"I like reading with you. It's one of my favorite things." Cathy held out her hand to Ronnie. "Come on and sit with us. I haven't had a chance to be with you today."
"I came to see you earlier." He moved toward her. "You were on the phone with Aunt Hannah."
How much had he heard? Probably enough to worry him. "She sends her love."
Ronnie looked at Donna, who was busily turning the pages of her book. "I want her to come home, Mom."
"So do I. But she'll be fine, Ronnie. She's very smart."
"The Beast," Donna prompted. "I'll read the first page."
"That will take you an hour," Ronnie said. "Let me do it."
"Will not," Donna said. "I'm good. Mama said so."
"She just wants to-" He stopped and then nodded. "Yeah. I noticed you were getting better yesterday when you were reading that Dora book."
"You did?" Donna's face lit with excitement. "Honest?"
"Honest." He dropped down on the floor at her feet. "Go ahead. Let me know if you have trouble with a word."
"I won't have trouble." Donna turned to the first chapter. "Mama, you just sit back and listen. I'll do the whole story. I told Ronnie this would make you happy."
Was that what this was all about? Good God, her five-year-old was administering therapy. The story made Donna happy, so she wanted to spread the joy? Cathy was touched. In the midst of sorrow, there was this sudden rainbow. "You were right." Cathy leaned back and her hand caressingly touched Ronnie's head as Donna turned the first page. "And that makes you very smart, young lady." She gazed down at the huge beast standing in the doorway of his castle. "He's pretty ugly, isn't he?"
"Beasts have to be ugly," Donna said matter-of-factly. "But that's okay, they always turn out to be princes in the end."
Only in fairy tales, Cathy thought. Hannah was dealing with a hideous reality right now and not letting her help. She was scared to death this Kirov would prove to be an uglier beast than the one in Donna's book.
And the finale of the story would bring not a happy but a deadly ending.
Hannah caught up with Kirov behind the motel, strolling in a surprisingly charming small Shakespeare Garden. Small plaques with quotes from the Bard were scattered among the lush, colorful flowers.
"I wouldn't have expected a garden like this behind an ordinary motel," she said.
"Beautiful flowers are a cheap way to dress up the ordinary."
"I never would have taken you for a botanist," Hannah said.
"I'm not." Kirov nodded toward one of the plaques. "I'm more interested in the Shakespeare quotes."
"Your stepbrother was a fan of Western literature. I guess that's something you shared."
"I suppose." He frowned. "But we certainly didn't share a love of mythology. I still don't know why there was a mythology book in his cabin. I did a few crude chemical tests on some of the pages last night, and I don't believe there are messages scribbled in invisible ink. That would have been too easy. Pavski had a chance to go through all those books before the Kremlin jerked the sub away from him and sent it to Finland. He obviously found nothing."
"Those are some of the most widely read stories in the history of the world. Maybe there's no special meaning to it at all."
"Possibly, but I knew all the men who might have occupied that cabin, and it doesn't seem like something that any of them would have cracked open. Strange."
"How well did you know them?"
He raised an eyebrow. "The crew? I tried to know them as well as I knew every piece of equipment on that sub."
"That's smart. I guess your life depended on each and every one of those people."
"More to the point, they were trusting their lives to me and their other officers. The least I could do is to try and get to know them."
"You knew some of them for a long time, didn't you? All the way back to the naval academy in St. Petersburg?"
"It was called Leningrad at the time, but yes. Some even earlier than that."
"Earlier?"
"I had known the assistant engineer since grade school."
Chalk one up for Kirov, Hannah thought. She'd read that engineer's mate Alexander Rotonoff had grown up in the same neighborhood as Ivanov.
"What was his name?"
"Alex Rotonoff. A good man, yet limited outside his narrow expertise."
Chalk up another one.
They rounded the corner and proceeded down another path. "If I remember your file correctly, your father was a sailor."
