The Mediterranean Caper

3

The young blond crewman cast off the lines, and the little twenty-six foot double-ended whaleboat surged sluggishly away from the makeshift dock near Brady Field. setting a course over the blue carpet of water toward the First Attempt. The throbbing four-cylinder Buda engine pushed the sturdy boat along at eight knots and cast the familiar nautical stink of diesel fumes over the deck. It was a few minutes to nine now, and the sun was hotter and even a slight breeze from the sea offered no relief.

Pitt stood and watched the shore recede until the dock became a dirty speck on the surf line. Then he hoisted his one hundred and ninety pounds onto the high tubular railing that circled the stern and sat with his buttocks hanging precariously over the boat’s frothing white wake. From his unusual position he could feel the pulsations from the shaft, and by looking straight down, he could see the propeller drill its way through the water. The whaleboat was only a quarter of a mile from the First Attempt when Pitt noticed the young crewman at the helm eyeing him with a mild look of respect.

“Excuse me, sir, but you look like you’ve spent some time in a double-ender.” The blond crewman nodded at Pitt’s seat on the railing. The young man had an academic air about him that implied scientific intelligence. Well tanned from the Aegean sun, he wore Bermuda shorts and nothing else except a long, sparse, yellow beard.

Pitt wrapped a hand around the stern light staff for support and groped in a breast pocket with his other hand for a cigarette. “I used to have one when I was in high school,” he said casually.

“You must have lived near the water,” said the young crewman.

“Newport Beach, California.”

“That’s a great place. I used to drive up there all the time when I was taking post graduate courses at Scripps in LaJolla.” The young crewman cracked a crooked smile, “Man oh man, was that ever a great place for girls. You must have had a ball growing up there.”

“I could think of worse places to go through puberty.” As long as the young man was talking freely, Pitt switched the subject. “Tell me, what sort of trouble have you been having on the project?”

“Everything went fine for the first couple of weeks, but as soon as we found a promising location to investigate, things turned sour and we’ve had nothing but rotten luck since.”

“For instance?”

“Mostly equipment failure; broken cables, missing and damaged parts, generator breakdowns, you know, things like that.”

They were nearing the First Attempt now and the Young crewman turned back to the helm and maneuvered the small boat along side of the boarding ladder.

Pitt stood and looked up at the larger vessel, surveying its outward appearance. By maritime standards she was a small ship; eight hundred twenty tons, one hundred fifty-two feet in length overall. Her keel was originally laid on an ocean-going tug in the Dutch shipyards of Rotterdam before World War II.

Immediately after the Germans invaded the lowlands, her crew Slipped her away to England where she performed outstanding and meritorious service throughout the war, towing torpedoed and crippled ships into the British port of Liverpool under the noses of Nazi U-boats. After the end of European hostilities, her tired and battered hull was traded by the Dutch Government to the U.S. Navy, who promptly enlisted her in the mothball fleet at Olympia, Washington. There she sat for twenty-five long years, sleeping under a gray plastic cocoon. Then the newly formed National Underwater Marine Agency purchased her remains from the Navy and converted her to a modern oceanographic vessel, rechristening her the First Attempt.

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.”

“You’ll have to pardon my ignorance of geological time eras,” Pitt interrupted, “but when did the Triassic Period take place?”

“Between one hundred eighty and two hundred thirty million years ago,” replied Gunn. “During this time an important evolutionary advance occurred in the vertebrate animals as the reptiles demonstrated a great leap over their more primitive ancestors. Some of the marine reptiles attained a length of twenty-three feet and were very tough customers. The most noteworthy event was the introduction of the first true dinosaurs, who even learned to walk on their hind legs and use their tails for a kind of cane.”

Pitt leaned back and stretched his legs. “I thought that the era of the dinosaurs occurred much later.”

Gunn laughed. “You’ve seen too many old movies. You’re undoubtedly thinking of the behemoths that were always portrayed in the early science fiction films, menacing a tribe of hairy cavemen. They never failed to have a forty ton Brontosaurus or a ferocious Tyrannosaurus or a flying Pteranodon chasing a half-nude, big-fitted heroine through a primeval jungle. Actually these more commonly known dinosaurs roamed the earth and became extinct sixty million years before man appeared.”

