Minutes later, The Grimsi was moored over the reading on the fathometer. The shore was nearly a mile away, the great cliffs showing off their gray vertical rock more distinctly than ever under the northern sun.
At the same time, a slight breeze sprang up and began to ruffle the surface of the rolling water. It was a mild warning, a signal foretelling the beginning of rougher weather to come. With the breeze a state of chilling apprehension raised the hairs on Pitts neck. For the first time he began to wonder what he would find beneath the cold Atlantic waters.
Chapter 10
The brilliant blue sky, free of clouds, allowed the sun to beat down and turn Pitts black neoprene wet suit into a skintight sauna bath as he checked the old single-hose U.S. Diver's Deepstar regulator. He would have preferred a newer model, but beggars couldn't be choosy.
He considered himself lucky that one of the young consulate members made a sport of diving and had the equipment on hand. He attached the regulator to the valve of an air bottle. Two single tanks were all he could scrounge. Enough for fifteen minutes' diving, and even that was stretching precious time for dives to one hundred and forty feet. His only consolation was that he wouldn't be down long enough to worry about decompression.
His last look of The Grimsi's deck before the bluegreen water closed over his face mask was of Admiral Sandecker sitting sleepily with fishing pole gripped in both hands and Tidi, dressed in Pitts outlandish clothes, brown hair encased in the knit cap, studiously sketching the Icelandic shoreline. Shielded from anyone watching from the cliffs, Pitt slipped over the side behind the wheelhouse and became a part of the sea's vastness. His body was tense. Without a diving companion there was no margin for error.
The shock of the icy water against his sweaty body nearly, made him pass out. Using the anchor line as a guide, he followed along its vanishing outline, leaving his air bubbles to swirl and rise lazily to the surface.
As he sank deeper and deeper, the light diminished and the visibility shortened. He checked his two vital references. The depth gauge read ninety feet and the orange dial on the Doxa diving watch notified him that he had been down two minutes.
The bottom gradually came into view. He automatically popped his ears for the third time and was struck by the color of the sand-a pure black. Unlike most areas of the world where the bottom sand was white, the volcanic activity of Iceland had left a carpet of soft ebony grains. He slowed his movement, spellbound by the strangeness of the dark color beneath the vast shroud of blue-green water. Visibility was about forty feet-quite good considering the depth.
Instinctively he swung around in a three-hundredand-sixty-degree circle. Nothing was in sight. He looked up and vaguely saw a shldow pass over him. It was a small school of cod foraging near the bottom for their favorite diet of shrimp and crab. He watched a moment as they slowly slipped overhead, their slightly flattened bodies tinted a dark olive and spotted with hundreds of small brown dots. Too bad the admiral can't hook one, he thought. The smallest weighed no less than fifteen pounds.
Pitt began swimming in ever-widening circles around the anchor line, dragging a fin in the sadd to mark his trail. Underwater he often saw fantasy, at deep depths his perception was distorted, danger magnified beyond clear thinking. After five circuits he saw a dim form through the blue haze. Quickly kicking his fins, he swam toward it. Thirty seconds later his hopes were broken and discarded. The form proved to be a large jagged rock poking up from the bottom like some forgotten and crumbling outpost in the middle of a desert.
Effortlessly he slipped around the current-worn sides, his mind blurred, struggling for control. This couldn't be the readine on the fathometer, he thought. The peak was too conical to match that of an aircraft fuselage.
Then he saw something lying in the sand just five feet away. The black paint on the broken and bent door blended against the black sand almost to the point of invisibility. He swam forward and turned it over, recoiling in surprise for an instant as a large lobster scurried from its new home. There were no markings anywhere on the inside paneling. Pitt had to move quickly now.
The plane had to be very close, but he was due to pull the valve for his reserve air, and that only left a few minutes of extra breathing-barely enough to get him to the surface.
It didn't take him long to find it. The aircraft was resting on its belly, broke in two, evidence of the impact from the crash. His breathing became harder now, signaling him that it was time to go on reserve. He pulled the valve and headed for the top. The watery ceiling over his head slowly became brighter as he rose along with his air bubbles. At thirty feet he stopped and searched for The Grimsi's keel; it was important that he break water out of sight from shore. She sat like a fat duck with her props tucked into her bottom, rolling drunkenly with the swells. He stared upward at the sun to get a direction. The Grimsi had drifted around her anchor lirie on a hundred-and- eighty-degree arc so that her starboard side now faced the coast.
He pulled himself over the port freeboard and, dropping his air tank, crawled across the deck into the wheelhouse. Sandecker, without looking up, slowly placed his rod against the railing and just as slowly walked over and leaned in the doorway.
'I hope you've had better luck than I have.'
'She's lying a hundred and fifty feet off the starboard beam,' Pitt said. 'I didn't have time to search the interior; my air was scraping bottom.'
'Better get out of that suit and have a cup of coffee. Your face is as blue as a windmill on a Delftware saucer.'
'Keep the coffee hot. I'll relax as soon as we've got what we came for.' Pitt started for the door.
Sandecker's eyes were set. 'You're not going anywhere for the next hour and a half. We still have plenty of time. The day is young. It's senseless to overdo your physical resources. You know the repetitive dive charts as well as any diver alive. Two dives to one hundred and forty feet within thirty minutes invites a case of the bends.' He paused, then drove the point home. 'You've seen men scream their lungs out from the agony of pain.
You know the ones who lived and the ones who were paralyzed for life. Even if I pushed this old scow to the hilt, I couldn't get you to Reykjavik before two hours.
Then, add another five hours on a jet to London and the nearest decompression chamber. No way, my friend.
You go below and rest up. I'll tell you when you can go down again.'
'No contest, Admiral; you win.' Pitt unzipped the front of his wet suit. 'However, I think it would be wiser to sack out above deck so that all three of us are in view.'
'Who's to see? The coast is deserted, and we haven't another boat since we left the harbor.'
'The coast isn't deserted. We have an observer.'
Sandecker turned and gazed across the water toward the cliffs. 'I may be getting old, but I don't need glasses yet. Damned if I can detect any obvious glitters.'
'Off to the right just beyond that rock that projects from the water.'
'Can't see crap from this distance.' He stared sideways at the point Pitt described. 'It'd be like looking through a keyhole and seeing another eye if I picked up the binoculars and stared back. How can you be sure?'
'There was a reflection. The sun flashed on something for a moment. Probably a pair of lenses.'
'Let them gawk. If anybody should ask why only two of us were on deck, Tidi was seasick and in misery on a bunk below.'
'That's as good an excuse as any,' Pitt said, smiling. 'So long as they can't tell the difference between Tidi and me in that wild set of duds.'
Sandecker laughed. 'Through binoculars from a nine away, your own mother couldn't tell the difference.'
'I'm not sure how I should take that.'
Sandecker turned and stared into Pitts eyes, his lips twisting from the laugh to a wry smile. 'Don't try. Just get your ass below. It's nappy time. I'll send Tidi down with a cup of coffee. And, no hanky-panky. I know how horny you get after a hard day's dive.'
An eerie, yellow-gray light showed through the hatch when Sandecker shook Pitt awake. He woke slowly, mind blurred, more groggy from a catnap than from an eight-hour sleep. Pitt could feel the drop in the wave action; The Grimsi was barely rocking, even in the low even swells. There was no hint of a breeze. The air was damp and heavy.
