Ghostboat Read online

  He was driven past a sign that read SUBDEVGRU ONE, and then down to the docks. A support craft was moored along the same finger-pier as AGSS-555 Dolphin. Frank got out of the car, and the driver went to find Dr. Edward Felanco. Frank walked to the end of the dock and looked the Dolphin over. She was a smaller version of the Candlefish. In fact, of all the research submersibles built over the last twenty years, she bore the closest resemblance to the old fleet-type warboats.

  “What do you think of her?”

  Frank locked around to find a silver-haired man, short and powerful-looking, smiling at him from the afterdeck of the support craft.

  “Are you Ed Frank?” the man asked.

  “Dr. Felanco?”

  “Yes.”

  Felanco hurried down the deck of the support ship and shook Frank’s hand. Together they walked down the dock to the Dolphin. “She was launched in 1968,” said Felanco. “She’s owned and operated by SUBDEVGRU ONE for the Navy. She’s one hundred sixty-five feet—half the length of your mysterious fleet boat...”

  Felanco’s eyes made a quick run at Frank’s face. Frank smiled. “I see you’ve guessed why I’m here.”

  “Wasn’t too difficult. You wanted to meet Hardy. I’m the one who told him about the reappearance of the Candlefish. I never had much trouble putting two and two together.”

  Frank stood looking at the Dolphin while Felanco told about his current ills with the project: The research trip had been pushed back four times already for mechanical failures aboard the sub.

  “Is Hardy going with you?”

  Felanco looked at him quizzically. “No. I assume you know some things about Jack Hardy.”

  “Some.”

  “For instance, he will never again go on a submarine voyage of any kind.”

  Frank lost his smile. “What do you mean?”

  “He refuses. Oh, he’ll plan the research for these jobs, outline the projects, and help to fit the boats, but once we head out to sea, we go without him.”

  “This goes back to his days aboard the Candlefish?”

  “Hell no. Goes back to 1965, I think...”

  “The Neptune 4000?”

  Felanco nodded.

  “I want to hear all about that one. It may have some bearing on my meeting with Hardy.”

  They went aboard the little support ship and sat down in the officers’ wardroom. Felanco ordered coffee and began to tell the story of Hardy’s last sea voyage.

  “Jack got involved with a team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a company of builders. They developed the Neptune 4000, an advanced deep-submergence research ship. Hardy assembled the project for traversing the Mindanao Depth in the east Pacific—”

  Frank interrupted him. “Wait a minute. I understood he set this thing up to examine Latitude Thirty and the Ramapo Depth.”

  “Not quite. He wanted that, eventually. That was to have been the second voyage. He submitted a lot of plans on it to the Navy. I think part of his idea was to conduct a search for the remains of the Candlefish... He had very heavy communication with the Navy about it. They turned him down flat.”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. The 1944 business seemed to haunt Hardy wherever he went. “What happened with the Neptune 4000?”

  “They were on a shakedown cruise off Pearl. They had been underwater about three hours, at a depth of twelve hundred feet... when Jack just seemed to go berserk. Two scientists with him called it acute claustrophobia. Whatever it was, they had to surface. Eventually they canceled the whole project.”

  “Why?”

  “Jack’s was the mind behind it, and he had a nervous breakdown. Put him out of commission for quite a while. His son, Peter, came down from law school in Seattle and stayed with him for three months.”

  Frank folded his arms and sat back. “He’s an unstable character, isn’t he?”

  “Not any more. He’s fifty-six years old, and I think he’s resigned himself to sailing a desk. When he came back to Scripps in the winter of ‘66, he said to me, ‘Eddie, I am never again going out on a submarine, a submersible, or any other undersea vehicle. I’ve had it’ He wasn’t kidding, Commander.”

  Frank took it under advisement

  “You said that you were the one who informed him about the Candlefish reappearing. How did he take it?”

  “Stunned... Jack is a very well-tanned old boy, and I could swear he turned white. He didn’t believe it at first, and he asked a lot of questions. I told him what was making the rounds on the base. I think the shocker was the fact that there was no evidence of the crew. No bodies. He just looked at me a long time, then he turned around and hobbled away. I haven’t spoken to him about it since.”

