Night Probe!

He had traveled only fifty meters when he heard a sustained droning coming from somewhere in the black void. He froze, listening.

The acoustics of the water scattered the sound and there was no way his ears could accurately detect the direction of the source. Then his eyes distinguished a dim yellow glow that grew and expanded above and to his right. There was no uncertainty in his mind. The Ocean Venturer's manned submersible was homing in on him.

There was no place to hide on the flat and barren riverbed, no rock formations, no forest of kelp to shield him. Once the submersible high-intensity beam picked him out, he would become as conspicuous as an escaping convict flattened against a prison wall under the harsh glare of a spotlight.

He dropped the spare air tanks and pressed his body into the silt, imagining the crew's faces pressed against the viewing ports, eyes trying to pierce the unending darkness. He held his breath so no telltale air bubbles would issue from his regulator.

The craft passed behind him and moved on. Gly inhaled a great breath, but didn't congratulate himself. He knew the crew would double back and keep looking.

Then he realized why he'd been missed. The silt had billowed up and clouded his figure. He lashed out with his fins and watched with relief as the submersible's light became lost in a great swirl of sediment. He grabbed up handfuls and waved the ooze about him. Within seconds he was totally cloaked. He switched on his diving light, but the floating muck reflected its ray. If he was blind, so were the men inside the submersible.

He groped around until his hands touched the spare air tanks. He checked his luminous wrist compass for the direction of the Empress and started to swim, stirring up the bottom in his wake.

"Klinger reporting in from the Sappho," said Gunn.

Pitt stepped back from the monitors. "Let me talk to him."

Gunn pulled off the headset and held it out. Pitt adjusted it to his head and spoke into the tiny microphone.

"Klinger, this is Pitt. What did you find?"

"Some sort of disturbance on the riverbed," Klinger's voice came back.

"Could you make out the cause?"

"Negative," Klinger repeated. "Whatever it was must have sunk in the silt."

Pitt looked over at the side-scan sonar. "Any contacts?"

The operator shook his head. "Except for a cloudlike smudge this side of the sub, the chart reads clear."

"Shall we return and give a hand with the salvage?" asked Klinger.

Pitt subsided into momentary silence. Oddly, Klinger's query annoyed him. Deep down inside he felt that an indefinable something was being overlooked.

Cold logic dictated that the human mind was far less infallible than machines. If the instruments detected nothing, then chances were, nothing was there to detect. Against his own nagging doubts, Pitt acknowledged Klinger's request.

"Klinger."

"Go ahead."

"Come on back, but take it slow and run a zigzag course."

"Understood. We'll keep a sharp eye. Sappho out."

Pitt handed the communications link back to Gunn. "How's it going?"

"Beautifully," replied Gunn. "See for yourself."

The clearing of the gallery was proceeding at a furious rate, or as furiously as was possible under the glue like hindrance of deepwater pressure. The team of divers from the saturation chamber sliced away at the smaller pieces of scrap, working with acetylene torches and hydraulic cutters. Two of them propped up the teetering bulkheads with aluminum support pillars to prevent a cave-in.

The men in the JIM suits were guiding the grappling claw, dangling from the Ocean Venturer's derrick above, to the heaviest sections of twisted debris. While one manhandled the lift cable, twisting it to the best angle, the other man held a small box in his hand-operated manipulator clamps that controlled the huge claw. When they were satisfied that they had a good, healthy bite, the pincers were closed, and the winch operator on the derrick took over, gently easing the load out of what had come to be known. affectionately as the pit.

"At the rate they're going," said Gunn, "we'll be ready to make the final burn over the area of Shields' stateroom in four days."

"Four days," Pitt said turning over the words slowly. "God only knows if we'll still be here-" Suddenly he stiffened and stared at the screens.

Gunn looked at him. "Is something wrong?"

"How many divers are supposed to be out of the chamber this shift?"

"Four at a time," replied Gunn. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I count five."

Gly cursed himself for taking such a foolish risk, but lying under one of the rusting lifeboats he could not observe in any detail the activity taking place down in the hole where the salvage team was laboring. The idea of mingling with them seemed absurdly simple, though dangerous.

He noted there was only a slight difference in the style of his thermal exposure suit and theirs. The air tanks strapped to his back were of an earlier model, but the color was the same. Who would notice a near-lookalike interloper in the murk?

He swam down and approached from one side until his fins scraped against something solid: a steel hatch cover torn loose and resting on the deck. Before he could figure out his next move, one of the salvage crew drifted over and pointed down at the hatch. Gly gave an exaggerated nod of his head in understanding, and together the two of them wrestled the heavy steci plate to the bulwarks and heaved it over the side.

There were no invisible perils here. Gly recognized the threat and kept a wary eye. He pitched in with the others as though he had been doing it from the start. It was to his way of thinking a classic case of the most obvious being the least obvious.

They were much farther along than he had imagined. The NUMA people were like miners who seemed to know exactly where the mother lode was located, and they dug their shaft accordingly. By his calculation they were removing a ton of scrap every three hours.

He kicked across the cavity, taking an approximate measurement of its width. The next two questions were, how deep were they going and how long would it take them to get there: Then he sensed that something was out of place, an impression more fancied than evident. Nothing looked to be out of the ordinary. The salvage men seemed too involved with their work to notice Gly. Yet there was a subtle change.

Gly moved into the shadows and floated immobile, breathing shallowly and evenly. He listened to the magnified underwater sounds and watched the animated movements of the JIM suits. His overworked sixth sense told him it was time to fade away. But he was too late.

What was imperceptible a moment before came through with glassy transparency now. The other divers looked busy, but they were accomplishing nothing. The grappling claw had not returned after snatching its last load. The saturation divers lazily poked at the debris but did not transfer any of it over the side.

Slowly, with clairvoyant cooperation, they had gradually formed a crescent around Gly. Then it dawned on him. His presence had been detected from the other ship. He had failed to catch the TV cameras attached to the lights because they were hidden by the glare, nor did he realize until now that the salvagers could receive instructions from a command center through miniaturized receivers inside their hoods.

He retreated until his back flattened against a bulkhead. The JIM suits formed a barrier in front of him while the other divers hovered on the flanks, closing off the final avenues of escape. They were all gazing at him now, and unemotional.

Gly unsheathed an eight-inch knife and crouched, thrusting it palm up in the nonprofessional but still lethal stance of a street fighter. It was a futile gesture born from a reflex action. The other divers carried knives too, nasty stainless steel blades strapped to their legs. And the manipulator clamps of the JIM suits possessed an inhuman strength to make painful wounds indeed.

They gathered around him motionless, like statues in a graveyard. Then one of the divers took a plastic slate from his weight belt and briefly wrote on it with a yellow grease stick. He finished and held the slate in front of Gly's nose. The message was short and to the point. It simply read,

KISS OFF

For a moment Gly was stunned.

This was not the reception he expected. Not waiting to be cajoled, he flexed his knees and launched his body upward, swimming strongly over the NUMA divers' heads. They made not the slightest effort to stop him, moving only to turn and watch him melt into the blackness.

"You let him go," Gunn said quietly.

"Yes, I let him go."

"Do you think it was wise?"

Pitt stood impassive and did not immediately answer, his incredible green eyes narrowed in conjecture. There was a smile but not a smile. The expression was almost menacing, that of a lion waiting in cover for a passing meal. "You saw the knife," Pitt said at last.

"He didn't have a prayer. Our boys would have fed him to the fish."

"The man was a killer." It was a simple statement, nothing more.

"We can still pick him up when he surfaces," Gunn persisted. "He would be helpless then."

"I don't think so."

"Any particular thought in mind?"

"Elementary," said Pitt. "We use a small fish to catch a big one.

"So that's it, eh?" Gunn said, unconvinced. "Wait until he meets up with his buddies, form a posse and round up the lot. Then turn them over to the authorities."

"For all we know, they are the authorities."

Gunn was more confused than ever. "So what's the percentage?"

"Our visitor was only on a scout mission. Next time he might bring some friends and really get nasty. We need to buy time. I think it would be worth our while to stop their clock."

Gunn made a peculiar twist with his lips and nodded. "I'm with you, but we had better get a move on. That guy will be boarding the next boat that passes by."

"No rush," Pitt said, quite relaxed. "He'll have to decompress for at least a half an hour. Probably has a spare set of air cylinders stashed on the river bottom somewhere."

Another question formed in Gunn's mind. "You said the gate-crasher was a killer. What made you say that?"

"He was too quick with the knife, too anxious to use it. Those who are born with a killer instinct never hesitate."

"So we're up against people with a license to kill," said Gunn thoughtfully. "Not exactly a cozy thought."

In the basin of the port of Rimouski, along the two deserted docks and the long warehouses, the predawn atmosphere was quiet and desolate, the stillness accented by the absence of wind.

It was too early for the appearance of the dockworkers, the eternally squawking seagulls, and the diesel locomotives that hauled the unloaded cargo to a nearby industrial park.

Tied to one dock was the tug that had towed an empty barge up and down the river past the Ocean Venturer only a few hours earlier. It was streaked with red rust, and the ravages from thirty years of hard use lay heavily on its uncompromising lines. A light streamed from the portholes of the master's cabin directly below the pilothouse, dimly reflecting across the black water.

Shaw checked his watch and pushed a tiny switch on what could have passed for a pocket calculator. He closed his eyes in thought a moment, and then began punching the rows of buttons.

Nothing like the old days, he mused, when an agent had to hide in an attic and mutter in low tones into the microphone of a radio transmitter. Now digital signals were relayed by satellite to a computer in London. There the message was decoded and sent to its proper destination by fiber optical transmission.

When he finished, he laid the electronic unit on the table and stood up to stretch. His muscles were stiff and his back sore. The bane of advancing age. He reached into his suitcase and pulled out the bottle of Canadian Club he had purchased after arriving at the Rimouski airport.

The Canadians called it whiskey, but to his British taste it seemed little different from American bourbon. It struck him as primitive to drink it warm-only the Scots preferred to down their liquor that way-but then, decrepit tugboats lacked such modern conveniences as ice makers He sat down in a chair and lit one of his specially o ordered cigarettes. At least something remained of the past. All he lacked was a warm companion. It was times like these, when he was alone with a bottle and reflecting on his life, that he regretted not having remarried.

His reverie was interrupted when the little device on the table gave off a muted beep. Then a fine slip of paper, no more than a quarter of an inch in width, began to issue from one end. A marvel of advanced technology; it never failed to amuse him.

He donned a pair of reading glasses, another curse of the creeping years, and began studying the diminutive wording on the paper. The full text consumed nearly half a meter. At the end he removed his glasses, switched off the transmitter receiver and replaced it in his pocket. "The latest news from jolly old England?" Shaw looked up to find Foss Gly standing in the doorway.

Gly made no move to enter. He just stared at Shaw from under questioning eyebrows and the expression in the eyes was that of a jackal sniffing the air.

"Merely an acknowledgment of my report on what you observed," replied Shaw casually. He began idly wrapping the message strip around his index finger in a roll.

Gly had changed from his thermal exposure suit into dungarees and a heavy turtleneck sweater. "I've still got the shivers. Mind if I help myself to a shot of your booze?"

"Be my guest."

Gly emptied half a water glass of the Canadian Club in two swallows. He reminded Shaw of an immense trained bear he'd once seen gulping a bucket of ale.

Gly expelled a long sigh. "Makes me feel almost human again.

"By my reckoning," said Shaw conversationally, "your decompression stage was five minutes on the down side. Are you feeling any ill effects?"

Gly made as if to pour himself another drink. "A slight tingling sensation, nothing more-" In a lightning movement his hand shot across the table and clutched Shaw's wrist in a steel grip. "That message wouldn't happen to concern liir-, liuw would it, dad?"

Shaw tensed as the nails dug into him. He flattened his feet on the floor, planning to thrust his body backward out of the chair. But Gly anticipated his thoughts.

"No tricks, dad, or I'll snap your bone."

Shaw sagged. Not from fear. From anger at being caught at a disadvantage.

"You overrate yourself, Inspector Gly. Why should the British secret service bother itself about you?"

"A thousand apologies," Gly sneered, maintaining the pressure. "I'm the suspicious type. Liars make me edgy."

"A crude accusation from a crude mind," said Shaw, coming back on balance. "I'd expect little else, considering the source."

Gly's lips twisted. "Clever words, Superspy. Suppose you tell me you didn't contact your boss in London and receive an acknowledgment over two hours ago."

"And if I say you're mistaken?"

"No good. I had a little chat with Doc Coli in the galley. Is your memory so rotten you've forgotten he helped you compose your report on that little gizmo? Or that you added a postscript after Coli left. A request for a rundown on Foss Gly. You know it, I know it. The reply is there in your hand."

The trapdoor had sprung and Shaw had fallen through. He cursed his transparency. He had little doubt that the ugly man across the table would murder if given the slightest opportunity. His only hope was to stall and throw Gly off his stride. He tried a long shot.

"Mr. Villon mentioned in passing that you might prove unstable. I should have taken him at his word."

The angry wideniing of the eyes told Shaw he had struck a nerve. He continued to turn the screw. "I believe he even used the term 'psycho.' "

The reaction was not what he expected. Not what he expected at all.

Instead of cold wrath, Gly's expression was suddenly transformed to one of enlightenment. He released Shaw's wrist and sat back. "So the double-talking scum stabbed me in the back," Gly muttered. "I might have guessed he'd eventually wise up to my scheme." He paused and looked at Shaw curiously. "I get the story now. Why I was always sent to do the underwater dirty work. Somewhere along the line you were to see to it I was conveniently drowned by an unfortunate accident."

Shaw was at a loss. None of this was going in the direction he intended. He flat out didn't know what Gly was talking about. He had no option but to string along. Very carefully he removed the message from his finger with his free hand and flipped it on the table in front of Gly and studied his eyes. There was a fractional glance downward, no more than a second. But it was enough.

"What puzzles me is why you're risking your life for a government and a man who wants you dead."

"Maybe I like the company benefits."

"Wit doesn't become you, Mr. Bogus Inspector Gly."

"How much did Villon tell you about me?"

"He didn't elaborate," said Shaw, mashing out his cigarette in an ashtray and noting that Gly's eyes followed the movement. "He only suggested that I would be doing Canada a favor by removing you. Frankly, I wasn't keen to play the role of a hired assassin, especially without knowing why you deserved to die."

"What changed your mind?"

"You did." Shaw had Gly's interest at a peak, but he still had no idea where it was taking him. "I began to study you. Your French-Canadian tongue is letter perfect. But your English: now there hangs another tale. Not the accent, mind you, but the terminology. Words like 'booze' and 'gizmo,' expressions such as 'What's the scam?' Pure Americanese. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked London to run a check on you. The answer is there on the table. You do deserve to die, Mr. Gly. No man deserves it more."

Gly's face turned menacing and his grinning teeth glistened yellow under the cabin light. "Do you think you're man enough to take me, dad?"

Shaw clutched the edge of the table with his hands and wondered how Gly intended to kill him. Gly would have to use a gun with a silencer or perhaps a knife. A loud report would bring Coli and the crew of the tug rushing into the cabin. Gly sat with his arms crossed casually in front of him. He looked relaxed, too relaxed.

"I don't have to bother. Mr. Villon had a change of heart. He's decided to turn you over to the Mounties."

Shaw had taken a wrong turn. He could read the mistake on Gly's face.

"Nice try, dad, but you blew it. Villon can't afford to keep me alive. I could put him behind bars until the next ice age."

"Just testing the water," said Shaw with feigned indifference. "The report is on Villon, not you." He nodded at the tabletop. "Read it yourself." Gly's eyes flicked downward.

Shaw threw every ounce of his strength against the table in a twisting motion and rammed the corner edge into the sweater just above the beltline.

A sharp grunt was the only reaction. Gly absorbed the momentum and scarcely recoiled. It would have knocked any other man across the room in agony. He clamped a great ham of a fist around a table leg and effortlessly lifted the heavy oak fixture to the ceiling.

Shaw was stunned. The thing must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds.

Gly slowly lowered the table, and set it aside as easily as a child laying a doll in a baby carriage and, rose to his feet. Shaw picked up his chair and brought it down in a violent arc, but Gly simply grabbed it in midair, wrenched it away and placed it neatly under the table.

There was no anger, no savage glare in Gly's eyes as they stared unblinkingly into Shaw's only three feet away.

"I have a gun," said Shaw, fighting to keep his voice controlled.

"Yes, I know," replied Gly, grinning satanically. "A quaint, old-fashioned twenty-five-caliber Beretta. I found it stashed in a boot beside your bunk. In fact, it's still there. I made sure before I came in here."

Shaw realized he wasn't going to feel the hammer impact of a bullet or the cut of a knife. Gly was going to do the job with his bare hands.

