Gunn shook his head. “The Panamanians are crying bloody murder. Between fixing the dam, raising the Salzburg, and compensating for lost traffic through the canal, Uncle Sam is going to be writing the country a pretty large check.”
“It’s still a bargain, considering what we almost lost.”
“I can’t disagree. Sandecker’s pleased as Punch, and the President is extremely grateful. However, for security reasons, he can’t divulge what was at stake. He’s taking lots of heat for what Panama is calling reckless American adventurism.”
Giordino yanked another beer from the cooler and popped its cap. “Reckless American adventurism? I’ll drink to that.”
“Of course,” Gunn said, “the President will be much happier if we return the Sea Arrow’s motor.”
“I have my best team working on it as we speak,” Pitt said.
Gunn looked up the canal in the other direction, eyeing a gray Navy destroyer moored a short distance away.
“The Spruance,” Pitt said. “Our security escort and lift vessel, if we’re fortunate.” Pitt looked Gunn in the eye. “It was a lucky thing you sent her into the locks when you did. I probably wouldn’t be here but for the armed detail they deployed.”
“Hiram and I saw the events unfolding on the canal’s video system. The Spruance happened to be heading in for a canal transit, so we accelerated her passage. Or Vice President Sandecker did, I should say.”
He looked over the side rail and saw air bubbles popping on the surface from the divers below. “How did the cruise ship make out?”
“The Sea Splendour? Her captain figured he was history, but a funny thing happened. The Italian media made him out as a hero for his role in stopping Bolcke and exposing the slave camp. Once the cruise line realized our government was footing the bill for all the damage, they gave him a medal and a promotion. The canal pilot aboard at the time didn’t fare so well, losing his job. But I understand Captain Franco got him an assignment with the cruise line.”
Gunn smiled. “Maybe he can get me a new job, too.”
The bubbles beneath him grew larger until the two divers appeared. Gunn recognized Dirk and Summer as they swam to a dive ladder and climbed aboard.
“Hi, Rudi,” Dirk said. “Come to dive with us? The water’s warm.”
“No, thanks.” Gunn looked askance at the turbid water. “Any sign of the motor?”
“We found it sitting intact, still strapped to the flatbed truck,” Summer said. “It was somehow tossed clear of the other containers, and the Salzburg as well.”
“The flatbed’s pretty mangled, but I didn’t see any damage to the motor itself,” Dirk said. “The Spruance should easily be able to hoist it up.”
Gunn let out a sigh. “That’s great news. NUMA won’t have to pay for a new dam now,” he said, giving Pitt a sideways look.
“Not our area of expertise,” Pitt replied with a laugh. “The Canal Authority did agree to let us supervise the removal of the Salzburg from the ditch, so it looks like we’ll be enjoying the balmy local weather for some time.”
Gunn wiped his brow with a sleeve. “Count me out. But I would like to drag Dirk and Summer back with me to help report on the events that took place.” Gunn reached for his travel bag. “That reminds me, I have a package for you two that I was asked to deliver.”
He rummaged in his bag and retrieved a thin box, which he handed to Summer. She opened it and removed a lengthy handwritten letter clipped to a leather-bound journal.
As she skimmed the letter, Dirk eyed the box and noted the return address. “It’s from Perlmutter. What does St. Julien have to say?”
“He says we’re not going back to Washington with Rudi,” Summer said, looking at her father with persuasive eyes. “Instead, we’re to take a trip to Tierra del Fuego.”
83
THE MOUNT VERNON TRAIL WAS A PICTURE OF tranquillity south of Alexandria, with only the muted whir of light highway traffic nearby intruding its peacefulness. Just a few early-morning joggers and bikers were scattered along its riverfront route, pushing to complete their daily workouts before the business day began.
Dan Fowler pushed himself to sprint the last few steps of his three-mile run, crossing an imaginary finish line before slowing to a walk. He ambled to a nearby drinking fountain, where he lapped up a stream of cool water.
