Vixen 03 Part 56

"You are Hiram Lusana." The deep ba.s.s voice echoed against the steel bulkheads.

"I am," Lusana answered hoa.r.s.ely. His voice sounded odd to him. He had not used it in nearly four days.

"You don't know how much I've looked forward to meeting you," the giant said.

"Who are you?"

"Does the name Fawkes mean anything to you?"

"Should it?" Lusana said, determined to resist.

"Aye, it's a terrible thing when you forget the names of the people you've murdered."

A realization mushroomed within Lusana. "Fawkes ... the raid on the Fawkes farm, in Natal."

"My wife and children cut down. My house burned. You even

slaughtered my workers. Whole families with the same skin as yours."

"Fawkes ... you're Fawkes," Lusana repeated, his drugged mind fighting to grasp a bearing.

"I'm satisfied the filthy business was done by the AAR," said Fawkes, a subtle hardening in his voice. "They were your men; you gave the orders."

"I was not responsible." The fog was lifting from Lusana's head and he was coming back on balance, inwardly at least. His arms and legs would not respond to command. "I'm sorry for what happened to your family. A tragic bloodletting that had no rhyme or reason. But you will have to look elsewhere to place the blame. My men were innocent."

"Aye, a denial was to be expected."

"What do you intend to do with me?" Lusana asked, his eyes without fear.

Fawkes looked out the bridge windows. It was pitch dark outside and a light mist coated the gla.s.s. There was a strange kind of sadness in his eyes.

He turned to Lusana. "We're going to take a little trip, you and I, a trip with no return ticket."

The taxi pa.s.sed through a back gate of the Was.h.i.+ngton National Airport at precisely nine thirty P.M. and dropped Jarvis behind a solitary hangar that sat on a seldom-used end of the field. Except for a faint glow of light through the dusty gla.s.s of a side door, the giant building seemed bleak and cavernous. He pushed open the door and was mildly surprised not to hear it creak. The well-oiled hinges pivoted without a whisper.

The yawning interior was brilliantly illuminated by overhead fluorescent lighting. A venerable old Ford trimotor aircraft sat like a huge goose in the center of the concrete floor, its wings protectively reaching out over several antique automobiles in various stages of restoration. Jarvis walked over to a car that seemed no more than a pile of rusted iron. A pair of feet protruded from beneath the radiator.

"You are Mr. Pitt?" Jarvis inquired.

"And you are Mr. Jarvis?"

"Yes."

Pitt rolled from under the car and sat up. "I see you found my humble abode all right."

Jarvis hesitated, taking in Pitt's greasy coveralls and disheveled appearance. "You live here?"

"I have an apartment upstairs," Pitt said, pointing to a gla.s.s-enclosed level above the hangar floor.

"You have a nice collection," said Jarvis, gesturing at the relics. "What is the one over there with the black fenders and silver coach work?"

"A 1936 Maybach-Zeppelin town car," Pitt answered.

"And the one you're working on?"

"A 1912 Renault open-drive landaulette."

" Seems a bit the worse for wear," said Jarvis, wiping a finger through a layer of rust.

Pitt smiled patiently. "She doesn't really look all that bad when you consider she's been immersed in the sea for seventy years."

Jarvis understood immediately. "From the t.i.tanic1?"

"Yes. I was allowed to keep her after the salvage project. Sort of a prize for services rendered, so to speak."

Pitt led the way up a flight of stairs to his apartment. Jarvis entered and his professional eye routinely traveled over the unusual furnis.h.i.+ngs. The occupant was a well-traveled man, he surmised, judging from the nautical objects decorating the interior. Copper divers' helmets from another age. Mariners' compa.s.ses, wooden helms, s.h.i.+ps' bells, even old nails and bottles, all neatly labeled with the names of famous s.h.i.+ps from which Pitt had salvaged them. It was like looking into a museum of a man's life.

Jarvis sank into a leather sofa at Pitt's invitation. He looked his host directly in the eyes. "Do you know me, Mr. Pitt?"

"No."

"Yet you had no qualms about seeing me."

"Who can resist intrigue?" Pitt said, grinning. "It's not every day I find a note on my winds.h.i.+eld with a phone number that turns out to be the National Security Agency."

"You guessed, of course, that you were being followed."

Pitt reclined in a leather chair and propped his feet on an ottoman. "Let's sack the wordplay, Mr. Jarvis, and get to the point. What's your sport?"

"Sport?"

"Your interest in me."

Ippf

"Okay, Mr. Pitt," said Jarvis. "Cards on the table. What is the real purpose behind NUMA's search for a special type of heavy naval sh.e.l.l?" "Sure you wouldn't like a drink?" Pitt countered. "No thanks," Jarvis answered, appraising Pitt's casual stall. "If you know we're in the market, then you know why." "Seismological tests on coral formations?" Pitt nodded.

Jarvis stretched his arms out on the sofa's backrest. "When do you have the tests scheduled?"

"The last two weeks of March next year."

"I see." Jarvis gave Pitt a benign, fatherly look and then lunged for the heart. "I've talked to four seismologists, two from your own agency. They do not subscribe to your idea of dropping sixteen-inch naval sh.e.l.ls from an airplane. In fact, they found it downright ludicrous. I was also informed that there are no seismographic tests scheduled by NUMA in the Pacific. In short, Mr. Pitt, your clever little dodge won't hold water." Pitt closed his eyes in thought. He could lie, or simply offer no comment. No, he reasoned, his alternatives had narrowed down to zero. There was virtually no hope that he and Steiger and Sandecker could negotiate a quick return of the QD warheads from the AAR. They had carried the search as far as their limited resources could take them. The time had come, he decided, to call in the professionals.

He opened his eyes and stared at Jarvis. " If it were within my power to place in the palm of your hand a plague organism that could kill without interruption for three hundred years, what would you do with it?"

Pitt's question caught Jarvis off guard. "I don't know what you're driving at."