Iceberg (Dirk Pitt 3)

Koski, followed by the mammoth form of Dover, climbed down the ladder and faced Pitt and Hunnewell.

19

"Okay, gentlemen, let's have it."

"You've seen most of the ship?" Pitt asked.

Koski nodded. "Enough. Eighteen years of rescue C, at sea, and I've never seen a vessel gutted as bad as this one."

"Do you recognize it?"

"Impossible. What's left to recognize? It was a pleasure craft, a yacht. That much is certain. Beyond that you can flip a coin."

Koski looked at Pitt, a faint puzzlement in his eyes. "I'm the one who expects answers. What are you leading up to?"

"The Lax. Ever hear of it?"

Koski nodded. "The Lax disappeared over a year ago with all hands, including its owner, the Icelandic mining magnate-" he hesitated, recalling, "Fyrie, Kristjan Fyrie. Christ, half the Coast Guard searched for months. Didn't find a sign. So what about the Lax?"

"You're standing on it," Pitt said slowly, letting his words sink in. He aimed his flashlight at the deck.

"And this cremated mess is all that's left of Kristjan Fyrie."

Koski's eyes widened and the color drained from his face. He took a step forward and stared down at the thing in the yellow circle of light. "Good God, are you sure?"

"Burned beyond recognition is a gross understatement, but Dr. Hunnewell is ninety percent certain of Fyrie's personal effects."

"Yes, the rings. I overheard."

"Not much, perhaps, but considerably more than we could find on the other bodies."

"I've never seen anything like this," Koski said in wonder. "It can't be. A ship this size couldn't vanish without a trace for nearly a year and then pop up burned to a cinder in the middle of an iceberg."

"It would seem that it did just that," Hunnewell said.

"Sorry, Dog" Koski said, staring into Hunnewell's eyes. "Though I'm the first to admit that I'm not in your league when it comes to the science of ice formations, I've kicked around the North Atlantic long enough to know that an iceberg might get sidetracked by currents, drifting in circles, or scrape along the Newfoundland Coast for up to three years-ample time for the Lax, by some remote chance, to become trapped and entombed. But, if you'll forgive the word play, the theory doesn't hold water."

"You're quite correct, Commander," Hunnewell said. "The chances are extremely remote for such an occurrence, but nonetheless conceivable. As you know, a fire-gutted ship takes days to cool. If a current or wind pushed and held the hull against the iceberg, it would only take forty-eight hours or less before this entire ship imbedded itself under the berg's mantle.

You can achieve the same situation by holding a red-hot poker against an ice block. The poker will melt its way into the block until it cools. Then the ice, if refrozen around the metal, locks it tight."

"Okay, Dog you score on that one. However, there's one important factor no one has considered."

"Which is?" Pitt prompted.

"The final course of the Lax," Koski said firmly.

"Nothing strange about that," Pitt offered. "It was in all the newspapers. Fyrie with his crew a

nd passengers left Reykjavik on the morning of April tenth of last year and laid a direct heading for New York. He was last sighted by a Standard Oil tanker six hundred miles off Cape Farewell, Greenland. After that, nothing more was seen or heard of the Lax again."

"That's fine as far as it goes." Koski pulled his coat collar around his ears and fought to keep his teeth from chattering.

"Except the sighting took place -near the fiftieth parallel-too far south of the iceberg limit."

"I would like to remind you, Commander," Hunnewell said, raising an intimidating eyebrow, "that your own Coast Guard has logged as many as fifteen hundred bergs in one year below the forty-eighth parallel."

"And I'd like to remind you, Dog" Koski persisted, "that during the year in question the number of iceberg sightings below the forty-eighth parallel came to zero."