Margolin, on the other hand, kept a low profile with the public and news media, aiming his energies more toward domestic issues. His stand on the President’s Communist bloc aid program was that the money would be better spent at home.
The Vice President was a born politician. He had the Constitution in his blood. He had come up the hard way — through the ranks, beginning with his state legislature, then governor and later the Senate. Once entrenched in his office in the Russell Building, he surrounded himself with a powerhouse staff of advisers who possessed a flair for strategic compromise and innovative political concepts. While it was the President who proposed legislation, it was Margolin who orchestrated its passage through the maze of committees into law and policy, all too often making the White House staff appear like fumbling amateurs, a situation that did not sit well with the President and caused considerable internal back-stabbing.
Margolin might have been the people’s choice for the Presidency, but he was not the party’s. Here his integrity and image as a “shaker and doer” worked against him. He too often refused to fall in line on partisan issues if he believed in a better path; he was a maverick who followed his own conscience.
The President watched Margolin disappear into the main salon, irritation and jealousy burning within him.
“What is Vince doing here?” Fawcett asked him nervously.
“Damned if I know,” snapped the President. “He said he was invited.”
Fawcett looked stricken. “Christ, somebody on the staff must have screwed up.”
“Too late now. I can’t tell him he’s not wanted and to please leave.”
Fawcett was still confused. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, but we’re stuck with him.”
“He could blow it.”
“I don’t think so. Regardless of what we think about Vince, he’s never made a statement that tarnished my image. That’s more than a lot of Presidents could say about their VP’s.”
Fawcett resigned himself to the situation. “There aren’t enough staterooms to go around. I’ll give up mine and stay on shore.”
“I appreciate that, Dan.”
“I can stay on the boat until tonight and then bunk at a nearby motel.”
“Perhaps, under the circumstances,” the President said slowly, “it would be best if you remained behind. With Vince along, I don’t want our guests to think we’re ganging up on them.”
“I’ll leave the documents supporting your position in your stateroom, Mr. President.”
“Thank you. I’ll study them before dinner.” Then the President paused. “By the way, any word on the Alaskan situation?”
“Only that the search for the nerve agent is under way.”
The President’s eyes reflected a disturbed look. He nodded and shook Fawcett’s hand. “See you tomorrow.”
Later Fawcett stood on the dock among the irritated Secret Service agents of the Vice President’s detail. As he watched the aging white yacht cut into the Anacostia River before turning south toward the Potomac, a knot began to tighten in the pit of his stomach.
There had been no written invitations!
None of it made any sense.
Lucas was putting on his coat, about to leave his office, when the phone linked to the command post buzzed.
“Lucas.”
“This is ‘Love Boat,’ “ replied George Blackowl, giving the code name of the movement in progress.
The call was unexpected and like a father with a daughter on a date Lucas immediately feared the worst. “Go ahead,” he said tersely.
“We have a situation. This is no emergency, I repeat, no emergency. But something’s come up that isn’t in the movement.”
Lucas expelled a sigh of relief. “I’m listening.”
“ ‘Shakespeare’ is on the boat,” said Blackowl, giving the code name for the Vice President.
“He’s where?” Lucas gasped.
“Margolin showed up out of nowhere and came on board as we were casting off. Dan Fawcett gave him his stateroom and went ashore. When I queried the President about the last-minute switch in passengers, he told me to let it ride. But I smell a screwup.”
“Where’s Rhinemann?”
“Right here with me on the yacht.”
“Put him on.”
There was a pause and then Hank Rhinemann, the supervisor in charge of the Vice President’s security detail, came on. “Oscar, we’ve got an unscheduled movement.”
“Understood. How did you lose him?”
“He came charging out of his office and said he had to attend an urgent meeting with the President on the yacht. He didn’t tell me it was an overnight affair.”
“He kept it from you?”
“ ‘Shakespeare’ is tight-mouthed as hell. I should have known when I saw the garment bag. I’m sorry as hell, Oscar.”
