Pacific Vortex Read online

  A plushly decorated suite was a luxury Pitt could hardly afford on his salary, but he justified its existence under the excuse that it was his first vacation in three years.

  He entered the bedroom and dumped Summer unceremoniously on the bed. Another time, staring down at a woman who was so delicate and smooth, he would have felt desire. Not tonight. Mentally, emotionally, and physically, Pitt had had it. The day began and ended as one grueling endurance run. Pitt left Summer blissfully unconscious and entered the bathroom where he undressed and took a shower.

  Nothing made sense. Why would a perfect stranger want to kill him? His only beneficiary was his little white-haired mother, and unless she’d given up charity teas and hooked rugs, and had taken up with the Mafia, she’d have no motive. Besides, he grinned to himself at the sheer fantasy of it all, what proof did he have that the hypodermic syringe held poison?

  A drug? That was a semi-credible possibility. But again, why? He knew no military codes he could think of, no nuclear bomb secrets, no classified missile locations, no top secret plans for the destruction of the world. His thoughts wandered back to Summer’s magnificent beauty. Then he finally forced his mind back to the reality of the moment, closing the tap and stepping out of the shower stall. He slipped a robe over his broad shoulders and, returning to the bedroom, placed a damp washcloth over the girl’s forehead, noting with a tinge of sadistic pleasure that she would wear a healthy-looking bruise on her jaw in the morning.

  He shook Summer roughly by both shoulders. Slowly, reluctantly, not wanting to part with the contentment of oblivion, and murmuring incoherently in a soft voice, her big gray eyes crept open. Awaking in a strange place would have startled most women. Not Summer. She was tough. Pitt could almost see the circuits of her mind burst into sudden operation. Her eyes darted about the room, first to Pitt, then to the door, to the balcony, and back to Pitt again. She stared at him casually, but a little too casually to be genuine. Then she raised her hand and lightiy touched her jaw, wincing at the contact.

  “You hit me?” It was more a question than a statement.

  “Yes.” He grinned. “And now that I have you on home ground, I think I’ll rape you.”

  At last her eyes came wide. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “How do you know I haven’t already?”

  She almost fell for it; her hand began moving down across her lower stomach and then suddenly stopped.

  “You’re not that perverted.”

  “Who said I was?”

  She looked at Pitt in a very peculiar way. “I was told . . .” She stopped herself and avoided his eyes.

  “You should be more careful,” Pitt said reproachfully. “Believing nasty old rumors and running up and down Waikiki Beach jabbing hypodermic needles into defenseless men can get you into a heap of trouble.”

  She stared at him for a few seconds, her lips moving as if she were about to reply, but uncertainty slowly welled in those fantastic gray eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “No matter.” Pitt turned his back on her and reached for a telephone. “I’ll let the police figure your game. That’s what honest citizens like me pay them for.”

  “A mistake.” Her voice suddenly turned hard and cold. “I’ll scream rape and with these marks on my face, who will they believe, you or me?”

  Pitt picked up the telephone and began punching the numbered buttons. “There’s not the slightest doubt that they’d believe you. That is, until Adrian Hunter testifies in my defense. She probably has a few marks of her own.” Pitt turned his attention to the phone. The voice that answered on the other end of the line surrendered after the fifth hello and hung up. At the dial tone, Pitt said “Hello, I’d like to report an assault ...”

  That was as far as he got Summer leaped off the bed and pushed the receiver down. “Please, you don’t understand.” Her voice was low and desperate.

  “That’s the understatement of the evening,” Pitt said angrily. He grabbed her by the shoulders, squeezing hard and staring unblinking, only a few inches from her widening pupils. “Kick a man in the balls and jam a hypodermic needle into his back and then act like little Miss Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm when you screw up. Just what in hell is your game?”

  She started to struggle, then relaxed almost immediately. “You gangster.” Her voice was a savage whisper.

  The obsolete expression caught Pitt off guard. Slowly he released his hold and stepped back. “That’s me, one of big Al Capone’s torpedoes, fresh off the boat from Chicago.”

