'Very well.' His opponent sighed. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a set of papers and handed them to Sandecker.
Silently the admiral read the orders. Then his lips twisted in a wry smile. 'I didn't really stand a chance, did I?'
'No, you didn't.'
Sandecker looked down at the papers in his hands again and shook his head. 'You're asking too much… too much.'
'I don't enjoy this sort of thing, but time is a commodity we can't afford. This whole scheme, a naive scheme, spawned by Hermit Limited is totally impractical. I admit it sounds inspiring and all that. Save the world, build a paradise. Who knows, maybe F. James Kelly has the answer for the future. But at the moment, he is the leader of a gang of maniacs who have murdered nearly thirty people. And, exactly ten hours from now, he plans to assassinate two heads of state. Our course is determined by one elementary fact-he must be stopped. And Major Pitt is the only one who is physically capable of recognizing Kelly's hired killers.'
Sandecker threw the papers on the desk. 'Physically capable. Nothing but goddamned words that have no feeling.' He pushed himself from the chair and began pacing the room. 'You're asking me to order a man who has been like a son to me, a man who has been beaten within an inch of death, to get up from a hospital bed and track down a gang of vicious killers six thousand miles from here?' Sandecker shook his head.
'You don't know the half of what you're demanding from human flesh and blood. There are limits to a man's courage. Dirk has already done far more than was expected of him.'
'Granted that courage is reduced by expenditure.
And I agree that the major has done more than was thought humanly possible. God knows there are few if any of my men who could have pulled that rescue off.'
'It could be we're arguing over nothing,' Sandecker said. 'Pitt may not be in any condition to leave the hospital.'
'I'm afraid your fears, or should I say your hopes, are groundless.' The bald man checked through a brown folder. 'I have here a few observations from my agents, who by the way have been guarding the major.'
He paused, reading, then went on. 'Excellent physique, constitution like a bull, unique rapport with… ah… the nurses.
Fourteen hours of rest, intensive care and massive vitamin injections plus the finest muscle therapy known by the top doctors in Iceland. He has been stitched, massaged and taped. Fortunately, the only major damage was to his ribs and at that the fractures were minor. All in all, he's a sorry mess, but I can't be particular. I'd take him if they were lowerin him into a coffin.'
Sandecker's face was cold and blank. He turned as one of the embassy secretaries poked her head around a door.
'Major Pitt is here, sir.'
Sandecker glared at the fat man. Surprise edged into his voice. 'You bastard, you knew all along he would do it.'
The fat man shrugged and said nothing.
Sandecker stiffened. His eyes looked resentfully into the fat man's. 'Okay, send him in.' Pitt came through the door and shut it behind him.
He moved stiffly across the room to a vacant sofa and very slowly eased into the soft cushions. His entire face was swathed in bandages, only the slits for his eyes and nose plus the top opening for a patch of black hair gave any indication of life beneath the rolls of white gauze.
Sandecker tried to look behind the bandages. The deep green eyes that were visible never seemed to flicker.
Sandecker sat down behind the desk and clasped his hand behind his head. 'Do the doctors at the hospital know where you are?'
Pitt smiled. 'I suspect they'll wonder in another half hour.'
'I believe you've met this gentleman.' Sandecker motioned to the fat man.
'We've talked over the telephone,' Pitt answered.
'We haven't been formally introduced… at least not with proper names.'
The fat man walked quickly around the desk and offered Pitt his hand. 'Kippmann, Dean Kippmann.'
Pitt took the hand. It was a fooler. There was nothing weak and fat about the grip. 'Dean Kippmann,' Pitt repeated. 'The chief of the National Intelligence Agency. There's nothing like playing with the big leaguers.'
'We deeply appreciate your help,' Kippmann said warmly. 'Do you feel up to a little air travel?'
'After Iceland, a little South American sun couldn't hurt.'
'You'll enjoy the sun all right.' Kippmann stroked the skin on his head again. 'Particularly the southern California variety.'
'Southern California?'
'By four o'clock this afternoon.'
'By four o'clock this afternoon 'At Disneyland.'
'At Disneyland?'
Sandecker said patiently: 'I'm well aware that your destination isn't exactly what you had in mind. But we can do without the echo.'
'With respects, sir, none of this figures.'
'Until an hour ago, those were our words precisely,' Kippmann said.
'Just what have you got in mind?' Pitt asked.
'This.' Kippmann pulled more papers from his seemingly bottomless briefcase and studied them briefly.
'Until we were able to question you and the other survivors who were physically up to it, we had only a sketchy idea at best as to the purpose behind Hermit Limited. We knew it existed, and we were fortunate to ferrett out a small percentage of their business dealings, but their ultimate goal, the brains, the money behind the entire operation remained a mystery-' Pitt broke in guardedly. 'But you had a lead. You suspected Dr. Hunnewell.'
'I'm glad you didn't tumble sooner, Major. Yes, the N.I.A. was trailing Dr. Hunnewell. No concrete evidence, of course. That's why we set him in the hope he would lead us to the men at the top of the organization.'.
'Oh, God, it was a setup!' It wasn't easy to combine a sour exclamation and an anguished moan in the same breath, but Pitt pulled it off. 'The whole goddamned scene on that iceberg was a setup.'
'Yes, Hunnewell came to our attention when he so thoughtfully provided all the right solutions for Fyrie Limited's undersea probe, but offered absolutely nothing toward the efforts under development in his own country.'
'Then emtombing the Lax was a neat little piece of deception,' Pitt said. 'That was your drawing card.
Hunnewell was bound to come forward as an investigator when the admiral here asked him out of what Hunnewell probably couldn't seemed sheer coincidence. believe his luck. He immediately volunteered, not to see what happened to his old friend Kristjan Fyrie-he'd already guessed that-or to inspect the strange phenomenon of a ship locked in ice, but rather to discover what had become of his precious undersea probe.'
'Again, Yes. Major.'
Kippmann handed Pitt several glossy photographs. 'Here are pictures taken from the submarine that kept a watch on the Lax for almost three weeks. They show an unusual feature about the crew.'
Pitt ignored him, and looked up at Sandecker evenly and steadily. 'The truth comes out at last. The Lax was found by the search fleet and then tailed until it burned.'
Sandecker shrugged. 'Mr. Kippmann took the trouble to notify me of that interesting little fact only last night.' The tight grin on his griffineke features hardly indicated friendliness toward Kippmann.
'Reproach us if you will,' Kippmann said seriously, 'but it was vital that you both were kept on the sidelines as much as possible. If Kelly or Rondheim or Particularly Hunnewell had smelled your connection with us, our whole operation would have bombed.' He stared at Pitt, his voice low. 'Major, you were simply to act as pilot for Hunnewell while he inspected the Lax. You then were to fly him to Reykjavik where we would have again taken over our observation of his movements.'
'It didn't quite work out that way, did it?'
'We underestimated the other side,' Kippmann said candidly.
Pitt inhaled on a cigarette and idly watched the smoke curl toward the ceilng. 'You haven't explained how the
