"One question I wish you'd clear up," the President said. "In reading over your report, Donner here stated that the mining equipment found at Novaya Zemlya was ordered through the U.S. government. That piece doesn't fit."
"Again, a cover story by the French," Seagram replied.
"The Jensen and Thor files also showed that the drilling equipment was paid for by a check drawn on a Washington, D.C., bank. The account, as it turns out, was under the name of the French ambassador. It was simply one more ruse to cloud the true operation."
"They didn't miss a trick, did they?"
Seagram nodded. "They planned well, but, for all their insight, they had no idea they were being led down the garden path."
"After Paris, then what?" the President persisted.
"The Coloradans spent two weeks at the Societe office, ordering supplies and making final preparations for the dig. When at last all was in readiness, they boarded a French naval transport in Le Havre and slipped into the English Channel. It took twelve days for the ship to pick its way through the Barents Sea ice floes before it finally anchored off Novaya Zemlya. After the men and equipment were safely ashore, Brewster shifted the Secret Army Plan into first gear and ordered the captain of the supply ship not to return for the ore until the first week in June, nearly seven months away."
"The plan being that the Coloradans and the byzanium would be long gone by the time the Societe des Mines ship returned."
"Exactly. They beat the deadline by two months. It took only five months for the gang to pry the precious element from the bowels of that icy hell. It was body-breaking work, drilling, blasting, and digging through solid granite while stabbed by fifty-degree-below-zero temperatures. Never, during the long winter months high along the Continental Divide of the Rockies, had they ever experienced anything like the frigid winds that howled down across the sea from the great polar ice cap to the north; winds that paused only long enough to deposit the terrible cold and replenish Bednaya Mountain's permanent ice sheet before sweeping on toward the Russian coast just over the horizon to the south. It took a frightful toll on the men. Jake Hobart died from exposure when he became lost in a snowstorm, and the others all suffered terribly from fatigue and frostbite. In Brewster's own words, `it was a frozen purgatory, not fit to waste good spit on."'
"It's a miracle they didn't all die," the President said.
"Good old hardy guts saw them through," Seagram said. "In the end they beat the odds. They had wrested the world's rarest mineral from that wasteland, and they had pulled off the job without detection. It had been a classic operation of stealth and engineering skill."
"They escaped the island with the ore, then?"
"Yes, Mr. President." Seagram nodded. "Brewster and his crew covered over the waste dump and ore-car tracks and concealed the entrance to the mine. Then they hauled the byzanium to the beach, where they loaded it on board a small three-roasted steamer dispatched by the War Department under the guise of a polar expedition. The ship was under the command of a Lieutenant Pratt of the United States Navy."
"How much ore did they take?"
"According to Sid Koplin's estimates, about half a ton of extremely high-grade ore."
"And when processed . . . ?"
"A rough guess at best would put it in the neighborhood of five hundred ounces."
"More than enough to complete the Sicilian Project," the President said.
"More than enough," Donner acknowledged.
"Did they make it back to the States?"
"No, sir. Somehow the French had figured the game and were patiently waiting for the Americans to do the dangerous dirty work before stepping on the stage and snatching the prize. A few miles off the southern coast of Norway, before Lieutenant Pratt could set a course east onto the shipping lane for New York, they were attacked by a mysterious steam cutter that bore no national flag."
"No identification, no international scandal," the President said. "The French covered every avenue."
Seagram smiled. "Except this time, if you'll pardon the pun, they missed the boat. Like most Europeans, they underestimated good old Yankee ingenuity; our War Department had also covered every contingency. Before the French could pump a third shot into the American ship, Lieutenant Pratt's crew had dropped the sides on a phony deckhouse and were blasting back with a concealed five-inch gun."
"Good, good," the President said. "As Teddy Roosevelt might have said, `Bully for our side."'
"The battle lasted until almost dark," Seagram went on. "Then Pratt got a shot into the Frenchman's boiler and the cutter burst into flames. But the American vessel was hurt, too. Her holds were taking water, and Pratt had one killed and four of his crew seriously wounded. After a consultation, Brewster and Pratt decided to head for the nearest friendly port, set the injured men ashore, and ship the ore on to the States from there. By dawn, they limped past the breakwater at Aberdeen, Scotland."
