Trojan Odyssey (18 page)

Sandecker ignored the slur. “Soon as you all get your things together, Rudi will drive you to the airport. I have a NUMA jet waiting to fly you to Washington. It's pressurized, so Dirk and Summer shouldn't have any complications from their recent decompression. We'll all meet in my office at noon tomorrow.”

“I hope you have beds on the airplane, because that's the only sleep we're going to get,” Giordino came back.

“Are you flying with us, Admiral?” asked Summer.

He grinned craftily. “Me? No, I'll follow on another plane.” He motioned toward the waiting reporters. “Somebody has to sacrifice himself on the altar of the news media.”

Giordino pulled a cigar from his breast pocket that looked suspiciously like one of Sandecker's private brand. He gazed cagily at the admiral as he lit the end. “Make sure they spell our names right.”

 

H
EIDI
L
ISHERNESS SAT
staring unseeing at the array of monitors showing a dying Hurricane Lizzie. After swinging southeast and causing havoc with ships traveling through the Caribbean, she slammed into the east coast of Nicaragua between Puerto Cabezas and Punta Gorda. Fortunately, her strength had dropped by half and there were few inhabitants living along the coastline. Before Lizzie traveled fifty miles across the lowland swamps and into the foothills, she had sputtered and finally died, but not before eighteen ships were lost with all hands and three thousand people had been killed, with another ten thousand injured and homeless.

She could only imagine how the death toll might have mushroomed if her forecasts and warnings hadn't been sent out soon after Lizzie was born. She was sitting there, slouched at her desk that was littered with photos, computer analysis reports and a forest of paper coffee cups, when her husband Harley approached through the empty office that looked as though Lizzie had swept through it, leaving an absolute mess for the cleaning people.

“Heidi,” he said as he gently placed his hand on her shoulder.

She looked up through reddened eyes. “Oh, Harley. I'm glad you came.”

“Come along, old girl, you've done an extraordinary job. Now it's time to let me take you home.”

Wearily, thankfully, Heidi came to her feet and leaned on her husband as he walked her out of the paper-strewn offices of the Hurricane Center. At the door she turned and took a last look, focusing on a large strip of paper pinned on one wall that someone had written on. The block lettering read: IF YOU KNEW LIZZIE LIKE WE KNOW LIZZIE, OH, OH, OH WHAT A STORM.

She smiled to herself and switched off the lights, sending the big storm center room into darkness.

A
UGUST
23, 2006
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

T
HE AIR WAS
hot and damp with humidity that hung heavy without a breeze. The sky was cobalt blue with white clouds marching across it like a herd of sheep. Except for the tourists, the city simmered at a slow pace in the middle of summer. Congress used any excuse for a recess to escape the heat and soggy air, holding sessions only when it thought it was either absolutely necessary, or when it polished its members' image as busy bees in the voters' eyes. To Pitt, as he stepped off the NUMA Citation jet, the atmosphere was little different from the tropics he'd come from. The private government airport a few miles north of the city was empty of other aircraft, as Giordino, Dirk and Summer followed him down the boarding stairs to the black asphalt that felt hot enough to fry Spam.

The only vehicle waiting on the aircraft parking strip was a prodigious 1931 Marmon town car with a V-16 engine. It was a wondrous vehicle with style and class, technically superior in its time, noble and elegant. One of only 390 Marmon V-16s built, it was magically smooth and silent, its big engine putting out 192 horsepower with 407 foot-pounds of torque. Painted a dusty rose, the coachwork was perfectly in tune with Marmon's advertising as “The World's Most Advanced Motor Car.”

Every bit as lovely and stylish as the car was the woman standing beside it. Tall and captivating, cinnamon hair glinting in the sun and falling to her shoulders, framing a soft beautiful face with a model's high cheekbones that were enhanced by soft violet eyes, Congresswoman Loren Smith stood cool and radiant. She was wearing a white lace patch blouse cut to show off her natural curves over matching asana pants cut loose with flared legs that dropped slightly over white canvas sneakers. She waved, smiled and ran over to Pitt. She looked up at him and kissed him lightly on the lips. Then stood back.

“Welcome home, sailor.”

“I wish I had a dollar for every time you've said that.”

“You'd be a rich man,” she said with a cute laugh. Then she hugged Giordino, Summer and Dirk. “I hear you all had a big adventure.”

“If not for Dad and Al,” said Dirk, “Summer and I would be wearing wings.”

“After you settle in, I want you to tell me all about it.”

