Odessa Sea Read online

  “Good and bad,” Summer said. “We found the wreck last night. She’s in good shape, lying intact in twelve hundred feet of water. We spent the day investigating her. We were able to access the forward hold and one of the stern holds, but we’ve seen no sign of the gold.”

  “It hasn’t been salvaged, has it?”

  “No, she doesn’t appear to have been disturbed. Her cargo appears to be rifles, not gold.”

  “We thought as much,” Perlmutter said.

  “Do you know something we don’t?” Dirk asked.

  “Charles and I have spent the past few days digging through the Archives and we located an intriguing nugget today. Tell them, Charles.”

  Trehorne’s voice joined the call. “We searched for everything related to the Sentinel, although a few of the ship’s documents were missing. Fascinating vessel, actually, with an interesting wartime record. Did you locate any evidence of her sinking?”

  “Yes,” Dirk said. “She has a large breach near the waterline off the starboard bow. It would appear consistent with damage from striking a mine.”

  “Indeed. If you took any video recordings, I would love to see them. As I was saying, we examined the ship, crew, and squadron data—and finally stumbled upon something curious in the fleet records. During World War I, the Royal Navy regularly ran guns across the Mediterranean to General Allenby in Egypt in support of the Arab Revolt. We found note of a shipment of Lee–Enfield rifles delivered by steamer from England to Gibraltar, then sent on to Alexandria. Only the shipment never made it.”

  “Let me guess,” Dirk said. “The guns were transported aboard the Sentinel.”

  “Precisely correct.”

  “So the Sentinel didn’t rendezvous with the Pelikan and take on the Romanov gold?” Summer asked.

  “That’s the key question,” Trehorne said. “The time line proved problematic at first glance, but Julian and I have a hypothesis. You see, the Sentinel was supposed to meet the Pelikan on February twenty-seventh near Chios. We found evidence which indicates the Sentinel was in Gibraltar on March second, taking on the shipment of rifles. The cruiser’s top speed was twenty-five knots, so that would have been a challenging feat, given the distance between the two.”

  Summer rubbed her eyes. “So the gold remained on the Pelikan?”

  “We don’t think so. What we believe happened, my dear, is that the Sentinel and the Pelikan had their rendezvous a day or two earlier. If we go back to the original letter from Hunt to Admiral Ballard, he requested the Sentinel be at the meeting point by February twenty-seventh. It turns out the Sentinel was in Athens the week before. As she was already in the vicinity, we believe she arrived on-site ahead of that date, and the Pelikan was early as well. That would have allowed plenty of time for the Sentinel to take the gold on board and arrive in Gibraltar by March second.”

  “We found no orders rescinding the rendezvous instructions,” Perlmutter said, “so there’s no evidence that the Sentinel was pulled away before Pelikan’s arrival.”

  “If that was the case,” Summer said, “what became of the gold?”

  There was a long pause. “We don’t know,” Perlmutter said, “but the answer would seem to lie in Gibraltar. Charles has some contacts there, along with a strong suspicion. We intend to fly down and do some sniffing about. If you’re finished with the Sentinel, why don’t you forget about the Pelikan for the moment and meet us there?”

  “Absolutely.” Summer perked up. “I’ve had a bad feeling about the Sentinel since we got here.”

  The group made plans to meet and said their good-byes. After the call ended, Dirk shook his head with a grimace.

  “What’s wrong?” Summer said. “You don’t think it’s there?”

  “I don’t know if it is or it isn’t. But I do know that Rudi’s never going to trust us with a travel budget ever again.”

  Five hundred meters across the sea, a Russian communications specialist aboard the spy ship stopped recording the satellite call as the connection went dead.

  Within the hour, Mansfield had listened to the conversation several times. He had to admit that the spy ship had finally proved its worth. Using a secure satellite line, he called Martina, who was still in Cagliari.

  “Success?” she asked.

  “No. We’ll be back in port tomorrow. I need you to get us on a flight to Gibraltar as soon as possible.”

