effort or trouble in a buoyant sort of way.
Sandecker eased the throttles back a notch above idle and took The Grimsi on a slow, leisurely tour of Reykjavik harbor. The admiral might have been standing on the bridge of a battle cruiser from the regulation smile on his face. He was back in his element, and he was enjoying every minute of it. To an interested observer his passengers looked like ordinary tourists on a chartered cruise-Tidi sunning herself and aiming a camera at everything in sight, and Pitt drawing furiously on a sketch pad. Before leaving the harbor they tied up at a bait boat and purchased two buckets of herring.
Then, after an animated conversation with the bait fishermen, they cast off and headed toward the sea.
As soon as they rounded a rocky point and lost sight of the harbor, Sandecker eased open the throttles and slowly pushed The Grimsi to 30 knots. it was a strange sight indeed to see the ungainly hull skipping over the waves like a Gold Cup hydroplane. The waves began to melt together as The Grimsi increased speed and lost them behind her swirling wake. Pitt found a chart of the coast and laid it on a small shelf beside Sandecker.
'It's right about here.' Pitt tapped a spot on the map with a pencil. 'Twenty miles southeast of Keflavik.'
Sandecker nodded. 'An hour and a half, no more. Not the way she moves. Take a look. The throttles are still a good two inches from their stops.'
'The weather looks perfect. I hope it holds.'
'No clouds in any direction. It's usually calm around the southern end of Iceland this time of year. The worst we can look forward to is meeting a bit of fog. It usually rolls in during the late afternoon.'
Pitt sat down, propped his feet on the doorway and gazed out at the rocky coastline. 'At least we don't have to worry about fuel.'
'What do the gauges read?'
'About two-thirds full.'
Sandecker's mind clicked like a Burroughs adding machine. 'Ample for our purpose. No reason to conserve, particularly since Rondheim is footing the bill.'
With a smug, satisfied expression on his face, he jammed the throttles against their stops.
The Grimsi sat down on her stern and took off across the blue wrinkled sea, her bow splitting two giant sheets of spray. Sandecker's timing left something to be desired. Tidi was cautiously climbing the ladder from the galley, balancing a tray laden with three cups of coffee when the admiral opened up the Sterlings. The sudden acceleration caught her totally off guard and the tray flew into the air and she vanished into the galley as though jerked backward by an invisible hand. Neither Pitt nor Sandecker caught the vaudevillian fall.
Thirty seconds later she reappeared in the wheelhouse, her head thrown back in anger. her hair stringy with dampness, her blouse stained brown by coffee.
'Admiral James Sandecker,' she shouted, the highpitched voice drowning out the roar of the Sterlings.
'When we get back to our hotel, you can just add the cost of a new blouse and a trip to the hairdresser on your expense account.'
Sandecker and Pitt stared at Tidi and then at each other in utter uncomprehension. 'I could have scalded myself into a hospital,' Tidi continued. 'If you want me to act as your stewardess on this voyage, I suggest you show a little more consideration.' With that, she whirled and disappeared into the galley.
Sandecker's eyebrows came together. 'What in hell was that all about?'
Pitt shrugged. 'Women rarely offer an explanation.'
'She's too young for menopause,' Sandecker mumbled. 'Must be on her period.'
Mentally applauding, Pitt said, 'Either way, it's going to cost you a blouse and a ' Tidi's hairdo.'
It took Tidi ten minutes to make another small pot of coffee. Considering the dip of The Grimsi's keel as it soared over and smacked the crests of the swells, it was a professional feat of dexterity that she managed to climb into the wheelhouse without spilling a drop from the three cups she clutched with dogged determination.
Pitt couldn't help smiling as he sipped the coffee and watched the indigo blue water pass under the old boat.
Then he thought of Hunnewell, of Fyrie, of Matajic, of O'Riley, and he wasn't smiting any longer.
He still wasn't smiling as he watched the stylus the fathometer's graph zigzag across the paper, measuring the sea floor. The bottom showed at one hundred and thirty feet. He wasn't smiling now because somewhere down there in the depths was an airplane with a dead crew, and he had to find it. If luck played into his hands, the fathometer would register an irregular hump on its chart.
He took his cross bearings on the cliffs and hoped for the best.
'Are you sure of your search pattern?' Sandecker asked.
'Twenty percent certain, eighty percent guesswork,' Pitt answered.
'I could have lowered the odds if I had the Ulysses as a checkpoint.'
'Sorry, I didn't know yesterday what you had in mind. My formal request for salvage was acted upon only a few hours after you crashed. The Air Force airsea rescue squadron on Keflavik picked your craft out of the surf with one of their giant helicopters. You have to give them credit. They're an efficient lot.'
'Their eagerness is going to cost us,' Pitt said.
Sandecker paused to make a course change. 'Have you checked the diving gear?'
'Yes, it's all accounted for. Remind me to buy those State Department people at the consulate a drink when we get back. Dressing up and playing bait fishermen took a bit of doing on such short notice.
To anyone gawking through a pair of navy binoculars it could have only looked like an innocent encounter. The diving gear was slipped on board so smoothly and inconspicuously while you were going through the routine of bait buying that I almost missed detecting the transfer from ten feet away.'
'I don't like the action. Diving alone invites danger, and danger invites death. I'll have you know I'm not in the habit of going against my own orders and allowing one of my men to dive in unknown waters without the proper precautions.' Sandecker shifted from one foot to the other. He was going against his better judgment, and the discomfort showed clearly in his expression. 'What do you hope to find down there besides a broken airplane and bloated bodies? How do you know someone hasn't already beaten us to it?'
'There is an outside chance that the bodies may carry identification that might point to the man behind this screwed-up enigma. This factor alone makes it worth an attempt to find the remains. What's more important is the aircraft itself. All identifying numbers and insignia were hidden under black paint, leaving nothing recognizable at a distance except a silhouette. That plane, Admiral, is the only positive lead we have to Hunnewell's and Matajic's murderer. The one thing black paint can't cover is the serial number of an engine, at least not on the turbine casing under the cowling. If we find the plane, and if I can retrieve the digits, it then becomes a simple matter to contact the manufacturer, trace the engine to the plane, and from there to the owner.'
Pitt hesitated a moment to make an adjustment on the fathometer. 'The answer to your second question,' he went on, 'is no way.'
'You seem damned sure of yourself,' Sandecker said mechanically. 'As much as I hate the murderous son-of- a-bitch, I still give him credit for brains. He'd have already searched for his missing plane, knowing that the wreckage could give him away.'
'True, he would have made a surface search, but this time-for the first time-we have the advantage.
Nobody witnessed the fight. The children who found Hunnewell and me on the beach said they investigated only after they noticed the Ulysses laying in the surf-not before. And the fact that our friendly assassins didn't kill us when they had an ideal opportunity instead of arriving at the doctor's house much later, proves they weren't ground observers. To sum up, I'm the only survivor who knows where to look-' Pitt broke off suddenly, his eyes concentrating on the graph and stylus. The black lines began widening from a thin waver back and forth across the paper to a small mountainlike sweep that indicated a sudden rise of eight to ten feet above the flat, sandy sea floor.
'I think we've found it,' Pitt said calmly. 'Circle to port and cross our wake on course one-eight-five, Admiral.'
Sandecker spun the helm and made a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree swing to the south, causing The Grimsi to rock gently as it passed over the waves of its own wake. This time the stylus took lonszer to sweep to a height of ten feet before tapering back to-zero.
'What depth?' Sandecker asked.
'One hundred and forty-five feet,' Pitt replied.
'Judging from the indication, we just passed over her from wing tip to wing tip.'