Shaw fought off a wave of mental nausea and lashed out with a vicious judo kick. He might just as well have stubbed his toe on a tree. Gly spun sideways and neutralized the thrust to his groin, taking the blow on his hip. He moved forward, taking no precaution to cover himself. He had the blank look of a butcher approaching a side of beef.

Retreating until his back met a bulkhead, Shaw glanced wildly around for a weapon, a lamp, or a book he could hurl, anything to slow two hundred pounds of muscle. But tugboat cabins are conceived for austere living; except for a picture screwed into a panel, there was nothing in reach.

Shaw pressed the flats of his hands together and whipped them in a scything chop to the side of Gly's neck. It was, he knew with sickening certainty, his last act of defiance. The result was the same as striking concrete, and he gasped in shock and pain. It felt as if both his palm bones had cracked.

Gly, showing no ill effects, reached around the small of Shaw's back with one massive arm and pulled, while the other forearm pressed into Shaw's chest. Then Gly slowly increased the opposing pressures and Shaw's spine began to bend. "So long, you limey twit."

Shaw gnashed his teeth together as the agony suddenly mushroomed inside him. The air was squeezed from his lungs and he could feel his heartbeat pounding in his head as the cabin began to dim and waver before his eyes. A final scream tried to force its way through clenched teeth, but died. There was nothing left now but the gruesome snap of his back. Death was the only release.

Somewhere in the distance, it seemed miles off, came the sound of a loud crack, and Shaw thought it was all over. The relentless pressure fell away and the agony dropped by several degrees. He went limp and crumpled to the deck.

Shaw wondered what would happen next. A long walk down a dark tunnel before reaching a blinding light? He was vaguely disappointed that there was no music. He began to itemize his sensations. It struck him as odd that he could still feel pain. His ribs ached and his spine felt as though it was on fire. Apprehensively he opened his eyes. It took them a few moments to focus properly.

The first objects he distinguished were a pair of cowboy boots.

He blinked, but they were still there. Calfskin with stitched design on the sides, high heel and modified pointed toe. He turned his head and looked up into a craggy face with eyes that seemed to smile. "Who are you?" he mumbled. "Pitt. Dirk Pitt."

"Strange, you don't look like the devil." Shaw had never doubted where he would eventually wind up.

Now the lips smiled. "There are some who would disagree." He knelt and hooked his hands under Shaw's arms. "Here, let me help you up, dad."

"God, how I wish," Shaw murmured irritably, "that people would stop calling me dad."

Gly lay like a dead man. His arms were loosely outflung, his legs twisted and slightly bent. He looked like a deflated rubber balloon.

"How did you manage that?" asked a dazed Shaw.

Pitt held up a very large wrench. "Equally good for turning bolts and denting skulls."

"Is he dead?"

"I doubt it. Nothing less than a cannon could wipe him out."

Shaw took several deep breaths and massaged his aching hands. "I'm grateful for your timely intervention, Mr…... er…..."

"The name is Pitt, Mr. Shaw. And you can cut the charade. We both know all about each other."

Shaw shifted his mind from first gear into second. Through luck he had barely survived one opponent, and now he was facing another.

"You're taking quite a chance, Mr. Pitt. My crew could come marching through the door any second."

"If anybody comes marching in here," Pitt said nonchalantly, "it'll be my crew. While you were waltzing with that walking muscle on the floor, your crew got securely stowed away in the engine room."

"My compliments," replied Shaw. "You walk softly and carry a big wrench."

Pitt shoved the tool into the side pocket of his windbreaker and sat down. "They were very cooperative. But I guess that happens to men when they stare into the business end of an automatic rifle."

Pain waves shot up and down Shaw's back. His lips pressed together and his face paled. He tried a few bending exercises, but they only made matters worse.

Pitt watched him. "I suggest you see an osteopath after you notify MI6 of recent events."

"Thank you for your concern," Shaw muttered. "How do you come to know so much?"

"You became an instant celebrity when you-looked into the cameras of our survey vehicle. Heidi Milligan recognized your face, and the CIA fleshed out your past."

Shaw's eyes narrowed. "Commander Milligan is on board your ship?"

"You're old friends, she tells me. A lovely girl, and savvy too. She conducts our historical research."

"I see," said Shaw. "She laid out the path for your salvage operation."

"If you mean that Heidi pointed out the location of Harvey Shields' cabin, yes."

Shaw was always amazed at the frankness of the Americans. Pitt, on the other hand, was always irritated by the British preference for fencing around.

"Why are you here, Mr. Pitt?"

"I felt the time had come to warn you to lay off."

"Lay off"

"There's no law that says you can't sit in the bleachers as a spectator, Mr. Shaw. But keep your boys out of our salvage area. The last one tried to play rough."

"You must be talking about Mr. Gly there."

Pitt looked down at the inert body. "I should have guessed."

"There was a time when I might have made him a good match," said Shaw wistfully.

Pitt smiled a smile that warmed the room. "I only hope I'm in as good a shape as you when I'm sixty-six."

"Good guess."

"Weight one hundred and seventy pounds; height six feet one inch, right-handed, numerous scars. No guess, Mr. Shaw. I have a copy of your biography. You've led an interesting life."

"Perhaps, but your accomplishments far outstrip mine." Shaw smiled for the first time. "You see, I have a file on you too."

Pitt looked at his watch. "I must be getting back to-the Ocean Venturer. It was a pleasure meeting you."

"I'll see you to your boat. It's the least I can do for a man who saved my life."

Two men stood guard on the deck outside. They were about the size and shape of polar bears. One of them spoke with a voice that seemed to come up from his socks when he spotted Shaw.

"Any problems, sir?" Pitt shook his head. "None. Are we ready to shove off?"

"Everyone is aboard except us."

"Go ahead. I'll follow."

Both men gave Shaw a don't-try-anything-funny look and climbed over the side to a launch moored beside the tug.

Pitt turned and said, "Give my regards to General Simms."

Shaw peered at Pitt with continued respect. "Is there anything you don't know?"

"There's lots I don't know." Pitt's expression turned devilish. "For one thing, I never took the time to learn backgammon."

God, Shaw thought, the man is beyond wonder, but he was too much the professional not to see the icy shrewdness beneath the outer layer of friendly warmth. "I shall be happy to teach you sometime. I'm rather good at the game."

"I'll look forward to it."

Pitt held out his hand.

In all his years in the deadly business of espionage, this was the first time Shaw ever recalled shaking hands with the enemy. He stared into Pitt's eyes for a long moment.

"Forgive me for not wishing you luck, Mr. Pitt, but you cannot be allowed to find the treaty. Your side has everything to gain. Mine has everything to lose. You must understand that."

"We both know the score."

"I would very much regret having to kill you,"

"I wouldn't like it much either." Pitt straddled the railing, paused and threw a wave. "Break a leg, Mr. Shaw." And then he dropped onto the foredeck of the launch.

Shaw stood for several minutes, watching the tiny boat until it became lost in the darkness. Then he wearily walked down to the engine room and released Dr. Coli and the tug's crew. When he returned to his cabin, Foss Gly was gone.

A crowd of nearly one thousand people stood outside the residence of the Prime Minister, applauding and waving placards and hand-painted banners in French and English, wishing Charles Sarveux well as he arrived home from the hospital. The doctors had insisted that he be transported by ambulance, but he firmly ignored their advice and rode home in the official limousine, impeccably dressed in a newly purchased suit, his scarred hands concealed by a pair of oversize kid gloves.

One of his party advisers suggested he keep his bandages in plain view to evoke public sentiment. But Sarveux would have no part of gimmicky politics. It was not his way.

The pain in his hip was excruciating. His arms were stiff with scar tissue and exploded in agony every time he attempted to move them. He was thankful the crowds and reporters were too distant to see the sweat that ran down his face as he smiled through tight lips and waved to their cheers.

The car passed through the gate and stopped at the front steps. Danielle rushed up to the door and threw it open. "Welcome home, Charles-"

The words stuck in her throat when she saw the tortured face, deep-etched in ashen, suffering "Help me inside," he whispered. "Let me get a Mountie-"

"No," he cut her off. "I will not be taken for an invalid."

He twisted in the back seat and placed his feet on the ground, his body half in, half out of the car. He took a moment to steel himself against the torment, then hooked one arm around Danielle's waist and swayed to a standing position.

She nearly went down under his weight. It took all her strength to hold him upright. She could almost feel the agony emanate from him as they shuffled up the steps of the landing. At the doorway he turned and flashed the famous Charles Sarveux smile at a bevy of reporters across the drive and made a thumbs-up sign.

Once the front door closed, his iron will gave out and he began to sink to the carpet. A Mountie swiftly pushed Danielle aside and grabbed him around the shoulders. A doctor and two nurses materialized, and together they gently carried him up the stairs to his room.

"You were mad to play hero," the doctor reprimanded Sarveux after settling the Prime Minister in bed. "Your fracture is far from fully healed. You might have caused serious damage and set back your recovery."

"A small risk to assure the people that their leader is not a vegetable." Sarveux smiled weakly.

Danielle came and sat on the edge of the bed. "You've made your point, Charles. There is no need to exert yourself." He kissed her hand. "I beg your forgiveness, Danielle."

She looked at him in confusion. "Forgiveness?"

"Yes," he said softly so the others in the room did not hear. "I undervalued your spirit. I always looked upon you as a wealthy child whose only aim in life was to nurture a great beauty and indulge in Cinderella fantasies. I was wrong."

"I'm not sure I understand…..." she said hesitantly.

"In my absence you stepped into my shoes and took up the reins of office with dignity and determination," he said sincerely. "You have truly proven that Danielle Sarveux is the first lady of the land."

Suddenly she felt a, deep sadness for him. In certain respects he was perceptive, and in others he seemed naive. Only now was he beginning to appreciate her capabilities. And yet her desires completely eluded him. He could not see that she was an illusion, could not guess the extent of her deceit.

By the time he came to know her fully, she thought, it would be too late.

Sarveux was in his robe, seated on the sofa and staring at the television set, whei Henri Villon entered his room later that night. A news commentator was standing in the middle of Quebec Street, surrounded by a huge crowd of cheering people.

"Thank you for coming, Henri."

Villon looked at the TV. "It's done," he said quietly. "The referendum for full independence has passed. Quebec is a nation."

"Now the chaos begins," said Sarveux. He punched the OFF button on the control box and the TV set went dark. Then he turned to Villon and motioned to a chair. "How do you see it?"

"I'm certain the transition will be smooth."

"You're overly optimistic. Until a general election can be held to install a new government, Quebec's parliament will be in turmoil, a golden opportunity for the FQS to rise up out of their sewer and make a power play." He shook his head sadly. "Jules Guertier's death could not have come at a worse time. He and I could have worked together in softening the road. Now I don't know."

"Surely you feel that the vacuum left by Jules can be filled?"

"By whom? You perhaps?"

A hardness came into Villon's eyes. "No man is better qualified. My efforts were instrumental in putting across the referendum. I have the backing of the trade unions and financial institutions. I am a respected party leader, and most important, I am a Frenchman who is highly regarded by the rest of Canada. Quebec needs me" Charles. I shall run for president and I'll win."

"So Henri Villon is going to lead Quebec out of the wilderness," said Sarveux caustically.

"French culture is more alive today than ever before. My sacred duty is to nourish it."

"Stop waving the fleur-delis, Henri. It doesn't become you."

"I have deep feelings for my native land."

"You have deep feelings for only Henri Villon."

"You think so little of me?" snapped Villon.

Sarveux stared him in the eye. "I had a high opinion of you once. But I watched as blind ambition transformed a dedicated idealist into a devious schemer." Villon glared back. "I think you should explain yourself."

"For starters, what possessed you to black out a third of the United States at the James Bay power project?"

Villon's expression turned impassive. "I felt it was necessary. The blackout was meant as a warning to the Americans to keep their hands off of French affairs."

"Where did you get such an insane idea?" Villon gave him a bemused look. "From you, of-course." Sarveux's expression went blank.

Suddenly Villon began to laugh. "You really don't remember, do you?"

"Remember what?" Sarveux asked mechanically.

"In the hospital after the plane crash, your mind was confused from the anesthetic. You raved about Canada being in great peril if the wrong people discovered the vulnerability of the control booth at James Bay. You were vague on the meaning. But then you instructed Danielle to tell me to consult Max Roubaix, the long-dead garrote murderer."

Sarveux sat mute, his face unreadable.

"A damned clever riddle, considering it came from a scrambled brain," Villon continued. "It took me a while to figure the parallel between Roubaix's favorite weapon and an energy stranglehold. I thank you for that, Charles. You unwittingly showed me how to make the Americans dance to the mere flip of an electrical switch."

Sarveux sat in silence for a moment, then he looked up at Villon and said, "Not unwittingly."

Villon missed the point. "Pardon?"

"Danielle did not hear the raving of a delirious man. There was a great deal of pain, but my mind was clear when I told her I wanted you to consult Max Roubaix."

"Playing some sort of childish game, Charles?"

Sarveux ignored him. "A very old and dear friend said you would betray my trust and the faith the Canadian people had in you. I could not bring myself to believe you were a traitor, Henri. But I had to be sure. You took the bait and threatened the United States with energy blackmail. A grave mistake on your part, antagonizing a superpower in the next yard."

Villon's mouth tightened in an ugly grin. "So you think you know something. To hell with you and to hell with the United States. As long as Quebec controls the St. Lawrence River and the hydroelectricity from James Bay it will be we who dictate to them and western Canada for a change. The Americans' righteous and holy preaching has made them clowns in the eyes of the world. They sit smug in their stupid morality, caring only about their private assets and bank accounts. America is a fading power on the way out. Inflation will finish their economic system. If they dare try and ram sanctions down Quebec's throat, we'll cut their circuits."

"Brave talk," said Sarveux. "But like so many others, you'll find that underestimating their resolve never pays. When their backs are to the wall, the Americans have a habit of coming out fighting."

"The guts have gone out of them," Villon sneered.

"You're a fool." Sarveux could not suppress the chill that ran through him. "For the good of Canada I will unmask and break you."

"You couldn't break a shop clerk," Villon mocked him.

"You haven't got a shred of solid evidence against me. No, Charles, soon the English-speaking bastards will kick you out of office, and I'll see to it you're not welcome in Quebec. It's about time you woke up to the fact that you're a man without a country." Villon rose and pulled a sealed envelope from his breast pocket and dropped it rudely in Sarveux's lap. "My resignation from the cabinet."

"Accepted," Sarveux said with grim finality.

Villon could not leave without one parting insult. "You're a pitiful creature, Charles. You haven't come to grips with it yet, but you have nothing left, not even your precious Danielle."

At the doorway Villon turned for a last look at Sarveux, expecting to see a man drowning in despair and defeat, his hopes and dreams shattered beyond repair.

Instead, he saw a man who was inexplicably smiling.

Villon went direct to his office in the Parliament building and began cleaning out his desk. He saw no purpose in waiting for morning and suffering through a multitude of goodbyes from men he neither respected nor liked.

His chief aide knocked and entered. "You have several messages-"

Villon waved a hand and cut him off. "I'm not interested. As of one hour ago I am no longer minister of internal affairs."

"There is one from Mr. Brian Shaw that sounded quite urgent. Also, General Simms has been personally trying to reach you."

"Yes, that North American Treaty affair," Villon said without looking up. "They're, probably begging for more men and equipment."

"Actually it's a request for our navy to escort the American ship off the wreckage of the Empress of Ireland."

"Fill out the necessary papers and sign my name to them. Then contact the commanding naval officer of the St. Lawrence District and have him carry out the request."

The aide turned and started for his office.

"Wait!" Villon's French fervor suddenly welled up within him. "One more thing. Instruct General Simms and Mr. Shaw that the sovereign nation of Quebec no longer relishes British meddling in her territory, and they are to cease all surveillance activities at once. Then get a message to our mercenary friend, Mr. Gly. Tell him there's a fat bonus for giving the NUMA ship a rousing farewell party. He'll understand."

They came late the following morning, ensigns flying and half the crew smartly turned out to stare at the Ocean Venturer. The foam fell away from the bow to a gentle wave; the beat of the engines slowed as the Canadian destroyer eased to a stop on a parallel heading two hundred yards to the south.

The radio operator came up to Pitt and Heidi who were standing on the bridge wing. "From the captain of the destroyer H.M.C.S. Huron. He requests permission to board."

"Nice and courteous," mused Pitt. "At least he asked."

"What do you think is on his mind?" asked Heidi.

"I know what's on his mind," replied Pitt. He turned to the radio operator. "Extend my compliments to the captain. Permission to board granted, but only if he honors us by staying for lunch."

"I wonder what he's like?" Heidi murmured.

