The Egyptian communications expert looked curious. 'Strange you should ask. Our Latin friends have been in and out of here every ten minutes, asking the same question. I thought they must be stupid. any acknowledgment to a direct transmission would be intercepted by American-European intelligence listening facilities. They'd fix our position within seconds.'
'So you've intercepted nothing suspicious.'
The Arab communications man shook his head. 'Even if I did, any message would certainly be in code.'
'Shut down the equipment. Make the Mexicans think you're still listening for something. Whenever they ask about an incoming message, play dumb and keep saying you've heard nothing.'
Ibn stared at him expectantly. 'My instructions, Sideiman?'
'Keep a sharp watch on Machado's crew. Get them off balance by acting friendly. Open the lounge bar and invite them to drink. Give the worst guard duty to our men, so the Latins can relax. This will lower their defenses.'
'Shall we kill them before they kill us?'
'No,' said Ammar, a flicker of sadistic pleasure in his eyes.
'We'll leave that job to the glacier.'
'Can't be less than a million icebergs down there,' said Gior dino bleakly. 'Be easier picking a midget headwaiter out of a colony of penguins. This could take days.'
Colonel Hollis was in the same mood. 'There has to be one matching the Lady Flamborough's contour and dimensions.
Keep looking.'
'Bear in mind,' said Gunn, 'Antarctic bergs tend to be flat.
The superstructure under the plastic shroud will give the ship a multipinnacle shape.'
Dillenger's eye was enlarged four times its size through a magnifying glass. 'The definition is amazing,' he muttered.
'Be even better when we see what's on the other side of those clouds.'
They were all grouped around a small table in the communications compartment of the Sounder, examining a huge color photo from the Casper. The aerial reconnaissance film had been processed and sent through the survey ship's laser receiver less than forty minutes after the aircraft landed.
The well-defined detail showed a sea of bergs broken away from the Larsen Ice Shelf on the eastern side of the peninsula, while hundreds more could be distinguished near glaciers off Graham Land to the west.
Pitts concentration was aimed elsewhere. He sat off to one side, studying a large nautical chart draped across his lap. Once in a while he looked up, listening, but did not contribute to the conversation.
Hollis turned to Captain Stewart, who stood next to the receiver, wearing a headset with attached microphone. 'When can we expect the Casper's infrared photo?'
Stewart raised a hand as a signal not to interrupt. He pressed the headset against his ears, listening to a voice at CIA headquarters in Washington. Then he nodded toward Hollis. 'The photo lab at Langley says they'll begin transmitting in half a minute.'
Hollis paced the small compartment like a cat listening for the sound of a can opener. He paused and stared curiously at Pitt, who was unconcernedly measuring distances with a pair of dividers.
The Colonel had learned a great deal about the man from NUMA in the past few hours, not from Pitt himself, but from the men on the ship. They talked of him as though he were some kind of walking legend.
'Coming through now,' announced Stewart. He removed the headset and waited patiently for the newspaper- size photo to emerge from the receiver. As soon as it rolled free, he carried it over and placed it on the table. Then everyone began scrutinizing the shoreline around the upper end of the peninsula.
'The technicians at the CIA photo lab have computer-converted the specially sensitive film to a thermogram,' explained Stewart. 'The differences of infrared radiation are revealed in various colors. Black represents the coldest temperatures. Dark blue, light blue, green, yellow and red form an increasingly warmer scale to white, the hottest.'
'What reading can we expect from the Lady Flamborough?' asked Dillenger.
'Somewhere in the upper end between yellow and red.'
'Closer to a dark blue,' Pitt broke in.
Everyone turned and glared at him as though he'd sneezed during a chess match.
'That being the case she won't stand out,' Hollis protested. 'We'd never find her.'
'Heat radiation from the engines and generators will show as plain as a golf ball on a green,' Gunn argued.
'Not if the engineering room was shut down.'
'You can't mean a dead ship?' Dillenger asked in disbelief.
Pitt nodded. He stared at the others with a passing casual gaze that was more disturbing than if he had thrown a wet blanket over the enthusiasm of a breakthrough.
He smiled and said, 'What we have here is a persistent urge to underrate the coach on the other team.'
The five men looked at each other and then back at Pitt, waiting for some kind of explanation.
Pitt laid his nautical charts aside and rose from his chair. He walked to the table, picked up the infrared photo and folded it in half, revealing only the lower tip of Chile.
'Now then,' Pitt continued, 'haven't you noticed that every time the ship went through a change of appearance