“Where does your freak fish fit into the picture?”

“Imagine, if you will, a three foot Teaser fish who lived, cavorted, made love and finally died somewhere in the Sea of Tethys. Nothing and no one took notice as this obscure creature’s body slowly sank to the red mud of the seabed. The unmarked grave was covered over with sediments which hardened into sandstone and left a thin film of carbon. It was this trace of carbon that etched and outlined the Teaser’s tissue and bone structure into the surrounding strata.” The years passed and turned into millenniums. And the millenniums became eons, until one warm spring day, two hundred million years later, a farmer in the Austrian town of Neunkirchen struck his plow against a hard surface. And presto, our Teaser fish, though now a near perfect fossilized version, once again returned to the light.” Gunn hesitated and ran his hand through a head of thinning hair. His face looked drawn and tired, but his eyes burned with excitement as he spoke of the Teaser. “One vital element you must remember; when the Teaser died there were no birds and bees, no hair bearing mammals, no delicate butterflies, even flowers had not yet appeared on the earth.”

Pitt studied the photograph of the fossil again. “It doesn’t seem possible that any living thing could survive this long without going through drastic evolutionary changes.”

“Incredible? Yes; but it has happened before. The shark has been with us for three hundred and fifty million years. The Horseshoe Crab has existed virtually unchanged over two hundred million years. Then, of course, we have the classic example; the Coelacanth.”

“Yes, I heard of it,” said Pitt. “That was the fish believed extinct for seventy million years until they began to be found off the coast of east Africa.”

Gunn nodded. “The Coelacanth was a sensational and important find at the time, but nothing compared to what the scientific world would gain if we could drop a Teaser in its lap.” Gunn paused for a moment to light another cigarette. His eyes betrayed the gleam of total absorption. “The whole thing boils down to this; the Teaser could be an early link in the evolution of mammals, and that Includes man. What I didn’t tell you was that the fossil found in Austria shows definite mammal characteristics in its anatomy. The protruding limbs and other features of its internal organs, place it in a perfect evolutionary line to advance in a general pattern toward the development of humans and animals.”

Pitt idly glanced at the pictures again. “If this so called living fossil is still floating around in its original form, how could it evolve into an advanced stage?”

“Any plant or animal species is like a related family,” Gunn replied. “One branch may produce offspring who are uniform in size and shape, while the cousins over on the other side of the mountain produce a race of giants with two heads and four arms.”

Pitt was getting restless. He opened the door and walked out onto the deck. The hot air struck him like a cloud of steam and he winced. All this expense and all these men sweating their asses off to catch a stinking fish, he thought. Who the hell cares if our ancestors were apes or fish — what difference did it make? At the rate mankind was racing toward self-destruction, it would probably be extinct in another thousand years or less anyway. He turned back to the darkened doorway and faced Gunn.

“Ok,” Pitt said slowly. “I know what you and your boatload of academic brains are searching for. Now the only question in my mind is where do I come in? If you’re having trouble with broken cables, faulty generators or missing tools, you don’t need me, you need a good mechanic who knows how to take care of his equipment.”

Gunn’s face looked puzzled for a moment, then he grinned. “I see that you’ve been pumping information out of Dr. Knight.”

“Dr. Knight?”

“Yes, Ken Knight, the young fellow who picked you up in the whaleboat this morning. He’s quite a brilliant marine geophysicist.”

“That’s an impressive description,” said Pitt. “He seemed friendly enough during the boat ride, but he hardly struck me as brilliant.”

The heat outside was becoming unbearable and the metal railing gleamed ominously. Pitt. not thinking, put his hand on the metal and instantly cursed as a burning sting etched his palm. Suddenly the pain set off an immense feeling of irritation Within him and he returned to the cabin, slamming the door. “Let’s skip all this crap,” Pitt snapped sharply. “Just tell me what miracle I’m supposed to perform that puts a Teaser over your fireplace and I’ll get to work.” He stretched out in Gunn’s bunk and took a deep breath and relaxed as the coolness of the stateroom calmed him once more. He glanced across the room at Gunn.

