Deep Six

Only the tourists are out in force, crawling over the Mall, throwing Frisbees and swarming around the Capitol, climbing the endless staircases and staring slack-jawed at the underside of the dome.

Some were peering through the iron fence around the White House around noontime when the President came out, quick stepped across the lawn and gave a jaunty wave before entering a helicopter. He was followed by a small entourage of aides and Secret Service agents. Few of the elite press corps were present. Most were home watching baseball on TV or roaming a golf course.

Fawcett and Lucas stood on the South Portico and watched until the ungainly craft lifted over E Street and dissolved to a speck as it beat its way toward Andrews Air Force Base.

“That was fast work,” Fawcett said quietly. “You made the switch in less than five hours.”

“My Los Angeles office tracked down Sutton and crammed him into the cockpit of a Navy F-20 fighter forty minutes after they were alerted.”

“What about Margolin?”

“One of my agents is a reasonable facsimile. He’ll be on board an executive jet for New Mexico as soon as it’s dusk.”

“Can your people be trusted not to leak this charade?”

Lucas shot Fawcett a sharp look. “They’re trained to keep quiet. If there’s a leak it will come from the presidential staff.”

Fawcett smiled faintly. He knew he was on shaky footing. The looseness of the White House staff was open territory for the press corps. “They can’t spill what they didn’t know,” he said. “Only now will they be waking up to the fact that the man in the helicopter with them isn’t the President.”

“They’ll be well guarded at the farm,” Lucas said. “Once they arrive no one gets off the property, and I’ve seen to it all communications are monitored.”

“If a correspondent figures the game, Watergate will seem as tame as an Easter-egg hunt.”

“How are the wives taking it?”

“Cooperating a hundred percent,” Fawcett answered. “The First Lady and Mrs. Margolin have volunteered to stay shut up in their bedrooms claiming to have a virus.”

“What now?” Lucas asked. “What else can we do?”

“We wait,” Fawcett replied, his voice wooden. “We stick it out until we find the President.”

“Looks to me like you’re overloading the circuits,” said Don Miller, Emmett’s deputy director of the FBI.

Emmett didn’t look up at Miller’s negative remark.

Within minutes after he had returned to the Bureau’s headquarters at Pe

His cover story to the Bureau’s six thousand agents was that the Secret Service had come on evidence of a pla

“It may be a heavy conspiracy,” Emmett said finally, his tone vague. “We can’t take the chance the Secret Service is wrong.”

“They’ve been wrong before,” Miller said.

“Not on this one.”

Miller gave Emmett a curious look. “You’ve given out damned little information to work with. Why the great secrecy?”

Emmett didn’t answer, so Miller dropped the subject. He passed three file folders across the desk. “Here’s the latest data on PLO kidnapping operations, the Mexican Zapata Brigade’s hostage activities, and one I’m in the dark about.”

Emmett gave him a cold stare. “Can you be more explicit?”

“I doubt if there’s a co

“Who are you talking about?” Emmett demanded, picking up the file and opening the cover.

“A Soviet representative to the United Nations, name of Aleksei Lugovoy—”

“A prominent psychologist,” Emmett noted as he read.

“Yes, he and several of his staff members on the World Health Assembly have gone missing.”

Emmett looked up. “We’ve lost them?”

Miller nodded. “Our United Nations surveillance agents report that the Russians left the building Friday night—”

“This is only Saturday morning,” Emmett interrupted. “You’re talking a few hours ago. What’s so suspicious about that?”

“They went to great lengths to shake our shadows. The special agent in charge of the New York bureau checked it out and discovered none of the Russians returned to their apartments or hotels. Collectively they dropped from sight.”

“Anything on Lugovoy?”

“All indications are he’s straight. He appears to steer clear of the Soviet mission’s KGB agents.”

“And his staff?”

“None of them have been observed engaging in espionage activities either.”

Emmett looked thoughtful for several moments. Ordinarily he might have brushed the report aside or at most ordered a routine follow-up. But he had a nagging doubt. The disappearance of the President and Lugovoy on the same night could be a mere coincidence. “I’d like your opinion, Don,” he said at last.

“Hard to second-guess this one,” Miller replied. “They may all show up at the United Nations on Monday as though nothing had happened. On the other hand, I’d have to suggest that the squeaky clean image Lugovoy and his staff have projected may be a screen.”

“For what purpose?”

Miller shrugged. “I haven’t a clue.”

Emmett closed the file. “Have the New York bureau stay on this. I want priority-one updates whenever they’re available.”

“The more I think about it,” Miller said, “the more it intrigues me.”

“How so?”

“What vital secrets could a bunch of Soviet psychologists want to steal?”

19

Successful shipping line magnates travel through the glittering waters of the international jet set in grand fashion. From exotic yachts to private airliners, from magnificent villas to resplendent hotel suites, they roam the world in an unending pursuit of power and wealth.

Min Koryo Bougainville cared nothing for a freewheeling lifestyle. She spent her waking hours in her office and her nights in small but elegant quarters on the floor above. She was frugal in most matters, her only weakness being a fondness for Chinese antiques.

When she was twelve, her father sold her to a Frenchman who operated a small shipping line consisting of three tramp steamers that plied the coastal ports between Pusan and Hong Kong. The line prospered and Min Koryo bore Rene Bougainville three sons. Then the war came and the Japanese overran China and Korea. Rene was killed in a bombing raid and the three sons were lost somewhere in the South Pacific, after being forced into the Imperial Japanese Army. Only Min Koryo and one grandson, Lee Tong, survived.

After Japan surrendered, she raised and salvaged one of her husband’s ships which had been sunk in Pusan harbor. Slowly she built up the Bougainville fleet, buying old surplus cargo ships, never paying more than their scrap value. Profits were few and far between, but she hung on until Lee Tong finished his master’s degree at the University of Pe

Lee Tong wore the misleading look of a jolly Oriental peasant. His round brown face split in a perpetual smile that seemed chiseled in ivory. If the Justice Department and half the federal law-enforcement agencies had wanted to close the book on a backlog of unsolved maritime crimes, they would have hung him from the nearest streetlight, but, oddly, none had a file on him. He skirted in the shadow of his grandmother; he was not even listed as a director or an employee of Bougainville Maritime. Yet it was he, the anonymous member of the family, who handled the dirty-tricks department and built the base of the company.