"Who else but a woman would care?" Pitt laughed. "Probably a spit-and-polish type, cool, precise and very official, who talks in Morse code."

"You're just being nasty." Heidi smiled.

"You wait." Pitt grinned back. "I bet he climbs up the ladder whistling "Maple Leaf Forever."

Lieutenant Commander Raymond Weeks did nothing of the sort. He was a jolly-looking man with laughing gray-blue eyes and a warm face. He had a pleasant ringing voice that came out of a short body with a noticeable paunch. With the right stuffing and a costume he'd have made a perfect department store Santa Claus.

He leaped lightly over the railing and walked unerringly up to Pitt, who was standing slightly off to one side of the welcoming committee.

"Mr. Pitt, I'm Ray Weeks. This is indeed an honor. I was absorbed by your work on the Titanic raising. You might even say I'm a fan of yours."

Charmingly disarmed, Pitt could only mumble, "How do you do."

Heidi nudged him in the ribs. "Spit and polish, heh?"

Weeks said, "Beg your pardon."

"Nothing," Heidi said brightly. "An inside joke."

Pitt recovered and made the introductions. It was, to his way of thinking, a wasted formality. That Weeks had been well briefed was obvious. He seemed to know everything about everybody. He expounded on a marine archaeological project that Rudi Gunn had nearly forgotten, even though he had been its field director. Weeks was especially solicitous to Heidi.

"If all my fellow officers looked like you, Commander Milligan, I might never retire from service."

"Flattery deserves a reward," said Pitt. "Perhaps I can persuade Heidi to give you a tour of the ship."

"I'd like that very-much." Then Weeks' expression turned serious. "You may not be so hospitable when you learn the nature of my visit."

"You've come to tell us the ball game has been called because of political rain."

"Your vernacular is most appropriate." Weeks shrugged. "I have my orders. I'm sorry."

"How much time have we got to retrieve our men and equipment?"

"How much do you need?"

"Twenty- four hours."

Weeks was no fool. He knew enough about salvage to know Pitt was conning him. "I can give you eight."

"We can't bring up the saturation chamber in less than twelve."

"You'd make a good merchant in a Turkish bazaar, Mr. Pitt." Weeks' smile returned. "Ten hours should see you through. "Providing you begin counting after lunch."

Weeks threw up his hands. "My God, you never give up. All right, after lunch it is."

"Now that's settled, Commander Weeks," said Heidi, "if you'll follow me, I'll show you the operation."

Accompanied by two of his ship's officers, Weeks trailed Heidi down a stairway to the work platform inside the center well. Pitt and Gunn turned and slowly made their way to the control room.

"Why the V.I.P treatment for a character who's kicking us out of the park?" Gunn asked irritably.

"I bought ten hours," Pitt said in a low voice. "And I'm going to buy every minute I can to keep those guys below working on the wreck."

Gunn stopped and looked at him. "Are you saying you're not discontinuing the project?"

"Hell yes," said Pitt earnestly.

"You're nuts." Gunn shook his head in wonder. "We need at least two more days to break through to Shields' cabin. You don't stand a prayer of stalling that long."

Pitt smiled crookedly. "Maybe not, but by God, I'm going to try."

Through the heavy veil of sleep, Moon felt someone shaking him. He had remained in his office around the clock since the Ocean Venturer had moored over the Empress of Ireland. Normal sleeping hours were forgotten and he took to catching up on his sleep with short catnaps. When he finally opened his eyes he found them looking into the grim features of the White House communications director. He yawned and sat up. "What's the latest?"

The communications director handed him a sheet of paper. "Read it and weep."

Moon studied the wording. Then he looked up. "Where's the President?"

"He's speaking to a group of Mexican-American labor leaders out in the rose garden."

Moon slipped on his shoes and hurried down the hallway, pulling on his coat and straightening his tie as he went. The President had just finished a round of handshaking and was returning to the oval office when Moon caught up with him. "More bad news?" asked the President.

Moon nodded and held up the message. "The latest word from Pitt."

"Read it to me as we walk back to my office."

"He says, "Have been ordered out of the St. Lawrence by the Canadian navy. Granted a ten-hour grace period to pack the suitcases. Destroyer is standing by."

"Is that all?"

"No, sir, there's more."

"Then let's have it."

Moon read on. " 'Intend to disregard eviction notice. Salvage continues. We are preparing to repel boarders. Signed Pitt.'"

The President stopped in mid-stride. "What was that?"

"Sir?"

"The last part, read it again."

" 'We are preparing to repel boarders.'"

The President shook his head in astonishment. "Good lord, the order to repel boarders hasn't been given in a hundred years."

"If I'm any judge of character, Pitt means what he says."

The President looked thoughtful.

"So the British and Canadians have slammed the door."

"I'm afraid that's the verdict," said Moon. "Shall I contact Pitt and order him to break off the salvage? Any other action might provoke a military response."

"It's true we're walking a tightrope, but good old-fashioned guts deserve a reward."

Moon suppressed a sudden fear. "You're not suggesting we throw Pitt a lifeline."

"I am," said the President. "It's time we showed some guts of our own."

They stood together tenderly as though it was the first time and watched a young moon rise in the east, guessing the destinations of the ships beating steadily downriver. Overhead the two red lights, signifying a vessel moored over a wreck, burned from the mast, giving them just enough glow to make out each other's faces. "I never knew it would come to this," Heidi said softly.

"You created a ripple effect," Pitt responded, "and it's still spreading."

She leaned against him. "Strange how the discovery of an old crumpled letter in a university archive could touch so many lives. If only I'd left well enough alone," she whispered.

Pitt put his arm around her and gently squeezed. "We can't look back on the ifs. There's no profit in it."

Heidi gazed across the water at the Canadian destroyer. The decks and boxlike superstructure were brightly lit, and she could hear the hum of the generators. She shivered as a drifting patch of fog crept in across the river. "What will happen when we overstep Commander Weeks' deadline?"

Pitt held up his watch to the dim mast lights. "We'll know in another twenty minutes."

"I feel so ashamed."

Pitt looked at her. "What is this, cleanse-the-soul hour?"

"That ship wouldn't be out there if I hadn't blabbed to Brian Shaw."

"Remember what I said about ifs."

"But I slept with him. That makes it worse. If anyone is hurt I…..." The words escaped her and she fell silent as Pitt held her tight.

They did not speak again until, a few minutes later, a low, polite cough tugged them back to reality. Pitt turned to see Rudi Gunn standing on the bridge wing above.

"You'd better come up, Dirk. Weeks is getting pretty insistent. Claims he sees no evidence of our departure. I'm running out of excuses."

"Did you tell him the ship is swept by bubonic plague and mutiny?"

"No time for humor," Gunn said seriously. "We also have a contact on radar. A ship steering out of the main channel in our direction. I fear our luncheon guest has called up reinforcements."

Weeks stared through the bridge windows at the incoming mist. He held a cup of coffee in one hand that was half full and turning cold. His normally easygoing disposition was stretched to the limits by the annoying indifference of the NUMA ship to his requests for information. He turned to his first officer, who was bent over a radarscope. "What do you make of it?"

"A large ship, nothing more. Probably a coastal tanker or a containership. Can you see its lights?"

"Only when they climbed over the horizon. The fog has cut them off."

"The curse of the St. Lawrence," said the first officer. "You never know when the fog decides to shroud this part of the river."

Weeks trained a pair of binoculars on the Ocean Venturer, but already its lights were beginning to blur as the fog bank rolled in. Within a few minutes the Venturer would be completely obscured.

The first officer straightened up and rubbed his eyes. "if I didn't know better, I'd say the target was on a collision course."

Weeks picked up a microphone. "Radio room, this is the Captain. Patch me in on the safety call frequency."

"The contact is slowing," said the first officer.

Weeks waited until he heard the bridge speaker come on and emit a low crackle of static. Then he began transmitting.

"To the ship-on an upriver course, bearing zero-one-seven degrees off Pointe-au-Pere. This is the H.M.C.S. Huron. Please respond. Over." His only reply was the muted static. He called two more times, but there was still no reply.

"Down to three knots and still closing. Range twelve hundred yards.

Weeks ordered a seaman to sound the inland waterway fog signal for a ship at anchor. Four blasts of the Huron's horn whooped over the black water: one short, two long, one short.

The answer was a prolonged shriek that cut through the fog.

Weeks stepped to the doorway, his eyes straining into the night. The approaching intruder remained invisible.

"He appears to be slipping between us and the Ocean Venturer," the first officer reported.

"Why in hell don't they answer? Why don't the fools stay clear?"

"Maybe we'd better throw a scare into them."

A devious gleam came into Weeks' eyes. "Yes, I think that might do the trick." He pressed the mike's transmit button and said, "To the ship off my port stem. This is the H.M.C.S. destroyer Huron. If you do not identify yourself immediately, we shall open fire and blow you out of the water."

Perhaps five seconds passed. Then a voice rasped out of the bridge speaker in a pronounced Texas drawl.

"This is the U.S.S. guided missile cruiser Phoenix. Draw when you're ready, pardner."

Local farmers may have welcomed the rain that poured onto the Hudson River valley, but it only further depressed the crew of the De Soto. Their search for the Manhattan Limited had turned up nothing but the twisted, rusting remains of the Hudson-Deauville bridge, which lay on the river bottom like the scattered bones of an extinct dinosaur.

Hour followed hour, the crew keyed to the instruments, the helmsman steering over the same grids five and six times, everyone trying to spot something they might have overlooked. Three times the probes that trailed behind the boat's stern hung up on underwater obstructions, creating delays of several hours before divers could work them free again.

The line of Giordino's mouth tightened as he pored over the grid charts, sketching in the debris shown by the side-scan so nor Finally he turned to Glen Chase.

"Well, we may not know where it is, but we sure as hell know where it ain't. I'm hoping the diving team will get lucky." He looked up at the large brass chronograph on the wheelhouse wall. "They should be surfacing about now."

Chase idly thumbed through the historical report on the Manhattan Limited wreck that Heidi Milligan had compiled and sent from Canada. He stopped at the last two pages and read them in silence.

"Is it possible the train was salvaged years later when it was old news," and no one bothered notifying the newspapers?"

"I don't think so," replied Giordino. "The disaster was too big an event in these parts for a successful recovery to go unnoticed and unrecorded."

"Any truth to the claims by individual divers that they discovered the locomotive?"

"None that can be verified. One guy even swears he sat in the cab and rang the engine's bell. Another says he swam through a Pullman car filled with skeletons. Show me an unsolved mystery, and I'll show you a certified weirdo with all the answers."

A figure in a dripping exposure suit materialized in the doorway and stepped into the wheelhouse. Nicholas Riley, chief diver for the project, sank to the deck, his back pressed against a bulkhead, and exhaled a great sigh. "That three-knot current is murder," he said tiredly.

"Did you find anything?" Giordino asked impatiently.

"A veritable junkyard," Riley answered. "Sections of the bridge are strewn all over the riverbed. Some of the girders look shredded, as if they were blown apart."

"That's explained in here," said Chase, holding aloft the report. "The Army Corps of Engineers blasted off the top of the wreckage in nineteen seventeen because it was a menace to navigation."

"Any sign of the train?" Giordino persisted.

"Not even a wheel." Riley paused to blow his nose. "Bottom geology is fine sand, very soft. You could sink a thin dime in it."

"How deep is bedrock?"

"According to our laser probe," replied Chase, "bedrock lies at thirty-seven feet."

"You could blanket a train and still have twenty feet to spare," said Riley.

Giordino's eyes narrowed. "If geniuses were awarded roses and idiots skunks, I'd get about ten skunks."

"Well, maybe seven skunks," Chase needled him. "Why the self-flagellation?"

"I was too dumb to see the solution to the enigma. Why the proton magnetometer can't get a solid reading. Why the sub bottom profiler can't distinguish an entire train under the sediment."

"Care to share your revelation?" queried Riley.

"Everyone takes for granted that the weakened bridge collapsed under the weight of the train and they dropped together, the locomotive and coaches entangled with steel girders, into the water below," Giordino said briskly. "But what if the train fell through the center span first, and then the entire bridge dropped down on top and blanketed it?"

Riley stared at Chase. "I think he's got something. The weight of all that steel could well have pressed all trace of the train deep into the soft sand."

"His theory also explains why our detection gear has struck out," Chase agreed. "The broken mass of the bridge structure effectively distorts and shields our probe signals from any objects beneath."

Giordino faced Riley. "Any chance of tunneling under the wreckage?"

"No way," grunted Riley. "The bottom is like quicksand. Besides, the current is too strong for my divers to accomplish much."

"We'll need a barge with a crane and dredge to yank that bridge off the bottom if we expect to lay our hands on the train," said Giordino.

Riley rose wearily to his feet. "Okay, I'll get my boys to shoot some underwater survey photol so we'll know where to lay the jaws of the crane."

Giordino took off his cap and wiped a sleeve over his forehead. "Funny how things work out. Here I thought we'd have the easy time of it, while Pitt and his crew got the short end of the stick."

"God knows what they're up against in the St. Lawrence," said Chase. "I wouldn't trade places with them."

"Oh, I don't know," Giordino shrugged. "If Pitt is running true to form, he's probably sitting in a deck chair with a beautiful woman on one side and a mai tai on the other, lapping up the Canadian sun."

A strange mist, a swirling, reddish mist curtained off the light and swam thickly in front of Pitt's eyes. Once, twice, several times he tried desperately to struggle through to the other side, reaching out in front of him like a blind man.

There had been no time to prepare for the shock, no time for his mind to comprehend, no time even to wonder. He wiped away the claret that trickled over his brows and probed a gash on his forehead four inches long and thankfully not skull-deep.

Pitt dragged himself to his feet, staring in disbelief at the litter of bodies around him.

Rudi Gunn's pale face looked up at Pitt, eyes lost and uncomprehending, and devoid of expression. He swayed on hands and knees, muttering softly. "Oh, God! Oh, God! What happened?"

"I don't know," Pitt answered in a strained voice, foreign even to himself. "I don't know."

On shore Shaw froze in hunched paralysis, lips compressed until his mouth no longer showed, face contorted in blind and bitter rage, a bitterness directed at his own sense of guilt.

Ignoring Villon's order to leave Canada, he had set up camp on the eastern tip of Father's Point, two-and-a-half miles from the salvage site. He had assembled a British army S-66 long range reconnaissance scope that could read a newspaper headline at five miles, and had begun the tedious routine of observing the small fleet of ships moored over the Empress of Ireland.

Launches were charging back and forth between the two naval vessels like ferries held to a schedule. Shaw amused himself by imagining the heated negotiations going on between the American and Canadian officers.

The Ocean Venturer appeared still and dead. No one moved about its decks, but he could clearly see that the derrick was still in operation as its huge winch pulled up slime-covered scrap from the hulk below.

Shaw sat back to rest his eyes for a moment and munch a couple of candy bars that passed for breakfast. He noticed a small outboard hydroplane coming down the river at great speed, somewhere between ninety and a hundred miles an hour as it blasted off the wave tops and trailed a ten-foot rooster tail in its wake.

His curious nature aroused, he turned the scope on it.

The hull was painted a metallic gold with a burgundy stripe that flared at the stern. The effect was that of an arrow as it banked and tracked into the sun. Shaw waited until the glare subsided and then he zeroed in on the driver. The single figure behind the windscreen wore goggles, but Shaw recognized the squat nose, the cold, hard face.

It was Foss Gly.

Shaw gazed fascinated as the hydroplane cut a large circle around the three ships, leaping clear of the water with only the props submerged, then thumping down with a kettledrum impact that carried to where Shaw was standing.

It was difficult to keep the scope trained on the bouncing boat, but he locked in when it swung on an opposite course and gave him a clear view of the exposed cockpit over the transom.

Gly was clutching the wheel with his right hand while his left hand held aloft a small box. A thin shaft gleamed in the sun, and Shaw identified it as an antenna.

"No!" he shouted to the un hearing wind as the awful truth of Gly's intent struck him. "No, damn you, no!"

Suddenly the stillness of the morning was shattered by a rumbling thunder that seemed to come from far away and then heighten with terrible swiftness, and a caldron of boiling water erupted and burst toward the sky arouqd the Ocean Venturer as the explosives on the bow of the Empress detonated.

The research vessel seemed to porpoise above the maelstrom, hang suspended for a few seconds, and then fall back on its starboard side, down, down until it seemed to drown under the massive column of water.

Even on shore the violence of the explosion was shocking. Shaw steadied himself on the tripod of the scope and stared, numb with disbelief.

The spray rose whitely in a vast cloud, swirling above the masts of Huron and Phoenix, fighting gravity and finally raining in a drenching torrent that entirely saturated the superstructures of both ships. There wasn't a man left standing on any deck. They were all knocked flat or overboard by the force of the blast.

