Raise the Titanic - Cussler Clive - Страница 25

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    "One question I wish you'd clear up," the President said. "In reading over your report, Donner here stated that the mining equipment found at Novaya Zemlya was ordered through the U.S. government. That piece doesn't fit."

    "Again, a cover story by the French," Seagram replied.

    "The Jensen and Thor files also showed that the drilling equipment was paid for by a check drawn on a Washington, D.C., bank. The account, as it turns out, was under the name of the French ambassador. It was simply one more ruse to cloud the true operation."

    "They didn't miss a trick, did they?"

    Seagram nodded. "They planned well, but, for all their insight, they had no idea they were being led down the garden path."

    "After Paris, then what?" the President persisted.

    "The Coloradans spent two weeks at the Societe office, ordering supplies and making final preparations for the dig. When at last all was in readiness, they boarded a French naval transport in Le Havre and slipped into the English Channel. It took twelve days for the ship to pick its way through the Barents Sea ice floes before it finally anchored off Novaya Zemlya. After the men and equipment were safely ashore, Brewster shifted the Secret Army Plan into first gear and ordered the captain of the supply ship not to return for the ore until the first week in June, nearly seven months away."

    "The plan being that the Coloradans and the byzanium would be long gone by the time the Societe des Mines ship returned."

    "Exactly. They beat the deadline by two months. It took only five months for the gang to pry the precious element from the bowels of that icy hell. It was body-breaking work, drilling, blasting, and digging through solid granite while stabbed by fifty-degree-below-zero temperatures. Never, during the long winter months high along the Continental Divide of the Rockies, had they ever experienced anything like the frigid winds that howled down across the sea from the great polar ice cap to the north; winds that paused only long enough to deposit the terrible cold 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."

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