The waterfront lobster restaurants, the fish pier and the controversial motel were gone, and all that was left were pilings that jutted from the water like bad teeth. Spherical Day-Glo warning buoys bobbed on the water to mark sunken wrecks. Cranes clawed away at the wreckage of boats on shore. Debris of every kind swirled in the Kestrel's wake.

Had Austin been of a more poetical bent, he would have said that the big wave had stolen the town's soul. “What I mess,” was the best he could come up with.

“Coulda been worse,” said Police Chief Charlie Howes, who stood next to Austin in the boat's stern.

“Yeah, if hit by a nuclear missile,” Austin said, with a shake of his head.

“Yep,” Howes replied, not letting an outlander outdo his Maine talent for brevity of speech.

Austin had been introduced to the chief a few hours earlier. A NUMA executive corporate jet had whisked Austin, Paul Trout and Jenkins to the Portland Airport. Jenkins had called ahead to Chief Howes, and he was waiting at the air- port in a police cruiser to drive the men to Rocky Point.

After the meeting with Sandecker, Austin had gone to his office with the satellite photos of the Ataman Explorer and studied them under a high-powered magnifying glass. Even though the pictures had been shot from thousands of feet up, they were sharp and detailed. He could easily read the ship's name on the hull and see people on deck.

Austin was immediately struck by the ship's resemblance to the Glomar Explorer, the six-hundred-foot-long salvage vessel Howard Hughes had built in the 1970s on secret contract to the CIA to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine. Tall derricks and cranes similar to those on the Glomar extended off the deck like waterborne oil rigs.

Austin examined the ship from stem to stern, paying particular attention to the deck area around the derricks. He made a few sketches on a pad of paper and sat back in his chair, a smug smile on his face. He had figured out a way to set onto the Ataman Explorer. It was a long shot and depended on how close he could get to it The vessel would run for cover at the first sight of a NUMA ship. He thought about the problem for a few minutes, recalling his Black Sea experience with Captain Kemal, then picked up his phone, called Yaeger and asked where Jenkins was.

“Doc Reed is giving him the NUMA VIP tour. He's offered to put Jenkins up for the night before he catches a plane back to Maine tomorrow.”