looked upon the poor man with either compassion or disgust, but Stacy nodded and offered him a faint smile.
Pitt, curious, stopped and said, “Nice day for a tan.”
The derelict, a black man in his late thirties, looked up. “You blind, man? What’d I do with a tan?”
Pitt recognized the sharp eyes of a professional observer, who dissected every square centimeter of Pitt’s hands, clothes, body, and face, in that order. They were definitely not the vacant eyes of a down-and-out street dweller.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Pitt answered in a neighborly tone. “It might come in handy when you take your pension and move to Bermuda.”
The bum smiled, flashing unblemished white teeth. “Have a safe stay, my man.”
“I’ll try,” Pitt said, amused at the odd reply. He stepped past the disguised first ring of protection sentry and followed the others into the building’s lobby.
The interior was as run down as the exterior. There was the unpleasant smell of disinfectant. The green tile floors were badly treadworn and the walls stark and smudged with years of overlaid handprints. The only object in the dingy lobby that seemed well maintained was an antique mail drop. The solid brass glinted under the dusty light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, and the American eagle above the words “U.S. Mail” was as shiny as the day it was buffed out of its casting. Pitt thought it a curious contrast.
An old elevator door slid open soundlessly. The men from NUMA were surprised to find a gleaming chrome interior and a U.S. marine in dress blues who was the operator. Pitt noted that Stacy acted as though she’d been through the drill before.
Pitt was the last one in, seeing his tired red eyes and the grizzly beginnings of a beard reflected in the polished chrome walls. The marine closed the doors, and the elevator moved with an eerie silence. Pitt could not feel any movement at all. No flashing lights over the door or on a display panel indicated the passing floors. Only his inner ear told him they were traveling very rapidly down a considerable distance.
At last the door opened onto a foyer and corridor that was so clean and orderly it would have done a spit- and-polish ship captain proud. The federal agents guided them to the second doorway from the elevator and stood aside. The group passed through a space between the outer and an inner door, which Pitt and Giordino immediately recognized as an air lock to make the room soundproof. As the second door was closed, air was pushed out with an audible pop.
Pitt found himself standing in a place with no secrets, an enormous conference room with a low ceiling, so dead to outside sounds the recessed fluorescent light tubes buzzed like wasps, and a whisper could be heard ten meters away. There were no shadows anywhere, and normal voice levels came almost like shouts. The center of the room held a massive old library table once purchased by Eleanor Roosevelt for the White House. It fairly reeked of furniture polish. A bowl of Jonathan apples made up the centerpiece. Underneath the table lay a fine old blood- red Persian carpet.
Stacy walked to the opposite side of the table. A man rose and kissed her lightly on the cheek, greeting her in a voice laced with a Texas accent. He looked young, at least six or seven years younger than Pitt. Stacy made no effort to introduce him. She and Pitt had not spoken a word to each other since boarding the Gulfstream jet in Hawaii. She made an awkward display of pretending he was not present by keeping her back turned to him.
Two men with Asian features sat together next to Stacy’s friend. They were conversing in low tones and didn’t bother to look up as Pitt and Giordino stood surveying the room. A Harvard type, wearing a suit with a vest adorned with a Phi Beta Kappa key on a watch chain, sat off by himself reading through a file of papers.
Sandecker set a course to a chair beside the head of the table, sat down, and lit one of his custom-rolled Havana cigars. He saw that Pitt seemed disturbed and restless, traits definitely out of character.
A thin older man with shoulder-length hair and holding a pipe walked over. “Which one of you is Dirk Pitt?”
“I am,” Pitt acknowledged.
“Frank Mancuso,” the stranger said, extending his hand. “I’m told we’ll be working together.”
“You’re one up on me,” Pitt said, returning a firm shake and introducing Giordino. “My friend here, Al Giordino, and I are in the dark.”
“We’ve been gathered to set up a MAIT.”
“A what?”
“MAIT, an acronym for Multi-Agency Investigative Team.”
“Oh, God,” Pitt moaned. “I don’t need this. I only want to go home, pour a tequila on the rocks, and fall into bed.”
Before he could expand on his grievances, Raymond Jordan entered the conference room accompanied by two men who wore faces with all the humor of patients just told by a doctor they had Borneo jungle fungus of the liver. Jordan made straight for Sandecker and greeted him warmly.
“Good to see you, Jim. I deeply appreciate your cooperation in this mess. I know it was a blow to lose your project.”
“NUMA will build another,” Sandecker stated in his usual cocksure way.
Jordan sat down at the head of the table. His deputies took chairs close by and laid out several document files on the table in front of him.
Jordan did not relax once he was seated. He sat stiffly, his spine not touching the backrest of the chair. His composed dark eyes moved swiftly from face to face as if trying to read everyone’s thoughts. Then he addressed himself directly to Pitt, Giordino, and Mancuso, who were still standing.
“Gentlemen, would you care to get comfortable?”
There was silence for a few moments as Jordan spread the files before him in order. The atmosphere was reflective and heavy with the kind of tension and concern that brought about ulcers.
Pitt sat expressionless, his mind elsewhere. He was not mentally geared for heavy talk, and his body was tired from the strain of the last two days. What he desperately wanted was a hot shower and eight hours of sleep, but he forced himself to go along for the ride out of respect for the admiral, who was, after all, his boss.
“I apologize,”
Jordan began, “for any inconvenience that I may have caused, but I’m afraid we are dealing with a critical emergency that can affect the security of our nation.” He paused to peer down at the personnel files on the desk in front of him. “A few of you know me and some of you have worked with me in the past. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Giordino, I have you at a disadvantage as I know something about you and you know very little about me.”
“Try zilch,” Giordino challenged him, avoiding Sandecker’s angry stare.
“I’m sorry,” said Jordan graciously. “My name is Ray Jordan, and I am empowered by direct presidential order to direct and manage all matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. The operation we’re about to launch covers both sides. To explain the situation and your presence here, I will turn this discussion over to my Deputy Director of Operations, Mr. Donald Kern.”
Kern was bony-thin, small, and lean. His intensely cool bluegreen eyes seemed to reach into everyone’s inner thoughts. All, that is, except Pitt’s. It was as if two bullets had met in midair, neither passing through the other, both stopped dead.
“First off,” Kern opened in a surprisingly deep voice while still trying to read Pitt, “we are all about to become part of a new federal organization consisting of investigators, specialists, support personnel, case review analysts, and field agents assembled for the purpose of defusing a serious threat to a great number of people here and around the world. In short, a MAIT team.” He pressed one of several buttons on a desk console and turned to one wall that was back-lit and displayed an organizational chart. There was a circle at the top and a larger one beneath. Four smaller circles extended from the bottom one like spider legs.
“The top circle represents the Command Center here in Washington,” he lectured. “The lower one is our Information Gathering and Collection Point on the Pacific island of Koror in the Palau Republic chain. The Resident, who will act as our Director of Field Operations, is Mel Penner.” He stopped and glanced pointedly at Penner, who had entered the room with him and Jordan,
Penner nodded a red corduroy-wrinkled face and lazily raised a hand. He neither looked around the table at the others nor smiled.
“Mel’s cover is acting as a UCLA sociologist studying native culture,” Kern added.
“Mel comes cheap.” Jordan smiled. “His home and office furnishings include a sleeping cot, a phone, a document shredder, and a work desk that also serves as a dining table and a counter for his hotplate.”