“Good morning, Dan. How was your run?”
Fowler choked, whirling around as water dribbled down his chin. His shock at hearing the familiar voice was evident as he turned to find Ann Bennett standing before him, dressed in her usual business attire.
“Ann . . . how are you?” he stammered.
“Just fine.”
“Where have you been? We’ve all been worried sick.”
“I had to take a little trip.”
“But you didn’t tell anyone. We’ve had the police searching for you. Is everything all right?”
“Yes. A personal matter came up rather unexpectedly.”
Fowler glanced around nervously, spotting only a few joggers and a man repairing a flat tire on his bicycle. “Are you alone? I feared you were in danger.”
“I’m fine. I just wanted to talk to you in private.”
“Sure.” Fowler eyed a grove of trees near the Potomac River that offered some seclusion. “Why don’t we walk?” He gently guided her off the trail.
“I had a lot of time to think about the case while I was away,” she said.
“You probably aren’t aware of the latest developments,” Fowler said, testing her. “Somebody hijacked one of the Sea Arrow’s propulsion motors on its way to Groton.”
“Yes, I was aware of that. Are there any suspects?”
“No, the FBI hit a wall on the case.”
“I’m not surprised. Tell me, Dan, what do you know about the ADS system?”
“ADS? Isn’t that some sort of crowd-control device that the Army cooked up? I really don’t know much about it.”
“Cooked up is right.” Ann thought back to her first encounter with the device in New Orleans. “Didn’t you tell me you were with the Army Research Lab?”
“Yes, I did a short stint there. Why do you ask?”
“According to their personnel director, you managed the security for the Active Denial System program. In that capacity, you would have had access to all its plans. Perhaps you’d find it interesting to know that the Army is not alone in possessing the technology. As a matter of fact, Edward Bolcke has a unit on one of his ships.”
“What are you driving at, Ann?”
“Dan, how long have you been on Bolcke’s payroll?”
They were almost to the trees. Fowler smiled at Ann. “That’s preposterous. We both know that Tom Cerny at the White House is your likely turncoat. Ann, you really shouldn’t jump into the water if you don’t know how to swim.”
Ann ignored the insult. “Cerny was a good red herring. I bought into him for a while, until I reviewed his detailed security clearance. Despite your allusions, he has had no involvement with any military technologies that have been compromised. He also hasn’t set foot in Central America in over twenty years. He’s clean.”
Fowler said nothing as they reached the edge of the grove.
“On the other hand,” Ann said, “I just discovered that you were a founding partner of SecureTek, the security subcontractor that was later sold to Edward Bolcke.”
“You’re reaching now.”
“Am I? We’ve tracked financial payments that were wired from Bolcke’s company to a bank account in your name here in Washington.” This time she was bluffing, but she was confident that further investigation would prove as much.
Fowler kept walking, guiding her deeper into the trees. After a long pause, he said, “Suppose you’re right. Now what?”
“You’ll be tried for espionage and spend the rest of your life in jail.”
Safely obscured from view, Fowler lunged at Ann, cuffing her around the neck and slamming her against a large red oak.
“No,” Fowler said. “I think it ends here.”
Ann stood frozen against the tree as Fowler yanked a bandanna from his pocket and rolled it thin. Wrapping it around her throat, he pulled on the ends to strangle her.
She pushed against him, but he was too strong, pinning her against the tree with his legs. Her head spun, and she began to choke—then she heard a gruff voice from behind Fowler.
“Let her go!”
Fowler turned to see two men dressed as joggers aiming Glock pistols at his head.
The man he had seen fixing a bike came running up wielding an H&K submachine gun. “FBI,” he shouted. “You’re under arrest.”
Fowler slowly released his grip on Ann, letting the bandanna fall to the ground. One of the FBI agents yanked him away as another cuffed his hands behind his back.
Before he was dragged to a waiting car, Ann stepped close and looked him in the eye. “Dan, trust me on this one. I do know how to swim.”
