atrol enough to get us interested. We put teams in the water at
daylight. There's nothing there."

"But there could have been," Scotty pointed out. "If they suspected we
knew about it, they could have removed it yesterday afternoon or last
night."

"Correct," Steve agreed. "They were worried, too. Otherwise why the call
on you last night? And the questions?" Steve paused while the waiter
served them. "The conclusion is this: Something they value was in the
water near where you swam. You met me yesterday morning, and they had
already identified me. Which means that they must have agents in
Washington who warned them JANIG was moving in on the case. Since it's
no secret that I'm with the outfit, they could peg me easily. When you
swam out toward this object, whatever it was, they were convinced that
somehow JANIG had learned about it. The tail got desperate and tried to
knock you off. Then, last night, they tried to find out what you knew,
and how."

"Who are 'they'?" Rick asked.

"If I knew that, I'd wrap the case up and go home. Jimmy has been
working on it for a week, but he hasn't any answers yet. I've been here
twenty-four hours, and I know even less."

"Could you identify the two men?" Scotty queried.

"Yes. Both small fry, both local. And both are obviously green at this
kind of business, otherwise you'd be a pair of real cold turkeys by
now."

That was true, Rick knew. Experienced agents wouldn't have given him and
Scotty the chances that they'd seized.

"The men must know what was under the water," Scotty said.

"Not necessarily. They just knew it was important, and they may have
been ordered to protect it. But your former shadow was on the griddle
all night, and told all he knew. It wasn't much. He didn't even know who
had hired him. He wasn't stalling, either."

"What's the next step?" Rick wanted to know.

"Jimmy and I will drive you to the plane. Then you take off for Clipper
Cay. And stay there until your vacation is over. Have you a short-wave
radio, by the way?"

"Yes. Why?" Rick had an all-wave battery portable.

"Monitor the Navy command frequency. Here, I'll write it down for you.
Listen every night at six for five minutes. If I want you, I'll send a
message. I don't think I will, but it won't do any harm to set up a
schedule."

Steve lowered his voice. "Now listen to me. This thing is big. The two
you ran up against yesterday were not good samples. We're dealing with
some tough profe