Lost City nf-5 Read online

  "I heard you rattle the roof tiles." Racine arched a finely shaped brow. "How many cows and sheep did you terrify this morning?"

  "None," he said, with a satisfied smile, "but I did strafe a convoy and freed some Allied prisoners." He broke into laughter at her blank stare. "Well, all right. I buzzed a chicken truck and drove it into a ditch."

  "Your aerial antics are most amusing, Emil, but I'm tired of paying the local farmers for the damage your exploits cause. There are more serious matters that deserve your attention. The future of the Fauchard empire, for one."

  Fauchard caught the icy tone in the voice and straightened up in his chair, like a malicious schoolboy who'd been scolded for a prank. "I know that, Mother. It's just my way of blowing off steam. I thinly better up there."

  "I hope you have thought about how you might deal with the threats to our family and way of life. You are the heir to all that the Fauchards have built up through many centuries. It is not a duty you should take lightly."

  "And I don't. You must admit we have buried a potentially embarrassing problem under thousands of tons of glacial ice."

  Racine's lips parted in a thin smile, revealing her perfect white teeth. "I doubt whether Jules would have liked being called an 'embarrassing problem." Sebastian deserves no credit. Due to his clumsiness, we almost lost the relic for all time."

  "He never knew it was under the ice. He was intent on bringing out the strongbox."

  "An exercise in futility." She flipped the cover open on the battered

  metal box that sat on her desk. "The potentially incriminating documents in here were ruined by water leakage years ago." "We didn't know that."

  She ignored his excuse. "Nor did you know the woman archaeologist escaped with the relic. We must get the helmet back. The success or failure of our whole enterprise now rests on its recovery. That fiasco at the Sorbonne was handled badly and brought in the police. Then Sebastian botched another attempt to retrieve our property. The helmet he brought us from the antiques dealer was nothing more than a cheap trinket manufactured in China for the theater." "I am looking into that "

  "You must stop looking and act. Our family has never allowed failure of any kind. We can never show weakness or we will be destroyed. Sebastian has become a liability. He may have been seen at the Sorbonne. Take care of it."

  Emil nodded. "I'll deal with him."

  Racine knew her son was lying. Sebastian, was like a mastiff trained to kill on command and was loyal only to her son. Having a servant like that in the superheated pressure chamber that was the Fauchard family could not be allowed, for very practical reasons. She knew that familial ties had never blocked a fatal dagger blow or fended off a smothering pillow when power and fortune were at stake.

  "See that you do, and make it soon."

  "I will. Our secret is safe in the meantime."

  "Safe! We were nearly exposed by a chance discovery. The key to the family's future is in the hands of astranger. I tremble to think how many other minefields are out there. Follow my lead. When my wayward chemist Dr. MacLean strayed from the reservation, I brought him back with a minimum of fuss."

  Emil chuckled. "But, Mother, you were the one who had all the

  project scientists except MacLean encounter 'accidents' before their work was done."

  Racine pinioned her son with a cold stare. "A miscalculation. I never said I was infallible. It is a mark of maturity to admit mistakes and rectify them. Dr. MacLean is at work on the formula as we speak. In the meantime, we must retrieve the relic so we can make our family whole again. Have you made any progress?"

  "The antiquities dealer, Darnay, has disappeared. We are trying to track him down."

  "What about the woman archaeologist?" "She seems to have vanished from Paris."

  "Keep looking. I have sent my personal agents to find her. We must move quietly. In the meantime, there is the threat to our larger enterprise. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is working with NUMA to explore the Lost City."

  "Kurt Austin, that man who rescued the people from under the glacier, was from NUMA. Is there any connection?"

  "Not that I know of," Racine said. "The joint expedition was in the works before Austin appeared on the scene. I'm concerned that the expedition could see the results of our work and questions would be raised."

  "We can't afford that."

  "I agree. That's why I have put a plan in place. The deep-sea vehicle Alvin is scheduled to make several dives. It will vanish on the first."

  "Is that wise? It would provoke a large search-and-rescue effort. Investigators and reporters will swarm over the site."

