Monster: Tale Loch Ness (34 page)

"No," Whittenfeld declared curtly. "This is supposition and drivel. And I cannot allow either to endanger the Loch Ness project."

"I'm warning you!" Dr. Rubinstein said. "If you don't listen to me, you are going to lose another ship." He laid out a series of charts. "The proof is incontrovertible. Each time the ship was attacked, the crew was using a Lyon TX-1 carbide insert drill bit and the drill was working in very hard chert silica."

"What does that mean?"

"It means the vibration produced by that combination has been acting as a magnet for the creature."

Whittenfeld examined several of Dr. Rubinstein's charts.

"Where did you get this information?"

"I gave it to them," Scotty said.

"The bit and mud records are confidential company property."

"I felt it was in the company's best interests to allow Dr. Rubinstein the opportunity to examine them."

"You exceeded your authority!"

"There were no standing orders."

"But there were standing assumptions, and I assumed a member of senior management would not act contrary to policy."

"I told you I acted in the best interests of the company. Dr. Rubinstein's discovery might very well save the company's neck."

"We do not have time to chase monsters. You'd do better to keep your attention on submersibles and dangerous people like Sutherland!"

Scotty breathed deeply, ready for a confrontation. "There was no submersible in the loch, and a submersible.did not cut the
Columbus
's blowout control hoses!"

"You say that with a great deal of conviction. Conviction which goes directly against the evidence. You were present at the hearings. You saw the hose."

"I saw
a
hose."

"What do you mean?"

"The hose shown to the investigation committee was not the hose Max Furst found on the bottom of the loch!"

Whittenfeld suddenly walked to his desk. "This had better be good," he said. "Because I don't like what I'm hearing. Or the inferences."

Dr. Rubinstein nervously bit his nails. Dr. Fiammengo started to speak. Scotty stopped her.

"The hose shown to the tribunal was not the hose retrieved," Scotty declared. "Somewhere between its recovery and presentation, a torched hose was substituted for one that was chewed."

"And you're accusing me of the fraud?" Whittenfeld asked.

"I'm accusing someone," Scotty replied sarcastically.

Lefebre shot to his feet, furious. "I took the hose after its recovery. I handed the hose to Monsieur Whittenfeld. The hose shown to the tribunal was the hose I had in my possession."

"Bullshit!"

Lefebre moved toward Scotty. Whittenfeld stopped him.

Scotty could barely hide his contempt for Lefebre as he opened Dr. Rubinstein's suitcase and removed the pictures and metal fragment, handing them to Whittenfeld.

"Those are pictures of the real hose taken by Max Furst. The fragment of the
Columbus
hull, dented with teeth marks, was recovered by Furst, also."

Whittenfeld examined the exhibits, then handed them to Lefebre.

"Forgeries," Lefebre declared, throwing them back on the table.

"They're not forgeries," Scotty snapped. "So let's bury the crap!" He pointed at the hull fragment. "The
Columbus
was attacked by a living thing!"

"Nonsense!" Whittenfeld declared.

"And Father MacPherson was killed by the same creature, a creature I saw. Yes, I saw it, goddamnit. I saw a giant thing, a giant black thing come up under the raft and splinter it into pieces."

Dr. Fiammengo collected the fragment and pictures. Dr. Rubinstein nervously tapped the table. Whittenfeld was visibly disconcerted.

A long silence followed.

"I assume you've kept this wild assertion to yourself, Mr. Bruce?" Whittenfeld finally asked, once more resorting to formality.

"So far."

"I see. And you, Dr. Rubinstein? Dr. Fiammengo?"

"We've only spoken to Mr. Bruce," Dr. Fiammengo said.

Whittenfeld smiled. "All right. Assume for one minute I believe this. What then?"

"You must move to protect your ship," Dr. Rubinstein said.

"We can stop using the Lyon bit."

Dr. Rubinstein vehemently shook his head. "I'm afraid you must do more than that because we must assume there could be other bit-formation combinations that might incite the creature."

"You say creature. What kind of creature?"

"A sea-adapted animal will do for now. Perhaps one hundred and twenty-five feet in length."

Whittenfeld snickered. "So what do you suggest?" he asked.

