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"Graham Farley's cornet," Sandecker repeated wistfully "If that old horn is any indication, the Titanicdown there in the black abyss as pretty and preserved as the night she sank"

28

To a chance observer standing on the shore or to anyone out for a leisurely cruise up the Rappahannock River, the three men slouched in a dilapidated old rowboat looked like a trio of ordinary weekend fisherarees, and sported hats festooned with the usual variety of hooks and flies It was a typical scene, down to the sixpack of beer trapped in a fishnet dangling in the water beside the boat

The shortest of the three, a red-haired, pinched-faced , his hands loosely gripped around a fishing pole that was attached to a red and white cork bobbing a bare two feet from the boat's waterline The second azine, while the third fisherh the e; with a well-fed stoazed through lazy blue eyes set in a jovial round face He was the perfect irandfather

Admiral Joseph Kemper could afford to look kindly When you wielded the almost incredible authority that he did, you didn't have to squint through hypnotic eyes or belch fire like a dragon He looked down and offered a benevolent expression to the

"It strikes "

"This has to be the most useless endeavor ever devised by man," Sandecker replied

"And you, Mr Seagram? You haven't dropped a hook since we anchored"

Seagraazine "If a fish could survive the pollution down there, Adet horror movie, and taste twice as bad"

"Since it was you gentlemen

who invitedto suspect a devious motive"

Sandecker neither agreed nor disagreed "Just relax and enjoy the great outdoors, Joe Forget for a few hours that you're the Navy's Chief of Staff"

"That's easy when you're around You're the only one I knoho talks down to me"

Sandecker grinned "You can't go through life with the whole world kissing your ass Siood therapy"

Keotten rid of you once and for all when you retired from the service Now it seeoddamned feather merchant"