  “I wish to heaven I’d...” She broke off and crossed her arms and massaged the reddening skin on her shoulders. “You are a devil.”

  Pitt felt no hate in return, only a touch of remorse as he noted the angry masses of red welts where his fingers had dug into her flesh.

  There was a long pause before she spoke. “I’ll tell you what you wish to know.” Despite the subtle change in tone, there was nothing soft in the coldness in her eyes. “But first, could you help me to the bathroom. I feel... I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Pitt extended his hand and grabbed her wrist, feeling her muscles tighten under his grip. Suddenly she braced one foot against the railing of the bed and threw every ounce of her slender body into a shoulder block to Pitt’s stomach. She caught him off balance; he fell backward over a chair, crashing to the floor and taking the bedstand lamp with him. Pitt had hardly collided with the shag carpet when Summer jerked open the sliding door and vanished out onto the balcony.

  Pitt made no effort to rise, but leaned back and relaxed into a more comfortable position on the floor. Ten seconds passed. He could hold it back no longer; he began to laugh. “Next time you exit a man’s tenth-floor apartment, you’d best carry a parachute.”

  She slowly stepped back into the bedroom, her lovely face livid with rage. “There is an evil word for you.”

  “I can think of at least a dozen,” he said, smiling politely.

  She moved to the other side of the room, putting as much space as the room allowed between them, and lowered herself into a chair, her eyes exploring his. “If I answer your questions, what then?”

  “Nothing,” Pitt said quietly. “When you tell a story I can swallow without gagging, you’re free to leave.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “My dear girl, I’m not the Boston Strangler or Jack the Ripper, and I assure you, I’m not in the habit of abducting innocent virgins from Waikiki Beach.”

  “Please,” she implored softly, “It was not my intent to harm you. I must work for my government just as you must work for yours. You have information I was ordered to obtain. The content of the syringe was an ordinary solution of scopolamine.”

  “Truth serum?”

  “Yes. Your reputation with women made you a prime suspect”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “The United States Navy, or at least its intelligence section, has reason to believe one of Miss Hunter’s lovers has been trying to gain classified information concerning her father’s fleet operations. I was ordered to investigate your involvement with her. That’s all there is to it.”

  That wasn’t all there was to it. There was no doubt in Pitt’s mind that she was lying. He also knew that she was trying to buy time. The only classified information that Adrian Hunter possessed was how the Navy’s up-and-coming crop of future admirals rated on her personal lovemaking scale.

  As Pitt rose from the floor and moved in front of her, she saw the brutal gleam in his eyes and she visibly tensed. Confused and angry, Pitt found himself sensing a strong degree of compassion toward the girl. He gazed at the red hair tousled over one eye, and the long slender hands reclining loosely on an inviting lap.

  “I’m sorry it turned out this way,” he said. “Damned sorry.” He felt a little foolish. “Too bad you ruined a good thing. You’re not with Naval Intelligence, dear heart. You’re not even a bona fide American. Hell, nobody’s used the term gangster in this country since the 1930
s. You also failed your secret agent test. No professional would have bought that phony telephone call to the police, but you did. Anyway, the Navy isn’t in the habit of allowing their female operators to run loose among villain types minus a backup crew armed to the teeth within screaming distance. You don’t carry a purse, and your dress is too tight to hide a transmitter to warn the watchdogs when the going gets nasty.” The shock treatment was working too well. Her face drained of all color and she truly looked sick.

  He went on. “And, in case you think I might be as pure and virginal as you are, you’re sadly mistaken. I checked you over from hair to painted toenails when I carried you here from the beach. The only thing you’ve got on under that dress is a tiny holster for the syringe, taped to the inside of your left thigh.”

  Summer’s eyes were glazed with revulsion. Pitt couldn’t remember when a woman had looked at him like that. She turned and stared at the bathroom as if she were making up her mind to throw up in the sink or on the shag carpet. The sink won. She rose unsteadily from the chair and reeled into the bathroom, slamming the door.

