Odessa Sea Page 17

  After he cleared the barge, Pitt wheeled the Macedonia back to starboard, centering the drifting vessel in his wake. He counted the seconds, hoping to put as much blue water behind him as possible, when the first explosion sounded. The loud report was followed a second later by the bellow of an exploding volcano.

  The barge disintegrated in a massive fireball that rose a hundred feet into the sky. Metallic debris rained down from the plume, peppering a large radius of the sea.

  On board the Macedonia, Pitt was knocked from his feet. The shock wave blew out the bridge’s rear windows and lifted the ship’s stern with a billowing wave. The hull and topsides were splattered with shrapnel. Most of the damage was superficial.

  Regaining his feet, Pitt found the Macedonia continuing to churn away from the maelstrom. He looked back at the remnants of the barge, which was foundering under a thick blanket of black smoke. The Air Force helicopter appeared above, circling around the haze.

  “Dirk, are you all right?” Giordino radioed.

  “No harm done,” Pitt replied. He set the helm on a southwesterly bearing that would take the Macedonia out of the restricted zone as soon as possible. “Just tell me our friends are done shooting.”

  “I guarantee they’ve holstered their weapons. The Truxton just threatened to send them to the bottom if they fire again.”

  “Jolly good for the Navy.”

  “From up here, the Macedonia looks like a spotted frog. You’ve got a few smoldering hot spots on the aft deck that could use some dousing.”

  “I’ll get on it shortly.” He noticed for the first time some dried blood on the floor of the bridge.

  “Have to ask you,” Giordino said, “what inspired the idea to turn toward the Russians and invite that second missile attack?”

  “The barge,” Pitt said. “I saw a small charge detonate on her, away from the stored munitions. I think they intentionally blew out her keel to sink her.”

  “Why would they drag it three hundred miles across the Black Sea to sink it outside of Sevastopol?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they were trying to block the harbor and their timing was off.”

  “Any sign of the Macedonia’s crew?”

  “None,” Pitt said. “Going to check now.”

  He set the helm on auto and exited the bridge with a handheld radio. Starting in the engine room and working his way up, he surveyed the entire ship. From open journals in the laboratories, to moldy half-eaten plates of food in the galley, he found numerous indications of a hurried crew departure.

  As Pitt returned to the bridge, Giordino was flying point off the ship’s bow. The Macedonia was nearly clear of the restricted zone and the Truxton was now visible on the radarscope. His mind on the missing crew, Pitt stood at the helm and stared at the open waters before him. After a time, he turned to a chart table—and noticed a miniature wireless video camera concealed in the ceiling.

  He pulled it down and saw it was actually twin cameras, one pointed at the helm and the other out the rear window. He tossed it on the table, then carefully examined the entire bridge for a clue. He checked the ship’s log first, but the most recent entry was days old, from when the Macedonia last entered port. Communications records, charts, and all other paperwork lying about the bridge were equally uninformative. But when he took a second look at the dried bloodstains on the floor, he noticed something.

  It was a light swirl in a smaller stain by the bulkhead. The smudge had been created by the toe of a shoe while the blood was still liquid. Looking closer, he saw a nearly invisible message that told Pitt what he already suspected. It was a single word smeared on the floor.

  Besso.

  37

  Mankedo and Vasko watched in disbelief as Pitt ripped the camera from the ceiling, sending the satellite-fed video link to black.

  Mankedo snapped shut the laptop on which they had watched the last hour’s events and shoved it to the side of his desk. “It was nearly there, on its way to a submerged detonation. Instead, destroyed on the surface, to no effect.”

  “That man!” Vasko said, his voice seething. “He was the same one on the inflatable who aided the Europol agent and took the uranium. How did he find the ship?”

  “He must be the head of NUMA that Dimitov dealt with on the Macedonia. His name is Pitt. Apparently, he’s an accomplished marine engineer.”

  “Why wasn’t he among the captured crew?”

  “Dimitov said this Pitt and another man responsible for the submersible were ashore when the ship was taken.”

