Текст книги "Night Probe!"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Clive Cussler
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Part V

THE MANHATTAN LIMITED

MAY 1989

QUEBEC, CANADA

The roar of the jet engines diminished soon after the Boeing 757 lifted from the runway of the Quebec airport. When the no smoking sign blinked out, Heidi loosened her seat belt, readjusted the leg that was encased in an ankle-to-thigh cast to a comfortable position and looked out the window.

Below, the long ribbon that was the St. Lawrence sparkled in the sun and then fell away behind as the plane curved south toward New York.

Her thoughts wandered over the events of the past several days in a kaleidoscope of blurred images. The shock and the pain that followed the explosion beneath the Ocean Venturer. The considerate attention of the surgeon and sailors on board the Phoenix-her leg-cast carried more drawings than a tattoo parlor sample book. The doctors and nurses in the Rimouski hospital where they had treated a dislocated shoulder, and laughed good-heartedly at her sorry attempts to speak French. They all seemed like distant figures out of a dream, and she felt saddened at knowing she might never see them again.

She did not notice a man slide into the aisle seat beside her until he touched her arm.

"Hello, Heidi."

She looked into the face of Brian Shaw and was too startled to speak.

"I know what you must think," he said softly, "but I had to talk to you."

Heidi's initial surprise quickly turned to scorn. "What hole did you crawl from?"

He could see her face flush with anger. "I can't deny it was a cold, calculated seduction. For that, I'm sorry."

"All in the line of duty," she said sarcastically. "Bedding down a woman to extract information and then using it to murder twelve innocent men. In my book, Mr. Shaw, you stink."

He was silent for a moment. American women, he mused, have an entirely different way of expressing themselves from that of British women. "A regrettable and completely senseless tragedy," he said. "I want you, and especially Dirk Pitt, to know I was not responsible for what happened."

"You've lied before. Why break your streak?"

"Pitt will believe me when you tell him it was Foss Gly who set off the explosives."

"Foss Gly?"

"Pitt knows the name."

She looked at him skeptically. "You could have stated your case with a phone call. Why are you really here? To pump more information out of me? To learn if we recovered the treaty copy from the Empress of Ireland?"

"You did not find the treaty," he said with finality. "You're shooting in the dark."

"I know that Pitt left Washington for New York and the search on the Hudson River still goes on. That's proof enough."

"You haven't told me what you want," she persisted.

He looked at her, his eyes intent. "You're to deliver a message from my prime minister to your president."

She glared back at him. "You're crazy."

"Not the least. On the face of it, Her Majesty's government is not supposed to be aware of what yours is about and it's too early in the game for a direct confrontation. Because the situation is too delicate for two friendly nations to go through ordinary diplomatic channels, all communications must be handled in a roundabout fashion. It's not an uncommon practice; in fact, the Russians are particularly fond of it."

"But I can't just call up the President," she said, bewildered.

"No need. Just relay the message to Alan Mercier. He'll take it from there."

"The national security adviser?"

Shaw nodded. "The same."

Heidi looked lost. "What do I tell him?"

"You're simply to say that Britain will not give up one of its Commonwealth nations because of a scrap of paper. And we will conduct a strong military defense against any incursion from outside the nation's borders."

"Are you suggesting a showdown between America and…..."

"You'd win, of course, but it would be the end of the Atlantic Alliance and NATO. The Prime Minister is hoping your country won't pay that high a price to take over Canada."

"Take over Canada," she repeated. "That's ridiculous."

"Is it? Why else are your people pulling out all stops to find a treaty copy?"

"There must be other reasons."

"Perhaps." He hesitated as he took her hand in his. "But somehow I don't think so."

"So the train lies buried under the fallen bridge," said Pitt. Glen Chase nodded. "Everything points in that direction."

"The only place it could be," added Giordino.

Pitt leaned over the railing of the catwalk that hung across the beam of the salvage barge. He watched the long projecting arm of the crane arc around and release a dripping mass of rusting girders into the main hold. Then it swung back and dipped its claw back into the river.

"At this rate it will take a week before we can probe the bottom."

"We can't excavate until the debris is out of the way," said Giordino.

Pitt turned to Chase. "Have one of your men remove a few fragments from the original truss connections with a cutting torch. I'd like to run them by an analytical chemistry lab."

"What do you expect to find?" Chase asked.

"Maybe why the bridge failed," Pitt replied.

