"What's the situation?"

"Stable for the moment. As soon as we get the pumps operating, we should be able to correct her list."

"Where's Pitt?"

"In the gymnasium."

Sandecker stopped in midstride and stared at Gunn. "The gymnasium, did you say?"

Gunn nodded and pointed at an opening in a bulkhead whose ragged edges suggested the work of an acetylene torch. "Through here." The room measured about fifteen feet wide by forty feet deep, and was inhabited by a dozen men who were all involved in their individual assignments and who were seemingly oblivious to the weird assortment of antiquated and rust-worn mechanisms mounted on what had once been a colorful linoleum-block floor. There were ornate rowing machines; funny-looking stationary bicycles that were attached to a large circular distance clock on the wall; several mechanical horses with rotting leather saddles; and what Sandecker could have sworn looked like a mechanical camel which, as he discovered later, was exactly that. Already the salvage crew had equipped the room with a radio transmitter and receiver, three portable gas-driven electrical generators, a small forest of spotlights on stands, a compact little Rube Goldberg-like galley, a clutter of desks and tables made out of collapsible aluminum tubing and packing crates, and several folding cots.

Pitt was huddled with Drummer and Spencer as Sandecker moved toward them. They were studying a large cutaway drawing of the ship.

Pitt looked up and waved a salute. "Welcome to the Big T, Admiral," he said warmly. "How are Merker, Kiel, and Chavez?"

"Safely bedded down in the Capricorn's sick bay," Sandecker answered.

"Ninety-per-cent recuperated and begging Dr. Bailey to return them to duty. A request, I might add, that fell on deaf ears. Bailey insisted that they remain under observation for twenty-four hours, and there is simply no budging a man of his size and determination." Sandecker paused to sniff the air and then wrinkled his nose. "God, what's that smell?"

"Rot," Drummer replied. "It fills every nook and cranny. There's no escaping it. And it's only a matter of time before the dead marine life that came up with the wreck begins to stink."

Sandecker gestured about the room. "A cozy place you've got here," he said,

"but why set up operations in the gym rather than the bridge?"

"A break from tradition for practical reasons," Pitt replied. "The bridge serves no useful function on a dead ship. The gym, on the other hand, sits amidships and offers us equal access to either bow or stern. It also adjoins our improvised helicopter pad over the first-class lounge roof. The closer to our supplies we are, the more efficiently we can operate."

"I had to ask," Sandecker said heavily. "I should have known you didn't pick this museum of mechanical monstrosities just to launch a physical-fitness program."

Something in a pile of wreckage that lay in a soggy heap against the forward wall of the gymnasium caught the admiral's eyes and he walked over to it. He stood and stared grimly for several moments at the skeletal remains of what had once been a passenger or crew member of the Titanic.

"I wonder who this poor devil was?"

"We'll probably never know," Pitt said. "Any dental records from 1912 have no doubt been destroyed long ago."

Sandecker leaned down and examined the pelvic section of the bones. "Good lord, it was a woman."

"Either one of the first-class passengers who elected to remain behind or one of the women from the steerage quarters who arrived on the Boat Deck after all the lifeboats had been launched."

"Have you found any other bodies?"

"We've been too busy to do any extensive exploring," Pitt said. "But one of Spencer's men reported another skeleton wedged against the fireplace in the lounge."

Sandecker nodded toward an open doorway. "What's through there?"

"That opens onto the grand staircase."

"Let's take a look."

They walked onto the landing above the A Deck lobby and looked down. Several rotting chairs and sofas were scattered haphazardly on the steps where they had fallen when the ship sank by the bow. The graceful flowing lines of the bannisters were still sound and undamaged, and the hands of the bronze clock could be seen frozen at 2:21. They made their way down the silt-coated stairs and entered one of the passageways leading to the staterooms. Without the benefit of outside light, the scene was an eerie one. Room after room was filled with rotted and fallen paneling interspersed with overturned and jumbled furniture. It was too dark to discern any detail, and after penetrating about thirty feet, they found their way blocked by a wall of debris, so they turned and headed back to the gymnasium.

Just as they came through the doorway, the man hunched over the radio turned from his set. It was Al Giordino.

"I wondered where you two went. The Uranus Oil people want to know about their submersible."

"Tell them they can retrieve the Deep Fathom off the Titanic's foredeck just as soon as we make dry dock in New York," Pitt said.

Giordino nodded and turned back to the radio.

"Leave it to the commercial business interests to bitch about their precious property on such a momentous occasion," Sandecker said with a gleam in his eye. "And, speaking of momentous occasions, would any of you gentlemen care to celebrate with a touch of spirits?"

"Did you say spirits?" Giordino looked up expectantly. Sandecker reached under his coat and produced two bottles. "Do not let it be said that James Sandecker ever fails to look out for the best interests of his crew."

"Beware of admirals bearing gifts," Giordino murmured. Sandecker shot him a weary glance. "What a pity walking the plank became pass."

"And keelhauling," Drummer added.

"I promise never to dig our leader ever again. Providing, of course, he keeps me in booze," Giordino said.

"A small price to pay." Sandecker sighed. "Choose your poison, gentlemen. You see before you a fifth of Cutty Sark scotch for the city slickers, and a fifth of Jack Daniel's for the farm boys. Round up some glasses and be my guests." It took Giordino all of ten seconds to find the required number of styrofoam cups in their Mickey Mouse all-electric galley. When the liquor had been poured, Sandecker raised his cup.

"Gentlemen, here's to the Titanic. May she never again rest in peace."

"To the Titanic. "

"Hear, hear."

Sandecker then relaxed on a folding chair, sipped at his scotch, and idly wondered which of the men in that soggy room were on the payroll of the Soviet government.

Soviet General Secretary Georgi Antonov sucked on his pipe with short, violent puffs and regarded Prevlov with a pensive gaze.

"I must say, Captain, I take a dim view of the whole undertaking."

"We have carefully considered every avenue, and this is the only one left open to us," Prevlov said.

"It's fraught with danger. I fear the Americans will not take the theft of their precious byzanium lying down."

"Once it is in our hands, Comrade Secretary, it will make no difference how loudly the Americans scream. The door will have been slammed in their faces." Antonov folded and unfolded his hands. A large portrait of Lenin floated on the wall behind him. "There must be no international repercussions. It must look to the world as though we were entirely within our rights."

"This time the American president will have no recourse. International law is on our side."

"It will mean the end of what used to be called détente," Antonov said heavily.

"It will also mean the beginning of the end of the United States as a superpower."

"A cheerful conjecture, Captain; I appreciate that." His pipe had gone out and he relit it, filling the room with a sweet aromatic odor. "However, should you fail, the Americans will be in the same position to say the same of us."

"We will not fail."

"Words," Antonov said. "A good lawyer plans the prosecutor's case as well as his own. What measures have you taken in the event of an unavoidable mishap?"

"The byzanium will be destroyed," Prevlov said. "If we cannot possess it, then neither can the Americans."

"Does that include the Titanic as well?"

"It must. By destroying the Titanic, we destroy the byzanium. It will be accomplished in such a way that another recovery operation will be totally out of the question."

Prevlov fell silent, but Antonov was satisfied. He had already given his approval for the mission. He studied Prevlov carefully. The captain looked like a man who was not used to failure. His every movement, every gesture, seemed thoughtfully planned in advance; even his words carried an air of confident forethought. Yes, Antonov was satisfied.

"When do you leave for the North Atlantic?" he asked.

"With your permission, Comrade Secretary, at once. A long-range reconnaissance bomber is on standby at Gorki Airfield. It is imperative that I be standing on the bridge of the Mikhail Kurkov within twelve hours. Good fortune has sent us a hurricane, and I will make full use of its force as a diversion for what will seem our perfectly legal seizure of the Titanic. "

"Then I will not keep you." Antonov stood and embraced Prevlov in a great bear hug. "The hopes of the Soviet Union go with you, Captain Prevlov. I beg you do not disappoint us."

The day began going badly for Pitt right after he wandered away from the salvage activity and made his way down to No. 1 cargo hold on G Deck. The sight that met his eyes in the darkened compartment was one of utter devastation. The vault containing the byzanium was buried under the collapsed forward bulkhead.

He stood there for a long time, staring at the avalanche of broken and twisted steel that prevented any easy attempt to reach the precious element. It was then that he sensed someone standing behind him.

"It looks like we've been dealt a bum hand," Sandecker said. Pitt nodded. "At least for the moment."

"Perhaps if we--"

"It would take weeks for our portable cutting equipment to clear a path through that jungle of steel."

"There's no other way?"

"A giant Dopplemann crane could clear the debris in a few hours."

"Then what you're saying is that we have no choice but to stand by and wait patiently until we reach the dry-dock facilities in New York." Pitt looked at him in the dim light and Sandecker could see the look of frustration that cracked his rugged features. There was no need for an answer.

"Removing the byzanium to the Capricorn would have been a break in our favor," Pitt said. "It'd certainly have saved us a lot of grief."

"Maybe we could fake a transfer."

"Our friends who work for the Soviets would smell a hoax before the first crate went over the side."

"Assuming they're both on board the Titanic, of course."

"I'll know this time tomorrow."

"I take it you have a line on who they are?"

"I've got one of them pegged, the one who killed Henry Munk. The other is purely an educated guess."

"I'd be interested in knowing who you've ferreted out," Sandecker said.

"My proof would never convince a federal prosecutor, much less a jury. Give me a few more hours, Admiral, and I'll lay them both, Silver and Gold, or whatever their stupid code names are, right in your lap."

Sandecker stared at him, then said, "You're that close?"

"I'm that close."

Sandecker passed a weary hand across his face arid tightened his lips. He looked at the tons of steel covering the vault. "I leave it with you, Dirk. I'll back your play to the last hand. I don't really have much choice." Pitt had other worries, too. The two Navy tugs that Admiral Kemper promised to send were still hours away, and sometime during the late morning, for no apparent reason, the Titanic took it into her mind to increase her starboard list to seventeen degrees.

The ship rode far too low in the water; the crests of the swells lapped at the sealed portholes along E Deck just ten feet below the scuppers. And although Spencer and his pumping crew had managed to drop suction pipes down the loading hatches into the cargo holds, they had not been able to fight their way through the debris crowding the companionways to reach the engine and boiler rooms, where the greatest volume of water still lay-remote and inaccessible. Drummer sat in the gymnasium, dirty and exhausted after working around the clock. He sipped at a mug of cocoa. "After almost eighty years of submersion and rot," he said, "the wood paneling in the passageways has fallen and jammed them worse than a path in a Georgia junkyard."

Pitt sat where he'd been all afternoon, bent over a drafting table next to the radio transmitter. He stared out of red-rimmed eyes at a transverse drawing of the Titanic's superstructure.

"Can't we thread our way down the main staircase or the elevator shafts?"

"The staircase is filled with tons of loose junk once you get down past D Deck," Spencer declared.

"And there isn't a prayer of penetrating the elevator shafts," Gunn added.

"They're crammed with jumbled masses of corroded cables and wrecked machinery. If that wasn't bad enough, all the watertight double-cylinder doors in the lower compartments are frozen solid in the closed position."

"They were shut automatically by the ship's first officer immediately after she struck the iceberg," Pitt said.

At that moment, a short bull of a man covered from head to toe with oil and grime staggered into the gym. Pitt looked up and faintly smiled. "That you, AI?" Giordino hauled himself over to a cot and collapsed like a sack of wet cement.

"I'd appreciate it if none of you lit any matches around me," he murmured. "I'm too young to die in a fiery blaze of glory."

"Any luck?" asked Sandecker.

"I made it as far as the squash court on F Deck. God, it's blacker than sin down there . . . fell down a companionway. It was flooded with oil that had seeped up from the engine room. Stopped cold. There was no way down."

"A snake might make it to the boiler rooms," Drummer said, "but it's for sure a man ain't gonna. At least, not until he spends a week clearing a passage with dynamite and a wrecking crew."

"There has to be a way," Sandecker said. "Somewhere down there she's taking water. If we don't get ahead of it by this time tomorrow, she'll roll belly up and head back to the bottom."

The thought of losing the Titanic after she was sitting pretty and upright again on a smooth sea had never entered their minds, but now everyone in the gym began to feel a sickening ache deep in their stomachs. The ship had yet to be taken in tow and New York was twelve hundred sea miles away.

Pitt sat there staring at the ship's interior diagrams. They were woefully inadequate. No set of detailed blueprints of the Titanic and her sister ship, the Olympic, existed. They had been destroyed, along with files full of photographs and construction data, when the Harland and Wolff shipbuilding yards in Belfast were leveled by German bombers during World War II.

"If only she wasn't so damned big," Drummer muttered. "The boiler rooms are damn near a hundred feet below the Boat Deck."

"Might as well be a hundred miles," Spencer said. He looked up as Woodson emerged from the grand stairway entrance. "Ah, the great stoneface is with us. What's the official photographer of the operation been up to?" Woodson lifted a battery of cameras from around his neck and gently laid them on a makeshift worktable. "Just taking some pictures for posterity," he said with his usual deadpan expression. "Never know, I just might write a book about all this someday, and naturally, I'll want credit for the illustrations."

