Arctic Drift dp-20

by Clive Cussler

  At the sound of her footsteps across the wooden slats, a thin gray-haired man stepped off the yacht and greeted Finlay.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Finlay. Do you wish to take out the Columbia Empress?” he asked, motioning toward the yacht.

  “No, Edward, I’m up for a sail today. It’s a better way to clear my head of Ottawa politics.”

  “An excellent proposition,” he replied, helping her and the dog into the sailboat. Untying the bow and stern lines, he shoved the boat away from the dock as Finlay raised the mainsail.

  “Watch out for freighters,” the caretaker said. “Traffic seems a bit lively today.”

  “Thank you, Edward. I shall be back by lunchtime.”

  The breeze quickly filled the mainsail, and Finlay was able to maneuver into the harbor without use of the outboard motor. As the harbor opened up before her, she tacked to the southeast, maneuvering past a Seattle-bound ferry. Seated in the small cockpit, she clipped on a safety harness, then took in the view around her. The quaint shore of Victoria Island receded on her left, its gabled, turn-of-the-century structures resembling a row of dollhouses. In the distance ahead, a steady stream of freighters rolled in along the Juan de Fuca Strait, splitting their forces between Vancouver and Seattle. A few other hardy sailboats and fishing boats dotted the sound, but the open expanse of water left a wide berth to the other vessels. Finlay watched as a small runabout roared past, its lone occupant tossing her a friendly wave before plowing on ahead of her.

  She sat back and soaked in the salt air, turning up her collar to the damp sea spray. She sailed toward a small group of islands east of Victoria, letting the Wayfarer run free while her mind did likewise. Twenty years before, she and T.J. had sailed across the Pacific on a much larger boat. Crossing remote stretches of ocean, she found that the solitude gave her a sense of comfort. She always considered the sailboat to be a remarkably therapeutic device. Just a few minutes on the water purged away the daily stresses while calming her emotions. She often joked that the country needed more sailboats and fewer psychologists.

  The small boat skimmed through quietly building swells as Finlay crossed the open bay. Approaching Discovery Island, she tacked to the southeast, breezing into a sheltered cove on the green island that stretched only a mile long. A pod of orcas broke the surface nearby, and Finlay chased after them for several minutes until they disappeared under the surface. Tacking again back toward the island, she saw that the nearby waters were clear of other vessels, save for the runabout that had passed earlier. The powerboat seemed to be running in large circles ahead of her. Finlay shook her head in loathing at the disruptive noise from its large outboard motor.

  The runabout suddenly stopped a short distance ahead of her, and Finlay could see the occupant fidgeting with a fishing pole. She shifted the rudder and tacked to her port, intending to pass offshore. Skirting by a few yards away, she was startled to hear a loud splash followed by a cry for help.

  Finlay looked to see the man flailing his arms wildly in the water, a sure sign that he didn’t know how to swim. He appeared to be weighed down by a heavy jacket and plunged under the water for a moment before struggling back to the surface. Finlay cut the tiller sharply, catching a quick burst of wind in the mainsail that shoved the boat toward the stricken man. Drawing closer, she quickly dropped the sails and drifted the last few yards, steering the sailboat alongside the flailing man.

  Finlay could see that he was a hefty man, with short hair and a weathered face. Despite his panicked motions, the man looked at his rescuer with penetrating eyes that showed a complete lack of fear. He turned and gave an annoyed look at the black Lab, who stood at the sailboat’s rail barking incessantly.

  Finlay knew enough not to try and struggle with a drowning victim, so she scanned the deck for a boat hook. Not finding it, she quickly coiled up the sailboat’s stern line and expertly tossed it to the man. He managed to loop an arm around the rope before slipping once more underwater. With a leg braced against the gunwale, Finlay pulled on the line, heaving the deadweight toward her. A few feet off the stern, the man popped to the surface, wheezing and sputtering for air.

  “Take it easy,” Finlay assured the man in a comforting voice. “You’re going to be all right.” She pulled him closer, then tied off the line on a cleat.

  The man regained his composure and pulled himself to the stern while breathing heavily.

