Cyclops (Dirk Pitt 8)

Quintana's team had begun destroying the electronic equipment

inside the compound. They would have to leave soon, and there would be no taking Raymond LeBaron with them.

Pitt thought of all the newspaper stories and magazine articles glorifying the dying man on the carpet as a steel-blooded power merchant who could make or break executive officers of giant corporations or high-level politicians in government, a wizard at manipulating the financial markets of the world, a vindictive and cold man whose trail was littered with the bones of competing businesses he had crushed and their thousands of employees who were cast out on the streets. Pitt had read all that, but all he saw was a dying old man, a paradox of human frailty, who had stolen his best friend's wife and then killed him for a fortune in treasure. Pitt could feel no pity for such a man, no flicker of emotion.

Now the slender thread holding LeBaron on to life was about to break. He leaned over and placed his lips close to the old power broker's ear.

"La Dorada," Pitt whispered. "What did you do with her?"

LeBaron looked up, and his eyes glistened for an instant as his clouding mind took a final look at the past. His voice was faint as he summoned up the strength to answer. The words came almost as he died.

"What did he say?" asked Giordino.

"I'm not sure," replied Pitt, his expression bewildered. "It sounded likèLook on the main sight.' "

To the Cubans across the bay on the main island the detonations sounded like distant thunder and they paid no attention. No spouting volcano of red and orange lit the horizon, no fiery column of flame reaching hundreds of feet through the black sky attracted their curiosity. The sounds came strangely muffled as the compound was destroyed from within. Even the belated destruction of the great antenna went without notice.

Pitt helped Jessie to the staging area on the beach, followed by Giordino and Gunn, who was carried on a stretcher by the Cubans. Quintana joined them and dropped all caution as he shined a pencil thin flashlight in Pitt's face.

"You'd better get a patch on that ear."

"I'll survive until we reach the SPUT."

"I had to leave two men behind, buried where they'll never be found. But there are still more going out than came in. Some of you will have to double up on the water Dashers. Dirk, you carry Mrs. LeBaron.

Mr. Gunn can ride with me. Sergeant Lopez can--"

"The sergeant can ride alone," Pitt interrupted.

"Alone?"

"We left a man behind too," said Pitt.

Quintana quickly swept the narrow beam at the others. "Raymond LaBaron?"

"He won't be coming."

Quintana gave a slight shrug, bowed his head at Jessie, and said simply, "I'm sorry" Then he turned away and began assembling his men for the trip back to the mother ship.

Pitt held Jessie close to him and spoke gently. "He asked you to take care of his first wife, Hilda, who still lives."

He couldn't see the surprise on her face, but he could feel her body tense.

"How did you know?" she asked incredulously.

"I met and talked with her a few days ago."

She seemed to accept that and did not ask him how he came to be at the rest home. "Raymond and I went through the ceremony and played out our roles as man and wife, but he could never completely give up or divorce Hilda."

"A man who loved two women."

"In different, special ways. A tiger in business, a lamb on the home front, Raymond was lost when Hilda's mind and body began to deteriorate. He desperately needed a woman to lean on. He used his influence to fake her death and place her in a rest home under a former married name."

"Your cue to walk on the scene." He did not like being cold, but he was not sorry.

"I was already part of his life," she said without hurt. "I was one of the senior editors of the Prosperteer. Raymond and I had carried on an affair for years. We felt comfortable together. His proposal bordered on a business proposition, a staged marriage of convenience, but it soon grew into more, much more. Do you believe that?"

"I've no talent for rendering verdicts," Pitt replied quietly.