Giordino nodded. “The Packard or the Marmon?”
“Neither,” replied Pitt. “Before we left for the Pacific, I rebuilt the engine for the Stutz but didn’t install it.”
“That nineteen thirty-two green town car?”
“The same.”
“We’re coming home two months early. Just under the wire for you to enter the classic car races at Richmond.”
“Two days away,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “I don’t think I can have the car ready in time.”
“Let me give you a hand,” Giordino offered. “Together we’ll put the old green bomb on the starting line.”
Pitt’s expression turned skeptical. “We may not get the chance. Something’s going down, Al. When the admiral clams up, the cow chips are about to strike the windmill.”
Giordino’s lips curled in a taut smile. “I tried to pump him too.”
“And?”
“I’ve had more productive conversations with fence posts.”
“The only crumb he dropped,” said Pitt, “was that after we land we go directly to the Federal Headquarters Building.”
Giordino looked puzzled. “I’ve never heard of a Federal Headquarters Building in Washington.”
“Neither have I,” said Pitt, his green eyes sharp and challenging. “Another reason why I think we’re being had.”
21
IF PITT THOUGHT they were about to be danced around the maypole, he knew it after laying eyes on the Federal Headquarters Building.
The unmarked van with no side windows that picked them up at Andrews Air Force Base turned off Constitution Avenue, passed a secondhand dress store, went down a grimy alley, and stopped at the steps of a shabby six-story brick building behind a parking lot. Pitt judged the foundation was laid in the 1930s.
The entire structure appeared in disrepair. Several windows were boarded shut behind broken glass, the black paint around the wrought-iron balconies was peeling away, the bricks were worn and deeply scarred, and for a finishing touch an unwashed bum sprawled on the cracked concrete steps beside a cardboard box full of indescribably mangy artifacts.
The two federal agents who escorted them from Hawaii led the way up the steps into the lobby. They ignored the homeless derelict, while Sandecker and Giordino merely gave him a fleeting glance. Most women would have looked upon the poor man with either compassion or disgust, but Stacy nodded and offered him a faint smile.
Pitt, curious, stopped and said, “Nice day for a tan.”
The derelict, a black man in his late thirties, looked up. “You blind, man? What’d I do with a tan?”
Pitt recognized the sharp eyes of a professional observer, who dissected every square centimeter of Pitt’s hands, clothes, body, and face, in that order. They were definitely not the vacant eyes of a down-and-out street dweller.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Pitt answered in a neighborly tone. “It might come in handy when you take your pension and move to Bermuda.”
The bum smiled, flashing unblemished white teeth. “Have a safe stay, my man.”
“I’ll try,” Pitt said, amused at the odd reply. He stepped past the disguised first ring of protection sentry and followed the others into the building’s lobby.
The interior was as run down as the exterior. There was the unpleasant smell of disinfectant. The green tile floors were badly treadworn and the walls stark and smudged with years of overlaid handprints. The only object in the dingy lobby that seemed well maintained was an antique mail drop. The solid brass glinted under the dusty light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, and the American eagle above the words “U.S. Mail” was as shiny as the day it was buffed out of its casting. Pitt thought it a curious contrast.
An old elevator door slid open soundlessly. The men from NUMA were surprised to find a gleaming chrome interior and a U.S. marine in dress blues who was the operator. Pitt noted that Stacy acted as though she’d been through the drill before.
Pitt was the last one in, seeing his tired red eyes and the grizzly beginnings of a beard reflected in the polished chrome walls. The marine closed the doors, and the elevator moved with an eerie silence. Pitt could not feel any movement at all. No flashing lights over the door or on a display panel indicated the passing floors. Only his inner ear told him they were traveling very rapidly down a considerable distance.
At last the door opened onto a foyer and corridor that was so clean and orderly it would have done a spit-and-polish ship captain proud. The federal agents guided them to the second doorway from the elevator and stood aside. The group passed through a space between the outer and an inner door, which Pitt and Giordino immediately recognized as an air lock to make the room soundproof. As the second door was closed, air was pushed out with an audible pop.
Pitt found himself standing in a place with no secrets, an enormous conference room with a low ceiling, so dead to outside sounds the recessed fluorescent light tubes buzzed like wasps, and a whisper could be heard ten meters away. There were no shadows anywhere, and normal voice levels came almost like shouts. The center of the room held a massive old library table once purchased by Eleanor Roosevelt for the White House. It fairly reeked of furniture polish. A bowl of Jonathan apples made up the centerpiece. Underneath the table lay a fine old blood-red Persian carpet.
Stacy walked to the opposite side of the table. A man rose and kissed her lightly on the cheek, greeting her in a voice laced with a Texas accent. He looked young, at least six or seven years younger than Pitt. Stacy made no effort to introduce him. She and Pitt had not spoken a word to each other since boarding the Gulfstream jet in Hawaii. She made an awkward display of pretending he was not present by keeping her back turned to him.
Two men with Asian features sat together next to Stacy’s friend. They were conversing in low tones and didn’t bother to look up as Pitt and Giordino stood surveying the room. A Harvard type, wearing a suit with a vest adorned with a Phi Beta Kappa key on a watch chain, sat off by himself reading through a file of papers.
Sandecker set a course to a chair beside the head of the table, sat down, and lit one of his custom-rolled Havana cigars. He saw that Pitt seemed disturbed and restless, traits definitely out of character.
A thin older man with shoulder-length hair and holding a pipe walked over. “Which one of you is Dirk Pitt?”
“I am,” Pitt acknowledged.
“Frank Mancuso,” the stranger said, extending his hand. “I’m told we’ll be working together.”
“You’re one up on me,” Pitt said, returning a firm shake and introducing Giordino. “My friend here, Al Giordino, and I are in the dark.”
“We’ve been gathered to set up a MAIT.”
“A what?”
“MAIT, an acronym for Multi-Agency Investigative Team.”
“Oh, God,” Pitt moaned. “I don’t need this. I only want to go home, pour a tequila on the rocks, and fall into bed.”
Before he could expand on his grievances, Raymond Jordan entered the conference room accompanied by two men who wore faces with all the humor of patients just told by a doctor they had Borneo jungle fungus of the liver. Jordan made straight for Sandecker and greeted him warmly.
“Good to see you, Jim. I deeply appreciate your cooperation in this mess. I know it was a blow to lose your project.”
“NUMA will build another,” Sandecker stated in his usual cocksure way.
Jordan sat down at the head of the table. His deputies took chairs close by and laid out several document files on the table in front of him.
Jordan did not relax once he was seated. He sat stiffly, his spine not touching the backrest of the chair. His composed dark eyes moved swiftly from face to face as if trying to read everyone’s thoughts. Then he addressed himself directly to Pitt, Giordino, and Mancuso, who were still standing.