"Naturally," Spencer said. "You didn't by chance find a clear companionway down to the boiler rooms?"

He shook his head. "I've been shooting in the first-class lounge. It's remarkably well preserved. Except for the obvious ravages of water on the carpeting and furniture, it could pass for a sitting room in the Palace of Versailles." He began changing film cartridges. "How's chances of borrowing the helicopter? I'd like to get some bird's-eye shots of our prize before the tugs arrive." Giordino raised up on one elbow. "Better use up your film while you can. Our prize may be back on the bottom by morning."

Woodson 's brows pinched together. "She's sinking?"

"I think not."

Every eye turned to the man who uttered those urea words. Pitt was smiling. He smiled with the confidence of a man who just became chairman of the board of General Motors.

He said, "As Kit Carson used to say when he was surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by Indians, `We ain't done in yet, not by a damned sight.' In ten hours' time the engine and boiler rooms will be bone-dry." He quickly fumbled through the diagrams on the table until he found the one he wanted. "Woodson said it, the bird's-eye view. It was right under our noses all the time. We should have been looking from overhead instead of from inside."

"Big deal," Giordino said. "What's so interesting from the air?"

"None of you get it?"

Drummer looked puzzled. "You missed me at the last fork in the road."

"Spencer?"

Spencer shook his head.

Pitt grinned at him and said, "Assemble your men topside and tell them to bring their cutting gear."

"If you say so," Spencer said, but made no move for the door.

"Mr. Spencer is mentally measuring me for a strait jacket," Pitt said. "He can't figure why we should be cutting holes on the roof of the ship to penetrate a distance of a hundred feet through eight decks of scrap. Nothing to it, really. We have a built-in tunnel, free of any debris, that leads straight to the boiler rooms. In fact, we have four of them. The boiler casings where the funnels once sat, gentlemen. Torch away the Wetsteel seals over the openings and you have a clear shot directly down to the bilges. Do you see the light?" Spencer saw the light all right. Everyone else saw it, too. They headed out the door as one, without giving Pitt the benefit of an answer.

Two hours later, the diesel pumps were knocking away in chorus and two thousand gallons of water a minute were being returned over the side to the mounting swells that were being pushed ahead of the approaching hurricane. They had dubbed her Hurricane Amanda, and by that sable afternoon the great steamer tracks running across her projected path were devoid of most vessels. All freighters, tankers, and passenger liners that had put to sea between Savannah, Georgia, and Portland, Maine, had been ordered back to port after NUMA's Hurricane Center in Tampa sent out the first warnings. Nearly a hundred vessels along the Eastern seaboard had postponed their sailing dates, while all ships bound from Europe that were already far at sea hove to, waiting for the hurricane to pass.

In Tampa, Dr. Prescott and his weather people swarmed around the wall chart, feeding new data into the computers, and plotting any deviation of Hurricane Amanda's track. Prescott's original predicted track was holding up to within a hundred and seventy-five miles.

A weatherman came up and handed him a sheet of paper. "Here's a report from a Coast Guard reconnaissance plane that penetrated the hurricane's eye." Prescott took the report and read parts of it aloud. " Èye approximately twenty-two miles in diameter. Forward speed increased to forty knots. Wind strength one hundred and eighty plus . . ."' his voice trailed off. His assistant looked at him, her eyes wide. "A hundred-and-eighty-mile-anhour winds?"

"And more," Prescott murmured. "I pity the ship that gets caught in this one." A glaze suddenly passed across the weatherman's eyes and he swung back to study the wall chart. Then his face turned ashen. "Oh Jesus . . . the Titanic!" Prescott looked at him. "The what?"

"The Titanic and her salvage fleet. They're sitting right in the middle of the projected path of the hurricane."

"The hell you say!" Prescott snapped.

The weatherman moved up to the wall chart and hesitated for several moments. Finally, he reached up and drew an X just below the Newfoundland Grand Banks. "There, that's the position where she was raised from the bottom."

"Where did you get this information?"

"It's been smeared all over the newspapers and television since yesterday. If you don't believe me, teletype NUMA headquarters in Washington and confirm."

"Screw the teletype," Prescott growled. He rushed across the room, snatched up a telephone and shouted into the receiver. "Punch me on a direct line to our headquarters in Washington. I want to speak with someone who's connected with the Titanic project."

While he waited for his call to go through, he peered over his glasses at the X

on the wall chart. "Here's hoping those poor bastards have a weatherman on board with uncanny foresight," he muttered to himself, "or about this time tomorrow they'll forever learn the meaning of the fury of the sea. There was a vague expression on Farquar's face as he stared at the weather maps laid out before him on the table. His mind was so numb and woolly from lack of sleep that he had difficulty in defining the markings he had made only minutes before. The indications of temperature, wind velocity, barometric pressure, and the approaching stormfront all melted together into one indistinct blur.

He rubbed his eyes in a useless attempt to get them to focus. Then he shook his head to clear the cobwebs, trying to remember what it was that he had been about to conclude,

The hurricane. Yes, that was it. Farquar slowly came to the realization that he had made a serious miscalculation. The hurricane had not veered into Cape Hatteras as he'd predicted. Instead, a high-pressure area along the eastern coast held it over the ocean on a northerly course. And what was worse, it had begun to move faster after recurving and was now hurtling toward the Titanic's position with forward speed approaching forty-five knots.

He had watched the hurricane's birth on the satellite photos and had closely studied the warnings from the NUMA station in Tampa, but nothing in all his years of forecasting had prepared him for the violence and the speed that this monstrosity had achieved in such a short time.

A hurricane in May? It was unthinkable. Then his words to Pitt came back to haunt him. What was it he had said? "Only God can make a storm." Farquar suddenly felt sick, his face beaded with sweat, hands clenching and unclenching.

"God help the Titanic this time," he murmured under his breath. "He's the only one who can save her now."

The U.S. Navy salvage tugs Thomas J. Morse and Samual R. Wallace arrived just before 1500 hours and slowly began circling the Titanic. The vast size and the strange deathlike aura of the derelict filled the tugs' crews with the same feeling of awe that was experienced by the NUMA salvage people the day before.

After a half an hour of visual inspection, the tugs pulled parallel to the great rusty hull and lay to in the heavy swells, their engines on "stop." Then, as if in unison, their cutters were lowered and the captains came across and began climbing a hastily thrown boarding ladder to the Titanic's shelter deck. Lieutenant George Uphill of the Morse was a short, plump, ruddy faced man who sported an immense Bismarck mustache, while Lieutenant Commander Scotty Butera of the Wallace nearly scraped the ceiling at six feet six and buried his chin in a magnificent black beard. No spick-and-span fleet officers these two. They looked and acted every bit the part of tough, no-nonsense salvage men

"You don't know how happy we are to see you, gentlemen," Gunn said, shaking their hands. "Admiral Sandecker and Mr. Dirk Pitt, our special projects director, are awaiting you in, if you'll pardon the expression, our operations room."

The tug captains tailed after Gunn up the stairways and across the Boat Deck, staring in trancelike rapture at the remains of the once beautiful ship. They reached the gymnasium and Gunn made the introductions.

"It's positively incredible," Uphill murmured. "I never thought in my wildest imagination that I would ever live to walk the decks of the Titanic.

"My sentiments exactly," Butera added.

"I wish we could give you a guided tour," Pitt said, "but each minute adds to the risk of losing her to the sea again."

Admiral Sandecker motioned them to a long table laden with weather maps, diagrams, and charts, and they all settled in with steaming mugs of coffee. "Our chief concern at the moment is weather," he said, "Our weatherman on board the Capricorn has suddenly taken to imagining himself as the 'prophet of doom." Pitt unrolled a large weather map and flattened it on the table. "There's no ducking the bad news. Our weather is deteriorating rapidly. The barometer has fallen half an inch in the last twenty-four hours. Wind force four, blowing north northeast and building. We're in for it, gentlemen, make no mistake. Unless a miracle occurs and Hurricane Amanda decides to cut a quick left turn to the west, we should be well into her front quadrant by this time tomorrow."

"Hurricane Amanda," Butera repeated the name. "How nasty is she?"

"Joel Farquar, our weatherman, assures me they don't come any meaner than this baby," Pitt replied. "She's already reported winds of force fifteen on the Beaufort scale."

"Force fifteen?" Gunn repeated in astonishment. "My Cod, force twelve is considered a maximum hurricane."

"This, I'm afraid," said Sandecker, "is every salvage man's nightmare come true--raise a derelict only to have it snatched away by a whim of the weather." He looked grimly at Uphill and Butera. "It looks as though you two made the trip for nothing. You'd better get back to your ships and make a run for it."

"Make a run for it, hell!" Uphill boomed. "We just got here."

"I couldn't have said it better." Butera grinned and looked up at Sandecker.

"The Morse and the Wallace can tow an aircraft earner through a swamp in a tornado if they have to. They're designed to slug it out with anything Mother Nature can dish out. If we can get a cable on board the Titanic and get her under tow, she'll stand a fighting chance of riding out the storm intact."

"Pulling a forty-five-thousand-ton ship through the jaws of a hurricane," Sandecker murmured. "That's a pretty heady boast."

"No boast." Butera came back dead-serious. "By fastening a cable from the stern of the Morse to the bow of the Wallace, our combined power can tow the Titanic in the same manner as a pair of railroad engines in tandem can pull a freight train."

"And, we can do it in thirty-foot seas at a speed of five to six knots," Uphill added.

Sandecker looked at the two tug captains and let them go on.

Butera charged ahead. "Those aren't run-of-the-mill harbor tugs floating out there, Admiral. They're deep-sea, ocean-rescue tugs, two hundred and fifty feet in length with five-thousand-horse diesel power plants, each boat capable of hauling twenty thousand tons of dead weight at ten knots for two thousand miles without running out of fuel. If any two tugs in, the world can pull the Titanic through a hurricane, these can."

"I appreciate your enthusiasm," Sandecker said, "but, I won't be responsible for the lives of you and your crews on what has to be an impossible gamble. The Titanic will have to drift out the storm as best she can. I'm ordering you both to shove off and head into a safe area."

Uphill looked at Butera. "Tell me, Commander, when was the last time you defied a direct command from an admiral?"

Butera feigned mock thoughtfulness. "Come to think of it, not since breakfast."

"Speaking for myself and the salvage crew," Pitt said, "we'd welcome your company."

"There you have it, sir," Butera said, grinning. "Besides, my orders from Admiral Kemper were either to bring the Titanic into port or take out papers for an early retirement. Me, I opt for the Titanic."

"That's mutiny," Sandecker said flatly; but there was no hiding the trace of satisfaction in his tone, and it took no great stroke of perception to recognize that the argument had gone exactly as he had planned it. He gave everyone a very shrewd look and said, "Okay, gentlemen, it's your funeral. Now that that's settled, I suggest that instead of sitting around here, you get about the business of saving the Titanic."

Captain Ivan Parotkin stood on the port wing bridge of the Mikhail Kurkov and searched the sky with a pair of binoculars' '

He was a slender man of medium height with a distinguished face that almost never smiled. He was in his late fifties, but his receding hair showed no sign of gray. A thick turtleneck sweater covered his chest while his hips and legs were encased in heavy woolen pants and knee boots.

Parotkin's first officer touched him on the arm and pointed skyward above the Mikhail Kurkov's huge radar dome. A four-engine patrol bomber appeared out of the northeast and magnified until Parotkin could make out its Russian markings. The aircraft seemed to be crawling scant miles per hour above its stalling speed as it swept overhead. Then suddenly a tiny object ejected from the underbelly, and seconds later a parachute blossomed open and began drifting over the ship's forward mastpeak, its occupant finally dropping into the water about two hundred yards off the starboard bow.

As the Mikhail Kurkov's small boat put away and dipped over the mountainous, wide-spaced waves, Parotkin turned to his first officer. "As soon as he is safely on board, conduct Captain Prevlov to my quarters." Then he laid the binoculars on the bridge counter and disappeared down a companionway.

Twenty minutes later, the first officer knocked at the highly polished mahogany door, opened it, and then stood aside to allow a man to pass through. He was thoroughly soaked and dripping salt water in puddles about the deck.

"Captain Parotkin."

"Captain Prevlov."

They stood there in silence a few moments, both highly trained professionals, and sized each other up. Prevlov had the advantage; he'd studied Parotkin's service history in depth. Parotkin, on the other hand, had only repute and first appearances to form a judgment. He wasn't sure he liked what he saw. Prevlov came off too handsome, too foxlike for Parotkin to grasp a favorable sense of warmth or trust.

"We are short on time," Prevlov said. "If we could get right down to the purpose of my visit-"

Parotkin held up his hand. "First things first. Some hot tea and a change of clothing. Dr. Rogovski, our chief scientist, is about your height and weight." The first officer nodded and closed the door.

