Raise the Titanic! (4 page)

Sid Koplin was
sure he was dying.

His eyes were closed and the blood from his side was staining the white snow. A burst of light whirled around in Koplin's mind as consciousness gradually returned, and a spasm of nausea rushed over him and he retched uncontrollably. Had he been shot once, or was it twice? He wasn't sure.

He opened his eyes and rolled up onto his hands and knees. His head pounded like a jackhammer. He put his hand to it and touched a congealed gash that split his scalp above the left temple. Except for the headache, there was no exterior sensation; the pain had been dulled by the cold. But there was no dulling of the agonizing burn on his left side, just below his rib cage, where the second bullet had struck, and he could feel the syruplike stickiness of the blood as it trickled under his clothing, over his thighs and down his legs.

A volley of automatic weapons fire echoed down the mountain. Koplin looked around, but all he could see was the swirling white snow that was whipped by the vicious arctic wind. Another burst tore the frigid air. He guessed that it came from only a hundred yards away. A Soviet patrol guard must be firing blindly through the blizzard in the random hope of hitting him again.

All thought of escape had vanished now. It was finished. He knew he could never make it to the cove where he'd moored the sloop. Nor was he in any condition to sail the little twenty-eight-foot craft across fifty miles of open sea to a rendezvous with the waiting American oceanographic vessel.

He sank back in the snow. The bleeding had weakened him beyond further physical effort. The Russians must not find him. That was part of the bargain with Meta Section. If he must die, his body must not be discovered.

Painfully, he began scraping snow over himself. Soon he would be only a small white mound on a desolate slope of Bednaya Mountain, buried forever under the constantly building ice sheet.

He stopped a moment and listened. The only sounds he heard were his own gasps and the wind. He listened harder, cupping his hands to his ears. Just audible through the howling wind he heard a dog bark.

“Oh God,” he cried silently. As long as his body was still warm, the sensitive nostrils of the dog were sure to pick up his scent. He sagged in defeat. There was nothing left for him but to lie back and let his life ooze away.

But a spark deep inside him refused to dim and be extinguished. Merciful God, he thought deliriously, he couldn't just lie there waiting for the Russians to take him. He was only a professor of mineralogy, not a trained secret agent. His mind and forty-year-old body weren't geared to stand up under intensive interrogation. If he lived, they could tear the whole story from him in a matter of hours. He closed his eyes as the sickness of failure overcame all physical agony.

When he opened them again, his field of vision was filled with the head of an immense dog. Koplin recognized him as a komondor, a mighty beast standing thirty inches at the shoulder, covered by a heavy coat of matted white hair. The great dog snarled savagely and would have ripped Koplin's throat open if it hadn't been kept in check by the gloved hand of a Soviet soldier. There was an indifferent look about the man. He stood there and stared down at his helpless quarry, gripping the leash in his left hand while he steadied a machine pistol with his right. He looked fearsome in his huge greatcoat that came down to booted ankles, and the pale, expressionless eyes showed no compassion for Koplin's wounds. The soldier shouldered his weapon and reached down and pulled Koplin to his feet. Then without a word, the Russian began dragging the wounded American toward the island's security post.

Koplin nearly passed out from the pain. He felt as though he'd been dragged through the snow for miles when actually it was only a distance of fifty yards. That was as far as they'd got when a vague figure appeared through the storm. It was blurred by the wall of swirling white. Through the dim haze of near unconsciousness, Koplin felt the soldier stiffen.

A soft “plop” sounded over the wind, and the massive komondor fell noiselessly on its side in the snow. The Russian dropped his hold on Koplin and frantically tried to raise his gun, but the strange sound was repeated and a small hole that gushed red suddenly appeared in the middle of the soldier's forehead. Then the eyes went glassy and he crumpled beside the dog.

Something was terribly wrong; this shouldn't be happening, Koplin told himself, but his exhausted mind was too far gone to draw any valid conclusions. He sank to his knees and could only watch as a tall man in a gray parka materialized from the white mist and gazed down at the dog.

“A damned shame,” he said tersely.

The man presented an imposing appearance. The oak-tanned face looked out of place for the Arctic. And the features were firm, almost cruel. Yet it was the eyes that struck Koplin. He had never seen eyes quite like them. They were a deep sea-green and radiated a penetrating kind of warmth, a marked contrast from the hard lines etched in the face.

The man turned to Koplin and smiled. “Dr. Koplin, I presume?” The tone was soft and effortless.

The stranger pushed a handgun with a silencer into a pocket, knelt down to eye level, and nodded at the blood spreading through the material of Koplin's parka. “I'd better get you to where I can take a look at that.” Then he picked Koplin up as one might a child and began trudging down the mountain toward the sea.

“Who are you?” Koplin muttered.

“My name is Pitt. Dirk Pitt.”

“I don't understand…where did you come from?”

Koplin never heard the answer. At that moment, the black cover of unconsciousness abruptly lifted up, and he fell gratefully under it.

Seagram finished off
a margarita as he waited in a little garden restaurant just off Capitol Street to have lunch with his wife. She was late. Never in the eight years they had been married had he known her to arrive anywhere on time. He caught the waiter's attention and gestured for another drink.