A man with a hard hat held up a portable loudspeaker and shouted over the noise of the crane's diesel engine: "Mr. Pitt, you're wanted on the phone."

Pitt excused himself and entered the barge's command office. The call was from Moon. "Any news?"

"None," Pitt answered.

There was a pause. "The President must have the treaty copy by Monday." Pitt was stunned. "That's only five days away."

"If you come up empty-handed by one o'clock in the afternoon on Monday, all search activities will be canceled."

Pitt's lips pressed together. "Dammit, Moon! You can't set impossible deadlines on a project like this."

"I'm sorry, that's the way it is."

"Why such short notice?"

"I can only tell you that the urgency is critical."

The knuckles of Pitt's hand clenched around the receiver turned ivory. He could think of nothing to say. "Are you still there?" queried Moon.

"Yes, I'm here."

"The President is anxious to hear of your progress."

"What progress?"

"You'll have to do better than that," Moon said testily.

"Everything hangs on whether we come across the train and the coach Essex was riding in."

"Care to give me an estimate?"

"There's an old saying among archaeologists," said Pitt. "Nothing is found until it wants to be found."

"I'm sure the President would prefer a more optimistic report. What should I tell him the chances are of having the treaty in his hands by Monday?"

"Tell the President," said Pitt, his voice like ice, "he doesn't have a prayer."

Pitt reached the Heiser Foundation analytic labs in Brooklyn at midnight. He backed the pickup truck against a loading dock and switched off the ignition. Dr. Walter McComb, the chief chemist, and two of his assistants were there, waiting for him. Pitt said, "I appreciate your staying up so late."

McComb, fifteen years older than Pitt and about seventy pounds heavier, hoisted one of the heavy bridge fragments without a grunt and shrugged. "I've never had a request from the White House before. How could I refuse?"

The four of them manhandled the steel scrap into a corner of a small warehouse. There the lab people used electric saws with moly steel blades to cut off samples which were soaked in a solution and cleaned by acoustics. Then they filtered away to different laboratories to begin their respective analytic specialities.

It was four in the morning when McComb conferred with his assistants and approached Pitt in the employees' lounge. "I.think we have something interesting for you," he said, grinning.

"How interesting?" Pitt asked.

"We've solved the mystery behind the Deauville-Hudson bridge collapse." McComb motioned for Pitt to follow him into a room crammed with exotic-looking chemistry equipment. He handed Pitt a large magnifying glass and pointed at two objects on the table. "See for yourself."

Pitt did as he was told and looked up questioningly. "What am I looking for?"

"Metal that separates under heavy stress leaves fracture lines. They're obvious in the sample on the left."

Pitt looked again. "Okay, I see them."

"You'll note that there are no fracture lines on the sample from the bridge to your right. The deformation is too extreme to have come from natural causes. We put specimens of it under a scanning electron microscope, which shows us the characteristic electrons in each element present. The results revealed residue from iron sulfide."

"What does it all mean?"

"What it all means, Mr. Pitt, is that the Deauville-Hudson bridge was cleverly. and systematically blown up."

"A grisly business," Preston Beatty exclaimed with an odd sort of pleasure. "One thing to butcher a human body, but quite another to serve it for dinner."

"Would you care for another beer?" asked Pitt.

"Please." Beatty downed the final swallow in his glass. "Fascinating people, Hattie and Nathan Pilcher. You might say they came up with the perfect solution for disposing of the corpus delicti." He motioned around the bar, which was busy with the early evening two-for-one drinks crowd. "This tavern we're sitting in rests on the very foundations of Pilcher's inn. The townspeople of Poughkeepsie burned down the original in 1823 when they learned of the ghastly deeds that had gone on behind its walls."

Pitt gestured for a barmaid. "What you're saying is that the Pilchers murdered overnight guests for their money and then put them on the menu."

"Yes, exactly." It was clear that Beatty was in his element. He recited the events with relish. "No way to take a body count, of course. A few scattered bones were dug up. But the best guess is that the Pilchers cooked between fifteen and twenty innocent travelers in the five years they were in business."

Professor Beatty was considered the leading authority on unsolved crimes. His books sold widely in Canada and the United States and had on occasion touched the nonfiction best-seller lists. He slouched comfortably in the booth and peered at Pitt through blue-green eyes over a salt-and-pepper beard. His age, Pitt guessed from the stern, craggy features and the silver-edged hair, was late forties. He looked more like a hardened pirate than a writer.

