Valhalla Rising (29 page)

“You have that much data on Cerberus?” Pitt asked, constantly amazed at Max’s enormous library of information.

“Not yet. But I will after I’ve entered their network and those of the companies who do business with them. Since their interests are international, various world governments must also have extensive files on them.”

Pitt looked at Yaeger suspiciously. “Since when is hacking into corporate networks legal?”

Yaeger’s expression took on that of a canny fox. “Once I give Max a command to search, far be it from me to interfere with her methods.”

Pitt rose from his chair. “I’ll leave it to you and Max to come up with the answers.”

“We’ll get to work on it.”

Pitt turned and gazed at Max. “So long for now, Max. You look stunning in that outfit.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pitt. I like you. A pity our circuits can’t integrate.”

Pitt approached Max and extended his hand. It went through the image. “You never know, Max. Someday Hiram may be able to make you solid.”

“I hope so, Mr. Pitt,” said Max in a husky voice. “Oh, how I hope so.”

T
he old aircraft hangar, built in the nineteen thirties for a long-since defunct airline, stood off in one corner of Ronald Reagan International Airport. The corrugated metal walls and roof were coated with orange/brown rust. Its few windows were boarded over, and the door to what once had been the office was weather-worn, with fading and peeling paint. The rounded roof structure sat at the end of an airport maintenance dirt road not far from a guard gate.

Pitt parked the NUMA jeep in the weeds outside the hangar and paused at the entrance door. He glanced at the security camera atop a wooden pole on the other side of the road to see that it had stopped its swivel and was aimed directly at him. Then he punched a sequence of numbers, waited for a series of clicks inside the hangar and turned the brass latch. The ancient door swung open noiselessly. The interior was dark except for a few skylights above an upstairs apartment. He switched on the lights.

The sudden effect was dazzling. Set off in their most elegant magnificence by the bright overhead lights, whitewalls and epoxy floor were three rows of beautifully restored classic automobiles. Sitting incongruously at the end of one row, but just as dazzling as the others, was a 1936 Ford hot rod. On one side of the hangar sat a World War II German jet fighter and a 1929 trimotor transport. Beyond was a turn-of-the-century railroad Pullman car, an odd-looking sailboat mounted on a rubber raft and a bathtub with an outboard motor attached on one end.

The collection of automotive mechanical masterpieces of art represented events in Pitt’s life. They were relics of his personal history. They were cherished, maintained by him and seen by only his closest friends. No one driving the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway past Ronald Reagan Airport who glanced at the obsolete aircraft hangar across the end of the runways could have imagined the incredible array of breathtaking artifacts inside.

Pitt closed and locked the door. He took a brief tour, as he always did after returning home after an expedition. Several rainstorms in the past month had kept down the dust. Tomorrow, he told himself, he would run a soft cloth over the gleaming paint and remove the light coating of dust that had seeped inside the hangar while he was gone. Finishing his inspection, he climbed the antique iron circular staircase to his apartment that was perched above the main floor against the hangar’s far wall.

The interior of his apartment was just as unique as the eclectic transportation collection below. Here there were all sorts of nautical antiques. No self-respecting interior decorator would have set foot in the place, certainly none who endorsed clutter. The 1,100 square feet of living space that included the living room, bathroom, kitchen and a bedroom were crowded with objects from old ships sunk or scrapped. There was a large wooden-spoked helm from an ancient clipper ship, a compass binnacle from an old Orient tramp steamer, ships’ bells, brass and copper divers’ helmets. The furniture was an assemblage of antique pieces that came from ships that had sailed the seas in the nineteenth century. Ship models in glass cases sat on low shelves, while marine paintings of ships crossing the seas by the respected artist Richard DeRosset hung on the walls.

After taking a shower and shaving, he made reservations at a small French restaurant that was only a mile from the hangar. He could have called Loren, but decided he wished to dine alone. Relationships could come later, once he’d wound down. An enjoyable dinner alone and then a night in his large goosedown-mattress bed would serve to rejuvenate him to face the next day.

After dressing, he had twenty minutes to kill before leaving for the restaurant. He took the slip of paper with Kelly’s phone number on it and called her. After five rings, he was about to hang up, wondering why her voice mail didn’t come on, when she finally answered.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Kelly Egan.”

He could hear the intake of breath over the line. “Dirk! You’re back.”

“Just got in and thought I’d call.”

“I’m so glad you did.”

“I’m due for a few days’ vacation. How busy are you?”

“Up to my ears in charity work,” she answered. “I’m chairman for the local Handicapped Children’s Organization. We’re putting on our annual children’s flying roundup, and I’m chairman of the event.”

“I hate to sound stupid, but what is a flying roundup?”

Kelly laughed. “It’s like an air show. People fly in old vintage airplanes and take the kids for rides in them.”

“You have your work cut out for you.”

“Tell me about it,” she said, with a quaint laugh. “The man who owned a sixty-year-old Douglas DC-3 was scheduled to take the kids on flights over Manhattan, but he had a problem with the landing gear and can’t make the show.”

“Where is the roundup?”

“Just across the Hudson River in New Jersey, at a private field near a town called Englewood Cliffs. It’s not far from Dad’s farm and laboratory.” The voice seemed to sadden.

Pitt walked out onto the balcony of his apartment with the portable phone and gazed at the classics below. His eyes fell on the big three-engine transport plane from 1929. “I think I can help you out on your aerial sightseeing project.”

“You can?” Kelly asked, brightening up again. “You know where you can get an old transport plane?”

“When is the roundup?”

“Two days from now. But how can you arrange for one on such short notice?”

Pitt smiled to himself. “I know somebody who is an easy touch for beautiful women and handicapped kids.”