84
THE SEAS OFF TIERRA DEL FUEGO WERE LIVING UP to their latitudinal nickname of the Furious Fifties. A strong westerly blew thick, heaving waves that broke with a boisterous flourish. Rifling currents added to the fury, shoving about the occasional stray iceberg that had drifted in from Antarctica. Over the centuries, these combined forces had carried many a ship to her grave in the frigid waters surrounding Cape Horn. All that was missing was a good williwaw—the sudden violent gusts that pounded the cape without warning.
A small trawler plowed gamely through the maelstrom, giving its occupants a roller-coaster ride. Inside the wheelhouse, Summer grabbed hold of the chart table as the boat slid down a fifteen-foot wave. “You couldn’t have found a bigger boat?” she asked with lament.
Dirk smiled and shook his head. The nautical offerings were slim on short notice in the nearby Argentinean town of Ushuaia. He felt lucky to have chartered the trawler. From Ushuaia, their trek down the Beagle Channel had been relatively calm, but on reaching the open ocean the ride had changed dramatically.
“That’s Isla Nueva straight ahead,” said the captain, a stocky man with white hair.
Summer peered out the wheelhouse window at a hilly green island a mile ahead. “Kind of scenic, in a remote sort of way. How big is it?”
“About eight miles across,” Dirk said. “We should be able to scan the full perimeter in four or five hours.”
“She sure ended up a long way from home.”
“She” was the Barbarigo. Their impromptu search was guided by the package Perlmutter had sent to them in Panama. Inside they had found a logbook from the sailor Leigh Hunt, recording his round-the-world voyage. Intrigued by what Summer had discovered on Madagascar, Perlmutter had tracked down Hunt’s family. One of Hunt’s children had located the logbook after an extended search in the attic of the family’s home. The log provided a detailed accounting of the sailor’s position when he sighted the South Atlantic Wraith.
Summer picked up the log and reexamined Hunt’s entries, as they rolled through the waves. “He says he was sailing north of Nueva and Lennox islands when he saw the Wraith drifting toward Nueva. That means it was likely drifting toward the island’s west coast.”
The trawler was approaching Nueva’s eastern shore, which was faced with high dark cliffs. Waves pounded against the rocky shoreline, spraying billows of white foam.
“Hope the coast is milder on the other side,” Dirk said. “If she hit the rocks around here, we won’t find her on this trip.”
Dirk had the captain bring the trawler as close to shore as possible, and they began a counterclockwise survey of the island. Their search was purely for any visible signs of the submarine, had she run aground. If that failed, a sonar survey of the surrounding waters would follow with the arrival of a NUMA research vessel.
They had scanned dozens of satellite images sent by Yaeger, identifying a handful of coastal anomalies that could be the remains of the Barbarigo. The only way to find out was to inspect the sites, regardless of the angry seas.
They reached the north side of the island, passing towering rocks that could have crushed an approaching vessel. Two sites marked on the satellite photos proved to be rock formations that bore only faint resemblance to a submarine.
As they worked their way west, the coastal terrain flattened, revealing a mixed shoreline of coarse beaches and jagged boulders.
“Coming up on our third site,” Dirk said, comparing a satellite photo with the trawler’s navigation screen.
Summer held a pair of binoculars to her eyes, struggling to hold focus as the deck rolled. “Tell me when we’re directly offshore.”
Dirk plotted the boat’s progress. “Sometime now.”
Summer studied the shoreline, scanning a small gravel beach between two rocky outcroppings. She caught sight of a smooth shape, then was knocked against the bulkhead by a large wave. “Take us in closer.”
She searched for the object again—and spotted a smooth, rounded band tucked against the rocks.
“Something’s there, though it doesn’t look very big.” She passed the binoculars to her brother. “Take a look.”
“Yes, it’s some kind of man-made object.” He lowered the binoculars and looked at his sister. “Let’s go see what’s there.”