When Shaw retrained the scope of Gly, the hydroplane was hurtling far up the river toward Quebec. Stony-faced, bitter at his helplessness, Shaw could only watch in agonized frustration as Gly once again escaped.

He turned back to the Ocean Venturer.

It looked like a dead ship. Its stern had settled ominously and its hull was heeled far over to starboard. Slowly and frighteningly the derrick teetered crazily sideways, hung, then ponderously toppled over the side with a great splash, leaving an incredible tangle of debris and cable heaped on the decks. God only knew how many men had been killed or maimed inside the steel walls.

Shaw could not bear to see any more. He picked up the scope and walked heavily away. from the shoreline, the deep rumble of the explosion rolling across the river and echoing back in his ears.

For some inexplicable reason the Ocean Venturer refused to die.

Perhaps it was the heavy double hull, especially designed for ramming through ice, that saved the ship. Many of the outer plates were smashed, the seams split and the keel twisted. The damage was extensive and severe, but still the ship survived.

Pitt had watched the derrick go over. He stared numbly through the shattered windows of the control room, released his grip on a doorway and staggered uncontrollably into Hoker's console, his sense of balance telling him what his eyes refused. The deck was tilting at an angle of thirty degrees.

His first thought was the grim appreciation that the ship was mortally hurt. Hard on the heels of that came the sickening realization of what the frightful blast must have done to the divers on the wreck. He shook off the fog and the dull ache that tried to creep back in his mind. He logically categorized the steps to be taken. Then he went into action.

He grabbed the phone and rang up the chief engineer. Nearly a minute crawled by before an impersonal voice replied in dazed shock. "Engine room."

"Metz, is that you?"

"You'll have to speak louder, I can't hear."

It dawned on Pitt that to the men on the lower decks and in the engine room, the roar and concussion must have been ear shattering He shouted into the mouthpiece. "Metz, this is Pitt!"

"Okay, that's better," Metz replied in a metallic monotone. "What in hell is going on?"

"My best guess, my only guess is an explosion from below."

"Damn, I thought the Canadians stuck a torpedo in us."

"Report on damage."

"It's like working under a hundred running faucets down here. Water is gushing in everywhere. I doubt if the pumps have the capability to handle it. That's all I can tell you until I sound the hull."

"What about injuries?"

"We were catapulted around like drunken gymnasts. I think Jackson has a broken knee, and Gilmore a skull fracture. Beyond that, a few battered eardrums and a gang of bruises."

"Come back to me every five minutes," Pitt ordered. "And whatever you do, keep the generators turning."

"I don't have to be reminded. If they go, we go."

"You got the idea."

Pitt crammed the phone in its receiver and looked worriedly at Heidi. Gunn was kneeling over her, cradling her head in his arms. She lay crumpled against the chart table, barely conscious, staring through vacant eyes at her left leg. It lay at a queer angle.

"Funny," she whispered. "It doesn't hurt a bit."

The pain would come, thought Pitt. Already her face was flour-white from shock. He took her hand. "Just lie still until we can get a stretcher."

He wanted to say more, to comfort her, but there was no time. Reluctantly he turned away at the anguished interruption of Hoker's voice.

"The board is out." Hoker was fighting to recover, picking his fallen chair off the deck, staring dumbly at his darkened console panel and monitors.

"Then fix the damned thing!" Pitt rapped out. "We've got to know what happened to the underwater crew."

He took a headset and patched himself into all the stations of the Ocean Venturer. On and below decks the scientists and engineers of NUMA began pulling their senses together and toiling like madmen to save their ship. The more seriously injured were carried to the hospital bay, where they soon overfilled the facilities and were placed in rows outside in the hallway. Those who did not have critical jobs labored to tear aside the wreckage of the derrick or seal the cracks in the hull as they stood in waist-high frigid water. A team of divers was hurriedly assembled to go below.

The messages kept pouring in as Pitt directed the recovery. A still bewildered radio operator turned to him. "Just in from the captain of the Phoenix. He wishes to know if we need assistance?"

"Hell, yes, we need assistance!" Pitt shouted. "Request he bring his ship alongside. We need every available pump he's got and all the damage control men he can spare."

He broke off and dabbed a damp towel on his forehead, waiting impatiently for the answer.

"The message is:'Hold the fort,'" said the radio operator excitedly. " 'We will tie up on your starboard side.'" Then a few seconds later: "Commander Weeks on the Huron asks if we're abandoning ship."

"He'd like that," Pitt growled. "It would solve all his problems.

"Standing by for an answer."

"Tell him we'll abandon ship when we can step off on the bottom. Then repeat the request for men and pumping equipment-"

"Pitt?" Metz voice broke in over the headset.

"Go ahead."

"Looks like the stern took the brunt of the blast. From midships forward the hull is tight and dry. From there back it's got more cracks than a jigsaw puzzle. I'm afraid we've had it."

"How long can you keep us afloat?"

"At the rate the water's rising it should reach and short the generators in twenty or twenty-five minutes. Then we lose the pumps. After that, maybe ten minutes."

"Help is on the way. Open the side loading doors so that damage control men and pumping equipment can be transferred from the naval vessels."

"They'd better hustle, or we won't be around to throw a welcome party."

The radio operator gestured and Pitt made his way toward him across the slanting deck.

"I've reestablished contact with Sappho I," he said. "I'll tie you in on the phone."

"Sappho I, this is Pitt, please reply."

"This is Klinger on Sappho I, or what's left of us."

"What is your condition?"

"We're lying about a hundred and fifty meters southeast of the wreck with our bow buried in the mud. The hull stood up to the concussion-it was like sitting inside a clanging bell-but one of the view ports cracked and we're taking on water."

"Are your life-support systems functioning?"

"Roger. They should keep us healthy for a while yet. The problem is, we'll drown a good fifteen hours before our oxygen supply goes."

"Can you make a free ascent?"

"I might," replied Klinger. "I only lost a tooth from the jolt. Marv Powers, though, is in a bad way. Both his arms are busted and he took a bad crack on the head. He'd never make it to the surface."

Pitt closed his eyes for a moment. He did not relish playing God with men's lives, designating priorities over who was saved first or last. When he looked up again, he had made his decision.

"You'll have to hold on for a while, Klinger. We'll get to you just as soon as we can. Keep me posted every ten minutes."

Pitt stepped out on the bridge wingpnd peered down. Four divers were disappearing over the side.

"I have a picture," said Hoker in triumph as one of the video monitors brightened into life.

The monitor showed a view of the excavation pit as seen from the upper promenade deck. The support columns were collapsed and the decks below had fallen inward. There was no sign of the two JIM suits or the saturation divers.

The cold, abstract eye of the camera saw only a crater ringed with grotesquely distorted steel, but to Pitt it was as though he was staring into an open grave.

"God help them," Hoker muttered under his breath. "They must all be dead."

Seventy miles away, Captain Toshio Yubari, a solid, weatherworn man in the prime of his early forties, sat erect in a bridge chair, intent on the small boat traffic that dotted the water ahead. The tide was running home toward the sea, and the 665-foot containership Honjo Maru loafed along at a steady fifteen knots. Yubari had decided to wait and ring for twenty knots once the ship had rounded Cape Breton Island.

The Honjo Maru had carried 400 new electric mini cars from Kobe, Japan, and was making the return voyage with a cargo of newsprint paper from the great pulp mills of Quebec. The massive rolls that filled the containers were far heavier per unit volume than the small cars, and the hull rode low in the water, a scant three inches above the waterline.

First Officer Shigaharu Sakai stepped from the wheelhouse and stood beside the captain. He stifled a yawn and rubbed his reddened eyes.

"Fun night ashore?" Yubari asked, smiling.

Sakai mumbled an unintelligible reply and changed the subject.

"Lucky we didn't cast off on a Sunday," he said, nodding at a fleet of sailing sloops that were racing around a buoyed course about a mile off their port bow.

"Yes, I'm told the traffic is so heavy on weekends you can almost walk across the river on the yachts."

"Shall I take the bridge, captain, while you enjoy a noonday meal?"

"Thank you," replied Yubari, keeping his gaze straight ahead, "but I prefer to remain until we reach the gulf. You might ask the steward, though, to bring me a bowl of noodles with duck and a beer."

Sakai started to comply and then stopped in mid-turn, pointing down the river. "There comes a brave soul or a very reckless one."

Yubari had already spotted the hydroplane and stared with the fascination men have with high speed. "He must be doing close to ninety knots."

"If he hits one of those sloops, there won't be enough left to make a pair of chopsticks."

Yubari came to his feet. "The fool is heading straight for them."

The hydroplane charged into the massed sloops like a coyote through a flock of chickens. The skippers wildly slewed their boats in all directions, losing the wind, full sails suddenly collapsing and flapping uncontrollably.

The inevitable occurred as the hydroplane slashed across the bow of one yacht, tearing away its bowsprit and losing a windshield in the bargain. Then it was free, leaving the fleet scattered and rolling heavily in its whipping wake.

Yubari and Sakai were entranced by the mad antics of the hydroplane as it made a sweeping curve and set a course for the Honjo Maru. The small, darting craft was close enough now so they could make out a form hunched over the wheel in the cockpit.

Suddenly it became obvious to them that the driver had been injured when the sloop's bowsprit swept away the windshield.

There was no time for shouted commands or warning blasts from the horn, no time for Yubari and Sakai to do anything but stand in frozen impotence like pedestrians on a street corner witnessing an accident in the making and helpless to prevent it.

They instinctively ducked as the hydroplane crashed square into the Honjo Maru's port beam and erupted in an instantaneous, blinding sheet of gasoline flames. The engine flew from its mountings high into the air end over end before smashing onto the forecastle. Scattered bits of fiery debris splattered the ship like shrapnel from a bomb. Several of the wheelhouse windows were broken in. Things fell of it of the sky for several seconds, raining about the ship and splashing in the river.

Miraculously no one was hurt on board the containership. Yubari ordered "all stop" on the engines. A boat was lowered to search the area astern, where oil was drifting up from the bottom and spreading on the low swells.

All that was found of the hydroplane's driver was a charred leather jacket and a pair of broken plastic goggles.

As the afternoon wore on, the mood of the Ocean Venturer's crew began to be tinged with guarded optimism. A steady stream of men and equipment poured aboard from the Phoenix and the Huron. Soon auxiliary pumps stalemated the advance of the water gushing into the lower decks. And once the remains of the derrick were cut away, the list was reduced to nineteen degrees.

Most of the seriously injured, including Heidi, were transferred to the more spacious medical facilities on board the Phoenix. Pitt met her on deck as her litter was carried up from below.

"Wasn't much of a cruise, was it?" he said, brushing the ash-blond hair from her eyes.

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," she replied, smiling gamely. He leaned over and kissed her. "I'll visit you first chance I get."

Then he turned and climbed up the slanting ladder to the control room. Rudi Gunn met him in the doorway.

"A JIM suit was spotted floating downriver," he said. "The Huron is towing it in with their launch."

"Any word from the dive rescue team?"

"The team master, Art Dunning, reported in a minute ago. They haven't found the chamber yet, but he did say it looked as though the blast centered around the bow of the Empress. The entire forecastle has disintegrated. The mystery is, where did the explosives come from?"

"They were laid before we arrived," said Pitt thoughtfully. "Or after."

"No way an amount large enough to create this kind of havoc could have been smuggled through our security ring."

"That ape of Shaw's beat the system."

"Once maybe, not several times, lugging heavy containers of underwater explosives. They must have stored the stuff in the bow section of the Empress until they could figure out where to place it throughout the ship to cause the greatest destruction."

"Blow the wreck and the treaty out of existence before we steamed over the horizon."

"But we showed up early and knocked them off their time schedule. That's why they stole the probe. They were afraid it might spot the explosives cache."

"Was Shaw so desperate to stop us he'd resort to mass murder?"

"That part throws me," Pitt admitted. "He somehow didn't strike me as the butchering kind."

Pitt's eyes wandered away and he caught sight of Chief Engineer Metz walking slowly into the control room. He looked like a man who was ready to drop. His face was drawn and haggard, clothes soaked from cap to boots, and he reeked of diesel oil.

"Guess what?" He smiled a tired smile. "The old girl is gonna make it. The Venturer ain't what it used to be, but by Jesus, it'll take us home."

It was the best news Pitt had heard since the explosion. "You've stopped the flooding?"

Metz nodded. "We're eight inches down from an hour ago. As soon as you can release a few divers, I can have the worst of the leaks sealed from the outside."

"The Huron," Pitt said anxiously. "Can you disengage the Huron's pumps?"

"I think so," replied Metz. "Between our own equipment and that of the Phoenix, we should be able to cope."

Pitt wasted no more time. Skipping normal radio protocol, he roared into the microphone on his headset.

"Klinger!"

The reply took a few seconds, and when it came, the voice was slurred. "Hi there, this is Captain Nemo of the submarine Nautilus speaking. Over."

"You're who?"

"The guy in Twenty Zillion Leagues Under the Sea. You know. Great flick. Saw it when I was a kid in Seattle. Best part was the fight with the giant squid." Pitt had to shake off a sense of unreality, and then he realized what was wrong. "Klinger!" he shouted, turning every head in the control room. "Your carbon dioxide level is too high! Do you understand? Check your air-scrubbing unit. Repeat. Check your air-scrubbing unit."

"Hey, how about that?" Klinger replied cheerily. "The indicator says we're breathing ten percent CO2-"

"Dammit, Klinger, listen to me! You've got to get down to point-oh-five percent. You're suffering from anoxia."

"Scrubber is on. How does that grab you?"

Pitt sighed with relief. "Hold on a little longer and activate your locator pinger. The Huron is coming to lift you on board."

"Whatever you say," Klinger replied, his tone like mush.

"How is the leakage?"

"Two, maybe three hours before the batteries are flooded."

"Increase your oxygen. Got that? Increase your oxygen. We'll see you for dinner."

He turned to speak to Gunn, but the little man had already anticipated him. He was halfway through the doorway.

"I'll direct the Sappho rs retrieval from the Huron personally," he said, and then was gone.

Pitt looked through the open windows and saw a small boom lifting the JIM suit out of the water as a launch from the Phoenix stood by. The dome was unloosened and swung open. Three crewmen from the Phoenix reached it and lifted out a limp figure and laid him on the deck. Then one of them looked up at Pitt and gave a thumbs-up sign.

"He's alive!" came the cry.

Two men in the sub and one JIM suit operator safe, and the ship still afloat, Pitt summed. If only their luck held.

Dunning and his crew had found the saturation chamber almost two hundred yards from where it had been anchored. The hatch into the outer entry compartment had jammed in the closed position, and it took four of them grunting in unison with four-foot steel bars to muscle it open. Then they all stared at Dunning through their face masks, none expecting or wanting to be the first to enter.

Dunning swam up inside until his head burst into the pressurized air. He climbed to a small shelf and removed his breathing tank, hesitated and then crawled into the main chamber. The electrical cable to the Ocean Venturer had parted and at first he saw only blackness. He switched on his dive light and played its beam around the small enclosure.

Every man inside the chamber was dead; they were piled on top of one another like a cord of wood. Their skin had turned a deep purplish blue and the blood from a hundred open wounds had merged into one huge pool on the floor. Already it was coagulating from the cold. Dunning could see by the thin trickles from the ears and mouths that they had all died instantaneously from the frightening concussion before their bodies were battered nearly to pulp as the chamber was hurled in violent gyrations over the riverbed by the force of the explosion.

Dunning sat there coughing up the vomit that rose in his throat. He began to tremble from sickness and the smell of death. Five long minutes passed before he was able to call the Ocean Venturer and speak coherently.

Pitt took the message, closed his eyes and leaned heavily against a display panel. He felt no anger, only a vast sorrow. Hoker looked at him and read the sad drama in the lines of that strong expressive face.

"The divers?"

"That was Dunning," Pitt said, his eyes staring into nothingness. "The men in the chamber…... there were no survivors. All died from concussion. Two are missing. If they were outside and exposed to the blast, there is no hope. He says they will bring up the bodies."

There were no words left in Hoker. He looked terribly old and lost. He went back to work on the video console, his movements slow and mechanical. Pitt suddenly felt too exhausted to carry on. It was a waste, the entire project a pitiful waste. They had accomplished nothing but the deaths of ten good men.

He did not hear the faint voice in the earphones at first. Finally it began to penetrate his despondency. Whoever was trying to reach him sounded weak and far away. "Pitt here. What is it?" The reply was garbled and unclear.

"You'll have to speak up, I can't make you out. Try increasing your volume."

"Is that any better?" a voice boomed through the receivers.

