A Death in Geneva (18 page)

“She's in French Creek, over yonder, came in Friday. We've been promised action by the middle of the week.”

Starring went to the rail, studied the distant, distinctive, hollow-box fantail of the long, clean-lined trans-oceanic barge carrier
Towerpoint
Pacer.
The canvas-shrouded habitat cylinder was barely visible aboard one of the big ship's barges. “I wonder what the Russian trawlers must have radioed when the
Pacer
went by?” The corners of his eyes wrinkled in amusement. “I hope, my friend, they reported a dangerous new development on their hands, a strategic plot, new missile, new size, new shape, on the move in the Med—Goddam 'em, Oats. I can't help thinking they had a hand in Connie's murder!”

His gray eyes stayed fixed on the
Pacer.
“We're missing a simple bet, Oats. Her barges are too wide for the catamaran's well. We're wasting time, dependent on an overage port, unions who would rather be on the dole than work. We should be free, able to make this transfer with no outside help. We need to build on the barge concept, continue to refine it—some half-width units, pre-position them in multiples, the home ports, and regional transfer hubs.”

“It'll be a new chapter, Tommie, but you're the leader”—Tooms waved a heavy hand toward the
Pacer
—“taken the technology and built it into the entire fleet.”

“The rest are deaf and blind, Oats. It's a tragedy, the rest of the pack. But, mark my words, Oats, no matter how hard any of them try to fail, the United States is too good! Somewhere, some kid, eight, ten, twelve, still a youngster, is beating along in a dingy, the play of that small craft in his hands, his arms, his entire body—some kid a hell of a lot smarter than either you or me who is going to splice it all together, take up where
we
left off, and send the United States another thousand miles ahead of the pack. Tell me, Oats, who were you dealing with on the bay project?”

“The fates were with me. I touched down at Dulles, made a few calls, twigged to the fact that Senator Darcy Parsons had a day's hearings scheduled for the successor to the Corps of Engineers' Chesapeake Bay model. I chugged over there, Maryland's Eastern Shore, and settled in for an afternoon and evening with the good senator and a cross section of competing power elites.”

“Parsons has been helpful, hasn't he?”

“More than helpful. The upper bay would never have been dredged—no coal-port expansion. We wouldn't have had the channel depth for the
Partner
and the
Mayan.
Beyond that, you owe him on the entire LNG project. He's not blind to environment, not by a long sight, but he's pushed hard for development. He's made some
enemies, is up for reelection this fall and feeling exposed, the reason for the hearings.”

“How can I help?”

“By not changing a thing. Your research project is the ticket he's been looking for. It'll be all you can do to keep him dry and out of the habitat. That bay, for all its one hundred ninety-five miles, is one of the most fragile ecosystems on the entire globe, shallow and vulnerable. And, even though it's been studied to near-exhaustion, the data is never up to snuff when a
new
problem comes along. The bay stays under a magnifying glass twelve months out of the year. The Federal boys and girls are obsessed with the bay. Why? Because they swim there; they boat there; they eat its catch.

Tooms helped himself to an ale from the tray, just delivered. “Sometime back, we had the Kepone scare, down around the James and York rivers. The first, you remember, wiped out the blues, the striped bass and rocks, wiped 'em off the table—carcinogens, raised hell in the gentry's minds about everything else, turtles, oysters, shad, catfish.

“Each year, there's a new scare. Last year, the menhaden, alewives ran into trouble. The spotter planes went up for the purse seiners; the schools weren't there. Then, they showed up, millions and millions dead, stinking up twenty miles of shoreline. The cry went up again. ‘The Bay is dying,' and the cry spread: ‘Keep Starring and his goddamned ships out of here—too many ships, too much shore runoff, too much, too much.' Well, there had been an oxygen imbalance that had caught the menhaden at the wrong time. The bay was healthy enough, and this year those skippers stand to get rich.

“But, this spring, they're at it again. A research team on the upper bay has discovered, or rediscovered since we've been finding them for the past decade, different traces of chemical compounds, polynuclear aromatics, and the name alone has whipped up a whole new wave of fear—a wave that has come splashing down around the good Senator, steamy politics.”

“Environmental, EPA, his opponent the most vocal?”

Tooms growled affirmatively, lit a cigarette. “In the lead, but not alone. Wading into the middle of all of this, I laid it on the line. I told the folks that if they were worried about your new tankers, it was time to dispel some of those worries, that they didn't have to believe me, you'd help to prove it for them, and prove it now. I told them
proof costs money, plenty of it, that you were set to underwrite an across-the-board subsurface, surface, atmospheric objective research program led by an international team, with a full and open invitation to each of the marine research institutes to participate over the course of two seasons, and to share in all data.

