"No, he has a suite at the Mayflower, courtesy of the government."
Felicia stretched her opulent body and flowed into the room. "By the way, I met Loren Smith for lunch. She poured out her love life to me."
"She took the bait?"
"If you mean the key to your little hideaway in Arlington, the answer is yes."
He took her in his arms, his eyes gentle but smug with satisfaction. "You won't be sorry, Felicia. Only good can come from this."
"Try telling that to Loren Smith," she said, turning away.
He released her. "Did she mention any names?"
"I gather she's teasing Phil Sawyer into marriage while she's screwing some guy from NUMA on the side."
"Did she say who?"
"His name is Dirk Pitt."
Daggat's eyes widened. "You did say Dirk Pitt?"
Felicia nodded.
Daggat's mind raced to make a connection and then he had it. "Son of a bitch! It's perfect!"
"What are you talking about?"
"The revered senior senator from California, George Pitt. Didn't it occur to you? Congresswoman Holier-Than-Thou Smith is shacking with the senator's son."
Felicia shivered as her skin suddenly went cold. "For God's sake, Frederick, drop this stupid scheme of yours before it gets out of hand."
"I don't think so," Daggat said, smiling a sinister smile. "I do what I think best for the country."
"You mean you do what you think best for Frederick Daggat."
He took her by the arm and led her from the office. "When you have time to reconsider, you'll come to find that I was right." He turned off the lights. "Now then, let's grab some dinner, and afterward we'll prepare Loren Smith's love nest for her one and only visit."
38
Admiral James Sandecker was a short, feisty character with flaming red hair and plenty of gall. When his retirement from the Navy was forced upon him, he used his considerable congressional influence to connive his way into the job of chief director of the then-fledgling National Underwater and Marine Agency. It was a match that was ordained for success from the start. In seven short years Sandecker had taken an insignificant eighty-person agency and built it into a massive organization of five thousand scientists and employees supported by an annual budget that exceeded four hundred million dollars.
He was accused by his enemies of being a grandstander, of launching oceanic projects that garnered more publicity than scientific data. His supporters applauded his flair for making the field of oceanography as popular as space science. Whatever his assets or liabilities, Admiral Sandecker was as solidly entrenched at NUMA as J. Edgar Hoover had been at the FBI.
He drained the last swallow from a bottle of Seven-Up, sucked on the stub of a giant cigar, and looked into the unsmiling faces of Admiral Walter Bass, Colonel Abe Steiger, Al Giordino, and Dirk Pitt.
>
"The part I find hard to swallow," he continued, "is the total lack of interest on the part of the Pentagon. It would seem logical-to me, at any rate-that Colonel Steiger's report on the discovery of Vixen 03 complete with photos would have shocked the hell out of them. And yet the colonel has told us his superiors acted as though the whole episode was best dropped and forgotten."
"There is a bona fide reason behind their indifference," Bass answered impassively. "Generals O'Keefe and Burgdorf are ignorant of the link between Vixen 03 and the QD project because none is recorded."
"How can that be?"
"What was learned after the deaths of Dr. Vetterly and his scientists motivated everyone who knew of QD's ghastly power to bury every scrap of evidence and erase all memories of its existence so that it could not be resurrected ever again."
"You mean you suppressed an entire defense project under the noses of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?" Sandecker said incredulously.
"By direct order from President Eisenhower I was to state in my reports to the Joint Chiefs that the experiment had backfired and the formulation of QD had died along with Dr. Vetterly."