Zero Hour nf-11

by Clive Cussler

  “We do have it,” Culver admitted, “but not because it was stolen. The OSS brought Tesla here in ’37 when he was finally threatening to publish the theory. We showed him this place. Gave him the data and told him what happened. He handed the theory over that same day. The Office of Alien Property was just making sure no other copies existed.”

  “You’d better give us yours, then,” Pitt said.

  “I’ll turn it over,” Culver said. “But let me be clear: the theory and the technology must be kept under wraps. Ever since this accident, we’ve watched people approach what Tesla discovered. Ninety-nine percent of them touch on it and then go the other way, even the serious ones. Those that don’t turn back have fallen on hard times.”

  “So you guys were watching Thero,” Pitt said wryly. “Probably helping make sure he failed.”

  “It wasn’t hard,” Culver said. “He’s a nut. Delusional, and possibly schizophrenic. We just helped people see that more clearly.”

  Pitt glanced at Sandecker. “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

  “Indeed,” Sandecker said.

  Pitt turned back to Culver. “You probably could have saved the world a lot of pain if you’d have brought him into the fold.”

  “We should have put a bullet in him,” Culver said bitterly. “We don’t want him, or anyone like him, in the fold. We don’t want anyone messing around with this. Ever.”

  Pitt narrowed his gaze. “Why? We pursue every other technology. Nuclear bombs, biological and chemical weapons. Why not this?”

  Culver didn’t blink. But he took the long way around in explaining. “My wife and I have a farm, Mr. Pitt. We have a few cows, a few goats, a few ATVs, and a whole lot of dogs. Some big dogs, some little dogs, even a few mean dogs. But there’s one scrawny mutt that just never was right. He never behaves the same way twice. Friendly one second, trying to tear your arm off the next. That dog scares me more than the mean ones. He scares the other dogs too. They give him a wide birth. Even the big alphas.

  “Zero-point energy is like that. It’s unpredictable. Erratic. The NSA has had people studying it for decades. We’re too damned scared to do anything like this experiment because each time we run the numbers, we come up with a range of possible outcomes instead of just one. Could you imagine firing a gun if you had a fifty-fifty chance of hitting the target or having the gun blow up in your face?”

  “No,” Pitt admitted.

  “Nor can I,” Culver said. “But that’s how it is. With a gun, you pull the trigger and the bullet fires. With a bomb, you hit the detonator and the explosives blow. Even a hydrogen bomb has an established yield. But with this stuff… With this stuff, the results seem to be random, like it has a mind of its own. And that means once you press the switch, all bets are off. At that point, anything can happen.”

  Pitt recalled Yaeger’s comment describing it as a moody genie, best kept in a bottle. It seemed the NSA agreed with him. He had a feeling Culver was making the point for a reason. “What are you really trying to say?”

  Culver still wouldn’t shoot straight, perhaps enjoying the little bit of power he was still holding.

  “Have your man run the numbers,” Culver said. “If he disagrees with our people, then we can argue about it. But this device must be prevented from operating under any circumstances. I assure you that’s how the President sees it. We have two nuclear attack submarines moving into the area. As soon as we have a location, they’re going to destroy the site with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.”

  Pitt glanced at Sandecker, who nodded gravely. He’d already been told.

  “It has to be done,” Sandecker said.

  To his surprise, Pitt found himself agreeing.

  TWENTY-NINE

  MV Rama, 0330 hours local time

  After a stop in the mess hall, and a change of clothes, Kurt sat in a dingy cabin with gray-brown walls lit by a single incandescent light.

  A chessboard sat in front of him on a small table. The game was in mid-progress, the pieces already in motion. A quarter of them stood on the side, fallen soldiers already taken by the other player.

  To the left was an almost empty bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and two shot glasses, which Anton Gregorovich had just finished topping off for the seventh time. To the right — easily within both men’s reach — sat the Makarov pistol that Gregorovich had given Kurt.

  Kurt had been in there for most of the night. This was their third game. Occasionally, Gregorovich asked him questions, which Kurt did his best to deflect. More often than not, he sat silently brooding.

