Текст книги "Night Probe!"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Clive Cussler
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"The President would like you to lead fishing expeditions into the St. "Lawrence and Hudson rivers."

Pitt jerked his eyes off the road and stared at Moon. "You're joking?"

"I couldn't be more serious. He thinks you're the only qualified man to take a stab at finding the copies of the North American Treaty."

"You know about it?"

"Yes, he took me into his confidence ten minutes after you left his office. I'm to act as liaison during your search."

Pitt slowed the car down to the legal speed limit and was silent for several seconds. Then he said, "I don't think he knows what he's asking."

"I assure you the President has looked at it from every angle."

"He's asking the impossible and expecting a miracle." Pitt's expression was incredulous, his voice quiet. "There's no way a piece of paper can remain intact after being immersed in water for three-quarters of a century."

"I admit the project sounds unpromising," agreed Moon. "And yet, if there is one chance in ten million a copy of the treaty exists, the President feels we must make an effort to find it.

Pitt stared down the road that split the Virginia countryside. "Suppose for a minute we got lucky and laid the North American Treaty on his lap? What then?"

"I can't say."

"Can't or won't?"

"I'm only a special aide to the President…... a messenger boy as you so rudely put it. I do what I'm told. My orders are to give you every assistance and see that your requests for funds and equipment are met. What happens if and when you salvage a readable document is none of my business and certainly none of yours.

"Tell me, Moon," said Pitt, a faint smile edged on his lips. "Have you ever read How to Win Friends and Influence People?"

"Never heard of it."

"I'm not surprised." Pitt ran up the rear end of an electric minicar that refused to yield the fast lane and blinked the Jensen's lights. The other driver finally signaled and gave way. "What if I say no deal?"

Moon stiffened almost imperceptibly. "The President would be most disappointed."

"I'm flattered." Pitt drove along, lost in thought. Then he turned and nodded. "Okay, I'll give it my best shot. I presume we're to begin immediately."

Moon simply nodded, vastly relieved.

"Item one on your list," said Pitt. "I'll need NUMA's manpower and resources. Most important, Admiral Sandecker must be informed of the project. I won't work behind his back."

"What you're about to attempt, Mr. Pitt, falls under the trite term of 'delicate situation.' The fewer people who know about the treaty, the less chance the Canadians get wind of it."

"Sandecker must be informed," Pitt repeated firmly.

"All right, I'll set up a meeting and acquaint him with the project."

"Not good enough. I want the admiral briefed by the President. He deserves that."

Moon had the look of a man who has had his wallet picked.

He kept his eyes straight ahead when he replied. "Okay, consider it done."

"Item two," Pitt continued. "We'll need a pro to handle the historical research."

"There are several top men around Washington who have taken on government assignments. I'll send you their resumes."

"I was thinking of a woman."

"Any particular reason?"

"Commander Heidi Milligan did the preliminary research on the treaty. She knows her way through archives, and she'd be one less to initiate into the club."

"Makes sense," said Moon thoughtfully, "except that she's somewhere out in the Pacific."

"Ring up the chief of naval operations and get her back, providing, of course, you carry the clout."

"I carry the clout, Mr. Pitt," Moon replied coolly.

"Item three. One of the treaty copies went down with the Empress of Ireland, which lies in Canadian waters. There's no way we can keep our diving operations a secret. Under existing salvage laws we're required to notify their government, the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which owned the vessel, and the insurance companies that paid off the claims."

The subdued expression on Moon's face turned smug. "I'm ahead of you on that score. The necessary paperwork is in the mill. Your cover story is that you're an archaeological team searching for artifacts that will be preserved and donated to American and Canadian maritime museums. You should be able to bring up enough trash during the operation to pacify any prying eyes."

"Item four," said Pitt. "The money."

"Ample funds will be placed at your disposal to see the job through."

Pitt hesitated before he spoke again, listening to the steady purr of the Jensen's 130-horsepower engine. The sun had dropped below the tops of the trees and he turned on the lights.

"I make no guarantees," he said at last.

"Understood."

"How do we stay in touch?"

Moon took out a pen and wrote on the back of Pitt's auction program. "I'll be available at this number on a twenty-four hour basis. We won't meet face to face again unless you run into an unexpected crisis." He paused and looked at Pitt, trying to fathom the man. But Pitt could not be read. "Any other questions?"

"No," said Pitt, wrapped in thought. "No more questions."

