“So where does Dorsett Consolidated go from here?” asked the sheik.
“Legally,” replied the chairman, “the entire business passes into the hands of Dorsett’s two grandsons.”
“How old are they?”
“A few months this side of seven years old.”
“That young?”
“I didn’t know any of his daughters were married,” said the Indian real-estate developer.
“They weren’t,” said the chairman flatly. “Maeve Dorsett bore twins out of wedlock. The father comes from a wealthy family of sheep ranchers. My sources say that he is an intelligent and reasonable man. He has already been named to act as guardian and administer assets of the estate.”
The Dutchman stared down the table at the chairman. “Who has been named to handle the boys’ corporate affairs?”
“A name you’re all well familiar with.” The chairman paused and smiled sardonically. “Until the grandchildren come of age, the day-to-day business activities of Dorsett Consolidated and its subsidiary divisions will be managed by the Strouser family of diamond merchants.”
“There’s retribution for you,” said the American elder statesman.
“What plans are in place should the diamond market collapse on its own? We can’t control prices forever.”
“I’ll answer that,” said the South African. “When we can no longer maintain a grip on diamond prices, we turn from natural stones excavated by expensive mining operations to those produced in a laboratory.”
“Are fakes as good?” asked the British publisher.
“Chemical laboratories are currently producing cultured emeralds, rubies and sapphires with the same physical, chemical and optical properties as stones mined from the ground. They are so perfect that trained gemologists have difficulty detecting any distinction. The same is true with laboratory-created diamonds.”
“Can they be sold without disclosure?” asked the chairman.
“No need to deceive. Just as we educated the public into believing diamonds were the only stone to own, so can cultured stones be advertised and promoted as the most practical to buy. The only basic difference is that one took millions of years for nature to create, the other fifty hours in a laboratory. The new wave of the future, if you will.”
The room went silent for a moment as each man considered the potential profits. Then the chairman smiled and nodded. “It would seem, gentlemen, that no matter which way the pendulum swings, our future earnings are secure.”
Pitt had been lucky, as every nurse on the floor of the hospital in Hobart, Tasmania, never ceased telling him. After a bout of peritonitis from the perforated colon, and the removal of the bullet from his pelvic girdle, where if had made a nice dent in the bone, he began to feel as if he had rejoined the living. When his lung reinflated and he could breathe freely, he ate like a starving lumberjack.
Giordino and Sandecker hung around until they were assured by the medical staff that Pitt was on the road to recovery, a fact attested to by his requests, or rather demands, for something to drink that wasn’t fruit juice or milk. Demands that were mostly ignored.
The admiral and Giordino then escorted Maeve’s boys to Melbourne, to their father, who had flown in from his family’s sheep station in the outback for Maeve’s funeral. A big man, Aussie to the core, with a university degree in animal husbandry, he promised Sandecker and Giordino to raise the boys in good surroundings. Though he trusted Strouser & Sons’ business judgments in their management of Dorsett Consolidated Mining, he wisely retained attorneys to watch over the twins’ best interests. Satisfied the boys were in good hands and that Pitt would soon be ready to return home, the admiral and Giordino flew back to Washington, where Sandecker received a tumultuous welcome and a round of ceremonial banquets as the man who fought a one-sided battle to save Honolulu from a tragic disaster.
Any thoughts the President or Wilber Hutton might have had of replacing him at NUMA quickly died. Word around the capital city was that the admiral would be at the helm of his beloved National Underwater & Marine Agency long after the current administration left the White House.
The doctor walked into the room and found Pitt standing at the window, gazing longingly down at the Derwent River flowing through the heart of Hobart. “You’re supposed to be in bed,” said the doctor in his Australian twang, pronouncing bed like byd.
Pitt gave him a hard look. “I’ve laid on a mattress a three-toed sloth wouldn’t sleep on for five days. I’ve served my time. Now I’m out of here.”
The doctor smiled slyly. “You have no clothes, you know. The rags you were wearing when they brought you in were thrown out in the trash.”
“Then I’ll walk out of here in my bathrobe and this stupid hospital gown. Whoever invented these things, by the way, should have them stuffed up his anal canal until the strings in the back come out his ears.”
“I can see arguing with you is wasting my other patients’ time.” The doctor shrugged. “It’s a bleeding wonder your body still functions. I’ve seldom seen so many scars on one man. Go if you must. I’ll see the nurse finds you some decent street clothes so you won’t be arrested for impersonating an American tourist.”
No NUMA jet this trip. Pitt flew commercial on United Airlines. As he shuffled onto the aircraft, still stiff and with a grinding ache in his side, the flight attendants, women except for one man, stared at him in open curiosity, watching him search the overhead numbers for his seat.
One attendant, brown hair neatly coiffed, eyes almost as green as Pitt’s and soft with concern, came over to him. “May I show you to your seat, sir?”
Pitt had spent a solid minute studying himself in a mirror before he caught a cab from the hospital to the airport. If he’d auditioned for a movie role that called for the walking dead, the director would have hired him in an instant the livid red scar across his forehead; the vacant, bloodshot eyes and gaunt, pale face; his movements like a ninety-year-old man with arthritis. His skin was blotched from the burns, his eyebrows were nonexistent, and his once thick, curly black hair looked like a sheep herder had tried styling it in a crewcut.
“Yes, thank you,” he said more out of embarrassment than appreciation.
“Are you Mr. Pitt?” she asked as she motioned to an empty seat by the window.
“At the moment I wish I were someone else, but yes, I’m Pitt.”
“You’re a lucky man,” she said smiling.
“So a dozen nurses kept telling me.”
“No, I mean you have friends who are very concerned about you. The flight crew were told you would be flying with us and were requested to make you as comfortable as possible.”
How in hell did Sandecker know he’d escaped the hospital, left directly for the airport and purchased a standby ticket to Washington, he wondered.
As it turned out, the flight attendants had little to do for him. He slept most of the trip, coming awake only to eat, watch a movie with Clint Eastwood playing the role of a grandfather, and drink champagne. He did not even know the plane was approaching Dulles International until the wheels thumped down and woke him up.
He came off the shuttle bus from the aircraft into the terminal, mildly surprised and disappointed that no one waited to greet him. If Sandecker had alerted the airline’s flight crew, he certainly knew when the plane was scheduled to arrive. Not even Al Giordino was waiting at the curb when he walked haltingly toward a taxi stand. A clear case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind, he told himself as his mood of depression deepened.
It was eight o’clock in the evening when he exited the cab, punched his code into the security system of his hangar and walked inside. He turned on the lights that reflected in the mirrored finish and chrome of his collector cars.
A tall object that nearly touched the ceiling stood in front of him, an object that hadn’t been there when he left.
For several moments, Pitt stared in rapt fascination at the totem pole. A beautifully carved eagle with spread wings graced the top. Then, in descending order, came a grizzly bear with its cub, a raven, a frog, a wolf, some
