Summer's eyes were glazed with revulsion. Pitt couldn't remember when a woman had looked at him like that. She turned and stared at the bathroom as if she were making up her mind to throw up in the sink or on the s.h.a.g carpet. The sink won. She rose unsteadily from the chair and reeled into the bathroom, slamming the door.

He soon heard the sound of water gushing as the commode was flushed; then the faucet on the sink was turned on. Pitt walked over to the balcony and gazed at the twinkling lights of Honolulu in the distance, while far below, the ocean breakers droned against the beach. He lingered at the balcony perhaps a little too long.

He was jolted back to reality by the sound of running water in the bathroom; the flow was too constant, too prolonged for normal routine. It took him three steps to reach the door-locked from the inside. No time for a theatrical "are you in there" line. Balancing on one leg, he kicked hard at the lock with the other, revealing an empty room.

Summer was gone. Her only trace was a trail of knotted bath towels, tied to the shower curtain railing and stretching over the windowsill. Casting an anxious eye below, he saw the last towel dangling only four feet above a chaise lounge on the balcony belonging to the room beneath his. No lights were showing, no shouts of alarm from the tenants. She had escaped safely. For that he was thankful.

He stood there recalling her face-a face that was probably compa.s.sionate and tender and gay.

Then he cursed himself for letting her get away.

It was early morning. Thin, ghostly trails of vapor were left behind from a light rain that had come and gone during the night The humidity would have been stifling but for the tradewinds that swept clean the sodden atmosphere and dispersed it over the blue ocean beyond the encircling reefs. The sandy strip of beach that curled from Diamond Head to the Reef Hotel was empty, but already tourists were beginning to trickle from the great gla.s.s and concrete hotels to begin a day of sightseeing and shopping excursions.

Lying crosswise on the sweat-dampened sheets of his bed, a naked Pitt gazed out the open window at a pair of myna birds who were fighting over a disinterested female perched in a neighboring palm tree. Black feathers flew in profusion as the birds squawked riotously, creating a disturbance heard for nearly a block. Then, just as the miniature brawl was about to reach its final round, Pitt's door chime sounded. Reluctantly, he slipped on a terrycloth robe, walked yawning to the door, and opened it.

"Good morning, Dirk." A short, fire-haired man with a protruding face, stood in the hall. "I hope I'm not interrupting a romantic interlude?"

Pitt stretched out his hand. "No, I'm quite alone. Come on in."

The little man crossed the threshold, looked unhurriedly about the room, then stepped out on the balcony, taking in the splendid view. He was nattily dressed in a light tan suit and vest, complete with watch and chain. He had a neatly trimmed Ahab, the whaler's red beard, with two evenly s.p.a.ced white streaks on each side of the chin, presenting a facial growth that was strikingly uncommon. The olive face was beaded with perspiration either from the humidity or from climbing the stairs, or both. When most men wove their lives through the channels of least resistance, Admiral James Sandecker, Chief Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, hit every barrier, every obstacle in the shortest line from point A to point B.

Sandecker turned and nodded over his shoulder. "How in h.e.l.l do you get any sleep with those d.a.m.ned crows screeching in your ears?"

"Fortunately, they don't fly amok until the sun's up." Pitt motioned to the sectional couch. "Get comfortable, Admiral, while I get the coffee going."

"Forget the coffee. Nine hours ago I was in Washington. The jet lag has my body chemistry all screwed up. I'd prefer a drink."

Pitt pulled out a bottle of Scotch from a cabinet and poured. He glanced across the room only to be met by Sandecker's twinkling blue eyes. What was coming? The head of one of the nation's most prestigious governmental agencies didn't fly six thousand miles just to chat with his Special Projects Director about birds. He handed Sandecker a gla.s.s and asked, "What brings you from Washington? I thought you were buried in plans for the new deep-sea current expedition?"

"You don't know why I'm here?" He was using his quiet cynical tone, the one that always made Pitt involuntarily cringe. 'Thanks to your meddling in affairs that don't concern you, I had to make a special trip to bail you out of one mess and throw you into another."

"I'don't follow."

