Raise the Titanic! (40 page)

“You'd do that?”

“I would.”

An icy calm seemed to settle over the President. “Before you dash out the door and waste more of the taxpayers' dollars on a congressional hearing over my fiscal maneuverings, I suggest you hear from the horse's own mouth what Meta Section is all about and what they've produced in the defense of the country that keeps us both gainfully employed.”

“I'm listening, Mr. President.”

“Good.”

One hour later, a thoroughly subdued Senator John Burdick sat in his office and carefully dropped his secret file on Meta Section into a shredding machine.

It was a
staggering sight to see the
Titanic
propped high and dry in the huge canyon of a dry dock.

Already the noise had started. Welders were attacking the clogged passageways. Riveters were hammering against the scarred hull, beefing up the temporary repairs made at sea to the jagged wounds below the waterline. Overhead, two sky-reaching cranes dipped their jaws down into the darkened cargo holds only to have them reappear minutes later with mangled bits and pieces of debris clutched in their iron teeth.

Pitt took what he knew would be his last look about the gymnasium and Upper Deck. Like bidding a New Year's Eve good-by to a passing piece of his life, he stood there and soaked up the memories. The sweat of the salvage, the blood and sacrifice of his crew, the fragility of their hope that had in the end carried them through. It would all be left behind. Finally, he cast aside his reverie and walked down the main staircase and eventually found his way to the forward cargo hold on G Deck.

They were all present and accounted for and looking strangely unfamiliar under the silver hard hats. Gene Seagram, gaunt and trembling, paced back and forth. Mel Donner, wiping trickles of sweat from his neck and chin, and nervously keeping a concerned eye on Seagram. Herb Lusky, a Meta Section mineralogist, standing by with his analysis equipment. Admirals Sandecker and Kemper, huddled in one corner of the darkened hold and conversing in low tones.

Pitt carefully stepped around the twisted bulkhead supports and over the rippled deck of warped steel until he was standing behind a shipyard worker who was intently aiming his cutting torch at a massive hinge on the vault door. The vault, Pitt thought darkly; it was only a matter of minutes now before the secret hidden inside its gut was laid bare. Suddenly, he became aware of an icy chill, everything around him seemed to turn cold, and he began to dread the opening of the vault.

As if sharing his uneasiness, the other men in the dank hold became quiet and gathered beside Pitt in restless apprehension.

At last, the worker turned off the fiery blue jet of his torch and raised his face shield.

“How's it look?” Pitt asked.

“They sure built them good in the old days,” the worker replied. “I've torched out the lock mechanism and knocked off the hinges, but she's still frozen solid.”

“What now?”

“We run a cable from the Doppleman crane above, attach it to the vault door, and hope for the best.”

It took the better part of an hour for a crew of men to wrestle a two-inch-thick cable into the hold and fasten it on to the vault. Then, when all was ready, a signal was relayed to the crane operator via a portable radio transmitter, and the cable began slowly to straighten out its curves and tighten. No one had to be told to move back out of the way. They all knew that if the wire took it in its head to snap, it would whiplash through the hold with more than enough force to split a man in two.

In the distance they could hear the engine of the crane straining. For long seconds nothing happened; the cable stretched and quivered, its strands groaning under the tremendous load. Pitt threw caution aside and edged closer. Still nothing happened. The vault's stubborn resolve seemed as firm as the steel of its walls.

The cable slackened as the crane operator eased off the strain to work up his engine's rpm's. Then he revved up and engaged the clutch once more, and the cable suddenly went taut with an audible twang. To the silent men who looked anxiously on, it seemed inconceivable that the old rusted vault could stand up to such a powerful assault, and yet the inconceivable was apparently happening. But then a tiny hairline crack made its appearance along the upper edge of the vault door. It was followed by two vertical cracks along the sides and, finally, a fourth, running across the bottom. Abruptly, with an agonizing screech of protest, the door reluctantly relinquished its grip and tore off the great steel cube.

No water came out of the yawning blackness. The vault had remained airtight during its long sojourn in the deep abyss.

Nobody made a move. They stood rooted, frozen, mesmerized by that uninviting black square hole. A musty stench rolled out from within.

