Deep Six

“When do you think they’ll smoke us out?”

“I’d be surprised if they haven’t pegged us already.”

“Can you stay one jump ahead of them?”

Yaeger gave Pitt an inquiring stare. “What sneaky plan are you about to uncork?”

“Go back to your keyboard and screw them up but good. Re-enter the network and alter the data, foul up the Bougainville day-to-day operations, erase legitimate bank records, insert absurd instructions into their programs. Let them feel the heat from somebody else’ for a change.”

“But we’ll lose vital evidence for a federal investigation.”

“So what?” Pitt declared. “It was obtained illegally. It can’t be used anyway.”

“Now wait a minute. We can be stepping into big trouble.”

“Worse than that, we might get killed,” Pitt said with a faint smile.

An expression blossomed on Yaeger’s face, one that wasn’t there before. It was sudden misgiving. The game had ceased to be fun and was taking on darker dimensions. It had never dawned on him that the search could turn ugly and he might be murdered.

Pitt read the apprehension in Yaeger’s eyes. “You can quit now and take a vacation,” he said. “I wouldn’t blame you.”

Yaeger seemed to waver for a moment. Then he shook his head. “No, I’ll stick with it. These people should be put away.”

“Come down hard on them. Jam the works in all aspects of their shipping company — outside investments, subsidiary businesses, real estate dealings, everything they touch.”

“It’s my ass, but I’ll do it. Just keep the admiral out of my hair for a few more nights.”

“Keep a lookout for any information relating to a ship called the Eagle.”

“The presidential yacht?”

“Just a ship called the Eagle.”

“Anything else?”

Pitt nodded grimly. “I’ll see that security is increased around your computer processing center.”

“Mind if I stay here and use your couch. I’ve developed this sudden aversion to sleeping alone irt my apartment.”

“My office is yours.”

Yaeger stood up and stretched. Then he nodded at the data sheets again. “What are you going to do with it?”

Pitt stared down at the first breach ever in the Bougainville criminal structure. The pace of his personal investigation was gaining momentum, pieces falling into his hands to be fitted in the overall picture, jagged edges meshing together. The scope was far beyond anything he’d imagined in the begi

“You know,” he said pensively, “I don’t have the vaguest idea.”

43

When senator Larimer awoke in the tear seat of the limousine, the eastern sky was begi

“Put these on,” Suvorov ordered brusquely.

“You never told me who you are,” Larimer said, his tongue moving in slow motion.

“My name is Paul.”

“No surname?”

“Just Paul.”

“You FBI?”

“No.”

“CIA?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Suvorov said. “Get dressed.”

“When will we arrive in Washington?”

“Soon,” Suvorov lied.

“Where did you get these clothes? How do you know they’ll fit?”

Suvorov was losing his patience with the inquisitive American. He shrugged off an impulse to crack the senator in the jaw with the gun.

“I stole them off a clothesline,” he said. “Beggars can’t be particular. At least they’re washed.”

“I can’t wear a stranger’s shirt and pants,” Larimer protested indignantly.

“If you wish to return to Washington in the nude, it is no concern of mine.”

Suvorov slammed the door, moved to the driver’s side of the car and edged behind the wheel. He drove out of a picturesque residential community called Plantation Estates and cut onto Highway 7. The early-morning traffic was starting to thicken as they crossed over the Ashley River bridge to Highway 26, where he turned north.

He was grateful that Larimer went silent. Moran was climbing from his semi-conscious state and mumbling incoherently. The headlights reflected off a green sign with white letters: AIRPORT NEXT RIGHT. He took the off ramp and came to the gate of the Charleston Municipal Airport. Across the main landing strip the brightening sky revealed a row of jet fighters belonging to the Air National Guard.

Following the directions given over the phone, he skirted the airport searching for a narrow cutoff. He found it and drove over a dirt road until he came to a pole holding a wind sock that hung limp in the dank atmosphere.

He stopped and got out, checked his watch and waited. Less than two minutes later the steady beat of a helicopter’s rotor could be heard approaching from behind a row of trees. The blinking navigation lights popped into view and a teardrop blue-and-white shape hovered for a few moments and then sat down beside the limousine.

The door behind the pilot’s seat swung outward and a man in white coveralls stepped to the ground and walked up to the limousine.

“You Suvorov?” he asked.

“I’m Paul Suvorov.”

“Okay, let’s get the baggage inside before we attract unwanted attention.”

Together they led Larimer and Moran into the passenger compartment of the copter and belted them in. Suvorov noted that the letters on the side of the fuselage read SUMTER AIRBORNE AMBULANCE.

“This thing going to the capital?” asked Larimer with a spark of his old haughtiness.

“Sir, it’ll take you anyplace you want,” said the pilot agreeably.

Suvorov eased into the empty co-pilot’s seat and buckled the harness. “I wasn’t told our destination,” he said.

“Russia, eventually,” the pilot said with a smile that was anything but humorous. “First thing is to find where you came from.”

“Came from?”

“My orders are to fly you around the back country until you identify the facility in which you and those two windbags in the back have spent the last eight days. When we accomplish that mission, I’m to fly you to another departure area.”

“All right,” said Suvorov. “I’ll do my best.”

The pilot didn’t offer his name and Suvorov knew better than to ask. The man was undoubtedly one of the estimated five thousand Soviet-paid “charges” stationed around the United States, experts in specialized occupations, all waiting for a call instructing them to surface, a call that might never come.

The helicopter rose fifty feet in the air and then banked off toward Charleston Bay. “Okay, which way?” asked the pilot.

“I can’t be sure. It was dark and I was lost.”

“Can you give me a landmark?”

“About five miles from Charleston; I crossed a river.”

“From what direction?”

“West, yes, the dawn was breaking ahead of me.”

“Must be Stono River.”

“Stono, that’s it.”

“Then you were traveling on State Highway 700.”

“I turned onto it about half an hour before the bridge.”

The sun had heaved itself above the horizon and was filtering through the blue summer haze that hung over Charleston. The helicopter climbed to nine hundred feet and flew southwestward until the highway unreeled beyond the cockpit windows. The pilot pointed downward and Suvorov nodded. They followed the outbound traffic as the South Carolina coastal plain spread beneath them. Here and there a few cultivated fields lay enclosed on all sides by forests of long-leafed pines. They passed over a farmer standing in a tobacco field who waved his hat at them.

“See anything familiar?” the pilot asked.

Suvorov shook his head helplessly. “The road I turned off of might be anywhere.”

“What direction were you facing when you met the highway?”

“I made a left turn so I must have been heading south.”

“This area is called Wadmalaw Island. I’ll start a circular search pattern. Let me know if you spot something.”