The boat was named The Grimsi, and her tiny squared wheelhouse, perched just five feet from the stern, made her look as though she rode in the opposite direction than her builder had intended when he laid her keel. She was a very old boat-as old as the antique compass mounted beside the helm. Her mahogany deck planks were worn smooth, but still lay strong and true, and smelled strongly of the sea. At the pier she had looked an old ungainly bathtub from her broadbeamed, stubby shape, but when the mighty Sterlings mumbled through their exhaust, her bow lifted from the water like a sea gull soaring into the wind. She seemed to delight in being carried along without effort or trouble in a buoyant sort of way.
Sandecker eased the throttles back a notch above idle and took The Grimsi on a slow, leisurely tour of Reykjavik harbor. The admiral might have been standing on the bridge of a battle cruiser from the regulation smile on his face. He was back in his element, and he was enjoying every minute of it. To an interested observer his passengers looked like ordinary tourists on a chartered cruise-Tidi sunning herself and aiming a camera at everything in sight, and Pitt drawing furiously on a sketch pad.
Before leaving the harbor they tied up at a bait boat and purchased two buckets of herring.
Then, after an animated conversation with the bait fishermen, they cast off and headed toward the sea.
As soon as they rounded a rocky point and lost sight of the harbor, Sandecker eased open the throttles and slowly pushed The Grimsi to 30 knots. it was a strange sight indeed to see the ungainly hull skipping over the waves like a Gold Cup hydroplane. The waves began to melt together as The Grimsi increased speed and lost them behind her swirling wake. Pitt found a chart of the coast and laid it on a small shelf beside Sandecker.
"It's right about here." Pitt tapped a spot on the map with a pencil. "Twenty miles southeast of Keflavik."
Sandecker nodded. "An hour and a half, no more. Not the way she moves. Take a look. The throttles are still a good two inches from their stops."
"The weather looks perfect. I hope it holds."
"No clouds in any direction. It's usually calm around the southern end of Iceland this time of year. The worst we can look forward to is meeting a bit of fog. It usually rolls in during the late afternoon."
Pitt sat down, propped his feet on the doorway and gazed out at the rocky coastline. "At least we don't have to worry about fuel."
"What do the gauges read?"
"About two-thirds full."
Sandecker's mind clicked like a Burroughs adding machine. "Ample for our purpose. No reason to conserve, particularly since Rondheim is footing the bill."
With a smug, satisfied expression on his face, he jammed the throttles against their stops.
The Grimsi sat down on her stern and took off across the blue wrinkled sea, her bow splitting two giant sheets of spray.
Sandecker's timing left something to be desired. Tidi was cautiously climbing the ladder from the galley, balancing a tray laden with three cups of coffee when the admiral opened up the Sterlings. The sudden acceleration caught her totally off guard and the tray flew into the air and she vanished into the galley as though jerked backward by an invisible hand. Neither Pitt nor Sandecker caught the vaudevillian fall.
Thirty seconds later she reappeared in the wheelhouse, her head thrown back in anger. her hair stringy with dampness, her blouse stained brown by coffee.
"Admiral James Sandecker," she shouted, the highpitched voice drowning out the roar of the Sterlings.
"When we get back to our hotel, you can just add the cost of a new blouse and a trip to the hairdresser on your expense account."
Sandecker and Pitt stared at Tidi and then at each other in utter uncomprehension. "I could have scalded myself into a hospital," Tidi continued. "If you want me to act as your stewardess on this voyage, I suggest you show a little more consideration." With that, she whirled and disappeared into the galley.
Sandecker's eyebrows came together. "What in hell was that all about?"
Pitt shrugged. "Women rarely offer an explanation."
"She's too young for menopause," Sandecker mumbled. "Must be on her period."
42
Mentally applauding, Pitt said, "Either way, it's going to cost you a blouse and a ' Tidi's hairdo."
