"Excuse me, Mr. President, but Mr. Seagram and Mr. Donner are waiting."
The President swiveled back to his desk and ran his hands through a patch of thick silver-tinted hair. "Okay, send them in."
He brightened visibly. Gene Seagram and Mel Donner enjoyed immediate access to the President at any time, day or night. They were the chief evaluators for the Meta Section, a group of scientists who worked in total secrecy, researching projects that were as yet unheard of-projects that attempted to leapfrog current technology by twenty to thirty years.
Meta Section was the President's own brainchild. He had conceived it during his first year in office, connived and manipulated the unlimited secret funding, and personally recruited the small group of brilliant and dedicated men who comprised its core. He took great unadvertised pride in it. Even the CIA and the National Security Agency knew nothing of its existence. It had always been his dream to back a team of men who could devote their skills and talents to impossible schemes, fantasy schemes with one chance in a million for success. The fact that Meta Section was still batting zero five years after its inception bothered his conscience not at all.
There was no hand shaking, only cordial hello's. Then Seagram unlatched a battered leather briefcase and withdrew a folder stuffed with aerial photographs. He laid the pictures on the President's desk and pointed at several circled areas that were marked on transparent overlays.
"The mountain region on the upper island of Novaya Zemlya, north of the Russian mainland. All indications from our satellite sensors pinpoint this area as a slim possibility."
"Damn?" the President muttered softly. "Every time we discover something like this, it has to sit in the Soviet Union or in some other untouchable location." He scanned the photographs and then turned his eyes to Donner. "The earth is a big place. Surely there must be other promising areas?"
Donner shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mr. President, but geologists have been searching for byzanium ever since Alexander Beesley discovered its existence in 1902. To our knowledge, none has ever been found in quantity."
"It's radioactivity is so extreme," Seagram said, "it has long vanished from the continents in anything more than very minute trace amounts. The few bits and pieces we've gathered on this element have been gleaned from small, artificially prepared particles."
"Can't you build a supply through artificial means?" the President asked.
"No, sir," Seagram replied. "The longest-lived particle we managed to produce with a high-energy accelerator decayed in less thaw two minutes."
The President sat back and stared at Seagram. "How much of it do you need to complete your program?"
Seagram looked to Donner, then at the President. "Of course you realize, Mr. President, we're still in a speculative stage . . ."
"How much do you need?" the President repeated.
"I should judge about eight ounces."
"I see."
"That's only the amount required to test the concept fully," Donner added. "It would take an additional two hundred ounces to set up the equipment on a fully operational scale at strategic locations around the nation's borders."
The President slumped in his chair. "Then I guess we scrap this one and go on to something else."
Seagram was a tall lanky man, with a quiet voice and a courteous manner, and, except for a large, flattened nose, he could almost have passed as an unbearded Abe Lincoln.
Donner was just the opposite of Seagram. He was short and seemed almost as broad as he was tall. He had wheat colored hair, melancholy eyes, and his face always seemed to be sweating. He began talking at a machine-gun pace. "Project Sicilian is too close to reality to bury and forget. I strongly urge that we push on. We'd be playing for the inside straight to end inside straights, but if we succeed . . . my God, sir, the consequences are enormous."
"I'm open to suggestions," the President said quietly.
Seagram took a deep breath and plunged in. "First, we'd need your permission to build the necessary installations. Second, the required funds. And third, the assistance of the National Underwater and Marine Agency."
The President looked questioningly at Seagram. "I can understand the first two requests, but I don't grasp the significance of NUMA. Where does it fit in?"
"We're going to have to sneak expert mineralogists into Novaya Zemlya. Since it's surrounded by water, a NUMA oceanographic expedition nearby would make the perfect cover for our mission."
"How long will it take you to test, construct, and install the system?"
Donner didn't hesitate. "Sixteen months, one week."
"How far can you proceed without byzanium?"
"Right up to the final stage," Donner answered.
The President tilted back in his chair and gazed at a ship's clock that sat on his massive desk. He said nothing for nearly a full minute. Finally he said, "As I see it, gentlemen, you want me to bankroll you into building a multimillion dollar, unproven, untested, complex system that won't operate because we lack the primary ingredient which we may have to steal from an unfriendly nation."
Seagram fidgeted with his briefcase while Donner merely nodded.
"Suppose you tell me," the President continued, "how I explain a maze of these installations stretching around the country's perimeters to some tight-fisted liberal in Congress who gets it in his head to investigate?"
"That's the beauty of the system," said Seagram. "It's small and it's compact. The computers tell us that a building constructed along the lines of a small power station will do the job nicely. Neither the Russian spy satellites nor a farmer living next door will detect anything out of the ordinary."