A wave of frustration swept Lucas. God, he thought, the leaders of the world’s leading superpowers were like kids when it came to their own security.
“It’s happened,” said Lucas sharply. “So we’ll make the best of it. Where is your detail?”
“Standing on the dock,” answered Rhinemann.
“Send them down to Mount Vernon and back up Blackowl’s people. I want that yacht cordoned off tighter than a bass drum.”
“Will do.”
“At the slightest hint of trouble, call me. I’m spending the night at the command post.”
“You got a line on something?” Rhinemann asked.
“Nothing tangible,” Lucas replied, his voice so hollow it seemed to come from a distant source. “But knowing that the President and the next three men in line for his office are all in the same place at the same time scares the hell out of me.”
7
“We’ve turned against the current.” Pitt’s voice was quiet, almost casual, as he stared at the color video screen on the Klein hydroscan sonar that read the seafloor. “Increase speed about two knots.”
Dressed in bleached Levi’s, Irish knit turtleneck sweater and brown tennis shoes, his brushed hair laid back under a NUMA baseball cap, he looked cool and comfortable with a bored, indifferent air about him.
The wheel moved slowly under the helmsman’s hands and the Catawba lazily shoved aside the three-foot swells as she swept back and forth over the sea like a lawn mower. Trailing behind the stern like a tin can tied to the tail of a dog, the sidescan sonar’s sensor pinged the depths, sending a signal to the video display, which translated it into a detailed image of the bottom.
They took up the search for the nerve agent source in the southern end of Cook Inlet and discovered that the residual traces rose as they worked westward into Kamishak Bay. Water samples were taken every half-hour and ferried by helicopter to the chemical lab on Augustine Island. Amos Dover philosophically compared the project to a children’s game of finding hidden candy with an unseen voice giving “warmer” or “colder” clues.
As the day wore on, the nervous tension that had been building up on the Catawba grew unbearable.
The crew was unable to go on deck for a breath of air. Only the EPA chemists were allowed outside the exterior bulkheads, and they were protected by airtight encapsulating suits.
“Anything yet?” Dover asked, peering over Pitt’s shoulder at the high-resolution screen.
“Nothing man-made,” Pitt answered. “Bottom terrain is rugged, broken, mostly lava rock.”
“Good clear picture.”
Pitt nodded. “Yes, the detail is quite sharp.”
“What’s that dark smudge?”
“A school of fish. Maybe a pack of seals.”
Dover turned and stared through the bridge windows at the volcanic peak on Augustine Island, now only a few miles away. “Better make a strike soon. We’re coming close to shore.”
“Lab to ship,” Mendoza’s feminine voice broke over the bridge speaker.
Dover picked up the communications phone. “Go ahead, lab.”
“
Steer zero-seven-zero degrees. Trace elements appear to be in higher concentrations in that direction.”
Dover gave the nearby island an apprehensive eye. “If we hold that course for twenty minutes we’ll park on your doorstep for supper.”
“Come in as far as you can and take samples,” Mendoza answered. “My indications are that you’re practically on top of it.”
Dover hung up without further discussion and called out, “What’s the depth?”
The watch officer tapped a dial on the instrument console. “One hundred forty feet and rising.”
“How far can you see on that thing?” Dover asked Pitt.
“We read the seabed six hundred meters on either side of our hull.”
“Then we’re cutting a swath nearly two thirds of a mile wide.”
“Close enough,” Pitt admitted.
“We should have detected the ship by now,” Dover said irritably. “Maybe we missed it.”
“No need to get uptight,” Pitt said. He paused, leaned over the computer keyboard and fine-tuned the image. “Nothing in this world is more elusive than a shipwreck that isn’t ready to be found. Deducing the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel is kindergarten stuff compared to finding a lost derelict under hundreds of square miles of water. Sometimes you get lucky early. Most of the time you don’t.”
“Very poetic,” Dover said dryly.