  “Can you help me aboard? ” he rasped, extending an arm skyward.

  Finlay instinctively reached down and grabbed the man’s thick hand. Before she could brace herself to pull, she felt herself roughly tugged toward the water. The man had gripped her wrist and flung himself backward, pushing off the sailboat’s stern with his feet. Taken off balance, the slight older woman flew over the railing and struck the water headfirst.

  Elizabeth Finlay’s surprise at being pulled over the rail was surpassed by the shock of immersion in the frigid waters. She gasped at the cold, then regained her bearings and kicked to the surface. Only she couldn’t get there.

  The drowning man had let go of her wrist but now gripped her about the arm above the elbow. To Finlay’s horror, she found herself being dragged deeper under the water. Only her safety harness, stretched to its full extension, kept her from descending farther into the depths. Caught in the middle of a lethal tug-of-war, she looked through a churning veil of bubbles at her underwater assailant. She was shocked to see that he had a dive regulator in his mouth spewing a stream of exhaust bubbles. Writhing to break free of his grasp, she pushed against him and felt a spongy layer beneath his clothes.

  A dry suit. The horror of it all suddenly set in. He was trying to kill her.

  Fear and panic preceded a surge of adrenaline, and the tough little woman kicked and flailed for all she was worth. A swinging elbow connected with the man’s face, knocking the regulator from his mouth. He momentarily let go of her arm, and she made a desperate kick for the surface. But his other hand reached out and clutched her ankle just before her head broke the water, and her fate was sealed.

  Finlay struggled desperately for another minute, her lungs screaming for relief, before a shroud of darkness clouded her vision. Amidst the terror, she curiously fretted about the safety of her pet Lab, whose muffled bark could be detected underwater. Slowly the struggle eased as the oxygen flow to her brain ceased. Unable to hold her breath any longer, she involuntarily gasped for air, filling her lungs with cold salt water. With a spastic choke and a final flail of the arms, Elizabeth Finlay collapsed.

  Her assailant held her limp body underwater for another two minutes, then cautiously surfaced alongside the sailboat. Seeing no other vessels about, he swam to the runabout and hoisted himself over the side. He pulled off a loose overcoat, revealing a dive tank and weight belt that he quickly unbuckled. Stripping out of the dry suit, he threw on some dry clothes, started the outboard, and quickly sped past the sailboat. On board the dinghy, the black Lab barked morosely as it eyed its owner drifting lifelessly off the stern.

  The man gazed at the dog without pity, then turned from the scene of death and calmly cruised toward Victoria.

  5

  The Ventura’s arrival at its home port of Kitimat created an immediate stir. Most of the hamlet’s eleven thousand residents knew the dead fishermen as neighbors, friends, or acquaintances. It was only minutes after Dirk docked the boat at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police wharf that word leaked out to the local townspeople. Family and friends quickly assembled on the dock until being pushed behind a temporary barricade erected by a bull-sized Mountie.

  Tying up the NUMA research boat just astern, Summer joined her brother, attracting curious gazes from the nearby onlookers. A hospital van was backed down the dock and the three bodies loaded aboard on covered stretchers. In a dingy bait shack a few feet away, Dirk and Summer chronicled their morbid discovery.

  “All three were dead when you went aboard?”

  The monotonous tone of the questioner’s voice matched his fa
ce. Kitimat’s police chief peered at Dirk and Summer with unblinking gray eyes that glared over a small nose and an expressionless mouth. Dirk had immediately pegged the inspector as a frustrated lawman trapped in a job too small for his ambitions.

  “Yes,” Dirk replied. “First thing I did was check for a pulse, but it was evident by their color and skin temperature that they had died at least a short while before I got aboard.”

  “Did you move the bodies?”

  “No. I just covered them up with some blankets when we got close to port. They looked to me like they died where they fell.”

  The chief nodded blankly. “Did you hear any distress calls on the radio beforehand? And were there any other vessels in the area?”

  “We heard no calls on the radio,” Summer replied.

  “The only other vessel I noted was a cruise ship sailing down the passage. She was several miles to the north of us when we found the Ventura,” Dirk added.