  He soon heard the sound of water gushing as the commode was flushed; then the faucet on the sink was turned on. Pitt walked over to the balcony and gazed at the twinkling lights of Honolulu in the distance, while far below, the ocean breakers droned against the beach. He lingered at the balcony perhaps a little too long.

  He was jolted back to reality by the sound of running water in the bathroom; the flow was too constant, too prolonged for normal routine. It took him three steps to reach the door-locked from the inside. No time for a theatrical “are you in there” line. Balancing on one leg, he kicked hard at the lock with the other, revealing an empty room.

  Summer was gone. Her only trace was a trail of knotted bath towels, tied to the shower curtain railing and stretching over the windowsill. Casting an anxious eye below, he saw the last towel dangling only four feet above a chaise lounge on the balcony belonging to the room beneath his. No lights were showing, no shouts of alarm from the tenants. She had escaped safely. For that he was thankful.

  He stood there recalling her face-a face that was probably compassionate and tender and gay.

  Then he cursed himself for letting her get away.

  It was early morning. Thin, ghostly trails of vapor were left behind from a light rain that had come and gone during the night The humidity would have been stifling but for the tradewinds that swept clean the sodden atmosphere and dispersed it over the blue ocean beyond the encircling reefs. The sandy strip of beach that curled from Diamond Head to the Reef Hotel was empty, but already tourists were beginning to trickle from the great glass and concrete hotels to begin a day of sightseeing and shopping excursions.

  Lying crosswise on the sweat-dampened sheets of his bed, a naked Pitt gazed out the open window at a pair of myna birds who were fighting over a disinterested female perched in a neighboring palm tree. Black feathers flew in profusion as the birds squawked riotously, creating a disturbance heard for nearly a block. Then, just as the miniature brawl was about to reach its final round, Pitt’s door chime sounded. Reluctantly, he slipped on a terrycloth robe, walked yawning to the door, and opened it.

  “Good morning, Dirk.” A short, fire-haired man with a protruding face, stood in the hall. “I hope I’m not interrupting a romantic interlude?”

  Pitt stretched out his hand. “No, I’m quite alone. Come on in.”

  The little man crossed the threshold, looked unhurriedly about the room, then stepped out on the balcony, taking in the splendid view. He was nattily dressed in a light tan suit and vest, complete with watch and chain. He had a neatly trimmed Ahab, the whaler’s red beard, with two evenly spaced white streaks on each side of the chin, presenting a facial growth that was strikingly uncommon. The olive face was beaded with perspiration either from the humidity or from climbing the stairs, or both. When most men wove their lives through the channels of least resistance, Admiral James Sandecker, Chief Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, hit every barrier, every obstacle in the shortest line from point A to point B.

  Sandecker turned and nodded over his shoulder. “How in hell do you get any sleep with those damned crows screeching in your ears?”

  “Fortunately, they don’t fly amok until the sun’s up.” Pitt motioned to the sectional couch. “Get comfortable, Admiral, while I get the coffee going.”

  “Forget the coffee. Nine hours ago I was in Washington. The jet lag has my body chemistry all screwed up. I’d prefer a drink.”

  Pitt pulled out a bottle of Scotch from a cabinet and poured. He glanced across the room only to be met by Sandecker’s twinkling blue eyes. What was coming? The head of one of the nation’s most prestigious governmental agencies didn’t fly six thousand miles just to chat with his Special Projects Director about birds. He handed Sandecker a glass and asked, “What brings you from Washington? I thought you were buried in plans for the new deep-sea current expedition?”

  “You don’t know why I’m here?” He was using his quiet cynical tone, the one that always made Pitt involuntarily cringe. ‘Thanks to your meddling in affairs that don’t concern you, I had to make a special trip to bail you out of one mess and throw you into another.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “A talent I know only too well.” There was the slight hint of a derisive smile. “It seems you aggravated a hornet’s nest when you showed up with the Starbuck’s message capsule. You unknowingly set off an earthquake in the Pentagon that was picked up on a seismograph in California. It also made you a big-man-on-campus with the Navy Department. I’m only a retired castoff to those boys, so I wasn’t offered a peek behind the curtain. I was simply asked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, courteously, I might add, to fly to Hawaii posthaste, explain your new assignment, and arrange for your loan to the Navy.”

