Deep Six

“A private party?” he asked.

“No,” Pitt said. “A hate-the-world, feel-sorry-for-yourself, down-in-the-dumps party.”

“I’ll join it anyway,” Giordino said, sliding into the booth. “The admiral’s concerned about you.”

“Tell him I’ll pay for the damage to the parking lot.”

“Be serious. The old guy is madder than a stepped-on rattler. Raised hell with the Justice Department all morning, demanding they launch an all-out investigation to find out who was behind the bombing. To him, an attack on you is an attack on NUMA.”

“The FBI nosing around my apartment and office?”

Giordino nodded. “No less than six of them.”

“And reporters?”

“I lost count. What did you expect? The blast that disintegrated your car thrust your name in the limelight. Instant celebrity. First bomb explosion the city’s had in four years. Like it or not, old friend, you’ve become the eye of the storm.”

Pitt felt a mild elation at having scared the Bougainville interests enough for them to attempt his removal. They must somehow have learned he was nipping at their flanks, digging deeper into their secrets with each bite. But why the overreaction?

The fake a

How then did they realize he was so close?

Bougainville couldn’t have tied him to the computer penetration and pla

Bougainville had linked him to the Eagle.

Pitt was so engrossed in thought he didn’t hear Giordino telling him he had a phone call.

“Your mind must be a million miles away,” said Giordino, pointing toward Cabot the bartender, who was holding up the bar phone.

Pitt walked over to the bar and spoke in the mouthpiece. “Hello.”

Sally Lindema

“What’s wrong?” Pitt demanded. “Is Loren all right?”

“I think so, and then maybe not,” said Sally, becoming flustered. “I just don’t know.”

“Take your time and spell it out,” Pitt said gently.

“Congresswoman Smith called me in the middle of the night from the Leonid Andreyev and told me to find the whereabouts of Speaker of the House Alan Moran. She never gave me a reason. When I asked her what to say when I contacted him, she said to tell him it was a mistake. Make sense to you?”

“Did you find Moran?”

“Not exactly. He and Senator Marcus Larimer were supposed to be fishing together at a place called Goose Lake. I went there but nobody else knew anything about them.”

“What else did Loren say?”

“Her last words to me were ‘Call Dirk and tell him I need—’ Then we were cut off. I tried several times to reach her again, but there was no answer.”

“Did you tell the ship’s operator it was an emergency?”

“Of course. They claimed my message was passed on to her stateroom, but she made no attempt to reply. This is the damnedest thing. Not like Congresswoman Smith at all. Sound crazy?”

Pitt was silent, thinking it out. “Yes,” he said at last, “just crazy enough to make sense. Do you have the Leonid Andreyev’s schedule?”

“One moment.” Sally went off the line for nearly a minute. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

“When does it make the next port?”

“Let’s see, it arrives in San Salvador in the Bahamas at ten A.M. tomorrow and departs the same evening at eight P.M. for Kingston, Jamaica.”

“Thank you, Sally.”

“What’s all this about?” Sally asked. “I wish you’d tell me.”

“Keep trying to reach Loren. Contact the ship every two hours.”

“You’ll call if you find out anything,” Sally said suspiciously.

“I’ll call,” Pitt promised.

He returned to the table and sat down.

“What was that all about?” Giordino inquired.

“My travel agent,” Pitt answered, pretending to be nonchalant. “I’ve booked us for a cruise in the Caribbean.”

48

Curtis Mayo sat at a desk amid the studio mock-up of a busy newsroom and peered at the television monitor slightly to his right and below camera number two. He was ten minutes into the evening news and waited for his cue after a commercial advertising a bathroom disinfectant. The thirty-second spot wound down on a New York fashion model, who probably never cleaned a toilet bowl in her life, smiling demurely with the product caressing her cheek.

The floor director moved into Mayo’s eye range, counted down the last three seconds and waved. The red light on the camera blinked on and Mayo stared into the lens, begi

“At the President’s farm in New Mexico there have been rumors that the nation’s chief executive and the Vice President are using look-alike stand-ins.”

As Mayo continued his story line the engineer in the control booth cut to the tape of the President driving the tractor.

“These scenes of the President cutting alfalfa on his farm, when viewed close up, suggest to some that it is not him. Certain famous ma

“John Sutton, the actor who bears a striking resemblance and who often imitates the President on TV shows and commercials, could not be found by reporters in Hollywood for comment. Which raises the question Why would our nation’s leaders require doubles? Is it a secret security procedure, or a deception for darker motives? Could it be the pressures of the job are such that they have to be in two places at the same time? We can only speculate.”

Mayo let the story dangle on a thread of suspicion. The engineer in the booth switched back to the studio camera, and Mayo went into the next story.

“In Miami today, police claimed a breakthrough in a string of drug-related murders… ”

After the program, Mayo smiled in grim delight when informed of the hundreds of calls flooding the network news offices asking for more information on the President’s double story. The same reaction, if not far heavier, had to be pouring into White House phone lines. In a spiteful sort of glee, he wondered how the presidential press secretary was taking it.

In New Mexico, So

John Sutton stood in back of him with a drink in one hand. “The vultures are circling,” he said.

“In giant flocks,” Thompson muttered.

“What happens now?”

“That’s for others to decide.”

“I’m not going to jail like Liddy, Colson and those other guys,” Sutton said nastily.

“Nobody’s going to jail,” Thompson said wearily. “This isn’t Watergate. The Justice Department is working with us.”

“No way I’m going to take a fall for a bunch of politicians.” Sutton’s eyes began to take on a greedy gleam. “A guy could make thousands, maybe a few million out of this.”

Thompson looked at him. “How?”

“Interviews, articles, and there’s book rights royalties — the possibilities for making a bundle are endless.”