“Madness,” muttered Pitt. “Suppose Shang's hit men were successful last night and killed Julia and me. You'd still be sitting here claiming you didn't have enough cold evidence to indict the man who ordered our murders.”
“Unfortunately, that's the way it is,” said Monroe.
“Qin Shang isn't about to stop there,” Julia said in frustration. “He fully intends to kill Dirk. He said as much at his party last night.”
“And I informed him that it's only fair that we play by the same rules,” said Pitt. “He now thinks I've hired a team of assassins to take him out too.”
“You threatened Qin Shang to his face?” Harper asked incredulously. “How could you dare?”
“It was easy,” Pitt answered casually. “Despite his wealth and power, he still puts his pants on one leg at a time the same as me. I thought it might be nice if he looks over his shoulder like the rest of his intended victims.”
“You're joking, of course,” said Monroe, scorn in his tone. “You don't really conspire to murder Shang.”
Pitt answered in a smooth voice. “Oh, but I do. As they say in the old western movies, it's either him or me, and next time I intend to shoot first.”
Monroe looked worried. He looked across the table at Hill and Davis. Then he focused on Sandecker. “Admiral, I called this meeting in the hope of enlisting Mr. Pitt in cooperating with our operation. But it seems he has become a loose cannon. Since he is under your authority, I strongly suggest you give him a leave of absence. Peter here will arrange for his protection in a safe house on the coast of Maine.”
“What about Julia?” demanded Pitt. “How do you intend to keep her safe from further harm?”
“Ms. Lee is an agent with INS,” said Harper in an official tone. “She will continue to work the case. A team of our agents will stand guard over her movements. I guarantee that she will be safe.”
Pitt stared across the table at Sandecker. “How do you call it, Admiral?”
Sandecker pulled his red Vandyke to a point. Only Pitt and Giordino recognized the wolfish glint in his eyes. “It would appear we have little choice in the matter. A safe house might be the best place for you to lay low until Qin Shang and his criminal activities are terminated.”
Pitt said soberly, “Well, I guess I have little say in the matter. A safe house it is.”
Sandecker wasn't fooled for an instant by Pitt's easy acceptance. He knew his special projects director did not have the slightest intention of leaving the room like a lamb. “Then it's settled.” Suddenly he laughed sharply.
“May I ask what you find so funny, Admiral?” asked Monroe irritably.
“Sorry, Mr. Monroe. But I'm relieved to assume that the INS, the FBI and CIA have no further use for NUMA.”
“That is correct. After your people bungled their underwater investigations of Qin Shang Maritime's facilities in Hong Kong and Sungari, I see it as a wasted effort to involve your agency any further.”
Monroe's cutting words produced no fury, no outrage, nor did they incite wrath. Pitt and Giordino sat there and took it in stride, expressing no emotions. Sandecker barely managed to reply to the commissioner's insulting remarks. He settled for clenching his fists out of sight under the table.
Pitt rose to his feet, followed by Giordino. “I know when I'm not wanted.” He grinned at Sandecker. “I'll wait in the car.” He paused to grasp lightly one of Julia's hands, raise it to his lips and kiss it. “Have you ever lain on the beach at Maza-tlan and watched the sunset over the Sea of Cortez?” he whispered in her ear.
She looked self-consciously up and down at the faces around the table, her face reddening. “I've never even been to Mexico.”
“You will,” he promised, “you will.” Then he released her hand and leisurely strolled from the conference room, trailed by Giordino and Sandecker.
Unlike most directors of U.S. governmental agencies, who demanded to be carried around Washington by limousine, Admiral Sandecker preferred to drive himself. After leaving the INS headquarters building, he steered the turquoise Jeep, which was one of the NUMA fleet of transportation vehicles, along the east side of the Potomac River on the Maryland shore. After dropping several miles below the city, he turned off the road and stopped the Jeep in a parking lot next to a small boat dock. Locking the car, Sandecker led the way across the floating wooden dock to a sixty-year-old double-ender whaleboat that had once served as Admiral Bull Halsey's shore boat during the war in the Pacific. After finding it in shabby condition, he had lovingly restored it to its original state. While he turned the handle that kicked the four-cylinder Buda diesel engine to life, Pitt and Giordino cast off the mooring lines. Then they climbed aboard as the little boat chugged out into the river.
“I thought we'd hold a little private talk before we returned to the NUMA building,” Sandecker said above the exhaust as he held the long tiller in the stern under one arm. “As ridiculous as it sounds, I'm leery of conversing in my own office.”
“It does tend to make one gun-shy, knowing Qin Shang can and has bought off half the city,” said Pitt.
“The guy has more tentacles than ten squids joined together at birth,” added Giordino.
“Unlike the Russians, who paid paltry sums for secret information during the cold war,” said Sandecker, “Qin Shang thinks nothing of paying out millions of dollars to buy people and information.”
“Backed by the Chinese government,” said Pitt, “his cash reserves are bottomless.”
Giordino sat on a bench seat facing Sandecker. “What magic have you conjured up, Admiral?”
“Magic?”
“I've been around you too long to know you're not the kind to sit back and take contempt and ridicule. Something is cooking in your Machiavellian mind.”
Pitt grinned. “I suspect the admiral and I are running on the same wavelength. We're not about to let NUMA be shut out of hanging Qin Shang from the nearest tree.”
Sandecker's lips curled in a taut smile as he swung the boat in a wide arc to avoid a sailboat that was tacking upriver. “I hate it when I'm second-guessed by the hired help.”
“Sungari?” asked Pitt.
Sandecker nodded. “I've kept Rudi Gunn and the Marine Denizen on station a few miles below Qin Shang Maritime's port facility in the Atchafalaya River. I'd like you two rogues to fly down and join him. Then wait for the United States to show up.”
“Where is she now?” asked Giordino.
“The last report put her two hundred miles off the coast of Costa Rica.”
“That should put her at the dock at Sungari in three days,” remarked Pitt.
“You were right about a crew coming on board to take her through the Panama Canal.”
“Did they remain on board?”
Sandecker shook his head. “After transit through the Canal, they disembarked. The United States is continuing toward Louisiana under remote control.”
“A 'robo ship,' ” Giordino muttered thoughtfully. “Hard to believe a ship the size of the United States is cruising the seas with no one on board.”
“The Navy has been developing the 'robo ship' concept for ten years,” explained Sandecker. “Ship designers and engineers have already built an arsenal ship that is basically a floating missile pad able to launch as many as five hundred missiles by remote control from another ship, an aircraft or a facility thousands of miles away, a radical departure from present aircraft carriers that require a five-thousand-man crew. It's the newest concept from the Navy since the nuclear ballistic missile submarine. Totally contained warships and bomber aircraft are not far behind.”
“Whatever Qin Shang has in mind for the United States,” said Giordino, “it's not as a missile platform. Dirk and I searched it from engine room to wheelhouse. There are no missile launchers.”
“I read your report,” said Sandecker. “You also found no indication that it would be used to smuggle illegal immigrants.”