  Frank began to feel itchy. He wanted to cut this short and get up to Scripps right away to see Hardy. He rose and thanked Felanco for his coffee and his time.

  “No trouble. I’m sure you’ll find Jack in his office... on Monday.”

  “Monday?”

  “Yes. He flies up to Seattle every third weekend to see his boy. Quite proud of him, you know?”

  “Are you sure that’s where he is?”

  “Oh, yes. Positive. My secretary arranges his flights. He picked up the ticket this morning. So—have you got a place to stay over the weekend?”

  Frank left Felanco on the wharf and went off to a pay phone. He dialed Hardy’s office number and let it ring until he was sure no one was going to answer.

  October 14, 1974

  Ed Frank remained in San Diego over the weekend, borrowing a Navy staff car from the base at Coronado and setting out to see the sights. He spent the rest of Saturday in Balboa Park, visiting the aerospace museum and the Reuben H. Fleet Space Center, fighting hordes of kids into the planetarium show, and then enjoying it as much as they did. Sunday he went to the San Diego Zoo and stood in front of the gorilla’s cage, peering at a big ape who bore a remarkable resemblance to Diminsky.

  Monday morning, bright and early, he swept onto the San Diego Freeway and raced up to La Jolla, then took the coast road to Scripps. He pulled onto the campus and stopped the car simply to admire the morning beauty of a cluster of buildings overlooking the Pacific. The landscape was colorful and manicured; trees swayed in the ocean breeze and brushed against each other. There was a romance about this place. Working here within a stone’s throw of the sea... Frank fully expected to find Jack Hardy standing on the edge of a wind-swept cliff, long strands of white hair flapping in the breeze, a chart in one hand and a compass in the other, every inch the ancient mariner.

  Instead, he found Hardy tucked away in his office on the third floor, behind a door lettered JACK N. HARDY, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF OCEANOGRAPHY.

  Ed Frank knocked, heard a muffled reply from within, and opened the door. A gentle sea breeze wafted in through large, open windows. In the center of a room filled with papers, books, charts, globes, sextants, and stacks of Xeroxed reports, was a big old carved oak desk. Behind it a figure rose awkwardly to full height. He was tall and lanky, with a bristling gray beard, his skin thick, tanned, and grained like leather. He had the look and the frame of a Nantucket whaler. Frank had examined Jack Hardy’s wartime photos closely, and he recognized the big blue eyes, the turned-up corners of the lips, giving him a near-permanent look of innocent friendliness. The hair had gone thin and was speckled with gray, and now he had that twisting, curly gray beard. But Frank looked past the open smile to the eyes: They betrayed a softness and vulnerability that was evident nowhere else in his make-up.

  Hardy smiled and came around the desk, favoring his right leg, hand outstretched. In the thirty years since his short-lived career aboard the old fleet boats, he had changed from a gawky boy to a weatherbeaten old coot. Frank looked up at him—Hardy was a good six inches taller—and shook his hand.

  “Professor, I’m Lieutenant Commander Ed Frank. I’m with the Naval Investigative Service.”

  “I was wondering when I would hear from you people,” Hardy spoke firmly. He motioned Frank to a chair.
“Come on in. Have a seat.”

  Frank kept smiling, doing his best to put Hardy at ease, but once the big man was safe behind his desk again, he fell into a cool restraint. He intended to maintain his distance; Frank could see that clearly.

  Frank gestured at the clutter around him. “Quite a setup.”

  “Yeah, it’s taken me ten years to get it this messy. They wouldn’t dare fire me.”

  “No,” chuckled Frank, “they’d better just burn it and start over.” He paused, grinning, until Hardy responded with a smile. “Professor, let me get right to the point. We have ourselves a hot potato.”

  “After thirty years? I’d say she’s had time to cool off.”

  Frank smiled tolerantly. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but the Candlefish is still in running condition.”

  Hardy stopped smiling. He went cold. “That wasn’t on the news.”

