Vixen 03 (16 page)

“A martini on the rocks,” said Steiger, eyeing the mounds. “On second thought, make that a double. It’s been one of those mornings.”

Pitt held up a nearly empty glass. “Another salty dog.”

“Christ,” moaned Steiger. “How can you stand those things?”

“I hear they’re good for cutting down weight,” Pitt answered. “The enzymes from the grapefruit juice cancel out the calories in the vodka.”

“Sounds like an old-wives’ tale. Besides, why bother? You don’t have an ounce of fat on you anywhere.”

“See,” Pitt laughed. “They really work.”

The humor was contagious. For the first time that day Steiger felt like laughing. But soon after the drinks arrived his expression clouded again, and he sat there silently, toying with his glass without touching its contents.

“Don’t tell me,” said Pitt, reading the colonel’s dour thoughts, “your friends at the Pentagon shot you down?”

Steiger nodded slowly. “They dissected every sentence of my report and flushed the pieces into the Washington sewer system.”

“Are you serious?”

“They wanted none of it.”

“What about the canisters and the fifth skeleton?”

“They claim the canisters are empty. As to your theory on Loren Smith’s father, I didn’t even bring it up. I saw little reason to stoke the fires of their already flaming skepticism.”

“Then you’re off the investigation.”

“I am if I wish to retire a general.”

“They leaned on you?”

“They didn’t have to. It was written in their eyes.”

“What happens now?”

Steiger looked at Pitt steadily. “I was hoping you might go it alone.”

Their eyes locked.

Salvage I 109

“You want me to raise the aircraft from Table Lake?”

“Why not? My God, you salvaged the Titanic from thirteen thousand feet in the middle of the Atlantic. A Stratocruiser in a landlocked lake should be child’s play for a man of your talents.”

“Very flattering. But you forget, I’m not my own boss. Raising Vixen 03 will take a crew of twenty men, several truckloads of equipment, a minimum of two weeks, and a budget of nearly four hundred thousand dollars. I can’t swing that on my own, and Admiral San decker would never give NUMA’s blessing to a project that size without solid assurance of additional government funding.”

“Then what about simply bringing up one of the canisters and Smith’s remains for positive identification?”

“And find ourselves holding the proverbial bag?”

“It’s worth a try,” Steiger said, excitement rising in his tone. “You can fly back to Colorado tomorrow. In the meantime I’ll authorize a contract to retrieve the crew’s bodies. That will get you off the hook with the Pentagon and NUMA.”

Pitt shook his head. “Sorry, but you’ll have to take a rain check. Sandecker assigned me to oversee the raising of a Union ironclad that sank off the Georgia coast during the Civil War.” He paused to check his watch. “I’m scheduled to board a flight for Savannah in six hours.”

Steiger sighed and his shoulders sagged. “Perhaps you can give it a go at a later date.”

“Wrap up the contract and keep it on ice. I’ll sneak off to Colorado the first chance I get. That’s a promise.”

“Have you told Congresswoman Smith about her father yet?”

“Truthfully, I haven’t had the guts.”

“A nagging doubt you could be wrong?”

“That’s part of it.”

A vacant expression clouded Abe Steiger’s face. “Jesus, what a mess.” He downed the double martini in one throw and then stared at the glass sadly.

The waitress returned with menus and they ordered. Steiger absently watched her backside as she swayed into the kitchen. “Instead of sitting here, beating out my brains over an old mystery nobody cares about, I should be concentrating on getting back to California and the wife and kids.”

“How many?”

“Kids? Eight, all told. Five boys and three girls.”

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“You must be Catholic.”

Steiger smiled. “With a name like Abraham Levi Steiger? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“By the way, you neglected to mention how the brass explained away Vixen 03’s flight plan.”

“General O’Keefe found the original. It didn’t jibe with our analysis of the one from the wreck.”

Pitt pondered a moment and then asked, “Do you have a Xerox copy I might borrow?”

“Of the flight plan?” \

“Just the sixth page.” •

“Outside, locked in the trunk of my car. Why?”

“A shot in the dark,” Pitt said. “I have this friend over at FBI who can’t resist a good crossword puzzle.”

“Must you really leave tonight?” Loren asked Pitt.

