An observer with protective goggles might have seen the thin trickle of brilliant yellow-white molten iron that began to drip through the hole in the pot. It instantly destroyed the microprocessor, consumed the circuit board, and proceeded to fry the answering device into bubbling junk while smoke thickened in the two-room apartment. Tiny particles of aluminum oxide began to fall as snow on the carpet while the sink enamel pinged and spat under incandescent metal soup. The stream of iron dwindled, slag already congealing as the clay pot disintegrated to add its thermal content to the mass in the sink. The cast-iron sink began to char the wooden counter at its lip, then slowly cooled. At that point, tendrils of smoke found their way through ceiling moldings into the apartment above.
In Victoria, the little man dallied at his lunch, which was evidently filet of shoe sole, but abandoned it after a few minutes. He walked to his own hotel, tossed a pillow on the floor of his room, and lay with his bare feet touching the locked door. He would need sleep now, to assure alertness that night.
While the sleeper husbanded his strength, an apartment dweller in Toronto arrived to find her smoke alarm whining in panic. Fire marshals traced the problem, took one look through the door they forced in the apartment below, and radioed the Toronto Metropolitan Police. Within an hour they had conferred with the RCMP which, unlike the generally similar Federal Bureau of Investigation to the south, has more sweeping powers in domestic matters.
A thorough description of the apartment's contents reached Ottawa early in the evening, and shortly afterward Ottawa sent five new photographs by wire to Toronto. None of the new pictures were from passports or mug shots; all were of a special category of people whose expertise in communication devices fitted the Toronto pattern. Neither the three men nor the two women were thought to be in Canada—until now. Pelletier took the group of new photofaxes, spread them irritably—and howled with delight.
Pelletier brandished a `known photograph,' distinguished neither by clarity nor recency, and handed it to the RCMP sergeant, who flinched. It was `Trnka,' beyond any shred of doubt. At that moment, there were five men on the case. A few minutes later, after RCMP/Ottawa contacted FBI/Washington, there were over thirty.
The HP tintinnabulated in the sleeper's ear at ten o'clock, Pacific Standard Time. Presently the little man strolled from the hotel to a dust-covered Pontiac off Wharf Street, and then moved on to the Inner Harbour. He watched a tall figure move across the lights from the cabin of an Islander Thirty-Four, continued his walk, and stopped again as the lights went out. He cursed softly, realizing that Graham intended to sleep aboard the damned boat. He found a coffee shop, wasted an hour, then returned to the Pontiac.
He dressed inside the car, beginning with the wetsuit, struggling into the zippered black turtleneck and charcoal denims more by feel than by sight. The deck shoes were new, stiff, and uncomfortable. He stuck the Llama automatic into his waistband and locked the car, taking one of his three B-four bags with him from the trunk. He sank the bag in shallows, two moorages from the Islander, and brought the other bags.
The water was cold only on his hands and feet, but he had trouble with the microbubbler in the darkness. Exhalations from SCUBA gear had been a clear signature of manfish since the early Cousteau aqualungs, and a trained ear could identify this signature through a fiberglass hull. The microbubbler changed both pitch and rhythm of exhalations. It was an absolute necessity for the job.
He adjusted flotation on a B-four bag, tugged on his flippers, carefully made his way under two hulls by touch and emerged silently at the third hull. A quick surveillance assured him that he had the right boat; then he submerged again in the friendly blackness. His flashlight played across the great weighted keel and, seeing rings set into the keel, he let fate smile for him. It would be necessary to bond only one ring to have a triangulated lashing. The work went quickly. To be on the safe side he emplaced a second ring with the thermoset adhesive. He did not risk testing the rings too much, but lashed the sodden bag in place and took his bearing again before dousing the flashlight. Then he returned for the second bag.
It was two in the morning before he eased aching muscles from layers of cloth and rubber. He wiped the Pontiac's interior with a cloth wherever some stray print might have clung, scrubbed his skin with the blue jacket to warm himself. What had he forgotten? Nothing.
Fool! The HP and the Llama both. The cold had made him stupid. He shoved the pistol into a rubber bag, leaving the zipper open for instant recovery, and set the HP alarm for a three-hour delay.
