Iceberg dp-3 Read online

  But the sound had died in the blackness beyond the upper hatchway. There was something sinister in the quality of the silence that hung over the devastated cabin-a feeling that someone was observing their every motion, listening to their every word. Pitt nerved himself for an act of defense, but it was too late. A powerful light beam played into the room from the top of the ladder, blinding his eyes in its blazing glare.

  "Robbing the dead, gentlemen? By God, I do believe you two are capable of most anything." The face was hidden behind the light, but the voice unmistakably belonged to Commander Koski.

  Chapter 4

  Without moving, without replying, Pitt stood in the middle of the charred deck. He stood there, it seemed to him, for a decade while his brain worked to explain Koski's presence. He had expected the Commander to arrive on the scene eventually, but not for at least another three hours. It was now obvious that instead of waiting until the prescribed rendezvous time, Koski had altered his heading and pushed the Catawaba at full speed along Hunnewell's plotted course into the ice pack as soon as the helicopter was out of sight.

  Koski swung the flash beam to the ladder, exposing Dover's face beside him. "We have much to talk about. Major Pitt, Dr. Hunnewell, if you please."

  Pitt thought of a cleverly worded comeback but dismissed it. Instead, he said, "Up your ass, Koski! You come down! And bring that hulking goon of an exec officer if it will make you feel any safer."

  There was almost a full minute of angry silence before Koski replied, "You're hardly in a position to make rash demands."

  "Why not? There's too much at stake for Dr. Hunnewell and me to sit here and suck our thumbs while you play amateur detective." Pitt knew his words were, arrogant, but he had to get the upper hand over Koski.

  "No need to get nasty, Major. An honest explanation will go a long way. You've Lied since the moment you set foot on my ship. The Novgorod indeed. The greenest cadet at the Coast Guard Academy wouldn't think of identifying this hulk as a Russian spy trawler.

  The radar antennas, the highly sophisticated electronic gear you described with such authority-did the equipment evaporate? I didn't buy you and Hunnewell from the beginning, but your stories were convincing. and my own headquarters, however mysteriously, backed you up. You've used me. Major. My crew, my ship, as you would a streetcar or a service station. An explanation?

  Yes, I don't think it's asking too much. Merely the answer to one simple question: what in hell is coming Off?" Koski was in the fold now, Pitt thought. The cocky little commander wasn't demanding, he was asking.

  "You still have to come down to our level. Part of the answer lies here in the ashes."

  There was a moment's hesitation, but they came.

  Koski, followed by the mammoth form of Dover, climbed down the ladder and faced Pitt and Hunnewell.

  "Okay, gentlemen, let's have it."

  "You've seen most of the ship?" Pitt asked.

  Koski nodded. "Enough. Eighteen years of rescue C, at sea, and I've never seen a vessel gutted as bad as this one."

  "Do you recognize it?"

  "Impossible. What's left to recognize? It was a pleasure craft, a yacht. That much is certain. Beyond that you can flip a coin." Koski looked at Pitt, a faint puzzlement in his eyes. "I'm the one who expects answers. What are you leading up to?"

  "The Lax. Ever hear of it?"

  Koski nodded. "The Lax disappeared over a year ago with all hands, including its owner, the Icelandic mining magnate-" he hesitated, recalling, "Fyrie, Kristjan Fyrie. Christ, half the Coast Guard searched for months. Didn't find a sign. So what about the Lax?"

  "You're standing on it," Pitt said slowly, letting his words sink in. He aimed his flashlight at the deck.

  "And this cremated mess is all that's left of Kristjan Fyrie."

  Koski's eyes widened and the color drained from his face. He took a step forward and stared down at the thing in the yellow circle of light. "Good God, are you sure?"

  "Burned beyond recognition is a gross understatement, but Dr. Hunnewell is ninety percent certain of Fyrie's personal effects."

  "Yes, the rings. I overheard."

  "Not much, perhaps, but considerably more than we could find on the other bodies."

  "I've never seen anything like this," Koski said in wonder. "It can't be. A ship this size couldn't vanish without a trace for nearly a year and then pop up burned to a cinder in the middle of an iceberg."