“I’m expected at a morning meeting to discuss salvage operations,” he said from the bathroom, where he was loading his shaving kit.

“Damn,” she said, pouting. “I might as well have an affair with a traveling salesman.”

He entered the bedroom. “Come now, to you I’m nothing but a current toy.”

“That’snot so.” She flung her arms around him. “Next to Phil Sawyer, you’re my very favorite person.”

Pitt looked at her. “Since when have you been seeing the President’s press secretary?”

“When the stud is away, Loren will play.”

“But good God! Phil Sawyer. He wears white shirts and talks like a thesaurus.”

“He asked me to marry him.”

“I may vomit.”

She held him tightly. “Pease, no sarcasm tonight.”

“I regret I can’t be more of an adoring lover to you, but I’m too damned selfish to commit myself. I’m not capable of giving the one hundred percent a woman like you needs.”

“I’ll settle for any percentage I can get.”

He leaned down and kissed her on the throat. “You’d make Phil Sawyer a rotten wife.”

Salvage
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Thomas Machita paid his admission and entered the grounds of the traveling amusement fair, one of many that sprang up on holidays around the South African countryside. It was Sunday and large groups of Bantu and their families lined up at the Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, and booth games. Machita made his way over to the ghost ride, according to Emma’s telephone instructions.

He was undecided as to which tool he would employ to kill Emma. The razor blade taped to his left forearm left much to be desired. The tiny bit of steel was a close-in weapon, lethal only if he sliced his victim’s jugular vein in an unguarded, discreet moment, an opportunity Machita considered quite remote in view of the sizable crowd around him.

Machita finally decided on the ice pick. He let out a satisfied sigh, as though he had solved a great scientific riddle. The pick was unobtrusively threaded among the strands of a basket clutched in his hands. The wooden handle had been removed, and in its place electrical tape had been wound several times around the needlelike shaft. A quick thrust between the ribs to the heart, or into an eye or an ear; if he could somehow ram the shaft into one of Emma’s eustachian tubes, there would be little if any body fluid to tell the tale.

Machita tightened his grip on the basket that held both the ice pick and the two million dollars for the payoff. His turn came and he paid for a ticket and mounted the platform of the ghost ride. The couple ahead of him, a giggling man and his obese wife, snuggled their way into a small car that seated two. The attendant, an old, haggard-looking derelict who constantly sniffed at a runny nose, lowered a safety bar over their legs and shoved a large lever protruding from the floor. The car bounced forward on a track and rolled through two swinging doors. Soon, women’s screams could be heard escaping from the darkened interior.

Machita entered the next car. He relaxed and became amused at the thought of the ride. Images of his childhood returned and he remembered cringing in a similar car during another ghost ride long ago as phosphorescent banshees lurched out of the blackness at him.

He did not observe the attendant as the lever was pushed; nor did he react immediately when the old man leaped agilely into the car with him and lowered the safety bar.

“I hope you enjoy the ride,” said a voice that Machita knew to be Emma’s.

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Once again the mysterious informer had shrewdly capitalized on Machita’s laxity. The odds favoring a clean kill had suddenly evaporated.

Emma’s hands expertly frisked his clothing. “How very wise of you to come unarmed, my dear Major.”

A score for our side, thought Machita, his hands casually holding the basket and shielding the ice pick. “Do you have Operation Wild Rose?” ”he asked, his tone official.

“Do you have two million American dollars?” the shadowy figure beside him retorted.

Machita hesitated and unconsciously ducked as the car swung beneath a tall stack of barrels that fell over toward them, jerking to a stop bare inches from their heads.

“Here … in the basket.”

Emma pulled an envelope from inside a dirty jacket. “Your boss will find this most interesting reading.”

“If not vastly overpriced.”

Machita was glancing through the documents in the envelope when a pair of grotesquely painted witches, fluoresced by ultraviolet light, leaped at the car and shrieked through hidden loudspeakers. Emma ignored the wax figures and opened the basket, studying the print on the currency under the purple illumination. The car rolled onward as the witches were pulled back into their recess by hidden springs and the tunnel plunged into darkness again.

