The Mediterranean Caper (5 page)

A knot formed in Pitt's stomach. It was the third missing piece that bothered him the most. Something in his logical mind would not jell. He looked over at the tire tracks again. They were too large for an ordinary car. They could only come from a more massive vehicle, say, a truck. His eyes narrowed, and his brain began to churn. He wouldn't have heard Teri drive up because he was asleep. And the truck had probably coasted to a stop, noiselessly.

Pitt's intent gaze turned from the diamond tread tire tracks to the beach. The tide was creeping over the sand and erasing all signs of recent human activity. He gauged the distance from the road to the beach and began to term the problem in the manner of a fifth grade schoolteacher.

If a truck is at point A, and two people are on the beach 250 feet away at point B, why wouldn't the two people on the beach hear the truck start its engine in the silence of early morning?

The answer eluded him, so Pitt shrugged and gave up. He shook out the towel and, wrapping it around his neck, walked back along the deserted road toward the main gate, whistling, “It's a Long Road to Tipperary.”

The young blond
crewman cast off the lines, and the little twenty-six-foot double-ended whaleboat surged sluggishly away from the makeshift dock near Brady Field, setting a course over the blue carpet of water toward the
First Attempt
. The throbbing four-cylinder Buda engine pushed the sturdy boat along at eight knots and cast the familiar nautical stink of diesel fumes over the deck. It was a few minutes to nine now, and the sun was hotter and even a slight breeze from the sea offered no relief.

Pitt stood and watched the shore recede until the dock became a dirty speck on the surf line. Then he hoisted his one hundred and ninety pounds onto the high tubular railing that circled the stern and sat with his buttocks hanging precariously over the boat's frothing white wake. From his unusual position he could feel the pulsations from the shaft, and by looking straight down, he could see the propeller drill its way through the water. The whaleboat was only a quarter of a mile from the
First Attempt
when Pitt noticed the young crewman at the helm eyeing him with a mild look of respect.

“Excuse me, sir, but you look like you've spent some time in a double-ender.” The blond crewman nodded at Pitt's seat on the railing. The young man had an academic air about him that implied scientific intelligence. Well tanned from the Aegean sun, he wore Bermuda shorts and nothing else except a long, sparse, yellow beard.

Pitt wrapped a hand around the stern light staff for support and groped in a breast pocket with his other hand for a cigarette. “I used to have one when I was in high school,” he said casually.

“You must have lived near the water,” said the young crewman.

“Newport Beach, California.”

“That's a great place. I used to drive up there all the time when I was taking post-graduate courses at Scripps in La Jolla.” The young crewman cracked a crooked smile. “Man oh man, was that ever a great place for girls. You must have had a ball growing up there.”

“I could think of worse places to go through puberty.”

As long as the young man was talking freely, Pitt switched the subject. “Tell me, what sort of trouble have you been having on the project?”

“Everything went fine for the first couple of weeks, but as soon as we found a promising location to investigate, things turned sour and we've had nothing but rotten luck since.”

“For instance?”

“Mostly equipment failure; broken cables, missing and damaged parts, generator breakdowns, you know, things like that.”

They were nearing the
First Attempt
now and the young crewman turned back to the helm and maneuvered the small boat alongside of the boarding ladder.

Pitt stood and looked up at the larger vessel, surveying its outward appearance. By maritime standards she was a small ship; eight hundred twenty tons, one hundred fifty-two feet in length overall. Her keel was originally laid on an oceangoing tug in the Dutch shipyards of Rotterdam before World War II. Immediately after the Germans invaded the lowlands, her crew slipped her away to England where she performed outstanding and meritorious service throughout the war, towing torpedoed and crippled ships into the British port of Liverpool under the noses of Nazi U-boats. After the end of European hostilities, her tired and battered hull was traded by the Dutch Government to the U.S. Navy, who promptly enlisted her in the mothball fleet at Olympia, Washington. There she sat for twenty-five long years, sleeping under a gray plastic cocoon. Then the newly formed National Underwater Marine Agency purchased her remains from the Navy and converted her to a modern oceanographic vessel, rechristening her the
First Attempt
.

Pitt squinted from the bright glare of the white paint, coating the ship from stem to stern staff. He climbed the boarding ladder and was greeted on the deck by an old friend, Commander Rudi Gunn, the skipper and project director of the ship.

