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  DIRK PITT® ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  POSEIDON’S ARROW (with Dirk Cussler)

  CRESCENT DAWN (with Dirk Cussler)

  ARCTIC DRIFT (with Dirk Cussler)

  TREASURE OF KHAN (with Dirk Cussler)

  BLACK WIND (with Dirk Cussler)

  TROJAN ODYSSEY

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  ATLANTIS FOUND

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  SHOCK WAVE

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  CYCLOPS

  DEEP SIX

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  RAISE THE TITANIC!

  ICEBERG

  THE MEDITERRANEAN CAPER

  FARGO ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  With Thomas Perry

  THE TOMBS

  With Grant Blackwood

  THE KINGDOM

  LOST EMPIRE

  SPARTAN GOLD

  ISAAC BELL NOVELS BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  THE STRIKER (with Justin Scott)

  THE THIEF (with Justin Scott)

  THE RACE (with Justin Scott)

  THE SPY (with Justin Scott)

  THE WRECKER (with Justin Scott)

  THE CHASE

  KURT AUSTIN ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  With Graham Brown

  THE STORM

  DEVIL’S GATE

  ZERO HOUR

  With Paul Kemprecos

  MEDUSA

  WHITE DEATH

  THE NAVIGATOR

  FIRE ICE

  POLAR SHIFT

  BLUE GOLD

  LOST CITY

  SERPENT

  OREGON FILES ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  With Jack Du Brul

  THE JUNGLE

  THE SILENT SEA

  CORSAIR

  PLAGUE SHIP

  SKELETON COAST

  DARK WATCH

  With Craig Dirgo

  GOLDEN BUDDHA

  SACRED STONE

  NONFICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  BUILT FOR ADVENTURE: THE CLASSIC AUTOMOBILES OF CLIVE CUSSLER AND DIRK PITT®

  With Craig Dirgo

  THE SEA HUNTERS

  THE SEA HUNTERS II

  CLIVE CUSSLER AND DIRK PITT REVEALED

  GHOST SHIP

  A Novel from the NUMA® Files

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Sandecker, RLLLP

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cussler, Clive.

  Ghost ship / Clive Cussler and Graham Brown.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-718-17876-5

  1. Austin, Kurt (Fictitious character)—Fiction. I. Brown, Graham, date. II. Title.

  PS3553.U75Z48 2014 2014008130

  813'.54—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  ALSO BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  July 25, 1909

  Durban, South Africa

  They were driving into a void, or so it seemed to Chief Inspector Robert Swan of the Durban Police Department.

  On a moonless night, beneath a sky as dark as India ink, Swan rode shotgun in the cab of a motortruck as it rumbled down a dusty track in the countryside north of Durban. The headlights of the big Packard cast yellow beams of light that flickered and bounced and did little to brighten the path ahead. As he stared into the gloom, Swan could see no more than forty yards of the rutted path at any one time.

  “How far to this farmhouse?” he asked, turning toward a thin, wiry man named Morris, who was wedged in next to the driver.

  Morris checked his watch, leaned toward the driver, and checked the odometer of the truck. After some mental calculations, he glanced down at the map he held. “We should be there soon, Inspector. No more than ten minutes to go, I’d say.”

  The chief inspector nodded and grabbed the doorsill as the bumpy ride continued. The Packard was known as a Three Ton, the latest from America and one of the first motor vehicles to be owned by the Durban Police Department. It had come off the boat with the customized cab and windshield. Enterprising workmen from the newly formed motor pool had built a frame to cover the flat bed and stretched canvas over it, though no one had done anything to make it more comfortable.

  As the truck bounced and lurched over the rutted buggy trail, Swan decided he would rather be on horseback. But what the big rig lost in comfort it made up for in hauling power. In addition to Swan, Morris, and the driver, eight constables rode in back.

  Swan leaned on the doorsill and turned to look behind him. Four sets of headlights followed. Three cars and another Packard. All told, Swan had nearly a quarter of the Durban police force riding with him.

  “Are you sure we need all these men?” Morris asked.

  Perhaps it was a bit much,
Swan thought. Then again, the criminals they were after—a group known in the papers as the Klaar River Gang—had numbers of their own. Rumors put them between thirty and forty, depending on whom one believed.

