Overton hesitated. “I’ve got one, but I want to save it until I know more.”
“What?”
“The DepthFinder was heavily damaged. When they lifted it out of the water, we saw that the right side was caved in.”
“You get pictures?”
“Not good ones, what with the weather, but yeah, I did.”
“Fax me the pictures.”
Overton hung up and looked over at the banquette. Debbie Lane and Mick Freelander were leaning over a map with Jacobs. Dickie Folger was in the galley making up another big pot of coffee. He made lousy coffee.
Overton crossed the deck uneasily because of the sway and pitch and stood beside the table, gripping its edge and watching them. Lane’s long, dark hair kept falling on the map, and she kept shoving it back over her shoulder. She was pretty good looking, Overton thought, but too intense.
The map had a series of crosses marked on it, derived from the five coordinates that Overton had gotten from the Earthquake Information Center. Looking at them on a map for the first time, Overton was aware of the shallow arc they made.
“That doesn’t happen in nature,” he said.
Jacobs looked up at him. “No, it doesn’t. What do you think, Wilson?”
He slid into the booth next to Lane. “Manmade.”
“But why?” Freelander asked.
“I can’t answer that,” he admitted.
“Here’s something else,” Jacobs said, moving the point of his stubby pencil to a spot on the map north and west of the last “X.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s where we are now. Or were, until the Orion started moving again, and we decided to follow along.”
“That’s only where the submersible surfaced,” Debbie Lane said. “There’s no telling where it first dove.”
“Except,” Jacobs said, moving the pencil northward on his map, “if they went down about here, it would be in line with the arc.”
“You’re saying,” Overton said, “that there’s been another earthquake we don’t know about, and that Brande was investigating it.”
“Perhaps.”
“And these earthquakes are manmade.”
“Perhaps.”
“And that Brande’s sub ran into something he didn’t know was there?”
“Or ran into an earthquake,” Freelander said.
“Or ran into somebody,” Debbie Lane said.
“Have you got the Melbourne back, Penny?” Paul Deride asked. “That’s an expensive piece of machinery.”
“Munro’s still towing it back and is about an hour out,” she told him. “There’s some damage to the bow, the antenna system, and one of the propulsion units, but McBride and his assistant are all right.”
“It’s repairable?”
“Yes, damn it!”
“Well, that’s what counts. Those hummers are too bloody expensive to replace every day.” Deride glanced over at the suite’s dining room table, where Anthony Camden was on another phone. The top of the table was littered with stacks of paper, most of them drafts of legal documents.
“What do we do about Brande?” Glenn asked.
“Nothing. I expect he got the message that he’s not to intrude on our operations.” He put his booted feet up on the coffee table and leaned back on the couch.
“He’s bound to report the incident.”
“So what, Penny? We’re within our rights to protect our site. Hell, for all they know, we could have been planting another explosive charge, and old Mac was warning them off. And if Brande makes a big stink in any of the international organizations, we’ll just sue. We’ve done that before.”
“What if they get some kind of injunction or mount an investigation?”
“You’ve been through this before, Penny. Anthony will have them tied up in court for ten years, and by the time there’s a judgment, we’ll have played out the vein and be on our way. Don’t you worry your sweet head about it.”
“So I can proceed with the program?”
“Certainly. You do what you do best, and Anthony and I will take care of the odds and ends.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do, Uncle Paul.”
Deride thought she sounded awfully relieved. There were still some things she had to learn about dealing with people in business, but she was coming along.
He replaced the receiver in its cradle and got up to refill his coffee cup. Then he sat down at the table opposite Camden and waited for the man to finish his conversation.
When he finally finished talking to Harriet in the Sydney office, Camden hung up and said, “They’re making inquiries about us, Paul.”
“Who are ‘they?’“
“American agencies. The State Department, the Commerce Department, the CIA.”
“CIA? That’s a first.”
“Also, we’ve got a letter requesting information about our activities and intent in the Pacific. That’s from the Vice President’s office.”
“I wouldn’t bother responding,” Deride grinned. “Hell, if they can’t get the President involved, it’s nothing to get excited about.”
“I suspect the State Department will put pressure on the Australian government, too.”
“Big deal. We’re still operating off-shore.”
Camden leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “We can’t stonewall for too long. At some point, we should make our position clear.”
Deride thought about that. “Okay. File for a bloody injunction against Brande. He’s interfering with our work.”
“Good. I’ll do that.”
Now, he was getting some action, if inaction could be considered any movement at all.
Carl Unruh thought it was damned unfortunate that it took a death to do it.
After a dozen phone calls — some people were reluctant to call him back, he had the same task force group gathered in the same conference room at State, and they all looked rather glum after his recitation of the events leading to Svetlana Polodka’s death.
Marlys Anstett’s quizzical eyebrows were raised even higher. “It was a drowning?”
“Prompted by an overtly offensive action that induced a brain concussion,” Unruh told her.
“We’d have a hell of a time proving that, Mr. Unruh, if we don’t even have the body. I don’t see Justice taking a position on this. We will need much more.”
“Well, Jesus H. Christ!”
“The best we can do right off, Carl,” Admiral Ben Delecourt said, “is a show of strength. The California and her escorts will be on the scene shortly. They can watch over any future dives.”
“If Brande can even get his submersible repaired sufficiently to make another dive,” Sam Porter said. “Perhaps the presence of warships is a moot point?”
Unruh wasn’t going to argue with the man from Commerce. If he wanted information from Commerce, he’d ask Hampstead.
“We sent a strongly-worded letter by fax to the AquaGeo offices in Washington and San Francisco, as well as their headquarters in Sydney, over the Vice President’s signature,” Pamela Stroh said. She shook her white tresses sadly. “We haven’t yet received a response.”
“That’s it?”
“These things take time, Mr. Unruh.”
“What about State?” Unruh asked.
“We asked some questions of the Australian foreign affairs department, and they were congenial enough, but they also declined to become involved in entrepreneurial disputes,” Damon Gilliland said.
Gilliland was wearing the same blue wool suit, Unruh noted, but his tie now belonged to a different regiment.
“So,” he said, “in two days, no one has accomplished anything. That about sum it up?”
Delecourt said, “We’ve had more seafloor detonations. Have you been following them?”