  A humorless smile came to Racine's lips. "True, but only if the disappearance is reported to the outside world. The support ship will vanish as well, with all its crew, before the Alvin's disappearance is reported. Searchers will have thousands of square miles of ocean to contend with."

  "A vanished ship and crew! Your talents have always awed me, Mother, but I never knew you were a magician."

  "Learn from me, then. Use failure as a stepping-stone to success. A ship is steaming toward the Lost City with a hold full of our mistakes. It will be remotely controlled by another vessel several miles away. It will anchor near the dive site. Once the submersible has been launched, the ship will call a Mayday, a fire aboard will be reported, the research vessel will send a boat over to investigate. The boarding crew will be greeted by our hungry lovelies. Once they have finished their work, the freighter will be moved hull to hull with the research vessel and the explosives aboard detonated by remote control. Both ships will disappear. No witnesses. We don't want a repeat of the situation with those television people." "A near disaster," Emil admitted.

  "True reality television," she said. "We were lucky that the sole survivor is thought to be a babbling lunatic. One more thing. Kurt

  Austin has asked for a meeting. He says he has information that might be of interest to our family regarding the body in the glacier."

  "He knows about Jules?"

  "We will find out. I have invited him here. If I see that he knows too much, I will place him in your hands."

  Emil rose and came around the desk. He gave his mother a peck on the cheek. Racine watched him as he left the armory, thinking how well Emil embodied the Fauchard spirit. Like his father, he was brilliant, cruel, sadistic, homicidal and greedy. And also like his father, Emil lacked common sense and was impulsive. These were the same characteristics that had caused Racine to kill her husband many years before when his actions were about to jeopardize her plans.

  Emil wanted to assume her mantle, but she feared for the future of the Fauchard empire and her carefully laid plans. She also knew that Emil wouldn't hesitate to kill her when the time came, which was one reason she had kept Emil in the dark as to the real significance of the relic. She would hate to have to dispose of her only offspring, but one had to be careful when a viper lived in the house.

  She picked up the phone. The chicken farmer Emil had driven off the road must be found and compensated for the damage to his chicks and dignity.

  She sighed heavily, thinking that a mother's work is never done.

  BLESSED WITH smooth seas and fair winds, the research vessel Atlantis rapidly covered the distance from the Azores Islands and dropped anchor north of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge over a submerged sea mountain called the Atlantic Massif. The seamount rises sharply from the ocean floor about fifteen hundred miles east of Bermuda and just south of the Azores. In the distant past, the massif protruded from the ocean, but now its flat top is some twenty-five hundred feet below the waves.

  Alvin was scheduled to dive the next morning. After dinner, Paul and Gamay got together with the other scientists on board to discuss the dive. They decided to gather rock, mineral and plant samples in the area around the Lost City and to record as many visual observations as possible.

  The Alvin Group, a seven-member team of pilots and engineers, was up at dawn and by six o'clock they were starting to
go through a fourteen-page checklist. By seven, they were swarming over the submersible, checking its batteries, electronics and other systems and

  instruments. They loaded still and video cameras on board along with lunches and extra warm clothing for the pilot and scientists.

  Then they placed stacks of iron bars on the outside of the hull to make the submersible heavy enough to sink to the bottom. The Alvin trip to the ocean floor was more a free-fall descent than an actual dive. When it was time to come up, the submersible would drop the ballast weights and float to the surface. For safety purposes, the manipulator arms could be dropped if they became entangled, and if the submersible got into trouble it could jettison the fiberglass outer hull, allowing the personnel sphere to rise to the surface on its own. If the submersible got itself into dire straits, the crew had seventy-two hours of life support.

  Paul Trout was a veteran fisherman who understood the quirky nature of the ocean. He had checked the weather reports, but he relied mostly on his own instincts and experience. He surveyed the weather and sea conditions from the deck of the Atlantis. The deep-blue sky was unmarred by clouds except for a few wispy mares' tails, and he had seen rougher seas in a bathtub. Conditions were perfect for a dive. As soon as it was light, the dive team had dropped two transponders to the ocean floor in the general area of the Alvin's dive. The transponders sent out a ping sound that allowed the submersible to keep track of its position in a dark world where there were no street signs and the ordinary techniques of surface navigation were practically useless.

