Ghostboat (9 page)

Frank set to work consolidating the papers and notes. By late evening, after a supper of sandwiches, Frank had decided that Hardy could be approached, though he would have to be handled with kid gloves: He appeared to be an extremely sensitive man. It would take maneuvering to get him to help out on this project. But Frank would do whatever had to be done; he felt that Jack Hardy’s assistance was crucial.

Frank sat back and went over his notes, sipping soda water and sucking on his pipe.

Over the years, that last night of December 11, 1944, must have become the most baffling riddle in Jack Hardy’s life. Was that riddle directly responsible for his entry into the field of oceanography? It seemed likely that he would have felt a strong urge to become involved in the one field of study that might provide answers to the mystery of the
Candlefish.

Frank rummaged for Cook’s folder and flipped through the records on the Board of Inquiry. No one on the Board had ever openly cast doubt on Hardy’s story, but the evidence seemed to suggest they had managed to get him so rattled and insecure that after a few days he was no longer sure
what
he believed. They never pieced together a story that satisfied Hardy, but what they settled on seemed to satisfy
them.

So Hardy had found his way into oceanography—perhaps in an attempt to justify himself, to prove his theories right. He had taken advantage of the GI Bill after the war to put himself through Scripps School of Oceanography, which in those days was little more than fledgling. He got into the field on the ground floor. He studied marine biology, marine geology, marine geography, and aided in the development of early programs for research submersibles.

Over the years he had tried to associate himself with study projects involving marine phenomena similar to what he suspected had occurred December 11th, 1944. But nothing ever panned out. His one venture out to the infamous Bermuda Triangle, aboard the support ship
Estefette
in 1955, proved an abortion. He had assembled a project on the magnetic index of cross-currents and was trying to prove the existence of powerful electromagnetic field centers in that area. It was a dismal failure. The equipment refused to respond. The other scientists insisted that the instruments failed simply because there were no such electromagnetic forces. But Hardy was convinced the instrumentation had been affected by the very forces he was seeking—only he couldn’t prove it. And no one was very much interested in spending more time or money on it.

So he had returned to Scripps and concentrated on research and the preparation of other men’s programs. His heyday was in the 1950s, when he nearly made the project team on board the
Trieste,
one of the first and most important of the research submersibles. The records showed that he had placed applications, had been seriously considered by the project team, but the minute the Navy got into it, Hardy was dropped.

Frank searched further in his notes. Every time the Navy got involved in a submersible project that meant an opportunity for Hardy, somehow the opportunity disappeared. Did the Navy keep a copy of his
Candlefish
testimony in front of them at all times?

The material covering the incident in 1965 was terribly skimpy—just brief references to a submersible called
Neptune 4000
and Hardy’s leadership of the expedition, his nervous breakdown, and the cancelation of the entire project.

It was probably his greatest opportunity, and for some reason he had blown it. Frank wanted to know more, but the information simply wasn’t here. What so intrigued him was the fact that Hardy had designed the project himself with a syndicate of builders and backers—and the expedition was to have centered around latitude 30° southeast off Japan!

Even today, Hardy was still employed at Scripps. Frank had his home address, an office, and the phone numbers of several close associates. One in particular—Dr. Edward Felanco, a vice-chairman of the Board at Scripps—was presently working with Hardy outfitting the submersiblb AGSS-555
Dolphin
for a special project.

Frank polished off his soda water and went up on deck to find Lieutenant Cook.

The next morning he caught a plane for San Diego.

CHAPTER 6

October 12, 1974

Frank landed at the Naval Air Station on Coronado at 1030 Saturday. He was escorted to the west-side wharf and boarded a launch that took him across the bay to Point Loma, where a car met him to cover the short distance to the submarine base.

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.”