First light proved the Parisienne abandoned, strewn with expensive clothing and an empty attache case under a mummy bag. Charles Graham spent most of the morning belowdecks with his spare mains'l, applying spurious United States Registration. He was tempted to abandon this business; it was one thing to snuff someone you actively disliked or who—you suspected—might be setting you up. But it was something else to kill some poor old helpless stranger. It would be a pleasure to put little Baztan over the side into Juan De Fuca—but Baztan, he thought, might not be the one who went over. Baztan might also become downright unpleasant if Graham did not show up at Port Angeles in the State of Washington. Sighing, Graham scanned the wharf for loiterers while he brewed tea in the galley. He did not think about the Pontiac, or about nearby boathouses.
At half-past eleven Graham cast off, easing the hull back on her inboard diesel. He was too busy to notice the splop and swirl from a neighboring boathouse, and got underway without the sails. He could crowd on plenty of sail once away from the Inner Harbour and into Victoria Harbour proper, but proceeded slowly until he could get some leeway. The diesel made a scant wake, but enough to hide the myriad of tiny bubbles that closed the gap toward his rudder, then disappeared torpedolike beneath his portside rail as he lounged at the tiller.
The Islander's sleek hull was designed to slip easily through the water and Graham assumed that some vagrant current was responsible for her sluggish performance. He would have reconsidered if he had seen the excrescences that rode her keel. A fathom below her waterline, rock-climber's carabiners snapped into place one by one as the manfish struggled to place himself in such a way that he felt minimal force from the water. He was fairly warm in his wetsuit under cotton clothing, but he had not yet felt the currents of Juan De Fuca, cold and treacherous as a spider's bride.
He felt more vulnerable as the sloop forged ahead. It might have been better to risk a border crossing afoot into Montana or Washington, he thought, but increased border patrols and sensing devices had made that chancy, even for Quebecois, who had provoked those precautions. He fumbled for a spare tank in the nearest B-four bag, letting the sling straps bite under his shoulders. It might not be such a bad trip, this way—unless his suit heater batteries failed.
The sloop coursed out from the city, under sail now, on a sou'easterly heading. Near the corner of St. Lawrence and Dallas streets a man watched her progress as he spoke into a telephone. 'Yes-sir, no mistake, it's Graham's Bitch. Well, that's her name, Inspector, can I help it? Nossir, she could be on a tack toward Port Townsend or just on a pleasure cruise. Right, sir; not very likely for Charles Graham. All right, I have twenty-power glasses; I'll let you know if he heads for Dungeness or Port Angeles.' He replaced the receiver, took up the glasses again. For an hour he watched the sloop. Then he made another call.
Near Buffalo, New York, a tiny craft plunged upward from the concrete airstrip, its pusher engine shrilling eagerly. Small by normal standards, the single-place Bede Five was also ridiculously fast. Its thin airfoils carried the additional burden of a long-range tank cupped flat against its belly. The Bede arrowed westward over Lake Erie, soon overtaking the ancient Republic Seabee amphibian that galumphed along on VFR at one thousand meters altitude. The Bede's pilot throttled back, lazing several kilometers in arrears, radioing his position as he passed the New York State shoreline and Route Ninety. He turned back only after learning that the big float-equipped Cessna from Erie, Pennsylvania was closing from the West and had the Seabee on radar.
Moments after the Bede had curved away on its homeward leg, the Cessna surged ahead. Its quarry was sinking toward the northern end of Lake Chautauqua, making no effort to pretend otherwise. The Cessna swept over the lake high enough for maneuvering advantage, yet low enough to land quickly. All three men in the Cessna were equipped with chutes and government-issue automatic weapons befitting agents of the FBI. The attache in Ottawa had forwarded an RCMP sergeant's opinion that only a pilot was aboard the Seabee, but it was a capacious craft and might hide a stowaway for days. The pilot had filed a flight plan but had not contacted Customs. The Cessna hung back, waiting for the amphib to flare out for its controlled bellyflop.
And hung back. And hung back. The old Seabee droned down the narrow lake, swooping near the shore at picturesque spots and banking out again from time to time. At the southeast end of the lake, the Seabee began its sluggish return, and eventually passed northward back toward Lake Erie. In the Cessna, the three agents traded shrugs; for all its suspicious behavior, the Seabee had broken no law.
In Juan De Fuca Strait, Charles Graham waited until he was fifteen kilometers from the Canadian shore, then started the diesel again and changed mains'ls. Directly below, the manfish fought to free a spare tank from its
