Blue & Gold

by Clive Cussler

  “I know no more important reason than to continue my work,” she said defensively.

  “In time, Dr. Cabral, in time. Your work will have little meaning if Gogstad succeeds in its plans. Whoever controls the world’s water controls the world.”

  “It sounds as if you’re talking about global domination, Admiral Sandecker.”

  “Why not? Napoleon and Hitler failed, but their attempts were made through force of arms. In each case they came up against somebody with a bigger stick.” He took a smooth puff on his cigar and watched the cloud of smoke. “The people protesting globalization, all that business with the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, were onto something. The danger is not in these entities but in the i;dCt that it is easier now for someone to exert total control over a economic sector.”

  “A sort of global Al Capone?” Austin offered.

  “There are similarities. Capone was ruthless about exterminating the competition and had a fine instinct for organization. His economic power gave him political clout. Bootleg booze is a far cry from water. The world can’t do without water. Those who control its flow will have the ultimate political power. Who will stand up against someone whose word can condemn you and your country to die of thirst? That is why I say with all due respect, Dr. Cabral, that there are more important matters to be taken care of first.”

  “You’re right, Admiral Sandecker,” Francesca conceded. “If this Gogstad finds the main supply of anasazium, it will control my process as well.”

  “Intelligence and beauty are such a welcome combination,” Sandecker said with unveiled appreciation. “The young lady has stated my fears exactly. It’s imperative that we find that long-lost cache before Gogstad does.”

  “I was trying to figure out how to pinpoint the location when you called. I’m going to need some help.”

  “That’s not a problem. Use any NUMA resource that you need, and if we don’t have them we’ll find them else where.”

  “I think Joe and I should leave as’ soon as possible for Alaska.”

  “Before you go dashing off to the Yukon there’s something else we have to discuss. This buildup of tankers that Joe’s re porter friend told him about has me worried. What do you make of it?”

  “At the very least Gogstad is expecting to move lots of water from Alaska to someplace that needs it. There has been talk of transporting water to China.”

  “Perhaps,” Sandecker said, unconvinced. “I’ll talk to Rudi Gunn. Maybe he and Yaeger can shed light on this mystery. While you and Joe are trying to nail down this flying wing, they can see what they can find about the tankers.”

  Austin rose and said, “I’ll start things moving.” He shook hands with Francesca and said, “I’ll show you out, Dr. Cabral.”

  “Thank you, and please call me Francesca,” she said as they strolled to the elevator.

  “I will if you call me Kurt. Tell me, do you prefer Korean, Thai, Italian, or just plain old American cooking?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “No one told you?” he said with mock amazement. “Dinner is part of the Austin rescue package. I hope you won’t refuse. Who l
  “In that case, I would be happy to accept your invitation. Would seven o’clock be convenient?”

  “That’s fine. It will give me plenty of time to start making preparations for our trip to Alaska.”

  “I’ll see you then. As you know I am staying with the Trouts. And Korean would be fine.”

  Austin bid Francesca good-bye near the huge globe that rose from the center of the sea-green floor in the NUMA lobby, an atrium surrounded by waterfalls and aquariums filled with colorful and exotic sea life. Then he went back to his fourth-floor office, called Zavala to let him know of his meeting with Sandecker, and lined up transportation for their trip.

  Francesca was ready when he arrived at the Trouts’ Georgetown house to pick her up. He chatted with Paul and Gamay long enough to be polite, then drove to his favorite Korean restaurant, housed in an unpretentious building in Alexandria.

  Austin recommended that they order below, thin strips of marinated beef cooked on a hot plate on the table. Ordinarily it was one of his favorite meals, but he hardly tasted it; he was too busy looking at Francesca. She was dressed simply in a stone washed denim dress whose light blue color set off her dark complexion and long luxurious hair that seemed to have captured the light of the sun. It was hard for Austin to reconcile the picture of this cultured and beautiful woman, who was clearly de lighted over the simple pleasure of a civilized meal, with the tale he had heard of her reign as a white goddess among savage Indians. She seemed relaxed and entirely at ease, but even as they laughed over her inept use of chopsticks, Austin couldn’t shake the feeling he experienced when they first met. Despite the civilized veneer, the jungle had seeped into her blood. He saw it in the feline gracefulness of her movement, and the watchfulness in her dark eyes. It was a quality that fascinated and attracted Austin, and he vowed to see more of Francesca when he returned from his mission.