"Why couldn't they have simply transported the ore to an American warship? Surely that would have been safer than shipping it by commercial means?"
"I can't be certain," Seagram replied. "Apparently, Brewster was afraid the French might then demand the ore through diplomatic channels, thereby forcing the Americans into admitting the theft and giving up the byzanium. As long as he kept it in his possession, our government could claim ignorance of the whole affair."
The President shook his head. "Brewster must have been a lion of a man."
"Oddly enough," Donner said, "he was only five-feet-two.
"Still, an amazing man, a great patriot to go through all that hell with no personal profit motive in mind. You can't help but wish to God he'd made it home free."
"Sadly, his odyssey wasn't finished." Seagram's hands began to tremble. "The French consulate in the port city blew the whistle on the Coloradans. One night, before they could unload the byzanium onto a truck, the French agents struck without warning from the shadows of the landing dock. No shots were fired. It was fists and knives and clubs. The hard-rock men from the legendary towns of Cripple Creek, Leadville, and Fairplay were no strangers to violence. They gave better than they took, tossing six bodies into the black waters of the harbor before the rest of their assailants melted into the night. But it was only the beginning. Crossroad after crossroad, from one village to the next, on city streets, and from behind every tree and doorway it seemed, the piratical attacks continued until the running flight across Britain had bloodied the landscape with a score of dead and wounded. The battles took on the aspects of a war of attrition; the men from Colorado were up against a massive organization which threw in five men for every two the miners eliminated. The attrition began to tell. John Caldwell, Alvin Coulter, and Thomas Price died outside of Glasgow. Charles Widney fell at Newcastle, Walter Schmidt near Stafford, and Warner O'Deming at Birmingham. One by one, the tough old miners were whittled away, their gore staining the cobblestone streets far from home. Only Vernon Hall and Joshua Hays Brewster lived to set the ore on the Ocean Dock at Southampton."
The President clenched his lips and tightened his fists. "Then the French won out."
"No, Mr. President. The French never touched the byzanium." Seagram picked up Brewster's journal and thumbed to the back. "I'll read the last entry. It's dated April 10, 1912:
"The deed is only a eulogy now, for I am but dead. Praise God, the precious ore we labored so desperately to rape from the bowels of that cursed mountain lies safely in the vault of the ship. Only Vernon will be left to tell the tale, for I depart on the great White Star steamer for New York within the hour. Knowing the ore is secure, I leave this journal in the care of James Rodgers, Assistant United States Consul in Southampton, who will see that it reaches the proper authorities in the event I am also killed. God rest the men who have gone before me. How I long to return to Southby."
A cold silence fell on the study. The President turned from the window and settled in his chair once more. He sat there a moment, saying nothing. Then he spoke "Can it mean the byzanium is in the United States? Is it possible that Brewster? . . ."
"I'm afraid not, sir," Seagram murmured, his face pale and beaded with sweat.
"Explain yourself!" the President demanded.
Seagram took a deep breath. "Because, Mr. President, the only White Star steamship that departed Southampton, England, on April the tenth, 1912, was the R.M.S. Titanic."
"The Titanic!" The President looked as if he had been shot. The truth had suddenly hit him. "It fits," he said tonelessly. "It would explain why the byzanium has been lost all these years."
"Fate dealt the Coloradans a cruel hand," Donner muttered. "They bled and died only to send the ore on a ship that was destined to sink in the middle of the ocean."
Another silence, deeper even than the one that had gone before.
The President sat granite-faced. "What do we do now, gentlemen?"
There was a pause of perhaps ten seconds, then Seagram rose unsteadily to his feet and stared down at the President. The strain of the past days, plus the agony of defeat, swept over him. There was no other door open to them; they had no choice but to see it through to the finish. He cleared his throat. "We raise the Titanic," he mumbled.
The President and Donner looked up.
"Yes, by God!" Seagram said, his voice suddenly hard and determined. "We raise the Titanic!"
