"Well," said Monroe to Pitt, "I understand you and Ms. Lee had an interesting evening." The tone of his voice strongly suggested a double meaning.
"Harrowing would be closer to the truth," Julia answered quickly, prim and proper in a white blouse and blue business suit with the skirt cut just above her shapely knees.
Pitt stared evenly at Harper. "Things might have gone smoother if our hired bodyguards hadn't tried to send us to the morgue."
"I deeply regret the incident," said Harper seriously. "But circumstances went beyond our control."
Pitt noticed that Harper looked far from sheepish. "I'd be interested in knowing the circumstances," he came back coldly.
"The four men Peter hired to protect you and Ms. Lee were murdered," revealed Davis of the FBI. A tall man who sat half a head above the other men around the table, he had the eyes of a Saint Bernard that had just come across a garbage can behind a barbecue-steak restaurant.
"Oh God," murmured Julia. "All four?"
"Because their concentration was focused on observing Mr. Perlmutter's residence they left themselves vulnerable for an assault."
"I regret their deaths," said Pitt. "But it doesn't sound like they operated as true professionals."
Monroe cleared his throat. "A full investigation is under way, of course. Initial analysis suggests that they were approached and murdered by Qin Shang's men, who posed as city police officers checking on reports of suspicious behavior in the neighborhood."
"You have witnesses?"
Davis nodded. "A neighbor across the street from Mr. Perlmutter reported seeing a patrol car and four uniformed officers entering the vans and driving them away."
"After shooting the bodyguards with silenced weapons," Harper added.
Pitt looked at Harper. "Can you identify the men who attacked me at the hangar?"
Harper glanced at Davis, who turned up his palms in a dismayed gesture. "It seems their bodies disappeared on the way to the morgue."
"How is that possible?" demanded Sandecker explosively.
"Don't tell me," Giordino said sarcastically, "an investigation is under way."
"That goes without saying," replied Davis. "All we know is that they went missing after being unloaded from the ambulances at the morgue. We were lucky, however, in obtaining a make on one of your assassins when a paramedic pulled off a glove so he could try for a pulse. The corpse's hand lay flat on your polished hangar floor and left a set of three fingerprints. The Russians identified the killer for us as a Pavel Gavrovich, a former high-level Defense Ministry agent and assassin. For a marine engineer with NUMA to take out a professional hit man, Mr. Pitt, a man who had killed at least twenty-two people that we know of, is a polished achievement."
"Professional or not," said Pitt quietly, "Gavrovich made the mistake of underestimating his prey."
"I find it incredible that Qin Shang can make fools of the entire United States government with such ease," said Sandecker acidly.
Pitt sat back and stared down as if seeing something beneath the surface of the conference table. "He couldn't. Not unless he had inside help from the Justice Department and other agencies of the federal government."
Wilbur Hill of the CIA spoke for the first time. He was a blond man with a mustache, the pale blue eyes set widely apart, as if he could observe movements off to his sides. "I'll likely get into trouble for saying this, but we have strong suspicions that Qin Shang's influence reaches into the White House."
"As we speak," said Davis, "a congressional committee and Justice Department prosecutors are looking into tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent contributions by the People's Republic of China that were funneled into the President's future election campaign through Qin Shang."
"When we met with the President," said Sandecker, "he spoke as if the Chinese were the greatest scourge on the country since the Civil War. Now you tell me his fingers are in Qin Shang's wallet."
"There is simply no underestimating the morals of a politician," Giordino said with a sardonic twist of his lips.
"Be that as it may," Monroe said gravely, "
olitical ethics are not the job of INS. Our primary concern at the moment is with the huge numbers of illegal Chinese aliens that are being smuggled into the country by Qin Shang Maritime Limited before being killed or enslaved by criminal syndicates."
"Commissioner Monroe is quite correct," said Harper. "The duty of INS is to plug the flow, not prosecute murders."
"I can't speak for Mr. Hill and the CIA," said Davis, "but the Bureau has been heavily involved with investigating Qin Shang's domestic crimes against the American people for three years."
"Our inquiries, on the other hand, are focused more on his overseas operations," offered CIA's Hill.