  Gamay stood nearby, engrossed in a phone conversation with Dr. Osborne. They were discussing the latest satellite photos of Gorgonweed infestation.

  "The weed is spreading more rapidly that we calculated," Osborne said. "Great masses of it are headed toward the east coast of the United States. And spots have begun to show up in the Pacific."

  "We're about to launch the Alvin," Gamay said. "We're in a quiet period, so the water should be relatively clear."

  "You'll need all the visibility you can get," Osborne said. "Keep a sharp eye out for areas of growth. The infestation source may not be readily apparent."

  "The cameras will be rolling every minute and we may pick up something when we look at the pictures," Gamay said. "I'll send photos back as soon as we have something."

  After Gamay hung up, she relayed Osborne's words to Paul. It was time to go. A crowd of people gathered on the fantail to watch. One of them was a trim man with salt-and-pepper hair who came over and wished them well. Charlie Beck was the leader of a team that had been training the ship's crew in security procedures.

  "You've got a lot of guts going down in that thing," he said. "The SEAL delivery vehicles always made me claustrophobic."

  "It will be a little tight," Gamay said, "but it's only for a few hours."

  When it wasn't diving, the submersible was housed on the aft deck in a special building known as the Alvin hangar. Now the hangar doors opened and the Alvin emerged, moving toward the stern on a set of rails, finally coming to a halt under the A-frame. The Trouts and the pilot climbed a set of stairs and walked across a narrow bridge to the sub's red-painted top, or "sail," as it was called. They took their shoes off and squeezed through the twenty-inch hatch.

  Two escort divers climbed onto the submersible and attached a winch line from the A-frame. While this was happening, a small inflatable boat was launched over the side. Controlled by an engineer on the "Dog House," a small room atop the hangar, the A-frame winched the eighteen-ton vehicle off the deck and lowered it into the ocean with the escort divers still hanging on. The divers removed the lines securing the tool basket at the bow end of the submersible, made one last check and said their good-byes down the hatch, then they swam to the inflatable to be taken back to the ship.

  They took their seats in the submersible's tight cabin, a titanium pressure sphere eighty-two inches in diameter. Practically every inch

  of the sphere's interior was covered with panels that contained switches for power activation, ballast control, monitors for oxygen and carbon dioxide, and other instruments. The pilot sat on a low raised stool where she could control the vehicle with the joystick in front of her.

  The Trouts squeezed into the tight space on either side of the pilot, sitting on cushions that provided a modicum of comfort. Despite the tight quarters, Trout was excited. Only his New England reserve kept him from shouting with joy. For a deep-ocean geologist, the cramped quarters of the Alvin were better than a deluxe stateroom on the QE2.

  Since its construction for the U.S. Navy in 1964, the Alvin's exploits had made it the world's most famous submersible. The stubby twenty-five-foot-long little vehicle with the singing chipmunk's name could dive as deep as fourteen thousand feet. The vehicle had made international headlines after it found a lost hydrogen bomb off the coast of Spain. On another expedition, it transported the first visitors to the grave of the Titanic.

  Seats on the Alvin were difficult to come by. Trout considered himself extremely lucky. If not for the urgent nature of the expedition, he might have waited years to go on a dive, even with his impressive NUMA credentials and inside connections.

  The pilot was a young marine biologist from South Carolina whose name was Sandy Jackson. With her calm, cool demeanor and laconic drawl, Sandy seemed like a younger version of the legendary aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran. She was a slim woman in her thirties, and under her jeans and wool sweater was the wiry physique of a marathon runner. Hair the hue of raw carrots was tucked under the tan Alvin baseball cap, which she wore with its navy blue visor backward.

  While Gamay had settled for a functional one-piece jumpsuit, Trout saw no reason to change his sartorial habits for a deep-sea dive.

