On the front page of the March 15, 1999, issue of Publishers Weekly, an article announced, “Pitt makes a move.” It went on to explain: “Bestselling thriller novelist Clive Cussler who only recently signed for a new series at Pocket Books, will publish his next two novels about his hero Dirk Pitt with Penguin Putnam, in a deal personally worked out with president Phyllis Grann. Cussler’s agent, Peter Lampack . . . said, [Grann] had presented ‘an extremely aggressive marketing plan’ to the author, traveling out personally to discuss it with him at his Arizona home, ‘and it was that, rather than the very considerable financial offer, that decided us.’”
Two months after the article appeared in Publishers Weekly, a cab dropped Clive off at G.P. Putnam’s Sons’ offices in lower Manhattan. Neil Nyren, Putnam’s senior VP/publisher and editor in chief, recalls his first encounter with Clive. “He had left Simon & Schuster and we were in the process of signing him up. Phyliss Grann was still here and she selected me to be his editor.” (Grann left Putnam two years after Clive arrived and served as executive editor at KnopfDoubleday until her retirement in 2011). Nyren, who joined Putnam in 1984, had previously worked at Random House, Arbor House, and Athenaeum. In addition to Clive, Nyren’s inventory of powerhouse authors includes Tom Clancy, Jack Higgins, Dave Barry, W.E.B. Griffin, Mike Lupica, Frederick Forsyth, and Daniel Silva. During one memorable week, Putnam had a total of eight books on the Times hardcover fiction and non-fiction lists - four were edited by Nyren.
“I would never presume Clive had an agenda,” Nyren says, “but shortly after we met, he related the story about Michael Korda’s heavy-handed editing on one of his books. Clive wrote ‘stet’ on every page and sent it back to Korda. During the more than thirteen years we’ve worked together I’ve made sure Clive’s books are published exactly as he wants them published.”
Clive was scheduled to be in New York for three days and Michael Barson, Putnam’s co-director of publicity, was given the task of finding him a place to stay. Putnam’s travel agent suggested “The W,” a recently opened luxury hotel in Union Square. “A limo would pick Clive up every day,” Barson says. “None of us had been in the hotel until the last day when I picked him to go to lunch with a group of Putnam executives. I walked into the lobby, and it was filled with twenty-seven-year-old Euro-trash and neo-beatniks. Clive comes down and says, ‘Well, Michael, as you see, I’m the only one in this building who is under thirty.’”
During lunch, somebody asked Clive how he liked the hotel. “He explained his room was in a funny corner of the building,” Barson says. “There wasn’t room for a big bed and he couldn’t really stretch out. All eyes turned to me. I’ve been torturing their new bestselling author for three days. When I asked Clive why he didn’t say something, I remember his answer, ‘Oh, I didn’t want to make any trouble.’”
Atlantis Found, the fifteenth Dirk Pitt adventure arrived in bookstores early in December 1999. “At that time we didn’t always go on tour with authors,” Michael Barson explains. “Putnam had a huge list, but management decided Clive’s first book with Putnam was so important I should go with him.”
After two days in New York and New Jersey, the duo flew to California. Three days later, they were in Colorado. “I was amazed,” Barson recalls, “how many fans Clive has in Colorado.” After three days in Colorado Springs and Denver, they headed for Texas and hit stores in San Antonio and Dallas. The tour, ten days in all, ended in Albuquerque.
Barson’s boss, Marilyn Ducksworth, wanted to make Clive’s first Putnam tour special. Having learned his drink of choice was tequila, she arranged with a New York liquor store to FedEx a different brand to each hotel along the way. “It was a grand gesture,” Barson says, “but Clive was only able to take a sip because we were moving fast and getting up early. Those heavy bottles of tequila began to accumulate and guess who got to lug them from airport to airport? Clive insisted I pick out a bottle when we hit our last stop, but at that point, I never wanted to see a bottle of liquor again. That trip with Clive was one of the most enjoyable tours I have been on since joining Putnam in 1994. Seeing the way his fans greeted him at each stop really made an impression on me. It was a special launch for a very special guy.”
