The sailor nodded. “I wouldn’t have found him but for the odor. He’s on the main deck, near the forward hatch.”

“Take me to him.”

Slowly the seaman turned and led Franco and Pitt down the companionway. They crossed the deck to the port side and marched past the rows of hatch covers. The seaman slowed as they approached the forward hatch, then stopped and pointed.

“He’s beneath one of the supporting braces,” the man said, not moving any closer. “He must have rolled or fallen there.”

Pitt and Franco stepped forward. Then they noticed a blue object wedged in the hatch cover’s hydraulics, next to a supporting brace. Inching closer, they could see it was the body of a man dressed in blue coveralls. The odor of decomposing flesh was overpowering, but the sight before them was even worse.

The clothes were unmarked and perfectly clean. Judging by the heavy work boots and a pair of gloves cinched to his waist, Pitt guessed he was an ordinary seaman. But that was the only thing he could determine.

The exposed skin had bloated to grotesque proportions and turned the color of French mustard. Small rivulets of dried blood had pooled around his ears and mouth. A swarm of flies buzzed around the seaman’s face and clustered on his open, bulging eyes. Yet it was the body’s extremities, marked beyond mere decomposition, that was most grisly. The seaman’s ears, nose, and fingertips were charred black, though the skin remained unbroken. Pitt recalled photos of polar explorers who had suffered extreme frostbite, marked by black blisters covering patches of dead skin. Yet the Tasmanian Star had sailed nowhere near any polar region.

Franco slowly backed away from the figure.

“Santa Maria!” he gasped. “He’s been taken by the devil himself.”

Chapter 8

8

A SCRATCHED AND BATTERED CRASH HELMET SAT centered on Pitt’s desk when he returned to his office in Washington. A short, typewriten note taped on the visor welcomed him back:

Dad,

Really, you need to be more careful!

Pitt chuckled as he slid the helmet aside, wondering if it came from his son or his daughter. Both children worked for NUMA and had just left for a project off Madagascar involving subsea tectonics.

There was a rap at his office door and in walked a voluptuous woman with perfect hair and makeup. Although Zerri Pochinsky was north of forty, her looks gave no hint of it. Pitt’s trusted secretary for many years, she might have become something more in his life if he hadn’t met Loren first.

“Welcome back to the lion’s den.” She smiled and placed a cup of coffee on his desk. “I honestly don’t know how that helmet got here.”

Pitt returned her smile. “There’s just no sanctity to my inner sanctum.”