THE BLACK ABYSS
September 1987
23
The forbidding beauty of pure, absolute black pressed against the viewport and blotted out all touch with earthly reality. The total absence of light, Albert Giordino judged, took only a few minutes to shift the human mind into a state of confused disorder. He had the impression of falling from a vast height with his eyes closed on a moonless night; falling through an immense black void without the tiniest fragment of sensation.
Finally, a bead of sweat trickled over his brow and dropped into his left eye, stinging it. He shook off the spell, wiped a sleeve across his face, and gently eased a hand over the control panel immediately in front of him, touching the various and familiar protrusions until his probing fingers reached their goal. Then he flicked the switch upward.
The lights attached to the hull of the deep-sea submersible flashed on and cut a brilliant swath through the eternal night. Although the narrow sides of the beam abruptly turned a blackish-blue, the tiny organisms floating past the direct glare reflected the light for several feet above and below the area around the viewport. Turning his face so as not to fog the thick Plexiglas, Giordino expelled a heavy sigh and then leaned back against the soft padding of the pilot's chair. It was nearly a full minute before he bent over the control console and began bringing the silent craft to life again. He studied the rows of dials until the wavering needles were calibrated to his satisfaction, and he scanned the circuit lights, making certain they all blinked out their green message of safe operation before he re-engaged the electrical systems of the Sappho I.
He swung the chair and gazed idly down the center passageway toward the stern. It might have been the newest and largest research submersible in the world to the National Underwater and Marine Agency, but, to Al Giordino, the first time he set eyes on it, the general design looked like a giant cigar on an ice skate.
The Sappho I wasn't built to compete with military submarines. She was functional. Scientific survey of the ocean bottom was her game, and her every square inch was utilized to accommodate a seven-man crew and two tons of oceanographic research instruments and equipment. The Sappho I would never fire a missile or cut through the sea at seventy knots, but then she could operate where no other submarine had ever dared to go 24,000 feet below the ocean's surface. Yet Giordino was never totally at ease. He checked the depth gauge, wincing at the reading of almost 12,500 feet. The pressure of the sea increases at the rate of fifteen pounds per square inch for every thirty feet. He winced again when his mental gymnastics gave him an approximate answer of nearly 6200 pounds per square inch, the pressure which at that moment was pushing against the red paint on the Sappho I's thick titanium skin.
"How about a cup of fresh sediment?"
Giordino looked up into the unsmiling face of Omar Woodson, the photographer on the mission. Woodson was carrying a steaming mug of coffee.
"The chief valve-and switch-pusher should have had his brew exactly five minutes ago," said Giordino.
"Sorry. Some idiot turned out the lights." Woodson handed him the mug. "Everything check out?"
"Okay across the board," Giordino answered. "I gave the aft battery section a rest. We'll juice off the center section for the next eighteen hours."
"Lucky we didn't drift into a rock outcropping when we shut down."
"Surely you jest." Giordino slid down in his seat, squinted his eyes and yawned with effortless finesse. "Sonar hasn't picked out anything larger than a baseball-size rock in the last six hours. The bottom here is as flat as my girl friend's stomach."
"You mean chest," Woodson said. "I've seen her picture." Woodson was smiling, which was rare for him.
"Nobody's perfect," Giordino conceded. "However, considering the fact her father is a wealthy liquor distributor, I can overlook her bad points-"
He broke off as Rudi Gunn, the commander of the mission, leaned into the pilot's compartment. He was short and thin, and his wide eyes, magnified by a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, peered intently over a large Roman nose, giving him the look of an undernourished owl about to strike. Yet his appearance was deceiving. Rudi Gunn was warm and kind. Every man who ever served under his command respected him enormously.
"You two at it again?" Gunn smiled tolerantly.
Woodson looked solemn. "The same old problem. He's getting horny for his girl again."
"After fifty-one days on this drifting closet, even his grandmother would forgive the gleam in his eye." Gunn leaned over Giordino and gazed through the viewport. For a few seconds only a dim blue filled his eyes, then gradually, just below the Sappho I, he could make out the reddish ooze of the top layer of bottom sediment. For a brief moment a bright red shrimp, barely over an inch long, floated across the beam of the light before it vanished into the darkness.