Raise the Titanic

"I must confess," Marganin said coolly, "your fertile mind is surpassed only by your ego."

Prevlov was caught off guard. His face paled with controlled anger, and, when he spoke, it required no acute sense of hearing or imagination to detect the emotion in his voice. "You dare to insult me?"

"Why not. You undoubtedly sold Comrade Antonov on the fact that it was your genius that arrived at the purpose of the Sicilian Project and the Titanic salvage operation, when, in reality, it was my source who passed along the information. And you also most likely told them about your wonderful plan to wrest the byzanium from the Americans' hands. Again, stolen from me. In short, Prevlov, you are nothing but an untalented thief."

"That will do!" Prevlov was pointing a finger at Marganin, his tone glacial. Suddenly, he stiffened and was completely under control again, intent, urbane, the true professional. "You will burn for your insubordination, Marganin," he said pleasantly. "I will see to it that you burn a thousand deaths before this month is through."

Marganin said nothing. He only smiled a smile that was as cold as a tomb.

38

"So much for secrecy," Seagram said, dropping a newspaper on Sandecker's desk. "That's this morning's paper. I picked it up from a newsstand not fifteen minutes ago."

Sandecker turned it around and looked at the front page. He didn't have to look farther, it was all there.

"`NUMA To Raise Titanic, "' he read aloud. "Well, at least we don't have to pussyfoot around any more. 'Multimillion dollar effort to salvage ill-fated liner.' You have to admit, it makes for fascinating reading. `Informed sources said today that the National Underwater and Marine Agency is conducting an all-out salvage attempt to raise the R.M.S.Titanic, which struck an iceberg and sank in the mid-Atlantic on April 15, 1912, with a loss of over fifteen hundred lives. This tremendous undertaking heralds a new dawn in deep-sea salvage that is without parallel in the history of man's search for treasure."'

"A multimillion-dollar treasure hunt," Seagram frowned darkly. "The President will love that."

"Even has a picture of me," Sandecker said. "Not a good likeness. Must be a stock photo from their files, taken maybe five or six years ago."

"It couldn't have come at a worse time," Seagram said. "Three more weeks . . . Pitt said he would try to lift her in three more weeks."

"Don't hold your breath. Pitt and his crew have been at it for nine months; nine grueling months of battling every winter storm the Atlantic could throw at them, tackling every setback and technical adversity as it came up. It's a miracle they've accomplished so much in so little time. And yet, a thousand and one things can still go wrong. There may be hidden structural cracks that might split the hull wide open when it breaks from the sea floor, or then again, the enormous suction between the keel and the bottom ooze might never release its grip. If I were you, Seagram, I wouldn't get a glow on until you see the Titanic being towed past the Statue of Liberty."

Seagram looked wounded. The admiral grinned at his stricken expression and offered him a cigar. It was refused.

"On the other hand," Sandecker said comfortingly, "she may rise to the surface as pretty as you please."

"That's what I like about you, Admiral, your on-again, off-again optimism."

"I like to prepare myself for disappointments. It helps to ease the pain."

Seagram didn't reply. He was silent for a minute. Then he said, "So we worry about the Titanic when the time comes. But we still have the problem of the press to consider. How do we handle it?"

"Simple," Sandecker said airily. "We do what any redblooded, grass-roots politician would do when his shady record is laid bare by scandal-hungry reporters."

"And that is?" Seagram asked warily.

"We call a press conference."

"That's madness. If Congress and the public ever got wind of the fact that we've poured over three-quarters of a billion dollars into this thing, they'll be on us like a Kansas tornado."

"So we play liar's poker and slice the salvage costs in half for publication. Who's to know? There's no way the true figure can be uncovered."

"I still don't like it," Seagram said. "These Washington reporters are master surgeons when it comes to dissecting a speaker at a press conference. They'll carve you up like a Thanksgiving turkey."

"I wasn't thinking of me," Sandecker said slowly.

"Then who? Certainly not me. I'm the little man who isn't here, remember?"

"I had someone else in mind. Someone who is ignorant of our behind-the-scenes skullduggery. Someone who is an authority on sunken ships and whom the press would treat with the utmost courtesy and respect."

"And where are you going to find this paragon of virtue?"

"I'm awfully glad you used the word virtue," Sandecker said slyly. "You see, I was thinking of your wife."

39

Dana Seagram stood confidently at the lectern and deftly fielded the questions put to her by the eighty-odd reporters seated in the NUMA headquarters auditorium. She smiled continuously, with the happy look of a woman who is enjoying herself and who knows she would be approved of. She wore a terra-cotta color wrap skirt and a deeply V'd sweater, neatly accented by a small mahogany necklace. She was tall, appealing, and elegant; an image that immediately put her inquisitors at a disadvantage.

A white-haired woman on the left side of the room rose and waved her hand. "Dr. Seagram?"

Dana nodded gracefully.

"Dr. Seagram, the readers of my paper, the Chicago Daily, would like to know why the government is spending millions to salvage an old rusty ship. Why wouldn't the money be better spent elsewhere, say for welfare or badly needed urban renewal?"

"I'll be happy to clear the air for you," Dana said. "To begin with, raising the Titanic is not a waste of money. Two hundred and ninety million dollars have been budgeted, and so far we are well below that figure; and, I might add, ahead of schedule."

"Don't you consider that a lot of money?"

"Not when you consider the possible return. You see, the Titanic is a veritable storehouse of treasure. Estimates run over three hundred million dollars. There are many of the passengers' jewels and valuables still on board a quarter of a million dollars' worth in one stateroom alone. Then there are the ship's fittings, as well as the furnishings and the precious decor, some of which may have survived. A collector would gladly pay anywhere from five hundred to a thousand dollars for one piece of china or a crystal goblet from the first-class dining room. No, ladies and gentlemen, this is one time when a federal project is not, if you'll pardon the expression, a taxpayer ripoff. We will show a profit in dollars and a profit in historical artifacts of a bygone era, not to mention the tremendous wealth of data for marine science and technology."

"Dr. Seagram?" This from a tall, pinch-faced man in the rear of the auditorium. "We haven't had time to read the press release you passed out earlier, so could you please enlighten us as to the mechanics of the salvage?"

"I'm glad you asked me that." Dana laughed. "Seriously, I apologize for the old cliche, but your question, sir, is the cue for a brief slide presentation that should help explain many of the mysteries regarding the project." She turned to the wings of the stage. "Lights, please."

The lighting dimmed and the first slide marched onto a wide screen above and behind the lectern.

"We begin with a composite of over eighty photographs pieced together to show the Titanic as she rests on the sea floor. Fortunately, she's sitting upright with a light list to port which conveniently puts the hundred-yard-long gash she received from the iceberg in an accessible position to seal."

"How is it possible to seal an opening that size at that enormous depth?"

The next slide came on and showed a man holding what looked like a large blob of liquid plastic.

"In answer to that question," Dana said, "this is Dr. Amos Stannford demonstrating a substance he developed called `Wetsteel.' As the name suggests, Wetsteel, though pliable in air, hardens to the rigidity of steel ninety seconds after coming in contact with water, and it can bond itself to a metal object as though it were welded."

This last statement was followed by a wave of murmurs throughout the room.

"Ball-shaped aluminum tanks, ten feet in diameter, that contain Wetsteel have been dropped at strategic spots around the vessel," Dana continued. "They are designed so that a submersible can attach itself to the tank, not unlike the docking procedure of a shuttle rocket with a space laboratory, and then proceed to the working area where the crew can aim and expel the Wetsteel from a specially designed nozzle."

"How is the Wetsteel pumped from the tank?"

"To illustrate with another comparison, the great pressure at that depth compresses the aluminum tank much like a tube of toothpaste, squeezing the sealant through the nozzle and into the opening to be covered."

She signaled for a new slide.

"Now here we see a cut-away drawing of the sea, depicting the supply tenders on the surface and the submersibles clustered around the wreck on the bottom. There are four manned underwater vehicles involved in the salvage operation. The Sappho I, which you may recall was the craft used on the Lorelei Current Drift Expedition, is currently engaged in patching the damage caused by the iceberg along the starboard side of the hull and also the bow, where it was shattered by the Titanic's boilers. The Sappho II, a newer and more advanced sister ship, is sealing the smaller openings, such as the air vents and portholes. The Navy's submersible, the Sea Slug, has the job of cutting away unnecessary debris, including the masts, rigging, and the aft funnel which fell across the After Boat Deck. And finally, the Deep Fathom, a submersible belonging to the Uranus Oil Corporation, is installing pressure relief valves on the Titanic's hull and superstructure."

"Could you please explain the purpose of the valves, Dr. Seagram?"

"Certainly," Dana replied. "When the hulk begins its journey to the surface, the air that has been pumped into her interior will begin to expand as the pressure of the sea lessens against her exterior. Unless this inside pressure is continuously bled, the Titanic could conceivably blow herself to pieces. The valves, of course, are there to prevent this disastrous occurrence."

"Then NUMA intends to use compressed air to lift the derelict?"

"Yes, the support tender, Capricorn, has two compressor units capable of displacing the water in the Titanic's hull with enough air to raise her."

"Dr. Seagram?" came another disembodied voice, "I represent Science Today, and I happen to know that the water pressure where the Titanic lies is upwards of six thousand pounds per square inch. I also know that the largest available air compressor can only put out four thousand pounds. How do you intend to overcome this differential?"

"The main unit on board the Capricorn pumps the air from the surface through a reinforced pipe to the secondary pump, which is stationed amidships of the wreck. In appearance, this secondary pump looks like a radial aircraft engine with a series of pistons spreading from a central hub. Again, we utilized the sea's great abyssal pressures to activate the pump, which is also assisted by electricity and the air pressure coming from above. I am sorry I can't give you an in-depth description, but I am a marine archaeologist, not a marine engineer. However, Admiral Sandecker will be available later in the day to answer your technical questions in greater detail."

"What about suction?" the voice of Science Today persisted. "After sitting imbedded in the silt all these years, won't the Titanic be fairly well glued to the bottom?"

"She will indeed." Dana gestured for the lights. They came on and she stood blinking in the glare for a few moments until she could distinguish her inquirer. He was a middle-aged man, with long brown hair and large wire rimmed glasses.

"When it is calculated that the ship has enough air to lift her mass toward the surface, the air pipe will be disconnected from the hull and converted to inject an electrolyte chemical, processed by the Myers-Lentz Company, into the sediment surrounding the Titanic's keel. The resulting reaction will cause the molecules in the sediment to break down and form a cushion of bubbles that will erase the static friction and allow the great hulk to wrest herself free from the suction."

Another man raised his hand.

"If the operation is successful and the Titanic begins floating toward the surface, isn't there a good chance she could capsize? Two and a half miles is a long way for an unbalanced object of forty-five thousand tons to remain upright."

"You're right. There is the possibility she might capsize, but we plan to leave enough water in her lower holds to act as ballast and offset this problem."

A young, mannish-looking woman rose and waved her hand.

"Dr. Seagram! I am Connie Sanchez of Female Eminence Weekly, and my readers would be interested in learning what defense mechanisms you have personally developed for competing on a day-to-day basis in a profession dominated by egotistic male pigheads."

The audience of reporters greeted the question with uneasy silence. God, Dana thought to herself, it had to come sooner or later. She stepped alongside the lectern and leaned on it in a negligent, almost sexy attitude.

"My reply, Ms. Sanchez, is strictly off the record."

"Then you're copping out," said Connie Sanchez with a superior grin.

Dana ignored the jab. "First, I find that a defense mechanism is hardly necessary. My masculine colleagues respect my intelligence enough to accept my opinions. I don't have to go bra-less or spread my legs to get their attention. Second, I prefer standing on my own home ground and competing with members of my own sex, not a strange stance when you consider the fact that out of five hundred and forty scientists on the staff of NUMA, a hundred and fourteen are women. And third, Ms. Sanchez, the only pigheads it's been my misfortune to meet during my life have not been men, but rather the female of the species."

For several moments, a stunned silence gripped the room. Then, suddenly, shattering the embarrassed quiet, a voice burst from the audience. "Atta girl, Doc," yelled the little white-haired lady from the Chicago Daily. "That's putting her down."

A sea of applause rippled and then roared, sweeping the auditorium in a storm of approval. The battle-hardened Washington correspondents offered her their respect with a standing ovation.

Connie Sanchez sat in her seat and stared coldly in flushed anger. Dana saw Connie's lips form the word "bitch" and she returned a smug, derisive kind of smile that only women do so well. Adulation, Dana thought, how sweet it is.

40

Since early morning the wind had blown steadily out of the northeast. By later afternoon it had increased to a gale of thirty-five knots, which in turn threw up mountainous seas that pitched the salvage ships about like paper cups in a dishwasher. The tempest carried with it a numbing cold borne of the barren wastes above the Arctic Circle. The men dared not venture out onto the icy decks. It was no secret that the greatest barrier against keeping warm was the wind. A man could feel much colder and more miserable at twenty degrees above zero Fahrenheit with a thirty-five-knot wind than at twenty degrees below zero with no wind. The wind steals the body heat as quickly as it can be manufactured-a nasty situation known as chill factor.

Joel Farquar, the Capricorn's weatherman, on loan from the Federal Meteorological Services Administration, seemed unconcerned with the storm snapping outside the operations room as he studied the instrumentation that tied into the National Weather Satellites and provided four space pictures of the North Atlantic every twenty-four hours.

"What does your prognosticating little mind see for our future?" Pitt asked, bracing his body against the roll.

"She'll start easing in another hour," Farquar replied "By sunrise tomorrow the wind should be down to ten knots."

Farquar didn't look up when he spoke. He was a studious, little red-faced man with utterly no sense of humor and no trace of friendly warmth. Yet, he was respected by every man on the salvage operation because of his total dedication to the job, and the fact that his predictions were uncannily accurate.

"The best laid plans . . ." Pitt murmured idly to himself. "Another day lost. That's four times in one week we've had to cast off and buoy the air line."

God can make a storm," Farquar said indifferently. He nodded toward the two banks of television monitors that covered the forward bulkhead of the Capricorn's operations room. "At least they're not bothered by it all."

Pitt looked at the screens which showed the submersibles calmly working on the wreck twelve thousand feet below the relentless sea. Their independence from the surface was the saving grace of the project. With the exception of the Sea Slug, which only had a downtime of eighteen hours and was now securely tied on the Modoc's deck, the other three submersibles could be scheduled to stay down on the Titanic for five days at a stretch before they returned to the surface to change crews. He turned to Al Giordino, who was bent over a large chart table.

"What's the disposition of the surface ships?"

Giordino pointed at the tiny two-inch models scattered about the chart. "The Capricorn is holding her usual position in the center. The Modoc is dead ahead, and the Bomberger is trailing three miles astern."

Pitt stared at the model of the Bomberger. She was a new vessel, constructed especially for deep-water salvage. "Tell her captain to close up to within one mile."

Giordino nodded toward the bald radio operator, who was moored securely to the slanting deck in front of his equipment. "You heard the man, Curly. Tell the Bomberger to come up to one mile astern."

"How about the supply ships?" Pitt asked.

"No problem there. This weather is duck soup to big ten-tonners the likes of these two. The Alhambra is in position to port, and the Monterey Park is right where she's supposed to be to starboard."

Pitt nodded at a small red model. "I see our Russian friends are still with us."

"The Mikhail Kurkov?" Giordino said. He picked up a blue replica of a warship and placed it next to the red model. "Yeah, but she can't be enjoying the game. The Juneau, that Navy guided-missile cruiser, hangs on like glue."

"And the wreck buoy's signal unit?"

"Serenely beeping away eighty feet beneath the uproar," Giordino announced. "Only twelve hundred yards, give or take a hair, bearing zero-five-nine, southwest that is."

"Thank God we haven't been blown off the homestead," Pitt sighed.

"Relax." Giordino grinned reassuringly. "You act like a mother with a daughter out on a date after midnight every time there's a little breeze."

"The mother-hen complex becomes worse the closer we get," Pitt admitted. "Ten more days, Al. If we can get ten calm days, we can wrap it up."

"That's up to the weather oracle." Giordino turned to Farquar. "What about it, O Great Seer of Meteorological Wisdom?"

"Twelve hours' advance notice is all you'll get out of me," Farquar grunted, without looking up. "This is the North Atlantic. She's the most unpredictable of any ocean in the world. Hardly one day is ever the same. Now, if your precious Titanic had gone down in the Indian Ocean, I could give you your ten day prediction with an eighty percent chance of accuracy."

"Excuses, excuses," Giordino replied. "I bet when you make love to a woman, you tell her going in that there's a forty-per-cent chance she'll enjoy it."

"Forty per cent is better than nothing," Farquar said casually.

Pitt caught a gesture by the sonar operator and moved over to him. "What have you got?"

"A strange pinging noise over the amplifier," the sonar man replied. He was a pale-faced man, about the size and shape of a gorilla. "I've picked it up off and on during the last two months. Strange sort of sound, kind of like somebody was sending messages."

"Make anything of it?"

"No, Sir. I had Curly listen to it, but he said it was pure gibberish."

"Most likely a loose object on the wreck that's being rattled about by the current."

"Or maybe it's a ghost," the sonar man said.

"You don't believe in them, but you're afraid of them, is that it?"

"Fifteen hundred souls went down with the Titanic," the sonar man said. "It's not unlikely that at least one came back to haunt the ship."

"The only spirits I'm interested in," Giordino said from the chart table, "are the kind you drink . . . ."

"The interior cabin camera of Sappho II just blacked out." This from the sandy-haired man seated at the TV monitors.

Pitt was immediately behind him, staring at the blackened monitor. "Is the problem at this end?"

"No, Sir. All circuits here and on the buoy's relay panel are operable. The problem must be on the Sappho II. It just seemed like somebody hung a cloth over the camera lens."

