Giordino leaned over the bunk “For chrissakes, Dirk, what mischief did you get yourself into after you left us last night? Gunn’s radio message said something about a mad dog.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Pitt, “But first I need a couple of questions answered myself.” He looked at Lewis.
“Colonel, do you know Bruno von Till?’
“Do I know von Till?” Lewis repeated. “Only slightly. I was introduced to him once and have seen him occasionally at parties given by the local dignitaries, but that’s about all From what I gather, he’s something of a mystery.”
“Do you, by chance, know what his business is?” Pitt asked hopefully.
“He owns a small fleet of ships.” Lewis paused for a moment, closing his eyes in thought. Then they shot open, transmitting a look of sudden recollection, “Minerva, yes that’s it, Minerva Lines: the name of the fleet.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Pitt murmured.
“Small wonder,” snorted Lewis. “Judging from the decrepit rust buckets I’ve seen smoking by Thasos, I doubt whether anyone else knows of its existence either.”
Pitt’s eyes narrowed. “Von Till’s ships cruise along the Thasos coastline?”
Lewis nodded. “Yes, one passes every week or so.
They’re easy to spot; they all have a big yellow ‘M’
Painted on the smoke funnels.”
“Do they anchor off shore or dock at Liminas?”
Lewis shook his head. “Neither. Every ship I’ve bothered to notice came from the south, circled the island and reversed course south again.”
“Without stopping?”
“They lie-to for perhaps half-an-hour, no more, right off the point by the old ruins.”
Pitt raised up out of the bunk. He looked questioningly at Giordino, then Lewis. "That’s odd.”
“Why?” asked Lewis lighting a cigar.
“Thasos is at least five hundred miles north of the main Suez Canal shipping lanes,” Pitt said slowly.
“Why should von Till send his ships on a thousand mile detour?”
“I don’t know,” Giordino said impatiently. “And frankly, I could care even less. Why not stop this verbal screwing around and tell us about your nocturnal escapades? What has this von Till character got to do with last night?”
Pitt stood and stretched, wincing from the stiff soreness. His mouth had a sand and gravel taste; he could not recall when his throat had been so dry before. Where was that dumb kid with the beer? Pitt caught sight of Giordino’s cigarettes, and he motioned for one.
He lit it and inhaled, increasing the rotten taste in his mouth.
He shrugged, smiling wryly. “OK, I’ll give it to you from beginning to end, but please feel free to stare at me like I’m crazy; I’ll understand.”
In the heat tortured cabin, the steel walls almost too hot to touch, Pitt told his story. He held nothing back, not even a thin belief that Teri had somehow betrayed him to von Till Lewis nodded thoughtfully on occasion but made no comment; his mind seemed to linger elsewhere, returning only when Pitt graphically described an event. Giordino paced the small cubicle unhurriedly, leaning slightly against the slow rolling of the ship.
When Pitt finished, no one spoke. Ten seconds passed, twenty, then thirty. The atmosphere had turned humid from perspiration and rapidly became stale from cigar and cigarette smoke.
“I know,” Pitt said a little tiredly. “It sounds like a fairy tale and makes very little sense. But, that’s exactly the way it happened, I left nothing out”
“Daniel in the lion’s den.” Lewis said flatly, without inflection. “I admit, what you’ve told us seems far fetched, but the facts have a strange way of bearing you out.” He pulled a handkerchief from a hip pocket and dabbed it across his forehead. “You were correct in predicting that the antique plane would attack this ship, and you even knew when.”
“Von Till supplied me with a hint. The rest was conjecture.”
“I can’t figure the weird set-up,” said Giordino.
“Using an old biplane to shoot up the sea and landscape merely to get rid of the First Attempt seems overly complicated.”
“Not really,” said Pitt. “It soon became obvious to von Till that his sabotage attempts on the scientific operations of NUMA’s expedition were not succeeding according to plan.”
“What crossed him up?” Giordino inquired.
“Gunn was stubborn,” Pitt grinned evenly. “In spite of what he thought were accidents and setbacks due to natural causes, he refused to weigh anchor and give up.”
“Good for him,” Lewis grunted, and cleared his throat to speak, but Pitt went on unruffled.
“Von Till had to find another direction. Using the old aircraft was a stroke of genius. If he had sent a modern jet fighter to attack Brady Field, all hell would have broken out in the form of an international crisis. The Greek Government, the Russians, the Arabs; all would have become involved, and this whole island would have been teeming with military personnel on emergency alert. No, von Till was smart: the antique Albatros caused our government some embarrassment and cost the Air Force a few million dollars, but spared everyone a diplomatic mess and an armed conflict.”
“Very interesting, Major.” Lewis’ voice was flat, skeptical. “Very interesting… and most instructional.
But would you mind answering a question that’s been nagging the back of my mind?”
“What is it, sir?” It was the first time Pitt had addressed Lewis as sir, and he found it strangely distasteful.
“Just what are these seagoing eggheads looking for that brought this rotten business down around our heads?”
“A fish,” Pitt replied grinning.
Lewis’ eyes widened and he almost dropped his cigar on his huge lap. “A what?”
“A fish,” Pitt repeated. “It’s nicknamed Teaser; a rare species reported to be a living fossil. Gunn assures me that landing one would be the greatest scientific achievement of the decade.” Pitt supposed wryly that he was overdoing it a bit, but he was irritated by Lewis’ blustering pompousness.
Lewis’ face was not pleasant as he rose trembling from his chair. “You mean to say that I have fifteen million dollars’ worth of wrecked aircraft scattered over a base under my personal command, my military career all but ruined, and all because of a goddamned fish?”
Pitt tried his best to look serious. “Yes, Colonel, I guess you might say that.”
A saddened look of absolute defeat gripped Lewis’ features as he shook his head from side to side. “My God, my God, it’s not fair, it’s just not…“
He was interrupted by a knock on the metal door.
The cabin boy entered, carrying a tray containing three brown bottles.
“Keep them coming,” Pitt ordered. “And, keep them cold.”
“Yes sir,” the boy mumbled. He set the tray down on the desk and hurried from the cabin.
Giordino passed Lewis a beer. “Here Colonel, drink up and forget the damage to Brady. The taxpayers will absorb the cost anyway.”
“In the meantime I’ll probably suffer a coronary,”
Lewis said gloomily. He sat back down in the chair, collapsing like a leaky inner tube.
Pitt held up the ice frosted bottle and rolled its cold surface across his forehead. The red and silver label was stuck on crooked. He stared idly at the reversed printing that proudly proclaimed: BY
APPOINTMENT TO THE ROYAL GREEK COURT.
“Where do we go from here?” Giordino said between gulps.
Pitt shrugged, “I'm not sure yet. A lot depends on what Gunn finds in the wreckage of the Albatros.”
“Any idea?’
“None at the moment.”
Giordino mashed his cigarette into an ashtray. “If nothing else, I’d say we’re well ahead of the game, especially compared to this time yesterday. Thanks to you our ghost from World War I is kaput, and we have a pretty good lead on the instigator behind the attacks. All we have to do now is have the Greek authorities pick up von Till”