Based on the plot Clive “borrowed back” from Paul Kemprecos, Atlantis Found’s prologue introduces two seemingly unrelated events – a comet slamming into North America in 7120 BCE and a nineteenth-century whaling ship discovering a 1770s merchant ship entombed in the Antarctic ice.
On hundred and fifty years later, Dirk Pitt becomes involved with the discovery of a previously unknown ancient civilization and the Fourth Empire, a gang of genetically engineered neo-Nazis planning to destabilize the ocean’s current by fracturing the Ross Ice Shelf from the Antarctic mainland. After the world is ravaged by earthquakes and tidal waves, the would-be world conquerors, safe on a fleet of four super ships, will be free to create their tyrannical vision of a new world order.
Pitt and Giordino head for the South Pole but find themselves stranded with no transportation to reach the Fourth Empire’s base before they unleash their nefarious scheme. With the future of the civilized world in the balance, they encounter an elderly mining engineer heading up a team that has recovered the Snow Cruiser, a vehicle abandoned during Admiral Byrd’s third Antarctic expedition. Pitt realizes the old-timer, who tells him, “Just call me Dad,” may hold the key to saving the world.
The Snow Cruiser is an example of Clive’s knack for reaching back into history and extracting little-known technology. Not only do these elements add interest to his novels, they also enlighten his readers. Built by the Pullman Company in 1939, the Antarctic Snow Cruiser (also known as Penguin I) was envisioned as a more efficient way to travel on the ice than conventional snow tractors. Fifty-five feet long, sixteen feet high and weighing 750,000 pounds, the vehicle carried a crew of five in accommodations resembling a modern motor home. Electricity, generated by a pair of diesel engines, powered four motors driving ten-foot diameter tires.
The Snow Cruiser arrived in Little America, Antarctica, in January 1940. Smooth, with no tread, the vehicle’s tires provided almost no traction, and the transmission proved inadequate to the demands of the frozen landscape. Ultimately covered with timber, the Snow Cruiser was used as a stationary headquarters for scientists until the outbreak of World War II, when it was abandoned. In 1958, the Snow Cruiser was discovered buried in the snow, but later expeditions found no trace of the vehicle. Although there was speculation the Soviet Union might have hauled it off, the Antarctic ice shelf is constantly breaking off, and the Snow Cruiser undoubtedly rests on the bottom of the Southern Ocean.
In Cussler’s story, Dad, the old miner, has his technicians cut grooves into the smooth tires with chainsaws and beef up the transmission. Pitt and Giordino convince Dad to loan them the vehicle, and they arrive in time to dole out harsh justice to the sons and daughters of the Fourth Empire.
Dad is Clive’s fictional alter ego. Mimicking Alfred Hitchcock’s film cameos, the appearances of an old fellow with gray hair, a gray beard, and blue-green eyes have been a familiar component in a Dirk Pitt novel since Clive first introduced himself as a character in Dragon. During a classic car show at a Virginia racetrack, Clive drives a 1926 Hispano-Suiza while racing Pitt, behind the wheel of a 1932 Stutz town car (Clive owns examples of both cars). As expected, Pitt manages to beat his creator by half a car length.
Clive maintains writing himself into Dragon was a joke, and he was certain Simon & Schuster would eliminate it. “Michael Korda,” Paul McCarthy says, “probably gave the manuscript a cursory glance, if he read it at all, and Clive’s deus ex machina made it into the book.” The usually perceptive Pitt never recognizes the helpful gray-haired stranger, whose disguises have included a mining engineer, fisherman, yachtsman, prospector, and bartender/cook.
After Dragon was published, Simon & Schuster received more than 300 letters prompted by Clive turning up in his own book. “My favorite,” one fan avowed,
“is where the author writes himself into the story to get himself out of a corner he’s written himself into. Makes me smile.” Another agreed, “I always enjoy Clive Cussler’s novels . . . I couldn’t keep a straight face when Clive wrote himself into the novel to race Dirk Pitt.” Predictably, a few readers were annoyed. One griped, “He’s far too into himself for my tastes, writing himself into your own novels. Come on!”
Atlantis Found was an instant bestseller, racking up sales of 600,000 copies in six months.