"Several things," Dr. Rubinstein replied. "First. I agree. You must not use the Lyon bit. Secondly, we must attempt to absolutely locate and identify the creature."

"How do we do that?"

"We introduce a specialized submersible to the vicinity of the drill ship and use the precise vibrations which anger the creature to draw it near."

"Won't that endanger the ship?"

"We won't use the ship. We'll duplicate the vibrations in a lab, record them, and introduce the sounds to the loch waters. Then, once we attract the creature, we will carefully photograph it so we can determine its size and our best course of action."

"Sounds fascinating," Whittenfeld said, barely able to mask his derision.

Dr. Rubinstein continued. "We can do all this with the utmost discretion. This way, we won't attract attention, and your drilling operation will be able to proceed unhindered."

Whittenfeld asked Dr. Rubinstein and Dr. Fiammengo to wait in the executive lounge; he wanted to speak to Mr. Bruce alone.

"How dare you bring these charlatans in here!" Whittenfeld screamed after Dr. Rubinstein and Dr. Fiammengo had left the room. "How dare you give them confidential company documents. Christ! For all the hell you know, they're with another oil company, and they wanted our cuttings so they could make strategic assessments concerning the Moray Firth bids!"

Scotty detailed Dr. Rubinstein's background. Then Dr. Fiammengo's. He produced the New York telex. Whittenfeld threw it on the table.

"Get rid of both of them," Whittenfeld ordered. "And find a way to destroy the pictures and hull fragment!"

"
No!
"

"What do you mean No!"

"You heard me."

"Either you do it or I fire you!"

"I don't give a damn what you do. The creature exists. I saw it. And I won't let another man die because of it."

"It's the wrong time and wrong place to go back to your old ways, Mr. Bruce! This isn't a cause. This isn't something to shake the world about."

"You don't believe that yourself."

Whittenfeld's anger flared. "I took you out of the garbage."

"I know."

"When no one else would have you. And I can send you right back. You disrupt another company, create a public furor over nothing again, and you're finished. You'll have to become a high school football coach!"

"Maybe."

"You imagined you saw this thing."

"I didn't imagine jack shit!"

"Goddamn you!"

Scotty angrily pointed: he was going to enjoy this. "Now you listen to me, you bastards. The bullshit is finished." He turned directly to Whittenfeld. "If you do not do what Dr. Rubinstein suggests, I'm going to go to Fallworth. I'm going to tell him everything. Then, if that doesn't work, I'm going to go to MacGregor. Then MacKenzie. Then Farquharson. Then the secretary of state for energy and the secretary of state for Scotland. Up to the prime minister if I have to. I'll go to every one of them and tell hem what I know." He paused. "Think about it. Those are your choices. You either do what Dr. Rubinstein suggests or I blow the lid."

"You don't mean that!" Whittenfeld challenged.

"You bet your ass I do!" Scotty said, using Dr. Rubinstein's trump, the threat to approach the authorities, "and I want an answer by the morning."

Scotty informed Dr. Rubinstein and Dr. Fiammengo that Whittenfeld would give them an answer by noon the following day. Then he drove Dr. Rubinstein back to the hotel and took Dr. Fiammengo with him into town for lunch. Finding a seat in a window booth at one of Inverness's "otherwise" Scottish coffee houses, Dr. Fiammengo placed a looseleaf folder on the table.

"See if you can recognize one of these," she suggested.

He flipped pages, staring at artists' renditions of prehistoric animals.

"Some nasty-looking critters," he observed.

She watched. A waitress delivered some coffee and two cheese-filled potato skins, a Scottish speciality.

"There's been a lot of conjecture about just what this creature might be," she said matter-of-factly. "Some have suggested it's an invertebrate, some form of giant annelid worm. Others, a mammalian species, highly evolved. Amphibians and fish have received some support, and so have reptiles."

"What do you think it is?" he asked, staring at her. As attractive as Dr. Fiammengo was, there was something coldly scientific about the way she spoke and gestured; she did not have Mary MacKenzie's warmth and smile or even her visible depth of emotional commitment.

