Deep Six (Dirk Pitt 7)

She had become so used to handling large sums of money during her four-year tenure that she was immune to the mere sight-a lassitude that afflicts all tellers sooner or later. Yet inexplicably, this time the piles of green-printed tender beguiled her. Subconsciously she began to picture it as belonging to her.

Arta went home that weekend and locked herself in her apartment to fortify her resolve and plan the crime she intended to commit, practicing every gesture, every motion until they came smoothly to her without hesitation. All Sunday night she lay awake until the alarm went off, bathed in cold sweat, but determined to see the act through.

The cash shipment arrived every Monday by armored car and usually totaled from six to eight hundred thousand dollars. It was then re-counted and held until distribution on Wednesday to the bank's branch offices, scattered throughout the Los Angeles basin.

She had decided the time to make her move was on Monday evening, while she was putting her money drawer in the vault.

In the morning, after she showered and made up her face, Arta donned a pair of panty hose. She wound a roll of two-sided sticky tape around her legs from min-calf to the top of her thighs, leaving the protective outer layer of the tape in place. This odd bit of handiwork was covered with a long skirt that came almost to her ankles, hining the tape with inches to spare.

Next she took neatly trimmed packets of bond paper and slipped them into a large pouch-style purse. Each displayed a crisp new five-dollar bill on the outer sides and was bound with genuine blue and white Federal Reserve Bank wrappers. To the casual eye they would appear authentic.

Arta stood in front of a full-length mirror and repeated over and over, "Arta Casilighio no longer exists. You are now Estelle Wallace."

The deception seemed to work. She felt her muscles relax, and her breathing became slower, shallower. Then she took a deep breath, threw back her shoulders and left for work.

In her anxiety to appear normal she inadvertently arrived at the bank ten minutes early, an astounding event to all who knew her well, but this was Monday morning and no one took notice. Once she settled behind her teller's counter every minute seemed an hour, every hour a lifetime. She felt strangely detached from the familiar surroundings, and yet any thought of forgetting the hazardous scheme was quickly suppressed. Mercifully, fear and panic remained dormant.

When six o'clock finally rolled around, and one of the assistant vice presidents closed and locked the massive front doors, she quickly balanced her cash box and slipped quietly off to the ladies' room, where in the privacy of a stall she unwound the tape's outer layer from around her legs and flushed it down the toilet. She then took the bogus money packets and fixed them to the tape, stamping her feet to make certain no

ne would drop off as she walked.

Satisfied everything was ready, she came out and dawdled in the lobby until the other tellers had placed their cash drawers in the vault and left. Two minutes alone inside that great steel cubicle was all she needed and two minutes alone was what she got.

Swiftly she pulled up the skirt and with precise movements exchanged the phony packets for those containing genuine bills.

When she stepped out of the vault and smiled a good evening to the assistant vice President as he nodded her out a side door, she couldn't believe she'd actually gotten away with it.

Seconds after entering her apartment, she shed the skirt, stripped the money packets from her legs and counted them. The tally came to $51,000.

Not nearly enough.

Disappointment burned within her. She would need at least twice that sum to leave the country and maintain a minimal level of comfort while increasing the lion's share through investments.

The ease of the operation had made her heady. did she dare make another foray into the vault? she wondered. The Federal Reserve Bank money was already counted and wouldn't be distributed to the branch banks until Wednesday. Tomorrow was Tuesday. She still had another chance to strike again before the loss was discovered.

Why not?

The thought of ripping off the same bank twice in two days excited her. Perhaps Arta Casilighio lacked the guts for it, but Estelle Wallace required no coaxing at all.

That evening she bought a large old-fashioned suitcase at a secondhand store and made a false bottom in it. She packed the money along with her clothes and took a cab to the Los Angeles International Airport, where she stored the suitcase overnight in a locker and purchased a ticket to San Francisco on an early-evening Tuesday flight.

Wrapping her unused Monday night ticket in a newspaper, she dropped it in a trash receptacle. With nothing remaining to be done, she went home and slept like a rock.

The second robbery went as smoothly as the first. Three hours after leaving the Beverly-Wilshire Bank for the last time, she was re-counting the money in a San Francisco hotel. The combined total came to $128,000. Not a staggering prize by inflationary standards, but more than ample for her needs.

The next step was relatively simple. She checked through the newspapers for ship departures and found the San Marino, a cargo freighter bound for Auckland, New Zealand, at six-thirty the following morning.

An hour before sailing time, she mounted the gangplank. The captain claimed he seldom took passengers, but kindly consented to take her on board for a mutually agreed fare-which Estelle suspected went into his wallet instead of the steamship company's coffers.

Estelle stepped across the threshold of the officers' dining saloon and paused uncertainly for a moment, facing the appraising stares of six men sitting in the room.

Her coppery-tinted hair fell past her shoulders and nearly matched her tan. She wore a long, sleek pink T-shirt dress that clung in all the right places. A white bone bracelet was her only accessory. To the officers rising to their feet the simple elegance of her appearance created a sensation.

Captain Irwin Masters, a tall man with graying hair, came over and took her arm. "Miss Wallace," he said, smiling warmly. "It's good to see you looking fit."

"I think the worst is over," she said.

"I don't mind admitting, I was beginning to worry. Not leaving your cabin for five days made me fear the worst. With no doctor on board, we would have been in a fix if you needed medical treatment."