Raise the Titanic! (34 page)

The vastness of
the
Titanic
's first-class dining saloon stretched under the ornate ceiling far into the dark shadows beyond the lights, the few remaining leaded glass windows reflecting eerie distortions of the bone-tired and defeated people standing under the guns of the unflinching Russians.

Spencer had been forced to join the group. The shock of incomprehension mirrored in his eyes. He stared at Sandecker incredulously.

“Pitt and Woodson dead? It can't be true.”

“It's true all right,” Drummer mumbled through a swollen mouth. “One of them sadistic bastards standing there shoved a knife into Woodson's gut.”

“A miscalculation on your friend's part,” Prevlov said with a shrug. He gazed speculatively at the frightened woman and the nine men standing before him, at their gaunt and blood-caked faces. He seemed to enjoy, in a detached sort of way, their struggle to retain their balance whenever the
Titanic
was struck broadside by an immense swell. “And speaking of miscalculations, Mr. Spencer, it seems your men have developed a noticeable lack of enthusiasm for manning the pumps. I needn't remind you that unless the water that is pouring in below the waterline is returned to the sea, this ancient monument to capitalistic extravagance will sink.”

“So let it sink,” Spencer said easily. “At least you and your Communist scum will go with it.”

“Not a likely event, particularly when you consider that the
Mikhail Kurkov
is standing by for just such an emergency.” Prevlov selected a cigarette from a gold case and tapped it thoughtfully. “So you see, a sensible man would accept the inevitable and perform his duties accordingly.”

“It still beats the hell out of letting you get your slimy hands on her.”

“You won't get any of us to do your dirty work for you,” Sandecker said. There was a quiet finality in his voice.

“Perhaps not.” Prevlov was quite unruffled. “On the other hand, I think I shall have the cooperation I require and very soon.” He motioned to one of the guards and muttered in Russian. The guard nodded, walked unhurriedly across the dining saloon, grabbed Dana by the arm, and roughly pulled her under one of the portable lights.

As one, the salvage crew crowded forward only to be met by four unyielding machine pistols held at gut level. They froze helplessly, rage and hostility seething through their every pore.

“If you harm her,” Sandecker whispered, his voice quivering in quiet anger, “you'll pay for it.”

“Oh come now, Admiral,” Prevlov said. “Rape is for the sick. Only a cretin would attempt blackmailing you and your crew with such a sorry ploy. American men still place their women on marble pedestals. You'd all willingly die in a useless attempt to protect her virtues, and where would that leave me? No, cruelty and torture are crude methods in the fine art of persuasion. Humiliation…” He paused, savoring the word. “Yes, humiliation, a magnificent incentive for inducing your men to return to their labors and keep the ship afloat.”

Prevlov turned to Dana. She looked at him, pathetic and lost. “Now then, Mrs. Seagram, if you will be so good as to take off your clothes—all of them.”

“What kind of cheap trick is this?” Sandecker asked.

“No trick. Mrs. Seagram's modesty will be laid bare, layer after layer, until you order Mr. Spencer and his men to cooperate.”

“No!” Gunn pleaded. “Don't do it, Dana!”

“Please, no appeals,” Prevlov said wearily. “I will have one of my men strip her by force if necessary.”

Slowly, barely perceptibly, a strange gleam of belligerence began spreading in Dana's eyes. Then without the slightest hesitation, she slipped out of her jacket, jumpsuit, and underclothing. In less than a minute she stood there in the halo of light, her body supple and alive and very nude.

Sandecker turned his back and one by one the other hardened salvage men followed suit until they were facing away into the darkness.

“You will look upon her,” Prevlov said coldly. “Your gallant gesture is touching, but completely useless. Turn around, gentlemen, our little performance is just beginning—”

“I think this stupid, chauvinistic bullshit has gone far enough.”

Every head jerked around as if yanked by the strings of a puppeteer at the sound of Dana's voice. She stood there with legs apart, hands on hips, breasts thrust outward, and her eyes blazed with a mocking awareness. Even with the unsightly bandage around her head she looked magnificent.

“The admission is free, boys, stare all you want. A woman's body is no big secret. You've all seen and undoubtedly touched one before. Why all the bashful glances?” Then her eyes changed to shrewd reflection and her lips lifted away from her teeth and she began laughing. She had decisively stolen the stage from Prevlov.

He stared at her, his mouth slowly tightening. “An impressive performance, Mrs. Seagram, an impressive performance indeed. But a typical display of Western decadence I hardly find amusing.”

“Show me a Communist, and I'll show you an asshole every time,” Dana taunted him. “If you shitheads only knew how the whole world laughs behind your threadbare backs every time you spout your gauche little Marxist terms like Western decadence, imperialistic warmongering, or bourgeois-manipulating, you might straighten up and show a little class. As it is, your kind is the biggest diabolical farce played on mankind since we climbed down from the trees. And if you had any balls, you'd face up to it.”