  Mankedo rose from the desk and paced his office. “I fear this will bring increased police scrutiny. We must move the Besso out of the Black Sea at once. I have a secondary project in the Mediterranean and will send Dimitov to initiate things. But first I will call Hendriks. This may finish our relationship.”

  “I don’t think so,” Vasko said. “He knew it was a risky project.”

  “Perhaps, but we have failed him in the bold strike he desired. That will likely mean an end to future jobs with him.”

  “You are wrong about that, Valentin. I have seen Hendriks and I have talked to the man. He is operating from a state of high emotion. He’s no longer the calculating business virtuoso that made millions. He is in a totally different place, and I believe he will support any grand plan that satisfies his need for aggression. The grander, the better. And we can give it to him. With the bomber.”

  “The bomber,” Mankedo said softly.

  “I’ve been working on it with Dimitov. He told me about the Ottoman wreck and the pilot’s body. The identification tags, as we know, confirm he was a flight engineer on the missing Tupolev bomber. It reminded me of some data we obtained from a fisherman in Balchik years ago. We purchased his snag records of underwater obstructions, hoping to find a salvageable wreck. He mentioned an odd tire assembly he pulled up in the area. It was back in the 1990s, so he may have forgotten or he didn’t know about the lost bomber.”

  “It could have been from another aircraft or something else entirely.”

  “Perhaps, but I checked his records. The fisherman described it as a nose wheel assembly, and his notes indicate it was found only three kilometers from the Ottoman wreck site. Dimitov and I have put together a compact search grid based on his coordinates. It’s worth a look.”

  “We don’t know if the rumors about the aircraft are even true.”

  “We also don’t know if they’re not. Just think about it, Valentin. We’d have something in our hands for which Hendriks would pay us dearly. If the plane is where we think it is, in relatively shallow water, we can find the truth easily enough.”

  Mankedo contemplated the idea and nodded. “Yes, it may soften the blow with Hendriks. But we’ll have to work fast. I’ll allow twenty-four hours to find it before I send Dimitov and the Besso off to the Mediterranean.”

  Vasko rubbed a hand across his bald head and smiled with confidence.

  “Consider it done.”

  38

  The distant glow of lights from London greeted Dirk, Summer, and Dahlgren as they exited the terminal at Heathrow Airport. The trio squeezed into a black taxicab for the twenty-mile ride into the city. An off-duty cab tucked in behind them, while Mansfield followed several car lengths back in a plain white panel van driven by a female agent.

  Reaching the city center, the lead cab turned north, passing through Soho, before pulling into the entrance of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. Summer helped Dahlgren hobble into the lobby and check in. A nurse arrived with a wheelchair and carted him off for a battery of tests and X-rays ahead of his scheduled surgery the next morning.

  Summer waved to him. “We’ll pick you up tomorrow night for dancing at the Savoy.”

  “I hope they’ll permit a peg leg in to mar the ballroom floor,” Dahlgren said.

  Dirk and Summer returned to their waiting cab, whi
ch backtracked south and west through London. The panel van took up a tailing position this time, maneuvering aggressively through the city’s heavy traffic to remain on the cab’s rear bumper. They entered Kensington, and the cab pulled into the entrance of The Gore, a four-star hotel just off Hyde Park.

  The panel van drove past the hotel and pulled to the curb a half block later. Mansfield looked to his driver, a cool, serious woman named Martina who wore her dark hair cut short. “Do you have system access to The Gore?”

  Martina retrieved a small electronic tablet hidden beneath the seat and consulted a long list of London hotels. She found a mark highlighted next to The Gore’s name and nodded. Never known for their high degree of security, the reservation systems of most hotels in major cities were long ago hacked by foreign intelligence agencies in order to track people of interest.

  “We’ll have their room number the instant they check in,” she said. “Ivan in the taxi will keep watch in the lobby until my surveillance team can be put in place.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Less than an hour.”

  Mansfield looked across the street at a small hotel called the Queen’s Gate.

  “I’ll take a room there and wait for your surveillance data. Perhaps we can have a drink together afterward?” he said with a charming raise of the brow.

