'I couldn't,' Pitt said. 'I would have had to step out of character. Rondheim has every reason to think I'm a faggot. I want him to go right on thinking that.'
'I'd like to think you have a hazy idea of what You're doing,' Sandecker said grimly. 'However, I'm afraid you bricked yourself into a corner with that crap about being an artist. I know for a fact that you can't draw a straight line. Natural eruption of light-my God.'
'I don't have to. Tidi will handle that little chore for me. I've seen samples of her work. It's quite good.'
'I do abstracts,' Tidi said, a pained look on her pretty face. 'I've never tried a true-life seascape.'
'Fake it,' Pitt said briskly. 'Do an abstract seascape. We're not out to impress the head curator at the Louvre.'
'But I have no supplies,' Tidi whined. 'Besides, the Admiral and I are leaving for Washington the day after tomorrow.'
'Your flight has just been canceled.' Pitt turned to Sandecker. 'Right, Admiral?'
Sandecker folded his hands and mulled for a few moments. 'In view of what we've learned in the last five minutes, I think it best if I hang around for a few days.'
'The change of climate will do you good,' Pitt said. 'You might even get in a fishing trip.'
Sandecker studied Pitts face. 'Fairy queen imitations, painting classes, fishing expeditions. Would you humor an old man and tell me what's running through that agile mind of yours?'
Pitt picked up a glass of water and swilled the lucid contents. 'A black airplane,' he said quietly. 'A black airplane resting beneath a watery death shroud.'
Chapter 9
They found Pier Twelve at about ten in the morning and were passed through the entrance barrier by a tali swarthy Fyrie guard. Sandecker dressed in old rumpled clothes, a floppy, soiled hat, carrying a tackle box and fishing rod. Tidi in slacks and knotted blouse warmly covered by a man's windbreaker. She held a sketching pad under one arm and a satchel-sized handbag under the other, both hands jammed deeply in the windbreaker's pockets. The guard did a classic double-take at Pitt, who brought up the rear moving along the pier in a short sissyish gait.
If Sandecker and Tidi looked and dressed like a pair of fishermen, Pitt came on like the queen of the May. He wore red suede pull-on boots, multicolored striped duck pants, so tight the seams were strained beyond endurance, supported by a two-inchwide tapestry belt and a — stretched purple sweater trimmed at the collar by a yellow neckerchief. His eyes blinked rapidly behind a pair of Ben Franklin glasses and his head was covered by a tasseled knit cap. The guard's mouth slowly drifted agape.
'Hi, sweetie,' Pitt said, smiling slyly. 'Is our boat ready?'
The guard's mouth remained agape, his eyes blank and unable to communicate to the brain the apparition they were focusing on.
'Come, come,' Pitt said. 'Miss Fyrie has generously loaned us the use of one of her boats. Which one is it?' Pitt stared fixedly at the guard's crotch.
The guard jerked alive as if he had been kicked, the stunned look on his face quickly turning to one of abject disgust. Without a word he led them down the pier, stopping in a hundred feet and pointing down at a gleaming thirty-two-foot Chris Craft cruiser.
Pitt leaped aboard and disappeared below. In a minute he was back on the pier.
'No, no, this won't do at all. Too mundane, too ostentatious. To create properly I must have a creative atmosphere.' He looked accross the pier. 'There, how about that one?'
Before the guard could reply, Pitt trotted the width of the pier and dropped to the deck of a forty-foot fishing boat. He explored it briefly, then popped his head through a hatchway.
'This is perfect. It has character, a crude uniqueness. We'll take this one.'
The guard hesitated for a moment. Finally, with that twitch of the shoulders that indicated a shrug, he nodded and left them, walking along the pier back to the entrance, throwing a backward look at Pitt every so often and shaking his head.
When he was out of earshot. Tidi said, 'Why this old dirty tub? Why not that nice yacht?'
'Dirk knows what he's doing.' Sandecker set the rod and tackle box down on the worn deck planking and looked at Pitt. 'Does it have a fathometer?'
'A Fleming six-ten, the top of the line. Extrasensitive frequencies for detecting fish at different depths.'
Pitt motioned down a narrow companionway. 'This boat was a lucky choice. Let me show you the engine room, Admiral.'
'You mean we ignored that beautiful Chris Craft simply because it doesn't have a fathometer?' Tidi asked disappointingly.
'That's right,' Pitt answered. 'A fathometer is our only hope of finding the black plane.'
Pitt turned and led Sandecker through the companionway down into the engine room. The stale air and the dank smell of oil and bilge immediately filled their nostrils, making them gasp at the drastic change from the diamond-pure atmosphere above. There was another odor. Sandecker looked at Pitt questioningly.
'Gas fumes?'
Pitt nodded. 'Take a look at the engines.'
A diesel engine is the most efficient means of propelling a small boat, particularly a fishing boat. Heavy, low revolutions-per-minute, slow, but cheap to run and reliable, the diesel is used in nearly every workboat on the sea that doesn't rely on sails for power, that is, except this boat. Sitting side by side, their propeller shafts vanishing into the bilge, a pair of Sterling 420 h.p. gas-fed engines gleamed in the dim light of the engine room like sleeping giants awaiting the starting switch to goad them into thunderous action' 'What in hell would a scow like this be doing with all this power?' Sandecker queried quietly.
'Unless I miss my guess,' Pitt murmured, 'the guard goofed.'
'Meaning?'
'On a shelf in the main cabin I found a pennant with an albatross on it.'
Pitt ran a hand over one of the Sterling's intake manifolds; it was clean enough to pass a naval inspection.
'This boat belongs to Rondheim, not Fyrie.'
Sandecker thought for a moment. 'Miss Fyrie instructed us to see her dockmaster. For some unknown reason he was absent, and the pier was left in charge of that grizzled character with the tobacco-stained mustache. It makes one wonder if we weren't set up.'
'I don't think so,' Pitt said. 'Rondheim will undoubtedly keep a tight eye on us, but we've given him no cause to be suspicious of our actions-not yet, at any rate. The guard made an honest mistake. Without special instructions he probably figured we were given permission to select any boat on the pier, so he quite naturally showed us the best of the lot first. There was nothing in the script that said we would pick this little gem.'
'What is it doing here? Rondheim surely can't be hard up for dock space.'
'Who cares,' Pitt said, a wide grin stretching his features. 'As long as the keys are in the ignition, I suggest we take it and run before the guard changes his mind.' The admiral needed no persuasion. When it came to indulging in devious games to achieve-in his mind-an honest purpose, he was sneaky to a fault.
Squaring his battered hat, he lost no time in issuing the first order of his new command.
'Cast off the lines, Major. I'm anxious to see what these Sterlings can do.'
Precisely one minute later, the guard came running down the pier waving his arms like a crazy man. It was too late. Pitt stood on the deck and waved back good naturedly as Sandecker, happy as a child with a new toy, gunned the engines and steered the deceptivelooking boat out into Reykjavik harbor.
The boat was named The Grimsi, and her tiny squared wheelhouse, perched just five feet from the stern, made her look as though she rode in the opposite direction than her builder had intended when he laid her keel. She was a very old boat-as old as the antique compass mounted beside the helm. Her mahogany deck planks were worn smooth, but still lay strong and true, and smelled strongly of the sea. At the pier she had looked an old ungainly bathtub from her broadbeamed, stubby shape, but when the mighty Sterlings mumbled through their exhaust, her bow lifted from the water like a sea gull soaring into the wind. She seemed to delight in being carried along without