There were a hundred questions swirling in Pitt's mind; none that could be answered by Moon.

He tried to visualize what he might find beneath the forbidding currents of the Hudson and St. Lawrence rivers, but nothing jelled. And then he began to wonder what was behind the mad, unfathomable scheme that was hurling him into the unknown.

"The time for decision."

Sandecker spoke to no one in particular as he gazed at the hydrographic charts, photo-enlarged to cover the far wall of the NUMA operations room. He rapped a knuckle against the one depicting a section of the Hudson River.

"Do we tackle the Manhattan Limited first?" He paused and gestured at the adjoining chart. "Or the Empress of Ireland?" He refaced the room and studied the four people seated around the long table. "Which one should take priority?"

Heidi Milligan, whose face showed the fatigue of a long flight from Honolulu, started to say something, but held back.

"Ladies first," Al Giordino said, grinning.

"I'm not qualified to voice an opinion on underwater salvage," she said hesitantly. "But I believe the ship offers the best chance of finding a readable treaty."

"Care to state your reasons?" asked Sandecker.

"Before the days of air travel," Heidi explained, "it was standard procedure for diplomatic couriers who sailed across the oceans to seal documents inside several layers of oilcloth as a protection against water damage. I recall one incident where important papers were found intact on a British Foreign Office courier when his body washed ashore six days after the Lusitania sinking." Sandecker smiled and nodded at her in satisfaction. She would be a good woman to have around. "Thank you, Commander. You've given us our first ray of hope."

Giordino yawned. He had spent most of the night being briefed on the project by Pitt, and it was all he could do to stay awake. "Perhaps Richard Essex wrapped his copy of the treaty in oilcloth too."

Heidi shook her head. "Most likely he would have carried it in a leather traveling bag."

"Little chance of that surviving," Sandecker acknowledged.

"My vote still goes to the train," said Giordino. "The Empress lies in a hundred and sixty-five feet-well below the safe depth for air diving. The train, on the other hand, can be no deeper than forty feet. After seven decades the ship must be eaten away by saltwater flowing in from the St. Lawrence Gulf. The train would be better preserved by fresh river water."

Sandecker turned to a small man whose owlish brown eyes peered through a large pair of horned-rimmed glasses. "Rudi, how do you see it?"

Rudi Gunn, NUMA's director of logistics, looked up from a pad filled with scribbles and unconsciously scratched one side of his nose. Gunn rarely gambled or played the angles. He dealt his cards from solid facts, never vague percentages.

"I favor the ship," he said quietly. "The only advantage of salvaging the Manhattan Limited is that it rests on home ground. However, the current of the Hudson River is three-and a-half knots. Far too strong for divers to work with any level of efficiency. And, as Al suggested, chances are, the engine and coaches are buried in the silt. This calls for a dredging operation. The worst kind."

"The salvage of a ship in open water is far more complex and time-consuming than bringing up a Pullman car from shallow depths," Giordino argued.

"True," Gunn conceded. "But we know where the Empress lies. The grave of the Manhattan Limited has never been found."

"Trains don't dissolve. We're looking at a confined area less than a mile square. A sweep with a proton magnetometer should make contact within a few hours."

"You talk as if the locomotive and coaches are still attached by their couplings. After the fall from the bridge they probably were scattered all over the riverbed. We could spend weeks excavating the wrong car. I can't accept the odds. It's too hit or-miss."

Giordino did not retreat. "What would you calculate the odds are against finding a small packet inside a crumbling fourteen thousand-ton vessel?"

"We ignore the odds." Dirk Pitt spoke quietly and for the first time. He sat at the end of the table, hands folded behind his head. "I say we try for both simultaneously."

Silence settled over the operations room. Giordino sipped at his coffee, mulling over Pitt's words. Gunn peered speculatively through his thick-lensed glasses.

"Can we afford the complications of dividing our efforts?"

"Better to ask, can we afford the time?" Pitt answered.

"Do we have a deadline?" Giordino queried.

"No, we're not held to a set schedule," said Sandecker. He moved away from the charts and sat on one corner of the table. "But the President made it clear to me that if a copy of the North American Treaty still exists, he wants it damned quick." The admiral shook his head. "What in hell good a soggy scrap of seventy-five-year-old paper is to our government, or what the urgency of finding it is, was not explained. I wasn't offered the luxury of reasoning why. Dirk is right. We don't have the time to conduct leisurely search projects in tandem."