  Kurt figured it was some kind of test to see if he could hold his liquor or his tongue.

  Eyeing the board stoically, Gregorovich finally moved, sliding a bishop into Kurt’s section. The move created options, forcing Kurt to choose between saving a pawn or a rook or making an offense move and letting both pieces go.

  Done with his move, Gregorovich pushed one of the overflowing shot glasses toward Kurt and lifted the other to his mouth.

  He knocked it down and then turned to the bottle for a refill. As he did, Kurt dumped the contents of his shot glass in a planter with a dying fern in it and quickly brought the glass back to his mouth.

  He finished the last sip as Gregorovich turned back to him. “I wouldn’t do that,” Kurt suggested, putting the glass down firmly.

  “What?” Gregorovich asked. “The bishop or the vodka?”

  “You leave yourself open to check,” Kurt said.

  “Only if you give up one of your pieces,” Gregorovich said and then downed the shot.

  Kurt studied the board carefully. He moved the rook to a spot next to the pawn, protecting them both, instead of threatening Gregorovich with check, which the Russian could have easily escaped.

  “You don’t understand this game, I think,” Gregorovich said. “You play defensively, protecting your pawns. This game, like life, is all about attacking.”

  Gregorovich took another of Kurt’s pieces, moving his queen recklessly into danger.

  “What would you know about life?” Kurt said. “Except how to end it.”

  This time, Kurt reached for the bottle and poured the shots. He allowed his hand to shake and appear unsteady.

  Gregorovich snickered. “I know that life is about finding your place in all of this madness,” he said. “Some of us find it easily, maybe you did. My path was more complicated. When I was a boy, my mother left us. My father’s temper and the back of his hand were too much for her. So, naturally, he took it out on me. When he drank, everything was my fault. When he didn’t drink, everything was my fault.”

  Gregorovich shook his head. “Somehow, I always failed him. And when I did, he would beat me. His favorite game was to force me outside and make me stand in the ice water of the bog. It came up to my thighs and it numbed my legs, and then he would whip me with a belt until the water turned red or until my knees buckled and I fell in it. I couldn’t feel my lower half, but I could feel every inch of that belt on my back with heightened awareness.”

  Kurt looked up from the board.

  “One day,” Gregorovich said, “I decided I would stay up. Stay up until he killed me, and then I’d be free. I stood as he thrashed me and I kept myself from falling. It infuriated him more until eventually he charged into the water and tried to force me under. This triggered something in me. Something I had never felt. I had forced him to change. And so instead of letting him drown me, I fought him. For the first time ever, I raised my fist to him. And when I’d beaten him to a bloody mess, I took that belt and strangled the life from the miserable bastard.”

  Kurt remained silent.

  “The look in his eyes,” Gregorovich continued. “The look in his eyes as he died. It wasn’t shock. It wasn’t fear. It was pride. For the first time in my life, and the last time in his, I had impressed him.”

  Kurt tipped back another shot of vodka. “Why are you telling me this touching family story?”

/>   “Because from that day on, I knew who I was,” Gregorovich said coldly. “From that day on, I understood life. It revealed what I was meant to be. An assassin. A killer. It is my gift. I have never failed at an assignment. Never failed to destroy the selected target. It is perfection. I am perfection.”

  “Except for Thero,” Kurt guessed.

  Gregorovich seemed to brood at the mention of the name.

  “Come on,” Kurt said, “it’s not that hard to figure. Thero’s facility was blown to bits. Somehow, he survives, and now Russia ends up on his hit list. It was you guys who blew him up. Seems you got everything except the head of the snake. I’d say you failed pretty badly on that one.”

  Gregorovich lunged across the table, his hand blasting the chess pieces all over the room as it plowed through them on the way to the Makarov. He reached the pistol before Kurt could react.

  Kurt had made a different choice. His left hand went for the vodka bottle, grabbed it, and smashed it against the bulkhead wall and brought the shattered stub up to Gregorovich’s neck like a blade. It met the Russian’s neck at the very instant the barrel of the Makarov lodged against Kurt’s gut.

