Sandecker’s face turned crimson, not from exertion but from hopelessness. He could not restrain his anger and resentment. He came to a stop, leaned down and gripped his knees, staring at the ground. “I’d close down NUMA in a minute for the chance to get my hands around Arthur Dorsett’s neck.”
“I’m sure you’re not alone,” said Gunn. “There must be thousands who dislike, distrust and even hate him. And yet they never betray him.”
“Small wonder. If he doesn’t arrange fatal accidents for those who stand in his way, he buys them off by filling their Swiss bank safety deposit boxes with diamonds.”
“A powerful persuader, diamonds.”
“He’ll never influence the President with them.”
“No, but the President can be misled by bad advice.”
“Surely not when the lives of over a million people are at stake.”
“No word yet?” asked Gunn. “The President said he’d be back to you in four days. It’s been six.”
“The urgency of the situation wasn’t lost on him—”
Both men turned at the honk of a horn from a car with NUMA markings. The driver pulled to a stop in the street opposite the jogging path. He leaned out the passenger’s window and shouted. “I have a call from the White House for you, Admiral.”
Sandecker turned to Gunn and smiled thinly. “The President must have big ears.”
As the admiral stepped over to the car, the driver handed him a portable phone. “Wilbur Hutton on a safe line, sir.”
“Will?”
“Hello, Jim, I’m afraid I have discouraging news for you.”
Sandecker tensed. “Please explain.”
“After due consideration, the President has postponed any action regarding your acoustic plague.”
“But why?” Sandecker gasped. “Doesn’t he realize the consequences of no action at all?”
“Experts on the National Science Board did not go along with your theory. They were swayed by the autopsy reports from Australian pathologists at their Center for Disease Control in Melbourne. The Hussies conclusively proved that the deaths on board the cruise ship were caused by a rare form of bacterium similar to the one causing Legionnaires’ disease.”
“That’s impossible!” Sandecker snapped.
“I only know what I was told,” Hutton admitted. “The Hussies suspect that contaminated water in the ship’s heating system humidifiers was responsible.”
“I don’t care what the pathologists say. It would be folly for the President to ignore my warning. For God’s sake, Will, beg, plead or do whatever it takes to convince the President to use his powers to shut down Dorsett’s mining operations before it’s too late.”
“Sorry, Jim. The President’s hands are tied. None of his scientific advisers thought your evidence was strong enough to run the risk of an international incident. Certainly not in an election year.”
“This is insane!” Sandecker said desperately. “If my people are right, the President won’t be able to get elected to clean public bathrooms.”
“That’s your opinion,” said Hutton coldly. “I might add that Arthur Dorsett has offered to open his mining operations to an international team of investigators.”
“How soon can a team be assembled?”
“These things take time. Two, maybe three weeks.”
“By then you’ll have dead bodies stacked all over Oahu.”
“Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, you’re in a minority in that belief.”
Sandecker muttered darkly, “I know you did your best, Will, and I’m grateful.”
“Please contact me if you come upon any further information, Jim. My line is always open to you.”
“Thank you.”
“Good-bye.”
Sandecker handed the phone back to the driver and turned to Gunn. “We’ve been sandbagged.”
Gunn looked shocked. “The President is ignoring the situation?”
Sandecker nodded in defeat. “Dorsett bought off the pathologists. They turned in a phony report claiming the cause of death of the cruise ship passengers was contamination from the heating system.”
“We can’t give up,” Gunn said, furious at the setback. “We must find another means of stopping Dorsett’s madness in time.”
“When in doubt,” Sandecker said, the fire returning to his eyes, “bank on somebody who is smarter than you are.” He retrieved the phone and punched in a number. “There is one man who might have the key.”
Admiral Sandecker bent down and teed up at tire Camelback Golf Club in Paradise Valley, Arizona. It was two o’clock in the afternoon under a cloudless sky, only five hours after he had jogged with Rudi Gunn in Washington. After landing at the Scottsdale airport, he borrowed a car from a friend, an old retired Navy man, and drove directly to the golf course. January in the desert could be cool, so he wore slacks and a long-sleeve cashmere sweater. There were two courses, and he was playing on the one called Indian Bend.
He sighted on the green 365 meters away, took two practice swings, addressed his ball and swung effortlessly. The ball soared nicely, sliced a bit to the right, bounced and rolled to a stop 190 meters down the fairway.
“Nice drive, Admiral,” said Dr. Sanford Adgate Ames. “I made a mistake talking you into a friendly game of golf. I didn’t suspect old sailors took a ground sport seriously.” Behind a long, scraggly gray beard that covered his mouth and came down to his chest, Ames looked like an old desert prospector. His eyes were hidden behind blue-tinted bifocals.
“Old sailors do many strange things,” Sandecker retorted.
Asking Dr. Sanford Adgate Ames to come to Washington for a high-level conference was no different from praying to God to conjure up a sirocco wind to melt the polar ice cap. Neither was likely to respond. Ames hated New York and Washington with equal passion and absolutely refused to visit either place. Offers of testimonial dinners and awards wouldn’t budge him from his hideaway on Camelback Mountain in Arizona.
Sandecker needed Ames, needed him urgently. Biting the bullet, he requested a meeting with the soundmeister, as Ames was called among his fellow scientists. Ames agreed, but with the strict provision Sandecker bring his golf clubs, as all discussion would take place on the links.
Highly respected in the scientific community, Ames was to sound what Einstein was to time and light. Blunt, egocentric, brilliant, Ames had written more than three hundred papers on almost every known aspect of acoustical oceanography. His studies and analyses over the course of forty-five years covered phenomena ranging from underwater radar and sonar techniques to acoustic propagation to subsurface reverberation. Once a trusted adviser with the Defense Department, he was forced to resign after his fervent objections to ocean noise tests being conducted around the world to measure global warming. His caustic attacks on the Navy’s underwater nuclear test projects was also a source of animosity at the Pentagon. Representatives of a host of universities trooped to his doorstep in hopes of getting him to join their faculties, but he refused, preferring to do research with a small staff of four students he paid out of his own pocket.
“What do you say to a dollar a hole, Admiral? Or are you a true betting man?”
“You’re on, Doc,” said Sandecker agreeably.
Ames stepped up to the tee, studied the fairway as if aiming a rifle and swung. He was a man in his late sixties, but Sandecker noted that his backswing reach was only a few centimeters off that of a man much younger and more nimble. The ball soared and dropped into a sand trap just past the 200-meter marker.
“How quickly the mighty fall,” said Ames philosophically.