"What piece of the statue did he remove?" Jessie asked.
"According to Hilda, he pried out the ruby heart. Then, after he smuggled it home, he discreetly had it cut, faceted, and sold through brokers. Now he had enough leverage to reach the pinnacle of high finance with Hilda at his side. Raymond LeBaron had arrived in fat city."
For a long moment they were quiet, each with his own thoughts, envisioning a desperate LeBaron throwing the golden woman over the side of his boat thirty years ago.
"The La Dorada," said Sandecker, breaking the silence. "Her weight would have pushed her deep beneath the soft silt of the harbor bottom."
"The admiral has a point," said Giordino. "LeBaron failed to consider that finding her again would be a major operation."
"I admit that bothered me too," said Pitt. "He must have known that after the Army Corps of Engineers stripped and removed the main hull section of the Maine hundreds of tons of wreckage were left embedded in the mud, making her almost impossible to find. The most sophisticated metal detector that money can buy won't pick out one particular object in a junkyard."
"So the statue will lie down there forever," said Sandecker. "Unless someday, someone comes along and dredges up half the harbor until he strikes it."
"Maybe not," Pitt said thoughtfully, his mind seeing something only he could see. "Raymond LeBaron was a canny character. He was also a professional salvage man. I believe he knew exactly what he was doing."
"What are you aiming at?" asked Sandecker.
"He put the statue over the side, all right. But I'm betting he very slowly lowered her feet first so she came down on the bottom standing up."
Giordino stared down at the deck. "Might be," he said slowly. "Might be. How tall is she?"
"About eight feet, including the base."
"Thirty years for three tons to settle in the mud. . ." mused Sandecker. "It's possible a couple of feet of her may still be protruding from the harbor floor."
Pitt smiled distantly. "We'll know as soon as Al and I dive down and run a search pattern."
As if on cue they all became quiet and gazed over the side into the water, oil-slicked and ash-coated, dark and secretive. Somewhere in the sinister green depths La Dorada beckoned.
<<80>>
Pitt stood in full dive gear and watched the bubbles rising from the deep and bursting on the surface. He glanced at his watch, marking the time. Giordino had been down nearly fifty minutes at a depth of forty feet. He went on watching the bubbles and saw them gradually travel in a circle. He knew that Giordino had enough air left for one more 360-degree sweep around the descent line tied to a buoy about thirty yards from the boat.
The small crew of Cubans Sandecker had recruited were very quiet. Pitt looked along the deck and saw them lined up at the rail beside the admiral, staring as though hypnotized at the glitter from the bubbles.
Pitt turned to Jessie, who was standing beside him. She hadn't said a word or moved in the last five minutes, her face tense with deep concentration, her eyes shining with excitement. She was swept up in the anticipation of seeing a legend. Then suddenly she called out. "Look!
A dark form rose from the depths amid a cloud of bubbles, and Giordino's head broke the water near the buoy. He rolled over on his back and paddled easily with his fins until he reached the ladder. He handed up his weight belt and twin air cylinder before climbing to the deck. He pulled off his face mask and spit over the side.
"How did it go?" asked Pitt.
"Okay," Giordino answered. "Here's the situation. I made eight sweeps around the base point where the buoy's descent line is anchored. Visibility is less than three feet. We may have a little luck. The bottom is a mixture of sand and mud, so it's not real soft. The statue may not have sunk over her head."
"Current?"
"About a knot. You can live with it."
"Any obstructions?"
"A few bits and pieces of rusted wreckage protrude from the bottom, so be careful not to snag your distance line."
Sandecker came up behind Pitt and made a final check of his gear. Pitt stepped through an opening in the rail and set the air regulator's mouthpiece between his teeth.
Jessie gave his arm a gentle squeeze through the protective dry suit. "Luck," she said.
He winked at her through the face mask and then took a long step forward. The bright sunlight was diffused by a sudden burst of bubbles as he was engulfed by the green void. He swam out to the buoy and started down the descent line. The yellow nylon braid faded and vanished a few feet below in the opaque murk.
Pitt followed the line cautiously, taking his time. He paused once to clear his ears. Less than a minute later the bottom abruptly seemed to lift up toward him and meet his outstretched hand. He again paused to adjust his buoyancy compensator vest and check his watch for the time, compass for direction, and air pressure gauge. Then he took the distance line Giordino had attached to the descent line by a clip and moved out along the radius.
After swimming about twenty-four feet his hand came in contact with a knot in the line Giordino had tied to measure the outer perimeter of his last sweep. After a short distance, Pitt spied an orange stake standing in the muck that marked the starting point for his circular search pattern. Then he moved out another six-foot increment, held the line taut, and began his sweep, his eyes taking in the three-foot visibility on both sides.
The water was desolate and lifeless and smelled of chemicals. He passed over colonies of dead sea life, crushed by the concussion from the bursting oil tanker, their bodies rolling across the bottom with the tide like leaves under a gentle breeze. He had sweated inside his dry suit under the sun on the boat, and he was sweating inside it now forty feet below the surface. He could hear the sounds of the rescue boats racing back and forth across the harbor, the roar of their exhaust and cavitation of their propellers magnified by the density of the water.
Yard by yard he scanned the barren harbor until he completed a full circle. He moved the marker out and started another sweep in the opposite direction.
Divers often experience great loneliness when swimming over an underwater desert with nothing to see beyond a hand's reach. The real world with people, less than fifty feet away on the surface, ceases to exist. They experience a careless abandon and an indifference toward the unknown. Their perception becomes distorted and they began to fantasize.