A year later, on August 1, 2000, Blue Gold, the second collaboration between Clive and Paul Kemprecos was published as a paperback. Often referred to as NUMA Files 2, Kurt Austin and his team find themselves facing a tyrannical eco-extortionist plotting to control the world’s fresh water supply. Clive’s readers, convinced the appearance of Kemprecos and Kurt Austin was not a conspiracy devised to send Dirk Pitt into early retirement, headed for their bookstores and Blue Gold added another title to Clive’s list of bestsellers.
A year later, Dirk Pitt returned to action in Valhalla Rising. The multi-layered plot - Vikings exploring North America, metallic monsters threatening shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the 1880s, Captain Nemo, a modern Red Baron, cruise ship disasters, and murderous oil magnates and cartels - inspired one reviewer to declare: “Valhalla Rising is Clive Cussler’s most audacious novel yet.”
In the last few pages, Clive adds an unexpected twist when a set of twins show up at Pitt’s door. The usually unflappable Pitt is staggered to discover Dirk Jr. and Summer are the result of his tryst with Summer Moran, daughter of the evil Delphi who menaced Pitt in Pacific Vortex! Pitt assumed Summer was killed in the collapse of Delphi’s underwater city, but she managed to survive. Horribly disfigured, and not wanting Pitt’s pity, Summer never contacted him, only revealing the identity of their father to her children shortly before her death.
After an emotional outpouring of embraces and tears, Pitt, Sr. takes Dirk, Jr. and Summer on a tour of his collection of classic automobiles and aircraft. Spotting a 1929 Duesenberg, Dirk Jr. tells his father how much he loves antique automobiles.
Now, Pitt was really touched by his newly found offspring. “Ever drive a Duesenberg?”
“Oh, no, never.”
Pitt put his arm around his son and said proudly, “You will, my boy. You will.”
Attendees at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival were stunned when Howard Baldwin announced his production company, Crusader Entertainment, had acquired the motion picture rights to the action-adventure books of Clive Cussler. Clive’s experience with Lew Grade and Raise the Titanic! had left such a bad taste in his mouth, he had turned down a succession of extremely lucrative offers to turn his books into films. Dick Klein remembers a conversation with Clive where he insisted, “They screwed up Titanic so bad I don’t want anything more to do with those Hollywood phonies.”
Clive’s about-face was set in motion by a phone call Peter Lampack received from Baldwin a year before his announcement at Cannes. “Howard told me,” Lampack says. “Philip Anschutz was putting his toes into the entertainment field and wanted to meet with Clive and myself.”
In 2001, Forbes estimated Philip Anschutz’s worth at more than $7 billion. Refusing interviews and maintaining a low-key lifestyle, “the invisible tycoon” made his fortune in oil, railroads, telecom, professional sports, and the entertainment industry.
When, during June 2000, Clive and Lampack were ushered into a conference room on the twenty-fourth floor of Anschutz’s office tower in downtown Denver, they felt like Custer at the Little Big Horn. In addition to Anschutz and Baldwin, six of Anschutz’s attorneys were seated around the table. After a few pleasantries, Anschutz got down to business, suggesting the $30 million Lampack was asking for the film rights to three Dirk Pitt books was excessive. When it became apparent the agent was not going to yield, Anschutz suggested Clive accompany him and Baldwin on a tour of his extensive collection of Western art, housed across the street in another Anschutz building. “As soon as they left,” Lampack says, “it became apparent taking Cussler out of the room was simply a ploy. They wanted me alone.”
The negotiations began to sour when William Immerman - an ex-Los Angeles district attorney turned entertainment lawyer - tried to modify the conditions Clive and Lampack had stipulated in their original conversations with Baldwin. “I explained,” Lampack says, “probably for the thousandth time. We were not going to enter into any deal without those absolute approvals. Clive had vowed never to allow Hollywood to film his books after the Raise the Titanic! disaster. If there was any chance of making another picture, he wanted to exercise some control over the production.”
When Clive, Anschutz, and Baldwin returned from the tour, Lampack was packing up his briefcase. “This negotiation,” he declared, “is over!” Clive remembers looking at Baldwin, “I thought he was going to have a stroke.” Anschutz suggested everybody calm down and keep talking. After several hours of intense wrangling, a compromise was struck: Crusader would buy the rights for Sahara and another unnamed Pitt book for $10 million each. In return, Clive would get “total and absolute discretion” over the first picture and consulting approval rights over subsequent films.
