After checking to see if the probing eye of the surveillance camera was still obstructed by the broom, he relaxed with a bottle of Martin Ray chardonnay. Pleased with himself but prudent and wary, Pitt laid his faithful, scratched and worn old Colt .45 automatic in his lap under a napkin. A gift from his father, the gun had saved his life on more than one occasion, and he never traveled without it. After he cleared up the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee, he walked into the living room, inserted the cassette from the AUV's camera package in a special adapter and slipped it into the slot of a VCR mounted on top of the cabin's television set. Then he sat hunched directly in front of the screen so the images could not be exposed to any camera still undiscovered in the living room.
As he watched the underwater video recorded by the AUV, he hardly expected to see anything that did not belong on the lake's bottom. His primary interest was the area in and around the dock and the yacht moored beside it. He sat patiently as the submersible swept back and forth over the shallower slopes before passing over the deep hole in the middle of the lake during its roundabout voyage toward Shang's dock. The first few minutes revealed only an occasional fish that darted away from the mechanical intruder, weeds growing out of the silt, gnarled logs that had been washed down the feeding streams. He smiled to himself when he observed several children's toys and bicycles just off a beach, as well as a pre-World War II automobile in deeper water. Then, suddenly, odd patches of white appeared through the blue-green void.
Pitt stiffened and stared in horrified fascination as the patches of white materialized into human faces on heads attached to bodies heaped together or lying alone in the silt. The lake bed was littered with what must have been hundreds of them, some piled three and four deep, perhaps more, many more. They rested on the slope of the lake in forty feet of water and spread out of sight into the deepest part of the lake. To Pitt it was like staring from a stage at a vast audience through an opaque curtain. Those in the front seats were clear and distinct, but me mass of people seated further to the rear faded and were lost in the dark. He couldn't begin to estimate the numbers. The appalling thought that came to him was that the bodies scattered in the shallower waters were but a small portion of those that lay out of the AUV's camera range in the unseen deep of the lake.
The chilling fingers of revulsion touched the back of Pitt's neck as he saw a number of women and several children scattered among the sunken field of dead. Many of them were elderly. The icy, fresh water running down from the glaciers had maintained the bodies in a state of near-perfect preservation. They appeared to be lying peacefully, as if asleep, slightly indented in soft silt. On some the facial expressions were tranquil, on others the eyes bulged and mouths were thrust open in what was their final scream. They lay undisturbed, unaffected by the frigid water temperature and the daily sequences of light and dark. There was no sign of decay.
As the submersible passed directly within one meter of what looked like an entire family, he could see by the folds of the eyes and features of the faces that they were Oriental. He could also see that their hands were tied behind them, their mouths taped and their feet roped to iron weights.
They had died at the hands of mass murderers. There was no sign of gunshot or knife wounds. Despite the myth, death by drowning is not a pleasant way to die. Only fire can be more horrible. When sinking rapidly into the deep, the eardrums burst, water rushes into the nostrils, causing incredible sinus pain, and the lungs feel as if they are seared by hot coals. Nor was death swift. The terror as they were bound, transported to the middle of the lake in the dead of night and then thrown, he guessed, from under the center cabin of the mysterious twin-hulled black boat, their screams muffled by the black water. They were innocently trapped in some unknown conspiracy, and died terribly and in agony.
Orion Lake was more than a picture of idyllic, charming scenery, much more. It was a graveyard.
ALMOST THREE THOUSAND MILES TO THE EAST, A SPRING drizzle fell over the heart of the city as a black limousine rolled silently over the wet, empty streets. The darkened windows rolled up, its occupants unseen, the car seemed as if it was part of a nocturnal funeral procession carrying mourners to a cemetery.
The dominant capital in the world, Washington had a benign aura of antiquated grandeur. This was especially true late at night when the offices were dark, the phones stopped ringing, the copy machines went mute and the distortions and exaggerations stopped coursing through the halls of the bureaucracy. Its political transient residents had all gone home to sleep with visions of campaign fund-raisers dancing in their heads. But for the lights and minimal traffic, the city took on a look of an abandoned Babylon or Persepolis.
Neither of the two men in the passenger compartment spoke as the driver, seated at the wheel in front of the closed divider window, efficiently steered the limousine over the rain-slicked asphalt that mirrored the streetlights along the sidewalks. Admiral James Sandecker stared out the window, his eyes staying unfocused as the driver turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue. His mind was lost in thought. Dressed in expensive sport coat and slacks, he didn't look the least bit tired. When the call came from Morton Laird, the President's chief of staff, he was hosting a late-night supper for a group of visiting oceanographers from Japan in his office suite atop the NUMA building across the river in Arlington, Virginia.
Slight of build from jogging five miles a day and exercising in the NUMA employees' health center, Sandecker looked much younger than a man homing in on sixty-five years of age. The respected director of NUMA since its founding, he had built a federal bureau of ocean sciences that was the envy of every maritime nation in the world. Spirited and gutsy, he wasn't a man to take no for an answer. Thirty years in the Navy, highly decorated, he was picked by a former president to head up NUMA when there wasn't a dime in funding nor congressional approval. In fifteen years, Sandecker had stepped on many toes, made any number of enemies, but persevered until no member of Congress dared suggest he resign in favor of a political lackey. Egocentric yet simple, he vainly dyed the gray that was seeping into his flaming red hair and Vandyke beard.
The man beside him, Commander Rudi Gunn, wore a rumpled business suit. He hunched his shoulders and rubbed his hands briskly. The April nights in Washington could be far too chilly for comfort. A graduate of the Naval Academy, Gunn had served in submarines until he became the admiral's chief aide. When Sandecker resigned to form NUMA, Gunn had followed him and was appointed director in charge of operations. He looked across at Sandecker through horn-rimmed glasses, studied the luminescent dial of his watch and then broke the silence.
He spoke in a voice mixed with fatigue and irritation. “Do you have any idea, Admiral, why the President demanded to see us at one o'clock in the morning?”
Sandecker turned his gaze from the passing lights and shook his head. “I haven't a clue. Judging from Morton Laird's tone, it was an invitation we couldn't refuse.”
“I'm not aware of any crisis going on,” muttered Gunn wearily, “domestic or foreign, that calls for middle-of-the-night secrecy.”
“Nor I.”
“Does the man ever sleep?”
“Three hours between four and seven A.M., according to my sources inside the White House. Unlike the previous three presidents, who served in Congress and were good friends, this one, a two-term governor of Oklahoma, is almost a total stranger to me. In the short time he's been in office since the former chief executive had a debilitating stroke, this is the first chance we've had to talk.”