The President spoke no more. He walked from the Oval Office and left Sandecker standing confused and alone.
The worst of hurricane Little Eva skirted the island and turned northeast into the Gulf of Mexico. The winds dropped off to forty miles an hour, but another two days would pass before they were replaced by the gentle trade winds from the south.
Cayo Santa Maria seemed empty of any life, animal or human. Ten years earlier, in a moment of generous comradeship, Fidel Castro had deeded the island over to his Communist allies as a gesture of goodwill. He then slapped the face of the White House by proclaiming it as a territory of Russia.
The natives were quietly but forcefully relocated onto the mainland, and engineering units of the GRU
(Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, or Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff), the military arm of the KGB, moved in and began building a highly secret underground installation.
Working in stages and only under cover of darkness, the complex slowly took shape beneath the sand and palm trees. CIA spy planes monitored the island, but intelligence analysis failed to detect any defense installations or heavy shipment of supplies by sea or air. Enhanced photo examination showed little except a few eroding roads that seemingly went nowhere. Only as a matter of routine was the island studied, but nothing ever turned up that indicated a threat to United States security.
Somewhere beneath the wind-beaten island, Pitt awoke in a small sterile room on a bed with a goosedown mattress under a fluorescent light that blazed continuously. He could not recall if he had ever slept in a feather bed, but he found it most comfortable and made a mental note to look around for one, if and when he ever got back to Washington.
Apart from bruises, sore joints, and a slight throb in his head he felt reasonably fit. He lay there and stared at the gray-painted ceiling, recalling the night before-- Jessie's discovery of her husband, the guards escorting Pitt, Giordino, and Gunn to an infirmary, where a female Russian doctor, who was built like a bawling pin, tended to their injuries, a meal of
mutton stew in a mess hall that Pitt rated six points below an east Texas truck stop, and finally being locked in a room with a toilet and washbasin, a bed, and a narrow wooden wardrobe.
Slipping his hands under the sheet, he explored his body. Except for several yards of tape and gauze, he was naked. He marveled at the homely doctor's fetish for bandages. He swung his bare feet onto the concrete floor and sat there, pondering his next move. A signal from his bladder reminded him he was still human, so he moved over to the commode and wished he had a cup of coffee. They, whoever they were, had left him his Doxa watch. The dial read 11:55. Since he had never slept more than nine hours in his life, he rightly assumed that it was the following morning.
A minute later he leaned over the basin and splashed cold water on his face. The single towel was coarse and hardly absorbed the moisture. He went over to the wardrobe, pulled it open, and found a khaki shirt and pants on a hanger and a pair of sandals. Before he put them on he removed several bandages over wounds that were already beginning to scab, and flexed the newfound freedom of movement. After he dressed, he tried the heavy iron door. The latch was still locked, so he pounded on the thick metal panel, causing a hollow boom to reverberate around the concrete walls.
A boy who looked no older than nineteen and wearing Soviet army fatigues opened the door and stood back, aiming a machine pistol, no larger than an ordinary household hammer, at Pitt's midsection.
He motioned down a long hall to the left, and Pitt obliged. They passed several other iron doors, and Pitt wondered if Gunn and Giordino were behind any of them.
They stopped at an elevator whose doors were held open by another guard. They entered and Pitt felt the slight pressure against his feet as the car rose. He glanced at the indicator above the door and noticed that it showed lights for five levels. A good-sized layout, he thought. The elevator came to a stop and the automatic doors glided open.
Pitt and his guard stepped out into a carpeted room with a vaulted ceiling. The two side walls held shelves stacked with hundreds of books. Most of the books were in English and many of them were by current best selling American authors. A vast map of North America covered the entire far wall. The room looked to Pitt to be a private study. There was a big, antique carved desk whose marble top was strewn with current issues of the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Stacked atop tables on each side of the doorway were piles of technical magazines, including Computer Technology, Science Digest, and the Air Force Journal. The carpet was burgundy red with six green leather chairs spaced evenly about its thick pile.
Maintaining his silence, the guard reentered the elevator and left Pitt standing alone in the empty room.
Must be time to observe the monkey, he mused. Pitt didn't bother to probe the walls for the lens to the video camera. There was little doubt in his mind that it was concealed in the room somewhere, recording his actions. He decided to try for a reaction. He swayed drunkenly for a moment, rolled his eyes upward, and then crumpled onto the carpet.
Within fifteen seconds a hidden door, whose edges perfectly matched latitude and longitude lines of the giant wall map, swung open and a short, trim man in an elegantly tailored Soviet military uniform walked into the room. He knelt down and peered into Pitt's half-open eyes.
"Can you hear me?" he asked in English.
"Yes," Pitt mumbled.
The Russian went over to a table and tilted a crystal decanter over a matching glass. He returned and lifted Pitt's head.
"Drink this," he ordered.
"What is it?"
"Courvoisier cognac with a sharp, biting taste," the Russian officer answered in a flawless American accent. "Good for what ails you."
"I prefer a richer, smoother Remy Martin," said Pitt, holding up the glass. "Cheers."
He sipped the cognac until it was gone, then rose lightly to his feet, found a chair, and sat down.
The officer smiled with amusement. "You seem to have made a quick recovery, Mr. . ."
"Snodgrass, Elmer Snodgrass, from Moline, Illinois."
"A nice Midwestern touch," the Russian said, coming around and sitting behind the desk. "I am Peter Velikov."