“You’d better not let my superintendents see you like that,” he said gruffly.
She slowly raised her head and looked down over a sea of skin. “I see no problem. I have my bra on.”
“And women wonder why they’re raped.”
“Surely you don’t want me to go around wearing a sack,” she said mockingly.
“I have just gotten off the phone with Washington,” he said heavily. “It seems your sister has vanished.”
Deirdre sat up, startled, and lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. “Are your sources reliable? I personally hired the best investigators, former Secret Service agents, to keep her under surveillance.”
“It’s confirmed. They bungled their assignment and lost her after a wild ride through the countryside.”
“Maeve isn’t smart enough to lose professional investigators.”
“From what I’ve been told, she had help.” Her lips twisted into a scowl. “Let me guess Dirk Pitt.”
Dorsett nodded. “The man is everywhere. Boudicca had him in her grasp at our Kunghit Island mine, but he slipped through her fingers.”
“I sensed he was dangerous when he saved Maeve. I should have known how dangerous when he interrupted my plans to be airlifted off the Polar Queen by our helicopter after I set the ship on a collision course toward the rocks. I thought we were rid of him after that. I never imagined he would pop up without warning at our Canadian operation.”
Dorsett motioned to a pretty little Chinese girl who was standing by a column supporting the roof over the veranda. She was dressed in a silk dress with long slits up the sides. “Bring me a gin,” he ordered. “Make it a tall one. I don’t like skimpy drinks.”
Deirdre held up a tall, empty glass. “Another rum collins.”
The girl hurried off to bring the drinks. Deirdre caught her father eyeing the girl’s backside and rolled her eyes. “Really, Daddy. You should know better than to bed the hired help. The world expects better from a man of your wealth and status.”
“There are some things that go beyond class,” he said sternly.
“What do we do about Maeve? She’s obviously enlisted Dirk Pitt and his friends from NUMA to help her retrieve the twins.”
Dorsett pulled his attention from the departing Chinese servant. “He may be a resourceful man, but he won’t find Gladiator Island as easy to penetrate as our Kunghit Island property.”
“Maeve knows the island better than any of us. She’ll find a way.”
“Even if they make it ashore”-he lifted a finger and pointed through the arched door of the courtyard in the general direction of the mines-“they’ll never get within two hundred meters of the house.”
Deirdre smiled diabolically. “Preparing a warm welcome seems most appropriate.”
“No warm welcome, my darling daughter, not here, not on Gladiator Island.”
“You have an ulterior plan.” It was more statement than question.
He nodded. “Through Maeve, they will, no doubt, devise a scheme to infiltrate our security. Unfortunately for them, they won’t have the opportunity of exercising it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We cut them off at the pass, as the Americans are fond of saying, before they touch our shore.”
“A perceptive man, my father.” She stood up and hugged him, inhaling his smell. Even when she was a little girl he had smelled of expensive cologne, a special brand he imported from Germany, a musky, no-nonsense smell that reminded her of leather briefcases, the indefinable scent of a corporation boardroom and the wool of an expensive business suit.
He reluctantly pushed her away, angry at a growing feeling of desire for his own flesh and blood. “I want you to coordinate the mission. As usual, Boudicca will expedite.”
“I’ll bet my share of Dorsett Consolidated you know where to find them.” She smiled archly at him. “What is our timetable?”
“I suspect that Mr. Pitt and Maeve have already left Washington.”
Her eyes squinted at him under the sun. “So soon?”
“Since Maeve hasn’t been seen at her house, nor has Pitt set foot in his NUMA office for the past two days, it goes without saying that they are together and on their way here for the twins.”
“Tell me where to set a trap for them,” she said, a sparkle of the feline hunter in her eyes, certain her father had the answer. “An airport or hotel in Honolulu, Auckland or Sydney?”
He shook his head. “None of those. They won’t make it easy for us by flying on commercial flights and staying at secluded inns. They’ll take one of NUMA’s small fleet of jet transports and use the agency’s facilities as a base.”
“I didn’t know the Americans had a permanent base for oceanographic study in either New Zealand or Australia.”
“They don’t,” replied Dorsett. “What they do have is a research ship, the Ocean Angler, which is on a deepsea survey project in the Bounty Trough, west of New Zealand. If all goes according to plan, Pitt and Maeve will arrive in Wellington and rendezvous with the NUMA ship at the city docks this time tomorrow.”
Deirdre stared at her father with open admiration. “How could you know all this?”
He smiled imperiously. “I have my own source in NUMA, who I pay very well to keep me informed of any underwater discoveries of precious stones.”
“Then our strategy is to have Boudicca and her crew intercept and board the research ship and arrange for it to disappear.”
“Not wise,” Dorsett said flatly. “Boudicca has learned that Dirk Pitt somehow traced the cleanup of the derelict ships to her and our yacht. We send one of NUMA’s research ships and its crew to the bottom and they’ll know damned well we were behind it. No, we’ll treat that matter more delicately.”
“Twenty-four hours isn’t much time.”
“Leave after lunch and you can be in Wellington by supper. John Merchant and his security force will be waiting for you at our warehouse outside of the city.”
“I thought Merchant had his skull fractured on Kunghit Island.”
“A hairline crack. Just enough to make him insane for revenge. He insisted on being in on the kill.”
“And you and Boudicca?” asked Deirdre.
“We’ll come across in the yacht and should arrive by midnight,” answered Dorsett. “That still leaves us ten hours to firm up our preparations.”
“That means we’ll be forced into seizing them during daylight.”
Dorsett gripped Deirdre by the shoulders so hard she winced. “I’m counting on you, Daughter, to overcome any obstacles.”
“A mistake, thinking we could trust Maeve,” Deirdre said reproachfully. “You should have guessed she would come chasing after her brats the first chance she got.”
“The information she passed on to us before disappearing was useful,” he insisted, angrily. Excuses for miscalculation did not come easily to Arthur Dorsett.
“If only Maeve had died on Seymour Island, we wouldn’t have this mess.”
“The blame is not entirely hers,” said Dorsett. “She had no prior knowledge of Pitt’s intrusion on Kunghit. He’s cast out a net, but any information he might have obtained cannot hurt us.”
Despite the minor setback, Dorsett was not overly concerned. His mines were on islands whose isolation was a barrier to any kind of organized protest. His vast resources had shifted into gear. Security was tightened to keep any reporters from coming within several kilometers of his operations. Dorsett attorneys worked long hours to keep any legal opposition at bay while the public relations people labeled the stories of deaths and disappearances throughout the Pacific Ocean as products of environmentalist rumor mills and attempted to throw the blame elsewhere, the most likely target being secret American military experiments.
When Dorsett spoke it was with renewed calm. “Twenty-three days from now any storm raised by Admiral Sandecker will die a natural death when we close the mines.”