  “There’s a certain amount of internal damage, causes unknown. We suspect it has to do with—well, with what you put in your original reports. Anyway, she’s seaworthy.”

  Hardy was very quiet, eyes boring into Frank. “I don’t see how.”

  “She surfaced about six hundred miles northwest of Pearl Harbor. We’ve had her towed back to the sub base and we’ve opened her up and checked her out There is no sign whatever of the crew.” He watched Hardy’s features tighten. “No bodies, no bones, no trace.”

  Hardy slid back in his chair very slowly, eyeing Frank. His face was a mask.

  “I thought maybe you might come out to Pearl and have a look at her.”

  It must have been a full thirty seconds before Hardy said, “No.” And Frank made him repeat it.

  “The Navy will certainly pay your way—”

  Hardy waved it off. “That’s old business, Commander. Old business.”

  “It’s new to me,” Frank said stiffly. And then he smiled again, still trying to find the warm side of this man. “I’ve been going through your reports to SubPac and the Board of Inquiry. Your ideas on what might have happened? I find them intriguing.”

  “Nobody believed me then—why should they believe me now?”

  “I see,” said Frank, and got up to pace around. He felt his patience going. “I guess we’ll just have to park the Candlefish in a used-submarine lot somewhere and hope we can find a buyer who wants to turn her into a floating museum. Or maybe we can put her back into service—a refit, a bit of conversion here and there—brand new!”

  Frank spun around quickly and growled at Hardy, “I’ll tell you, Professor, that thing has been in my hair nine days now, and everywhere I go I find people who range from uncooperative to downright ignorant! My own superiors would just as soon sweep the whole boat under a rug and pretend it never even existed. It’s a thorn in everyone’s hide, and nobody wants to take the responsibility for doing any more than removing it! Well, I want more! I want to find out how that bloody boat came back! And I need help!”

  Hardy shifted uncomfortably. “What do you want with me?”

  “I want you to come out to Pearl.”

  Hardy shook his head, No. Frank closed in on him. “As a scientist! You’re a survivor and an oceanographer. You know the boat and you know the sea!”

  “No.”

  Frank scowled and realized he must appear comical to the old man—all loud and eager foolishness. “Professor, in 1965 you were writing letters to the Navy outlining your plan for investigating Latitude Thirty.” Frank saw Hardy’s body stiffen. ‘That spot off the coast of Japan is renowned for the disappearance of ships and planes, for crews turning up dead or vanishing without a trace...”

  Hardy’s arms folded across his chest; he looked as if he were preparing to retreat into himself.

  Frank pressed on. “It’s an area uncomfortably similar to that goddamned Devil’s Triangle off the coast of Florida. Only this one is in the Pacific!”

  Hardy tried to remain unconcerned. “So?”

  Frank’s next announcement was delivered with quiet but deadly conviction. “Professor, the Candlefish is the first one of those things that has ever come back!”

  An unmistakable swell of fear crossed Hardy’s face, and Frank didn’t know whether he had secured him or lost him. It was to be several days before he would know few sure.

  CHAPTER 7

  October 15, 1974

  Joanne came home from work early and found Frank changing uniforms in a stumbling hurry. She let out a shriek of joy and leaped all over him. He laughed and hugged her tightly.

  “I missed you. I missed you!” she purred in his hair.

  “Did you miss me?”

  “No—” She pulled away with a smile and fixed his tie.

  “What sort of trouble have you been getting into?” He played with the buttons on her blouse.

  “Oh, I shacked up with two sailors from the Mexican Navy. We survived eight days on beans and tacos.”

  “Sure. And what are you doing home at two thirty in the afternoon?”

  She padded away in calculated nonchalance. “There was a fire in my wastebasket.”

  Frank blinked in surprise. He followed her into the bathroom and watched her run cold water over her face. She made a ceremony of the ablutions, until finally she glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye and said, “Yes, I started it, but don’t ask.”

  He burst out laughing and grabbed her around the waist. Her face was dripping wet when he pulled her around for a kiss. He never saw her hand come up over his head, but the rush of water down his neck made him leap a foot in the air. She jumped back, the washcloth still clutched tightly in her hand.

