“Did the bodies show the same symptoms as those on Polar Queen?”
“We’ll never know,” answered Sandecker. “It blew up and sank while a boarding party was investigating, killing them as well.”
“That’s a twist.”
“And to add to the mystery,” Sandecker continued, “a Chinese junk luxury yacht owned and sailed by the movie actor Garret Converse is missing in the same area.”
“His legion of fans won’t be happy when they learn he died from unknown causes.”
“His loss will probably get more coverage from the news media than all the dead on the cruise ship,” Sandecker acknowledged.
“How has my theory on sound waves played?” Pitt asked.
“Yaeger’s working it through his computers as we speak. With luck, he’ll have gleaned more data by the time you and Al walk through the door. I have to tell you, he and Rudi Gunn think you may be onto something.”
“See you soon, Admiral,” Pitt said and hung up. He sat motionless and stared at the phone, hoping to God they were on the right track.
The dishes were cleared and the party in the ship’s dining room had become loud with laughter as everyone competed in telling shaggy dog stories. As with Pitt, hardly anyone noticed that Giordino also had departed the festivities. Captain Dempsey entered into the humor of the evening with an old, old joke about a rich farmer who sends his ne’er-do-well son to college and makes him take along the old family dog, Rover. The kid then uses the old mangy dog to con his old man out of spending money by claiming he needs a thousand dollars because his professors claim they can make Rover read, write and talk. By the time he came to the punch line, everybody laughed more from sheer relief it was over than from the humor.
On one wall nearby, a ship’s phone rang, and the first officer answered. Without a word, he nodded in Dempsey’s direction. The captain caught the gesture, came over and took the call. He listened a moment, hung up the receiver and started for the open passageway leading to the stern deck.
“Are you all joked out?” Van Fleet called after him.
“I have to stand by for the helicopter’s departure,” he answered.
“What’s the mission?”
“No mission. Pitt and Giordino have been ordered back to Washington by the admiral, posthaste. They’re flying off to the mainland to catch a military transport.”
Maeve overheard and grabbed Dempsey by the arm. “When are they leaving?”
He was surprised by the sudden strength of her grip. “They should be lifting off about now.”
Deirdre came over and stood next to Maeve. “He must not care enough about you to say good-bye.”
Maeve felt as if a giant hand had suddenly reached inside her and squeezed her heart. Anguish filled her body. She rushed out the door onto the deck. Pitt had only lifted the helicopter a scant three meters off the pad N hen she came running into view. She could clearly see both men through the helicopter’s large windows. Giordino looked down, saw her and waved. Pitt had both hands busy and could only respond with a warm grin and a nod.
He expected to see her smile and wave in return, but her face seemed drawn in fear. She cupped her hands and cried out to him, but the noise of the turbine exhaust and thumping rotor blades drowned out her words. He could only shake his head and shrug in reply.
Maeve shouted again, this time with lowered hands as if somehow willing her thoughts into his mind. Too late. The helicopter shot into the air vertically and dipped over the side of the ship. She sagged to her knees on the deck, head in her hands, sobbing, as the turquoise aircraft flew over the endless marching swells of the sea.
Giordino looked back through his side window and saw Maeve slumped on the deck, Dempsey walking toward her. “I wonder what the fuss was all about,” he said curiously.
“What fuss?” asked Pitt.
“Maeve ... she acted like a Greek mourner at a funeral.”
Concentrating on controlling the helicopter, Pitt had missed Maeve’s unexpected display of grief. “Maybe she hates good-byes,” he said, feeling a wave of remorse.
“She tried to tell us something,” Giordino said vaguely, reliving the scene in his mind.
Pitt did not take a backward glance. He felt deep regret at not having said his farewells. It was rude to have denied Maeve the courtesy of a friendly hug and a few words. He had genuinely felt attracted to her. She had aroused emotions within him that he hadn’t experienced since losing someone very dear to him in the sea north of Hawaii many years ago. Her name was Summer, and not a day passed that he didn’t recall her lovely face and the scent of plumeria.
There was no way for him to tell if the attraction was mutual. There were a multitude of expressions in her eyes, but nothing he saw that indicated desire. And nothing in her conversation had led him to believe they were more than merely two people touching briefly before passing into the night.
He tried to remain detached and tell himself that their affair had nowhere to go. They were bound to lives on opposite sides of the world. It was best to let her fade into a pleasant memory of what might have been if the moon and stars had shone in the right direction.
“Weird,” Giordino said, staring ahead at the restless sea as the islands north of Cape Horn grew in the distance.
“‘Weird’?” Pitt echoed in a tone of indifference.
“What Maeve yelled as we lifted off.”
“How could you hear anything over the chopper’s racket?”
“I couldn’t. It was all in the way she formed the words with her mouth.”
Pitt grinned. “Since when do you read lips?”
“I’m not kidding, pal,” Giordino said in dead seriousness. “I know the message she tried to get across to us.”
Pitt knew from long years of experience and friendship that when Giordino turned profound he worked purely from essentials. You didn’t step into his circle, spar with him and step out unscathed. Pitt mentally remained outside the circle and peered in. “Spit it out. What did she say?”
Giordino slowly turned and looked at Pitt, his deep-set black eyes reflective and somber at the same time. “I could swear she said ‘Help me.’”
The twin-engined Buccaneer jet transport touched down smoothly and taxied to a quiet corner of Andrews Air Force Base, southeast of Washington. Fitted out comfortably for high-ranking Air Force officers, the aircraft flew nearly as fast as the most modern fighter plane.
As the flight steward, in the uniform of an Air Force master sergeant, carried their luggage to a waiting car and driver, Pitt marveled at Admiral Sandecker’s influence in the capital city. He wondered what general the admiral had conned into temporarily lending the plane to NUMA, and what manner of persuasion it took.
Giordino dozed during the drive, while Pitt stared unseeing at the low buildings of the city. The rush-hour traffic had begun streaming out of town, and the streets and bridges leading into the suburbs were jammed. Fortunately, their car was traveling in the opposite direction.
Pitt cursed his idiocy for not returning to Ice Hunter shortly after liftoff. If Giordino had interpreted her message correctly, Maeve was in some sort of trouble. The possibility that he had deserted her when she was calling out to him gnawed at his conscience.
The long arm of Sandecker reached through his melancholy and cast a shroud over his preoccupation with guilt. Never in Pitt’s years with NUMA had he ever placed his personal problems above the vital work of the agency. During the flight to Punta Arenas, Giordino had provided the crowning touch.
“There’s a time for being horny, and this isn’t it. People and sea life are dying by the boatload out there on the water. The sooner we stop this evil, the more lives will be spared to pay taxes. Forget her for now. When this cauldron of crap is over you can take a year off and chase her Down Under.”
Giordino might never-have been hired to teach rhetoric at Oxford, but he seldom failed to fill a book with common sense. Pitt surrendered and reluctantly eased Maeve from his mind, not entirely successfully. The memory of her lingered like a portrait that became more beautiful with the passage of time.
His thoughts were broken as the car rolled over the driveway in front of the tall green, solar-glassed building