  “It will be done,” she said in her usual efficient manner. “Is the gold there?”

  “It can be nowhere else.”

  72

  The raid on Hendriks’s Bermuda estate went nothing like the assault on Mankedo’s salvage yard. Ana made sure of it.

  A dozen Bermuda police officers covered the main entrance while a second SWAT team of equal size approached from the beachfront. Though Ana initially had doubts about the Bermudans’ experience and training, she was soon impressed by their zeal and planning. As a British Overseas Territory, Bermuda officially recognized Europol, and the local law enforcement authorities had provided all due cooperation.

  Surveillance of the property during the prior twenty-four hours had revealed no activity other than the comings and goings of the gardeners. Hendriks’s private jet had been seen at the airport recently but vanished about the time the surveillance began, which made Ana wonder if he had been tipped off by a local. No matter now, she thought. A 1950s-era atomic bomb wouldn’t likely fit on a private jet.

  At six a.m. sharp, she led a Bermuda police lieutenant to a pedestrian door along the residence’s closed gated drive. Ignoring the video cameras that sprouted from the top of the walls like kudzu, the lieutenant wedged a crowbar beneath the latch and pried open the door. He radioed the beach team, then signaled to his surrounding force to proceed.

  Ana was already through the door when the lieutenant followed with his armed men. They fanned out along the drive and jogged to the imposing residence. Ana and the lieutenant approached the front door with half the men and tried the handle. It was unlocked. Ana and the men readied their weapons, then burst in.

  From the kitchen, a dark-skinned woman in a tattered robe screamed at the sudden intrusion of armed men. She raised her arms to the sky and rocked back on her heels as Ana and the lieutenant approached.

  “Where’s Hendriks?” the policeman asked.

  “Mr. Hendriks not here,” she said. “He leave two days ago. No one here but me.” Like many Bermudans, she spoke with a slight Caribbean accent.

  “What’s your name?” Ana asked.

  “I am Rose, Mr. Hendriks’s housekeeper. Mr. Hendriks not here.”

  Two armed policemen, who had approached from the beach, appeared from the rear of the house. “All clear in back,” one said.

  The lieutenant nodded. “All right. Help search the house.”

  As the men left, Ana pulled the housekeeper aside. “Rose, can you tell me who was here with Mr. Hendriks?”

  “Some employees from his company. Two older men were here also. Doctors, I think. They all stayed in the guest quarters.”

  “Medical doctors?”

  Rose shrugged. “I heard Mr. Hendriks address just one as ‘Doctor.’”

  “What were they doing here?”

  “They worked in the garage laboratory. All secret. I’m not allowed to go in there.”

  “The building at the side of the residence?” Ana asked.

  Rose nodded.

  “How long where they there?”

  “About two weeks. They all leave in a hurry a few days ago, including Mr. Hendriks.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know. Probably to his home in Amsterdam. He doesn’t come to Bermuda so much anymore without his family.”

  The police lieutenant reappeared with his men. “The house and grounds appear empty, Agent Belova. I’m afraid you might be chasing a false lead.”
>
  “The garage,” she said. “I want to see the garage.”

  They made their way to the freestanding building. As they approached a side entry, they could see it was a large structure, its size concealed by thick foliage. A padlock secured the entrance, and the lieutenant called for a bolt cutter from a support vehicle. He snipped the padlock free, shoved open the door, and they stepped inside.

  The research lab was still furnished, with computer terminals, test equipment, and lab benches filling the bay. While the lieutenant admired the test drone hanging from the ceiling, Ana focused on a more ordinary vehicle. Just inside the main door sat a weathered flatbed truck. She noted the black and white Bulgarian license plate affixed to the rear bumper.

  “Lieutenant,” she called. “They were here. This is the truck that was transported from Bulgaria.”

  The Bermudan stepped over and gazed at the empty truck.

  “The weapon is gone now, if it was indeed here,” Ana said. “Probably flown out with Hendriks and his crew.”