Giordino looked at Pitt and sighed. "Okay, we shoot for two birds with one stone."

"Two stones," Pitt corrected him. "While a salvage expedition forces its way inside the ship's hull, a survey team probes the Hudson for the Manhattan Limited, or specifically, for the government railroad coach that carried Richard Essex."

"How soon can we get the show on the road?" asked Sandecker.

Pitt's eyes took on a detached look, as though they were focused on an object beyond the walls of the room. "Forty-eight hours to assemble a crew and gear, twenty-four to load and outfit a vessel. Then allowing for good sailing weather, we should be moored over the Empress in five days."

"And the Manhattan Limited?"

"I can put a boat equipped with magnetometer, side-scan sonar and a sub-bottom profiler on site by this time the day after tomorrow," Giordino replied positively.

The time estimates seemed optimistic to Sandecker, but he never questioned the men in front of him. They were the best in the business and they rarely disappointed him. He stood up and nodded at Giordino.

"Al, the Manhattan Limited search is yours. Rudi, you'll head the salvage operation on the Empress of Ireland." He turned to Pitt. "Dirk, you'll act as combined projects director."

"Where would you like me to start?" asked Heidi.

"With the ship. The builder's blueprints, deck plans, the exact area of Harvey Shields' stateroom. Any relevant data that will lead us to the treaties."

Heidi nodded. "The public inquiry into the disaster was held in Quebec. I'll begin by digging into the transcript of the findings. If your secretary will book me on the next flight, I'll be on my way."

She looked mentally and physically exhausted, but Sandecker was too pressured for time to voice a gentlemanly offer of a few hours' sleep. He paused a few moments, staring into each determined face. "AU right," he said without emotion. "Let's do it."

General Morris Simms, casually attired as a fisherman, felt oddly out of character carrying a bamboo rod and wicker creel as he walked down a worn path to the River Blackwater near the village of Seward's End, Essex. He stopped at the edge of the bank under a picturesque stone bridge and nodded a greeting to a man who was seated on a folding chair, patiently contemplating a bobber on the surface of the water.

"Good morning, Prime Minister."

"Good morning, Brigadier."

"Frightfully sorry to trouble you on your holiday."

"Not at all," said the Prime Minister. "The bloody perch aren't biting anyway." He tilted his head toward the portable table beside him that held a bottle of wine and what looked to Simms like a ham-and-veal pie. "There's extra glasses and plates in the basket. Help yourself to the sherry and pie."

"Thank you, sir, I think I shall."

"What's on your mind?"

"The North American Treaty, sir." He paused as he poured the sherry. "Our man in the States reports the Americans are going to make an all-out effort to find it."

"Any chance they might?"

"Very doubtful." Simms held up the bottle. "More sherry?"

"Yes, thank you."

Simms poured. "At first I thought they might make a few simple probes. Nothing elaborate, of course, a small operation to convince themselves there was little hope of a document surviving. However, it now seems they're going after it in deadly earnest."

"Not good," the Prime Minister grunted. "That indicates, to me at least, that if they're remotely successful, they intend to exercise the terms set down in the treaty."

"My thought also," Simms agreed.

"I can't picture the Commonwealth without Canada," said the Prime Minister. "The entire framework of our overseas trade organization would begin an inevitable collapse. As it is, our economy is in shambles. The loss of Canada would be a disaster."

"As bad as all that?"

"Worse." The Prime Minister stared into the stream while he spoke. "If Canada goes, Australia and New Zealand would follow in three years. I don't have to tell you where that would leave the United Kingdom."

The enormity of the Prime Minister's dire prediction was beyond Simms' comprehension. England without an empire was inconceivable. And yet, sadly, deep down he knew British stoicism could find a way to accept it.

The bobber made a couple of quick dips but became still again. The Prime Minister sipped at the sherry thoughtfully. He was a formidably heavy-featured man with unblinking blue eyes and a mouth that ticked up at the edges in a perpetual smile.

"What instructions are your people working under?" he asked.

"Only to observe and report the Americans' actions."

"Are they aware of the treaty's potential threat?"

"No, sir."

"You'd better inform them. They must be aware of the danger to our nation. Where do we stand otherwise?"

"Using the National Underwater and Marine Agency as a cover, the President has ordered an intensive salvage operation on the Empress of Ireland."

"This thing must be nipped in the bud. We've got to keep them off the Empress."

