and replenish Bednaya Mountain's permanent ice sheet before sweeping on toward the Russian coast just over the horizon to the south. It took a frightful toll on the men. Jake Hobart died from exposure when he became lost in a snowstorm, and the others all suffered terribly from fatigue and frostbite. In Brewster's own words, `it was a frozen purgatory, not fit to waste good spit on.''
'It's a miracle they didn't all die,' the President said.
'Good old hardy guts saw them through,' Seagram said. 'In the end they beat the odds. They had wrested the world's rarest mineral from that wasteland, and they had pulled off the job without detection. It had been a classic operation of stealth and engineering skill.'
'They escaped the island with the ore, then?'
'Yes, Mr. President.' Seagram nodded. 'Brewster and his crew covered over the waste dump and ore-car tracks and concealed the entrance to the mine. Then they hauled the byzanium to the beach, where they loaded it on board a small three-roasted steamer dispatched by the War Department under the guise of a polar expedition. The ship was under the command of a Lieutenant Pratt of the United States Navy.'
'How much ore did they take?'
'According to Sid Koplin's estimates, about half a ton of extremely high-grade ore.'
'And when processed . . . ?'
'A rough guess at best would put it in the neighborhood of five hundred ounces.'
'More than enough to complete the Sicilian Project,' the President said.
'More than enough,' Donner acknowledged.
'Did they make it back to the States?'
'No, sir. Somehow the French had figured the game and were patiently waiting for the Americans to do the dangerous dirty work before stepping on the stage and snatching the prize. A few miles off the southern coast of Norway, before Lieutenant Pratt could set a course east onto the shipping lane for New York, they were attacked by a mysterious steam cutter that bore no national flag.'
'No identification, no international scandal,' the President said. 'The French covered every avenue.'
Seagram smiled. 'Except this time, if you'll pardon the pun, they missed the boat. Like most Europeans, they underestimated good old Yankee ingenuity; our War Department had also covered every contingency. Before the French could pump a third shot into the American ship, Lieutenant Pratt's crew had dropped the sides on a phony deckhouse and were blasting back with a concealed five-inch gun.'
'Good, good,' the President said. 'As Teddy Roosevelt might have said, `Bully for our side.''
'The battle lasted until almost dark,' Seagram went on. 'Then Pratt got a shot into the Frenchman's boiler and the cutter burst into flames. But the American vessel was hurt, too. Her holds were taking water, and Pratt had one killed and four of his crew seriously wounded. After a consultation, Brewster and Pratt decided to head for the nearest friendly port, set the injured men ashore, and ship the ore on to the States from there. By dawn, they limped past the breakwater at Aberdeen, Scotland.'
'Why couldn't they have simply transported the ore to an American warship? Surely that would have been safer than shipping it by commercial means?'
'I can't be certain,' Seagram replied. 'Apparently, Brewster was afraid the French might then demand the ore through diplomatic channels, thereby forcing the Americans into admitting the theft and giving up the byzanium. As long as he kept it in his possession, our government could claim ignorance of the whole affair.'
The President shook his head. 'Brewster must have been a lion of a man.'
'Oddly enough,' Donner said, 'he was only five-feet-two.
'Still, an amazing man, a great patriot to go through all that hell with no personal profit motive in mind. You can't help but wish to God he'd made it home free.'
'Sadly, his odyssey wasn't finished.' Seagram's hands began to tremble. 'The French consulate in the port city blew the whistle on the Coloradans. One night, before they could unload the byzanium onto a truck, the French agents struck without warning from the shadows of the landing dock. No shots were fired. It was fists and knives and clubs. The hard-rock men from the legendary towns of Cripple Creek, Leadville, and Fairplay were no strangers to violence. They gave better than they took, tossing six bodies into the black waters of the harbor before the rest of their assailants melted into the night. But it was only the beginning. Crossroad after crossroad, from one village to the next, on city streets, and from behind every tree and doorway it seemed, the piratical attacks continued until the running flight across Britain had bloodied the landscape with a score of dead and wounded. The battles took on the aspects of a war of attrition; the men from Colorado were up against a massive organization which threw in five men for every two the miners eliminated. The attrition began to tell. John Caldwell, Alvin Coulter, and Thomas Price died outside of Glasgow. Charles Widney fell at Newcastle, Walter Schmidt near Stafford, and Warner O'Deming at Birmingham. One by one, the tough old miners were whittled away, their gore staining the cobblestone streets far from home. Only Vernon Hall and Joshua Hays Brewster lived to set the ore on the Ocean Dock at Southampton.'
The President clenched his lips and tightened his fists. 'Then the French won out.'
'No, Mr. President. The French never touched the byzanium.' Seagram picked up Brewster's journal and thumbed to the back. 'I'll read the last entry. It's dated April 10, 1912:
'The deed is only a eulogy now, for I am but dead. Praise God, the precious ore we labored so desperately to rape from the bowels of that cursed mountain lies safely in the vault of the ship. Only Vernon will be left to tell the tale, for I depart on the great White Star steamer for New York within the hour. Knowing the ore is secure, I leave this journal in the care of James Rodgers, Assistant United States Consul in Southampton, who will see that it reaches the proper authorities in the event I am also killed. God rest the men who have gone before me. How I long to return to Southby.'
A cold silence fell on the study. The President turned from the window and settled in his chair once more. He sat there a moment, saying nothing. Then he spoke 'Can it mean the byzanium is in the United States? Is it possible that Brewster? . . .'
'I'm afraid not, sir,' Seagram murmured, his face pale and beaded with sweat.
'Explain yourself!' the President demanded.
Seagram took a deep breath. 'Because, Mr. President, the only White Star steamship that departed Southampton, England, on April the tenth, 1912, was the R.M.S. Titanic.'
'The Titanic!' The President looked as if he had been shot. The truth had suddenly hit him. 'It fits,' he said tonelessly. 'It would explain why the byzanium has been lost all these years.'
'Fate dealt the Coloradans a cruel hand,' Donner muttered. 'They bled and died only to send the ore on a ship that was destined to sink in the middle of the ocean.'
Another silence, deeper even than the one that had gone before.
The President sat granite-faced. 'What do we do now, gentlemen?'
There was a pause of perhaps ten seconds, then Seagram rose unsteadily to his feet and stared down at the President. The strain of the past days, plus the agony of defeat, swept over him. There was no other door open to them; they had no choice but to see it through to the finish. He cleared his throat. 'We raise the Titanic,' he mumbled.
The President and Donner looked up.
'Yes, by God!' Seagram said, his voice suddenly hard and determined. 'We raise the Titanic!'
THE BLACK ABYSS
September 1987
23
The forbidding beauty of pure, absolute black pressed against the viewport and blotted out all touch with earthly reality. The total absence of light, Albert Giordino judged, took only a few minutes to shift the human mind into a state of confused disorder. He had the impression of falling from a vast height with his eyes closed on a moonless night; falling through an immense black void without the tiniest fragment of sensation.
Finally, a bead of sweat trickled over his brow and dropped into his left eye, stinging it. He shook off the spell, wiped a sleeve across his face, and gently eased a hand over the control panel immediately in front of him, touching the various and familiar protrusions until his probing fingers reached their goal. Then he flicked the switch upward.
The lights attached to the hull of the deep-sea submersible flashed on and cut a brilliant swath through the eternal night. Although the narrow sides of the beam abruptly turned a blackish-blue, the tiny organisms floating