"Now then," Parotkin said, "I am certain a man of your rank and importance didn't risk his life parachuting into running sea merely to observe the atmospheric phenomenon of a hurricane."

"Hardly. Personal danger is not my cup of tea. And speaking of tea, I don't suppose you have anything stronger on board?"

Parotkin shook his head. "Sorry, Captain. I insist on a dry ship. Not exactly to the crew's liking, I admit, but it does save occasional grief."

"Admiral Sloyuk said you were a paragon of efficiency."

"I do not believe in tempting the fates."

Prevlov unzipped his sodden jumpsuit and let it fall on the floor. "I am afraid you are about to make an exception to that rule, Captain. We, you and I, are about to tempt the fates as they have never been tempted before." Pitt could not escape the feeling he was being deserted on a lonely island as he stood on the foredeck of the Titanic and watched the salvage fleet get under way and begin moving toward the western horizon and safer waters. The Alhambra was the last in line to slip past, her captain flashing a "good luck" with his addis lamp, the news people quietly, solemnly filming what might be the last visual record of the Titanic. Pitt searched for Dana Seagram among the crowd gathered at the railings, but his eyes failed to pick her out. He watched the ships until they became small dark specks on a leaden sea. Only the missile cruiser Juneau and the Capricorn remained behind, but the salvage tender would soon depart and follow the others once the tug captains signaled they had the derelict in tow.

"Mr. Pitt?"

Pitt turned to see a man who had the face of a canvas weary prizefighter and the body of a beer keg.

"Chief Bascom, sir, of the Wallace. I brought a two-man crew aboard to make fast the towing cable."

Pitt smiled a friendly smile. "I bet they call you Bad Bascom."

"Only behind my back. It's a name that's followed me ever since I tore up a bar in San Diego." Bascom shrugged. Then his eyes narrowed. "How did you guess?"

"Commander Butera described you in glowing terms... behind your back, that is."

"A good man, the commander."

"How long will it take for the hookup?"

"With luck and the loan of your helicopter, about an hour."

"No problem over the helicopter; it belongs to the Navy anyway." Pitt turned and gazed down at the Wallace as Butera very carefully backed the tug toward the Titanic's old straight up-and-down bow until he was less than a hundred feet away. "I take it the helicopter is to lift the tow cable on board?"

"Yes sir," Bascom answered. "Our cable measures ten inches in diameter and weighs in at one ton per seventy feet. No lightweight that one. On most tow jobs, we'd cast a small line over the derelict's bow which in turn would be attached to a series of heavier lines with increasing diameters that finally tied into the main cable, but that type of operation calls for the services of an electric winch, and since the Titanic is a dead ship and human muscles are way under matched for the job, we take the easy why out. No sense in filling up sick bay with a crew of hernia patients."

Even with the help of the helicopter, it was all Bascom and his men could do to secure the great cable into position. Sturgis came through like an old pro. Tenderly manipulating the helicopter's controls, he laid the end of the Wallace's tow cable on the Titanic's forecastle deck as neatly as though he'd practiced the trick for years. It took only fifty minutes, from the time Sturgis released the cable and flew back to the Capricorn, until Chief Bascom stood on the forepeak and waved his arms over his head, signaling the tugs that the connection was made. Butera on the Wallace acknowledged the signal with a blast on the tug's whistle and rang the engine room for "dead ahead slow" as Uphill on the Morse went through the same motions. Slowly the two tugs gathered way, the Wallace trailing the Morse on three hundred yards of wire leash, paying out the main cable until the Titanic rose and dropped in the steadily increasing swells nearly a quarter of a mile astern. Then Butera held up his hand and the men on the Wallace's afterdeck gently eased on the brake of the tug's immense towing winch and the cable took up the strain.

From atop the Titanic's vast height, the tugs looked like tiny toy boats tossing over the enormous crests of the waves one moment before disappearing to their mastlights in the cavernous troughs the next. It seemed impossible that such puny objects could budge over forty-five thousand tons of dead weight, and yet slowly, imperceptibly at first, their combined forces of ten-thousand horsepower began to tell and soon a minute dog's bone of foam could be discerned curling around the Titanic's faded Plimsoll's mark.

She was barely making way--New York was still twelve hundred miles to the west--but she had at last picked up where she'd left off that cold night back in 1912 and was once again making for port.

The ominous-looking black clouds rose and spilled over the southern horizon. It was a hurricane bar. Even as Pitt watched, it seemed to expand and strengthen, turning the sea to a dark shade of dirty gray. Oddly, the wind became light, aimlessly changing direction every few seconds. He noticed that the sea gulls that had once swarmed about the salvage fleet were not in view. Only the sight of the Juneau, moving steadily five hundred yards abeam the Titanic, provided any sense of security.

Pitt glanced at his watch and then took another look over the port railing before he slowly, almost casually, approached the entrance to the gymnasium.

"Is the gang all here?"

"They're getting restless as hell," Giordino said. He was standing huddled against a ventilator in a seemingly vain attempt to hide from the icy wind. "If it wasn't for the admiral's restraining influence, you'd have had a first-class riot on your hands."

"Everyone is accounted for?"

"To a man."

"You're positive?"

"Take the word of Warden Giordino. None of the inmates have left the room, not even to go potty."

"Then I guess it's my turn to enter stage right."

"Any complaints from our guests?" Giordino asked.

"The usual. Never satisfied with their accommodations, not enough heat or too much air conditioning, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

"You'd better go aft and see about making their wait enjoyable."

"For God's sake, how?"

"Tell them jokes."

Giordino gave Pitt a sour look and mumbled dryly to himself as he turned and walked off into the evening's dimming light.

Pitt checked his watch once more and entered the gymnasium. Three hours had passed since the tow had begun and the final act of the salvage had settled down to a routine. Sandecker and Gunn were bent over the radio pestering Farquar on the Capricorn, now fifty miles to the west, for the latest news on Hurricane Amanda, while the rest of the crew was grouped in a tight semicircle around a small and thoroughly inadequate oil-burning stove.

As Pitt entered, they had all looked up expectantly. When at last he spoke, his voice was unnaturally soft in the unnatural quiet that was broken only by the hum of the portable generators. "My apologies, gentlemen, for keeping you waiting, but I thought the short coffee break would reconstitute your sagging sinews."

"Cut the satire," Spencer snapped, his voice taut with irritation. "You call us all up here and then make us sit around for half an hour when there is work to do. What's the story?"

"The story is simple," Pitt said evenly. "In a few minutes, Lieutenant Sturgis will drop his helicopter on board one last time before the storm strikes. With the exception of Giordino and myself, I would like all of you, and that includes you, Admiral, to return with him to the Capricorn. "

"Aren't you out of your depth, Pitt," Sandecker said in an unemphatic one.

"To some degree, yes, sir, but I firmly believe I'm doing the right thing."

"Explain yourself." Sandecker glowed like a piranha about to gulp a goldfish. He was playing his role to the hilt. It was an epic job of typecasting.

"I have every reason to believe the Titanic hasn't the structural strength left to weather a hurricane."

"This old tub has taken more punishment than any man-made object since the pyramids," Spencer said. "And, now the great seer of the future, Dirk Pitt, predicts the old girl will throw in the sponge and sink at the first blow from a lousy storm."

"There's no guarantee she can't or won't founder under a heavy sea," Pitt hedged. "Either way, it's stupid to risk any more lives than we have to."

"Let me see if I get this straight." Drummer leaned forward, his hawklike features intent and angry. "Except for you and Giordino, the rest of us are supposed to haul ass and ditch everything we've busted our balls to achieve over the last nine months just so's we can hide on the Capricorn till the storm blows over? Is that the idea?"

"You go to the head of the class, Drummer."

"Man, you're out of your gourd."

"Impossible," Spencer said. "It takes four men just to oversee the pumps."

"And the hull below the waterline has to be sounded around the clock for new leaks," Gunn added.

"You heroes are all alike," Drummer drawled "Always making noble sacrifices to save others. Let's face it; ain't no way two men can ride herd on this old tub. I vote we all stay."

Spencer turned and read the faces of his six-man crew. They all stared back at him out of eyes red-rimmed with lack of sleep and nodded in chorus. Then Spencer faced Pitt again. "Sorry, great leader, but Spencer and his merry band of pump-pushers have decided to hang in there."

"I'm with you," Woodson said solemnly.

"Count me in," said Gunn.

Chief Bascom touched Pitt on the arm. "Beggin' your pardon, sir, but me and my boys are for sticking around too. That cable out there has to be checked every hour during the storm for signs of chafing, and heavy grease applied to the fair-lead to prevent a break."

"Sorry, Pitt, my boy," Sandecker said with a marked degree of satisfaction.

"You lose."

The sound of Sturgis's helicopter was heard hovering for a landing over the lounge roof. Pitt shrugged resignedly and said, "Well that settles it then. We all sink or swim together." Then he cracked a tired smile. "You'd all better get some rest and some food in your stomachs. It may be your last chance. A few hours from now we'll be up to our eyeballs in the front quadrant of the hurricane. And, I don't have to draw a picture of what we can expect."

He swung on his heels and walked out the door to the helicopter pad. Not a bad performance, he thought to himself. Not a bad performance at all. He'd never be nominated for an Academy Award, but what the hell, his captive audience had thought it convincing and that's all that really mattered.

Jack Sturgis was a short, thin man with sad drooping eyes, the kind women considered bedroom eyes. He gripped a long cigarette holder between his teeth and jutted his chin forward in a show reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt. He had just climbed down from the cockpit of the helicopter and seemed to be groping for something under the landing gear when Pitt stepped onto the pad. Sturgis looked up. "Any passengers?" he asked.

"Not this trip."

Sturgis nonchalantly flicked an ash from his cigarette holder. "I knew I should have stayed cuddled in my warm, cozy cabin on the Capricorn. " He sighed.

"Flying in the face of hurricanes will be the death of me yet."

"You'd better get going," Pitt said. "The wind will be on us any time now."

"Makes no difference." Sturgis shrugged indifferently. "I'm not going anywhere."

Pitt looked at him. "What do you mean by that?"

"I've been had, that's what I mean." He gestured up at the rotor blades. The two-foot tip of one was hanging down like a limp wrist. "Somebody around here resents whirlybirds."

"Did you strike a bulkhead on landing?"

Sturgis put on a hurt expression. "I do not, repeat, do not strike objects upon landing." He found what he was searching for and straightened up. "Here, see for yourself; some son of a bitch tossed a hammer into my rotor blades." Pitt took the hammer and examined it. The rubber handgrip showed a deep gash where it had come in contact with the blade.

"And, after all I've done for you people," Sturgis said, "this is how you show your appreciation."

"Sorry, Sturgis, but I suggest you forget any aspirations of ever becoming a television detective. You sadly lack an analytical mind, and you're prone to leap to false conclusions."

"Get off it, Pitt. Hammers don't fly through the air without a means of propulsion. One of your people must have tossed it when I was landing."

"Wrong. I can vouch for the whereabouts of every soul on board this ship, and no one was anywhere near the helicopter pad in the last ten minutes. Whoever your little destructive friend is I'm afraid you brought him with you."

"Do you think I'm a dead-brain? Don't you think I'd know if I carried a passenger? Besides, now you're insinuating a suicidal act. If that hammer had been thrown one minute sooner, when we were a hundred feet in the air, you and your crew would have had an ugly mess to clean up."

"Wrong nomenclature," Pitt said. "Not passenger, but stowaway. And, he's no dead-brain either. He waited until your wheels kissed the deck before he made his play and escaped through the cargo hatch. God only knows where he's hiding now. A thorough search of fifty miles of pitch dark passageways and compartments is impossible."

Sturgis's face suddenly paled. "Christ, our intruder is still in the copter."

"Don't be ridiculous. He beat it the instant you landed."

"No, no. It's possible to throw a hammer out and up through an open cabin window into the rotor blades, but escape is something else again."

"I'm listening," Pitt said quietly.

"The cargo compartment hatch is electronically operated and can only be activated from a switch in the control cabin."

"Is there another exit?"

"Only a door to the control cabin."

Pitt studied the sealed cargo hatch for a long moment, then turned back to Sturgis, his eyes cold. "Is this any way to treat an unexpected guest? I think the appropriate thing to do is for us to invite him into the fresh air." Sturgis became rooted to the deck as he spotted the Colt forty-five automatic, complete with silencer, that had suddenly materialized in Pitt's right hand.

"Sure. . . sure. . ." he stammered. If you say so." Sturgis clambered up the ladder to the control cabin, leaned in and pushed a switch. The electric motors made a whirring sound and the contoured seven-footby-seven-foot door rose open and upward over the helicopter's fuselage. Even before the locking pins clicked into position, Sturgis was back on the deck and standing warily behind Pitt's broad shoulders.

Half a minute after the door had opened, Pitt was still standing there. He stood there for what Sturgis thought was a lifetime without moving a muscle, breathing slowly and evenly, and listening. The only sounds were the slap of the waves against the hull, the low whine of the steadily building wind over the Titanic's superstructure and the murmur of voices that carried through the gymnasium door, not the sounds he was tuned in for. When he was satisfied there were no sounds of feet scraping, rustling of clothing, or other tones relating to menace or stealth, he stepped into the helicopter.

