The distress in Giordino's face vanished. "Did they stop to investigate for survivors?"
"No. The derelict was badly damaged and looked deserted. The captain rightly assumed his first priority was to reach the island with a team of doctors."
"Thank you, Major." Giordino turned to Sandecker, "You heard?"
"I heard," Sandecker snapped impatiently. "Get this thing in the air."
Giordino required no urging. Within ten minutes of lifting off, they spotted the yacht almost exactly where the captain of the relief ship reported it, wallowing dead amid the marching swells. She rode low in the water with a ten-degree list to port. Her topsides looked as if they had been swept away by a giant broom. Her once proud sapphire-blue hull was scorched black, and her decks wore a heavy coating of gray ash. She had been through hell and she looked it.
"The helicopter pad looks clear," commented Sandecker.
Giordino lined up on the stern of the yacht and made a slow, slightly angled descent. The sea showed no sign of white, indicating a mild wind factor, but the yacht's roll and its list made his landing tricky.
He reduced power and hovered at an angle matching that of the yacht, timing his drop for when the yacht rose on the crest of a wave. At the exact moment, the Agusta flared out, hung for a few seconds and sank to the sloping deck. Giordino immediately applied the brakes to keep the aircraft from rolling into the sea and shut down the engine. They were safely down and their thoughts now turned to fear of what they might find.
Giordino jumped out first and quickly fastened tiedown ropes from the helicopter to the deck.
Hesitating for a moment to draw their breath, they stepped across the charred deck and entered the main salon.
One look at the two inert figures huddled in one corner of the room and Sandecker shook his head despairingly.
He briefly closed his eyes tight, fighting a wave of mental anguish. So awesome was the cruel scene, he couldn't move. There was no sign of life. Grief tore at his heart He stared motionless in sad bewilderment.
They both had to be dead, he thought.
Pitt was holding Maeve in his arms. The side of his face was a mask of dried blood from the injury inflicted by Boudicca. The whole of his chest and side were also stained dark crimson. The charred clothes, the eyebrows and hair that had been singed away, the burns on his face and arms, all gave him the image of someone horribly maimed in an explosion. He looked like he'd died hard.
Maeve seemed as though she had died not knowing her sleep would be eternal. A waxen sheen on her lovely features, she reminded Sandecker of a white, unburned candle, a sleeping beauty no kiss would ever awake.
Giordino knelt down beside Pitt, refusing to believe his old friend was dead. He gently shook Pitt's shoulder. "Dirk! Speak to me, buddy."
Sandecker tried to pull Giordino away. "He's gone," he said in a saddened whisper.
Then with such unexpectedness that both men were frozen in shock and disbelief, Pitt's eyes slowly opened, He stared up at Sandecker and Giordino, not understanding, not recognizing.
His lips quivered, and then he murmured, "God forgive me, I lost her."
THE DUST SETTLES
The tension that was present in the Paris conference room during the previous me
eting could not be felt this time around. Now the atmosphere was relaxed, almost cheerful. The directors of the Multilateral Council of Trade were more congenial as they met to discuss the latest of their international behind-the-scenes business dealings.
The chairs were filled around the long ebony table as the chairman paused', waiting for murmured conversations to die down, before he called the meeting to order.
"Gentlemen, much has happened since our last discussion. At that time we were faced with a threat to our international diamond operations. Now, thanks to a whim of nature, the scheme to destroy our diamond market has been brought to a standstill with the untimely death of Arthur Dorsett."
"Good riddance to bad rubbish," said the chief executive of the diamond cartel, laughing. He could scarcely believe the triumph he felt, and his elation at having a menacing threat fortuitously eliminated without a costly fight.
"Hear! Hear!" came a chorus of voices around the table.
"I'm happy to report," the chairman continued, "the market price of diamonds has risen dramatically in the past few days, while prices of colored gemstones have suffered a substantial drop."
The gray-haired man from one of America's richest families and a former Secretary of State spoke from the other end of the table. "What's to stop Dorsett Consolidated Mining's directors from going ahead with Arthur's program of discounting diamonds throughout his vast chain of jewelry stores?"
The Belgian industrialist from Antwerp made a gesture with his hand as he spoke. "Arthur Dorsett was a megalomaniac. His dreams of grandeur did not include others. He ran his mining operations and sales organizations without a board of directors. Arthur was a one-man band, He trusted no one. Except for occasionally hiring an outside adviser and then squeezing the man or woman dry for whatever expertise he could absorb before throwing them into the street, he ran Dorsett Consolidated alone with no one else at the top."
The Italian cargo-fleet owner smiled. "I'm tempted to climb the volcanoes that wiped out Arthur Dorsett and his evil empire and pour a bottle of champagne into their craters."