Lusky was the first to find his voice. “My God, what is it? What in hell is that smell?”

“Get me a light,” Pitt ordered one of the workmen.

Someone produced a flourescent hand light. Pitt switched it on and danced its bluish-white beam on the interior of the vault.

They could see ten wooden boxes, tightly secured by stout leather straps. They could also see something else, something that turned every face ghostly pale. It was the mummified remains of a man.

He was lying
in one corner of the vault, eyes closed and sunken in, skin as blackened as old tar paper on a warehouse roof. The muscle tissue was shrunken over the bony skeleton and a bacterial growth covered him from head to toe. He looked like a moldy piece of bread. Only the white hair of his head and beard were perfectly preserved. A pool of viscous fluid extended around the remains and moistened the atmosphere, as if a bucket of water had been thrown on the walls of the vault.

“Whoever it is is still wet,” Kemper murmured, his face a mask of horror. “How can that be after so long?”

“Water accounts for over half the weight of the body,” Pitt answered quietly. “There simply wasn't enough air trapped inside the vault to evaporate all of the fluids.”

Donner turned away, repulsed by the macabre scene. “Who was he?” he managed, fighting the urge to vomit.

Pitt looked at the mummy impassively. “I think we will find that his name was Joshua Hays Brewster.”

“Brewster?” Seagram whispered, his frightened eyes wild with fear.

“Why not?” Pitt said. “Who else knew the contents of the vault?”

Admiral Kemper shook his head in stunned wonderment. “Can you imagine,” he said reverently, “what it must have been like dying in that black hole while the ship was sinking into the depths of the sea?”

“I don't care to dwell on it,” Donner said. “I'll probably have nightmares every night for the next month as it is.”

“It's positively ghastly,” Sandecker said with difficulty. He studied the saddened, knowing expression on Pitt's face. “You knew about this?”

Pitt nodded. “I was forewarned by Commodore Bigalow.”

Sandecker fixed him with a speculative look, but he let it drop at that and turned to one of the shipyard workers. “Call the coroner's office and tell them to come and get that thing out of there. Then clear the area and keep it cleared until I give you an order to the contrary.”

The shipyard people needed no further urging. They disappeared from the cargo hold as if by magic.

Seagram grabbed Lusky's arm with an intensity that made the mineralogist start. “Okay, Herb, it's your show now.”

Hesitantly, Lusky entered the cavity, stepped over the mummy, and pried open one of the ore boxes. Then he set up his equipment and began analyzing the contents. After what seemed forever to the men pacing the deck outside the vault, he looked up, his eyes reflecting a dazed disbelief.

“This stuff is worthless.”

Seagram moved in closer. “Say again.”

“It's worthless. There isn't even a minute trace of byzanium.”

“Try another box,” Seagram gasped feverishly.

Lusky nodded and went to work. But it was the same story on the next ore box, and the next, until the contents of all ten were strewn everywhere.

Lusky looked as though he was suffering a seizure. “Junk…pure junk…” he stammered. “Nothing but common gravel, the kind you'd find under any roadbed.”

The hushed note of bewilderment in Lusky's voice faded away and the quiet in the
Titanic
's cargo hold became heavy and deep. Pitt stared downward, stared dumbly. Every eye was held by the rubble and the broken boxes while numbed minds fought to grasp the appalling reality, the horrible, undeniable truth that
everything
—the salvage, the exhausting labor, the astronomical drain of money, the deaths of Munk and Woodson—had all been for nothing. The byzanium was not on the
Titanic
, nor had it ever been. They were the victims of a monstrously cruel joke that had been played out seventy-six years before.

It was Seagram who finally broke the silence. In the final ignition of madness, he grinned to himself in the gray light, the grin mushrooming into a bansheelike laughter that echoed in the steel hold. He thrust himself through the door of the vault, snatched up a rock, and struck Lusky on the side of the head, sending a spray of red over the yellow wood ore boxes.

He was still laughing, locked in the throes of black hysteria, when he fell upon the putrescent remains of Joshua Hays Brewster and began bashing the mummified head against the vault wall until it loosened from the neck and came off in his hands.

