“What can we do tomorrow if they’re onto us?”
“We’ll make a roundabout drive to Portmagee and watch for a tail. On the small roads around here, it shouldn’t be too hard to tell if we’re being followed.”
Having eaten their salad of burrata with tomatoes finished with pesto sauce, they finished their dinner of pappardelle with lamb ragu, then made their way back to the hotel. Dirk was preparing for bed when someone knocked at his door. Expecting Summer, he opened the door and found Riki standing there with a travel bag over her shoulder.
“I’m told the hotel is full,” she said with a seductive smile. “Any chance you have room for a stray boarder?”
47
Pitt quietly dressed in black clothes and waited in his darkened room until midnight. He kissed his sleeping wife on the cheek and slipped out the window, lowering himself from the sill and dropping to a rocky knoll. He moved away from the illuminated manor and made his way up to the driveway. Crossing the road, he threaded his way through the trees, working his way, unseen, past the guard at the front gate.
He found the Mini where he’d parked it, still within view of the manor. Pitt put the transmission in neutral and pushed the car onto the road. With the aid of a downhill grade, he was able to shove the car around a curve and out of the guard’s sight. Pitt jumped in and started the car, driving slowly toward Drumnadrochit, using only the parking lights. Once he’d put a mile between himself and the manor, he flicked on the headlights and increased speed.
He’d traveled only a short distance when a set of headlights appeared in the rearview mirror. Pitt maintained a healthy speed until he approached Urquhart Castle. Then he braked hard, pulled into the visitor parking lot, and turned off the Mini’s lights. With an open view down the road, he watched as the car following him approached. A quarter of a mile away, it stopped and sat idling in the road.
Pitt flicked on his lights and hopped out. He stepped to the back, crouched, and ran his hands beneath the rear bumper. At the far end, his fingers touched a small metal box, attached with a magnet.
“Gotcha,” he said, examining the GPS tracking device. He debated about tossing it into the lake, but climbed back in the car and set it on the passenger seat. He pulled out of the lot and zipped down the road, not stopping until he entered Inverness a few minutes later. He didn’t have to look behind to know the other car was still tailing him.
Inverness was quiet at that hour, save for a handful of spirited pubs near the center of town. Pitt drove randomly through the city, searching for a decoy. One presented itself in the form of a late-night street sweeper. Pitt circled around, approached the vehicle a block ahead of its oncoming path, then turned down an alley. He parked the Mini behind a dumpster, grabbed the tracking device, and walked to the street.
He spotted a bike rack near the curb and stood next to it as if fumbling for a lock. As the street sweeper churned alongside, he slapped the magnetized tracking device to its back. Then Pitt returned up the alley and crouched behind the trash container as the sweeper moved to the end of the block. He had to wait only a minute before the black BMW crept by, a man and a woman visible inside.
Once the car had passed, Pitt got into the Mini and drove back down the alley. He turned left and wound his way out of town. Once he found Dores Road, he traveled south, leaving his pursuers be
hind.
Pitt drove the shoreline road to the small village of Foyers, where he turned at the old church. He wheeled around the building and again parked behind its high stone walls. Near the water he spotted an empty flatbed truck with a built-in crane. Pitt made his way down the hill, passed the truck, and stepped onto the small darkened dock. The glow of a lit cigar at the far end signaled he wasn’t alone.
Pitt stepped along the creaking dock and found Al Giordino lying on a large coil of rope, puffing a cigar, and gazing at a clear patch of night sky.
“Nice heavens here,” he said. “I’ve spotted Venus, Mars, and a shooting star.”
“Did you make a wish?”
“I wished I was viewing the Southern Cross from a Tahitian beach.” He ground out the cigar and rose to his feet. Like Pitt, he wore dark clothes.
“Any problem with the Nymph?”
“Not a one,” Giordino said. “Rudi tested her. I grabbed her in Liverpool and transported her to the dock, here.” He waved an arm around. “Finding this place in the dark was the hardest challenge.”
Pitt had to search the dockside waters to spot the turquoise submersible tied up a few yards away. Lying low in the water, the tiny two-man craft was barely visible.
“Her batteries are fully charged,” Giordino said. “I take it we don’t have an official invite?”
“Not exactly.” Pitt relayed his suspicions about the lab.
“Rudi mentioned a potential global plague. He sounded pretty panicked. You think this is the source?”
“Could be.” Pitt climbed onto the submersible. “The place is heavily secured by land. I figured the best way to take a closer look was by water.”
Giordino nodded. “With the Sea Nymph we’ve got both stealth and the ability to see through black water.” He cast off the mooring lines, followed Pitt inside, and sealed the hatch.
Pitt took the pilot’s seat, ran through a quick safety check, then engaged the thrusters and propelled the submersible to the center of the lake. He submerged the vessel just beneath the surface, allowing only a thin masthead near the stern to rise above the water.
It contained both a rotating video camera and a GPS receiver. Linked to a pair of screens on the center console, it allowed Pitt and Giordino to view the lake’s surface alongside a digital map that relayed their exact position. As Pitt adjusted the light level on the image, Giordino activated a set of multibeam sonar units at each corner of the submersible’s base frame.
The Sea Nymph was designed for deepwater survey projects in restricted environments, so it was compact with high maneuverability. The combined sonars allowed for a three-hundred-sixty-degree acoustic view, which complemented mineral, sediment, and water sensing devices.