Iceberg (Dirk Pitt 3)

"Southern California?"

"By four o'clock this afternoon."

"By four o'clock this afternoon "At Disneyland."

"At Disneyland?"

Sandecker said patiently: "I'm well aware that your destination isn't exactly what you had in mind. But we can do without the echo."

"With respects, sir, none of this figures."

"Until an hour ago, those were our words precisely," Kippmann said.

"Just what have you got in mind?" Pitt asked.

"This." Kippmann pulled more papers from his seemingly bottomless briefcase and studied them briefly.

"Until we were able to question you and the other survivors who were physically up to it, we had only a sketchy idea at best as to the purpose behind Hermit Limited. We knew it existed, and we were fortunate to ferrett out a small percentage of their business dealings, but their ultimate goal, the brains, the money behind the entire operation remained a mystery-" Pitt broke in guardedly. "But you had a lead. You suspected Dr. Hunnewell."

"I'm glad you didn't tumble sooner, Major. Yes, the N.I.A. was trailing Dr. Hunnewell. No concrete evidence, of course.

That's why we set him in the hope he would lead us to the men at the top of the organization.".

"Oh, God, it was a setup!" It wasn't easy to combine a sour exclamation and an anguished moan in the same breath, but Pitt pulled it off. "The whole goddamned scene on that iceberg was a setup."

"Yes, Hunnewell came to our attention when he so thoughtfully provided all the right solutions for Fyrie Limited's undersea probe, but offered absolutely nothing toward the efforts under development in his own country."

"Then emtombing the Lax was a neat little piece of deception," Pitt said. "That was your drawing card.

Hunnewell was bound to come forward as an investigator when the admiral here asked him out of what Hunnewell probably couldn't seemed sheer coincidence. . believe his luck. He immediately volunteered, not to see what happened to his old friend Kristjan Fyrie-he'd already guessed that-or to inspect the strange phenomenon of a ship locked in ice, but rather to discover what had become of his precious undersea probe."

"Again, Yes. Major."

Kippmann handed Pitt several glossy photographs. "Here are pictures taken from the submarine that kept a watch on the Lax for almost three weeks. They show an unusual feature about the crew."

Pitt ignored him, and looked up at Sandecker evenly and steadily. "The truth comes out at last. The Lax was found by the search fleet and then tailed until it burned."

88

Sandecker shrugged. "Mr. Kippmann took the trouble to notify me of that interesting little fact only last night." The tight grin on his griffineke features hardly indicated friendliness toward Kippmann.

"Reproach us if you will," Kippmann said seriously, "but it was vital that you both were kept on the sidelines as much as possible. If Kelly or Rondheim or Particularly Hunnewell had smelled your connection with us, our whole operation would have bombed." He stared at Pitt, his voice low. "Major, you were simply to act as pilot for Hunnewell while he inspected the Lax. You then were to fly him to Reykjavik where we would have again taken over our observation of his movements."

"It didn't quite work out that way, did it?"

"We underestimated the other side," Kippmann said candidly.

Pitt inhaled on a cigarette and idly watched the smoke curl toward the ceilng. "You haven't explained how the Lax came to be in the iceberg. Nor have you shed any light on what happened to the pirate crew, or given a hint as to how Fyrie and his crew and scientists could disappear for over a year and then suddenly hove their charred bodies turn up on the ship again."

"The answer to both questions is simple," Kippmann said. "Fyrie's crew never left the ship."

Sandecker took his hands from behind his head and slowly leaned forward, placing them palms down on the desk in front of him. His eyes were rock-hard. "Matajic reported a crew of Arabs, not fair-haired Scandinavians."

"That's true," Kippmann agreed. "I think if you gentlemen will oblige me by glancing at these photographs, you'll see what I mean about the crew."

He passed the prints to Sandecker and extra copies to Pitt. He then sat down in a chair and lit a cigarette after inserting it in a long holder. Kippmann was totally relaxed. Pitt -was beginning to think the man would have yawned if he'd been stabbed in the crotch.

"Please note photo number one," Kippmann said.