  Though they’d begun as common highwaymen, robbing others and extorting those who tried to make an honest living doing business out in the Veld, they’d grown more cunning and violent in the last six months. Farmhouses of those who refused to pay protection money were being burned to the ground. Miners and travelers were disappearing without a trace. The truth came to light when several of the gang were captured trying to rob a bank. They were brought back to Durban for interrogation only to be rescued in a brazen attack that left three policemen dead and four others wounded.

  It was a line that Swan would not allow them to cross. “I’m not interested in a fair fight,” he explained. “Need I remind you what happened two days ago?”

  Morris shook his head, and Swan rapped his hand on the partition that separated the cab from the back of the truck. A panel slid open and the face of a burly man appeared, all but filling the window.

  “Are the men ready?” Swan asked.

  “We’re ready, Inspector.”

  “Good,” Swan said. “Remember, no prisoners tonight.” The man nodded his understanding, but the words caused

  Morris to offer a sideways glance.

  “You have a problem?” Swan barked.

  “No, sir,” Morris said, looking back at his map. “It’s just that . . . we’re almost there. Just over this hill.”

  Swan turned his attention forward once again and took a deep breath, readying himself. Almost immediately he caught the scent of smoke. It was distinct in flavor, like a bonfire.

  The Packard crested the hill moments later, and the coalblack night was cleaved in two by a frenzied orange blaze on the field down below them. The farmhouse was burning from one side to the other, whirls of fire curling around it and reaching toward the heavens.

  “Bloody hell,” Swan cursed.

  The vehicles raced down the hill and spread out. The men

  poured forth and took up positions surrounding the house. No one hit them. No one fired.

  Morris led a squad closer. They approached from upwind

  and darted into the last section of the barn that wasn’t ablaze. Several horses were rescued, but the only gang members they found were already dead. Some of them half burned, others merely shot and left to die.

  There was no hope of fighting the fire. The ancient wood and the oil-based paint crackled and burned like petrol. It put out such heat that Swan’s men were soon forced to back off or be broiled alive.

  “What happened?” Swan demanded of his lieutenant. “Looks like they had it out among themselves,” Morris said. Swan considered that. Before the arrests in Durban, rumors had been swirling that suggested the gang was fraying at the seams. “How many dead?”

  “We’ve found five. Some of the boys think they saw two more inside, but they couldn’t reach ’em.”

  At that moment gunfire rang out.

  Swan and Morris dove behind the Packard for cover. From sheltered positions, some of the officers began to shoot back, loosing stray rounds into the inferno.

  The shooting continued, oddly timed and staccato, though Swan saw no sign of bullets hitting nearby.

  “Hold your fire!” he shouted. “But keep your heads down.”

  “But they’re shooting at us,” one of the men shouted.

  Swan shook his head even as the pop-pop of the gunfire continued. “It’s just ammunition going off in the blaze.”

  The order was passed around, shouted from one man to the next. Despite his own directive, Swan stood up, peering over the hood of the truck.

  By now the inferno had enveloped the entire farmhouse. The remaining beams looked like the bones of a giant resting on some Nordic funeral pyre. The flames curled around and through them, burning with a strange intensity, bright white and orange with occasional flashes of green and blue. It looked like hell itself had risen up and consumed the gang and their hideout from within.

  As Swan watched, a massive explosion went off deep inside the structure, blowing the place into a fiery scrap. Swan was thrown back by the force of the blast, landing hard on his back, as chunks of debris rattled against the sides of the Packard.

  Moments after the explosion, burning confetti began falling, as little scraps of paper fluttered down by the thousands, leaving trails of smoke and ash against the black sky. As the fragments kissed the ground, they began to set fires in the dry grass.

  Seeing this, Swan’s men went into action without delay, tamping out the embers to prevent a brushfire from surrounding them.

  Swan noticed several fragments landing nearby. He rolled over and stretched for one of them, patting it out with his hand. To his surprise, he saw numbers, letters, and the stern face of King George staring back at him.

  “Tenners,” Morris said excitedly. “Ten-pound notes. Thousands of them.”

  As the realization spread through the men, they redoubled their efforts, running around and gathering up the charred scraps with a giddy enthusiasm they rarely showed for collecting evidence. Some of the notes were bundled and not too

  badly burned. Others were like leaves in the fireplace, curled

  and blackened beyond recognition.

  “Gives a whole new meaning to the term blowing the loot,” Morris said.

