Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

Giordino went to his condo in Alexandria to clean up and call a bevy of his girlfriends to let them know he was back in circulation. Pitt postponed the comforts of home and took a NUMA jeep to the NUMA headquarters on the east hill overlooking the Potomac River. He parked the jeep in the underground parking lot and took the elevator up to the tenth floor, the domain of Hiram Yaeger, the agency's computer genius, who headed up a vast network. Yaeger's library contained every known scientific fact or historical event about the oceans since recorded history, and then some.

Yaeger came out of Silicon Valley and had been with NUMA almost fifteen years. He looked like an old hippie, with his graying hair tied in a ponytail. His standard uniform for the day was a pair of Levi's, a Levi jacket and cowboy boots. Nobody knew it to look at him, but he lived in an elegantly designed house in a fashionable residential section of Maryland. He drove a BMW 740il, and his daughters were honor students and equestrian trophy-winners. He'd also created and designed a technically advanced computer named Max that was nearly human. He'd programmed photos of his wife into the holographic image that appeared when he talked to it.

Yaeger was studying the latest results sent from a NUMA expedition off Japan that was drilling into the sea floor in a search of life under the silt in the fractured rock, when Pitt walked into his sanctum sanctorum.

He looked up, then stood and smiled as he extended his hand. "Well, well, the scourge of the dismal deep is home again." He was taken aback at Pitt's appearance. The NUMA special projects director looked like a lost soul off the street. His shorts and flowered shirt were ratty, and he was wearing slippers over heavily bandaged feet. Despite several hours of sleep on the airplanes, his eyes looked tired and washed out. His face had over a week's growth of scraggly beard.

This was clearly a man who had seen hard times. "For the man of the hour, you look like second-class roadkill."

Pitt shook Yaeger's hand. "I came directly from the airport just to harass you."

"I don't doubt it for a moment." He looked into Pitt's eyes with pure admiration. "I read the report about the incredible rescue performed by you and the Deep Encounter's, crew, followed up by your fight with the pirates. How do you become involved in so much havoc?"

"It finds me," said Pitt, throwing up his hands in a modest gesture. "Seriously, the lion's share of the credit goes to the entire complement of the research ship, who worked like fiends in saving the passengers. And Giordino did most of the work in rescuing the crew of the survey ship."

Yaeger well knew Pitt's aversion to words of praise and compliments. The guy was too self-conscious for his own good, Yaeger thought. He skipped over any more talk of the recent events and motioned for Pitt to sit down.

"Have you seen the admiral yet? He has about fifty media interviews lined up for you."

"I'm not ready to face the world just yet. I'll see him in the morning."

"What brings you to my world of electronic manipulation?"

Pitt laid Egan's leather case on Yaeger's desk and opened it. He unwrapped the object taken from the cruise liner and handed it to him. "I'd like to have this analyzed and identified."

Yaeger examined the odd-shaped thing for a moment, then nodded. "I'll have the chemistry lab do a number on it. Unless it has a complicated molecular structure, I should have an answer for you in two days. Anything else?"

Pitt passed over the videocassettes from the Abyss Navigator. "Computer-enhance and digitize these into three-dimensional images."

"Can do."

"One final thing before I head home." He laid a drawing on the desk. "Have you ever seen a company logo like this?"

Yaeger examined Pitt's crude drawing of the three-headed dog with a snake for a tail and the word Cerberus beneath. He stared at Pitt queerly. "You don't know what outfit this is?"

"No."

"Where did you see it?"

"It was covered up on the side of the pirates' work boat."

"An oil rig work boat."

"Yes, the same type," Pitt replied. "You're familiar with it?"

"I am," replied Yaeger sagely. "You're opening a real can of worms if you connect the Cerberus Corporation with the hijacking of the Deep Encounter."

"T

he Cerberus Corporation," Pitt said, uttering each syllable slowly. "How stupid of me. I should have known. The conglomerate owns most of the U.S. domestic oil fields, copper and iron mines, and its chemical division makes a thousand different products. It was the three-headed dog that threw me. I failed to make the connection."

"All very relevant when you think about it."

"Why a three-headed dog as a corporate logo?"

"Each head stands for a division of the company," answered Yaeger. "One for oil, one for mining and the other for the chemistry division."

"And the serpent's tail?" asked Pitt half facetiously. "Does that represent something dark and sinister?"