"There was little I could do. I stumbled into the bow of the boat and stared at their mutilated remains in disbelief. The sky was again crystal clear and blue. The insidious killer had come in the form of a great yellow cloud and just as quickly had disappeared.
"After that I lost all track of time. I know that I drifted for days — and then I did the only thing I could do. In order to sustain myself, I ate the remains of my companions."
I closed Govan's journal, shuddered and, without much enthusiasm, finished what was left of my Scotch and water. The theory was developing rapidly now. Now it was no longer a matter of trying to retrieve something that might prolong an old man's life. Suddenly it was a matter of finding something before the world experienced another Deechapal.
By the time the waitress had cleared away the dishes, Hannah and Maggie had most of the details of my sojourn into Kingston, and I was ready to talk theory, hypothesis or hunch — whatever anybody wanted to call it. To their credit, the trio of Maggie, Hannah and Queet had us resupplied, and Queet was able to convince the powers of the Maritime Academy that Hannah was a genuine card-carrying, qualified pilot of a PC-13A submersible. The bogus NASA card was the thing that convinced them. It was the first time that I had worked an assignment with an unlimited budget, and it was a heady experience. After all, Bearing had been pretty specific: ''Get me those cylinders."
Before the arrival of the team, I had managed to pull off one other minor miracle. The archaic Jamaican telephone system had functioned just long enough for me to get a call through to Lucy. As usual, the chubby little lady wasn't there, and I had visions of my one contact with reality flitting from one collegiate holiday function to another and paying damn little attention to the tape recordings I was leaving. Nevertheless, I left the usual barrage of instructions and questions. The most important was to find out what she could about the known constituents for cryonic experiments, both then and now. The key question, of course, was what gases are used and just how volatile are they. I was well aware that any of the trio of Hannah, Maggie or Huntington could probably answer the question, but I wanted my answers straight from the old college data bank — free of bias, free of conjecture, but most of all free from having them know what I was thinking. I had even gone so far as to tell young Lucy that I didn't have ready access to a phone and that all she had to do was record the answers to my questions and code them for an 05 data recall. If she wasn't too full of holiday cheer, Lucy would know what to do.
Hannah listened patiently while I expostulated my rather bizarre theory, all the while slumped back in a chair and sucking heartily on one of those fancy Jamaican fruit and rum drinks. When I finished, she yawned and looked at her watch. "So suppose everything you say is true? What are we going to do?" It was typical Hannah — the bottom line.
"Look, I played this thing over and over in my mind, and I keep coming up with the same answers. It all hinges on Bormann, and what do we know about him?"
"Martin Bormann?" Maggie repeated.
"He's the one who supposedly engineered the whole scheme."
"From everything I've ever read," Hannah interjected, "Bormann and Goebbels were, outside of Hitler, the two most powerful men in the party at the end. The same article said that Goering and Himmler were almost nonentities by the end of the war."
"Didn't Hitler appoint Bormann as part of the successor government, along with Doenitz and Goebbels?" Maggie asked.
I was happy to hear the ladies' recollections of historical fact were confirming my conviction that I was on the right track. "Okay — second question. How would you describe Martin Bormann?"
Hannah's face furrowed into a frown. "What the hell is this, Elliott, a history test?"
Maggie had gotten into the spirit of the thing. "Well, I'd say he was clever, conniving, power hungry…"
Hannah confirmed the assessment with a nod.
"Okay, ladies, assuming everything you've just said is true, why would Martin Bormann have tried to save Hitler's life?"
"To assure continuance of the Third Reich?" Maggie guessed.
I shook my head. "Perhaps… but now let me put a little twist on that. Suppose, just for one moment, that Bormann staged the whole thing just to look like he was trying to use Bachmann's process to save Hitler for the reemergence of the Third Reich."
"That doesn't make any sense," Hannah protested.
"Now wait a minute. Suppose this is nothing more than an elaborate scam. I tried to put myself in Bormann's place. I'm thinking to myself that if I arrange an elaborate scheme in which the world learns of a plan to reanimate Adolph Hitler through an obscure process known as cryonics, the whole world will be looking for those damn cylinders… right?"
The ladies were listening, but they weren't buying. I could tell by the looks on their faces.
"So," I continued, undaunted, "Bormann realizes that when those cylinders are found, they will be taken somewhere where elaborate and extensive efforts will be made to try to save Hitler so that he can be brought to trial. Follow me?" I turned to Hannah. "Now, answer this one question. If you had one of those cylinders, where would you try to open it?"
She thought for a minute. "Well," she speculated, "it would have to be a carefully controlled environment, and, because of the media pressure, probably conducted at a major medical research center like Baltimore or Boston or maybe even Washington. It would have to be a place where they knew they had everything it took to get the job done."
"Which is another way of saying that even if we find the cylinders, we aren't going to open them on the deck of the Sloe Gin because we wouldn't dare take the risk. Right?"
Hannah nodded. "That's the way I see it."
"Then explain Byron Huntington to me."
Maggie gave me a quizzical look, but Hannah was the one who caught on. "I see what you're getting at."
"See, damn it, that's just one of the questions that keeps popping up. Who the hell is Byron Huntington and why the hell is he a part of the team? Surely Bearing Schuster thought of all of this."
Maggie's lovely face began to curl into a smile. "I see. You think he may be the one that told Packer that Poqulay had sold out and took us over to see the situation at Deechapal."
"That's right," Hannah agreed. "We left him on the Sloe Gin with Sargent. We know he had access to the ship-to-shore."
Maggie began to sputter. "You're losing me. Are you trying to say that Hitler isn't in one of those cylinders?"
"I don't know what I think at this point. Hitler could very well be there — and maybe even Eva — but I got a hunch it ain't like I think it is. Even that's not the real question. The real question is — what's in the other cylinders?"
Hannah slumped back in her seat, lips pursed, brows knitted into an unattractive knot. "Well, Elliott, are you going to tell us?"
I finally worked up enough courage to lay my wild theory on them. I was all too aware that it might sound totally preposterous when I finally said it out loud. "I think Martin Bormann planned one helluva surprise for his boss, what's left of the Nazi party and damn near the whole civilized world. I think that every time one of those cylinders are opened, a highly toxic and lethal gas is released that destroys everything in its path. I think that's what converted Big Doobacque from an island paradise into a clump of lifeless rock. Furthermore, I think that's what happened at Deechapal and also the crew of the Bay Foreman."