Atlantis Found (Dirk Pitt 15)

The apparition before his eyes was a sight he would take with him to the grave.

A woman, a beautiful woman, or what had once been a beautiful woman, stared at him through wide, sightless, blue-gray eyes. The arm and hand that had tapped his shoulder were still outstretched, as if beckoning. She wore the standard Fourth Empire black jumpsuit, but its material was shredded, as though a giant cat had raked its claws across it. Tentacles of flesh strayed from the openings and wafted under the gentle current. A finely contoured breast was exposed by the torn cloth, and one arm below the elbow was missing. There were insignia badges of rank on the shoulder straps, but Pitt did not recognize their significance.

The face was strangely serene and bled white by the cold water. Her features were enhanced by a mass of blond hair that rose and floated behind her head like a halo. Her cheekbones were high and her nose slightly bobbed. Her lips were loosely open, as if she were about to speak. Her blue-gray eyes seemed to be staring directly into his opaline green eyes less than a foot away. He was in the act of pushing her away as if she were a demon from the underworld, when he thought better of it and realized what he must do.

He rapidly groped through her pockets. It came as no surprise when he came up empty of identification. Next he took a thin cable from a reel that was hooked to his weight belt and tied one end around the corpse's booted foot. Then he ascended through the huge split in the U-boat's hull and headed for the dim aura of light 160 feet above.

After his decompression stops, Pitt surfaced precisely in the center of the jagged hole in the ice and swam over to the edge where Cox and several members of the crew had gathered around. Evie Tan stood nearby, shooting pictures as Pitt and his bulky dive gear were pulled from the water onto the ice by several strong arms.

"Find what you were looking for?" asked Cox.

"Nothing we can take to the bank," Pitt replied, after his mask was removed. He passed the line to Cox that led down into the water.

"Dare I ask what's on the other end?"

"I brought along a friend from the U-boat."

Evie's eyes stared at the obscure form rising from the depths. As it surfaced, the hair fanned out and the eyes seemed to be looking directly at the sun. "Oh Lord!" she gasped, her face turning as pale as the ice floe. "It's a woman!" So shocked was Evie, she neglected to shoot photos of the strange woman before she was wrapped in a plastic sheet and loaded onto a sled.

Pitt was helped off with his air tanks and gazed at the sled with the body that was being dragged by crewmen toward the Polar Storm. "Unless I miss my guess, she was an officer."

"A great pity," said Cox sorrowfully. "She must have been a very attractive lady."

"Even in death," Evie said, sadly, "there was an undeniable sophistication about her. If I'm any judge of character, she was a woman of quality."

"Maybe," said Pitt, "but what was she doing on a submarine that should have been destroyed five decades ago? Hopefully, she'll provide a piece of the puzzle if an identification can be made on her body."

"I'm going to follow this story to its conclusion," she said resolutely.

Pitt removed his dive fins and pulled on a pair of fur-lined boots. "You'd better check with the Navy and Admiral Sandecker. They may not want this affair leaked to the public just yet."

Evie started to voice a protest, but Pitt was already walking in the tracks of the sled back to the ship.

Pitt showered and shaved, soaking up the steam in the stall before relaxing with a small glass of Agavero Liqueur de Tequila from a bottle he'd purchased when he was on a dive trip to La Paz, Mexico.

Only when he had collected his thoughts in proper order did he call Sandecker in Washington.

"A body, you say," said Sandecker, after listening to Pitt's postmortem of the events following the assault on the ship. "A female officer of the U-boat."

"Yes, sir. At the first opportunity, I'll have her flown to Washington for examination and identification."

"Not easy, if she's a foreign national."

"I'm confident her history can be tracked down."

"Were any of the artifacts from the Madras damaged in the attack?" asked Sandecker.

"All safe and intact."

"You and everyone on board were lucky to escape without being killed."

"It was a near thing, Admiral. If Commander Cunningham hadn't shown up in the Tucson when he did, it would be the Polar Storm lying under an icy sea instead of the U-boat."

"Yaeger ran an investigation of the U-2015 through his data files. The sub was an enigma. The records indicate that she was lost off Denmark in early April of 1945. However, some historians believe she escaped the war intact and was scuttled by her crew in the Rio de la Plata between Argentina and Uruguay near the site where the Graf Spee was blown up, but nothing has ever been proven."

"So her ultimate fate was never established?"