Simms cleared his throat. "By…... ah what measures, sir?"

"It's time we told the Canadians what the Americans are about. Offer our cooperation within the framework of Commonwealth law. Request they revoke permission for NUMA to operate on the St. Lawrence. If the President persists in this folly, blow up the wreck and destroy the British treaty copy once and for all."

"And the American copy that was lost on the train? We can't very well order them off their own river."

The Prime Minister shot Simms an acid look. "Then you'll just have to think of something a bit more drastic, won't you?"

Part IV

THE EMPRESS OF IRELAND

MAY 1989

OTTAWA CANADA

Villon closed the file cover and shook his head.

"Nonsense."

"I assure you," said Brian Shaw, "it is not nonsense."

"What does it all mean?"

"Exactly what you read in the report," said Shaw, staring directly at Villon. "The Americans have launched a search for evidence of a treaty that gives the whole of Canada to them."

"Until now, I've never heard of such a treaty."

"Few people have." Shaw paused to light a cigarette. "Immediately after the documents were lost, all but a few references to the negotiations were secretly destroyed."

"What proof do you have the Americans are actually out to lay their hands on this treaty?"

"I followed a string through a labyrinth. It led to a chap by the name of Dirk Pitt who holds a high level position with the National Underwater and Marine Agency. I had him watched closely by embassy personnel. They discovered he is leading two search expeditions: one to the spot on the Hudson River where Essex's train was lost, and the other to the Empress of Ireland. I can assure you, Mr. Villon, he is not looking for treasure."

Villon sat silently for a moment. Then he shifted in his chair and leaned forward. "How can I help you?"

"For starters, you could order Pitt and his crew off the St. Lawrence."

Villon shook his head. "I can't do that. Permission for the salvage operation went through the proper channels. There is no telling what the Americans might do if we suddenly revoked their license. They could easily retaliate by shutting off our fishing rights in their waters."

"General Simms considered that prospect. So he came up with another option." Shaw paused a moment. "He suggests that we destroy the wreck of the Empress."

"You could do that without causing a nasty incident?"

"Provided that I can reach the wreckage before Pitt does."

Villon sat back, coldly analyzing how the information Shaw had put before him could be exploited to his advantage. He let his eyes drift across the room to a painting on the wall of a clipper ship under full sail before the wind. At last, his thoughts arranged, he nodded. "I shall give you every cooperation."

"Thank you," Shaw replied. "I'll require the services of five men, a boat and the proper diving equipment."

"You'll need a good man to coordinate your plans."

"Do you have someone in mind?"

"I do," said Villon. "I'll see that he gets in touch with you. He is a Mountie, well trained for this sort of work. His name is Gly, Inspector Foss Gly."

The expedition to locate the Manhattan Limited seemed jinxed from the start. Giordino was frustrated to the gills. Already he was four days behind on his promised schedule.

After a hurried dockside loading of men and equipment, the trim new research boat, the De Soto, sixty feet long and especially designed by NUMA engineers to cruise inland waterways, churned upriver and headed toward near destruction.

The helmsman kept a keen eye on the channel buoys and passing pleasure craft. His main concern, however, was the falling barometer and a light splattering of rain on the wheelhouse windows. Together they promised a first-class storm by nightfall.

As darkness settled, the river's chop began throwing spray over the De Soto's foredeck. Suddenly the wind howled down over the steep palisades bordering the shoreline, gusting from twenty miles an hour to over sixty. The force of the blast pushed the speeding boat out of the main channel. Before the helmsman could literally muscle it back on course, it had driven into shallow waters, ripping a two-foot gash under its port bow on what was believed to be a submerged log.

For the next four hours, Giordino drove his crew with the heavy hand of a Captain Bligh. The sonar operator insisted later that the feisty Italian's tongue lashed about his ears like a bullwhip. It was a masterful performance. The hole was plugged until there were only a few small trickles, but not before the water had risen above the bilges and was sloshing ankle deep on the lower deck.

Laden with two tons of water, the De Soto handled sluggishly. Giordino ignored it in his fury and crammed the throttles to their stops. The sudden burst of speed raised the splintered wound above, the waterline and the vessel hurtled back down the river toward New York.

Two days were lost while the boat was dry docked and its hull repaired. No sooner had they gotten underway again than the magnetometer was found to be defective and a new unit rushed from San Francisco. Two more days down the drain.