The captain had to sail another mile down the coast before he found a small cove that afforded protection from the waves. A small rubber boat was launched, and Dirk and Summer paddled the short distance to land. As they pulled the boat onto the beach, a squall blew in, dousing them with rain.
“Last time we were on an island,” Dirk said, “I would have killed for this kind of storm.”
They trudged up the coast in the downpour, fighting the stiff offshore breeze that pelted their faces with stinging drops. Despite the dismal conditions, Summer noted the rugged beauty of this island at the tip of South America. But the coastal terrain became monotonous in the pouring rain, and after a half hour of hiking, they became unsure about where they had spotted the anomaly.
Standing at the water’s edge studying the surrounding rocks, Summer finally spotted the object farther up the beach. It was a rusty curved plate of steel about six feet long, wedged firmly in the rocks.
“I’ll go out on a limb,” Dirk said. “It could be part of a submarine conning tower.”
Summer nodded and looked out to sea. “She probably struck those rocks and sank offshore. Or drifted out to sea again.”
“No,” Dirk said, his voice registering surprise. “I think that we’ve been looking in the wrong direction.” He tapped Summer’s arm and pointed inland. She saw only a narrow gravel beach. Beyond was a shrub-covered hollow at the base of a rocky knoll. The beach was barren, so she gazed at the hollow—and her jaw dropped.
Poking through the shrubs, another fifty feet inland, was the rest of the conning tower.
They scrambled across the beach and into the thicket, where the entire hull of a submarine was concealed in the brush. The vessel was three-quarters buried, but Dirk could tell they had approached it from the stern. Where there once was a drive propeller he saw only a mangled shaft. They hiked along the hull until they reached the exposed conning tower, which rose like an abandoned castle. Summer pulled a black-and-white photo from her pocket and compared it to the rusting steel hulk. It was a perfect match.
She smiled at her brother. “It’s the Barbarigo.”
They climbed up the battered remnants of the conning tower, where they could make out the imposing hulk of the entire boat through the underbrush.
“How could it have landed way up here?” Summer asked.
“Probably a rogue wave. The ar
ea around Cape Horn is notorious for them. It must have been a real monster to throw her this far inland.”
Summer gazed at the bow. “Do you think her cargo is still aboard?”
It was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question—and the reason they had rushed down to Tierra del Fuego. For Perlmutter had uncovered much more than just the sailor’s logbook. He had pieced together the mystery of the Barbarigo’s last voyage.
It all started with the German scientist Oswald Steiner, who had boarded the sub in Malaysia. Steiner, Perlmutter found, was a highly regarded physicist known for his research in advanced electromagnetics. Pressed into military research by the Nazis, he dabbled in their atomic program before focusing on a secret project of his own: a magnetic rail gun.
Steiner advanced the theory that a projectile launched at extreme velocities could travel up to fifty miles, allowing the Germans to bombard the southeast coast of England from Normandy. For the system to work, he needed the most powerful magnets in the world, and those came from one source. Rare earths.
In 1942 there was little demand for any of the rare earth elements, which were difficult to extract and refine. Germany and her conquests had few of the minerals, but Steiner found a lone source that could meet his needs. A small garnet mine in Malaysia, under Japanese control, extracted samarskite as a by-product. The samarskite contained high concentrations of the rare earth samarium, a key element in producing high-performance magnets.
Traveling to Malaysia, Steiner was stunned to discover a large stockpile of the mineral, amassed over years from mining operations. The local workers referred to it as Red Death due to its deep russet color, but it was Steiner who determined it was lightly radioactive, which in time had produced illness in some of the miners.
Thrilled with his discovery, Steiner requested transport of the samarskite back to Germany. An Italian submarine called the Tazzoli was assigned the task but was sunk in transit. When the Barbarigo arrived in Singapore, scheduled to pick up a supply of rubber and zinc, Steiner had her orders changed and stuffed her with samarskite. Accompanying the shipment home, he died with the Italian crew after they had to abandon the damaged sub.