Pitt swung to face the radio operator. "Curly, contact Sappho II and ask them to check their cabin TV camera."

Giordino picked up a clipboard and checked the crew schedule. "Omar Woodson is in command of the Sappho II this shift."

Curly pressed the transmit switch. "Sappho II, hello Sappho II, this is Capricorn. Please reply." Then he leaned forward, pressing his headset tighter to his ears. "The contact is weak, sir. Lots of interference. The words are very broken. I can't make them out."

"Turn on the speaker," Pitt ordered.

A voice rattled into the operations room, muffled behind a wave of static.

"Something is jamming the transmission," said Curly. "The relay unit on the air-line buoy should be picking them up loud and clear."

"Give your volume everything it's got. Maybe we can make some sense out of Woodson's reply."

"Sappho II, could you repeat please. We cannot read you. Over."

As soon as Curly turned up the speaker, the explosion of ear-splitting crackle made everyone jump.

"------corn. We ------- ----ou ----lear. ----ver."

Pitt grabbed the microphone. "Omar, this is Pitt. Your cabin TV camera is out. Can you repair? We will await your reply. Over."

Every eye in the operations room locked on the speaker as though it were alive. Five interminable minutes dragged by while they patiently waited for Woodson's report. Then Woodson's fragmented voice hammered through the loudspeaker again.

"Hen----- Munk ------- ------est per-----on ------ sur---------."

Giordino twisted his face, puzzled. "Something about Henry Munk. The rest is too garbled to comprehend."

"They're back on monitor." Not every eye had been aimed at the speaker. The young man at the TV monitors had never taken his off Sappho II's screen. "The crew looks like they're grouped around someone lying on the deck."

Like spectators at a tennis match, every head turned in unison to the TV monitor. Figures were moving to and fro in front of the camera, while in the background three men could be seen bent over a body stretched grotesquely on the submersible's narrow cabin deck.

"Omar, listen to me," Pitt snapped into the microphone. "We do not understand your transmissions. You are back on TV monitor. I repeat, you are back on TV monitor. Write your message and hold it up to the camera. Over."

They watched one of the figures detach itself from the rest and lean over a table for a few moments writing and then approach the TV camera. It was Woodson. He held up a scrap of paper whose rough printing read, "Henry Munk dead. Request permission to surface."

"Good God!" Giordino's expression was one of pure astonishment. "Henry Munk dead? It can't be true."

"Omar Woodson isn't noted for playing games," Pitt said grimly. He began to transmit again. "Negative, Omar. You cannot surface. There is a thirty-five-knot gale up here. The sea is turbulent. I repeat, you cannot surface."

Woodson nodded that he understood. Then he wrote something else, looking over his shoulder furtively every so often. The note said "I suspect Munk murdered!"

Even Farquar's usually inscrutable face had gone pale. "You'll have to let them surface now," he whispered.

"I will do what I have to do." Pitt shook his head decisively. "My feelings will have to look elsewhere. There are five men still alive and breathing inside Sappho II. I won't risk bringing them up only to lose them all under a thirty-foot wave. No, gentlemen, we will just have to sit it out until sunrise to see what there is to see inside the Sappho II."

41

Pitt had the Capricorn home in on the signal-relay buoy as soon as the wind dropped to twenty knots. Once again they connected the air line running from the ship's compressor to the Titanic and then waited for the Sappho IIs emergence from the deep. The eastern sky was beginning to brighten when final preparations were made to receive the submersible. Divers made ready to drop in position around the Sappho II and secure safety lines to prevent her from capsizing in the heavy seas; the winches and cables were set to haul her from the water and into the open stern of the Capricorn; down in the galley the cook began making an urn of coffee and a hearty breakfast to greet the crew of the submersible when they arrived. When all was in readiness, the scientists and engineers stood quietly shivering in the early morning cold, wondering about Henry Munk's death.

It was 0610 when the submersible popped into the marching swells one hundred yards off the port stern of the Capricorn. A line was run out by boat, and within twenty minutes the Sappho II was winched onto the stern ramp of her tender. As soon as she was blocked and secured into place, the hatch was opened and Woodson pulled himself out, followed by the four surviving members of his crew.

Woodson climbed to the top deck, where Pitt was waiting for him. His eyes were red with sleeplessness and his face stubble-bearded and gray, but he managed a thin smile as Pitt shoved a steaming mug of coffee into his hand. "I don't know which I'm happier to see, you or the coffee," he said.

"Your message mentioned murder," Pitt said, ignoring any word of greeting.

Woodson sipped at the coffee for a moment and looked back at the men who were gently lifting Munk's body through the submersible's hatch. "Not here," he said quietly.

Pitt motioned toward his quarters. Once the door was closed, he wasted no time. "Okay, let's have it."

Woodson dropped heavily onto Pitt's bunk and rubbed his eyes. "Not much to tell. We were hovering about sixty feet above the sea floor sealing off the starboard ports on C Deck when I got your message about the TV camera. I went aft to check it out and found Munk lying on the deck with his left temple caved in."

"Any sign of what caused the blow?"

"As plain as the nose on Pinocchio's face," Woodson answered. "Bits of skin, blood, and hair were stuck on the corner of the alternator housing cover."

"I'm not that familiar with the Sappho II's equipment. How is it mounted?"

"On the starboard side, about ten feet from the stern. The housing cover is raised about six inches off the deck so the alternator below is easily accessible for maintenance."

"Then it might have been an accident. Munk could have stumbled and fallen, striking his head on the edge."

"He could have, except his feet were facing the wrong way."

"What do his feet have to do with it?"

"They were pointed toward the stern."

"So?"

"Don't you get it?" Woodson said impatiently. "Munk must have been walking toward the bow when he fell."

The fuzzy picture in Pitt's mind began to clear. And he saw the piece of the puzzle that didn't belong. "The alternator housing is on the starboard side so it should have been Munk's right temple that was smashed, not his left."

"You got it."

"What caused the TV camera to malfunction?"

"No malfunction. Somebody hung a towel over the lens."

"And the crew? Where was each member positioned?"

"I was working the nozzle while Sam Merker acted as pilot. Munk had left the instrument panel to go to the head which is located in the stern. We were the second watch. The first watch included Jack Donovan-"

"A young blond fellow; the structural engineer from Oceanic Tech?"

"Right. And, Lieutenant Leon Lucas, the salvage technician on assignment from the Navy, and Ben Drummer. All three men were asleep in their bunks."

"It doesn't necessarily follow that any one of them killed Munk," Pitt said. "What was the reasoning? You don't just kill someone in an unescapable situation twelve thousand feet under the sea without one hell of a motive."

Woodson shrugged. "You'll have to call in Sherlock Holmes. I only know what I saw."

Pitt continued to probe "Munk could have twisted as he fell."

"Not unless he had a rubber neck that could turn a hundred and eighty degrees backward."

"Let's try another puzzler. How do you kill a two-hundred-pound man by knocking his head against a metal corner that's only six inches off the floor? Swing him by the heels like a sledgehammer?"

Woodson threw out his hands in a helpless gesture. "Okay, so maybe I got carried away and began seeing homicidal maniacs where none exist. God knows, that wreck down there gets to you after a while. It's weird. There are times I could have sworn I even saw people walking the decks, leaning over the rails, and staring at us." He yawned and it was evident that he was fighting to keep his eyes open.

Pitt made for the door and then turned. "You better get some sleep. We'll go over this later."

Woodson needed no further urging. He was peacefully gone to the world before Pitt was halfway to the sick bay.

Dr. Cornelius Bailey was an elephant of a man, broad shouldered, and had a thrusting, square jawed face. His sandy hair was down to his collar and the beard on the great jaw was cut in an elegant Van Dyke. He was popular among the salvage crews and could out drink any five of them when he felt in the mood to prove it. His hamlike hands turned Henry Munk's body over on the examining table as effortlessly as if it was a stick doll, which indeed it very nearly was, considering the advanced stage of rigor mortis.

"Poor Henry," he said. "Thank God, he wasn't a family man. Healthy specimen. All I could do for him on his last examination was clean out a little wax from his ears."

"What can you tell me about the cause of death?" Pitt asked.

"That's obvious," Bailey said. "First, it was due to massive damage of the temporal lobe-"

"What do you mean by first?"

"Just that, my dear Pitt. This man was more or less killed twice. Look at this." He pulled back Munk's shirt, exposing the nape of the neck. There was a large purplish bruise at the base of the skull. "The spinal cord just below the medulla oblongata has been crushed. Most likely by a blunt instrument of some kind."

"Then Woodson was right; Munk was murdered."

"Murdered, you say? Oh yes, of course, no doubt of it," Bailey said calmly, as though homicide were an everyday shipboard occurrence.

"Then it would seem the killer struck Munk from behind and then rammed his head against the alternator housing to make it look like an accident."

"That's a fair assumption."

Pitt laid a hand on Bailey's shoulder. "I'd appreciate it if you kept your discovery quiet for a while, Doc."

"Mum's the word; my lips are sealed and all that crap. Don't waste another thought on it. My report and testimony will be here when you need it."

Pitt smiled at the doctor and left the sick bay. He made his way aft to where the Sappho II sat dripping salt water on the stern ramp, climbed up the hatch ladder, and dropped down inside. An instrument technician was checking the TV camera.

"How does it look?" Pitt asked.

"Nothing wrong with this baby," the technician replied.

"As soon as the structural crew checks out the hull, you can send her back down."

"The sooner, the better," Pitt said. He moved past the technician to the after end of the submersible. The gore from Munk's injuries had already been cleaned from the deck and the corner of the alternator housing.

Pitt's mind was whirling. Only one thought broke away and uncoiled. Not a thought really, rather an unreasoning certainty that something would point an accusing finger toward Munk's murderer. He figured it would take him an hour or more, but the fates were kind. He found what he knew he must find within the first ten minutes.

42

"Let me see if I understand you," Sandecker said, glaring across his desk. "One of the members of my salvage crew has been brutally murdered and you're asking me to sit idle and do nothing about it while the killer is allowed to roam loose?"

Warren Nicholson shifted uneasily in his chair and avoided Sandecker's blazing eyes. "I realize that it's difficult to accept."

"That's putting it mildly," Sandecker snorted. "Suppose he takes it in his head to kill again?"

"That's a calculated risk we have considered."

"We have considered?" Sandecker echoed. "It's simple for you to sit up there at CIA headquarters and say that. You're not down there, Nicholson, trapped in a submersible thousands of feet below the sea, wondering whether the man standing next to you is going to bash your brains out."

"I am certain it won't happen again," Nicholson said impassively.

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because professional Russian agents do not commit murder unless it is absolutely necessary."

"Russian agents-" Sandecker stared at Nicholson in startled and total disbelief. "What in God's name are you talking about?"

"Just that. Henry Munk was killed by an operative working for the Soviet Naval Intelligence Department."

"You can't be positive. There is no proof . . . ."

"Not one hundred per cent, no. It might have been someone else with a grudge against Munk. But the facts point to a Soviet-paid operative."

"But why Munk?" Sandecker asked. "He was an instrument specialist. What possible threat could he have been to a spy?"

"I suspect that Munk saw something he shouldn't have and had to be silenced," Nicholson said. "And that's only the half of it, in a manner of speaking. You see, Admiral, there happen to be not one, but two Russian agents who have infiltrated your salvage operation."

"I don't buy that."

"We're in the business of espionage, Admiral. We find out these things."

"Who are they?" Sandecker demanded.

Nicholson shrugged helplessly. "I'm sorry, that's all I can give you. Our sources reveal that they go under the code names of Silver and Gold. But as to their true identities, we have no idea."

Sandecker's eyes were grim. "And if my people discover who they are?"

"I hope you will cooperate, at least for the time being, and order them to remain silent and take no action."

"Those two could sabotage the entire salvage operation."

"We're banking heavily on the assumption that their orders do not include destruction."

"It's madness, pure madness," Sandecker murmured. "Do you have any idea of what you're asking of me?"

"The President put the same question to me some months ago, and my answer is still the same. No, I don't. I'm aware that your efforts go beyond mere salvage, but the President has not seen fit to make me privy to the real reason behind your show."

Sandecker's teeth were clenched. "And, if I should go along with you? What then?"

"I will keep you posted as to any new developments. And when the time comes, I will give you the green light to take the Soviet agents into custody."

The admiral sat silently for a few moments and, when he finally spoke, Nicholson noted his deadly serious tone.

"Okay, Nicholson, I'll string along. But God help you if there is a tragic accident or another murder down there. The consequences will be more terrible than you can possibly imagine."

43

Mel Donner came through Marie Sheldon's front door, his suit splattered from a spring rain.

"I guess this will teach me to carry an umbrella in the car," he said, taking out a handkerchief and brushing away the dampness.

Marie closed the front door and stared up at him curiously. "Any port in a storm. Is that it, handsome?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"From the look of you," Marie said, her voice soft and slurry, "you needed a roof until the rain let up, and the fates kindly led you to mine."

Donner's eyes narrowed for a moment, but only a moment. Then he smiled. "I'm sorry, my name is Mel Donner. I'm an old friend of Dana's. Is she at home?"

"I knew a strange man begging on my doorstep was too good to be true." She smiled. "I'm Marie Sheldon. Sit down and make yourself comfortable while I call Dana and get you a cup of coffee."

"Thank you. The coffee sounds like a winner."

Donner appraised Marie's backside as she swiveled toward the kitchen. She wore a short white tennis skirt, a sleeveless knit top, and her feet were bare. The taut swing of her hips flipped the skirt to and fro in a pert, seductive sort of way.

She returned with a cup of coffee. "Dana is lazy on weekends. She seldom rolls out of the sack before ten. I'll go upstairs and speed things up."

While he waited, Donner studied the books on the shelves beside the fireplace. It was a game he often practiced. Book titles seldom failed to unlock the door to their owner's personality and tastes.

The selections ran the usual gamut for the single female there were several books of poetry, The Prophet, The New York Times Cookbook, and the usual sprinkling of gothics and best sellers. But it was the arrangement that interested Donner. Interwoven among Physics of Intercontinental Laval Flows and Geology of Underwater Canyons, he found Explanation of Sexual Fantasies of the Female, and The Story O. He was just reaching for the latter when he heard the sound of feet coming down the stairs. He turned as Dana entered the room.

She came forward and embraced him. "Mel, how wonderful to see you."

"You look great," he said. The months of strain and anguish had been erased. She seemed more at ease and she smiled without tenseness.

"How's the swinging bachelor?" she asked. "Which line are you using on poor innocent girls this week, the brain surgeon or the astronaut?"

He patted his paunch. "I've retired the astronaut story until I can shed a few pounds. Actually, because of the publicity you people are getting on the Titanic, I can do no wrong by telling the little lovelies crowded around the Washington singles' bars that I'm a deep-sea diver."

"Why don't you simply tell the truth. After all, as one of the country's leading physicists, you have nothing to be ashamed of."

"I know, but somehow playing the real me takes the fun out of it. Besides, women love a lover who's phony."

She nodded at his cup. "Can I get you more coffee?"

"No thanks." He smiled, and then his expression became serious. "You know why I'm here."

"I guessed."

"I'm worried about Gene."

"So am I"

"You could go back to him . . ."

Dana met Mel's eyes evenly. "You don't understand. When we are together, it only makes things worse."

"He's lost without you."

She shook her head. "His job is his mistress. I was only a whipping post for his frustrations. Like most wives, I'm not geared to take the anguish that goes hand in hand with a husband's insensibility when he's overburdened with on-the-job stress. Don't you see, Mel? I had to leave Gene before we destroyed each other." Dana turned and held her face in her hands, then quickly composed herself. "If only he could quit and go back to teaching, then things would be different."

"I shouldn't be telling you this," Donner said, "but the project will be completed in another month if all goes according to plan. Then Gene will have nothing to keep him in Washington. He'll be free to return to the university."

"But what about your contacts with the government?"

"Finished. We enlisted for a specific project, and when it's finished, so are we. Then all of us take a bow and head back to whatever campus we originally came from."

"He may not even want me."

"I know Gene," Donner said. "He's a one-woman man. He'll be waiting. . . unless, of course, you're involved with another man."

She looked up surprised. "Why do you say that?"

"I happened to be in Webster's Restaurant last Wednesday night

Oh God! Dana thought. One of her few dates since leaving Gene had come back to haunt her already. It had been a foursome with Marie and two biologists from the NUMA marine sciences laboratory, a friendly, comfortable evening. That was all, nothing had happened.

She stood up and glared down at Donner. "You, Marie, and yes, even the President, all expect me to go crawling back to Gene like some damned old security blanket he can't sleep without. But not one of you has even bothered to ask how I feel. What emotions and frustrations do I face? Well, to hell with all of you. I am my own woman, to do with my life as I please. I'll go back to Gene if and when I damn-well feel like it. And, if I feel in the mood to go out with other men and get laid, so be it."

She spun and left Donner sitting there stunned and embarrassed. Up the stairs and into the bedroom where she threw herself on the bed. She had mouthed nothing but mere words. There would never be another man in her life but Gene Seagram, and some day, soon, she was sure she would return to him. But now the tears came until there were none left.

Imbedded in one of the mirrored walls, a phonograph record, watched over by a female disc jockey, thundered through four huge quad speakers. The postage-stamp dance floor was jammed, and a thick haze of cigarette smoke filtered the brightly colored lights that exploded on the ceiling of the discotheque. Donner sat at the table alone, idly watching the couples gyrate to the blaring music.

A petite blonde wandered up to him and suddenly stopped. "The rainmaker?"

Donner looked up. He laughed and got to his feet. "Miss Sheldon."

"Marie," she said pleasantly.

"Are you alone?"

"No, I'm the third wheel with a married couple."

