Night Probe! Page 19

  "Better to ask, can we afford the time?" Pitt answered.

  "Do we have a deadline?" Giordino queried.

  "No, we're not held to a set schedule," said Sandecker. He moved away from the charts and sat on one corner of the table. "But the President made it clear to me that if a copy of the North American Treaty still exists, he wants it damned quick." The admiral shook his head. "What in hell good a soggy scrap of seventy-five-year-old paper is to our government, or what the urgency of finding it is, was not explained.

  I wasn't offered the luxury of reasoning why. Dirk is right. We don't have the time to conduct leisurely search projects in tandem."

  Giordino looked at Pitt and sighed. "Okay, we shoot for two birds with one stone."

  "Two stones," Pitt corrected him. "While a salvage expedition forces its way inside the ship's hull, a survey team probes the Hudson for the Manhattan Limited, or specifically, for the government railroad coach that carried Richard Essex."

  "How soon can we get the show on the road?" asked Sandecker.

  Pitt's eyes took on a detached look, as though they were focused on an object beyond the walls of the room. "Forty-eight hours to assemble a crew and gear, twenty-four to load and outfit a vessel. Then allowing for good sailing weather, we should be moored over the Empress in five days."

  "And the Manhattan Limited?"

  "I can put a boat equipped with magnetometer, side-scan sonar and a sub-bottom profiler on site by this time the day after tomorrow," Giordino replied positively.

  The time estimates seemed optimistic to Sandecker, but he never questioned the men in front of him.

  They were the best in the business and they rarely disappointed him. He stood up and nodded at Giordino.

  "Al, the Manhattan Limited search is yours. Rudi, you'll head the salvage operation on the Empress of Ireland." He turned to Pitt. "Dirk, you'll act as combined projects director."

  "Where would you like me to start?" asked Heidi.

  "With the ship. The builder's blueprints, deck plans, the exact area of Harvey Shields' stateroom. Any relevant data that will lead us to the treaties."

  Heidi nodded. "The public inquiry into the disaster was held in Quebec. I'll begin by digging into the transcript of the findings. If your secretary will book me on the next flight, I'll be on my way."

  She looked mentally and physically exhausted, but Sandecker was too pressured for time to voice a gentlemanly offer of a few hours' sleep. He paused a few moments, staring into each determined face.

  "AU right," he said without emotion. "Let's do it."

  General Morris Simms, casually attired as a fisherman, felt oddly out of character carrying a bamboo rod and wicker creel as he walked down a worn path to the River Blackwater near the village of Seward's End, Essex. He stopped at the edge of the bank under a picturesque stone bridge and nodded a greeting to a man who was seated on a folding chair, patiently contemplating a bobber on the surface of the water.

  "Good morning, Prime Minister."

  "Good morning, Brigadier."

  "Frightfully sorry to trouble you on your holiday."

  "Not at all," said the Prime Minister. "The bloody perch aren't biting anyway." He tilted his head toward the portable table beside him that held a bottle of wine and what looked to Simms like a ham-and-veal pie. "There's extra glasses and plates in the basket. Help yourself to the sherry and pie."

  "Thank you, sir, I think I shall."

  "What's on your mind?"

  "The North American Treaty, sir." He paused as he poured the sherry. "Our man in the States reports the Americans are going to make an all-out effort to find it."

  "Any chance they might?"

  "Very doubtful." Simms held up the bottle. "More sherry?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  Simms poured. "At first I thought they might make a few simple probes. Nothing elaborate, of course, a small operation to convince themselves there was little hope of a document surviving. However, it now seems they're going after it in deadly earnest."

  "Not good," the Prime Minister grunted. "That indicates, to me at least, that if they're remotely successful, they intend to exercise the terms set down in the treaty."

  "My thought also," Simms agreed.

  "I can't picture the Commonwealth without Canada," said the Prime Minister. "The entire framework of our overseas trade organization would begin an inevitable collapse. As it is, our economy is in shambles.

  The loss of Canada would be a disaster."

  "As bad as all that?"

  "Worse." The Prime Minister stared into the stream while he spoke. "If Canada goes, Australia and New Zealand would follow in three years. I don't have to tell you where that would leave the United Kingdom."

  The enormity of the Prime Minister's dire prediction was beyond Simms' comprehension. England without an empire was inconceivable. And yet, sadly, deep down he knew British stoicism could find a way to accept it.

  The bobber made a couple of quick dips but became still again. The Prime Minister sipped at the sherry thoughtfully. He was a formidably heavy-featured man with unblinking blue eyes and a mouth that ticked up at the edges in a perpetual smile.

  "What instructions are your people working under?" he asked.

  "Only to observe and report the Americans' actions."

  "Are they aware of the treaty's potential threat?"

  "No, sir."

  "You'd better inform them. They must be aware of the danger to our nation. Where do we stand otherwise?"

  "Using the National Underwater and Marine Agency as a cover, the President has ordered an intensive salvage operation on the Empress of Ireland."

  "This thing must be nipped in the bud. We've got to keep them off the Empress."

  Simms cleared his throat. "By . . . ah what measures, sir?"