"A talent I know only too well." There was the slight hint of a derisive smile. "It seems you aggravated a hornet's nest when you showed up with the Star-buck's message capsule. You unknowingly set off an earthquake in the Pentagon that was picked up on a seismograph in California. It also made you a big-man-on-campus with the Navy Department. I'm only a retired castoff to those boys, so I wasn't offered a peek behind the curtain. I was simply asked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, courteously, I might add, to fly to Hawaii posthaste, explain your new a.s.signment, and arrange for your loan to the Navy."

Pitt's eyes narrowed. "Who's behind this?"

"Admiral Leigh Hunter of the 101st Salvage Fleet."

"You can't be serious?"

"He personally requested you."

Pitt shook his head angrily. "This is asinine. What's to stop me from refusing?"

"You force me to remind you," Sandecker said calmly, "that in spite of your status with NUMA, you're still carried on the active rolls as a major in the Air Force. And, as you well know, the Joint Chiefs frown upon insubordination."

Pitt's eyes looked resentfully into Sandecker's. "It won't work."

"Yes it will," Sandecker said. "You're a d.a.m.n good marine engineer, the best I've got. I've already met with Hunter and I minced no words in telling him so."

"There are other complications," Pitt didn't sound very confident, "that haven't been considered."

"You mean the fact that you've been laying Hunter's daughter?"

Pitt stiffened. "Do you know what that makes you, Admiral?"

"A sly, old devious son of a b.i.t.c.h?" Sandecker asked. "Actually, there's much more to this business than you've taken the trouble to notice."

"You sound ominous as h.e.l.l," Pitt said, unimpressed.

"I mean to," Sandecker replied seriously. "You're not joining the Navy to learn a new trade. You're to act as liaison between Hunter and myself. Before this thing's over with, NUMA will be involved up to its ears. NUMA has been ordered to help the Navy with whatever oceanographical data they demand."

"Equipment?"

"If they ask for it."

"Finding a submarine that disappeared six months ago won't be a picnic."

"The Starbuck is only half the act," Sandecker said. "The Navy Department has compiled thirty-eight doc.u.mented cases of ships over the past thirty years that have sailed into a circular-shaped area north of the Hawaiian Islands and vanished. They want to know why."

"Ships disappear in the Atlantic and Indian oceans too. It's not an unheard-of occurrence."

"True, but under normal circ.u.mstances, marine disasters leave traces behind; bits of flotsam, oil slicks, even bodies. Wreckage will also float ash.o.r.e to give a hint of a missing ship's fate, but no such remains have turned up from the ships that vanished in the Pacific Vortex."

"The Pacific Vortex? "

"That's the name the seamen in the maritime unions coined for it. They won't sign on a ship whose course takes them through the area."

"Thirty-eight ships," Pitt repeated slowly. "What about radio contact? A ship would have to go down in seconds not to transmit a Mayday signal."

"No distress signals were ever received."

Pitt didn't say anything. Sandecker simply sipped his Scotch, offering no further comment. As if on cue, the myna birds began their noisy antics again, shattering the brief silence. Pitt shut them from his mind and stared steadfastly at the floor; there were a hundred questions swirling around in his head, but it was far too early in the morning for him to conjure up theories on mysterious ship disappearances.

After the silence had dragged on a bit too long, Pitt spoke: "Okay, so thirty-seven ships will never reach port again. That leaves the thirty-eighth, the Starbuck. The Navy has the exact position from the capsule. What are they waiting for? If they locate the remains, their salvage ships won't require an act of G.o.d to raise her from ten fathoms."

"It's not all that elementary."

"Why not? The Navy raised the submarine F-4 from sixty fathoms right here on Oahu off the entrance of Pearl Harbor. And that was back in 1915."

"The armchair admirals who do their thinking through computers today, aren't convinced that the message you found is genuine. At least not until they've had time to a.n.a.lyze the handwriting."

Pitt sighed. "They suspect the dumb a.s.s who brought in the capsule of perpetrating a hoax."

"Something like that."

Pitt forced back a laugh. "So that, at least, explains the transfer. Hunter wants to keep an eye on me."