The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (35 page)

“You may want to speak with our Mr. Cromwell, Colonel. He wasn’t present at our meeting and could have seen something when he left. The time he left the cabin and the time these men died cannot be ignored,” Claire said, not really knowing why. She despised the Frenchman so much for the callous way he did his job that she could not let him get away with this if he was responsible.

“Then we’ll just have to have a little talk with Mr. Cromwell.”

“You can talk now, gentlemen,” said a voice from the stairs above. “As you can see, my clothing is rather pristine, with the exception of sweat, but I’m sure I can be forgiven for that. On the other hand”—he stepped aside as Sergeant Major Dugan led Gray Dog through the opening—“this man seems to be covered in what would be known as evidence.”

Thomas eyed the man calling himself Cromwell and took his points to heart. “Thank you. We’ll talk later.” He turned to Gray Dog and Dugan. The Comanche was splattered with the blood of the murdered men.

“What happened?” John Henry asked as Gray Dog’s eyes were on the three bodies illuminated in several oil lamps. They didn’t waver even when John Henry stepped into his line of vision. “Gray Dog, report!”

The tone brought the eyes of the Comanche up. Thomas could see that the boy’s facial features were nearly void of blood splatter. This meant that the Indian had not been the killer. John Henry could plainly see that Gray Dog had been hit by flying blood and not a soaking that would have occured if he had been inside the brig. Taylor was examining the boy as well as Thomas and was fast coming to the same conclusion. John Henry took Gray Dog’s hands and looked them over. Other than calluses and dirt, they were clean.

Gray Dog finally moved his eyes to those of Thomas.

“Did you see who did this?” John Henry asked as Dugan placed the pistol back in its holster.

Gray Dog didn’t answer, his eyes glancing from the colonel’s to the staring faces of Claire and Ollafson. They both became uneasy when his dark eyes fell on them.

“They know,” Gray Dog said as he shook off the hand of Dugan and then, with a look at Taylor and Thomas, Gray Dog moved away and into the shadows of the ship.

“What in the hell does that mean?” Taylor asked but not before the Indian had vanished. “Is that it? That is all the questioning you’re going to do?” Taylor was so angry his eyes were wide and his face red.

“As I said, Gray Dog didn’t do this,” Thomas said as he turned to face Ollafson. “Now, what do you suppose he meant by that?”

“I have no idea, Colonel. We did nothing but discuss our route to the mountain. That is all, I swear,” Claire said.

“We examined the artifacts, I’m afraid.” Ollafson was staring at the hull and his eyes didn’t move. Claire got a cold chill when she realized Ollafson was right, they had been examining the Angelic Script on the petrified wood.

“Not the curse again?” Thomas said, getting angry that these people could still advance outlandish speculation about what they were facing. In John Henry’s experience they didn’t need a curse to help with killing their fellow man; they could handle that aspect rather well. No, they didn’t have a curse on their hands, but they did have someone who was pretty well motivated to throw a crimp in their mission plans.

Before Ollafson could once more try to defend his position, a signalman walked in and handed Jackson a message. “Gentlemen,” he turned to face Claire, “and lady, we’ll have to postpone this debate about murder and curses. I’m afraid our rendezvous point is upon us. The
Carpenter
, the
Chesapeake
, and the
Argo
are here.”

“Does that mean—” Ollafson started to ask excitedly.

“Yes, Professor, we are five miles off Gibraltar. When the U.S. Navy says it will get you there, we get you there.” Jackson turned to face Thomas. “Captain Abernathy has signaled that they have had quite a time keeping
Argo
afloat,” he said in a low tone as the others made their way out of the blood-splattered brig area. “The crewmen have been working every hour to keep the damn thing from foundering. What we have hidden inside that barge is just too damn heavy.”

“We may have to make other plans if
Argo
sinks before we need her,” Thomas said worriedly.

“The plan is, we don’t have a chance of escaping the European powers if they wanted to stop us, and they will when they find out why we are really here. Without the
Argo
we’ll be blown clear out of the water, and not one witness will be alive to say what happened. We are far from home waters, Colonel.”

