Clive Cussler - Iceberg

Sandecker shook his head. "You're assuming too much. Kirsti Fyrie would never go along with an international power play."

"She will have no choice in the matter," Pitt said.

"In marriage the spoils go to the dominant personality."

"A woman in love is blind. Is that it?"

"No," Pitt answered. "I don't think this is a match based on love."

"Now you're an expert on affairs of the heart," Sandecker said sarcastically.

"No contest," Pitt said, grinning, "but we are fortunate in having an expert in our Midst who has a built-in natural intuition for such things." He turned to Tidi.

"Care to give us a feminen opinion, dearheart?"

Tidi nodded. "She was terrified of him."

Sandecker looked at her speculatively. "What do you mean by that?"

"Just what I said," Tidi said firmly. "Miss Fyrie was scared to death of Mr. Rondheim. Didn't you see how he clutched her neck? I guarantee that she'll be wearing high collars for the next week until the bruises disappear.

"Are you sure you're not imagining or exaggerating?" Tidi shook her head. "It was all she could do to keep from screaming."

Sandecker's eyes were suddenly full of hostility.

"That rotten son-of-a-bitch." He gazed at Pitt steadily.

"Did you catch it?"

"Yes."

This increased Sandecker's anger. "Then why in hell didn't you stop it?"

"I couldn't," Pitt said. "I would have had to step out of character. Rondheim has every reason to think I'm a faggot. I want him to go right on thinking that."

"I'd like to think you have a hazy idea of what You're doing," Sandecker said grimly. "However, I'm afraid you bricked yourself into a corner with that crap about being an artist. I know for a fact that you can't draw a straight line. Natural eruption of light-my God."

"I don't have to. Tidi will handle that little chore for me. I've seen samples of her work. It's quite good."

"I do abstracts," Tidi said, a pained look on her pretty face. "I've never tried a true-life seascape."

"Fake it," Pitt said briskly. "Do an abstract seascape. We're not out to impress the head curator at the Louvre."

"But I have no supplies," Tidi whined. "Besides, the Admiral and I are leaving for Washington the day after tomorrow."

"Your flight has just been canceled." Pitt turned to Sandecker. "Right, Admiral?"

Sandecker folded his hands and mulled for a few moments. "In view of what we've learned in the last five minutes, I think it best if I hang around for a few days."

"The change of climate will do you good," Pitt said. "You might even get in a fishing trip."

Sandecker studied Pitts face. "Fairy queen imitations, painting classes, fishing expeditions. Would you humor an old man and tell me what's running through that agile mind of yours?"

Pitt picked up a glass of water and swilled the lucid contents. "A black airplane," he said quietly. "A black airplane resting beneath a watery death shroud."

They found Pier Twelve at about ten in the morning and were passed through the entrance barrier by a tali swarthy Fyrie guard. Sandecker dressed in old rumpled clothes, a floppy, soiled hat, carrying a tackle box and fishing rod. Tidi in slacks and knotted blouse warmly covered by a man's windbreaker. She held a sketching pad under one arm and a satchel-sized handbag under the other, both hands jammed deeply in the windbreaker's pockets. The guard did a classic double-take at Pitt, who brought up the rear moving along the pier in a short sissyish gait.

If Sandecker and Tidi looked and dressed like a pair of fishermen, Pitt came on like the queen of the May. He wore red suede pull-on boots, multicolored striped duck pants, so tight the seams were strained beyond endurance, supported by a two-inchwide tapestry belt and a — stretched purple sweater trimmed at the collar by a yellow neckerchief. His eyes blinked rapidly behind a pair of Ben Franklin glasses and his head was covered by a tasseled knit cap. The guard's mouth slowly drifted agape.

"Hi, sweetie," Pitt said, smiling slyly. "Is our boat ready?"

The guard's mouth remained agape, his eyes blank and unable to communicate to the brain the apparition they were focusing on.

"Come, come," Pitt said. "Miss Fyrie has generously loaned us the use of one of her boats. Which one is it?" Pitt stared fixedly at the guard's crotch.

The guard jerked alive as if he had been kicked, the stunned look on his face quickly turning to one of abject disgust. Without a word he led them down the pier, stopping in a hundred feet and pointing down at a gleaming thirty-two-foot Chris Craft cruiser.

Pitt leaped aboard and disappeared below. In a minute he was back on the pier.

"No, no, this won't do at all. Too mundane, too ostentatious. To create properly I must have a creative atmosphere." He looked accross the pier. "There, how about that one?"

Before the guard could reply, Pitt trotted the width of the pier and dropped to the deck of a forty-foot fishing boat. He explored it briefly, then popped his head through a hatchway.

"This is perfect. It has character, a crude uniqueness. We'll take this one."

The guard hesitated for a moment. Finally, with that twitch of the shoulders that indicated a shrug, he nodded and left them, walking along the pier back to the entrance, throwing a backward look at Pitt every so often and shaking his head.

When he was out of earshot. Tidi said, "Why this old dirty tub? Why not that nice yacht?"

"Dirk knows what he's doing." Sandecker set the rod and tackle box down on the worn deck planking and looked at Pitt. "Does it have a fathometer?"

"A Fleming six-ten, the top of the line. Extrasensitive frequencies for detecting fish at different depths."

Pitt motioned down a narrow companionway. "This boat was a lucky choice. Let me show you the engine room, Admiral."

"You mean we ignored that beautiful Chris Craft simply because it doesn't have a fathometer?" Tidi asked disappointingly.

"That's right," Pitt answered. "A fathometer is our only hope of finding the black plane."

Pitt turned and led Sandecker through the companionway down into the engine room. The stale air and the dank smell of oil and bilge immediately filled their nostrils, making them gasp at the drastic change from the diamond-pure atmosphere above. There was another odor. Sandecker looked at Pitt questioningly.

"Gas fumes?"

Pitt nodded. "Take a look at the engines."

A diesel engine is the most efficient means of propelling a small boat, particularly a fishing boat. Heavy, low revolutions-per-minute, slow, but cheap to run and reliable, the diesel is used in nearly every workboat on the sea that doesn't rely on sails for power, that is, except this boat. Sitting side by side, their propeller shafts vanishing into the bilge, a pair of Sterling 420 h.p. gas-fed engines gleamed in the dim light of the engine room like sleeping giants awaiting the starting switch to goad them into thunderous action' "What in hell would a scow like this be doing with all this power?" Sandecker queried quietly.

"Unless I miss my guess," Pitt murmured, "the guard goofed."

"Meaning?"

"On a shelf in the main cabin I found a pennant with an albatross on it."

Pitt ran a hand over one of the Sterling's intake manifolds; it was clean enough to pass a naval inspection.

"This boat belongs to Rondheim, not Fyrie."

Sandecker thought for a moment. "Miss Fyrie instructed us to see her dockmaster. For some unknown reason he was absent, and the pier was left in charge of that grizzled character with the tobacco-stained mustache. It makes one wonder if we weren't set up."

"I don't think so," Pitt said. "Rondheim will undoubtedly keep a tight eye on us, but we've given him no cause to be suspicious of our actions-not yet, at any rate. The guard made an honest mistake. Without special instructions he probably figured we were given permission to select any boat on the pier, so he quite naturally showed us the best of the lot first. There was nothing in the script that said we would pick this little gem."