Dirk Pitt 22 - Poseidon's Arrow

by Clive Cussler

  She could draw only one conclusion, that she must have been getting close to identifying the source. She racked her brains, reviewing the contractors and persons of interest. She kept returning to Tom Cerny. Could the White House aide have been alerted to her inquiry?

  She paced the small cabin, noticing several cigarette burns on the corner desk. The marks made her think of the crewman and his odd greeting.

  “Don’t get cooked,” she repeated. The words nagged at her until suddenly their meaning struck like a bolt of lightning.

  “Of course!” she said, disgusted that it hadn’t come to her sooner. “Don’t get cooked indeed.”

  52

  A LATE-NIGHT COMMERCIAL FLIGHT FROM DURBAN via Johannesburg proved the quickest way back to Washington for Dirk and Summer. They were bleary-eyed when they staggered off the plane early the next morning at Reagan National Airport. Remarkably, Summer walked freely through the terminal, showing stiffness from the flight but no lingering paralysis from her decompression sickness.

  Timely immersion in the Alexandria’s deco chamber had proved her salvation. While the NUMA ship rushed from the tip of Madagascar to Durban, Summer and Dirk had been pressurized to an equivalent depth of four hundred feet. The paralysis in Summer’s leg promptly disappeared. The ship’s medical team slowly relieved the pressure in the chamber, allowing the nitrogen bubbles in their tissues to dissipate. When they were released from the chamber almost two days later, Summer found she could walk with only a faint lingering ache.

  Since flying could aggravate the symptoms, the ship’s doctor insisted they not board an airplane for twenty-four hours. Fortunately, their steaming time to Durban occupied the full duration. Free of the chamber, they had time to brief the others on their work in the submersible, inspect its damage, and book their flight home, before racing to Durban’s King Shaka International Airport the moment the Alexandria touched the dock.

  After collecting their bags at Reagan, they took a cab across the tarmac to their father’s hangar. Letting themselves in, they stored their bags and cleaned themselves up in the loft apartment.

  “You think Dad would mind if we borrowed one of his cars to run to the office?” Summer asked.

  “He’s always given us a standing offer to drive what we like,” Dirk said. He pointed to a silver-and-burgundy roadster parked near a workbench. “He said in an e-mail before he left for the Pacific that he just got that Packard running strong. Why don’t we take it?”

  He checked to see that it had plenty of gas while Summer opened a garage door. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he pulled the choke and adjusted the throttle lever mounted on the steering wheel and hit the starter button. The big straight-eight engine murmured to life. Letting it warm up for a moment, he pulled the car outside and waited for Summer to lock the hangar.

  She jumped into the passenger seat with a travel bag in tow, not noticing a white van parked across an adjacent field. “What’s with the funky seats?” she asked.

  The Packard roadster’s tight cockpit held two rigid seats. Summer’s passenger seat was permanently offset a few inches farther from the dash than Dirk’s driver’s seat.

  “More room for the driver to turn and shift at high speed,” Dirk explained, pointing to the floor-mounted gear lever.

  “I’ll gladly take the extra legroom.”

  Built in 1930, the Model 734 Packard chassis carried one of the factory’s rarest bodies, a sleek boattail speedster. The trunk line tapered to an angular point, giving the car a highly streamlined appearance. Sporting dual side-mounted spare tires, the body gleamed with metallic pewter paint, contrasted by burgundy fenders and a matching body-length stripe. Narrow Woodlite headlights on the prow, combined with an angled windshield, added to the sensation that the car was in motion even while parked.

  Dirk drove north onto the George Washington Parkway, finding that the Packard loped along easily with the highway traffic. It was only a ten-minute drive to the NUMA headquarters, a tall glass structure that bordered the Potomac. Dirk parked in the underground garage, and they took an employee elevator to the top floor and Rudi Gunn’s office. His secretary directed them to the computer resource center, so they dropped down three flights to the high-tech lair of Hiram Yaeger.

