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harm.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “Admiral”—Frank smiled—”a sub thirty years old?”
    “Exactly! You don’t know why it surfaced.”
    Frank sat back. “I think it’s more a matter of how. I mean... there can’t possibly be any crew left alive on her, unless she really wasn’t sunk in ‘44 and somebody’s been running around the ocean in a stolen submarine for thirty years.”
    Diminsky waved his coffee cup.
    “What about those Japanese soldiers in the Philippines? Every year they turn up some joker who’s still fighting for the Emperor. What if our side has a bunch of trigger-happy submariners whose radio got knocked out in ‘44 and who’ve been running around the Pacific for thirty years growing beards and afraid to show their faces?”
    The look on Cook’s face was enough to slow Admiral Diminsky to a crawl. He snatched up the rest of Cook’s toast and ate it. “Okay,” he growled, “just wanted you to see that any guesses on our part at this point are ridiculous. We cannot assume that boat is just a harmless old hulk until we prove it’s a harmless old hulk!”
    Frank sighed and finally nodded agreement “I think we should be glad to have it back.”
    “Glad!” bellowed Diminsky. “I’m glad you’re glad. And you’ll be really tickled to know we’ve been ordered to remove that damned boat from the shipping lanes in one fat hurry.”
    “And then?”
    “And then figure out how it got there.”
    Frank relaxed. Good. He was relieved. Sometimes the Navy had a tendency to ignore things that posed too many problems. Shove them into a hole they can’t stick out of—that was the attitude. In the Navy—in all the services—the Inexplicable was equated with the disagreeable. But to Ed Frank the inexplicable was of paramount interest. He loved intrigue and danger and the unknown—seized on it doggedly whenever he encountered it.
    Diminsky rattled off orders about procedure. The next step would be to line up transportation to Hawaii and quarters at Pearl Harbor. Diminsky wanted to leave at 0800 the next morning.
    Frank couldn’t resist: “What time do you want to tee off, Admiral?”
    Diminsky eyed him squarely. “I’ll leave my clubs home if you’ll leave your girl friend.”
     
    Frank spent the rest of the morning in his office, pulling out the charts and notebooks of independent research he had been skulling out during the last few years. He got on the phone with Joanne at 1100 and apologized for leaving in the middle of the night. Then he had to apologize for waking her up at 11 in the morning. She complained about her sunburn, and he listened patiently and wondered if he could somehow sneak her over to Pearl Harbor. On second thought—she would only get sunburned again. The hell with that.
    He hung up and leaned back in his chair. He studied her photograph: the frozen smile, the hair swept back, the delicate skin. Around him, the other cubicles were empty. Somewhere, from far across the room, came the sound of a typewriter. Another Saturday soldier. Frank sat up straight and looked over his notes again.
    This whole project of his—the notes and charts he had put together for himself, the research he had done, the interviews—all looked now as if it might take on fresh purpose. The Candlefish. could be the key. At last those little red dots he had spot-marked on the Pacific chart—the ones clustered around latitude 30°—might really provide the first concrete evidence that the Devil’s Triangle off the southeastern coast of the United States was no myth; that, in fact, she had a sister.
     
     

 
    CHAPTER 3
     
     
    October 6, 1974
     
    They flew cross-country in a Navy jet transport.
    While they were crossing the Rockies, Cook accepted a call from ComSubPac and listened intently. “Could you hold a second, sir?” Cook covered the mouthpiece and leaned over to Frank. “ComSubPac. The ATFs report their people are unable to gain entrance to the submarine.”
    “What