  Martina gave him a glacial stare. “The data will be delivered once it is acquired.”

  Mansfield chortled and exited the car.

  Inside The Gore, Dirk and Summer checked in at the front desk, where a message was handed to them.

  “It’s from St. Julien,” Summer said. “He’ll be by in an hour to take us to dinner.”

  “Knowing Julien, we better dress for fine dining.”

  They settled into adjacent rooms on the third floor and returned to the lobby an hour later. Summer was dressed in a soft, beige cashmere sweater and boot-length skirt, while Dirk wore a dark blue sport coat and gray slacks.

  Standing behind a porter’s cart and pretending to study a tourist map, the agent named Ivan discreetly watched their movements.

  They made their way out to the portico, where right on time an elegant Rolls-Royce Phantom III Town Car pulled to the entrance. Dirk recognized it as a 1937 Sedanca de Ville.

  The driver, a man of Pakistani descent in a chauffeur’s uniform, hopped out and opened the rear door. “Ms. Pitt? Mr. Pitt?” He waved a gloved hand toward the interior.

  Summer climbed in first and found a massively rotund man occupying the bulk of the rear seat. He patted the Connolly leather beside him. “Plenty of room here, my dear. We’ll give Dirk the jump seat.”

  Summer gave him a hug and squeezed in beside him.

  Dirk wriggled in and parked himself on a fold-down seat, then reached across and shook the big man’s hand. “Traveling in style, I see.”

  “Coachwork by Barker,” Perlmutter said, stroking his long, full beard. “A bit roomier, you know. I will say that it does earn high marks for styling.”

  “It’s gorgeous,” Summer said, “especially for an eighty-year-old car.”

  Perlmutter reached forward and wrapped a knuckle against the window to the driver’s compartment, then lowered the glass an inch. “To Le Gavroche, James.”

  The chauffeur nodded, dropped the car into gear, and silently pulled forward as Perlmutter rolled the window back up.

  “A chauffeur named James?” Summer asked.

  Perlmutter shrugged. “I believe his name is actually Ravi, but he kindly answers to James.”

  Summer laughed. “It’s wonderful to see you again, Julien. How was your nautical history conference?”

  “Smashing. There were some excellent papers on early wrecks being investigated in the Mediterranean, as well as some exciting research topics here in England. My presentation on the Aztec sea canoes you and your father discovered in the Caribbean was quite well received.”

  As one of the world’s leading maritime historians, Perlmutter was a walking encyclopedia of shipwreck knowledge. A longtime friend of the Pitt family, he had been a trusted resource on many NUMA projects, as well as being a reliably jovial dining companion. Aside from his passion for nautical history, Perlmutter was a dedicated gourmand.

  “I almost forgot.” Summer handed over a bottle in a felt bag. “A gift from Norway.”

  Perlmutter opened the bag to reveal a dark green bottle. He studied the label, then chuckled. “Aquavit, of course. Why, thank you. It makes for a delightful cordial.” He slid open a walnut compartment beneath the driver’s window, exposing a small bar set. Cracking the seal on the bottle, he poured three glasses and passed them around.

  “Skål!” he toasted.

  Summer sniffed the harsh-tasting liquid with a grimace.

  Dirk noticed her reaction and smiled. “At least it will keep you warm if the London fog rolls in.”

  As they sipped their drinks, the Rolls driver slithered around the east end of Hyde Park before pulling up to a corner brick building. Perlmutter led his guests into a side door beneath a brass plate engraved Le Gavroche. A historic training ground for London’s top chefs, Le Gavroche was easily the city’s best French restaurant.

  Perlmutter had a spring in his step as they were guided downstairs and seated in a green velveteen tufted booth. Ordering a lobster mousse appetizer, he sighed with delight. “I recall when a pork pie was considered haute cuisine in London. My, how times have changed for the better.”

  “Tell the truth, Julien,” Summer asked. “Was it the nautical conference or London’s fine dining that enticed your visit from Washington?”

  “I refuse to answer that on the grounds it may prove incriminatory.” He patted his stomach and laughed.

