She also owned a comparatively modest fifty-foot motor yacht, the Phantom Lode, which was somewhere above, awaiting her. She had ordered the yacht into these waters since, after her inspection of AG-4 and a meeting with Deride, she intended to take a few days off and perhaps visit San Francisco.
With her looks — reddish-tinted blonde hair, high classic cheekbones, smooth and long Egyptian throat, blue eyes with a trace of aquamarine fire in them, and slightly busty well-trimmed figure, she could compete in any jet set society in Europe, America, or Australia.
She preferred being bundled up in a thick jumpsuit, with an additional sweater to combat the cold at depth, hunched over a computer terminal, seeking the solutions to geological jigsaw puzzles.
The earth and its secrets had forever been her challenge.
And her reward.
She was not dismayed by the road she had taken. It would lead her to her most cherished prize.
Which was the passion she left unspoken. It was nameless, and yet, she knew it by many names.
Carl Unruh needed sixteen minutes to find a parking place for his Taurus, and he had only planned for five. A few years earlier, the delay would have elevated his frustration to the upper reaches of tolerance, but now he took it as a matter of course. The Washington gridlock was everywhere: traffic, bureaucracy, minds.
Automatically scanning faces and body language as he weaved his way along the congested sidewalk an operations habit holdover he made his way to the corner of F Street, turned onto it, and then found the entrance to Reeves.
The luncheon crowd was noisy, and much of it was gathered into a mob at the bakery counter at the front of the restaurant, clamoring for pie, pie, pie. The place had a turn of the century feel to it, a nice patina of age on the varnish, a warm hued glow from the Tiffany lamps.
He found Hampstead halfway down one of the long counters, his folded top coat reserving a seat for Unruh. He picked it up and tucked it into his lap as Unruh shrugged out of his own coat and settled down at the counter. All of the coat hooks on the mirrored wall were already in use.
“I might have known you’d go cheap, Avery, when it’s your turn to buy.”
“Nonsense, Carl. The menu is what draws me.”
The elderly waitress paused in front of them for a few seconds.
“I would like,” Hampstead told her, “the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. With mayonnaise, please.”
The waitress didn’t even wince.
“And a tall, tall glass of cold, cold milk.”
“Mayonnaise?” Unruh asked.
“They make their own.”
“I know that, but with peanut butter?”
“It keeps the peanut butter from sticking to the roof of your mouth.”
“I’ll pass.” Unruh ordered a ham sandwich on rye and potato salad.
The waitress slid away, and Hampstead said, “Where else in this town can you order peanut butter?”
“I imagine supply meets demand.”
“You just remember that from economics class.”
“It’s about all I remember,” Uhruh said.
“Did you remember to ask my question?”
“I did. The boys in white uniforms are doing lots of magical things they don’t want to talk about, but they’re not doing them in the area you specified, Avery.”
“Hmmm. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”
“It would have been nice to have a simple, possibly logical answer without having to go take a look,” Unruh said.
They were having to speak loudly, and somewhat cryptically, because of the raucous diners around them.
“However,” Uhruh went on, “because of our sudden interest, the boys in white are now intrigued.”
“Good. They can go look.”
“Actually, they said they’d pick up part of your cost.”
“Amazing!” Hampstead said. “And how about your shop?”
“Maybe we can spring a few bucks. I’ll have to talk to the elders.”
“Why this display of largesse, Carl?”
“It seems the admirals had already had a report of two anomalies.”
“From whom?”
“Some seismologist at Scripps.”
The Scripps Institute of Oceanography at La Jolla was a unit of the University of California at San Diego, operating on both public and private funds. It was the counterpart to the East Coast’s Wood’s Hole, Massachusetts.
“All right, then” Hampstead said. “I’ll see what I can arrange.”
“Use Brande.”
Hampstead raised a bushy eyebrow and revealed his horsey teeth in a grin.
Unruh had never met Brande, and he suspected that Brande didn’t like him much after the decisioning processes that had taken place during the Russian missile fiasco.
In response to the questioning eyebrow, he said, “While we had some differences of opinion, I still respect ability, Avery. However, you might not mention my name.”
“I’ll avoid it like the plague.”
Adrienne Hampstead didn’t in the least mind asking people for money, and lots of it, and if for no other reason, that made Kaylene Thomas appreciate her. Since Adrienne had signed on with MVU as the Director of Development hired personally by Thomas, Brande’s workload on the fund raising circuit had been reduced substantially.
There were still institutional and salvage groups who wanted to meet the boss personally, and Brande accommodated them, but Adrienne did all the preparatory work. And in direct negotiations with units of the Commerce Department, it was Brande who did all the work. They would not taint Avery Hampstead with even the shadow of a conflict of interest.
Adrienne was taller than Thomas by three or four inches and lean in a svelte way. Her coloring was several shades darker, and a mild resemblance to her brother Avery was apparent in the slightly elongated shape of her face. With happy green eyes and a nearly permanent smile, she was an instant friend to nearly everyone she met.
The two of them had taken chairs in a corner of the office, trying to get away from the buzz of technical jargon spouted by fifteen scientists and researchers dotted around the room. One intern from the University of Colorado had commandeered the telephone on Thomas’s desk. Adrienne didn’t have a desk; she worked out of a briefcase.
Enroute to a meeting in Portland, Oregon, Adrienne was wearing a pale green traveling suit with a lacy-cuffed white-on-white blouse. Thomas was in her typical jeans, running shoes, and a blue and gray striped blouse.
“Gerrard has nearly four and a half million invested in the Committee of One,” Hampstead said, leaning against the front of someone’s desk. “He’s willing to put another mil into her half to raise her and half to refit her.”
“Where did you meet him?” Thomas asked.
“Corpus Christi. A charity bash.”
“He could take the insurance and run.”
“I think he loves the boat. I also think he’ll get the insurance people to put up the recovery cash. They’d prefer to take only a partial hit on this one.”
Marine Visions had worked with insurance companies before on recoveries. They had also worked with the Department of Defense in the salvage of downed aircraft and super secret components from aircraft and ships. Their search robots and retrieval robots could operate freely at depth while reducing the risk to human beings.