“Well, Tommie, a lot of fleas started hopping toward this hound's back.” Tooms swatted at a fly buzzing around his calves. “I invited their nominations, said we'd be prepared to accommodate them aboard the
Octagon
this August first, and I suggested that we get together the following morning to share some thinking on the best public presentation of their institutes' roles in the project. At that point, Darcy Parsons's smile was only a mite larger than the one you're wearing now.”

“You've done well, my friend. Those taxiboats dart around the harbor like water bugs, don't they?” Starring gave a wave to the passengers of the dghajsas passing beneath the
Octagon
's bow. He brought their conversation to an end, crossed to the door of his suite. “See to it that I have an early meeting with our young team of divers. I do remember the girl—what was her name?

“Leslie Renfro.”

“That's right.” The door closed. Tooms stretched, rubbed the trans-Atlantic fatigue from his face, took a fresh ale, and headed to his cabin.

Leslie Renfro placed three telephone calls on June 10, the first to Oats Tooms to confirm that she, Head, and Tonasi would sail with the
Towerpoint Octagon.
The second was to Smith & Kalkara Commercial Ship Chandlers, Ltd. The third was an unlisted telephone number in Naples; her message, without salutation or identification, was brief. “Xavier is twenty-one. Fishing party Saturday night. Xavier is twenty-one.” That weekend, the
Matabele
left harbor to keep a 4:00 A.M. rendezvous with the Palermo faction.

On Monday, June 13, the
Matabele
motored to the chandler's wharf to take aboard four twenty-man, self-inflating life rafts, paid for in cash. They were heavy, each packed into a hard, white fiberglass cylinder two meters long, sealed with breakaway banding, the most modern shipboard rescue equipment in Malta. The ketch again left Valletta for the privacy of the Gozo anchorage.

The false bulkhead was dismantled, reopening the forecastle, the crates knocked apart, the boards taken ashore, smashed and burned
in several small, separate fires under cover of daylight. The gunmetal-black-and-bronze shapes, still half swathed in protective packing, were winched up by the jib halyard, from the cabin floor, through the forward hatch, each placed in a separate life-raft container. The length and circumference of the cylinders were right, but the fit imperfect. Strips of the rafts and pieces of the crating which had only partially burned were exhumed and retrieved from the beach. When the cylinders were resealed with metal bandings the shapes were packed tightly inside. Additional hours slid by. The three carefully hand-painted the identification—F
RAGILE
—S
CIENTFIC
I
NSTRUMENTS
—R
ENFRO
R
ESEARCH
—on each cylinder and tagged them and a metal sea chest for transfer to the catamaran. When the
Matabele
returned to Marsamxett Harbor two days later, the white cylinders were on deck as before, carefully lashed. They were much heavier now, sixty kilograms each.

Acrid diesel exhaust from the idling engine of the
Towerpoint Octagon
's workboat hung in the still harbor air as the gear was transferred from the ketch. Diving equipment, clothing, and personal belongings, such as they were, were packed in new, blue nylon duffels, with names already stenciled in gold, a gift from Starring.

Leslie Renfro was below reinspecting the ketch from stem to stern, cuddies, lockers, the bilge, and engine spaces—clean. She blotted the film of sweat on her temples and upper lip. “The yard is expecting one month's storage in advance; you have it?” Tonasi touched his hip pocket, nodded. They moved out into the cockpit, stood close together, their words masked from the workboat crew by the deep gurgle and sputtering of the engine outtake. “There should be no questions. The yard has been told that an Italian diving club is chartering the ketch for the summer. The club should arrive to take her in two weeks; her documents have already been forwarded to the club's officials. Remember that, a diving club, nothing more. I will send this crowd back to pick you up in three hours.” She crossed into the workboat, which pulled away and threaded its way back out through the yacht basin to the Grand Harbor.

Tooms led the way along the
Octagon
's main deck, guiding his discoveries into Starring's suite. They were a fine-looking trio, young, tanned, trim, the men well muscled, each wearing one of the new
blue windbreakers with a circular patch on the left breast showing the contours of the Chesapeake Bay in pale blue with the yellow Towerpoint habitat superimposed, the words
CHESAPEAKE DIVEQUEST INTERNATIONAL
arching across the top, and
RESEARCH, KNOWLEDGE, PRODUCTIVITY
along the bottom.

“Sit down, my friends; consider this ship your home. Welcome! You are honored guests and partners in what I know will be a thoroughly rewarding adventure.” He watched them absorb the surroundings, oiled oak paneling extending from the deck to the rub rail halfway up the bulkheads, met by a robins-egg-blue silk wall covering, richly hung oils and wall sculptures, illuminated by recessed lighting.

“I have been careful to be correct with this ship. She is, after all, a working ship; I'd like to show you.” He led the way to a semicircular bannister, its newel a white-robed maiden, face averted, bearing an earthen water urn, the railing curving down to the next deck. He stood aside, inviting them to take the lead. “When I was very young, my father traveled to Europe each summer. The family went with him, always on a
French
ship, at my mother's insistence.”