"Sir, my name is Dirk Pitt, and I wonder if I might have a word with you?"
"Sure, go right ahead," said Bass, finishing the toss. "Pardon me if I keep after these damned weeds, but I want to clear out as much as I can before dinner. If I didn't do this at least twice a week before winter, they'd choke off the whole pond come spring."
Pitt stepped back as a flying wad of tuberous stems and heart-shaped leaves splattered at his feet. To him, at least, it was an awkward situation, and he wasn't sure how to handle it. The admiral's back was to him, and Pitt hesitated. He took a deep breath and plunged. "I'd like to ask you several questions concerning an aircraft with the code designation Vixen 03."
Bass kept at his labor without a pause, but the whitened knuckles amend the handle of the pitchfork did not go unnoticed by Pitt.
"Vixen 03," he said, and shrugged.
"Doesn't ring a bell. Should it?"
"It was a Military Air Transport Service plane that vanished back in 1954."
"That was a long time ago." Bass stared vacantly at the water. "No, I can't recall any connection with a MATS aircraft," he said finally. "Not surprising, though. I was a surface officer throughout my thirty years in the Navy. Heavy ordnance was my specialty."
"Do you recall ever meeting a major in the Air Force by the name of Vylander?"
"Vylander?" Bass shook his head. "Can't say as I have." Then he looked at Pitt speculatively. "What was your name again? Why are you asking me these questions?"
"My name is Dirk Pitt," he said again.
"I'm with the National Underwater and Marine Agency. I found some old papers that stated you were the officer who authorized Vixen 03's flight orders."
"There must be a mistake."
"Perhaps," said Pitt. "Maybe the mystery will be cleared up when the wreck of the aircraft is raised and thoroughly inspected."
"I thought you said it vanished."
"I discovered the wreckage," Pitt answered.
Pitt studied Bass closely for any discernible reaction. There was none. He decided to leave the admiral alone to collect his thoughts.
"I'm sorry to leave troubled you, Admiral. I must have gotten my signals mixed."
Pitt turned and began walking up the path back to the inn. He'd covered nearly fifty feet when Bass yelled after him.
"Mr. Pitt!"
Pitt turned. "Yes?"
"Are you staying at the inn?"
"Until tomorrow morning. Then I must be on my way."
The admiral nodded. When Pitt reached the pines bordering Anchorage House, he took another look toward the pond. Admiral Bass was calmly forking the lily pads onto t e bank, as if their brief conversation had simply been about crops and the weather.
32
Pitt enjoyed a leisurely dinner with the other guests at the inn. The dining room had been designed in the style of an eighteenthcentury country tavern, with old flintlock rifles, pewter drinking cups, and weathered farm implements hanging on the walls and rafters.
The food was about as homemade as any Pitt had ever tasted. He ate two helpings each of the fried chicken, brandied carrots, baked corn, and sweet potatoes, and barely had room for the three-inch-thick wedge of apple pie.
Heidi moved about the tables, serving coffee and making small talk with the guests. Pitt noted that most were of socialsecurity age. Younger couples, he mused, probably found the peaceful serenity of a country inn boring. He finished an Irish coffee and stepped out onto the porch. A full moon rose in the east and turned the pines to silver. He eased into a vacant bentwood rocker and propped his feet on the porch railing and waited for Admiral Bass to make the next move.
The moon had arched overhead nearly twenty degrees when Heidi came out and wandered slowly in his direction. She stood in back of him for a moment and then said, "There is no moon so bright as a Virginia moon."
"You won't get an argument from me," said Pitt.
"Did you enjoy your dinner?"
"I'm afraid my eyes were bigger than my stomach. I gorged myself. My compliments to your chef. His down-home cooking style is poetry to the palate."
Heidi's smile went from friendly to beautiful in the glow of the moon. "She'llbe happy to hear it."
Pitt made a helpless gesture. "A lifetime of chauvinistic tendencies is hard to suppress."
She settled her tightly packed bottom on the railing and faced him, her expression suddenly turning serious. "Tell me, Mr. Pitt, why did you come to Anchorage House?"
Pitt stopped rocking and stared squarely into her eyes. "Is this a survey to check the effectiveness of your advertising or are you just plain inquisitive?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry, but Walter seemed very upset when he returned from the pond this evening. I thought that maybe — "
"You think it was because of something I said," Pitt said, finishing for her.
"I don't know."
"Are you related to the admiral?"
It was the magic question, for she began talking about herself. She was a lieutenant commander in the Navy; she was assigned to the Norfolk Navy Yard; she had enlisted out of Wellesley College and had eleven years to go to retirement; her ex-husband had been a colonel in the Marines and had ordered her about like a recruit; she'd had a hysterectomy, so no children; no, she was not related to the admiral; she had met him when he was a guest lecturer at a Naval College seminar, and she came down to Anchorage House whenever she could sneak off from her duties; she made no bones about the fact that she and Bass had a MayDecember affair going. just when it was getting interesting, she stopped and peered at her watch.
"I'd better run along and see to the other guests." She smiled, and again that transformation. "If you get tired of just sitting, I suggest you take a stroll to the top of the rise beside the inn. You'll find a lovely view of the lights of Lexington."
Her tone, it seemed to Pitt, was more one of command than of suggestion.
Heidi had been only half right. The view from the rise was not only lovely: it was breathtaking. The moon illuminated the entire valley and the streetlights of the town twinkled like a distant galaxy. Pitt had been standing there only a minute when he became aware of a presence behind him.
"Admiral Bass?" he inquired casually.
"Please raise your hands and do not turn around." Bass ordered brusquely.
Pitt did as he was told.
Bass did not make a full body search but instead slipped out Pitt's wallet and beamed a flashlight on its contents.
After a few moments he clicked off the light and returned the wallet to Pitt's pocket.
"You may lower your hands, Mr. Pitt, and turn around if you wish."
"Any reason for the melodramatics?" Pitt tilted his head at the revolver poised in Bass's left hand.
"It seems you've exhumed an excessive amount of information about a subject that belongs buried. I had to be certain of your identity."
"Then you're satisfied that I'm who I say I am?"
"Yes, I called your boss at NUMA. Jim Sandecker served under my command in the Pacific during World War Two. He gave me an impressive list of your credentials. He also wanted to know what you were doing in Virginia when you were supposed to be on a salvage tender off the coast of Georgia."
"I've not made Admiral Sandecker privy to my findings."
"Which, as you claimed earlier, at the pond, were the remains of Vixen 03."