Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

“We don’t know his present whereabouts,” Gannon said. “We can try to contact him.”

“Please do that, Captain. Could you also prepare a list of everyone on board?”

“I’ll get right to it, Detective-Superintendent. You can conduct your interviews in the mess hall.”

“Thank you very much for your cooperation, Captain.”

As Gannon hurried off to carry out Randolph’s request, Randolph said, “Now, gentlemen, since you were so intimately acquainted with the events of last night, perhaps you wouldn’t mind being interviewed first.”

“We’d be happy to tell you the whole story,” Austin said.

They shook hands all around. As Randolph walked off to supervise his team, he snorted like a horse.

“Engineers,” he muttered.

Austin suggested that Zavala take the first interview while he tried to reach Kane. He walked a short distance from the activity on the aft deck, and called directory assistance on his cell phone, asking for the number of Bonefish Key Marine Center. A computer-generated voice informed him that the lab was not open to the public and referred callers to the center’s website.

After a moment’s thought, he punched in another number from his phone list.

A low, cool female voice answered his call.

“Hi, Kurt,” said Gamay Morgan-Trout, “congratulations. Paul and I watched the bathysphere dive on TV until the transmission got cut off. How was the briny deep?”

“Briny and deep. I’ll tell you about it later. Sorry to interrupt your sabbatical at Scripps, but I need a favor. I’d like you or Paul to wrangle an invitation to the Bonefish Key marine lab in Florida. They discourage visitors, but if anyone can get in it’s you.”

“Didn’t the director of Bonefish Key make the B3 dive with Joe?”

“His name is Max Kane. But don’t expect any help from him.”

“I’ll give it a try, Kurt. What exactly should I be looking for?”

“I don’t know. Just keep your eyes open for anything that strikes you as funny.”

Gamay responded with a soft chuckle.

“I love the crisp specificity of your directive, Kurt.”

“It’s a management course they teach called Cover Your Ass 101. The first lesson in CYA is that if anything goes wrong, it’s not your fault. Call me when you or Paul get to Bonefish Key. Joe and I will be on the Beebe for another day or two.”

Austin clicked off, then walked to the ship’s railing. He was burning with impatience. He didn’t like interrupting the sabbatical Paul and Gamay Trout were taking from the Special Assignments Team, but until he and Zavala managed to extricate themselves from the police investigation they would have to be the team’s eyes and ears.

He gazed at the sparkle of the morning sun on the water. He sometimes joked that he was afflicted with what he called the King Neptune syndrome. He had spent so much of his life on or under the ocean that he had developed a proprietary attitude toward the two-thirds of the globe covered by water.

Austin had conceived the Bathysphere 3 project as a way to instill respect for the sea in the young people who would someday become its caretakers.

The faceless entity behind the attacks had almost ruined that.

He knew his mortal limitations. Unlike Neptune, Austin couldn’t raise a storm at the touch of a trident.

A cold glint came to his eyes, and he compressed his lips in a tight, humorless smile.

But he had shown numerous times that he could raise hell. He couldn’t wait to get off the ship so he could rattle the walls of Hades.

CHAPTER 17

PAUL TROUT WAS NEAR THE END OF THE SEMINAR HE WAS leading on global warming when his cell phone began to vibrate. Without missing a beat, he reached into his sports jacket pocket, shut off the phone, and threw the next graph up on the projection screen, only to hear a soft ripple of laughter behind his back. He turned, curious at what could be so humorous about an ocean-salinity pie chart.

No one was looking at the chart. Every eye in the room was staring out the window at an attractive red-haired woman in a two-piece bathing suit who was on the lawn outside the building. She was doing jumping jacks and waving a cell phone in the air at the same time.