Dana Seagram finally entered and stood in the foyer a moment searching for her husband. She spotted him and began meandering between the tables in his direction. She wore an orange sweater and a brown tweed skirt so youthfully it made her seem like a coed in graduate school. Her hair was blond and tied with a scarf, and her coffee-brown eyes were funny and gay and quick.

“Been waiting long?” she said, smiling.

“Eighteen minutes to be precise,” he said. “About two minutes, ten seconds longer than your usual arrivals.”

“I'm sorry,” she replied. “Admiral Sandecker called a staff meeting, and it dragged on later than I'd figured.”

“What's his latest brainstorm?”

“A new wing for the Maritime Museum. He's got the budget and now he's making plans to obtain the artifacts.”

“Artifacts?” Seagram asked.

“Bits and pieces salvaged from famous ships.” The waiter came with Seagram's drink and Dana ordered a daiquiri. “It's amazing how little is left. A life belt or two from the
Lusitania
, a ventilator from the
Maine
here, an anchor from the
Bounty
there; none of it housed decently under one roof.”

“I should think there are better ways of blowing the taxpayer's money.”

Her face flushed. “What do you mean?”

“Collecting old junk,” he said diffidently, “enshrining rusted and corroded bits of nonidentifiable trash under a glass case to be dusted and gawked at. It's a waste.”

The battle flags were raised.

“The preservation of ships and boats provides an important link with man's historical past.” Dana's brown eyes blazed. “Contributing to knowledge is an endeavor an asshole like you cares nothing about.”

“Spoken like a true marine archaeologist,” he said.

She smiled crookedly. “It still frosts your balls that your wife made something of herself, doesn't it?”

“The only thing that frosts my balls, sweetheart, is your locker-room language. Why is it every liberated female thinks it's chic to cuss?”

“You're hardly one to provide a lesson in savoir-faire,” she said. “Five years in the big city and you still dress like an Omaha anvil salesman. Why can't you style your hair like other men? That Ivy League haircut went out years ago. I'm embarrassed to be seen with you.”

“My position with the administration is such that I can't afford to look like a hippie of the sixties.”

“Lord, lord.” She shook her head wearily. “Why couldn't I have married a plumber or a tree surgeon? Why did I have to fall in love with a physicist from the farm belt?”

“It's comforting to know you loved me once.”

“I still love you, Gene,” she said, her eyes turning soft. “This chasm between us has only opened in the last two years. We can't even have lunch together without trying to hurt each other. Why don't we say to hell with it and spend the rest of the afternoon making love in a motel. I'm in the mood to feel deliciously sexy.”

“Would it make any difference in the long run?”

“It's a start.”

“I can't.”

“Your damned dedication to duty again,” she said, turning away. “Don't you see? Our jobs have torn us apart. We can save ourselves, Gene. We can both resign and go back to teaching. With your Ph.D. in physics and my Ph.D. in archaeology, along with our experience and credentials, we could write our own ticket with any university in the country. We were on the same faculty when we met, remember? Those were our happiest years together.”

“Please, Dana, I can't quit. Not now.”

“Why?”

“I'm on an important project—”

“Every project for the last five years has been important. Please, Gene, I'm begging you to save our marriage. Only you can make the first move. I'll go along with whatever you decide if we can get out of Washington. This town will kill any hope of salvaging our life together if we wait much longer.”

“I need another year.”

“Even another month will be too late.”

“I am committed to a course that makes no conditions for abandonment.”

“When will these ridiculous secret projects ever end? You're nothing but a tool of the White House.”

“I don't need that bleeding-heart, liberal crap from you.”

“Gene, for God's sake, give it up!”

“It's not for God's sake, Dana, it's for my country's sake. I'm sorry if I can't make you understand.”

“Give it up,” she repeated, tears forming in her eyes. “No one is indispensable. Let Mel Donner take your place.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. “I created this project from nothing. My gray matter was its sperm. I must see it through to completion.”

The waiter reappeared and asked if they were ready to order.

Dana shook her head. “I'm not hungry.” She rose from the table and looked down at him. “Will you be home for dinner?”

“I'll be working late at the office.”

There was no stopping her tears now.

“I hope whatever it is you're doing is worth it,” she murmured. “Because it's going to cost you a terrible price.”

Then she turned and hurried away.

Unlike the Russian
intelligence officer so often stereotyped in American motion pictures, Captain André Prevlov had neither bull-shoulders nor shaven head. He was a well-proportioned, handsome man who sported a layered hairstyle and a modishly trimmed mustache. His image, built around an orange Italian sports car and a plushly furnished apartment overlooking the Moscow River, didn't sit too well with his superiors in the Soviet Navy's Department of Foreign Intelligence. Yet, despite Prevlov's irritating leanings, there was little possibility of his being purged from his high position in the department. The reputation he had carefully constructed as the Navy's most brilliant intelligence specialist, and the fact that his father was number twelve man in the Party, combined to make Captain Prevlov untouchable.

With a practiced, casual movement, he lit a Winston and poured himself a shot glass of Bombay gin. Then he sat back and read through the stack of files that his aide, Lieutenant Pavel Marganin, had laid on his desk.