“You look healthy,” said Gunn unsmilingly, “except for your bloodshot eyes.” He reached for a cigarette. Before he lit it, he offered one to Pitt, who shook his head and held up one in his hand.

“I hear you've got problems,” said Pitt.

Gunn's face turned grim. “You're damn right I do,” he snapped. “I didn't ask Admiral Sandecker to send you all the way from Washington just for fun and games.”

Pitt's eyebrows went up in surprise. This sudden harshness did not fit Gunn. Under normal circumstances the little commander was a warm and humorous person. “Take it easy, Rudi,” said Pitt softly. “Let's get out of the sun, and you can brief me on what this mess is all about.”

Gunn removed his horn-rimmed glasses and rubbed a wrinkled handkerchief across his forehead. “I'm sorry, Dirk, it's just that I've never seen so many things go wrong at one time. It's highly frustrating after all the planning that went into this project. I guess it's beginning to make me irritable as hell. Even the crew has noticeably avoided me the last three days.”

Pitt placed an arm on the shorter man's shoulders and grinned. “I promise not to avoid you even if you are a nasty little bastard.”

Gunn looked blank for a moment, and then a sense of relief seemed to flood his eyes, and he flung back his head and laughed. “Thank God you're here.” He gripped Pitt's arm tightly. “You may not solve any mysteries, but at least I'll feel a hell of a lot better just having you around.” He turned and pointed toward the bow. “Come along, my cabin is up forward.”

Pitt followed Gunn up a steep ladder to the next deck and into a small cabin that must have been designed by a closet-maker. The only comfort, and it was a large one, was a cool blast of air that emitted from an overhead ventilator.

He stood in front of the opening for a moment and soaked in the cool breeze. Then he straddled a chair and leaned his arms across the top of the backrest, waiting for Gunn to give the briefing.

Gunn closed the porthole and remained standing. “Before I begin, let me ask you what you know about our Aegean expedition.”

“I only heard that the
First Attempt
was researching the Mediterranean for zoological purposes.”

Gunn stared at him, shocked. “Didn't the admiral supply you with any detailed data concerning this project before you left Washington?”

Pitt lit another cigarette. “What makes you think that I came straight from the Capital?”

“I don't know,” Gunn said hesitantly. “I only assumed that you…”

Pitt stopped him with a grin. “I haven't been anywhere near the States in over four months.” He exhaled a puff of smoke toward the ventilator and watched the blue haze swirl into nothingness. “Sandecker's message to you simply stated that he was sending me directly to Thasos. He obviously neglected to mention where I was coming from and when I would arrive. Therefore, you expected me to come soaring out of the blue sky four days ago.”

“Again, I'm sorry,” Gunn said, shrugging. “You're right, of course. I figured two days at the most for that old tin duck of yours to fly from the Capital. When you finally flew into that fiasco at Brady Field yesterday you were already four days late by my schedule.”

“It couldn't be helped. Giordino and I were ordered to airlift supplies into an ice probe station, camped on an ice floe north of Spitzbergen. Right after we landed, a blizzard hit and grounded us for over seventy-two hours.”

Gunn laughed. “You certainly flew from one extreme in temperature to another.”

Pitt didn't answer, but merely smiled.

Gunn pulled open the top drawer of a small compact desk and handed Pitt a large manilla envelope that contained several drawings of a strange looking fish. “You ever see anything like this before?”

Pitt looked down at the drawings. Most of them were different artists' conceptions of the same fish, and yet each varied in details. The first was an ancient Greek illustration on the side of a vase. Another had obviously been part of a Roman fresco. He noted that two of them were more modern stylized drawings, depicting the fish in a series of movements. The last was a photograph of a fossil imbedded in sandstone. Pitt looked up at Gunn questioningly.

Gunn handed him a magnifying glass. “Here, take a closer look through this.”

Pitt adjusted the height of the thick glass and scrutinized each picture. At first glance the fish looked similar in size and shape to the Bluefin Tuna, but on closer inspection, the bottom pelvic fins took on the appearance of small jointed webbed feet. There were two more identical limbs located just in front of the dorsal fin.

He whistled softly. “This is a weird specimen, Rudi. What do you call it?”

