Clive Cussler - Atlantis Found

"My God, that was close!" the helmsman muttered with a thankful sigh.

"A submarine," said Evie in a vague voice, as she lowered her camera. "Where did it come from? What navy did it belong to?"

"I saw no markings," said the helmsman. "It certainly didn't look like any submarine I've ever seen."

The ship's first officer, Jake Bushey, came rushing onto the bridge. "What happened, Captain?"

"A near collision with a submarine."

"A nuclear submarine, here in Marguerite Bay? You must be joking."

"Captain Gillespie isn't joking," said Evie. "I've got a photo record to prove it."

"It wasn't a nuclear sub," said Gillespie slowly.

"She was an old model by the look of her," the helmsman said, gazing at his hands, noticing for the first time that they were shaking.

"Take the bridge," Gillespie ordered Bushey. "Keep us on a course toward that ice ridge a mile off the starboard bow. We'll drop the scientists there. I'll be in my cabin."

Evie and Jake Bushey both caught the distant, puzzled expression on the captain's face. They watched as he dropped down a companionway to the passageway on the deck below. Gillespie opened the door to his cabin and stepped inside. He was a man born to the sea and a lover of sea history. Shelves stretching around the bulkheads of his cabin were filled with books about the sea. His eyes wandered over the titles and stopped at an old ship's recognition book.

He sat in a comfortable leather chair and turned the pages, stopping at a photo in the middle of the book. There it was, a picture of the identical vessel that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The photo showed a large submarine cruising on the surface not far from a rocky coastline. The caption underneath read,

Only known photo of the U-2015, one of two XXI Electro Boats to see operational service during World War II. A fast vessel that could stay submerged for indefinite periods of time and cruise nearly halfway around the world before surfacing for fuel.

The caption went on to say that the U-2015 had been last reported off the coast of Denmark and had vanished somewhere in the Atlantic and was officially listed as Fate Unknown.

Gillespie could not believe what his eyes told him. It seemed impossible, but he knew it to be true. The strange, unmarked vessel the Polar Storm had nearly sent to the icy bottom of the bay was a Nazi U-boat from a war that had ended fifty-six years before.

After a lengthy conference call with Admiral Sandecker, chief director of the National Underwater & Marine Agency, and Francis Ragsdale, the recently appointed director of the FBI, it was agreed that Pitt, Giordino, and Pat O'Connell would fly to Washington to brief government investigators on the strange series of events in the Paradise Mine. FBI agents were dispatched to Pat's home near the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to take her daughter to a safe house just outside Washington, where they would soon be together. Agents also swooped into Telluride and hustled Luis and Lisa Marquez, along with their daughters, to a secret location in Hawaii.

Escorted by a protective ring of deputies, courtesy of Sheriff Eagan, the three of them- Pitt, Giordino, and Pat O'Connell- boarded a NUMA jet and took off for the nation's capital. As the turquoise painted Cessna Citation Ultra V jet banked over the snow-mantled peaks of the San Juan Mountains and set a course northeast, Pat relaxed in her leather seat, reached out, and took Pitt's hand in hers.

"You're sure my daughter is safe?"

He smiled and gently squeezed her hand. "For the tenth time, she's in the capable hands of the FBI. You'll have her in your arms in a few hours."

"I can't picture us living like hunted animals the rest of our lives."

"Won't happen," Pitt assured her. "Once the lunatic nutcases of the Fourth Empire are rooted out, arrested, and convicted, we'll all be able to live normal lives again."

Pat looked over at Giordino, who had fallen asleep before the wheels lifted off the runway. "He doesn't waste any time drifting off, does he?"

"Al can sleep anywhere, anytime. He's like a cat." He held up her hand to his lips and give her fingers a light kiss. "You should get some sleep, too. You must be dead on your feet."

It was the first display of affection Pitt had offered since they'd met, and Pat felt a pleasurable warmth course through her. "My mind is too busy for me to be tired." She pulled her notebook from her case. "I'll use the flight to begin an initial analysis of the inscriptions."

"The aircraft has a computer facility in the rear cabin, if it would be of any help."

"Does it have a scanner to convert my notes onto a disk?"

"I believe so."

The fatigue seemed to ebb from her face. "That would be a great help. A pity my film was ruined after being immersed in the water."

Pitt reached down into his pants pocket, retrieved a plastic packet, and dropped it into her lap. "A complete photo survey of the chamber."

She was quite surprised as she opened the packet and found six canisters of film. "Where in the world did you get these?"

"Compliments of the Fourth Empire," he answered casually. "Al and I interrupted their photo shoot in the chamber. They were finishing up when we arrived, so I'm assuming they recorded the entire text. I'll have the rolls developed first thing in the NUMA photo lab."

"Oh, thank you," Pat said excitedly, kissing him on a cheek thick with stubble. "My notes only covered a smattering of the inscriptions." As if he were merely a passing stranger on a busy street, she turned away from him and hurried toward the aircraft's computer cabin.

Pitt eased his aching body from his seat and walked forward to the compact little galley, opened a refrigerator, and lifted out a soft drink can. Sadly, to his way of thinking, Admiral Sandecker permitted no alcoholic beverages on board NUMA ships or aircraft.

He stopped and stared down at the wooden crate that was firmly strapped in an empty seat. The black obsidian skull had not been out of his sight from the time he carried it from the chamber. He could only imagine the empty eye sockets staring at him through the wood of the crate. He sat in a seat across the aisle and raised the antenna of a Globalstar satellite telephone and punched a stored number. His call was linked to one of seventy orbiting satellites that relayed it to another satellite that relayed the signal to earth, where it was connected with a public telephone network.

Pitt gazed out the port at the passing clouds, knowing the party on the other end seldom answered before the seventh or eighth ring. Finally, on the tenth, a deep voice came through the receiver. "I'm here."

"St. Julien."

"Dirk!" St. Julien Perlmutter boomed, recognizing the voice. "If I'd known it was you, I'd have answered sooner."

"And step out of character? I don't think so."

Pitt could easily picture Perlmutter, all four hundred pounds of him in his ritual silk paisley pajamas, buried amid a mountain of nautical books in the carriage house he called home. Raconteur, gourmand, connoisseur, and acclaimed marine history authority, with a library collection of the world's rarest nautical books, private letters, papers, and plans on almost every ship ever built, he was a walking encyclopedia of man and the sea.

"Where are you, my boy?"

"Thirty-five thousand feet over the Rocky Mountains."

"You couldn't wait to call me in Washington?"

"I wanted to shift a research project into first gear at the first opportunity."

"How can I help you?"

Pitt briefly explained the mysterious chamber and the inscriptions on the walls. Perlmutter listened thoughtfully, interrupting to ask an occasional question. When Pitt finished, Perlmutter inquired, "What specifically do you have in mind?"