  They found Gunn and Yaeger parked in front of a wall-sized video screen, examining satellite photos of an empty sea. With bedraggled hair and circles under their eyes, both looked as if they hadn’t slept in days. But the men perked up at the sight of Pitt’s children. “Glad to have you back,” Gunn said. “You gave us quite a scare when your submersible went missing.”

  Summer smiled. “Us, too.”

  “I thought we were going to have to sedate Rudi,” Yaeger said. “Your leg okay, Summer?”

  “Just fine. I think the coach seat from Johannesburg was more painful than the bends.” She eyed a collection of dirty coffee cups on the table before breaking the mood. “What’s the latest on Dad and Al?”

  Both men turned grim. “Unfortunately, there’s not much to report,” Gunn said. He described Pitt’s mission of protecting the ore carrier, while Yaeger dialed up a map of the eastern Pacific.

  “They boarded the Adelaide about a thousand miles southeast of Hawaii,” Yaeger said. “A Navy frigate on exercise out of San Diego was scheduled to meet them when they neared the coast and escort them to Long Beach. The Adelaide never appeared.”

  “Any sign of debris?” Dirk asked.

  “No,” Gunn said. “We’ve had search-and-rescue craft from Hawaii and the mainland overflying the area for days. The Navy has dispatched two vessels to the scene, and the Air Force has even sent in some long-range reconnaissance drones. They’ve all come up empty.”

  Dirk noted a white horizontal line beginning at the left edge of the screen that ended when it intersected a red line from Hawaii. “Is that the Adelaide’s track?”

  “Her AIS beacon provided her track to that point shortly after your dad and the SWAT team went aboard,” Yaeger said. “After that, the AIS signal went dead.”

  “So she sank?” Summer asked, her voice breaking.

  “Not necessarily,” Gunn said. “She could have simply disengaged the tracking system, which would be an obvious move after a hijacking.”

  “We’ve drawn a couple of big circles around her last reported position to see where she could have gone.” Yaeger replaced the ocean map with a split screen of two satellite ocean photos. At the bottom was overlaid a stock photo of a large green bulk carrier labeled Adelaide. “We’re looking at coastal satellite photos to see if she might have popped up somewhere.”

  “Hiram has accessed every public and not-so-public source of satellite reconnaissance. Unfortunately, the point of disappearance is smack in the middle of a large dead zone in satellite coverage, so we’re jumping to the coastlines.”

  “North, South, and Central America, for starters.” Yaeger stifled a yawn. “Should keep us busy till Christmas.”

  “How can we help?” Summer asked.

  “We’ve got satellite images for most of the major West Coast ports from the past four days. I’ll divvy them up and see if anyone can spot a ship resembling the Adelaide.”

  Yaeger set up two laptops and downloaded the images. Everyone went to work, scouring the photos for a large green cargo ship. They worked all through the day, studying image after image, until their eyes burned. Yet hopes were raised as they pegged eleven ships from the sometimes fuzzy and obscured photos that appeared to fit the Adelaide’s profile.

  “Three in Long Beach, two in Manzanillo, four to the Panama Canal, and one each to San Antonio, Chile, and Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica,” Yaeger said.

  “I can’t imagine any of the Long Beach vessels would be ours,” Dirk said, “unless they ran to another port to off-load first.”

  Gunn looked at his watch. “It’s still early out west. How about we break for dinner? When we reconvene, we can begin calling the port authorities at each location. They should be able to confirm if the
Adelaide cleared their local facilities.”

  “Good thought,” Dirk said, standing and stretching. “I’ve run out of gas on a diet of airline food and coffee.”

  “Just a second,” Summer said. “Before we break, I need a quick favor from Hiram, and then I’ll need your help in making a delivery.” She picked up her travel pack, which clinked with the sound of bottles inside.

  “I’m pretty hungry. Can we grab a bite on the way?”

  “Where we’re headed,” she said, “I can positively guarantee there will be something good to eat.”

  53

  THE PACKARD ROARED OUT OF THE PARKING garage and skirted past a white van at the edge of the outside lot before merging into the evening rush-hour traffic. Dirk crossed into Georgetown as an evening breeze tousled Summer’s hair in the open car. Turning down a shady residential street filled with elegant homes, Dirk stopped in front of a former carriage house that ages ago had been transformed into a courtly freestanding residence.

