Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

"Two reasons," Seagram replied. "First, since the byzanium was on foreign soil, the mine would have to be operated in secret. If the miners were caught by the Russians, the French government would get the blame, not the Americans. Second, the Congress in those days penny pinched the Army to death. There were simply not enough funds to include a mining venture in the Arctic, regardless of the potential profit."

"It would seem the French were playing against a stacked deck."

"It was a two-way street, Mr. President. There was no doubt in Brewster's mind that once he opened the Bednaya Mountain Mine and began shipping the ore, he and his crew of men would be murdered by paid assassins of the Societe des Mines de Lorraine. That was obvious from the Society's fanatical insistence on secrecy. And one other little matter. It was the French and not Brewster who masterminded the Little Angel Mine tragedy."

"You have to give them credit for playing a good game," said Donner. "The Little Angel hoax was the perfect cover for eventually killing off Brewster and his entire crew. After all, how could anyone be accused of murdering nine men in the Arctic when it was a matter of public record that they had all died six months earlier in a Colorado mining accident?"

Seagram continued, "We're reasonably certain that the Societe des Mines spirited our heroes to New York in a private railroad car. From there, they probably took passage on a French ship under assumed names."

"One question I wish you'd clear up," the President said. "In reading over your report, Donner here stated that the mining equipment found at Novaya Zemlya was ordered through the U.S. government. That piece doesn't fit."

"Again, a cover story by the French," Seagram replied.

"The Jensen and Thor files also showed that the drilling equipment was paid for by a check drawn on a Washington, D.C., bank. The account, as it turns out, was under the name of the French ambassador. It was simply one more ruse to cloud the true operation."

"They didn't miss a trick, did they?"

Seagram nodded. "They planned well, but, for all their insight, they had no idea they were being led down the garden path."

"After Paris, then what?" the President persisted.

"The Coloradans spent two weeks at the Societe office, ordering supplies and making final preparations for the dig. When at last all was in readiness, they boarded a French naval transport in Le Havre and slipped into the English Channel. It took twelve days for the ship to pick its way through the Barents Sea ice floes before it finally anchored off Novaya Zemlya. After the men and equipment were safely ashore, Brewster shifted the Secret Army Plan into first gear and ordered the captain of the supply ship not to return for the ore until the first week in June, nearly seven months away."

"The plan being that the Coloradans and the byzanium would be long gone by the time the Societe des Mines ship returned."

"Exactly. They beat the deadline by two months. It took only five months for the gang to pry the precious element from the bowels of that icy hell. It was body-breaking work, drilling, blasting, and digging through solid granite while stabbed by fifty-degree-below-zero temperatures. Never, during the long winter months high along the Continental Divide of the Rockies, had they ever experienced anything like the frigid winds that howled down across the sea from the great polar ice cap to the north; winds that paused only long enough to deposit the terrible cold and replenish Bednaya Mountain's permanent ice sheet before sweeping on toward the Russian coast just over the horizon to the south. It took a frightful toll on the men. Jake Hobart died from exposure when he became lost in a

snowstorm, and the others all suffered terribly from fatigue and frostbite. In Brewster's own words, `it was a frozen purgatory, not fit to waste good spit on."'

"It's a miracle they didn't all die," the President said.

"Good old hardy guts saw them through," Seagram said. "In the end they beat the odds. They had wrested the world's rarest mineral from that wasteland, and they had pulled off the job without detection. It had been a classic operation of stealth and engineering skill."

"They escaped the island with the ore, then?"

"Yes, Mr. President." Seagram nodded. "Brewster and his crew covered over the waste dump and ore-car tracks and concealed the entrance to the mine. Then they hauled the byzanium to the beach, where they loaded it on board a small three-roasted steamer dispatched by the War Department under the guise of a polar expedition. The ship was under the command of a Lieutenant Pratt of the United States Navy."

"How much ore did they take?"

"According to Sid Koplin's estimates, about half a ton of extremely high-grade ore."

"And when processed . . . ?"

"A rough guess at best would put it in the neighborhood of five hundred ounces."

"More than enough to complete the Sicilian Project," the President said.

"More than enough," Donner acknowledged.

"Did they make it back to the States?"

"No, sir. Somehow the French had figured the game and were patiently waiting for the Americans to do the dangerous dirty work before stepping on the stage and snatching the prize. A few miles off the southern coast of Norway, before Lieutenant Pratt could set a course east onto the shipping lane for New York, they were attacked by a mysterious steam cutter that bore no national flag."

"No identification, no international scandal," the President said. "The French covered every avenue."

Seagram smiled. "Except this time, if you'll pardon the pun, they missed the boat. Like most Europeans, they underestimated good old Yankee ingenuity; our War Department had also covered every contingency. Before the French could pump a third shot into the American ship, Lieutenant Pratt's crew had dropped the sides on a phony deckhouse and were blasting back with a concealed five-inch gun."

"Good, good," the President said. "As Teddy Roosevelt might have said, `Bully for our side."'