  Ordering a roast duck in port jus to Dirk’s turbot and Summer’s Dover sole, he forced himself to turn his attention from food. “Now, tell me about this Norwegian shipwreck of yours.”

  “It’s British, actually.” Dirk described their discovery of the Canterbury and their encounter with the Russian salvage ship.

  “My word, that is most aggressive behavior,” Perlmutter said. “Any idea why the Russians would take such a keen interest in a rusty Royal Navy cruiser?”

  Summer reached into her purse and retrieved a photo of the gold bar. “We found this in a cabin near the bridge.”

  Perlmutter’s eyes lit up. “Perhaps there is more in the hold, though a light cruiser makes for a poor cargo ship.”

  “We suspect that’s what the Russians are after,” Dirk said. “Note the stampings on the bar.”

  Perlmutter had already focused on the imprint of the double-headed eagle. “House of Romanov,” he whispered. “Small wonder the Russians claimed the wreck as their own. Tell me again, when was the Canterbury sunk?”

  “February twenty-sixth, 1917,” Dirk said. “She had left Archangel a few days earlier.”

  The wheels began churning in Perlmutter’s head, taking him far from the French restaurant. “Most curious.” He placed the photo on the table. “My land-based history may be a bit rusty, but, as I recall, the Russian monarchy possessed an enormous inventory of gold at the beginning of World War I. What they didn’t have, however, was an adequate supply of weapons and ammunition for their troops. They shipped gold bullion to the Allies in exchange for munitions, first via Archangel, then from Vladivostok after the Germans wised up and laid mines in the west. An attempted gold shipment from Archangel in 1917 would have been both dangerous and somewhat extraordinary but not impossible.”

  “How can we find out more about the Canterbury’s last voyage?” Summer asked.

  “Dr. Charles Trehorne, Emeritus Professor of Nautical Archaeology at Oxford. He’s a colleague and an expert on Royal Navy shipwrecks. I’ll ring him this evening and see if we can meet with him tomorrow.” He twirled the wineglass with his thick fingers.

 
Savoring the aroma of the Bordeaux, he slipped the photo of the gold bar back to her. “What did you do with the gold itself?”

  “We brought it with us,” Summer said. “It’s in the room safe at the hotel. I’m sure no one would suspect I have anything of value there.”

  Perlmutter nodded and took another sip. He had no way of knowing, but at that very moment, Summer’s room safe was both open and empty.

  • • •

  DRESSED IN A HOUSEMAID’S UNIFORM, the Russian agent Martina had entered The Gore’s rear service door, concealing an assortment of electronic infiltration devices in a bucket of cleaning supplies covered by a towel. She climbed a stairwell to the third floor and found the room numbers to which she’d been directed by a hacker at the Russian Embassy.

  She started with Dirk’s room, slipping a card key into the door lock, which had been precoded by the hacker with the correct security code. Dirk hadn’t bothered unpacking, which made her mission simpler. She started with his unlocked suitcase, rifling through it and finding nothing of intelligence value. Moving to the room telephone, she attached a tiny wireless transmitter to its base, supplemented by a signal booster she attached to the back of the window curtains. The device would transmit all phone and room conversations to a listening station in the panel van parked down the street, at least until its batteries expired in a week or so. Finally, she dug out a ring of keys and found a master that matched the hotel manager’s emergency key to the room safe. Inside, she found only Dirk’s passport. She ignored that, closed the safe, and hurried to the next room.

  She repeated the procedure in Summer’s suite, at least to the point of opening the room safe. Startled by the gold bar, she removed it and set it on the bed, along with Summer’s passport, laptop, and a flash drive. Using her small electronic tablet, she photographed the bar from all sides, then returned it to the safe with the computer and passport. She inserted the flash drive into the tablet and copied its files, then returned it and closed the safe.

  Martina placed her devices at the bottom of her bucket and was turning to leave when she heard a knock at the door and a click of the lock. She froze as the door swung open and a housekeeper entered, carrying a jar of mints. The housekeeper stopped and stared at the Russian. “Are you turning down this room?”