Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

"Take my word for it," said Kelly. "He's bigger than life."

Pitt set up house in the Manhattan Limited Pullman railroad car that sat on rails along one wall of the hangar. A relic from a Hudson River search operation several years ago, he used it as guest quarters when visitors and friends stayed with him. Giordino often borrowed it for the night when he wanted to impress one of his string of lady friends. Women found the luxurious antique railroad car a very exotic setting for a romantic evening.

He had stepped from the shower and was shaving when the extension phone in the Pullman car rang. He picked up the receiver and simply said, "Hello."

"Dirk!" St. Julien Perlmutter's voice boomed in Pitt's ear. "How are you, my boy?"

"Fine, St. Julien. Where are you?"

"Amiens, France. I spent the day talking to Jules Verne scholars. Tomorrow, I have an appointment with Dr. Paul Hereoux, president of the Jules Verne Society. He has graciously given me permission to conduct research in the society's archives, which are inside the house where Verne lived and wrote until his death in 1905. Verne was an amazing man, you know-I had no idea. A true visionary. He established the genre of science fiction, of course, but he also anticipated flights to the moon, submarines that could circle the globe underwater, solar heating, moving escalators and walkways, three-dimensional holographic images-you name it, he was there first. He also foresaw asteroids and comets striking the Earth and causing wide devastation."

"Discover any new revelations about Captain Nemo and the Nautilus?"

"Nothing beyond what Verne wrote in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and The Mysterious Island."

"That was the sequel, right? The one that told what happened to Nemo after the Nautilus was lost in a maelstrom off the Norwegian coast."

"Yes, Twenty Thousand Leagues came out in 1869 as a magazine serial. The Mysterious Island in 1875 revealed the history and biography of Nemo."

"From what I gathered from Dr. Egan's research on Verne, he seemed fascinated by how the author created Nemo and his submarine. Egan must have believed that Verne had more than a brilliant imagination working for him. I think Egan thought Verne built the story around a real person."

"I'll know more in a couple of days," said Perlmutter. "But don't get your hopes up. Jules Verne's tales, however ingeniously clever, were fiction. Captain Nemo may have been one of the greatest protagonists in literature, but really, he was nothing more than the precursor of the mad scientist out to exact revenge for past wrongs. The noble genius gone wrong."

"Still," Pitt persisted, "for Verne to have created a technical marvel like the Nautilus from the keel up in his own mind seems incredible. Unless Jules Verne was the Leonardo da Vinci of his time, he must have had technical advice above and beyond what was generally thought available in 1869."

"From the real Captain Nemo?" asked Perlmutter cynically.

"Or some other engineering genius," Pitt answered seriously.

"You don't appreciate true genius," said Perlmutter. "I may glean new details from the archives, but I'm not betting my life's savings on the outcome."

"It's been many years since I read the books," said Pitt, "but Nemo was a man of mystery in Twenty Thousand Leagues. If I recall, it wasn't until near the end of The Mysterious Island that Verne offered an insight into Nemo."

"Chapter Sixteen," Perlmutter recited. "Nemo was born the son of a rajah in India. Prince Dakkar, as he was named, was an exceptionally gifted and intelligent child. Verne described him as growing up handsome, extremely wealthy and full of hatred for the British who had conquered his country. His lust for revenge affected his thinking as he grew older, especially after he led and fought in the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857. In revenge, British agents seized and murdered his father, mother, wife and two children.

"During the years he brooded over the loss of his family and country, he threw himself into the science of marine engineering. On a remote, uninhabited island in the Pacific, he used his wealth to build a shipyard, where he created the Nautilus. Verne wrote that Nemo harnessed electricity long before Tesla and Edison built their generators. The engines in the submarine powered the boat indefinitely without the need of refueling or regeneration."

"Makes me wonder if Verne didn't envision Dr. Egan's magneto-hydrodynamic engines."

"After completing his undersea vessel," continued Perlmutter, "he brought on a loyal crew and vanished under the sea. Then in 1867 he took on three castaways who had fallen off an American Navy frigate that he had attacked. They recorded his secret existence and voyaged around the world with him underwater. The castaways-a professor, his servant and a Canadian fisherman-escaped when the Nautilus sailed into the maelstrom and Nemo disappeared. By the time he was sixty years old, his crew had died and he was interred in a coral cemetery beneath the sea. Alone with his beloved submarine, Nemo spent his final years in a cavern beneath a volcano on Lincoln Island. After aiding castaways on the island against pirates and helping them to leave and sail home, he died of natural causes. The volcano then erupted and Lincoln Island sank beneath the sea, burying Captain Nemo and his extraordinary Nautilus in the depths, where they are now enshrined in fictional history."

"But was it fiction?" Pitt mused. "Or based on nonfiction?"

"You'll never sell me that Nemo was anything more than a figment of Verne's imagination," said Perlmutter, in a quiet, authoritative voice.

Pitt said nothing for a few moments. He did not fool himself. He was chasing shadows. "If only I knew what Dr. Egan discovered about the Vikings and Captain Nemo," he said at last.

Perlmutter sighed patiently. "I fail to see a connection between two such totally different topics."

"Egan was a fanatic on both. I can't help but feel they somehow tied in with each other."

"I doubt that he uncovered any previously undiscovered facts on either. Certainly nothing that hasn't already been recorded."

"St. Julien, you're an old cynic."

"I'm a historian, and I do not ch

ronicle or publish anything I can't document."