Pitt stared at the overhead bulkhead for a long and considering moment. “What’s the visibility under the water surface?”
“The water turns crystal fifty yards from shore. On the flood tide I’ve seen a hundred feet or better.”
“I’d like to borrow your copter and take aerial photos of this area.”
“Why bother?” Dover said curtly. “Semper Paratus, Always Ready, is not the Coast Guard’s motto for laughs.” He motioned through a doorway. “We have charts showing three thousand miles of Alaskan coastline in color and incredible detail, courtesy of satellite reconnaissance.”
Pitt nodded for Giordino to take his place in front of the hydroscan as he rose and followed the Catawba’s skipper into a small compartment stacked with cabinets containing nautical charts. Dover checked the label inserts, pulled open a drawer and rummaged inside. Finally he extracted a large chart marked “Satellite Survey Number 2430A, South Shore of Augustine Island.” Then he laid it on a table and spread it out.
“Is this what you have in mind?”
Pitt leaned over and studied the bird’s-eye view of the sea off the volcanic island’s coast. “Perfect. Got a magnifying glass?”
“In the shelf under the table.”
Pitt found the thick, square lens and peered through it at the tiny shadows on the photo survey. Dover left and returned shortly with two mugs of coffee.
“Your chances are nil of spotting an anomaly in that geological nightmare on the seafloor. A ship could stay lost forever in there.”
“I’m not looking at the seafloor.”
Dover heard Pitt’s words all right, but the meaning didn’t register. Vague curiosity reflected in his eyes, but before he could ask the obvious question the speaker above the doorway crackled.
“Skipper, we’ve got breakers ahead.” The watch officer’s voice was tense. “The Fathometer reads thirty feet of water under the hull — and rising damned fast.”
“All stop!” Dover ordered. A pause, then: “No, reverse engines until speed is zero.”
“Tell him to have the sonar sensor pulled in before it drags bottom,” Pitt said offhandedly. “Then I suggest we drop anchor.”
Dover gave Pitt a strange look, but issued the command. The deck trembled beneath their feet as the twin screws reversed direction. After a few moments the vibration ceased.
“Speed zero,” the watch officer notified them from the bridge. “Anchor away.”
Dover acknowledged, then sat on a stool, cupped his hands around the coffee mug and looked directly at Pitt.
“Okay, what do you see?”
“I have the ship we’re looking for,” Pitt said, speaking slowly and distinctly. “There are no other possibilities. You were mistaken in one respect, Dover, but correct in another. Mother Nature seldom makes rock formations that run in a perfectly straight line for several hundred feet. Consequently, the outline of a ship can be detected against an irregular background. You were right, though, in saying our chances were nil of finding it on the seafloor.”
“Get to the point,” Dover said impatiently.
“The target is on shore.”
“You mean grounded in the shallows?”
“I mean on shore, as in high and dry.”
“You can’t be serious?”
Pitt ignored the question and handed Dover the magnifying glass. “See for yourself.” He took a pencil and circled a section of cliffs above the tideline.
Dover bent over and put his eye to the glass. “All I see is rock.”
“Look closer. The projection from the lower part of the slope into the sea.”
Dover’s expression turned incredulous. “Oh, Jesus, it’s the stern of a ship!”
“You can make out the fantail and the top half of the rudder.”
“Yes, yes, and a piece of the after deckhouse.” Dover’s frustration was suddenly washed away by the mounting excitement of the discovery. “Incredible. She’s buried bow-on into the shore, as though she were covered by an avalanche. Judging from the cruiser stern and the balanced rudder, I’d say she’s an old Liberty ship.” He looked up, a deepening interest in his eyes. “I wonder if she might be the Pilottown?”
“Sounds vaguely familiar.”
