Treasure

"We'll leave that job to the glacier."

"Can't be less than a million icebergs down there," said Gior dino bleakly. "Be easier picking a midget headwaiter out of a colony of penguins. This could take days."

Colonel Hollis was in the same mood. "There has to be one matching the Lady Flamborough's contour and dimensions.

Keep looking."

"Bear in mind," said Gu

The superstructure under the plastic shroud will give the ship a multipi

Dillenger's eye was enlarged four times its size through a magnifying glass. "The definition is amazing," he muttered.

"Be even better when we see what's on the other side of those clouds."

They were all grouped around a small table in the communications compartment of the Sounder, examining a huge color photo from the Casper. The aerial reco

The well-defined detail showed a sea of bergs broken away from the Larsen Ice Shelf on the eastern side of the peninsula, while hundreds more could be distinguished near glaciers off Graham Land to the west.

Pitts concentration was aimed elsewhere. He sat off to one side, studying a large nautical chart draped across his lap. Once in a while he looked up, listening, but did not contribute to the conversation.

Hollis turned to Captain Stewart, who stood next to the receiver, wearing a headset with attached microphone. "When can we expect the Casper's infrared photo?"

Stewart raised a hand as a signal not to interrupt. He pressed the headset against his ears, listening to a voice at CIA headquarters in Washington. Then he nodded toward Hollis. "The photo lab at Langley says they'll begin transmitting in half a minute."

Hollis paced the small compartment like a cat listening for the sound of a can opener. He paused and stared curiously at Pitt, who was unconcernedly measuring distances with a pair of dividers.

The Colonel had learned a great deal about the man from NUMA in the past few hours, not from Pitt himself, but from the men on the ship. They talked of him as though he were some kind of walking legend.

"Coming through now," a

"The technicians at the CIA photo lab have computer-converted the specially sensitive film to a thermogram," explained Stewart. "The differences of infrared radiation are revealed in various colors. Black represents the coldest temperatures. Dark blue, light blue, green, yellow and red form an increasingly warmer scale to white, the hottest."

"What reading can we expect from the Lady Flamborough?" asked Dillenger.

"Somewhere in the upper end between yellow and red."

"Closer to a dark blue," Pitt broke in.

Everyone turned and glared at him as though he'd sneezed during a chess match.

"That being the case she won't stand out," Hollis protested. "We'd never find her."

"Heat radiation from the engines and generators will show as plain as a golf ball on a green," Gu

"Not if the engineering room was shut down."

"You can't mean a dead ship?" Dillenger asked in disbelief.

Pitt nodded. He stared at the others with a passing casual gaze that was more disturbing than if he had thrown a wet blanket over the enthusiasm of a breakthrough.

He smiled and said, "What we have here is a persistent urge to underrate the coach on the other team."

The five men looked at each other and then back at Pitt, waiting for some kind of explanation.

Pitt laid his nautical charts aside and rose from his chair. He walked to the table, picked up the infrared photo and folded it in half, revealing only the lower tip of Chile.

"Now then," Pitt continued, "haven't you noticed that every time the ship went through a change of appearance or altered course, it came immediately after one of our satellites passed overhead."

"Another example of precise pla

"Okay, so the hijack leader knew the orbiting schedules and guessed when the satellite cameras were aimed in his direction," said Hollis. "So what?"

"So he covered all avenues and shut down power to prevent detection by infrared photography. And, most important, to keep the warmth from melting the thin layer of ice coating the plastic shroud."

Four out of five found Pitts theory quite plausible. The holdout was Gu

"You're forgetting the subzero temperatures around the peninsula," said Gu

"Rudi makes good sense," Giordino said. "They couldn't survive without some degree of warmth and protective clothing."

Pitt smiled like a lottery wi

"You're driving in circles," said Hollis in aggravation. "Make sense."

"Nothing complicated: The Lady Flamborough didn't enter the Antarctic."

"Didn't enter the Antarctic," repeated Hollis mechanically. "Face the facts, man. The last satellite photo of the ship showed her halfway between Cape Horn and the tip of the peninsula, steaming hell-bent to the south."

"She had no place else to go," protested Dillenger.

Pitt tapped a finger on the ragged mass of islands scattered around the Straits of Magellan. "Want to bet?"

Hollis stood frowning, baffled for a moment. And then he caught on. His confusion vanished and total understanding beamed in his eyes. "She doubled back," he said flatly.

"Rudi had the key," Pitt acknowledged. "The hijackers weren't about to commit suicide, nor were they going to risk detection by infrared photos. They never had any intention of heading into the ice pack.

Instead, they cut northwest and skirted the barren islands above Cape Horn."

Gu

"Then why the iceberg scam?" queried Giordino.

"To appear as if they calved from a glacier."

"Calved, like in cow?"

"Calving is the breaking away of an ice mass from an ice front or wall,"

Gu

Giordino stared down at the infrared photo. "Glaciers this far north?"

"Several flow down the mountains and meet the sea within eight hundred kilometers from where we're docked here in Punta Arenas," replied Pitt.

"Where do you'reckon she is?" Hollis asked.

Pitt took a chart showing the desolate fringe islands west of Tierra del Fuego. "Two possibilities within the Lady Flamborough's sailing range since she was last spotted by satellite." He paused to place an X beside two names on the chart. "Directly south of here, glaciers flow from Mounts Italia and S ento."