The darkened skies outside dimmed the interior and Pitt was uneasily aware that he was perfectly silhouetted against the dusk light. At first glance, the compartment seemed empty, but then Pitt felt a tapping on his shoulder and noted that Sturgis was pointing past him at a tarpaulin tucked around a humanlike shape.

"I neatly folded and stowed that tarp not more than an hour ago," Sturgis whispered.

Swiftly, Pitt reached down and dragged the tarpaulin away with his left hand while aiming the Colt as steadily as a park statue with his right. A figure enveloped in a heavy foul-weather jacket lay huddled on the cargo deck, the eyes loosely closed in a state of unconsciousness that was obviously related to the ugly, bleeding, and purplish bruise just above the hairline. Sturgis stood rooted in the shadows in shocked immobility, his widening eyes blinking rapidly, still adjusting to the diminishing light. Then he rubbed his chin lightly with his fingers and shook his head in disbelief. "Good lord," he muttered in awe. "Do you know who that is?"

"I do," Pitt answered evenly. "Her name is Seagram, Dana Seagram." With appalling abruptness, the sky above the Mikhail Kurkov went pitch dark . .

. great black clouds rolled overhead, obliterating the evening stars, and the wind returned and rose to a wailing gale of forty miles an hour, breaking the edges of the wave crests and carrying the foam in well-defined streaks toward the northeast.

Inside the large wheelhouse of the Soviet ship it was warm and comfortable. Prevlov stood beside Parotkin, who was watching the Titanic's blip on radar.

"When I took command of this ship," Parotkin said, as though lecturing a schoolboy, "I was under the impression my orders were to carry out research and surveillance programs. Nothing was said about conducting an out-and-out military operation."

Prevlov held up a protesting hand. "Please, Captain, forget the words military and operation are unmentionable. The little venture upon which we are about to embark is a perfectly legal civilian activity known in the western countries as a change in management."

"Blatant piracy is closer to the truth," Parotkin said. "And what do you call those ten marines you so kindly added to my crew when we left port?

Stockholders?"

"Again, not marines, but rather civilian crewmen."

"Of course," Parotkin said dryly. "And every one armed to the teeth."

"There is no international law I know of that forbids ship crewmen the right to possess arms."

"If one existed, you would no doubt discover an escape clause."

"Come, come, my dear Captain Parotkin." Prevlov slapped him heartily on the back. "When this evening is played to the finale, we will both be heroes of the Soviet Union."

"Or dead," Parotkin said woodenly.

"Calm your fears. The plan is flawless, and with the storm which drove off the salvage fleet, it becomes even more so."

"Aren't you overlooking the Juneau? Her captain will not stand idly by while we steam alongside the Titanic, board her and raise the hammer and sickle over her bridge."

Prevlov held up his wrist and stared at his watch. "In exactly two hours and twenty minutes, one of our nuclear attack submarines will surface a hundred miles to the north and begin transmitting distress signals under the name of the Laguna Star, a tramp freighter of rather dubious registry."

"And you think the Juneau will take the bait and dash to the rescue?"

"Americans never reject an appeal for help," Prevlov said confidently. "They all have a Good Samaritan complex. Yes, the Juneau will respond. She has to; except for the tugs which cannot leave the Titanic, she is the only available ship within three hundred miles."

"But if our submarine then submerges, nothing will show on the Juneau's radar screens."

"Naturally, her officers will assume that the Laguna Star has sunk, and they will double their efforts to arrive in the nick of time to save the lives of a nonexistent crew."

"I bow to your imagination." Parotkin smiled. "Yet that still leaves you with such problems as the two United States Navy tugs, boarding the Titanic during the worst hurricane in years, neutralizing the American salvage crow, and then towing the derelict back to Russia, all without creating an international uproar."

"There are four parts to your statement, Captain." Prevlov paused to light a cigarette. "Number one, the tugboats will be eliminated by two Soviet operatives who are at this moment masquerading as members of the American salvage crew. Number two, I shall board the Titanic and assume its command when the eye of the hurricane reaches us. Since the wind velocities in this area seldom exceed fifteen knots, my men and I should have little difficulty in crossing over and entering through a hull loading door that will be conveniently opened on schedule by one of the operatives. Number three, my boarding party will then dispose of the salvage crew quickly and efficiently. And, fiery, number four, it will be made to look to the world as dough the Americans fled the ship at the height of the hurricane and were lost at sea. That, of course, makes the Titanic an abandoned derelict. The first captain who gets a towline on her is then entitled to the salvage rights. You are to be that lucky captain, Comrade Parotkin. Under international marine law, you will have every legal right to take the Titanic in tow."

"You will never get away with it," Parotkin said. "What you're suggesting is outright mass murder." There was a vacant, sick look in his eyes. "Have you also considered the consequences of failure with the same dedication to detail?" Prevlov looked at him, the ever-present smile tightening. "Failure has been considered, Comrade. But let us fervently hope our final option will not be required." He pointed at the large blip on the radar screen. "It would be a pity to have to sink the world's most legendary ship a second time, and for all time." Deep in the bowels of the ancient ocean liner, Spencer and his pumping crew struggled to keep the diesel pumps going. Sometimes working alone in the cold, black caverns of steel, with nothing but the pitiful comfort of small spotlights, they uncomplainingly went about their business of keeping the ship afloat. It came as somewhat of a surprise to find that in some compartments the pumps were falling behind the incoming water.

By seven o'clock the weather had deteriorated to the point of no return. The barometer slipped past 29.6 and was still falling steeply. The Titanic began to pitch and roll and take solid water over her bow and cargo deck bulwarks. Visibility under the shroud of night and the driving rain dropped to almost zero. The only sighting the men on the tugs had of the big ship came with an occasional bolt of lightning that vaguely silhouetted her ghostly outline. The main concern, however, was the cable that disappeared into the mad, swirling waters astern. The constant strain on this lifeline was enormous; every time the Titanic took the full onslaught from a wave of massive proportions, they watched in ominous fascination as the cable arched out of the water and creaked in agonized protest.

Butera never moved from his bridge, keeping in constant contact with the men in the afterdeck cablehouse. Suddenly, a voice from the speaker crackled over the howl of the outside wind. "Captain?"

"This is the Captain," he replied into a hand phone.

"Ensign Kelly in the cablehouse, sir. Something mighty peculiar going on back here."

"Would you care to explain, Ensign?"

"Well, sir, the cable seems to have gone berserk. First she swung to port and now she's carried over to starboard at what I must say, sir, is an alarming angle."

"Okay, keep me posted." Butera switched off and opened another channel.

"Uphill, can you hear me? This is Butera."

On the Morse Uphill answered almost immediately. "Go ahead."

"I think the Titanic has sheered off to starboard."

"Can you make out her position?"

"Negative. The only indication is the angle of the cable." There came a silence of several moments as Uphill thrashed the new development over in his mind. Then he came back through the speaker "We're hardly making four knots as it is. We have no alternative but to push on. If we stop to see what she's up to, she may swing broadside into the sea and roll over."

"Can you pick her up on your radar?"

"No can do, a sea swept away our antennae twenty minutes ago. How about yours?"

"Still have the antennae, but the same sea that took yours shorted, out my circuits."

"Then it's a case of the blind leading the blind."

Butera set the radio phone in its cradle and cautiously cracked the door leading to the starboard wing of the bridge. Shielding his eyes with his arm, he staggered outside and strained his eyes to penetrate the night gone crazy. The searchlights proved useless, their beams merely reflected the driving rain and revealed nothing. Lightning flashed astern, its thunder drowned out by the wind, and Butera's heart skipped a beat. The brief burst of backlighting failed to reveal any outline of the Titanic. It was as though she had never been. Water streaming down his oilskins, his breath coming in gasps, he pushed back past the door just as Ensign Kelly's voice rasped over the speaker again.

"Captain?"

Butera wiped the spray from his eyes and picked up the phone. "What is it, Kelly?"

"The cable, it's slackened."

"Is it a break?"

"No, sir, the cable's still pain out, but it's settled several feet lower in the water. I've never seen one act like this before. It's as if the derelict took it in her mind to pass us."

It was the words "pass us" that did it . . . and Butera would never forget the sudden shock of realization. A mental click triggered open a floodgate in his mind, released a nightmare of images in orderly sequence, images of a mad pendulum, its arc growing ever wider until it turned in on itself. The signs were there, the cable angled badly to starboard, the sudden slackness. He envisioned the whole scene in his mind the Titanic driven slightly ahead and parallel to the Wallace's starboard beam and now the pull from the cable snapping the derelict back in the manner of a line of school children playing Crack the Whip. Then something broke the nightmare inside Butera's head and released him from its numbing thrall.

He grabbed the radio phone and rang the engine room in almost the same movement. "Ahead full speed! Do you hear me, engine room? Ahead full speed!" And then he called the Morse. "I'm coming at you full speed," he shouted. "Do you read me, Uphill?"

"Please repeat," Uphill asked.

"Order full speed ahead, damn it, or I'll run you down." Butera dropped the phone and fought his way outside onto the bridge wing again. The hurricane was beating the sea into a froth so savage, so angry, that it was nearly impossible to separate air from water. It was all he could do to maintain a hold on the railing.

Then he saw it, the immense bow of the Titanic looming up through the curtain of the thrashing deluge, hardly more than a hundred feet off the starboard quarter. There was nothing he could do now except watch in frozen horror as the menacing mass moved inexorably closer to the Wallace.

"No!" he cried above the wind. "You dirty old corpse; you leave my ship alone." It was too late. It seemed impossible that the Titanic could ever swing clear of the Wallace's stern. And yet the impossible happened. The great sixty-foot bow rose up on a mountainous wave and hung there suspended just long enough for the tug's screws to take bite and pull her clear. Then the Titanic dropped in the trough, missing the stern of the Wallace by no more than three feet, throwing up a surge that engulfed the entire smaller vessel, carrying away both its lifeboats and one of the ventilators.

The wave tore Butera's grip from the railing and swept him across the bridge, jamming his body against the wheelhouse bulkhead. He lay there totally submerged under the billow, his throat choking, his lungs gasping for air, his brain sluggishly taking strength from the strong pulsing beat of the Wallace's engines that transmitted through the deck. When the water finally drained away, he struggled to his feet and retched his stomach empty.

He clawed his way back into the safety of the wheelhouse. Butera, his senses stunned by the miracle of the Wallace's deliverance, watched the great black apparition that was the Titanic slide by astern until she disappeared again in the shroud of wind-whipped rain.

"Leave it to Dirk Pitt to pick up a dame in the middle of the ocean during a hurricane," Sandecker said. "What's your secret?"

"The Pitt curse," Pitt answered, as he tenderly bandaged the swelling on Dana's head. "Women are forever attracted to me under impossible circumstances when I'm in no mood to respond."

Dana began to moan softly.

"She's coming around," Gunn said. He was on his knees next to a cot they had wedged between the gymnasium's old exercise equipment to steady it from the ship's rolling and pitching.

Pitt covered her with a blanket. "She suffered a nasty tap, but her mass of hair probably saved her from anything worse than a concussion."

"How did she come to be on Sturgis's helicopter?" Woodson asked. "I thought she was babysitting the news people on board the Alhambra. "

"She was," Admiral Sandecker said. "Several television network correspondents requested permission to cover the Titanic's haul to New York from aboard the Capricorn. I gave authorization on the condition that Dana accompany them."

"I ferried them over," Sturgis said. "And, I saw Mrs. Seagram disembark when I landed on the Capricorn. It's a mystery to me how she re-entered the helicopter without being noticed."

"Yeah, a mystery," Woodson repeated caustically. "Don't you bother checking your cargo compartment between flights?"

"I'm not running a commercial airline," Sturgis snapped back. He looked as though he was about to hit Woodson. He glanced at Pitt and was met with a disapproving stare. Then, with a visible effort, he reined in his emotions and spoke slowly and firmly "I'd been flying that bird out there steady for twenty hours straight. I was tired. I easily convinced myself that there was no need to bother with a cargo-compartment check because I was certain it was empty. How was I to know Dana Seagram would sneak on board?"

Gunn shook his head. "Why did she do it? Why would she?. . ."

"I don't know why . . . how the hell should I?" Sturgis said. "Suppose you tell me why she threw a hammer through my rotor blades, wrapped herself up in a tarpaulin, and then clouted herself on the head? Not necessarily in that order."

"Why don't you ask her?" Pitt said. He nodded down at the cot. Dana was staring up at the men, her eyes devoid of understanding. She looked as though she had just been dragged up from the sanctuary of exhausted sleep.

"Forgive me . . . for asking such a hackneyed question," she murmured. "But, where am I?"

"My dear girl," Sandecker said, kneeling at her side, "you're on the Titanic. " She looked dazedly at the admiral, disbelief written across her face. "That can't be?"