Prevlov's face went white. “This has gone far enough,” he snapped. He was on the verge of losing his very carefully practiced control and it frustrated him.

Dana stretched her long and opulent body and said, “What's the matter, Ivan? Too used to muscle-bound, hod-carrying Russian women? Can't get used to the idea of a liberated gal from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave laughing at your sorry tactics?”

“It is your vulgarity that I find difficult to accept. At least our women do not act like common gutter sluts.”

“Fuck you.” Dana grinned sweetly.

Prevlov missed nothing. He caught the flickered glance between Giordino and Spencer, caught the flexing of Sturgis's fists, and the tiny inclination of Drummer's head. He became fully aware now that Dana's indolent yet continual movement away from the Americans and toward the rear of the Russian guards was neither unconscious nor unplanned. Her performance was nearly complete. The Soviet marines were twisting their necks to gawk; their guns were beginning to droop in their hands, when Prevlov shouted out a command in Russian.

The guards, jolted out of their laxity, swung back and faced the salvage crew, their weapons aimed and steady again.

“My compliments, dear lady.” Prevlov bowed. “Your little display of theatrics very nearly worked. A clever, clever deception.”

There was a curious clinical satisfaction in Prevlov's expression; a functional chill as if his cunning had been called and he had easily won the hand.

He watched Dana, appraising her fractional show of defeat. The grin had remained on her face, as though painted there, and her shoulders huddled in a slight shiver, but she shook it off and straightened once again, proud and self-assured.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course not.” Prevlov sighed. He stared at her for a moment, and then turned and said something to one of the guards. The man nodded, pulled out a knife and slowly advanced toward Dana.

Dana stiffened and paled, as though turned to salt. “What are you going to do?”

“I ordered him to cut off your left breast,” Prevlov said conversationally.

Spencer stared openmouthed at Sandecker, his eyes pleading for the admiral to back down.

“Good God!” Sandecker uttered desperately. “You can't allow—you promised, no cruelty or torture—”

“I am the first to admit there is no finesse in savagery,” Prevlov said. “But you leave me no choice. It is the only solution to your obstinacy.”

Sandecker sidestepped around the nearest guard. “You'll have to kill me first—”

The guard jammed his machine pistol muzzle into Sandecker's kidney, and the admiral fell to his knees, his face twisted in agony, his breath coming in loud, sucking noises.

Dana clenched her hands at her sides until they turned ivory. She had played her hand down to the last card, and now she looked lost; those beautiful coffee-brown eyes were sick in abhorrence when she saw the guard's eyes suddenly reflect a look of confusion as a steel hand fell on her shoulder and pushed her aside. Pitt walked slowly into the light.

Pitt stood frozen
in time, like some unspeakable apparition that had risen from the depths of a watery hell. He was saturated from head to foot, his black hair plastered down across a bloodied forehead, his lips curled in a satanic smile. In the light of the lamps, the droplets of water sparkled as they trickled from his wet clothing and splattered on the deck.

Prevlov's face was a wax mask. Calmly, he pulled a cigarette from the gold case, lit it, and exhaled the smoke in a long sigh.

“Your name? May I assume that your name is Dirk Pitt?”

“That's what the fine print reads on the birth certificate.”

“It seems you are an uncommonly durable man, Mr. Pitt. It was my understanding that you were dead.”

“It just goes to prove you can't rely on shipboard gossip.”

Pitt took off his damp jacket and gently draped it over Dana's shoulders. “Sorry, dear heart, it's the best I can do for the moment.” Then he turned back to Prevlov. “Any objections?”

Prevlov shook his head. Pitt's offhand manner puzzled him. He scrutinized Pitt as a diamond cutter studies a stone, but saw nothing behind the veil of those sea-green eyes.

Prevlov gestured to one of his men who moved up to Pitt. “Simply a precautionary search, Mr. Pitt. Any objections?”

Pitt shrugged agreeably and held his hands in the air. The guard quickly, efficiently ran his hands up and down Pitt's clothing and then stepped back and shook his head.

“No arms,” Prevlov said. “Very wise of you, but then I would have expected nothing less from a man of your reputation. I have read with considerable interest a dossier describing your exploits. I would have liked very much to have known you under less adversary circumstances.”

“Sorry I can't return the compliment,” Pitt said pleasantly, “but you're not exactly the type of vermin I'd like for a friend.”

Prevlov stepped forward two paces and hit Pitt with all his strength with the back of his hand.

