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"Would you like me to describe them in detail?" asked Pitt carelessly. "Maeve is tall, blond, with incredibly blue eyes. Strictly a camp-on-the-beach type." He paused to point at a portrait of a young blond woman, wearing an old-fashioned dress with a diamond the size of a quail's egg set in a pendant around her neck. "That's her in the painting."
"Not even close." Boudicca smirked. "That happens to be a portrait of my great-great-great-grandmother."
"Neither here nor there," Pitt said with feigned indifference, unwilling to tear his eyes away from the incredible likeness of Maeve. "Deirdre, on the other hand, has brown eyes and red hair and walks like a runway model."
After a long pause, Boudicca said, "He must be who he says he is."
"That doesn't explain his presence here," Merchant persisted.
"I told you during our last meeting," said Pitt. "I came here to study the effects of the chemicals and pollution flowing into the sea from the mine."
Merchant smiled thinly. "An inventive story, but far from the truth."
Pitt could not relax for a moment. He was in the company of dangerous people, cunning and shrewd.
He had felt his way, assessing the reaction to his line of approach, but he realized it was only a matter of a minute or two before Boudicca figured out his game. It was inevitable. She had enough pieces to fill in the borders of the puzzle. He decided he could better control the situation by telling the truth.
"The gospel you want, the gospel you'll get. I'm here because the pulsed ultrasound you use to excavate far diamonds causes an intense resonance that channels great distances underwater. When undersea conditions are optimal these pulses converge with those from your other mining operations around the Pacific and kill any living organism in the area. But of course I'm not telling you anything you don't already know."
He'd caught Boudicca off balance. She stared at Pitt as if he had stepped off an alien spaceship.
"You're quite good at creating a scene." she said hesitantly. "You should have gone into the movies."
"I've considered it," said Pitt. "But I don't have James Woods' talent or Mel Gibson's looks." He discovered a bottle of Herradura silver tequila behind the bar on a glass shelf backed by a gold-tinted mirror and poured himself a shot glass. He also found a lime and a salt shaker. He let Boudicca and the others stand there and watch as he dabbed his tongue on the flap of skin between his thumb and forefinger before sprinkling salt on it. Then he downed the tequila, licked the salt and sucked on the lime.
"There, now I feel ready to face the rest of the day. As I was saying, you know more about the horrors of the acoustic plague, as it's come to be called, than I do, Ms. Dorsett. The same killer that came frighteningly close to killing your sisters. So it would be foolish of me to waste my time attempting to enlighten you."
"I don't have the vaguest idea of what you're talking about." She turned to Merchant and Crutcher.
"This man is dangerous. He is a menace to Dorsett Consolidated Mining. Get him off my boat and do with him whatever you think is necessary to ensure he doesn't bother us again."
Pitt made one last toss of the dice. "Garret Converse, the actor, and his Chinese junk, the Tz'u-hsi.
David Copperfield would be proud of the way you made Converse, his entire crew and boat disappear."
The expected reaction was all there. The strength and the arrogance evaporated.
Boudicca suddenly looked lost. Then Pitt threw in the clincher. "Surely you haven't forgotten the Mentawai. Now there was a sloppy job. You mistimed your explosives and blew up the boarding party from the Rio Grande who were investigating what appeared to be an abandoned ship. Unfortunately for you, your yacht was seen fleeing the scene and later identified."
"A most intriguing tale." There was scorn in Boudicca's voice, but a scorn disputed by a deep foreboding in her face. "You might almost say spellbinding. Are you quite finished, Mr. Pitt, or do you have an ending?"
"An ending?" Pitt sighed. "It hasn't been written yet. But I think it's safe to say that very soon Dorsett Consolidated Mining Limited will be only a memory."
He had gone one step too far. Boudicca began to lose control. Her anger swelled, and she came close to Pitt, her face tight and cold. "My father can't be stopped. Not by any legal authority or any government. Not in the next twenty-seven days. By then, we'll have closed down the mines of our own accord."
"Why not do it now and save God only knows how many lives?"
"Not one minute before we're ready."
"Ready for what?"
"A pity you can't ask Maeve."
"Why Maeve?"
'Deirdre tells me that she became quite friendly with the man who saved her."
"She's in Australia," said Pitt.