At last, under the light of a full moon, Giordino watched cautiously as the De Soto slipped under the massive stone abutment that had once supported the Hudson-Deauville bridge. He poked his head in the open wheelhouse window.

"What do you read on the fathometer?"

Glen Chase, the taciturn, balding captain of the boat, cast an eye at the red digital numerals. "About twenty feet. Looks safe enough to park here till morning."

Giordino shook his head at Chase's land talk. The captain stoutly refused to voice the language of the sea, using left for port and right for starboard, claiming that ancient tradition did not fit the modern scheme of the times.

The anchor was dropped and the boat secured by lines running to a convenient tree on shore and the rusting remains of the bridge pier in the river. The engines were shut down and the auxiliary power unit fired up. Chase stared up at the crumbling abutment.

"Must have been quite a structure in its day."

"Fifth longest in the world when it was built," said Giordino.

"What do you suppose caused it to fall?"

Giordino shrugged. "According to the inquiry report, the evidence was inconclusive. The best theory was high winds combined with lightning strikes weakened a supporting truss."

Chase nodded his head toward the river. "Think it's waiting down there?"

"The train?" Giordino gazed at the moonlit waters. "It's there all right. The wreckage wasn't found in 1914 because all salvage men had at their command were copper-helmeted divers in clumsy canvas suits, groping in zero visibility, and grapples dragged by small boats. Their equipment was too limited and they looked in the wrong place."

Chase lifted his cap and scratched his head. "We should know in a couple of days."

"Less, with any luck."

"How about a beer?" Chase asked, smiling. "I always buy for an optimist."

"I believe I will," said Giordino.

Chase disappeared down a stairwell and made his way to the galley. In the main dining salon the crew could be heard joking among themselves as they adjusted the television dish antenna to pick up signals from a passing relay satellite.

A sudden chill raised goose bumps on Giordino's hairy arms, and he reached inside the wheelhouse for a windbreaker. As he was pulling up the zipper he hesitated and cocked an ear.

Chase appeared and handed him a beer can. "I didn't bother with glasses."

Giordino held up his hand for silence. "You hear that?"

Chase's brow furrowed. "Hear what?"

"Listen."

Chase tilted his head, his eyes locked in the unseeing stare of a man concentrating on sounds. "A train whistle," he announced indifferently.

"You sure?"

Chase nodded. "I can hear it plainly. Definitely a train whistle."

"Don't you find that odd?" asked Giordino.

"Why should I?"

"Diesel locomotives have air horns. Only the old steam engines blew whistles, and the last one was retired thirty years ago.

"Could be one of those kids' rides at an amusement park somewhere up the river," Chase surmised. "Sound can carry for miles over water."

"I don't think so," Giordino said, cupping his ears and swinging his head back and forth like a radar antenna. "It's getting louder…... louder and closer."

Chase ducked into the wheelhouse and returned with a land road map and a flashlight. He unfolded the paper over the deck railing and beamed the light.

"Look here," he said pointing to the tiny blue lines. "The main rail line cuts inland twenty miles south of here."

"And the nearest track?"

"Ten, maybe twelve miles."

"Whatever is making that sound is no more than a mile away," Giordino said flatly.

Giordino tried to fix the direction. The blazing moon illuminated the landscape with crystal clarity. He could distinguish individual trees two miles away. The sound was approaching along the west bank of the river above them. There was no movement of any kind, no lights except those of a few distant farmhouses.

Another shriek.

New sounds now. The clangor of heavy steel, the throaty, pulsating exhaust of steam and combustion split the night. Giordino felt as if he was suspended in air. He stood rigid. He waited.

"It's turning-turning toward us," Chase rasped as though he was still trying to convince himself. "God, it's coming off the ruins of the bridge."

They both stared upward at the top of the abutment, unable to breathe, unable to grasp what was happening. All at once the deafening noise of the invisible train exploded out of the dark above them. Giordino instinctively ducked. Chase froze, his face a ghastly corpse-white, the enlarged pupils of his eyes black pits you could fall into.

And then, abruptly, silence-a silence deathlike and ominous.

Neither man spoke, neither moved. They stood rooted to the deck like wax figures without hearts or lungs. Slowly Giordino gathered his thoughts and took the flashlight from Chase's unresisting hand. He shone its beam on the top of the abutment.

There was nothing to see but time-worn stone and impenetrable shadows.