"Oh, I assure you it is," Sandecker said. "Pitt, there's a bit of scotch left. Bring me a glass."

Pitt obediently did as he was told and handed Sandecker the glass. Dana took a swallow of the Cutty Sark, choked on it and coughed, holding her head as if to contain the pain that had suddenly exploded in her skull.

"There, there, my dear." It was plain to see Sandecker was somewhat at a loss as to how to treat a woman in agony. "Rest easy. You've suffered a nasty blow on the head."

Dana felt the bandage circling her hair and then clutched the admiral's hand knocking the glass on the deck.

Pitt winced as the scotch spilled. Women just don't appreciate good booze.

"No, no, I'm all right." She struggled to a sitting position on the cot and stared in wonder at the strange mechanical contrivances. "The Titanic, " she said the name reverently. "I'm actually on the Titanic?"

"Yes." Pitt's voice was edged with sharpness. "And, we'd like to know how you got here."

She looked at him, half-uncertainly, half-confused, and said, "I don't know. I honestly don't know. The last thing I recall I was on the Capricorn. "

"We found you in the helicopter," Pitt said.

"The helicopter . . . I lost my make-up kit . . . must have dropped it on the flight from the Alhambra. " She forced a wan smile. "Yes, that's it. I returned to the helicopter to search for my make-up kit. I found it jammed between the fold-up seats. I tried pulling it free when . . . well, I guess I fainted and hit my head when I fell."

"Fainted? You're sure you--" Pitt broke off his question and asked another instead. "What was the very last thing you remember seeing before you blacked out?"

She thought a moment, staring as if at some distant vision in time. Those coffee-brown eyes seemed unnaturally large against her pale and strained face. Sandecker patted her hand paternally. "Just take your time." Finally her lips formed a word. "Boots."

"Say again," Pitt ordered.

"A pair of boots," she answered as if seeing a revelation. "Yes, I remember now, a pair of sharp-toed cowboy boots."

"Cowboy boots?" Gunn asked, his expression blank.

Dana nodded. "You see, I was down on my hands and knees trying to extricate my make-up kit, and then . . . I don't know . . . they just seemed to be there . . ." She paused.

"What color were they?" Pitt prodded her.

"Kind of a yellow, cream color."

"Did you see the man's face?"

She started to shake her head and caught herself at the first stab of pain. "No, everything went dark then. . . that's all there is. . ." Her voice trailed off. Pitt could see that there was nothing to be gained by further interrogation. He looked down at Dana and smiled. She looked up and smiled back with an anxious-to-please smile.

"We dirty old men had best leave you alone to rest for a while," he said. "If you need anything, one of us will always be close by."

Sandecker followed Pitt over to the entrance to the grand staircase. "What do you make of it?" Sandecker asked. "Why would anyone want to harm Dana?"

"For the same reason they killed Henry Munk."

"You think she got wise to one of the Soviet agents?"

"More likely, in her case, it was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"The last thing we need on our hands now is an injured woman." Sandecker sighed. "There'll be hell to pay when Gene Seagram gets my radio message about what happened to his wife."

"With all due respect, sir, I told Gunn not to send your message. We can't risk a change in plans at the last minute. Men make cautious decisions where women are concerned. We won't hesitate to risk the lives of a dozen members of our own sex, but we'll balk every time when it comes to endangering one of the female species. What Seagram, the President, Admiral Kemper, and the others in Washington don't know won't hurt them, at least for the next twelve hours."

"It would appear my authority means nothing around here," Sandecker said acidly. "Anything else you neglected to tell me, Pitt? Like who those outlandish cowboy boots belong to?"

"The boots belong to Ben Drummer."

Ì've never seen him wear them. How would . . . how could you know that?"

"I discovered them when I searched his quarters on the Capricorn. "

"Now you've added burglarizing to your other talents," Sandecker said.

"Drummer wasn't alone. Giordino and I have searched every one of the salvage crews' belongings over the past month."

"Find anything of interest?"

"Nothing incriminating."

"Who do you think injured Dana?"

It wasn't Drummer. That much is certain. He's got at least a dozen witnesses including you and me, Admiral, who will testify that he's been on board the Titanic since yesterday. It would have been impossible for him to attack Dana Seagram on a ship that was fifty miles away."

At that moment, Woodson came up and caught Pitt's arm. "Sorry for the interruption, boss, but we just received an urgent call from the Juneau. I'm afraid it's bad news."

"Let's have it," Sandecker said wearily. "The outlook can't possibly be painted any blacker than it is now."

"Oh, but it can," Woodson said. "The message is from the missile cruiser's captain and reads `Have received distress call from eastbound freighter Laguna Star, bearing zero five degrees, a hundred and ten miles north of your position. Must respond. Repeat, must respond. Sorry to leave you. Good luck to the Titanic!"'

" `Good luck to the Titanic, "' Sandecker echoed. His voice was flat and empty of life. "We might as well raise a flashing sign on the hull that says, `Welcome thieves and pirates. Come one, come all."'

So now it begins, Pitt thought to himself.

But the only sensation that coursed through his body was a sudden, overwhelming urge to go to the bathroom.

The air in Admiral Joseph Kemper's Pentagon office reeked of stale cigarette smoke and half-eaten sandwiches, and it almost seemed to crackle under the invisible cloud of tension.

Kemper and Gene Seagram were huddled over the admiral's desk in quiet conversation while Mel Donner and Warren Nicholson, the CIA director, sat together on the sofa, their feet propped on a coffee table, and dozed. But they jerked upright in full wakefulness when the strange buzz that was specially tuned into Kemper's red telephone broke the hushed quiet. Kemper grunted into the receiver and laid it back in its cradle.

"It was the security desk. The President is on his way up." Donner and Nicholson glanced at each other and heaved themselves off the sofa. They had no sooner cleared the coffee table of the evening's debris, straightened their ties and donned their coats when the door opened and the President strode in followed by his Kremlin security adviser, Marshall Collies. Kemper came from behind his desk and shook the President's hand. "Nice to see you, Mr. President. Please make yourself at home. May I get you something?"

The President scanned his watch and then grinned. "Three hours yet before the bars close. How about a Bloody Mary?"

Kemper grinned back and nodded to his aide. "Commander Keith, will you do the honors?"

Keith nodded. "One Bloody Mary coming up, sir."

"I hope you gentlemen won't mind me standing watch with you," the President said, "but I have a heavy stake in this too!"

"Not at all, sir," Nicholson answered. "We're happy to have you."

"What is the situation at the moment?"

Admiral Kemper gave a full briefing to the President, describing the unexpected ferocity of the hurricane, showing the positions of the ships on a projected wall map, and explaining the Titanic's towing operation.

"Was it absolutely necessary that the Juneau be ordered off station?" the President asked.

"A distress call is a distress call," Kemper replied solemnly, "and must be answered by every ship in the area, regardless of the circumstances."

"We have to play according to the other team's rules until half time," Nicholson said. "After that, it's our game."

"Do you think, Admiral Kemper, that the Titanic can stand up to the battering of a hurricane?"

"As long as the tugs can keep her bow into the wind and sea, she's an oddson favorite to come through with flying colors."

"And if for some reason the tugs cannot keep her from swinging broadside to the waves?"

Kemper avoided the President's gaze and shrugged.

"Then it's in God's hands."

"Nothing could be done?"

"No, sir. There is simply no way to protect any one vessel caught in the clutches of a hurricane. It becomes a case of every ship for herself."

"I see."

A knock at the door, and another officer entered, laid two slips of paper on Kemper's desk, and retreated.

Kemper read the notes and poked up, his face set in a grim expression. "A message from the Capricorn," he said. "Your wife, Mr. Seagram . . . your wife is reported missing. A search party aboard ship was unable to locate her. They fear she was lost overboard. I'm sorry."

Seagram sagged into Collins' arms, his eyes widened in stunned horror. "Oh my God!" he cried. "It can't be true. Oh God! What am I going to do. Dana . . . Dana. . ."

Donner rushed to his side. "Steady, Gene. Steady." He and Collins steered Seagram over to the sofa and gently lowered him to the cushions. Kemper gestured to the President for his attention. "There's another message, sir. From the Samuel R. Wallace, one of the tugs towing the Titanic. The towing cable," Kemper said. "It snapped. The Titanic is adrift in the center of the hurricane."

The cable hung like a dead snake over the stern of the Wallace, it's severed end swaying in the black depths a quarter of a mile below.

Butera stood frozen beside the great electric winch, refusing to believe his eyes. "How?" he shouted in Ensign Kelly's ear. "How could it part? It was built to take worse stress than this."

"Can't figure it," Kelly yelled back above the storm. "There was no extreme stress on her when she went."

"Bring her up, Ensign. Let's take a look."

The ensign nodded and gave the orders. The brake was released and the reel began turning, pulling the wire up from the sea. A solid sheet of spray dashed against the cablehouse. The dead weight of the wire acted as an anchor, dragging down the stern of the Wallace, and each time a column of water approached, it rose high over the wheelhouse and came thundering down upon it with a shock that jarred the entire tug.

At last the end of the tow cable appeared over the stern and snaked up onto the reel. As soon as the brake was applied, Butera and Kelly moved in and began examining the frayed strands.

Butera stared at it, his face twisted in stunned incomprehension. He touched the burned wire ends and looked dumbly at the ensign.

The ensign did not share Butera's muteness. "Jesus Christ in heaven," he shouted hoarsely. "It's been cut through with an acetylene torch." Pitt was down on his hands and knees on the cargo floor of the helicopter, sweeping his flashlight under the folded passenger seats when the Titanic's tow cable dropped into the sea.

Outside the wind howled with demonic power. Pitt couldn't have known it, but without the tug's steadying influence, the Titanic's bow was being forced by the raging sea to leeward, exposing her entire flank to the unleashed furies. She was beginning to broach to.

It had taken him only two minutes to find Dana's make-up kit where it had solidly jammed behind one of the folded front seats immediately behind the control-cabin bulkhead. He could easily see why she had had difficulty retrieving the blue nylon case from its prison. Very few women are blessed with mechanical inclinations, and Dana was definitely not one of them. It hadn't occurred to her to simply unclasp the restraining straps and unfold the seat. Pitt did so and the kit fell free into his hand.

He didn't bother opening it; he wasn't interested. What he was interested in was the recessed compartment in the forward bulkhead, where a twenty-man life raft sat, or where it was supposed to sit. The yellow, rubberized cover was there all right, but the raft was gone.

Pitt had no time to appreciate the implication of his discovery. Even as he pulled the empty cover out of its compartment, a monstrous sea crashed against the flank of the helpless Titanic, heeling her great mass over on her starboard side as though she never meant to stop. Pitt made a desperate grab for one of the seat supports, but his fingers closed on air and he was spilled like a sack of potatoes down across the sloping floor, crashing against the partially opened cargo door with such force that he ripped a four-inch gash in his scalp. Mercifully, the next few hours were lost to Pitt. He was aware of a cold gale sweeping into the fuselage, but not much else. His mind was a vague mass of gray wool and he felt remotely detached from his surroundings. He could not know or even sense when the helicopter shed its triplelashed moorings and was hurled sideways, dropping off the first-class lounge roof onto the Boat Deck, crumpling its tail section, tearing off its rotor blades, before grinding over the railing and falling toward the tormented sea.

The Russians came aboard the Titanic during the storm's lull. Deep down in the bowels of the engine and boiler rooms, Spencer and his pumping crew had no chance, not the least opportunity for any resistance. Their total surprise acknowledged Prevlov's dedication to exact planning and detailed execution. The fight that occurred topside-massacre would have been closer to the truthwas over almost before it began. Five Russian marines, half the boarding force, their faces all but hidden by seaman caps pulled low on top and with huge mufflers wrapped below, were in the gymnasium with automatic machine pistols ready and aimed before anyone could comprehend what was happening. Woodson was the first to react. He swung from the radio, his eyes widened in a look of recognition, and an expression of pure anger swept over his normally passive face. "You bastard!" he blurted, and then hurled himself at the nearest intruder.

But a knife materialized in the man's hand and he deftly rammed it into Woodson's chest, tearing the photographer's heart nearly in two. Woodson clutched at his killer, then slowly slid downward to the booted feet, shock in his eyes, then disbelief, then pain, and finally the emptiness of death. Dana sat up on her cot and screamed and screamed. It was that stimulus that finally stung the other members of the salvage crew into action. Drummer caught Woodson's murderer on the cheek with his fist and received the barrel of a machine pistol across his face for his effort. Sturgis launched his body in a flying tackle but his timing was late. A gun butt caught him just above the temple at the same instant he crashed into his intended victim and they both fell to the deck in a heap, the assailant quickly regaining his feet while Sturgis lay there as if dead. Giordino was in the act of bringing a wrench down on another Russian's skull when there was an ear-splitting crack. A bullet passed through his upraised hand and sent the wrench clattering across the deck. The shot seemed to freeze all movement. Sandecker, Gunn, and Chief Bascom and his men halted in mid action as they abruptly realized that their unarmed defense of the ship was hopeless in the face of gunk held by highly trained killers.

