Iceberg

Pitt ignored Koski's testy remark "It's all too perfect. The radio operator in the radio room, two engineers in the engine room, the captain and a mate on the bridge, the passengers in either their staterooms or salon, even a cook in the galley, everybody exactly where he should be. You tell me, Commander; you're the expert. What in hell kind of a fire would sweep through the entire ship, roasting everyone to a crisp without their making the slightest attempt at selfpreservation?"

Koski tugged at an ear thoughtfully. "No hoses are scattered in the passageways. It's apparent no one tried to save the ship."

"The nearest body to the fire extinguisher lies twenty feet away. The crew went against all laws of human nature if they decided at the last minute to run and die at their routine duty stations. I can't imagine a cook who perferred dying in his galley to saving his life."

"That still proves nothing. Panic could have-"

"What does it take to convince you, Commander-a belt in the bicuspids with a baseball bat?

Explain the radio operator. He died at his set, yet it's a known fact that a Mayday signal was never received from the Lax or any'other ship in the North Atlantic at the time. Seems a bit odd that he couldn't have gotten off at least three or four words of a distress call."

"Keep going," Koski said quietly. His piercing eyes had an interested glint.

Pitt lit a cigarette and blew a long cloud of blue smoke into the refrigerated air, and he seemed to deliberate for a moment. "Let's talk about the condition of the derelict. You said it, Commander, you've never seen a ship gutted as badly as this one. Why? It was carrying no explosives or flammable cargo, and we can rule out the fuel tanks-they caused the blaze to spread, yes, but not to this degree on the opposite end of the ship. Why would every square inch burn with such a high intensity? The hull and superstructure are steel. And besides hoses and extinguishers, the Lax had a sprinkler system." He paused and pointed at two misshapen metal fixtures hanging from the ceiling. "A fire at sea usually starts at one location, the engine room, or a cargo hold, or a storage area, and then spreads from compartment to compartment, taking hours and sometimes days to fully consume a ship. I'll bet you any amount you care to cover that a fire investigator would scratch his head and cross this one off as a flash fire, one that totaled out the entire ship within a matter Of minutes, setting a new record, ignited by causes or persons unknown."

"What do you have in mind for the cause?"

Pitt said, "A flamethrower."

There was a minute of appalled silence.

"Do you realize what you're suggesting?"

"You're damned right I do," Pitt said. "Right down to the violent blast of searing flame, the hideous swish of the jets, the terrible smoke from melted flesh.

"Like it or not, a flamethrower is the logical answer."

They were all listening now with horrified interest.

Hu

"It's outlandish, unthinkable," Koski murmured.

"This entire setup is outlandish," Pitt said evenly.

Hu

"They all could have been shot," Dover ventured.

"I studied several of the remains." Pitt shook his head. "There were no signs of bullets or shattered bones."

"And if he waited until they were all knocked out by the POison-I prefer to they died outrightscattered them around the ship, and then went from compartment to compartment with a flame thrower.

Koski left the surmise unplumbed. "But what then? Where did the killer go from there?"

"Before attempting to answer that one," Hu

He obviously wasn't one of the passengers or crew. -ne Lax sailed with fifteen men, and it burned with fifteen men. Logic dictates that this was the work of a team who boarded from another ship."

"Won't work," said Koski- "Any boarding of one ship by another requires some sort of radio contact.

Even if the Lax had picked up survivors from a phony shipwreck, the captain would have immediately reported it." Koski suddenly smiled. "As I recall, Fyrie's last message asked for the reservation of a penthouse suite at the Statler-Hilton in New York."

"Poor bastard," Dover said slowly. "If money and success ends like this, who needs it?" He looked at the thing on the deck again and quickly turned away. "God, what kind of maniac could murder fifteen humans at a sitting? Methodically poison fifteen men and then calmly cremate them with a flamethrower?"

"The same maniac who blows up airliners for insurance money," said Pitt. "One who can kill another human with the same lack of shattering guilt you'd experience after swatting a fly. The motive here was obviously gain. Fyrie and his people made a discovery that was extremely valuable. The United States wanted it, Russia wanted it, but a dark horse got away with it."

"Was it worth all this?" Hu

"It was to the sixteenth man." Pitt stared down at the grisly remains on the deck. "The unrecorded intruder who became the death of the party."

Chapter 5

Iceland, the land of frost and fire, rugged glaciers and smoldering volcanoes, an island prism of lava-bed reds, rolling tundra greens, and placid lake blues stretched under the rich gold glow of the midnight sun. Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, bounded by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream in the south and by the frigid polar sea to the north, Iceland rests midway as the crow flies between New York and Moscow. A strange island of kaleidoscopic scenes far less cold than its name suggests; the average temperature in the cold month of January rarely rises above that of the New England coast of the United States. To someone seeing it for the first time, Iceland seems indeed an unequaled phenomenon of beauty.

Pitt watched the jagged snow-packed peaks of the island grow on the horizon and the flashing water below the Ulysses turn from the deep blue of the great ocean depths to the rich green of the inshore surf. Then he altered the controls, and the helicopter dipped neatly on a ninety-degree angle and a parallel course along the steep lava cliffs that burst from the sea below. They passed over a tiny fishing village, nestled on a barron circle bay, its roofs painted in a checkered myriad of tile reds and pastel greens; an outpost at the gateway of the Arctic Circle.

"What time is it?" Hu

"Ten minutes past four in the morning," Pitt replied. "God, to look at the sun, you'd think it was four in the afternoon." Hu

"Keep your eyes propped open, it won't be long now."

"How far to Reykjavik?"

"Another half hour." Pitt paused to make a visual check of the instruments. "I could have cut north sooner, but I wanted to sightsee the coastline."