  "It would seem that it did just that," Hunnewell said.

  "Sorry, Dog" Koski said, staring into Hunnewell's eyes. "Though I'm the first to admit that I'm not in your league when it comes to the science of ice formations, I've kicked around the North Atlantic long enough to know that an iceberg might get sidetracked by currents, drifting in circles, or scrape along the Newfoundland Coast for up to three years-ample time for the Lax, by some remote chance, to become trapped and entombed. But, if you'll forgive the word play, the theory doesn't hold water."

  "You're quite correct, Commander," Hunnewell said. "The chances are extremely remote for such an occurrence, but nonetheless conceivable. As you know, a fire-gutted ship takes days to cool. If a current or wind pushed and held the hull against the iceberg, it would only take forty-eight hours or less before this entire ship imbedded itself under the berg's mantle. You can achieve the same situation by holding a red-hot poker against an ice block. The poker will melt its way into the block until it cools. Then the ice, if refrozen around the metal, locks it tight."

  "Okay, Dog you score on that one. However, there's one important factor no one has considered."

  "Which is?" Pitt prompted.

  "The final course of the Lax," Koski said firmly.

  "Nothing strange about that," Pitt offered. "It was in all the newspapers. Fyrie with his crew and passengers left Reykjavik on the morning of April tenth of last year and laid a direct heading for New York. He was last sighted by a Standard Oil tanker six hundred miles off Cape Farewell, Greenland. After that, nothing more was seen or heard of the Lax again."

  "That's fine as far as it goes." Koski pulled his coat collar around his ears and fought to keep his teeth from chattering. "Except the sighting took place — near the fiftieth parallel-too far south of the iceberg limit."

  "I would like to remind you, Commander," Hunnewell said, raising an intimidating eyebrow, "that your own Coast Guard has logged as many as fifteen hundred bergs in one year below the forty-eighth parallel."

  "And I'd like to remind you, Dog" Koski persisted, "that during the year in question the number of iceberg sightings below the forty-eighth parallel came to zero."

  Hunnewell merely shrugged.

  "It would be most helpful, Dr. Hunnewell, if you'd explain how an iceberg appeared where none existed, then with the Lax frozen in its clutches ignored the prevailing currents for eleven and a half months and cruised four degrees north while every other berg in the Atlantic was drifting south at the rate of three knots an hour."

  "I can't," Hunnewell said simply.

  "You can't?" Koski's face went blank with disbelief. He looked at Hunnewell, then at Pitt, then back to Hunnewell again. "You rotten bastards!" he said savagely. "Don't lie to me!"

  "That's pretty salty terminology, Commander," Pitt said harshly.

  "What in hell do you expect? You're both highly intelligent people, yet you act like a pair of mongoloids.

  Take Dr. Hunnewell here. An internationally renowned scientist, and he can't even explain how an iceberg can drift north against the Labrador Current. Either you're a fraud, Dog or you're the dumbest professor — on record. The plain simple truth is that it's as impossible for this berg to reverse drift as it is for a glacier to flow uphitl."

  "Nobody's perfect," Hunnewell said shrugging helplessly.

  "No courtesy, no honest answer, is that it?"

  "It's not a question of honesty," Pitt said. "We've our orders just as you have yours. Up to an hour ago Hunnewell and I were following a precise plan. That plan is now out the window."r />
  "Uh-huh. And the next move in our game of charades?"

  "The problem is, we can't explain everything," Pitt said. "Damned little in reality. I'll tell you what Dr. Hunnewell and I know. After that you'll have to draw your own conclusions."

  "You could have leveled with me sooner."

  "Hardly," Pitt said. "As captain of your ship you have full authority. You even have the power to disregard or challenge orders from your Commandant if you feel they endanger your crew and ship. I couldn't take a chance. We had to give you a snow job so you'd cooperate fully. Besides, we were not to confide in anyone. I'm going against those orders right now."

  "Could be another snow job?"

  "Could be," Pitt said, grinning, "but what's the percentage? Hunnewell and I have nothing more to gain. We're washing our hands of this mess and heading for Iceland."