"The truly incredible part," Beatty continued, "is how the killers were exposed."

"A restaurant critic gave them a bad review," Pitt suggested.

"You're closer than you know." Beatty laughed. "One evening a retired sea captain stopped overnight. He was accompanied by a manservant, a Melanesian he'd brought on board his ship many years before in the Solomon Islands. Unfortunately for the Pilchers, the Melanesian had once been a cannibal and his educated taste buds correctly identified the meat in the stew."

"Not very appetizing," said Pitt. "So what happened to the Pilchers? Were they executed?"

"No, while awaiting trial they escaped and were never seen again."

The beers arrived and Beatty paused while Pitt signed the tab.

"I've pored through old crime reports here and in Canada trying to connect their modus operandi with later unsolved murders, but they passed into oblivion along with Jack the Ripper.

"And Clement Massey," said Pitt, broaching the subject on his mind.

"Ah, yes, Clement Massey, alias Dapper Doyle." Beatty spoke as if fondly recalling a favorite relative. "A robber years ahead of his time. He could have given lessons to the best of them."

"He was that good?"

"Massey had style and was incredibly shrewd. He planned all his jobs so they looked like the work of rival gangs. As near as I can figure, he pulled off six bank holdups and three train robberies that were blamed on someone else."

"What was his background?"

"Came from a wealthy Boston family. Graduated Harvard summa cum laude. Established a thriving law practice that catered to the social elite of Providence. Married a prominent socialite who bore him five children. Elected twice to the Massachusetts senate."

"Why would he rob banks?" Pitt asked incredulously.

"For the hell of it," Beatty replied. "As it turns out, he handed over every penny of his ill-gotten gains to charity."

"How come he was never glamorized by the newspapers or old pulp magazines?"

"He had vanished from the scene long before his crimes were tied to him," Beatty replied. "And that came only after an enterprising newspaper reporter proved that Clement Massey and Dapper Doyle-were one and the same. Naturally, his influential friends and colleagues saw to it that the scandal was quickly covered up. There wasn't enough hard evidence for a trial anyway."

"Hard to believe that Massey was never recognized during a holdup."

"He seldom went along," Beatty laughed. "Like a general directing a battle behind the lines, he usually stayed in the background. All the jobs were pulled out of state, and even his own gang didn't know his true identity. Actually, he was recognized on one of the few occasions he directed a robbery at first hand. But the witness' testimony was scoffed at by the investigating marshal. After all, who could believe that a respected state senator was a closet bandit?"

"Odd that Massey didn't wear a mask."

"A psychological turn-on," said Beatty. "He probably flaunted himself just to experience the excitement that comes from crowding your luck. A double life can be a super challenge for some men. And yet deep down, they want to get caught. Like a husband cheating on his wife who throws lipstick covered handkerchiefs in the family laundry hamper."

"Then why the Wacketshire depot robbery? Why did Massey risk everything for a paltry eighteen bucks?"

"I've spent more than one night staring at the ceiling over that enigma." Beatty looked down at the table and moved his glass around. "Except for that caper, Massey never pulled a job that paid less than twenty-five grand."

"He disappeared right after that."

"I'd get lost too if I was the cause of a hundred deaths." Beatty took a long swallow of his beer. "Because he ignored the stationmaster's plea to stop the train and allowed women and children to plunge into a cold river, he became enshrined in the annals of crime as a savage mass murderer instead of a Robin Hood.

"How do you read it?"

"He wanted to rob the train," Beatty answered matter-of-factly. "But something went wrong. There was a bad storm that night. The train was running late. Maybe he was thrown off schedule. I don't know. Something screwed up his plans."

"What was on the train for a robber?" asked Pitt.

"Two million in gold coin."

Pitt looked up. "I read nothing about a gold shipment on the St. Gaudens twenty-dollar gold pieces struck in nineteen fourteen at the Philadelphia mint. Bound for the banking houses in New York. I think Massey got wind of it. The railroad officials thought they were being clever by rerouting the gold car over half the countryside instead of dispatching it direct over the main track. Rumors were, the car was attached to the Manhattan Limited in Albany. No way to prove anything, of course. The loss, if there was a loss, was never reported. The bank bigwigs probably figured it better suited their image to hush the matter up."

"That may explain why the railroad nearly went broke trying to salvage the train."