  Which was why it was all the more painful when Austin apologized for calling it an early night. He had much to do be fore leaving for Alaska, he explained. As he dropped her off on the Trouts’ doorstep, he asked if she would like to go out again when he returned.

  “Thank you. I’d like that, very much,” she said. “I plan to be in Washington for some time and hope we can get to know each other better.”

  “Until then,” Austin said. ‘At a time and place to be announced.”

  She smiled and pecked him lightly on the lips. “It’s a date.”

  Chapter 29

  With Sandecker’s backing Austin had no trouble commandeering a NUMA jet. Streaking across the country at five hundred miles per hour, the turquoise Cessna Citation Ultra had refueled at Salt Lake City before pushing on to Anchorage. After the all-night trip they arrived as the morning light cast a rosy glow over the Chugach Mountains on the outskirts of Alaska’s big city, which some of the locals call Los Anchorage. They were airborne within minutes. Dashing on to their destination in Nome.

  Shortly after the NUMA jet took off from Anchorage, Zavala came back from the galley with a couple of steaming mugs of coffee. Austin was studying an old map spread out on the table that folded down between the seats. He was directing his attention to a fist of land whose knuckles jabbed at the former U.S.S.R. a few miles across the Bering Strait.

  Settling into the chair opposite Austin’s, Zavala sipped his coffee and looked out the window at the vast land mass below. Black mountains edged by rivers and heavy forests were visible through a scattering of whiskered cirrus clouds.

  “That’s big country,” Zavala said lazily. “Any idea of our next port of call after Nome?”

  Austin leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared into space. His broad mouth curled in a wry smile. “More or less,” he said.

  Zavala knew his partner wasn’t trying to be mysterious. Austin simply didn’t like surprises. When time allowed he cautiously collected the facts before making a move. Zavala pointed downward. “I’m sure it doesn’t come as any surprise to you that there is more down there than less.”

  “Something like six hundred thousand square miles, last I heard. I have no illusions about the formidable task we’re up against. We could search until we became eligible for NUMA pensions and not find a thing.” Austin’s brow furrowed in thought. “That’s why I decided to work my way backward from what we know, not what we don’t know.”

  Zavala swiftly grasped the premise. “We know what the tar get was in the Soviet Union.” He pointed on the map to the northwest coast of Alaska where blunt fingers of the ragged coastline, all that remained of the old land bridge, reached to ward Asia. “What was the flying wing’s statistical range?”

  “Around three thousand miles cruising at around five hundred miles per hour. I’m assuming that its fue
l storage capacity would have been beefed up to extend the range as much as possible for this mission.”

  “There’s always the possibility of midair refueling,” Zavala said.

  “I’ve taken that into consideration. I’m guessing that they would have kept the operation simple and short to avoid detection.”

  Taking a sharp pencil in hand, Austin drew an arc from Barrow to the Yukon Delta.

  Zavala let out a low whistle. “You’re talking about a trip that could be more than a thousand miles from target. That’s still a lot of territory to cover.”

  “It’s bigger than some states,” Austin acknowledged. “So I made an educated guess. The cloak-and-dagger boys wanted to keep this crazy scheme as hush-hush as possible. Building a new base would be costly and time-consuming, and most important, it might attract unwanted attention.”

  Zavala snapped his fingers. “They would use an existing base.”

  Austin nodded. “During World War II, Alaska bristled with gun emplacements and airfields because of fears Japan would invade. Each red dot on the map denotes an airstrip from World War II.”

  Zavala pondered the problem. “What if the base were secret?”

