Deep Six (Dirk Pitt 7)

"No, Mr. President. I , am Seaman First Class Lee Tong. Seaman Klosner was relieved at ten o'clock. I'm on duty until tomorrow morning."

The President was one of the few politicians whose ego was attuned to people. He spoke as graciously to an eight-year-old boy as he did to an eighty-year-old woman. He genuinely enjoyed drawing strangers out, calling them by their Christian names as if he'd known them for years.

"Your family Chinese, Lee?"

"No, sir. Korean. They immigrated to America in nineteen fifty-two.' "Why did you join the Coast Guard?"

"A love of the sea, I guess."

"Do you enjoy catering to old bureaucrats like me?"

Seaman Tong hesitated, obviously uneasy. "Well my choice, I'd rather be serving on an icebreaker."

"I'm not sure I like coming in second to an icebreaker." The President laughed good-naturedly. "Remind me in the morning to put in a word to Commandant Collins for a transfer. We're old friends."

"Thank you, Mr. President," Seaman Tong mumbled excitedly.

"I'll get your brandies right away."

Just before Tong turned away he flashed a wine smile that revealed a large gap in the middle of his upper teeth.

A HEAVY FOG CREPT OVER the Eagle, smothering her hull in damp, eerie stillness. Gradually the red warning lights of a radio antenna on the opposite shore blurred and disappeared. Somewhere overhead a gull shrieked, but it was a muted, ghostly sound; impossible to tell where it came from. The teak decks soon bled moisture and took on a dull sheen under the mist-veiled floodlights standing above the pilings of the old creaking pier anchored to the bank.

A small army of Secret Service agents, stationed at strategic posts around the landscaped slope that gently rose toward George Washington's elegant colonial home, guarded the nearly invisible yacht.

Voice contact was kept by short-wave miniature radios. So that both hands could be free at all times, the agents wore earpiece receivers, battery units on their belts and tiny microphones on their wrists.

Every hour the agents changed posts, moving on to the next prescheduled security area while their shift leader wandered the grounds checking the efficiency of the surveillance network.

In a motor home parked in the drive beside the old manor house, agent Blackowl sat scanning a row of television monitors. Another agent manned the communications equipment, while a third eyeballed a series of warning lights wired to an intricate system of alarms spaced around the yacht.

"You'd think the National Weather Service could give an accurate report ten miles from its forecast office," Blackowl groused as he sipped his fourth coffee of the night. "They said 'light mist." if this is light mist, I'd like to know what in hell they call fog so thick you can dish it with a spoon?"

The agent in charge of radio communications turned and lifted the earphones on his headset. "The chase boat says they can't see beyond their bow. They request permission to come ashore and tie up."

"Can't say I blame them," said Blackowl. "Tell them affirmative."

He stood and massaged the back of his neck. Then he patted the communications agent on the shoulder. "I'll take over the radio.

You get some sleep."

"As advance agent, you should be bedded down yourself."

"I'm not tired. Besides, I can't see crap on the monitors anyway."

The agent looked up at a large digital clock on the wall. "Zero one fifty hours. Ten minutes till the next post change."

Blackowl nodded and slid into the vacated chair. He had no sooner settled the earphones on his head than a call came from the Coast Guard cutter anchored near the yacht.

"Control, this is River Watch."

"This is Control," Blackowl replied, recognizing the voice of the cutter's commander.

"We're experiencing a problem with our scanning equipment."

"What kind of problem?"

"A high-energy signal on the same frequency as our radar is fouling reception."