The Mediterranean Caper by Clive Cussler

from one extreme in temperature to another.”
    Pitt didn’t answer, but merely smiled.
    Gunn pulled open the top drawer of a small compact desk and handed Pitt a large manilla envelope that contained several drawings of a strange looking fish. “You ever see anything like this before?”
    Pitt looked down at the drawings. Most of them were different artists’ conceptions of the same fish, and yet each varied in details. The first was an ancient Greek illustration on the side of a vase. Another had obviously been part of a Roman fresco. He noted that two of them were more modern stylized drawings, depicting the fish in a series of movements. The last was a photograph of a fossil imbedded in sandstone. Pitt looked up at Gunn questioningly.
    Gunn handed him a magnifying glass. “Here, take a closer look through this.”
    Pitt adjusted the height of the thick glass and scrutinized each picture. At first glance the fish looked similar in size and shape to the Bluefin Tuna, but on closer inspection, the bottom pelvic fins took on the appearance of small jointed webbed feet. There were two more identical limbs located just in front of the dorsal fin.
    He whistled softly. “This is a weird specimen, Rudi. What do you call it?”
    â€œI can’t pronounce the Latin name, but the scientists aboard the First Attempt have affectionately nicknamed it the Teaser .”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œBecause, by every law of nature that fish should have become extinct over two hundred million years ago. But as you can see by the drawings men still claim they have seen it. Every fifty or sixty years there’s a rash of sightings, but unfortunately for science, a Teaser has yet to be caught.” Gunn glanced at Pitt and looked away again. “If there is such a fish, it must bear a charmed life. There are literally hundreds of accounts of fishermen and scientists who look you in the eye with a straight face and say they had a Teaser on a hook or in a net, but before the fish could be hauled on board it escaped. Every zoologist in the world would give his left testicle to obtain a live, or even dead Teaser .”
    Pitt mashed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “What makes this particular fish so important?”
    Gunn held up the drawings. “Notice that the artists couldn’t agree on the outer layer of skin. They illustrate tiny scales, smooth porpoise-like skin, and one even brushed in a kind of furry hide like a sea lion. Now, if you take the possibility of hairy skin, together with the limb extensions, it may be we have the dim beginnings of the first mammal.”
    â€œTrue, but if the skin were smooth you’d have nothing more than an early reptile. The earth was covered with them back in those days.”
    Gunn’s eyes mirrored a confident look. “The next point to consider is that the Teasers lived in warm shallow water, and every recorded sighting took place no more than three miles from shore and they all occurred right here in the eastern Mediterranean where the average surface temperature seldom drops below sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit.”
    â€œSo what does that prove?” asked Pitt.
    â€œNothing solid, but since primitive mammal life survives better in milder climates, it lends a little support to the possibility that they might have survived to the present.”
    Pitt stared at Gunn thoughtfully. “I’m sorry, Rudi. You still haven’t sold me.”
    â€œI knew you were a hardhead,” said Gunn. “That’s why I left the most interesting part till last.” He paused and removed his glasses and rubbed the lenses with a piece of Kleenex. Then he replaced the black rims over his hawkish nose. He continued speaking as if lost in a dream. “During the Triassic Period in geological time, and before the Himalayas and the Alps rose, a great sea swept over what is now Tibet and India. It also extended over Central Europe and