  “Son of a bitch,” he growled, and ripped off the clean shirt.

  After a moment, she came up to him in a warm slink.

  “Isn’t it lucky I came home early?”

  Two hours later, Frank was convinced that Lady Luck certainly had played a big part in his afternoon. In fact, she’d made his day. He drove over to the Pentagon at six o’clock and met Admiral Diminsky in the coffee lounge. It was hot, and the admiral was wearing short-sleeved suntans. He was busy dictating to his secretary, and would hardly even look at Frank while they waited for John Allen Smith, the civilian chief of the NIS, to appear.

  Smitty came in at six thirty and crossed over to them with a big smile. The rest of him was even bigger. Smitty was a huge, forty-seven-year-old Mormon; he neither drank nor smoked, and didn’t approve when others indulged. So Frank, who had brought his pipe kit from the apartment, had to refrain from smoking through the entire meeting. It was a trial.

  “Ed, how are you?” Smitty’s voice boomed across the lounge. He shook Frank’s hand and sat down. He ordered a club sandwich and a pitcher of iced tea. “Down to business. The admiral has filled me in on your efforts to date, and he has acquainted me with certain details of your plan. Namely, the expected cost.”

  The old knife-in-the-back routine, thought Frank. No wonder Diminsky wouldn’t look him square in the eye.

  “Sir, I am as aware of cost as the admiral is. But I am convinced that an opportunity like this cannot be allowed to—”

  “I am not convinced,” said Smitty flatly. “I don’t see what you are out to prove.”

  “I’ll lay it out as simply as I can, sir. We all know the popular myth, the incidents that are supposed to have occurred in the so-called Devil’s Triangle. We are aware that somewhat related incidents have occurred in latitude thirty degrees off the coast of Japan as well. If we can prove to some degree of satisfaction that Latitude Thirty is actually another Devil’s Triangle, we will go a long way toward scientific acceptance of what has been up until now a purely conjectural phenomenon.”

  “In English, please, Commander,” mumbled Smitty.

  “Yes, sir. The point is that scientists do not take this business seriously. And if they are .ever going to, we have to provide them with evidence that they can use as a basis for further investigation. We have to prove that the Candlefish was a victim of forces unknown, that her sinking was not of natur
al cause, but clearly unnatural. The fact that she is here is almost enough to prove it—but not quite. There may be a scientific explanation for how she was preserved so well over a thirty-year period. And if we dumped her into the hands of scientists tomorrow morning, I’m sure they would come up with one. But it’s not the preservation we’re concerned with. It’s what got her in the first place—what got the crew—and how she came back.”

  Diminsky sipped a Coke. “What evidence do you expect to turn up?”

  Frank leaned forward and thought very carefully before he spoke, not wanting to commit himself too much, but wanting to tantalize as much as possible. “I feel that in this instance, as in many others taking place in the Devil’s Triangle, we are dealing with time more than with any other physical factors.”

  “Go on,” said Smitty, attacking his sandwich and washing it down with giant swallows of iced tea.

  “Time slip, time warp, time barrier. I don’t know what. It sounds like third-rate science fiction, I know, but I’m convinced these things must be taken into consideration.”

  “Just a second.” Smitty dabbed his lips.

  Diminsky sipped more Coke and let a little contemptuous smile creep over his face. He was happily watching Frank make an ass of himself.

  “Commander, are you going to try to prove that the Candlefish was snatched out of 1944 and dumped into 1974?”

  “Sir, I don’t know. Basically I am only interested in opening up areas of investigation for other, more qualified people. You have to remember, our Navy and Air Force and those of a lot of other countries have lost several hundred planes and vessels in this area. That’s costly. And if we have a line on how to stop it, we goddamned well better follow it.”

  “How?” Smitty eyed Frank intently.

  “If we can retrace that last patrol of the Candlefish and come to some conclusions about what happened to her, based purely on eyeball observations, we will be able to go before the Senate Appropriations Committee and solicit funds for a much more thorough research job, perhaps for the creation of a specific project under Naval auspices.”