“I thought I'd never see the day,” he said. “Dirk Pitt hobbling around on a cane.”
“Just practicing for my senile years,” Pitt retorted.
A short, red-haired man with a zeppelin-shaped cigar stashed jauntily between his lips came over and shook Pitt’s, hand. “Welcome back, Dirk. Congratulations on a great job in the Aegean.”
Pitt stared into the griffin-featured face of Admiral James Sandecker, the crusty chief of the National Underwater Marine Agency.”
“Thank you, Admiral. Any word on the Teaser yet?”
“Only that it’s alive and still swimming,” Sandecker answered. “Since Gunn had it flown over last week in a special tank, I haven’t been able to get near the goddamn thing — a horde of scientists have been crowded around it, ogling their damn eyes right out of their sockets. They promised me a preliminary report by morning.”
Zacynthus came across to greet Pitt. He seemed younger, much more relaxed than when. Pitt had last seen him, three weeks previously.
“Good to see you walking again,” Zacynthus said smiling. “You look as mean and nasty as ever.”
He took Pitt by the arm and led him over to a tall man standing by the window and introduced them. Pitt studied the Director of the Bureau and was studied in return by hard gray eyes that peered intently from a high-checked. pockmarked face; it was a face straight out of a police lineup. Pitt amusingly reflected that the Director looked more like a narcotics smuggler than the chief administrator of several thousand federal investigators. The Director spoke first.
“I've looked forward to meeting you, Major Pitt The Bureau is deeply grateful for your assistance.” The voice was low and very precise.
“I didn’t do much. Inspector Zacynthus and Colonel Zeno carried most of the load.”
The Director met his eyes evenly. “That may be, but you carry the scars.” He motioned Pitt to a chair and offered him a cigarette. “Did you have a good flight from Greece?”
Pitt lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Air Force cargo planes aren’t exactly famous for their cuisine and royal coachman service, but I must admit that it was considerably more relaxing than the flight in.”
Admiral Sandecker gave Pitt a puzzled look. “Why the Air Force? You could have flown from Athens on Pan Am or TWA.”
“Souvenirs,” Pitt laughed. “One of my mementos of Thasos was too bulky to fit in the luggage compartment of a commercial airliner. Colonel Lewis came to my rescue and helped me hitch a ride on a half-empty Air Force cargo plane that was headed stateside.”
“Your wound,” Sandecker nodded at Pitt’s leg. “Healing all right?”
“It’s still a bit stiff,” Pitt answered. “Nothing a thirty day medical leave won’t cure.”
The Admiral eyed Pitt shrewdly for a moment through a blue haze of cigar smoke. “Two weeks.” The tone reeked of cool authority. “I have more faith in your recuperative powers than you have.”
The Director cleared his throat. “I’ve read Inspector Zacynthus’ report with a great deal of interest.
There is, however, one point he didn’t cover. It isn’t important. but out of personal curiosity, I wonder if you could tell me. Major how you came to the conclusion that Minerva Lines ships had the capacity to carry submarines?”
Pitt smiled with his eyes. “I guess you might say, sir, the secret was written in the sand.”
The Director’s lips curled in a humorless smile. He wasn’t used to indirect answers.. “Very Homeric, Major, but hardly the answer I had in mind.”
“Strange but true,” Pitt said. “After finding no sign of the heroin on board the Queen Artemisia, I swam to the beach and began doodling with a stick in the sand. A detachable submarine seemed like an abstract idea at first. but the more
I doodled, the more concrete it became.”
The Director leaned back in his chair and shook his head sadly. “Forty years, a hundred agents from twelve different nations all struggling under the most adverse conditions imaginable to break von Till’s smuggling operation. Three of those agents gave up their lives in the struggle” He looked gravely across the desk at Pitt “Somehow it almost seems a tragic joke that our efforts overlooked a solution that was so apparent to someone standing on the outside looking in.”
Pitt stared at him in silence.
“By the way,” the Director continued suddenly cheerful, “I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to hear the results of our Galveston stakeout?”
“No sir.” Pitt carefully tapped an ash in an ashtray. “Until five minutes ago I haven’t seen or talked to Inspector Zacynthus since we parted on Thasos. nearly three weeks ago I’ve had no way of knowing whether my small assist paid off for you in Galveston or not.”
Zacynthus looked at the Director. “May I fill Major Pitt in, sir?”
The Director nodded.
Zacynthus turned to Pitt.
“Everything went according to plan. Five miles outside the harbor we were met by a small fleet of von Till’s fishing boats — a bit tricky at this point, not knowing the proper identification signals. Luckily I persuaded the Queen Jocasta’s captain — with the threat of castration with a rusty knife-to desert the enemy and join our side.”
“Did anyone come aboard?” Pitt asked.
“There was no danger of that,” Zacynthus replied.
“A boarding party would have looked too damned suspicious to a passing patrol boat. The fishermen merely stood off and signaled us to detach the sub. Interesting piece of machinery, that sub. The Navy engineers who studied it coming across the Atlantic were quite impressed.”
“What made it so unique?” “It was fully automatic.”
“A drone?” Pitt asked incredulously.
“Yes, another one of von Till’s clever innovations. You see, if the sub had an accident or was detected by the Harbor Patrol before it reached the cannery there was no way in hell it could be traced or connected to Minerva Lines. And without a crew there would be no one to interrogate.”
Pitt was intrigued. “Then it was controlled by one of the fishing boats.”
Zacynthus nodded. “Right up the middle of the harbor’s main channel and under the pilings of the cannery. Only this trip the sub carried several uninvited stowaways: myself and ten marines on loan from the Mediterranean Tenth Fleet I might add that the cannery was surrounded by thirty of the Bureau’s best agents.”
“If Galveston had more than one cannery,” Giordino said thoughtfully, “you’d have been in big trouble.”
Zacynthus grinned knowingly. “As a matter of fact, Galveston boasts a total of four canneries, all located on pilings over the water.”
Giordino didn’t have to ask the obvious question. It was written all over his face.
“I’ll put your mind at ease,” Zacynthus said. “The Bureau’s Gulf Ports Department had each cannery under surveillance for two weeks before the Queen Jocasta’s arrival. The tip-off came when one of them received a shipment of sugar.”
Pitt raised an eyebrow. “Sugar?”
“Sugar,” the Director offered, “is often used to adulterate the heroin and boost the quantity. By the time pure heroin is cut by the middle man and cut again by the dealer, the original supply is increased by a substantial amount.”
Pitt thought for a moment “So the one hundred and thirty tons was only a beginning?”
“It could have been the beginning,” Zacynthus answered, "if it wasn’t for you, old friend. You’re the only one who saw through von Till’s plan. If you and Giordino hadn’t arrived at Thasos when you did, the rest of us would be sitting up in Chicago about now, forming a daisy chain and kicking each other into Lake Michigan.”
Pitt grinned. “Write it off to luck.”
“Call it what you will,” Zacynthus retorted. “As things stand at the moment, we have over thirty of the biggest illegal drug importers in the country waiting for indictment, including everyone connected with the trucking company that transported the goods. And that’s only the half of it. When we searched the cannery office we found a book with the names of nearly two thousand dealers from New York to Los Angeles. For the Bureau it was comparable to a prospector discovering the mother lode.”