Donner's eyes followed her gesture, but it was impossible to tell who she meant amid the jumbled bodies on the dance floor. He pulled back a chair for her. "Consider yourself escorted."

A cocktail waitress happened by and Donner shouted an order above the din. He turned to find Marie Sheldon studying him approvingly. "You know, Mr. Donner, for a physicist, you're not a bad-looking man."

"Damn! I had hoped to be a CIA agent tonight."

She grinned. "Dana told me about a few of your escapades. Leading poor innocent girls astray. For shame."

"Don't believe all you hear. Actually, I'm shy and introverted when it comes to women."

"Oh really?"

"Scout's honor." He lit her cigarette. "Where's Dana tonight?"

"Very sly of you. You tried to zing one over on me."

"Not really. I just-"

"It's none of your prying business, of course, but Dana is on a ship somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean about now."

"A vacation will do her good."

"You do have a way of milking a poor girl for information," Marie said. "Just for the record, so you can inform your pal Gene Seagram, she's not on holiday, but playing den mother to a regiment of news correspondents who demanded to be on the scene when the Titanic is raised next week."

"I guess I asked for that."

"Good. I'm always impressed by a man who admits the folly of his ways." She tilted her eyes at him in a kind of mocking amusement. "Now that that's settled, why don't you propose to me?"

Donner's brows knitted. "Isn't the coy maiden the one who's supposed to say, `But sir, I hardly know you'?"

She took his hand and stood up. "Come on then."

"May I ask where?"

"To your place," she said with a mischievous grin.

"My place?" Events were clearly moving too fast for Donner.

"Sure. We have to make love, don't we? How else can two people who are engaged to be married get to know each other?"

44

Pitt slouched in his train seat and idly watched the Devon countryside glide past the window. The tracks curved along the coastline at Dawlish. In the Channel he could see a small fleet of fishing trawlers heading out for the morning's catch. Soon a misting rain streaked the glass and blurred his view, so he turned once more to the magazine on his lap and thumbed the pages without really seeing them.

If they had told him two days ago that he'd take a temporary leave from the salvage operation, he'd have thought them stupid. And, if they'd suggested that he'd travel to Teignmouth, Devonshire, population 12,260, a small picturesque resort town on the southeast coast of England, to interview a dying old man, he'd have thought them downright insane.

He had Admiral James Sandecker to thank for this pilgrimage, and that is exactly what the admiral had called it when he had ordered Pitt back to NUMA headquarters in Washington. A pilgrimage to the last surviving crew member of the Titanic.

"There's no use in arguing the matter any further," Sandecker said unequivocally. "You're going to Teignmouth."

"None of this adds up." Pitt was pacing the floor nervously, his equilibrium struggling to forget the months of endless pitching and rolling of the Capricorn. "You order me ashore during a crucial moment of the salvage and tell me I have two Russian agents, identities unknown, who have carte blanche to go about murdering my crew under the personal protection of the CIA, and then in the same breath, you calmly order me to England to take down the deathbed testimony of some ancient limey."

"That `ancient limey' happens to be the only member of the Titanic's crew who hasn't been buried."

"But what of the salvage operation," Pitt persisted. "The computers indicate the Titanic's hull might break loose from the bottom any time after the next seventy-two hours."

"Relax, Dirk. You should be back on the decks of the Capricorn by tomorrow evening. Plenty of time before the main event. Meanwhile, Rudi Gunn can handle any problems that come up during your absence."

"You don't offer me much choice." Pitt gestured in defeat.

Sandecker smiled benevolently. "I know what you're thinking . . . that you're indispensable. Well, I've got news for you. That's the best salvage crew in the world out there. I feel confident that somehow they'll struggle through the next thirty-six hours without you."

Pitt smiled, but there was no humor in his face. "When do I leave?"

"There is a Lear jet waiting at the NUMA hangar at Dulles. It will take you to Exeter. You can catch a train from there for Teignmouth."

"Afterward, shall I report to you back here in Washington?"

"No, you can report to me aboard the Capricorn. "

Pitt looked up. "The Capricorn?"

"Certainly. Just because you're relaxing in the English countryside, you don't expect me to miss out on seeing the Titanic's regenesis in case she decides to come up ahead of schedule, do you?"

Sandecker grinned satanically. He could afford that as it was all he could do to keep from laughing at the aggrieved and crestfallen expression on Pitt's face.

Pitt climbed into a cab at the railroad station and rode along a narrow road beside the river estuary to a small cottage overlooking the sea. He paid the cab driver, went through a vine-covered gate, and up a walk bordered by rose bushes. His knock was answered by a girl with absorbing violet eyes framed by neatly brushed red hair and a soft voice that was touched by a Scot's accent.

"Good morning, sir."

"Good morning," he said with a slight nod. "My name is Dirk Pitt, and-"

"Oh yes, Admiral Sandecker's cable said you were coming. Please come in. The commodore is expecting you."

She was dressed in a neatly pressed white blouse and a green wool sweater and matching skirt. He followed her into the living room of the cottage. It was cozy and comfortable, a fire was burning brightly in the fireplace, and if Pitt had not known that the owner was a retired mariner, he could have easily guessed it by the decor. Ships' models filled every available shelf, while framed prints of famous sailing vessels graced all four walls. A great brass telescope was mounted in front of the window facing the Channel, and a ship's wheel, its wood gleaming from hours of hand-waxed care, stood in one corner of the room as if awaiting a momentary turn from some long-forgotten helmsman.

"You look like you've had a very uncomfortable night," the girl said. "Would you like some breakfast?"

"Courtesy urges me to decline, but my stomach rumbles for me to` accept."

"Americans are famous for hearty appetites. I would have been disappointed if you had shattered the myth."

"Then I'll do my best to uphold Yankee tradition, Miss. . ."

"Please forgive me. I'm Sandra Ross, the commodore's great-granddaughter."

"You look after him, I take it."

"When I can. I'm a flight attendant with Bristol Airlines. A village lady sees to him when I have a flight." She motioned him down a hallway. "While you're waiting for a bit to eat, you'd best talk to Grandfather. He's very, very old, but he's dying to hear-He's anxious to hear all about your efforts to raise the Titanic. "

She knocked lightly on a door and opened it a crack. "Commodore, Mr. Pitt is here to see you."

"Well, get him in here," a voice rasped back, "before I founder on the reef."

She stood aside and Pitt entered the bedroom.

Commodore Sir John L. Bigalow, K.B.E., R.D., R.N.R. (Retired) sat propped up in a bunklike bed and studied Pitt through deep blue eyes, eyes that had the dreamlike quality of another age. The few strands of hair on his head were pure white, as was his beard, and his face showed the ruddy, weathered look of a seafaring man. He wore a tattered turtleneck sweater over what looked to be a Dickens'-style nightshirt. He held out a leathery hand that was as steady as a rock.

Pitt took it and marveled at the firm grip. "This is indeed an honor, Commodore. I have often read of your heroic escape from the Titanic. "

"So much rot," he grumbled. "I was torpedoed and cast adrift in both World Wars, and all anybody ever asks me about is the night of the Titanic. " He motioned to a chair. "Don't stand there like a beardless lad on his first trip to sea. Sit down. Sit down."

Pitt did as he was told.

"Now tell me about the ship. What does she look like after all these years? I was a young man when I served on her, but I still remember her every deck."

Pitt reached into the breast pocket of his coat and handed Bigalow an envelope of photographs. "Perhaps these can give you some idea of her present condition. They were taken by one of our submersibles just a few weeks ago."

Commodore Bigalow slipped on a pair of reading glasses and studied the pictures. Several minutes ticked off a ship's clock beside the bed while the old mariner became lost in the memories of another time. Then he looked up wistfully. "She was in a class all by herself, she was. I know. I sailed them all the Olympic . . . Aquitania . . . Queen Mary. Sure they were elaborate and modern for their time, but they couldn't touch the care and craftsmanship that went into the Titanic's furnishings her wonderful paneling and her marvelous staterooms. Aye, she still casts a heavy spell, she does."

"She grows ever more bewitching with the years," Pitt agreed.

"Here, here," Bigalow said as he pointed excitedly to a photo, "by the port ventilator on the roof over the officers' quarters. This is where I was standing when she sank beneath my feet and I was washed into the sea." The long decades seemed to melt away from his face. "Oh, but the sea was cold that night. Four degrees below freezing it was."

For the next ten minutes he talked of swimming in the icy water, miraculously finding a rope that led to an overturned lifeboat; the awful mass of struggling people; the pitiful cries that pierced the night air and then slowly died out; the long hours spent clutching the keel of the boat, huddled against the cold with thirty other men; the excitement when the Cunard liner Carpathia hove into view and made the rescue. Finally, he sighed and peered over the tops of his glasses at Pitt. "Am I boring you, Mr. Pitt?"

"Not in the least," Pitt answered. "Listening to someone who actually lived the event seems almost like living it myself."

"Then I'm going to give you another story to try on for size," Bigalow said. "Until now I never told a soul about my last minutes before the ship went down. I never mentioned a word in any of my interrogations about the sinking; not to the United States Senate inquiry or to the British Court of Inquiry. Nor; did I ever breathe a syllable to the newspaper reporters or writers who were forever researching books on the tragedy. You, sir, are the first and will be the last to hear it from my lips."

Three hours later, Pitt was on the train back to Exeter, neither tired nor worn. He did feel a kind of excitement. The Titanic, along with the strange enigma locked within the vault of cargo hold No. 1, G Deck, beckoned to him now more than ever. Southby, he wondered? How did Southby fit in the picture? For perhaps the fiftieth time he looked down at the package that Commodore Bigalow had given him. And he was not sorry that he had come to Teignmouth.

45

Dr. Ryan Prescott; chief of the NUMA Hurricane Center in Tampa, Florida, had had every intention of getting home on time for once and spending a quiet evening with his wife playing cribbage. But at ten minutes before midnight he was still at his desk staring tiredly at the satellite photos spread before him.

"Just when we think we've learned all there is to know about storms," he said querulously, "one pops out of nowhere and breaks the mold."

"A hurricane in the middle of May," his female assistant replied between yawns. "It's one for the record book all right."

"But why? The hurricane season normally extends from July to September. What caused this one to materialize two months early?"

"Beats me," the woman answered. "Where do you figure our pariah is headed?"

"Too early to predict with any certainty," Prescott said. "Her birth followed the normal patterns, true enough vast low-pressure area fed by moist air, swirling counterclockwise due to the earth's rotation. But here the difference ends. It usually takes days, sometimes weeks, for a storm four-hundred miles wide to build up. This baby pulled off the trick in less than eighteen hours."

Prescott sighed, rose from his desk, and walked to a large wall chart. He consulted a pad covered with scribbles, noting the known position, atmospheric conditions and speed. Then he began drawing a predicted track westerly from a point a hundred and fifty miles northeast of Bermuda, a track that gradually curved northward toward Newfoundland.

"Until she gives us a hint of her future course, that's the best I can do." He paused as if waiting for confirmation. When none came, he asked, "Is that how you see it?"

Still receiving no reply, he turned to repeat the question but the words never came. His assistant had fallen asleep, her head cradled in her arms upon the desk. Gently he shook her shoulder until the green eyes fluttered open.

"There's nothing more we can do here," he said softly. "Let's go home and get some sleep." He glanced warily back at the wall chart. "Chances are it's a thousand-to-one fluke that will dissipate before morning and lapse into a minor localized storm." He spoke with some authority, but there was no conviction in his tone.

What he did not notice was that the line on the chart representing his predicted course for the hurricane traveled precisely over 41°46` North by 50°14' West.

46

Commander Rudi Gunn stood on the bridge of the Capricorn and watched a tiny blue speck far to the west materialize out of the diamond-clear sky. For a few minutes it seemed to hang there, neither changing shape nor growing larger, a dark blue dot suspended above the horizon, and then, almost all at once, it enlarged and took on the shape of a helicopter.

He made his way to the landing pad aft of the superstructure and stood waiting as the craft approached and hovered above the ship. Thirty seconds later the skids kissed the flight pad, the whine of the turbines died away, and the blades slowly idled to a stop.

Gunn moved in closer as the right-hand door opened and Pitt stepped out.

"Good trip?" Gunn asked.

"Interesting," Pitt replied.

Pitt read the strain in Gunn's face. The lines around the little man's eyes were set tight and his face was grim. "You look like a kid who just had his Christmas presents stolen, Rudi. What's the problem?"

"The Uranus Oil sub, the Deep Fathom. She's trapped on the wreck."

Pitt was silent for a moment. Then he asked simply, "Admiral Sandecker?"

"He set up his headquarters on the Bomberger. Since it was the Deep Fathom's tender, he thought it would be better to conduct the rescue mission from there until you returned."

"You say was, as if the sub is as good as lost."

"It doesn't look good. Come topside and I'll fill you in on the details."

There was an air of tension and despair in the Capricorn's operations room. The usually gregarious Giordino simply nodded at Pitt's arrival, totally bypassing any word of greeting. Ben Drummer was on the microphone, talking to the crew of the Deep Fathom, encouraging them with a show of forced cheer and optimism that was betrayed by the dread in his eyes. Rick Spencer, the salvage operations equipment engineer, was gazing in mute concentration at the TV monitors. The other men in the room went about their business quietly, their faces pensive.

Gunn began explaining the situation. "Two hours before she was to ascend and change crews, the Deep Fathom, manned by engineers Joe Kiel, Tom Chavez, and Sam Merker--"

"Merker was with you on the Lorelei Current Expedition," Pitt interrupted.

"So was Munk." Gunn nodded solemnly. "It would seem we're a cursed crew."

"Go on."

"They were in the midst of installing a pressure bleed valve on the starboard side of the Titanic's forecastle deck bulkheads when their stern brushed against a forward cargo crane. The corroded mounts broke loose and the derrick section fell across the sub's buoyancy tanks, rupturing them.

More than two tons of water poured through the opening and pinned her hull to the wreck."

"How long ago did it happen?" Pitt asked.

"About three and a half hours ago."

"Then why all the gloom? You people act as if there wasn't a prayer. The Deep Fathom carries enough oxygen in her reserve system to support a crew of three for over a week. Plenty of time for Sappho I and II to seal the air tanks and pump clear the water."

"It's not all that simple," Gunn said. "Six hours is all we've got."

"How do you figure a six-hour margin?"

"I left the worst part for last." Gunn stared bleakly at Pitt. "The impact from the falling crane cracked a welded scam on the Deep Fathom's hull. It's only a tiny pinhole, but the tremendous pressure at that depth is forcing the sea into the cabin at the rate of four gallons a minute. It's a miracle the seam hasn't burst, collapsing the hull and crushing those guys to jelly." He tilted his head toward the clock over the computer panel. "Six hours is all they've got before the water fills the cabin and they drown . . . and there's not a damned thing we can do about it."

"Why not plug the leak from the outside with Wetsteel?"

"Easier said than done. We can't get at it. The section of the hull's seam that contains the leak is jammed against the Titanic's forecastle bulkhead. The admiral sent down the other three submersibles in the hope that their combined power could move the Deep Fathom just enough to reach and repair the damage. It was no-go."

Pitt sat down in a chair, picked up a pencil, and began making notations on a pad. "The Sea Slug is equipped with cutting equipment. If she could attack the derrick-"

"Negative." Gunn shook his head in frustration. "During the tugging operation, the Sea Slug broke her manipulator arm. She's back on the Modoc's deck now and the Navy boys say it's impossible to repair the arm in time." Gunn slammed his fist down on the chart table. "Our last hope was the winch on the Bomberger. If it was possible to attach a cable to the derrick, we might have pulled it free of the sub."

"End of rescue," Pitt said. "The Sea Slug is the only submersible we've got that's equipped with a heavy-duty manipulator arm, and without it, there is no way of making a hookup with the cable."

Gunn rubbed his eyes wearily. "After thousands of manhours poured into the planning and construction of every back-up safety system conceivable, and the calculating of concise emergency procedures for every predictable contingency, the unforeseen rose up and smacked us below the belt with a beyond-the-bounds-of-probability, million-to-one accident the computers didn't count on."

"Computers are only as good as the data fed into them," Pitt said.

He moved over to the radio and took the microphone from Drummer's hand. "Deep Fathom, this is Pitt. Over."

"Nice to hear your cheery voice again," Merker came over the speaker as calmly as if he were on the telephone lying at home in bed. "Why don't you drop down and make up a fourth for bridge?"

"Not my game," Pitt answered matter-of-factly. "How much time left before the water reaches your batteries?"

"At the rate she's rising, approximately another fifteen to twenty minutes."

Pitt turned to Gunn and said what needed no saying. "When their batteries go, they'll be out of communication."

Gunn nodded. "The Sappho II is standing by to keep them company. That's about all we can do."

Pitt pressed the mike button again. "Merker, how about your life-support system?"

"What life-support system? That crapped out half an hour ago. We're existing on bad breath."

"I'll send you down a case of Certs."

"Better make it fast. Chavez has a malignant case of halitosis." Then a trace of doubt surfaced in Merker's tone. "If the worst happens and we don't see you guys again, at least we'll be surrounded by good company down here."

Merker's abrupt reference to the Titanic's dead left every man in the operations room a shade paler; every man that is, except Pitt. He touched the transmit button. "Just see to it you leave a clean ship. We may want to use it again. Pitt out."

It was interesting to see the reaction to Pitt's seemingly callous remark. Giordino, Gunn, Spencer, and the others just stared at him. Only Drummer displayed an expression of anger.

Pitt touched Curly, the radio operator, on the shoulder. "Patch me into the admiral on the Bomberger, but use a different frequency."

Curly looked up. "You don't want those guys on the Deep Fathom to hear?"

"What they don't know won't hurt them," said Pitt coldly. "Now hurry it up."

