“How about you. Henry?” continued Liam.
The bald-headed fisherman took a sip of stout arid answered.
“That’s easy, mate. Since I’d spend my time in one even if I had a fortune, I’d buy me a nice quiet little pub.”
“I’d be willing to sell mine real cheap,” returned Eamon McGilligan.
“Because if I had the dough, I’d get a sleek yacht and sail off for Tahiti to marry one of those topless native girls. Now that would be living like a real king!”
“Since you asked the question, what would you spend it on, Liam?” queried Billy Kelly.
Liam thoughtfully tamped down the tobacco in his pipe. Yet before he could express himself, the double doors to the pub swung open, and in walked a tall, sandy-haired stranger. Finding something about this man disturbingly familiar, Liam racked his brain in an effort to place him. And then it came to him: this was the fellow who had been over at his house the other night asking questions about Sean’s whereabouts.
Immediately sensing trouble, Liam slouched down on his stool and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. Even then the stranger carefully scanned the room and headed his way. In a last-ditch effort at anonymity, Liam purposely dropped his pipe tool on the floor and went to his knees to search for it. This only served to inflame his arthritic joints as he located the tool beside a pair of mud-stained combat boots.
“Liam Lafferty?” quizzed an icy voice from above.
Sheepishly Liam looked up and as defiantly as possible answered, “Who wants to know?”
“We met the other night when I stopped by your cottage to ask about your son,” returned the stranger.
“I just talked to your wife, and she said that I’d find you either here or on your boat. Is it possible that I could have a few more minutes of your time, in private?”
Not willing to make a scene in front of his friends, Liam stood stiffly and forced a cordial reply.
“Why, of course, my friend. If you’d like, we can take one of the booths in the back.”
Conscious of the curious stares of his drinking companions, Liam followed the stranger over to the booth. Only when they were well out of hearing distance did Liam speak out angrily.
“What is it this time? As it turns out, my son is just fine. And here you went and scared me and my wife to death for absolutely nothing!”
Colin Stewart studied the heavily lined face of the old fisherman.
“Right now I’m not interested in Sean.
What I want to know is more about that object you mentioned fishing out of the sea on the night you saw the mysterious fire light up the sky.”
Shocked that the stranger remembered his misguided revelation, Liam tried to play ignorant.
“I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about, sir.”
“Oh yes you do,” rejoined the Highlander forcefully.
“When we first met, you apparently thought we were there on another matter, and babbled away about a piece of satellite that you pulled from the sea. You even thought that we were sent by the United States Navy to retrieve it. Now I realize you don’t understand the real significance of this matter.
But all I can tell you is that your son will be in big trouble if that object you found doesn’t get back to its rightful owner.”
“But it will!” sputtered Liam excitedly.
“In fact, its on its way right now!”
“What do you mean by that?” shot back Colin Stewart.
Well aware that his interrogator wasn’t the type of man he could easily fool, Liam decided to be truthful.
“The satellite’s on its way to Port Glasgow even as we speak. I saw Dr. Blackwater and Sean load it onto a tug with my very own eyes this morning. So if you have any idea of trying to take the reward for yourself, you can forget all about it.”
“Believe me, it’s not the reward that I’m concerned with. Could you describe this so-called satellite that you recovered, Mr. Lafferty?”
His mind set at ease by the way in which the Scotsman’s tone of voice had suddenly lightened, Liam did his best to describe his treasure in words. As he did so, the stranger’s probing eyes never left his face, and the fisherman could tell just how important this description was to his interrogator.
While Liam went on to explain each detail of the recovery effort, Colin Stewart intently listened, appalled by what he was hearing. His first instinct was to immediately notify the commander of the Royal Navy headquarters unit at Northwood. With his assistance, the tug could perhaps be apprehended. And if that couldn’t be achieved, at the very least the Royal Family could be kept as far away from Gare Loch as possible.
Though this would have been the prudent course of action, the Highlander knew that his case was still pitifully weak. Command would want solid evidence to begin a search of this scope. And this was particularly the case if the Queen’s plans were to be altered.
Right now, all he had was the word of a drunken old fisherman, and a few bits of circumstantial evidence that made great sense to him, but would appear inconsequential as far as Command was concerned.
It was with this circumspect realization that Stewart decided to take a vastly different tack. The fisherman was in the process of explaining the engine problems that he’d had on the night of the find when the Scotsman interrupted.
“Excuse me, Mr. Lafferty, but would it be possible for you to take me out to the spot where you found the object in your boat right now? I’d be willing to pay you for a full day’s charter.”
“I don’t think that I’d have any trouble finding it,” replied Liam.
“But you do realize that there’s some sort of naval exercise going on out there, and that we’ll most likely get stopped by the authorities along the way.”
Praying that just such a thing would happen, Colin Stewart anxiously stood and instructed the fisherman to lead the way down to the docks.
Chapter Fourteen
The utter enormity of the job at hand was finally beginning to register in Mac’s consciousness. They had been unbelievably lucky to find the first of the two missing bombs when they had. Now, as the search went on in earnest for the final weapon, he realized that it could be almost anywhere in a fifty-mile radius of water. This was the current extent of the debris field as determined by the latest information relayed to him by the various platforms of the ever-expanding search fleet.
To better coordinate this effort, Mac decided to remain on the oceanographic ship. Its communications systems were a bit more flexible than the attack sub’s.
Staying on the Lynch also meant that he could become more closely involved with CURV, and the other ROV’s currently hard at work scanning the seafloor for any sign of their elusive quarry.
Just recently one of the minesweepers had relayed to them a promising contact. The object in question was located at a depth of 636 feet, lying on its side on a base of sandy sediment. Ever hopeful that this would signal the end of their search, Mac ordered the Lynch in to investigate.
He sat at the controls as CURV was dispatched down into the depths. It was with the greatest of expectations that he triggered the device’s mercury-vapor floodlights and activated its fiberoptic camera. A hushed tension prevailed in the control room as Mac maneuvered CURV down to the coordinates given to them by the minesweeper.
His eyes glued to the monitor screen, Mac watched as the seafloor came into focus. Soon afterward, a cylindrical object could be seen in the distance, and with his pulse ever quickening, Mac opened up the ROV’s throttle. Already looking forward to the triumphant dispatch he’d soon be sending to Admiral Long, he reached forward to fine-tune the camera’s focus. It was then that he noticed that the object was not the missing nuclear device at all, but a rusted-out water heater that someone had unceremoniously dumped here.