Pitt staggered back one step and stood there, a trickle of blood oozing from one corner of his still grinning lips. “Well, well,” he said quietly, thickly. “The illustrious André Prevlov finally blew his cool.”

Prevlov leaned forward, his eyes half-closed in wary speculation. “My name?” his voice was barely above a murmur. “You know my name?”

“Fair is fair,” Pitt answered. “I know as much about you as you know about me.”

“You're even cleverer than I was led to believe,” Prevlov said. “You've discovered my identity—an astute piece of perception. On that I commend you. But you needn't bluff with knowledge you do not possess. Beyond my name, you know nothing.”

“I wonder. Perhaps I can enlighten you further with a bit of local folklore.”

“I have no patience for fairy tales,” Prevlov said. He motioned to the guard with the knife. “Now if we can get on about the business of persuading Admiral Sandecker to inspire your pumping crew to greater efforts, I would be most grateful.”

The guard, a tall man, his face still hidden under the muffler, began advancing toward Dana once more. He extended the knife. Its blade gleamed in the light no more than three inches from Dana's left breast. She hugged Pitt's jacket tightly around her shoulders and stared at the knife, numbed beyond fear.

“Too bad you're not big on fairy tales,” Pitt said conversationally. “This is one you'd have enjoyed. It's all about a pair of bumbling characters called Silver and Gold.”

Prevlov glanced at him, hesitated, and then nodded the guard back. “You have my attention, Mr. Pitt. I will give you five minutes to prove your point.”

“It won't take long,” Pitt said. He paused to rub the eye that had caked closed from the hardening blood. “Now then, once upon a time there were two Canadian engineers who discovered that spying could be a lucrative sideline. So they shed all qualms of guilt and became professional espionage agents in every sense of the word, concentrating their talents on obtaining classified data about American oceanographic programs and sending it through hidden channels to Moscow. Silver and Gold earned their money, make no mistake. Over the past two years, there wasn't a NUMA project the Russians didn't have knowledge of down to the tiniest detail. Then, when the
Titanic
's salvage came up, the Soviet Navy's Department of Foreign Intelligence—your department, Prevlov—smelled a windfall. Without the slightest degree of chicanery, you found yourself with not one, but two men in your employ who were in a perfect situation to obtain and pass along America's most advanced deep-water-salvage techniques. There was, of course, another vital consideration, but even you weren't aware of it at the time.

“Silver and Gold,” Pitt went on, “sent regular reports concerning the raising of the wreck through an ingenious method. They used a battery-powered pinger, a device that can transmit underwater sound waves similar to sonar. I should have caught on to it when the
Capricorn
's sonar man detected the transmissions, but instead I dismissed it as loose debris caused by a deep water current knocking about the
Titanic
. The fact that someone was sending out coded messages never entered our heads. Nobody bothered to decipher the random noises. Nobody, that is, except the man sitting under a set of hydrophones on board the
Mikhail Kurkov
.”

Pitt paused and glanced about the dining saloon. He had everyone's attention. “We didn't begin to smell either rat until Henry Munk felt the need for a poorly timed call of nature. On his way back to the head at the aft end of the
Sappho II
, he heard the pinging device in operation and investigated; he caught one of the agents in the act. Your man probably tried to lie his way out of it, but Henry Munk was an instrument specialist. He recognized a communications pinger when he saw one and quickly figured the game. It was a case of the cat killing curiosity. Munk had to be silenced, and he was, from a blow to the base of the skull by one of Woodson's camera tripods. This created an awkward situation for the murderer, so he bashed Munk's head against the alternator housing to make it look like an accident. However, the fish didn't take the bait. Woodson was suspicious; I was suspicious; and to top it off, Doc Bailey found the bruise on Munk's neck. But since there was no way of proving who the killer was, I decided to string along with the accident story until I could scratch up enough evidence to point an accusing finger. Later, I went back and searched the submersible and discovered one slightly used and very bent camera tripod along with the pinging device where our friendly neighborhood spy had, ironically, hidden them in Munk's own storage locker. Certain that it was a waste of time to have them checked on shore for fingerprints—I didn't need a bolt from the blue to tell me I was dealing with a professional—I left the tripod and the pinger exactly as I found them. I took the chance that it would only be a matter of time before your agent got complacent and began contacting the
Mikhail Kurkov
again. So I waited.”

“A fascinating story,” Prevlov said. “But very circumstantial. Absolute proof would have been impossible to come by.”

Pitt smiled enigmatically and continued. “The proof came through a process of elimination. I was relatively sure the killer had to be one of the three men on board the submersible who were supposedly asleep during their rest period. I then alternated the
Sappho II
's crew schedule every few days so that two of them had duties on the surface while the third was diving below on the wreck. When our sonar man picked up the next transmission from the pinger, I had Munk's murderer.”