Gunn’s face was expressionless, but Pitt knew him well enough to perceive his discomfort. Pitt smiled and reached over and gripped Gunn on the shoulder. “I don’t wish to appear mercenary. but if you want me to join your little crew of scientific pirates it’s going to cost you a drink. All this talk makes a man pretty damn thirsty.”

Gunn laughed with relief and called over his intercom for some ice from the ship’s galley. Then he produced a bottle of Chivac Regal and two glasses from his bottom desk drawer. ‘While we’re waiting for the ice, you might scan this report I wrote concerning our equipment malfunctions.” He passed a yellow folder to Pitt. “I’ve covered every incident in detail and chronological order. In the beginning I thought it was merely accidents or bad luck, but now it’s gone far beyond the realm of mere coincidence.”

“Have you any proof of tampering or sabotage?” asked Pitt.

“None whatsoever.”

“The broken cable that Knight mentioned, was it cut?" Gunn shrugged. “No, the ends were frayed, but that’s another mystery. I’ll explain it to you.” Gunn paused and flicked an ash from his cigarette. “We work with a safety margin of five-to-one. For example; if the specifications of a cable state there is a danger of breakage with a stress of twenty-five thousand pounds or above, we will never place a stress on it higher than five thousand pounds. Because of this large safety factor NUMA has yet to have a single fatality on a project.

Lives are more important to us than scientific discovery. Underwater exploration is a risky business and the list is long with the names of men before us who have died trying to pry new secrets from the seas.”

“What was the safety margin when your cable Parted?”

“I was getting to that. It was nearly six-to-one. We Only had a four thousand pound stress on it at the time. It was extremely fortunate that no one was injured from the whiplash of the cable when it snapped”

“May I see the cable?”

“Yes, I’ve had the parted ends cut from the main sections and saved for your arrival.”

A loud knock echoed from the door and a young red-haired boy, no more than eighteen or nineteen, entered the cabin, carrying a small bucket of ice. He sat it on the desk and turned and faced Gunn. “Can I get you anything else, sir?” “Yes, as a matter of fact, you can,” said Gunn. “Run down to the maintenance deck and find the cable sections that broke recently and bring them back here to me.”

“Yes sir.” The boy did an abrupt about-face and hurried from the cabin.

“One of the crew members?” asked Pitt.

Gunn dropped the ice in the glasses and poured in the scotch. He passed a glass to Pitt. “Yes, we have eight crew members and fourteen scientists on board.”

Pitt swirled the yellow liquid around the ice cubes.

“Could any one of those twenty-two men be responsible for your problems?”Gunn shook his head.

“I’ve thought about that, I’ve even dreamed about it, and I’ve analyzed each man’s personnel record at least fifty times, and I can’t see what possible motive any of them might have for hindering the project.”

Gunn paused to sip his drink. “No, I’m certain my opposition comes from another source. Someone inexplicably wants to stop us from catching a fish that might not even exist.”

The boy soon returned with the two halves of the broken cable. He handed the braided steel to Gunn and left the cabin, closing the door after him. Pitt took another drink from his scotch and climbed from the bunk. He set the glass on Gunn’s desk’. and lifted the cable in his hands, examining the ends closely.

It looked like any other greasy steel cable. Each piece was about two feet in length and contained twenty-four hundred strands that were braided into a standard five-eighth-inch diameter. The cable was not broken in a compact area. The breaks were spread over a fifteen inch distance that gave both frayed wires the appearance of a pair of uneven, unwound horse tails.

Something caught Pitt’s eye. and he took the magnifying glass and peered through the heavy lens. His eyes glinted with intensity and his lips slowly spread into a grin of smug satisfaction. The old feelings of excitement and intrigue began to course through his veins. This might turn out to be an interesting operation after all, he thought.

“See anything?’ asked Gunn.

“Yes, a great deal,” replied Pitt. “Somewhere along the line you’ve found yourself an enemy who doesn’t want you fishing around in his territory."

Gunn became flushed and his eyes opened wide. “What did you find?”

