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He finally worked up his nerve and climbed the huge rudder and over the stern railing onto the quarterdeck. He stood there disconcerted. From stem to stern the main deck was deserted. Everything seemed in perfect order, all lines coiled and in place, the rigging set and taut. Nothing lay loose on the deck.
Tantoa climbed below and walked fearfully through the interior of the junk, half expecting to find bodies. Thankfully he saw no signs of death or disorder. Not a single soul was on board.
No ship could sail from China, halfway across the Pacific Ocean, without a crew, Tantoa told himself.
His imagination took hold, and he began to envision ghosts. A ship sailed by a spectral crew. Frightened, he rushed up the stairs onto the deck and leaped over the railing onto the warm sand. He had to report the derelict to the council of Cooper Island's little village. Tantoa ran up the beach to what he believed was a safe distance before staring over his shoulder to see if he was followed by some unspeakable horror.
The sand around the junk was deserted. Only the allseeing eyes on the bows glared at him malevolently. Tantoa raced off toward his village and never looked back.
The atmosphere in the Ice Hunter's dining room had a strange mood of subdued festivity. The occasion was a farewell party thrown by the crew and scientists for the survivors of the Polar Queen tragedy. Roy Van Fleet and Maeve had been working day and night, shoulder to shoulder, for the past three days, examining the remains of the penguins, seals and dolphins collected for study and filling notebooks full of observations.
Van Fleet had grown fond of her, but he stopped short of demonstrating any kind of affection; the vision of his pretty wife and three children was seldom out of his mind. He was sorry they couldn't have continued working together. The other scientists in the lab agreed that they made a great team.
The Ice Hunter's chef did himself proud with an incredible gourmet dinner featuring filets of deepsea cod with mushroom and wine sauce. Captain Dempsey looked the other way while the wine flowed.
Only the officers standing watch over the operation of the ship had to remain dry, at least until they came off duty and it was their turn to party.
Dr. Mose Greenberg, the shipboard wit, made a long speech laced with banal puns about everyone on board. He might have kept pontificating for another hour if Dempsey hadn't signaled for the chef to bring out a cake especially baked for the occasion. It was shaped like the continent of Australia, with icing picturing the more notable landmarks including Ayres Rock and Sydney Harbor. Maeve was truly touched, and tears moistened her eyes. Deirdre appeared bored with it all.
As captain, Dempsey sat at the head of the longest table, the women sitting in honor at his elbows.
Because he was head of NUMA's special-projects division, Pitt was allotted the chair at the opposite end of the table. He tuned out the conversations flowing around him and focused his attention on the two sisters.
They couldn't have come out of the womb more unalike, he thought. Maeve was a warm and wild creature, a light brightly glowing with life. He fantasized her as a friend's untamed sister washing a car, clad in a tight T-shirt and cutoff shorts while displaying her girlish waist and shapely legs to great advantage. She had changed since he first met her. She talked exuberantly, her arms swaying for effect, vivacious and unpretentious. And yet her manner seemed oddly forced, as if her thoughts were elsewhere and she were under some unknown stress.
She wore a short-skirted red cocktail dress that fit her figure as if it were sewn on after she was in it.
Pitt thought at first it was loaned to her by one of the women scientists on board who wore a smaller size, and then he recalled seeing her return with Deirdre from Polar Queen on Ice Hunter's shore boat with their luggage stacked in the bow. She wore yellow coral earrings that matched the necklace around her bare neck. She glanced in his direction and their eyes met, but only for an instant. She was in the midst of describing her pet dingo in Australia, and she quickly looked back at her audience as if she hadn't recognized him.
Deirdre, on the other hand, exuded sensuality and sophistication, traits sensed by every man in the room. Pitt could easily picture her stretched out on a bed covered with silk sheets, beckoning. The only drawback was her imperious manner. She had seemed retiring and vulnerable when he'd found her on Polar Queen. But she too had transformed, into a cool and aloof creature. There was also a flinty hardness Pitt had not recognized before.
She sat in her chair straight-backed and regal in a brown sheath dress that stopped discreetly above her silk-stockinged knees. She wore a scarf around her neck that accented her fawn eyes and copper hair, which was drawn severely back in a huge knot. As if sensing that Pitt was studying her, she slowly turned and stared back at him without expression, and then the eyes became cool and calculating.
Pitt found himself engaged in a game of wills. She was not about to blink even as she carried on a conversation with Dempsey. Her eyes seemed to look through him and, finding nothing of interest, continued on to a picture hanging on the wall behind. The brown eyes that were locked on opaline green never wavered. She obviously was a lady who held her own against men, Pitt reasoned. Slowly, very slowly, he began to cross his eyes. The comical ploy broke the spell and Deirdre's concentration.
Thrusting her chin up in a haughty gesture, she dismissed Pitt as a clown and turned her attention back to the conversation at her end of the table.
Though Pitt felt a sensual desire for Deirdre, he felt himself drawn to Maeve. Perhaps it was her engaging smile with the slight gap between the teeth, or the beautiful mass of incredibly blond hair that fell in a cascade behind and in front of her shoulders. He wondered about her shift of manner since he first found her in the blizzard on Seymour Island. The ready smile and the easy laugh were no longer there.
Pitt sensed that Maeve was subtly under Deirdre's control. It was also obvious, to him if to no one else, there was no love lost between them.
Pitt mused about the age-old choice faced by the sexes. Women were often torn between mister nice guy, who generally ended up as father of her kids, and the hellraising jerk who represented offbeat romance and adventure. Men, for all their faults, were occasionally forced to choose between miss wholesome girl-next-door, who generally ended up as mother to his children, and the wild sexpot who couldn't keep her body off him.
For Pitt there could be no agonized decision. Late tomorrow evening, the ship would dock at the Chilean port of Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, where Maeve and Deirdre would take a commuter flight to Santiago. From there they could book a direct flight to Australia. A waste of time, he thought, to allow his imagination to run amok. He did not dare to hope that he would ever lay eyes on either one of them again.
He slipped a hand below the table and touched the folded fax in his pants pocket. Overcome by curiosity, he had communicated with St. Julien Perlmutter, a close family friend who had accumulated the world's foremost library of shipwreck information. A well-known partygiver and gourmand, Perlmutter was well connected in Washington circles and knew where most of the skeletons were buried. Pitt had put in a call and asked his friend to check on the ladies' family background. Perlmutter faxed him a brief report in less than an hour with a promise of a more in-depth account
within two days.
These were no ordinary women from common circumstances. If the unmarried men, and maybe even a few of the married, knew that Maeve and Deirdre's father, Arthur Dorsett, was head of a diamond empire second only to De Beers and the sixth richest man in the world, they might have pulled out all stops in begging the ladies' hand in marriage.
The section of the report that struck him as odd was a drawing of the Dorsett corporate hallmark that Perlmutter included. Instead of the obvious, a diamond on some sort of background, the Dorsett logotype was a serpent undulating through the water.
The ship's officer on duty came up alongside Pitt and spoke softly. "Admiral Sandecker is on the satellite phone and would like to talk to you."
"Thank you, I'll take the call in my cabin."
Unobtrusively, Pitt pushed back his chair, rose and left the dining room, unnoticed by all except Giordino.
