The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

PROLOGUE

New York City

April

The sky over Manhattan was the color of old pewter. The clouds were so low that the tops of some of the tallest buildings vanished into the mist. The air had a biting edge, while the Hudson Hawk, the famed wind that blew along its namesake river, was in full flight. The spring-like weather from a week earlier was but a memory to the city dwellers.

An armored Chevy Suburban with government plates eased up to the midblock curb in a downtown neighborhood. A late-twenties man in a trench coat holding a furled black umbrella and obviously waiting for the vehicle pushed himself from the flower box he’d been leaning against and approached the big SUV as its passenger’s-side window whispered down.

The driver, a thirty-year veteran in providing security for government officials, said nothing.

“Greetings,” the pedestrian stammered. He peered into the backseat and his mouth flattened into a line when he saw it was unoccupied. “I’m Thomas Gwynn. I’m supposed to meet with the NUMA Director. The National Underwater and Marine Agency. Dirk Pitt.”

Back at the beginning of his career, the driver, Vin Blankenship, would have asked to see ID, but he’d checked the website of the law firm where Gwynn worked and recognized the younger man from his online bio. “Mr. Pitt texted me to say his meeting at the UN is running a little long. He asked that I pick you up before I get him, and then we head over to Queens.”

“Oh, sure. That’s no problem.” Gwynn let himself into the back of the big truck. He loosened the belt on his coat. “Nice and warm in here.”

Despite the extra weight of its armor and bulletproof glass, the Suburban pulled from the curb with remarkable agility and power. Its throaty V-8 was as heavily modified as her coachwork.

Blankenship soon had the big truck cruising north on the FDR. Had he wanted, he could have hit the sirens and lights, but he figured they had plenty of time.

“Did you drive Mr. Pitt here from Washington?” Gwynn asked, just for something to say.

“No. I’m from the New York office. I was assigned to him while he’s here for the UN conference. I picked him up at Penn two days ago, and I’ll be dropping him off there after the tour—or whatever it is he wanted to see today.”

“FBI?”

“Secret Service.”

“Does he need protection like that?”

“C’mon, this is New York. Everyone needs protection.” Blankenship laughed at his own joke.

Fifteen minutes later, he wheeled the Suburban onto the plaza in front of the five-hundred-and-five-foot glass monolith that is the United Nations headquarters. He had to present credentials to guards in black tac gear and slalom through concrete barriers to approach the building. He stopped and rolled down his window so he’d be recognized. His wasn’t the only government Suburban present.

There were dozens of people milling around on the plaza, huddled in little groups of three and four, all with name tags. Most wore smiles and were shaking hands in self-congratulatory ways. Most were dressed in suits, but there were a few Arabs in white dishdashas and some African women in dresses as colorful as tropical bird feathers. This had been a truly international affair. One solitary figure that did not look so pleased spied the idling SUV and its driver. He launched himself across the crowded esplanade with a single-mindedness usually reserved for master jewelers about to make a critical cut.

Dirk Pitt was tall, and rather more lanky than muscular, with a swirl of dark hair and bright green eyes. His mouth was usually held in such a way as to convey a sense that he found life to be pleasantly amusing. Not now, though. His eyes were dark, like the color of a squall at sea, and his mouth was pinched so that his jaw jutted out.

“You look even worse today than after yesterday’s meetings,” Blankenship said as Pitt neared the Suburban.

Pitt pulled himself up into the passenger’s seat next to the driver. This broke security protocol, but the NUMA Director had assured the Secret Service vet that if anything happened he would make sure blame would fall squarely on his own shoulders.

Pitt said, “I may not know how to stem the tide of so much plastic waste entering the world’s oceans, but I do know that spending days in a lecture hall with a bunch of overfed and overindulged bureaucrats who decide nothing other than the agenda for the next round of meetings isn’t going to solve anything.” He gave a little shudder and, just like that, the darkness enveloping him evaporated. He looked over his shoulder with a friendly grin and an outstretched hand. “Thomas Gwynn, I’m Dirk Pitt. Thanks for agreeing to meet in such an unorthodox way. My schedule’s tight, and my wife says I have to be back in Washington tonight for a birthday party for her chief of staff.”

“This is no problem at all,” Gwynn replied. He realized how soft his hand must have felt to Pitt’s callused grip. The man ran a massive government agency, but it was clear he was no overfed, overindulged bureaucrat. “Your wife is Congresswoman Loren Smith.”

“I’m a lucky man,” Pitt said with obvious love. “I will admit that you piqued my interest when you called my office. It was just good luck that I was coming to New York the next day. Most people are aware of the Titanic salvage, some may even remember that I headed the raising, but to the best of my knowledge the fact we were hoping to recover the byzanium ore from her holds remains classified. How do you know about that?” Pitt held up a finger to forestall the answer to ask the driver, “You know where we’re heading, right?”

“I grew up ten minutes from that old site,” Blankenship replied. “I used to fish the East River just upstream.”

Pitt grinned. “I hope you didn’t eat anything you caught.”

The Secret Service man chuckled. “We couldn’

t even identify half the things we caught.”

Turning his attention back to Thom Gwynn, Pitt asked again, “So, how do you know about the byzanium?”

“My law firm kept papers on behalf of the man who recovered it.”

Pitt nodded, and stated, “Joshua Hayes Brewster. A Colorado hard-rock miner who first discovered the ore on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Russian Arctic and then returned in 1911 with a group of other men to wrest it from the mountain.”

He knew the story as surely as he knew his own.

“No, Mr. Pitt. I’m talking about Isaac Bell.”