Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

“Splendid. I’ll give her a call.”

Perlmutter consulted a Rolodex and dialed the number. He chatted amiably with someone, then hung up and said, “She’ll see you at three o’clock, but she had some good news and some bad ne

ws. The good news is that the logbook of the 1848 voyage was given to Caleb Nye. The bad news is that a fire destroyed Nye’s library.”

“I guess we won’t be traveling to New Bedford,” Paul said with a slow shake of his head.

“Why are you New Englanders such pessimists?” Gamay said.

“Because we’re realists,” he said. “Without the ship’s log, we don’t know where the Princess stopped after it left Pohnpei.”

“True,” she said. “But maybe we don’t need the log if we concentrate on Caleb Nye.”

“Of course,” Paul said with a snap of his fingers. “Caleb was an eyewitness to the voyage. He told hundreds of people about his experience. We might find something somewhere with the details of his trip.”

“It’s worth a talk with Ms. Dobbs,” Perlmutter said. “By the way, you never said why you were interested in the log.”

Paul said, “It’s a long story, St. Julien. We can tell you over dinner when we get back. Your choice. Our treat.”

The suggestion got Perlmutter off the subject of the logbook, which was what Paul intended.

“There’s a new French restaurant near the Watergate I’ve been meaning to try,” Perlmutter said. “But back to business.”

He brushed his fingers over a section of shelves and began pulling out books. Minutes later, the Trouts left the carriage house, their arms loaded down with volumes cherry-picked from Perlmutter’s whaling collection. The Trouts stacked them in the back of the Mini Cooper Clubman that they used as their in-town car.

On the short drive back to their town house, Paul said, “I hate to be a pessimist again, but Kurt and Joe have set themselves a formidable task. Finding the missing lab may be impossible. We could be doing something more substantial than chasing down a nineteenth-century whaler whose adventures may or may not have a bearing on the case.”

Gamay nodded.

“I understand that this trip may turn out to be a waste of valuable time,” she said, “but one fact is inescapable.”

“What’s that?”

“Caleb Nye is all we have.”

CHAPTER 32

AS THE CITATION X STREAKED WEST OVER THE NORTH American continent at six hundred miles an hour, all was quiet in the cabin, where the passengers slept soundly with forty-three thousand feet of air beneath their pillows.

Song Lee had been the first to turn in, followed by Joe Zavala, who was stretched out on a thickly padded chair. Kurt Austin had read for a short while, then he had set Casey’s file aside and glanced at Song, who was sleeping on the sofa. Her bare legs stuck out from under her blanket. Austin adjusted the blanket, then went up to the cockpit and radioed the ground-crew manager at the Los Angeles Airport. He came back, settled into another chair, and within minutes had slipped into a deep slumber.

When the passengers got off at LAX to stretch their legs, the ground-crew manager was waiting to hand Lee a plastic bag. At Austin’s request, the manager had contacted his wife, and she had put together a change of clothes to replace the smoky T-shirt and shorts Lee had been wearing since Bonefish Key.

When she opened the bag, she let out a cry of delight, and dashed into the hangar to try them on. She squeezed in a quick shower beforehand, and a brief phone call after dressing, and then the jet leaped into the sky again and set a course for Honolulu. With the California coastline fading behind in the distance, Lee came over and sat next to Austin, who was discussing the maps and charts in Lieutenant Casey’s packet with Zavala. She was wearing a pair of conservative black cotton slacks and a sleeveless white cotton blouse that looked stylish on her slim figure.

“I understand you arranged for the delivery of my new wardrobe,” she said. “Thank you very much, Kurt. The clothes fit me perfectly.”

“Sailors are good at taking measurements with their eyes,” Austin said.

He saw Zavala mouthing the word Smooth, and realized that he had compared Song Lee’s lithe body to a boat keel. Quickly changing the subject, he said, “These are the blueprints for Dr. Kane’s undersea lab. From this layout, can you say what was going on there?”

“In general, perhaps.” She examined the diagrams. “These spheres labeled LIVING QUARTERS and ADMINISTRATION are self-evident. Those labeled LAB and RESOURCE CULTIVATION tell only part of the story.”

“We have lots of time. I’d be interested in hearing the whole story, Song.”

She pinched her chin in thought, then said, “Imagine the medusa project as a three-act play. Act 1 was the basic research on the jellyfish toxin at Bonefish Key. Act 2 is the practical application of that research toward synthesizing a vaccine, which was done at Davy Jones’s Locker. Act 3 would have been the actual production at centers set up to manufacture the vaccine in large volumes. We were at the second intermission.”

“Why were you more successful than other labs working in the area of ocean biotechnology?” Austin asked.