Fire Ice

She smiled at Austin and came over to the table. "Something smells good."

"You're in luck. The chef has decided on an Italian theme. Have a seat."

She sat down and closed her eyes. "Don't tell me." She inhaled the aromas coming from the galley. "An antipasto of truffle salad and olivi mushrooms followed by a porcini risotto."

"Not quite." Austin cleared his throat. "We're having pizza. Mushroom, or pepperoni if you'd prefer carne."

Kaela opened her eyes and stared at Austin. "What happened to the four-star chef?"

Austin tried his best to look angelic, but his rugged features wouldn't cooperate. "I confess. I exaggerated. My intentions were entirely honorable. Your spirits needed a lift back there on the beach."

"And you looked like you'd pushed your face through a plate-glass window. Glad to see you're in better shape."

"Amazing the miracles that can be performed with a needle, sutures and swabs."

Kaela glanced over at the serving counter. "How's the pizza?"

"Almost as good as Spago's. Especially when you have nectar like this to wash it down." He reached under the table and produced a bottle of Brunello Chianti Classico. "I picked up a case when we stopped in Venice."

"You'refull of surprises, aren't you?" Kaela said, laughing.

"Sorry the di

"No argument there. The view is spectacular." She rose and said, "If you open the bottle, I'll get our di

"This pizza is incredible," Kaela said. She sipped the wine with a dreamy expression on her face. Suddenly, she glanced around as if she had lost something. "Have you seen Mickey and Dundee?"

"I meant to tell you. The boys grabbed something to eat earlier, then went up to the bridge to shoot some video. Seems they've charmed their way past Captain Atwood's gruff facade."

"The camera tends to bring out the ham in people." Austin refilled their glasses. "Tell me about your Noah's ark assignment."

"It's the usual combination of humbug and fact that Unbelievable Mysteries packages for the mass TV audience. They splice old blurry images with new footage and do a dramatic voice-over. Heavy on the mysterious background music. There's usually a hint of a government cover-up and some danger to the crew. The viewers love it."

"The danger was real this time."

"Yes, it was," she said thoughtfully. "That's why I feel so bad about Captain Kemal's cousin. It was my idea to look into the old sub base."

"Don't blame yourself. There was no way you could have known you'd be shot out of the water."

"Still – has anyone been able to contact Captain Kemal?"

"The bridge got in touch with him a while ago. Apparently, his radio is working now. The captain gave him the bad news."

"Poor Mehmet. I keep playing that scene over and over again in my head. His family must be devastated." Austin gently tried to take Kaela's mind off a situation she couldn't alter.

"If you're looking for Noah's ark, wouldn't you do better poking around Mount Ararat?"

Kaela welcomed the chance to change the subject. "No, not especially. You're familiar with the findings of William Ryan and Walter Pitman?"

"They're the Columbia University geologists who speculated that the Black Sea was originally a freshwater lake be- fore the Mediterranean broke through the Bosporus in a great flood. The people who lived along the shore had to run for their lives."

"Then you must know that the saga of the flood, passed down by generations of bards, may have inspired the tale of Noah and the ark. Which means that the ark sailed these waters. It would be a waste of time humping our cameras up the side of Mount Ararat. Don't you agree?"

Austin leaned back in his chair and gazed into the dark amber eyes. They sparkled with good-humored intelligence.

"I'll answer that with a question of my own."

"Let me guess. You want to know why someone who pretends to be a serious reporter ended up on the television equivalent of a supermarket tabloid."

Austin added perceptiveness to the list of Kaela's other admirable qualities. "I've seen your show. In the episode I watched, Big Foot had been found living in Loch Ness with an alien love-child."

"That must have been before my time, but I take your point. U.M. is trash television at its trashiest."

Austin spread his hands. "So?"

"It's a long story."

"We've plenty of time to talk. I'll have the sommelier refill your wineglass as often as you'd like."

"That's the best offer I've had all day." She cradled her chin in one hand and gazed into his face. There was no timidity in her large eyes. "I'll tell you about my background if you do the same for yourself."

"Okay, you're on."

She took another sip of Chianti. "I was born in Oakland, California. I was named Katherine after my dad's mother, and Ella after Ella Fitzgerald, Mom's favorite singer. My last name was Doran. I shortened it to Kaela Dorn when I went into TV. My mother was a ballet instructor at an African-American community center and my dad was an Irish-American, long-haired, pot-smoking hippie who had come to Berkeley to protest the Vietnam War and everything else."

"There was a lot of that in the sixties." She nodded. "Dad put aside his love beads and bongos and now teaches courses in contemporary American history at Berkeley, specializing in the protest movements of the sixties and seventies. He still has his beard, but it's a lot whiter than it used to be."

"Happens to the best of us," Austin said, pointing to his prematurely steel gray hair.

"I was something of a rebel as a kid. Pop's fault. One day Mom came down to the corner, where I was hanging out with a gang, and dragged me into her ballet classes where she could keep an eye on me. I traded in my gangsta colors for a tutu. I wasn't a bad dancer."

The woman sitting across from Austin seemed made for dancing. "I would have been surprised if you were any less graceful than a Pavlova."

"Thank you," she said. "I was fair, but tripping about on my toes in the Nutcracker Suite didn't satisfy my craving for adventure. Pop's fault, too. He bummed around Khartoum and New Delhi before he headed west to pull us out of Vietnam single-handedly. I went to Berkeley and studied English lit, then I got accepted as an intern at a local TV station that wanted to fill its minority-hiring quota. I got tired of reading gory reports about car crashes off a TelePrompTer. When I heard about the opening at Unbelievable Mysteries, I jumped at the chance to travel to exotic, offbeat places, and be paid pretty well for it. Okay, that's me. How about you? How did you come to be rescuing maidens in distress and their friends?"

Austin gave a condensed version of his biography, omitting his service in the CIA, stretching a fact here and there to make the pieces fit. Kaela listened intently, and if she detected his effort to massage the truth, she didn't show it.

"I'm not surprised that you like fast boats or that you collect antique dueling pistols, or even that you listen to progressive jazz. I'm more surprised to hear that you study philosophy."