“Where did all of that United States Navy bravado vanish to?” Taylor asked, breaking into the conversation.

“The confidence I have shown thus far only stems from my meticulous planning. If
Argo
is lost I am realist enough to know we don’t stand a chance of getting out of these waters, much less a confined area like the Aegean or the Bosphorus Strait. I know my business, sir, and we need
Argo
.”

“How is the crew of the
Chesapeake
taking the workload?”

“Well, I suspect that Captain Abernathy will request more men. He says the band is near exhaustion. It seems the boys with the drums and trumpets aren’t used to physical labor all that much.” Thomas saw Jackson smile for the first time since he had met the arrogant naval officer. “I will accede to his wishes when we meet in an hour. After all, now may be a good time to start separating the prisoners and dispersing them to the other ships.”

“No. Transfer marine or naval personnel, but I want the prisoners kept together for the time being.”

“All the rotten eggs in one basket?” Taylor asked without the wry smile this time.

John Henry paused as he reached the steps.

“Something like that. And keep this in mind—from this moment forward and until this mission is either complete or we are stopped, the captain here has orders to scuttle this ship with everyone on it if you don’t keep your word.”

Taylor watched the room empty and then he turned to the dead men inside the brig. His eyes wandered to the deck and then the lock on the door of the cell. It was still secured.

“Maybe it would be a good idea to sink this death ship right now.”

Jessy Taylor looked one last time at his butchered men and in his mind he kept hearing the words of Ollafson about what had killed his friends. He wondered if John Henry Thomas knew exactly what they were in for.

Above decks and in the clear afternoon air, the three American warships and one tow barge were meeting for the last time on the high seas before entering the Mediterranean.

*   *   *

It took three hours for Captain Abernathy and the
Chesapeake
’s Captain Mize to be transferred over to the
Yorktown
. The commander of the
Argo
had begged off the meeting because they were still bailing water from the bilges of the supply barge. Any instruction from John Henry would be passed on to Captain Faraday, the commander of
Argo,
by the
Chesapeake
’s crew.

The captain’s quarters filled to capacity as the team sat down for their first face-to-face meeting with all parties involved. Colonel Thomas was about to unveil his plans, with the exception of the exact role to played out by the
Argo
, the details of which would remain with Thomas and Captain Jackson.

The late lunch provided by the mess crew had been an exceptional meal. Captains Abernathy and Faraday had eaten with abandon as the cooks onboard their ships were nowhere near as good as the mess crew on the
Yorktown
. The large steward Grandee was complimented no less than four times by the visiting captains during the meal, with a wary eye toward the swelling on the large man’s features. No questions were asked and no explanations were offered. The two captains had noticed that no one, with the exception of the army sergeant major, touched their food. As a matter of fact, most looked like they had just come off a bad bout of seasickness before the lunch had commenced. They also noticed the strange sight of the Indian as he sat in the far corner. Gray Dog had been cleaned up, and John Henry wanted to keep him close to either himself or Dugan for the duration of the voyage.

The plates were cleared and then John Henry nodded in the direction of Professor Ollafson. He rose and brought up his satchel and instead of bringing out the petrified artifacts, he removed three large drawings. He looked up at Commander Jackson.

“I had the engineering department at Harvard Yard make these up. They are drawn from memory, so please forgive any shortcomings.” He spread the three large diagrams on the table as John Henry leaned over and used the candle on the table to light a cigar. His eyes met those of Claire Richelieu as she listened to Ollafson. For some reason the look from the ancient-languages woman made Thomas feel uncomfortable.

“Gentlemen, I give you the Ark.”

Everyone at the table with the exception of Colonel Taylor leaned forward to see the drawing. Taylor, on the other hand, rose and moved to the credenza, removed a cigar from the humidor, struck a match, and puffed the cigar to life. He looked at the glowing end momentarily and then walked to the large windows at the stern and looked out upon the sea.

