Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

"You're straddling an interesting concept," Kemper said. "But one fraught with problems."

"Nothing comes easy," Seagram replied.

"What's your next step?"

Sandecker answered that one. "We send down television cameras to locate the hull and survey the damage."

"God only knows what you'll find-" Kemper stopped abruptly and pointed at Sandecker's jerking bobber. "By God, Jim, I believe you've caught a fish."

Sandecker leaned lazily over the side of the boat. "So I have," he said smiling. "Let's hope the Titanic is just as cooperative."

"I am afraid that that hope may prove to be an expensive incentive," Kemper said, and there was no answering smile on his lips.

Pitt closed Joshua Hays Brewster's journal and looked across the conference table at Mel Donner. "That's it then."

"The whole truth and nothing but the truth," Donner said.

"But wouldn't this byzanium, or whatever you call it, lose its properties after being immersed in the sea all these years?"

Donner shook his head. "Who's to say? No one has ever had a sufficient quantity in their hands to know for sure how it reacts under any conditions."

"Then it may be worthless."

"Not if it's locked securely in the Titanic's vault. Our research indicates that the strong room is watertight."

Pitt leaned back and stared at the journal. "It's a hell of a gamble."

"We're aware of that."

"It's like asking a gang of kids to lift a Patton tank out of Lake Erie with a few ropes and a raft."

"We're aware of that," Donner repeated.

"The cost alone of raising the Titanic is beyond comprehension," Pitt said.

"Name a figure."

"Back in 1974 the CIA paid out over three hundred million dollars just to raise the bow of a Russian submarine. I couldn't begin to fathom what it would run to salvage a passenger liner that grosses forty-six thousand tons from twelve thousand feet of water."

"Take a guess then."

"Who bankrolls the operation?"

"Meta Section will handle the finances," Donner said. "Just look upon me as your friendly neighborhood banker. Let me know what you think it will take to get the salvage operation off the ground, and I'll see to it the funds are secretly transferred into NUMA's annual operating budget.

"Two hundred and fifty million ought to start the ball rolling."

"That's somewhat less than our estimates," Donner said casually. "I suggest that you not limit yourself. Just to be on the safe side, I'll arrange for you to receive an extra five."

"Five million?"

"No." Donner smiled. "Five hundred million."

After the guard passed him out through the gate, Pitt pulled up at the side of the road and gazed back through the chain-link fence at the Smith Van and Storage Company. "I don't believe it," he said to no one. "I don't believe any of it." Then slowly, with much difficulty, as if he were fighting the commands of a hypnotist, Pitt dropped the shift lever into "Drive" and made his way back to the city.

29

It had been a particularly grueling day for the President. There were seemingly endless meetings with opposition party congressmen; meetings in which he had struggled, vainly in most cases, to persuade them to support his new bill for the modification of income-tax regulations. Then there had been a speech at the convention of near hostile state governors, followed later in the afternoon by a heated session with his aggressive, overbearing secretary of state.