It took Tidi ten minutes to make another small pot of coffee. Considering the dip of The Grimsi's keel as it soared over and smacked the crests of the swells, it was a professional feat of dexterity that she managed to climb into the wheelhouse without spilling a drop from the three cups she clutched with dogged determination.
Pitt couldn't help smiling as he sipped the coffee and watched the indigo blue water pass under the old boat.
Then he thought of Hunnewell, of Fyrie, of Matajic, of O'Riley, and he wasn't smiting any longer.
He still wasn't smiling as he watched the stylus the fathometer's graph zigzag across the paper, measuring the sea floor. The bottom showed at one hundred and thirty feet. He wasn't smiling now because somewhere down there in the depths was an airplane with a dead crew, and he had to find it. If luck played into his hands, the fathometer would register an irregular hump on its chart.
He took his cross bearings on the cliffs and hoped for the best.
"Are you sure of your search pattern?" Sandecker asked.
"Twenty percent certain, eighty percent guesswork," Pitt answered.
"I could have lowered the odds if I had the Ulysses as a checkpoint."
"Sorry, I didn't know yesterday what you had in mind. My formal request for salvage was acted upon only a few hours after you crashed. The Air Force airsea rescue squadron on Keflavik picked your craft out of the surf with one of their giant helicopters. You have to give them credit. They're an efficient lot."
"Their eagerness is going to cost us," Pitt said.
Sandecker paused to make a course change. "Have you checked the diving gear?"
"Yes, it's all accounted for. Remind me to buy those State Department people at the consulate a drink when we get back.
Dressing up and playing bait fishermen took a bit of doing on such short notice.
To anyone gawking through a pair of navy binoculars it could have only looked like an innocent encounter. The diving gear was slipped on board so smoothly and inconspicuously while you were going through the routine of bait buying that I almost missed detecting the transfer from ten feet away."
"I don't like the action. Diving alone invites danger, and danger invites death. I'll have you know I'm not in the habit of going against my own orders and allowing one of my men to dive in unknown waters without the proper precautions." Sandecker shifted from one foot to the other. He was going against his better judgment, and the discomfort showed clearly in his expression. "What do you hope to find down there besides a broken airplane and bloated bodies? How do you know someone hasn't already beaten us to it?"
"There is an outside chance that the bodies may carry identification that might point to the man behind this screwed-up enigma. This factor alone makes it worth an attempt to find the remains. What's more important is the aircraft itself. All identifying numbers and insignia were hidden under black paint, leaving nothing recognizable at a distance except a silhouette.
That plane, Admiral, is the only positive lead we have to Hunnewell's and Matajic's murderer. The one thing black paint can't cover is the serial number of an engine, at least not on the turbine casing under the cowling. If we find the plane, and if I can retrieve the digits, it then becomes a simple matter to contact the manufacturer, trace the engine to the plane, and from there to the owner."
Pitt hesitated a moment to make an adjustment on the fathometer. "The answer to your second question," he went on, "is no way."
"You seem damned sure of yourself," Sandecker said mechanically. "As much as I hate the murderous son-of-a-bitch, I still give him credit for brains. He'd have already searched for his missing plane, knowing that the wreckage could give him away."
"True, he would have made a surface sear
ch, but this time-for the first time-we have the advantage.
Nobody witnessed the fight. The children who found Hunnewell and me on the beach said they investigated only after they noticed the Ulysses laying in the surf-not before. And the fact that our friendly assassins didn't kill us when they had an ideal opportunity instead of arriving at the doctor's house much later, proves they weren't ground observers. To sum up, I'm the only survivor who knows where to look-" Pitt broke off suddenly, his eyes concentrating on the graph and stylus. The black lines began widening from a thin waver back and forth across the paper to a small mountainlike sweep that indicated a sudden rise of eight to ten feet above the flat, sandy sea floor.
"I think we've found it," Pitt said calmly. "Circle to port and cross our wake on course one-eight-five, Admiral."