The Ocean Venturer lay anchored over the wreck of the Empress of Ireland. A light rain had passed in the early morning hours and the Venturer's white hull glistened orange under the new sun. In contrast, a tired old fishing boat, its faded blue paint scarred and chipped, lazily trolled its nets two hundred yards away. To the fishermen the Ocean Venturer, silhouetted against the brightening horizon, looked as if it had been created by an artist with a warped sense of humor.

Its hull lines were aesthetic and contemporary. Beginning with its gracefully rounded bow, the main deck line traveled in an eye-pleasing curve to the oval fantail. There were none of the sharp edges associated with most other ships; even the eggshaped bridge rested on an arched spire. But there the beauty ended. Like a Cyrano's repulsive nose, a derrick similar to those erected in new oil fields protruded incongruously from the Ocean Venturer's midsection.

Functional, if not attractive, the derrick possessed the capability of lowering a variety of scientific packages through the hull to the seafloor or of raising heavy objects such as salvage debris straight into the ship's bowels. The Ocean Venturer was the perfect vessel to act as a work platform for the treaty search.

Pitt stood on the stern, clutching a Portuguese fisherman's cap tightly to his head as the blades of a NUMA helicopter whipped the air around him. For a few moments the pilot hovered while he tested the wind currents. Then he dropped the chopper slowly until the skids settled firmly on the painted markings of the flight pad.

Pitt hunched over, jogged up to the craft and opened the door. Heidi Milligan, dressed in a jumpsuit of cotton painter's cloth in dazzling azure blue, hopped out. Pitt helped her down and took a suitcase that was passed to him by the pilot.

"On your next taxi run," Pitt yelled above the whine of the turbines, "bring us a case of peanut butter."

The pilot waved a casual salute and shouted back, "Shall do."

Pitt escorted Heidi across the deck as the helicopter lifted from the pad and dipped its nose toward the south. She turned to him and smiled. "Does the project director always double as baggage porter?"

"Like the man said," Pitt laughed, "I get no respect."

Several minutes after he showed her to her quarters, she entered the dining salon carrying a packet of papers and sat down beside him. "How was your trip?"

"Productive," she replied. "How's your end?"

"We arrived on site yesterday afternoon, eighteen hours ahead of schedule, and positioned the Ocean Venturer above the wreck."

"What's your next move?"

"A small unmanned remote sub with cameras will be lowered to survey the Empress. The video data it relays to our monitors will be studied and analyzed."

"What angle does the ship lie?"

"Forty– five degrees to starboard." Heidi frowned.

"Lousy luck."

"Why?"

She began to spread the papers over the table. Some were quite large and had to be unfolded.

"Before I answer that, here's a copy of the passenger list from the Empress on its final sailing. At first I thought I hit a dead end when I couldn't find Harvey Shields' name among the first-class passengers. Then it occurred to me that he might have traveled in a lower class to avoid advertising his presence. Most transatlantic liners provided plush accommodations on second-class decks for wealthy but frugal eccentrics or highlevel government officials who wanted to cross the oceans in low profile. That's where I found him. Upper deck D, cabin forty-six."

"Nice work. You put a fix on the needle in the haystack. Now we don't have to tear the whole ship apart."

"That's the good news," said Heidi. "Now the bad news."

"Let's have it."

"The Storstad, the Norwegian coal collier that sank the Empress, struck the liner starboard amidships almost directly between the funnels, gouging a wedge-shaped hole over fifteen feet wide and nearly fifty feet in height. The collier's bow sliced into the boiler rooms below the waterline with a section of the second-class accommodations straight above."

"You're suggesting that the Storstad obliterated Shields' cabin?"

"We have to consider the worst possibility." Heidi spread a copy of the Empress of Ireland's plans over the charts. She pointed a pencil tip at a small circled area. "Number forty-six was an outside starboard cabin. It was either damned close or directly in the middle of the impact point."

"That could explain why Shields' body was never found."

"He was probably crushed to death in his sleep."

"What did you mean by 'lousy luck' when I gave you the wreck's angle?"

"A forty– five-degree list to starboard would put cabin forty six in the riverbed," Heidi replied. "The interior must be buried in silt.

"Back to square one. The silt would preserve the treaty's covering but make it almost impossible to find."

Heidi sat silently watching Pitt as he slowly tapped his fingers on the table, his mind rummaging through the data laid before him. His deep green eyes took on a faraway look.