Pitt was down on the main floor in coveralls replacing the shattered windshield on the Duesenberg. Before she greeted him, Julia's gaze swept over the immaculate machinery on the spacious floor below.
She did not recognize the makes of the classic cars parked in even rows, nor did she recognize the Ford Trimotor aircraft and the Messerschmitt 262 jet plane sitting side by side at one end of the hangar. There was a large, old-fashioned Pullman car sitting on a short section of track, while behind it a small bathtub with an outboard motor stood perched on a small platform beside a strange-looking craft that resembled the upper half of a sailboat that had been tied to the buoyancy tubes of a rubber boat. A mast rose from the middle with what seemed like palm fronds woven into a sail. “Good morning,” she called down.
He looked up and gave her a killer smile. “Nice to see you, lazybones.”
“I could have stayed in bed all day.” “No chance of that,” he said. “Admiral Sandecker called while you were in dreamland. He and your boss want our bodies at a conference in one hour.”
“Your place or mine?” Julia asked in a humorous tone. “Yours, the INS headquarters office.” “How did you ever clean and press my silk dress?” “I soaked it in cold water after you fell asleep last night and hung it to dry. This morning I lightly ironed it through a cotton towel. As far as I can tell, it looks good as new.”
“You're quite a guy, Dirk Pitt,” she said. “I've never known a man so thoughtful, or innovative. Do you perform the same services for all the girls who sleep over?”
“Only exotic ladies of Chinese descent,” he answered. “May I fix breakfast?”
“Sounds good. You'll find whatever you need in the fridge and on the upper cupboards to your right. I already made coffee.”
She hesitated as Pitt began removing the fragmented mirror on the side-mounted spare tire. “I'm sorry about your car,” she said sincerely.
Pitt merely shrugged. “The damage is nothing I can't fix.” “Truly, she's a lovely car.”
“Fortunately, the bullets failed to strike any vital parts.” “Speaking of Qin Shang's thugs ...”
“Not to worry. There are enough hired guards patrolling outside to stage a coup on a third-world country.”
“I'm embarrassed.”
Pitt looked up at Julia leaning on the balcony railing and saw that her face was genuinely red with chagrin. “Why?”
“My superiors at INS and fellow agents must know I spent the night and are probably making snide remarks behind my back.”
Pitt looked up at Julia on the balcony and grinned. “I'll tell anybody who asks that while you slept, I spent the night working on a rear end.”
“That's not funny,” she said reprovingly.
“Sorry, I meant to say differential.”
“That's better,” Julia said, turning flippantly with a toss of her ebony hair and strutting into the kitchen, having enjoyed Pitt's teasing of her.
Accompanied by two bodyguards in an armored sedan, Pitt and Julia were driven to her sorority sister's apartment so she could change into attire more fitting for a government agent. Then they were taken to the stark-looking Chester Arthur Building on Northwest I Street, which housed the headquarters of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They entered the beige seven-story stone structure with its blackened windows from the underground parking area and were escorted up an elevator to the Investigations Division where they were met by Peter Harper's secretary, who showed them into a conference room.
Six men were already present in the room: Admiral San-decker; Chief Commissioner Duncan Monroe and Peter Harper of the INS; Wilbur Hill, a director with the Central Intelligence Agency; Charles Davis, special assistant to the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Al Giordino. They all rose to their feet as Pitt and Julia entered the room. All, that is, except Giordino, who simply nodded silently and gave Julia an infectious smile. Introductions were quickly made before everyone settled in chairs around a long oak table.
“Well,” said Monroe to Pitt, “I understand you and Ms. Lee had an interesting evening.” The tone of his voice strongly suggested a double meaning.
“Harrowing would be closer to the truth,” Julia answered quickly, prim and proper in a white blouse and blue business suit with the skirt cut just above her shapely knees.
Pitt stared evenly at Harper. “Things might have gone smoother if our hired bodyguards hadn't tried to send us to the morgue.”
“I deeply regret the incident,” said Harper seriously. “But circumstances went beyond our control.”
Pitt noticed that Harper looked far from sheepish. “I'd be interested in knowing the circumstances,” he came back coldly.
“The four men Peter hired to protect you and Ms. Lee were murdered,” revealed Davis of the FBI. A tall man who sat half a head above the other men around the table, he had the eyes of a Saint Bernard that had just come across a garbage can behind a barbecue-steak restaurant.
“Oh God,” murmured Julia. “All four?”
“Because then” concentration was focused on observing Mr. Perlmutter's residence they left themselves vulnerable for an assault."
“I regret their deaths,” said Pitt. “But it doesn't sound like they operated as true professionals.”
Monroe cleared his throat. “A full investigation is under way, of course. Initial analysis suggests that they were approached and murdered by Qin Shang's men, who posed as city police officers checking on reports of suspicious behavior in the neighborhood.”
“You have witnesses?”
Davis nodded. “A neighbor across the street from Mr. Perlmutter reported seeing a patrol car and four uniformed officers entering the vans and driving them away.”
“After shooting the bodyguards with silenced weapons,” Harper added.
Pitt looked at Harper. “Can you identify the men who attacked me at the hangar?”
Harper glanced at Davis, who turned up his palms in a dismayed gesture. “It seems their bodies disappeared on the way to the morgue.”
“How is that possible?” demanded Sandecker explosively.
“Don't tell me,” Giordino said sarcastically, “an investigation is under way.”
“That goes without saying,” replied Davis. “All we know is that they went missing after being unloaded from the ambulances at the morgue. We were lucky, however, in obtaining a make on one of your assassins when a paramedic pulled off a glove so he could try for a pulse. The corpse's hand lay flat on your polished hangar floor and left a set of three fingerprints. The Russians identified the killer for us as a Pavel Gavrovich, a former high-level Defense Ministry agent and assassin. For a marine engineer with NUMA to take out a professional hit man, Mr. Pitt, a man who had killed at least twenty-two people that we know of, is a polished achievement.”
“Professional or not,” said Pitt quietly, “Gavrovich made the mistake of underestimating his prey.”
“I find it incredible that Qin Shang can make fools of the entire United States government with such ease,” said San-decker acidly.
Pitt sat back and stared down as if seeing something beneath the surface of the conference table. “He couldn't. Not unless he had inside help from the Justice Department and other agencies of the federal government.”
Wilbur Hill of the CIA spoke for the first time. He was a blond man with a mustache, the pale blue eyes set widely apart, as if he could observe movements off to his sides. “I'll likely get into trouble for saying this, but we have strong suspicions that Qin Shang's influence reaches into the White House.”
“As we speak,” said Davis, “a congressional committee and Justice Department prosecutors are looking into tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent contributions by the People's Republic of China that were funneled into the President's future election campaign through Qin Shang.”