He smiled. "Your famous memory at work. Yes, my father loved the sea."
"And his father before him?'
"A wagon maker. My father and I insisted that our love of adventure came from my grandmother."
"Your father's first command was a supply vessel in the Aegean Sea, the Danitelvia."
"Actually, that was his second. His first was another supply ship, the Lettenski, but his command only lasted about seventy-two hours. The ship developed engine problems and eventually had to be scuttled." He cocked an eyebrow at her. "I'm surprised you didn't know that, since I'm sure a copy of his service record was attached to mine. I suppose there's a limit to that memory of yours, eh?"
The bastard knew he was being tested, but she wasn't ready to make an issue of it yet. In any case, he'd passed with flying colors. If he was lying about being Ivanov, he'd certainly done his homework.
She shrugged. "What are we waiting for now?"
"I'm waiting to hear back on a few inquiries I've made about McClary, and my computer is downloading the contents of that GPS device as we speak. By the way, how did your call with Cathy go?"
"Fine."
"Was it?"
"Yes."
His gaze held her own, and it was obvious he didn't believe her. Either he was extremely perceptive, or she was a bad liar. Both, she decided.
He didn't push it. "Good," he said gently. "I know you're worried about her. Let's head back to my room. The GPS download should be finished anytime now."
TWELVE
Hannah's gaze narrowed on Kirov's laptop screen, which was now divided into two distinct sections. One window featured a graphic representation of a GPS device, the other was littered with blue and white icons.
Kirov pointed to the icons. "These are the various destination coordinates still lurking in the GPS unit's memory."
"How were you able to do this on such short notice?"
"The Internet is a wonderful thing. I downloaded a recovery utility that people use when they accidentally delete addresses they need."
He double-clicked an icon, and a map appeared on the on-screen GPS device. "This is the Docklands area of London."
"Whoever owned this has been to that address?"
"Most likely." Kirov pulled up on online telephone directory and keyed in the address. "Club Oasis" came up on the screen.
Hannah nodded in recognition. "That's a dance club."
"Frequent the place, do you?"
"Some of the guys in my crew have been there. It wasn't easy getting them back to work after a night in that place."
"Fairly innocuous," Kirov said. "And we already know this man has a fondness for European pop music."
Kirov turned his attention back to the destination icons. One by one, he clicked them and checked the locations against his online telephone directory.
After he was finished, Hannah checked the notes she had taken. "Fourteen locations, all in either England, Scotland, or Ireland. All public addresses-restaurants, pubs, dance clubs, a racquet club. On their own, they don't mean very much."
"I agree. Perhaps we should just give it a rest until I hear something back about McClary."
"Fine." Hannah picked up the digital music player and earphones.
"What do you want with that?"
"Maybe it'll help me get to know the person who owns it better." She headed for the adjoining door. "Besides, I might like it. Just because you don't like anything recorded since 1970 doesn't mean I don't."
St
atic. Shrill, earsplitting static.
Hannah sat bolt upright in her bed and yanked out the earphones. At first she thought it was nothing more than the opening refrain of a bit of obnoxious techno pop, but there was no way this could be considered music. She had been listening to the player for over an hour, and while the songs certainly weren't to her taste, she didn't detest them the way Kirov did.
This number was entirely another matter.
She checked out the tiny LCD screen and saw that the song was entitled "Waterbridge." She held the earphones up and still heard only static. She jumped to the next tune and heard guitars, synth drums, and heavily processed vocals, just like almost every other song on the player.
Back to "Waterbridge." More static.
Then, nothing.
She looked at the LCD screen again. It now read: INVALID FILE.
Invalid file.
She went rigid. Christ almighty.
She picked up the phone and punched Kirov's extension. "Get your laptop and bring it down to my room. Now."
"I'll be there in three minutes."
Two minutes later Hannah opened her door to Kirov's knock. He was carrying his laptop and cables. "What is it?"
"You can set up the laptop on my desk."