Sandecker spun the helm and made a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree swing to the south, causing The Grimsi to rock gently as it passed over the waves of its own wake. This time the stylus took lonszer to sweep to a height of ten feet before tapering back to-zero.
"What depth?" Sandecker asked.
"One hundred and forty-five feet," Pitt replied.
"Judging from the indication, we just passed over her from wing tip to wing tip."
Minutes later, The Grimsi was moored over the reading on the fathometer. The shore was nearly a mile away, the great cliffs showing off their gray vertical rock more distinctly than ever under the northern sun.
43
At the same time, a slight breeze sprang up and began to ruffle the surface of the rolling water. It was a mild warning, a signal foretelling the beginning of rougher weather to come. With the breeze a state of chilling apprehension raised the hairs on Pitts neck. For the first time he began to wonder what he would find beneath the cold Atlantic waters.
Chapter 10
The brilliant blue sky, free of clouds, allowed the sun to beat down and turn Pitts black neoprene wet suit into a skintight sauna bath as he checked the old single-hose U.S. Diver's Deepstar regulator. He would have preferred a newer model, but beggars couldn't be choosy.
He considered himself lucky that one of the young consulate members made a sport of diving and had the equipment on hand. He attached the regulator to the valve of an air bottle. Two single tanks were all he could scrounge. Enough for fifteen minutes' diving, and even that was stretching precious time for dives to one hundred and forty feet. His only consolation was that he wouldn't be down long enough to worry about decompression.
His last look of The Grimsi's deck before the bluegreen water closed over his face mask was of Admiral Sandecker sitting sleepily with fishing pole gripped in both hands and Tidi, dressed in Pitts outlandish clothes, brown hair encased in the knit cap, studiously sketching the Icelandic shoreline. Shielded from anyone watching from the cliffs, Pitt slipped over the side behind the wheelhouse and became a part of the sea's vastness. His body was tense. Without a diving companion there was no margin for error.
The shock of the icy water against his sweaty body nearly, made him pass out. Using the anchor line as a guide, he followed along its vanishing outline, leaving his air bubbles to swirl and rise lazily to the surface.
As he sank deeper and deeper, the light diminished and the visibility shortened. He checked his two vital references. The depth gauge read ninety feet and the orange dial on the Doxa diving watch notified him that he had been down two minutes.
The bottom gradually came into view. He automatically popped his ears for the third time and was struck by the color of the sand-a pure black. Unlike most areas of the world where the bottom sand was white, the volcanic activity of Iceland had left a carpet of soft ebony grains. He slowed his movement, spellbound by the strangeness of the dark color beneath the vast shroud of bluegreen water. Visibility was about forty feet-quite good considering the depth.
Instinctively he swung around in a three-hundredand-sixty-degree circle. Nothing was in sight. He looked up and vaguely saw a shldow pass over him. It was a small school of cod foraging near the bottom for their favorite diet of shrimp and crab.
He watched a moment as they slowly slipped overhead, their slightly flattened bodies tinted a dark olive and spotted with hundreds of small brown dots. Too bad the admiral can't hook one, he thought. The smallest weighed no less than fifteen pounds.
Pitt began swimming in ever-widening circles around the anchor line, dragging a fin in the sadd to mark his trail.
Underwater he often saw fantasy, at deep depths his perception was distorted, danger magnified beyond clear thinking. After five circuits he saw a dim form through the blue haze. Quickly kicking his fins, he swam toward it. Thirty seconds later his hopes were broken and discarded. The form proved to be a large jagged rock poking up from the bottom like some forgotten and crumbling outpost in the middle of a desert.
Effortlessly he slipped around the current-worn sides, his mind blurred, struggling for control. This couldn't be the readine on the fathometer, he thought. The peak was too conical to match that of an aircraft fuselage.