“One of the most stubborn mysteries of the northern seas. The Pilottown tramped back and forth between Tokyo and the West Coast until ten years ago, when her crew reported her sinking in a storm. A search was launched and no trace of the ship was found. Two years later an Eskimo stumbled on the Pilottown caught in the ice about ninety miles above Nome. He went aboard but found the ship deserted, no sign of the crew or cargo. A month later, when he returned with his tribe to remove whatever they could find of value, it was gone again. Nearly two years passed, and she was reported drifting below the Bering Strait. The Coast Guard was sent out but couldn’t locate her. The Pilottown wasn’t sighted again for eight months. She was boarded by the crew of a fishing trawler. They found her in reasonably good shape. Then she disappeared for the last time.”
“I seem to recall reading something…” Pitt paused. “Ah, yes, the ‘Magic Ship.’ “
“That’s what the news media dubbed her,” Dover acknowledged. “They described her disappearing act as a ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ routine.”
“They’ll have a field day when it gets out she was drifting around for years with a cargo of nerve agent.”
“No way of predicting the horror if the hull had been crushed in an ice pack or shattered on a rocky shore, creating an instant spill,” Dover added.
“We’ve got to get in her cargo holds,” said Pitt. “Contact Mendoza, give her the position of the wreck and tell her to airlift a team of chemists to the site. We’ll approach from the water.”
Dover nodded. “I’ll see to the launch.”
“Throw in acetylene equipment in case we have to cut our way inside.”
Dover bent over the chart table and stared solemnly at the center of the marked circle. “I never thought for a minute I’d stand on the deck of the Magic Ship.”
“If you’re right,” said Pitt, staring into his coffee mug, “the Pilottown is about to give her last performance.”
8
The sea had been calm, but by the time the Catawba’s launch was a quarter-mile from the lonely, forbidding coast, a twenty-knot wind kicked up the water. The spray, tainted by the nerve agent, struck the cabin windows with the fury of driven sand. Yet where the derelict lay beached, the water looked reasonably peaceful, protected as it was by jagged pinnacles of rock that rose up a hundred yards offshore like solitary chimneys from burned-out houses
.
Far above the turbulent waters Augustine Volcano seemed calm and serene in the late afternoon sun. It was one of the most beautifully sculptured mountains in the Pacific, rivaling the classic contour of Mount Fuji in Japan.
The powerful launch surfed for an instant on a whitecapped swell before diving over the crest. Pitt braced his feet, gripped a railing with both hands while his eyes studied the shore.
The wreck was heeled over at a twenty-degree angle and her stern section blanketed in brown rust. The rudder was canted in the full starboard position and two barnacle-encrusted blades of the propeller protruded from the black sand. The letters of her name and home port were too obscured to read.
Pitt, Giordino, Dover, the two EPA scientists and one of the Catawba’s junior officers all were garbed in white encapsulating suits to protect them from the plumes of deadly spray. They communicated by tiny transmitters inside their protective headgear. Attached to their waist belts were intricate filter systems designed to refine clean, breathable air.
The sea around them was carpeted with dead fish of every species. A pair of whales rolled lifelessly back and forth with the tide, united in rotting decay with porpoises, sea lions and spotted seals. Birds by the thousands floated amid the morbid debris. Nothing that had lived in the area had escaped.
Dover expertly threaded the launch between the threatening offshore barrier of projecting rock, the remnant of an ancient coastline. He slowed, waiting for a momentary lull in the surf, biding his time while carefully eyeing the depth. Then as a wave slammed onto the shore and its backwash spilled against the next one coming in, he aimed the bow at the small spit of sand formed around the base of the wreck and pushed the throttle forward. Like a horse bracing for the next hurdle at the Grand National, the launch rose up on the wave crest and rode it through the swirling foam until the keel dropped and scraped onto the spit.
“A neat bit of handiwork,” Pitt complimented him.
“All in the timing,” Dover said, a grin visible behind his helmet’s face mask. “Of course, it helps if you land at low tide.”
They tilted back their heads and stared up at the wreck towering above them. The faded name on the stern could be deciphered now. It read Pilottown.
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