He crossed the room to the desk. "The iPod?"
Hannah nodded. "We were on the right track, but concentrating on the wrong device. Upload the song 'Waterbridge' into your laptop and tell me what you get."
Kirov uploaded the file and double-clicked it. An "invalid or unknown file" error message came up on the screen. "That's strange," he murmured. "It has an MP3 extension, which would indicate it's an audio file."
"But it's not," Hannah said. "It was given an MP3 extension so that it could be downloaded to the music player and appear in the directory. We need to rename it."
"Rename it to what?" Kirov said.
"I don't know. I'll just start trying extensions and see what works."
Hannah sat next to Kirov and tried several of the more common file extensions, assignable to popular word-processing and graphic file formats. None opened the file.
Until she tried the.wmv extension.
"It's opening," Kirov said as the Windows Media Player appeared on the screen.
The video was a crudely animated map that showed a set of coordinates that Hannah quickly identified as a point off the New England coast.
The "camera" then plunged underwater to show four red cylinders at a depth reading of 1625 feet.
"What the hell is that?" she asked. "Is that what Pavski has been looking for?"
"I don't think so," Kirov said. "If he really knew the location, he wouldn't be bothering with the Silent Thunder, you, your brother, and with reinforcements from the motherland. This has to be something else."
"Like what?"
"I don't know." He stared at the crudely rendered red cylinders. "Those could represent training torpedoes we used during military exercises."
"Why would they be on the bottom of the ocean?"
"Actually, they were made to float. But it's possible that there's something placed inside to weigh them down."
"Do you think these may have been ejected from the Silent Thunder?" Hannah leaned back in her chair. "Something that can point the way to what they're looking for? Maybe what we want isn't on the sub at all."
The video repeated on the screen, and Kirov jotted down the coordinates. "Who knows? But if Pavski had this information over a week ago, he's probably recovered them by now."
Hannah studied the animatic as the underwater plunge repeated. "Maybe not. If this depth is correct, it would take some expensive equipment and a lot of expertise to do that. We might still have a chance."
"How? Unless you're willing to involve Bradworth and the resources of the U.S. government-"
"No way."
"You're thinking. I can see the wheels go round." He leaned back in his chair, and a small smile curved his lips. "It's a lovely thing to behold. How are we going to do this, Hannah?"
"Experts and expensive equipment," Hannah said. "In case you're forgetting, I am an expert. And as far as resources go, I have a few connections of my own."
By sundown, Hannah and Kirov were on a forty-foot rented fishing boat, heading toward the research vessel Aurora 125 miles off the Virginia coast. Kirov manned the wheel while Hannah stood beside him staring ahead at the 225-foot craft.
"Do you really think this is going to work?" Kirov asked.
"Who knows? If it doesn't, we'll try something else," Hannah said. "Captain Tanbury is a good guy, but he may be at the mercy of the researchers aboard. He says they're studying brine shrimp populations."
"Brine shrimp? You mean sea monkeys?"
Hannah chuckled. "Excellent pop culture reference. Did they advertise them on the back of comic books in Russia, too?"
"Not that I know of, but I've seen the packages in your country's souvenir shops, especially in coastal towns. It's ridiculous. Next they'll be packaging algae and selling it to children as pets."
"In any case, this is our best hope. My only other options are either too far away or too closely tied to military interests." She waved back at a man in a bright red shirt who was waving at her from the stern. "There's Tanbury now. I'm afraid you'll have to pretend to be a member of my crew again."
Kirov shrugged. "I'm getting used to being your lackey. As long as I don't catch you enjoying it too much."
"No promises," Hannah said, as they pulled alongside the Aurora and tossed mooring lines to the waiting deckhands.
A rope ladder flew over the side, and Captain Tanbury's round red face appeared above the railing. "Ahoy, Hannah Bryson. Have you come to rescue me?"
Hannah smiled as she and Kirov climbed the ladder. "Rescue you from what?"