The President rubbed his chin. "Why do you want to jump the gun on the Sicilian Project before you're one hundred-per-cent ready?"
"We're gambling, sir," said Donner. "We're gambling that in the next sixteen months we can either make a breakthrough and produce byzanium in the laboratory or find a deposit we can extract somewhere on earth."
"Even if it takes us ten years," Seagram blurted, "the installations would be in and waiting. Our only loss would be time."
The President stood up. "Gentlemen, I'll go along with your science-fiction scheme, but on one condition. You have exactly eighteen months and ten days. That's when the new man, whoever he may be, takes over my job. So if you want to keep your sugar daddy happy until then, get me some results."
The two men across the desk went limp.
At last Seagram managed to speak. "Thank you, Mr. President. Somehow, some way, the team will bring in the mother lode. You can count on it."
"Good. Now if you'll excuse me. I have to pose in the Rose Garden with a bunch of fat old Daughters of the American Revolution." He held out his hand. "Good luck, and remember, don't screw up your undercover operations. I don't want another Eisenhower U-2 spy mission to blow up in my face. Understood?"
Before Seagram and Donner could answer, he had turned and walked out a side door.
Donner's Chevrolet was passed through the White House gates. He eased into the mainstream of traffic and headed across the Potomac into Virginia. He was almost afraid to look in the rear view mirror for fear that the President might change his mind and send a messenger to chase them down with a rejection. He rolled down the window and breathed in the humid summer air.
"We came off lucky," Seagram said. "I guess you know that."
"You're telling me. If he'd known we'd sent a man into Russian territory over two weeks ago, the fertilizer would have hit the windmill."
"It still might," Seagram mumbled to himself. "It still might if NUMA can't get our man out."
2
Sid Koplin was sure he was dying.
His eyes were closed and the blood from his side was staining the white snow. A burst of light whirled around in Koplin's mind as consciousness gradually returned, and a spasm of nausea rushed over him and he retched uncontrollably. Had he been shot once, or was it twice? He wasn't sure.
He opened his eyes and rol
led up onto his hands and knees. His head pounded like a jackhammer. He put his hand to it and touched a congealed gash that split his scalp above the left temple. Except for the headache, there was no exterior sensation; the pain had been dulled by the cold. But there was no dulling of the agonizing burn on his left side, just below his rib cage, where the second bullet had struck, and he could feel the syrup like stickiness of the blood as it trickled under his clothing, over his thighs and down his legs.
A volley of automatic weapons fire echoed down the mountain. Koplin looked around, but all he could see was the swirling white snow that was whipped by the vicious arctic wind. Another burst tore the frigid air. He guessed that it came from only a hundred yards away. A Soviet patrol guard must be firing blindly through the blizzard in the random hope of hitting him again.
All thought of escape had vanished now. It was finished. He knew he could never make it to the cove where he'd moored the sloop. Nor was he in any condition to sail the little twenty-eight-foot craft across fifty miles of open sea to a rendezvous with the waiting American oceanographic vessel.
He sank back in the snow. The bleeding had weakened him beyond further physical effort. The Russians must not find him. That was part of the bargain with Meta Section. If he must die, his body must not be discovered. Painfully, he began scraping snow over himself. Soon he would be only a small white mound on a desolate slope of Bednaya Mountain, buried forever under the constantly building ice sheet.
He stopped a moment and listened. The only sounds he heard were his own gasps and the wind. He listened harder, cupping his hands to his ears. Just audible through the howling wind he heard a dog bark.
"Oh God," he cried silently. As long as his body was still warm, the sensitive nostrils of the dog were sure to pick up his scent. He sagged in defeat. There was nothing left for him but to lie back and let his life ooze away.
But a spark deep inside him refused to dim and be extinguished. Merciful God, he thought deliriously, he couldn't just lie there waiting for the Russians to take him. He was only a professor of mineralogy, not a trained secret agent. His mind and forty-year-old body weren't geared to stand up under intensive interrogation. If he lived, they could tear the whole story from him in a matter of hours. He closed his eyes as the sickness of failure overcame all physical agony.
When he opened them again, his field of vision was filled with the head of an immense dog. Koplin recognized him as a komondor, a mighty beast standing thirty inches at the shoulder, covered by a heavy coat of matted white hair. The great dog snarled savagely and would have ripped Koplin's throat open if it hadn't been kept in check by the gloved hand of a Soviet soldier. There was an indifferent look about the man. He stood there and stared down at his helpless quarry, gripping the leash in his left hand while he steadied a machine pistol with his right. He looked fearsome in his huge greatcoat that came down to booted ankles, and the pale, expressionless eyes showed no compassion for Koplin's wounds. The soldier shouldered his weapon and reached down and pulled Koplin to his feet. Then without a word, the Russian began drawing the wounded American toward the island's security post.