  The safety was off, Kurt’s liver unprotected. But so was his opponent’s jugular. Either man could have ended the other’s life in a blink, but it was a standoff. If Gregorovich fired, Kurt’s body would convulse, and the jagged glass of the bottle would slice his artery. If Kurt flipped the edge of the glass, he would mortally wound the Russian, but death would not come quick enough to stop the 9mm bullet from blasting through his liver and tearing apart his internal organs.

  They stared into each other’s eyes. Two men on the brink.

  “In chess they call this blood,” Gregorovich said. “A piece for a piece, an even trade. But our trade wouldn’t be even, would it? End my life and I end yours, but Kirov will have your crew shot before dawn. The pawns you fight desperately to protect will die along with their king. And I sense you have no stomach for that kind of outcome.”

  “That may be true,” Kurt said. “But if you kill me, you lose your only chance to find Thero, your only chance to erase your one big failure. And your pride won’t let you give that up. No matter how badly I’ve angered you.”

  The Russian began to laugh. “At least we understand each other.”

  Gregorovich released the pistol and dropped it into Kurt’s lap. He then pulled slowly away from the glass.

  Kurt grabbed the pistol and tossed the broken bottle away.

  “I will find and destroy Thero,” Gregorovich said matter-of-factly. “Whether it happens before or after he obliterates Australia, Russia, or the rest of the world matters little to me. I will hunt him down and kill him because it is personal to me. And I will do so if I have to drive every man and woman on this ship to their deaths in the process.”

  Kurt nodded. He recognized a modern-day Ahab when he saw one.

  “Why would you need to drive your men so hard,” Kurt asked. “Don’t they have the same orders as you?”

  “Orders, yes. But they lack my zeal. They’re uneasy and have been since we determined what happened to your ship. Like the men with Columbus, they’re afraid we’re sailing off the edge of the map.”

  “So that’s why you gave us the guns,” Kurt said.

  “You and your men are quite an effective counterbalance against them,” Gregorovich said. “Now they have something else to worry about beyond getting rid of me.”

  “How Machiavellian of you,” Kurt said.

  “It’s worked so far,” Gregorovich boasted. “But for how long, I don’t know. Kirov prods them and plots against me. They may find the heart to challenge me yet. If they do, you and your men will certainly die.”

  “Or fight for you,” Kurt guessed.

  “Odd as that sounds, yes.”

  “I guess we’d have no choice,” he said. “The question is: how much time do you think we have until that occurs?”

  Gregorovich shook his head. “No,” he said, “that’s not the question. The question is: how far will you go to stop Thero?”

  So that was it. Gregorovich was looking for a partner, a blood brother, in his quest for the prey that escaped him. Kurt was up for that, as long as they got there in time.

  “To stop Thero from killing millions,” Kurt said. “To the ends of the Earth, if necessary.”

  Gregorovich nodded. It was the answer he wanted to hear. It also happened to be true.

  “This far south,” the Russian said, “it would seem we’re almost there.”

  “Not quite,” Kurt replied. He stood and checked his watch. It was time for a new heading. “Tell your helmsman to change course. Our new heading should be 245 degrees.”

  “So we don’t journey to Antarctica after all?”

  “Not yet anyway,” Kurt said, keeping the truth to himself. “I’m going to my quarters so I can sleep this off. Assuming Kirov doesn’t kill me during the night, I’ll have more course changes for you in the morning.”

  Gregorovich nodded, and Kurt stepped out into the hall. One of the commandos waited there.

  “You must be the bellhop,” Kurt muttered. “Take me to my cabin.”

  He was escorted aft until he reached a pair of the Russian commandos standing outside the cabin in which the NUMA crew had been placed. He stepped past them and went inside, only to find an argument in full bloom.

  Captain Winslow and his XO were on one side, Joe and Hayley on the other.

  “… he’s got us this far,” Hayley insisted.