Then he saw something lying in the sand just five feet away. The black paint on the broken and bent door blended against the black sand almost to the point of invisibility. He swam forward and turned it over, recoiling in surprise for an instant as a large lobster scurried from its new home. There were no markings anywhere on the inside paneling. Pitt had to move quickly now.
The plane had to be very close, but he was due to pull the valve for his reserve air, and that only left a few minutes of extra breathing-barely enough to get him to the surface.
It didn't take him long to find it. The aircraft was resting on its belly, broke in two, evidence of the impact from the crash.
His breathing became harder now, signaling him that it was time to go on reserve. He pulled the valve and headed for the top.
The watery ceiling over his head slowly became brighter as he rose along with his air bubbles. At thirty feet he stopped and searched for The Grimsi's keel; it was important that he break water out of sight from shore. She sat like a fat duck with her props tucked into her bottom, rolling drunkenly with the swells. He stared upward at the sun to get a direction. The Grimsi had drifted around her anchor lirie on a hundredand-eighty-degree arc so that her starboard side now faced the coast.
He pulled himself over the port freeboard and, dropping his air tank, crawled across the deck into the wheelhouse.
Sandecker, without looking up, slowly placed his rod against the railing and just as slowly walked over and leaned in the doorway.
44
"I hope you've had better luck than I have."
"She's lying a hundred and fifty feet off the starboard beam," Pitt said. "I didn't have time to search the interior; my air was scraping bottom."
"Better get out of that suit and have a cup of coffee. Your face is as blue as a windmill on a Delftware saucer."
"Keep the coffee hot. I'll relax as soon as we've got what we came for." Pitt started for the door.
Sandecker's eyes were set. "You're not going anywhere for the next hour and a half. We still have plenty of time. The day is young. It's senseless to overdo your physical resources. You know the repetitive dive charts as well as any diver alive. Two dives to one hundred and forty feet within thirty minutes invites a case of the bends." He paused, then drove the point home.
"You've seen men scream their lungs out from the agony of pain.
You know the ones who lived and the ones who were paralyzed for life. Even if I pushed this old scow to the hilt, I couldn't get you to Reykjavik before two hours.
Then, add another five hours on a jet to London and the nearest decompression chamber. No way, my friend.
You go below and rest up. I'll tell you when you can go down again."
"No contest, Admiral; you win." Pitt unzipped the front of his wet suit. "However, I think it would be wiser to sack out above deck so that all three of us are in view."
"Who's to see? The coast is deserted, and we haven't another boat since
we left the harbor."
"The coast isn't deserted. We have an observer."
Sandecker turned and gazed across the water toward the cliffs. "I may be getting old, but I don't need glasses yet. Damned if I can detect any obvious glitters."
"Off to the right just beyond that rock that projects from the water."
"Can't see crap from this distance." He stared sideways at the point Pitt described. "It'd be like looking through a keyhole and seeing another eye if I picked up the binoculars and stared back. How can you be sure?"
"There was a reflection. The sun flashed on something for a moment. Probably a pair of lenses."
"Let them gawk. If anybody should ask why only two of us were on deck, Tidi was seasick and in misery on a bunk below."
"That's as good an excuse as any," Pitt said, smiling. "So long as they can't tell the difference between Tidi and me in that wild set of duds."
Sandecker laughed. "Through binoculars from a nine away, your own mother couldn't tell the difference."
"I'm not sure how I should take that."
Sandecker turned and stared into Pitts eyes, his lips twisting from the laugh to a wry smile. "Don't try. Just get your ass below. It's nappy time. I'll send Tidi down with a cup of coffee. And, no hanky-panky. I know how horny you get after a hard day's dive."
An eerie, yellow-gray light showed through the hatch when Sandecker shook Pitt awake. He woke slowly, mind blurred, more groggy from a catnap than from an eight-hour sleep. Pitt could feel the drop in the wave action; The Grimsi was barely rocking, even in the low even swells. There was no hint of a breeze. The air was damp and heavy.