“Cliffs above water usually mean steep drop-offs below,” Mac said, when she commented.
“You really think
Not that she could have seen bottom, with or without the shimmer of fuel. The green water was rich, nearly opaque with plankton.
“Either that or there’s a petroleum pipeline running right under a nameless little dog hole, and while we were gone, the line just happened to pop a leak.”
“Not likely,” she said.
“No, it-wait. Go out of gear.”
She put the shifter in neutral and watched Mac. He gave her some terse directions and watched the wildly colorful screen. The dinghy doubled back on its course, then turned again, and again, painting images of the bottom on the screen with each yard of motion.
“There,” he said, pointing at the screen. “Bloody bastards. She was a good boat.”
She stared at the bright colors. It was hard for her to translate them into anything useful. But that was why people hired experts.
“You’re sure,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.
“She’s sitting on her keel in one hundred and fifty-four feet of water.” He stabbed the screen with one index finger. “That’s the top of the cabin, twenty feet above the waterline-if she was floating. What I’ve had you doing is the equivalent of flying over her from bow to stern.”
“Guess we’ll need that seaplane just to get home.”
Mac grunted.
Emma started to say something, shook her head, and tried again. “Why? Why would anyone sink millions of dollars’ worth of new yacht?”
“They didn’t need her anymore.”
“If the smugglers found out that the Agency was closing in, it’s possible that they buried the evidence and ran. But…”
“But that doesn’t explain
“Yeah,” she said unhappily.
She thought hard, fast, silently offering and rejecting explanation after explanation for the scuttling of
“Maybe Demidov got impatient,” she said finally.
“Would we?”
She sighed. “No. Maybe they’re planning to salvage her and start again. A different way of hiding her, as it were.”
“A ship that has been on the bottom is pretty well ruined. You’re not going to just float her, pump her out, and take off.”
Emma stared at the deceptively beautiful rainbows in the slick. The most likely conclusion made her stomach clench. She looked at Mac.
He looked as grim as she felt.
“You’re thinking what I don’t want to think,” she said
“I’m not real happy about it, either.”
“It’s a crazy idea. Premature. Unsupported.”
“And it fits the facts as we know them,” he said bleakly. “You can paint over almost every color hull but black.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It comes as a surprise to a lot of people.” He shrugged. “You want to call or should I?”
“I will.”
She dug out her phone, hit speed dial, and braced herself to tell St. Kilda some really bad news.
64
DAY FIVE
MANHATTAN
10:49 P.M.
Alara sat in Steele’s office as she had for hours, talking on her phone, trading favors, calling in IOUs, bribing, threatening careers, and looking more exhausted with each lost minute.
Steele didn’t look any better. St. Kilda had been combing through its own mazes, searching for something-a hint, a tone of voice, a choice of words, something done or undone-anything that would indicate that someone knew more than he or she was telling.
Nothing had come his way.
“Deputy Director of Operations on line four,” Dwayne said to Steele. “Two other calls standing by, but they’re just lower-level screamers.”
Steele nodded. He paid Dwayne very well to sort out important calls; at times like this, he was worth double his salary.
“Switch Duke to my phone,” Steele said.
Alara’s black eyes narrowed as she focused on each nuance of Steele’s expression and words. The image of a dying city haunted her, slicing her soul with the knowledge that her children’s children had inherited a world gone mad.
She had four advanced degrees in global history. She was no closer to answering the sanity question than she had been as an eager student whose mind was on fire with the beauty and complexity of the world’s cultures and history.
The complexity, at least, remained.
Even the beauty, sometimes.
Without realizing it Alara shook her head. She had lived too long knowing too much-and not nearly enough.
Steele watched her as he listened to Duke. If her eyes had been open, he would have thought she was warning him against talking to the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations. But her eyes were like her past, closed.
“Duke,” Steele said finally, “I give you my word that you have everything we have. More. You know what originally kicked this avalanche off the mountain. St. Kilda doesn’t, which places us at a real disadvantage.”
“You’re in a tough place,” Duke agreed. “We all are. This kind of investigation is difficult in the extreme. People won’t, often
“If you make Seattle’s memorial big enough, your explanations might fit on the plaque.”
“Damn it, Steele. It’s not only our people at risk. Our allies-”
“Will pass the hat for the plaque,” Steele said. “So will our enemies. When it comes to sharing real information, there’s little difference.”
“We have sat intel people working 24/7,” Duke said. “Problem is, there’s a storm moving down the northwest coast from Alaska. It’s already hammering the Queen Charlotte Islands. Northern Vancouver Island will feel it tomorrow, but the clouds are coming in right now.”
“I’m certain your satellite intelligence technicians are capable of penetrating a few clouds.”
“Whether or how much is classified,” Duke said.
Steele bit off a particularly vicious oath. It seemed that the only thing unclassified about this steaming pile of shit was the finger-pointing.
“Look,” Duke said, “I’ve given you all that I can and more than I should. Tim Harrow’s diver confirmed that