At that precise moment a man strode into the room, his intense gray eyes taking in every detail of the scene. He wasted no more than three seconds-three seconds and no more was all Andre Prevlov needed to survey any given situation. He stared down at the still-screaming Dana and smiled graciously. "Do you mind, my dear lady," he said in fluent, idiomatic English. "I think female panic inflicts quite an unnecessary strain on the vocal chords." Her round eyes were stricken. Her mouth closed and she sat huddled in a ball on the cot, staring at the spreading pool of blood under Omar Woodson and shuddering uncontrollably.

"There now, that's much better." Prevlov followed her eyes to Woodson, then to Drummer, who was sitting on the deck in the process of spitting out a tooth, and then to Giordino, who glared back holding his bleeding hand.

"Your resistance was foolish," Prevlov said. " One dead and three injured, and for nothing."

"Who are you?" Sandecker demanded. "By what right do you board this ship and murder my crew?"

"Ali! A pity we must meet under such remote and unpleasant circumstances," Prevlov apologized. "You are, of course, Admiral James Sandecker, are you not?"

"My questions still stand," Sandecker spat angrily.

"My name is of no consequence," Prevlov replied. "The answer to your other question is obvious. I am taking over this ship in the name of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."

"My government will never stand idly by and let you get away with it."

"Correction," Prevlov murmured. "Your government will stand idly by."

"You underestimate us."

Prevlov shook his head. "Not I, Admiral. I am fully aware of what your countrymen are capable of. I also know they will not start a war over the legitimate boarding of a derelict ship."

" `Legitimate boarding'?" Sandecker echoed. "The Civil Salvage Service laws define a derelict vessel as one whose crew has abandoned at sea without intent of returning or attempt at recovery. Since this ship still retains its crew, your presence, sir, constitutes a blatant act of high-seas piracy."

"Spare me your interpretation of maritime legalities." Prevlov held up a protesting hand. "You are quite right, of course, for the moment." The implication was clear. "You wouldn't dare cast us adrift in the middle of a hurricane."

"Nothing so mundane, Admiral. Besides, I am well aware that the Titanic is taking on water. I need your salvage engineer, Spencer, I believe his name is, and his crew to keep the pumps operating until the storm abates. After that, you and your people will be provided with a life raft. Your departure will then guarantee our right to salvage."

"We cannot be allowed to live to testify," Sandecker said. "Your government would never permit that. You know it, and I know it."

Prevlov looked at him, calm, unaffected. Then he turned casually, almost callously, dismissing Sandecker. He spoke in Russian to one of the marines. The man nodded and, tipped over the radio--and pounded it with the stock of his machine pistol into mangled pieces of metal, glass, and wiring.

"There is no further use for your operations room." Prevlov motioned around the gymnasium. "I have installed my communication facilities in the main dining room on D Deck. If you and the others will be so kind as to follow me, I will see to your comfort until the weather clears."

"One more question," Sandecker said without moving, "You owe me that."

"Of course, Admiral, of course."

"Where is Dirk Pitt?"

"I regret to inform you," Prevlov said with ironic sympathy, that Mr. Pitt was in your helicopter when it was swept over the side into the sea. His death must have come quickly."

Admiral Kemper sat opposite a grim-faced President and casually poured four teaspoons of sugar into his coffee cup.

"The aircraft carrier Beecher's Island is nearing the search area. Her planes will begin searching at first light." Kemper forced a thin smile. "Don't worry, Mr. President. We'll have the Titanic back in tow by mid-afternoon. You have my word on it."

The President looked up. "A helpless ship adrift and lost in the middle of the worst storm in fifty years? A ship that's rusted half through after lying on the bottom for seventy-six years? A ship the Soviet government is looking for any excuse to get their hands on? And you say not to worry. You're either a man of unshakable conviction, Admiral, or you're a hyperoptimist."

"Hurricane Amanda." Kemper sighed at the name. "We made allowances for every possible contingency, but nothing in our wildest imagination prepared us for a storm of such tremendous magnitude in the middle of May. It struck so fearfully hard, and on such short notice, that there was no time to reshuffle our priorities and time schedules."

"Suppose the Russians took it into their heads to make their play and are on board the Titanic this minute?"

Kemper shook his head. "Boarding a ship under a hundred-plus-mile-an-hour winds and seventy-foot seas? My years at sea tell me that's impossible."

"A week ago, Hurricane Amanda would have been considered impossible; too." The President looked up dully as Warren Nicholson sank in the opposite sofa.

"Any news?"

"Nothing from the Titanic," Nicholson said. "They haven't reported since they entered the eye of the hurricane."

"And the Navy tugs?"

"They still haven't sighted the Titanic-which isn't too surprising. With their radar inoperative, they're reduced to a visual search pattern. A hopeless chore, I'm afraid, in near-zero visibility."

For long moments, there was a suffocating silence. It was finally broken by Gene Seagram. "We can't lose it now, not when we were so close," he said, struggling to his feet. "The terrible price we've paid . . . I've paid . . . the byzanium, oh God, we can't let it be taken away from us again." His shoulders drooped and he seemed to wither as Donner and Collins eased him back down on the sofa.

Kemper spoke in a whisper. "If the worst happens, Mr. President? What then?"

"We write off Sandecker, Pitt, and the others."

"And the Sicilian Project?"

"The Sicilian Project," the President murmured. "Yes, we write that off too." The heavy-gray wool slowly began to fade away and Pitt became aware that he was lying in an upside-down position on something hard and in something wet. He hung there long minutes, his mind in the twilight zone between consciousness and unconsciousness, until gradually he was able to pry open his eyes, or at least one eye; the other was caked shut by coagulated blood. Like a man who had just struggled up from a deep dark tunnel into the daylight, he squinted his good eye from right to left, up and down. He was still in the helicopter, his feet and legs curled upward along the floor and his back and shoulders lay against the aft bulkhead.

That accounted for the hardness. The wetness was an understatement. Several inches of water sloshed back and forth around his body. He wondered vaguely how he had come to be contorted in this awkward position. His head felt as if little men were running around inside it, jabbing pitchforks into his brain. He splashed some water over his face, ignoring the sting of the salt, until the blood diluted and ran off, allowing the eyelid to open. Now that he had regained his peripheral vision he turned his body so that he was sitting on the bulkhead and looking up at the floor. It was like staring at the crazy room of an amusement park fun house.

There was to be no exiting through the cargo door; it had been jammed shut from the beating the fuselage had taken during its journey across the Titanic's decks. Left with no other choice but to get out through the control-cabin hatch, Pitt began climbing up the floor, using the cargo tie-down rings for handgrips. One ring at a time, he pulled himself toward the forward bulkhead, or what now constituted the ceiling. His head ached and he had to stop every few feet, waiting for the cobwebs to clear. At last, he could reach up and touch the door latch. The door wouldn't budge. He pulled out the Colt and pounded at the latch. The force of the blow knocked the pistol out of his wet hand, and it clattered all the way to the rear bulkhead. The door remained stubbornly closed.

Pitt's breath was coming now in heaving gasps. He was on the verge of blacking out from exhaustion. He turned and looked down. The aft bulkhead seemed a long way away. He gripped a cargo tie-down ring with both hands, swung in a series of ever-widening arcs, and then lashed out with both feet, using all the muscle a man can use when he knows it is his last try. The latch gave and the door sprung upward at an angle of thirty degrees before gravity took over and brought it slamming back down. But the brief opening was all Pitt needed to thrust a hand over the door frame, using his fingers as a jam. He gasped in agony as the door fell across his knuckles. He hung there, soaking up the pain, gathering the strength for the final hurdle. He took a deep breath and heaved his body through the opening as one would climb through a trapdoor in an attic without benefit of a ladder. Then he rested again, waiting for the dizziness to pass and his heart to slow down to a near-normal beat.

He wrapped his bleeding fingers in a sodden handkerchief and took stock of the control cabin. No problem escaping here. The cabin hatch had been torn off its hinges and the windshield glass knocked from its frames. Now that his escape was assured, he began to wonder how long he had been unconscious. Ten minutes? An hour? Half the night? He had no way of knowing as his watch was gone, probably wrenched from his wrist.

What had happened? He tried to analyze the possibilities. Had the helicopter been blown into the sea? Not likely. It would have been Pitt's coffin in the abyss by now. But where had the water in the cargo section come from? Maybe the aircraft had been ripped loose from its moorings and swept against one of the Boat Deck bulkheads of the derelict. That didn't work either. It couldn't explain why the helicopter was standing in a perfect perpendicular position. What he did know for certain was that every additional second spent sitting around in the middle of a hurricane and playing question-and-answer games moved him one second closer to more serious injury or even death. The answers were waiting outside, so he worked himself over the pilot's seat and stared through the shattered cockpit windows into the darkness beyond.

He was staring straight up the side of the Titanic. The gargantuan rusty plates of the hull stretched off into the dim light to the right and left. A quick downward look revealed the angry sea.

The waves were swirling about in massive confusion, often coming together in huge collisions that sounded like an artillery barrage. Visibility was better now; no heavy rain was falling and the wind had slackened to no more than ten or fifteen knots. At first Pitt thought that he must have slept through the hurricane, but then he figured out why the sea was leaping skyward without any sense of direction the Titanic was drifting in the eye of the coil, and only a few more minutes would pass before the full fury of the storm's rear quadrant would fall upon the wallowing ship.

Pitt edged carefully through one of the broken windows over the nose of the helicopter and then dropped onto the deck of the Titanic. No sensuous or erotic interlude with the world's most beautiful woman could have come close to matching the thrill he felt at finding his feet on one side of the old liner's water

logged decks again.

But which deck? Pitt leaned over the railing, twisted around, and looked up. There on the deck above was the bent and broken handrail still clutching a part of the helicopter. That meant he was standing on the B Deck Promenade. He looked down and saw the reason behind the aircraft's ignominious posture. Its journey toward the boiling sea had been abruptly halted by the landing skids, which had caught and then wedged into the observation openings along the Promenade Deck, leaving the helicopter hanging in an upright stance like some monstrous bug on a wall. The great swells had then slammed against its fuselage, damming it even tighter against the ship.

Pitt had no time to appreciate the miracle of his salvation. For, as he stood there, he felt the increasing pressure from the wind as the tail of the hurricane approached. He had trouble getting his footing and he realized that the Titanic's list had returned and she was leaning heavily to starboard again. It was then that he noticed the running lights of another ship close by, no more than two hundred yards off the starboard beam. There was no way of telling what size she was; the sea and the sky began melting together as the driving rain returned, lashing his face with the cutting power of sandpaper. Could it be one of the tugs, he wondered? Or perhaps the Juneau had returned. But suddenly Pitt knew the lights were from none of these. A shaft of lightning flashed and he saw the unmistakable dome that could only be the Mikhail Kurkov's radar antennae shield.

By the time he had climbed a stairway and staggered to the helicopter pad on the Boat Deck, he was still wet to the skin and panting from the exertion. He paused to kneel and pick up one of the mooring lines, studying the parted ends of the nylon fibers. Then he rose and leaned into the howling wind and vanished into the curtain of water that enshrouded the ship.

The vastness of the Titanic's first-class dining saloon stretched under the ornate ceiling far into the dark shadows beyond the lights, the few remaining leaded glass windows reflecting eerie distortions of the bone-tired and defeated people standing under the guns of the unflinching Russians.

Spencer had been forced to join the group. The shock of incomprehension mirrored in his eyes. He stared at Sandecker incredulously.

"Pitt and Woodson dead? It can't be true."

"It's true all right," Drummer mumbled through a swollen mouth. "One of them sadistic bastards standing there shoved a knife into Woodson's gut."

"A miscalculation on your friend's part," Prevlov said with a shrug. He gazed speculatively at the frightened woman and the nine men standing before him, at their gaunt and blood-caked faces. He seemed to enjoy, in a detached sort of way, their struggle to retain their balance whenever the Titanic was struck broadside by an immense swell. "And speaking of miscalculations, Mr. Spencer, it seems your men have developed a noticeable lack of enthusiasm for manning the pumps. I needn't remind you that unless the water that is pouring in below the waterline is returned to the sea, this ancient monument to capitalistic extravagance will sink."

"So let it sink," Spencer said easily. "At least you and your Communist scum will go with it."

"Not a likely event, particularly when you consider that the Mikhail Kurkov is standing by for just such an emergency." Prevlov selected a cigarette from a gold case and tapped it thoughtfully. "So you see, a sensible man would accept the inevitable and perform his duties accordingly."

"It still beats hell out of letting you get your slimy hands on her."

"You won't get any of us to do your dirty work for you," Sandecker said. There was a quiet finality in his voice.

"Perhaps not." Prevlov was quite unruffled. "On the other hand, I think I shall have the cooperation I require and very soon." He motioned to one of the guards and muttered in Russian. The guard nodded, walked unhurriedly across the dining saloon, grabbed Dana by the arm and roughly pulled her under one of the portable lights.