  "You're dropping all this in my lap?"

  "Why not? Abandoned and drifting derelicts are your bag. Remember your motto, Semper paratus, always prepared, Coast Guard to the rescue and all that."

  The twisted look on Koski's face was priceless. "I would appreciate it if you just stuck to the facts without benefit of tawdry remarks."

  "Very well," Pitt said calmly. "The story I concocted on the Catawaba was true up to a point-the point where I substituted the Novgorod for the Lax. Fyrie's yacht, of course, wasnt carrying classified electronic equipment, or any other clandestine mechanical devices for that matter. The cargo actually consisted of eight major-league engineers and scientists from Fyrie Mining Limited, who were on their way to New York to open secret negotiations with two of our government's largest defense contractors. Somewhere on board-probably in this room-was a file of documents containing a geological survey of the ocean floor. What Fyrie's research team bad discovered under the sea or where remains a mystery. This information was vitally important to a great number of people; our own defense department desperately yearned to get their hands on it.

  And so did the Russians; they pulled out all stops to grab it."

  "The last statement explains a great deal," said Koski.

  "Meaning?"

  Koski exchanged knowing looks with Dover. "We were one of the ships that searched for the Lax-it was the Catawaba's first patrol. Every time we blinked our eyes, we found ourselves crossing the wake of a Russian vessel. We were just egotistical enough to think they were observing our search patterns. Now it turns out that they were nosing after the Lax too."

  "It also neatly ties in with the reason we butted in on your show" said Dover. "Ten minutes after you and Dr. Hunnewell left the flight pad, we received a message from Coast Guard Headquarters warning of a Russian sub patrolling around the ice pack. We tried but couldn't raise you-"

  "Small wonder," Pitt interrupted. "It was essential that we maintain strict radio silence once we headed for the derelict. I took the precaution of switching the radio off. We couldn't transmit, much less receive."

  "After Commander Koski notified headquarters of our failure to contact your helicopter," Dover continued, "a signal came through hot and heavy ordering us to hightail it after you and act as escort in case the sub got pushy."

  "How did you find us?" Pitt asked.

  "We hadn't passed two icebergs before we snotted that yellow copter of yours. it stood out like a canary on a bedsheet."

  Pitt and Hunnewell looked at each other and began laughing.

  "What's the joke?" Koski asked curiously.

  "Luck, plain, simple, paradoxical luck," said Pitt, his face twisted in mirth. "We flew all over hell for three hours before we found this floating ice palace, and you found it five minutes after you began searching." Pitt then briefly told Koski and Dover about the iceberg decoy and meeting with the Russian submarine.

  "Good Lord," Dover muttered. "Are you suggesting that we're not the first to set foot on the iceberg?"

  "The evidence is plain," Pitt said. "The Ice Patrol's dyed stain has been chipped away, and Hunnewell and I found footprints in nearly every cabin of the ship.

  And there's more, something that takes the whole situation out of the mysterious and puts it in the category of the macabre."

  "The fire?"

  "The fire."

  "Undoubtedly accidental. Fires have been happening on ships since the first reed boats floated down the Nile thousand of years ago."

  "Murder has been going on for much longer than that."

  "Murder!" Koski repeated flatly. "You did say murder?"

  "With a capital M."

  "Except for the excessive degree, I've observed nothing I haven't already seen On at least eight other burned-out ships during my service on the Coast Guard-bodies, stench, devastation, the works. In your honored opinion as an Air Force officer what makes You think this one is any different?"

  Pitt ignored Koski's testy remark "It's all too perfect. The radio operator in the radio room, two engineers in the engine room, the captain and a mate on the bridge, the passengers in either their staterooms or salon, even a cook in the galley, everybody exactly where he should be. You tell me, Commander; you're the expert. What in hell kind of a fire would sweep through the entire ship, roasting everyone to a crisp without their making the slightest attempt at selfpreservation?"

  Koski tugged at an ear thoughtfully. "No hoses are scattered in the passageways. It's apparent no one tried to save the ship."

