Clive Cussler - Polar Shift

"Do you trust the Russians?" •

"I don't trust any one. The Russians will be paid in full when they show me the evidence of her death. In the meantime, she is thousands of miles away from here, unable to interfere."

"How do you plan to respond to Austin?"

"I was hoping I could borrow the Lucifer Legion for that job."

"Lucifer? You know how undisciplined they are."

"I'm thinking of deniability. If something goes wrong, they are simply a group of crazed killers acting on their own."

"They'll need some supervision."

"Fine with me."

"I'll take my boat to Portland and catch a helicopter to Boston for the trip to Rio."

"Good. I'll join you there as soon as I take care of some minor matters."

After discussing last-minute details, Margrave hung up and barked an order to his guard. He went into the lighthouse and made a phone call. Then he piled a few belongings into a bag with his laptop computer. Minutes later, he was striding along the pier to the cigarette boat. The boat's powerful engine was warming up. He got aboard with two security men. They cast off, and he gunned the engine, launching the boat over the surface of Penobscot Bay with its bow high in the air.

The boat passed a speck of an island covered with a thick growth of fir trees. Paul and Gamay sat on a large rock in the shade of the trees and watched the fast-moving craft throw up a rooster tail of white water as it went speeding by the island.

"Looks like Mr. Margrave is a man in a hurry," Gamay said.

Trout smiled. "Hope it was something we said."

They hiked across the island to where their boat was tied up to a tree, got in and started the engine. Then they swung the boat around to the other side of the island, gave the motor throttle and followed in Margrave's vanishing wake.

The thirty-story tubular structure that houses the National Underwater and Marine Agency sat on an East Washington hill overlooking the Potomac River. Sheeted in green reflective glass, the building was home to thousands of NUMA's oceanographers, marine engineers and the labs and computers they worked with.

Austin's office was a spartan affair on the fourth floor. It had the usual accoutrements, including a desk, a computer and a filing cabinet. The walls were decorated with photos of NUMA research vessels, charts of the world's oceans and a bulletin board festooned with copies of scientific articles and news clips. On the desk was a favorite photograph of Austin's mother and father sailing on Puget Sound. It was taken in happier days, before his mother died of a lingering disease.

The office's plainness was partly deliberate. Because the nature of the Special Assignments Team's work was largely clandestine, Austin wanted to blend into the NUMA backdrop. The other reason for the purely functional nature of his office stemmed from the fact that he was often away on missions that took him around the globe. His workplace was the world's oceans.

On the same floor was the NUMA boardroom, an imposing space with a ten-foot-long conference table built out of a section of wooden hull from a sunken schooner. Austin had chosen a smaller and less regal space than the conference room to plot strategy. The small study lined with shelves that were stacked with books about the sea was a quiet place often used by those waiting to make presentations.

As Austin sat at an oak table in the center of the study, he thought about Churchill's war room, or the Oval Office, where decisions were made that affected the future of the world. He had no infantry divisions or powerful fleets, he mused. He had Joe Zavala, who would much rather be driving his Corvette convertible with a lovely woman at his side; Barrett, a brilliant computer nerd with a spider tattooed on his bald pate; and the beautiful and intelligent Karla Janos, whom Austin would have preferred to be talking to over cocktails.

"Paul and Gamay are on their way back from Maine," he announced. "They hit a dead end trying to persuade Margrave to call off his plans."

"That means we have only one option," Karla said. "We've got to stop this insane scheme."

Austin gazed across the table at Karla, studying the creamy, unblemished skin and perfect mouth, thinking how unfair it was for a simple threat to the world to intrude on the potential for romance. Karla noticed that she was the object of Austin's coral blue eyes. She raised a finely arched eyebrow. "Yes, Kurt?"

Caught in the act, Austin cleared his throat. "I was wondering how your uncle is doing?"

"Technically, he's my god-grandfather, but he's doing well. Simply exhausted and worn out. The hospital wants to keep him for a few days. He's got to stay off his ankle. But he'll probably escape as soon as he gets some rest."

"I'm glad to hear he's doing well. I can drop you off at the hospital after our meeting. When we're through here, I'm driving down to an event near Manassas National Battlefield to brief Dirk Pitt, NUMA's director."

"Is Pitt refighting the Civil War?" Zavala said.

"He's satisfied with the outcome, as far as I know, but he got roped into a charity deal near Bull Run. He'd like to get filled in before the White House session. What have you got, Joe?"

"Good news. I asked Yeager to scour the records of shipbuilders. I thought if we could figure out where the transmitter ships were built we might be able to track them down. But even Max drew a blank. Next I went after the dynamos. I thought they might be commercially made."

"The generators we saw aren't the kind of thing you'd pick up at your neighborhood electrical supply house."

"Only a few companies manufacture equipment that size," Zavala said. "I followed up on every one, checking their sales for the past three years. They all went to power companies except one order supposedly shipped to a factory in South America, which is owned by Gant's foundation. The same multinational company that owns the factory has a shipyard in Mississippi. Seemed a funny combination of property for anyone to own, especially a nonprofit lobbying group."

"You're sure the foundation owns them?"

"Positive. I checked through the foundation's filings as a nonprofit. They own the shipyard through a straw company set up in Delaware. I had someone from NUMA follow up with a bogus story about retrofitting a big research vessel for us. The company itself is apparently legit. The management said they had just wrapped up a major retrofit job-they wouldn't go into details-and would be interested in making a bid."

"So the ships are still there?"

"They left several days ago. I accessed the NUMA satellite archives. Four ships left the boatyard last week."

"Four?"

"Three transmitter ships and what looks like a passenger liner. They seem to be headed toward South America."

Barrett had been silent since watching the computer simulation. "Thanks for your hard work, Joe. I'm feeling guilty as hell about all this. I can't stop thinking that this tragedy is my fault."

"Not at all," Karla said. "You could never know that your work would be used in a destructive way. It's no different than my grandfather. He was simply interested in pure science." Karla was shaking her head when a smile appeared on her face. "Topsy-Turvy," she said.

She laughed at the bewildered expressions around the table.

"It's the title of a bedtime poem my grandfather used to tell me. Not very good poetry, as I recall, but he said it was something that I would always have if I needed it." She scrunched her brow as she tried to remember the words.

Topsy-turvy,

Turvy-topsy,

The world stands on its head.

The sky's on fire,

The earth's afraid,

The ocean leaves its bed.