Fire Ice nf-3

by Clive Cussler

  Austin and Trout got a firm grip on their charges as the net pulled them to the surface. Their troubles weren't over, however. They were tossed around in the heaving seas and hampered by their scuba gear, until, finally, they jettisoned their air tanks and belts. Without the awkward weight, they could work with the waves rather than fight them.

  Jenkins was leaning over the stern controlling the hauler, the big metal drum that the net was wound upon when not in the water. The net had drawn Austin and the pilot within a few feet of safety, but the boat pitched and yawed violently and the seas lifted them one second, dropped them the next. Choking fumes from the exhaust rose from the water. To make matters worse, Austin's right arm had become entangled in the net.

  Jenkins saw their predicament, and the narrow blade of a razor-sharp filleting knife flashed dangerously close to Austin's biceps. With his arm free, he reached up to Jenkins, who grabbed his wrist in an iron grip. Working the hauler with the other hand, he pulled Austin, then the pilot, closer.

  "Damn funny-looking fish we're catching these days," he yelled over the rumble of the engine.

  Howes was manning the helm and doing his best to keep the boat steady. "Those fellas are a bit small," he shouted back. "Maybe we should throw them back."

  "Not on your life," Austin said, as he got one leg over the transom and practically fell into the boat.

  Jenkins helped the pilot on board. With three of them working, they got Trout and Logan onto the boat in short order. The submariners staggered drunkenly across the pitching deck into the wheelhouse. The net had caught several hundred pounds of fish; and the weight threatened to drag the ship down. Jenkins hated to lose the fish and let the net loose in the sea where it might catch on a propeller, but he had no choice. He cut the lines and watched the net drift off into the foamy sea. Then he took over the helm and gunned the boat through the white-capped seas that splashed over the bow.

  Howes helped the others out of their dry suits, then passed around blankets and a bottle of Irish whiskey. Austin peered through the spume, but the black ship had disappeared. There was also no sign of the fishing boats that had accompanied them on the way out. He asked where the other boats were.

  "Things got dicey out here, so I sent them home," Jenkins yelled over the grinding roar of the engine. "We should get back to port before the storm hits. Sit back and enjoy the ride."

  "I wonder what our former hosts will say when they discover us gone," Logan said with a wolfish smile.

  "I'm hoping that they'll think you tried to escape and were drowned."

  "Thanks for coming to our rescue. My only regret is that we couldn't leave the way we came, on the NR-1."

  "The important part was getting you out in one piece."

  Trout passed the whiskey bottle to Austin. "Here's to a job well done."

  Austin raised the bottle to his lips and took a sip. The fiery liquid overwhelmed the salty taste in his mouth and warmed his stomach. He stared out past their heaving wake, thinking about the huge projectile they had seen on the ship.

  "Unfortunately," he said, "the real work may have just begun."

  HIRAM YAEGER TOILED late into the night. He had moved away from his usual place at the grand console and sat in a corner of the vast computer center, his face lit up by a single screen. He was typing commands into a keyboard, and Max didn't like it.

  HIRAM, WHY AREN'T WE USING THE HOLOGRAM?

  THIS IS A SIMPLE ACCESS PROBLEM, MAX. WE DON'T NEED THE BELLS AND WHISTLES. IT's BACK TO BASICS.

  I FEEL PRACTICALLY NAKED SITTING OUT HERE IN A PLAIN PLASTIC CABINET.

  YOU'RE STILL BEAUTIFUL IN MY EYES.

  FLATTERY WILL GET YOU EVERYWHERE. THE PROBLEM, PLEASE.

  Yaeger had been working for hours to carve away the useless and misleading data in the files Austin and Trout had transmitted from the Ataman ship. He'd run into countless dead ends and had had to cut through more layers than an onion. Finally, he had distilled his findings into a series of commands that would cut through the dross. He typed them out one at a time and waited. Before long, words written in Cyrillic appeared. He entered a command to use translation software.

  Yaeger scratched his head, mystified at the image on the screen. It was a menu.

  As he was watching, the menu disappeared and in its place was a message from Max.

