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"Where is he?"
Misty shrugged. "After talking briefly with Captain Burch, he sailed off to continue his round-the-world cruise."
"I never got a chance to thank him," said Pitt regretfully.
"He was a funny old guy," said Giordino. "He said we'd probably meet up again."
"Who knows," Pitt said wistfully. "Anything is possible."
Part Two
GUARD OF HADES
21
JULY 25, 2003 NUKU'ALOFA, TONGA
Under orders from Admiral Sandecker, Captain Burch steered a course straight to the port city of Nuku'alofa, the capital town of the island nation of Tonga, the only remaining Polynesian monarchy. A car was waiting for Pitt and Giordino to rush them to the international airport at Fua'amotu, where they could immediately board a Royal Tongan airliner for Hawaii. From there, a NUMA jet would take them on to Washington.
Fond and tearful farewells were said with the men and women from the Deep Encounter. Despite their hair-raising ordeal, almost all of them had voted to return to station and continue their deep-ocean survey of the Tonga Trench. Misty cried, Giordino kept blowing his nose, Pitt's eyes were moist, even Burch and House looked as if they had lost their family dog. It was all Pitt and Giordino could do to break away and jump in the waiting car.
After boarding a 747, they just had time to settle in their seats and fasten their seat belts before the big jet was thundering down the runway and rising in a lazy climb. The lush green landscape of Tonga quickly vanished behind them, and then they were climbing over an indigo sea above scattered clouds that looked thick enough to walk on. Thirty minutes into the flight, Giordino had drifted off to sleep in the aisle seat. Sitting by the window, Pitt retrieved Egan's leather case from the floor beneath the seat ahead of him and flicked open the clasps. He lifted the lid carefully, leery that it might be filled with oil again. A ridiculous idea, he thought with amusement. There was nothing magical about a prankster doing the deed.
The case was empty except for a towel and the cassettes containing the video taken of the Emerald Dolphin by the cameras of the Abyss Navigator. He gently unwrapped the towel until he held the strange-looking misshapen object with the greenish tint they had picked up from the chapel floor. He turned it over in his left hand, using the fingers of his right. This was the first opportunity he'd had to eye it up close.
There was a strange kind of greasy feel about it. Instead of being jagged and coarse, like most badly incinerated inorganic material, the object was rounded and smooth and twisted in a spiral. Pitt didn't have a clue as to its composition. He rewrapped the object in the towel and set it back in the case. He was certain the chemists in the NUMA lab would identify it.
Once he delivered the material, his part of the mystery was finished.
Breakfast came, but he begged off, and had only tomato juice and coffee. Hunger eluded him. As he sipped the coffee, he again stared out the window. An island was drifting under the aircraft far below, an emerald speck set on a blue topaz sea. He studied it for a moment and recognized the shape as Tutuila, one of the American Samoan islands. He could make out the harbor of Pago Pago, where he'd visited the naval station many years ago with his father, then a United States congressman on a junket around the Pacific.
He recalled the trip well. He was a boy in his middle teens and he'd taken every opportunity to dive around the island while his father was inspecting the naval facilities, gliding among the coral and the brilliantly colored fish with a spear gun. He'd rarely released the old surgical rubber sling, sending the thin spear shaft at a fish. He'd preferred simply to study or photograph the wonders beneath the surface. After a day spent enjoying the water, he would relax on the sandy beach under a palm tree and contemplate his future.
And then, he remembered another beach, this one on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. He was still in the Air Force then. He saw himself as a young man with the woman whose memory had never left him. Summer Moran was the loveliest woman he'd ever known. He could recall in vivid detail the first time they'd met in the bar at the Ala Moana Hotel on Waikiki Beach. Her enchanting gray eyes, the long fiery red hair, the perfectly shaped body in a tight oriental silk green dress slit on the sides. Then came the vision of her death as it had a thousand times. He'd lost her during an earthquake in an underwater city built by her mad father, Frederick Moran. She'd swum down to save him and never returned.
He closed down that part of the memory as he had done so often in the past and stared at his reflection in the window. The eyes still radiated an intensity that had never dimmed, and yet there was a slight hint of age and weariness creeping into them. He wondered what it would be like to meet himself as he was twenty years ago. Suppose the young Dirk Pitt of two decades ago walked up and sat down next to him on a park bench. How would he receive the fresh young buck who had served with distinction as an Air Force pilot? Would he even recognize him? How would the youth see the old Dirk Pitt? Could he remotely foresee the wild adventures, agonizing heartbreaks and bloody encounters and injuries? The old Pitt doubted it. Would the young Pitt be repulsed at what he saw and shy away from what lay ahead, taking a totally different direction in their lives?
Pitt turned back from the window, closed his eyes and put the vision of his youth and what-might-have-been out of his mind. Would he do it all over again if given the chance for a restart? For the most part, the answer was yes. Oh sure, he would have made a few alterations and fine-tuned different episodes of his life. But on the whole, it had been extremely satisfying and filled with achievement. He felt thankful simply to be alive, and let it go at that.
His thoughts were interrupted by the bouncing of the plane as it hit turbulence. He complied when the FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT light gonged on. He stayed awake and read magazines until the plane landed at the John Rodgers International Airport in Honolulu. He and Giordino were met by the pilot from NUMA who was to fly them to Washington. He escorted them to the carousels so they could pick up their luggage and then drove them to a turquoise-painted NUMA Gulfstream jet on the far side of the airport. When they took off, the sun was falling in the western sky and the blue was slowly turning black in the east.
For most of the trip, Giordino slept like a zombie, while Pitt fitfully dozed off and on. When he woke, his mind began to work. Was his end of the Emerald Dolphin tragedy finished? There was little doubt that Admiral Sandecker would put him to work on a new project. He made up his mind to argue against that possibility. He decided he had to see the mystery through to its conclusion. Those who had caused the terrible fire of the cruise liner must pay. They had to be tracked down, their motives dissected and then punished.
His mind slowly turned from the inhuman unpleasantness to the lure of sleeping in his own down-filled bed in his aircraft hangar apartment. He wondered if Congresswoman Loren Smith, his current lady love, would meet him after the plane landed, as she did so often. Loren, with her cinnamon hair and violet eyes. They had come so close to marriage on several occasions, but never quite got over the hump. Maybe now was the time. God only knows, thought Pitt, I can't be bounding all over the oceans and falling in a pit of devilment for many more years. Age, he knew, was creeping over his body like a layer of molasses, slowing it down infinitesimally, until one day he would wake up and say, My God, I'm eligible for Social Security and Medicare.
"No!" he said aloud.
Giordino awoke and looked at him. "Did you call?"
Pitt smiled. "Talking in my sleep."
Giordino shrugged, rolled to his side and reentered dreamland.
No, Pitt thought silently this time. I'm not going out to pasture, not for a long while yet. There would always be another undersea project, another maritime investigation. There was no way he would quit until they closed the lid on his casket.
When he woke up for the final time, the aircraft was touching down at Langley Air Force Base. The day was dark and rainy, the water streaking across the windows. The pilot taxied to the NUMA terminal and stopped just short of an open hangar. When Pitt stepped to the asphalt, he paused and looked toward the nearby parking lot. His hopes were in vain.
Loren Smith was not there to greet him.
