"That's pretty heady material."
"The minutes have been doctored. They may seem important, but in reality they have been carefully reworded to mislead your superiors."
"Passing along fake documents won't do my position any good."
"Ease your mind," the fat man said. "Tomorrow at this time an agent of the KGB will obtain the same material. The KGB will declare it bona fide. Since you will have produced your information twenty-four hours ahead of them, it will put a feather in your cap in the eyes of Admiral Sloyuk."
"Very cunning," Marganin said, staring at the newspaper. "Anything else?"
"This is good-by," the fat man murmured.
"Good-by?"
"Yes. I have been your contact long enough. Too long. We've come too far, you and I, to become lax in our security now."
"And my new contact?"
"Are you still living in the naval barracks?" the fat man replied with another question.
"The barracks will remain my home. I am not about to draw suspicion as a big spender and live in a fancy apartment like Prevlov's. I shall continue to lead a spartan existence on my Soviet naval pay."
"Good. My replacement is already assigned. He will be the orderly who cleans the officers' quarters of your barracks."
"I will miss you, old friend," Marganin said slowly.
"And I, you."
There was a long moment of silence. And then, finally, the fat man spoke again in a hushed undertone. "God bless, Harry."
When Marganin folded the newspaper and laid it aside, the fat man was gone.
82
"That's our destination over there to the right," the pilot of the helicopter said. "I'll set down in that pasture just across the road from the churchyard."
Sandecker looked out the window. It was a gray, overcast morning and soft blankets of mist were hovering over the low areas of the tiny village. A quiet lane wandered past several quaint houses and was bordered on both sides by picturesque rock walls. He stiffened as the pilot made a steep bank around the church steeple.
He glanced at Donner on the seat beside him. Donner was staring straight ahead. In front of him, occupying the seat next to the pilot, was Sid Koplin. The mineralogist had been called back on this one last assignment for Meta Section, because Herb Lusky was still not well enough to make the trip.
Sandecker felt the slight bump as the landing skids touched the ground, and a moment later the pilot cut the engine and the rotor blades drifted to a stop.
In the sudden stillness after the flight from London, the pilot's voice seemed overly loud. "We're here, sir."
Sandecker nodded and stepped out the side door. Pitt was waiting and walked toward him with an outstretched hand.
"Welcome to Southby, Admiral," he said smiling.
Sandecker smiled as he took Pitt's hand, but there was no humor in his face. "The next time you take a powder without notifying me as to your intentions, you're fired."
Pitt feigned a hurt expression and then turned and greeted Donner. "Mel, nice to see you."
"Likewise," Donner said warmly. "I believe you've already met Sid Koplin."
"A chance meeting," Pitt grinned. "We were never formally introduced."
Koplin took Pitt's hand in both of his. This was hardly the same man Pitt had found dying in the snows of Novaya Zemlya. Koplin's grip was firm and his eyes alert.
"It was my fondest wish," he said, his voice heavy with emotion, "that some day I would have the opportunity of thanking you in person for saving my life."
"I'm glad to see you in good health," was all Pitt could think of to mumble. He looked down at the ground nervously.
By God, Sandecker thought to himself, the man was actually embarrassed. He never dreamed he'd see the day when Dirk Pitt turned modest. The admiral rescued Pitt by grabbing him by the arm and pulling him toward the village church.
"I hope you know what you're doing," Sandecker said. "The British frown upon colonials who go around digging up their graveyards."
"It took a direct call from the President to the Prime Minister to cut through all the bureaucratic red tape of an exhumation," Donner added.
"I think you will find the inconvenience has been worth it," Pitt said.
They came to the road and crossed it. Then they passed through an ancient wrought-iron gate and walked into the graveyard that surrounded the parish church. They walked in silence for several moments, reading the inscriptions on the weather-worn headstones.
Then Sandecker motioned toward the little village. "It's so far off the beaten track. What steered you onto it?"
"Pure luck," Pitt answered. "When I began tracing the Coloradans' movements from Aberdeen, I had no idea of how Southby might fit in the puzzle. The final sentence in Brewster's journal, if you recall, said 'How I long to return to Southby.' And, according to Commodore Bigalow, Brewster's last words just before he shut himself in the Titanic's vault were 'Thank God for Southby.'
"My only inkling, and a meager one at that, was Southby had an English ring to it, so I began by pinpointing as nearly is I could the miners' trail to Southampton-"
"By following their grave markers," Donner finished.
"They read like signposts," Pitt admitted. "That and the fact that Brewster's journal recorded the times and places of their deaths, except, that is, for Alvin Coulter and Vernon Hall. Coulter's final resting place remains a mystery, but Hall lies here in the Southby village cemetery."
"Then you found it on a map."
"No, the village is so small it isn't even a dot in the Michelin Tour Guide. I just happened to notice an old, forgotten hand-painted sign some farmer had set along the main road years ago advertising a milk cow for sale. The directions gave the farm's location as three kilometers east in the next country lane to Southby. The last pieces of the puzzle then began dropping into place."
