He reached down, grasped Loren by the wrists and pulled her effortlessly out of the water and into the boat. Pitt stretched out his hand, but the steward ignored it.
“Sorry,” he said, “we have no more room.”
“What — what are you talking about?” Pitt demanded. “The boat is half empty.”
“You are not welcome aboard my vessel.”
“You damned well don’t even own it.”
“Oh, but I do.”
Pitt stared at the steward in sheer incredulity, then slowly turned and took one long comprehensive look across the water at the container ship. The name of the starboard bow was
“Our confrontation is a lucky circumstance for me, Mr. Pitt, but I fear a misfortune for yourself.”
Pitt stared at the steward. “You know me?”
The grin turned into an expression of hate and contempt. “Only too well. Your meddling has cost Bougainville Maritime dearly.”
“Tell me who are you?” asked Pitt, stalling for time and desperately glancing in the sky for a Navy recovery helicopter.
“I don’t think I’ll give you the satisfaction,” the steward said with all the warmth of a frozen food locker.
Unable to hear the conversation, Loren pulled at the steward’s arm. “Why don’t you bring him on board? What are you waiting for?”
He turned and savagely backhanded her across the cheek, sending her stumbling backward, falling across two survivors who sat in stunned surprise.
Giordino, who was standing in the stern of the boat, started forward. A seaman produced an automatic shotgun from under a seat and rammed the wooden shoulder stock into his stomach. Giordino’s jaw dropped open; he gasped for breath and lost his footing, dropping partially over the side of the boat, arms trailing in the water.
The steward’s lips tightened and the smooth yellow features bore no readable expression. Only his eyes shone with evil. “Thank you for being so cooperative, Mr. Pitt. Thank you for so thoughtfully coming to me.”
“Get screwed!” Pitt snapped in defiance.
The steward raised an oar over his head. “Bon voyage, Dirk Pitt.”
The oar swung downward and clipped Pitt on the right side of his chest, driving him under the water. The wind was crushed from his lungs and a stabbing pain swept over his rib cage. He resurfaced and lifted his left arm above his head to ward off the next inevitable blow. His move came too late. The oar in the hands of the steward mashed Pitt’s extended arm down and struck the top of his head.
The blue sky turned to black as consciousness left him, and slowly Pitt drifted under the lifeboat and sank out of sight.
59
The President’s wife entered his second-floor study, kissed him good night and went off to bed. He sat in a soft high-back embroidered chair and studied a pile of statistics on the latest economic forecasts. Using a large yellow legal pad, he scribbled a prodigious amount of notes. Some he saved, some he tore up and discarded before they were completed. After nearly three hours, he removed his glasses and closed his tired eyes for a few moments.
When he opened them again, he was no longer in his White House study, but in a small gray room with a high ceiling and no windows.
He rubbed his eyes and looked once more, blinking in the monotone light.
He was still in the gray room, only now he found himself seated in a hard wooden chair, his ankles strapped to square carved legs and his hands to the armrests.
A violent fear coursed through him, and he cried for his wife and the Secret Service guards, but the voice was not his. It had a different tonal quality, deeper, more coarse.
Soon a door that was recessed into one wall swung inward and a small man with a thin, intelligent face entered. His eyes had a dark, bemused look, and he carried a syringe in one hand.
“How are we today, Mr. President?” he asked politely.
Strangely, the words were foreign, but the President understood them perfectly. Then he heard himself shouting repeatedly, “I am Oskar Belkaya, I am not the President of the United States, I am Oskar—” He broke off as the intruder plunged the needle into his arm.
The bemused expression never left the little man’s face; it might have been glued there. He nodded toward the doorway and another man wearing a drab prison uniform came in and set a cassette recorder on a Spartan metal table that was bolted to the floor. He wired the recorder to four small eyelets on the table’s surface and left.
“So you won’t knock your new lesson on the floor, Mr. President,” said the thin man. “I hope you find it interesting.” Then he switched on the recorder and left the room.
The President struggled to shake off the bewildering terror of the nightmare. Yet it all seemed too real to be dream fantasy. He could smell his own sweat, feel the hurt as the straps chafed his skin, hear the walls echo with his cries of frustration. His head sagged to his chest and he began to sob uncontrollably as the recorded message droned over and over. When at last he sufficiently recovered, he raised his head as if lifting a ponderous weight and looked around.
He was seated in his White House study.
Secretary Oates took Dan Fawcett’s call on his private line. “What’s the situation over there?” he asked without wasting words.
“Critical,” Fawcett replied. “Armed guards everywhere. I haven’t seen this many troops since I was with the Fifth Marine Regiment in Korea.”
“And the President?”
“Spitting out directives like a Gatling gun. He won’t listen to advice from his aides any longer, myself included. He’s getting increasingly harder to reach. Two weeks ago, he’d give full attention to opposing viewpoints or objective comments. No more. You agree with him or you’re out the door. Megan Blair and I are the only ones still with access to his office, and my days are numbered. I’m bailing out before the roof caves in.”
“Stay put,” said Oates. “It’s best for all concerned if you and Oscar Lucas remain close to the President. You’re the only open line of communications any of us have into the White House.”
“Won’t work.”
“Why?”
“I told you, even if I stick around, I’ll be closed out. My name is rapidly climbing to the top of the President’s shit list.”
“Then get back in his good graces,” Oates ordered. “Crawl up his butt and support whatever he says. Play yes-man and relay up-to-the-minute reports on every course of action he takes.”
There was a long pause. “Okay, I’ll do my best to keep you informed.”
“And alert Oscar Lucas to stand by. We’re going to need him.”
“Can I ask what’s going on?”
“Not yet,” Oates replied tersely.
Fawcett didn’t press him. He switched tack. “You want to hear the President’s latest brainstorm?”
“Bad?”
“Very bad,” admitted Fawcett. “He’s talking about withdrawing our military forces from the NATO alliance.”
Oates clutched the phone until his knuckles turned ivory. “He’s got to be stopped,” he said grimly.
