Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

Pitt smiled to himself. "I know somebody who is an easy touch for beautiful women and handicapped kids."

22

Pitt was up early the next morning, shaved and put on a dark business suit. Sandecker insisted his top-level directors dress the part. He ate a light breakfast and drove across the river to the NUMA headquarters. The traffic was heavy as usual, but he was in no great hurry and used the delays to collect his thoughts and plan his schedule for the day. He took the elevator from the underground parking area straight up to the fourth floor, which held his office. When the doors opened, he stepped out onto an ornate mosaic tile floor with scenes of ships at sea that stretched down the corridor. The entire floor was empty. At seven o'clock, he was the first to arrive.

He stepped into his corner office, removed his coat and hung it on an old-fashioned coat rack. Pitt seldom spent more than six months out of the year at his desk. He preferred working in the field. Paperwork was not his favorite area. He spent the next two hours sorting through his mail and studying the logistics of future NUMA scientific expeditions around the world. As special projects director, he oversaw those projects that dealt with the engineering side of oceanography.

At nine o'clock sharp, his secretary of many years, Zerri Pochinsky, entered the outer office. Seeing Pitt at his desk, she rushed in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Welcome back. I hear you're to be congratulated."

"Don't you start in," Pitt grumbled, happy to see Zerri.

Zerri was just twenty-five and single when she was hired as Pitt's secretary. Married to a Washington lobbyist now, she had no children of her own, but they had adopted five orphans. Extremely bright and intelligent, she worked just four days a week: an arrangement Pitt was happy to accommodate because of her mastery of the job, and the fact that she was always two steps ahead of him. She was the only secretary he knew who could still take shorthand.

Vivacious, with an endearing smile and hazel eyes, her fawn-colored hair fell to her shoulders, a style she had never changed in all the years Pitt had known her. In the early years, they had often flirted with each other, but Pitt had an unbroken rule about fooling around in his own office. They'd remained close friends without romantic attachments.

Zerri came around behind Pitt's desk chair, clasped her arms around his neck and shoulders and gave him a squeeze. "You'll never know how glad I am to see you in the flesh. I always anguish like a mother whenever I hear you're reported missing in action."

"Bad pennies always turn up."

She straightened up, smoothed her skirt and her tone became official. "Admiral Sandecker wants you in the conference room at eleven o'clock sharp."

"Giordino, too?"

"Giordino, too. Also, don't make plans for the afternoon. The admiral has set up interviews with the news media. They've gone crazy without any on-the-scene witnesses of the burning of the Emerald Dolphin to grill."

"I told all I knew in New Zealand," muttered Pitt.

"Not only are you in the United States, but in Washington. The news media considers you a local hero. You have to play along and answer their questions."

"The admiral should make Al endure the blitz. He loves the attention."

"Except that he works under you, which makes you the front man."

For the next few hours, Pitt worked on his detailed report of the crazy events of the past two weeks, beginning with his sighting of the burning cruise liner to the battle and escape of the Deep Encounter from the hijackers. He left out the part dealing with the possible Cerberus Corporation connection, because at this point he didn't have the slightest notion where the giant company entered into the picture. He left it to Hiram Yaeger to continue tracing the thread.

At eleven, Pitt entered the conference room and closed the door behind him. Sandecker and Rudi Gunn were already seated at the long conference table that had been constructed from planking salvaged from a schooner sunk in Lake Erie in 1882. The large room was paneled in teak, and enhanced by a turquoise carpet and a Victorian mantelpiece. Hanging on the walls were paintings of historical U.S. naval battles. Pitt's worst fears were realized when two other men rose from their chairs to greet him.

Sandecker remained seated as he made the introductions. "Dirk, I believe you know these gentlemen."

A tall blond man with a mustache and light blue eyes shook Pitt's hand. "Good to see you, Dirk. It's been, what, two years?"

Pitt pressed the hand of Wilbur Hill, a director of the CIA. "Closer to three."

Charles Davis, the special assistant to the director of the FBI, stepped forward. At six foot six, he was by far the tallest man in the room. He always reminded Pitt of a dog with sad, droopy eyes in search of his food dish. "We last met when we worked together on that Chinese immigration case."

"I remember it well," Pitt replied cordially.

While they chatted briefly about old times, Hiram Yaeger and Al Giordino walked into the room. "Well, it looks like we're all present," said Sandecker. "Shall we get to it?"

Yaeger began by passing around folders with copies of photos the cameras had taken of the sunken Emerald Dolphin. "While you gentlemen study these, I'll run the VCR."

A huge three-sided monitor dropped from a hidden recess in the ceiling. Yaeger pressed the buttons on a remote control and the images taken by the video cameras of the Sea Sleuth began to sweep in three dimensions across a stage in front of the screens. The wreck had a ghostly and pathetic look on the seabed. It was hard to believe that such a beautiful ship could have been reduced to such an incredible degree of devastation.

Pitt gave a narration as the submersible moved along the hull of the sunken cruise liner. "The wreck lies nineteen thousand seven hundred and sixty feet deep on a smooth slope of the Tonga Trench. She's broken into three pieces. The wreckage and debris field cover a square mile. The stern, and a fragment of the midships section, lies a quarter of a mile from the main forward section. This is where we concentrated our search. At first we believed she shattered upon impact with the bottom, but if you study the way the gaps in the hull are torn outward, it appears obvious that a series of explosions blew out the hull beneath the waterline while the fire-destroyed derelict was under tow by the Quest Marine tugboat. We can safely assume her internal structure, weakened by a series of synchronized detonations, broke up during her plunge to the bottom."

"Couldn't the hull have been blown apart wh

en smoldering fire reached the ship's fuel tanks and caused them to explode while the ship was being towed?" asked Davis.