Felicia Collins leaned languidly against the doorway, saying nothing, just staring at Daggat.

A thought triggered in the back of his mind and he rose and made an apologetic gesture. "I'm sorry, time slipped away from me I completely forgot our dinner date."

"You're forgiven," she said.

He reached for his coat. "You must be starved."

"By the fourth martini, all hunger pangs disappeared." She peered around the office. "I figured you and Hiram were probably tied up in conference."

"I turned him over to the State Department this afternoon. They're giving him the usual lukewarm treatment reserved for fourth-class visiting dignitaries."

"Is it safe for him to be out in public?"

"I saw to it that he's provided with round-the-clock security."

"Then he's no longer our houseguest."

"No. he has a suite at the Mayflower, courtesy of the government."

Felicia stretched her opulent body and flowed into the room. "By the way, I met Loren Smith for lunch. She poured out her love life to me."

"She took the bait."

"If you mean the key to your little hideaway in Arlington, the answer is yes."

He took her in his arms. his eyes gentle but smug with satisfaction. "You won't be sorry. Felicia. Only good can come from this."

"Try telling that to Loren Smith," she said, turning away.

He released her. "Did she mention any names?"

"I gather she's teasing Phil Sawyer into marriage while she's screwing some guy from NUMA on the side."

"Did she say who?"

"His name is Dirk Pitt."

Daggat's eyes widened. "You did say Dirk Pitt?"

Felicia nodded.

Daggat's mind raced to make a connection and then he had it. "Son of a bitch! It's perfect! "

"What are you talking about?"

"The revered senior senator from California, George Pitt. Didn't it occur to you? Congresswoman Holier-Than-Thou Smith is shacking with the senator's son."

Felicia shivered as her skin suddenly went cold. "For God's sake, Frederick, drop this stupid scheme of yours before it gets out of hand."

"I don't think so," Daggat said, smiling a sinister smile. "I do what I think best for the country."

"You mean you do what you think best for Frederick Daggat."

He took her by the arm and led her from the office. "When you have time to reconsider, you'll come to find that I was right." He turned off the lights. "Now then, let's grab some dinner, and afterward we'll prepare Loren Smith's love nest for her one and only visit."

Admiral James Sandecker was a short, feisty character with flaming red hair and plenty of gall. When his retirement from the Navy was forced upon him, he used his considerable congressional influence to connive his way into the job of chief director of the thenfledgling National Underwater and Marine Agency. It was a match that was ordained for success from the start. In seven short years Sandecker had taken an insignificant eightyperson agency and built it into a massive organization of five thousand scientists and employees supported by an annual budget that exceeded four hundred million dollars.

He was accused by his enemies of being a grandstander, of launching oceanic projects that garnered more publicity than scientific data. His supporters applauded his flair for making the field of oceanography as popular as space science. Whatever his assets or liabilities, Admiral Sandecker was as solidly entrenched at NUMA as J. Edgar Hoover had been at the FBI.

He drained the last swallow from a bottle of Seven-Up, sucked on the stub of a giant cigar, and looked into the unsmiling faces of Admiral Walter Bass, Colonel Abe Steiger, AI Giordino, and Dirk Pitt.

"The part I find hard to swallow," he continued, "is the total lack of interest on the part of the Pentagon. It would seem logical — to me, at any rate — that Colonel Steiger's report on the discovery of Vixen 03 complete with photos would have shocked the hell out of them. And yet the colonel has told us his superiors acted as though the whole episode was best dropped and forgotten."

"There is a bona fide reason behind their indifference," Bass answered impassively. "Generals O'Keefe and Burgdorf are ignorant of the link between Vixen 03 and the QD project because none is recorded."

"How can that be?"

"What was learned after the deaths of Dr. Vetterly and his scientists motivated everyone who knew of QD's ghastly power to bury every scrap of evidence and erase all memories of its existence so that it could not be resurrected ever again."

"You mean you suppressed an entire defense project under the noses of the Joint Chiefs of Staff'?" Sandecker said incredulously.

"By direct order from President Eisenhower I was to state in my reports to the Joint Chiefs that the experiment had backfired and the formulation of QD had died along with Dr. Vetterly."

"And they swallowed the story?"

"They had no reason not to," said Bass. "Besides the President, Secretary of Defense Wilson, and myself and a handful of scientists, no one else knew exactly what Vetterly had discovered. As far as the Joint Chiefs were concerned. the project was simply another low-budget experiment within the ugly realm of chemical-biological warfare. They suffered no qualms; nor did they ask embarrassing questions before writing it off as a failure."

"What was the purpose of circumventing the armed-forces power structure?"

"Eisenhower was an old soldier who abhorred mass-kill weapons." Bass seemed to shrivel in his chair while he collected his thoughts. "I am the last surviving member of the Quick Death Team," he continued slowly. "Unhappily, the secret will not die with me, as I had once hoped. because Mr. Pitt. here, accidentally discovered a longlost source of the disease strain. I did not bare the facts then — nor will I now — to the men who run the Pentagon, for fear that they would consider recovering Vixen 03's cargo and storing it, in the name of national defense, against the day it might be unleashed against a future enemy."

"But surely if it came down to protecting our country…" Sandecker protested.

Bass shook his head. "I don't think you understand the true horror of the Quick Death organism, Admiral. Nothing known can impede its deadly effects. Allow me to cite an illustration: if five ounces of QD were delivered over Manhattan Island, the organism would seek out and kill ninety-eight percent of the population within four hours. And no one, gentlemen, no human, could set foot on the island for over three centuries. Future generations could only stand on the New jersey shore and watch the oncemighty buildings erode and crumble over the bones of their former inhabitants."

The other men around the table paled; their blood ran cold. For a while no one spoke. They sat frozen, visualizing a city entombing three million corpses. It was Pitt who finally broke the uneasy silence.

"The people in Brooklyn and the Bronx — they would not be affected?"

"QD organisms spread in colonies. Strangely, they do not travel by human contact or by the wind. They tend to stay localized. Of course, if enough of the biological agent were delivered by aircraft or rockets, theoretically blanketing all of North America. the entire continent would become barren of all human life until the year 2300."

"Is there nothing that can kill QD?" asked Steiger.