Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

Sandecker fixed him with a speculative look, but he let it drop at that and turned to one of the shipyard workers. "Call the coroner's office and tell them to come and get that thing out of there. Then clear the area and keep it cleared until I give you an order to the contrary."

The shipyard people needed no further urging. They disappeared from the cargo hold as if by magic.

Seagram grabbed Lusky's arm with an intensity that made he mineralogist start. "Okay, Herb, it's your show now."

Hesitantly, Lusky entered the cavity, stepped over the mummy and pried open one of the ore boxes. Then he set up his equipment and began analyzing the contents. After what seemed forever to the men pacing the deck outside the vault. he looked up, his eyes reflecting a dazed disbelief.

"This stuff is worthless."

Seagram moved in closer. "Say again."

"It's worthless. There isn't even a minute trace of byzanium."

"Try another box," Seagram gasped feverishly.

Lusky nodded and went to work. But it was the same story on the next ore box, and the next, until the contents of all ten were strewn everywhere.

Lusky looked as though he was suffering a seizure. "Junk . . . pure junk.. ." he stammered. "Nothing but common gravel, the kind you'd find under any roadbed."

The hushed note of bewilderment in Lusky's voice faded away and the quiet in the Titanic's cargo hold became heavy and deep. Pitt stared downward, stared dumbly. Every eye was held by the rubble and the broken boxes while numbed minds fought to grasp the appalling reality, the horrible, undeniable truth that everything-the salvage, the exhausting labor, the astronomical drain of money, the deaths of Munk and Woodson had all been for nothing. The byzanium was not on the Titanic, nor had it ever been. They were the victims of a monstrously cruel joke that had been played out seventy-six years before.

It was Seagram who finally broke the silence. In the final ignition of madness he grin

ned to himself in the gray light, the grin mushrooming into' a bansheelike laughter that echoed in the steel hold. He thrust himself through the door of the vault, snatched up a rock, and struck Lusky on the side of the head sending a spray of red over the yellow wood ore boxes.

He was still laughing, locked in the throes of black hysteria, when he fell upon the putrescent remains of Joshua Hays Brewster and began bashing the mummified head against the vault wall until it loosened from the neck and came off in his hands.

As he held the ugly, abhorrent thing before him, Seagram's conflicted mind suddenly saw the blackened, parchmentlike lips spread into a hideous grin. His breakdown was complete. The parallel depression of Joshua Hays Brewster had reached out through the mists of time and bequeathed Seagram a ghostly inheritance that hurled the physicist into the yawning jaws of a madness from which he was never to escape.

79

Six days later, Donner entered the hotel dining room where Admiral Sandecker was eating breakfast and eased into a vacant chair across the table. "Have you heard the latest?"

Sandecker paused between bites of his omelet. "If it's more bad news, I'd just as soon you keep it to yourself."

"They nailed me coming out of my apartment this morning." He threw a folded paper on the table in front of him. "A subpoena to appear in front of a congressional investigating committee."

Sandecker forked another slice of the omelet without looking at the paper. "Congratulations."

"Same goes for you, Admiral. Dollars-to doughnuts a federal marshal is lurking in your office anteroom this very minute, waiting to slap one on you."

"Who's behind it?"

"Some punk-eased freshman senator from Wyoming who's trying to make a name for himself before he's forty." Donner dabbed a crumpled handkerchief on his damp forehead. "The stupid ass even insists on having Gene testify."

"That I'd have to see." Sandecker pushed the plate away and leaned back in his chair. "How is Seagram getting along?"

"Manic depressive psychosis is the fancy term for it."

"How about Lusky?"

"Twenty stitches and a nasty concussion. He should be out of the hospital in another week."

Sandecker shook his head. "I hope I never have to live through anything like that ever again." He took a swallow of coffee. "How do we play it?"

"The President called me personally from the White House last night. He said to play it straight. The last thing he wants is to become entangled in a snarl of conflicting lies."

"What about the Sicilian Project?"