The man turned to Koplin and smiled. 'Dr. Koplin, I presume?' The tone was soft and effortless.
The stranger pushed a handgun with silencer into a pocket, knelt down to eye level, and nodded at the blood spreading through the material of Koplin's parka. 'I'd better get you to where I can take a look at that.' Then he picked Koplin up as one might a child and began trudging down the mountain toward the sea.
'Who are you?' Koplin muttered.
'My name is Pitt. Dirk Pitt.'
'I don't understand . . . where did you come from?'
Koplin never heard the answer. At that moment, the black cover of unconsciousness abruptly lifted up, and he fell gratefully under it.
3
Seagram finished off a margarita as he waited in a little garden restaurant just off Capitol Street to have lunch with his wife. She was late. Never in the eight years they had been married had he known her to arrive anywhere on time. He caught the waiter's attention and gestured for another drink.
Dana Seagram finally entered and stood in the foyer a moment searching for her husband. She spotted him and began meandering between the tables in his direction. She wore an orange sweater and a brown tweed skirt so youthfully it made her seem like a coed in graduate school. Her hair was blond and tied with a scarf, and her coffee-brown eyes were funny and gay and quick.
'Been waiting long?' she said, smiling.
'Eighteen minutes to be precise,' he said. 'About two minutes, ten seconds longer than your usual arrivals.'
'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Admiral Sandecker called a staff meeting, and it dragged on later than I'd figured.'
'What's his latest brainstorm?'
'A new wing for the Maritime Museum. He's got the budget and now he's making plans to obtain the artifacts.'
'Artifacts?' Seagram asked.
'Bits and pieces salvaged from famous ships.' The waiter came with Seagram's drink and Dana ordered a daiquiri.. 'It's amazing how little is left. A life belt or two from the Lusitania, a ventilator from the Maine here, an anchor from the Bounty there; none of it housed decently under one roof.'
'I should think there are better ways of blowing the taxpayer's money.'
Her face flushed. 'What do you mean?'
'Collecting old junk,' he said diffidently, 'enshrining rusted and corroded bits of non-identifiable trash under a glass case to be dusted and gawked at. It's a waste.'
The battle flags were raised.
'The preservation of ships and boats provides an important link with man's historical past.' Dana's brown eyes blazed. 'Contributing to knowledge is an endeavor an asshole like you cares nothing about.'
'Spoken like a true marine archaeologist,' he said.
She smiled crookedly. 'It still frosts your balls that your wife made something of herself, doesn't it?'
'The only thing that frosts my balls, sweetheart, is your locker-room language. Why is it every liberated female thinks it's chic to cuss?'
'You're hardly one to provide a lesson in savoir-faire,' she said. 'Five years in the big city and you still dress like an Omaha anvil salesman. Why can't you style your hair like other men? That Ivy League haircut went out years ago. I'm embarrassed to be seen with you.'
'My position with the administration is such that I can't afford to look like a hippie of the sixties.'
'Lord, lord.' She shook her head wearily. 'Why couldn't I have married a plumber or a tree surgeon? Why did I have to fall in love with a physicist from the farm belt?'
'It's comforting to know you loved me once.'
'I still love you, Gene,' she said, her eyes turning soft. 'This chasm between us has only opened in the last two years. We can't even have lunch together without trying to hurt each other. Why don't we say to hell with it and spend the rest of the afternoon making love in a motel. I'm in the mood to feel deliciously sexy.'
'Would it make any difference in the long run?'
'It's a start.'
'I can't.'
'Your damned dedication to duty again,' she said, turning away. 'Don't you see? Our jobs have torn us apart. We can save ourselves, Gene. We can both resign and go back to teaching. With your Ph.D. in physics and my Ph.D. in archaeology, along with our experience and credentials, we could write our own ticket with any university in the country. We were on the same faculty when we met, remember? Those were our happiest years together.'
'Please, Dana, I can't quit. Not now.'
'Why?'
'I'm on an important project-'
'Every project for the last five years has been important. Please, Gene, I'm begging you to save our marriage. Only you can make the first move. I'll go along with whatever you decide if we can get out of Washington. This town will kill any hope of salvaging our life together if we wait much longer.'
'I need another year.'
'Even another month will be too late.'
'I am committed to a course that makes no conditions for abandonment.'
'When will these ridiculous secret projects ever end? You're nothing but a tool of the White House.'
'I don't need that bleeding-heart, liberal crap from you.'
'Gene, for God's sake, give it up!'
'It's not for God's sake, Dana, it's for my country's sake. I'm sorry if I can't make you understand.'
'Give it up,' she repeated, tears forming in her eyes. 'No one is indispensable. Let Mel Donner take your place.'
He shook his head. 'No,' he said firmly. 'I created this project from nothing. My gray matter was its sperm. I must see it through to completion.'
The waiter reappeared and asked if they were ready to order.
Dana shook her head. 'I'm not hungry.' She rose from the table and looked down at him. 'Will you be home for dinner?'
'I'll be working late at the office.'
There was no stopping her tears now.
'I hope whatever it is you're doing is worth it,' she murmured. 'Because it's going to cost you a terrible price.'
4
Unlike the Russian intelligence officer so often stereotyped in American motion pictures, Captain Andre Prevlov had neither bull-shoulders nor shaven head. He was a well proportioned handsome man who sported a layered hairstyle and a modishly trimmed mustache. His image, built around an orange Italian sports car and a plushly furnished apartment overlooking the Moscow River, didn't sit too well with his superiors in the Soviet Navy's Department of Foreign Intelligence. Yet, despite Prevlov's irritating leanings, there was little possibility of his being purged from his high position in the department. The reputation he had carefully constructed as the Navy's most brilliant intelligence specialist, and the fact that his father was number twelve man in the Party, combined to make Captain Prevlov untouchable.
With a practiced, casual movement, he lit a Winston and poured himself a shot glass of Bombay gin. Then he sat back and read through the stack of files that his aide, Lieutenant Pavel Marganin had laid on his desk.
'It's a mystery to me, sir,' Marganin said softly, 'how you can take so easily to Western trash.'
Prevlov looked up from a file and gave Marganin a cool, disdainful stare. 'Like so many of our comrades, you are ignorant of the world at large. I think like an American, I drink like an Englishman, I drive like an Italian, and I live like a Frenchman. And do you know why, Lieutenant?'
Marganin flushed and mumbled nervously. 'No, sir.'
'To know the enemy, Marganin. The key is to know your enemy better than he knows you, better than he