They walked along in silence and made their way over to where three men were standing. Two wore the standard work clothes of local farmers, the third was in the uniform of a county constable. Pitt made the brief introductions, and then Donner solemnly handed the constable the order for exhumation.
They all stared down at the grave. The tombstone stood at one end of a large stone slab that lay atop the deceased. The stone simply read:
VERNON HALL
Died April 8, 1912
R.I.P.
Neatly carved in the center of the arched horizontal slab was the image of an old three-wasted sailing ship.
"'. . . the precious ore we labored so desperately to rape from the bowels of that cursed mountain lies safely in the vault of the ship. Only Vernon will be left to tell the tale, for I depart on the great White Star steamer . . . '" Pitt recited the words from Joshua Hays Brewster's journal.
"Vernon Hall's burial vault," Donner said as if in a dream. "This is what he meant, not the vault of the Titanic."
"It's unreal," Sandecker murmured. "Is it possible that the byzanium lies here?"
"We'll know in a few minutes," Pitt said. He nodded to the two farmers who began shoving at the slab with pry bars. Once the slab was hefted aside, the farmers began digging.
"But why bury the byzanium here?" Sandecker asked. "Why didn't Brewster go on to Southampton and have it loaded on board the Titanic?"
"A myriad of reasons," Pitt said, his voice unnaturally loud in the quiet graveyard. "Hunted like a dog, exhausted beyond human endurance, his friends all brutally murdered before his eyes, Brewster was pushed into madness just as surely as Gene Seagram was when he learned that fate had snatched away his moment of success on the very verge of fulfillment. Add all that to the fact that Brewster was in a strange land; he was alone and friendless. Death stalked him constantly without letup, and his only chance for escaping to the United States with the byzanium was moored several miles away at the dock in Southampton.
"It's said that insanity breeds genius. Perhaps in Brewster's case it was so, or perhaps he was simply misguided by his delusions. He assumed, wrongly as it tur
ned out, that he could never make it safely aboard the ship with the byzanium by himself. So, he buried it in Vernon Hall's grave and substituted worthless rock in the original ore boxes. Then he probably left his journal with the church vicar with instructions to turn it over to the American consulate in Southampton. I imagine his cryptic prose grew from the madness that had brought him to the point where he trusted no one-not even an old country vicar. He probably figured that some perceptive soul in the Army Department would decipher the true meaning of his wandering prose in the event of his murder."
"But he made it on board the Titanic safely," Donner said. "The French didn't stop him."
"My guess is that things were getting too warm for the French agents. The British police must have followed the trail of bodies, just as I did, and were breathing down the pursuers' back."
"So the French, afraid of an international scandal of gigantic proportions, backed off at the last moment," Koplin injected.
"That's one theory," Pitt replied.
Sandecker looked thoughtful. "The Titanic . . . the Titanic sank and queered everything."
"True," Pitt answered automatically. "Now a thousand ifs enter the picture. If Captain Smith had heeded the ice warnings and reduced speed; if the ice packs hadn't floated unusually far south that year, if the Titanic had missed the iceberg and docked in New York as scheduled; and, if Brewster had lived to tell his story to the Army, the byzanium would have simply been dug up and recovered at a later date. On the other hand, even if Brewster had been killed before he boarded the ship, the Army Department would have no doubt figured the double meaning at the end of his journal and acted accordingly. Unfortunately, the wheels of chance played a dirty trick the Titanic sank, taking Brewster along with it, and the veiled words of his journal threw everybody, including ourselves, completely off the track for seventy-six years."
"Then why did Brewster lock himself in the Titanic's vault?" Donner asked in puzzlement. "Knowing that the ship was doomed, knowing that any suicidal act was a meaningless gesture, why didn't he try and save himself?"
"Guilt is a powerful motive for suicide," Pitt said. "Brewster was insane. That much we know. When he realized that his scheme to steal the byzanium had caused a score of people, eight of whom were close friends, to die needlessly, he blamed himself. Many men, and women, too, have taken their own lives for much less-"
"Hold on a moment!" Koplin cut in. He was kneeling over an open case of mineral-analysis gear. "I'm getting a radioactive reading from the fill over the coffin."
The diggers climbed out of the hole. The rest clustered around Koplin and peered curiously as he went through his ritual. Sandecker pulled a cigar from his breast pocket and stuck it between his lips without lighting it. The air was cold, but Donner's shirt was wet right through his coat. No one spoke. Their breaths came in small wisps of vapor that quickly dissipated in the subdued gray light.
Koplin studied the rocky soil. It didn't match the composition of the moist brown earth that surrounded the grave's excavation. At last, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He held several small rocks up in his hand. "Byzanium!"
"Is . . . is it here?" Donner asked in a hushed whisper. "Is it really all here?"
"Ultra high grade," Koplin announced. His face broke into a wide smile. "More than enough to complete the Sicilian Project."
