“How would you know that?” Chana asked him.
“I was on a ship back then too, young lady. On a U.S. destroyer.”
Chana felt her face redden and she had to compose herself. “Make your point, Charlie.”
This time Berger didn’t address her. He looked directly at Colbert and said, “Could time and natural deterioration finally eat out the metal holding those mines down?”
Colbert frowned, his mouth tight. “There would be one hell of a coral formation around them.”
“Those mines had quite a positive flotation, Captain. That constant strain could conceivably crack the coral.”
“No,” Colbert finally said. “The flotation just isn’t that great. The coral would be too much for it.”
“Supposing it was given a little help from outside?”
“What are you getting to?” Chana asked him.
“The Sentilla has been making seismographic recordings of the area where that ship... the Alberta was supposed to have gone down. They touch off two-hundred-pound charges of high explosives in various areas and record the echoes that bounce off the bottom.”
Chana saw what Berger was hinting at and said, “Damn!”
Colbert needed more convincing. “They don’t use explosives now. It’s all done electronically.”
“Their equipment went out and they didn’t want to interrupt their schedule while the repairs were being made and went back to the old method for two days.”
“Well?” Chana asked.
Colbert nodded. “It could happen.”
“Oh boy,” Chana said, “the year of the mines. Let’s hope they all wind up on Scara.”
“It could be that they didn’t,” Berger said. He looked at Colbert again and wiped the sweat off his brow. “I’m no explosives expert, but I picked up something in a technical journal a long time ago that said the United States was making mines with a built-in attrition. After a certain period of time the explosive would have no force to damage. You know about that?”
Colbert nodded. “I heard it, not that I believed it, though. It sounded like propaganda to me.”
“Not necessarily,” Berger argued. “After a war no one wants live mines floating around, not the winners, not the losers, so it could make sense.”
“So,” Chana added, “these loose mines, now still active, but at low power, could be responsible for wiping out those boats. No big blast, just a nice low thud, enough to take them down.”
Berger bobbed his head. “Something like that.”
“You sure do get political, all right. If that theory ever proved out everything would get dropped in Uncle Sam’s lap with a roar heard ‘round the world. Look, all we have right now are three things tentatively identified as mines on the shore of a barren island. Let’s keep it that way until we see what it’s all about. To date, the official position is that these sinkings are a remarkable coincidence.” Chana knew that the skepticism showed in her voice, but she went on doggedly. “As far as anybody is concerned, we are independent shipping resupplying the Sentilla.”
“Good luck, lady. You’re going to need it.” Berger’s eyes were laughing at her.
“Why?”
“Because in a couple of days another ship will be laying off here ready to get in on all the action they can.” Berger grinned then and added, “It’s a motion picture company. They’re doing a movie on the Devil’s Triangle with a sea monster angle.”
“We have nothing to do with them,” Chana snapped. “This is a fairly innocuous mission that hasn’t even been discussed publicly.”
Berger let out a deep-throated rumble again and said, “A Hollywood publicity crew doesn’t wait for public discussions. They make up what they want. They can smell out details like our brunch here. They can put two and two together.”
“Nothing’s been said about our mission,” Chana reminded him.
Berger twisted his lips into a sardonic smile. “You’re going to provide great background for them. They’ve already got shots of the Ponteroy picking up the crew of the Arico Queen. Give them half a chance and they’ll put all the bits and pieces together, and even if they don’t fit they’ll make something up that does.”
“The Company know about this?”
“Right,” Berger said. “They called me an hour before you docked. The admonition given was to keep a very, repeat very, low profile and don’t let any official position rear its ugly head in this case. Or else.”
The way Berger said it made Chana’s skin crawl. She knew how the Company could work under special conditions. “Or else?” She made it sound unconcerned.
“Yeah. The Company scares me sometimes, the way they think ahead so damn far. They’ve had a man over on Peolle for a couple months already.”
“What!”
“Ever hear of a guy named Hooker? Mako Hooker? He’s one of their big heavies. Took out those two Russian rascals right in the subway station in New York. We were still in the Cold War then.”
“Hooker’s retired,” Chana said quietly.
“I thought in his department you had to get killed to get retired.”
“Sorry, but I’m not familiar with his department.”
Berger watched her skeptically. “Well, he’s retired right next door, only twelve miles away. He bought into a damn good boat with a native captain who knows these waters like the back of his hand, and the way he cruises in it he’s going to be as familiar with it himself before long.”
“Hooker retired,” Chana insisted. “State practically forced the issue.”
Berger snorted and went back to his old island-gruff manner. “State is a bunch of dummies. Fat-assed, pantywaist slobs who can only mess things up. If they let the Company handle it we’d never be jammed the way we are now. Damn jerks.” His eyes raised and caught hers in an unguarded moment. “I didn’t know you knew Hooker.”
“We met,” she said.
Her tone was convincing enough and it was only Colbert who saw the tautness in her hand that was lying on the table.
The tip of an orange-red sun was hovering on the edge of the horizon, taking a last look at the sea for the day. It was another calm time, the water’s surface rolling gently under soft two-foot swells. A large school of menhaden suddenly blackened an area the size of a football field, made it roll and sparkle in the fading sunlight, then disappeared as suddenly as they came. A loose group of birds cruised behind them, disinterested because their feeding was complete and they were racing toward home grounds. Their flight course was exact and unwavering.
When the first bird uttered a raucous, piercing scream the small flight twisted and split up in sudden terror, evading the area where the menhaden had been only a second before. The birds were not hatchlings. They had made these flights hundreds of times and instinctively recognized the workings of a nature they were a part of.
But apparently they were seeing something too foreign to be natural. It was not something they could even identify and be sure of, but it meant danger, the presence of a predator. It was only a dark thing, huge and deadly, and it was lurking, that they could sense. They were around it in seconds, then regrouped again on their course line home. A moment later they had no memory of the incident, but on subse quent flights instinct would trigger them into circumnavigating that particular area.
For a moment the shadow became substance, rippling the water with the tip of its forward parts. It had direction and motion, heading south-southeast fast enough to just barely make the water bubble. Then, as though it had seen or smelled enough to satisfy it, the shadow left the surface and dropped deeper and deeper until it was no longer visible from above.