"Yes, what is it?" he demanded.
"Gene Seagram here. Admiral. Did I catch you in bed?"
"Oh, hell no." Sandecker yawned. "I never retire before I write five chapters on my autobiography, rob at least two liquor stores, and rape a cabinet member's wife. Okay, what are you after, Seagram?"
"Something has come up."
"Forget it. I'm not endangering any more of my men and ships to bail your agents out of enemy territory." He used the word enemy as though the country were at war.
"It's not that at all."
"Then what?"
"I need a line on someone."
"Why come to me in the dead of night?"
"I think you might know him."
"What's the name?"
"Pitt. Dirk. The last name is Pitt, probably spelled P-i-t-t."
"Just to humor an old man's curiosity, what makes you think I know him?"
"I have no proof, but I'm certain he has a connection with NUMA."
"I have over two thousand people under me. I can't memorize all their names."
"Could you check him out? It's imperative that I talk to him."
"Seagram," Sandecker grunted irritably, "you're a monumental pain in the ass. Did it ever occur to you to call my personnel director during normal working hours?"
"My apologies," Seagram said. "I happened to be working late and-"
"Okay, if I dig up this character, I'll have him get in touch with you."
"I'd appreciate it." Seagram's tone remained impersonal. "By the way, the man your people rescued up in the Barents Sea is getting along nicely. The surgeon on the First Attempt did a magnificent job of bullet removal."
"Koplin, wasn't it?"
"Yes, he should be up and around in a few days."
"That was a near thing, Seagram. If the Russians had cottoned onto us, we'd have a nasty incident on our hands about now."
"What can I say?" Seagram said helplessly.
"You can say good night and let me get back to sleep," Sandecker snarled. "But first, tell me how this Pitt figures into the picture."
"Koplin was about to be captured by a Russian security guard when this guy appears out of a blizzard and kills the guard, carries Koplin across fifty miles of stormy water, not to mention stemming the blood flow from his wounds, and somehow deposits him on board your research vessel, ready for surgery."
"What do you intend to do when you find him?"
"That's between Pitt and myself."
"I see," Sandecker said. "'Well, good night, Mr. Seagram."
"Thank you, Admiral. Good-by."
Sandecker hung up and then sat there a few moments, a bemused expression on his face. "Killed a Russian security guard and rescued an American agent. Dirk Pitt . . . you sly son of a bitch."
11
United's early flight touched down at Denver's Stapleton Airfield at eight in the morning. Mel Donner passed quickly through the baggage claim and settled behind the wheel of an Avis Plymouth for the fifteen-minute drive to 400 West Colfax Avenue and the Rocky Mountain News. As he followed the west-bound traffic, his gaze alternated between the windshield and a street map stretched open beside him on the front seat.
He had never been in Denver before, and he was mildly surprised to see a pall of smog hanging over the city. He expected to be confronted with the dirty brown and gray cloud over places like Los Angeles and New York, but Denver had always conjured up visions in his mind of a city cleansed by crystal clean air, nestled under the protective shadow of Purple Mountain Majesties. Even these were a disappointment; Denver sat naked on the edge of the great plains, at least twenty-five miles from the nearest foothills.
He parked the car and found his way to the newspaper's library. The girl behind the counter peered back at him through tear-shaped glasses and smiled an uneven-toothed, friendly smile.
"Can I help you?"
"Do you have an issue of your paper dated November 17, 1911?"
"Oh my, that does go back." She twisted her lips. "I can give you a photocopy, but the original issues are at the State Historical Society."
"I only need to see page three."
"If you care to wait, it'll take about fifteen minutes to track down the film of November 17, 1911, and run the page you want through the copy machine."
"Thank you. By the way, would you happen to have a business directory for Colorado?"
"We certainly do." She reached under the counter and laid a booklet on the smudged plastic top.
Donner sat down to study the directory as the girl disappeared to search out his request. There was no listing of a Guthrie and Sons Foundry in Pueblo. He thumbed to the T's. Nothing there either for the Thor Forge and Ironworks of Denver. It was almost too much to expect, he reasoned, for two firms still to be in business after nearly eight decades.
The fifteen minutes came and went, and the girl hadn't returned, so he idly leafed through the directory to pass the time. With the exception of Kodak, Martin Marietta, and Gates Rubber, there were very few companies he'd heard of. Then suddenly he stiffened. Under the J listings his eyes picked out a Jensen and Thor Metal Fabricators in Denver. He tore out the page, stuffed it in his pocket, and tossed the booklet back on the counter.
"Here you are, sir," the girl said. "That'll be fifty cents."
Donner paid and quickly scanned the headline in the upper-right-hand corner of the old newsprint's reproduction. The article covered a mine disaster.