“Who is it, Pitt?” Spencer asked grimly. “There are ten of us here. Was it one of us?”

Pitt locked eyes for an instant with Prevlov and then turned suddenly and nodded at one of the weary men huddled under the lamps.

“I regret that the only introductory fanfare I can offer is the pounding of the waves against the hull, but bear with me and take a bow anyway, Drummer. It may well be your final encore before you toast in the electric chair.”

“Ben Drummer!” Gunn gasped. “I can't believe it. Not with him sitting there all battered and bloody after attacking Woodson's killer.”

“Local color,” Pitt said. “It was too early to raise the curtain on his identity, not at least until we had all walked the plank. Until then, Prevlov needed an informer to blow the whistle on any ideas we might have dreamed up for retaking the ship.”

“He fooled me,” said Giordino. “He's worked harder than any two men on the crew to keep the
Titanic
floating.”

“Has he?” Pitt came back. “Sure, he's looked busy, even managed to work up a sweat and get dirty, but what have you actually seen him accomplish since we came on board?”

Gunn shook his head. “But he's…rather I thought that he'd been working day and night surveying the ship.”

“Surveying the ship, hell. Drummer has been running around with a portable acetylene torch and cutting holes in her bottom.”

“I can't buy that,” said Spencer. “Why work at scuttling the ship if his Russian chums want to lay their claws on her too?”

“A desperate gamble to delay the tow,” Pitt answered. “Timing was critical. The only chance the Russians had to board the
Titanic
with any degree of success was during the eye of the hurricane. It was clever thinking. The possibility never occurred to us. If the tugs could have towed the hulk without any complications, we'd have missed the eye by thirty miles. But thanks to Drummer, the instability of the listing hull made the tow job a shambles. Before the cable parted, she sheered all over the ocean, forcing the tugs to reduce their speed to minimum steerage way. And, as you can see, the mere presence of Prevlov and his band of cutthroats attests to the success of Drummer's efforts.”

The truth began to register then. None of the salvage crew had actually witnessed Drummer slaving over a pump or offering to carry his share of the load. It registered that he'd always been off on his own, showing up only to complain of his frustration at not overcoming the obstacles that supposedly prevented his survey tour of the ship. They stared at Drummer as though he were some alien from another world, waiting for, expecting the indignant words of denial.

There was to be no denial, no shocked plea of innocence, only a flicker of annoyance that vanished as quickly as it had come. Drummer's transformation was nothing short of astounding. The sad droop to the eyes had disappeared; they suddenly took on a glinting sharpness. Gone too was the lazy curl from the corners of his lips and the slouched, indifferent posture of his body. The indolent façade was gone and in its place was a straight-shouldered, almost aristocratic-looking man.

“Permit me to say, Pitt,” Drummer said in a precise tone, “your powers of observation would do a first-class espionage agent proud. However, you haven't uncovered anything that really changes the situation.”

“Fancy that,” Pitt said. “Our former colleague has suddenly lost his Jubilation T. Cornpone accent.”

“I mastered it rather skillfully, don't you think?”

“That's not all you mastered, Drummer. Somewhere in your budding career you learned how to win secrets and murder friends.”

“A necessity of the trade,” Drummer said. He had eased away from the salvage crew until he was standing beside Prevlov.

“Tell me, which one are you, Silver or Gold?”

“Not that it matters any longer,” Drummer shrugged. “I'm Gold.”

“Then your brother is Silver.”

Drummer's smug expression hardened. “You know this?” he said slowly.

“After I had you pegged, I turned over my evidence, meager as it was, to the FBI. I have to hand it to Prevlov and his comrades at Soviet Naval Intelligence. They laid a phony history on you that was as American as apple pie, or should I say Georgia peach pie, and seemingly as genuine as the Confederate flag. But the bureau finally broke through the false documents certifying your impeccable security clearance and tracked you all the way back to the old homestead in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where you and your brother were born…within ten minutes of each other I might add.”

“My God!” Spencer muttered. “Twins.”

“Yes, but nonidentical. They don't even look like brothers.”

“So it became a simple case of one twin leading to the other,” Spencer said.

“Hardly simple,” Pitt replied. “They're a smart pair, Drummer and his brother. You can't take that away from them. That was my prime mistake, attempting to draw a parallel between two men who should have had the same likes and dislikes, who shared the same quarters or who palled around together. But Silver and Gold played opposite roles to the core. Drummer was equally chummy to everyone and lived alone. I was at a dead end. The FBI was trying to trace Drummer's brother while rechecking the security clearances of every member of the salvage crew, but nobody could make a definite connection. Then a break in the form of near-tragedy burst on the scene and pinned the tail on the donkey.”