict Arnold and claimed he would see your administration wiped from the history books. After he ran through several more irrelevant slurs, he suggested you do the country a great service by committing suicide, thereby saving the taxpayers a long-drawn-out investigation and expensive trial."
The President's face became a mask of rage. "That sniveling little bastard thinks he's going to put me in a courtroom?"
"It's no secret, Moran is pulling out all stops to take your place."
"His feet are too small to fill my shoes," the President said through tight lips. "And his head is too big to fit the job."
"To hear him tell it, his right hand is already raised to take the oath of office," Fawcett said. "The proposed impeachment proceeding is only the first step in a blueprint for a transition from you to him."
"Alan Moran will never occupy the White House," the President said, his voice flat and hard.
"No congressional session, no impeachment," said Fawcett. "But you can't keep them corralled indefinitely."
"They can't meet until I give the word."
"What about tomorrow morning at Lisner Auditorium?"
"The troops will break that up in short order."
"Suppose the Virginia and Maryland National Guardsmen stand their ground?"
"For how long against veteran soldiers and Marines?"
"Long enough for a great many to die," said Fawcett.
"So what?" the President scoffed coldly. "The longer I keep Congre
ss in disarray, the more I can accomplish. A few deaths are a small price to pay."
Fawcett looked at him uneasily. This was not the same man who solemnly swore during his campaign for the Presidency that no American boy would be ordered to fight and die under his administration. It was all he could do to act out his role of friend and adviser. After a moment he shook his head. "I hope you're not being overly destructive."
"Getting cold feet, Dan?"