Moments later Sandecker's voice boomed over the speaker. "Capricorn, this is Admiral Sandecker. Over."

"Pitt here, Admiral."

Sandecker wasted no time on niceties. "You're aware of what we're up against?"

"'Gunn has briefed me," Pitt replied.

"Then you know we have exhausted every avenue. No matter how you slice it, time is the enemy. If we could stall the inevitable for another ten hours, we'd have a fighting chance of saving them." '

"There's one other way," Pitt said. "The odds are high but mathematically, it's possible."

"I'm open to suggestions."

Pitt hesitated. "To begin with, we forget the Deep Fathom for the moment and turn our energies in another direction."

Drummer came close to him. "What are you saying, Pitt? What goes on here? 'Forget the Deep Fathom'," he shouted through twitching lips. "Are you mad?"

Pitt smiled a disarming smile. "The last desperate roll of the dice, Drummer. You people failed, and failed miserably. You may be God's gift to the world of marine salvage, but as a rescue force, you come off like a bunch of amateurs. Bad luck compounded your mistakes, and now you sit around whining that all is lost. Well all is not lost, gentlemen. We're going to change the rules of the game and put the Deep Fathom on the surface before the six-hour deadline, which, if my watch serves me, is now down to five hours and forty-three minutes."

Giordino looked at Pitt. "Do you really think it can be done?"

"I really think it can be done."

47

The structural engineers and the marine scientists huddled around in small circles, mumbling to themselves as they frantically shoved their slide rules back and forth. Every so often, one of them would break away and walk over to the computers and check the readout sheets. Admiral Sandecker, who had just arrived from the Bomberger, sat behind a desk gripping a mug of coffee and shaking his head.

"This will never be written into the textbooks on salvage," he murmured. "Blowing a derelict off the bottom with explosives. God, it's insane."

"What other choice do we have?" Pitt said. "If we can kick the Titanic out of the mud, the Deep Fathom will be carried up with her."

"The whole idea is crazy," Gunn muttered. "The concussion will only expand the cracked seam in the submersible's hull and cause instant implosion."

"Maybe. Maybe not," Pitt said. "But even if that occurs, it's probably best that Merker, Kiel, and Chavez die instantly from the sea's crush than suffer the prolonged agony of slow suffocation."

"And what about the Titanic?" Gunn persisted "We could blow everything we've worked for all these months all over the abyssal landscape."

"Score that as a calculated risk," Pitt said. "The Titanic's construction is of a greater strength than most ships afloat today. Her beams, girders, bulkheads, and decks are as sound as the night she sank. The old girl can take whatever we dish out. Make no mistake about it."

"Do you honestly think it will work?" Sandecker asked.

"I do."

"I could order you not to do this thing. You know that."

"I know that," Pitt replied. "I'm banking on you to keep me in the ball game until the final inning."

Sandecker rubbed his hand across his eyes, then shook his head slowly as if to clear it. Finally he said, "Okay. Dirk, it's your baby."

Pitt nodded and turned away.

There were just five hours and ten minutes to go.

Two and a half miles below, the three men in the Deep Fathom, cold and alone in a remote, uncharitable environment, watched the water creep up the cabin walls inch by inch until it flooded the main circuitry and shorted out the instruments, throwing the interior of the cabin into blackness. Then they began to feel the sting of the thirty-four-degree water in earnest as it swirled around their legs. Standing there shivering under the torment of certain death, they still nurtured the spark to survive.

"As soon as we get topside," Kiel murmured, "I'm going to take a day off, and I don't care who knows it."

"Come again?" Chavez said in the darkness.

"They can fire me if they want to, but I'm sleeping in tomorrow."

Chavez groped for and found Kiel's arm, gripping it roughly. "What are you babbling about?"

"Take it easy," Merker said. "With the life-support system gone, the carbon-dioxide buildup is getting to him. I'm beginning to feel a bit giddy myself."

"Foul air on top of everything else," Chavez grumbled. "If we don't drown, we get crushed when the hull bursts, and if we don't get mashed like eggshells, we suffocate on our own air. Our future looks none too bright."

"You left out exposure," Merker added sardonically. "If we don't climb above this freezing water, we won't get a chance at the other three."

Kiel said nothing but limply allowed Chavez to shove him into the uppermost sleeping bunk. Then Chavez followed and sat on the edge, his feet dangling over the side.

Merker struggled through the crotch-deep water to the forward viewport and looked out. He could see only the haloed outline of the Sappho II through the blinding glare of her lights. Even though the other craft hovered only ten feet away, there was nothing she could do for the stricken Deep Fathom while they were both surrounded by the relentless pressure of the hostile deep. As long as she is still there, Merker thought, they haven't written us off. He took no small consolation in the fact that they were not alone. It wasn't much to lean on, but it was all they had.

On board the supply ship Alhambra, camera crews from the three major networks, swept up in the swirling tide of expectation, feverishly struggled to get their equipment into action. Along every available foot of starboard-deck railing, wire-service reporters peered through binoculars in hypnotic concentration at the Capricorn floating two miles away, while photographers aimed their telephoto lenses on the surface of the water between the ships. Trapped in one corner of a makeshift pressroom, Dana Seagram pulled a foul-weather jacket tightly around her shoulders and gamely stood up to the dozen news people armed with tape recorders who were pushing microphones toward her face as though they were lollipops.

"Is it true, Ms. Seagram, that attempting to raise the Titanic three days ahead of schedule is in reality a last-ditch attempt to save the lives of the men trapped below?"

"It is only one of several solutions," Dana replied.

"Are we to understand that all other attempts have failed?"

"There have been complications," Dana admitted.

Inside one of the jacket's pockets, Dana nervously twisted a handkerchief until her fingers turned sore. The long months of give-and-take with the men and women of the press were beginning to tell.

"Since the loss of communications with the Deep Fathom, how can you know for certain whether the crew is still alive?"

"Computer data assure us that their situation will not turn critical for another four hours and forty minutes."

"How does NUMA intend to bring up the Titanic if the electrolyte chemical is not fully injected into the silt around the hull?"

"I can't answer that," Dana said. "Mr. Pitt's last message prom the Capricorn only stated that they were going to raise the wreck in the next few hours. He did not offer details regarding the method."

"What if it's too late? What if Kiel, Chavez, and Merker are already dead?"

Dana's expression went rigid. "They are not dead," she said with eyes blazing. "And, the first one of you who reports such a cruel and inhuman rumor before it's a proven fact will get their ass kicked off this ship, credentials and Nielsen ratings be damned. Do you understand?"

The reporters stood there a moment in mute surprise at Dana's sudden display of anger, and then slowly and silently they began to lower the microphones and melt toward the deck outside.

Rick Spencer unrolled a large piece of paper on the chart table and anchored it down with several half-empty coffee mugs. It was an overhead drawing that depicted the Titanic and her position in relation to the sea floor. He began pointing a pencil at various spots about the hulk that were marked with tiny crosses.

"Here's the way it shapes up," he explained. "According to the computer data, we set eighty charges, each containing thirty pounds of explosives, at these key points in the sediment along the Titanic's hull."

Sandecker leaned over the drawing, his eyes scanning the crosses. "I see that you've staggered them in three rows on each side."

"That's right, sir," Spencer said. "The outside rows are set sixty yards away; the middle, forty; and the inner rows are just twenty yards from the ship's plates. We'll detonate the starboard outer row first. Then eight seconds later we fire the port outer row. Another eight seconds and we repeat the procedure with the middle rows, and so on."

"Kind of like rocking a car back and forth that's stuck in the mud," Giordino volunteered.

Spencer nodded. "You might say that's a fair comparison."

"Why not jolt her out of the silt with one big bang?" Giordino asked.

"It's possible a sudden shock might do it, but the geologists are in favor of separate overlapping shock waves. It's vibration we're after."

"Have we the explosives?" Pitt asked.

"The Bomberger carries nearly a ton for seismic research purposes," Spencer replied. "The Modoc has four hundred pounds in her stores for underwater salvage blasting."

"Will it do the trick?"

"Border line," Spencer admitted. "Another three hundred pounds would have given us a more acceptable margin for success."

"We could have it flown from the mainland by jet and air-dropped," Sandecker suggested.

Pitt shook his head. "By the time the explosives arrived, and were loaded in a sub and planted on the sea floor, it would be two hours too late."

"Then we'd best get on with it," Sandecker said brusquely. "We have a tight deadline to meet." He turned to Gunn. "How soon can the explosives be set in place?"

"Four hours," Gunn said unhesitatingly.

Sandecker's eyes narrowed. "That's cutting it pretty thin. That only leaves a leeway of fourteen minutes."

"We'll make it," Gunn said. "However, there is one condition."

"What is it?" Sandecker snapped impatiently.

"It will take every operational submersible we've got."

"That means pulling the Sappho II from its station beside the Deep Fathom," Pitt said. "Those poor bastards down there will think we're deserting them."

"There's no other way," Gunn said helplessly. "There's simply no other way."

Merker had lost all track of time. He stared at the luminous dial on his watch but his eyes couldn't focus on the glowing numbers. How long since the derrick had fallen across their buoyancy tanks, he wondered, five hours, ten, was it yesterday? His mind was sluggish and confused. He could only sit there without moving a muscle, breathing shallowly and slowly, each breath seemingly taking a lifetime. Gradually, he became aware of a movement. He reached out and touched Kiel and Chavez in the darkness, but they made no sound, no response; they had fallen into a lethargic stupor.

Then he became aware of it again, a minute but perceptible something that was not where it was supposed to be. His mind turned over as though it were immersed in syrup. But at last he had it. Except for the relentless rise of the water, there was no change, no sign of physical motion inside the flooding cabin; it was the angle of the Sappho II's light beam through the forward viewports that had dimmed.

He dropped off the bunk into the water-it came up to his chest now-and almost as if in a nightmare, he struggled toward the upper front ports and peered into the depths outside.

Suddenly, his numbed senses were gripped by a fear such as he had never known before. His eyes widened and glazed, his hands clenched in futility and despair.

"Oh Godl" he cried aloud. "They're leaving us. They've given us up."

Sandecker twisted the huge cigar he had just lit and continued to pace the deck. The radio operator raised his hand and the admiral turned in mid-step and came up behind him.

"The Sappho I reporting, sir," Curly said. "She's finished positioning her charges."

"Tell her to head topside as fast as her buoyancy tanks will take her. The higher she goes, the less pressure on her hull when the explosives detonate." The admiral swung and faced Pitt, who was keeping a watchful eye on the four monitors, whose cameras and floodlights were mounted in strategic spots around the Titanic's superstructure. "How does it look?"

"So far, so good," Pitt answered. "If the Wetsteel pressure seals hold up against the concussions, we'll stand a fighting chance."

Sandecker stared at the color images and his brow furrowed as he perceived great streams of bubbles issuing from the liner's hulk. "She's losing a lot of air," he said.

"Excess pressure escaping through the bleeder valves," Pitt said tonelessly. "We switched from the electrolyte pumps back to the compressors in order to cram as much extra air as we can into the upper compartments." He paused to fine-tune a picture and then continued. "The Capricorn's compressors put out ten thousand cubic feet of air an hour, so it didn't take long to raise the pressure inside the hull another ten pounds per inch, just enough to pop the bleeder valves."

Drummer ambled over from the computers and checked off a series of notations on a clipboard. "As near as we can figure, ninety per cent of the ship's compartments are unwatered," he said. "The main problem, as I see it, is that we have more lift than the computers say is necessary. If and when the suction gives way, she'll come up like a kite."

"The Sea Slug just dropped her last charge," Curly reported.

"Ask her to make a swing by the Deep Fathom before she starts for the surface," Pitt said, "and see if she can make visual contact with Merker and his crew."

"Eleven minutes to go," Giordino announced.

"What in hell is keeping the Sappho II?" Sandecker asked no one in particular.

Pitt looked across the room to Spencer. "Are the charges ready to fire?"

Spencer nodded. "Each row is tuned to a different transmitter frequency. All we have to do is turn a dial and they'll go off in their proper sequence."

"What do you bet we see first, the bow or the stern?"

"There's no contest. The bow is buried twenty feet deeper in the sediment than the rudder. I'm counting on the stern breaking free and then using its buoyant leverage to pull up the rest of the keel. She should rise on very nearly the same angle she sank-providing she's agreeable and rises at all."

"Last charge secured," droned Curly. "Sappho II is making her getaway."

"Anything from the Sea Slug?"

"She reports no visual contact with Deep Fathom's crew."

"Okay, tell her to hightail it toward the surface," Pitt said. "We fire the first row of charges in nine minutes."

"They're dead," . Drummer suddenly cried, his voice breaking "We're too late, they're all dead."

Pitt took two steps and gripped Drummer by the shoulders. "Cut the hysterics. The last thing we need is a premature eulogy."

Drummer dropped his shoulders, his face ashen and frozen in a stonelike expression of dread. Then he silently nodded and walked unsteadily back to the computer console.

"The water must only be a couple of feet from the sub's cabin ceiling by now," Giordino said. It came out about half an octave higher than his normal tone.

"If pessimism sold by the pound, you guys would all be millionaires," Pitt said dryly.

"The Sappho I has reached the safety zone at six thousand feet." This from the sonar operator.

"One down, two to go," murmured Sandecker.

There was nothing left to do now but wait for the other submersibles to rise above the danger level of the approaching concussion waves. Eight minutes passed, eight interminable minutes that saw the sweat begin to ooze on two dozen foreheads.

"Sappho II and Sea Slug now approaching safety zone."

"Sea and weather?" Pitt demanded.

"Four-foot swells, clear skies, wind out of the northeast at five knots," answered Farquar, the weatherman. "You couldn't ask for better conditions."

For several moments no one spoke. Then Pitt said, "Well, gentlemen, the time has come." His voice was level and relaxed, and no trace of apprehension showed in his tone or manner. "Okay, Spencer, count it down."

Spencer began repeating the announcements with clocklike regularity. "Thirty seconds . . . fifteen seconds . . . five seconds . . . signal transmitting . . . mark." Then he unhesitatingly went right into the next firing order. "Eight seconds . . . four seconds . . . signal transmitting . . . mark."

Everyone clustered around the TV monitors and the sonar operator, their only contacts now with the bottom. The first explosion barely caused a tremor through the decks of the Capricorn, and the volume of sound came to their ears like that of faraway thunder. The cloud of anxiety could be slashed with a sword. Every single eye was trained straight ahead on the monitors, on the quivering lines that distorted the images when the charges went off. Tense, strained, numb with the expectant look of men who feared the worst but hoped for the best, they stood there immobile as Spencer droned on with his countdowns.

The shudders from the deck became more pronounced as shock wave followed shock wave and broke on the surface of the ocean. Then, abruptly, the monitors all flickered in a kaleidoscope of fused light and went black.

"Damn!" Sandecker muttered. "We've lost picture contact."

"The concussions must have jolted loose the main relay connector," Gunn surmised.

Their attention quickly turned to the sonar scope, but few of them could see it; the operator had drawn himself up so close to the glass that his head obscured it. Finally, Spencer straightened up. He sighed deeply to himself, pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and rubbed his face and neck. "That's all she wrote," he said hoarsely. "There isn't any more."

"Still stationary," said the sonar operator. "The Big T is still stationary."

"Go baby!" Giordino pleaded. "Get your big ass up!"

"Oh God, dear God," Drummer mumbled. "The suction is still holding her to the bottom."

"Come on, damn you," Sandecker joined in. "Lift . . . lift."

If it was humanly possible for the mind to will 46,328 tons of steel to release its hold on the grave it had occupied for seventy-six long years and return to the sunlight, the men crowded around the sonarscope would have surely made it so. But there was to be no psychokinetic phenomenon this day. The Titanic stayed stubbornly clutched to the sea floor.

"A dirty, rotten break," Farquar said.

Drummer held his hands over his face, turned away, and stumbled from the room.

"Woodson on the Sappho II requests permission to descend for a look-see," said Curly.

Pitt shrugged. "Permission granted."

Slowly, wearily, Admiral Sandecker sank into a chair. "What price failure?" he said.

The bitter taste of hopelessness flooded the room, swept by the grim tide of total defeat.

"What now?" Giordino asked, staring vacantly at the deck.

"What we came here to do," answered Pitt tiredly. "We go on with the salvage operation. Tomorrow we'll begin again to..."

"She's moved!"

No one reacted immediately.

"She moved," the sonar operator repeated. His voice had a quiver to it.

"Are you sure?" Sandecker whispered.

"Stake my life on it."

Spencer was too stunned to speak. He could only stare at the sonarscope with an expression of abject incredulity. Then his lips began working. "The aftershocks!" he said. "The aftershocks caused a delayed reaction."

"Rising," the sonar operator shouted, banging his fist on the arm of his chair. "That gorgeous old bucket of bolts has broken free. She's coming up."

48

At first everybody was too dumbstruck to move. The moment they had prayed for, had spent eight tortuous months struggling for, had sneaked up behind them and somehow they couldn't accept it as actually happening. Then the electrifying news began to sink in and they all began shouting at the same time, like a crowd of mission control space engineers during a rocket liftoff.

"Go baby, go!" Sandecker shouted as joyfully as a schoolboy.

"Move, you mother!" Giordino yelled. "Move, move!"

"Keep coming, you big beautiful rusty old floating palace, you," Spencer murmured.

Suddenly, Pitt rushed across to the radio and clutched Curly's shoulder in a viselike grip.

"Quick, contact Woodson on the Sappho II. Tell him the Titanic is on her way up and to get the hell out of the way before he's run over."

"Still on a surface course," the sonar operator said. "Speed of ascent accelerating."

