Dragon (Dirk Pitt 10)

Pitt stretched. "I'll be glad to get home."

Giordino could read Pitt's mood and adroitly steered the talk to his friend's antique and classic car collection. "What are you working on?"

"You mean which car?"

Giordino nodded. "The Packard or the Marmon?"

"Neither," replied Pitt. "Before we left for the Pacific, I rebuilt the engine for the Stutz but didn't install it."

"That nineteen thirty-two green town car?"

"The same."

"We're coming home two months early. Just under the wire for you to enter the classic car races at Richmond."

"Two days away," Pitt said thoughtfully. "I don't think I can have the car ready in time."

"Let me give you a hand," Giordino offered. "Together we'll put the old green bomb on the starting line."

Pitt's expression turned skeptical. "We may not get the chance. Something's going down, Al. When the admiral clams up, the cow chips are about to strike the windmill."

Giordino's lips curled in a taut smile. "I tried to pump him too."

"And?"

"I've had more productive conversations with fence posts."

"The only crumb he dropped," said Pitt, "was that after we land we go directly to the Federal Headquarters Building."

Giordino looked puzzled. "I've never heard of a Federal Headquarters Building in Washington."

"Neither have I," said Pitt, his green eyes sharp and challenging. "Another reason why I think we're being had."

If Pitt thought they were about to be danced around the maypole, he knew it after laying eyes on the Federal Headquarters Building.

The unmarked van with no side windows that picked them up at Andrews Air Force Base turned off Constitution Avenue, passed a secondhand dress store, went down a grimy alley, and stopped at the steps of a shabby six-story brick building behind a parking lot. Pitt judged the foundation was laid in the 1930s.

The entire structure appeared in disrepair. Several windows were boarded shut behind broken glass, the black paint around the wrought-iron balconies was peeling away, the bricks were worn and deeply scarred, and for a finishing touch an unwashed bum sprawled on the cracked concrete steps beside a cardboard box full of indescribably mangy artifacts.

The two federal agents who escorted them from Hawaii led the way up the steps into the lobby. They ignored the homeless derelict, while Sandecker and Giordino merely gave him a fleeting glance. Most women would have looked upon the poor man with either compassion or disgust, but Stacy nodded and offered him a faint smile.

Pitt, curious, stopped and said, "Nice day for a tan."

The derelict, a black man in his late thirties, looked up. "You blind, man? What'd I do with a tan?"

Pitt recognized the sharp eyes of a professional observer, who dissected every square centimeter of Pitt's hands, clothes, body, and face, in that order. They were definitely not the vacant eyes of a down-and-out street dweller.

"Oh, I don't know," Pitt answered in a neighborly tone. "It might come in handy when you take your pension and move to Bermuda."

The bum smiled, flashing unblemished white teeth. "Have a safe stay, my man."

"I'll try," Pitt said, amused at the odd reply. He stepped past the disguised first ring of protection sentry and followed the others into the building's lobby.

The interior was as run down as the exterior. There was the unpleasant smell of disinfectant. The green tile floors were badly treadworn and the walls stark and smudged with years of overlaid handprints. The only object in the dingy lobby that seemed well maintained was an antique mail drop. The solid brass glinted under the dusty light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, and the American eagle above the words

"U.S. Mail" was as shiny as the day it was buffed out of its casting. Pitt thought it a curious contrast.