Serpent (NUMA Files 1)

Dressed in clean shorts and T-shirt, he went into the kitchen, brewed half a pot of strong Kenyan coffee; and rustled up a pan of bacon and eggs. He carried the plate through a slider to the deck overlooking the Potomac and watched the river go by as he ate breakfast. Still enjoying the cholesterol rush, he refilled a mug of coffee, then went into his combination study-den. He put a Coltrane CD on the stereo, settled into a black leather chair, and listened to Anton Sax's instrument sing in voices its creator could never have dreamed were possible. It was not surprising that Austin favored progressive jazz. In a way the sounds of Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, and other artists in his extensive music library reflected Austin's own personality: a steely coolness that masked intense energy and drive, the ability to reach deep into his soul when superhuman effort was needed, and a talent for improvisation.

The spacious room was an eclectic collection of the old and the new, authentic darkwood colonial furniture, and white walls hung with contemporary originals. Curiously for a man who was raised in and around the sea and who spent much of his life on or under the water, there were few nautical items. A primitive painting of a sailing clipper done by a Hong Kong Picasso for a China Trade skipper, a nineteenth-century chart of the Pacific, a couple of shipbuilding tools, a photo of his catboat, and a glass-encased scale model of his racing hydroplane.

His bookshelves held the leatherbound sea adventures of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville and dozens of books of ocean science. But the most hand worn volumes were those of writers like Plato, Kant, and the other great philosophers he liked to study. Austin was aware of the dichotomy but saw no oddity in it. More than one sea captain had retired inland after a career on the bounding main. Austin wasn't yet ready to move to Kansas, but the sea was a wild and demanding mistress, and he needed this quiet refuge from its crushing embrace.

As he sipped his coffee his eye fell on the brace of Mantons mounted on the wail over the fireplace. Austin had nearly two hundred sets of dueling pistols in his collection: Most of the pairs were stored in a fireproof vault. He kept the more recent acquisitions at the boathouse. He was fascinated not only by the workmanship and deadly beauty of the pistols but by the twists and turns of history that may have been launched by a well-placed ball fired on a quiet morning. He pondered how the republic might have fared if Aaron Burr had not killed Alexander Hamilton. The Mantons brought his mind back to the Nereus incident. What a strange night! In the days he'd been home recovering Austin had replayed the attack in his mind again and again, fast-forwarding, freezing action, and rewinding like a VCR.

After the battle the exertion and loss of blood caught up with Austin. He had barely taken a dozen steps before he could go no farther, collapsing in slowmotion and ending up in a sitting position. Captain Phelan had been the one to tell the crew all was safe. They came out of hiding, scraped Austin and Zavala off the deck, and carried them on stretchers to sickbay. On the way they passed the body of the assailant Austin had nailed with

a single shot from his dueling pistol. At Austin's direction they stopped, and a crewman with a strong stomach pulled the mask off the dead man. The face was that of a man in his thirties, dark-complexioned, with a thick black mustache, his features otherwise unremarkable except for the round hole in the forehead.

Zavala sat up on his stretcher and let out a low whistle. "'Tell me you had a laser sight on that old blunderbuss. A moving target in the dark! If I hadn't seen it I'd say a shot like that was impossible." ,

"It is impossible," Austin said with a rueful smirk. "I was playing it safe With a body shot."

As he explained to Zavala while their wounds were properly bandaged, his uncanny accuracy had nothing to do with his aim or the pistol's disreputable barrel grooving. In his haste Austin had turned the small pressure adjusting screw next to the trigger in the wrong direction and set the pistol with a hair trigger. Thank goodness for Manton's barrelweighted idiotproofing.

A oilcompany helicopter summoned by an emergency radio call plucked the wounded men and Nina Kirov from the Nereus and dropped them off in Tarfaya. Captain Phelan refused to leave his ship, and after the physician's mate had ascertained he'd be able to function on a limited basis within a few days, he stayed on to take the Nereus to the Yucatan. Within hours Austin and Zavala were on a NUMA executive jet that had been diverted to Morocco on its way to the United States from Rome. Nina hitched a ride on the plane to Dulles airport. The painkiller Austin was given knocked him for a loop, and he slept almost the entire flight. His. recollections were vague, but he remembered dreaming that a blond angel kissed him lightly on the cheek. When he awoke he was in Washington. Nina was gone, having caught the shuttle for Boston. He wondered whether he'd ever see her again. After spending a couple of days in the hospital he and Zavala were sent home, told to take their medication faithfully and give their bodies a chance to heal.