  "It's time we told the Canadians what the Americans are about. Offer our cooperation within the framework of Commonwealth law. Request they revoke permission for NUMA to operate on the St.

  Lawrence. If the President persists in this folly, blow up the wreck and destroy the British treaty copy once and for all."

  "And the American copy that was lost on the train? We can't very well order them off their own river."

  The Prime Minister shot Simms an acid look. "Then you'll just have to think of something a bit more drastic, won't you?"

  Part IV

  THE EMPRESS OF IRELAND

  MAY 1989

  OTTAWA CANADA

  Villon closed the file cover and shook his head.

  "Nonsense."

  "I assure you," said Brian Shaw, "it is not nonsense."

  "What does it all mean?"

  "Exactly what you read in the report," said Shaw, staring directly at Villon. "The Americans have launched a search for evidence of a treaty that gives the whole of Canada to them."

  "Until now, I've never heard of such a treaty."

  "Few people have." Shaw paused to light a cigarette. "Immediately after the documents were lost, all but a few references to the negotiations were secretly destroyed."

  "What proof do you have the Americans are actually out to lay their hands on this treaty?"

  "I followed a string through a labyrinth. It led to a chap by the name of Dirk Pitt who holds a high level position with the National Underwater and Marine Agency. I had him watched closely by embassy personnel. They discovered he is leading two search expeditions: one to the spot on the Hudson River where Essex's train was lost, and the other to the Empress of Ireland. I can assure you, Mr. Villon, he is not looking for treasure."

  Villon sat silently for a moment. Then he shifted in his chair and leaned forward. "How can I help you?"

  "For starters, you could order Pitt and his crew off the St. Lawrence."

  Villon shook his head. "I can't do that. Permission for the salvage operation went through the proper channels. There is no telling what the Americans might do if we suddenly revoked their license. They could easily retaliate by shutting off our fishin
g rights in their waters."

  "General Simms considered that prospect. So he came up with another option." Shaw paused a moment. "He suggests that we destroy the wreck of the Empress."

  "You could do that without causing a nasty incident?"

  "Provided that I can reach the wreckage before Pitt does."

  Villon sat back, coldly analyzing how the information Shaw had put before him could be exploited to his advantage. He let his eyes drift across the room to a painting on the wall of a clipper ship under full sail before the wind. At last, his thoughts arranged, he nodded. "I shall give you every cooperation."

  "Thank you," Shaw replied. "I'll require the services of five men, a boat and the proper diving equipment."

  "You'll need a good man to coordinate your plans."

  "Do you have someone in mind?"

  "I do," said Villon. "I'll see that he gets in touch with you. He is a Mountie, well trained for this sort of work. His name is Gly, Inspector Foss Gly."

  The expedition to locate the Manhattan Limited seemed jinxed from the start. Giordino was frustrated to the gills. Already he was four days behind on his promised schedule.

  After a hurried dockside loading of men and equipment, the trim new research boat, the De Soto, sixty feet long and especially designed by NUMA engineers to cruise inland waterways, churned upriver and headed toward near destruction.

  The helmsman kept a keen eye on the channel buoys and passing pleasure craft. His main concern, however, was the falling barometer and a light splattering of rain on the wheelhouse windows. Together they promised a first-class storm by nightfall.

  As darkness settled, the river's chop began throwing spray over the De Soto's foredeck. Suddenly the wind howled down over the steep palisades bordering the shoreline, gusting from twenty miles an hour to over sixty. The force of the blast pushed the speeding boat out of the main channel. Before the helmsman could literally muscle it back on course, it had driven into shallow waters, ripping a two-foot gash under its port bow on what was believed to be a submerged log.

  For the next four hours, Giordino drove his crew with the heavy hand of a Captain Bligh. The sonar operator insisted later that the feisty Italian's tongue lashed about his ears like a bullwhip. It was a masterful performance. The hole was plugged until there were only a few small trickles, but not before the water had risen above the bilges and was sloshing ankle deep on the lower deck.

  Laden with two tons of water, the De Soto handled sluggishly. Giordino ignored it in his fury and crammed the throttles to their stops. The sudden burst of speed raised the splintered wound above, the waterline and the vessel hurtled back down the river toward New York.

  Two days were lost while the boat was dry docked and its hull repaired. No sooner had they gotten underway again than the magnetometer was found to be defective and a new unit rushed from San Francisco. Two more days down the drain.

  At last, under the light of a full moon, Giordino watched cautiously as the De Soto slipped under the massive stone abutment that had once supported the Hudson-Deauville bridge. He poked his head in the open wheelhouse window.

  "What do you read on the fathometer?"

  Glen Chase, the taciturn, balding captain of the boat, cast an eye at the red digital numerals. "About twenty feet. Looks safe enough to park here till morning."

  Giordino shook his head at Chase's land talk. The captain stoutly refused to voice the language of the sea, using left for port and right for starboard, claiming that ancient tradition did not fit the modern scheme of the times.

  The anchor was dropped and the boat secured by lines running to a convenient tree on shore and the rusting remains of the bridge pier in the river. The engines were shut down and the auxiliary power unit fired up. Chase stared up at the crumbling abutment.