John Henry watched Taylor and then his eyes returned to the table. The drawing depicted what looked like the bow of a ship protruding from ice. From what he could see, the Ark had just about fifty or sixty feet of exposed timbers showing as the great vessel angled sharply from the frozen glazier it had rested in for what the Bible said was at least five thousand years. Ollafson claimed the ship to be very much older than even the Bible’s estimate.

“The problem, as I see it—not that just climbing to the summit will be an easy feat—is freeing the Ark from the ice without destroying it.” Ollafson looked up at Jackson. “I gave the captain estimates of size and weight before we left Baltimore. Captain?”

Jackson cleared his throat and then stood. He pointed to the glacier in which the Ark was buried. “If these are the correct dimensions of the … the … ship”—he looked embarrassed to call the object what Ollafson had—“the danger will be in placing the explosives in the right position to free the … boat without breaking its back. The forces involved have never been tested in freeing petrified wood. In this case we’ll just call it stone, because stone, of course, is very fragile when subjected to explosives.”

“Can you free it?” Thomas asked as he leaned forward and jabbed at the diagram.

“My naval engineer says yes, but he cannot guarantee that a salvage operation will be one hundred percent viable.”

“Which means he believes the Ark will break if moved at all.”

The young Jackson looked up at Thomas, who had already leaned back and was puffing on his cigar.

“To make the meeting as brief as possible, yes, Colonel, the Ark will break. There is no way we can stop that unless you have a way of melting an entire glacier to get at it.”

“Understood. We simply bring back what we can; the rest we leave.”

“Gentlemen, please, we have to return as much of the find back to American shores as we can. There is too much we can learn from this to leave anything behind.”

Thomas ignored Ollafson’s concern and then turned back to Jackson.

“Are Captains Faraday and Mize clear on the rendezvous plan after we have what we came for?”

“Yes, they have their orders. I must say I would prefer to have the barge and the
Argo
in the Mediterranean rather than the Black Sea; we will need her there. That is my opinion.”

Thomas held the cigar and then slowly stood and paced to the same window where Taylor was looking out.

Jessy looked from the calm sea and faced Thomas, and then he turned with a sour look on his face and returned to the table.

“My fears do not lie in the Mediterranean, nor even the Bosphorus Strait, Captain. I believe any action by any power will be taken outside the line of vision of prying eyes. No, they’ll ambush us before we reach the strait in the Black Sea. There are no witnesses there.”

“As you wish,” Jackson said with a resigned shake of his head.

“Now,” John Henry turned back to the table and leaned on its surface. “Colonel Taylor will be issued a Union officer’s uniform for our meeting with the sultan. Miss Richelieu will accompany us, along with Captain Jackson. Once the official greeting is concluded we will continue east from Constantinople to the final stop on the line. Is that clear?”

Most nodded.

“Captains, you will take the
Chesapeake
and the
Carpenter
through the Bosphorus Strait and then into the Black Sea with
Argo
. Then you will discharge your land element and railroad equipment at the coastal town of Trabzon. They will take the seacoast railroad line as far as it goes, where Lieutenant Parnell will be waiting to take overall command of land forces. From there my team will be less than fifty-six miles to the slopes of Ararat. Once we meet up we will begin the ascent to the summit with Parnell left behind to make ready for when we may need him and the … other elements.”

“May I ask why I am to be included in this meeting with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire?” Taylor asked as he smoked his cigar.

“It is for the simple reason that I can’t trust you, Colonel Taylor. Any attempt to get word to the sultan or any other entity will result in the mission failing and your men trading one prison cell for another. Only this one is inside a country that is a little less forgiving than your own.”

“You mean
your
country.”

“Correct, mine. So I suggest you be on your best behavior, because from what I understand from the president, we will be dealing with a loose cannon in the sultan. I understand he is quite insane.”

John Henry didn’t respond. He turned and walked to the large windows at the bow, opened one, and then tossed the cigar out. He turned and faced the men and one woman in front of him.

“When do you plan to enter the Mediterranean, Captain?”