"Perhaps." Beatty became lost in the past for a minute. Then he said, "Of all the crimes I've studied, in all the police archives of the world, Massey's penny ante robbery at Wacketshire intrigues me the most."

"It smells for another reason."

"How so?"

"This morning a lab found traces of iron sulfide in samples taken from the Deauville-Hudson bridge."

Beatty's eyes narrowed. "Iron sulfide is used in black powder."

"That's right. It looks like Massey blew the bridge."

Beatty appeared stunned by the revelation. "But why? What was his motive"

"We'll find the answers," said Pitt, "when we find the Manhattan Limited."

Pitt drove mechanically on the return, trip to the De Soto. A thought forced its way through the others: one he had ignored. At first he gave it a negative reception, but it refused to be shelved away. Then it began to come together and make sense.

He stopped at a phone booth in the parking lot of a supermarket and rang a number in Washington. The line buzzed and a gruff voice came on.

"Sandecker." Pitt didn't bother identifying himself. "A favor."

"Shoot."

"I need a sky hook."

"Come again."

Pitt could almost imagine the mouth as it clamped another notch on the cigar. "A sky hook. I've got to have a delivery by tomorrow noon."

"What in hell for?"

Pitt took a breath and told him.

Villon eased the executive jet to the left of an afternoon cumulus cloud, the control yoke barely moving beneath his hands. Through the copilot's window, Danielle watched a carpet of Canadian pines glide past below.

"It's all so beautiful," she said.

"You miss the scenery in an airliner," Villon replied. "They fly too high for you to enjoy any detail."

She was in a deep shade of blue, a snug sweater and cotton knit skirt that circled around her knees. There was a sort of savvy look about her that could never quite overcome the feminine warmth that flowed under the surface.

"Your new plane is beautiful too."

"A gift from my well-heeled supporters. The title isn't in my name, of course, but no one touches it but me.

They sat in silence for a few minutes as Villon held the jet on a steady course over the heart of Laurentides Park. Blue lakes began to appear all around them like tiny diamonds in an emerald setting. They could easily make out small boats with fishermen casting for speckled trout.

Finally Danielle said, "I'm happy you invited me. It's been a long time."

"Only a couple of weeks," he said without looking at her. "I've been busy campaigning."

"I thought perhaps…... perhaps you didn't want to see me anymore.

"Whatever gave you that idea?"

"The last time at the cottage."

"What about it?" he asked innocently. "You weren't exactly cordial."

He tilted his head lightly, trying to recall. Nothing materialized and he shrugged, writing it off to womanly touchiness. "Sorry, I must have had a lot on my mind."

He set the plane on a wide sweeping bank and dropped in the autopilot. Then he smiled. "Come on, I'll make it up to you."

He took her hand and led her from the cockpit.

The passenger cabin stretched twenty feet to the lavatory. There were four seats and a sofa, a thick carpeted floor, a fully stocked wet bar and dining table. He opened a door into a private sleeping compartment and bowed toward a queen-sized bed.

"The perfect love nest," he said. "Intimate, secluded and far from prying eyes."

The sunshine poured through the windows and spread over the bedsheets. Danielle sat up as Villon padded from the passenger cabin and passed her a drink. "Isn't there a law against this sort of thing?" she asked. "Sex at five thousand feet?"

"No," she said between sips of a Bloody Mary. "Letting an airplane fly around in circles for two hours without anybody in the cockpit."

"You going to turn me in?"

She stretched back seductively on the bed. "I can see the headlines now: NEW PRESIDENT OF QUEBEC CAUGHT IN FLYING WHOREHOUSE."

"I'm not President yet." He laughed. "You will be after the elections."

"They're six months away. Anything can happen between now and then."

"The polls say you're a shoo-in."

"What does Charles say?"

"He never mentions you anymore."

Villon sat down on the bed and trailed his fingers lightly across her belly. "Now that Parliament has handed him a vote of no confidence, his power has evaporated. Why don't you leave him? Things would be simpler for us."

"Better I remain at his side a little while longer. There is much I can still learn of importance to Quebec."

"While we're on the subject, there is something that concerns me."

She began to squirm. "What is it?"

"The President of the United States is speaking to Parliament next week. I'd like to know what he intends to say. Have you heard anything?"

She took his hand and moved it down. "Charles talked about it yesterday. Nothing to worry about. He said the President was going to make a plea for an orderly transition of Quebec independence."

"I knew it," Villon said, smiling. "The Americans are caving in."

Danielle began to lose control and reached out for him.