"We haven't weathered the storm yet," Pitt said. "A hundred and one things can still go wrong before she breaks surface. If only-"

"Yeah," Giordino cut in, "like, if only the Wetsteel maintains its bond, or if only the bleeder valves can keep up with the sudden drop in water pressure, or if the hull doesn't take it in its mind to go snap, crackle, and pop. `If' . . . it's a mighty big word."

"Still coming and coming fast," the sonar operator said, staring at his scope. "Six hundred feet in the last minute."

Pitt swung to Giordino. "Al, find Doc Bailey and the pilot of the helicopter, and get in the air like a mad bull was on your ass. Then, as soon as the Titanic stabilizes herself, drop down on her forecastle deck. I don't care how you do it-rope ladder, winch, and bucket chair-crash-land the copter if you have to, but you and the good doctor drop down fast and pop the Deep Fathom's hatch cover and lift those men out of that hellhole!"

"We're halfway there." Giordino grinned. He was already out the door before Pitt could issue his next order to Spencer.

"Rick, stand by to hoist the portable diesel pumps on board the derelict. The sooner we can get ahead of any leaks, the better."

"We'll need cutting torches to get inside her," Spencer said, his eyes wide with excitement.

"Then see to it."

Pitt turned back to the sonar panel.

"Rate of ascent?"

"Eight hundred and fifty feet a minute," the sonar operator called back.

"Too fast," Pitt said.

"It's what we didn't want," Sandecker muttered through his cigar. "Her interior compartments are overfilled with air and she's soaring to the surface out of control."

"And, if we've miscalculated the amount of ballast water left in her lower holds, she could rocket two-thirds her length out of the water and capsize," Pitt added.

Sandecker looked him in the eye. "And that would spell finish to the Deep Fathom's crew." Then without another word, the admiral turned and led the exodus from the operations room to the deck outside, where everyone began scanning the restless swells in heart-pounding anticipation.

Only Pitt hung back. "What depth is she?" This to the sonar operator.

"Passing the eight-thousand-foot mark."

"Woodson reporting in," Curly intoned. "He says the Big T just went by the Sappho II like a greased pig."

"Acknowledge and tell him to surface. Relay the same message to the Sea Slug and Sappho I. " There was nothing left to do here so he stepped out the door and up the ladder to the port bridge wing, where he joined Gunn and Sandecker.

Gunn picked up the bridge phone. "Sonar, this is the bridge."

"Sonar."

"Can you give me an approximate fix on where she'll appear?"

"She should break water about six hundred yards off the port quarter."

"Time?"

There was a pause.

"Time?" Gunn repeated.

"Is now soon enough for you, Commander?"

At that very moment, a huge wave of bubbles spread across the sea and the fantail of the Titanic burst up into the afternoon sun like a gigantic whale. For a few seconds it seemed as though there was no stopping her soaring flight from the depths-her stern kept crowding into the sky until she came free of the water up to the boiler casing, where her No. 2 funnel had once stood. It was a staggering sight; the inside air bleeding down sent great torrents of spray shooting through the pressure-relief valves, shrouding the great ship in bit, blowing rainbowed clouds of vapor. She hung poised for several moments, clawing at the crystal blue heavens, and then, slowly at first, began to settle until her keel smacked the sea with a tremendous splash that sent a ten-foot wave surging toward the surrounding fleet of ships. She heeled down as if she had no intention of recovering. A thousand onlookers held their breath as she careened ever farther onto her starboard beam ends, thirty, forty, forty-five, fifty degrees, and there she hung for what seemed like a dreadful eternity; everyone was half-expecting her to continue the roll over onto her superstructure. But then, with agonizing sluggishness, the Titanic slowly began the struggle to right herself. Gradually, foot by foot, until her hull reached a starboard list of twelve degrees . . . and there she stayed.

Nobody could speak. They all just stood there, too stunned, too mesmerized by what they had just seen to do anything but breathe. Sandecker's weathered face looked ghostly pale even in the bright sun.

Pitt was the first to find his voice. "She's up," he managed in a barely audible whisper.

"She's up," Gunn acknowledged softly.

Then the spell was broken by the pulsing blades of the Capricorn's helicopter as it headed into the wind and angled over the debris-laden forecastle of the resurrected ship. The pilot held the craft on a level position a few feet above the deck and almost instantly two tiny specks could be seen dropping out of a side door.

Giordino scrambled up the access ladder and found himself staring at the hatch cover of the Deep Fathom. Thank God for small miracles the hull was still sound. Cautiously, he maneuvered his body on top of the rounded, slippery deck and tried the handwheel. The spokes felt like ice, but he gripped firm and gave a heavy twist. The handwheel refused to cooperate.

"Stop dawdling and open the damned thing," Dr. Bailey boomed behind him. "Every second counts."

Giordino took a deep breath and heaved with every ounce the muscles of his oxlike body could give. It moved an inch. He tried again, and this time forced half a turn, and then, finally, it began spinning easily as the air inside the sub hissed out and the pressure against the seal relaxed. When the handwheel halted at the end of its threads, Giordino swung the hatch open and peered into the darkness below. A stale, rancid smell rose up and attacked his nostrils. His heart sank when, after his eyes became accustomed to the darkness inside, he saw the water sloshing only eighteen inches from the upper bulkhead.

Dr. Bailey pushed past and lowered his immense hulk through the hatch and down the interior ladder. The icy water stung his skin. He pushed off the rungs and dogpaddled toward the after part of the submersible until hip, hand touched something soft in the dim light. It was a leg. Following it over the knee, he felt his way toward the torso. His hand came out of the water at shoulder level and he touched a face.

Bailey moved closer until his nose was a bare inch from the face in the darkness. He tried to feel for a pulse, but his fingers were too numb from the cold water, and he detected nothing that indicated life or death. Then, suddenly, the eyes fluttered open, the lips trembled, and a voice whispered, "Go away . . . I told you . . . I'm not working today."

"Bridge?" Curly's voice scratched through the speaker.

"This is the bridge," answered Gunn.

"Ready to patch in the helicopter."

"Go ahead."

There was a pause and then a strange voice cracked onto the bridge. "Capricorn, this is Lieutenant Sturgis."

"This is Commander Gunn, Lieutenant; I have you loud and clear. Over."

"Dr. Bailey has entered the Deep Fathom. Please stand by."

The brief respite gave everyone a chance to study the Titanic. She looked uncompromisingly utilitarian and downright naked without her towering funnels and masts. The steel plates of her sides were blotched and stained with rust, but the black and white paint of her hull and superstructure still shone through. She looked a mess, like a hideous old prostitute who dwelt in dreams of better days and long-lost beauty. The portholes and windows were covered with the unsightly gray of the Wetsteel, and her once-immaculate teak decks were rotted and cluttered with miles of corroded cable. The empty lifeboat davits seemed to reach out in wraithlike pleading for a return of their long-lost contents. The overall effect of the ocean liner's presence came across the water like an eerie subject in a surrealistic painting. And yet, there was an inexplicable serenity about her that could not be described.

"Capricorn, this is Sturgis. Over."

"Gunn here. Come in."

"Mr. Giordino has just given me three fingers and a thumbs-up sign. Merker, Kiel, and Chavez are still alive."

A strange quiet followed. Then Pitt walked over to the emergency equipment panel and pressed the siren button. The ear-splitting sound whooped across the water.

Then the Modoc's whistle blared in reply, and Pitt saw the normally reserved Sandecker laugh and throw his cap in the air. The Monterey Park joined in, and the Alhambra and finally the Bomberger, until the sea around the Titanic was one huge cacophony of sirens and whistles. Not to be outdone, the Juneau moved up and punctuated the mad din with a thunderous salute from her eight-inch gun mount.

It was a moment that none of those present would ever live again. For the first time in all the years he could remember, Pitt felt the trickle of warm tears on his cheeks.

49

The late-afternoon sun was just touching the tops of the trees as Gene Seagram sat slouched on a bench in East Potomac Park and contemplated the Colt revolver in his lap. Serial number 204,783, he thought, you're about to serve the purpose you were manufactured for. Almost lovingly, he ran his fingers over the barrel, the cylinder, and the grips. Suicide it seemed the ideal solution to end his flight into black depression. He marveled that he hadn't thought of it before. No more uncontrollable crying in the middle of the night. No more sensations of worthlessness or the gnawing inside his guts that his life had been a transparent sham.

His mind envisioned the past few months as reflected in the cracked and distorted mirror of acute despair. The two things he had cherished most were his wife and the Sicilian Project. Now Dana was gone, his marriage a shambles. And the President of the United States had taken what seemed to Seagram to be a needless risk in leaking his precious project to the sworn enemy of democracy.

Sandecker had revealed to him the presence of the two Soviet agents on the Titanic's salvage fleet. And the fact that the CIA had warned the admiral not to interfere with their espionage activities only served to drive, what seemed to Seagram, another nail into the coffin of the Sicilian Project. Already one of NUMA's engineers had been murdered, and just this morning, the daily report from Sandecker's staff to Meta Section told of the trapped submersible and the apparent hopelessness of rescuing its crew. It had to be sabotage. There could be no doubt of it. The mismatched pieces of the puzzle were forced into unfitting slots by Seagram's confused brain. The Sicilian Project was dead, and he now made up his mind to die with it. He was in the act of releasing the gun's safety catch when a shadow fell across him and a voice spoke in a friendly tone.

"It's much too nice a day to rip off your life, don't you think?"

Officer Peter Jones had been walking his beat along the path beside Ohio Drive when he noticed the man on the park bench. At first glance, Jones thought Seagram was simply a wine-sodden derelict soaking up the sun. He considered running him in, but dismissed it as a waste of time; a booked bum would be back on the streets inside twenty-four hours. Jones figured it was hardly worth the effort of filling out the endless reports. But then something about the man didn't fit the stereotyped lost soul. Jones moved casually, inconspicuously around a large leafing elm tree and doubled back slightly to the side of the bench. On closer inspection his suspicions were confirmed. True, the reddened unseeing eyes and the vacant look of the alcoholic were there, as was the listless uncaring droop of the shoulders, but so were small bits and pieces that didn't belong. The shoes were shined, the suit expensive and pressed, the face neatly shaven, and the fingernails trimmed. And then there was the gun.

Seagram slowly looked up into the face of a black police officer. Instead of meeting a determined look of wariness, he found himself gazing into an expression of genuine compassion.

"Aren't you jumping to conclusions?" Seagram said.

"Man, if I ever saw a classic case of suicidal depression, you're it." Jones made a sitting gesture. "May I share your bench?"

"It's city property," Seagram said indifferently.

Jones carefully sat down an arm's length from Seagram and languidly stretched out his legs and leaned against the backrest, keeping his hands in plain sight and away from his holstered service revolver.

"Now me, l'd pick November," he said softly. "April is when the flowers pop and the trees go green, but November, that's when the weather turns nasty, the winds chill you to the bone, and the skies are always cloudy and dreary. Yeah, that's the month I'd pick all right to do away with myself."

Seagram clutched the Colt tighter, eyeing Jones in apprehension, waiting for him to make his move.

"I take it you consider yourself something of an expert on suicide?"

"Not really," Jones said. "In fact, you're the first one I ever got to watch in the act. Most of the time I come on the scene long after the main event. Now take drownings; they're the worst. Bodies all bloated up and black, eyeballs mush in their sockets after the fish have nibbled at them. Then there's the jumpers. I saw a fella one time who had leaped off a thirty-story building. Lit on his feet. His shin bones came out his shoulders . . ."

"I don't need this," Seagram snarled. "I don't need a nigger cop feeding me horror stories."

Anger flickered in Jones's eyes for an instant, and then quickly passed.

"Sticks and stones. . ." he said. He took out a handkerchief and leisurely wiped the sweatband of his cap. "Tell me, Mister ah . . ."

"Seagram. You might as well know. It won't make any difference later."

"Tell me, Mr. Seagram, how do you intend on doing it. A bullet in the temple, the forehead, or in the mouth?"

"What does it matter, the results are the same."

"Not necessarily," Jones said conversationally. "I don't recommend the temple or forehead, at least not with a small-caliber gun. Let's see, what have you got there? Yeah, looks like a thirty-eight. It might do a messy job okay, but I doubt if it would kill you proper. I knew one guy who fired a forty-five into his temple. Scrambled his brains and shoved out his left eye, but he didn't die. Lived for years like a turnip. Can't you picture him lying there, his bowels running all over the sheets, and him begging to be put out of his misery. Yeah, if I was you, I'd stick the barrel in my mouth and blow off the back of the head. That's the safest bet."

"If you don't shut up," Seagram snapped, pointing the Colt at Jones, "I'll kill you too."

"Kill me?" Jones said. "You haven't got the balls. You're not a killer, Seagram. It's written all over you."

"Every man is capable of committing murder."

"I agree, murder is no big deal. Anybody can do it. But only a psychopath ignores the consequences."

"Now you're beginning to sound like a philosopher."

"Us dumb nigger cops oftentimes like to fool white people with our smarts routine."

"I apologize for my poor choice of words."

Jones shrugged. "You think you got problems, Mr. Seagram? I'd love to have your problems. Look at yourself; you're white, obviously a man of means, you probably have a family and a nice position in life. How'd you like to trade places with me, change the color of your skin, be a black cop with six kids and a ninety-year-old frame house with a thirty-year mortgage on it? Tell me about it, Seagram. Tell me about how tough your world really is."

"You could never understand."

"What's there to understand? Nothing under the sun is worth killing yourself over. Oh sure, your wife will shed a few tears at first; but then she'll give your clothes to the Salvation Army, and six months from now she'll be in bed with another man while you'll be nothing but a picture in a scrapbook. Look around you. It's a beautiful spring day. Hell, think what you'll be missing. Didn't you watch the President on TV?"

"The President?"

"He came on at four o'clock and talked about all the great things that were happening. Manned flights to Mars are only three years away; there's been a breakthrough on the control of cancer; and he showed pictures of some old sunken ship the government salvaged from almost three miles below the ocean."

Seagram stared at Jones with unbelieving eyes. "What was that you said? A ship salvaged? What ship?"

"I don't remember."

"The Titanic?" Seagram asked in a whisper. "Was it the Titanic?"

"Yeah, that was the name. It rammed an iceberg and sank a long time ago. Come to think of it, I remember seeing a movie about the Titanic on television. Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb were in--" Jones broke off at the look of incredulity, then shock, then twisted confusion that showed in Seagram's face.

Seagram handed his gun to the uncomprehending Jones and leaned back against the bench. Thirty days. Thirty days would be all he'd need once he had the byzanium to test the Sicilian Project's system and then see it through to operational status. It had been a narrow thing. If a wandering cop hadn't intruded when he did, thirty seconds would have been all Seagram had left to see anything ever again, forever.

50

"I assume you have weighed the staggering consequences of your accusations?"

Marganin looked at the soft-spoken little man with the cold blue eyes. Admiral Boris Sloyuk seemed more the baker around the corner than the shrewd head of the Soviet Union's second-largest intelligence-gathering network.

"I fully realize, Comrade Admiral, that I am jeopardizing my naval career and risking a prison sentence, but I place duty to the State above my personal ambitions."

"Very noble of you, Lieutenant," Sloyuk said without expression. "The charges you have brought are extremely damaging, to say the least; however you have not produced concrete evidence that indicates Captain Prevlov is a traitor to our country, and without it, I cannot condemn a man on his subordinate's word alone."

Marganin nodded. But he had planned his confrontation with the admiral carefully. Bypassing Prevlov and the normal chain of command to approach Sloyuk had been a risky business indeed, but the trap had been exactingly set and timing was critical. Calmly, he reached into his pocket and produced an envelope which he passed across the desk to Sloyuk.

"Here are transaction records of account number AZF seven-six-oh-nine at the Banque de Lausanne in Switzerland. You will note, sir, that it receives large deposits on a regular basis from one V. Volper, a clumsy anagram derived from the name Prevlov."

Sloyuk studied the bank records and then shot Marganin a very skeptical look. "You must forgive my suspicious nature, Lieutenant Marganin, but this has all the earmarks of trumped-up material."

Marganin passed across another envelope. "This one contains a secret communication from the American ambassador here in Moscow to the Defense Department in Washington. In it he states that Captain Andre Prevlov has been a vital source of Soviet naval secrets. The ambassador has also included the plans for our fleet deployment in the event of a first nuclear strike against the United States." Marganin felt satisfaction surge through him as the admiral's normally impassive face wrinkled in uncertainty. "I think the picture is clear, there is nothing trumped up here. A low-ranking officer in my position could not possibly obtain such highly classified fleet orders. Captain Prevlov, on the other hand, enjoys the confidence of the Soviet Naval Strategy Committee."

The barriers were down and the road was open; Sloyuk had no option but to acquiesce. He shook his head in perplexity. "The son of a great party leader who betrays his country for money . . . I find it impossible to accept."

"If one takes into consideration Captain Prevlov's extravagant lifestyle, it is not difficult to see the excessive demands made his financial resources."

"I am well, aware of Captain Prevlov's tastes."

"Are you also aware that he is having an affair with a woman who passes herself off as the wife of the American ambassador's chief aide?"

An annoyed look crossed Sloyuk's face. "You know about her?" he asked guardedly. "Prevlov led me to believe that he was using her to obtain secrets from her husband at the embassy."

"Not so," Marganin said. "In fact, she is a divorcée and an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency." Marganin paused and then drove the point home. "The only secrets that pass through her hands are those provided by Captain Prevlov. It is he who is her source."

Sloyuk was silent for a few moments. Then he locked Marganin with a penetrating gaze. "How did you come by all this?"

"I would rather not divulge my informant's identity, Comrade Admiral. I mean no disrespect, but I have nurtured and developed his trust for nearly two years, and I gave him a solemn oath that his name and position with the American government would remain known only to me."

Sloyuk nodded. He accepted it. "You realize, of course, that this puts us in a very grave situation."

"The byzanium?"

