Sandecker sidestepped around the nearest guard. 'You'll have to kill me first-'
The guard jammed his machine pistol muzzle into Sandecker's kidney, and the admiral fell to his knees, his face twisted in agony, his breath coming in loud, sucking noises.
Dana clenched her hands at her sides until they turned ivory. She had played her hand down to the last card, and now she looked lost; those beautiful coffee-brown eyes were sick in abhorrence when she saw the guard's eyes suddenly reflect a look of confusion as a steel hand fell on her shoulder and pushed her aside. Pitt walked slowly into the light.
66
Pitt stood frozen in time, like some unspeakable apparition that had risen from the depths of a watery hell. He was saturated from head to foot, his black hair plastered down across a bloodied forehead, his lips curled in a satanic smile. In the light of the lamps, the droplets of water sparkled as they trickled from his wet clothing and splattered on the deck.
Prevlov's face was a wax mask. Calmly, he pulled a cigarette from the gold case, lit it, and exhaled the smoke in a long sigh.
'Your name? May I assume that your name is Dirk Pitt?'
'That's what the fine print reads on the birth certificate.'
'It seems you are an uncommonly durable man, Mr. Pitt, It was my understanding that you were dead.'
'It just goes to prove you can't rely on shipboard gossip.'
Pitt took off his damp jacket and gently draped it over Dana's shoulders. 'Sorry, dear heart, it's the best I can do for the moment.' Then he turned back to Prevlov. 'Any objections?'
Prevlov shook his head. Pitt's offhand manner puzzled him. He scrutinized Pitt as a diamond cutter studies a stone, but saw nothing behind the veil of those sea-green eyes.
Prevlov gestured to one of his men who moved up to Pitt. 'Simply a precautionary search, Mr. Pitt. Any objections?'
Pitt shrugged agreeably and held his hands in the air. The guard quickly, efficiently ran his hands up and down Pitt's clothing and then stepped back and shook his head.
'No arms,' Prevlov said. 'Very wise of you, but then I would have expected nothing less from a man of your reputation. I have read with considerable interest a dossier describing your exploits. I would have liked very much to have known you under less adversary circumstances.'
'Sorry I can't return the compliment,' Pitt said pleasantly, 'but you're not exactly the type of vermin I'd like for a friend.'
Prevlov stepped forward two paces and hit Pitt with all his strength with the back of his hand.
Pitt staggered back one step and stood there, a trickle of blood oozing from one corner of his still grinning lips. 'Well, well,' he said quietly, thickly. 'The illustrious Andre Prevlov finally blew his cool.'
Prevlov leaned forward, his eyes half-closed in wary speculation. 'My name?' his voice was barely above a murmur. 'You know my name?'
'Fair is fair,' Pitt answered. 'I know as much about you as you know about me.'
'You're even cleverer than I was led to believe,' Prevlov said. 'You've discovered my identity-an astute piece of perception. On that I commend you. But you needn't bluff with knowledge you do not possess. Beyond my name, you know nothing.'
'I wonder. Perhaps I can enlighten you further with a bit of local folklore.'
'I have no patience for fairy tales,' Prevlov said. He motioned to the guard with the knife. 'Now if we can get on about the business of persuading Admiral Sandecker to inspire your pumping crew to greater efforts, I would be most grateful.'
The guard, a tall. man, his face still hidden under the muffler, began advancing toward Dana once more. He extended the knife. Its blade gleamed in the light no more than three inches from Dana's left breast. She hugged Pitt's jacket tightly around her shoulders and stared at the knife, numbed beyond fear.
'Too bad you're not big on fairy tales,' Pitt said conversationally. 'This is one you'd have enjoyed. It's all about a pair of bumbling characters called Silver and Gold.'
Prevlov glanced at him, hesitated, and then nodded the guard back. 'You have my attention, Mr. Pitt. I will give you five minutes to prove your point.'
'It won't take long,' Pitt said. He paused to rub the eye that had caked closed from the hardening blood. 'Now then, once upon a time there were two Canadian engineers who discovered that spying could be a lucrative sideline. So they shed all qualms of guilt and became professional espionage agents in every sense of the word, concentrating their talents on obtaining classified data about American oceanographic programs and sending it through hidden channels to Moscow. Silver and Gold earned their money, make no mistake. Over the past two years, there wasn't a NUMA project the Russians didn't have knowledge of down to the tiniest detail. Then, when the Titanic's salvage came up, the Soviet Navy's Department of Foreign Intelligence-- your department, Prevlov-- smelled, a windfall. Without the slightest degree of chicanery, you found yourself with not one, but two men in your employ who were in a perfect situation to obtain and pass along America's most advanced deep-water-salvage techniques. There was, of course, another vital consideration, but even you weren't aware of it at the time.
'Silver and Gold,' Pitt went on, 'sent regular reports concerning the raising of the wreck through an ingenious method. They used a battery-powered pinger, a device that can transmit underwater sound waves similar to sonar. I should have caught on to it when the Capricorn's sonar man detected the transmissions, but instead I dismissed it as loose debris caused by a deep water current knocking about the Titanic. The fact that someone was sending out coded messages never entered our heads. Nobody bothered to decipher the random noises. Nobody, that is, except the man sitting under a set of hydrophones on board the Mikhail Kurkov.'
Pitt paused and glanced about the dining saloon. He had everyone's attention. 'We didn't begin to smell either rat until Henry Munk felt the need for a poorly timed call of nature. On his way back to the head at the aft end of the Sappho II, he heard the pinging device in operation and investigated; he caught one of the agents in the act. Your man probably tried to lie his way out of it, but Henry Munk was an instrument specialist. He recognized a communications pinger when he saw one and quickly figured the game. It was a case of the cat killing curiosity. Munk had to be silenced, and he was, from a blow to the base of the skull by one of Woodson's camera tripods. This created an awkward situation for the murderer, so he bashed Munk's head against the alternator housing to make it look like an accident. However, the fish didn't take the bait. Woodson was suspicious; I was suspicious; and to top it off, Doc Bailey found the bruise on Munk's neck. But since there was no way of proving who the killer was, I decided to string along with the accident story until I could scratch up enough evidence to point an accusing finger. Later, I went back and searched the submersible and discovered one slightly used and very bent camera tripod along with the pinging device where our friendly neighborhood spy had, ironically, hidden them in Munk's own storage locker. Certain that it was a waste of time to have them checked on shore for fingerprints-I didn't need a bolt from the blue to tell me I was dealing with a professional-I left the tripod and the pinger exactly as I found them. I took the chance that it would only be a matter of time before your agent got complacent and began contacting the Mikhail Kurkov again. So I waited.'
'A fascinating story,' Prevlov said. 'But very circumstantial. Absolute proof would have been impossible to come by.'
Pitt smiled enigmatically and continued. 'The proof came through a process of elimination. I was relatively sure the killer had to be one of the three men on board the submersible who were supposedly asleep during their rest period. I then alternated the Sappho II's crew schedule every few days so that two of them had duties on the surface while the third was diving below on the wreck. When our sonar man picked up the next transmission from the pinger, I had Munk's murderer.'
'Who is it, Pitt?' Spencer asked grimly. 'There are ten of us here. Was it one of us?'
Pitt locked eyes for an instant with Prevlov and then turned suddenly and nodded at one of the weary men huddled under the lamps.
'I regret that the only introductory fanfare I can offer is the pounding of the waves against the hull, but bear with me and take a bow anyway, Drummer. It may well be your final encore before you toast in the electric chair.'
'Ben Drummer!' Gunn gasped. 'I can't believe it. Not with him sitting there all battered and bloody after attacking Woodson's killer.'
