"You're standing on it," Pitt said slowly, letting his words sink in. He aimed his flashlight at the deck.
"And this cremated mess is all that's left of Kristjan Fyrie."
Koski's eyes widened and the color drained from his face. He took a step forward and stared down at the thing in the yellow circle of light. "Good God, are you sure?"
"Burned beyond recognition is a gross understatement, but Dr. Hunnewell is ninety percent certain of Fyrie's personal effects."
"Yes, the rings. I overheard."
"Not much, perhaps, but considerably more than we could find on the other bodies."
"I've never seen anything like this," Koski said in wonder. "It can't be. A ship this size couldn't vanish without a trace for nearly a year and then pop up burned to a cinder in the middle of an iceberg."
"It would seem that it did just that," Hunnewell said.
"Sorry, Dog" Koski said, staring into Hunnewell's eyes. "Though I'm the first to admit that I'm not in your league when it comes to the science of ice formations, I've kicked around the North Atlantic long enough to know that an iceberg might get sidetracked by currents, drifting in circles, or scrape along the Newfoundland Coast for up to three years-ample time for the Lax, by some remote chance, to become trapped and entombed. But, if you'll forgive the word play, the theory doesn't hold water."
"You're quite correct, Commander," Hunnewell said. "The chances are extremely remote for such an occurrence, but nonetheless conceivable. As you know, a fire-gutted ship takes days to cool. If a current or wind pushed and held the hull against the iceberg, it would only take forty-eight hours or less before this entire ship imbedded itself under the berg's mantle. You can achieve the same situation by holding a red-hot poker against an ice block. The poker will melt its way into the block until it cools. Then the ice, if refrozen around the metal, locks it tight."
"Okay, Dog you score on that one. However, there's one important factor no one has considered."
"Which is?" Pitt prompted.
"The final course of the Lax," Koski said firmly.
"Nothing strange about that," Pitt offered. "It was in all the newspapers. Fyrie with his crew and passengers left Reykjavik on the morning of April tenth of last year and laid a direct heading for New York. He was last sighted by a Standard Oil tanker six hundred miles off Cape Farewell, Greenland. After that, nothing more was seen or heard of the Lax again."
"That's fine as far as it goes." Koski pulled his coat collar around his ears and fought to keep his teeth from chattering. "Except the sighting took place — near the fiftieth parallel-too far south of the iceberg limit."
"I would like to remind you, Commander," Hunnewell said, raising an intimidating eyebrow, "that your own Coast Guard has logged as many as fifteen hundred bergs in one year below the forty-eighth parallel."
"And I'd like to remind you, Dog" Koski persisted, "that during the year in question the number of iceberg sightings below the forty-eighth parallel came to zero."
Hunnewell merely shrugged.
"It would be most helpful, Dr. Hunnewell, if you'd explain how an iceberg appeared where none existed, then with the Lax frozen in its clutches ignored the prevailing currents for eleven and a half months and cruised four degrees north while every other berg in the Atlantic was drifting south at the rate of three knots an hour."
"I can't," Hunnewell said simply.
"You can't?" Koski's face went blank with disbelief. He looked at Hunnewell, then at Pitt, then back to Hunnewell again. "You rotten bastards!" he said savagely. "Don't lie to me!"
"That's pretty salty terminology, Commander," Pitt said harshly.
"What in hell do you expect? You're both highly intelligent people, yet you act like a pair of mongoloids.
Take Dr. Hunnewell here. An internationally renowned scientist, and he can't even explain how an iceberg can drift north against the Labrador Current. Either you're a fraud, Dog or you're the dumbest professor — on record. The plain simple truth is that it's as impossible for this berg to reverse drift as it is for a glacier to flow uphitl."
"Nobody's perfect," Hunnewell said shrugging helplessly.
"No courtesy, no honest answer, is that it?"
"It's not a question of honesty," Pitt said. "We've our orders just as you have yours. Up to an hour ago Hunnewell and I were following a precise plan. That plan is now out the window."
"Uh-huh. And the next move in our game of charades?"
"The problem is, we can't explain everything," Pitt said. "Damned little in reality. I'll tell you what Dr. Hunnewell and I know. After that you'll have to draw your own conclusions."
"You could have leveled with me sooner."
"Hardly," Pitt said. "As captain of your ship you have full authority. You even have the power to disregard or challenge orders from your Commandant if you feel they endanger your crew and ship. I couldn't take a chance. We had to give you a snow job so you'd cooperate fully. Besides, we were not to confide in anyone. I'm going against those orders right now."
"Could be another snow job?"
"Could be," Pitt said, grinning, "but what's the percentage? Hunnewell and I have nothing more to gain. We're washing our hands of this mess and heading for Iceland."
"You're dropping all this in my lap?"
"Why not? Abandoned and drifting derelicts are your bag. Remember your motto, Semper paratus, always prepared, Coast Guard to the rescue and all that."
The twisted look on Koski's face was priceless. "I would appreciate it if you just stuck to the facts without benefit of tawdry remarks."
"Very well," Pitt said calmly. "The story I concocted on the Catawaba was true up to a point-the point where I substituted the Novgorod for the Lax. Fyrie's yacht, of course, wasnt carrying classified electronic equipment, or any other clandestine mechanical devices for that matter. The cargo actually consisted of eight major-league engineers and scientists from Fyrie Mining Limited, who were on their way to New York to open secret negotiations with two of our government's largest defense contractors. Somewhere on board-probably in this room-was a file of documents containing a geological survey of the ocean floor. What Fyrie's research team bad discovered under the sea or where remains a mystery. This information was vitally important to a great number of people; our own defense department desperately yearned to get their hands on it.
And so did the Russians; they pulled out all stops to grab it."
"The last statement explains a great deal," said Koski.
"Meaning?"
Koski exchanged knowing looks with Dover. "We were one of the ships that searched for the Lax-it was the Catawaba's first patrol. Every time we blinked our eyes, we found ourselves crossing the wake of a Russian vessel. We were just egotistical enough to think they were observing our search patterns. Now it turns out that they were nosing after the Lax too."
"It also neatly ties in with the reason we butted in on your show" said Dover. "Ten minutes after you and Dr. Hunnewell left the flight pad, we received a message from Coast Guard Headquarters warning of a Russian sub patrolling around the ice pack. We tried but couldn't raise you-"
"Small wonder," Pitt interrupted. "It was essential that we maintain strict radio silence once we headed for the derelict. I took the precaution of switching the radio off. We couldn't transmit, much less receive."
"After Commander Koski notified headquarters of our failure to contact your helicopter," Dover continued, "a signal came through hot and heavy ordering us to hightail it after you and act as escort in case the sub got pushy."
"How did you find us?" Pitt asked.
"We hadn't passed two icebergs before we snotted that yellow copter of yours. it stood out like a canary on a bedsheet."