Now! Machita thought. He snatched the ice pick from its hiding place and lunged at where he guessed Emma’s right eye socket should be. But in that split second the car snapped into a sharp turn and an orange floodlight burst on a bearded Satan who menacingly brandished a pitchfork. It was enough to deflect Machita’s aim. The pick missed Emma’s eye and its tip became embedded in the skull, above the brow.

The stunned informer cried out, chopped Machita’s hand away, and plucked the thin shaft from his head. Machita grabbed the razor blade taped to his forearm and swung it at Emma’s throat in a sweeping backhand slash. But his wrist was smashed downward by the devil’s pitchfork, snapping the bone.

The devil was genuine. He was one of Emma’s accomplices. Machita countered by throwing open the safety bar and lashing out with his feet, catching the costumed man in the groin, feeling his heels sink deeply into soft flesh. Then the car swung back into blackness and the devil was left behind.

Salvage I 113

Machita whipped his body back to face Emma, but found the seat beside him empty. A brief stream of sunlight flashed several meters to the left of the car as a door was opened and closed. Emma had vanished out an exit, taking the basket of money with him.

“Gross stupidity,” said Colonel Jumana with fiendish satisfaction. “You must pardon me for saying it, my General, but I told you so.”

Lusana stared pensively out the window at a formation of men drilling on the parade grounds. “A mistake in judgment, Colonel, nothing more. We will not lose the war because we have lost two million dollars.”

A sheepish Thomas Machita sat at the table, his face beaded with1 perspiration, staring vacantly at the cast covering his wrist. “There was no way of knowing-“

He stiffened as Jumana stormed to his feet, the colonel’s face radiating pure anger as he snatched Emma’s envelope and hurled it into Machita’s face. ?

“No way of knowing you were being set up? You fool! There you sit, our glorious chief of intelligence, and you can’t even kill a man in the dark. Then you add insult to injury by giving him two million dollars for an envelope containing operating procedures for military garbage re:; moval.”

“Enough!” snapped Lusana.

There was silence. Jumana took a deep breath, then slowly stepped backward to his chair. Anger seethed in his eyes. “Stupid mistakes,” he said bitterly, “do not win wars of liberation.”

“You make too much of it,” Lusana said stonily. “You are a superb leader of men, Colonel Jumana, and a tiger in battle, but as with most professional soldiers, you are sadly lacking in administrative style.”

“I beg you, my General, do not take your wrath out on me.” Jumana pointed an accusing finger at Machita. “He is the one who deserves punishment.”

A sense of frustration enveloped Lusana. Regardless of intelligence or education, the African mind retained an almost childlike innocence toward blame. Blood-soaked rituals still inspired them with a higher sense of justice than did a serious conference across a table. Wearily, Lusana looked at Jumana.

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“The mistake was mine. I alone am responsible. If I had not given Major Machita the order to kill Emma, Operation Wild Rose might be lying in front of us this minute. Without murder on his mind, I trust the major would have checked the contents of the envelope before he turned over the money.”

“You still believe the plan to be valid?” Jumana asked incredulously.

“I do,” Lusana said firmly. “Enough to warn the Americans when I fly to Washington next week to testify at the congressional hearings on aid to African nations.”

“Your priorities are here,” said Machita, his eyes expressing alarm. “I beg you, my General, send someone else.”

“There is none better qualified,” Lusana assured him. “I am still an American citizen with a number of high contacts who sympathize with our fight.”

“Once you leave here, you will be in grave danger.”

“We all deal in danger, do we not?” asked Lusana. “It is our comrade-in-arms.” He turned to Jumana. “Colonel, you will be in command during my absence. I shall furnish you with explicit orders for the conduct of our operation. I expect you to see that they are carried out to the letter.”

Jumana nodded.

A fear began to swell inside Machita, and he could not help wondering if Lusana was paving the road to his own downfall and releasing a tidal wave of blood that would soon surge across the whole of Africa.

Loren Smith rose from behind her desk and held out her hand as Frederick Daggat was ushered into her office. He smiled his best politician’s smile. “I hope you’ll forgive my intrusion … ah … Congresswoman.”

Loren grasped his hand firmly. It never failed to amuse her to see a man stumble over her title. They never seemed to get the hang of saying ” Congresswoman.”