“While you line up a caterer, I'll change my plane reservations, and let you know when I'm coming in.”

“I'll meet you at the airport. We'll have a plane waiting to fly us to Norfolk.”

They discussed a few more details and hung up. Kurt pondered the request from Adler, then went back to his table to tell his father he would be leaving in the morning. If Austin was annoyed about his son's change in plans, he didn't show it. He thanked Kurt for coming to Seattle for the kayak race, and they vowed to get together again when they had more time.

Kurt caught an early flight out of Seattle the next morning. As the plane took off and headed east, he thought about his father's muted reaction to his change in plans. He wondered if Austin Senior really wanted him to join the family business. To the old man, it would be admitting that he was on the road to retirement. Both men tended to have strong opinions, and it would be like having two captains on a rowboat.

In any case, his father was plain wrong about Kurt's attachment to his NUMA work. It wasn't the excitement that kept him at the huge ocean science agency. Every opportunity for an adrenaline rush meant many long hours of reports, paperwork and meetings, which he tried to avoid by staying in the field. The siren call that lured him back again and again was the unfathomed mystery of the sea.

Mysteries like the strange encounter with the killer whales. He pondered the incident with the orcas. He wondered, too, about the man with the weird tattoo and the purpose of the electrical setup he'd seen on Barrett's boat. After a few minutes, he put his formless thoughts aside, picked up a pad and a ballpoint pen and began to sketch out specifications for a new kayak.

NUMA 6 - Polar Shift

3

NEW YORK CITY

BEFORE FRANK MALLOY had become a high-priced consultant to the nation's police departments, he'd been the quintessential cop. He loathed disorder of any kind. His uniforms were always pressed and sharply creased. In a holdover from his Marine Corps days, his salt-and-pepper hair was cut close to the scalp military style. Frequent workouts kept his compact body fit and muscular.

Unlike many police officers who found stakeout tedious, Malloy enjoyed sitting for hours in a car, watching the ebb and flow of traffic and pedestrians, ever alert for the slightest rent in the fabric of society. It also helped that he had an iron bladder.

Malloy was parked on Broadway, checking out the steady parade of fast-walking pedestrians and gawking tourists, when a man cut away from the crowd and made his way straight for the unmarked NYPD cruiser.