  MAY I TAKE YOUR ORDER, SIR? WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?

  I COULD TELL YOU BETTER IF WE USED THE HOLOGRAM.

  Yaeger blinked. Max was trying to bribe him. He rotated his shoulder blades to relieve the stress of working, breathed a weary sigh and brought his fingers back to the keyboard.

  30

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  THE NUMA EXECUTIVE jet was one of dozens of planes coming into Washington National Airport. Unlike the regularly scheduled arrivals that followed the bug-like ground vehicles to their respective terminals, the turquoise plane taxied to a restricted section on the south end of the airport not far from an old airplane hangar with a rounded roof. The engines whined to a stop and a trio of dark blue Suburban SUVs emerged from the shadows with darkened headlights, and lined up alongside the plane.

  Two Marine guards and a man dressed in civilian clothes got out of the lead vehicle. While the guards took their place at the foot of the gangway, standing stiffly at attention, the third man, who carried a black satchel, strode quickly up the gangway and rapped on the door. It opened a second later, and Austin stuck his head out.

  "I'm Captain Morris, a doctor from the naval hospital," the man said. "I've come to check out our people." He looked past Austin and saw the unconscious forms of the captain and the pilot slumped in their seats. "Dear God! Are they dead?"

  "Yeah, dead drunk," Austin said. "We celebrated their homecoming on the trip from Portland and they had a little too much of the bubbly. Those strapping young Marines down there might want to assist your men off the plane."

  Captain Morris called the Marines, and they managed to help the NR-1 men down the gangway to the tarmac. The cool night air revived Captain Logan and the pilot. They gave Austin and Trout an emotional and slurred thank-you, staggered to the middle vehicle and were whisked off into the night in a squeal of tires, leaving Austin and Trout breathing in their engine exhausts.

  The taillights were barely out of sight when a figure stepped from the shadows and a familiar and unmistakable voice said, "That's gratitude for you. The least the navy could have done was call a cab to run you home."

  Austin glanced at the departing SUVs. "The navy doesn't like fly-by-night operations like us showing up their expensive intelligence services and aircraft carriers."

  "They'll get over it," Admiral Sandecker said, with amusement. "Can I offer you a lift?"

  "Best offer I've had all night." Austin and Trout got into the Jeep Cherokee parked nearby. Sandecker deplored limousines, or any of the trap- pings of power for that matter, and preferred to drive a four- wheel drive from NUMA's agency pool. The pilot and copilot finished buttoning down the plane and Sandecker gave them rides home.

  Austin had called Sandecker from Maine to tell him about the mission. As he drove onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Sandecker said, "I said it before, but you boys deserve a medal for getting aboard that ship."

  "It was getting off the ship that I preferred, although I may give up fishing forever now that I've seen a trawl from a cod's point of view," Trout said with his understated New England humor.

  Sandecker chuckled. "You're reasonably certain no one on board the Ataman ship will suspect the navy men were spirited away?"

  "A few crewmen might remember seeing us and put two and two together with the missing dry suits and the open moon pool. I doubt they'd think anyone was crazy enough to do what we did, and get away with it."

  "I agree. They will report the missing navy men to Razov, but they'll assume they drowned or died from hypothermia. Even if they suspect an intrusion, I doubt whether they'd tell Razov, for fear of their lives."

  "He might learn
the truth when the navy announces that all the NR-1 crew have been rescued."

  "I've asked the Navy Department to keep a lid on the announcement, which they were glad to do. The crew members will be reunited with their families and whisked off to a seaside retreat for some R amp; R."

  "That will buy us some time."

  "We'll need every minute. Get a good night's sleep, both of you, and we'll have a meeting first thing in the morning."

  Sandecker drove Trout to his Georgetown town house and gave Austin a lift to Fairfax. Austin dropped his overnight bag inside the door and went into the den-study, a spacious room with dark wood colonial furniture and walls lined with shelves for his books and progressive jazz collection. The red light was blinking on his telephone answering machine. He clicked through the messages and was happy to hear that Joe Zavala was back from England. Austin grabbed a tall can of Speckled Hen ale from his refrigerator and settled into a black leather chair with his phone. Joe answered on the first ring. They talked at length. Zavala filled him in on his interview with Lord Dodson, and Austin gave a summary of Jenkins's visit to NUMA and the successful mission to the Ataman ship.

