Clive Cussler - Dragon

Acosta came up, followed by four of his men who unreeled the cable to his floodlight. He stood back and lit the entire trailer in a bright halo.

“Where in hell did this come from?” Acosta said in astonishment.

“Bring your light inside,” said Mancuso, his worst fear realized.

With the added brightness they could see the trailer was clean. The desks were uncluttered, the wastebaskets emptied, and no ashtrays were to be seen anywhere. The only sign of previous occupancy was a construction worker’s hardhat perched on a hook and a large blackboard hung on one wall. Mancuso studied the lined columns. The numerals were in Arabic, while the headings were written in katakana symbols.

“A schedule?” asked Acosta.

“An inventory of the treasure.”

Acosta sank into a chair in back of a desk. “Gone, all of it smuggled away.”

“About twenty-five years ago, according to a date on the board.”

“Marcos?” asked Acosta. “He must have gotten here first.”

“No, not Marcos,” Mancuso answered as though he’d always known the truth. “The Japanese. They returned, took the gold, and left us with the bones.”

14

CURTIS MEEKER PARKED his wife’s Mercury Cougar and casually strode the three blocks to Ford’s Theater between E and F streets on Tenth. He buttoned his overcoat against the brisk fall air and fell in step with a group of senior citizens who were on a late Saturday evening walking tour of the capital city.

Their guide stopped them in front of the theater where John Wilkes Booth had shot Abraham Lincoln and gave a brief lecture before taking them across the street to the Petersen House where the President had died. Unobtrusively, Meeker slipped away, flipped his federal shield at the doorman, and passed into the lobby of the theater. He conversed briefly with the manager and then sat down on a sofa, where he appeared to be calmly reading a program.

To any late first-nighters who quickly passed by Meeker to their seats, he looked like an indifferent theatergoer who was bored with the restaging of a late-nineteenth-century play based on the Spanish-American War and preferred to sit it out in the lobby.

Meeker was definitely not a tourist or a theatergoer. His title was Deputy Director of Advanced Technical Operations, and he seldom went anywhere at night except to his office, where he studied satellite intelligence photos.

He was basically a shy man who rarely spoke more than one or two sentences at a time, but he was highly respected by intelligence circles as the best satellite photo analyst in the business. He was what women refer to as a nice-looking man, black hair specked with gray, kind face, easy smile, and eyes that reflected friendliness.

While his attention seemed locked on the program, one hand slipped into a pocket and pressed a button on a transmitter.

Inside the theater Raymond Jordan was fighting to stay awake. Under his wife’s sideways glare he yawned as a defense against the hundred-year-old dialogue. Mercifully, to the audience sitting in the old-style hard seats, the plays and acts at Ford’s Theatre were short. Jordan twisted to a more comfortable position in the hard wooden seat and allowed his mind to drift from the play to a fishing trip he’d planned for the following day.

Suddenly his revery was broken by three soft beeps on a digital watch on his wrist. It was what was called a Delta watch because of the code it received, and was labeled as a Raytech so it looked ordinary and wouldn’t stand out. He cupped one hand over the crystal display that lit up on the dial. The Delta code alerted him to the severity of the situation and indicated someone would fetch or meet him.

He whispered an excuse to his wife and made his way to the aisle and then to the lobby. When Jordan recognized Meeker, his face clouded. Though he welcomed any interruption, he was not happy that it concerned some kind of crisis.

“What’s the situation?” he asked without preamble.

“We know which ship carried the bomb,” answered Meeker, rising to his feet.

“We can’t talk here.”

“I’ve arranged with the manager for the theater’s executive suite. I can brief you privately in there.”

Jordan knew the room. He led off with Meeker trailing and entered an anteroom furnished in 1860s decor. He closed the door and stared at Meeker. “Are you certain? There is no mistake?”

Meeker shook his head solemnly. “Photos from an earlier weather bird showed three ships in the area. We activated our old Sky King intelligence satellite as it passed over after the explosion and factored out two of the ships.”

“How?”

“With computer enhancement of the radar-sonar system that enables us to see through water as though it was transparent.”

“Have you briefed your people?”

“Yes.

Jordan stared Meeker in the eye. “Are you satisfied with your conclusions?”

“I haven’t a doubt,” Meeker replied squarely.

“The proof is solid?”

“Yes.”

“You know you’ll share the responsibility if you’ve screwed up.”

“As soon as I’ve made my report, I’m going home and sleep like a baby… Well almost.”

Jordan relaxed and settled into a chair beside a table. He looked up at Meeker expectantly. “Okay, what have you got?”

Meeker pulled a leather-bound file folder from a deep pocket inside his overcoat and laid it on the table.

Jordan smiled. “You don’t believe in briefcases, I see.”

“I like my hands free,” Meeker said with a shrug. He opened the file and spread out five photographs. The first three showed the ships on the surface with incredible detail. “Here you see the Norwegian passenger-cargo liner circling the drifting Japanese auto carrier. Twelve kilometers away, the British survey ship is in the act of lowering a submersible into the sea.”

“The before shot,” said Jordan.

Meeker nodded. “The next two are from the Sky King taken after the explosion, revealing two shattered hulks on the bottom. The third has disintegrated. Except for a few scattered pieces of her engines on the seabed, there is virtually nothing left of her.”

“Which one was she?” Jordan asked slowly, as if anticipating the answer.

“We made positive IDs on the two that sank intact.” Meeker paused to turn from the photographs and look into Jordan’s eyes as if to underscore his answer. “The ship that was transporting the bomb was the Japanese auto carrier.”

Jordan sighed and leaned back in the chair. “It doesn’t come as a great shock that Japan has the bomb. They’ve had the technology for years.”

“The giveaway came when they built a liquid-metal fastbreeder reactor. Fissioning with fast neutrons, the breeder creates more plutonium fuel than it burns. The first step in producing nuclear weaponry.”

“You’ve done your homework,” said Jordan.

“I have to know what to look for.”

“Like an elusive, yet-to-be-discovered factory for nuclear weapons production,” Jordan said acidly.

Meeker looked at him unwaveringly, then smiled. “Your ground intelligence hasn’t got a clue where they’re making them either.

“True,” Jordan admitted. “The Japs have accomplished an incredible cover-up. I’ve a hunch their government leaders are in the dark as well.”

“If their production facility was aboveground, our new satellite detection array would have nailed it.”

“Odd there are no areas of unusual radioactivity.’

“We’ve detected nothing outside their electrical power reactors and a nuclear waste dump near a coastal town called Rokota.”

“I’ve seen the reports,” said Jordan. “They sank a four-thousand-meter shaft to throw their waste. Could it be we’ve overlooked something?”