"I lean toward the reptilian theory. Eyewitness reports would support some form of aquatic dinosaur, in particular, the
Plesiasaur
, which grew to enormous size and roamed the seas millions of years ago. And we have the reptile-like mucous sample. But, of course, there are strong arguments against!"

"Like what?"

"It is presumed dinosaurs were cold-blooded like modem reptiles and therefore would prefer warm water over cold, certainly water warmer than the loch. And
Plesiasaurs
, like other reptiles, breathed air. Now we're going to have a hard time accepting a creature which only breathes air bemuse such a creature would be a very visible landmark."

"It could have evolved to breathe in water. Like an amphibian. Couldn't it?"

"Maybe. But amphibians can't breathe in both environments simultaneously. When an amphibian is young, it breathes in water through gills, but when it comes on to land, it loses the gills and solely utilizes lungs."

"Maybe this one has learned a different trick."

"Maybe."

He continued to span the pages. Suddenly, he stopped. She leaned over. His facial expression changed rapidly; he was disturbed.

"This is it—almost."

She turned the book around. On the page was a giant black dinosaur with a long neck, a huge bulbous body, and four immense flippers.

"You've chosen a
Plesiasaur
," she said excitedly.

"I did?"

"Yes. But you said almost "

"Yes. I saw the body. The rear flippers, too. But I also saw two huge arms, tipped by enormous claws."

"Where?"

He pointed to the picture. "Where the front flippers are shown here."

She looked up, puzzled. "It's possible," she said, reflecting. "Anything's possible. But this creature certainly would have to be a very evolved organism. Your description suggests it. The mucous samples we studied do, too. If it can breathe underwater, it is one hell of an incredible thing."

"Are we dreaming all this, lady?" he asked.

"No," she answered.

"Sometimes I wonder. And when I wonder, I confront logic again."

"Specifically?"

"If this creature's a dinosaur, how and why did it survive its brethren?"

"I don't know, and we may never know."

He digested the disclaimer, grabbed the book, studied the picture and the proportkms. "Incredible," he said in conclusion. "Just incredible."

Whittenfeld called the following morning and informed Scotty he could not make a decision without additional documentation on the background of Dr. Rubinstein and Dr. Fiammengo.

Scotty protested. Whittenfeld demurred. They were not about to embark on a Sunday school picnic. Dr. Rubinstein's proposed gambit was beyond the ken of a novice. Before he would give the project a "go," he wanted to be damn sure Dr. Rubinstein and Dr. Fiammengo were the genuine articles.

And he wanted the additional information quickly.

Scotty agreed, strangely pleased by Whittenfeld's intransigence. He, too, was concerned. He now had no doubt about Dr. Rubinstein's and Dr. Fiammengo's honesty, but he wanted to be doubly sure about their abilities, too.

He informed Dr. Rubinstein there would be a slight delay, then placed additional inquiries with New York. Three members of the New York security office were placed on the matter full time, told to complete dossiers on both principals within two days.

Business completed, he drove the jeep to the Highland Regional Council offices and picked up Mary MacKenzie. They shared a lager at a pub in town. The day before, they had spoken at length about Father MacPherson's death. She still seemed as upset about it now as she'd been then. He mentioned his conversation with Superintendent MacGregor, then informed her he'd let the cat out of the bag about their relationship. She said she didn't care. She also said she wanted to visit the parish.

They motored to Loch Meiklie, arriving after the sun had set. The church was dark and intimidating. The silence was deafening, almost supernatural. It was as if MacPherson's death had placed a shroud over the building, burying it.

The impression disturbed him; he cursed it away.

Her footsteps rang clearly as she approached the altar. He watched her kneel and pray. The sound of crickets suddenly intruded. Life was reborn. She stood erect, her expression contradictory, remorseful, yet strong. Then she raised her hands and recalled MacPherson's vision—the beast, the false prophet, the rider on the white horse—recalled it as if she had been meant to take up the standard.

"Why did you say all that?" he asked after they had returned to the jeep.

"I felt it appropriate."

"Out of respect?"

"Yes. But there's another reason. I think Father MacPherson was right."

"About the Loch Ness monster?"

"No. About good and evil."

He said nothing. Based on what he knew, he also felt that MacPherson, in a very real way, had been right.

He drove the jeep back on to the road.