“I can't pronounce the Latin name, but the scientists aboard the
First Attempt
have affectionately nicknamed it the
Teaser
.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, by every law of nature that fish should have become extinct over two hundred million years ago. But as you can see by the drawings men still claim they have seen it. Every fifty or sixty years there's a rash of sightings, but unfortunately for science, a
Teaser
has yet to be caught.” Gunn glanced at Pitt and looked away again. “If there is such a fish, it must bear a charmed life. There are literally hundreds of accounts of fishermen and scientists who look you in the eye with a straight face and say they had a
Teaser
on a hook or in a net, but before the fish could be hauled on board it escaped. Every zoologist in the world would give his left testicle to obtain a live, or even dead
Teaser
.”

Pitt mashed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “What makes this particular fish so important?”

Gunn held up the drawings. “Notice that the artists couldn't agree on the outer layer of skin. They illustrate tiny scales, smooth porpoise-like skin, and one even brushed in a kind of furry hide like a sea lion. Now, if you take the possibility of hairy skin, together with the limb extensions, it may be we have the dim beginnings of the first mammal.”

“True, but if the skin were smooth you'd have nothing more than an early reptile. The earth was covered with them back in those days.”

Gunn's eyes mirrored a confident look. “The next point to consider is that the
Teasers
lived in warm shallow water, and every recorded sighting took place no more than three miles from shore and they all occurred right here in the eastern Mediterranean where the average surface temperature seldom drops below sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit.”

“So what does that prove?” asked Pitt.

“Nothing solid, but since primitive mammal life survives better in milder climates, it lends a little support to the possibility that they might have survived to the present.”

Pitt stared at Gunn thoughtfully. “I'm sorry, Rudi. You still haven't sold me.”

“I knew you were a hardhead,” said Gunn. “That's why I left the most interesting part till last.” He paused and removed his glasses and rubbed the lenses with a piece of Kleenex. Then he replaced the black rims over his hawkish nose. He continued speaking as if lost in a dream. “During the Triassic Period in geological time, and before the Himalayas and the Alps rose, a great sea swept over what is now Tibet and India. It also extended over Central Europe and ended in the North Sea. Geologists call this once-great body of water the Sea of Tethys. All that remains of it today is the Black, the Caspian and the Mediterranean Seas.”

“You'll have to pardon my ignorance of geological time eras,” Pitt interrupted, “but when did the Triassic Period take place?”

“Between one hundred eighty and two hundred thirty million years ago,” replied Gunn. “During this time an important evolutionary advance occurred in the vertebrate animals as the reptiles demonstrated a great leap over their more primitive ancestors. Some of the marine reptiles attained a length of twenty-three feet and were very tough customers. The most noteworthy event was the introduction of the first true dinosaurs, who even learned to walk on their hind legs and use their tails for a kind of cane.”

Pitt leaned back and stretched his legs. “I thought that the era of the dinosaurs occurred much later.”

Gunn laughed. “You've seen too many old movies. You're undoubtedly thinking of the behemoths that were always portrayed in the early science fiction films, menacing a tribe of hairy cavemen. They never failed to have a forty-ton Brontosaurus or a ferocious Tyrannosaurus or a flying Pteranodon chasing a half-nude, big-titted heroine through a primeval jungle. Actually these more commonly known dinosaurs roamed the earth and became extinct sixty million years before man appeared.”

“Where does your freak fish fit into the picture?”

“Imagine, if you will, a three-foot
Teaser
fish who lived, cavorted, made love and finally died somewhere in the Sea of Tethys. Nothing and no one took notice as this obscure creature's body slowly sank to the red mud of the seabed. The unmarked grave was covered over with sediments which hardened into sandstone and left a thin film of carbon. It was this trace of carbon that etched and outlined the
Teaser
's tissue and bone structure into the surrounding strata. The years passed and turned into millenniums. And the millenniums became eons, until one warm spring day, two hundred million years later, a farmer in the Austrian town of Neunkirchen struck his plow against a hard surface. And presto, our
Teaser
fish, though now a near perfect fossilized version, once again returned to the light.” Gunn hesitated and ran his hand through a head of thinning hair. His face looked drawn and tired, but his eyes burned with excitement as he spoke of the
Teaser
. “One vital element you must remember; when the
Teaser
died there were no birds and bees, no hair-bearing mammals, no delicate butterflies, even flowers had not yet appeared on the earth.”