  “He’s playing a game with our lives,” the XO replied.

  “We’d be dead if he told them what they wanted to hear,” Joe added.

  Apparently, more than one mutiny was brewing on the ship.

  “Told who what they wanted to hear?” Kurt asked.

  The group turned in unison.

  “The Russians,” Captain Winslow said. “While you were out drinking with their leader, they came and took our injured crewmen to the sick bay. Only now they tell us no one will be receiving medical treatment until we give them more information.”

  Kurt didn’t like the sound of that. But there was no turning back.

  “I don’t know if this is the right course of action,” Winslow added.

  “It’s the only course left,” Kurt said.

  “We have to give them something,” Winslow said. “At least a hint.”

  “No. If they guess right, we’re all dead,” Kurt explained. “They’ll tie weights to our feet and drop us over the side to save the cost of a bullet.”

  “My crewmen are in shock,” Winslow said. “They’re dying. For God sakes, Kurt, be reasonable.”

  “There’s no room for reason,” Kurt snapped. “Can’t you see that?!”

  The others stared back at him, taken off guard at an uncommon burst of fury.

  “We’re caught in between a madman and a lunatic,” he explained. “Gregorovich is insane. This isn’t a job for him. It’s some kind of vendetta. Maybe even a suicide mission. His failure to kill Thero years ago is eating him alive. If he has to, he’ll murder every one of us just to get another shot at it. And Thero is worse. He was a schizophrenic, a sociopath, years ago. Can you imagine what time and pain have done to him since? He’s called his lair Tartarus, the Prison of the Gods. What do you think that says about him? He considers himself a god. A persecuted one at that. You think he’s going to let up on his threat?”

  They gazed at Kurt oddly. No doubt he looked half deranged himself at this point.

  “It can’t be that bad,” the XO said.

  “It can be and it is,” Kurt said. “If anyone’s making plans to survive this, I suggest you stop wasting your time because most likely we won’t. The only thing we can hope for is to prevent Thero from acting. And to do that, we need the Russians as much as they need us.”

  Joe stood with Kurt, the loyal friend that he was. Hayley seemed to understand the truth and had resigned herself to it. Even the XO seemed to soften his postur
e. But Winslow shook his head.

  “They’re my crew,” he said. “My responsibility.”

  Kurt understood that. He figured lack of sleep and guilt were weighing on the captain’s mind too.

  “Most of your crewmen already gave their lives to fight this,” Kurt said. “So did nine members of the ASIO, and at least four civilians who’ve tried to escape Thero’s grasp. The only way to give those deaths meaning is to stop Thero from winning. We have a chance to do that if we side with Gregorovich. It’s a long shot. But it’s the only shot we have.”

  Winslow seemed unsure.

  Kurt put his hand on the captain’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. “I know what you’re going through. None of us would even be in this situation if I’d kept my nose out of it. Those crewmen’s lives are on me, not you. But we can’t bring them back. We can only do our best to make sure their deaths are not in vain.”

  Winslow looked back at Kurt. He seemed to understand. “So what do we do now?”

  “We have to reduce the number of commandos at their disposal,” Kurt said. “Even the odds a little.”

  “How? They have us under guard.”

  Kurt had been thinking about this while losing in chess to Gregorovich. “They eat buffet style around here,” he said, having noted the setup on his single pass through the mess hall. “This ship is filthy. It has to be crawling with bacteria. Scrape up any kind of grunge you can find. I don’t care where you get it from, and, frankly, I don’t want to know. Collect it up and find a way to drop it in the food right around chow time — after we’ve gotten our fill of course.”

  “Germ warfare,” Joe noted.

  “If the commandos are too sick to fight, Gregorovich will have no choice but to take us along.”

  “I like it,” Joe said. “What if he leaves us behind anyway?”

  “Then we take over the ship and radio NUMA if we can.”

  Joe nodded, and Hayley offered a sad smile. Even the XO cracked a grin at the thought of going on the offensive for a change. Winslow agreed. “Okay,” he said. “I’m with you.”