"Any reason for the melodramatics?" Pitt tilted his head at the revolver poised in Bass's left hand.
"It seems you've exhumed an excessive amount of information about a subject that belongs buried. I had to be certain of your identity."
"Then you're satisfied that I'm who I say I am?"
"Yes, I called your boss at NUMA. Jim Sandecker served under my command in the Pacific during World War Two. He gave me an impressive list of your credentials. He also wanted to know what you were doing in Virginia when you were supposed to be on a salvage tender off the coast of Georgia."
"I've not made Admiral Sandecker privy to my findings."
"Which, as you claimed earlier, at the pond, were the remains of Vixen 03."
"She exists, Admiral. I've touched her."
Bass's eyes flashed with hostility. "You're not only bluffing, Mr. Pitt, but you're also lying. I demand to know why."
"My case is not built on lies," said Pitt evenly. "I have two other reputable witnesses and videotaped pictures as proof."
A look of incomprehension shadowed Bass's face. "Impossible! She disappeared over the ocean. We spent months searching for her and didn't find a trace."
"You looked in the wrong place, Admiral. Vixen 03 lies under a mountain lake in Colorado."
Bass's tough facade seemed to dissolve, and in the moonlight Pitt suddenly saw him as a tired, worn old man. The admiral lowered the pistol and swayed drunkenly toward a bench at the edge of the overlook. Pitt reached out a hand to steady him.
Bass nodded thanks and sank onto the bench. "I suppose it had to happen someday. I wasn't fool enough to think the secret could last forever." He looked up and clutched Pitt's arm. "The cargo. What of the cargo?"
"The canisters have broken their moorings, but otherwise they seemed reasonably intact."
"Thank God for that, at least," sighed Bass. "Colorado, you say. The Rocky Mountains. So Major Vylander and his crew never made it out of the state."
"The flight originated in Colorado?" asked Pitt.
"Buckley Field was Vixen 03's point of origin." He held his head in his hands. "What went wrong so early? They must have gone down shortly after takeoff."
44
"It looks as though they had mechanical problems and tried to ditch in the only open space they could find. It being winter, the lake was frozen over, and they were fooled into thinking they were coming down in a field. The weight of the aircraft then broke through the ice and sank in a deep section of the lake, deep enough so that after the ice melted in the spring, her outline could not be distinguished from the air."
"And all this time we thought. . ." Bass's voice trailed off and he sat there in silence. Finally he said softly, "Those canisters must be retrieved."
"Do they contain nuclear material?" Pitt asked.
"Nuclear material . . ." Bass repeated, his tone vague. "Is that what you think?"
"The date stated in Vixen O3's flight plan could have put her in the South Pacific in time for the Bikini H-bomb tests. I also found a metal tag on one of the crewmen, marked with the symbol for radioactivity."
"You misread the evidence, Mr. Pitt. True, the canisters were originally designed to house nuclear naval shells. But the night Vylander and his crew disappeared they were used for a far different purpose."
"It's been suggested they're empty."
Bass sat like a wax statue. "If only it were that simple," he murmured. "Unfortunately, there are other instruments of war besides the nuclear kind. You might say that Vixen 03 and her crew were carriers."
"Carriers?"
"A plague," said Bass. "The canisters contain the Doomsday organism."
33
An uneasy silence settled over the two men as Pitt digested the enormity of the admiral's revelation.