"Exactly," Sloyuk said tersely. "If Prevlov told the Americans of our plan, it could prove disastrous. Once the byzanium is in their hands and the Sicilian Project is operational, the balance of power would be theirs for the next decade."

"Perhaps Captain Prevlov has not leaked our plan yet," Marganin said. "Perhaps he was waiting until the Titanic was raised."

"She has risen," Sloyuk said. "Not more than three hours ago, Captain Parotkin of the Mikhail Kurkov reported that the Titanic is on the surface and ready to be taken in tow."

Marganin looked up surprised. "But our agents, Silver and Gold, assured us the raising would not be attempted for another seventy-two hours."

Sloyuk shrugged. "The Americans are always in a hurry."

"Then we must cancel Captain Prevlov's plan to seize the byzanium in favor of one with credence."

Prevlov's plan--Marganin had to suppress a grin when he said it. The shrewd captain's colossal ego would be his downfall. From here on in, Marganin thought confidently, the drama would have to be played out very, very carefully.

"It is too late to change our strategy now," Sloyuk said slowly. "The men and ships are in place. We will go ahead as scheduled."

"But what about Captain Prevlov? Surely you will order his arrest?"

Sloyuk looked at Marganin coldly. "No, Lieutenant, he will remain at his duties."

"He cannot be trusted," Marganin said desperately. "You have seen the evidence-"

"I have seen nothing that cannot be manufactured," Sloyuk snapped brusquely. "Your little package comes too neatly wrapped, too meticulously tied with ribbon to be bought at first glance. What I do see is a young upstart who is stabbing his superior in the back in order to reach the next rung on the ladder of promotion. Purges went out before you were born, Lieutenant. You played a dangerous game and you lost."

"I assure you--"

"Enough!" Sloyuk's tone was hard as granite. "I am secure in the knowledge that the byzanium will be safely on board a Soviet ship no later than three days from now; an event that will prove Captain Prevlov's loyalty and your guilt."

51

The Titanic lay motionless and dead against the unending onslaught of the waves as they swirled. around her huge mass, then closed ranks again and swept onward toward some as yet unknown and distant shore. She lay there and drifted with the current, her sodden wooden decks steaming under the fading evening sun. She was a dead ship that had returned among the living. A dead ship, but not an empty ship. The compass tower on the raised deck over her first-class lounge had been quickly cleared away to accommodate the helicopter, and soon a steady stream of men and equipment was being ferried on board to begin the arduous task of correcting the list and preparing her for the long tow to New York Harbor.

For a few short minutes after the half-dead crew of the Deep Fathom were airlifted to the Capricorn, Giordino had had the Titanic all to himself. The fact that he was the first to set foot on her decks in seventy-six years never entered his head, and though it was still broad daylight, he shied away from any exploring. Each time he gazed down the 882-foot length of the ship, he felt as if he was staring at an empty crypt. Nervously, he lit a cigarette, sat on a wet capstan, and waited for the invasion that wasn't long in coming.

Pitt experienced no pangs of uneasiness when he came on board, but, rather, a feeling of reverence. He walked to the bridge and stood alone, absorbed in the legend of the Titanic. God only knew, he'd wondered a hundred times what it was like that Sunday night nearly eight decades ago when Captain Edward J. Smith stood on the very same spot and realized that his great command was slowly and irreversibly sinking beneath his feet. What were his thoughts, knowing the lifeboats could hold only 1180 people, while on the maiden voyage the ship was carrying 2200 passengers and crew? Then he wondered what the venerable old captain would have thought had he known the decks of his ship would one day be walked again by men as yet unborn in his time.

After what seemed hours, but was in reality only a minute or two, Pitt broke out of his reverie and moved aft along the Boat Deck, past the sealed door of the wireless cabin, where First Operator John G. Phillips had sent history's first SOS; past the empty davits of lifeboat No. 6, in which Mrs. J. J. Brown of Denver later achieved enduring fame as the "Unsinkable Molly Brown"; past the entrance to the grand stairway, where Graham Farley and the ship's band had played to the end; past the spot where millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim and his secretary had stood calmly waiting for death, dressed in the finery of their evening clothes so that they could go down like gentlemen.

It took him almost a quarter of an hour to reach the elevator house at the far end of the Boat Deck. Pitt climbed over the hand railing and dropped to the Promenade Deck below. Here, he found the aft mast protruding from the rotted planking like a forelorn stump, ending abruptly at a height of eight feet where it had been cut short by Sea Slug's underwater torch.

Pitt reached inside his jacket and pulled out the package given him by Commodore Bigalow and tenderly unwrapped it. He had forgotten to carry a line or cord, but he made do with the twine from the wrapping. When he was through, he stepped back from the stub of the once tall mast and stared up at his makeshift handiwork.

It was old and it was faded, but the red pennant of the White Star Line that Bigalow had snatched from oblivion so long ago proudly flew once more over the unsinkable Titanic.

52

The morning sun was just probing its rays above the eastern horizon when Sandecker jumped from the helicopter's cockpit door and ducked under the whirling blades, clutching his cap. Portable lights still blazed over the derelict's superstructure and crates of machinery were scattered about the decks in various stages of assembly. Pitt and his crew had slaved through the night, struggling like madmen to organize the salvage efforts.

Rudi Gunn greeted him under a rust-cankered ventilator.

"Welcome aboard the Titanic, Admiral," Gunn said, grinning. It seemed as if everybody in the salvage fleet was grinning this morning.

"What's the situation?"

"Stable for the moment. As soon as we get the pumps operating, we should be able to correct her list."

"Where's Pitt?"

"In the gymnasium."

Sandecker stopped in midstride and stared at Gunn. "The gymnasium, did you say?"

Gunn nodded and pointed at an opening in a bulkhead whose ragged edges suggested the work of an acetylene torch. "Through here."

The room measured about fifteen feet wide by forty feet deep, and was inhabited by a dozen men who were all involved in their individual assignments and who were seemingly oblivious to the weird assortment of antiquated and rust-worn mechanisms mounted on what had once been a colorful linoleum-block floor. There were ornate rowing machines; funny-looking stationary bicycles that were attached to a large circular distance clock on the wall; several mechanical horses with rotting leather saddles; and what Sandecker could have sworn looked like a mechanical camel which, as he discovered later, was exactly that.

Already the salvage crew had equipped the room with a radio transmitter and receiver, three portable gas-driven electrical generators, a small forest of spotlights on stands, a compact little Rube Goldberg-like galley, a clutter of desks and tables made out of collapsible aluminum tubing and packing crates, and several folding cots.

Pitt was huddled with Drummer and Spencer as Sandecker moved toward them. They were studying a large cutaway drawing of the ship.

Pitt looked up and waved a salute. "Welcome to the Big T, Admiral," he said warmly. "How are Merker, Kiel, and Chavez?"

"Safely bedded down in the Capricorn's sick bay," Sandecker answered. "Ninety-per-cent recuperated and begging Dr. Bailey to return them to duty. A request, I might add, that fell on deaf ears. Bailey insisted that they remain under observation for twenty-four hours, and there is simply no budging a man of his size and determination." Sandecker paused to sniff the air and then wrinkled his nose. "God, what's that smell?"

"Rot," Drummer replied. "It fills every nook and cranny. There's no escaping it. And it's only a matter of time before the dead marine life that came up with the wreck begins to stink."

Sandecker gestured about the room. "A cozy place you've got here," he said, "but why set up operations in the gym rather than the bridge?"

"A break from tradition for practical reasons," Pitt replied. "The bridge serves no useful function on a dead ship. The gym, on the other hand, sits amidships and offers us equal access to either bow or stern. It also adjoins our improvised helicopter pad over the first-class lounge roof. The closer to our supplies we are, the more efficiently we can operate."

"I had to ask," Sandecker said heavily. "I should have known you didn't pick this museum of mechanical monstrosities just to launch a physical-fitness program."

Something in a pile of wreckage that lay in a soggy heap against the forward wall of the gymnasium caught the admiral's eyes and he walked over to it. He stood and stared grimly for several moments at the skeletal remains of what had once been a passenger or crew member of the Titanic.

"I wonder who this poor devil was?"

"We'll probably never know," Pitt said. "Any dental records from 1912 have no doubt been destroyed long ago."

Sandecker leaned down and examined the pelvic section of the bones. "Good lord, it was a woman."

"Either one of the first-class passengers who elected to remain behind or one of the women from the steerage quarters who arrived on the Boat Deck after all the lifeboats had been launched."

"Have you found any other bodies?"

"We've been too busy to do any extensive exploring," Pitt said. "But one of Spencer's men reported another skeleton wedged against the fireplace in the lounge."

Sandecker nodded toward an open doorway. "What's through there?"

"That opens onto the grand staircase."

"Let's take a look."

They walked onto the landing above the A Deck lobby and looked down. Several rotting chairs and sofas were scattered haphazardly on the steps where they had fallen when the ship sank by the bow. The graceful flowing lines of the bannisters were still sound and undamaged, and the hands of the bronze clock could be seen frozen at 2:21. They made their way down the silt-coated stairs and entered one of the passageways leading to the staterooms. Without the benefit of outside light, the scene was an eerie one. Room after room was filled with rotted and fallen paneling interspersed with overturned and jumbled furniture. It was too dark to discern any detail, and after penetrating about thirty feet, they found their way blocked by a wall of debris, so they turned and headed back to the gymnasium.

Just as they came through the doorway, the man hunched over the radio turned from his set. It was Al Giordino.

"I wondered where you two went. The Uranus Oil people want to know about their submersible."

"Tell them they can retrieve the Deep Fathom off the Titanic's foredeck just as soon as we make dry dock in New York," Pitt said.

Giordino nodded and turned back to the radio.

"Leave it to the commercial business interests to bitch about their precious property on such a momentous occasion," Sandecker said with a gleam in his eye. "And, speaking of momentous occasions, would any of you gentlemen care to celebrate with a touch of spirits?"

"Did you say spirits?" Giordino looked up expectantly.

Sandecker reached under his coat and produced two bottles. "Do not let it be said that James Sandecker ever fails to look out for the best interests of his crew."

"Beware of admirals bearing gifts," Giordino murmured.

Sandecker shot him a weary glance. "What a pity walking the plank became passé."

"And keelhauling," Drummer added.

"I promise never to dig our leader ever again. Providing, of course, he keeps me in booze," Giordino said.

"A small price to pay." Sandecker sighed. "Choose your poison, gentlemen. You see before you a fifth of Cutty Sark scotch for the city slickers, and a fifth of Jack Daniel's for the farm boys. Round up some glasses and be my guests."

It took Giordino all of ten seconds to find the required number of styrofoam cups in their Mickey Mouse all-electric galley. When the liquor had been poured, Sandecker raised his cup.

"Gentlemen, here's to the Titanic. May she never again rest in peace."

"To the Titanic. "

"Hear, hear."

Sandecker then relaxed on a folding chair, sipped at his scotch, and idly wondered which of the men in that soggy room were on the payroll of the Soviet government.

53

Soviet General Secretary Georgi Antonov sucked on his pipe with short, violent puffs and regarded Prevlov with a pensive gaze.

"I must say, Captain, I take a dim view of the whole undertaking."

"We have carefully considered every avenue, and this is the only one left open to us," Prevlov said.

"It's fraught with danger. I fear the Americans will not take the theft of their precious byzanium lying down."

"Once it is in our hands, Comrade Secretary, it will make no difference how loudly the Americans scream. The door will have been slammed in their faces."

Antonov folded and unfolded his hands. A large portrait of Lenin floated on the wall behind him. "There must be no international repercussions. It must look to the world as though we were entirely within our rights."

"This time the American president will have no recourse. International law is on our side."

"It will mean the end of what used to be called détente," Antonov said heavily.

"It will also mean the beginning of the end of the United States as a superpower."

"A cheerful conjecture, Captain; I appreciate that." His pipe had gone out and he relit it, filling the room with a sweet aromatic odor. "However, should you fail, the Americans will be in the same position to say the same of us."

"We will not fail."

"Words," Antonov said. "A good lawyer plans the prosecutor's case as well as his own. What measures have you taken in the event of an unavoidable mishap?"

"The byzanium will be destroyed," Prevlov said. "If we cannot possess it, then neither can the Americans."

"Does that include the Titanic as well?"

"It must. By destroying the Titanic, we destroy the byzanium. It will be accomplished in such a way that another recovery operation will be totally out of the question."

Prevlov fell silent, but Antonov was satisfied. He had already given his approval for the mission. He studied Prevlov carefully. The captain looked like a man who was not used to failure. His every movement, every gesture, seemed thoughtfully planned in advance; even his words carried an air of confident forethought. Yes, Antonov was satisfied.

"When do you leave for the North Atlantic?" he asked.

"With your permission, Comrade Secretary, at once. A long-range reconnaissance bomber is on standby at Gorki Airfield. It is imperative that I be standing on the bridge of the Mikhail Kurkov within twelve hours. Good fortune has sent us a hurricane, and I will make full use of its force as a diversion for what will seem our perfectly legal seizure of the Titanic."

"Then I will not keep you." Antonov stood and embraced Prevlov in a great bear hug. "The hopes of the Soviet Union go with you, Captain Prevlov. I beg you. do not disappoint us.

54

The day began going badly for Pitt right after he wandered away from the salvage activity and made his way down to No. 1 cargo hold on G Deck.

The sight that met his eyes in the darkened compartment was one of utter devastation. The vault containing the byzanium was buried under the collapsed forward bulkhead.

He stood there for a long time, staring at the avalanche of broken and twisted steel that prevented any easy attempt to reach the precious element. It was then that he sensed someone standing behind him.

"It looks like we've been dealt a bum hand," Sandecker said.

Pitt nodded. "At least for the moment."

"Perhaps if we--"

"It would take weeks for our portable cutting equipment to clear a path through that jungle of steel."

"There's no other way?"

"A giant Dopplemann crane could clear the debris in a few hours."

"Then what you're saying is that we have no choice but to stand by and wait patiently until we reach the dry-dock facilities in New York."

Pitt looked at him in the dim light and Sandecker could see the look of frustration that cracked his rugged features. There was no need for an answer.

"Removing the byzanium to the Capricorn would have been a break in our favor," Pitt said. "It'd certainly have saved us a lot of grief."

"Maybe we could fake a transfer."

"Our friends who work for the Soviets would smell a hoax before the first crate went over the side."

"Assuming they're both on board the Titanic, of course."

"I'll know this time tomorrow."

"I take it you have a line on who they are?"

"I've got one of them pegged, the one who killed Henry Munk. The other is purely an educated guess."

"I'd be interested in knowing who you've ferreted out," Sandecker said.

"My proof would never convince a federal prosecutor, much less a jury. Give me a few more hours, Admiral, and I'll lay them both, Silver and Gold, or whatever their stupid code names are, right in your lap."

Sandecker stared at him, then said, "You're that close?"

"I'm that close."

Sandecker passed a weary hand across his face arid tightened his lips. He looked at the tons of steel covering the vault. "I leave it with you, Dirk. I'll back your play to the last hand. I don't really have much choice."

Pitt had other worries, too. The two Navy tugs that Admiral Kemper promised to send were still hours away, and sometime during the late morning, for no apparent reason, the Titanic took it into her mind to increase her starboard list to seventeen degrees.

The ship rode far too low in the water; the crests of the swells lapped at the sealed portholes along E Deck just ten feet below the scuppers. And although Spencer and his pumping crew had managed to drop suction pipes down the loading hatches into the cargo holds, they had not been able to fight their way through the debris crowding the companionways to reach the engine and boiler rooms, where the greatest volume of water still lay-remote and inaccessible.

Drummer sat in the gymnasium, dirty and exhausted after working around the clock. He sipped at a mug of cocoa. "After almost eighty years of submersion and rot," he said, "the wood paneling in the passageways has fallen and jammed them worse than a path in a Georgia junkyard."

Pitt sat where he'd been all afternoon, bent over a drafting table next to the radio transmitter. He stared out of red rimmed eyes at a transverse drawing of the Titanic's superstructure.

"Can't we thread our way down the main staircase or the elevator shafts?"

"The staircase is filled with tons of loose junk once you get down past D Deck," Spencer declared.

"And there isn't a prayer of penetrating the elevator shafts," Gunn added. "They're crammed with jumbled masses of corroded cables and wrecked machinery. If that wasn't bad enough, all the watertight double-cylinder doors in the lower compartments are frozen solid in the closed position."

"They were shut automatically by the ship's first officer immediately after she struck the iceberg," Pitt said.

At that moment, a short bull of a man covered from head to toe with oil and grime staggered into the gym. Pitt looked up and faintly smiled. "That you, Al?"

Giordino hauled himself over to a cot and collapsed like a sack of wet cement. "I'd appreciate it if none of you lit any matches around me," he murmured. "I'm too young to die in a fiery blaze of glory."

"Any luck?" asked Sandecker.

"I made it as far as the squash court on F Deck. God, it's blacker than sin down there . . . fell down a companionway. It was flooded with oil that had seeped up from the engine room. Stopped cold. There was no way down."

"A snake might make it to the boiler rooms," Drummer said, "but it's for sure a man ain't gonna. At least, not until he spends a week clearing a passage with dynamite and a wrecking crew."

"There has to be a way," Sandecker said. "Somewhere down there she's taking water. If we don't get ahead of it by this time tomorrow, she'll roll belly up and head back to the bottom."

The thought of losing the Titanic after she was sitting pretty and upright again on a smooth sea had never entered their minds, but now everyone in the gym began to feel a sickening ache deep in their stomachs. The ship had yet to be taken in tow and New York was twelve hundred sea miles away.