  "The nearest body to the fire extinguisher lies twenty feet away. The crew went against all laws of human nature if they decided at the last minute to run and die at their routine duty stations. I can't imagine a cook who perferred dying in his galley to saving his life."

  "That still proves nothing. Panic could have-"

  "What does it take to convince you, Commander-a belt in the bicuspids with a baseball bat?

  Explain the radio operator. He died at his set, yet it's a known fact that a Mayday signal was never received from the Lax or any'other ship in the North Atlantic at the time. Seems a bit odd that he couldn't have gotten off at least three or four words of a distress call."

  "Keep going," Koski said quietly. His piercing eyes had an interested glint.

  Pitt lit a cigarette and blew a long cloud of blue smoke into the refrigerated air, and he seemed to deliberate for a moment. "Let's talk about the condition of the derelict. You said it, Commander, you've never seen a ship gutted as badly as this one. Why? It was carrying no explosives or flammable cargo, and we can rule out the fuel tanks-they caused the blaze to spread, yes, but not to this degree on the opposite end of the ship. Why would every square inch burn with such a high intensity? The hull and superstructure are steel. And besides hoses and extinguishers, the Lax had a sprinkler system." He paused and pointed at two misshapen metal fixtures hanging from the ceiling. "A fire at sea usually starts at one location, the engine room, or a cargo hold, or a storage area, and then spreads from compartment to compartment, taking hours and sometimes days to fully consume a ship. I'll bet you any amount you care to cover that a fire investigator would scratch his head and cross this one off as a flash fire, one that totaled out the entire ship within a matter Of minutes, setting a new record, ignited by causes or persons unknown."

  "What do you have in mind for the cause?"

  Pitt said, "A flamethrower."

  There was a minute of appalled silence.

  "Do you realize what you're suggesting?"

  "You're damned right I do," Pitt said. "Right down to the violent blast of searing flame, the hideous swish of the jets, the terrible smoke from melted flesh.

  "Like it or not, a flamethrower is the logical answer."

  They were all listening now with horrified interest.

  Hunnewell made a choking noise in his throat as if he were going to be sick again.

  "It's outlandish, unthinkable," Koski murmured.

  "This entire setup is outlandish," Pitt said evenly.

  Hunnewell stared at Pitt blankly. "I can't believe that everyone stood like sheep and let themselves be turned into human to
rches. "Don't you see?" Pitt said. "Our fiendish friend somehow either drugged or poisoned the passengers and crew. Probably slipped a massive dose of chloral hydrate into their food or drinks."

  "They all could have been shot," Dover ventured.

  "I studied several of the remains." Pitt shook his head. "There were no signs of bullets or shattered bones."

  "And if he waited until they were all knocked out by the POison-I prefer to they died outrightscattered them around the ship, and then went from compartment to compartment with a flame thrower.

  Koski left the surmise unplumbed. "But what then? Where did the killer go from there?"

  "Before attempting to answer that one," Hunnewell said wearily, "I wish someone would kindly explain where the murderer materialized from in the first place.

  He obviously wasn't one of the passengers or crew. -ne Lax sailed with fifteen men, and it burned with fifteen men. Logic dictates that this was the work of a team who boarded from another ship."

  "Won't work," said Koski- "Any boarding of one ship by another requires some sort of radio contact.

  Even if the Lax had picked up survivors from a phony shipwreck, the captain would have immediately reported it." Koski suddenly smiled. "As I recall, Fyrie's last message asked for the reservation of a penthouse suite at the Statler-Hilton in New York."

  "Poor bastard," Dover said slowly. "If money and success ends like this, who needs it?" He looked at the thing on the deck again and quickly turned away. "God, what kind of maniac could murder fifteen humans at a sitting? Methodically poison fifteen men and then calmly cremate them with a flamethrower?"

  "The same maniac who blows up airliners for insurance money," said Pitt. "One who can kill another human with the same lack of shattering guilt you'd experience after swatting a fly. The motive here was obviously gain. Fyrie and his people made a discovery that was extremely valuable. The United States wanted it, Russia wanted it, but a dark horse got away with it."

  "Was it worth all this?" Hunnewell said with sickness in his eyes.