When the meeting ended, Clive and Anschutz shook hands. “Anschutz,” Lampack recalled, “made a reference to the fact that he intended this series to be as successful, if not more so, than the James Bond series. Baldwin appeared extremely relieved.”
Baldwin’s interest in bringing the Dirk Pitt books to the big screen was sparked by Lowell Weicker, the one-time senator and governor of Connecticut. Weicker, a hockey fan and avid scuba diver, was introduced to the Baldwins when they had owned the Hartford Whalers. He already knew Clive from a week spent in the Hydrolab together back in 1980.
When Weicker was informed the Baldwins were headed for Hollywood, he told them, “you’d better do this movie [Sahara].” Ranking among the most popular of the Dirk Pitt novels, Sahara’s plot kicks off a week before the South surrenders. President Lincoln is captured by Confederate forces and spirited aboard the CSS Texas. Loaded with government files and Southern gold, the ironclad manages to break through the Union blockade but disappears in a dense fog. Shifting the action to 1931, aviatrix Kitty Mannock vanishes while flying over the Sahara Desert.
Sixty-five years later, Dirk Pitt, searching the Nile for the remains of a pharaoh’s barge, rescues Dr. Eva Rojas, a scientist investigating a disease turning the natives into crazed savages. Pitt and NUMA are soon engaged in a battle with Yves Massarde, a ruthless French industrialist, assisted by a corrupt warlord, operating a bogus nuclear waste facility. In a race to save the world’s oceans, Pitt figures out the connection between the fate of the Confederate ironclad and Kitty Mannock’s final flight, outwits Massarde and his henchmen, and learns that Abraham Lincoln is not buried in Springfield, Illinois.
On August 29, 2001, a headline in Newsday announced: “Clive Cussler in Control/Bestselling Author Lands $30 Million Deal.” Columnist Liz Smith reported, “. . . some say it’s the most successful book-to-movie deal in Hollywood history . . . In this amazing contract with Crusader Entertainment, the author has final approval of scripts, casting and directors. Sahara begins shooting in the fall in Tunisia or Morocco. The lead has not been cast, but the wonderful William Macy is to play Admiral Sandecker.”
Speaking to the press, Baldwin gushed, “We have forged a unique relationship with Clive, and are committed to maintaining the strength and integrity of his original vision and the amazing adventures he’s created. We intend to make these movies true to his books - action adventures that will appeal to everyone in the family.”
Clive’s enthusiasm matched Baldwin’s. “Over the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been approached by many companies looking to translate my books into movies. It’s a testament to the people at Crusader and their business philosophy that we will be working together on Sahara and other films. They are true collaborators and have the best interests of my read
ers and myself in mind, which is no small feat.”
While Sahara’s production forged ahead and his books continued to hit the bestseller lists, Clive was facing a personal crisis.
During the weekend Clive received his honorary degree from the Maritime College in 1997, Barbara had informed her family she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. “We were shattered,” Teri says. “When I asked Mom why she hadn’t said anything earlier, she said she didn’t want to ruin Clive’s wonderful moment.”
At the time, Dirk recalls thinking, “My mother was the last person you would think had cancer. She was a borderline health nut, always ate well, took lots of vitamins and liked to exercise. She apparently smoked for a while in her twenties, but like Bill Clinton, always claimed she never inhaled.” In the fall of 1997, Barbara underwent a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. After a successful recovery, she resumed her normal activities and Dirk, along with the rest of his family, “assumed that would be the end of it.”
During a routine physical in 2001, Barbara’s doctor discovered several suspicious spots on her lungs. When tests suggested it might be serious, her doctors scheduled her for surgery. “My mother’s illness took us completely by surprise,” Dirk says. “The entire family was there when the surgeon came out to the waiting room. He told us they had removed a small section on one of her lungs and some cancerous tissue in her lymph nodes. This didn’t mean anything to me, but I’ve often thought of the grim look on his face. He must have known then that my mother’s long-term prospects were not good. Barbara sailed through chemo - quietly, without complaint - and life for our family was soon back to normal.”