Dragon (Dirk Pitt 10)

"I know I shouldn't have stepped out of bounds, but I wanted to play out a hunch."

"You're not much of a team player, are you, Dirk?" said Jordan, using Pitt's given name for the first time. "You'd rather play your own game.

" `Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means.' "

"Your words?"

"No, they belong to Francis Hutcheson, a Scot philosopher."

"I give you credit for quoting in the exact form," said Jordan. "Most of official Washington would have plagiarized the original and quoted `The ends justifies the means.' "

"What do you want?" asked Pitt, desperately eyeing his bed.

"I thought you'd also like to know that we found the bomb carriers."

"All six cars?" Pitt asked, astonished.

"Yes, they're hidden in a Japanese bank building in downtown Washington. Sealed in an underground basement until the day they're dusted off and driven to their scheduled targets and detonated."

"That was fast work."

"You have your methods, we have ours."

"Have you placed them under surveillance?"

"Yes, but we have to tread softly. We don't dare tip our hand yet, not before we terminate those responsible for this horror and destroy their command center," said Jordan. "As it was, Giordino came within a hair of blowing the operation this afternoon. Somebody at Murmoto Distributors was scared.

We got in and out of their accounting system only minutes before they erased their imported shipping data."

"The data led you to the cars?"

"We were able to track and penetrate a known Japanese owned freight company whose trucks picked them up. They programmed no mention of destination in their records, of course, but we did manage tòborrow' a copy of the driver's delivery log. It revealed the number of kilometers the truck traveled after leaving the dockyard. The rest involved solid investigation and fancy footwork."

"Like breaking and entering."

"We never break when we enter," said Jordan.

"Should it leak out that our good citizens are sitting on nuclear bombs belonging to a foreign power, the country will be torn apart by panic."

"Not a healthy situation, I agree. The public uproar and the demand for revenge might scare the Japs into moving the cars to strategic positions and pressing thèfire' button before we can find and neutralize them."

"An across-the-board search could take twenty years to find them all."

"I don't think so," said Jordan calmly. "We know how they do it, and thanks to you and Giordino, we know what to look for. The Japanese are not half the pros we are in the intelligence business. I'll bet we'll find every Murmoto and its bomb within thirty days."

"I applaud optimism," said Pitt. "But what about our allies and the Russians? The Japanese may have hidden bombs under them too. Is the President going to warn their leaders of the possibility?"

"Not yet. The NATO nations can't be trusted not to leak a secret this critical. On the other hand, the President may feel that letting the Kremlin in on it might tighten relations. Think about it. We're both in the same boat now, both threatened suddenly by another superpower."

"There is one other frightening threat.

"There's so many, what have I missed?"

"Suppose Japan set off a few of the bombs in either the U.S. or Russia? We'd each think one attacked the other, go to war, and leave the crumbs for the wily Japs to pick over."

"I don't want to go to bed with that in my head," said Jordan uneasily. "Let's just take things as they come. If our operation is successful, then it's in the hands of the politicians again."

"Your last thought," said Pitt, feigning apprehension, "would keep anyone awake nights."