  The chief stared at them for an awkward minute, then closed a small notebook he had been scribbling in. “What do you think happened?” he asked, arching brows finally cracking his stone face.

  “I’ll leave that for the pathologists to determine,” Dirk said, “though if you forced me to guess, I’d say carbon monoxide poisoning. Maybe an exhaust leak under the wheelhouse allowed gases to accumulate inside.”

  “They were all found together in the bridge, so it might figure,” the chief nodded. “You don’t feel any ill effects?”

  “I’m fine. Opened all the windows, just to be safe.”

  “Anything else you can tell me that might be of help?”

  Dirk looked up for a moment then nodded. “There’s the odd message on the footwell.”

  The chief’s brows arched again. “Show me.”

  Dirk led him and Summer onto the Ventura and into the bridge. Standing near the wheel, he poked a toe toward the helm. The chief dropped to his knees for a closer look, disturbed that he had missed something during his initial crime scene investigation. A faint penciled inscription was scribbled on the face of the helm, just a few inches above the deck. It was a spot where a prone man dying on the deck might try to leave a last message.

  The inspector pulled out a flashlight and aimed it at the inscription. In a shaky hand was spelled the word CHOKE D, with a small gap in front of the D. The chief reached over and picked up a yellow pencil that had rolled against the bulkhead.

  “The writing was in reach of the captain’s body,” Dirk said. “Maybe he fell quickly and couldn’t reach the radio.”

  The chief grunted, still upset he had missed it earlier. “Doesn’t mean much. Might have already been there.” He turned and stared at Dirk and Summer. “What is your business in Hecate Strait?” he asked.

  “We are with the National Underwater and Marine Agency, conducting a study of phytoplankton health along the Inside Passage,” Summer explained. “We are sampling the waters between Juneau and Vancouver, at the request of the Canadian Fisheries Department.”

  The inspector looked at the NUMA boat, then nodded. “I’m going to have to ask you people to stay here in Kitimat for a day or two until the preliminary investigation is complete. You can keep your boat tied up here; this is a municipal dock. There’s a motel just a block or two up the road, if you need it. Why don’t you plan on coming by my office tomorrow afternoon around three? I’ll send a car to pick you up.”

  “Glad to be of help,” Dirk replied drily, slightly annoyed at their being treated as potential suspects.

  The interview complete, Dirk and Summer jumped to the dock and started walking back to their boat. They looked up as a fiberglass workboat nearly identical to their own came roaring toward the dock. The pilot brought it in way too fast, the bow kissing the dock hard just seconds after the engines had been cut. A tall man in a flannel shirt burst from the wheelhouse, grabbed a bow line, and leaped to the dock. Quickly tying the line behind the NUMA boat, he stomped along the pier, his boots pounding the wooden planks. Summer noted his rugged features and shaggy hair as he approached but sensed a measure of grace in his wide, dark eyes.

  “Are you the folks who found the Ventura?” he asked, giving Dirk and Summer a hard stare. The voice was refined and articulate, which seemed to Summer an odd contrast to the man’s appearance.

  “Yes,” Dirk replied. “I brought her in to port.”

  The man nodded briskly, then stormed down the dock, catching the police inspector as he stepped ashore. Summer watched as the man engaged the Mountie in an animated conversation, their voices elevating to a high pitch.

  “Can’t say we’ve had the warmest of welcomes,” Dirk muttered, climbing into the NUMA vessel. “Does everybody here have the demeanor of a grizzly bear?”

  “Guess we brought too much drama to sleepy little Kitimat,” Summer replied.

  Securing their boat and retrieving their water samples, they headed into the north-woods town, finding it not so sleepy after all. A miniboom was taking place in Kitimat, an outgrowth of the deepwater port facility located southwest of downtown. International industry had quietly taken notice of the shipping capabilities and was turning the town into the busiest Canadian port north of Vancouver. A longtime Alcon Aluminum smelter had recently undergone a billion-dollar expansion, while logging operations and tourism continued to grow.

