Night Probe! (Dirk Pitt 6)

He laid his hand on the knob, turned it and passed inside. For an instant he was taken back by the opulence of the private coach. They certainly don't make them like they used to, he mused.

A figure wearing a derby hat with a yellowed newspaper covering his features was sprawled in a red velvet revolving chair. Two of his companions sat folded over a mahogany dining table, their heads in their arms. One was dressed in what Shaw identified as an English-cut coat and trousers. The other wore a tropical worsted suit. It was the second who grabbed Shaw's interest. A withered hand clutched the grip of a small travel case.

Almost as if he was afraid of waking its owner, Shaw painstakingly removed the case from under the rigid fingers.

Suddenly he froze. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he caught an imperceptible movement. But it had to be an illusion. The wavering shadows on the walls were causing his inborn fears to run wild. If it was left to his imagination, the feeble light could make anything come alive.

Then his heart stopped. A cardiologist would say that's impossible. But his heart stopped as he stared paralyzed at a reflection in the window.

Behind him, the cadaver with the derby in the revolving chair was straightening to a stiff-backed position.

Then the hideous thing lowered the newspaper from its face and smiled at Shaw.

"You won't find what you're looking for in there," Dirk Pitt said, nodding at the travel bag.

Shaw would never deny that he'd been rattled out of his wits. He sagged into a chair, waiting for his heart to pump again. He could see now that Pitt wore an old coat over a black wet suit. When he finally collected his senses, he said, "You have a disconcerting way of announcing your presence."

Pitt added to the dim illumination by turning on his dive light and then nonchalantly turned his attention back to the old newspaper. "I always knew I was born eighty years too late. Here's a used Stutz Bearcat Speedster with low mileage for only six hundred and seventy-five dollars."

Shaw had used up all his emotional reactions in the past twelve hours and was hardly in the mood for idle levity. "How did you manage to get in here?" he demanded more than asked.

Pitt continued to study the classified automobile ads as he answered. "Swam in through the escape shaft.

Ran out of air and almost drowned, Would have too if I hadn't lucked onto a pocket of stale air under an old submerged rock crusher. One more breath enabled me to break into a side tunnel."

Shaw motioned around the coach. "What happened here?"

Pitt pointed toward the two men at the table. "The man with the travel case is, or rather was, Richard Essex, undersecretary of state. The other man was Clement Massey. Beside Massey is a farewell letter to his wife. It tells the whole tragic story."

Shaw picked up the letter and squinted at the faded ink. "So this fellow Massey here was a train robber."

"Yes, he was after a gold shipment."

"I saw it. Enough there to buy the Bank of England."

"Massey's plan was incredibly complex for its time. He and his men flagged the train at an abandoned junction called Mondragon Hook. There they forced the engineer to switch the Manhattan Limited onto an old rail spur and into the quarry before any of the passengers realized what was happening."

"Judging by this, he got more than he bargained for."

"In more ways than one," Pitt agreed. "Overpowering the guards went off without a hitch. That part of the plan had been well rehearsed. But the four army security guards who were escorting Essex and the treaty to Washington came as a rude surprise. When the gunfire died away, the guards were all dead or wounded and Massey was minus three of his own men."

"Apparently it didn't stop him," said Shaw, reading on.

"No, he went ahead and faked the DeauvilleHudson bridge accident; then he returned to the quarry and set off black powder charges that sealed off the entrance. Now he had all the time in the world to unload the gold and flee out the escape exit."

"How was that possible if it was filled with water?"

"The best laid plans, etcetera," said Pitt. "The escape shaft runs on a higher level than the deep end of the quarry where the original flooding occurred. When Massey hijacked the Manhattan Limited, the way out was still dry. But after he blew the entrance, the shock waves opened underground fissures and water seepage gushed into the shaft and cut off any chance of escape, condemning everyone to a slow, horrifying death."

"The poor devils," said Shaw. "Must have taken them weeks to perish from cold and starvation."

"Strange how Massey and Essex sat down at the same table to die together," Pitt mused aloud. "I wonder what they found in common at the end?"

Shaw set his flashlight so that its beam illuminated Pitt. "Tell me, Mr. Pitt. Did you come alone?"

"Yes, my diving partner turned back."

"I must assume you have the treaty."