As one, the salvage crew crowded forward only to be met by four unyielding machine pistols held at gut level. They froze helplessly, rage and hostility seething through their every pore.

"If you harm her," Sandecker whispered, his voice quivering in quiet anger,

"you'll pay for it."

"Oh come now, Admiral," Prevlov said. "Rape is for the sick. Only a cretin would attempt blackmailing you and your crew with such a sorry ploy. American men still place their women on marble pedestals. You'd all willingly die in a useless attempt to protect her virtues, and where would that leave me? No, cruelty and torture are crude methods in the fine art of persuasion. Humiliation . .

." He paused, savoring the word. "Yes, humiliation, a magnificent incentive for inducing your men to return to their labors and keep the ship afloat." Prevlov turned to Dana. She looked at him, pathetic and lost. "Now then, Mrs. Seagram, if you will be so good as to take off your clothes-all of them."

"What kind of cheap trick is this?" Sandecker asked.

"No trick. Mrs. Seagram's modesty will be laid bare, layer after layer until you order Mr. Spencer and his men to cooperate."

"No!" Gunn pleaded. "Don't do it, Dana!"

"Please, no appeals," Prevlov said wearily. "I will have one of my men strip her by force if necessary."

Slowly, barely perceptibly, a strange gleam of belligerence began spreading in Dana's eyes. Then without the slightest hesitation, she slipped out of her jacket, jumpsuit, and underclothing. In less than a minute she stood there in the halo of light, her body supple and alive and very nude.

Sandecker turned his back and one by one the other hardened salvage men followed suit until they were facing away into the darkness.

"You will look upon her," Prevlov said coldly. "Your gallant gesture is touching, but completely useless. Turn around, gentlemen, our little performance is just beginning-"

"I think this stupid, chauvinistic bullshit has gone far enough." Every head jerked around as if yanked by the strings of a puppeteer at the sound of Dana's voice. She stood there with legs apart, hands on hips, breasts thrust outward, and her eyes blazed with a mocking awareness. Even with the unsightly bandage around her head she looked magnificent.

"The admission is free, boys, stare all you want. A woman's body is no big secret. You've all seen and undoubtedly touched one before. Why all the bashful glances?" Then her eyes changed to shrewd reflection and her lips lifted away from her teeth and she began laughing. She had decisively stolen the stage from Prevlov.

He stared at her, his mouth slowly tightening. "An impressive performance, Mrs. Seagram, an impressive performance indeed. But a typical display of Western decadence I hardly find amusing."

"Show me a Communist, and I'll show you an asshole every time," Dana taunted him. "If you shitheads only knew how the whole world laughs behind your threadbare backs every time you spout your gauche little Marxist terms like Western decadence, imperialistic war-mongering, or bourgeois-manipulating, you might straighten up and show a little class. As it is, your kind is the biggest diabolical farce played on, mankind since we climbed down from the trees. And if you had any balls, you'd face up to it."

Prevlov's face went white. "This has gone far enough," he snapped. He was on the verge of losing his very carefully practiced control and it frustrated him. Dana stretched her long and opulent body and said, "What's the matter, Ivan?

Tao used to muscle-bound, hod-carrying Russian women? Can't get used to the idea of a liberated gal from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave laughing at your sorry tactics?"

"It is your vulgarity that I find difficult to accept. At least our women do not act like common gutter sluts."

"Fuck you." Dana grinned sweetly.

Prevlov missed nothing. He caught the flickered glance between Giordino and Spencer, caught the flexing of Sturgis's fists, and the tiny inclination of Drummer's head. He became fully aware now that Dana's indolent yet continual movement away from the Americans and toward the rear of the Russian guards was neither unconscious nor unplanned. Her performance was nearly complete. The Soviet marines were twisting their necks to gawk; their guns were beginning to droop in their hands, when Prevlov shouted out a command in Russian. The guards, jolted out of their laxity, swung back and faced the salvage crew, their weapons aimed and steady again.

"My compliments, dear lady." Prevlov bowed. "Your little display of theatrics very nearly worked. A clever, clever deception."

There was a curious clinical satisfaction in Prevlov's expression; a functional chill as if his cunning had been called and he had easily won the hand. He watched Dana, appraising her fractional show of defeat. The grin had remained on her face, as though painted there, and her shoulders huddled in a slight shiver, but she shook it off and straightened once again, proud and selfassured.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course not." Prevlov sighed. He stared at her for a moment, and then turned and said something to one of the guards. The man nodded, pulled out a knife and slowly advanced toward Dana.

Dana stiffened and paled, as though turned to salt. "What are you going to do?"

"I ordered him to cut off your left breast," Prevlov said conversationally. Spencer stared openmouthed at Sandecker, his eyes pleading for the admiral to back down.

"Good God!" Sandecker uttered desperately. "You can't allow-you promised, no cruelty or torture-"

"I am the first to admit there is no finesse in savagery," Prevlov said. "But you leave me no choice. It is the only solution to your obstinacy." 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 coffeebrown 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.

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 tike 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."

"Local color," Pitt said. "It was too early to raise the curtain on .his identity, not at least until we had all walked the plank. Until then, Prevlov needed an informer to blow the whistle on any ideas we might have dreamed up for retaking the ship."

"He fooled me," said Giordino. "He's worked harder than any two men on the crew to keep the Titanic floating."

"Has he?" Pitt came back. "Sure, he's looked busy, even managed to work up a sweat and get dirty, but what have you actually seen him accomplish since we came on board?"

Gunn shook his head. "But he's . . . rather I thought that he'd been working day and night surveying the ship."

"Surveying the ship, hell. Drummer has been running around with a portable acetylene torch and cutting holes in her bottom."

"I can't buy that," said Spencer. "Why work at scuttling the ship if his Russian chums want to lay their claws on her, too?"

"A desperate gamble to delay the tow," Pitt answered.

"Timing was critical. The only chance the Russians had to board the Titanic with any degree of success was during the eye of the hurricane. It was clever thinking. The possibility never occurred to us. If the tugs could have towed the hulk without any complications, we'd have missed the eye by thirty miles. But thanks to Drummer, the instability of the listing hull made the tow job a shambles. Before the cable parted, she sheered all over the ocean, forcing the tugs to reduce their speed to minimum steerage way. And, as f can see, the mere presence of Prevlov and his band cutthroats attests to the success of Drummer's efforts."

The truth began to register then. None of the salvage crew had actually witnessed Drummer slaving over a pump or offering to carry his share of the load. It registered that he'd always been off on his own, showing up only to complain of his frustration at not overcoming the obstacles that supposedly prevented his survey tour of the ship. They stared at Drummer as though he was some alien from another world, waiting for, expecting the indignant words of denial.

There was to be no denial, no shocked plea of innocence, only a flicker of annoyance that vanished as quickly as it had come. Drummer's transformation was nothing short of astounding. The sad droop to the eyes had disappeared; they suddenly took on a glinting sharpness. Gone too was the lazy curl from the corners of his lips and the slouched, indifferent posture of his body. The indolent facade was gone and, in its place, was a straight-shouldered, almost aristocraticlooking man.

"Permit me to say, Pitt," Drummer said in a precise tone, "your powers of observation would do a first-class espionage agent proud. However, you haven't uncovered anything that really changes the situation."

"Fancy that," Pitt said. "Our former colleague has suddenly lost his Jubilation T. Cornpone accent."

"I mastered it rather skillfully, don't you think?"

"That's not all you mastered, Drummer. Somewhere in your budding career you learned how to win secrets and murder friends."

"A necessity of the trade," Drummer said. He had eased away from the salvage crew until he was standing beside Prevlov.

"Tell me, which one are you, Silver or Gold?"

"Not that it matters any longer," Drummer shrugged "I'm Gold."

"Then your brother is Silver."

Drummer's smug expression hardened. "You know this?" he said slowly.

"After I had you pegged, I turned over my evidence, meager as it was, to the FBI. I have to hand it to Prevlov and his comrades at Soviet Naval Intelligence. They laid a phony history on you that was as American as apple pie, or should I say Georgia peach pie, and seemingly as genuine as the Confederate flag. But the bureau finally broke through he false documents certifying your impeccable security clearance and tracked you all the way back to the old homestead in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where you and your brother were born . . . within ten minutes of each other I might add."

"My God!" Spencer muttered. "Twins."

"Yes, but nonidentical. They don't even look like brothers."

"So it became a simple case of one twin leading to the other," Spencer said.

"Hardly simple," Pitt replied. "They're a smart pair, Drummer and his brother. You can't take that away from hem. That was my prime mistake, attempting to draw a Parallel between two men who should have had the same likes and dislikes, who shared the same quarters or who palled around together. But Silver and Gold played opposite roles to the core. Drummer was equally chummy to everyone and lived alone. I was at a dead end. The FBI was trying to trace Drummer's brother while rechecking the security clearances of every member of the salvage crew, but nobody could make a definite connection. Then a break in the form of near-tragedy burst on the scene and pinned the tail on the donkey."

"The Deep Fathom accident," Gunn said, staring at Drummer through cold, unblinking eyes. "But Drummer had no relation with the submersible. He was on the crew of the Sappho II. "

"He had a very real relation. You see, his brother was on the Deep Fathom."

"How did you guess that?" Drummer asked.

"Twins have a curious bond. They think and feel things as one. You may have masqueraded as two totally unrelated persons, Drummer, but the two of you were too close for one of you not to come unglued when the other was on the brink of death. You felt your brother's agony, just as surely as if you were trapped down there in the abyss with him."

"Of course," Gunn said. "We were all on edge at the time, but Drummer was a damn-near hysterical."

"Again it became a process of elimination among three men; this time Chavez, Kiel, and Merker. Chavez is obviously of Mexican descent and you can't fake that. Kiel is eight years too young; you can't fake that either. That left Sam Merker."

"Damn!" Spencer muttered. "How could we have been taken in for so long?"

"Not hard to imagine when you consider that we were up against the best team the Russians could field." A smile tugged at Pitt's lips. "Incidentally, Spencer, you previously stated that there were ten of us here. You miscounted there are eleven. You neglected to include Jack the Ripper there." He turned to the guard who was still standing in front of Dana, still clutching the knife in his hand as if it had grown there. "Why don't you drop your stupid disguise, Merker, and join the party."

The guard slowly removed his cap and unwound the muffler that covered the lower half of his face.

"He's the dirty bastard that knifed Woodson," Giordino hissed.

"Sorry about that," Merker said calmly. "Woodson's first mistake was in recognizing me. He might have lived if he had let it go at that. His second mistake, and a very fatal one, was attacking me."

"Woodson was your friend."

"The business of espionage makes no allowances for friends."

"Merker," Sandecker said. "Merker and Drummer. Silver and Gold. I trusted you both, and yet you sold NUMA down the river. For two years you sold us. And for what? A few lousy dollars."

"I wouldn't say a few, Admiral." Merker eased the knife back into its sheath.

"More than enough to support my brother and me in fashionable style for a long time to come."

"Hey, where did he come from?" Gunn asked. "Merker is supposed to be in Doc Bailey's sick bay on board the Capricorn. "

"He stowed away on Sturgis's helicopter," Pitt said, patting his bleeding head with a damp handkerchief.

"Can't be!" Sturgis blurted out. "You were there, Pitt, when I opened the cargo hatch. Except for Mrs. Seagram, the copter was empty."

"Merker was there all right. After he gave Doc Bailey the slip, he kept away from his own cabin and made for brother Drummer's quarters, where he borrowed a fresh change of clothing, including a pair of cowboy boots. Then he sneaked onto the helicopter, threw out the emergency life raft, and hid under its cover. Unfortunately for Dana, she happened along in search of her make-up kit. When she knelt down to retrieve it, her eye caught Merker's boots protruding from under the life raft cover. Not about to let her screw up his escape, he popped her on the head with a hammer he'd found lying around somewhere, wrapped her in a tarpaulin, and crawled back into his hiding space."

"That means he was still in the cargo compartment when we uncovered Mrs. Seagram."

"No. By then he was gone. If you recall, after you switched open the cargo door, we waited for a few moments, listening for any movement inside. There was none because Merker had already crept into the control cabin under the cover of the noise from the door-actuator motors. Then when you and I played Keystone Kops and entered the cargo compartment, he dropped down the cockpit ladder outside and walked peacefully into the night."

"But why throw the hammer into the rotor blades?" Sturgis persisted. "What was the purpose?"

"Since you flew the copter from the Capricorn empty," Merker said, "and there was no freight to unload, I couldn't risk the chance of your taking off again without opening the cargo door. You had me trapped back there and didn't know it.

"You became a busy little beaver after that," Pitt said to Merker, "flitting about the ship, guided no doubt by a diagram provided by Drummed. First, you took your brother's portable cutting rig and burned off the tow cable while Chief Bascom and his men were resting in the gymnasium between inspection tours. Next, you cut the mooring lines to the helicopter, taking great satisfaction, I'm certain, in knowing that it was swept over the side of the ship with me in it."