“This cable was purposely cut,” said Pitt. His voice was very cold.

“What do you mean: cut,” cried Gunn. ‘Where do you see evidence of human tampering?”

Pitt held up the magnifying glass for Gunn. “Notice how the breaks spiral down and bend inward toward the core? And see how the strands have a smashed appearance. If a cable of this diameter is pulled at each end until it snaps, the strands are clean and the ends have a tendency to point out and away from the core. That didn’t happen here.”

Guns stared at the shattered cable. “I don’t understand. What could have caused this?”

Pitt looked thoughtful for a moment. “My guess is Primacord.”

Gunn was stunned. His eyes flew wide behind the big glasses. “You can’t be serious? Isn’t that an explosive?”

“Yes it is,” Pitt said calmly. “Primacord looks like string or rope and can be made in any thickness.

mainly, it’s used for blasting down trees and setting off different groups of distantly spaced explosives at he same time. It reacts like a burning fuse except that it moves and bursts rapidly, almost with the speed of light.”

“But how could anyone plant explosives under the ship without being seen.. The water is crystal clear in this area. Visibility is over one hundred feet. One of the scientists or crew members would have seen any intruder… Not to mention hearing the sound of an explosion.”

“Before I attempt to answer that, let me ask you two questions. What equipment was attached to the cable when it parted? And at what time did you discover the break?”

“The cable was connected to the underwater decompression chamber. The divers have been working at one hundred and eighty feet and it has become necessary to begin decompression underwater for long periods of time to prevent the bends. We discovered the broken cable at about 0700 in the morning right after breakfast.” “I take it that you left the chamber in the water overnight?”

“No,” replied Gunn. “It’s our habit to lower the chamber before dawn so it’ll be in place and ready to receive the divers in case of an early morning emergency.”

“There’s your answer!” Pitt exclaimed. “Someone swam under cover of the predawn darkness to the cable and set off the Primacord. Visibility may be one. hundred feet after the sun comes up but at night it’s less than one foot.”

“And the noise from the blast?”

“Elementary my dear Gunn,” Pitt grinned. “I should guess that a small amount of Primacord detonating at approximately eighty feet of depth would sound very similar to a sonic boom from one of Brady Field’s F-105 Starfires.”

Guns looked at Pitt with respect. It was basically a sound theory, and obviously there was little he could think of to debate about His forehead creased, “Where do we go from here?”

Pitt downed the scotch and banged the glass onto Gunn’s desk. “You just stay in the briny and fish for your Teaser. I’m going back to the island and try my hand at a little hunting. There may be a tie-in with your disruptions and the attack on Brady yesterday, and the next step will be to find who’s behind this mess and what their motives are.”

Suddenly the door burst open and a man leaped into the cabin. He wore only a pair of abbreviated swim trunks and a wide belt, containing a knife and a nylon net bag. His wet, sun-bleached hair was streaked with whitish yellow and freckles dotted his nose and chest.

As he stood there, the water dripped to the carpet around his feet in spreading dark stains.

“Commander Gunn,” he shouted excitedly. “I’ve seen one! I’ve actually seen a Teaser, not more than ten feet in front of my mask.”

Guns jumped to his feet. “Are you sure? Did you get a close look at him?”

“Better than that, sir, I took a picture of him.”

The freckle-nosed man stood there, grinning with every available tooth. “If only I had a spear gun, I might have got him, but I was shooting coral formations with my camera instead.”

“Quick,” snapped Gunn. “Get that film to the lab and have it developed.”

“Yes sir.” The fellow turned and dashed out of the door, spraying Pitt with a few drops of saltwater as he passed.

Guns’s face had a happy but determined look.

‘My God. To think I was about to give up, throw my tail between my legs and set a course for home.

Now, dammit, I’m going to stay anchored here until I die of old age or catch a Teaser.” His eyes twinkled as he glanced at Pitt. ‘Well, Major, what do you think of that?”

Pitt merely shrugged. “Personally, I prefer angling for girls.” With very little effort his mind dropped the business at hand and formed a tantalizing picture of Teri standing on the beach in her red bikini.