“You certainly have a way with women,” Pitt remarked casually.

“Lucky for us there’s still a few things we can do better than they can.”

Casio motioned toward a large double door carved with dragons and quietly opened it. Min Koryo was propped up in her spacious bed, browsing through a pile of audit reports. For a moment the two men stood mute and unmoving, waiting for her to look up and acknowledge their intrusion. She looked so pathetic, so fragile, that any other trespassers might have wavered. But not Pitt and Casio.

Finally she lifted her reading glasses and gazed at them, showing no apprehension or fright. Her eyes were fixed in frank curiosity.

“Who are you?” she asked simply.

“My name is Sal Casio. I’m a private investigator.”

“And the other man?”

Pitt stepped from the shadows and stood under the glow from the spotlights above the bed. “I believe you know me.”

There was a faint flicker of surprise in her voice, but nothing else. “Mr. Dirk Pitt.”

“Yes.”

“Why have you come?”

“You are a slimy parasite who sucked the life out of untold innocent people to build your filthy empire. You’re responsible for the death of a personal friend of mine and also for that of Sal’s daughter. You tried to kill me, and you ask why I’m here?”

“You are mistaken, Mr. Pitt. I am guilty of nothing so criminal. My hands are unstained.”

“A play on words. You live in your museum of Oriental artifacts, shielded from the outside world, while your grandson did your dirty work for you.”

“You say I am the cause of your friend’s death?”

“She was killed by the nerve agent you stole from the government and left on the Pilottown.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said gently. The politeness and sympathy were without a trace of irony. “And you, Mr. Casio. How am I to blame for your daughter?”

“She was murdered along with the crew of the same ship, only then it was called the San Marino.”

“Yes, I recall,” said Min Koryo, dropping all pretense. “The girl with the stolen money.”

Pitt stared into the old woman’s face, examining it. The blue eyes were bright and glistening, and the skin was smooth, with only a bare hint of aging lines. She must have truly been a beautiful woman once. But beneath the veneer Pitt detected ugliness, a cesspool locked in ice. There was a black malignity inside her that filled him with contempt.

“I suppose you’ve smashed so many lives,” he said, “you’ve become immune to human suffering. The mystery is how you got away with it for so long.”

“You have come to arrest me?” she asked.

“No,” Casio answered stonily. “To kill you.”

The piercing eyes blazed briefly. “My security people will come through the door any second.”

“We’ve already eliminated the guard at the receptionist’s desk and the one outside your door. As to others”— Casio paused and pointed a finger at a TV camera mounted above her bed—”I’ve reprogrammed the tapes. Your guards at the monitors are watching whatever occurred in your bedroom a week ago last night.”

“My grandson will hunt you both down, and your punishment will not be quick.”

“Lee Tong is dead,” Pitt informed her, relishing every syllable.

The face altered. Now the blood flowed out of it and it became a pale yellow. But not with the emotions of shock and hurt, Pitt thought. She was waiting, waiting for something. Then the flicker of expectancy vanished as quickly as it had come.

“I do not believe you,” she said at last.

“He sank with the laboratory barge after I shot him.”

Casio moved around to the side of the bed. “You must come with us now.”

“May I ask where you’re taking me?” The voice was still soft and gracious. The blue eyes remained set.

They didn’t notice her right hand move beneath the covers.

Pitt never really accounted for the instinctive move that saved his life. Maybe it was the sudden realization that the TV camera was not exactly shaped like a camera. Maybe it was the complete absence of fear in Min Koryo, or the aura that she was in firm command, but as the beam of light stabbed out from above her bed, he pitched himself to the floor.

Pitt rolled to his side, tugging the automatic from his coat. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the laser beam sweep the room, cutting through furniture, scorching the draperies and wallpaper with a needle-thin spear of energy. The gun was in his hands, blasting away at the electron amplifier. At his fourth shot, the beam blinked out.

Casio was still standing. He reached out toward Pitt and then stumbled and fell. The laser had cut through his stomach as neatly as a surgeon’s scalpel. He twisted over on his back and stared up. Casio was seconds away from death. Pitt wanted to say something, but he couldn’t get the words out.

The case-hardened old investigator raised his head; his voice came in a rasping whisper. “The elevator… code four-one-one-six.” And then his eyes went sightless and his breathing ceased.

Pitt took the transmitter from Casio’s pocket, rose and trained the automatic just ten inches from Min Koryo’s heart. Her face was locked in a fearless smile. Then Pitt lowered the gun and reached under the covers and silently lifted her out of the bed into her wheelchair.

She made no move to resist, spoke no words of defiance. She sat, wizened and mute, as Pitt pushed her into the corridor and onto a small lift that lowered them to the office floor. When they reached the reception lobby, she noted the unconscious security guard and looked up at him.

“What now, Mr. Pitt?”

“The final curtain for Bougainville Maritime,” he said. “Tomorrow your rotten business will be no more. Your Oriental art objects will be given away to museums. A new tenant will come in and redecorate your offices and living quarters. In fact, your entire fleet of ships will be sold off. From now on the name of Bougainville will be nothing but a distant memory in newspaper microfilm files. No friends or relatives will mourn you, and I’ll personally see that you’re buried in a potter’s field with no marker.”

At last he had broken through and her face revealed a searing hate. “And your future, Mr. Pitt?”

He grinned. “I’m going to rebuild the car you blew up.”

She weakly lifted herself from the wheelchair and spat at him. Pitt made no move to wipe away the spittle. He simply stood there and grinned wickedly, looked down and saw the evil viciousness erupt as she cursed him in Korean.

Pitt pressed the code numbers Casio had given him into the transmitter and watched as the doors to Liftonic QW-607 opened.

But there was no elevator, only an empty shaft.

“Bon voyage, you diabolic old crone.”

Then he shoved the wheelchair into the vacant opening and stood listening as it clattered like a pebble down a well, echoing off the sides of the shaft until there was the faint sound of impact a hundred stories below.

Loren was sitting on a bench in the concourse as he came through the main door of the Trade Center. She came toward him and they met and embraced. They clung together without saying anything for a few moments.

She could feel the fatigue and the pain in him. And she sensed something more. A strange inner peace that she had never known was there. She kissed him lightly several times. Then she took his arm and led him to a waiting taxi.

“Sal Casio?” she asked.

“With his daughter.”

“And Min Koryo Bougainville?”

“In hell.”

She caught the distant look in his eyes. “You need rest. I’d better check you into a hospital.”

Suddenly the old devilish look flashed on his face. “I had something else in mind.”

“What?”

“The next week in a suite in the best hotel in Manhattan. Champagne, gourmet dinners sent up by room service, you making love to me.”

A coquettish expression gleamed in her eyes. “Why do I have to do all the work?”