"Yes, I can hear you now." Pitt's own voice echoed back. "Who is this?"

"Collins." The next few words were distorted: "been attempting to make phone contact since I came to. Don't know what happened. Suddenly all hell broke loose. Only now managed to splice my communications link."

The name Collins was not familiar to Pitt. In his few short days aboard the Ocean Venturer, he had been too busy to memorize and associate a hundred names with their respective faces. "What's your problem?" Pitt asked impatiently, his mind returning to other matters.

There was a long pause. "I guess you might say I'm trapped," the reply came back heavy in sarcasm. "And if it isn't inconvenient I would appreciate an assist in getting the hell out of here."

Pitt tapped Hoker on the shoulder. "Who is Collins and what's his capacity?"

"Don't you know?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be asking," Pitt growled. "He claims he's trapped and needs help."

Hoker looked at him incredulously. "Collins is one of the JIM suit operators! He was down during the explosion."

"Christ," Pitt muttered. "He must think I'm the prize idiot of the decade." He fairly yelled into the microphone. "Collins, give me your condition and precise location."

"The suit is intact. A few dents and scratches, nothing more. The life-support system indicates another twenty hours, providing I don't practice aerobic dancing." Pitt grinned quietly to himself at Collins' humorous spirits, felt regret that he didn't know the man. "Where am I? Damned if I know exactly. The suit is up to its crotch in mud, and there's trash hanging all over it. I can barely articulate the arms."

Pitt's gaze traveled to Hoker, who was staring back with a curious blank expression. "Any possibility he can jettison the lifting line, release his weights and make a free ascent like his partner?" Hoker asked.

Pitt shook his head. "He's half buried in silt and entangled in the wreckage."

"You did say he was in silt?" Pitt nodded.

"Then he must have fallen through onto the second-class deck."

The possibility had also struck Pitt, but he was afraid to predict, to even express a hope. "I'll ask him," he said quietly. "Collins?"

"I haven't gone anywhere."

"Can you determine if you dropped into the target area?"

"Beats me," answered Collins. "I blacked out right after the big bang. Things were pretty well stirred up. Visibility is only now beginning to clear a little."

"Look around. Describe what you see."

Pitt waited impatiently for a reply, knuckles rapping unconsciously against a computer. His eyes roamed to the Huron, which was perched over the Sappho I, watched the crane on the afterdeck swing over the side. Suddenly his ear receivers crackled and he stiffened.

"Pitt?"

"I'm listening."

The self- assurance was gone and Collins sounded strangely subdued. "I think I'm where the bow of the Storstad struck the Empress. The damage around me is old…... much corrosion and heavy growth-" He broke off, without completing the description. After a silence, he came back; his voice had a chill in it. "There are bones. I count two, no three skeletons. They're embedded in the rubble. God, I feel like I'm standing in a catacomb."

Pitt tried to visualize what Collins was seeing, how he would have felt if they could exchange places. "Go on. What else is there?"

"The remains of the poor devils, whoever they were, are above me. I can almost reach out and pat their heads."

"You mean skulls."

"Yeah. One is smaller, maybe a child. The others appear to be adults. I may want to take one home with me."

From the gruesome direction the conversation was turning, Pitt could not help wondering if Collins was losing his grip on reality. "What for? So you can play Hamlet?"

"Hell, no," Collins replied indignantly. "The jaws must have four thousand bucks' worth of gold in the teeth."

A bell rang in the back of Pitt's mind, and he reached back to recall an image on a photograph. "Collins, listen to me carefully. On the upper jaw. Are two large rabbit teeth in the upper center surrounded by gold caps?"

Collins did not answer immediately and the few moments delay was maddening to Pitt. He could not know that Collins was too stunned to reply.

"Uncanny…... positively uncanny," Collins murmured over the phone link in total bafflement. "You described the guy's bicuspids perfectly."

The manifestation struck with such abruptness, such incredibility, that Pitt was for the moment incapable of speech, capable only of the heart-stopping realization that they had at last discovered the burial vault of Harvey Shields.

Sarveux waited until the door had closed behind his secretary before he spoke. "I have read your report, and I find it deeply disturbing."

Shaw did not answer, for no answer was required. He looked across the desk at the Prime Minister. The man looked older in person than he appeared on camera. What struck Shaw were the sadness in the eyes and the gloves on the hands. Though he was aware of Sarveux's injuries, it still looked odd to see a man working at a desk wearing gloves.

"You've made very grave accusations against Mr. Villon, none of which are backed up with hard evidence."

"I'm not the devil's advocate, Prime Minister. I've only presented the facts as I know them."

"Why do you come to me with this?"

"I thought you should be aware of it. General Simms shared my view."

"I see." Sarveux was silent for a moment. "Are you certain this Foss Gly worked for Villon "There is no doubt of it."

Sarveux sank back in his chair. "You would have done me a greater service by forgetting this thing."

A look of surprise came over Shaw's face. "Sir?"

"Henri Villon is no longer a member of my cabinet. And this Gly fellow, you say, is dead."

Shaw did not immediately answer, and Sarveux took advantage of his hesitation to continue. "Your hired assassin theory is vague and obscure to say the least. Based on nothing but conversation. There isn't enough circumstantial evidence here to prompt even a preliminary investigation."

Shaw gave Sarveux his best withering stare. "General Simms is of a mind that with a little more digging you may find that the infamous Mr. Gly was the mastermind behind your air crash and the recent demise of Premier Guerrier."

"Yes, the man was no doubt capable of-" Sarveux stopped in mid-sentence. His eyes widened and his face tensed. He leaned across the desk. "What was that? What did you imply?" His voice was stunned, demanding.

"Henri Villon had the motive for wanting you and Guerrier dead, and he…... I've proved to my satisfaction anyway…... employed a known killer. I admit that two and two don't necessarily add up to four, but in this case even three may be an acceptable answer."

"What you and General Simms are suggesting is repugnant," Sarveux said in hoarse indignation. "Canadian ministers do not go around murdering one another to attain higher office."

Shaw saw that any further argument was fruitless. "I'm sorry I can't offer you more precise information."

"So am I," said Sarveux, his manner quickly becoming cool again. "I'm not convinced a blunder by you or one of your people didn't cause that nasty mess with the Americans on the St. Lawrence. And now you're trying to cover up by throwing the blame on someone else." Shaw felt his anger rising. "I assure you, Prime Minister, that is not the case."

Sarveux stared at Shaw steadily. "Nations are not run on probabilities, Mr. Shaw. Please thank General Simms and tell him to consider the matter dropped. And while you're at it, please inform him I see no reason to pursue the North American Treaty business." Shaw sat astounded. "But, sir, if the Americans find a treaty copy, they can-"

"They won't," Sarveux cut him short. "Good day, Mr. Shaw."

His hands balled into fists, Shaw got up and wordlessly left the room.

As soon as the door latch clicked, Sarveux picked up the phone and dialed a number on his private line.

Forty minutes later, Commissionaire Harold Finn of the Mounties entered the room.

He was an unimpressive little man in rumpled clothes, the sort who is lost in a crowd or melts in with the furniture during a party. His charcoal hair was parted down the middle and contrasted with bushy white eyebrows.

"I'm sorry to have gotten you over here on such short notice," Sarveux apologized.

"No problem," Finn said stonily. He took a chair and began fishing through a briefcase.

Sarveux didn't waste time. "What are your findings?"

Finn unhinged a pair of reading glasses and held them in front of his eyes as he scanned a pair of opened folders. "I have the file on the autopsy and a report on Jean Boucher."

"The man who discovered Jules Guerrier's body?"

"Yes, Guerrier's bodyguard/ chauffeur He found the remains when he went to wake the premier in the morning. The coroner's report states that Guerrier died sometime between nine and ten the previous evening. The autopsy was unable to turn up a specific cause of death."

"Surely they must have some idea?"

"A variety of factors," said Finn, "none conclusive. Jules Guerrier was one step away from the grave. According to the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, he was suffering from emphysema, gallstones, arteriosclerosis-the latter is what probably killed him-rheumatoid arthritis and cancer of the prostate gland." Finn looked up and smiled thinly. "It was a miracle the man lived as long as he did."

"So Jules died a natural death."

"He had a good excuse for it."

"What about this Jean Boucher?"

Finn read from the report. "Comes from a solid family. Good education. No record of arrests and nothing to indicate an interest in radical causes. Wife and two children, both girls who are married to honest wage earners. Boucher was hired by Guerrier in May of sixty-two. As far as we can determine, he was completely loyal to the premier."

"Do you have any reason to suspect foul play?"

"Frankly, no," replied Finn. "But the death of a well-known personage demands strict attention to details so that no disputes arise at a later date. This case should have been routine. Unfortunately, Boucher threw a wrench into the gears of the investigation."

"In what way?"

"He swears Henri Villon visited Guerrier the night in question and was the last man to see the premier alive."

Sarveux looked bewildered. "That's impossible. Villon made the opening dedication speech at the performing arts center two hundred miles away. He was seen by thousands of people."

"Millions, actually," said Finn. "The event was on national television."

"Could Boucher have murdered Jules and then made up this fairy tale as an alibi?"

"I don't think so. We don't have a shred of evidence that Guerrier was assassinated. The autopsy is clean. Boucher needs no alibi."

"But his claim that Villon was present in Quebec; what purpose does it serve?"

"None that we can figure, yet his conviction is unshakable."

"The man was obviously hallucinating," said Sarveux.

Finn leaned forward in his chair. "He isn't insane, Mr. Sarveux. That's the catch. Boucher demanded to take truth serum and be placed under hypnosis and given a lie detector test." Finn took a deep breath. "We called his bluff, but the results proved conclusively he wasn't bluffing. Boucher was telling the truth."

Sarveux stared at him speechlessly.

"I wish I could say the Mounties have all the answers, but we don't," Finn admitted. "The house was swept by our laboratory people. With one exception, the only fingerprints they turned up belonged to Guerrier, Boucher, the maid and the cook. Regrettably all prints found on the bedroom door knob were smudged."

"You mentioned an exception."

"We found a strange impression from a right index finger on the front-door chime. We have yet to identify it."

"Doesn't prove a thing," said Sarveux. "It could have been made by a tradesman, a postman or even one of your people during the investigation."

Finn smiled. "If that were the case, the computer in our ID section would have a make in two seconds or less. No, this is someone we don't have on file." He paused to study a page in the folder. "Interestingly enough, we have an approximate time when persons unknown rang the chimes. Guerrier's secretary, a Mrs. Molly Saban, brought him a bowl of chicken soup to fight off the flu. She arrived around eight-thirly, punched the chime button, delivered the soup to Boucher and left. She was wearing gloves, so the next bare finger to come along left a clear impression."

"Chicken soup," said Sarveux, shaking his head. nature's cure-all." The eter'Thanks to Mrs. Saban, we know that someone approached Guerrier's home sometime after eight-thirty of the night he died."

"If we accept Boucher's word, how could Villon be in two places at once?"

"I haven't a clue."

"The investigation, is it formally closed?"

Finn nodded. "There was little to be gained by continuing."

"I want you to reopen it."

Finn's only reaction was a marginal lift of one eyebrow. "Sir?"

"There may be something to Boucher's story after all," said Sarveux. He passed Shaw's report across the desk to Finn. "I've just received this from an agent in the British secret service. It suggests a connection between Henri Villon and a known killer. See if there is any substance to the possibility. Also, I'd like your people to conduct another autopsy."

Finn's other eyebrow came up. "Obtaining an exhumation order could prove a messy business."

"There will be no exhumation order," said Sarveux curtly.

"I understand, Prime Minister," said Finn, catching Sarveux's drift. "The affair will be handled under tight security. I'll personally see to the details."

Finn inserted the reports in his briefcase and stood up to leave.

"There is one more thing," said Sarveux.

"Yes, Prime Minister."

"How long have you known of my wife's affair with Villon?"

Finn's normally inscrutable features took on a pained look. "Well, sir…... ah, it came to my attention nearly two years ago."

"And you did not come to me?"

"Unless we feel a treasonable act has been committed, it is Mountie policy not to become involved with the domestic privacy of Canadian citizens." Then he added, "That, of course, includes the Prime Minister and the members of Parliament."

"A sound policy," Sarveux said tightly. "Thank you, commissioner. That will be all…... for the moment."

Daybreak found a dark pall over the St. Lawrence.

Two of the critically injured had died, bringing the death toll to twelve. The body of one of the missing divers washed up on the southern shore six miles downriver. The other man was never found.

Numb with exhaustion and sick of heart, the crew of the Ocean Venturer lined the railings in silence as their dead were solemnly carried aboard the Phoenix for the voyage home. To some it was a bad dream that would eventually fade; for others the tragedy would remain in vivid clarity forever.

After Collins was extricated and hauled aboard with only three hours of breathable air left in his JIM suit, Pitt closed down all further operations on the wreck. Metz reported that the engine room was reasonably dry and the Ocean Venturer was holding its own, the list now being only ten degrees. The damage control specialists from the naval ships were released and the long hoses of their support pumps withdrawn. The research ship would make home port under its own power, but on only one engine. The propeller shaft of the other had been bent out of alignment.

Pitt went down into the well-deck area and donned a thermal suit. He tightened his weight belt and was adjusting the harness on his air tanks when Gunn came up to him. "You're going down," he said flatly.

"After all that's happened, it would be criminal to leave without getting what we came for," Pitt replied.

"Do you think it wise to dive alone? Why not let Dunning and his men go with you?"

"They're in no condition," said Pitt. "They went beyond repetitive dive limits bringing up the bodies. Their nitrogen buildup is excessive."

Gunn knew he could have moved the Matterhorn with greater ease than he could budge a stubborn Dirk Pitt. He shrugged off the abortive attempt and made a grim face. "It's your funeral." Pitt grinned. "I appreciate the joyous send-off."

"I'll keep an eye peeled on the monitors," said Gunn. "And if you're a bad boy and come home past curfew, I might even bring down the air bottles for your decompression stops myself."

Pitt nodded a wordless thanks. Unexcitably patient, quiet and unassuming, Gunn was the eternal insurance policy, the one who saw to the endless details overlooked by the rest. He never had to be asked. He planned with deep forethought and then simply accomplished what had to be done.

Pitt adjusted his face mask, threw Gunn a casual salute and dropped into the cold abyss.

At twenty feet he rolled over on his back and gazed upward at the bottom of the Ocean Venturer, which hovered above like a great dark blimp. At forty feet it faded into the murk and was gone. The world of sky and clouds seemed light-years away.

The water was dense and opaque, a dull green. As the increasing pressure tightened around his body, Pitt felt a prodding desire to turn back, lie down on his back in the sun, take a long nap and forget the whole thing. He shook off the temptation and switched on his dive light as the green dusk became black.

Then the enormous ship materialized out of the gloom in three dimensions.

An oppressive silence hung over the corpse of the Empress of Ireland. It was a phantom ship on a voyage to nowhere.

Pitt swam over the steeply sloping lifeboat deck, past the portholes and the eerie interior of the cabins beyond. He reached the edge of the excavation pit and hesitated. The water was noticeably colder at this level. He watched his air bubbles issue from the breathing regulator and rise to the surface in little clusters, merging and expanding upward. He pointed the dive light at them and they glistened like foam along a beach under a full moon.

He let himself glide slowly into the man-made cavity. Fifty feet down he settled as weightlessly as a leaf into the bottom silt. He was in the mangled womb of Harvey Shields' cabin.

An icy shiver ran down his spine, not from the frigid water his thermal suit kept him reasonably comfortable-but from the specters of his imagination. He saw the bones described by Collins. Unlike the bleached white and connected skeletons in medical school classrooms, they had turned a tobacco shade of brown and become separated.

A mound of clutter had piled up in front of a small opening in the tangled steel behind the larger of the two skulls and was partly covered with mud. He moved in closer and began probing with his hands.

He touched a limp, round object. He pulled it free and a cloud of dust like particles and tiny shreds of material billowed in front of his face mask. The object was an old life belt.

He worked himself into the opening and tore at the rubble. The dive light was nearly useless. The swirling disturbance in the water stonewalled the beam and reflected it like a thick bank of fog.

He came across a rusting straight razor, and nearby, a shaving mug. Then came a well-preserved shoe, an oxford by the look of it, and a small medicine bottle. The top was still sealed and the contents untainted by the water.

With the perseverance of an archaeologist sifting away the layers of time, Pitt explored the deteriorating junk with his fingers. He did not feel the cold seeping into his thermal suit. Without noticing, he had rubbed against sharp metal edges that sliced through the protective covering into his skin. Vaporlike trails of blood were issuing from several cuts on his back and legs.

His heartbeat quickened when he thought he saw his goal protruding from the silt. It was the arched handle of a piece of luggage. He wrapped his hand around it and gave a gentle tug. The badly corroded locking mechanism of a large suitcase came free. He shook away his false optimism and kept probing.