"A life of indentured servitude to a bunch of eggheads. Oh, wait." He clapped his head in mock distress. "What am I thinking? You're no good to me. You're an egghead, too!"
"You were damn grateful I was an egghead when I was working with you." They high-fived each other as she climbed aboard.
Tanbury was a bear of a man in his early fifties, with thick red hair both on top and curling out of the neckline of his T-shirt. He gestured down to Kirov. "Who's your friend?"
"Another egghead. Captain Earl Tanbury, meet Nicholas Kirov."
Kirov climbed aboard and shook hands with Tanbury. "Delighted to meet you, Captain Tanbury."
"At least, an egghead with manners. A lot of these scientists think I'm such a redneck that they don't bother with the niceties." Tanbury gestured for them to walk with him down the deck. "I was happy to get your call, Hannah, but I'm guessing this isn't just a social visit."
She nodded. "I need to talk to you about a mutual friend of ours."
"Who?" he asked warily.
" LISA ."
Tanbury smiled. "A subject near and dear to my heart. Would you like to see her?"
"Very much."
"This way." Tanbury led them to the ship's stern, where a two-man submersible was suspended on a winch. "There she is. LISA-Lateral Intake Submersible Application. She still works as well as she did the day you left her with us."
Hannah ran her hand caressingly across LISA's white hull. It was one of her first major contracts, one that had paved the way for many high-profile projects that followed. The egg-shaped underwater craft featured fore-and-aft observation ports and two pairs of finely articulated robotic hands extending from the front of the vessel, tilting downward almost as if poised to play the next movement of a piano concerto.
"Looks good," Hannah said. "You've been taking good care of it."
"Her," Tanbury corrected. "We've been taking good care of her."
Hannah smiled. "Of course."
"And she's been taking good care of us. She gets a little prickly when you try to overwork her, but overall she's a good gal."
Kirov turned toward her with lifted brows. "See?"
"Men and the sea…" Hannah murmured.
> Tanbury chuckled. "Aw, I'm just trying to get under your skin. I know how you feel about this stuff. Seriously, though, she's as reliable as any submersible I've ever known. There may be newer ones out there with more bells and whistles, but she's a great little performer. The institute has a mile-long list of research groups waiting to lease this boat, and LISA is a big reason why. You did good, Hannah."
"Glad to hear it," Hannah said. "Because I have a big favor to ask, Tanbury."
"Shoot."
"I want to borrow LISA for a day."
Tanbury smile faded. "I'd call that a damn big favor."
"It gets bigger. I can't tell you why I need it, and no one off this ship can know I have it."
Tanbury shook his head. "I have people from the institute on board who expect to use it all day tomorrow."
"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important to me. I need this, Tanbury."
He studied her expression. "Yeah, I can see it means a lot to you. Can't it wait a day or two? Maybe I can work it."
She shook her head.
"Tough." He thought for a moment. "Let me put on my bullshit hat for a second. What if I tell them you had concerns about the structural safety of the pod and needed to take it away to conduct some tests? That will satisfy the people on board. But after that, when word gets back to the institute and manufacturer…"
"I'll handle it. Stick by your story, and I'll take the heat."
"You'll have to." He grimaced. "Because this is the kind of caper I could lose my job over."
"I appreciate it. You won't lose your job. I'll make sure of that."
"I trust you. There's not many people in this world I'd trust with my livelihood, but you're one of them, Hannah." He walked to the side and stared down at their rented boat. "You won't get far trying to take LISA with that."
"We'll do an underwater tow from the stern. The winch will support it."
"I guess so, as long as the weather holds." He turned back. "Jesus, Hannah, a woman with your connections should be able to just pick up the phone and-"
"You're the only connection that will do me any good right now, Tanbury."
He sighed. "How did I get so lucky? Oh well, we're about to have dinner. Care to join us?"
Silent Thunder Page 17