Iceberg

The guard jerked alive as if he had been kicked, the stu

Pitt leaped aboard and disappeared below. In a minute he was back on the pier.

"No, no, this won't do at all. Too mundane, too ostentatious. To create properly I must have a creative atmosphere." He looked accross the pier. "There, how about that one?"

Before the guard could reply, Pitt trotted the width of the pier and dropped to the deck of a forty-foot fishing boat. He explored it briefly, then popped his head through a hatchway.

"This is perfect. It has character, a crude uniqueness. We'll take this one."

The guard hesitated for a moment. Finally, with that twitch of the shoulders that indicated a shrug, he nodded and left them, walking along the pier back to the entrance, throwing a backward look at Pitt every so often and shaking his head.

When he was out of earshot. Tidi said, "Why this old dirty tub? Why not that nice yacht?"

"Dirk knows what he's doing." Sandecker set the rod and tackle box down on the worn deck planking and looked at Pitt. "Does it have a fathometer?"

"A Fleming six-ten, the top of the line. Extrasensitive frequencies for detecting fish at different depths."

Pitt motioned down a narrow companionway. "This boat was a lucky choice. Let me show you the engine room, Admiral."

"You mean we ignored that beautiful Chris Craft simply because it doesn't have a fathometer?" Tidi asked disappointingly.

"That's right," Pitt answered. "A fathometer is our only hope of finding the black plane."

Pitt turned and led Sandecker through the companionway down into the engine room. The stale air and the dank smell of oil and bilge immediately filled their nostrils, making them gasp at the drastic change from the diamond-pure atmosphere above. There was another odor. Sandecker looked at Pitt questioningly.

"Gas fumes?"

Pitt nodded. "Take a look at the engines."

A diesel engine is the most efficient means of propelling a small boat, particularly a fishing boat. Heavy, low revolutions-per-minute, slow, but cheap to run and reliable, the diesel is used in nearly every workboat on the sea that doesn't rely on sails for power, that is, except this boat. Sitting side by side, their propeller shafts vanishing into the bilge, a pair of Sterling 420 h.p. gas-fed engines gleamed in the dim light of the engine room like sleeping giants awaiting the starting switch to goad them into thunderous action' "What in hell would a scow like this be doing with all this power?" Sandecker queried quietly.

"Unless I miss my guess," Pitt murmured, "the guard goofed."

"Meaning?"

"On a shelf in the main cabin I found a pe

Pitt ran a hand over one of the Sterling's intake manifolds; it was clean enough to pass a naval inspection.

"This boat belongs to Rondheim, not Fyrie."

Sandecker thought for a moment. "Miss Fyrie instructed us to see her dockmaster. For some unknown reason he was absent, and the pier was left in charge of that grizzled character with the tobacco-stained mustache. It makes one wonder if we weren't set up."

"I don't think so," Pitt said. "Rondheim will undoubtedly keep a tight eye on us, but we've given him no cause to be suspicious of our actions-not yet, at any rate. The guard made an honest mistake. Without special instructions he probably figured we were given permission to select any boat on the pier, so he quite naturally showed us the best of the lot first. There was nothing in the script that said we would pick this little gem."

"What is it doing here? Rondheim surely can't be hard up for dock space."

"Who cares," Pitt said, a wide grin stretching his features. "As long as the keys are in the ignition, I suggest we take it and run before the guard changes his mind." The admiral needed no persuasion. When it came to indulging in devious games to achieve-in his mind-an honest purpose, he was sneaky to a fault.

Squaring his battered hat, he lost no time in issuing the first order of his new command.

"Cast off the lines, Major. I'm anxious to see what these Sterlings can do."

Precisely one minute later, the guard came ru

The boat was named The Grimsi, and her tiny squared wheelhouse, perched just five feet from the stern, made her look as though she rode in the opposite direction than her builder had intended when he laid her keel. She was a very old boat-as old as the antique compass mounted beside the helm. Her mahogany deck planks were worn smooth, but still lay strong and true, and smelled strongly of the sea. At the pier she had looked an old ungainly bathtub from her broadbeamed, stubby shape, but when the mighty Sterlings mumbled through their exhaust, her bow lifted from the water like a sea gull soaring into the wind. She seemed to delight in being carried along without effort or trouble in a buoyant sort of way.

Sandecker eased the throttles back a notch above idle and took The Grimsi on a slow, leisurely tour of Reykjavik harbor. The admiral might have been standing on the bridge of a battle cruiser from the regulation smile on his face. He was back in his element, and he was enjoying every minute of it. To an interested observer his passengers looked like ordinary tourists on a chartered cruise-Tidi su

Then, after an animated conversation with the bait fishermen, they cast off and headed toward the sea.

As soon as they rounded a rocky point and lost sight of the harbor, Sandecker eased open the throttles and slowly pushed The Grimsi to 30 knots. it was a strange sight indeed to see the ungainly hull skipping over the waves like a Gold Cup hydroplane. The waves began to melt together as The Grimsi increased speed and lost them behind her swirling wake. Pitt found a chart of the coast and laid it on a small shelf beside Sandecker.

"It's right about here." Pitt tapped a spot on the map with a pencil. "Twenty miles southeast of Keflavik."

Sandecker nodded. "An hour and a half, no more. Not the way she moves. Take a look. The throttles are still a good two inches from their stops."

"The weather looks perfect. I hope it holds."

"No clouds in any direction. It's usually calm around the southern end of Iceland this time of year. The worst we can look forward to is meeting a bit of fog. It usually rolls in during the late afternoon."

Pitt sat down, propped his feet on the doorway and gazed out at the rocky coastline. "At least we don't have to worry about fuel."

"What do the gauges read?"

"About two-thirds full."

Sandecker's mind clicked like a Burroughs adding machine. "Ample for our purpose. No reason to conserve, particularly since Rondheim is footing the bill."

With a smug, satisfied expression on his face, he jammed the throttles against their stops.

The Grimsi sat down on her stern and took off across the blue wrinkled sea, her bow splitting two giant sheets of spray. Sandecker's timing left something to be desired. Tidi was cautiously climbing the ladder from the galley, balancing a tray laden with three cups of coffee when the admiral opened up the Sterlings. The sudden acceleration caught her totally off guard and the tray flew into the air and she vanished into the galley as though jerked backward by an invisible hand. Neither Pitt nor Sandecker caught the vaudevillian fall.