Two feet beyond, his eyes spotted another handgrip; this one was smaller. He paused and checked his dive watch. Five minutes of air were left. Gunn would be waiting. He took a long breath and slowly eased the handgrip out of the litter.

Pitt found himself staring at the remnants of a small hand case. The leather sides and bottom, though badly rotted, were still intact. Almost afraid to hope, he pried the hinges apart.

Inside was a muck-coated packet. Pitt knew instinctively that he held the North American Treaty.

Dr. Abner McGovern sat at his desk, stared thoughtfully at the cadaver stretched on the stainless steel table, and casually munched a deviled-egg sandwich.

McGovern was perplexed. The lifeless form of Jules Guerrier was not cooperating. Most of the tests on the corpse had been run four and five times. He and his assistants had analyzed the lab data endlessly, studied and restudied the results obtained by the police coroner of Quebec. And still the exact cause of death eluded him.

McGovern was one of those stubborn people who refuse to give up, the kind who stays up all night to finish a novel or add the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He refused to give up now. A life did not simply cease without a reason.

Guerrier had been in pitiful physical condition. But the man was known to have a tremendous constitution. His will to live would never have extinguished like a lamp at the flick of a switch.

It had to be something other than a breakdown of bodily functions. It had to be from something induced.

Every test for poison had been run, even the exotics. All had proven negative. Nor was there evidence of the tiniest puncture from an injection needle under the hair or the nails, between fingers and toes, inside the orifices.

The possibility of suffocation kept returning to McGovern. Expiration from lack of oxygen left few telltale signs.

In the forty years he had served on the Mounties' forensic pathology staff, he could recall only a handful of cases where the victims were murdered by suffocation.

He slipped on a new pair of gloves and approached the stiff, as he referred to it. For the third time that afternoon he scrutinized the interior of the mouth. All was as it should be. No bruises, no paleness behind the lips.

Another dead end.

He returned to his desk and collapsed in the chair dejectedly, hands hanging loosely in his lap, eyes staring vacantly at the tile floor. Then he noticed a slight discoloration on the thumb of one glove. Idly he smeared it on a piece of paper, leaving a greasy pink smudge.

Quickly he bent again over Guerrier. Cautiously he rubbed a towel between the inner lips and outer gums. Then he peered at them through a magnifying glass.

"Ingenious," he murmured aloud as though conversing with the corpse. "Positively ingenious."

Sarveux felt terribly tired. His stand on noninterference with Quebec independence had met with a storm of opposition from his own party and the English-speaking loyalists in the west. The Parliament members from the Maritime Provinces had been especially indignant over his break with national unity. Their anger was to be expected. The new Quebec nation isolated them from the rest of Canada.

He was sitting in his study, sipping a drink while trying to wash away the day's events, when the phone rang. His secretary told him that Commissioner Finn was calling from Mountie headquarters. He sighed and waited for the click of the connection. "Mr. Sarveux?"

"Speaking."

"It was murder," Finn said bluntly.

"You have proof?"

"Beyond a doubt."

Sarveux gripped the receiver tightly. God, he thought, when will it end? "How?"

"Premier Guerfier was smothered to death. Damned clever of the killer. He used theatrical makeup to cover the evidence. Once we knew what to look for we found traces of tooth marks in the fabric of a bed pillow."

"You'll keep after Boucher."

"No need," said Finn. "Your report from British intelligence was most opportune. The print on the doorbell matches the right index finger of Foss Gly."

Sarveux closed his eyes. Perspective, he told himself; he must keep a perspective. "How is it possible Boucher mistook Gly for Villon?"

"I can't say. However, judging from the photo in the report, there is a slight resemblance. The use of makeup on Guerrier may be a key. If Gly could fool our pathologists, he may be enough of a master of disguise to fix himself up to pass as the spitting image of Villon."

"You're speaking of Gly as if he was still alive."

"A habit of mine until I see the body," replied Finn. "Do you wish me to continue the investigation?"

"Yes, but I want everything kept confidential," said Sarveux. "Can you rely on your people to remain quiet?"

"Absolutely," Finn replied.

"Keep Villon under strict surveillance and get Guerrier back in his grave."

"I'll see to it."

"And one more thing, commissioner."

"Sir?"

"From now on, report to me in person. Telephone communications have a way of being intercepted."

"Understood. I'll be back to you shortly. Goodbye, Prime Minister.

Several seconds after Finn hung up, Sarveux was still gripping the receiver. Is it possible that Henri Villon and the slippery head of the FQS are one and the same? he wondered. And Foss Gly. Why would he masquerade as Villon?

The answers took an hour in coming, and suddenly he wasn't tired anymore.

The trim executive jet, sporting the NUMA aquamarine colors, whined onto the landing strip and rolled to a stop within twenty feet of where Sandecker and Moon stood waiting. The door to the passenger compartment dropped open and Pitt climbed down. He carried a large aluminum container in both hands.

Sandecker's eyes mirrored a deep concern when he saw the haggard face, watched the slow faltering steps of a man who had lived too long with exhaustion. He moved forward and put his arm around Pitt's shoulder as Moon took the box.

"You look terrible. When was the last time you slept?"

Pitt peered at him through glazed eyes. "I've lost track. What's today?"

"Friday.

"Not sure…... think it was Monday night."

"Good God, that was four days ago."

A car pulled up and Moon manhandled the box into the trunk. The three of them piled in the back seat, and Pitt promptly dozed off. It seemed he had hardly closed his eyes when Sandecker was shaking him. The driver had stopped at the laboratory entrance to the Arlington College of Archaeology.

A man wearing a white lab coat came through the doorway, accompanied by two uniformed security guards. He was sixtyish, walked slightly stooped and owned a face like Dr. Jekyll after he became Mr. Hyde.

"Dr. Melvin Galasso," he said without offering his hand. "Did you bring the artifact?"

Pitt gestured at the aluminum box as Moon lifted it from the rear of the car. "In there."

"You haven't allowed it to dry out, I hope. It's important that the outer wrapping be pliable."

"The travel bag and the oilcloth packet are still immersed in St. Lawrence River water."

"How did you find them?"

"Buried in silt up to the carrying handle."

Galasso nodded silently in satisfaction. Then he turned toward the doorway to the laboratory.

"All right, gentlemen," he said over his shoulder. "Let's see what you've got."

Dr. Galasso may have been sadly lacking in the social graces, but he had no shortage of patience. He used up two hours simply removing the oilcloth from the travel bag, describing in precise detail every step of the procedure as though lecturing to a class. "The bottom mud was your savior," he elucidated. "The leather, as you can see, is in an excellent state of preservation and still quite soft."

With meticulous dexterity he cut a rectangular hole in the side of the travel bag with a surgical scalpel, extremely careful not to damage the contents. Then he trimmed a thin plastic sheet to slightly larger dimensions than the packet and eased it into the opening.

"You were wise, Mr. Pitt, not to touch the wrapping," he droned on. "If you had attempted to lift it out of the bag, the material would have crumbled away."

"Won't oilcloth stand up under water?" asked Moon.

Galasso paused and fixed him with a surley stare. "Water is a solvent. Loosely speaking, if given enough time it can dissolve a battleship. Oilcloth is simply a piece of fabric that has been chemically treated, generally on one side only. Therefore, it is perishable."

Dismissing Moon, Galasso went back to his work.

When he was satisfied that the plastic was correctly positioned under the packet, he began slipping it out a few millimeters at a time, until at last the still dripping, shapeless thing lay exposed and vulnerable for the first time in seventy-five years.

They stood there in hushed silence. Even Galasso seemed caught up in the awesome moment; he could think of nothing to say. Moon began to tremble and he clamped his hands on a sink for support. Sandecker pulled at his beard while Pitt sipped at his fourth cup of black coffee.

Wordlessly, Galasso began concentrating on un peeling the wrapping. First he gently patted a paper towel against the surface until it was dry. Then he examined it from every angle, like a diamond cutter contemplating the impact point on a fifty-carat gem, probing here and there with a tiny marking pen.

At last he started the unveiling. With agonizing slowness he doggedly unraveled the brittle cloth. After what seemed an eternity to the men pacing the floor, Galasso came to the final layer. He paused to wipe the perspiration that was glistening on his face, and to flex his numbed fingers. Then he was ready to continue.

"The moment of truth," he said pontifically.

Moon picked up a nearby telephone and established a direct line to the President. Sandecker moved in closer and peered intently over Galasso's shoulder. Pitt's features were expressionless, cold and strangely remote.

The thin, fragile flap was lifted cautiously by degrees and laid back.

They had dared to confront the impossible and their only reward was disillusionment, followed by a crushing bitterness.

The indifferent river had seeped into the oilcloth and turned the British copy of the North American Treaty into a paste like unreadable mush.

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."

Pitt turned. "Ghost?"

"An unmentionable subject around here," said Chase. "Nobody likes to admit they've seen it."

"Speak for yourself." Giordino cracked a smile. "I've only heard the thing."

"Its light was brighter than hell when it swung up the old grade to the bridge the other night. The beam lit up half the east shoreline. I don't see how you missed it."

"Wait a minute," Pitt broke in. "are you talking about the phantom train?"

Giordino stared at him. "You know?"

"Doesn't everyone?" Pitt asked in mock seriousness."

"Tis said the specter of the doomed train is still trying to cross the Deauville-Hudson bridge to the other side."

"You don't believe that?" Chase asked cautiously.

"I believe there is something up on the old track bed that goes chug in the night. In fact, it damn near ran over me."

"When?"

"A couple of months ago when I came here to survey the site."

Giordino shook his head. "At least we won't go to the loony bin alone."

"How often has the ghost called on you?"

Giordino looked at Chase for support. "Two, no, three times."

"You say some nights you heard sounds but saw no lights?"

"The first two intrusions came with steam whistles and the roar of a locomotive," explained Chase. "The third time we got the full treatment. The clamor was accompanied by a blinding light."

"I saw the light too," Pitt said slowly. "What were your weather conditions?"

Chase thought a moment. "As I recall, it was clear and blacker than pitch when the light showed."

"That's right," added Giordino. "The noise came alone only on nights the moon was bright."

"Then we've got a pattern," said Pitt. "There was no moon during my sighting."

"All this talk about ghosts isn't putting us any closer to finding the real train," said Giordino blandly. "I suggest we get back to reality and figure a way to get under the bridge wreckage in the next"-he hesitated and consulted his watch- "seventy-four hours."

"I have another suggestion," said Pitt.

"Which is?"

"To hell with it."

Giordino looked at him, ready to smile if Pitt was joking. But he was not.

"What are you going to tell the President?"

A strange, distant look came over Pitt's face. "The President?" he repeated vaguely. "I'm going to tell him we've been fishing in the air, wasting an enormous amount of time and money searching for an illusion."

"What are you getting at?"

"The Manhattan Limited," Pitt replied. "It doesn't lie on the bottom of the Hudson River. It never has."

The setting sun was suddenly snuffed out by the clouds. The sky went dark and menacing. Pitt and Giordino stood on the old track bed, listening to the deep rumbling of the storm as it drew closer. And then lightning crackled and the thunder echoed and the rain came.

The wind swept through the trees with a demonic whine. The humid air was oppressive and charged with electricity. Soon the light was gone and there was no color, only black pierced by brief streaks of white. Raindrops, hurled in horizontal sheets by wind gusts, struck their faces with the stinging power of sand.

Pitt tightened the collar of his raincoat, hunched his shoulders against the tempest and stared into the night.

"How can you be sure it will appear?" Giordino shouted over the gale.

"Conditions are the same as the night the train vanished," Pitt shouted back. "I'm banking on the ghost having a melodramatic sense of timing."

"I'll give it another hour," said a thoroughly miserable Chase. "And then I'm heading back to the boat and a healthy slug of Jack Daniel's."

Pitt motioned them to follow. "Come on, let's take a hike down the track bed."

Reluctantly Chase and Giordino fell in behind. The lightning became almost incessant and, seen from shore, the De Soto looked like a gray ghost herself. A great shaft of brilliance flashed for an instant across the river behind her and she became a black outline. The only sign of life was the white light on the mast that burned defiantly through the downpour.

After about half a mile, Pitt halted and tilted his head as if listening. "I think I hear something."

Giordino cupped his hands to his ears. He waited until the last thunderclap died over the rolling hills. Then he heard it too: the mournful wail of a train whistle.

"You called it," said Chase. "It's right on schedule."

No one spoke for several seconds as the sound grew closer, and then there came the clang of a bell and the puff of the exhaust. It was drowned out momentarily by another burst of thunder. Chase swore later that he could feel time grinding to a stop.

At that moment a light came around a curve and washed its beam on them, the rays eerily distorted by the rain. They stood there, each seeing the yellow reflections on the face of the others.

They stared ahead, disbelieving, yet certain it was not a trick of their imaginations. Giordino turned to say something to Pitt and was astounded to see him smiling, actually smiling at the expanding blaze.

"Don't move," Pitt said with incredible calm. "Turn around, close your eyes and cover them with your hands so you aren't blinded by the glare."

Instinct dictated they do just the opposite. The urge for selfpreservation, to run or at least throw themselves flat on the ground tore at their conscious senses. Their only bond with courage was Pitt's firm words.

"Steady…... steady. Be ready to open your eyes when I yell.

God, it was unnerving.

Giordino tensed for the impact that would smash his flesh and bones into a ghastly spray of crimson and white. He made up his mind he was going to die, and that was that. The deafening clangor was upon them, assaulting their ear drums. They felt as though they had been thrust into some strange vacuum where twentieth-century reasoning lost all relevance.

Then, as if by magic, the impossible thing passed over them. "Now!" Pitt shouted above the din.

They all dropped their hands and stared, eyes still adjusted to the dark.

The light was now aimed away and traveling down the abandoned track bed, the locomotive sound diminishing in its wake. They could clearly see a black rectangle centered in the glow about eight feet off the ground. They watched fascinated as it grew smaller in the distance and then turned up the grade to the bridge, where it blinked out and the accompanying clatter died into the storm. "What in hell was that?" Chase finally muttered.

"An antique locomotive headlamp and an amplifier," answered Pitt.

"Oh, yeah?" grunted Giordino skeptically. "Then how does it float in mid-air?"

"On a wire strung from the old telegraph poles."

"Too bad there has to be a logical explanation," said Chase, sadly shaking his head. "I hate to see good supernatural legends debunked."

Pitt gestured toward the sky. "Keep looking. Your legend should be returning anytime now."

They grouped around the nearest telegraph pole and stared upward into the darkness. A minute later a black shape emerged and slipped noiselessly through the air above them. Then it melted back into the shadows and was gone. "Fooled hell out of me," Giordino admitted.

"Where did the thing come from?" asked Chase.

Pitt didn't answer immediately. He suddenly stood illuminated by a lightning strike in a distant field; the flash revealed a contemplative look on his face. Finally he said, "You know what I think?"

"No, what?"

"I think we should all have a cup of coffee and a slice of hot apple pie."

By the time they knocked on Ansel Magee's door they looked like drowned rats. The big sculptor cordially invited them in and took their wet coats. While Pitt made the introductions, Annie Magee, true to expectations, hurried into the kitchen to rustle up coffee and pie, only this time it was cherry.

"What brings you gentlemen out on such a miserable night?" asked Magee.

"We were chasing ghosts," Pitt replied.

Magee's eyes narrowed. "Any luck?"

"May we talk about it in the depot office?"

Magee nodded agreeably. "Of course. Come, come."

It took little urging for him to regale Chase and Giordino with the history behind the office and its former occupants. As he talked, he built a fire in the potbellied stove. Pitt sat silently at Sam Harding's old rolltop desk. He'd heard the lecture before and his mind was elsewhere.

Magee was in the midst of pointing out the bullet in Hiram Meecham's chessboard when Annie entered, carrying a tray with cups and plates.

After the last scrap of pie was gone, Magee looked across the office at Pitt. "You never did say whether you found a ghost."

"No," Pitt replied. "No ghost. But we did find a clever rig that fakes the phantom train."

Magee's broad shoulders drooped and he shrugged. "I always knew someone would discover the secret someday. I even had the local folks fooled. Not that any of them minded. They're all quite proud of having a ghost they can call their own. Sort of gives them something to brag about to the tourists."

"When did you get wise to it?" Annie asked.

"The night I came to your door. Earlier I was standing on the bridge abutment when you sent the phantom on a run. Just before it reached me the lamp blinked out and the sound shut down."

"You saw how it worked then?"