P
itt was up early the next morning, shaved and put on a dark business suit. Sandecker insisted his top-level directors dress the part. He ate a light breakfast and drove across the river to the NUMA headquarters. The traffic was heavy as usual, but he was in no great hurry and used the delays to collect his thoughts and plan his schedule for the day. He took the elevator from the underground parking area straight up to the fourth floor, which held his office. When the doors opened, he stepped out onto an ornate mosaic tile floor with scenes of ships at sea that stretched down the corridor. The entire floor was empty. At seven o’clock, he was the first to arrive.

He stepped into his corner office, removed his coat and hung it on an old-fashioned coat rack. Pitt seldom spent more than six months out of the year at his desk. He preferred working in the field. Paperwork was not his favorite area. He spent the next two hours sorting through his mail and studying the logistics of future NUMA scientific expeditions around the world. As special projects director, he oversaw those projects that dealt with the engineering side of oceanography.

At nine o’clock sharp, his secretary of many years, Zerri Pochinsky, entered the outer office. Seeing Pitt at his desk, she rushed in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Welcome back. I hear you’re to be congratulated.”

“Don’t you start in,” Pitt grumbled, happy to see Zerri.

Zerri was just twenty-five and single when she was hired as Pitt’s secretary. Married to a Washington lobbyist now, she had no children of her own, but they had adopted five orphans. Extremely bright and intelligent, she worked just four days a week: an arrangement Pitt was happy to accommodate because of her mastery of the job, and the fact that she was always two steps ahead of him. She was the only secretary he knew who could still take shorthand.

Vivacious, with an endearing smile and hazel eyes, her fawn-colored hair fell to her shoulders, a style she had never changed in all the years Pitt had known her. In the early years, they had often flirted with each other, but Pitt had an unbroken rule about fooling around in his own office. They’d remained close friends without romantic attachments.

Zerri came around behind Pitt’s desk chair, clasped her arms around his neck and shoulders and gave him a squeeze. “You’ll never know how glad I am to see you in the flesh. I always anguish like a mother whenever I hear you’re reported missing in action.”

“Bad pennies always turn up.”

She straightened up, smoothed her skirt and her tone became official. “Admiral Sandecker wants you in the conference room at eleven o’clock sharp.”

“Giordino, too?”

“Giordino, too. Also, don’t make plans for the afternoon. The admiral has set up interviews with the news media. They’ve gone crazy without any on-the-scene witnesses of the burning of the
Emerald Dolphin
to grill.”

“I told all I knew in New Zealand,” muttered Pitt.

“Not only are you in the United States, but in Washington. The news media considers you a local hero. You have to play along and answer their questions.”

“The admiral should make Al endure the blitz. He loves the attention.”

“Except that he works under you, which makes you the front man.”

For the next few hours, Pitt worked on his detailed report of the crazy events of the past two weeks, beginning with his sighting of the burning cruise liner to the battle and escape of the
Deep Encounter
from the hijackers. He left out the part dealing with the possible Cerberus Corporation connection, because at this point he didn’t have the slightest notion where the giant company entered into the picture. He left it to Hiram Yaeger to continue tracing the thread.

At eleven, Pitt entered the conference room and closed the door behind him. Sandecker and Rudi Gunn were already seated at the long conference table that had been constructed from planking salvaged from a schooner sunk in Lake Erie in 1882. The large room was paneled in teak, and enhanced by a turquoise carpet and a Victorian mantel-piece. Hanging on the walls were paintings of historical U.S. naval battles. Pitt’s worst fears were realized when two other men rose from their chairs to greet him.

Sandecker remained seated as he made the introductions. “Dirk, I believe you know these gentlemen.”

A tall blond man with a mustache and light blue eyes shook Pitt’s hand. “Good to see you, Dirk. It’s been, what, two years?”

Pitt pressed the hand of Wilbur Hill, a director of the CIA. “Closer to three.”

Charles Davis, the special assistant to the director of the FBI, stepped forward. At six foot six, he was by far the tallest man in the room. He always reminded Pitt of a dog with sad, droopy eyes in search of his food dish. “We last met when we worked together on that Chinese immigration case.”

“I remember it well,” Pitt replied cordially.

While they chatted briefly about old times, Hiram Yaeger and Al Giordino walked into the room. “Well, it looks like we’re all present,” said Sandecker. “Shall we get to it?”

Yaeger began by passing around folders with copies of photos the cameras had taken of the sunken
Emerald Dolphin.
“While you gentlemen study these, I’ll run the VCR.”

A huge three-sided monitor dropped from a hidden recess in the ceiling. Yaeger pressed the buttons on a remote control and the images taken by the video cameras of the
Sea Sleuth
began to sweep in three dimensions across a stage in front of the screens. The wreck had a ghostly and pathetic look on the seabed. It was hard to believe that such a beautiful ship could have been reduced to such an incredible degree of devastation.

Pitt gave a narration as the submersible moved along the hull of the sunken cruise liner. “The wreck lies nineteen thousand seven hundred and sixty feet deep on a smooth slope of the Tonga Trench. She’s broken into three pieces. The wreckage and debris field cover a square mile. The stern, and a fragment of the midships section, lies a quarter of a mile from the main forward section. This is where we concentrated our search. At first we believed she shattered upon impact with the bottom, but if you study the way the gaps in the hull are torn outward, it appears obvious that a series of explosions blew out the hull beneath the waterline while the fire-destroyed derelict was under tow by the Quest Marine tugboat. We can safely assume her internal structure, weakened by a series of synchronized detonations, broke up during her plunge to the bottom.”

“Couldn’t the hull have been blown apart when smoldering fire reached the ship’s fuel tanks and caused them to explode while the ship was being towed?” asked Davis.