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Then he threw back his head and began to laugh, a roaring, deep laugh that filled the room from carpet to ceiling. "God! If there is anything worse than a cocky Dirk Pitt, I hope it becomes infected with syphilis and rots in hell." He returned to the chair behind the desk and sat down, hands clasped behind his head. "OK, Dirk, I'll put you in at first string, but you'll be required to play straight ball, no fancy independent plays. Agreed?"
"You're the boss."
Sandecker winced noticeably. "Okay, out of respect for your ah . . . superior, suppose you give me the whole story from the beginning. I've read the written words, now I want to hear it orally, direct from the horse's mouth." He peered at Pitt with an expression that dared argument. "Shall we commence?"
Sandecker heard Pitt out, then said: " 'God save thee,' that's what he said?"
"That's all he said. Then he was gone. I'd hoped Dr. Hunnewell might have offered me a clue to the whereabouts of the Lax between the time it vanished and the time it became inbedded in the iceberg, but he volunteered nothing except a historical sketch of Kristjan Fyrie and a lecture on zirconium."
He did as he was told. I didn't want you involved "That was two days ago. Now I'm involved up to my neck." Pitt leaned over the desk toward the older man. "Let's have it, You sly old fox. What in hell is going on?"
Sandecker grinned. "For your sake, I'm going to take that as a compliment." He pulled out a bottom drawer and propped his feet on it.
"I hope you know what you're letting yourself in for."
"I don't have the vaguest idea, but tell me anyway.
"All right then." Sandecker leaned back in his swivel chair and puffed several times on his cigar. "This is what took place as far as it goes-too many pieces are missing for even a fifty percent glimpse at the overall picture. About a year and a half ago, Fyrie's scientists successfully designed and constructed a nuclear undersea probe that could identify fifteen to twenty different mineral elements on the ocean floor. The p e opera y posing elements to neutrons given off by a laboratory-produced element called celtinium-279. When activated by the neutrons, the elements on the ocean's bottom gave off gamma rays, which were then analyzed and counted by a tiny detector on the probe. During tests off Iceland, the probe detected and measured mineral samples of manganese, gold, nickel, titanium, and zirconium-the zirconium in huge and unheard-of amounts."
"I think I see. Without the probe, the zirconium could never be found again," Pitt said thoughtfully.
"The prize then is not the rare elements, but rather the probe itself."
"Yes, the probe opens a vast and untapped frontier for undersea mining. Whoever owns it won't control the world, of course, but possession could lead to a direct reshuffling of private financial empires and a healthy shot in the arm for the treasury of any country with a continental shelf containing a rich storehouse of minerals."
Pitt was silent for a few moments. "God, is it worth all the killing?"
Sandecker hesitated. "It depends upon how bad somebody wants it. There are men who wouldn't kill for every cent in the world, and there are others who wouldn't hesitate to slit a throat for the price of a meal."
"In Washington, you informed me that Fyrie and his scientific team were on their way to the U.S. to open negotiations with our defense contractors. I take it that was a little white lie?"
Sandecker smiled. "Yes, that was actually an understatement. Fyrie was scheduled to meet with the President and present him with the probe." He looked at Pitt, and then said more Positively: "I was the first One Fyrie notified when the tests on the probe proved successful. I don't know what Hunnewell told you about Fyrie, but he was a visionary a gentle man who wouldn't step on an ant or a flower. He knew the far reaching good the probe would bring to mankind; he also knew what unscrupulous interests would do to exPloit it
once the probe fell into their hands, so he decided to turn it over to the nation that he 'was certain would make beneficial and charitable use of its potential-so much noble crap in my book. But you have to give the do-gooders of the earth credit; they make an honest stab at helping the rest of us ungrateful rabble."
His face looked pained. "A goddamned shame. Kristjan Fyrie would be alive this minute if he'd been rotten and selfish."
Pitt grinned knowingly. It was a well-advertised fact that Admiral Sandecker, in spite of his boiler-plate exterior, was at hart a humanitarian, and he rarely disguised his disgust and hatred for greed-driven industrialists-an outspoken trait that didn't exactly make him in great demand as a guest at society dinner parties.
"Isn't it possible," Pitt asked, "for American engineers to develop our own probe?"
"Yes, in fact we already have one, but compared with Fyrie's probe, it operates with all the efficiency of a bicycle next to a sportscar. His people made a breakthrough that is ten years ahead of anything we or the Russians are currently developing."
"Any ideason who stole the probe?"
Sandecker shook his head. "None. It's obviously a well-financed organization. Beyond that we're playing blindman's buff in a swamp."
"Which country would have the necessary resources to-"
"You can forget that speculation," Sandecker interrupted. "The National Intelligence Agency is Positive no foreign government is in the act. Even the Chinese would think twice before killing two dozen people over an innocent, nondestructive scientific instrument. No, it's got to be a private motive. For what purpose besides financial gain," he shrugged helplessly, "we can't even guess."
"All right, so the mysterious organization has the probe, so they strike a bonanza on the sea floor. How do they raise it?"
"They can't," Sandecker replied. "Not without highly technical equipment."
"It doesn't make sense. If they've had the probe over a year, what good has it done them?"
"They've put the probe to good use all right," Sandecker said seriously, "testing every square foot of the continental shelf on the Atlantic shore of North and South America. And they used the Lax to do it."