  “Maybe we can still confirm its presence.” He waved over an officer carrying a wand that was wired to an electronic box. “Geiger counter,” the lieutenant said. “If they swapped out any parts, there may be radioactive debris.”

  Ana nodded. “Check every square centimeter. Then I want passenger lists and details on every aircraft flown out of here in the past week.”

  “We’ll get right on it.”

  As the lieutenant issued orders to his subordinates, Ana paced the lab, a thousand questions running through her mind. Could the Russian bomb still be functional? How big is it—and how powerful? And, most important, where did they take it?

  She stepped past a lab table filled with old radio tubes and examined a large whiteboard. A series of mathematical formulas were visible where the dry marker hadn’t been cleanly erased. But she ignored the writing and focused on a small map fastened to the corner. It showed a section of a large waterway that ran north and south, with several tributaries on either side. The labels were in English, but she didn’t recognize the names. None, that is, except for a city on one of the western tributaries with a star next to it.

  Washington, D.C.

  73

  Pitt was feeling a touch of jet lag when he stepped into his office at the NUMA headquarters, a towering glass structure on the banks of the Potomac. He’d been at his desk less than a minute when Rudi Gunn entered with two cups of coffee.

  “Welcome back to the fray.” He passed a cup to Pitt.

  “Thanks, I could use a jump start.”

  “You’ve got about five minutes to enjoy it, then we need to head downtown.”

  Pitt glanced at his calendar. “I didn’t think I had any meetings today.”

  “The Vice President tends to be in a hurry when he wants something,” Gunn said. “His secretary just called. He wants to see us in his office in thirty minutes.”

  “Why the urgent social call?”

  “He wants to know about the Russian bomber.”

  “Hallelujah,” Pitt said. “I figured we’d have to kick and scream to get anyone’s attention about it.”

  “Apparently, someone else has succeeded on that front.”

  They downed their coffee, and a waiting car drove them across the Arlington Memorial Bridge to 17th Street, then north to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The Vice President’s expansive office was on the second level. While prior occupants had used it as a ceremonial office, Sandecker preferred its relative isolation, shunning his official office in the West Wing.

  After clearing multiple layers of security, Pitt and Gunn entered the mahogany-floored office to find its owner pacing the floor like an angry bull.

  A diminutive man with fiery red hair and a temper to match, Admiral James Sandecker was nobody’s fool. His bearded face brightened at the arrival of Pitt and Gunn. Sandecker had been the founding father of NUMA and Pitt and Gunn had been among his first hires at the new federal agency. During their years working together, the men had formed a close bond that hadn’t waned when Sandecker was drafted to the vice presidency after the incumbent died in office.

  “Good to see you, Admiral,” Pitt said, dispensing with his current official title.

  “Come on in and grab a seat.” Sandecker ushered them to a large conference table where several men in suits were already seated. Pitt recognized the director of Homeland Security, a man named Jimenez, at the head of the table, flanked by several other security officials. Sandecker made the introductions as Pitt and Gunn grabbed a pair of empty chairs.

  Jimenez wasted no time getting to the point. “We understand you have knowledge of a rogue weapon of mass destruction in the Black Sea region.”

  “We have circumstantial evidence,” Pitt said, “that an early atomic bomb was recently salvaged from a Russian bomber that crashed in the sea off Bulgaria. Data from the plane’s tail number seems to confirm its cargo.”

  He nodded at Gunn, who plugged a laptop computer into a tabletop video projector. A photo of a large silver plane appeared on a white wall at the end of the table.

  “Dirk just retrieved the serial number from the sunken craft,” Gunn said. “Aircraft number 223002 is a Tupolev Tu-4, like the one pictured here. It’s a Russian heavy bomber built after World War II from the design of our own B-29 Superfortress. Our particular plane is a Tu-4A, which was a modified version capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. The plane was assigned to the Fifty-seventh Bomber Division and based near Odessa. It was on a routine training mission over the Black Sea on the night of April fourteenth, 1955, when it flew into a storm and was never seen again.”