"No, I was blinded by the glare. By the time my eyes readjusted to the dark it was long gone. Baffled the hell out of me at first. My gut instinct was to search the ground level. That only added to my confusion when I failed to find tracks in the snow. But I'm a man with a curious streak. I wondered why the old railbed was torn up and hauled away down to the last cross tie and yet the telegraph poles were left standing. Railroad officials are a tightfisted lot. They don't like to leave any reusable equipment behind when they abandon a right-of-way. I began following the poles until I came to the last one in line. It stands at the door of a shed beside your private track. I also noticed that the headlamp was missing from your locomotive."

"I have to give you credit, Mr. Pitt," said Magee. "You're the first to hit upon the truth."

"How does the thing operate?" asked Giordino.

"The same principle as a chair lift on a ski slope," Magee explained. "The headlamp and a set of four speakers hang suspended from a continuous cable strung along the crossbars of the telegraph poles. When the light and sound package reaches the edge of the old Deauville bridge, a remote switch shuts off the batteries and then it makes a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and returns to the shed."

"Why was it that some nights we only heard the sound but saw no lights?" asked Chase.

"The locomotive headlamp is rather large," answered Magee. "It's too easily detectable. So on moonlit nights I remove it and run only the sound system."

Giordino smiled broadly. "I don't mind admitting, Chase and I were ready to take up religion the first time it paid us a visit."

"I hope I didn't cause you any unnecessary inconvenience."

"Not at all. It was a great source of conversation."

"Annie and I stand on the riverbank nearly every day and watch your salvage operation. Looks to me like you've experienced problems. Have any pieces of the Manhattan Limited been pulled up yet?"

"Not even a rivet," Pitt answered. "We're closing the project down."

"That's a shame," Magee said sincerely. "I was rooting for your success. I guess the train wasn't meant to be found."

"Not in the river at any rate."

"More coffee, anyone?" Annie came around with-the pot.

"I'll take some," said Pitt. "Thank you."

"You were saying." Magee probed.

"Do you own one of those little motorcars that railroad gangs ride on when they repair track?" Pitt asked, changing the subject.

"I have an eighty-year-old handcar that moves on muscle power."

"May I borrow it along with your phantom train gear?"

"When do you want to use it?"

"Now."

"On a stormy night like this?"

"Especially on a stormy night like this."

Giordino took up his station on the platform bordering the tracks. In one hand he held a large flashlight. The wind had died down to ten miles an hour, and by keeping to the corner of the depot he was sheltered from the sweeping rain.

Chase was not so lucky. He stood huddled atop the handcar a quarter of a mile up the track. For perhaps the tenth time he dried off the battery terminals and checked the wires leading to the locomotive headlamp and sound speakers that were jury rigged on the front of the handcar.

Pitt stepped to the doorway and made a signal with his hand. Giordino acknowledged it and then jumped down onto the track bed and blinked his flashlight into the darkness.

"About damned time," Chase mumbled to himself as he pushed the battery switch and began pumping the hand levers.

The headlamp's beam glinted on the wet rails and the whistle shriek was swept ahead by a following gust of wind. Pitt hesitated, timing in his mind the advance of the handcar. Satisfied that Chase was approaching at a good clip, he reentered the office and absorbed the warmth from the stove. "We're rolling," he said briefly.

"What do you hope to learn by recreating the robbery?" asked Magee.

"I'll know better in a few minutes," Pitt replied evasively.

"I think it's exciting," Annie bubbled.

"Annie, you act out the role of Hiram Meechum, the telegrapher, while I play the station agent, Sam Harding," Pitt instructed. "Mr. Magee, you're the authority. I'll leave it to you to take the part of Clement Massey and lead us through the events step by step."

"I'll try," Magee said. "But it's impossible to reconstruct the exact dialogue and movements of seventy-five years ago."

"We won't need a perfect performance," Pitt grinned. "A simple run-through will do fine."

Magee shrugged. "Okay…... let's see, Meechum was seated at the table in front of the chessboard. Harding had just taken a call from the dispatcher in Albany, so he was standing near the phone when Massey entered."

He walked to the doorway and turned around, holding out his hand in simulation of a gun. The locomotive sounds drew nearer and mingled with the occasional boom of thunder. He stood there a few seconds listening, and then he nodded his head. "This is a holdup," he said. Annie looked at Pitt, unsure of what to do or say.

"After the surprise wore off," said Pitt, "the railroad men must have put up an argument."

"Yes, when I interviewed Sam Harding he said they tried to tell Massey there was no money in the depot, but he wouldn't listen. He insisted that one of them open the safe."

"They hesitated," Pitt conjectured.

"In the beginning," said Magee, his voice taking on a hollow tone. "Then Harding agreed, but only if he could flag the train first. Massey refused, claiming it was a trick. He became impatient and fired a bullet through Meechum's chessboard."

Annie hesitated, a blank look on her face. Then, carried away by her imagination, she swept the board off the table and scattered the chess pieces over the floor.

"Harding begged, tried to explain that the bridge was out. Massey would have none of it."

The headlamp beam on the handcar flashed through the window. Pitt could see that Magee's eyes were looking into another time. "Then what happened?" Pitt prompted.

"Meechum grabbed a lantern and made an attempt to reach the platform and stop the train. Massey shot him in the hip." Pitt turned. "Annie, if you please?"

Annie rose from her chair, made a few steps toward the door and eased down in a reclining position on the floor.

The handcar was only a hundred yards away now. Pitt could read the dates on the calendar hanging on the wall from the headlamp. "The door?" Pitt snapped. "Open or closed." Magee paused, trying to think. "Quickly, quickly!" Pitt urged. "Massey had kicked it closed."

Pitt pushed the door shut. "Next move?"

"Open that damned safe! Yes, Massey's very words, according to Harding."

Pitt hurried over and knelt in front of the old iron safe.

Five seconds later the handcar, with Chase pumping up a sweat, rolled by on the track outside, the bass of the speakers reverberating throughout the old wooden building. Giordino stood and swung the flashlight at the windows in a wide circular motion, making it seem to those inside that the beam was flickering past the window glass in the wake of the handcar. The only sound missing was the clack of the steel coach wheels.

A shiver crept up Magee's spine and gripped him all the way to the scalp. He felt as if he had touched the past, a past he had never truly known.

Annie lifted herself from the floor and put her arms around his waist. She looked up into his face, her expression strangely penetrating. "It was so real," Magee murmured. "All so damn real."

"That's because our reenactment was the way it happened back in nineteen fourteen," said Pitt.

Magee turned and stared at Pitt. "But there was the real Manhattan Limited then."

Pitt shook his head. "There was no Manhattan Limited then."

"You're wrong. Harding and Meechum saw it."

"They were tricked," Pitt said quietly.

"That can't be…..." Magee began, then stopped, his eyes wide in un comprehension He started over. "That can't be…... they were experienced railroad men…... they couldn't be fooled."

"Meechum was lying wounded on the floor. The door was closed. Harding was bent over the safe, his back to the tracks. All they saw were lights. All they heard were sounds. Sounds from an old gramophone recording of a passing train."

"But the bridge…... it collapsed under the weight of the train. That couldn't be faked."

"Massey blew the bridge in sections. He knew one big bang would have alerted half the valley. So he detonated small charges of black powder at key structure points, coinciding the blasts with the thunderclaps, until the center span finally gave way and dropped in the river."

Magee, still puzzled, said nothing.

"The robbery of the station was only a sham, a cover-up. Massey had bigger things on his mind than a measly eighteen dollars. He was after a two-million-dollar gold-coin shipment carried on the Manhattan Limited."

"Why go to all the trouble?" Magee asked doubtfully. "He could have simply stopped the train, held it up and made off with the coins."

"That's how Hollywood might have filmed it," said Pitt. "But in real life there's always a catch. The coins in question were twenty-dollar pieces called St. Gaudens. They each weighed close to one ounce. Simple arithmetic tells us that it took a hundred thousand coins to make two million dollars. Then allow sixteen ounces to a pound, do a little dividing and you come up with a shipment weighing over three tons. Not exactly a bundle a few men could unload and haul away before railroad officials figured the cause of the train's delay and sent a posse charging down the tracks."

"All right," said Giordino. "I'll bite and ask the question on everyone's mind. If the train didn't pass through here and take a dive in the Hudson, where did it go?"

"I think Massey took over the locomotive, diverted the train from the main track and hid it where it remains to this day."

If Pitt had claimed to be a visitor from Venus or the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte, his words couldn't have received a more dubious reception. Magee looked downright apathetic. Only Annie had a thoughtful expression.

"In some respects, Mr. Pitt's theory isn't as farfetched as it sounds," she said.

Magee stared at her as if she was an errant child. "Not one passenger or crewman who survived to tell the tale, or a robber confessing on a deathbed, not even a corpse to point a finger? Not a fragment from an entire train come to light after all these years…... not possible."

"It would have to be the greatest vanishing act of all time," added Chase.

Pitt did not look as though he was listening to the conversation. He suddenly turned to Magee. "How far is Albany from here?"

"About twenty-five miles. Why do you ask?"

"The last time anyone saw the Manhattan Limited up close was when it left the Albany station."

"But surely you can't really believe."

"People believe what they want to believe," said Pitt. "Myths, ghosts, religion and the supernatural. My belief is that a cold, tangible entity has simply been misplaced for three quarters of a century in a place where nobody thought to look."

Magee sighed. "What are your plans?"

Pitt looked surprised at the question. "I'm going to eyeball every inch of the deserted track bed between here and Albany," he said grimly, "until I find the remains of an old rail spur that leads to nowhere."

The telephone rang at 11:15 p.m. Sandecker laid aside the book he was reading in bed and answered.

"Sandecker."

"Pitt again."

The admiral pushed himself to a sitting position and cleared his mind. "Where are you calling from this time?"

"Albany. Something has come up."

"Another problem with the salvage project?"

"I called it off."

Sandecker took a deep breath. "Do you mind telling me why?"

"We were looking in the wrong place."

"Oh, Christ," he groaned. "That tears it. Damn. No doubt at all?"

"Not in my mind."

"Hang on."

Sandecker picked out a cigar from a humidor on the bedside table and lit it. Even though the trade embargo with Cuba had been lifted in 1985, he still preferred the milder flavor and looser wrap of a Honduras over the Havana. He always felt that a good cigar kept the world at bay. He blew out a rolling cloud and came back on the line. "Dirk."

"Still here."

"What do I tell the President?"

There was silence. Then Pitt spoke slowly and distinctly. "Tell him the odds have dropped from a million to one to a thousand to one."

"You found something?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then what are you working on?"

"Nothing more than a gut feeling."

"What do you need from me?" asked Sandecker.

"Please get ahold of Heidi Milligan. She's staying at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York. Ask her to dig into old railroad archives for any maps that show New York Quebec Northern Railroad tracks, sidings aivd spurs between Albany and the Deauville-Hudson bridge during the years eighteen eighty to nineteen fourteen."

"Okay, I'll take care of it. Got her number?"

"You'll have to get it from information."

Sandecker took a long puff on the cigar. "How does it look for Monday?"

"Grim. You can't rush these things."

"The President needs that treaty copy."

"Why?"

"Don't you know?"

"Moon clammed up when I asked."

"The President is speaking before the House of Commons and the Senate of the Canadian Parliament. His speech centers around a plea for merging our two countries into one. Alan Mercier let me in on it this morning. Since Quebec went independent, the Maritime Provinces have been considering statehood. The President is hoping to talk the Western Provinces into joining too. That's where a signed copy of the North American Treaty comes in. Not to coerce or threaten, but to eliminate the red-tape jungle of the transition and stonewall any objections and interference from the United Kingdom. His pitch for a unified North America is only fifty-eight hours away. You get the action?"

"Yes…..." Pitt said sullenly. "I've got it now. And while you're at it, thank the President and his little group for letting me know at the last minute."

"Would it have mattered otherwise?"

"No, I guess not."

"Where can Heidi get in touch with you?"

"I'll keep the De Soto moored at the bridge site as a command post. All calls can be relayed from there." There was nothing more to say. So Sandecker simply said, "Good luck."

"Thanks," Pitt came back. And then the line went dead.

Sandecker had the number of Heidi's hotel in less than a minute. He dialed direct and waited for the connection.

"Good evening, Gramercy Park Hotel," a sleepy female voice answered.

"Commander Milligan's room, please."

A pause. "Yes, room three sixty-seven. I'll ring."

"Hello," a man answered.

"Is this Commander Milligan's room?" Sandecker demanded impatiently.

"No, sir, this is the assistant manager. The commander is out for the evening."

"Any idea when she'll return?"

"No sir, she didn't stop at the desk when she left."

"You must have a photographic memory," said Sandecker suspiciously.

"Sir?"

"Do you recognize all your guests when they pass through the lobby?"

"When they're very attractive ladies who stand six feet tall and wear a cast on one leg, I do."

"I see."

"May I give her a message?"

Sandecker thought a moment. "No message. I'll call again later."

"One minute, sir. I think she passed by and entered the elevator while we've been talking. If you'll hold on, I'll have the switchboard ring her room and transfer your call."

In room 367 Brian Shaw laid down the receiver and walked into the bathroom. Heidi lay in the tub, covered by a blanket of bubbles, her cast-enclosed leg propped awkwardly on the edge of the tub. Her hair was covered by a plastic shower cap and she lazily held an empty glass in one hand.

"Venus, born of the foam and the sea." Shaw laughed. "I wish I had a picture of this."

"I can't reach the champagne," she said, pointing to a magnum of Tattinger brut reserve vintage in an ice bucket perched on the washbasin. He nodded and filled her glass. Then he poured the remainder of the chilled champagne over her breasts.

She yelped and tried to splash him, but he ducked nimbly back through the doorway. "I owe you for that," she shouted.

"Before you declare war, you've got a call."

"Who is it?"

"I didn't ask. Sounds like another dirty old man." He nodded at a wall phone mounted between the tub and the commode. "You can take it here. I'll hang up the extension."

As soon as her voice came on the line, Shaw clicked the connection and then kept his ear pressed to the receiver. When Heidi and Sandecker finished their conversation, he waited for her to hang up. She didn't.

Smart girl, he thought. She didn't trust him.

After ten seconds he finally heard the disconnect as she placed the handset in its cradle. Then he dialed the hotel switchboard.

"May I help you?"

"Yes, could you ring room three sixty-seven in a minute and ask for Brian Shaw? Please don't say who you are."

"Nothing else?"

"When Shaw himself answers, just punch off the connection. "Yes, sir."

Shaw returned to the bathroom and peered around the door. "Truce?"

Heidi looked up and smiled. "How'd you like it if I did that to you?"

"The sensation wouldn't be the same. I'm not built like you. "Now I'll reek of champagne."

"Sounds delicious." The phones in the suite jangled.

"Probably for you," he said casually.

She reached over and answered, then held the handset toward him. "They asked for Brian Shaw. Perhaps you'd like to take it in the other room."

"I have no secrets," he said, grinning slyly.

He muttered through a one-sided conversation and then hung up. He made an angered expression.

"Damn, that was the consulate. I have to meet with someone."

"At this time of night?" she asked.

He leaned down and kissed her toes that protruded from the end of the cast. "Revel in anticipation. I'll be back in two hours.

The curator of the Long Island Railroad Museum was an elderly retired accountant who nourished a lifelong passion for the iron horse. He walked yawning through the relics on display while grumbling incessantly about being abruptly awakened in the dead of night to open the building for an FBI agent.

He came to an antique door whose glass was etched with an elk standing on a mountain, looking down on a diamond stacked locomotive puffing a great billow of smoke as it rounded a sharp curve. He fished around with a large ring until he found the right key. Then he unlocked the door, swung it open and switched on the lights.

He paused and stuck out an arm, blodking Shaw's way. "Are you sure you're an FBI man?"

Shaw sighed at the stupid wording of the question and produced a hastily forged ID card for the third time. He waited patiently for the curator to read the fine print again.

"I assure you, Mr. Rheinhold."

"Rheingold. Like the beer."

"Sorry, but I assure you the bureau wouldn't have put you to all this bother if the matter wasn't most urgent."

Rheingold looked up at him. "Can you tell me what this is all about?"

"Afraid not."

"An Amtrak scandal. I bet you're investigating an Amtrak scandal."

"I can't say."

"A train robbery maybe. Must be pretty confidential. I haven't seen any mention on the six o'clock news."

"Might I ask if we can get on with it," Shaw said impatiently. "I'm in a bit of a rush."

"Okay, just asking," Rheingold said, disappointed.

He led the way down an aisle bordered by high shelves crammed with bound volumes on railroading, most of them long out of print. He stopped at the end of one bookcase containing large portfolios, peered through the bottom lenses of his bifocals and read the titles aloud.