Koplin nearly passed out from the pain. He felt as though he'd been dragged through the snow for miles when actually it was only a distance of fifty yards. That was as far as they'd got when a vague figure appeared through the storm. It was blurred by the wall of swirling white. Through the dim haze of near unconsciousness, Koplin felt the soldier stiffen.
A soft "plop" sounded over the wind, and the massive komondor fell noiselessly on its side in the snow. The Russian dropped his hold on Koplin and frantically tried to raise his gun, but the strange sound was repeated and a small hole that gushed red suddenly appeared in the middle of the soldier's forehead. Then the eyes went glassy and he crumpled beside the dog.
Something was terribly wrong; this shouldn't be happening, Koplin told himself, but his exhausted mind was too far gone to draw any valid conclusions. He sank to his knees and could only watch as a tall man in a gray parka materialized from the white mist and gazed down at the dog.
"A damned shame," he said tersely.
The man presented an imposing appearance. The oak tanned face looked out of place for the Arctic. And the features were firm, almost cruel. Yet it was the eyes that struck Koplin. He had never seen eyes quite like them. They were a deep sea-green and radiated a penetrating kind of warmth, a marked contrast from the hard lines etched in the face.
The man turned to Koplin and smiled. "Dr. Koplin, I presume?" The tone was soft and effortless.
The stranger pushed a handgun with silencer into a pocket, knelt down to eye level, and nodded at the blood spreading through the material of Koplin's parka. "I'd better get you to where I can take a look at that." Then he picked Koplin up as one might a child and began trudging down the mountain toward the sea.
"Who are you?" Koplin muttered.
"My name is Pitt. Dirk Pitt."
"I don't understand . . . where did you come from?"
Koplin never heard the answer. At that moment, the black cover of unconsciousness abruptly lifted up, and he fell gratefully under it.
3
Seagram finished off a margarita as he waited in a little garden restaurant just off Capitol Street to have lunch with his wife. She was late. Never in the eight years they had been married had he known her to arrive anywhere on time. He caught the waiter's attention and gestured for another drink.
Dana Seagram finally entered and stood in the foyer a moment searching for her husband. She spotted him and began meandering between the tables in his direction. She wore an orange sweater and a brown tweed skirt so youthfully it made her seem like a coed in graduate school. Her hair was blond and tied with a scarf, and her coffee-brown eyes were funny and gay and quick.
"Been waiting long?" she said, smiling.
"Eighteen minutes to be precise," he said. "About two minutes, ten seconds longer than your usual arrivals."
"I'm sorry," she replied. "Admiral Sandecker called a staff meeting, and it dragged on later than I'd figured."
"What's his latest brainstorm?"
"A new wing for the Maritime Museum. He's got the budget and now he's making plans to obtain the artifacts."
"Artifacts?" Seagram asked.
"Bits and pieces salvaged from famous ships." The waiter came with Seagram's drink and Dana ordered a daiquiri.. "It's amazing how little is left. A life belt or two from the Lusitania, a ventilator from the Maine here, an anchor from the Bounty there; none of it housed decently under one roof."
"I should think there are better ways of blowing the taxpayer's money."
Her face flushed. "What do you mean?"
"Collecting old junk," he said diffidently, "enshrining rusted and corroded bits of non-identifiable trash under a glass case to be dusted and gawked at. It's a waste."
The battle flags were raised.
"The preservation of ships and boats provides an important link with man's historical past." Dana's brown eyes blazed. "Contributing to knowledge is an endeavor an asshole like you cares nothing about."
"Spoken like a true marine archaeologist," he said.
She smiled crookedly. "It still frosts your balls that your wife made something of herself, doesn't it?"
"The only thing that frosts my balls, sweetheart, is your locker-room language. Why is it every liberated female thinks it's chic to cuss?"
"You're hardly one to provide a lesson in savoir-faire," she said. "Five years in the big city and you still dress like an Omaha anvil salesman. Why can't you style your hair like other men? That Ivy League haircut went out years ago. I'm embarrassed to be seen with you."
"My position with the administration is such that I can't afford to look like a hippie of the sixties."
"Lord, lord." She shook her head wearily. "Why couldn't I have married a plumber or a tree surgeon? Why did I have to fall in love with a physicist from the farm belt?"
"It's comforting to know you loved me onc
e."
"I still love you, Gene," she said, her eyes turning soft. "This chasm between us has only opened in the last two years. We can't even have lunch together without trying to hurt each other. Why don't we say to hell with it and spend the rest of the afternoon making love in a motel. I'm in the mood to feel deliciously sexy."