Night Probe! (Dirk Pitt 6)

"She saw something that knocked hell out of her."

"On the monitors?"

"Just before transmission was cut off," Hoker explained. "Take a look while I replay the videotape." Pitt watched. Gunn came and stood beside him, staring. The darkened screens slowly lightened and once again they saw the RSV break into sunlight. The glare lessened and then flashed in several sequences.

"This is when Baby was lifted from the water," observed Pitt. "Yes," Hoker agreed. "Now catch the next action."

A series of distortion lines swept horizontally across the monitors, and then abruptly the left one blinked out.

"The clumsy nerds," Hoker complained bitterly. "They didn't know a delicate piece of gear when they saw it. They dropped Baby on its port camera and broke the color pickup tube."

At that moment the shroud was pulled back, coming into focus. The material could now be clearly seen for what it was.

"Plastic," exclaimed Gunn. "A thin sheet of opaque plastic.

"That explains the protoplasm," said Pitt. "And there are your neighborhood spooks."

Two figures in rubber diving suits knelt down and appeared to study the RSV.

"A pity we can't see their faces under the face masks," said Gunn.

"You'll see one soon enough," said Hoker. "Watch."

A pair of legs clad in Wellington boots and denim pants walked into camera range. Their owner stopped behind the divers and bent down and peered into the camera lenses.

He wore a British-style commando sweater with leather patches over the shoulders and elbows. A knit stocking cap was set at a casual side angle; graying hair along the temples was brushed fastidiously above the ears. He seemed to be in his late fifties, Pitt figured, or perhaps middle sixties. He had the look about him of a man who might be older than he appeared.

The face possessed a cruel, selfassured quality, found in men who are familiar with hazard. The dark eyes had the detached interest of a sniper peering through a telescopic sight at his impending victim.

Suddenly there was a slight, discernible widening of the eyes and the intense expression turned to anger.

His mouth twisted with silent words and he spun quickly from view.

"I'm not a lip-reader," said Pitt, "but it looked as if he said 'You fools.' "

They remained, watching, as what looked like a canvas tarpaulin was thrown over the RSV and the monitors turned dark for the last time.

"That's all she wrote," said Hoker. "Contact was lost a minute later when they destroyed the transmission circuitry."

Heidi rose from the chair and moved forward as if she was in a trance. She pointed at the dead monitors, her lips quivering.

"I know him," she said, her voice barely audible. "The man in the picture . . . I know who he is."

Dr. Otis Coli inserted a du Maurier cigarette in a gold-tipped filter, clamped it between his dentures and lit it. Then he resumed poking through the open access panel into the electronic heart of the RSV.

"Damned clever, the Americans," he said, impressed with what he saw. "I've read scientific papers on it, but never seen one up close."

Coli, director of the Quebec Institute of Marine Engineering, had been recruited by Henri Villon. He was a gorilla of a man, barrel-chested, and had a rounded, heavy-browed face. His white hair passed his collar, and his mustache, beneath a thin, sloping nose, looked as if it had been clipped with sheep shears.

Brian Shaw stood beside Coli, his face clouded with concern. "What do you make of it?"

"An ingenious bit of technology," said Coli in the tone of a young man engrossed in a Playboy foldout.

"Visual data is translated and sent by ultrasonic sound waves to the mother ship where it is encoded and enhanced by computers. The resulting imagery is then transferred to videotape with rather amazing clarity."

"So what's the scam?" grunted Foss Gly. He perched boredly atop a rusty winch mounted on the blue fishing boat's foredeck.

Shaw fought to hold down his temper. "The scam, as you so apathetically put it, is that these cameras were transmitting pictures when you brought them on board. Not only have the people on the NUMA ship been alerted to the fact they're being watched, they also have our faces recorded on videotape."