Pitt said, 'A flamethrower.'
There was a minute of appalled silence.
'Do you realize what you're suggesting?'
'You're damned right I do,' Pitt said. 'Right down to the violent blast of searing flame, the hideous swish of the jets, the terrible smoke from melted flesh.
'Like it or not, a flamethrower is the logical answer.'
They were all listening now with horrified interest.
Hunnewell made a choking noise in his throat as if he were going to be sick again.
'It's outlandish, unthinkable,' Koski murmured.
'This entire setup is outlandish,' Pitt said evenly.
Hunnewell stared at Pitt blankly. 'I can't believe that everyone stood like sheep and let themselves be turned into human torches. 'Don't you see?' Pitt said. 'Our fiendish friend somehow either drugged or poisoned the passengers and crew. Probably slipped a massive dose of chloral hydrate into their food or drinks.'
'They all could have been shot,' Dover ventured.
'I studied several of the remains.' Pitt shook his head. 'There were no signs of bullets or shattered bones.'
'And if he waited until they were all knocked out by the POison-I prefer to they died outrightscattered them around the ship, and then went from compartment to compartment with a flame thrower.
Koski left the surmise unplumbed. 'But what then? Where did the killer go from there?'
'Before attempting to answer that one,' Hunnewell said wearily, 'I wish someone would kindly explain where the murderer materialized from in the first place.
He obviously wasn't one of the passengers or crew. -ne Lax sailed with fifteen men, and it burned with fifteen men. Logic dictates that this was the work of a team who boarded from another ship.'
'Won't work,' said Koski- 'Any boarding of one ship by another requires some sort of radio contact.
Even if the Lax had picked up survivors from a phony shipwreck, the captain would have immediately reported it.' Koski suddenly smiled. 'As I recall, Fyrie's last message asked for the reservation of a penthouse suite at the Statler-Hilton in New York.'
'Poor bastard,' Dover said slowly. 'If money and success ends like this, who needs it?' He looked at the thing on the deck again and quickly turned away. 'God, what kind of maniac could murder fifteen humans at a sitting? Methodically poison fifteen men and then calmly cremate them with a flamethrower?'
'The same maniac who blows up airliners for insurance money,' said Pitt. 'One who can kill another human with the same lack of shattering guilt you'd experience after swatting a fly. The motive here was obviously gain. Fyrie and his people made a discovery that was extremely valuable. The United States wanted it, Russia wanted it, but a dark horse got away with it.'
'Was it worth all this?' Hunnewell said with sickness in his eyes.
'It was to the sixteenth man.' Pitt stared down at the grisly remains on the deck. 'The unrecorded intruder who became the death of the party.'
Chapter 5
Iceland, the land of frost and fire, rugged glaciers and smoldering volcanoes, an island prism of lava-bed reds, rolling tundra greens, and placid lake blues stretched under the rich gold glow of the midnight sun. Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, bounded by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream in the south and by the frigid polar sea to the north, Iceland rests midway as the crow flies between New York and Moscow. A strange island of kaleidoscopic scenes far less cold than its name suggests; the average temperature in the cold month of January rarely rises above that of the New England coast of the United States. To someone seeing it for the first time, Iceland seems indeed an unequaled phenomenon of beauty.
Pitt watched the jagged snow-packed peaks of the island grow on the horizon and the flashing water below the Ulysses turn from the deep blue of the great ocean depths to the rich green of the inshore surf. Then he altered the controls, and the helicopter dipped neatly on a ninety-degree angle and a parallel course along the steep lava cliffs that burst from the sea below. They passed over a tiny fishing village, nestled on a barron circle bay, its roofs painted in a checkered myriad of tile reds and pastel greens; an outpost at the gateway of the Arctic Circle.
'What time is it?' Hunnewell asked, awakening from a light sleep.
'Ten minutes past four in the morning,' Pitt replied. 'God, to look at the sun, you'd think it was four in the afternoon.' Hunnewell yawned loudly and made a vain attempt to stretch in the cramped confines of the cockpit. 'About now I'd give my right arm if I could go back to sleep between the crisp white sheets of a soft bed.'
'Keep your eyes propped open, it won't be long now.'
'How far to Reykjavik?'
'Another half hour.' Pitt paused to make a visual check of the instruments. 'I could have cut north sooner, but I wanted to sightsee the coastline.'
'Six hours, forty-five minutes since we left the Catawaba. Not bad time.'
'Probably could have shaved that considerably if we weren't handicapped with an extra fuel tank.'
'Without it we'd be back there somewhere trying to swim four hundred miles to shore.'
Pitt grinned. 'We could have always sent a Mayday to the Coast Guard.'
'Judging from the mood Commander Koski was in when we took off, I doubt if he'd put himself out for us if we were drowning in a bathtub and he had his hand on the plug.'
'In spite of what Koski thinks of me, I'd vote for him as admiral any time he decided to run. In my book he's a damn good man.'
'You have a funny way of expressing your admiration,' Hunnewell said dryly. 'Except for your perceptive deduction concerning the flame thrower hat's off to you for that one, by the way-you really didn't tell him a damned thing.'
'We gave him the truth as far as it went. Anything else would have been fifty percent guesswork. The only real fact that we omitted was the name of Fyrie's discovery.'
'Zirtonium.' Hunnewell's gaze was lost in the distance. 'Atomic number: forty.'
'I barely squeaked through my geology class,' Pitt said, smiling. 'zirconium? What makes it worth mass murder?'
'Purified zirconium is vital in the construction of nuclear reactors because it absorbs little or no radiation.
Every nation in the world with facilities for atomic research would give their eyeteeth to have it obtainable by the carload. Admiral Sandecker is certain that if Fyrie and his scientists did indeed discover a vast zirconium bonanza, it was under the sea close enough to the surface to be raised economically.'
Pitt turned and stared out of the cockpit bubble at the dark ultramarine blue that stretched almost unripPled to the south. A fishing boat with a chain of dories sailed out to sea, the tiny hulls moving as easy as if they were gliding across a tinted mirror. He watched them through eyes that barely saw, his mind dwelling on the exotic element that lay — covered by the cold waters below.
'A hell of an undertaking,' he muttered, just loud enough to be heard over the drone from the engine's exhaust. 'The problems of raising raw ore from the sea bottom are emense.'
'Yes, but not insurmountable. Fyrie Limited employs the world's leading experts at underwater mining.
That's how Kristjan Fyrie built his empire, you know, dredging diamonds off the coast of Africa.' Hunnewell spoke with what sounded like simple admiration. 'He was only eighteen, a seaman on an old Greek freighter, when he jumped ship at Beira, a small port on the coast Of Mozambique. It didn't take him long to catch the diamond fever. There was a boom on in those days, but the big SYndicates had all the productive claims tied up.
That's where Fyrie stood out from the rest-he had a shrewd and creative mind.
'If diamond deposits could be found on land not two miles from shore, he reasoned, why couldn't they lie underwater on the continental shelf? So every day for five months he dove in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean until he found a section of the seabed that looked promising. Now the trick was scrounging the financing to buy the needed dredging equipment. Fyrie had arrived in Africa with nothing but the shirt on his back. To beg from the white