As he held the ugly, abhorrent thing before him, Seagram's conflicted mind suddenly saw the blackened, parchmentlike lips spread into a hideous grin. His breakdown was complete. The parallel depression of Joshua Hays Brewster had reached out through the mists of time and bequeathed Seagram a ghostly inheritance that hurled the physicist into the yawning jaws of a madness from which he was never to escape.

Six days later,
Donner entered the hotel dining room where Admiral Sandecker was eating breakfast and eased into a vacant chair across the table. “Have you heard the latest?”

Sandecker paused between bites of his omelet. “If it's more bad news, I'd just as soon you keep it to yourself.”

“They nailed me coming out of my apartment this morning.” He threw a folded paper on the table in front of him. “A subpoena to appear in front of a congressional investigating committee.”

Sandecker forked another slice of the omelet without looking at the paper. “Congratulations.”

“Same goes for you, Admiral. Dollars to doughnuts a federal marshal is lurking in your office anteroom this very minute, waiting to slap one on you.”

“Who's behind it?”

“Some punk-assed freshman senator from Wyoming who's trying to make a name for himself before he's forty.” Donner dabbed a crumpled handkerchief on his damp forehead. “The stupid ass even insists on having Gene testify.”

“That I'd have to see.” Sandecker pushed the plate away and leaned back in his chair. “How is Seagram getting along?”

“Manic-depressive psychosis is the fancy term for it.”

“How about Lusky?”

“Twenty stitches and a nasty concussion. He should be out of the hospital in another week.”

Sandecker shook his head. “I hope I never have to live through anything like that ever again.” He took a swallow of coffee. “How do we play it?”

“The President called me personally from the White House last night. He said to play it straight. The last thing he wants is to become entangled in a snarl of conflicting lies.”

“What about the Sicilian Project?”

“It died a quick death when we opened the
Titanic
's vault,” Donner said. “We have no alternative but to spill the entire can of worms from the beginning to the sorry end.”

“Why does the dirty laundry have to be washed in the open? What good will it do?”

“The woes of a democracy,” Donner said resignedly. “Everything has to be open and above board, even if it means giving away secrets to an unfriendly foreign government.”

Sandecker placed his hands on his face and sighed. “Well, I guess I'll be looking for a new job.”

“Not necessarily. The President has promised to issue a statement to the effect that the whole failure of the project was his responsibility and his alone.”

Sandecker shook his head. “No good. I have several enemies in Congress. They're just drooling in anticipation of turning the screws on my resignation from NUMA.”

“It may not come to that.”

“For the past fifteen years, ever since I attained the rank of admiral, I've had to double-deal with politicians. Take my word for it, it's a dirty business. Before this thing is over with, everyone remotely connected with the Sicilian Project and the raising of the
Titanic
will be lucky if they can find a job cleaning stables.”

“I'm truly sorry it had to end like this, Admiral.”

“Believe me, so am I.” Sandecker finished off his coffee and patted a napkin against his mouth. “Tell me, Donner, what's the batting order? Who has the illustrious senator from Wyoming named as the leadoff witness?”

“My understanding is that he intends taking the
Titanic
's salvage operation first, and then working backward to involve Meta Section and finally the President.” Donner picked up the subpoena and shoved it back in his coat pocket. “The first witness they're most likely to call is Dirk Pitt.”

Sandecker looked at him. “Pitt, did you say?”

“That's right.”

“Interesting,” Sandecker said softly. “Most interesting.”

“You've lost me somewhere.”

Sandecker neatly folded the napkin and laid it on the table. “What you don't know, Donner, what you couldn't know, is that immediately after the men in the little white coats carried Seagram off the
Titanic
, Pitt vanished into thin air.”

Donner's eyes narrowed. “Surely you know where he is. His friends? Giordino?”

“Don't you think we all tried to find him?” Sandecker snarled. “He's gone. Disappeared. It's as though the earth swallowed him up.”

“But he must have left some clue.”

“He did say something, but it didn't make any sense.”

“What was that?”

“He said he was going to look for Southby.”

“Who in hell is Southby?”

“Damned if I know,” Sandecker said. “Damned if I know.”