Valhalla Rising (68 page)

“Amherst came from a wealthy family of shipbuilders and shipowners. He joined the Royal Navy and rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming a captain at age twenty-nine. Born in eighteen thirty and blessed with a brilliant mind, he was a child prodigy and became an engineering genius. He constantly came up with all sorts of inventive designs for ships and their propulsion systems. Unfortunately, he was a bit of a firebrand. When the old mossbacks in the admiralty refused to consider his proposals, he went to the newspapers and vilified them as ignorant men afraid of the future. He was then unceremoniously kicked out of the Navy for insubordination.”

“Much like Billy Mitchell eighty years later.”

“A fair comparison.” Perlmutter continued, “Verne met Amherst on a voyage across the Atlantic on the passenger liner
Great Eastern.
It was Amherst who regaled Verne with stories of his desire to build an underwater vessel capable of going anywhere beneath the oceans. He drew designs on Verne’s notebook paper and described in detail the revolutionary propulsion system he had devised to power his radical submarine. Needless to say, Verne was enthralled. He kept up heavy correspondence with Amherst for four years. Then suddenly, the letters stopped coming. Verne went on to write imaginative tales and became famous, and put Amherst from his mind.”

“Verne loved the sea, as you know, and he owned several yachts, which he sailed around Europe. It was on one of these voyages off Denmark that a great whalelike vessel rose out of the sea and drifted alongside Verne’s sailboat. A stunned Verne, along with his son, Michel, who’d accompanied him, watched as Captain Amherst rose from a forward hatch tower and hailed him, inviting the writer to come aboard. Leaving his boat in Michel’s command, Verne went aboard Amherst’s astounding underwater vessel.”

“So the
Nautilus did
exist.”

Perlmutter nodded almost reverently on his end of the phone. “Verne learned that Amherst had secretly built his submarine in a great underwater cavern beneath the cliffs under his family estate in Scotland. When the vessel was completed and had successfully passed its trials, Amherst put together a crew of professional seamen who were unmarried and not bound to families. He then sailed the seas for thirty years.”

“How long was Verne on board?” asked Pitt.

“Verne ordered his son to sail the yacht back to port and wait in the hotel there. He was flattered that his old friend had sought him out. He stayed on board the
Nautilus,
which was the actual name given the sub by Amherst, for nearly two weeks.”

“Not two years, like the people in the novel?”

“It was more than ample time for Verne to study every inch of the vessel, which he exactingly recorded in his book, with a few writer’s liberties here and there. A few years later, he produced
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.
”

“What finally happened to Amherst?”

“According to an account in Verne’s notebook, a mysterious messenger came to his house in 1895 and gave him a letter from Amherst. Most of the captain’s crew had died and he had intended to return to his ancestral home in Scotland, but it had been destroyed in a fire that killed his remaining relatives. In addition, the cavern in the cliffs where he had built the
Nautilus
had suffered a cave-in, so there wasn’t even that to return to.”

“So he sailed to the Mysterious Island?”

“No,” stated Perlmutter. “Verne made that up so the final resting place of Amherst and his
Nautilus
would not be found. Not, at least, for a long, long time. The letter went on to say that Amherst had found a similar underwater cavern on the Hudson River in New York, which would serve as the tomb for him and the
Nautilus.
”

Pitt stiffened, unable to suppress a shout of euphoria. “The Hudson River?”

“That’s what was written in the notebook.”

“St. Julien.”

“Yes.”

“I love you to death.”

Perlmutter gave out with a chuckle. “My dear boy, with my colossal body, you could never get near enough to do that.”

T
he early-morning mist hung poised over the blue water of the river just as it had nearly a thousand years ago when the Norsemen arrived. Visibility was less than a hundred yards, and the fleet of small sailing yachts and powerboats that usually crowded the river on most summer Sundays had yet to leave their docks. The mist was like the touch of a young woman, soft and gentle, as it curled around the little boat that cruised along the shore beneath the rocky palisades. She was not a graceful craft, nor did her bow and stern rise into the mist with intricately carved dragons like those that had come so many centuries before. She was a twenty-six-foot NUMA work boat, efficient, functional and designed for a close-to-shore survey.