  After he hung up, Austin walked out onto the deck and drew a deep breath of river air into his lungs. The exercise cleared his head, and he began to think about the drama that had played out on the Black Sea decades ago. With the passage of time, the people who had struggled for their lives had no more substance than the lights glowing like fireflies along the Maryland shore. Yet the long-ago echoes of their voices were still being heard more than eighty years later.

  According to Zavala's report, the empress and her daughters were traveling on the Odessa Star with some of the royal treasure when the ship was attacked and sunk. Razov probably had the treasure now. Austin was uncertain why a man who already had more money than Croesus would go through so much trouble to dive for treasure. Greed knows no bounds, he concluded.

  More important was the fact that the Grand Duchess Maria had escaped. Lord Dodson was worried about political turmoil if and when the news got out. Austin frowned at the tacit approval of the British Crown in the sordid tale. The story might embarrass some families, but all those involved were long dead. Mendacity by those in high office was no longer the scandal it once had been. Austin was more concerned about how the story connected to Ataman and the supposed plot against the United States.

  Austin glanced at his watch. He hadn't realized the late- ness of the hour or how worn-out he was. He crawled up to his bedroom in the turret of the old Victorian boathouse, crashed into bed and was asleep within minutes.

  AUSTIN WAS UP at dawn, dressed in T-shirt, shorts and baseball cap, put a pot of Jamaican coffee on to brew and went downstairs to where his twenty-three-foot Mass Aero racing scull was stored under the house. He was lifting the forty-pound scull off its rack in preparation for a morning row on the Potomac, when he heard the telephone ring. Irritated at having his routine interrupted, he sprinted up the stairs to the main level and snatched the phone from its cradle.

  "We've got it," Yaeger said, his voice scratchy from weariness. "That is to say, Max and I almost got it."

  "Should I be happy or sad?"

  "Maybe both," Yaeger said. "I had Max working on the file all night. She did a hell of a job. Click on your computer, and I'll show you what I've got."

  Austin did as he was told and called up the e-mail and the attachment Yaeger had forwarded. The image that came up showed a document with several lines of Russian written in graceful script, the words bounded by fancy scrollwork.

  "What is it?"

  "It's a menu," Yaeger said. "The first one is the appetizer, Beluga caviar. The rest is a list of courses for something like a Russian banquet. Perlmutter would love it. Sounds quite tasty after this morning's snack of sugar-glazed doughnuts and weak coffee."

  "I'll buy you a full-course breakfast later, but are you saying that after all we went through to get this stuff, the best we can come up with is caviar?"

  "Yes and no. The menu is really a set of files encrypted with steganography. It means 'covered writing.' It's a way of hiding messages in pictures. Uses a special software. Man, whoever set up security is real good. Even Max hit the wall on this one. I wrote a new program that unravels the puzzle. Watch."

  A gray dialog box appeared. "What is that?"

  "It's asking for the password."

  "What about the password we used to get into the ship's computer?"

  "Troika was only good so far as it went. It got me to this point. Now I need another one."

  Austin groaned. "So we're right back to where we started."

  "Yes and no. I've got Max running through possible words or combinations. She'll come up with an answer… but it could be days."

  "We may not have days," Austin said. "Then I've got another idea that may help you. The files indicate that there is a master control somewhere other than on your mystery ship. Find that, and we can find your password."

  Austin's head was swimming, as it did after any conversation with Yaeger. "Let me think about it. I'll get back to you."

  Austin went back downstairs and shoved his racing scull into the water. Easing into the narrow craft, he warmed up for ten minutes under quarter pressure, gradually working his rate to twenty-eight strokes a minute, his eyes glued to the dial of the StrokeCoach over his toes. The strokes merged with an unbroken rhythm that sent the light shell scudding smoothly over the river's misty surface like flowing quicksilver.

