Raise the Titanic! (41 page)

Pitt steered the
rented Rover sedan cautiously down the narrow, rain-slickened country road. The tall beech trees lining the shoulders seemed to close in and attack the moving car as they pelted its steel roof with the heavy runoff from their leaves.

Pitt was tired, dead tired. He had set out on his odyssey not sure of what it was he might find, if anything. He'd begun as Joshua Hays Brewster and his crew of miners had begun, on the docks of Aberdeen, Scotland, and then he'd followed their death-strewn path across Britain almost to the old Ocean Dock at Southampton from which the
Titanic
had set out on her maiden voyage.

He turned his gaze from the pounding wipers on the windshield and glanced down at the blue notebook lying on the passenger seat. It was filled with dates, places, miscellaneous jottings, and torn newspaper articles he had accumulated along the way. The musty files of the past had told him little.

the April 7, 1912, editions of the Glasgow papers noted fifteen pages back from the headline. The detail-barren stories were as deeply buried as the bodies of Coloradans John Caldwell and Thomas Price were in a local cemetery.

Their tombstones, discovered by Pitt in a small churchyard, offered virtually nothing other than their names and dates of death. It was the same story with Charles Widney, Walter Schmidt, and Warner O'Deming. Of Alvin Coulter he could find no trace.

And finally there was Vernon Hall. Pitt hadn't found his resting place either. Where had he fallen? Had his blood been spilled amid the neat and orderly landscape of the Hampshire Downs or perhaps somewhere on the back streets of Southampton itself?

Out of the corner of one eye he caught a marker that gave the distance to the great harbor port as twenty kilometers.

Pitt drove on mechanically. The road curved and then paralleled the lovely, rippling Itchen stream, famous throughout southern England for its fighting trout, but he didn't notice it. Up ahead, across the emerald-green farmlands of the coastal plain, a small town came into view, and he decided he would stop there for breakfast.

An alarm went off in the back of Pitt's mind. He jammed on the brakes, but much too hard—the rear wheels broke loose and the Rover skidded around in a perfect three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle, coming to rest still aimed southward but sunk to the hubcaps in the yielding muck of a roadside ditch.

Almost before the car had fully stopped, Pitt threw open the door and leaped out. His shoes sank out of sight and became stuck, but he pulled free of them and ran back down the road in his stocking feet.

He halted at a small sign beside the road. Part of the lettering was obscured by a small tree that had grown up around it. Slowly, as if he were afraid his hopes would be shattered by yet another disappointment, he pushed aside the branches and suddenly it all became quite clear. The key to the riddle of Joshua Hays Brewster and the byzanium was there in front of him. He stood there soaking up the falling rain and in that instant he knew that everything had been worthwhile.

Marganin sat on
a bench by the fountain in Sverdlov Square across from the Bolshoi Theater and read a newspaper. He felt a slight quiver and knew without looking that someone had taken the vacant place beside him.

The fat man in the rumpled suit leaned against the backrest and casually gnawed on an apple. “Congratulations on your promotion, Commander,” he mumbled between bites.

“Considering how events turned out,” Marganin said without lowering the paper, “it was the least Admiral Sloyuk could do.”

“And your situation now…with Prevlov out of the way?”

“With the good Captain's defection, I was the logical choice to replace him as Chief of the Foreign Intelligence Analysis Division. It was an obvious conclusion.”

“It is good that our years of labor have paid such handsome dividends.”

Marganin turned a page. “We have only opened the door. The dividends are yet to come.”

“You must be more careful of your actions now than ever before.”

“I intend to,” Marganin said. “This Prevlov business badly burned the Soviet Navy's credibility with the Kremlin. Everyone in the Naval Intelligence Department is having their security clearances rechecked under tight scrutiny. It will be a long time before I am trusted as fully as Captain Prevlov was.”

“We will see to it that things are speeded up a bit.” The fat man pretended to swallow a large bite from the apple. “When you leave here, mingle with the crowd at the entrance to the subway across the street. One of our people who is adroit at lifting wallets from the unsuspecting will do a reverse routine and discreetly insert an envelope into your inside breast pocket. The envelope contains the minutes from the last meeting of the United States Navy Chief of Staff with his fleet commanders.”

“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.

“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 as 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 on 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-masted 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 turned 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' backs.”

“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
if's
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.