  Swan chuckled, but he wasn’t really listening, his thoughts

  were elsewhere; studying the fire, counting the bodies, working

  the case as an inspector’s mind should.

  Something was not right, not right at all.

  At first, he put it down to the anticlimactic nature of the evening. The gang he’d come to make war on had done the job for

  him. That he could buy. He’d seen it before. Criminals often

  fought over the spoils of their crimes, especially when they were

  loosely affiliated and all but leaderless, as this gang was rumored to be.

  No, Swan thought, this was suspicious on a deeper level. Morris seemed to notice. “What’s wrong?”

  “It makes no sense,” Swan replied.

  “What part of it?”

  “The whole thing,” Swan said. “The risky daylight bank job.

  The raid to get their men out. The gunfight in the street.” Morris stared at him blankly. “I don’t follow you.” “Look around,” Swan suggested. “Judging by the storm of

  burnt cash raining down on us, these thugs were sitting on a

  small fortune.”

  “Yes,” Morris agreed. “So what?”

  “So why rob a heavily defended bank in broad daylight if

  you’re already loaded to the gills with cash? Why risk shooting

  up Durban to get your mates out only to gun them down back

  here?”

  Morris stared at Swan for a long moment before nodding his agreement. “I have no idea,” he said. “But you’re right. It makes no sense at all.”

  The fire continued to burn well into the morning hours, only dying when the farmhouse was consumed. The operation ended without casualties among the police, and the Klaar River Gang was never heard from again.

  Most considered it a stroke of good fortune, but Swan was never convinced. He and Morris would discuss the events of that evening for years, well into their retirement. Despite many theories and guesses as to what really went on, it was a question they would never be able to answer.

  July 27, 1909

  170 miles West-Southwest of Durban

  The SS Waratah plowed through the waves on a voyage from Durban to Cape Town, rolling noticeably with the growing swells. Dark smoke from coal-fired boilers spilled from her single funnel and was driven in the opposite direction by a contrary wind.

  Sitting alone in the main lounge of the five-hundred-foot steamship, fifty-one-year-old Gavin Brèvard felt the vessel roll ponderously to starboard. He watched the cup and saucer in
front of him slide toward the edge of the table, slowly at first, and then picking up speed as the angle of the ship’s roll increased. At the last second, he grabbed for the cup, preventing it from sliding off the edge and clattering to the floor.

  The Waratah remained at a sharp pitch, taking a full two minutes to right herself, and Brèvard began to worry about the vessel he’d booked passage on.

  In a prior life, he’d spent ten years at sea aboard various steamers. On those ships the recoil was quicker, the keel more adept at righting itself. This ship felt top-heavy to him. It made him wonder if something was wrong.

  “More tea, sir?”

  Deep in thought, Brèvard barely noticed the waiter in the uniform of the Blue Anchor Line.

  He held out the cup he’d saved from destruction. “Merci.”

  The waiter topped it off and moved on. As he left, a new figure came into the room, a broad-shouldered man of perhaps thirty, with reddish hair and a ruddy face. He made a direct line for Brèvard, taking a seat in the chair opposite.

  “Johannes,” Brèvard said in greeting. “Glad to see you’re not trapped in your cabin like the others.”

  Johannes looked a little green, but he seemed to be holding up. “Why have you called me here?”

  Brèvard took a sip of the tea. “I’ve been thinking. And I’ve decided something important.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “We’re far from safe.”

  Johannes sighed and looked away. Brèvard understood. Johannes thought him to be a worrier. A fear-laden man. But Brèvard was just trying to be cautious. He’d spent years with people chasing him, years living under the threat of imprisonment or death. He had to think five steps ahead just to remain alive. It had tuned his mind to a hyperattentive state.

  “Of course we’re safe,” Johannes replied. “We’ve assumed new identities. We left no trail. The others are all dead, and the barn has been burned to the ground. Only our family continues on.”

  Brèvard took another sip of tea. “What if we’ve missed something?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Johannes insisted. “We’re beyond the reach of the authorities here. This ship has no radio. We might as well be on an island somewhere.”

  That was true. As long as the ship was at sea, they could rest and relax. But the journey would end soon enough.

  “We’re only safe until we dock in Cape Town,” Brèvard pointed out. “If we haven’t covered our trail as perfectly as we think, we may arrive to a greeting of angry policemen or His Majesty’s troops.”