  “It was secret, at least up to now.” Austin jabbed the map with his pencil at Nome and drew a wide circle around the dot. “We’ll find what we’re looking for here, although I must admit that with all the suppositions I’ve made, it’s still a crap shoot.”

  Zavala studied the map, and his lips twitched up at the corners in his trademark smile. “How can you be certain this is the right area? The plane could have taken off from dozens of places.”

  “I had a little help from a ghost.” Austin reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small spiral-bound notebook. The brown cover was worn, but it was still possible to read the words “U.S. Army Air Force” and the name inked just below. He handed the notebook to Zavala. “This is the diary of Buzz Martin’s father, the pilot who flew the wing on its last mission.”

  Zavala laughed with delight. “You should have been a magician. You couldn’t have done better pulling a rabbit out of a hat.”

  “This rabbit jumped into my lap. After Sandecker met with LeGrand, the CIA poked around and came up with Martin’s personal effects. They must have been in a hurry to get rid of in criminating evidence and didn’t vet the stuff thoroughly. Buzz found the notebook tucked into his father’s uniform. He thought it might contain something of importance and gave it to me just before we left Washington.”

  Zavala thumbed through the curling pages. “I don’t see a de tailed map to follow.”

  “You didn’t think this was going to be easy, did you?” Austin took the book back and opened to a page where he had placed a yellow sticky tab. “Martin was a good soldier. He knew that loose lips sink ships. Most of the diary is devoted to how he missed his wife and kid. But he let a few things sneak in. Here, let me read you the first paragraph:

  “To my dear wife Phyllis and son Buzz. Maybe someday you will read this. I had a lot of time on my hands and started this diary on the way to No-Name. If the brass knew I was taking notes, I’d be in hot water. This thing is even more secret than the Manhattan Project. As the spooks frequently reminded me, I’m just a dumb sky jockey who’s sup posed to follow orders and not ask questions. Sometimes I feel more like a prisoner: I’m kept under close supervision with the rest of the crew. So I guess this journal is a way of saying, hey, I’m a person. They’re feeding us well, Phyllis, I know how you worry about the way I eat. Lots of good fresh meat and fish. The Quonset hut was not made for the frozen north. The snow slides off the roof but metal is a lousy insulator. We keep the wood stove going day and night. We’d be better off in an igloo. The plane gets the first-class accommodations in its hidey-hole. Sorry to complain. I’m lucky to be flying this baby! I can’t believe an aircraft as big as this can maneuver like a fighter plane. It’s definitely the aviation wave of the future. ”

  Austin stopped reading. “He goes on to say how homesick he is and how glad he’ll be to get back.”

  “Too bad Martin didn’t get to enjoy that future. He had no idea he was not only a prisoner but a condemned man as well.”

  “Martin wasn’t the first or last patriot thrown to the dogs in the interests of what the higher-ups said was the greater good. Unfortunately he can’t have the satisfaction of knowing his little diary will show us the way to No-Name.”

  “That’s even more obscure than the dateline they used to use during the war: ‘Somewhere in the Pacific.’ ”

  “I thought so, too, until I remembered a story I heard years ago. Seems a British Navy officer sailing off Alaska in the 1850s saw land that wasn’t on the chart so he wrote in ‘? Name.’ The Admiralty draftsman who recopied the chart thought the question mark was a C and that the a in Name was an o. No name became Cape Nome which became Nome. Here’s something else:

  “Uneventful trip from Seattle. Plane handles like a dream. Touched down thirty minutes past No-Name. ”

  “What was the cruising speed of the wing?” Zavala asked.

  “About four hundred to five hundred miles per hour.”

  “That would put them two hundred to two hundred fifty miles beyond Nome.”

  “My calculations exactly. Here’s where it starts to get interesting:

  “Got my first look at our destination. Told the guys it looks like Doug’s nose from the air. ”

  ‘A dog’s nose?”

  “No, the proper name, Doug,”

  “That narrows it down to a few million guys,” Zavala said wearily.

