Night Probe! - Clive Cussler

"Sounds delicious." The phones in the suite jangled.

"Probably for you," he said casually.

She reached over and answered, then held the handset toward him. "They asked for Brian Shaw. Perhaps you'd like to take it in the other room."

"I have no secrets," he said, grinning slyly.

He muttered through a one-sided conversation and then hung up. He made an angered expression.

"Damn, that was the consulate. I have to meet with someone."

"At this time of night?" she asked.

He leaned down and kissed her toes that protruded from the end of the cast. "Revel in anticipation. I'll be back in two hours.

The curator of the Long Island Railroad Museum was an elderly retired accountant who nourished a lifelong passion for the iron horse. He walked yawning through the relics on display while grumbling incessantly about being abruptly awakened in the dead of night to open the building for an FBI agent.

He came to an antique door whose glass was etched with an elk standing on a mountain, looking down on a diamond stacked locomotive puffing a great billow of smoke as it rounded a sharp curve. He fished around with a large ring until he found the right key. Then he unlocked the door, swung it open and switched on the lights.

He paused and stuck out an arm, blodking Shaw's way. "Are you sure you're an FBI man?"

Shaw sighed at the stupid wording of the question and produced a hastily forged ID card for the third time. He waited patiently for the curator to read the fine print again.

"I assure you, Mr. Rheinhold."

"Rheingold. Like the beer."

"Sorry, but I assure you the bureau wouldn't have put you to all this bother if the matter wasn't most urgent."

Rheingold looked up at him. "Can you tell me what this is all about?"

"Afraid not."

"An Amtrak scandal. I bet you're investigating an Amtrak scandal."

"I can't say."

"A train robbery maybe. Must be pretty confidential. I haven't seen any mention on the six o'clock news."

"Might I ask if we can get on with it," Shaw said impatiently. "I'm in a bit of a rush."

"Okay, just asking," Rheingold said, disappointed.

He led the way down an aisle bordered by high shelves crammed with bound volumes on railroading, most of them long out of print. He stopped at the end of one bookcase containing large portfolios, peered through the bottom lenses of his bifocals and read the titles aloud.

"Let's see, track layouts for the New Haven Hartford, the Lake Shore Michigan Southern, Boston Albany…... ah, here it is, the New York Quebec Northern." He carried the portfolio over to a table and untied the strings on the cover. "Great railroad in its day. Over two thousand miles of track. Ran a crack express called the Manhattan Limited. Any particular section of the track you're interested in?"

"I can find it, thank you," said Shaw.

"Would you like a cup of coffee? I can make some upstairs in the office. Only take a couple of minutes."

"You're a civilized man, Mr. Rheingold. Coffee sounds fine."

Rheingold nodded and walked back down the aisle. He paused and turned when he came to the doorway. Shaw was sitting at the table studying the faded and yellowing maps.

When he returned with the coffee, the portfolio was neatly tied and replaced in its proper niche on the shelf. "Mr. Shaw?" There was no answer. The library room was empty.

Pitt felt inspired and determined, even exhilarated.

A deep sense of knowing he had opened a door that had been overlooked for generations acted on him like a stimulant. With an optimism that was not there before, he stood in a small, empty pasture and waited for the two-engine jet to float in for a landing.

Under normal procedures the feat would have been impossible: the field was pockmarked by old tree stumps and riddled with dry gullies. The longest flat spot ran no more than fifty feet before ending at a moss-covered rock wall. Pitt had expected a helicopter and he began to wonder if the pilot had a death wish or had brought the wrong aircraft.

Then he watched in fascination as the wings and engines began to slowly tilt upward while the fuselage and tail remained horizontal. When they reached ninety degrees and were facing skyward the plane stopped its forward motion and began to settle to the uneven ground.

Soon after the wheels touched the grass, Pitt walked up to the cockpit door and opened it. A boyish face with freckles and red hair broke into a cheery grin. "Morning. You Pitt?"

"That's right."

"Climb in."

Pitt climbed in, secured the door and sat in the copilot's seat. "This is a VTOL, isn't it?"

"Yeah," the pilot replied. "Vertical takeoff and landing, made in Italy, Scinletti 440. Nice little flier, finicky at times. But I sing Verdi to it and it's putty in my hands."

"You don't use a helicopter?"

"Too much vibration. Besides, vertical photography works best from a high-speed airplane." He paused. "By the way, the name's Jack Westler." He didn't offer to shake hands. Instead, he eased the throttles toward their stops, and the Scinletti began to rise.

At about two hundred feet, Pitt twisted in his seat and stared back at the wings as they turned horizontal again. The craft began increasing its forward speed and soon returned to level flight.

"What area would you like to photo-map?" asked Westler.

"The old railroad bed along the west bank of the Hudson as far as Albany."

"Not much left."

"You're familiar with it?"

"I've lived in the Hudson River valley all my life. Ever hear of the phantom train?"

"Spare me," Pitt replied in a weary tone.

"Oh…... okay," Westler dropped the subject. "Where do you want to begin rolling the film?"

"Start at the Magee place." Pitt looked around the rear cabin. It was void of equipment. "Speaking of film, Where is the camera and its operator?"

"You mean cameras, plural. We use two, their lenses set at different angles for a binocular effect. They're mounted in pods under the fuselage. I operate them from here in the cockpit."

"What altitude will you fly?"

"Depends on the focal lenses. Altitude is computed mathematically and optically. We're set to make our run at ten thousand feet."

The view of the valley from above was heady. The landscape unfurled and spread to the horizons, crisp and green, crowned by spring clouds. From five thousand feet the river took on the shape of a huge python crawling through the hills, with low islands sometimes dotting the channel like stepping-stones in a small stream. A vineyard country here, and an orchard land, broken by an occasional dairy farm.

When the altimeter read ten thousand, Westler made a sweeping turn to slightly west of north. The De Soto crept beneath, looking like a tiny model in a diorama.

"Cameras are rolling," Westler announced.

"You make it sound like a movie production," said Pitt.

"Almost. Each picture overlaps the next by sixty percent. That way, one particular object will show up twice at slightly different angles with varied highlights. You can detect things that are invisible from ground level, remnants of man-made disturbances hundreds or even thousands of years old."

Pitt could see very clearly the scar of the track bed. Then it abruptly stopped and vanished into a field of alfalfa. He pointed downward.

"Suppose the target is completely obliterated?"

Westler peered through the windshield and nodded. "Okay, there's a case in point. When the land over the area of interest was used for agriculture, the vegetation will assume a subtle color difference due to elements foreign to the native soil composition. The change might be missed by the human eye, but the camera optics and enhanced color tone in the film will exaggerate features in the earth beyond reality."

In no time at all, it seemed to Pitt, they were approaching the southern outskirts of New York State's capital. He gazed down at the oceangoing cargo ships docked at the port of Albany. Acres of railroad tracks fanned out from the storage warehouses like a giant spider's web. Here the old railbed disappeared for good under the heavy foot of modern development. "Let's make another run," said Pitt.