Lost City (NUMA Files 5)

anything you want."

"Do British vessels still stock grog?" Austin said.

"I don't have any grog, but I have a bottle of fine Scotch whiskey in my cabin."

"That will do just fine," Austin said.

A WELCOME OF A different sort greeted the Scapa as it sidled up to the dock at Kirkwall, Orkney's capital. Lined up on shore, waiting for the Coast Guard boat to arrrve, were a bus, a hearse and about two dozen figures dressed in white hooded contamination suits.

Austin stood at the rail of the boat with Captain Bruce. He eyed the welcoming committee and said, "That's either a decontamination team or the latest in British fashion."

"From the looks of things, my crew won't be going on shore leave anytime soon," the captain said. "The Scapa and its crew have been quarantined in case you and your friends have left any nasty bugs behind."

"Sorry to cause you all this trouble, Captain."

"Nonsense," Captain Bruce said. "Your visit has certainly enlivened what would have been a routine patrol. And as I say, it's what we do."

Austin shook hands with the captain, then he and the other

refugees from the island walked down the gangway. As each passenger set foot on land, he or she was asked to don a clear plastic suit and cap and a surgical mask. Then they were escorted onto the bus and the dead were loaded into the hearse. The passengers were asked not to raise the window blinds. After a ride of five minutes, they stepped off the bus in front of the large brick building that once could have served as a warehouse.

A huge bubble tent had been set up inside the building to serve as a decontamination lab staffed by more people in white suits. Everyone who had been on the island was asked to shower and their clothes were stuffed in plastic bags and taken off to be analyzed. When they were finished showering, they were given cotton hospital outfits that made them look like mental patients, poked and prodded by a phalanx of plastic-wrapped doctors and pronounced fit to rejoin the human race. Despite the indignities, they were treated with the utmost politeness.

After being examined, Austin and his NUMA colleagues were given back their neatly folded and newly laundered clothes. Then they were taken into a small, mostly bare room furnished with several chairs and a table. At their entry, the man in the pin-striped suit who sat behind the table stood and introduced himself as Anthony Mayhew. He said he was with MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, and asked them to take a seat. Mayhew had finely chiseled features, and an upper-class accent that led Austin to say, "Oxford?"

"Cambridge, actually," he said with a smile. Mayhew talked in clipped sentences, as if he had taken verbal shears to extraneous words. "Distinction is hard to catch. My apologies for the folderol with the sawbones and those lab people in the space suits. Hope you weren't inconvenienced."

"Not all. We were badly in need of showers," Austin said.

"Please tell whoever does our laundry to use a little less starch in our collars," Zavala added.

A chuckle escaped Mayhew's thin lips. "I'll do that. MI5 are well acquainted with the work of NUMA's Special Assignments Team. But once the brass heard from Captain Bruce about dead bodies, secret experiments and mutants, they simply panicked like the good civil servants they are. They wanted to make sure you wouldn't contaminate the British Isles."

Austin grimaced. "I didn't think we smelled that bad."

Mayhew gave Austin a blank look, and then broke into laughter. "American humor. I should have known. I spent several years on assignment in the States. My superiors were less worried about odor than having a deadly virus be unleashed."

"We wouldn't dream of contaminating our English cousins," Austin said. "Please assure your superiors that this has nothing to do with biological warfare."

"I'll do that as well," Mayhew said. He looked from face to face. "Please, could someone please explain what the devil is going on?"

Austin turned to Trout. "Paul is in the best position to fill you in on island life. The rest of us were only there for a few hours."

Trout's lips tightened in a wry grin. "Let me start by saying that the island is not exactly a Club Med."

He then laid out the story, from the Alvin's aborted dive on the Lost City to his escape and rescue.

Austin expected a snort of disbelief when Trout described his work on the Philosopher's Stone, but instead, Mayhew slapped his knee in an un-British display of emotion. "This fits like a glove. I knew there was something big behind the scientists' deaths."

"I'm afraid you've lost us," Austin said.

"Pardon me. Several months ago, my department was called in to investigate a bizarre series of deaths involving a number of scientists.

The first was a fifty-year-old computer expert who went out to his garden toolshed, wrapped bare electrical wires around his chest, stuck a handkerchief in his mouth and plugged the wires into an outlet. No apparent motive for killing himself."

Austin winced. "Very creative."

"That was only the beginning. Another scientist on his way home from a London party drove off a bridge. The police said his blood alcohol level far exceeded the legal level. But witnesses at the party said he had not been drinking and his relatives said the man never drank anything stronger than port. He'd throw up if he did. On top of that, someone had put old worn-out tires on his meticulously maintained Rover."