  Locating a shipping office, they overnighted their water samples to a NUMA lab facility in Seattle, then grabbed a late dinner. Walking back to their motel, they took a detour to the dock to retrieve a few items from the boat. Standing on the bridge, Summer found herself staring at the Ventura, moored in front of them. The police had finished their investigation and the boat sat empty, a silent blanket of morbidity hanging over it. Dirk stepped up from belowdecks, noticing his sister’s concentration.

  “Can’t do anything to bring them back,” he said. “It’s been a long day. Let’s head to the motel and turn in.”

  “Just thinking about that message on the footwell and what the captain was trying to say. I wonder if it was a warning of some sort.”

  “They died quickly. We don’t even know if it was a last message.”

  Summer thought about the inscription again and shook her head. It meant something more than it appeared to, of that much she was certain. Beyond that, she had no clue. Somehow, she told herself, she would figure it out.

  6

  The restaurant’s decor would never be featured in Architectural Digest, Dirk thought, but the smoked salmon and eggs certainly rated five stars. He grinned at the moose head protruding above Summer as he swallowed another bite of breakfast. The moose was only one of a dozen stuffed animal heads mounted on the wall. Each seemed to be staring at Summer through hard glassy eyes.

  “All this roadkill is enough to make a person turn vegan,” Summer grimaced, shaking her head at the bared snout of a grizzly bear.

  “Kitimat’s taxidermist must be the richest guy in town,” Dirk replied.

  “Probably owns the motel.”

  She sipped at a cup of coffee as the door to the café opened and a tall man entered the restaurant. He strode directly to their table as Dirk and Summer recognized him as the agitated man they’d encountered on the dock the day before.

  “May I please join you?” he asked in a nonthreatening manner.

  “Please do,” Dirk said, pushing out a chair. He stuck his hand out at the stranger. “I’m Dirk Pitt. This is my sister, Summer.”

  The man’s brow rose a fraction as he gazed at Summer.

  “Glad to know you,” he replied, shaking hands. “My name is Trevor Miller. My older brother, Steve, was captain of the Ventura.”

  “We’re sorry for what happened yesterday,” Summer replied. She could tell by the look in the man’s eyes that he was deeply shaken by the loss of his brother.

  “He was a good man,” Trevor said, his gaze turning distant. He then looked at Summer and offered a sheepish grin. “My apologies for the gruff behavior yesterday. I had just received word of
my brother’s death over the marine radio and was a little upset and confused.”

  “A natural reaction,” Summer said. “I think we were all a little confused.”

  Trevor inquired about their involvement, and Summer told of their discovery of the fishing boat while surveying the Hecate Strait.

  “Your brother fished these waters for some time?” Dirk asked.

  “No, only two or three years. He was actually a doctor who sold his practice and turned to fishing out of passion. Did pretty well at it, too, despite all the restrictions placed on commercial fishing these days to protect the stocks.”

  “Seems like an odd career transition,” Summer remarked.

  “We grew up on the water. Our father was an engineer for the local mining company and an avid fisherman. We traveled around a lot but always had a boat. Steve would be on the water every chance he got. He even crewed on a trawler in high school.”

  “He sure kept a smart boat,” Dirk said. “I’ve never seen such an immaculate fishing boat.”

  “The Ventura was the pride of the Northwest, he used to joke. Steve was a bit of a perfectionist. He always kept his boat spotless and his equipment maintained in the highest order. That’s what makes everything so troubling.” He gazed out the window, a faraway look in his eyes. Then he turned to Dirk and asked quietly, “They were dead when you found them?”

  “I’m afraid so. The boat was circling haphazardly with no one at the helm when we first spotted it.”

  “The Ventura would have piled onto the rocks of Gil Island if Dirk hadn’t jumped aboard,” Summer added.

  “I’m glad you did,” Trevor said. “The autopsies revealed that the men died of asphyxiation. The police are certain that carbon monoxide poisoning was the cause. Yet I went all over the Ventura and could find no evidence of an exhaust leak.”

  “The engine is well astern of the wheelhouse, which makes it perplexing. Perhaps there is no leak and it was just an odd mix of wind and running conditions that allowed the exhaust fumes to accumulate in the cabin,” Dirk suggested. “It does seem odd that the three men succumbed so quickly.”