  They had barely rung the bell when the front door was thrown open by a gargantuan man sporting an overflowing gray beard. St. Julien Perlmutter’s eyes twinkled as he greeted Dirk and Summer and invited them inside.

  “I nearly ate without you,” he said.

  “You were expecting us?” Dirk asked.

  “Of course. Summer e-mailed me with the particulars of your Madagascar mystery. I insisted you both come by for dinner the instant you returned. Don’t you two talk to each other?”

  Summer smiled sheepishly at her brother, then followed Perlmutter through a book-infested living room and into a formal dining area, where an antique cherrywood table sat overloaded with food. Perlmutter was a marine historian, one of the best on the planet, but he had a second love as a gourmand. His eyes lit up when Summer opened her bag and offered him three bottles of wine from South Africa.

  “A Vergelegen Chardonnay and a pair of red varietals from De Toren.” He examined the labels with delight. “Outstanding selections. Shall we?”

  He wasted no time in finding a corkscrew and pouring the Chardonnay.

  “I am, of course, distressed to hear of your father’s absence. May he be in safe port,” he said, raising his glass.

  While discussing Pitt’s disappearance, they dined on pork loin in chipotle sauce, fingerling potatoes, and baked asparagus. Fresh Georgia peaches in a cream-and-brandy sauce were devoured for dessert. The host’s French cook and housekeeper had the night off, so Summer and Dirk helped Perlmutter clear the table and wash the dishes before sitting back down at the table.

  “The wine was delicious, Summer, but don’t toy with me,” Perlmutter said. “You know what I really want to get my hands on.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” She opened her travel bag and pulled out the carefully wrapped journal from the beached life raft. “The log of the Barbarigo,” she said.

  “So that’s what this is all about,” Dirk said. “And here I thought you were just happy to see us.”

  Perlmutter laughed with a roar that echoed through the house. A longtime friend of their father, he had readily taken to Pitt’s twin children as a sort of kindly uncle.

  “My boy, your company is welcome anytime.” He opened and poured another of Summer’s bottles. “But a good nautical mystery is sweeter than wine.”

  Perlmutter took the package and carefully unwrapped its oilskin covering. The leather-bound journal showed signs of wear, but was otherwise undamaged. He gently opened the cover and read the title page, written by hand in bold lettering.

  “Viaggio di Sommergibile Barbarigo, Giugno 1943. Capitano di corvetta Umberto de Julio.” Perlmutter looked up at Summer and smiled. “That’s our submarine.”

  “Submarine?” Dirk asked.

  “The raft on the beach,” Summer said. “It contained the remains of crewmen from a World War Two Italian submarine.”

  “The Barbarigo, a large boat of the Marcello class,” Perlmutter said. “She had an illustrious record in the Atlantic early in the war, sinking six vessels and downing an aircraft. But she lost her teeth in 1943 when she was assigned to a project with the code name of Aquila.”

  “Latin for ‘eagle,’” Dirk said.

  Summer gave her brother a suspicious look.

  “Astronomy,” he explained. “I remember it from a constellation near Aquarius.”

  “Mule would have been a more befitting name,” Perlmutter said. “The Germans were concerned over their high loss of surface ships while trading war materials with Japan, so they convinced the Italians to convert eight of their largest, and somewhat outdated, submarines to transport duty. The interiors were gutted and most of their armaments removed so they could carry a maximum amount of cargo.”

  “Sounds like dangerous duty,” Dirk said.

  “It was. Four of the vessels were sunk outright, one was scuttled, and the other three captured in Asia before completing a round-trip. Or at least that’s what the history books say.” Perlmutter began scanning the pages, examining the dates.

  “So what happened to the Barbarigo?” Summer asked.

  “Designated Aquila Five, she departed Bordeaux on June 16, 1943, bound for Singapore with a cargo of mercury, steel, and aluminum bars. Radio contact was lost a few days later, and it was presumed she was sunk somewhere near the Azores.”