They carried their luggage and duffel bags to the car, threw some in the humpbacked trunk and the rest on the floor of the rear seat. Loren slipped behind the wheel that sat in the open air while Pitt moved into the passenger's side. The rest shared the enclosed rear compartment behind the divider window.

“Are we dropping Al off at his condo in Alexandria?” she asked.

Pitt nodded. “Then we can head for the hangar and clean up. The admiral wants us in his office by noon.”

Loren looked down at the clock on the instrument panel. The hands read: 10:25. Frowning as she expertly, smoothly, shifted through the gears, she said caustically, “No time to relax before going back to work? After what the four of you have been through, isn't he crowding you a bit?”

“You know as well as I that beneath his sandpaper exterior beats the heart of a considerate man. He wouldn't insist on a deadline unless it was important.”

“Still,” Loren said, as the car was waved through the armed security guard at the airport gate, “he could have given you twenty-four hours to rejuvenate.”

“We'll know soon enough what's on his mind,” Pitt muttered, doing his best to keep from dozing off.

Fifteen minutes later, Loren drove up to the gated condominium complex where Giordino lived. A bachelor who had yet to marry, he seemed in no hurry to take the big step, preferring to spread his frosting on the cake, as he put it. Loren had seldom seen him with the same lady twice. She had introduced him to her lady friends, who all found him charming and interesting, but after a while he always drifted off to someone else. Pitt always likened him to a prospector wandering a tropical paradise for gold but never finding it on the beach under the palm trees.

Giordino retrieved his duffel bag and waved. “See you again soon…too soon.”

The drive to Pitt's aircraft hangar apartment at one deserted end of Ronald Reagan National Airport was traffic-free. Again, they were waved through a security gate when the guard recognized Pitt. Loren stopped at the old hangar once used by a long-extinct airline in the nineteen thirties and forties. Pitt had purchased it to store his old-car collection and remodeled the upper offices into an apartment. Dirk and Summer lived on the main floor that also housed his fifty-car collection, a pair of old aircraft and a railroad Pullman car that he'd found in a cave in New York.

Loren braked the Marmon in front of the main door as Pitt used his remote to disengage his complicated alarm system. Then the door raised and she drove inside and parked in the middle of the incredible array of beautiful old classic automobiles dating from the earliest, a 1918 V-8 Cadillac, to a 1955 Rolls-Royce Hooper-bodied Silver Dawn. Sitting on a white epoxy floor and illuminated by skylights above, the old cars radiated a dazzling rainbow of colors.

Dirk and Summer retired to their separate compartments in the Pullman car while Pitt and Loren went up to his apartment, where he showered and shaved as she fixed a light brunch for the four of them. Thirty minutes later, Pitt exited his bedroom, dressed in casual slacks and golf shirt. He sat down at his kitchen table as Loren handed him a Ramos Fizz.

“Have you ever heard of a big corporation called Odyssey?” he asked Loren out of the blue.

She looked at him for a moment. “Yes, I'm on a congressional committee that has looked into its operations. It's not an agenda that's being covered by the news media. What do you know about our investigation?”

He shrugged casually. “Absolutely nothing. I wasn't aware of your congressional involvement with Specter.”

“The corporation's nebulous founder? Then why did you ask?”

“Curiosity. Nothing more. Specter owned the hotel Al and I helped save from being carried onto the rocks by Hurricane Lizzie.”

“Other than the fact he heads a vast scientific research facility in Nicaragua and is involved with huge construction projects and mining operations around the world, very little is known about him. Some of his international dealings are legitimate, others are very shady.”

“What are his projects in the U.S.?”

“Water canals through the southwest deserts and a few dams. That's the extent of it.”

“What sort of scientific research projects does Odyssey conduct?” Pitt asked.

Loren shrugged. “Their activities are heavily veiled, and since their facility is in Nicaragua, they aren't bound by any laws to report their experiments. Rumor has it they're involved with fuel cell research, but no one knows for certain. Our intelligence people don't see Odyssey as a priority investigation.”

“And their construction operations?”

“Mostly underground vaults and warehouse excavation,” answered Loren. “The CIA has heard rumors that he's hollowed out caverns for clandestine nuclear and biological weapons manufactured in countries such as North Korea, but there's no proof. A number of their projects are with the Chinese, who want their military research programs and weapons supplies kept secret. Odyssey seems to have made a speciality of building below-the-surface vault warehouses that hide military activity and arms assembly plants from spy satellites.”

“Yet Specter built and operated a floating hotel.”

“A toy he uses to entertain clients,” explained Loren. “He's only in the resort business for the fun of it.”