  Gunn flashed up a contemporary Bulgarian newspaper clipping. “The Russians engaged in an extensive search for the plane in secret, but the efforts caught the attention of a few journalists along the Bulgarian coastline. The locals didn’t know, of course, that the plane was carrying an atomic weapon. Based on the accounts we found, the Russians focused their search near the city of Varna, about thirty miles north of where Dirk found the wreckage.”

  “Its cargo bay was empty when you found it?” Jimenez asked.

  “That’s correct,” Pitt said. “The bomb bay was configured to carry a single weapon, and the plane showed signs of recent salvage efforts.”

  Gunn presented another photo, this one a black and white image of a large bomb perched on a rack.

  “Based on the plane, date, and the rack configuration, we believe this Tu-4 was carrying an RDS-5 atomic bomb,” Gunn said. “This was an early Soviet nuclear weapon that yielded a destructive power of thirty kilotons of TNT. It predates the Russians’ more deadly hydrogen bombs, and is peanuts by modern nuclear standards, but it still packs twice the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

  One of the FBI agents cleared his throat. “You’re telling me the Russians lost an atomic bomb sixty years ago and gave up trying to find it?”

  Gunn nodded. “It was hardly the only one. There are in fact dozens of lost or unaccounted nuclear weapons from the Cold War era. Most, like the one carried on our Tu-4, were lost at sea.”

  “One of our own lost A-bombs was discovered just a couple of years ago by some sport divers,” Pitt said. “A Mark 15 bomb that was jettisoned by a B-47 near Savannah in 1958.”

  “Would this Russian RDS-5 bomb still be functional?” Jimenez asked.

  “Scientists I’ve spoken to believe so,” Gunn said. “There’s a good chance the bomb casing would remain watertight. If not, then only the electronic components would be damaged and they could be reconfigured with modern technology. There would be only a slight degradation in the radioactive components.”

  “The Savannah bomb was recovered intact and in good condition,” Pitt said, “and that was resting in oxygenated, highly saline water. Our Russian bomb in the Black Sea was exposed to a much less corrosive environment.”

  “Any
idea where the weapon is now?” Sandecker asked.

  “We, and Europol, believe it was salvaged by Valentin Mankedo, a Bulgarian black market dealer,” Pitt said. “There’s reason to believe it was flown to either Lisbon or Bermuda on a chartered transport.”

  “I understand Europol believes this Mankedo has had dealings in the past with Ukrainian anti-government rebels, to acquire stolen nuclear materials,” Jimenez said.

  “I was a witness to his efforts to hijack a shipment of stolen highly enriched uranium that came out of Crimea.” Pitt noticed an unease from the men around the table. “Is there an imminent threat?”

  “Four days ago, an Air Force C-5 transport was blown up on the tarmac of a Ukrainian air base near Kiev,” Sandecker said. “The plane was on a stopover delivering civilian aid that the administration recently authorized in support of the Ukrainian government. Three airmen were killed in the blast, but there were few leads to the responsible party. Then, yesterday, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev received a package addressed to the President.” Sandecker opened a folder and held up a photo of a charred piece of gray metal.

  “From the C-5?” Pitt asked.

  “It’s been sent to the FBI lab for analysis but is believed to be from the wreckage. Included with the souvenir was a letter written in Russian.”

  Sandecker shuffled through some additional papers and located a translated copy.

  “‘Dear Mr. President,’ it begins. ‘Take this as a first warning for your intrusion into our lands. Aid to the illicit government in Kiev must cease immediately. If there is not a public pronouncement that the U.S. will immediately halt all financial and political support to the administration in Kiev, then death will come to America and the Star-Spangled Banner will no longer wave over your historic capital.’ It’s signed by the United Armed Forces of Novorossiya.”

  “Which rebel group is that?” Gunn asked.

  “It’s something of a confederation of all the pro-Russian military groups operating in eastern Ukraine,” Jimenez said. “Some in the region have come to calling the area Novorossiya, or New Russia. It’s a rather clever way of making it difficult to pin responsibility on one group.”