“What else could have sunk the ship?” Eddie Seng asked, his fingers steepled under his chin.

Linc quipped, “How about a white whale?”

“Not a white whale,” Eric Stone said, looking up from his own laptop. “A blue cloud.”

“Come again?” Juan invited.

“There’s a report from a freighter, the Mohican, about a strange blue cloud, like an electrical aura, that enveloped their ship as they were approaching Philadelphia. It lasted for about thirty minutes, and vanished as mysteriously as it arose. The Mohican’s captain, a Charles Urquhart, reported strange magnetic anomalies while his ship was enshrouded. Metal objects adhered to the deck as if glued, and the ship’s compass just spun in its mount.”

“Any other ships report this effect?” Cabrillo asked.

“Nothing else. Just the Mohican.”

Mark Murphy gasped as he was struck by a sudden revelation.

“Hold on to that thought,” Juan warned, knowing when Murph was about to steer the conversation into a conspiracy-laden dead end. “No need to get ahead of ourselves. This sounds to me like a straight insurance scam. Westinghouse claims the boat sank, takes the money, and then sells it off to some Russian guy who parks it on the Aral Sea. And if there was ever a place an insurance investigator wouldn’t look, it’s there.”

Mark was practically bouncing up and down in his seat.

“Okay,” Juan conceded, “go ahead.”

Murph grinned wolfishly. “According to the Lloyd’s report, the insurance was just a token amount to satisfy a bank over liability issues. The ship itself wasn’t covered.” When no one reacted to his statement, he went on in a rush. “Come on, guys. It’s all there. Westinghouse’s money, Tesla’s genius, a weird blue aura with strange magnetic properties, and a ship found ten thousand miles from where it vanished.”

“Are you talking teleportation?” Linc asked dubiously.

“Exactly! What was it Sherlock Holmes said? If you eliminate all other factors, the one which remains must be true.”

“How do we know we’ve eliminated all the other factors?” Eddie asked.

Mark had no immediate answer to that.

“Insurance issues aside,” Seng continued, “I think the more likely scenario is, the ship was sold off. The new owners sailed it to the Black Sea, where it was disassembled, transported to the Aral, and put back together.”

Cabrillo turned his gaze to Murphy, an eyebrow arched. “You have to admit that makes a lot more sense than your science-fiction idea.”

Mark looked like a child who just had his favorite toy taken from him.

“I hate to be the one to say this,” Max Hanley said with a resigned shake of his bulldog head, “but Mark might not be wrong.”

“Excuse me?”