He jerked his right foot off the accelerator and jammed it on the brake pedal. Then he spun the steering wheel to the left, snapping the Allard broadside before tearing down the middle of the road, the tires smoking and screaming across the asphalt. Before the car drifted to a stop, the rear wheels were spinning and the Allard leaped onto the county road, which led into the pitch-black of the countryside.
Pitt had to focus every bit of his concentration on the curves ahead. The old sealed-beam headlights did not illuminate the road as far ahead as the more modern halogen units, and he had to use his sixth sense to prepare for the next bend. Pitt loved corners, ignoring the brakes, throwing the car into a controlled skid, then maneuvering into setting up for a straight line until the next curve.
The Allard was in its element now. The heavier Cadillac was stiffly sprung for a road car, but its suspension was no match for the lighter sports car, which was built for racing. Pitt had a love affair with the Allard. He had an exceptional sense of the car’s balance and gloried in its simplicity and big, pounding engine. A taut grin stretched his lips as he threw the car into the curves, driving like a demon without touching the brakes, downshifting only on the hairpin turns. The driver of the Cadillac fought on relentlessly but rapidly lost ground with every turn.
Yellow warning lights were flashing on barricades ahead. A ditch opened up beside the road where a pipeline was in the midst of being laid. Pitt was relieved to see that the road carried through and was not blocked completely. The road turned to dirt and gravel for a hundred meters, but he never took his foot off the accelerator. He reveled at the huge cloud of dust he left in his wake, knowing it would slow their pursuer.
After another two minutes of her exciting breakneck ride, Maeve pointed ahead and slightly to her right. “I see headlights,” she said.
“The main highway,” Pitt acknowledged. “Here is where we lose them for good.”
Traffic was clear at the intersection, no cars approaching from either direction for nearly half a kilometer. Pitt burned rubber in a hard turn to the left, away from the city.
“Aren’t you going the wrong way?” Maeve cried above the screeching tires.
“Watch and learn,” Pitt said as he snapped the wheel back, gently braked and eased the Allard around in a U turn and drove in the opposite direction. He crossed the junction with the county road before the lights of the Cadillac were in view and picked up speed as he drove toward the glow of the capital city.
“What was that all about?” asked Maeve.
“It’s called a red herring,” he said conversationally. “If the hounds are as smart as I think they are, they’ll follow my tire marks in the opposite direction.”
She squeezed his arm and snuggled against him. “What do you do for your finale?”
“Now that I’ve dazzled you with my virtuosity, I’m going to arouse you with my charm.”
She gave him a sly look. “What makes you think I haven’t been frightened out of any desire for intimacy?”
“I can climb into your mind and see otherwise.”
Maeve laughed. “How can you possibly read my thoughts?”
Pitt shrugged cavalierly and said, “It’s a gift. I have Gypsy blood running in my veins.”
“You, a Gypsy?”
“According to the family tree, my paternal ancestors, who migrated from Spain to England in the seventeenth century, were Gypsies.”
“And now you read palms and tell fortunes.”
“Actually, my talents run in other directions, like when the moon is full.”
She looked at him warily but took the bait. “What happens when the moon is full?”
He turned and said with the barest hint of a grin, “That’s when I go out and steal chickens.”
Maeve stared warily into the blackness as Pitt drove along a darkened dirt road on the edge of Washington’s International Airport. He approached what looked like an ancient, deserted aircraft hangar. There was no other building nearby. Her uneasiness swelled and she instinctively crouched down in the seat as Pitt pulled the Allard to a stop under dim, yellowed lights on a tall pole.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded.
He looked down at her as if bemused. “Why, my place, of course.”
Her face took on an expression of womanly distaste. “You live in this old shed?”
“What you see is a historic building, built in 1936 as a maintenance hangar for an early airline long since demised.”
He pulled a small remote transmitter from his coat pocket and punched in a code. A second later a door lifted, revealing what seemed to Maeve a yawning cavern, pitch-black and full of evil. For effect, Pitt turned off the headlights, drove into the darkness, sent a signal to close the door and then sat there.
“Well, what do you think?” he teased in the darkness.
“I’m ready to scream for help,” Maeve said with growing confusion.
“Sorry.” Pitt punched in another code and the interior of the hangar burst into bright light from rows of fluorescent lamps strategically set around the hangar’s arched ceiling.
Maeve’s jaw dropped in awe as she found herself looking at priceless examples of mechanical art. She could not believe the glittering collection of classic automobiles, the aircraft and early American railroad car. She recognized a pair of Rolls-Royces and a big convertible Daimler, but she was unfamiliar with the American Packards, Pierce Arrows, Stutzes, Cords and the other European cars on display, including a Hispano-Suiza, Bugatti, Isotta Fraschini, Talbot Lago and a Delahaye. The two aircraft that hung from the ceiling were an old Ford Tri-motor and a Messerschmitt 262 World War II fighter aircraft. The array was breathtaking. The only exhibit that seemed out of place was a rectangular pedestal supporting an outboard motor attached to an antique cast-iron bathtub.
“Is this all yours?” she gasped.
