silence.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “I’ve just been informed that the Senate has voted for conviction by the required two-thirds. Our beleaguered President is no longer in office and the Vice Presidency is vacant. The time has come for us to put our house in order and begin anew.”
As if on cue, Chief Justice Nelson O’Brien rose from a chair, smoothed his black robes and cleared his throat. Everyone crowded around Moran as his secretary held what was dubiously touted as his family Bible.
Just then Sam Emmett and Dan Fawcett came through the doorway and paused. Then they spied Oates and Simmons and approached.
“Any word?” Oates asked anxiously.
Emmett shook his head. “None. General Metcalf ordered a communications blackout. I haven’t been able to reach him at the Pentagon to find out why.”
“Then it’s all over.”
No one replied as they all turned in unison and stood in powerless frustration as Moran raised his right hand to take the oath of office as President, his left hand on the Bible.
“Repeat after me,” Chief Justice O’Brien intoned like a drumroll. “I, Alan Robert Moran, do solemnly swear…”
“… that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States,” O’Brien droned on.
Suddenly the room behind Oates went quiet. The prompting of the oath by the Chief Justice went unanswered by Moran. Curious, Oates turned around and looked at the crowd. They were all staring in frozen wonder at Vice President Vincent Margolin, who walked through the doorway preceded by Oscar Lucas and flanked by General Metcalf and Admiral Sandecker.
Moran’s upraised arm slowly fell and his face turned ashen. The silence smothered the room like an insulating cloud as Margolin stepped up to the Chief Justice, the stunned audience parting for him. He gave Moran a frigid look and then smiled at the rest.
“Thank you for the rehearsal,” he said warmly. “But I think I can take over from here.”
76
SAL CASIO WAS WAITING in the vast lobby of the World Trade Center when Pitt came slowly through the entrance. Casio looked at him in stark appraisal. He couldn’t remember when he’d seen any man so near the edge of physical collapse.
Pitt moved with the tired shuffle of a man who had endured too much. He wore a borrowed foul-weather jacket two sizes too small. His right arm hung slack while his left was pressed against his chest, as if holding it together, an^l his face was etched in a strange blending of suffering and triumph. The eyes burned with a sinister glow that Casio recognized as the fires of revenge.
“I’m glad you could make it,” Casio said without referring to Pitt’s haggard appearance.
“It’s your show,” said Pitt. “I’m only along for the ride.”
“Only fitting and proper we be together at the finish.”
“I appreciate the courtesy. Thank you.”
Casio turned and guided Pitt over to a private elevator. Pulling a small push-button transmitter from his pocket, he punched the correct code and the doors opened. Inside was an unconscious guard who was bound with laundry cord. Casio stepped over him and opened a polished brass door to a circuit panel with the words LIFTONIC ELEVATOR QW-607 engraved on it. He made an adjustment in the settings and then pushed the button that read “100.”
The elevator rose like a rocket and Pitt’s ears popped three times before it slowed and the doors finally opened onto the richly furnished anteroom of Bougainville Maritime Lines Inc.
Before he stepped out, Casio paused and repro-grammed the elevator circuitry with his transmitter. Then he turned and stepped out onto the thick carpet.
“We’re here to speak with Min Koryo,” Casio announced mundanely.
The woman eyed them suspiciously, particularly Pitt, and opened a leather-bound journal. “I see nothing in Madame Bougainville’s schedule that shows any appointments this evening.”
Casio’s face furrowed into his best hurt look. “Are you sure?” he asked, leaning over the desk and peering at the appointment book.
She pointed at the blank page. “Nothing is written—”
Casio chopped her across the nape of the neck with the edge of his palm, and she fell forward, head and shoulders striking the desktop. Then he reached inside her blouse and extracted a vestpocket.25-caliber automatic pistol.
“Never know it to look at her,” he explained, “but she’s a security guard.”
Casio tossed the gun to Pitt and took off down a corridor hung with paintings of the Bougainville Maritime fleet. Pitt recognized the
Her eyes widened and in a lightning reflex she lashed out with one foot at Casio’s groin. He anticipated the thrust and shifted his weight ever so slightly, catching the blow on the side of his thigh. Then she flashed into the classic judo position and buried several rapid cuts at his head.
She would have done more damage to an oak tree. Casio shook off her attack, crouched and sprung like an offensive back coming off the line. She spun to her left in an impressive display of feline grace but was knocked off balance by his shoulder. Then Casio straightened and smashed through her defense with a vicious left hook that nearly tore off her head. Her feet left the floor and she flew into a five-foot-high Sung Dynasty vase, breaking it into dust.
“You certainly have a way with women,” Pitt remarked casually.
“Lucky for us there’s still a few things we can do better than they can.”
Casio motioned toward a large double door carved with dragons and quietly opened it. Min Koryo was propped up in her spacious bed, browsing through a pile of audit reports. For a moment the two men stood mute and unmoving, waiting for her to look up and acknowledge their intrusion. She looked so pathetic, so fragile, that any other trespassers might have wavered. But not Pitt and Casio.
Finally she lifted her reading glasses and gazed at them, showing no apprehension or fright. Her eyes were fixed in frank curiosity.
“Who are you?” she asked simply.
“My name is Sal Casio. I’m a private investigator.”
“And the other man?”
Pitt stepped from the shadows and stood under the glow from the spotlights above the bed. “I believe you know me.”
There was a faint flicker of surprise in her voice, but nothing else. “Mr. Dirk Pitt.”
“Yes.”
“Why have you come?”
“You are a slimy parasite who sucked the life out of untold innocent people to build your filthy empire. You’re responsible for the death of a personal friend of mine and also for that of Sal’s daughter. You tried to kill me, and you ask why I’m here?”
“You are mistaken, Mr. Pitt. I am guilty of nothing so criminal. My hands are unstained.”
“A play on words. You live in your museum of Oriental artifacts, shielded from the outside world, while your grandson did your dirty work for you.”
“You say I am the cause of your friend’s death?”
“She was killed by the nerve agent you stole from the government and left on the
