Vixen 03 Part 33

"Room fourteen. Up the stairs and three doors to your left, Mr. Pitt."

She had read his name upside down as he signed it. "I'm Heidi Milligan. If you need anything, just push the buzzer by your door. I'll get the message sooner or later. I hope you won't mind carrying your own luggage up."

"I'll manage. Is the admiral handy? I'd like to talk to him about ... about antiques."

She pointed through a double screen door at the end of the lobby. "You'll find him down by the duck pond, clearing away lily pads."

Pitt nodded and headed in the direction Heidi Milligan had indicated. The door opened onto a footpath that meandered down a gently sloping hill. Admiral Ba.s.s had wisely chosen not to landscape Anchorage House. The surrounding grounds had been left to nature and were covered with pines and late-blooming wildflowers. For a moment Pitt forgot his mission and soaked up the scenic quiet that hemmed in the trail to the pond.

He found an elderly man, in hip boots and brandishing a pitchfork, aggressively attacking a circular growth of water lilies about eight feet from sh.o.r.e. The admiral was a big man and he threw the tangled root stocks onto the bank with the ease of someone thirty years younger. He wore no hat under the Virginia sun and the sweat rolled free from his bald head and trickled off the ends of his nose and chin.

"Admiral Walter Ba.s.s?" Pitt said, hailing him.

The pitchfork stopped in mid-throw. "Yes, I'm Walter Ba.s.s."

"Sir, my name is Dirk Pitt, and I wonder if I might have a word with you?"

"Sure, go right ahead," said Ba.s.s, finishing the toss. "Pardon me if I keep after these d.a.m.ned weeds, but I want to clear out as much as I can before dinner. If I didn't do this at least twice a week before winter, they'd choke off the whole pond come spring."

Pitt stepped back as a flying wad of tuberous stems and heart-shaped leaves splattered at his feet. To him, at least, it was an awkward situation, and he wasn't sure how to handle it. The admiral's back was to him, and Pitt hesitated. He took a deep breath and plunged. "I'd like to ask you several questions concerning an aircraft with the code designation Vixen 03."

Ba.s.s kept at his labor without a pause, but the whitened knuckles around the handle of the pitchfork did not go unnoticed by Pitt.

"Vixen 03," he said, and shrugged. "Doesn't ring a bell. Should it?"

"It was a Military Air Transport Service plane that vanished back in 1954."

IB.

"That was a long time ago." Ba.s.s stared vacantly at the water. "No, I can't recall any connection with a MATS aircraft," he said finally. "Not surprising, though. I was a surface officer throughout my thirty years in the Navy. Heavy ordnance was my specialty."

"Do you recall ever meeting a major in the Air Force by the name of Vylander?"

"Vylander?" Ba.s.s shook his head. "Can't say as I have." Then he looked at Pitt speculatively. "What was your name again? Why are you asking me these questions?"

"My name is Dirk Pitt," he said again. "I'm with the National Underwater and Marine Agency. I found some old papers that stated you were the officer who authorized Vixen 03's flight orders."

"There must be a mistake."

"Perhaps," said Pitt. "Maybe the mystery will be cleared up when the wreck of the aircraft is raised and thoroughly inspected."

"I thought you said it vanished."

"I discovered the wreckage," Pitt answered.

Pitt studied Ba.s.s closely for any discernible reaction. There was none. He decided to leave the admiral alone to collect his thoughts.

"I'm sorry to have troubled you, Admiral. I must have gotten my signals mixed."

Pitt turned and began walking up the path back to the inn. He'd covered nearly fifty feet when Ba.s.s yelled after him.

"Mr. Pitt!"

Pitt turned. "Yes?"

"Are you staying at the inn?"

"Until tomorrow morning. Then I must be on my way."

The admiral nodded. When Pitt reached the pines bordering Anchorage House, he took another look toward the pond. Admiral Ba.s.s was calmly forking the lily pads onto the bank, as if their brief conversation had simply been about crops and the weather.

Pitt enjoyed a leisurely dinner with the other guests at the inn. The dining room had been designed in the style of an eighteenth-century country tavern, with old flintlock rifles, pewter drinking cups, and weathered

farm implements hanging on the walls and rafters.

The food was about as homemade as any Pitt had ever tasted. He ate two helpings each of the fried chicken, brandied carrots, baked corn, and sweet potatoes, and barely had room for the three-inch-thick wedge of apple pie.

Heidi moved about the tables, serving coffee and making small talk with the guests. Pitt noted that most were of social-security age. Younger couples, he mused, probably found the peaceful serenity of a country inn boring. He finished an Irish coffee and stepped out onto the porch. A full moon rose in the east and turned the pines to silver. He eased into a vacant bentwood rocker and propped his feet on the porch railing and waited for Admiral Ba.s.s to make the next move.

The moon had arched overhead nearly twenty degrees when Heidi came out and wandered slowly in his direction. She stood in back of him for a moment and then said, "There is no moon so bright as a Virginia moon."

"You won't get an argument from me," said Pitt.

"Did you enjoy your dinner?"

"I'm afraid my eyes were bigger than my stomach. I gorged myself. My compliments to your chef. His down-home cooking style is poetry to the palate."

Heidi's smile went from friendly to beautiful in the glow of the moon. "She'll be happy to hear it."

Pitt made a helpless gesture. "A lifetime of chauvinistic tendencies is hard to suppress."

She settled her tightly packed bottom on the railing and faced him, her expression suddenly turning serious. "Tell me, Mr. Pitt, why did you come to Anchorage House?"

Pitt stopped rocking and stared squarely into her eyes. "Is this a survey to check the effectiveness of your advertising or are you just plain inquisitive?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry, but Walter seemed very upset when he returned from the pond this evening. I thought that maybe-"

"You think it was because of something I said," Pitt said, finishing for her.

"I don't know."

"Are you related to the admiral?"

It was the magic question, for she began talking about herself. She was a lieutenant commander in the Navy; she was a.s.signed to the Norfolk

Navy Yard; she had enlisted out of Wellesley College and had eleven years to go to retirement; her ex-husband had been a colonel in the Marines and had ordered her about like a recruit; she'd had a hysterectomy, so no children; no, she was not related to the admiral; she had met him when he was a guest lecturer at a Naval College seminar, and she came down to Anchorage House whenever she could sneak off from her duties; she made no bones about the fact that she and Ba.s.s had a May-December affair going. Just when it was getting interesting, she stopped and peered at her watch.

"I'd better run along and see to the other guests." She smiled, and again that transformation. "If you get tired of just sitting, I suggest you take a stroll to the top of the rise beside the inn. You'll find a lovely view of the lights of Lexington."