Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

"Damn! I had hoped to be a CIA agent tonight."

She grinned. "Dana told me about a few of your escapades. Leading poor innocent girls astray. For shame."

"Don't believe all you hear. Actually, I'm shy and introverted when it comes to women."

"Oh really?"

"Scout's honor." He lit her cigarette. "Where's Dana tonight?"

"Very sly of you. You tried to zing one over on me."

"Not really. I just-"

"It's none of your prying business, of course, but Dana is on a ship somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean about now."

"A vacation will do her good."

"You do have a way of milking a poor girl for information," Marie said. "Just for the record, so you can inform your pal Gene Seagram, she's not on holiday, but playing den mother to a regiment of news correspondents who demanded to be on the scene when the Titanic is raised next week."

"I guess I asked for that."

"Good. I'm always impressed by a man who admits the folly of his ways." She tilted her eyes at him in a kind of mocking amusement. "Now that that's settled, why don't you propose to me?"

Donner's brows knitted. "Isn't the coy maiden the one who's supposed to say, `But sir, I hardly know you'?"

She took his hand and stood up. "Come on then."

"May I ask where?"

"To your place," she said with a mischievous grin.

"My place?" Events were clearly moving too fast for Donner.

"Sure. We have to make love, don't we? How else can two people who are engaged to be married get to know each other?"

44

Pitt slouched in his train seat and idly watched the Devon countryside glide past the window. The tracks curved along the coastline at Dawlish. In the Channel he could see a small fleet of fishing trawlers heading out for the morning's catch. Soon a misting rain streaked the glass and blurred his view, so he turned once more to the magazine on his lap and thumbed the pages without really seeing them.

If they had told him two days ago that he'd take a temporary leave from the salvage operation, he'd have thought them stupid. And, if they'd suggested that he'd travel to Teignmouth, Devonshire, population 12,260, a small picturesque resort town on the southeast coast of England, to interview a dying old man, he'd have thought them downright insane.

He had Admiral James Sandecker to thank for this pilgrimage, and that is exactly what the admiral had called it when he had ordered Pitt back to NUMA headquarters in Washington. A pilgrimage to the last surviving crew member of the Titanic.

"There's no use in arguing the matter any further," Sandecker said unequivocally. "You're going to Teignmouth."

"None of this adds up." Pitt was pacing the floor nervously, his equilibrium struggling to forget the months of endless pitching and rolling of the Capricorn. "You order me ashore during a crucial moment of the salvage and tell me I have two Russian agents, identities unknown, who have carte blanche to go about murdering my crew under the personal protection of the CIA, and then in the same breath, you calmly order me to England to take down the deathbed testimony of some ancient limey."

"That `ancient limey' happens to be the only member of the Titanic's crew who hasn't been buried."

"But what of the salvage operation," Pitt persisted. "The computers indicate the Titanic's hull might break loose from the bottom any time after the next seventy-two hours."

"Relax, Dirk. You should be back on the decks of the Capricorn by tomorrow evening. Plenty of time before the main event. Meanwhile, Rudi Gunn can handle any problems that come up during your absence."

"You don't offer me much choice." Pitt gestured in defeat.

Sandecker smiled benevolently. "I know what you're thinking . . . that you're indispensable. Well, I've got news for you. That's the best salvage crew in the world out there. I feel confident that somehow they'll struggle through the next thirty-six hours without you."

Pitt smiled, but there was no humor in his face. "When do I leave?"