"Thank God!" Donner gasped. He staggered over to an above-ground crypt and unceremoniously collapsed on it, oblivious to the shocked stares of the local farmers.
Koplin looked back down into the grave. "Insanity does breed genius," he murmured. "Brewster filled the grave with the ore. Anyone except a professional mineralogist would have simply dug through it and finding nothing in the coffin but bones, would have walked off and left it."
"An ideal way to conceal it," Donner agreed. "Practically right out in the open."
Sandecker stepped over and took Pitt's hand and shook it. "Thank you," he said simply.
Pitt could only nod in reply. He felt tired and numb. He wanted to find himself a place where he could crawl away from the world and forget it for a while. He wished the Titanic had never been, had never slid down the ways of the Belfast shipyard to the silent sea, to the merciless sea that had transformed that beautiful ship into a grotesque, rusted old hulk.
Sandecker seemed to read Pitt's eyes. "You look like you need a rest," he said. "Don't let me see your ugly face around my office for at least two weeks."
"I was hoping you'd say that." Pitt smiled wearily.
"Mind telling me where you plan to hide out?" Sandecker asked slyly. "Only in the event an emergency arises at NUMA, of course, and I have to get in touch with you."
"Of course," Pitt came back dryly. He paused a moment. "There's a little airline stewardess who lives with her great grandfather in Teignmouth. You might try me there."
Sandecker nodded in silent understanding.
Koplin came over and grasped Pitt by both shoulders. "I hope we meet again sometime."
"My sentiments, too."
Donner looked at him without rising and said with emotional hoarseness, "It's finally over."
"Yes," Pitt said. "It's over and done with. Everything."
He felt a sudden chill, a feeling of cold familiarity, as though his words had echoed hauntingly from the past. Then he turned and walked from the Southby graveyard.
They all stood and watched him grow smaller in the distance, until he entered a shroud of mist and disappeared.
"He came from the mists and he returned to the mists," Koplin said, his mind drifting back to his first meeting with Pitt on the slopes of Bednaya Mountain.
Donner gazed at him oddly. "What was that you said?"
"Just thinking out loud." Koplin shrugged. "That's all."
August 1988
RECKONING
"Stop engines."
The telegraph rang in reply to the captain's command, and the vibrations coming from the engine room of the British cruiser H.M.S. Troy died away. The foam around the bow melted into the blackness of the sea as the ship slowly lost her momentum, silent except for the hum of her generators.
It was a warm night for the North Atlantic. The sea was glassy-calm and the stars blazed in a sparkling carpet across the sky from horizon to horizon. The Union Jack hung limp and lifeless in its halyards, untouched by even a hint of breeze.
The crew, over two hundred of them, was assembled on the foredeck as a lifeless body sewn in the traditional sailcloth of a bygone era and shrouded by the national flag, was carried out and poised at the ship's railing. Then the captain, his voice resonant and unemotional, read the sailor's burial service. As soon as he uttered the final words, He nodded. The slat was tilted, and the body slid into the waiting arms of the eternal sea. The bugle notes were clear and pure as they drifted into the quiet night; then the men were dismissed and they turned silently away.
A few minutes later, when the Troy was under way again, the captain sat dowry and made the following entry in the ship's log:
H.M.S Troy. Time 0220, 10 August 1988.
Pos. Lat. 41°46'N., Long. 50°14'W
At the exact time in the morning of the White Star steamer R.M.S Titanic's foundering, and in accordance with his dying wish that he spend eternity with his former shipmates, the remains of Commodore Sir John Bigalow, K.B.E., R.D.,. R.N.R. (Retired) were committed to the deep.
The captain's hand trembled as he signed his name. He was closing out the last chapter of a tragic drama that had stunned the world . . . a world the likes of which would never be seen again.
At almost the same moment, on the other side of the earth somewhere in the vast desolate wastes of the Pacific Ocean, a huge cigar-shaped submarine crept silently far below the languorous waves. Startled fish scattered into the depths at the monster's approach, while within its smooth black skin, men prepared to launch a quad of ballistic missiles at a series of divergent targets six thousand miles to the east.
At precisely 1500 hours, the first of the great mi
ssiles ignited its rocket engine and burst through the sun-danced swells in a volcanic eruption of white water, rising with a thunderous roar into the blue Pacific sky. In thirty seconds, it was followed by the second, and the third, and, finally, the fourth. Then, trailing long fiery columns of orange flame, the quartet of potential mass-destruction arched into space and disappeared.
Thirty-two minutes later, while homing in on their down-range trajectory, the missiles abruptly blew up, one by one, in gigantic balls of flame, and disintegrated while still some ninety miles from their respective targets. It was the first time in the history of American rocketry that anyone remembered that the attending technicians and engineers and military officers who held rein on the nation's defense programs had ever cheered the sudden and seemingly disastrous end to a perfect launch.
The Sicilian Project had proven itself an unqualified success on its first try.
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Raise the Titanic dp-4 Page 35