Pitt sat there staring at the ship's interior diagrams. They were woefully inadequate. No set of detailed blueprints of the Titanic and her sister ship, the Olympic, existed. They had been destroyed, along with files full of photographs and construction data, when the Harland and Wolff shipbuilding yards in Belfast were leveled by German bombers during World War II.

"If only she wasn't so damned big," Drummer muttered. "The boiler rooms are damn near a hundred feet below the Boat Deck."

"Might as well be a hundred miles," Spencer said. He looked up as Woodson emerged from the grand stairway entrance. "Ah, the great stoneface is with us. What's the official photographer of the operation been up to?"

Woodson lifted a battery of cameras from around his neck and gently laid them on a makeshift worktable. "Just taking some pictures for posterity," he said with his usual deadpan expression. "Never know, I just might write a book about all this someday, and naturally, I'll want credit for the illustrations."

"Naturally," Spencer said. "You didn't by chance find a clear companionway down to the boiler rooms?"

He shook his head. "I've been shooting in the first-class lounge. It's remarkably well preserved. Except for the obvious ravages of water on the carpeting and furniture, it could pass for a sitting room in the Palace of Versailles." He began changing film cartridges. "How's chances of borrowing the helicopter? I'd like to get some bird's-eye shots of our prize before the tugs arrive."

Giordino raised up on one elbow. "Better use up your film while you can. Our prize may be back on the bottom by morning."

Woodson 's brows pinched together. "She's sinking?"

"I think not."

Every eye turned to the man who uttered those words. Pitt was smiling. He smiled with the confidence of a man who just became chairman of the board of General Motors.

He said, "As Kit Carson used to say when he was surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by Indians, 'We ain't done in yet, not by a damned sight.' In ten hours time the engine and boiler rooms will be bone-dry." He quickly fumbled through the diagrams on the table until he found the one he wanted. "Woodson said it, the bird's-eye view. It was right under our noses all the time. We should have been looking from overhead instead of from inside."

"Big deal," Giordino said. "What's so interesting from the air?"

"None of you get it?"

Drummer looked puzzled. "You missed me at the last fork in the road."

"Spencer?"

Spencer shook his head.

Pitt grinned at him and said, "Assemble your men topside and tell them to bring their cutting gear."

"If you say so," Spencer said, but made no move for the door.

"Mr. Spencer is mentally measuring me for a strait jacket," Pitt said. "He can't figure why we should be cutting holes on the roof of the ship to penetrate a distance of a hundred feet through eight decks of scrap. Nothing to it, really. We have a built-in tunnel, free of any debris, that leads straight to the boiler rooms. In fact, we have four of them. The boiler casings where the funnels once sat, gentlemen. Torch away the Wetsteel seals over the openings and you have a clear shot directly down to the bilges. Do you see the light?"

Spencer saw the light all right. Everyone else saw it, too. They headed out the door as one, without giving Pitt the benefit of an answer.

Two hours later, the diesel pumps were knocking away in chorus and two thousand gallons of water a minute were being returned over the side to the mounting swells that were being pushed ahead of the approaching hurricane.

55

They had dubbed her Hurricane Amanda, and by that sable afternoon the great steamer tracks running across her projected path were devoid of most vessels. All freighters, tankers, and passenger liners that had put to sea between Savannah, Georgia, and Portland, Maine, had been ordered back to port after NUMA's Hurricane Center in Tampa sent out the first warnings. Nearly a hundred vessels along the Eastern seaboard had postponed their sailing dates, while all ships bound from Europe that were already far at sea hove to, waiting for the hurricane to pass.

In Tampa, Dr. Prescott and his weather people swarmed around the wall chart, feeding new data into the computers, and plotting any deviation of Hurricane Amanda's track. Prescott's original predicted track was holding up to within a hundred and seventy-five miles.

A weatherman came up and handed him a sheet of paper. "Here's a report from a Coast Guard reconnaissance plane that penetrated the hurricane's eye."

Prescott took the report and read parts of it aloud. "Eye approximately twenty-two miles in diameter. Forward speed increased to forty knots. Wind strength one hundred and eighty plus . . ." his voice trailed off.

His assistant looked at him, her eyes wide. "A hundred-and-eighty-mile-an-hour winds?"

"And more," Prescott murmured. "I pity the ship that gets caught in this one."

A glaze suddenly passed across the weatherman's eyes and he swung back to study the wall chart. Then his face turned ashen. "Oh Jesus . . . the Titanic!"

Prescott looked at him. "The what?"

"The Titanic and her salvage fleet. They're sitting right in the middle of the projected path of the hurricane."

"The hell you say!" Prescott snapped.

The weatherman moved up to the wall chart and hesitated for several moments. Finally, he reached up and drew an X just below the Newfoundland Grand Banks. "There, that's the position where she was raised from the bottom."

"Where did you get this information?"

"It's been smeared all over the newspapers and television since yesterday. If you don't believe me, teletype NUMA headquarters in Washington and confirm."

"Screw the teletype," Prescott growled. He rushed across the room, snatched up a telephone and shouted into the receiver. "Punch me on a direct line to our headquarters in Washington. I want to speak with someone's who's connected with the Titanic project."

While he waited for his call to go through, he peered over his glasses at the X on the wall chart. "Here's hoping those poor bastards have a weatherman on board with uncanny foresight," he muttered to himself, "or about this time tomorrow they'll forever learn the meaning of the fury of the sea.

There was a vague expression on Farquar's face as he stared at the weather maps laid out before him on the table. His mind was so numb and woolly from lack of sleep that he had difficulty in defining the markings he had made only minutes before. The indications of temperature, wind velocity, barometric pressure, and the approaching stormfront all melted together into one indistinct blur.

He rubbed his eyes in a useless attempt to get them to focus. Then he shook his head to clear the cobwebs, trying to remember what it was that he had been about to conclude,

The hurricane. Yes, that was it. Farquar slowly came to the realization that he had made a serious miscalculation. The hurricane had not veered into Cape Hatteras as he'd predicted. Instead, a high-pressure area along the eastern coast held it over the ocean on a northerly course. And what was worse, it had begun to move faster after recurving and was now hurtling toward the Titanic's position with forward speed approaching forty-five knots.

He had watched the hurricane's birth on the satellite photos and had closely studied the warnings from the NUMA station in Tampa, but nothing in all his years of forecasting had prepared him for the violence and the speed that this monstrosity had achieved in such a short time.

A hurricane in May? It was unthinkable. Then his words to Pitt came back to haunt him. What was it he had said? "Only God can make a storm." Farquar suddenly felt sick, his face beaded with sweat, hands clenching and unclenching.

"God help the Titanic this time," he murmured under his breath. "He's the only one who can save her now."

56

The U.S.Navy salvage tugs Thomas J. Morse and Samual R. Wallace arrived just before 1500 hours and slowly began circling the Titanic. The vast size and the strange deathlike aura of the derelict filled the tugs' crews with the same feeling of awe that was experienced by the NUMA salvage people the day before.

After a half an hour of visual inspection, the tugs pulled parallel to the great rusty hull and lay to in the heavy swells, their engines on "stop." Then, as if in unison, their cutters were lowered and the captains came across and began climbing a hastily thrown boarding ladder to the Titanic's shelter deck.

Lieutenant George Uphill of the Morse was a short, plump, ruddy faced man who sported an immense Bismarck mustache, while Lieutenant Commander Scotty Butera of the Wallace nearly scraped the ceiling at six feet six and buried his chin in a magnificent black beard. No spick-and-span fleet officers these two. They looked and acted every bit the part of tough, no-nonsense salvage men

"You don't know how happy we are to see you, gentlemen," Gunn said, shaking their hands. "Admiral Sandecker and Mr. Dirk Pitt, our special projects director, are awaiting you in, if you'll pardon the expression, our operations room."

The tug captains tailed after Gunn up the stairways and across the Boat Deck, staring in trancelike rapture at the remains of the once beautiful ship. They reached the gymnasium and Gunn made the introductions.

"It's positively incredible," Uphill murmured. "I never thought in my wildest imagination that I would ever live to walk the decks of the Titanic.

"My sentiments exactly," Butera added.

"I wish we could give you a guided tour," Pitt said, "but each minute adds to the risk of losing her to the sea again."

Admiral Sandecker motioned them to a long table laden with weather maps, diagrams, and charts, and they all settled in with steaming mugs of coffee. "Our chief concern at the moment is weather," he said, "Our weatherman on board the Capricorn has suddenly taken to imagining himself as the 'prophet of doom'."

Pitt unrolled a large weather map and flattened it on the table. "There's no ducking the bad news. Our weather is deteriorating rapidly. The barometer has fallen half an inch in the last twenty-four hours. Wind force four, blowing north northeast and building. We're in for it, gentlemen, make no mistake. Unless a miracle occurs and Hurricane Amanda decides to cut a quick left turn to the west, we should be well into her front quadrant by this time tomorrow."

"Hurricane Amanda," Butera repeated the name. "How nasty is she?"

"Joel Farquar, our weatherman, assures me they don't come any meaner than this baby," Pitt replied. "She's already reported winds of force fifteen on the Beaufort scale."

"Force fifteen?" Gunn repeated in astonishment. "My God, force twelve is considered a maximum hurricane."

"This, I'm afraid," said Sandecker, "is every salvage man's nightmare come true-raise a derelict only to have it snatched away by a whim of the weather." He looked grimly at Uphill and Butera. "It looks as though you two made the trip for nothing. You'd better get back to your ships and make a run for it."

"Make a run for it, hell!" Uphill boomed. "We just got here."

"I couldn't have said it better." Butera grinned and looked up at Sandecker. "The Morse and the Wallace can tow an aircraft earner through a swamp in a tornado if they have to. They're designed to slug it out with anything Mother Nature can dish out. If we can get a cable on board the Titanic and get her under tow, she'll stand a fighting chance of riding out the storm intact."

"Pulling a forty-five-thousand-ton ship through the jaws of a hurricane," Sandecker murmured. "That's a pretty heady boast."

"No boast." Butera came back dead-serious. "By fastening a cable from the stern of the Morse to the bow of the Wallace, our combined power can tow the Titanic in the same manner as a pair of railroad engines in tandem can pull a freight train."

"And, we can do it in thirty-foot seas at a speed of five to six knots," Uphill added.

Sandecker looked at the two tug captains and let them go on.

Butera charged ahead. "Those aren't run-of-the-mill harbor tugs floating out there, Admiral. They're deep-sea, ocean-rescue tugs, two hundred and fifty feet in length with five-thousand-horse diesel power plants, each boat capable of hauling twenty thousand tons of dead weight at ten knots for two thousand miles without running out of fuel. If any two tugs in the world can pull the Titanic through a hurricane, these can."

"I appreciate your enthusiasm," Sandecker said, "but, I won't be responsible for the lives of you and your crews on what has to be an impossible gamble. The Titanic will have to drift out the storm as best she can. I'm ordering you both to shove off and head into a safe area."

Uphill looked at Butera. "Tell me, Commander, when was the last time you defied a direct command from an admiral?"

Butera feigned mock thoughtfulness. "Come to think of it, not since breakfast."

"Speaking for myself and the salvage crew," Pitt said, "we'd welcome your company."

"There you have it, sir," Butera said, grinning. "Besides, my orders from Admiral Kemper were either to bring the Titanic into port or take out papers for an early retirement. Me, I opt for the Titanic."

"That's mutiny," Sandecker said flatly; but there was no hiding the trace of satisfaction in his tone, and it took no great stroke of perception to recognize that the argument had gone exactly as he had planned it. He gave everyone a very shrewd look and said, "Okay, gentlemen, it's your funeral. Now that that's settled, I suggest that instead of sitting around here, you get about the business of saving the Titanic."

Captain Ivan Parotkin stood on the port wing bridge of the Mikhail Kurkov and searched the sky with a pair of binoculars.

He was a slender man of medium height with a distinguished face that almost never smiled. He was in his late fifties, but his receding hair showed no sign of gray. A thick turtleneck sweater covered his chest while his hips and legs were encased in heavy woolen pants and knee boots.

Parotkin's first officer touched him on the arm and pointed skyward above the Mikhail Kurkov's huge radar dome. A four-engine patrol bomber appeared out of the northeast and magnified until Parotkin could make out its Russian markings. The aircraft seemed to be crawling scant miles per hour above its stalling speed as it swept overhead. Then suddenly a tiny object ejected from the underbelly, and seconds later a parachute blossomed open and began drifting over the ship's forward mastpeak, its occupant finally dropping into the water about two hundred yards off the starboard bow.

As the Mikhail Kurkov's small boat put away and dipped over the mountainous, wide-spaced waves, Parotkin turned to his first officer. "As soon as he is safely on board, conduct Captain Prevlov to my quarters." Then he laid the binoculars on the bridge counter and disappeared down a companionway.

Twenty minutes later, the first officer knocked at the highly polished mahogany door, opened it, and then stood aside to allow a man to pass through. He was thoroughly soaked and dripping salt water in puddles about the deck.

"Captain Parotkin."

"Captain Prevlov."

They stood there in silence a few moments, both highly trained professionals, and sized each other up. Prevlov had the advantage; he'd studied Parotkin's service history in depth. Parotkin, on the other hand, had only repute and first appearances to form a judgment. He wasn't sure he liked what he saw. Prevlov came off too handsome, too foxlike for Parotkin to grasp a favorable sense of warmth or trust.

"We are short on time," Prevlov said. "If we could get right down to the purpose of my visit-"

Parotkin held up his hand. "First things first. Some hot tea and a change of clothing. Dr. Rogovski, our chief scientist, is about your height and weight."

The first officer nodded and closed the door.

"Now then," Parotkin said, "I am certain a man of your rank and importance didn't risk his life parachuting into running sea merely to observe the atmospheric phenomenon of a hurricane."

"Hardly. Personal danger is not my cup of tea. And speaking of tea, I don't suppose you have anything stronger on board?"

Parotkin shook his head. "Sorry, Captain. I insist on a dry ship. Not exactly to the crew's liking, I admit, but it does save occasional grief."

"Admiral Sloyuk said you were a paragon of efficiency."

"I do not believe in tempting the fates."

Prevlov unzipped his sodden jumpsuit and let it fall on the floor. "I am afraid you are about to make an exception to that rule, Captain. We, you and I, are about to tempt the fates as they have never been tempted before."

57

Pitt could not escape the feeling he was being deserted on a lonely island as he stood on the foredeck of the Titanic and watched the salvage fleet get under way and begin moving toward the western horizon and safer waters.

The Alhambra was the last in line to slip past, her captain flashing a "good luck" with his addis lamp, the news people quietly, solemnly filming what might be the last visual record of the Titanic. Pitt searched for Dana Seagram among the crowd gathered at the railings, but his eyes failed to pick her out. He watched the ships until they became small dark specks on a leaden sea. Only the missile cruiser Juneau and the Capricorn remained behind, but the salvage tender would soon depart and follow the others once the tug captains signaled they had the derelict in tow.

"Mr. Pitt?"

Pitt turned to see a man who had the face of a canvas weary prizefighter and the body of a beer keg.

"Chief Bascom, sir, of the Wallace. I brought a two-man crew aboard to make fast the towing cable."

Pitt smiled a friendly smile. "I bet they call you Bad Bascom."

"Only behind my back. It's a name that's followed me ever since I tore up a bar in San Diego." Bascom shrugged. Then his eyes narrowed. "How did you guess?"

"Commander Butera described you in glowing terms... behind your back, that is."

"A good man, the commander."

"How long will it take for the hookup?"

"With luck and the loan of your helicopter, about an hour."

"No problem over the helicopter; it belongs to the Navy anyway." Pitt turned and gazed down at the Wallace as Butera very carefully backed the tug toward the Titanic's old straight up-and-down bow until he was less than a hundred feet away. "I take it the helicopter is to lift the tow cable on board?"

"Yes sir," Bascom answered. "Our cable measures ten inches in diameter and weighs in at one ton per seventy feet. No lightweight that one. On most tow jobs, we'd cast a small line over the derelict's bow which in turn would be attached to a series of heavier lines with increasing diameters that finally tied into the main cable, but that type of operation calls for the services of an electric winch, and since the Titanic is a dead ship and human muscles are way under matched for the job, we take the easy way out. No sense in filling up sick bay with a crew of hernia patients."

Even with the help of the helicopter, it was all Bascom and his men could do to secure the great cable into position. Sturgis came through like an old pro. Tenderly manipulating the helicopter's controls, he laid the end of the Wallace's tow cable on the Titanic's forecastle deck as neatly as though he'd practiced the trick for years. It took only fifty minutes, from the time Sturgis released the cable and flew back to the Capricorn, until Chief Bascom stood on the forepeak and waved his arms over his head, signaling the tugs that the connection was made.

Butera on the Wallace acknowledged the signal with a blast on the tug's whistle and rang the engine room for "dead ahead slow" as Uphill on the Morse went through the same motions. Slowly the two tugs gathered way, the Wallace trailing the Morse on three hundred yards of wire leash, paying out the main cable until the Titanic rose and dropped in the steadily increasing swells nearly a quarter of a mile astern. Then Butera held up his hand and the men on the Wallace's afterdeck gently eased on the brake of the tug's immense towing winch and the cable took up the strain.

From atop the Titanic's vast height, the tugs looked like tiny toy boats tossing over the enormous crests of the waves one moment before disappearing to their mastlights in the cavernous troughs the next. It seemed impossible that such puny objects could budge over forty-five thousand tons of dead weight, and yet slowly, imperceptibly at first, their combined forces of ten-thousand horsepower began to tell and soon a minute dog's bone of foam could be discerned curling around the Titanic's faded Plimsoll's mark.

She was barely making way-New York was still twelve hundred miles to the west-but she had at last picked up where she'd left off that cold night back in 1912 and was once again making for port.

