Poseidon's Arrow

Fowler glanced around nervously, spotting only a few joggers and a man repairing a flat tire on his bicycle. “Are you alone? I feared you were in danger.”

“I’m fine. I just wanted to talk to you in private.”

“Sure.” Fowler eyed a grove of trees near the Potomac River that offered some seclusion. “Why don’t we walk?” He gently guided her off the trail.

“I had a lot of time to think about the case while I was away,” she said.

“You probably aren’t aware of the latest developments,” Fowler said, testing her. “Somebody hijacked one of the Sea Arrow’s propulsion motors on its way to Groton.”

“Yes, I was aware of that. Are there any suspects?”

“No, the FBI hit a wall on the case.”

“I’m not surprised. Tell me, Dan, what do you know about the ADS system?”

“ADS? Isn’t that some sort of crowd-control device that the Army cooked up? I really don’t know much about it.”

“Cooked up is right.” Ann thought back to her first encounter with the device in New Orleans. “Didn’t you tell me you were with the Army Research Lab?”

“Yes, I did a short stint there. Why do you ask?”

“According to their personnel director, you managed the security for the Active Denial System program. In that capacity, you would have had access to all its plans. Perhaps you’d find it interesting to know that the Army is not alone in possessing the technology. As a matter of fact, Edward Bolcke has a unit on one of his ships.”

“What are you driving at, Ann?”

“Dan, how long have you been on Bolcke’s payroll?”

They were almost to the trees. Fowler smiled at Ann. “That’s preposterous. We both know that Tom Cerny at the White House is your likely turncoat. Ann, you really shouldn’t jump into the water if you don’t know how to swim.”

Ann ignored the insult. “Cerny was a good red herring. I bought into him for a while, until I reviewed his detailed security clearance. Despite your allusions, he has had no involvement with any military technologies that have been compromised. He also hasn’t set foot in Central America in over twenty years. He’s clean.”

Fowler said nothing as they reached the edge of the grove.

“On the other hand,” Ann said, “I just discovered that you were a founding partner of SecureTek, the security subcontractor that was later sold to Edward Bolcke.”

“You’re reaching now.”

“Am I? We’ve tracked financial payments that were wired from Bolcke’s company to a bank account in your name here in Washington.” This time she was bluffing, but she was confident that further investigation would prove as much.

Fowler kept walking, guiding her deeper into the trees. After a long pause, he said, “Suppose you’re right. Now what?”

“You’ll be tried for espionage and spend the rest of your life in jail.”

Safely obscured from view, Fowler lunged at Ann, cuffing her around the neck and slamming her against a large red oak.

“No,” Fowler said. “I think it ends here.”

Ann stood frozen against the tree as Fowler yanked a bandanna from his pocket and rolled it thin. Wrapping it around her throat, he pulled on the ends to strangle her.

She pushed against him, but he was too strong, pinning her against the tree with his legs. Her head spun, and she began to choke—then she heard a gruff voice from behind Fowler.

“Let her go!”

Fowler turned to see two men dressed as joggers aiming Glock pistols at his head.

The man he had seen fixing a bike came running up wielding an H&K submachine gun. “FBI,” he shouted. “You’re under arrest.”

Fowler slowly released his grip on Ann, letting the bandanna fall to the ground. One of the FBI agents yanked him away as another cuffed his hands behind his back.

Before he was dragged to a waiting car, Ann stepped close and looked him in the eye. “Dan, trust me on this one. I do know how to swim.”

84

THE SEAS OFF TIERRA DEL FUEGO WERE LIVING UP to their latitudinal nickname of the Furious Fifties. A strong westerly blew thick, heaving waves that broke with a boisterous flourish. Rifling currents added to the fury, shoving about the occasional stray iceberg that had drifted in from Antarctica. Over the centuries, these combined forces had carried many a ship to her grave in the frigid waters surrounding Cape Horn. All that was missing was a good williwaw—the sudden violent gusts that pounded the cape without warning.

A small trawler plowed gamely through the maelstrom, giving its occupants a roller-coaster ride. Inside the wheelhouse, Summer grabbed hold of the chart table as the boat slid down a fifteen-foot wave. “You couldn’t have found a bigger boat?” she asked with lament.

Dirk smiled and shook his head. The nautical offerings were slim on short notice in the nearby Argentinean town of Ushuaia. He felt lucky to have chartered the trawler. From Ushuaia, their trek down the Beagle Channel had been relatively calm, but on reaching the open ocean the ride had changed dramatically.

“That’s Isla Nueva straight ahead,” said the captain, a stocky man with white hair.

Summer peered out the wheelhouse window at a hilly green island a mile ahead. “Kind of scenic, in a remote sort of way. How big is it?”

“About eight miles across,” Dirk said. “We should be able to scan the full perimeter in four or five hours.”

“She sure ended up a long way from home.”

“She” was the Barbarigo. Their impromptu search was guided by the package Perlmutter had sent to them in Panama. Inside they had found a logbook from the sailor Leigh Hunt, recording his round-the-world voyage. Intrigued by what Summer had discovered on Madagascar, Perlmutter had tracked down Hunt’s family. One of Hunt’s children had located the logbook after an extended search in the attic of the family’s home. The log provided a detailed accounting of the sailor’s position when he sighted the South Atlantic Wraith.

Summer picked up the log and reexamined Hunt’s entries, as they rolled through the waves. “He says he was sailing north of Nueva and Lennox islands when he saw the Wraith drifting toward Nueva. That means it was likely drifting toward the island’s west coast.”

The trawler was approaching Nueva’s eastern shore, which was faced with high dark cliffs. Waves pounded against the rocky shoreline, spraying billows of white foam.

“Hope the coast is milder on the other side,” Dirk said. “If she hit the rocks around here, we won’t find her on this trip.”

Dirk had the captain bring the trawler as close to shore as possible, and they began a counterclockwise survey of the island. Their search was purely for any visible signs of the submarine, had she run aground. If that failed, a sonar survey of the surrounding waters would follow with the arrival of a NUMA research vessel.

They had scanned dozens of satellite images sent by Yaeger, identifying a handful of coastal anomalies that could be the remains of the Barbarigo. The only way to find out was to inspect the sites, regardless of the angry seas.

They reached the north side of the island, passing towering rocks that could have crushed an approaching vessel. Two sites marked on the satellite photos proved to be rock formations that bore only faint resemblance to a submarine.

As they worked their way west, the coastal terrain flattened, revealing a mixed shoreline of coarse beaches and jagged boulders.

“Coming up on our third site,” Dirk said, comparing a satellite photo with the trawler’s navigation