“It's a mystery to me, sir,” Marganin said softly, “how you can take so easily to Western trash.”

Prevlov looked up from a file and gave Marganin a cool, disdainful stare. “Like so many of our comrades, you are ignorant of the world at large. I think like an American, I drink like an Englishman, I drive like an Italian, and I live like a Frenchman. And do you know why, Lieutenant?”

Marganin flushed and mumbled nervously. “No, sir.”

“To know the enemy, Marganin. The key is to know your enemy better than he knows you, better than he knows himself. Then do unto him before he has a chance to do unto you.”

“Is that a quote from Comrade Nerv Tshetsky?”

Prevlov shrugged in despair. “No, you idiot; I'm bastardizing the Christian Bible.” He inhaled and blew a stream of smoke through his nostrils and sipped the gin. “Study the Western ways, my friend. If we do not learn from them, then our cause is lost.” He turned back to the files. “Now then, why are these matters sent to our department?”

“No reason other than that the incident took place on or near a seacoast.”

“What do we know about this one?” Prevlov snapped open the next file.

“Very little. A soldier on guard patrol at the north island of Novaya Zemlya is missing, along with his dog.”

“Hardly grounds for a security panic. Novaya Zemlya is practically barren. An outdated missile station, a guard post, a few fishermen—we have no classified installations within hundreds of miles of it. Damned waste of time to even bother sending a man and a dog out to patrol it.”

“The West would no doubt feel the same way about sending an agent there.”

Prevlov's fingers drummed the table as he squinted at the ceiling.

Finally, he said, “An agent? Nothing there…nothing of military interest…yet—” He broke off and flicked a switch on his intercom. “Bring me the National Underwater and Marine Agency's ship placements of the last two days.”

Marganin's brows lifted. “They wouldn't dare send an oceanographic expedition near Novaya Zemlya. That's deep within Soviet waters.”

“We do not own the Barents Sea,” Prevlov said patiently. “It is international waters.”

An attractive blond secretary, wearing a trim brown suit, came into the room, handed a folder to Prevlov, and then left, closing the door softly behind her.

Prevlov shuffled through the papers in the folder until he found what he was looking for. “Here we are. The NUMA vessel
First Attempt
, last sighted by one of our trawlers three hundred and twenty-five nautical miles southwest of Franz Josef Land.”

“That would put her close to Novaya Zemlya,” Marganin said.

“Odd,” Prevlov muttered. “According to the United States Oceanographic Ship Operating Schedule, the
First Attempt
should have been conducting plankton studies off North Carolina at the time of this sighting.” He downed the remainder of the gin, mashed out the butt of his cigarette, and lit another. “A very interesting concurrence.”

“What does it prove?” Marganin asked.

“It proves nothing, but it suggests that the Novaya Zemlya patrol guard was murdered and the agent responsible escaped, most likely rendezvoused with the
First Attempt
. It suggests that the United States is up to something when a NUMA research ship deviates from her planned schedule without explanation.”

“What could they possibly be after?”

“I haven't the foggiest notion.” Prevlov leaned back in his chair and smoothed his mustache. “Have the satellite photos enlarged of the immediate area at the time of the event in question.”

 

The evening shadows were darkening the streets outside the office windows when Lieutenant Marganin spread the photo blowups on Prevlov's desk and handed him a high-powered magnifying glass.

“Your perceptiveness paid off, sir. We have something interesting here.”

Prevlov intently studied the pictures. “I see nothing unusual about the ship; typical research equipment, no military-detection hardware in evidence.”

Marganin pointed at a wide-angle photo that barely revealed a ship as a small white mark on the emulsion. “Please note the small shape about two thousand meters from the
First Attempt
in the upper-right corner.”

Prevlov peered through the glass for almost a full half-minute. “A helicopter!”

“Yes, sir, that's why I was late with the enlargements. I took the liberty of having the photos analyzed by Section R.”

“One of our Army security patrols, I imagine.”

“No, sir.”

Prevlov's brows raised. “Are you suggesting that it belongs to the American vessel?”

“That's their guess, sir.” Marganin placed two more pictures in front of Prevlov. “They examined earlier photos from another reconnaissance satellite. As you can see by comparing them, the helicopter is flying on a course away from Novaya Zemlya toward the
First Attempt
. They judged its altitude at ten feet and its speed at less than fifteen knots.”

“Obviously avoiding our radar security,” Prevlov said.

“Do we alert our agents in America?” said Marganin.

“No, not yet. I don't want to risk their cover until we are certain what it is the Americans are after.”

He straightened the photographs and slipped them neatly into a folder, then looked at his Omega wristwatch. “I've just time for a light supper before the ballet. Do you have anything else, Lieutenant?”

“Only the file on the Lorelei Current Drift Expedition. The American deep-sea submersible was last reported in fifteen thousand feet of water off the coast of Dakar.”

Prevlov stood up, took the file and shoved it under his arm. “I'll study it when I get a chance. Probably nothing in it that concerns naval security. Still, it should make good reading. Leave it to the Americans to come up with strange and wonderful projects.”