The ship’s hull was only two meters from the pilings. Pitt swam until he was directly beneath the ship’s boarding ramp. He reached up, locked his hands around across member that reinforced the pilings and pulled himself out of the water. Climbing the slanting beams until he reached the upper edge of the dock, he slowly raised his; head and scanned the immediate vicinity. .
The area around the boarding ramp was deserted, but a Dorsett security van was parked across the nearest entry onto the pier. He counted four men lined across an open stretch between stacks of cargo containers and several parked cars alongside the ship moored in front of the Ocean Angler.
He ducked below the edge of the dock and spoke to Maeve and Giordino. “Our friends are guarding the entrance to the pier about eighty meters away, too far to stop us from making it on board.”
No more conversation was necessary. Pitt pulled both of them onto the beam he was standing on. Then, at his signal, they all climbed over the beam that acted as a curb, dodged around a huge bollard that held the mooring lines of the ship, and with Maeve in the lead, dashed up the boarding ramp to the open deck above.
When he reached the safety of the ship, Pitt’s instincts began working overtime. He had erred badly, and the mistake couldn’t be undone. He knew when he saw the men guarding the dock begin walking slowly and methodically toward the Ocean Angler as if they were out for stroll through the park. There was no shouting or confusion. They acted as though they had expected them quarry to suddenly appear and reach the sanctuary of the ship. He knew when he looked over decks devoid of human activity that something was very, very wrong. Someone on the crew should have been in evidence on a working ship. The robotic submersibles, the sonar equipment, the great winch for lowering survey systems into the depths were neatly secured. Rare was the occasion when an engineer or scientist wasn’t fussing with hi prized apparatus. And he knew when a door opened from a companionway leading to the bridge and a familiar figure stepped out onto the deck that the unthinkable had happened.
“How nice to see you again, Mr. Pitt,” said John Merchant, snidely. “You never give up, do you?”
Pitt, in those first few moments of bitter frustration, felt an almost tangible wave of defeat wash over him. The fact that they had been effortlessly and completely snared, that Maeve was trapped in the arms of her father, that there was every likelihood that he and Giordino would be murdered, was a heavy pill to swallow.
It was all too painfully obvious that with advance warning from their agent inside NUMA, Dorsett’s men had arrived at the Ocean Angler first, and through some kind of subterfuge had temporarily subdued the captain and crew and taken over the ship just long enough to trap Pitt and the others. It had all been so predestined, so transparent that Arthur Dorsett had been certain to do something beyond the bounds of the ordinary, as a backup strategy in the event that Pitt and Giordino had slipped through his fingers and somehow come on board. Pitt felt he should have predicted it and come up with an alternate plan, but he’d underestimated the shrewd diamond tycoon. Pirating an entire ship while it was docked within stone’s throw of a major city had not crossed Pitt’s mind.
When he saw a small army of uniformed men appear from their hiding places, some with police clubs, a few leveling rubber-pellet guns, he knew hope was lost. But not irretrievably lost. Not so long as he had Giordino at his side. He looked down at Giordino to see how he was reacting to the terrible shock. As far as he could tell, Giordino looked as though he was enduring a boring classroom lecture. There was no reaction at all. He stared at Merchant as though measuring the man for a coffin, a stare, Pitt observed, that was strangely like the one with which Merchant was appraising Giordino.
Pitt put his arm around Maeve, whose brave front began to crumble. The blue eyes were desolate, the wide, waxen eyes of one who knows her world is ending. She bowed her head and placed it in her hands as her shoulders sagged. Her fear was not for herself but for what her father would do to her boys now that it was painfully obvious she had deceived him.
“What have you done with the crew?” Pitt demanded of Merchant, noting the bandage on the back of his head.
“The five men left on board were persuaded to remain in their quarters.”
Pitt looked at him questioningly. “Only five?”
“Yes. The others were invited to a party in their honor by Mr. Dorsett, at Wellington’s finest hotel. Hail to the brave explorers of the deep, that sort of tiring. As a mining company, Dorsett Consolidated has a vested interest in whatever minerals are discovered on the seafloor.”
“You were well prepared,” said Pitt coldly. “Who in NUMA told you we were coming?”
“A geologist, I don’t know his name, who keeps Mr. Dorsett informed of your underwater mining projects He’s only one of many—who provide the company with inside information from businesses and governments around the world”
“A corporate spy network.”
“And a very good one. We’ve tracked you from the minute you took off from Langley Field in Washington.”
The guards who surrounded the three made no move to restrain them. “No shackles, no handcuffs?” asked Pitt.
“My men have been commanded to assault and maim only Miss Dorsett should you and your friend attempt to escape.” Merchant’s teeth fairly gleamed under the sun between his thin lips. “Not my wish, of course. The orders came direct from Ms. Boudicca Dorsett.”
“A real sweetheart,” Pitt said acidly. “I’ll bet she tortured her dolls when she was little.”
“She has some very interesting plans for you, Mr. Pitt.”
“How’s your head?”
“Not nearly injured enough to keep me from flying over the ocean to apprehend you.”
“I can’t stand the suspense. Where do we go from here?”
“Mr. Dorsett will arrive shortly. You will all be transferred to his yacht.”
“I thought his floating villa was at Kunghit Island.”
“It was, several days ago.” Merchant smiled, removed his glasses and meticulously polished the lenses with a small cloth. “The Dorsett yacht has four turbocharged diesel engines connected to water jets that produce a total of 18,000 horsepower that enable the 80-ton craft to cruise at 120 kilometers an hour. You will find Mr. Dorsett is a man of singularly high taste.”
“In reality, he probably has a personality about as Interesting as a cloistered monk’s address book,” said Giordino readily. “What does he do for laughs besides count diamonds?”
Just for a moment, Merchant’s eyes blazed at Giordino and his smile faded, then he caught himself and the lifeless look returned as if it had been applied by a makeup artist.
“Humor, gentlemen, has its price. As Miss Dorsett can tell you, her father lacks a fondness for satiric wit. 1 venture to say that by this time tomorrow you will have precious little to smile about.”
Arthur Dorsett was nothing like Pitt had pictured him. He expected one of the richest men in the world, with three beautiful daughters, to be reasonably handsome, with a certain degree of sophistication. What Pitt saw before him in the salon of the same yacht he’d stood in at Kunghit Island was a troll from Teutonic folklore who’d just crawled from an underworld cave.
Dorsett stood a half a head taller than Pitt and was twice as broad from hips to shoulders. This was not a man who was comfortable sitting behind a desk. Pitt could see from whom Boudicca had gotten the black, empty eyes. Dorsett had weathered lines in his face, and the rough, scarred hands indicated that he wasn’t afraid of getting them dirty. The mustache was long and scraggly with a few bits of his lunch adhering to the strands of hair. But the thing that struck Pitt as hardly befitting a man of Dorsett’s international stature was the teeth that looked like the ivory keys of an old piano, yellowed and badly chipped. Closed lips should have covered the ugliness, but oddly, they never seemed to close, even when Dorsett was not talking.