  “Yeah, I know, I had the same reaction until I read the rest: All it needs is a corn cob pipe to look like old Eagle Beak.”

  “Douglas MacArthur. Who could forget that profile?”

  “Especially someone who had come out of the Big War. In addition, Nome is only one hundred and sixty one miles from Russia. I thought it was worth ordering up some satellite pictures. While you snoozed your way over the continental United States, I was going over the photos with a magnifying glass.”

  He handed the satellite views to Zavala, who examined them for a few minutes and shook his head. “I don’t see anything that resembles an eagle’s beak.”

  “I didn’t find one, either. I told you it wasn’t going to be easy.”

  They were still going over the photos and map when the NUMA pilot announced that the plane was starting its de scent to Nome Airport. They gathered their gear in a couple of bags and were ready when the plane rolled to a stop on the tarmac of the small but modern airport. A taxi took them to town along one of Nome’s three two-lane gravel roads. The bright sun did little to relieve the monotonous terrain of flat, treeless tundra, although the Kigluaik Mountains could be seen in the distance. The cab took them onto Front Street, which bordered the blue-gray waters of the Bering Sea, past the turn-of-the-century city hall, terminus for the Iditarod dogsled race, dropping them off at the barge port and fishing harbor where their leased float plane awaited with a full tank of fuel.

  Zavala was more than pleased with the plane, a single-engine Maule M-7 with short takeoff and landing capability. While Joe checked out the plane Austin picked up some sandwiches and coffee at Fat Freddie’s diner. They were traveling light. They brought clothing mostly, although Austin had packed his trusty Bowen revolver. Zavala had brought along an Ingram machine pistol capable of firing hundreds of rounds a minute. When Austin asked why he needed such lethal firepower in the desolate northland, Zavala had muttered something about grizzly bears.

  With Zavala at the controls the Maule headed northeasterly along the coast. The plane stayed low, cruising at a hundred and seventy-five miles per hour. The day was cloudy but with none of the rain the Nome area is noted for. They quickly settled into a routine. Austin called out a promising-looking piece of real estate, and Zavala circled it a couple of times. Austin pencil-shaded the areas they covered on his map. Their excitement at being on the hunt quickly faded as the plane droned over mile aft
er mile of ragged coastline. The barren land was broken only by lacy rivers and shallow ponds created by melted snow.

  Austin kept them amused by reciting poems of Robert Ser vice which Zavala translated into Spanish. But even “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” didn’t dull the monotony of their quest. Zavala’s usual good humor was beginning to wear. “We’ve seen parrot beaks, pigeon beaks, and even a turtle beak, but no eagle,” he grumbled.

  Austin studied the shaded portions of his map. A substantial amount of coastline had yet to be covered.

  “We’ve still got a lot of territory to check out. I’d like to keep on going. How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine, but the plane is going to need fuel before long.”

  “We passed what looked like a fishing camp a short while back. How about breaking for lunch while we tank up old Betsy here?”

  Zavala responded by putting the plane into a banking circle. Before long they picked up the river they had flown over earlier and followed it for about ten minutes until they sighted a cluster of plywood shacks. Two float planes were tied up in the river. Zavala scoped out a straight stretch of water. He brought the plane down, skimmed the surface in a near perfect landing, and taxied the plane up to a weather-beaten pier. A stocky young man with a face as round as a full moon saw them coming and threw out a mooring line.

  “Welcome to Tinook Village, population one hundred and sixty-seven, most of them related,” he said with a smile as dazzling as sunlight on new snow. “My name is Mike Tinook.”

  Tinook didn’t appear surprised to have a couple of strangers drop out of the sky to visit his remote village. With vast distances to cover Alaskans will fly a hundred miles just to have breakfast. Perhaps it has something to do with the scarcity of human contact outside Anchorage, but most Alaskans spin out their stories about how they came north within five minutes of making an acquaintance. Mike related how he grew up in the village, worked as an airplane mechanic in Anchorage, and came back home to stay.

  Austin explained they were with the National Underwater & Marine Agency.