"Is it what you were looking for?" the girl asked.
"It will have to do," he said as he walked away.
Jensen and Thor Metal Fabricators was situated between the Burlington-Northern rail yards and the South Platte River; a massive corrugated monstrosity that would have blotted any landscape except the one that surrounded it. Inside the work shed, overhead cranes shuffled enormous lengths of rusty pipe from pile to pile, while stamping machines pounded away with an intolerable clangor that made Donner's eardrums cringe from the attack. The main office sat off to one side behind sound-proofed aggregate concrete walls and tall arched windows.
An attractive, large-breasted receptionist escorted him down a shag-carpeted hall to a spacious paneled office. Carl Jensen, Jr., came around the desk and shook hands with Donner. He was young; no more than twenty-eight and wore his hair long. He had a neatly trimmed mustache and wore an expensive plaid suit. He looked for all the world like a UCLA graduate; Donner couldn't see him as anything else.
"Thank you for taking the time to see me, Mr. Jensen."
Jensen smiled guardedly. "It sounded important. A big man on the Washington campus and all. How could I refuse?"
"As I mentioned over the telephone, I'm checking on some old records."
Jensen's smile thinned. "You're not from the Internal Revenue, I hope."
Donner shook his head. "Nothing like that. The government's interest is purely historical. If you still keep them, I'd like to check over your sales records for July through November of 1911."
"You're putting me on." Jensen laughed.
"I assure you, it's a straight request."
Jensen stared at him blankly. "Are you sure you've got the right company?"
"I am," Donner said brusquely, "if this is a descendant of the Thor Forge and Ironworks."
"My great-grandfather's old outfit," Jensen admitted.
"My father bought up the outstanding stock and changed the name in 1942 "
"Would you still have any of the old records?"
Jensen shrugged. "We threw out the ancient history some time ago. If we'd saved every receipt of sale since great granddaddy opened his doors back in 1897, we'd need a warehouse the size of Bronco Stadium just to store them."
Donner pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the beads of sweat from his face. He sagged in his chair.
"However," Jensen continued, "and you can thank the foresight of Carl Jensen, Sr,, we have all our past records down on microfilm."
"Microfilm?"
"The only way to fly. After fiv
e years, we film everything. Efficiency personified, that's us."
Donner couldn't believe his luck. "Then you can provide me with sales for the last six months of 1911?"
Jensen didn't answer. He leaned over the desk, spoke into his intercom, and then tilted back in his executive chair. "While we wait, can I get you a cup of coffee, Mr. Donner?"
"I'd prefer something with a little more snap."
"Spoken like a man from the big city." Jensen stood up and walked over to a mirrored bar from which he produced a bottle of Chivas Regal. "You'll find Denver quite gauche. A bar in an office is generally frowned upon here. The locals' idea of entertaining visiting firemen is to treat them to a large Coca-Cola and a lavish lunch at the Wienerschnitzel. Fortunately for our esteemed out-of-town customers, I spent my business apprenticeship on Madison Avenue."
Donner took the offered glass and downed it.
Jensen looked at him appraisingly and then refilled the glass. "Tell me, Mr. Donner, just what is it you expect to find?"
"Nothing of importance," Donner said.
"Come now. The government wouldn't send a man across half the country to itemize seventy-six-year-old sales records strictly for laughs."
"The government often handles its secrets in a funny way."
"A classified secret that goes back to 1911?" Jensen shook his head in wonder. "Truly amazing."
"Let's just say we're trying to solve an ancient crime whose perpetrator purchased your great-grandfather's services."
Jensen smiled and courteously accepted the lie.
A black-haired girl in long skirt and boots swiveled into the room, threw Jensen a seductive look, laid a Xerox paper on his desk, and retreated.
Jensen picked up the paper and examined it. "June to November must have been a recession year for my ancestor. Sales for those months were slim. Any particular entry you're interested in, Mr. Donner?"
"Mining equipment."
"Yes, this must be it . . . drilling tools. Ordered August tenth and picked up by the buyer on November first." Jensen's lips broke into a wide grin. "It would seem, sir, the laugh is on you."
"I don't follow."
"The buyer, or as you've informed me, the criminal . . ." Jensen paused for effect ". . . was the U.S. government."
12
The Meta Section headquarters was buried in a nondescript old cinder block building beside the Washington Navy Yard. A large sign, its painted letters peeling under the double onslaught of the summer's heat and humidity, humbly advertised the premises as the Smith Van & Storage Company.
The loading docks appeared normal enough. Packing crates and boxes were piled in strategic locations, and to passing traffic on the Suitland Parkway, the trucks parked around the yard behind a fifteen-foot-high chain-link fence looked exactly as moving vans should look. Only a closer inspection would have revealed old derelicts with missing engines and dusty, unused interiors. It was a scene that would have warmed the soul of a motion-picture set designer.
