Cyclops (Dirk Pitt 8)

"It's one thing to send in one man on a diplomatic mission with a small suitcase like your friend Hagen.

It's something else to smuggle a team with five hundred pounds of electronic equipment. If we had more time, something might have been arranged. Covert boat landings and parachute drops stand little chance through Cuba's defense screen. Smuggling by ship is the best method, but we're talking at least a month's preparation."

"You make it sound like we're a guy with an unknown disease and no known cure."

"That about sums it up, Mr. President," said Brogan. "About all we can do is sit and wait. . . and watch it happen."

"No, I won't have that. In the name of humanity we have to do something. We can't let all those people die." He paused, feeling a knot growing in his stomach. "God, I can't believe the Russians will actually set off a nuclear bomb in a city. Doesn't Antonov realize he's plunging us deeper into a morass there can be no backing out of?"

"Believe me, Mr. President, our analysts have run every conceivable contingency through computers.

There is no easy answer. Asking the Cubans to evacuate the city through our radio networks will accomplish nothing. They'll simply ignore any warnings coming from us.

"There is still hope Ira Hagen can get to Castro in time."

"Do you really think Fidel will take Hagen at face value? Not very likely. He'll think it's only a plot to discredit him. I'm sorry, Mr. President, we have to steel ourselves against the disaster, because there isn't a damned thing we can do about it."

The President wasn't listening anymore. His face reflected grim despair. We put a colony on the moon, he thought, and yet the world's inhabitants still insist on murdering each other for asinine reasons.

"I'm calling a cabinet meeting tomorrow early, before the moon colony announcement," he said in a defeated voice. "We'll have to create a plan to counter Soviet and Cuban accusations of guilt and pick up the pieces as best we can."

Leaving the Swiss embassy was ridiculously easy. A tunnel had been dug twenty years before that dropped over a hundred feet below the streets and sewer pipes, far beneath any shafts Cuban security people might have sunk around the block. The walls were sealed to keep out water, but silent pumps were kept busy draining away the seepage.

Clark led Pitt down a long ladder to the bottom, and then through a passage that ran for nearly two city blocks before ending at a shaft. They climbed up and emerged in a fitting room of a women's dress shop.

The shop had closed six hours earlier and the window displays effectively blocked any view of the interior. Sitting in the storeroom were three exhausted, haggard-looking men who gave barely a sign of recognition to Clark as he entered with Pitt.

"No need to know real names," said Clark. "May I present Manny, Moe, and Jack."

Manny, a huge black with a deeply trenched face, wearing an old faded green shirt and khaki trousers, lit a cigarette and merely glanced at Pitt with world-weary detachment. He looked like a man who had experienced the worst of life and had no illusions left.

Moe was peering through spectacles at a Russian phrase book. He wore the image of an academic--

lost expression, unruly hair, neatly sculptured beard. He silently nodded and gave an offhand smile.

Jack was the stereotype Latin out of a 1930s movie-- flashing eyes, compact build, fireworks teeth, triangular moustache. All he was missing was a bongo drum. He gave the only words of recognition.

"Hola, Thomas. Come to pep-talk the troops?"

"Gentlemen, this is. . . ah. . . Sam. He's come up with an angle that throws new light on the search."

"It better be damned well worth it to drag us off the docks," grunted Manny. "We've got little time to waste on asshole theories."

"You're no closer now to finding the bomb than you were twenty-four hours ago," Clark said patiently.

"I suggest you listen to what he has to say"

"Screw you," Manny said. "Just when we found a way to slip on board one of the freighters, you call us back."

"You could have searched every inch of those ships and never found a ton-and-a-half nuclear device,"

said Pitt.

Manny turned his attention to Pitt, eyes traveling from feet to hair, like a linebacker sizing up an opposing halfback. "Okay, smartass, where's our bomb?"

"Three bombs," Pitt corrected, "and none of them nuclear."