The jangle of the phone jolted Austin out of his reverie. He picked up the receiver and heard a crisp greeting. "Good morning Kurt, how are you feeling?"

"I'm coming along quite well, Admiral Sandecker. Thank you for asking. Although I must admit to being a little bored."

"Glad to hear that. Your boredom is about to come to an abrupt end. We're meeting tomorrow at nine to see if we can get to the bottom of this Moroccan business. I'm bringing Zavala in as well. He's been seen around Arlington in his convertible, so I assume he, too, is bored with inactivity."

Zavala, who drove a 1961 Corvette, mostly because it was the last model with a trunk, had used his time to tinker in his basement, where he liked to restore mechanical contrivances and create new technical underwater devices. As soon as he was able to walk without falling over he started working out at a boxing gym. Joe was never bored when there were women around, and he'd been making the most of the sympathetic leverage his wound got him.

Austin had talked to Zavala numerous times on the phone. For all the fun Joe was having, he was itching for action. Austin was telling the truth when he said, "I'm sure he's eager to get back to work, Admiral."

"Splendid. By the way I understand you're well enough to qualify for a spot on the Olympic crew team."

As coxswain, maybe. One suggestion, sir. The next time you hire someone to impersonate a birdwatcher, you might make sure he isn't wearing dress shoes and knee socks."

Pause. "I don't have to remind you that NUMA does not have the same pool of clandestine operatives that your Langley neighbors have at their beck and call. I asked Joe McSweeney, one of NUMA s bean counters from accounting, to quietly see how you were coming along. He passes your house commuting to work. Sounds as if a James Bond bug bit him and he took the job more seriously than I imagined. Hope you don't mind."

"No problem, sir. I appreciate your concern. It's better than having daily phone calls from headquarters."

"Thought you might think so. Incidentally Mac does know his birds."

"I'm sure he does," Austin said. "See you tomorrow, Admiral."

Austin hung up, chuckling at Sandecker's paternalism and his disingenuous shot at the CIA whose headquarters were less than a mile from the boathouse. The admiral's agency was primarily scientific, but its operations as the undersea counterpart of NASA were naturally made for intelligence gathering that rivaled or even surpassed the best "the Company" could come up with.

Sandecker envied the CIA's bottomless budget and limited accountability, although he himself was no slouch at prying funding from Congress. He could muster the support of twenty top universities with schools in the marine sciences and a host of large corporations. With its five thousand scientists, engineers, and others; its ongoing studies in deep ocean geology and mining, biological studies of sea life, marine archaeology, and climatology; and its farflung fleet of research vessels and aircraft, NUMAs reach extended to every part of the globe.

Hiring Austin away from the CIA had been a major Sandecker coup. Austin came to NUMA in a roundabout fashion. He had studied for his master's degree in systems management at the University of Washington and attended a high-rated dive school in Seattle. He'd trained as an underwater jack-of-all trades, which meant he was proficient in basics such as welding, the commercial application of explosives, and mud diving. He specialized in flotation, lifting heavy objects from the sea, and deep-sea saturation diving in various environments using mixed air and undersea chambers. After working on oil rigs in the North Sea a couple of years, he returned to his father's marine salvage company for six years before being lured into a little-known branch of the CIA that specialized in underwater intelligence gathering. He was assistant director of the secret raising of a Russian submarine and the salvage and investigation of an Iranian container ship carrying nuclear weapons that was sunk clandestinely by an Israeli submarine. He also conducted several investigations into commercial airlines that had been mysteriously shot down over the sea, locating, salvaging, and investigating the incidents.

At the end of 'the Cold War the CIA closed down the undersea investigation branch. Austin probably would have drifted into another CIA section had he not been hired by Admiral Sandecker for special undersea assignments that often took place outside the realm of government oversight. Sandecker could cry poor mouth and point at Langley all he wanted, but he was well acquainted with cloak-and-dagger operations.

Austin glanced at his watch. Ten o'clock. It would be seven in Seattle. He picked up the phone and punched out a number. A voice with a buzzsaw edge answered.

"Good morning," Austin said. "It's your number one son."

About time you called."

"I talked to you yesterday, Pop."

"A lot can happen in twenty-four hours," Austin's father replied with good-natured gruffness.