  Austin rowed without gloves so he could feel the river with each dip of the oars. He wanted to sweat out the white-hot anger he felt over the Sea Hunter so that the heat would not consume him. He slipped into a meditative state and felt his rage ebb, although it didn't go away entirely. After rowing for a time, he turned in a wide circle and headed back. Before long, the scull was gliding up to the ramp of the boathouse. He threw his sweaty clothes in a hamper, took a long shower and shaved, and dressed in a tan sports jacket, navy blue polo shirt and light slacks.

  A sound sleep and an energetic row had given him perspective. He brushed aside the distractions that had been pulling his mind apart in a hundred different directions and concentrated on the prime force behind all he had experienced. Razov. He had to find Razov. Everything else would flow from there. He picked up the phone and called Rudi Gunn, who had never shaken his old navy habits and was in his office before most commuters had poured their first cup of coffee.

  "Kurt, I was about to call you. Admiral Sandecker told me about your successful mission. Congratulations to you and Paul."

  "Thanks, Rudi. Unfortunately, our job isn't over. Razov is the key to all this. I was wondering if you'd heard anything about his whereabouts."

  "That's what I wanted to tell you. The Mad Russian has come up for air. He and his super yacht are expected momentarily in Boston."

  "How'd you pick that up, through intelligence or satellites?"

  "Neither one, actually. I saw it in the business section of the Washington Post. I'll read it to you:

  Russian mining tycoon Mikhail Razov will arrive in Boston today to announce the opening of an international trade center. Razov, who is also a prominent political figure in his country, will host a reception for government officials and other guests tonight aboard his yacht, said to be one of the largest privately owned vessels in the world. The stop-off is part of a tour of major East Coast ports."

  "Thoughtful of him to save us time and energy," Austin said.

  "It doesn't fit with what I have heard about the gentleman. Wonder what he's really up to?"

  "Why don't I go aboard and ask him?"

  "You're serious?"

  "Of course. It might do some good for him to know that we're onto him. Maybe we can shake the trees and see what falls out."

  "Just as long as you're not standing under them."

  Austin thought of Yaeger's suggestion about finding the master control center. A man like Razov would never let anything get far from his control. And h
is yacht was both his home and the headquarters of his worldwide corporation.

  "We can't let an opportunity like this go by. I want to get aboard that yacht."

  "We could fix you up with some NUMA credentials."

  "That would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I have another idea. I'll get back to you."

  Austin hung up and dug in his wallet for a business card. Then he dialed the New York number on it.

  "Unbelievable Mysteries," the receptionist said.

  He asked if Kaela Dorn had returned from assignments. "I believe so. May I say who's calling?"

  Austin gave his name and braced for a breath of icy air. He was surprised at the warmth in Kaela's voice. "Good morning, Mr. Austin. You certainly get up early in the day."

  "The early bird catches the worm, I've been told."

  "Never did like worms," Kaela said. "What can I do for you?"

  "First of all, tell me why you're being so friendly."

  "Why shouldn't I be? You saved my life. Even better, you got me transportation back to Istanbul on Captain Kemal's boat."

  "Which wasn't exactly the QE2, as I recall."

  "Doesn't matter. On the way back, the captain told me about a wreck he knew of and took me there. It was big and old, and my guess is that it was originally measured in cubits."

  "Noah's ark?"

  "Who knows? Who cares? We got the story, plus bonuses. So thanks again, and I mean it with all sincerity when I say, what can I do for you, even though you still owe me a dinner."

  "How about Boston baked beans?"

  "I was thinking more of rack of lamb at the Four Seasons."

  "Anything you say. But I need your help first. There's a trade reception tonight aboard a yacht in Boston Harbor, and I need some press credentials."

  "Is there a story here?"

  "Eventually. But not now."

  "Okay, but under one condition. I'm going with you. Before you say no, think about it."

  Austin thought about Kaela's sultry beauty for a millisecond. "It's a deal. I'll catch a shuttle to Logan Airport." He suggested a meeting time and place.