Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

"Rather strong words, don't you think?" interrupted Congressman Sturgis. "We have seen or heard nothing here that shows evidence of any criminal activity."

"You will tomorrow," Loren said evenly, staring at Sturgis with a look of sheer triumph, "when Ms. Morse will supply the names of everyone in Washington and across the rest of the country who has accepted bribes from Mr. Guru's Merlin Zale. I promise you, the trail of graft and corruption, the depth of the money trail into offshore bank accounts, will stun the government to its core and shock the public as no scandal ever has in the past."

"What has this Sally Morse got to do with Mr. Zale?" asked Sturgis, realizing too late he was skating on thin ice.

"She was a former member of the Cerberus inner council. She kept a written record of meetings, payoffs and crimes. There are many names on the list you should find familiar."

The ice cracked and parted, and Sturgis fell through. He abruptly rose and left the chamber without another word, as Loren banged her gavel and adjourned the proceedings until the following day.

The gallery went mad. Reporters from the major news media surged around Zale and rushed after Loren, but Pitt was waiting at the door and hustled her through the noisy mob of newspeople who were shouting questions and trying to block their path. With his arm around her waist, he managed to steer her through the gauntlet and down the steps of the Capitol into a NUMA car waiting at the curb. Giordino stood by the car with the doors open.

Curtis Merlin Zale sat at the table, inundated by a sea of journalists and flashing cameras, like a man lost in the abyss of a nightmare.

Finally, he rose unsteadily to his feet and fought his way through the turmoil. With the help of Capitol police, he made it to the safety of his limousine. His chauffeur drove him to the mansion that housed the Washington headquarters of Cerberus and then watched as Zale walked like an elderly senior citizen through the lobby and entered the elevator to his luxurious office.

No man was more isolated from reality. He had no close friends, no family still living. Omo Kanai, perhaps the only man to whom Zale could relate, was dead. Zale was alone in a world where his was a household name.

As he sat there behind his desk and stared out the window into the courtyard below, he weighed his future and found it ominously dark. It was inevitable that he would end up in federal prison, regardless of how long he fought to stay free. When the members of the Cerberus cartel turned against him to save themselves, the finest, most expensive criminal trial lawyers in the country would be fighting a battle lost before it had even begun. Their testimony alone was enough to ensure his execution.

His wealth would surely be taken away by an avalanche of lawsuits, federal as well as civil. His loyal team of Vipers was no more. They were lying deep in the silt of New York's outer bay. They no longer stood ready to eliminate those who would testify against him.

He could never escape, never hide anywhere in the world. A man of his stature was too easy for investigators to track down, whether he fled to the Sahara Desert or to a lonely island in the middle of the ocean.

The people who had died because of his greed came back to haunt him now, not as wraiths or hideous ghosts, but like a parade of ordinary people thrown on a screen by a projector. In the end, he had lost his great gamble. He saw no avenue leading to a refuge. The decision was not difficult.

He rose from behind his desk, walked to a bar and poured himself a shot of expensive, fifty-

year-old-aged whiskey and sipped it as he returned to his desk and opened a side drawer. He picked up what looked like a small antique snuffbox. There were two pills inside that he had saved in the unlikely event he would be incapacitated from an accident or suffered from a debilitating disease. He took a final drink of the whiskey, placed the pills under his tongue and relaxed in the big leather executive chair.

They found Curtis Merlin Zale dead the next morning, his desk clean of papers. There was no final note expressing shame or regret.

55

Giordino pulled the car to a stop in front of the NUMA building. Pitt stepped to the sidewalk, then turned and leaned in the window and said to Loren, "It won't take long for an army of reporters and television cameras to surround your town house in Alexandria. I think it best that Al takes you to the hangar, at least for tonight. You can bunk with the other ladies until your hearings continue tomorrow. By then, your staff can work out a security team for you."

She leaned out and kissed him lightly on the lips. "Thank you," she said softly.

He smiled and waved as Giordino pulled the car from the curb into traffic.

Pitt went directly to Sandecker's office, where he found the admiral and Rudi Gunn waiting for him. Sandecker was back in one of his good moods, puffing contentedly on one of his big personally wrapped cigars. He stepped over and shook Pitt's hand vigorously. "Great job, great job," he repeated. "Brilliant concept, using a spar with underwater explosives contained in magnetic canisters. You blew half the stern off the ship without endangering the propane tanks."

"We were lucky it worked," said Pitt modestly.

Gunn also shook Pitt's hand. "You left us with quite a mess to clean up."

"It could have been worse."

"We're already working out contracts with salvage companies to remove the ship. Don't want it to be a menace to navigation," said Gunn.

"What about the propane?"

"The tops of the tanks are only thirty feet below the surface," explained Sandecker. "The divers shouldn't have a problem hooking up pipes and pumps to other LNG tankers to remove the gas."

"The Coast Guard has already set buoys around the wreck, and stationed a lightship as a warning to incoming and outgoing ship traffic," Gunn added.

Sandecker moved back behind his desk and blew a large cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling. "How did Loren's hearing go?"

"Not good for Curtis Merlin Zale."