  "Must have been quite a structure in its day."

  "Fifth longest in the world when it was built," said Giordino.

  "What do you suppose caused it to fall?"

  Giordino shrugged. "According to the inquiry report, the evidence was inconclusive. The best theory was high winds combined with lightning strikes weakened a supporting truss."

  Chase nodded his head toward the river. "Think it's waiting down there?"

  "The train?" Giordino gazed at the moonlit waters. "It's there all right. The wreckage wasn't found in 1914 because all salvage men had at their command were copper-helmeted divers in clumsy canvas suits, groping in zero visibility, and grapples dragged by small boats. Their equipment was too limited and they looked in the wrong place."

  Chase lifted his cap and scratched his head. "We should know in a couple of days."

  "Less, with any luck."

  "How about a beer?" Chase asked, smiling. "I always buy for an optimist."

  "I believe I will," said Giordino.

  Chase disappeared down a stairwell and made his way to the galley. In the main dining salon the crew could be heard joking among themselves as they adjusted the television dish antenna to pick up signals from a passing relay satellite.

  A sudden chill raised goose bumps on Giordino's hairy arms, and he reached inside the wheelhouse for a windbreaker. As he was pulling up the zipper he hesitated and cocked an ear.

  Chase appeared and handed him a beer can. "I didn't bother with glasses."

  Giordino held up his hand for silence. "You hear that?"

  Chase's brow furrowed. "Hear what?"

  "Listen."

  Chase tilted his head, his eyes locked in the unseeing stare of a man concentrating on sounds. "A train whistle," he announced indifferently.

  "You sure?"

  Chase nodded. "I can hear it plainly. Definitely a train whistle."

  "Don't you find that odd?" asked Giordino.

  "Why should I?"

  "Diesel locomotives have air horns. Only the old steam engines blew whistles, and the last one was retired thirty years ago.

  "Could be one of those kids' rides at an amusement park somewhere up the river," Chase surmised.

  "Sound can carry for miles over water."

  "I don't think so," Giordino said, cupping his ears and swinging his head back and forth like a radar antenna. "It's getting louder . . . louder and closer."

  Chase ducked into the wheelhouse and returned with a land road map and a flashlight. He unfolded the paper over the deck railing and beamed the light.

  "Look here," he said pointing to the tiny blue lines. "The main rail line cuts inland twenty miles south of here."

  "And the nearest track?"

  "Ten, maybe twelve miles."

  "Whatever is making that sound is no more than a mile away," Giordino said flatly.

  Giordino tried to fix the direction. The blazing moon illuminated the landscape with crystal clarity. He could distinguish individual trees two miles away. The sound was approaching along the west bank of the river above them. There was no movement of any kind, no lights except those of a few distant farmhouses.

  Another shriek.

  New sounds now. The clangor of heavy steel, the throaty, pulsating exhaust of steam and combustion split the night. Giordino felt as if he was suspended in air. He stood rigid. He waited.

  "It's turning-turning toward us," Chase rasped as though he was still trying to convince himself. "God, it's coming off the ruins of the bridge."

  They both stared upward at the top of the abutment, unable to breathe, unable to grasp what was happening. All at once the deafening noise of the invisible train exploded out of the dark above them.

  Giordino instinctively ducked. Chase froze, his face a ghastly corpse-white, the enlarged pupils of his eyes black pits you could fall into.

  And then, abruptly, silence-a silence deathlike and ominous.

  Neither man spoke, neither moved. They stood rooted to the deck like wax figures without hearts or lungs. Slowly Giordino gathered his thoughts and took the flashlight from Chase's unresisting hand. He shone its beam on the top of the abutment.

  There was nothing to see but time-w
orn stone and impenetrable shadows.

  The Ocean Venturer lay anchored over the wreck of the Empress of Ireland. A light rain had passed in the early morning hours and the Venturer's white hull glistened orange under the new sun. In contrast, a tired old fishing boat, its faded blue paint scarred and chipped, lazily trolled its nets two hundred yards away. To the fishermen the Ocean Venturer, silhouetted against the brightening horizon, looked as if it had been created by an artist with a warped sense of humor.

  Its hull lines were aesthetic and contemporary. Beginning with its gracefully rounded bow, the main deck line traveled in an eye-pleasing curve to the oval fantail. There were none of the sharp edges associated with most other ships; even the eggshaped bridge rested on an arched spire. But there the beauty ended.

  Like a Cyrano's repulsive nose, a derrick similar to those erected in new oil fields protruded incongruously from the Ocean Venturer's midsection.

  Functional, if not attractive, the derrick possessed the capability of lowering a variety of scientific packages through the hull to the seafloor or of raising heavy objects such as salvage debris straight into the ship's bowels. The Ocean Venturer was the perfect vessel to act as a work platform for the treaty search.

  Pitt stood on the stern, clutching a Portuguese fisherman's cap tightly to his head as the blades of a NUMA helicopter whipped the air around him. For a few moments the pilot hovered while he tested the wind currents. Then he dropped the chopper slowly until the skids settled firmly on the painted markings of the flight pad.