“Absolutely.”
“How?” Marino wanted to know.
“A number of things,” he said. “For example, when ships are stored at the Inactive Yard, their missile and torpedo tubes are covered with steel plates outside the hull.
shaft inside the ship so the And a plate is welded over the screw is fixed. Obviously, all guns and communications are removed.”
“Meaning that a violation of at least some of these regulations could be inspected from the outside,” I said. “You could tell by looking at the vessel if you were near it in the water.”
He looked at me and caught my meaning precisely.
“Yes, you could tell.”
“You could dive around this sub and find that the torpedo tubes, for example, are not sealed. You might even be able to tell that the screw was not welded.”
“Yes,” he said again. “All of that you could tell.”
“That’s what Ted Eddings was doing.”
“I’m afraid so.” It was Wesley who spoke. “Divers recovered his camera and we’ve looked at the film, which had only three exposures. All blurred images of the Exploiter’s screw. So it doesn’t appear he was in the water long before he died.”
“And where is that submarine now?” I asked.
CA USE of D EAT H 26i The general paused. “You might say that we’re in subtle pursuit of it.”
“Then it’s gone.”
“I’m afraid it left port about the same time the nuclear power plant was stormed.”
I looked at the three men. “Well, I certainly think we know why Eddings had gotten increasingly paranoid about self-protection.”
“Someone must have set him up,” Marino said. “You can’t just decide at the last minute to poison someone with cyanide gas.”
“His was a premeditated murder committed by someone he must have trusted,” Wesley said. “He wouldn’t have told just anybody what he was doing that night.”
I thought of another label in Eddings’s fax machine. CPT could stand for captain, and I mentioned Captain Green’s name to them.
“Well, Eddings must have had at least one inside source for his story,” was Wesley’s comment. “Someone was leaking information to him and I suspect this same someone set him up or at least assisted in it.” He looked at me.
“And we know from his phone bills that over the past few months, he had quite a lot of communication with Green, by phone and fax, that seems to have begun last fall when Eddings did a rather harmless profile on the shipyard.”
“Then he started digging too deep,” I said.
“His curiosity was actually helpful to us,” General Sessions said. “We started digging deeper, too. We’ve been investigating this situation longer than you might imagine.”
He paused, and smiled a little. “In fact, Dr. Scarpetta, you have not been as alone at some points as you might have thought.”
“I sincerely hope you’ll thank Jerod and Ki Soo,” I said, assuming they were SEALs.
But it was Wesley who replied, “I will, or perhaps you can yourself next time you visit HRT. “General Sessions,” I moved on to what seemed a rather more mundane topic. “Would you happen to know if rats are a concern in decommissioned ships””
“Rats are always a worry in any ship,” he said.
“One of the uses of cyanide is to exterminate rodents in the hulls of ships,” I said. “The Inactive Yard may keep a supply of it.”
As I’ve indicated, Captain Green is of great concern to us.” He knew just what I meant. -Vis–vis the New Zionists?” I asked.
“No,” Wesley answered for him. “Not as opposed to but as with. My speculation is that Green is the New Zionists’ direct link to anything military, such as the shipyard, while Roche is simply his toady. Roche is the one who harasses, snoops and snitches.”
“He didn’t kill Danny,” I said.
“Danny was killed by a psychopathic individual who blends well enough with normal society that he did not draw any attention to himself as he waited outside the Hill Cafe. I’d profile this individual as a white male, early thirties to early forties, experienced in hunting and in guns, in general.”
” Sounds like the spitting image of the drones who took over Old Point,” Marino remarked.