Vixen 03

"I'm sorry to leave troubled you, Admiral. I must have gotten my signals mixed."

Pitt turned and began walking up the path back to the i

"Mr. Pitt!"

Pitt turned. "Yes?"

"Are you staying at the i

"Until tomorrow morning. Then I must be on my way."

The admiral nodded. When Pitt reached the pines bordering Anchorage House, he took another look toward the pond. Admiral Bass was calmly forking the lily pads onto t e bank, as if their brief conversation had simply been about crops and the weather.

32

Pitt enjoyed a leisurely di

The food was about as homemade as any Pitt had ever tasted. He ate two helpings each of the fried chicken, brandied carrots, baked corn, and sweet potatoes, and barely had room for the three-inch-thick wedge of apple pie.

Heidi moved about the tables, serving coffee and making small talk with the guests. Pitt noted that most were of socialsecurity age. Younger couples, he mused, probably found the peaceful serenity of a country i

The moon had arched overhead nearly twenty degrees when Heidi came out and wandered slowly in his direction. She stood in back of him for a moment and then said, "There is no moon so bright as a Virginia moon."

"You won't get an argument from me," said Pitt.

"Did you enjoy your di

"I'm afraid my eyes were bigger than my stomach. I gorged myself. My compliments to your chef. His down-home cooking style is poetry to the palate."

Heidi's smile went from friendly to beautiful in the glow of the moon. "She'll be happy to hear it."

Pitt made a helpless gesture. "A lifetime of chauvinistic tendencies is hard to suppress."

She settled her tightly packed bottom on the railing and faced him, her expression suddenly turning serious. "Tell me, Mr. Pitt, why did you come to Anchorage House?"

Pitt stopped rocking and stared squarely into her eyes. "Is this a survey to check the effectiveness of your advertising or are you just plain inquisitive?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry, but Walter seemed very upset when he returned from the pond this evening. I thought that maybe — "

"You think it was because of something I said," Pitt said, finishing for her.

"I don't know."

"Are you related to the admiral?"

It was the magic question, for she began talking about herself. She was a lieutenant commander in the Navy; she was assigned to the Norfolk Navy Yard; she had enlisted out of Wellesley College and had eleven years to go to retirement; her ex-husband had been a colonel in the Marines and had ordered her about like a recruit; she'd had a hysterectomy, so no children; no, she was not related to the admiral; she had met him when he was a guest lecturer at a Naval College seminar, and she came down to Anchorage House whenever she could sneak off from her duties; she made no bones about the fact that she and Bass had a MayDecember affair going. just when it was getting interesting, she stopped and peered at her watch.

"I'd better run along and see to the other guests." She smiled, and again that transformation. "If you get tired of just sitting, I suggest you take a stroll to the top of the rise beside the i

Her tone, it seemed to Pitt, was more one of command than of suggestion.

Heidi had been only half right. The view from the rise was not only lovely: it was breathtaking. The moon illuminated the entire valley and the streetlights of the town twinkled like a distant galaxy. Pitt had been standing there only a minute when he became aware of a presence behind him.

"Admiral Bass?" he inquired casually.

"Please raise your hands and do not turn around." Bass ordered brusquely.

Pitt did as he was told.

Bass did not make a full body search but instead slipped out Pitt's wallet and beamed a flashlight on its contents.

After a few moments he clicked off the light and returned the wallet to Pitt's pocket.

"You may lower your hands, Mr. Pitt, and turn around if you wish."

"Any reason for the melodramatics?" Pitt tilted his head at the revolver poised in Bass's left hand.

"It seems you've exhumed an excessive amount of information about a subject that belongs buried. I had to be certain of your identity."

"Then you're satisfied that I'm who I say I am?"

"Yes, I called your boss at NUMA. Jim Sandecker served under my command in the Pacific during World War Two. He gave me an impressive list of your credentials. He also wanted to know what you were doing in Virginia when you were supposed to be on a salvage tender off the coast of Georgia."

"I've not made Admiral Sandecker privy to my findings."

"Which, as you claimed earlier, at the pond, were the remains of Vixen 03."

"She exists. Admiral. I've touched her."

Bass's eyes flashed with hostility. "You're not only bluffing, Mr. Pitt, but you're also lying. I demand to know why."

"My case is not built on lies," said Pitt evenly. "I have two other reputable witnesses and videotaped pictures as proof."

A look of incomprehension shadowed Bass's face. "Impossible! She disappeared over the ocean. We spent months searching for her and didn't find a trace."

"You looked in the wrong place, Admiral. Vixen 03 lies under a mountain lake in Colorado."

Bass's tough facade seemed to dissolve, and in the moonlight Pitt suddenly saw him as a tired, worn old man. The admiral lowered the pistol and swayed drunkenly toward a bench at the edge of the overlook. Pitt reached out a hand to steady him.

Bass nodded thanks and sank onto the bench. "I suppose it had to happen someday. I wasn't fool enough to think the secret could last forever." He looked up and clutched Pitt's arm. "The cargo. What of the cargo?"

"The canisters have broken their moorings, but otherwise they seemed reasonably intact."

"Thank God for that, at least," sighed Bass. "Colorado, you say. The Rocky Mountains. So Major Vylander and his crew never ma e it out of the state."

"The flight originated in Colorado?" asked Pitt.

"Buckley Field was Vixen 03's point of origin." He held his head in his hands. "What went wrong so early? They must have gone down shortly after takeoff."

"It looks as though they had mechanical problems and tried to ditch in the only open space they could find. It being winter, the lake was frozen over, and they were fooled into thinking they were coming down in a field. The weight of the aircraft then broke through the ice and sank in a deep section of the lake, deep enough so that after the ice melted in the spring, her outline could not be distinguished from the air."

"And all this time we thought…" Bass's voice trailed off and he sat there in silence. Finally he said softly, "Those canisters must be retrieved."