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"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."
"Six hours, forty-five minutes since we left the Catawaba. Not bad time."
"Probably could have shaved that considerably if we weren't handicapped with an extra fuel tank."
"Without it we'd be back there somewhere trying to swim four hundred miles to shore."
Pitt grinned. "We could have always sent a Mayday to the Coast Guard."
"Judging from the mood Commander Koski was in when we took off, I doubt if he'd put himself out for us if we were drowning in a bathtub and he had his hand on the plug."
"In spite of what Koski thinks of me, I'd vote for him as admiral any time he decided to run. In my book he's a damn good man."
"You have a funny way of expressing your admiration," Hunnewell said dryly. "Except for your perceptive deduction concerning the flame thrower hat's off to you for that one, by the way-you really didn't tell him a damned thing."
"We gave him the truth as far as it went. Anything else would have been fifty percent guesswork. The only real fact that we omitted was the name of Fyrie's discovery."
"Zirtonium." Hunnewell's gaze was lost in the distance. "Atomic number: forty."
"I barely squeaked through my geology class," Pitt said, smiling. "zirconium? What makes it worth mass murder?"
"Purified zirconium is vital in the construction of nuclear reactors because it absorbs little or no radiation.
Every nation in the world with facilities for atomic research would give their eyeteeth to have it obtainable by the carload.
Admiral Sandecker is certain that if Fyrie and his scientists did indeed discover a vast zirconium bonanza, it was under the sea close enough to the surface to be raised economically."
Pitt turned and stared out of the cockpit bubble at the dark ultramarine blue that stretched almost unripPled to the south. A fishing boat with a chain of dories sailed out to sea, the tiny hulls moving as easy as if they were gliding across a tinted mirror.
He watched them through eyes that barely saw, his mind dwelling on the exotic element that lay -covered by the cold waters below.
"A hell of an undertaking," he muttered, just loud enough to be heard over the drone from the engine's exhaust. "The problems of raising raw ore from the sea bottom are emense."
"Yes, but not insurmountable. Fyrie Limited employs the world's leading experts at underwater mining.
That's how Kristjan Fyrie built his empire, you know, dredging diamonds off the coast of Africa." Hunnewell spoke with what sounded like simple admiration. "He was only eighteen, a seaman on an old Greek freighter, when he jumped ship at Beira, a small port on the coast Of Mozambique. It didn't take him long to catch the diamond fever. There was a boom on in those days, but the big SYndicates had all the productive claims tied up.
That's where Fyrie stood out from the rest-he had a shrewd and creative mind.
"If diamond deposits could be found on land not two miles from shore, he reasoned, why couldn't they lie underwater on the continental shelf? So every day for five months he dove in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean until he found a section of the seabed that looked promising. Now the trick was scrounging the financing to buy the needed dredging equipment. Fyrie had arrived in Africa with nothing but the shirt on his back. To beg from the white moneyed interests in the territory would have been a waste of time. They would have taken everything and left him with nothing."
"One percent of something is often better than ninety-nine per
cent of nothing," Pitt interjected.
"Not to Kristjan Fyrie," Hunnewell replied defensively. "He had a true Icelander's sense of principle-share the profits but never give them away. He went before the black people of Mozambique and sold them on forming their own syndicate, with Kristjan Fyrie, of course, as president and general manager. After the black people raised the financing for the barge and dredging equipment, Fyrie worked twenty hours a day until the entire operation was running like a computer at IBM. The five months of diving paid off-the dredge began to bring up high-grade diamonds almost immediately. Within two years Fyrie was worth forty million dollars."
Pitt noticed a dark speck in the sky, several thousand feet higher and in front of the Ulysses. "You certainly seem to have studied the Fyrie history."
"I know it sounds strange," Hunnewell went on, "but Fyrie seldom stayed with a project more than a few years. Most men would have bled the operation dry. Not Kristjan. After he made a fortune beyond his wildest dreams, he turned the whole business over to the people who financed the venture."
"Just gave it away?"
"Lock, stock and the popular barrel. He distributed every share of his stock to the native stockholders, set up a black administration that could run efficiently without him, and took the next boat back to Iceland. Of the few white men held in high esteem by the Africans, the name of Kristjan Fyrie stands right at the top."
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