"Let's see, track layouts for the New Haven Hartford, the Lake Shore Michigan Southern, Boston Albany…... ah, here it is, the New York Quebec Northern." He carried the portfolio over to a table and untied the strings on the cover. "Great railroad in its day. Over two thousand miles of track. Ran a crack express called the Manhattan Limited. Any particular section of the track you're interested in?"

"I can find it, thank you," said Shaw.

"Would you like a cup of coffee? I can make some upstairs in the office. Only take a couple of minutes."

"You're a civilized man, Mr. Rheingold. Coffee sounds fine."

Rheingold nodded and walked back down the aisle. He paused and turned when he came to the doorway. Shaw was sitting at the table studying the faded and yellowing maps.

When he returned with the coffee, the portfolio was neatly tied and replaced in its proper niche on the shelf. "Mr. Shaw?" There was no answer. The library room was empty.

Pitt felt inspired and determined, even exhilarated.

A deep sense of knowing he had opened a door that had been overlooked for generations acted on him like a stimulant. With an optimism that was not there before, he stood in a small, empty pasture and waited for the two-engine jet to float in for a landing.

Under normal procedures the feat would have been impossible: the field was pockmarked by old tree stumps and riddled with dry gullies. The longest flat spot ran no more than fifty feet before ending at a moss-covered rock wall. Pitt had expected a helicopter and he began to wonder if the pilot had a death wish or had brought the wrong aircraft.

Then he watched in fascination as the wings and engines began to slowly tilt upward while the fuselage and tail remained horizontal. When they reached ninety degrees and were facing skyward the plane stopped its forward motion and began to settle to the uneven ground.

Soon after the wheels touched the grass, Pitt walked up to the cockpit door and opened it. A boyish face with freckles and red hair broke into a cheery grin. "Morning. You Pitt?"

"That's right."

"Climb in."

Pitt climbed in, secured the door and sat in the copilot's seat. "This is a VTOL, isn't it?"

"Yeah," the pilot replied. "Vertical takeoff and landing, made in Italy, Scinletti 440. Nice little flier, finicky at times. But I sing Verdi to it and it's putty in my hands."

"You don't use a helicopter?"

"Too much vibration. Besides, vertical photography works best from a high-speed airplane." He paused. "By the way, the name's Jack Westler." He didn't offer to shake hands. Instead, he eased the throttles toward their stops, and the Scinletti began to rise.

At about two hundred feet, Pitt twisted in his seat and stared back at the wings as they turned horizontal again. The craft began increasing its forward speed and soon returned to level flight.

"What area would you like to photo-map?" asked Westler.

"The old railroad bed along the west bank of the Hudson as far as Albany."

"Not much left."

"You're familiar with it?"

"I've lived in the Hudson River valley all my life. Ever hear of the phantom train?"

"Spare me," Pitt replied in a weary tone.

"Oh…... okay," Westler dropped the subject. "Where do you want to begin rolling the film?"

"Start at the Magee place." Pitt looked around the rear cabin. It was void of equipment. "Speaking of film, Where is the camera and its operator?"

"You mean cameras, plural. We use two, their lenses set at different angles for a binocular effect. They're mounted in pods under the fuselage. I operate them from here in the cockpit."

"What altitude will you fly?"

"Depends on the focal lenses. Altitude is computed mathematically and optically. We're set to make our run at ten thousand feet."

The view of the valley from above was heady. The landscape unfurled and spread to the horizons, crisp and green, crowned by spring clouds. From five thousand feet the river took on the shape of a huge python crawling through the hills, with low islands sometimes dotting the channel like stepping-stones in a small stream. A vineyard country here, and an orchard land, broken by an occasional dairy farm.

When the altimeter read ten thousand, Westler made a sweeping turn to slightly west of north. The De Soto crept beneath, looking like a tiny model in a diorama.

"Cameras are rolling," Westler announced.

"You make it sound like a movie production," said Pitt.

"Almost. Each picture overlaps the next by sixty percent. That way, one particular object will show up twice at slightly different angles with varied highlights. You can detect things that are invisible from ground level, remnants of man-made disturbances hundreds or even thousands of years old."

Pitt could see very clearly the scar of the track bed. Then it abruptly stopped and vanished into a field of alfalfa. He pointed downward.

"Suppose the target is completely obliterated?"

Westler peered through the windshield and nodded. "Okay, there's a case in point. When the land over the area of interest was used for agriculture, the vegetation will assume a subtle color difference due to elements foreign to the native soil composition. The change might be missed by the human eye, but the camera optics and enhanced color tone in the film will exaggerate features in the earth beyond reality."

In no time at all, it seemed to Pitt, they were approaching the southern outskirts of New York State's capital. He gazed down at the oceangoing cargo ships docked at the port of Albany. Acres of railroad tracks fanned out from the storage warehouses like a giant spider's web. Here the old railbed disappeared for good under the heavy foot of modern development. "Let's make another run," said Pitt.

"Coming around," acknowledged Westler.

Five more times they swept the fading New York Quebec Northern tracks, but the faint, fragile line through the countryside still looked solitary, undivided by discernible offshoots.

Unless the cameras spotted something he couldn't detect, the only hope he had of finding the Manhattan Limited was Heidi Milligan.

The maps had vanished from the portfolio in the railroad museum, and Heidi had no doubt who had stolen them.

Shaw had returned to the hotel later that night, and they had made fluid and gentle love until early morning. But when she awoke, he was gone. Too late she realized that he had listened in on her conversation with Admiral Sandecker. More than once, during their lovemaking, she had thought of Pitt. It was very different with him. Pitt's style was consuming and savage and impelled her to respond with savage intensity. Their time in bed had been a competition, a tournament that she never won. Pitt had drowned her, left her floating in a haze of exhausted defeat. Deep down it galled her independent ego and her mind refused to accept his superiority, and yet her body hungered for it with sinful abandon.

With Shaw the act was tender and almost respectful, and she could control her responses. Together they nurtured each other; apart they were like two gladiators circling, scheming for an opening to defeat the other. Pitt always left her spent and with a feeling she'd been used. Shaw was using her too, only for a different purpose, but strangely it didn't seem to matter. She longed to come back to him like someone returning from a stormy voyage.

She sat back in a chair in the library room of the museum and closed her eyes. Shaw thought he had forced her into a dead end by stripping the records. But there were other sources of railroad lore, other archives, private collections or historical societies. Shaw knew she could not afford the time-consuming journeys to check them out. So now she had to think of another avenue to explore. And what Shaw couldn't know, couldn't project in his scheming mind, was that she wasn't trapped at all.

"Okay, Mr. Smart-Ass," she muttered to the silent bookshelves, "here's where you get yours."

She called over the yawning curator, who was still grumbling about inconsiderate FBI agents.

"I'd like to see your old dispatch records and logbooks."

He nodded cordially. "We have cataloged samplings of old dispatch material. Don't have them all, of course. Too voluminous to store. Just tell me what you want and I'll be happy to search it out for you."

Heidi told him, and by lunchtime she had found what she was looking for.

Heidi stepped off the plane at the Albany airport at four o'clock in the afternoon. Giordino was there waiting for her. She brushed off an offer of a wheelchair and insisted on walking on her crutches to the car.

"How are things going?" she asked as Giordino pulled the car into traffic and turned south.

"Doesn't look encouraging. Pitt was poring over aerial photographs when I left the boat. No trace of a branch track showed up anywhere."

"I think I've found something."

"We could damn well use a piece of luck, for a change," Giordino muttered.

"You don't sound enthusiastic."

"My school spirit has been bled out of me."

"Things that bad?"

"Figure it out. The President goes before the Canadian Parliament tomorrow afternoon. We're dead. No way in hell we'll come up with a treaty by then…... even if one exists, which I doubt."

"What does Pitt think?" she asked. "About the train being someplace else besides buried in the river, I mean?"

"He's convinced it never reached the bridge."

"What do you believe?"

Giordino gazed expressionless down the road. Then he smiled. "I believe it's a waste of breath to argue with Pitt."

"Why, because he's stubborn?"

"No," Giordino answered. "Because he's usually right."

For hours Pitt had stared through binocular glasses at the photo blowups, his brain interpreting the detail in three dimension.

The zigzag rail fences separating pastures from bordering woodlands, the automobiles and houses, a red-and-yellow hot-air balloon that made a colorful splash against the green landscape-they were all revealed in amazing clarity. Even an occasional railroad tie could be distinguished on the weed strewn track bed.

Time after time he retraced the almost arrow-straight line between the destroyed bridge and the outskirts of Albany's industrial section, his eyes straining to pick out a minute detail, the tiniest suggestion of an abandoned rail spur.

The secret stayed kept.

He finally gave in and was leaning back in a chair resting his eyes when Heidi and Giordino entered the De Soto's chartroom. Pitt stood tiredly and embraced her. "How's the leg?" he asked.

"On the mend, thank you."

They helped her to a chair. Giordino took her crutches and leaned them against a bulkhead. Then he set her briefcase on the deck beside her. "Al tells me you've drawn a blank," she said.

Pitt nodded. "Looks that way."

"I have some more bad news for you." He said nothing, waiting. "Brian Shaw knows everything," she said simply.

Pitt read the embarrassment in her eyes. "Everything covers a lot of territory."

She shook her head in frustration. "He stole the maps of the old rail line from the museum before I had a chance to study them."

"Do him damned little good unless he'd got a clue to their value."

"I think he's guessed," Heidi said softly.

Pitt sat thoughtful for a moment, rejecting any attempt at cross-examining Heidi. The damage was done. How Shaw came to lay his hands on the key to the enigma no longer mattered. Incredibly, he felt a tinge of jealousy. And he couldn't help wondering what Heidi saw in the older man. "Then he's in the area."

"Probably sneaking around the countryside this minute," added Giordino.

Pitt looked at Heidi. "The maps may be worthless to him. Nothing resembling a rail spur shows on the aerial photos."

She picked up the briefcase, set it in her lap and opened the locks. "But there was a rail spur," she said. "It used to cut off the main line at a place called Mondragon Hook Junction." The atmosphere in the chartroom suddenly galvanized.

Pitt said, "Where is that?"

"I can't pinpoint it exactly without an old map."

Giordino quickly glanced through several topographical maps of the valley. "Nothing here, but these surveys only go back to nineteen sixty-five."

"How did you discover this Mondragon Hook?" asked Pitt.

"Elementary reasoning," Heidi shrugged. "I asked myself where I would hide a locomotive and seven Pullman cars where no one could find them for a lifetime. The only answer was underground. So I began working backward and checked old Albany dispatch records before nineteen fourteen. I hit pay dirt and found eight different freight trains that hauled ore cars loaded with limestone."

"Limestone?"

"Yes, the shipments originated from ajunction called Mondragon Hook and were destined for a cement plant in New Jersey."

"When?"

"In the eighteen nineties."

Giordino looked skeptical. "This Mondragon Hook could have been hundreds of miles from here."

"It had to be below Albany," said Heidi.

"How can you be sure?"

"New York Quebec Northern records don't list ore cars carrying limestone on any freight trains that passed through Albany. But I did run across a mention of them in a dispatch log from the Germantown rail yard where there was a switch of locomotives."

"Germantown," said Pitt. "That's fifteen miles downriver."

"My next step was to search through old geological maps," Heidi continued. She paused and slipped one from her briefcase and flattened it on the table. "The only underground limestone quarry between Albany and Germantown lay here." She made a mark with a pencil. "About nine miles north of the DeauvilleHudson bridge and three-quarters of a mile west."

Pitt put the binocular glasses to his eyes and began scanning the aerial photos. "Here, due east of the quarry site, is a dairy farm. The house and barnyard have erased all remains of the junction."

"Yes, I see it," Heidi said excitedly. "And there's a paved road that runs toward the New York State Thruway."

"Small wonder you lost the trail," Giordino said. "The county laid asphalt over it."

"If you look closely," said Pitt, "you can pick out a section of old rail ballast as it curves from the road for a hundred yards and ends at the foot of a steep hill, or mountain as the natives would label it."

Heidi peered through the binoculars. "Surprising how clear everything becomes when you know what to search for."

"Did you happen to turn up any information on the quarry" Giordino asked her.

"That part was easy," Heidi nodded. "The property and the track right-of-way were owned by the Forbes Excavation Company, which operated the quarry from eighteen eighty-two until nineteen ten, when they encountered flooding. All operations were halted, and the land was sold to neighboring farmers."

"I hate to be a wet blanket," said Giordino. "But suppose the quarry was an open pit?"

Heidi gave him a considering look. "I see what you mean. Unless the Forbes Company mined the limestone from inside the mountain, there'd be no place to hide a train." She scanned the photo again. "Too much growth to tell for sure, but the terrain appears unbroken."

"I think we should scout it out," Pitt said.

"All right," Giordino agreed. "I'll drive you."

"No, I'll go alone. In the meantime, call Moon and get some more bodies up here-a platoon of marines, in case Shaw brings in reinforcements. And tell him to send us a mining engineer, a good one. Round up any old-timers around the countryside who might remember any strange goings-on at the quarry. Heidi, if you feel up to it, kick the local publishers out of bed and dig through old papers for any relevant news items that were pushed to the back pages by the Deauville-Hudson bridge collapse. I'll know better where we stand when I inspect the quarry."

"Not much time left," Giordino said gloomily. "The President makes his speech in nineteen hours."

"I don't have to be reminded." Pitt reached for his coat. "All that's left for us now is to get inside that mountain."

The sun had set and was replaced by a quarter moon. The evening air was crisp and sharp. From his vantage point high above the old quarry entrance Shaw could see the lights of villages and farms miles away. It was a fair and picturesque land, he thought idly.

The sound of a piston-engined plane intruded on the silent countryside. Shaw twisted around and looked skyward, but could see nothing. The plane was flying without navigation lights. He judged by the sound of the engines that it was circling at only a few hundred feet above the hill. Here and there the light of a star was blotted by what Shaw knew were parachutes.

Fifteen minutes later, two shadows moved out of the trees below and climbed toward him. One of the men was Burton Angus The other was stockily built. In the darkness he could have passed for a huge rolling rock. His name was Eric Caldweiler, and he was former superintendent of a coal mine in Wales.

"How did it go?" Shaw asked.

"A perfect jump, I'd say," Burton-Angus replied. "They practically landed on top of my signal beam. The officer in command is a Lieutenant Macklin."

Shaw ignored one of the cardinal rules of undercover night operations and lit a cigarette. The Americans would know of their presence soon enough, he reasoned. "Did you find the quarry entrance?"

"You can forget about it," said Caldweiler. "Half the hillside slipped away."

"It's buried?"

"Aye, deeper than a Scotsman's whiskey cellar. The overburden is thicker than I care to think about."

Shaw said, "Any chance of digging through?"

Caldweder shook his head. "Even if we had a giant dragline, you're talking two or three days."

"No good. The Americans could show up at any time."

"Might gain entry through the portals," said Caldweiler, stoking up a curved briar pipe. "Providing we can find them in the dark."

Shaw looked at him. "What portals?"

"Any heavily worked commercial mine requires two additional openings: an escape way in case the main entrance is damaged, and an air ventilation shaft."

"Where do we start searching?" Shaw asked anxiously.

Caldweder was not to be rushed. "Well, let's see. I judge this to be a drift mine-a tunnel in the side of the hill where the outcropping broke the surface. From there the shaft probably followed the limestone bed on a down% yard slope. That would put the escape way somewhere around the base of the hill. The ventilator? Higher up, facing the north."

"Why north?"

"Prevailing winds. Just the ticket for cross-ventilation in the days before circulating fans."

"The air vent it is then," said Shaw. "It would be better hidden in the hillside woods and less exposed than the escape portal below."

"Not another safari up the mountain," Burton-Angus complained.

"Do you good," said Shaw, smiling. "Work off the fancy buffets of those embassy row parties." He mashed out the cigarette with his heel. "I'll go and round up our helpers."

Shaw turned and made his way into a heavy thicket near the base of the hill about thirty meters from the old rail spur. He tripped over a root at the edge of a ravine and fell, arms outstretched for the slamming impact. Instead, he rolled down a weed-blanketed slope and landed on his back in a bed of gravel.

He was lying there gasping, trying to get his knocked-out breath back, when a figure materialized above him, silhouetted against the stars, and touched the muzzle of a rifle to his forehead.

"I rather hope you're Mr. Shaw," a polite voice said.

"Yes, I'm Shaw," he managed to rasp.

"I'm pleased." The gun was pulled back. "Let me help you up, sir."

"Lieutenant Macklin?"

"No, sir, Sergeant Bentley."

Bentley was dressed in a military black-and-gray camouflaged night smock with pants that tucked into paratroop-style boots. He wore a dark beret over his head and his hands and feet were the color of ink. He carried a netted steel helmet in one hand. Another man stepped out of the darkness. "A problem, sergeant?"