Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

"Then you found it on a map."

"No, the village is so small it isn't even a dot in the Michelin Tour Guide. I just happened to notice an old, forgotten hand-painted sign some farmer had set along the main road years ago advertising a milk cow for sale. The directions gave the farm's location as three kilometers east in the next country lane to Southby. The last pieces of the puzzle then began dropping into place."

They walked along in silence and made their way over to where three men were standing. Two wore the standard work clothes of local farmers, the third was in the uniform of a county constable. Pitt made the brief introductions, and then Donner solemnly handed the constable the order for exhumation.

They all stared down at the grave. The tombstone stood at one end of a large stone slab that lay atop the deceased. The stone simply read:

VERNON HALL

Died April 8, 1912

R.I.P.

Neatly carved in the center of the arched horizontal slab was the image of an old three-wasted sailing ship.

"'. . . the precious ore we labored so desperately to rape from the bowels of that cursed mountain lies safely in the vault of the ship. Only Vernon will be left to tell t

he tale, for I depart on the great White Star steamer . . . '" Pitt recited the words from Joshua Hays Brewster's journal.

"Vernon Hall's burial vault," Donner said as if in a dream. "This is what he meant, not the vault of the Titanic."

"It's unreal," Sandecker murmured. "Is it possible that the byzanium lies here?"

"We'll know in a few minutes," Pitt said. He nodded to the two farmers who began shoving at the slab with pry bars. Once the slab was hefted aside, the farmers began digging.

"But why bury the byzanium here?" Sandecker asked. "Why didn't Brewster go on to Southampton and have it loaded on board the Titanic?"

"A myriad of reasons," Pitt said, his voice unnaturally loud in the quiet graveyard. "Hunted like a dog, exhausted beyond human endurance, his friends all brutally murdered before his eyes, Brewster was pushed into madness just as surely as Gene Seagram was when he learned that fate had snatched away his moment of success on the very verge of fulfillment. Add all that to the fact that Brewster was in a strange land; he was alone and friendless. Death stalked him constantly without letup, and his only chance for escaping to the United States with the byzanium was moored several miles away at the dock in Southampton.

"It's said that insanity breeds genius. Perhaps in Brewster's case it was so, or perhaps he was simply misguided by his delusions. He assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that he could never make it safely aboard the ship with the byzanium by himself. So, he buried it in Vernon Hall's grave and substituted worthless rock in the original ore boxes. Then he probably left his journal with the church vicar with instructions to turn it over to the American consulate in Southampton. I imagine his cryptic prose grew from the madness that had brought him to the point where he trusted no one-not even an old country vicar. He probably figured that some perceptive soul in the Army Department would decipher the true meaning of his wandering prose in the event of his murder."

"But he made it on board the Titanic safely," Donner said. "The French didn't stop him."

"My guess is that things were getting too warm for the French agents. The British police must have followed the trail of bodies, just as I did, and were breathing down the pursuers' back."

"So the French, afraid of an international scandal of gigantic proportions, backed off at the last moment," Koplin injected.

"That's one theory," Pitt replied.

Sandecker looked thoughtful. "The Titanic . . . the Titanic sank and queered everything."

"True," Pitt answered automatically. "Now a thousand ifs enter the picture. If Captain Smith had heeded the ice warnings and reduced speed; if the ice packs hadn't floated unusually far south that year, if the Titanic had missed the iceberg and docked in New York as scheduled; and, if Brewster had lived to tell his story to the Army, the byzanium would have simply been dug up and recovered at a later date. On the other hand, even if Brewster had been killed before he boarded the ship, the Army Department would have no doubt figured the double meaning at the end of his journal and acted accordingly. Unfortunately, the wheels of chance played a dirty trick the Titanic sank, taking Brewster along with it, and the veiled words of his journal threw everybody, including ourselves, completely off the track for seventy-six years."

"Then why did Brewster lock himself in the Titanic's vault?" Donner asked in puzzlement. "Knowing that the ship was doomed, knowing that any suicidal act was a meaningless gesture, why didn't he try and save himself?"

"Guilt is a powerful motive for suicide," Pitt said. "Brewster was insane. That much we know. When he realized that his scheme to steal the byzanium had caused a score of people, eight of whom were close friends, to die needlessly, he blamed himself. Many men, and women, too, have taken their own lives for much less-"

"Hold on a moment!" Koplin cut in. He was kneeling over an open case of mineral-analysis gear. "I'm getting a radioactive reading from the fill over the coffin."

The diggers climbed out of the hole. The rest clustered around Koplin and peered curiously as he went through his ritual. Sandecker pulled a cigar from his breast pocket and stuck it between his lips without lighting it. The air was cold, but Donner's shirt was wet right through his coat. No one spoke. Their breaths came in small wisps of vapor that quickly dissipated in the subdued gray light.

Koplin studied the rocky soil. It didn't match the composition of the moist brown earth that surrounded the grave's excavation. At last, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He held several small rocks up in his hand. "Byzanium!"

"Is . . . is it here?" Donner asked in a hushed whisper. "Is it really all here?"

"Ultra high grade," Koplin announced. His face broke into a wide smile. "More than enough to complete the Sicilian Project."

"Thank God!" Donner gasped. He staggered over to an above-ground crypt and unceremoniously collapsed on it, oblivious to the shocked stares of the local farmers.