"I hope you filled the fuel tanks before we left Ottawa," she murmured in a slurred voice.

"We have enough for three more hours' flying time," he said, and then he came down on top of her.

"There is no mistake?" Sarveux said into the phone.

"Absolutely none," replied Commissioner Finn. "My man saw them board Mr. Villon's plane. We've tracked them on air force radar. They've been circling Laurentides Park since one o'clock.

"Your man is certain it was Henri Villon."

"Yes, Sir, there was no doubt," Finn reassured him.

"Thank you, commissioner."

"Not at all, Prime Minister. I'll be standing by."

Sarveux replaced the receiver and paused a moment to rally his senses. Then he spoke into the intercom. "You may send him in now."

Sarveux's face tensed in the first conclusive moment of shock. He was certain his eyes were deceiving him, his mind playing tricks with his imagination. His legs refused to respond, and he could not gather the strength to rise from behind the desk. Then the visitor walked across the room and stood looking down.

"Thank you for seeing me, Charles."

The face bore the familiar cold expression, the voice came exactly as he had known it. Sarveux fought to maintain an outward calm, but he suddenly felt weak and dizzy.

The man standing before him was Henri Villon, in the flesh, completely at ease, displaying the same aloof poise that never cracked.

"I thought…... I thought you were…... were campaigning in Quebec," Sarveux stammered.

"I took time out to come to Ottawa in the hope you and I might declare a truce."

"The gap between our differences is too wide," Sarveux said, slowly regaining his composure.

"Canada and Quebec must learn to live together without further friction," said Villon. "You and I should too."

"I'm willing to listen to reason." There was a subtle hardening in Sarveux's voice. "Sit down, Henri, and tell me what's on your mind."

Alan Mercier finished reading the contents of a folder marked MOST SECRET and then reread them. He was stunned. Every so often he flipped the pages backward, attempting to keep an open mind, but finding it increasingly difficult to believe what his eyes conveyed. He had the look of a man who held a ticking bomb in his hands.

The President sat across from him, seemingly detached, patiently waiting. It was very quiet in the room; the only sound was an occasional crackle from a smoldering log in the fireplace. Two trays of food sat on the large coffee table that separated the two men. Mercier was too engrossed to eat, but the President consumed the late dinner hungrily.

Finally Mercier closed the folder and solemnly removed his glasses. He pondered for a moment, then looked up.

"I have to ask," he said. "Is this mad plot for real?"

"Right down to the period in the lase sentence."

"A remarkable concept," Mercier sighed. "I'll give it that."

"I think so."

"I find it hard to believe you took it so far in all these years without a leak."

"Not surprising when you consider only two people knew about it."

"Doug Oates over at State was aware."

"Only after the inauguration," the President acknowledged. "Once I possessed the power to put the wheels in motion, the first step, the obvious step, was to bring in the State Department."

"But not national security," said Mercier, a cool edge on his voice.

"Nothing personal, Alan. I only added to the inner circle as each stage progressed."

"So now it's my turn."

The President nodded. "I want you and your staff to recruit and organize influential Canadians who see things as I do."

Mercier dabbed a handkerchief at the sweat glistening on his face. "Good God. If this thing backfires and your announcement of national insolvency follows on its heels…...?" He let the implication hang.

"It won't," the President said grimly.

"You may have reached too far."

"But if it is accepted, at least in principle, think of the opportunities."

"You'll get your first indication when you spring it on the Canadian Parliament on Monday."

"Yes, it'll be out in the open then." Mercier laid the folder on the table. "I have to hand it to you, Mr. President. When you sat silent and refused to intervene in Quebec's bid for independence, I thought you'd slipped a cog. Now I'm beginning to see the method behind your madness."

"We've only opened the first door"-the President waxed philosophical-"to a long hallway."

"Don't you think you're counting too heavily on finding the North American Treaty?"

"Yes, I suppose you're right." The President stared out the window at Washington without seeing it. "But if a miracle happens on the Hudson River by Monday, we may have the privilege of designing a new flag."

The sky hook was just what its name suggested: a helicopter capable of transporting bulky equipment to the tops of high buildings and heavy equipment across rivers and mountains. Its slender fuselage tapered to a length of 105 feet and the landing gear hung down like rigid stalks.

To the men on the salvage site the ungainly craft looked like a monstrous praying mantis that had escaped from a Japanese science fiction movie. They watched fascinated as it flew two hundred feet above the river, the huge rotor blades whipping the water into froth from shore to shore.