  He was impeccably dressed, as usual. His stone washed jeans were tailored, his button-down shirt came from Brooks Brothers and he wore one of the large colorful bow ties that he collected. This one had a seahorse pattern. His bomber jacket was made of the finest Italian leather. Even his silk long underwear was custom-made. His light brown hair was carefully parted down the middle and swept back at the temples, making him look like a character from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

  "This is an easy trip," Sandy said as the tanks filled with water and the submersible began its twenty-five-hundred-foot dive. "Alvin dives around a hundred feet a minute, which means we'll be on the bottom in less than a half hour. If we were diving to the fifteen-thousand-foot max, we'd drop for an hour and a half. We usually play classical music on the way down and soft rock on the ascent," Sandy said, "but it's up to you."

  "Mozart would set the proper mood," Gamay said.

  A moment later, the cabin was filled with the lilting strains of a piano concerto.

  "We're about midway," Sandy said after fifteen minutes.

  Trout greeted the announcement with a broad grin. "Can't wait to see this underwater metropolis."

  While the Alvin sank into the depths, the Atlantis moved in a slow circle above the dive area and the support crew gathered with the chief scientist in the top lab, between the bridge and the chart room, where the dive is monitored.

  Sandy reported their progress with the acoustic telephone, acknowledged the garbled reply, then turned to the Trouts.

  The submarine continued its descent.

  "What do you folks know about the Lost City?" she said.

  "From what I've read, it was found by accident in the year 2000. The discovery apparently came as quite a surprise," Gamay said.

  Sandy nodded. "Surprise doesn't begin to describe our reaction.

  Shell-shocked would be a more accurate term. We were towing the Argo II behind the ship looking for volcanic activity on the mid-ocean ridge. Around midnight, the second shift leader saw what looked like frozen white Christmas trees on the video monitor screens and realized we'd hit hydrothermal vents. We didn't see tube worms or clams like those found at other ocean vent areas. Word spread like wildfire. Before long, everyone on the ship was trying to squeeze i
nto the control van. By then, we were starting to see the towers."

  "I heard one scientist say that if the Lost City were on land, it would be a national park," Trout said.

  "It wasn't just what we found but where we found them. Most of the vents that have previously been discovered, like the 'black smokers' for instance, were near mid-oceanic ridges formed by tectonic plates. The Lost City is nine miles from the nearest volcanic center. We sent the Alvin down the next day."

  "I understand some columns are nearly twenty stories high," Trout said.

  Sandy switched on the outside floodlights and glanced through her view port. "See for yourself."

  Paul and Gamay peered through the circular windows. They had seen the still photos and videos of the Lost City, but nothing could have prepared them for the primordial scene that unfolded before them. Paul's large hazel eyes blinked in excitement as the vehicle glided over a fantastic forest of lofty columns. Gamay, who was equally enthralled, said the columns reminded her of the "snow ghosts" that form atop mountains where supercooled fog forms tufts of rime on the tree branches.

  The carbonate and mica pillars ranged in color from stark white to beige. Gamay knew from her research that the lighter-colored columns were active while the darker ones were extinct. The towers soared to multiple, feathery spires at their summits. Delicate white flanges jutted out from the sides the way mushrooms grow on old

  tree trunks. New crystals were continuously forming, giving the edges the appearance of Spanish lace.

  At one point Sandy slowed the Alvin's descent and the submersible hovered near a chimney whose flat top was at least thirty feet across. The tower seemed to be alive and moving. The chimney was covered with mats of growth that undulated in the bottom currents as if in rhythm to music from the speakers.

  Gamay let out the breath she'd been holding. "This is like being in a dreamscape."

  "I've seen it before and I'm still in awe," Sandy said. She steered the Alvin close to the top of the tall column. "This is where it gets really interesting. The warm water coming from below the sea bottom rises and becomes trapped under those flanges. Those mats you see are actually dense microbe communities. The flanges trap the 160-degree alkaline fluids that stream up the chimneys from below ocean crust that is 1.5 billion years old. The water carries methane, hydrogen and minerals emitted by vents. Some people think we may be looking at the beginnings of life," she said in a hushed voice.