Sandecker's twinkling blue eyes. What was coming? The head of one of the nation's most prestigious governmental agencies didn't fly six thousand miles just to chat with his Special Projects Director about birds. He handed Sandecker a glass and asked, «What brings you from Washington? I thought you were buried in plans for the new deep-sea current expedition?»
«You don't know why I'm here?» He was using his quiet cynical tone, the one that always made Pitt involuntarily cringe. 'Thanks to your meddling in affairs that don't concern you, I had to make a special trip to bail you out of one mess and throw you into another.»
«I don't follow.»
«A talent I know only too well.» There was the slight hint of a derisive smile. «It seems you aggravated a hornet's nest when you showed up with the Star-buck's message capsule. You unknowingly set off an earthquake in the Pentagon that was picked up on a seismograph in California. It also made you a big-man-on-campus with the Navy Department. I'm only a retired castoff to those boys, so I wasn't offered a peek behind the curtain. I was simply asked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, courteously, I might add, to fly to Hawaii posthaste, explain your new assignment, and arrange for your loan to the Navy.»
Pitt's eyes narrowed. «Who's behind this?»
«Admiral Leigh Hunter of the 101st Salvage Fleet.»
«You can't be serious?»
«He personally requested you.»
Pitt shook his head angrily. «This is asinine. What's to stop me from refusing?»
«You force me to remind you,» Sandecker said calmly, «that in spite of your status with NUMA, you're still carried on the active rolls as a major in the Air Force. And, as you well know, the Joint Chiefs frown upon insubordination.»
Pitt's eyes looked resentfully into Sandecker's. «It won't work.»
«Yes it will,» Sandecker said. «You're a damn good marine engineer, the best I've got. I've already met with Hunter and I minced no words in telling him so.»
«There are other complications,» Pitt didn't sound very confident, «that haven't been considered.»
«You mean the fact that you've been laying Hunter's daughter?»
Pitt stiffened. «Do you know what that makes you, Admiral?»
«A sly, old devious son of a bitch?» Sandecker asked. «Actually, there's much more to this business than you've taken the trouble to notice.»
«You sound ominous as hell,» Pitt said, unimpressed.
«I mean to,» Sandecker replied seriously. «You're not joining the Navy to learn a new trade. You're to act as liaison between Hunter and myself. Before this thing's over with, NUMA will be involved up to its ears. NUMA has been ordered to help the Navy with whatever oceanographical data they demand.»
«Equipment?»
«If they ask for it.»
«Finding a submarine that disappeared six months ago won't be a picnic.»
«The Starbuck is only half the act,» Sandecker said. «The Navy Department has compiled thirty-eight documented cases of ships over the past thirty years that have sailed into a circular-shaped area north of the Hawaiian Islands and vanished. They want to know why.»
«Ships disappear in the Atlantic and Indian oceans too. It's not an unheard-of occurrence.»
«True, but under normal circumstances, marine disasters leave traces behind; bits of flotsam, oil slicks, even bodies. Wreckage will also float ashore to give a hint of a missing ship's fate, but no such remains have turned up from the ships that vanished in the Pacific Vortex.»
«The Pacific Vortex?»
«That's the name the seamen in the maritime unions coined for it. They won't sign on a ship whose course takes them through the area.»
«Thirty-eight ships,» Pitt repeated slowly. «What about radio contact? A ship would have to go down in seconds not to transmit a Mayday signal.»
«No distress signals were ever received.»
Pitt didn't say anything. Sandecker simply sipped his Scotch, offering no further comment. As if on cue, the myna birds began their noisy antics again, shattering the brief silence. Pitt shut them from his mind and stared steadfastly at the floor; there were a hundred questions swirling around in his head, but it was far too early in the morning for him to conjure up theories on mysterious ship disappearances.
After the silence had dragged on a bit too long, Pitt spoke: «Okay, so thirty-seven ships will never reach port again. That leaves the thirty-eighth, the Starbuck. The Navy has the exact position from the capsule. What are they waiting for? If they locate the remains, their salvage ships won't require an act of God to raise her from ten fathoms.»
«It's not all that elementary.»
«Why not? The Navy raised the submarine F-4 from sixty fathoms right here on Oahu off the entrance of Pearl Harbor. And that was back in 1915.»
«The armchair admirals who do their thinking through computers today, aren't convinced that the message you found is genuine. At least not until they've had time to analyze the handwriting.»
Pitt sighed. «They suspect the dumb ass who brought in the capsule of perpetrating a hoax.»
«Something like that.»
Pitt forced back a laugh. «So that, at least, explains the transfer. Hunter wants to keep an eye on me.»
«You made the mistake of reading the capsule's message. This alone takes you from the ranks of innocent bystander, and classifies you as top secret material. Also, the 101st Fleet wants to borrow our new long-range FXH helicopter. None of the Navy's pilots are checked out on it. You are. And, if an unfriendly nation got it in their heads to try and locate and salvage Uncle Sam's newest and most advanced nuclear sub before we do — it's first come, first serve in international waters — you're a sitting duck for their undercover agents to kidnap in order to discover the Starbuck's position.»
«It's nice to be known and loved,» Pitt said. «But you forget; I'm not the only one who knows the Starbuck's final resting place
«Yes, but you're the easiest to come by. Hunter and his staff are safely confined to Pearl Harbor, working around-the-clock in an attempt to clear up the puzzle.» The admiral paused, stuck a massive cigar in his face, lit it, and puffed meditatively. «Knowing you like I do, my boy, an enemy agent wouldn't have to use muscle. They'd simply send their most seductive Mata Hari to the nearest bar and let you pick her up.»
Sandecker noticed the sudden look of pain that gripped Pitt's face but he went on.
«I might add, for your own information, that the 101st Fleet is one of the finest undercover salvage operations in the world.»
«Undercover?»
«Talking to you is like floundering on a reef,» San-decker said with forbearance. «Admiral Hunter and his men have raised a British bomber from the water only ten miles from the Cuban shore right under the nose of Castro. Then they salvaged the New Century off Libya, the Southwind in the Black Sea, the Tari Maru within sight of the lights of China. In each case the ships were all salvaged by the 101st before the nations whose waters the vessels sank in, knew the score. Don't underestimate Hunter and his gang of underwater scrap mongers. They're second to none.»
«The Starbuck,» Pitt said, «why all the cloak and dagger?»
«For one thing, Dupree's final position is an impossibility. The only way the Starbuck could possibly be where his message said it lay, was for the ship to fly. A feat marine architects haven't as yet accomplished. Not with ten thousand tons of steel, at any rate.»
Pitt looked steadily at Sandecker. «It's got to be out there. Underwater detection systems are far more advanced now. It doesn't figure that the Starbuck remains lost, or that a massive search turned up absolutely nothing.»
Sandecker held up his empty glass and stared at it «As long as there are seas, ships, and men, there will be strange unsolved mysteries. The Starbuck is only one.»
Pitt stood under the shower nozzle; the steaming hot water opening his pores. After finishing tinder a heavy spray of cold water, he stepped out, toweled, and shaved the stubble from the night before, taking his time. He