The sight was made even stranger by the wedge-shaped object that hung suspended from the sky hook's belly. Except for Pitt and Giordino, it was the first time any of the NUMA crew had set eyes on the Doodlebug.

Pitt directed the lowering operation by radio, instructing the pilot to set his load beside the De Soto. The sky hook very slowly halted its forward motion and hovered for a few minutes until the Doodlebug's pendulum motion died. Then the twin cargo cables unreeled, easing the research vessel into the river. When the strain slackened, the De Soto's crane was swung over the side and divers scrambled up the ladder on the vertical hull. The cable hooks were exchanged on the hoisting loops and, free of its burden, the sky hook rose, banked into a broad half circle and headed back downriver.

Everyone stood along the rails gawking at the Doodlebug, wondering about its purpose. Suddenly, adding to their silent bewilderment, a hatch popped open, a head appeared and a pair of heavy-lidded eyes surveyed the astonished onlookers. "Where in hell is Pitt?" the intruder shouted.

"Here!" Pitt yelled back.

"Guess what?"

"You found another bottle of snakebite medicine in your bunk."

"How'd you know?" Sam Quayle replied, laughing.

"Lasky with you?"

"Below, rewiring the ballast controls to operate in shallow water.

"You took a chance, riding inside all the way from Boston."

"Maybe, but we saved time by activating the electronic systems during the flight."

"How soon before you're ready to dive?"

"Give us another hour."

Chase moved beside Giordino. "Just what is that mechanical perversion?" he asked.

"If you had any idea what it cost," Giordino answered with an imperturbable smile, "you wouldn't call it nasty names."

Three hours later-the Doodlebug, its top hatches rippling the water ten feet beneath the surface, crawled slowly across the riverbed. The suspense inside was hard to bear as the hull skirted dangerously close to the gnarled pieces of the bridge.

Pitt kept a close eye on the video monitors while Bill Lasky maneuvered the craft against the current. Behind them, Quayle peered at a systems panel, focusing his attention on the detection readouts.

"Any contact?" Pitt asked for the fourth time.

"Negative," answered Quayle. "I've widened the beam to cover a twenty-meter path at a depth of one hundred meters into the geology, but all I read is bedrock."

"We've worked too far upriver," Pitt said, turning to Lasky. "Bring it around for another pass."

"Approaching from a new angle," acknowledged Lasky, his hands busy with the knobs and switches of the control console.

Five more times the Doodlebug threaded its way through the sunken debris. Twice they heard wreckage scraping along the hull. Pitt was all too aware that if the thin skin was penetrated, he would be blamed for the loss of the six-hundred-million dollar vessel.

Quayle seemed immune to the peril. He was infuriated that his instrument remained mute. He was particularly angry at himself for thinking the fault was his.

"Must be a malfunction," he muttered. "I should have had a target by now."

"Can you isolate the problem?" Pitt asked.

"No, dammit!" Quayle abruptly snapped. "All systems are functioning normally. I must have miscalculated when I reprogrammed the computers."

The expectations of a quick discovery began to dim. Frustration was worsened by false hopes and anticipation. Then, as they turned around for another run through the search grid, the never current surged against the exposed starboard area of the Doodlebug and swept its keel into a mud bank Lasky struggled with the controls for nearly an hour before the vessel worked free.

Pitt was giving the coordinates for a new course when Giordino's voice came over the communications speaker. "De Soto to Doodlebug. Do you read?"

"Speak," said Pitt tersely.

"You guys have been pretty quiet."

"Nothing to report," Pitt answered.

"You better close up shop. A heavy storm front is moving in. Chase would like to secure our electronic marvel before the wind strikes."

Pitt hated to give up, but it was senseless to continue. Time had run out. Even if they found the train in the next few hours, it was doubtful if the salvage crew could pinpoint and excavate the coach that carried Essex and the treaty before the President's address to Parliament.

"Okay," said Pitt. "Make ready to receive us. We're folding the act.

Giordino stood on the bridge and nodded at the dark clouds massing over the ship. "This project has had a curse on it from the beginning," he mumbled gloomily. "As if we don't have enough problems, now it's the weather."

"Somebody up there plain doesn't like us," said Chase, pointing to the sky.

"You blaming God, you heathen?" Giordino joked goodnaturedly.

"No," answered Chase looking solemn. "The ghost."