Shock Wave (Dirk Pitt 13)

"What have you done with the crew?" Pitt demanded of Merchant, noting the bandage on the back of his head.

"The five men left on board were persuaded to remain in their quarters."

Pitt looked at him questioningly. "Only five?"

"Yes. The others were invited to a party in their honor by Mr. Dorsett, at Wellington's finest hotel. Hail to the brave explorers of the deep, that sort of tiring. As a mining company, Dorsett Consolidated has a vested interest in whatever minerals are discovered on the seafloor."

"You were well prepared," said Pitt coldly. "Who in NUMA told you we were coming?"

"A geologist, I don't know his name, who keeps Mr. Dorsett informed of your underwater mining projects He's only one of many -who provide the company with inside information from businesses and governments around the world"

"A corporate spy network."

"And a very good one. We've tracked you from the minute you took off from Langley Field in Washington."

The guards who surrounded the three made no move to restrain them. "No shackles, no handcuffs?"

asked Pitt.

"My men have been commanded to assault and maim only Miss Dorsett should you and your friend attempt to escape." Merchant's teeth fairly gleamed under the sun between his thin lips. "Not my wish, of course. The orders came direct from Ms. Boudicca Dorsett."

"A real sweetheart," Pitt said acidly. "I'll bet she tortured her dolls when she was little."

"She has some very interesting plans for you, Mr. Pitt."

"How's your head?"

"Not nearly injured enough to keep me from flying over the ocean to apprehend you."

"I can't stand the suspense. Where do we go from here?"

"Mr. Dorsett will arrive shortly. You will all be transferred to his yacht."

"I thought his floating villa was at Kunghit Island."

"It was, several days ago." Merchant smiled, removed his glasses and meticulously polished the lenses with a small cloth. "The Dorsett yacht has four turbocharged diesel engines connected to water jets that produce a total of 18,000 horsepower that enable the 80-ton craft to cruise at 120 kilometers an hour.

You will find Mr. Dorsett is a man of singularly high taste."

"In reality, he probably has a personality about as Interesting as a cloistered monk's address book,"

said Giordino readily. "What does he do for laughs besides count diamonds?"

Just for a moment, Merchant's eyes blazed at Giordino and his smile faded, then he caught himself and the lifeless look returned as if it had been applied by a makeup artist.

"Humor, gentlemen, has its price. As Miss Dorsett can tell you, her father lacks a fondness for satiric wit. 1 venture to say that by this time tomorrow you will have precious little to smile about."

Arthur Dorsett was nothing like Pitt had pictured him. He expected one of the richest men in the world, with three beautiful daughters, to be reasonably handsome, with a certain degree of sophistication.

What Pitt saw before him in the salon of the same yacht he'd stood in at Kunghit Island was a troll from Teutonic folklore who'd just crawled from an underworld cave.

Dorsett stood a half a head taller than Pitt and was twice as broad from hips to shoulders. This was not a man who was comfortable sitting behind a desk. Pitt could see from whom Boudicca had gotten the black, empty eyes. Dorsett had weathered lines in his face, and the rough, scarred hands indicated that he wasn't afraid of getting them dirty. The mustache was long and scraggly with a few bits of his lunch adhering to the strands of hair. But the thing that struck Pitt as hardly befitting a man of Dorsett's international stature was the teeth that looked like the ivory keys of an old piano, yellowed and badly chipped. Closed lips should have covered the ugliness, but oddly, they never seemed to close, even when Dorsett was not talking.

He was positioned in front of the driftwood desk with the marble top, flanked by Boudicca, who stood on his left, wearing denim pants and a shirt that was knotted at her midriff but, oddly, buttoned at the neck, and Deirdre, who sat in a patterned-silk chair, chic and fashionably dressed in a white turtleneck under plaid shirt and skirt. Crossing his arms and sitting on his desk with one foot on a carpeted deck, Dorsett smiled like a monstrous old hag. The sinister eyes examined every detail of Pitt and Giordino like needles, probing every centimeter from hair to shoelaces. He turned to Merchant, who was standing behind Maeve, his hand resting inside a tweed sport coat on a holstered automatic slung under one arm.

"Nicely done, John." He beamed. "You anticipated their every move." He lifted a matted eyebrow and stared at the two men standing before him, wet and bedraggled, turned his eyes to Maeve, stringy damp hair sticking to her forehead and cheeks, grinned hideously and nodded at Merchant. "Not all went as you expected, perhaps? They look like they fell in a moat."

"They delayed the inevitable by trying to escape into the water," Merchant said airily. The self-assurance, the pomposity, were mirrored in his eyes. "In the end they walked right into my hands."