  Pitt’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s behind this?”

  “Admiral Leigh Hunter of the 101st Salvage Fleet.”

  “You can’t be serious?”

  “He personally requested you.”

  Pitt shook his head angrily. “This is asinine. What’s to stop me from refusing?”

  “You force me to remind you,” Sandecker said calmly, “that in spite of your status with NUMA, you’re still carried on the active rolls as a major in the Air Force. And, as you well know, the Joint Chiefs frown upon insubordination.”

  Pitt’s eyes looked resentfully into Sandecker’s. “It won’t work.”

  “Yes it will,” Sandecker said. “You’re a damn good marine engineer, the best I’ve got. I’ve already met with Hunter and I minced no words in telling him so.”

  “There are other complications,” Pitt didn’t sound very confident, “that haven’t been considered.”

  “You mean the fact that you’ve been laying Hunter’s daughter?”

  Pitt stiffened. “Do you know what that makes you, Admiral?”

  “A sly, old devious son of a bitch?” Sandecker asked. “Actually, there’s much more to this business than you’ve taken the trouble to notice.”

  “You sound ominous as hell,” Pitt said, unimpressed.

  “I mean to,” Sandecker replied seriously. “You’re not joining the Navy to learn a new trade. You’re to act as liaison between Hunter and myself. Before this thing’s over with, NUMA will be involved up to its ears. NUMA has been ordered to help the Navy with whatever oceanographical data they demand.”

  “Equipment?”

  “If they ask for it.”

  “Finding a submarine that disappeared six months ago won’t be a picnic.”

  “The Starbuck is only half the act,” Sandecker said. “The Navy Department has compiled thirty-eight documented cases of ships over the past thirty years that have sailed into a circular-shaped area north of the Hawaiian Islands and vanished. They want to know why.”

  “Ships disappear in the Atlantic and Indian oceans too. It’s not an unheard-of occurrence.”

  “True, but under normal c
ircumstances, marine disasters leave traces behind; bits of flotsam, oil slicks, even bodies. Wreckage will also float ashore to give a hint of a missing ship’s fate, but no such remains have turned up from the ships that vanished in the Pacific Vortex.”

  “The Pacific Vortex?”

  “That’s the name the seamen in the maritime unions coined for it. They won’t sign on a ship whose course takes them through the area.”

  “Thirty-eight ships,” Pitt repeated slowly. “What about radio contact? A ship would have to go down in seconds not to transmit a Mayday signal.”

  “No distress signals were ever received.”

  Pitt didn’t say anything. Sandecker simply sipped his Scotch, offering no further comment. As if on cue, the myna birds began their noisy antics again, shattering the brief silence. Pitt shut them from his mind and stared steadfastly at the floor; there were a hundred questions swirling around in his head, but it was far too early in the morning for him to conjure up theories on mysterious ship disappearances.

  After the silence had dragged on a bit too long, Pitt spoke “Okay, so thirty-seven ships will never reach port again. That leaves the thirty-eighth, the Starbuck. The Navy has the exact position from the capsule. What are they waiting for? If they locate the remains, their salvage ships won’t require an act of God to raise her from ten fathoms.”

  “It’s not all that elementary.”

  “Why not? The Navy raised the submarine F-4 from sixty fathoms right here on Oahu off the entrance of Pearl Harbor. And that was back in 1915.”

  “The armchair admirals who do their thinking through computers today, aren’t convinced that the message you found is genuine. At least not until they’ve had time to analyze the handwriting.”

  Pitt sighed. “They suspect the dumb ass who brought in the capsule of perpetrating a hoax.”

  “Something like that.”

  Pitt forced back a laugh. “So that, at least, explains the transfer. Hunter wants to keep an eye on me.”