Cyclops (Dirk Pitt 8)

Sorry? Pitt still couldn't believe he was conversing with a machine. "If I may digress for a moment, Hope, allow me to say you're a very bright and most congenial computer."

"Thank you for the compliment, Dirk. In case you're interested, I can also do sound effects, imitate animals, sing-- though not too well-- and pronouncèsupercalifragilisticexpialidocious,' even if I haven't been programmed to its exact definition. Would you like me to say it backwards?"

Pitt laughed. "Some other time. Getting back to the Cyclops, the one I'm interested in probably sank in the Caribbean."

"That narrows it down to two. A small steamer that ran aground in Montego Bay, Jamaica, 5 May 1968, and a U.S. Navy collier-- an ore or coal transport-- lost without a trace, between 5 and 10

February 1918."

Raymond LeBaron wouldn't be flying around searching for a ship stranded in a busy harbor only twenty years ago, Pitt reasoned. The tale of the Navy collier came back to him. The loss was touted as one of the great mysteries of the mythical Bermuda Triangle.

"We'll go with the Navy collier," said Pitt.

"If you wish me to print out the data for you, Dirk, press the control button on your keyboard and the letters PT. Also, if you watch the screen I can project whatever photos are available."

Pitt did as he was told and the printer began pounding away. True to her word,' Hope flashed a picture of the Cyclops lying at ancho

r in an unnamed port.

Although her hull was slender with its old-fashioned straight-up-and-down bow and graceful champagne-glass stern, her superstructure had the look of a child's erector set gone wild. A maze of derricks, spiderwebbed by cables and laced by overhead supports, rose amidships like a dead forest. A long deckhouse ran along the aft part of the ship above the engine room, its roof festooned with towering twin smokestacks and several tall ventilators. Forward, the wheelhouse perched above the main deck like a vanity table on four legs, spotted with a single row of portholes and open beneath. Two high masts with a crossbar protruded from a bridge that could have passed for a football goalpost. She seemed ungainly, an ugly duckling that never made it to swan.

There was also a ghostly quality about her. At first Pitt couldn't put his finger on it, and then it struck him-- oddly, no crew member was visible anywhere on her decks. It was if she were deserted.

Pitt turned from the monitor and scanned the printout of the ship's statistics: Launched: 7 May 1910 by William Cramp & Sons Shipbuilders, Philadelphia Tonnage: 19,360 displaced

Length: 542 feet (actually longer than the battleships of her time) Beam: 65 feet

Draft: 27 feet 8 inches

Speed: 15 knots (3 knots faster than the Liberty ships of World War II) Armament: Four 4-inch guns

Crew: 246

Master: G. W Worley, Naval Auxiliary Service

Pitt noted that Worley was the Cyclops' captain from the time she was placed in service until she disappeared. He sat back, his mind drifting as he studied the picture of the ship.

"Do you have any other photographs of her?" he asked Hope.

"Three from the same angle, one stern shot, and four of the crew."

"Let's have a look at the crew."

The monitor went black for a moment and soon an image of a man, standing at a ship's railing and holding a little girl's hand, came into view.

"Captain Worley with his daughter," explained Hope.

A huge man with thinning hair, neatly trimmed moustache, and massive hands stood in a dark suit, necktie casually askew outside the jacket, shoes highly shined, staring into a camera that froze his image seventy-five years ago. The little blond girl at his side wore a knee-length jumper and a little hat, and gripped what looked to be a very rigid doll in the shape of a bottle.

"Real name was Johann Wichman," Hope briefed without command. "He was born in Germany and illegally entered the United States when he jumped a merchant ship in San Francisco during the year 1878. How he falsified his records is not known. While commanding the Cyclops, he lived in Norfolk, Virginia, with his wife and daughter."

"Any possibility he was working for the Germans in 1918?"

"Nothing was ever proven. Would you like the reports from naval investigations of the tragedy?"

"Just print them out. I'll study them later."

"The next photo is of Lieutenant David Forbes, the executive officer," said Hope.