The speed was kept to a meticulous four knots as it dragged the long, narrow, yellow sensor below the water in its wake. Signals from the sensor were sent into the recording unit of the side-scan sonar, and Giordino stood and stared intently at the colored three-dimensional display that revealed the bottom of the river and the submerged rock at the base of the palisades. There was no beach, only a brief bit of sand and rock that quickly dropped off again once it reached the water.

Kelly stood at the helm, steering cautiously and keeping her sapphire blue eyes darting between the shoreline to her left and the waters ahead, respectful and wary of any underwater rocks that might carve up the bottom of the boat. The small craft seemed to be barely crawling through the water. The throttle of the big Yamaha 250-horsepower outboard motor on the stern was barely set a notch above idle.

She wore only basic makeup, and her honey maple hair was braided down her back, the mist building on the woven strands, droplets glistening like pearls. Her brief shorts were white, accented by a sea-foam green sleeveless sweater worn under a lightweight jersey cotton jacket. Her feet, nicely shaped, were inserted into open sandals whose color matched her sweater. The long, sculptured legs were spread with feet firmly planted on the deck to compensate for any roll caused by the wake of a passing boat unseen in the mist.

As focused as he was on the sonar recording, Giordino could not resist an occasional quick glance at Kelly’s firmly encased stern. Pitt did not have the opportunity. He was comfortably laid back in a lawn chair plopped on the bow of the survey boat. Not one to put up a front to impress anyone, he often carried his favorite lawn chair and a thick soft pad on expeditions such as this one, when he saw no reason to stand for hours at a stretch. He reached down and raised a cup with a flared base for stability and sipped at the black coffee inside. Then he resumed peering at the palisades through wide-angle binoculars whose lenses were ground for detailed close viewing.

Except for sections where the ridges of volcanic rock rose in sheer vertical formation, the steep slopes were covered with brush and small trees. Part of the Newark Basin rift system that had become inactive during the Jurassic Age, the palisades contained characteristic sedimentary sandstones and mud rocks, which had a reddish-brown color and were used to build the brownstone homes and town houses of New York City. The steeper escarpments were composed of igneous rock that was highly resistant to erosion, giving it a great natural beauty.

“Another two hundred yards before we pass beneath Dad’s farm,” announced Kelly.

“Any readings, Al?” Pitt asked through the windshield that was propped open.

“Rocks and silt,” Giordino answered briefly. “Silt and rocks.”

“Keep an eye out for any indication of a rock slide.”

“You think the entrance to the cavern might have been sealed by nature?”

“I’m guessing it was by man.”

“If Cameron took his sub inside the cliffs, there must have been an underwater cavity.”

Pitt talked without lowering the glasses. “The question is whether it still exists.”

“You’d think sport divers would have stumbled onto it by now,” said Kelly.

“It could only happen by chance. There are no wrecks to dive on near here and there are better spots in the river to spearfish.”

“One hundred yards,” warned Kelly.

Pitt aimed the glasses at the top of the cliff three hundred and fifty feet above and saw the roofs of Egan’s house and study rising over the edge. He leaned forward in anticipation and carefully studied the face of the palisade. “I see signs of a fall,” he said, pointing at the scattered mass of rock that had slid and tumbled down the side of the steep cliff.

Giordino took a swift glance out his side window to see what Pitt was pointing toward and then quickly refocused on the images on the recording paper. “Nothing yet,” he reported.

“Steer another twenty feet from shore,” Pitt ordered Kelly. “That will give the sonar a better angle to read the slope underwater.”

Kelly looked at the instrument dial on the fathometer. “The bottom drops off steeply before sloping toward the middle of the river.”