The ominous-looking black clouds rose and spilled over the southern horizon. It was a hurricane bar. Even as Pitt watched, it seemed to expand and strengthen, turning the sea to a dark shade of dirty gray. Oddly, the wind became light, aimlessly changing direction every few seconds. He noticed that the sea gulls that had once swarmed about the salvage fleet were not in view. Only the sight of the Juneau, moving steadily five hundred yards abeam the Titanic, provided any sense of security.

Pitt glanced at his watch and then took another look over the port railing before he slowly, almost casually, approached the entrance to the gymnasium.

"Is the gang all here?"

"They're getting restless as hell," Giordino said. He was standing huddled against a ventilator in a seemingly vain attempt to hide from the icy wind. "If it wasn't for the admiral's restraining influence, you'd have had a first-class riot on your hands."

"Everyone is accounted for?"

"To a man."

"You're positive?"

"Take the word of Warden Giordino. None of the inmates have left the room, not even to go potty."

"Then I guess it's my turn to enter stage right."

"Any complaints from our guests?" Giordino asked.

"The usual. Never satisfied with their accommodations, not enough heat or too much air conditioning, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

"You'd better go aft and see about making their wait enjoyable."

"For God's sake, how?"

"Tell them jokes."

Giordino gave Pitt a sour look and mumbled dryly to himself as he turned and walked off into the evening's dimming light.

Pitt checked his watch once more and entered the gymnasium. Three hours had passed since the tow had begun and the final act of the salvage had settled down to a routine. Sandecker and Gunn were bent over the radio pestering Farquar on the Capricorn, now fifty miles to the west, for the latest news on Hurricane Amanda, while the rest of the crew was grouped in a tight semicircle around a small and thoroughly inadequate oil-burning stove.

As Pitt entered, they had all looked up expectantly. When at last he spoke, his voice was unnaturally soft in the unnatural quiet that was broken only by the hum of the portable generators. "My apologies, gentlemen, for keeping you waiting, but I thought the short coffee break would reconstitute your sagging sinews."

"Cut the satire," Spencer snapped, his voice taut with irritation. "You call us all up here and then make us sit around for half an hour when there is work to do. What's the story?"

"The story is simple," Pitt said evenly. "In a few minutes, Lieutenant Sturgis will drop his helicopter on board one last time before the storm strikes. With the exception of Giordino and myself, I would like all of you, and that includes you, Admiral, to return with him to the Capricorn. "

"Aren't you out of your depth, Pitt," Sandecker said in an unemphatic tone.

"To some degree, yes, sir, but I firmly believe I'm doing the right thing."

"Explain yourself." Sandecker glowed like a piranha about to gulp a goldfish. He was playing his role to the hilt. It was an epic job of typecasting.

"I have every reason to believe the Titanic hasn't the structural strength left to weather a hurricane."

"This old tub has taken more punishment than any man-made object since the pyramids," Spencer said. "And, now the great seer of the future, Dirk Pitt, predicts the old girl will throw in the sponge and sink at the first blow from a lousy storm."

"There's no guarantee she can't or won't founder under a heavy sea," Pitt hedged. "Either way, it's stupid to risk any more lives than we have to."

"Let me see if I get this straight." Drummer leaned forward, his hawklike features intent and angry. "Except for you and Giordino, the rest of us are supposed to haul ass and ditch everything we've busted our balls to achieve over the last nine months just so's we can hide on the Capricorn till the storm blows over? Is that the idea?"

"You go to the head of the class, Drummer."

"Man, you're out of your gourd."

"Impossible," Spencer said. "It takes four men just to oversee the pumps."

"And the hull below the waterline has to be sounded around the clock for new leaks," Gunn added.

"You heroes are all alike," Drummer drawled "Always making noble sacrifices to save others. Let's face it; ain't no way two men can ride herd on this old tub. I vote we all stay."

Spencer turned and read the faces of his six-man crew. They all stared back at him out of eyes red-rimmed with lack of sleep and nodded in chorus. Then Spencer faced Pitt again. "Sorry, great leader, but Spencer and his merry band of pump-pushers have decided to hang in there."

"I'm with you," Woodson said solemnly.

"Count me in," said Gunn.

Chief Bascom touched Pitt on the arm. "Beggin' your pardon, sir, but me and my boys are for sticking around too. That cable out there has to be checked every hour during the storm for signs of chafing, and heavy grease applied to the fair-lead to prevent a break."

"Sorry, Pitt, my boy," Sandecker said with a marked degree of satisfaction. "You lose."

The sound of Sturgis's helicopter was heard hovering for a landing over the lounge roof. Pitt shrugged resignedly and said, "Well that settles it then. We all sink or swim together." Then he cracked a tired smile. "You'd all better get some rest and some food in your stomachs. It may be your last chance. A few hours from now we'll be up to our eyeballs in the front quadrant of the hurricane. And, I don't have to draw a picture of what we can expect."

He swung on his heels and walked out the door to the helicopter pad. Not a bad performance, he thought to himself. Not a bad performance at all. He'd never be nominated for an Academy Award, but what the hell, his captive audience had thought it convincing and that's all that really mattered.

Jack Sturgis was a short, thin man with sad drooping eyes, the kind women considered bedroom eyes. He gripped a long cigarette holder between his teeth and jutted his chin forward in a show reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt. He had just climbed down from the cockpit of the helicopter and seemed to be groping for something under the landing gear when Pitt stepped onto the pad.

Sturgis looked up. "Any passengers?" he asked.

"Not this trip."

Sturgis nonchalantly flicked an ash from his cigarette holder. "I knew I should have stayed cuddled in my warm, cozy cabin on the Capricorn. " He sighed. "Flying in the face of hurricanes will be the death of me yet."

"You'd better get going," Pitt said. "The wind will be on us any time now."

"Makes no difference." Sturgis shrugged indifferently. "I'm not going anywhere."

Pitt looked at him. "What do you mean by that?"

"I've been had, that's what I mean." He gestured up at the rotor blades. The two-foot tip of one was hanging down like a limp wrist. "Somebody around here resents whirlybirds."

"Did you strike a bulkhead on landing?"

Sturgis put on a hurt expression. "I do not, repeat, do not strike objects upon landing." He found what he was searching for and straightened up. "Here, see for yourself; some son of a bitch tossed a hammer into my rotor blades."

Pitt took the hammer and examined it. The rubber hand-grip showed a deep gash where it had come in contact with the blade.

"And, after all I've done for you people," Sturgis said, "this is how you show your appreciation."

"Sorry, Sturgis, but I suggest you forget any aspirations of ever becoming a television detective. You sadly lack an analytical mind, and you're prone to leap to false conclusions."

"Get off it, Pitt. Hammers don't fly through the air without a means of propulsion. One of your people must have tossed it when I was landing."

"Wrong. I can vouch for the whereabouts of every soul on board this ship, and no one was anywhere near the helicopter pad in the last ten minutes. Whoever your little destructive friend is I'm afraid you brought him with you."

"Do you think I'm a dead-brain? Don't you think I'd know if I carried a passenger? Besides, now you're insinuating a suicidal act. If that hammer had been thrown one minute sooner, when we were a hundred feet in the air, you and your crew would have had an ugly mess to clean up."

"Wrong nomenclature," Pitt said. "Not passenger, but stowaway. And, he's no dead-brain either. He waited until your wheels kissed the deck before he made his play and escaped through the cargo hatch. God only knows where he's hiding now. A thorough search of fifty miles of pitch dark passageways and compartments is impossible."

Sturgis's face suddenly paled. "Christ, our intruder is still in the copter."

"Don't be ridiculous. He beat it the instant you landed."

"No, no. It's possible to throw a hammer out and up through an open cabin window into the rotor blades, but escape is something else again."

"I'm listening," Pitt said quietly.

"The cargo compartment hatch is electronically operated and can only be activated from a switch in the control cabin."

"Is there another exit?"

"Only a door to the control cabin."

Pitt studied the sealed cargo hatch for a long moment, then turned back to Sturgis, his eyes cold. "Is this any way to treat an unexpected guest? I think the appropriate thing to do is for us to invite him into the fresh air."

Sturgis became rooted to the deck as he spotted the Colt forty-five automatic, complete with silencer, that had suddenly materialized in Pitt's right hand.

"Sure . . . sure. . " he stammered. "If you say so."

Sturgis clambered up the ladder to the control cabin, leaned in and pushed a switch. The electric motors made a whirring sound and the contoured seven-foot-by-seven-foot door rose open and upward over the helicopter's fuselage. Even before the locking pins clicked into position, Sturgis was back on the deck and standing warily behind Pitt's broad shoulders.

Half a minute after the door had opened, Pitt was still standing there. He stood there for what Sturgis thought was a lifetime without moving a muscle, breathing slowly and evenly, and listening. The only sounds were the slap of the waves against the hull, the low whine of the steadily building wind over the Titanic's superstructure and the murmur of voices that carried through the gymnasium door, not the sounds he was tuned in for. When he was satisfied there were no sounds of feet scraping, rustling of clothing, or other tones relating to menace or stealth, he stepped into the helicopter.

The darkened skies outside dimmed the interior and Pitt was uneasily aware that he was perfectly silhouetted against the dusk light. At first glance, the compartment seemed empty, but then Pitt felt a tapping on his shoulder and noted that Sturgis was pointing past him at a tarpaulin tucked around a humanlike shape.

"I neatly folded and stowed that tarp not more than an hour ago," Sturgis whispered.

Swiftly, Pitt reached down and dragged the tarpaulin away with his left hand while aiming the Colt as steadily as a park statue with his right.

A figure enveloped in a heavy foul-weather jacket lay huddled on the cargo deck, the eyes loosely closed in a state of unconsciousness that was obviously related to the ugly, bleeding, and purplish bruise just above the hairline.

Sturgis stood rooted in the shadows in shocked immobility, his widening eyes blinking rapidly, still adjusting to the diminishing light. Then he rubbed his chin lightly with his fingers and shook his head in disbelief. "Good lord," he muttered in awe. "Do you know who that is?"

"I do," Pitt answered evenly. "Her name is Seagram, Dana Seagram."

58

With appalling abruptness, the sky above the Mikhail Kurkov went pitch dark . . . great black clouds rolled overhead, obliterating the evening stars, and the wind returned and rose to a wailing gale of forty miles an hour, breaking the edges of the wave crests and carrying the foam in well-defined streaks toward the northeast.

Inside the large wheelhouse of the Soviet ship it was warm and comfortable. Prevlov stood beside Parotkin, who was watching the Titanic's blip on radar.

"When I took command of this ship," Parotkin said, as though lecturing a schoolboy, "I was under the impression my orders were to carry out research and surveillance programs. Nothing was said about conducting an out-and-out military operation."

Prevlov held up a protesting hand. "Please, Captain, you forget the words military and operation are unmentionable. The little venture upon which we are about to embark is a perfectly legal civilian activity known in the western countries as a change in management."

"Blatant piracy is closer to the truth," Parotkin said. "And what do you call those ten marines you so kindly added to my crew when we left port? Stockholders?"

"Again, not marines, but rather civilian crewmen."

"Of course," Parotkin said dryly. "And every one armed to the teeth."

"There is no international law I know of that forbids ship crewmen the right to possess arms."

"If one existed, you would no doubt discover an escape clause."

"Come, come, my dear Captain Parotkin." Prevlov slapped him heartily on the back. "When this evening is played to the finale, we will both be heroes of the Soviet Union."

"Or dead," Parotkin said woodenly.

"Calm your fears. The plan is flawless, and with the storm which drove off the salvage fleet, it becomes even more so."

"Aren't you overlooking the Juneau? Her captain will not stand idly by while we steam alongside the Titanic, board her and raise the hammer and sickle over her bridge."

Prevlov held up his wrist and stared at his watch. "In exactly two hours and twenty minutes, one of our nuclear attack submarines will surface a hundred miles to the north and begin transmitting distress signals under the name of the Laguna Star, a tramp freighter of rather dubious registry."

"And you think the Juneau will take the bait and dash to the rescue?"

"Americans never reject an appeal for help," Prevlov said confidently. "They all have a Good Samaritan complex. Yes, the Juneau will respond. She has to; except for the tugs which cannot leave the Titanic, she is the only available ship within three hundred miles."

"But if our submarine then submerges, nothing will show on the Juneau's radar screens."

"Naturally, her officers will assume that the Laguna Star has sunk, and they will double their efforts to arrive in the nick of time to save the lives of a nonexistent crew."

"I bow to your imagination." Parotkin smiled. "Yet that still leaves you with such problems as the two United States Navy tugs, boarding the Titanic during the worst hurricane in years, neutralizing the American salvage crew, and then towing the derelict back to Russia, all without creating an international uproar."

"There are four parts to your statement, Captain." Prevlov paused to light a cigarette. "Number one, the tugboats will be eliminated by two Soviet operatives who are at this moment masquerading as members of the American salvage crew. Number two, I shall board the Titanic and assume its command when the eye of the hurricane reaches us. Since the wind velocities in this area seldom exceed fifteen knots, my men and I should have little difficulty in crossing over and entering through a hull loading door that will be conveniently opened on schedule by one of the operatives. Number three, my boarding party will then dispose of the salvage crew quickly and efficiently. And, finally, number four, it will be made to look to the world as though the Americans fled the ship at the height of the hurricane and were lost at sea. That, of course, makes the Titanic an abandoned derelict. The first captain who gets a towline on her is then entitled to the salvage rights. You are to be that lucky captain, Comrade Parotkin. Under international marine law, you will have every legal right to take the Titanic in tow."

"You will never get away with it," Parotkin said. "What you're suggesting is outright mass murder." There was a vacant, sick look in his eyes. "Have you also considered the consequences of failure with the same dedication to detail?"

Prevlov looked at him, the ever-present smile tightening. "Failure has been considered, Comrade. But let us fervently hope our final option will not be required." He pointed at the large blip on the radar screen. "It would be a pity to have to sink the world's most legendary ship a second time, and for all time."

59

Deep in the bowels of the ancient ocean liner, Spencer and his pumping crew struggled to keep the diesel pumps going. Sometimes working alone in the cold, black caverns of steel, with nothing but the pitiful comfort of small spotlights, they uncomplainingly went about their business of keeping the ship afloat. It came as somewhat of a surprise to find that in some compartments the pumps were falling behind the incoming water.

By seven o'clock the weather had deteriorated to the point of no return. The barometer slipped past 29.6 and was still falling steeply. The Titanic began to pitch and roll and take solid water over her bow and cargo deck bulwarks. Visibility under the shroud of night and the driving rain dropped to almost zero. The only sighting the men on the tugs had of the big ship came with an occasional bolt of lightning that vaguely silhouetted her ghostly outline. The main concern, however, was the cable that disappeared into the mad, swirling waters astern. The constant strain on this lifeline was enormous; every time the Titanic took the full onslaught from a wave of massive proportions, they watched in ominous fascination as the cable arched out of the water and creaked in agonized protest.

Butera never moved from his bridge, keeping in constant contact with the men in the afterdeck cablehouse. Suddenly, a voice from the speaker crackled over the howl of the outside wind. "Captain?"

"This is the Captain," he replied into a hand phone.

"Ensign Kelly in the cablehouse, sir. Something mighty peculiar going on back here."

"Would you care to explain, Ensign?"

"Well, sir, the cable seems to have gone berserk. First she swung to port and now she's carried over to starboard at what I must say, sir, is an alarming angle."

"Okay, keep me posted." Butera switched off and opened another channel.

"Uphill, can you hear me? This is Butera."

On the Morse Uphill answered almost immediately. "Go ahead."

"I think the Titanic has sheered off to starboard."

"Can you make out her position?"

"Negative. The only indication is the angle of the cable."

There came a silence of several moments as Uphill thrashed the new development over in his mind. Then he came back through the speaker "We're hardly making four knots as it is. We have no alternative but to push on. If we stop to see what she's up to, she may swing broadside into the sea and roll over."

"Can you pick her up on your radar?"

"No can do, a sea swept away our antennae twenty minutes ago. How about yours?"

"Still have the antennae, but the same sea that took yours shorted, out my circuits."

"Then it's a case of the blind leading the blind."

Butera set the radio phone in its cradle and cautiously cracked the door leading to the starboard wing of the bridge. Shielding his eyes with his arm, he staggered outside and strained his eyes to penetrate the night gone crazy. The searchlights proved useless, their beams merely reflected the driving rain and revealed nothing. Lightning flashed astern, its thunder drowned out by the wind, and Butera's heart skipped a beat. The brief burst of backlighting failed to reveal any outline of the Titanic. It was as though she had never been. Water streaming down his oilskins, his breath coming in gasps, he pushed back past the door just as Ensign Kelly's voice rasped over the speaker again.

"Captain?"

Butera wiped the spray from his eyes and picked up the phone. "What is it, Kelly?"

"The cable, it's slackened."

"Is it a break?"

"No, sir, the cable's still pain out, but it's settled several feet lower in the water. I've never seen one act like this before. It's as if the derelict took it in her mind to pass us."

It was the words "pass us" that did it . . . and Butera would never forget the sudden shock of realization. A mental click triggered open a floodgate in his mind, released a nightmare of images in orderly sequence, images of a mad pendulum, its arc growing ever wider until it turned in on itself. The signs were there, the cable angled badly to starboard, the sudden slackness. He envisioned the whole scene in his mind the Titanic driven slightly ahead and parallel to the Wallace's starboard beam and now the pull from the cable snapping the derelict back in the manner of a line of school children playing Crack the Whip. Then something broke the nightmare inside Butera's head and released him from its numbing thrall.

He grabbed the radio phone and rang the engine room in almost the same movement. "Ahead full speed! Do you hear me, engine room? Ahead full speed!" And then he called the Morse. "I'm coming at you full speed," he shouted. "Do you read me, Uphill?"

"Please repeat," Uphill asked.