Gene Seagram read over the reports on the real-estate purchases for the Sicilian Project's installations. There were forty-six in all. The northern Canadian border numbered the most, followed closely by the Atlantic seaboard. The Pacific Coast had eight designated areas, while only four were plotted for the border above Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. The transactions had gone off smoothly; the buyer in each case had gone under the guise of the Department of Energy Studies. There would be no cause for suspicion. The installations were designed, to all outward appearances, to resemble small relay power stations. To even the most wary of minds, there was nothing to suspect on the surface.
He was going over the construction estimates when his private phone rang. Out of habit, he carefully put the reports back in their folder and slipped it in a desk drawer, then picked up the phone. "This is Seagram."
"Hello, Mr. Seagram."
"Who's this?"
"Major McPatrick, Army Records Bureau. You asked me to call you at this number if I came up with anything on a miner by the name of Jake Hobart."
"Yes, of course. I'm sorry, my mind was elsewhere." Seagram could almost envision the man on the other end of the line. A West Pointer, under thirty-that much was betrayed by the clipped verbs and the youngish voice. Probably make general by the time he was forty-five, providing he made the right contacts while commanding a desk at the Pentagon.
"What do you have, Major?"
"I've got your man. His full name was Jason Cleveland Hobert. Born January 23, 1874, in Vinton, Iowa."
"At least the year checks."
"Occupation, too he was a miner."
"What else?"
"He enlisted in the Army in May of 1898 and served with the First Colorado Volunteer Regiment in the Philippines."
"You did say Colorado?"
"Correct, sir." McPatrick paused and Seagram could hear the riffling of papers over the line. "Hobart had an excellent war record. Got promoted to sergeant. He suffered serious wounds fighting the Philippine insurrectionists and was decorated twice for meritorious conduct under fire."
"When was he discharged?"
"They called it 'mustering out' in those days," McPatrick said knowledgeably. "Hobart left the Army in October of 1901."
"Is that your last record of him?"
"No, his widow is still drawing a pension-"
"Hold on," Seagram interrupted. "Hobart's widow is still living?"
"She cashes her fifty dollars and forty cents' pension check every month, like clockwork."
"She must be over ninety years old. Isn't that a little unusual, paying a pension to the widow of a Spanish American War veteran? You'd think most of them would be pushing up tombstones by now."
"Oh hell no, we still carry nearly a hundred Civil War widows on the pension rolls. None were even born when Grant took Richmond. May and December marriages between sweet young things and old toothless Grand Army of the Republic vets were quite ordinary in those days."
"I thought a widow was eligible for pension only if she was living at the time her husband was killed in battle."
"Not necessarily," McPatrick said. "The government pays widows' pensions under two categories. One is for service-oriented death. That, of course, includes death in battle, or fatal sickness or injury inflicted while serving between certain required dates as set by Congress. The second is non-service death. Take yourself, for example. You served with the Navy during the Vietnam war between the required dates set for that particular conflict. That makes your wife, or any future wife, eligible for a small pension should you be run over by a truck forty years from now."
"I'll make a note of that in my will," Seagram said, uneasy in the knowledge that his service record was where any desk jockey in the Pentagon could lay his hands on it. "Getting back to Hobart."
"Now we come to an odd oversight on the part of Army records."
"Oversight?"
"Hobart's service forms fail to mention re-enlistment, yet he is recorded as `died in the service of his country'. No mention of the cause, only the date . . . November 17, 1911."
Seagram suddenly straightened in his chair. "I have it on good authority that Jake Hobart died a civilian on February 10, 1912."
"Like I said, there's no mention of cause of death. But I assure you, Hobart died a soldier, not a civilian, on November 17. I have a letter in his file dated July 25, 1912, from Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War under President Taft, ordering the Army to award Sergeant Jason Hobart's wife full widow's pension for the rest of her natural life. How Hobart rated the personal interest of the Secretary of War is a mystery, but it leaves little doubt of our man's status. Only a soldier in high standing would have received that kind of preferential treatment, certainly not a coal miner."
"He wasn't a coal miner," Seagram snapped.
"Well, whatever."
"Do you have an address for Mrs. Hobart?"
"I have it here somewhere." McPatrick hesitated a moment. "Mrs. Adeline Hobart, 261-B Calle Aragon, Laguna H
ills, California. She's in that big senior citizens development down the coast from L.A."
"That about covers it," Seagram said. "I appreciate your help in this matter, Major."
"I hate to say this, Mr. Seagram, but I think we've got two different men here."
"I think perhaps you're right," Seagram replied. "It looks as though I might be on the wrong track."