“It was either this or a wife and kids,” he joked.
She turned and tilted her head coquettishly. “You’re not too old to marry and have children. You just haven’t found the right woman.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“Unlucky in love?”
“The Pitt curse.”
She gestured to a dark blue Pierce Arrow travel trailer. “Is that where you live?”
He laughed and pointed up. “My apartment is up those circular iron stairs, or if you’re lazy, you can take the freight elevator.”
“I can use the exercise,” she said softly.
He showed her up the ornate wrought-iron spiral staircase. The door opened into a living room-study filled with shelves stacked with books about the sea and glass encased models of ships Pitt had discovered and surveyed while working for NUMA. A door on one side of the room led into a large bedroom decorated like the captain’s cabin of an old sailing ship complete with a huge wheel as a backboard for the bed. The opposite end of the living room opened into a kitchen and dining area. To Maeve, the apartment positively reeked of masculinity.
“So this is where Huckleberry Finn moved after leaving his houseboat on the river,” she said, kicking off her shoes, settling onto a leather couch and curling up her legs on the cushions.
“I’m on water most of the year as it is. These rooms don’t see me as often as I’d like.” He removed his coat and untied his bow tie. “Can I offer you a drink?”
“A brandy might be nice.”
“Come to think of it, I carried you away from the party before you had a chance to eat. Let me whip you up something.”
“The brandy will-do just fine. I can gorge tomorrow.”
He poured Maeve a Remy Martin and sat down on the couch beside her. She wanted him desperately, wanted to press herself into his arms, to just touch him, but inside herself she was seething with turmoil. A sudden wave of guilt swept over her as she visualized her children suffering under the brutal hand of Jack Ferguson. She could not push aside the enormity of it. Her chest felt tight, and the rest of her body, numb and weak. She ached for Sean and
Michael, who were to her still babies. To allow herself to fall into a sensual adventure was little short of a crime. She wanted to scream with despair. She set the brandy on the coffee table and abruptly began to weep uncontrollably.
Pitt held her tightly. “Your children?” he asked.
She nodded between sobs. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to mislead you.”
Strangely, female emotions had never been a big mystery with Pitt as with most men, and he was never confused or mystified when the tears came. He looked upon women’s sometimes emotional behavior more with compassion than discomfort. “Put a woman’s concern for her offspring against her sex drive, and motherly concern wins every time.”
Maeve would never comprehend how Pitt could be so understanding. To her, he didn’t seem human. He certainly was unlike any man she’d ever known. “I’m so lost and afraid. I’ve never been more helpless in my life.”
He rose from the couch and came back with a box of tissues. “Sorry I can’t offer you a handkerchief, but I don’t carry them much anymore.”
“You don’t mind ... my disappointing you?”
Pitt smiled as Maeve wiped her eyes and blew her nose with a loud snort. “The truth is, I had ulterior motives.”
Her eyes widened questioningly. “You don’t want to go to bed with me?”
“I’d turn in my testosterone card if I didn’t. But that’s not entirely why I brought you here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I need your help in consolidating my plans.”
“Plans for what?”
He looked at her as if he was surprised she asked. “To sneak onto Gladiator Island, of course, snatch your boys and make a clean getaway.”
Maeve made nervous gestures of incomprehension with her hands. “You’d do that?” she gasped. “You’d risk your life for me?”
“And your sons,” Pitt added firmly.
“But why?”
He had an overpowering urge to tell her she was lithe and lovely and that he harbored feelings of deep affection for her, but he couldn’t bring himself to sound like a lovesick adolescent. True to form, he swerved to the light side.
“Why? Because Admiral Sandecker gave me ten days off, and I hate to sit around and not be productive.”
A smile returned to her damp face, and she pulled him against her. “That’s not even a good lie.”
“Why is it,” he said just before he kissed her, “that women always see right through me?”
DIAMONDS... THE GRAND ILLUSION
January 30, 2000
Gladiator Island, Tasman Sea
The Dorsett manor house sat in the saddle of the island, between the two dormant volcanoes. The front overlooked the lagoon, which had become a bustling port for the diamond mining activities. Two mines in both volcanic chutes had been in continuous operation almost from the day Charles and Mary Dorsett returned from England after their marriage. There were those who claimed the family empire began then, but those who knew better held that the empire was truly launched by Betsy Fletcher when she found the unusual stones and gave them to her children to play with.
The original dwelling, mostly built from logs, with a palm frond or palapa roof, was torn down by Anson Dorsett. It was he who designed and built the large mansion that still stood after being remodeled by later generations until eventually taken over by Arthur Dorsett. The style was based on the classical layout-a central courtyard surrounded by verandas from which doors opened onto thirty rooms, all furnished in English colonial antiques. The only visible modern convenience was a large satellite dish, rising from a luxuriant garden, and a modern swimming pool in the center courtyard.
Arthur Dorsett hung up the phone, stepped out of his office-study and walked over to the pool where Deirdre was languidly stretched on a lounge chair, in a string bikini, carefully absorbing the tropical sun into her smooth skin.
“You’d better not let my superintendents see you like that,” he said gruffly.
