Seconds later, she was out the door, and he could hear her padding down the hallway. He glanced at his wristwatch. He kept a packed duffel bag ready at all times. All he had to do was grab it and go.
On the drive to the boathouse, he called his shared secretary and said he would be away for a few days. Then he called Elwood Nickerson and left a similar message. He didn’t go into details. Somehow he didn’t feel comfortable telling the undersecretary of state that the key to heading off an international crisis was a doll-sized figure five thousand miles away.
Chapter 25
“TODAY’S THE DAY,” Paul Trout said with steely determination.
Trout stood wide-legged in a dinghy while he handed fishing tackle to his wife Gamay, who was aboard their twenty-one-foot powerboat. Gamay set the rods into a rack and said, “Ho-hum,” bringing her palm to her lips in an exaggerated yawn. “I recall the same male bragging twenty-four hours ago on this very same spot. It was an empty boast, just like the day before.”
Trout climbed onto the boat with surprising agility for a man built like a professional basketball player. Although he was six foot eight, he moved with a catlike grace that came from years of experience on boats at the side of his fisherman father. He punched the starter button on the console. The inboard engine came to life with a throaty grumble and a puff of blue exhaust.
“No brag. When you’re born into an old Cape Cod family that’s caught tons of fish over the decades, you expect an off day once in a while.” He stuck his nose in the air like a bloodhound. “That grand-daddy striper is waiting in his honey hole for me to hook him.”
“Now I know why fishermen have a reputation for telling tall tales.” Gamay cast off the mooring line.
Trout gave the throttle a light touch and steered the boat at a slow speed across Eel Pond toward the Water Street drawbridge. They passed a bar whose deck overlooked the pond, and Trout smacked his lips. “I can taste that cold frosty beer.”
“Let’s jack up the ante,” Gamay said. “Loser buys dinner too.”
“It’s a bet,” Trout said without hesitation. “Fried clams go great with beer.”
The boat proceeded slowly under the drawbridge and out into the harbor, past the Martha’s Vineyard ferry terminal and the research vessel Atlantis, which was tied up to the dock of the world-famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where Trout’s interest in oceanography had been stimulated when he was still a boy.
The boat cleared the harbor and Trout goosed the throttle. The bow angled up on plane and he steered toward the ElizabethIslands, an archipelago that lay in a string southwest of Cape Cod. Gamay puttered about the deck, readying fishing gear.
There were few things better in Trout’s opinion than racing over the waves with the salty breeze in his face and the prospects of a full day of fishing. All he needed to make the outing a perfect ten would be to catch a bigger fish than Gamay. He was used
to friendly competition with his wife, but he had been quietly annoyed that she had outfished him over the last two days.
As a young girl growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan, Gamay was no slouch when it came to boats and fishing. Although she had grown into an attractive woman, she retained a hint of the tomboy she had once been. Her good-natured taunts at Trout’s lack of success ran counter to his understated New England persona. He gritted his teeth. Today damn well better be the day or he would never live it down.
Near the low-lying hump that was NaushonIsland, Trout pointed the boat toward a cloud of squalling seabirds diving in the water in search of bait being chased to the surface by larger links in the food chain. Amorphous yellow blobs were popping up on the fish-finder screen. There was a fishy scent in the air. He cut the engine and the boat plowed to a stop.
Gamay handed Trout a fishing rod and took the wheel. It was customary for the highliner on the last trip to let the lowliner go first. Trout settled into the swivel chair and let some line out. He started jigging, continuously jerking the rod to keep the lure traveling through the water.
“Fish on!” he yelled.
He cranked the reel and pulled in a thirty-two-inch-long striped bass. After measuring the fish, he threw it back. Gamay quickly caught a twenty-eight-incher. Again they tossed the fish overboard. They took turns catching stripers in roughly the same size range before the school played out, and they moved to another spot that was equally as productive.
They kept a running compilation and were in a dead heat when Trout felt a sharp tug on the line that almost pulled his arm out. This was going to be the tiebreaker. He was barely aware of a cell phone chiming. Gamay put the phone to her ear and, after a moment, said, “Kurt needs to talk to you.”
Trout cranked the reel like a man possessed. The silver body of a huge fish flashed near the surface. Damn. It was as big as a whale. He tried to concentrate.
“Tell him to wait,” he shouted over his shoulder.
“He can’t wait,” Gamay said. “He and Joe are on their way to Turkey.”
Turkey? The last Trout was aware of, Austin and Zavala were off to Newfoundland. In that instant, Trout lost his train of thought, and the fish. The line went slack. Oh, hell. He got up, handed the rod to Gamay, and took the phone in exchange.
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Austin said.
“Naw,” Trout said. He stared disconsolately at the ripples where he’d last seen the giant striper. “What’s up, Kurt?”
“Can you come up with a computer model that will reconstruct a transatlantic ship voyage? I know it’s a tall order.”
“I’ll give it a try,” Trout said. “I’ll need a date. I can figure in currents, weather, and speed if that information is available.”
“Actually, very little is available. This was a Phoenician ship. The crossing was made around 900 B.C.”