AUSTIN LIVED IN A converted Victorian boathouse, part of a larger estate that he bought when he commuted to CIA headquarters in nearby Langley. At the time, it was what the real-estate agents called a fixer-upper. It had reeked of mildew and old age, but its location on the banks of the Potomac River persuaded Austin to open his wallet and spend countless hours of his own fixing it up.
Following his usual ritual, Austin dropped his duffel bag in the front hall, went in the kitchen and grabbed a cold bottle of beer from the refrigerator, then walked out on the deck to fill his lungs with the damp-mud fragrance of the Potomac.
He tossed back the beer, then went into his study and plunked himself down in front of his computer. The study was an oasis for Austin. He likened himself to ship captains who grow sick of the sea and retire to Kansas or anyplace other than the ocean when their careers are over. The sea was a demanding mistress, and it was good to get away from her strong embrace. Except for a few paintings of ships by primitive artists and photos of his small fleet of boats, there was little in his house that would indicate his connection to the world’s premier ocean-study agency.
The walls were taken up by bookshelves housing his collection of philosophy books. While he liked to read the old philosophers for their wisdom, their writings also provided the moral anchor that kept him from going adrift. The men on the Beebe were not the first he had killed. Nor, unfortunately, would they be the last.
Over the fireplace was a matched pair of dueling pistols, part of an extensive collection that he considered his main vice. While he admired the pistols for their technical innovations, they also reminded him of the role that chance plays in life-or-death situations.
He plucked a Miles Davis record from his equally extensive jazz collection and put it on the turntable. He sat back in his chair, listening to a couple of cuts from the seminal Birth of the Cool, then flexed his fingers and began typing. While the details were still fresh in his mind, he wanted to pound out a first draft of his report on the attack on the B3.
Shortly before midnight, Austin crawled into his bed high in the boathouse turret. He awoke refreshed around seven the next morning. He made a pot of Jamaican coffee and toasted a frozen bagel found in his pitifully empty refrigerator. Thus fortified, he returned to his report.
He made surprisingly few changes to it. After a quick review, he sent his words off on electronic wings to NUMA director Dirk Pitt.
Austin decided to reward his hard work with a row on the Potomac. Rowing was his main form of exercise when he was home and was largely responsible for packing even more muscle onto his broad shoulders. He dragged his lightweight racing shell from its rack under the boathouse.
As the slender shell skimmed over the river, his measured scull strokes and the beauty of the river quieted his mind. When he had cleared away the mental clutter-the sabotage of the B3, his fight with the AUV, the night raid on the Beebe-he was still left with an undeniable conclusion: somebody wanted Max Kane dead and would go to extreme lengths to make it happen.
After his row, Austin stowed the shell, showered off the sweat from his exertions, shaved, and called Paul Trout.
Trout told Austin that Gamay had left for Bonefish Key the day before. He had received a voice mail confirming her arrival but had yet to talk to her.
Austin then gave Trout a condensed version of his report of the attacks on the bathysphere.
“Now I know why you told Gamay that the dive was memorable, ” Trout said. “Where do we go from here?”
“I’m hopeful Gamay will turn up something on Doc Kane. He’s our major lead right now. Joe and I will compare notes and figure out our next move.”
Austin said he would keep Trout posted, and then he thawed out another bagel to make a tuna-fish sandwich. He ate the sandwich in his kitchen, wistfully reminiscing about the wonderful meals he had eaten in the world’s capitals, when the phone trilled.
He checked the caller ID. Then he pushed the SPEAKER button, and said, “Hello, Joe, I was just about to call you.”
Zavala got right to the point.
“Can you come over right away?” he asked.
“The Zavala black book has more women listed in it than the D.C. directory, so I know you’re not lonely. What’s going on?”
“I’ve got something I want to show you.”
Austin couldn’t miss the unmistakable note of excitement in Zavala’s soft-spoken voice.
“I’ll be over in an hour,” Austin said.
At sea, Austin’s typical work outfit was a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and sandals. The switch from oceangoing to land creature always came as a shock. Shoes felt like vises attached to his feet, legs seemed imprisoned in tan cotton slacks, the collar of his blue dress shirt chafed. While he would slip on his navy blue linen blazer, he refused to wear a tie. It felt like a noose around his muscular neck.
Unlike Dirk Pitt, who collected cars and seemed to have one for every occasion, Austin put his passion into his antique dueling pistols and instead drove a turquoise-colored Jeep Cherokee from the NUMA motor pool.
Suburban traffic was piling up, but Austin knew the short-cuts, and slightly less than an hour after Joe’s call he pulled up in front of a small building in Arlington.
At the front door of the former library, he punched the entry code into a keypad and stepped into the main living level. The space, which once had housed stacks, now looked like the interior of an adobe building in Santa Fe. The floors were dark red Mexican tile, the doorways arched, and niches in the whitewashed walls displayed colorful folk art that Zavala had collected on trips to his ancestral home in Morales. His father, a skilled carpenter, had made the beautifully carved furniture.
Austin called out Zavala’s name.
“I’m down in Frankenstein’s lab,” Zavala yelled up from his basement, where he spent his spare time when he wasn’t tinkering with his Corvette.
Austin descended the stairs to the brightly lit workshop. Zavala had utilized every square inch of the former book-storage room for his gleaming collection of lathes, drills, and milling machines. Odd-shaped metal parts whose functions were known only to Zavala hung from the walls next to black-and-white poster engravings of old engines.
Mounted in glass cases were scale models of the cutting-edge underwater vehicles Zavala had designed for NUMA. A Stuart model steam engine he was restoring sat on a table. Zavala never hesitated to get his hands greasy when it came to tinkering with mechanical contrivances or creating new ones, but today he was facing a computer screen with his back to Austin.
Austin glanced around at the bewildering shrine Zavala had established to moving parts.
“Ever think of continuing where Dr. Frankenstein left off?” he asked.
Zavala spun in his chair, his lips cracked in their usual slight smile.
“Making monsters out of junk parts is ancient history, Kurt. Robotics is where it’s at. Isn’t that right, Juri?”
A Tyrannosaurus rex, around ten inches high, with plastic skin the color and texture of an avocado, stood next to the computer. It waggled its head, shuffled its feet, rolled its eyes, opened its toothy mouth, and said, “Si, Senor Zavala.”
Austin pulled up a stool.
“Who’s your green friend?”
“Juri, short for Jurassic Park. Got the little guy over the Internet. He’s programmed for about twenty functions. I tinkered with his innards to make him speak Spanish.”
“A bilingual T-Rex,” Austin said. “I’m impressed.”
“It wasn’t that difficult,” Zavala said. “His circuits are relatively simple. He can move and bite, and he can respond to external stimuli. Give him a little more muscle, bigger teeth, optical sensors, put him in a waterproof jacket, and you have something like the mechanical shark that thought an Austinburger would make a tasty snack.”