Clive Cussler - The Mediterranean Caper

Pitt squinted from the bright glare of the white paint, coating the ship from stem to stern staff. He climbed the boarding ladder and was greeted on the deck by an old friend, Commander Rudi Gunn, the skipper and project director of the ship.

“You look healthy,” said Gunn unsmilingly, “except for your bloodshot eyes.” He reached for a cigarette. Before he lit it, he offered one to Pitt, who shook his head and held up one in his hand.

“I hear you’ve got problems,” said Pitt.

Gunn’s face turned grim. “You’re damn right I do,” he snapped. “I didn’t ask Admiral Sandecker to send you all the way from Washington just for fun and games.”

Pitt’s eyebrows went up in surprise. This sudden harshness did not fit Gunn. Under normal circumstances the little commander was a warm and humorous person. “Take it easy, Rudi,” said Pitt softly. “Let’s get out of the sun, and you can brief me on what this mess is all about”

Gunn removed his horned rimmed glasses and rubbed a wrinkled handkerchief across his forehead.

“I'm sorry, Dirk, it’s just that I’ve never seen so many things go wrong at one time. It’s highly frustrating after all the planning that went into this project. I guess it’s beginning to make me irritable as hell. Even the crew has noticeably avoided me the last three days.”

Pitt placed an arm on the shorter man’s shoulders and grinned. “I promise not to avoid you even if you are a nasty little bastard.”

Gunn looked blank for a moment, and then a sense of relief seemed to flood his eyes, and he flung back his head and laughed. “Thank God you’re here,” be gripped Pitt’s arm tightly. “You may not solve any mysteries, but at least I'll feel a hell of a lot better just having you around.” He turned and pointed toward the bow. “Come along, my cabin is up forward.”

Pitt followed Gunn up a steep ladder to the next deck and into a small cabin that must have been designed by a closet-maker. The only comfort, and it was a large one, was a cool blast of air that emitted from an overhead ventilator. He stood in front of the opening for a moment and soaked in the cool breeze. Then he straddled a chair and leaned his arms across the top of the backrest, waiting for Gunn to give the briefing.

Gunn closed the porthole and remained standing. “Before I begin, let me ask you what you know about our Aegean expedition?”

“I only heard that the First Attempt was researching the Mediterranean for zoological purposes.”

Gunn stared at him, shocked. “Didn’t the admiral supply you with any detailed data concerning this project before you left Washington?”

Pitt lit another cigarette. “What makes you think that I came straight from the Capital?”

“I don’t know,” Gunn said hesitantly. “I only assumed that you…“

Pitt stopped him with a grin. “I haven’t been anywhere near the States in over four months.” He exhaled a puff of smoke toward the ventilator and watched the blue haze swirl into nothingness. “Sandecker’s message to you simply stated that he was sending me directly to Thasos. He obviously neglected to mention where I was coming from and when I would arrive. Therefore, you expected me to come soaring out of the blue sky four days ago.”

“Again, I’m sorry,” Gunn said shrugging. “You’re right, of course. I figured two days at the most for that old tin duck of yours to fly from the Capital. When you finally flew into that fiasco at Brady Field yesterday you were already four days late by my schedule.”

“It couldn’t be helped. Giordino and I were ordered to airlift supplies into an ice probe station, camped on an ice floe north of Spitzbergen. Right after we landed, a blizzard hit and grounded us for over seventy-two hours.”

Gunn laughed. “You certainly flew from one extreme in temperature to another.” Pitt didn’t answer, but merely smiled.

Gunn pulled open the top drawer of a small compact desk and handed Pitt a large manila envelope that contained several drawings of a strange looking fish. “You ever see anything like this before?”

Pitt looked down at the drawings. Most of them were different artist’s conceptions of the same fish, and yet each varied in details. The first was an ancient Greek illustration on the side of a vase. Another had obviously been part of a Roman fresco. He noted that two of them were more modern. stylized drawings, depicting the fish in a series of movements. The last was a photograph of a fossil imbedded in sandstone. Pitt looked up at Gunn questioningly.

Gunn handed him a magnifying glass. “Here, take a closer look through this.” Pitt adjusted the height of the thick glass and scrutinized each picture. At first glance the fish looked similar in size and shape to the Bluefin Tuna, but on closer inspection, the bottom pelvic fins took on the appearance of small jointed webbed feet. There were two more identical limbs located just in front of the dorsal fin.

He whistled softly. “This is a weird specimen, Rudi. What do you call it?” “I can’t pronounce the Latin name, but the scientists aboard the First Attempt have affectionately nicknamed it the Teaser.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, by every law of nature that fish should have become extinct over two hundred million years ago. But as you can see by the drawings. men still claim they have seen it. Every fifty or sixty years there’s a rash of sightings, but unfortunately for science, a Teaser has yet to be caught.” Gunn glanced at Pitt and looked away again. “If there is such a fish, it must bear a charmed life. There are literally hundreds of accounts of fishermen and scientists who look you in the eye with a straight face and say they had a Teaser on a hook or in a net, but before the fish could be hauled on board it escaped. Every zoologist in the world would give his left testicle to obtain a live, or even dead Teaser.”

Pitt mashed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “What makes this particular fish so important?”

Gunn held up the drawings. “Notice that the artists couldn’t agree on the outer layer of skin. They illustrate tiny scales, smooth porpoise-like skin, and one even brushed in a kind of furry hide like a sea lion. Now, if you take the possibility of hairy skin, together with the limb extensions, it may be we have the dim beginnings of the first mammal.”

“True, but if the skin were smooth you’d have nothing more than an early reptile. The earth was covered with them back in those days.”

Gunn’s eyes mirrored a confident look. “The next point to consider is that the Teasers lived in warm shallow water, and every recorded sighting took place no more than three miles from shore, and they all occurred right here in the eastern Mediterranean where the average surface temperature seldom drops below sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit.”

“So what does that prove?” asked Pitt.

“Nothing solid, but since primitive mammal life survives better in milder climates, it lends a little support to the possibility that they might have survived to the present.”

Pitt stared at Gunn thoughtfully. “I’m sorry, Rudi. You still haven’t sold me.”

“I knew you were a hard head,” said Gunn.

“That’s why I left the most interesting part till last.” He paused and removed his glasses and rubbed the lenses With a piece of Kleenex. Then he replaced the black rims over his hawkish nose. He continued speaking as if lost in a dream. “During the Triassic Period in geological time, and before the Himalayas and the Alps rose, a great sea swept over what is now Tibet and India. It also extended over Central Europe and ended in the North Sea. Geologists call this once great body of water, the Sea of Tethys. All that remains of it today is the Black, the Caspian and the Mediterranean Seas.”