Night Probe! (Dirk Pitt 6)

"He was probably crushed to death in his sleep."

"What did you mean by 'lousy luck' when I gave you the wreck's angle?"

"A forty-five-degree list to starboard would put cabin forty six in the riverbed," Heidi replied. "The interior must be buried in silt.

"Back to square one. The silt would preserve the treaty's covering but make it almost impossible to find."

Heidi sat silently watching Pitt as he slowly tapped his fingers on the table, his mind rummaging through the data laid before him. His deep green eyes took on a faraway look.

She reached over and touched his hand. "What are you thinking about?"

"The Empress of Ireland," Pitt said quietly. "It's the ship the world forgot. A tomb of a thousand souls.

God only knows what we'll find when we get inside her."

"I hope you don't mind seeing me on such short notice," said the President as he strode from the elevator.

"Not at all," replied Sandecker without fanfare. "Everything has been constructed. Please step this way."

The President motioned his Secret Service men to wait by the elevator. Then he followed the admiral down a carpeted hallway to a large cedar double door. Sandecker opened it and stood aside.

"After you, Mr. President."

The room was circular and the walls were covered by a dark purple fabric. There were no windows and the only piece of furniture was a large kidney-shaped table that stood in the center. Its surface was illuminated by blue and green overhead spotlights. The President approached and stared at a three-footlong object resting on a bed of fine-grained sand.

"So this is how it looks," he said in a reverent tone.

"The grave of the Empress of Ireland," Sandecker acknowledged. "Our miniature craftsman worked from video pictures relayed by the Ocean Venturer."

"Is that the salvage ship?" the President asked, pointing to another model that was suspended on a clear plastic plate about two feet above the Empress.

"Yes, the models are in exact proportion to each other. The distance between them represents the depth from the surface to the riverbed."

The President studied the Empress model for several seconds. Then he shook his head in wonderment.

"The treaty is so small and the ship so large. Where do you begin to look?"

"Our researcher had a breakthrough on that score," said Sandecker. "She was able to pinpoint the location of Harvey Shields' cabin." He motioned to an area amidships on the buried starboard hull. "It lies somewhere about here. There is, unfortunately, a good possibility that the cabin was mangled in the collision with the coal collier."

"How will you go about reaching the cabin?"

"After the crew conducts a survey of the interior of the ship by an unmanned remote search vehicle,"

replied Sandecker, "the salvage operation will start on the lifeboat deck and excavate downward to the target site."

"It looks like they're going about it the hard way," said the President. "Me, I'd enter from outside the lower hull."

"Easier said . . . As near as we can figure, Shields' cabin lies under tons of silt. Take my word for it, Mr.

President, dredging through river mud is a dangerous, exhausting, time-consuming procedure. By attacking from inside the ship the men will have a firm platform from which to work, and most important, they'll be able to orient the exact direction of their penetration from the shipbuilder's plans at any time during the operation."

"You've made your case," the President acquiesced.

Sandecker went on: "We're relying on four different systems to tunnel through the guts of the ship. One is the derrick you see on the Ocean Venturer. Designed for a lifting load of fifty tons, it will remove the heavier debris. Second, a two-man submersible with mechanical arms will function as an all-purpose back up unit."

The President picked up a detailed miniature and studied it. "I take it this represents the submersible?"

Sandecker nodded. "The Sappho I. It was one of four deepwater recovery vehicles used on the Titanic project last year."