Pitt felt none of those things, except maybe a touch of a fantasy. He was drunk with the hunt and so absorbed in seeing the treasured statue in his mind, gleaming gold and brilliant green, that he almost missed a vague form looming up through the mist on his right.
Rapidly kicking his fins, he swam toward it. The object was round and indistinct and partly buried. The two feet that protruded from the silt were coated with slime and strands of sea growth that waved with the current.
A hundred times Pitt had wondered how he'd feel, how he would react when he confronted the golden woman. What he really felt was fear, fear that it was only a false alarm and the search might never end.
Slowly, apprehensively, he wiped away the slimy growth with his gloved hands. Tiny particles of vegetation and silt billowed in a brown swirl, obscuring the thing. He waited under an eerie silence until the cloud melted into the watery gloom.
He moved closer, floating just above the bottom, until his face was only a few inches away from the mysterious object. He stared through his face mask, his mouth suddenly going dry, his heart pounding like a calypso drum.
With a look of timeless melancholy, a pair of emerald-green eyes stared back at him.
Pitt had found La Dorada.
January 4, 1990
Washington, D.C.
<<81>>
The President's announcement of the Jersey Colony and the exploits of Eli Steinmetz and his moon team electrified the nation and caused a worldwide sensation.
Every evening for a week television viewers were treated to spectacular scenes of the lunar landscape never viewed during the brief Ap
ollo landings. The struggle of the men to survive while constructing a livable habitat was also shown in dramatic detail.
Steinmetz and the others became the heroes of the hour. They were feted across the country, interviewed on countless television talk shows, and given the traditional ticker tape parade in New York.
The cheers for the moon colonists' triumph had the ring of old-fashioned patriotism, but the impact went deeper, broader. Now there was something tangible beyond the short, showy flights above the earth's atmosphere, a permanence in space, solid proof that man could live a life far from his home planet.
The President looked buoyant at a private dinner party he hosted in honor of the "inner core" and the colonists. His mood was far different from the first time he had confronted the men who conceived and launched the moon base. He held out a glass of champagne to Hudson, who was staring absently through the roomful of people as though it were silent and empty.
"Your mind lost in space, Leo?"
Hudson's eyes fixed on the President for a moment, and then he nodded. "My apologies. A nasty habit of mine, tuning out at parties."
"I'll bet you're hatching plans for a new settlement on the moon."
Hudson smiled wryly. "Actually, I was thinking of Mars."
"So the Jersey Colony is not the end."
"There will never be an end, only the beginning of another beginning."
"Congress will ride with the mood of the country and vote funding to expand the colony. But an outpost on Mars-- you're talking heavy money."
"If we don't do it now, the next generation will."
"Got a name for the project?"
Hudson shook his head. "Haven't given it much thought."
"I've often wondered," the President said, "where you came up with `Jersey Colony.' "
"You didn't guess?"
"There's the state of New Jersey, the isle of Jersey off the French coast, Jersey sweaters. . ."
"It's also a breed of cow."
"A what?"
"The nursery rhyme, `Hey diddle diddle,/The cat and the fiddle,/ The cow jumped over the moon.
The President looked blank for a moment, and then he broke out laughing. When he recovered he said, "My God, there's irony for you. Man's greatest achievement was named after a Mother Goose cow."
"She's truly exquisite," said Jessie.
"Yes, gorgeous," agreed Pitt. "You never tire of looking at her."
They gazed in rapt fascination at the La Dorada, which now stood in the East Building central court of Washington's National Gallery. The burnished golden body and the polished emerald head gleamed under the sun's rays that shone through the great skylight. The dramatic effect was awesome. Her unknown Indian sculptor had portrayed her with compelling beauty and grace. She stood in a relaxed posture, one leg in front of the other, arms slightly bent at the elbows with hands extended outward from the sides.
Her rose quartz pedestal sat atop a five-foot-high solid block of Brazilian rosewood. The missing heart had been replaced by one crafted out of crimson glass that almost matched the splendor of the original ruby.
Throngs of people stared in wonder at the dazzling sight. A line stretched outside the gallery by the mall for nearly a quarter of a mile. La Dorada even surpassed the attendance record for the King Tut artifacts.
Every dignitary in the capital appeared to pay homage. The President and his wife escorted Hilda Kronberg-LeBaron to the preopening viewing. She sat in her wheelchair, a content old lady with sparkling eyes who smiled and smiled as the President honored the two men in her past with a short dedication speech. When he lifted her out of her chair so she could touch the statue, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
"Strange," Jessie murmured, "when you think about how it all began with the shipwreck of the Cyclops and ended on the shipwreck of the Maine."
"Only for us," Pitt said distantly. "For her it began four hundred years ago in a Brazilian jungle."
"Hard to imagine such a thing of beauty has caused so many deaths."
He wasn't listening and didn't reply.
She flashed a curious look at him. He was staring intently at the statue, his mind lost in another time, another place.
"Rich the treasure, sweet the pleasure," she quoted.
He slowly turned and looked at her, his eyes refocusing on the present. The spell was broken. "I'm sorry," he said.
Jessie couldn't help smiling. "When are you going to give it a try?"
"Try?"
"Rush off to search for La Dorada's lost city?"
"No need to rush," Pitt replied, suddenly laughing. "It's not going anywhere."
FB2 document info
Document ID: 4bb41150-0ea7-49c6-9ae1-bb4cc1c14bdb
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 3.6.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.53, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Clive Cussler
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
Cyclops dp-8 Page 48