  He skipped ahead to the last page. “My Italian is deplorable, but I read the last entry as November 12, 1943.”

  “Nearly five months later,” Dirk said. “Something doesn’t figure.”

  “I have the answer, I hope, right here.” Summer pulled out a sheaf of printed pages. “I had Hiram scan the logbook into his computer system. He claimed it was child’s play to translate it into English and gave me the output right before we left.”

  She began passing the pages around the table, letting Dirk and Perlmutter devour them like a pair of hungry coyotes.

  “Here we go,” Dirk said. “It says here that they were spotted and attacked by two aircraft in the Bay of Biscayne shortly after leaving port but safely eluded them. Their radio mast was damaged, which prevented them from communicating with central command.”

  Via the journal, they followed the Barbarigo’s voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean. The submarine off-loaded its cargo in Singapore and then was diverted to a small Malaysian port near Kuala Lumpur.

  “‘On 23 September, we took on 130 tons of oxidized ore called Red Death by the locals,’” Summer read. “‘A German scientist named Steiner oversaw the loading and joined the crew for the return voyage.’”

  “The first officer later wrote that Steiner stayed holed up in his cabin with a stack of physics books for the rest of the trip,” Dirk said.

  “Red Death?” Perlmutter said. “I wonder if it is something like Edgar Allan Poe’s plague of the same name. I’ll have to take a look at that—and this fellow Steiner. Certainly a curious cargo.”

  The trio flipped through several weeks of entries describing the submarine’s return across the Indian Ocean. On the ninth of November, the handwriting turned hurried, and the pages showed saltwater stains.

  “This is where they got into trouble, while off the coast of South Africa,” Perlmutter said. He read aloud a terse description of the Barbarigo diving to avoid a nighttime air attack. After eluding several bombing runs, the crew believed they had escaped the attack—only to discover that the sub’s propeller had been disabled or blown off entirely.

  Dirk and Summer sat silently as Perlmutter read of the resulting tragedy. With no propulsion, the sub remained submerged for twelve hours, fearing that additional aircraft had been called to the scene. Surfacing at midday, they found themselves in an empty sea, drifting to the southeast. Carried past the shipping lanes and without a long-range radio, the officers feared they might drift to their deaths in the Antarctica. Captain De Julio ordered the crew to abandon ship, and they took to the four life rafts stowed beneath the forward deck, saluting their beloved vessel as they left her side. In
a mix-up of orders, the last officer off failed to prime the scuttle charges and sealed the main hatch. Rather than sinking before them, the Barbarigo drifted off toward the horizon.

  Perlmutter stopped reading and raised his eyebrows like a pair of drawbridges. “My word,” he said quietly. “That is most curious.”

  “What happened to the other three boats?” Summer asked.

  “The log entries become spottier at this point,” Perlmutter said. “They attempted to reach South Africa and were within sight of land when a storm struck. The boats were dispersed in the rough seas, and Captain De Julio said the men in his boat never again saw the other three. During the ordeal they lost five men, all their food and water, and their sail and oars. The raft was carried east, drifting away from shore with the coastal current. Eventually the weather turned hot and dry. With no fresh water, they lost two more crewmen, leaving only the captain, the first officer, and two engineers.”

  “Ravaged by thirst, they eventually spotted land again and were able to paddle closer. High winds and huge swells carried them ashore and tossed them onto the beach,” Perlmutter said. “They found themselves in a hot desert, desperate for water. The last entry states the captain went off alone in search of water, as the others were too weak to walk. The journal ends, ‘God bless the Barbarigo and her crew.’”

  “We can attest to the barrenness of the region,” Summer said after a time. “What a tragedy that they nearly made it safely to South Africa and ended up a thousand miles away in Madagascar.”

  “They fared slightly better than the crewmen in the other three boats,” Dirk said.

  Perlmutter nodded, though he appeared lost in thought. He rose from his seat and padded into the living room, then returned a few minutes later with an armful of books and an inquisitive look. “Congratulations, Summer. It would appear as if you have solved two enduring mysteries of the sea.”