Deep Six (Dirk Pitt 7)

"One moment." Sally went off the line for nearly a minute.

"Okay, what do you want to know?"

:, When does it make the next port?"

'Let's see, it arrives in San Salvador in the Bahamas at ten A.M.

tomorrow and departs the same evening at eight P.m. for Kingston, Jamaica."

" Thank you, Sally."

"What's all this about?" Sally asked. "I wish you'd tell me."

"Keep trying to reach Loren. Contact the ship every two hours."

"You'll call if you find out anything," Sally said suspiciously.

"I'll call," Pitt promised.

He returned to the table and sat down.

"What was that all about?" Giordino inquired.

"My travel agent," Pitt answered, pretending to be nonchalant.

"I've booked us for a cruise in the Caribbean."

CURnS MAYO SAT AT A DESK amin the studio mock-up of a busy newsroom and peered at the television monitor slightly to his right and below camera number two. He was ten minutes into the evening news and waited for his cue after a commercial advertising a bathroom disinfectant. The thirty-second spot wound down on a New York fashion model, who probably never cleaned a toilet bowl in her life, smiling demurely with the product caressing her cheek.

The floor director moved into Mayo's eye range, counted down the last three seconds and waved. The red light on the camera blinked on and Mayo stared into the lens, beginning the segment of his news program.

"At the President's farm in New Mexico there have been rumors that the nation's chief executive and the Vice President are using look-alike stand-ins."

As Mayo continued his story line the engineer in the control booth cut to the tape of the President driving the tractor.

"These scenes of the President cutting alfalfa on his farm, when viewed close up, suggest to some that it is not him. Certain famous mannerisms seem exaggerated, different rings are seen on the fingers, the wristwatch is not the one he usually wears, and there appears to be a casual habit of scratching the chin that has not been noted before."

"John Sutton, the actor who bears a striking resemblance and who often imitates the President on TV shows and commercials, could not be found by reporters in Hollywood for comment. Which raises the question Why would our nation's leaders require doubles? Is it a secret security procedure, or a deception for darker motives? Could it be the pressures of the job are such that they have to be in two places at the same time? We can only speculate."

Mayo let the story dangle on a thread of suspicion. The engineer in the booth switched back to the studio camera, and Mayo went into the next story.

"In Miami today, police claimed a breakthrough in a string of drug-related murders. . . ."

After the program, Mayo smiled in grim delight when informed of the hundreds of calls flooding the network news offices asking for more information on the President's double story, The same reaction, if not far heavier, had to be pouring into White House phone lines. In a spiteful sort of glee, he wondered how the presidential press secretary was taking it.

In New Mexico, Sonny Thompson stared blankly at the TV set long after Mayo left the air. He sat collapsed in his chair, his flesh the consistency of blubber. He envisioned his carefully nurtured world slamming to a rapid end. His peers in the news media were about to crucify him on a cross of sensationalism. When he was proven an accomplice to a conspiracy to deceive the American public, no newspaper or TV network would ever hire him after his looming White House departure.

John Sutton stood in back of him with a drink in one hand. "The vultures are circling," he said.

"In giant flocks," Thompson muttered.

"What happens now?"

"That's for others to decide."

"I'm not going to jail like Lindy, Colson and those other guys," Sutton said nastily.

'Nobody's going to jail," Thompson said wearily. "This isn't Watergate. The Justice Department is working with us."