“Nothing yet,” Giordino said quietly. “The rock appears all crammed together.”

“I have something,” said Pitt almost casually.

Giordino looked up. “Like what?”

“I have what looks like man-made markings in the rock.”

Kelly looked up at the cliff. “Like inscriptions?”

“No,” replied Pitt. “More like marks from chisels.”

“No cave or tunnel from the sonar,” Giordino droned.

Pitt came around the side of the cabin and jumped down on the work deck. “Let’s pull in the sensor and anchor the boat just offshore.”

“You think we should go dive before finding a target?” asked Giordino.

Pitt leaned back and stared up the steep palisade. “We’re directly below Dr. Egan’s study. If there’s a hidden cavern, it has to be around here. We’ll have an easier time sighting it beneath the surface by eye.”

Kelly expertly turned the boat in a tight circle and shut down the throttle as Pitt pulled in the sensor and dropped the anchor. Then she moved it slowly in reverse in the direction of the river current until the flukes dug into the bottom. Then she switched off the ignition and shook the droplets of moisture from her long braided mane. “Is this where you wish to park?” she inquired with a cute smile.

“Perfect,” Pitt complimented her.

“May I come, too? I got my certification in the Bahamas.”

“Let us go first. If we find something, I’ll surface and wave you in.”

It was summer, and the Hudson River water was a brisk seventy-two degrees. Pitt opted for a neoprene quarter-inch wet suit with pads on the knees and elbows. A weight belt with light weights to counteract the buoyancy of the wet suit was clamped around his waist. He pulled on a pair of gloves, his fins and hood before slicking the inside lens of his mask and pulling the straps over his head, setting the mask atop his head with the snorkel dangling. Because he would be diving in no more than ten feet, he did not wear a buoyancy compensator, preferring more freedom and ease of mobility for moving in and around the rocks. “We’ll free-dive first and check out the landscape before we use the tanks.”

Giordino nodded silently and lowered the stepladder over the stern. Instead of falling backward over the side, he dropped down three rungs of the ladder, then stepped off into the water. Pitt swung his legs over the bulwark and slipped in with the barest hint of a splash.

The water was as transparent as glass for thirty feet before it faded into a gloom turned green with clouds of minuscule algae. It was also cold to the flesh. Pitt was warm-blooded and preferred his water temperature to be in the low eighties. If God had meant for humans to be fish, he thought, He’d have given us a body temperature of sixty degrees instead of ninety-eight-point-six.

Pitt hyperventilated and curled forward, lifting his legs and using their weight to push him downward in an effortless dive. The great jagged rocks were massed together like pieces of an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle. Many weighed several tons, while others were no larger than a child’s Radio Flyer wagon. He made sure the flukes of the anchor were securely dug into the sandy bottom before surfacing for air.

The current pulled at Pitt and Giordino, and they used their hands as anchors, clutching the rocks and pulling their bodies over the moss-coated surfaces, thankful they had had the foresight to wear gloves to protect their fingertips from the sharp edges. They soon realized they were not in the right area, because this part of the slope disappeared toward the center of the river too gradually.

They surfaced for air and decided to split the search. Pitt would head up and Giordino would follow the rocky shore downriver. Pitt gazed at the sky to get his bearings on the buildings sitting near the crest. He could just make out the top of the chimney of the house. He swam against the current, parallel to Egan’s house and study four hundred feet above.

The mist was clearing and the sun was beginning to sparkle the water, casting dappled and shimmering light across the slime-coated rocks. Pitt saw few fish larger than his little finger. They darted around him curiously without the slightest show of fear, somehow knowing that this weird lumbering creature was far too slow to catch them. He wiggled a finger at them, but they spiraled around it as if it were a maypole. He continued lazily kicking his fins while floating on the surface and breathing slowly through his snorkel, as he watched the craggy bottom pass beneath.