She slowly raised her head and looked down over a sea of skin. “I see no problem. I have my bra on.”
“And women wonder why they’re raped.”
“Surely you don’t want me to go around wearing a sack,” she said mockingly.
“I have just gotten off the phone with Washington,” he said heavily. “It seems your sister has vanished.”
Deirdre sat up, startled, and lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. “Are your sources reliable? I personally hired the best investigators, former Secret Service agents, to keep her under surveillance.”
“It’s confirmed. They bungled their assignment and lost her after a wild ride through the countryside.”
“Maeve isn’t smart enough to lose professional investigators.”
“From what I’ve been told, she had help.” Her lips twisted into a scowl. “Let me guess Dirk Pitt.”
Dorsett nodded. “The man is everywhere. Boudicca had him in her grasp at our Kunghit Island mine, but he slipped through her fingers.”
“I sensed he was dangerous when he saved Maeve. I should have known how dangerous when he interrupted my plans to be airlifted off the Polar Queen by our helicopter after I set the ship on a collision course toward the rocks. I thought we were rid of him after that. I never imagined he would pop up without warning at our Canadian operation.”
Dorsett motioned to a pretty little Chinese girl who was standing by a column supporting the roof over the veranda. She was dressed in a silk dress with long slits up the sides. “Bring me a gin,” he ordered. “Make it a tall one. I don’t like skimpy drinks.”
Deirdre held up a tall, empty glass. “Another rum collins.”
The girl hurried off to bring the drinks. Deirdre caught her father eyeing the girl’s backside and rolled her eyes. “Really, Daddy. You should know better than to bed the hired help. The world expects better from a man of your wealth and status.”
“There are some things that go beyond class,” he said sternly.
“What do we do about Maeve? She’s obviously enlisted Dirk Pitt and his friends from NUMA to help her retrieve the twins.”
Dorsett pulled his attention from the departing Chinese servant. “He may be a resourceful man, but he won’t find Gladiator Island as easy to penetrate as our Kunghit Island property.”
“Maeve knows the island better than any of us. She’ll find a way.”
“Even if they make it ashore”-he lifted a finger and pointed through the arched door of the courtyard in the general direction of the mines-“they’ll never get within two hundred meters of the house.”
Deirdre smiled diabolically. “Preparing a warm welcome seems most appropriate.”
“No warm welcome, my darling daughter, not here, not on Gladiator Island.”
“You have an ulterior plan.” It was more statement than question.
He nodded. “Through Maeve, they will, no doubt, devise a scheme to infiltrate our security. Unfortunately for them, they won’t have the opportunity of exercising it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We cut them off at the pass, as the Americans are fond of saying, before they touch our shore.”
“A perceptive man, my father.” She stood up and hugged him, inhaling his smell. Even when she was a little girl he had smelled of expensive cologne, a special brand he imported from Germany, a musky, no-nonsense smell that reminded her of leather briefcases, the indefinable scent of a corporation boardroom and the wool of an expensive business suit.
He reluctantly pushed her away, angry at a growing feeling of desire for his own flesh and blood. “I want you to coordinate the mission. As usual, Boudicca will expedite.”
“I’ll bet my share of Dorsett Consolidated you know where to find them.” She smiled archly at him. “What is our timetable?”
“I suspect that Mr. Pitt and Maeve have already left Washington.”
Her eyes squinted at him under the sun. “So soon?”
“Since Maeve hasn’t been seen at her h
ouse, nor has Pitt set foot in his NUMA office for the past two days, it goes without saying that they are together and on their way here for the twins.”
“Tell me where to set a trap for them,” she said, a sparkle of the feline hunter in her eyes, certain her father had the answer. “An airport or hotel in Honolulu, Auckland or Sydney?”
He shook his head. “None of those. They won’t make it easy for us by flying on commercial flights and staying at secluded inns. They’ll take one of NUMA’s small fleet of jet transports and use the agency’s facilities as a base.”
“I didn’t know the Americans had a permanent base for oceanographic study in either New Zealand or Australia.”
“They don’t,” replied Dorsett. “What they do have is a research ship, the Ocean Angler, which is on a deepsea survey project in the Bounty Trough, west of New Zealand. If all goes according to plan, Pitt and Maeve will arrive in Wellington and rendezvous with the NUMA ship at the city docks this time tomorrow.”
Deirdre stared at her father with open admiration. “How could you know all this?”
He smiled imperiously. “I have my own source in NUMA, who I pay very well to keep me informed of any underwater discoveries of precious stones.”
“Then our strategy is to have Boudicca and her crew intercept and board the research ship and arrange for it to disappear.”
“Not wise,” Dorsett said flatly. “Boudicca has learned that Dirk Pitt somehow traced the cleanup of the derelict ships to her and our yacht. We send one of NUMA’s research ships and its crew to the bottom and they’ll know damned well we were behind it. No, we’ll treat that matter more delicately.”
“Twenty-four hours isn’t much time.”
“Leave after lunch and you can be in Wellington by supper. John Merchant and his security force will be waiting for you at our warehouse outside of the city.”
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