Treasure of Khan (Dirk Pitt 19)

"Our buddy Sarghov?" Giordino asked.

"I don't think so," Pitt replied. "His cabin didn't hav

e the look of an impending escape artist."

"I don't understand. The research data would be of value only to the scientific community. We've shared everything with our Russian counterparts. Who would want to steal the information?" Gunn asked, his anguish slowly cooling.

"Perhaps the intent was not to steal the data. Perhaps they just didn't want us to discover something in the data," Pitt reflected.

"Could be," Giordino agreed. "Rudi, that means your beloved computer is probably at the bottom of Lake Baikal snagging lures about now."

"Is that supposed to be a consolation?" he muttered.

"Don't feel bad. You still made out better than the old fisherman."

"True. He did lose his boat," Gunn said.

"He lost more than that," Pitt replied, then told Gunn of the discovery in the cabin.

"But why murder an old man?" Gunn gasped, shaking his head in disbelief. "And what of the others? Were they abducted? Or did they leave willingly, after killing the fisherman and destroying our scientific data?"

The same questions percolated through Pitt's mind, only there were no answers.

• • • •

By midday, an overhead city utility line was tapped from shore and wired to the Vereshchagin, providing electrical power to the grounded ship and activating the bilge pumps that had been disabled. Auxiliary water pumps were deployed on the aft deck, helping pump dry the flooded compartments under the whine of their attached generators. Slowly but surely, the submerged stern began to creep out of the water at a pace far too sluggish for the few remaining crew members watching from shore. Around Listvyanka, residents continued the cleanup from the flood-ravaged waters. The town's celebrated open-air fish market was quickly pieced back together, with several vendors already offering an aromatic assortment of fresh-smoked fish. The sounds of sawing and hammering filled the air as a row of tourist kiosks, taking the brunt of the wave's carnage, were already being rebuilt.

Word gradually filtered in about other destruction around the lake caused by the quake and wave. Extensive property damage had occurred along the southern shores of the lake, but remarkably no loss of life was reported. The Baikalsk paper mill, a landmark facility on the south coast, suffered the most costly damage, its operations forced to close for several weeks while debris was cleared and its flooded structures restored. At the opposite end of the lake, there were reports that the earthquake had severely damaged the Taishet-Nakhodka oil pipeline that skirted the northern shore. Ecologists from the Limnological Institute were already en route to assess the potential environmental damage should an oil spill approach the lake.

Shortly after lunch, Listvyanka's police chief boarded the Vereshchagin, accompanied by two detectives from Irkutsk. The police authorities climbed up to the ship's bridge, where they greeted Captain Kharitonov in a formal manner. The Listvyanka chief, a slovenly man in an ill-fitting uniform, dismissed with a glance the three Americans who sat reconfiguring their computer equipment on the opposite side of the bridge. A self-important bureaucrat impressed with his own power, the chief enjoyed the perquisites, if not the actual work, required of the job. As Kharitonov relayed the missing crewmen and the discovery of the dead fisherman in the flooded cabin below, a flash of anger crossed the chief's face. The missing persons and attempted sinking of the Vereshchagin might be explained away as an accident, but a dead body complicated matters. A potential murder would mean extra paperwork and state officials looking over his shoulder. In Listvyanka, the occasional stolen bicycle or barroom brawl was the extent of his normal criminal dealings, and that was the way he preferred it.

"Nonsense," he retorted in a gravelly voice. "I knew Belikov well. He was a drunken old fisherman. Drank too much vodka and passed out like an old goat. An unfortunate accident," he casually explained away.

"Then what about the disappearance of the two crewmen and the survey team that was rescued with the fisherman, as well as the attempted sinking of my ship?" Captain Kharitonov added with rising anger.

"Ah yes," the police chief replied, "the crew members who opened the sea cocks by mistake. Ashamed of their mechanical error, they have probably fled in embarrassment. They will turn up eventually at one of our fine drinking houses," he said knowingly. Realizing that the two Irkutsk men did not appear to be buying his rationale, he continued. "It will, of course, be necessary to interview the crew and passengers for an official accounting of the incident."

Pitt turned from the egotistical police chief and studied the two lawmen at his side. The detectives from the Irkutsk City Police Criminal Investigation Division were clearly not cut from the same cloth. They were hardened men who wore suits rather than uniforms and carried concealed weapons. No ordinary beat cops, they had an air of quiet confidence that suggested experience and training derived from someplace other than the local police academy. When the three men began a quick round of inquiries aboard ship, Pitt curiously noted that the Irkutsk men seemed more interested in Sarghov's absence than the missing survey team or the dead fisherman.

"Who says Boris Badenov isn't alive and well?" Giordino muttered under his breath after a brief interrogation.

When the interviews were completed, the lawmen returned to the bridge, where the police chief gave Captain Kharitonov a last stern admonition, for effect. The Vereshchagin's captain glumly announced that at the direction of the Listvyanka police, all crew members would be required to return to the ship at once, where they were to remain in confinement until the completion of the investigation.

"They could have at least let us make a beer run first," Giordino moaned.

"I knew I should have stayed in Washington," Gunn grumbled. "Now we're exiled to Siberia."

"Washington is a miserable swamp in the summertime anyway," Pitt countered, admiring the panoramic lake view from the bridge window.

A mile and a half away, he noticed the black freighter that he and Al had flown over the night before. The ship had moved ashore and was docked at an undamaged pier at the far end of town, its stern cargo hold being picked at by a large wharf-side crane.

A pair of binoculars dangled from a hook near the bridge window and Pitt unconsciously pulled them to his eyes while studying the ship. Through the magnified lenses, he saw two large flatbed trucks and a smaller enclosed truck parked on the dock adjacent to the ship. The crane was off-loading items onto the trucks, a little unusual in that Listvyanka was primarily an outgoing port that provided goods to the rest of the lakefront communities. Focusing on one of the flatbed trucks, he could see that it held a strange vertically shaped item on a wooden pallet that was wrapped in a canvas tarp.

"Captain?" he asked of Kharitonov while pointing out the window. "That black freighter. What do you know about her?"

Captain Kharitonov stepped over and squinted in the direction of the ship. "The Primoski. A longtime scullion on Lake Baikal. For years, she made a regular run from Listvyanka to Baikalskoye in the north, carrying steel and lumber for a rail spur being built up there. When the work was completed last year, she sat dead at her moorings for several months. Last I heard she was under short-term lease to an oil company. They brought in their own men to sail her, which upset her old crew. I do not know what they're using her for, probably to transport pipeline equipment."

"An oil company," Pitt repeated. "Wouldn't by chance be the Avarga Oil Consortium, would it?"