under a dozen flashlights. Then Dame Fortune smiled. The pilot didn't flick on his landing lights until the craft had passed safely beyond where they stood. It banked sharply toward the roof of what looked like a glass-walled office building, hovered and then settled.
Pitt took the binoculars from Giordino and trained them on the aircraft as it landed and the rotor blades slowly swung to a stop. The door came open and several figures in lavender jumpsuits crowded around the steps, as a woman stepped down, wearing a gold jumpsuit. He gently rotated the adjustment until he had a sharp definition. He couldn't be absolutely positive, but he would have bet a year's pay that the person who climbed from the helicopter was the woman who called herself Rita Anderson.
His face tightened with anger as he passed the binoculars back to Giordino. 'Look closely at the queen in the gold jumpsuit.'
Giordino studied the woman closely and watched as she and her retinue walked toward the elevator that led down from the roof. 'Our pal from the yacht,' he spoke, in a voice low and vicious. 'The one who murdered Renee. My kingdom for a sniper rifle.'
'Nothing we can do about her,' Pitt said regretfully. 'Our number one priority is to get the Lowenhardts to Washington in one piece.'
'And speaking of one piece, how are we getting past an electric fence, three Dobermans and two heavily armed security guards?'
'Not through,' Pitt said quietly, as his mind calculated the odds on a long shot, 'but
The Lowenhardts stood quietly, not quite knowing what to make of the conversation. Giordino followed Pitt's gaze toward the helicopter on the top of the office building a block away, his expression cool and focused. Wordlessly, silently, a plan took root between them. Pitt lifted the binoculars and studied the building.
'The headquarters office of the facility,' he said. 'It looks unguarded.'
'No reason for them to lock people inside. All the workers are loyal employees of Odyssey.'
'And no paranoia about unwanted guests entering through the front doors.' Pitt tilted the glasses. The pilots followed Rita into the elevator, leaving the helicopter seemingly deserted. 'We'll never have a better opportunity.'
'I fail to see an opportunity in gaining entrance to a busy office building, bluffing our way past two hundred workers, trespassing to the tenth floor to steal a helicopter without someone suspecting a band of rats in their lair.'
'Maybe it would help if I could find you a lavender jumpsuit.'
Giordino gave Pitt a look that would have withered a redwood. 'I've already gone beyond the call of duty. You'll have to think of something else.'
Pitt walked up to the Lowenhardts, who were standing with their arms around each other. They looked apprehensive but not frightened. 'We're going to enter the headquarters building and ascend to the roof, where we will appropriate the helicopter,' Pitt said. 'Stay close to me. If we run into trouble, drop to the floor. We can't have you obstructing our line of fire. Our best hope is to act audacious. Al and I will try to make it look like we're escorting you to a meeting or interrogation or whatever scam works best. Once we reach the roof, hurry into the aircraft quickly and tighten your seat belts. The takeoff might be very rough.'
Claus and Hilda solemnly assured him they would follow his instructions. They were in it now up to their ears and had crossed over the point of no return. Pitt had faith in their adhering to his instructions to the letter. They had no choice.
They walked along the edge of the street until they reached the steps leading up to the entrance of the headquarters. A passing truck caught them in its headlights. But the driver took no notice of them. Two women, one in lavender, the other in a white jumpsuit, were standing just outside the portal, smoking cigarettes. This time with Giordino in the lead, who smiled politely, they passed through the big glass door into the lobby. Several women and only one man milled about the lobby in conversation. Few looked their way as Pitt and the others passed, and those who glanced at them did so without suspicion.
Moving along as if it was a common, everyday routine, Giordino hurried the group into an empty elevator before the doors closed. But no sooner had everyone entered, and before he could push the button for the roof exit, than an attractive blond woman in lavender entered, leaned in front of him and pressed the button for the eighth floor.
She turned and studied the Lowenhardts, paused significantly as a look of wariness came to her eyes. 'Where are you taking these people?' she demanded in English.
Giordino hesitated, unsure of what tack to take. Undaunted, Pitt stepped beside Giordino and said in broken Spanish,
The eyes suddenly blazed. 'I wasn't speaking to you!' she snapped maliciously. 'I was talking to the lady.'
Caught in the middle of the exchange, Giordino was afraid of speaking, his voice a sure giveaway that he wasn't feminine. When he spoke, it was a squeaky high pitch that sounded odd and hollow inside the elevator.
'I speak a little
His answer was a penetrating stare. She studied his face and her eyes widened as she saw his five o'clock shadow. She reached out and rubbed one hand across his cheek. 'You're a man!' she blurted. She wheeled and reached out to stop the elevator at the next floor, but Pitt slapped her hand down.
The Odyssey representative looked at Pitt in disbelief. 'How dare you?'
He smiled devilishly. 'You've made such an impression on me that I'm stealing you away to a better world.'
'You're crazy!'
'Like a fox.' The elevator stopped on the eighth floor, but Pitt pushed the close door button. The doors remained shut, the motor hummed and it continued upward to its last stop on the roof above the tenth floor.
'What is going on here?' For the first time she took a good look at the Lowenhardts, who seemed amused by the exchange. Her face clouded. 'I know these people. They're supposed to be confined at night in the prison building. Where are you taking them?'
'To the nearest bathroom,' Pitt answered nonchalantly.
The woman didn't know whether to stop the elevator or scream. Confused, she fell back on her womanly instinct and opened her mouth to scream. Pitt showed no hesitation in ramming his right fist into her jaw. She went down like a sack of wet flour. Giordino grabbed her under the arms before she hit the floor and pulled her into a corner, where she was out of sight when the doors opened.
'Why didn't you simply gag her?' asked Hilda, shocked at seeing Pitt brutally strike the woman.
'Because she would have bitten my hand, and I didn't feel in a chivalrous mood to let her do it.'
Agonizingly, with apparently infinite slowness, the elevator rose the final few feet of its ascent and reached the stop on the tenth floor leading to the roof. After it eased smoothly to a halt, the doors spread apart and they exited.
Right into a group of four uniformed security guards who had been standing out of sight behind a large air-conditioning unit.
The atmosphere was one of calm if not an equal level of anxiety in Sandecker's penthouse apartment at the Watergate in Washington. He paced the floor under a trail of blue smoke from one of his mammoth, specially wrapped cigars. Some men might have acted as gentlemen with ladies present rather than enshrouding them with tobacco fumes, but not the admiral. They either accepted his noxious habit or he didn't entertain them. And, despite this liability, single ladies of Washington passed over his doorstep with surprising frequency.
Considered a prestigious catch because he was an unmarried widower with a daughter and three grandchildren who lived in Hong Kong, Sandecker was besieged with dinner invitations. Either fortuitously or unluckily, depending upon how one looked at it, he was constantly introduced to single ladies looking for a husband or a relationship. Amazingly, the admiral was a master at juggling five ladies at the same time, one of the reasons he was a fitness nut.
His lady of the evening, Congresswoman Bertha Garcia, who stepped into the office of her late husband, Marcus, was sitting on the balcony, drinking a glass of fine port while viewing the lights of the capital. Stylishly attired in a short black cocktail dress after attending a party with the admiral, she gazed with amusement at