“Who is Specter? The operation's manager for the
Ocean Wanderer
had nothing good to say about him.”

“He must not like his job.”

“Not that. He told me he would no longer work for Specter, because he ran from the hotel and flew off in his private plane before the hurricane struck, abandoning the guests and employees, not caring whether they might all die.”

“Specter is a very mysterious person. Probably the only corporate executive officer of a giant business who doesn't have a personal publicity agent or public relations firm. He's never given an interview and is rarely seen in public. There are no records of his history, family or schooling.”

“Not even a birth record?”

Loren shook her head. “No record of his birth has been found in the U.S. or in any other nation's archives around the world. His true identity has yet to be revealed despite the best efforts of our intelligence agencies. The FBI tried to get a handle on him a few years ago, but came up empty. There are no revealing photographs because his face is always covered by a scarf and heavy sunglasses. They tried to obtain fingerprints, but he wears gloves. Even his closest business aides have never seen his face. All that is obvious is that he is very obese, probably weighing more than four hundred pounds.”

“Nobody's life or business can remain
that
veiled.”

Loren made a helpless gesture with her hands.

Pitt poured himself a cup of coffee. “Where are his corporate headquarters located?”

“Brazil,” replied Loren. “He also has a huge office center in Panama. And because he has made a large investment in the country, the president of the republic made him a citizen. He also appointed Specter as a director of the Panama Canal Authority.”

“So what is the justification for your congressional probe?” asked Pitt.

“His dealings with the Chinese. Specter's connection with the People's Republic of China's is a long-standing relationship that goes back fifteen years. As a director of the Canal Authority, he was instrumental in helping the Hong Kong–based Whampoa Limited company, which is tied in with the People's Liberation Army, to obtain a twenty-five-year option for control of the canal's Atlantic and Pacific Ocean ports of Balboa and Cristobal. Whampoa will also be in charge of all loading and unloading of ship cargoes, and the railroad that transports cargo between the ports, and will soon begin construction on a new suspension bridge that will be used to truck oversized cargo containers north and south over the Canal Zone.”

“What is our government doing about this?”

Loren shook her head. “Nothing that I'm aware of. President Clinton gave the Chinese carte blanche for their influence and expansion throughout Central America.” Then she added, “Another intriguing thing about the Odyssey Corporation is that its top management is almost entirely staffed by women.”

Pitt smiled. “Specter must be idolized by the feminist movement.”

Dirk and Summer joined them for a brief late breakfast before they left for Sandecker's office. This time, Pitt drove one of the turquoise NUMA Navigators that were part of the fleet of agency vehicles. He stopped at Loren's town house to drop her off.

“Dinner tonight?” he queried.

“Are Dirk and Summer coming, too?”

“I might drag the kids,” Pitt said, smiling, “but only if you insist.”

“I insist.” Loren gave his hand a squeeze and elegantly exited the Navigator, stepped lightly to the driveway and walked up the steps to her door.

 

T
HE
NUMA
HEADQUARTER
s building rose thirty stories on a hill above the Potomac River and had a commanding view of the city. Sandecker had personally chosen the site when Congress provided him with the funding to construct the building. It was far more magnificent than officials had originally conceived and ran several million dollars over budget. Because it was on the east side of the river just out of the District of Columbia, the admiral had unaccountably found a skyline free from the building height restrictions and erected a magnificent green glass tubular structure that could be seen from miles around.

Pitt drove into the crowded underground parking and pulled into his reserved slot. They took the elevator up to Sandecker's office on the top floor and exited the elevator into an anteroom paneled with teak decking from old shipwrecks. The admiral's secretary asked if they wouldn't mind waiting a minute since he was in a meeting.

Almost before the words left her lips, the door to the admiral's office opened and two old friends stepped into the ante-room. Kurt Austin, with a premature forest of gray hair, who was Pitt's counterpart as director of special projects, and Joe Zavala, the wiry engineer who often worked on submersible designs and construction with Giordino, stepped forward and shook hands.

“Where is the old geezer sending you two?” asked Giordino.

“Heading for the Canadian north country. There's rumors of mutant fish in some of the lakes. The admiral asked us to check it out.”

“We heard about your rescue of the
Ocean Wanderer
in the middle of Hurricane Lizzie,” said Zavala. “I didn't expect to see you back in the harness so soon.”

“No rest for the weary in Sandecker's book,” Pitt said with a half grin.

Austin nodded at Dirk and Summer. “One of these days I'll have you and the kids over for a barbecue.”