Fire Ice (NUMA Files 3)

"That's the best offer I've had all day." She cradled her chin in one hand and gazed into his face. There was no timidity in her large eyes. "I'll tell you about my background if you do the same for yourself."

"Okay, you're on."

She took another sip of Chianti. "I was born in Oakland, California. I was named Katherine after my dad's mother, and Ella after Ella Fitzgerald, Mom's favorite singer. My last name was Doran. I shortened it to Kaela Dorn when I went into TV. My mother was a ballet instructor at an African-American community center and my dad was an Irish-American, long-haired, pot-smoking hippie who had come to Berkeley to protest the Vietnam War and everything else."

"There was a lot of that in the sixties." She nodded. "Dad put aside his love beads and bongos and now teaches courses in contemporary American history at Berkeley, specializing in the protest movements of the sixties and seventies. He still has his beard, but it's a lot whiter than it used to be."

"Happens to the best of us," Austin said, pointing to his prematurely steel gray hair.

"I was something of a rebel as a kid. Pop's fault. One day Mom came down to the corner, where I was hanging out with a gang, and dragged me into her ballet classes where she could keep an eye on me. I traded in my gangsta colors for a tutu. I wasn't a bad dancer."

The woman sitting across from Austin seemed made for dancing. "I would have been surprised if you were any less graceful than a Pavlova."

"Thank you," she said. "I was fair, but tripping about on my toes in the Nutcracker Suite didn't satisfy my craving for adventure. Pop's fault, too. He bummed around Khartoum and New Delhi before he headed west to pull us out of Vietnam single-handedly. I went to Berkeley and studied English lit, then I got accepted as an intern at a local TV station that wanted to fill its minority-hiring quota. I got tired of reading gory reports about car crashes off a TelePrompTer. When I heard about the opening at Unbelievable Mysteries, I jumped at the chance to travel to exotic, offbeat places, and be paid pretty well for it. Okay, that's me. How about you? How did you come to be rescuing maidens in distress and their friends?"

Austin gave a condensed version of his biography, omitting his service in the CIA, stretching a fact here and there to make the pieces fit. Kaela listened intently, and if she detected his effort to massage the truth, she didn't show it.

"I'm not surprised that you like fast boats or that you collect antique dueling pistols, or even that you listen to progressive jazz. I'm more surprised to hear that you study philosophy."

"I don't know if study is the right word. I like to say I've read a few books on the subject." He paused in thought, then said, " 'One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.' Rene Descartes."

"Which means?"

"I see a lot of strange things and people in my business. It gives me comfort to know that as far as philosophy is concemed, there is nothing new under the sun. Greed, avarice, evil. And conversely, goodness, generosity, love… Plato once said…" Austin became conscious of Kaela's stare. "Sorry. I sound like a professor."

"I've never met a professor who swoops down out of the sky to do single-handed battle with a bunch of cutthroats." She regarded him with leveled eyes. "Tell me, what exactly is your Special Assignments Team? Somebody mentioned it to me before I came out here."

"There's no 'exactly' about it. There are four of us, each with an area of expertise. Joe Zavala is a marine engineer who designs many of our vehicles. The ultralight I flew in on was his creation. He can pilot anything under or above the sea. Paul Trout is a deep-ocean geologist with credentials from Woods Hole Oceanographic and Scripps Institute.

His wife, Gamay, is a diver and marine biologist with a background in nautical archaeology."

"Impressive. You still haven't told me what your team does."

"Depends. In general, we handle undersea assignments that tend to be other than routine." Austin failed to mention that those assignments often took place secretly, outside the realm of government oversight.

She snapped her fingers. "Of course. Now I remember. The Christopher Columbus tomb in the Yucatan. You were involved in its discovery."

"Somewhat. It was a NUMA project."

"Fascinating," Kaela said. "I'd like to do a story on your team."

"The NUMA Public Affairs Department would love it. Favorable publicity comes in handy when we go before Congress with our budget. Give them a jingle when you get back. I'll be glad to help."

"Thanks, I'd appreciate that very much."

"Now let me ask you a question. What do you intend to do with the footage your crew filmed back in Russia?"

"I'm not sure," she said, with a furrowed brow. "We don't have much except the dead body of a guy dressed up like a doorman at a Russian nightclub." She broke out in laughter. "Not that the lack of facts ever discouraged Unbelievable Mysteries from cooking up a story."

"Maybe he's one of those UFO aliens you're always fi

nding," Austin offered.

"Not with that sword." Kaela shuddered at the memory. "Seriously, Kurt, what's your take on this whole thing? Who were those guys and why were they so touchy about an abandoned sub base left over from the Cold War?"

Austin shook his head. "I can't answer those questions."

"You must have given it some thought."