"Two birds with one slice," Merker admitted. "Why deny-" Merker was cut short by a muffled burst from a submachine gun that echoed from somewhere on the decks below. Prevlov shrugged and looked at Sandecker.

"I fear your men below are proving difficult." He removed the cigarette from its holder and crushed it out with his boot. "I think this discussion has lasted long enough. The storm will be abating in a few hours and the Mikhail Kurkov will move into position for the tow. Admiral Sandecker, you will see to it your men cooperate in manning the pumps. Drummer will show you the locations where he's pierced the hull below the waterline so that the rest of your crew can stem the leakage."

"So it's back to the torture games," Sandecker said contemptuously.

"I am through playing games, Admiral." Prevlov had a determined look. He spoke to one of the guards, a short man with a coarsened toughness about him. The same guard who had shoved his gun into Sandecker's side. "This is Buski, a very direct fellow who happens to be the finest marksman in his regiment. He also understands a smattering of English, enough at any rate to translate numerical progression." He turned to the guard. "Buski, I am going to begin counting. When I reach five, you will shoot Mrs. Seagram in the right arm. At ten, in the left; at fifteen in the right knee; and so on until Admiral Sandecker mends his uncooperative ways."

"A businesslike concept," Pitt added. "And you'll shoot the rest of us after we've served your purpose, weight our bodies, and dump them in the sea so they're never found. Then you'll claim we abandoned the ship in the helicopter, which, of course, conveniently crashed. You'd even provide two witnesses, Drummer and Merker, who would testify after their miraculous survival about how the benevolent Russians plucked them from the sea just as they were going down for the third time."

"I see no need to prolong the agony any further," Prevlov said tiredly. "Buski." Buski raised his machine pistol and took aim at Dana's arm.

"Your intrigue me, Prevlov," Pitt said. "You've shown little interest in how I learned Drummer and Merker's code names or why I didn't have them thrown in the brig after I ferreted out their identities. You don't even seem curious as to how I came to know your name."

"Curious, yes, but it makes no difference. Nothing can change the circumstances. Nothing and no one can help you and your friends, Pitt. Not now. Not the CIA or the whole United States Navy. The die is cast. There will be no more play with words."

Prevlov nodded at Buski. "One."

"When Captain Prevlov reaches the count of four, you will die, Buski." Buski leered smugly and made no reply.

"Two."

"We knew your plans for taking the Titanic. Admiral Sandecker and I have known for the last forty-eight hours."

"You've run your last bluff," Prevlov said. "Three." Pitt shrugged indifferently. "Then all blood is on your hands, Prevlov."

"Four."

An ear-shattering blam rang deafeningly through the dining saloon as the bullet caught Buski just below the hairline and between the eyes, catapulting a quarter of his skull in a crimson blur of slow-motion, snapping his head upward, and slamming him to the deck in an inert spreadeagle at Prevlov's feet. Dana cried out in startled pain as she was slammed to the deck. There were no apologies from Pitt for throwing her there and then crushing the breath out of her as he used his hundred and ninety pounds for a protective shield. Giordino dove for Sandecker and hauled him down with all the intensity of a desperation tackle by a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers. The rest of the salvage crew wasted no more than a tenth of a second in demonstrating their fondness for selfpreservation. They scattered and dropped like leaves in a windstorm, closely followed by Drummer and Merker, who fell as though shackled together. The blast was still ringing in the far corners of the room when the guards came alive and began firing bursts from their submachine pistols into the darkness toward the dining-saloon entrance. It was a meaningless gesture. The first was cut down almost instantly, pitching forward on his face. The second flung his machine pistol into the air and clutched the river of red that burst from his neck while the third sank slowly to his knees, staring dumbly at the two small holes that had suddenly appeared in the center of his coat.

Now Prevlov stood alone. He stared down at them all and then at Pitt. His expression was one of acceptance, acceptance of defeat and death. He nodded a salute at Pitt and then calmly pulled his automatic from the holster and began firing into the darkness. He expended his clip and stood there, waiting for the gun flash, braced for the pain that must surely come. But there was no return fire. The room went silent. Everything seemed to slow down, and only then did the revelation burst on him. He was not meant to die.

It had been a trap, and he had walked into it as naively as a small child into a tiger's den.

A name began to tear at his very soul, taunting him, repeating itself over and over again.

Marganin . . . Marganin . . . Marganin . . .

A marine seal is usually defined as an aquatic carnivorous mammal with webbed flippers and soft fur, but the wraithlike phantoms who suddenly materialized around Prevlov and the fallen guards bore little resemblance to their namesake. The United States Navy SEAL, an acronym of sea, air, and land, were members of an extraordinary elite fighting group, trained in every phase of combat from underwater demolition to jungle warfare.

There were five of them encased in pitch-black rubber wetsuits, hoods, and tight slipperlike boots. Their faces were indistinguishable under the ebony warpaint, making it all but impossible to tell where the wetsuits left off and flesh began. Four men held M-24 automatic rifles with collapsible stocks, while the fifth tightly gripped a Stoner weapon, a wicked looking affair with two barrels. One of the SEALs detached himself from the rest and helped Pitt and Dana to their feet.

"Oh God," Dana moaned. "I'll be black and blue for a month." For perhaps five dazed seconds she massaged her aching body, oblivious to the fact that Pitt's jacket had come open. When shocked realization did come, when she saw the guards sprawled grotesquely in death, her-voice dropped to a whisper. "Oh shit. .

. Oh shit. . ."

"I think it's safe to say the lady survived," Pitt said with a half grin. He shook the SEAL's hand, then introduced him to Sandecker, who was unsteadily clutching Giordino's shoulder for support.

"Admiral Sandecker, may I present our deliverer, Lieutenant Fergus, United States Navy SEALs."

Sandecker acknowledged Fergus's smart salute with a pleased nod, released his hold on Giordino, and stood ramrod straight.

"The ship, Lieutenant, who commands the ship?"

"Unless I'm mistaken, sir, you do--"

Fergus's words were punctuated by another burst of echoing gunfire from somewhere in the cavernous depths of the ship.

"The last stubborn holdout." Fergus smiled. It was obvious. His white teeth gleamed like a neon sign at midnight. "The ship is secure, sir. My ironclad guarantee on it."

"And the pumping crew?"

"Safe and sound and back at their work."

"How many men in your command?"

"Two combat units, Admiral. Ten men in all, including myself." Sandecker's eyebrows raised. "Only ten men, did you say?"

"Ordinarily for an assault of this nature," Fergus said matter-of-factly, "we'd have used just one combat unit, but Admiral Kemper thought it best to double our force to be on the safe side."

"The Navy's advanced some since I served," Sandecker said wistfully.

"Any casualties?" Pitt asked.

"Until five minutes ago, two of my men wounded, nothing serious, and one missing."

"Where did you come from?" The question was from Merker's lips. He was staring malevolently over the shoulder of a wary SEAL. "There was no ship in the area, no aircraft was sighted. How. . . ?"

Fergus looked at Pitt questioningly. Pitt nodded. "Permission granted to inform our former colleague the facts of life, Lieutenant. He can muse over your answers while he's sitting in a cell on death row."

"We came aboard the hard way," Fergus obliged. "From fifty feet below the surface through the torpedo tubes of a nuclear submarine. That's how I lost one of my men; the water was rough as hell. A wave must have crushed him against the Titanic's hull while we were taking turns climbing the boarding ladders dropped over the side by Mr. Pitt."

"Strange that no one else saw you come on board," Spencer murmured.

"Not strange at all," Pitt said. "While I was helping Lieutenant Fergus and his team come over the aft cargo deck bulwarks, and then tucking them away in the chief steward's old cabin on C Deck, the rest of you were assembled in the gymnasium awaiting my soul-stirring speech on personal sacrifice." Spencer shook his head. "Talk about fooling all of the people some of the time." '

"I have to hand it to you," Gunn said, "you had us all flimflammed."

"At that, the Russians nearly stole the ballgame. We didn't expect them to make their play until the storm quieted down. Boarding during the lull of the hurricane's eye was a masterstroke. And it almost worked. Without either Giordino, or the admiral or me to warn the lieutenant--we three were the only ones privy to the SEALs' presence--Fergus would have never known when to launch his attack on the boarders."

"I don't mind admitting," Sandecker said, "for a while there I thought that we'd had it. Giordino and I prisoners of Prevlov, and Pitt thought to be dead."

"God knows," Pitt said, "if the helicopter hadn't wedged itself into the Promenade Deck, I'd be asleep in the deep right now."

"As it was," Fergus said, "Mr. Pitt looked like death warmed over when he stumbled in the chief steward's cabin. A hardy man, this one. Half-drowned, his head split open, and yet he still insisted on guiding my team through this floating museum until we located your Soviet visitors."

Dana was looking at Pitt in a peculiar way. "How long were you hiding in the shadows before you made your grand entrance?"

Pitt grinned slyly. "For a minute prior to your striptease."

"You bastard. You stood there and let me make an ass out of myself," she flared. "You let them use me like I was a cut of beef in a butcher store window."

"I used you too, dear heart, as a matter of necessity. After I found Woodson's body and the smashed radio in the gymnasium I didn't need a gypsy to tell me the boys from the Ukraine had boarded the ship. I then rounded up Fergus and his men and led them down to the boiler rooms figuring the Russians would already be guarding the pumping crew. I was right. First priorities first. Whoever controlled the pumps controlled the derelict. When I saw that I would be more hindrance than help in overcoming the guards, I borrowed a SEAL and came looking for the rest of you. After wandering through half the ship we finally heard voices coming out of the dining saloon. Then I ordered the SEAL to hightail it below for reinforcements."

"Then it was all a great big stalling tactic," Dana said.

"Exactly. I needed every second I could beg, borrow, or steal until Fergus showed up and evened the odds. That's why I held off until the last second to put in an appearance."

"A high stakes gamble," Sandecker said. "You cut Act Two a bit fine, didn't you?"

"I had two things going for me," Pitt explained. "One was compassion. I know you, Admiral. In spite of your gargoyle exterior, you still help little old ladies across streets and feed stray animals. You might have waited until the last instant to give in, but you would have given in." Then Pitt put his arms around Dana and slowly produced a nasty looking weapon from a pocket of the jacket draped on her shoulders. "Number two was my insurance policy. Fergus loaned it to me before the party began. It's called a Stoner weapon. It shoots a cloud of tiny needlelike flachettes. I could have cut down Prevlov and half his men with one burst."

"And I thought you were being a gentleman," Dana said with a contrived bitter tone. "You only hung your jacket on me so they wouldn't find the gun when they searched you."

"You have to admit, that your . . . ahem . . . exposed condition made for an ideal distraction."

"Beggin' your pardon, sir," said Chief Bascom. "But why on earth would this rusty old bucket of bolts interest the Russians?"

"My very thoughts," Spencer added. "What's the big deal?"

"I guess it's a secret no longer." Pitt shrugged. "It's not the ship the Russians were after. It's a rare element called byzanium that sank with the Titanic back in 1912. Properly processed and installed in a sophisticated defense system, so I'm told, it will make intercontinental ballistic missiles about as outdated as flying dinosaurs."

Chief Bascom let out a long low whistle. "And you mean to say that stuff is still below decks somewhere?"

"Buried under several tons of debris, but it's still down there."

"You'll never live to see it, Pitt. None of you . . . none of u=_, will. The Titanic will be totally destroyed by morning." There was no anger in Prevlov's face, but something touching on complacent satisfaction. "Did you really think every contingency was not allowed for? Every possibility for failure not backed up by an alternate plan? If we cannot have the byzanium, then neither can you." Pitt looked at him with what seemed to be bemusement.

"Forget any hopes you entertain of the cavalry, or in your case, the cossacks, galloping to the rescue, Prevlov. You made a hell of a try, but you were playing against an American idiom known as a stacked deck. You prepared for everything, everything, that is, except a setup in preparation for a double cross. I don't know how the scheme was nurtured. It must have been a wonder of creative cunning, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I'm sorry, Captain Prevlov, but to the victor belong the spoils."

"The byzanium belongs to the Russian people," Prevlov said gravely. "It was raped from our soil by your government. It is not we who are the robbers, Pitt, it is you."

"A moot point. If it were a work of historical art, my State Department would no doubt see it off on the next ship back to Murmansk. But not when it's the prime ingredient for a strategic weapon. If our roles were reversed, Prevlov, you wouldn't give it away any more than we would."

"Then it must be destroyed."

"You're wrong. A weapon that does not take lives, but simply protects them, must never be destroyed."

"Your kind of sanctimonious philosophy simply affirms what our leaders have known all along. You cannot win against us. Someday, in the not too distant future, your precious experiment in democracy will go the way of the Greek senate. A piece of an era for students of communism to study, nothing more."

"Don't hold your breath, Comrade. Your kind will have to show a lot more finesse before you can run the world."

"Read your history," Prevlov said with an ominous smile. "The people whom the sophisticated nations down through the centuries have referred to as the barbarians have always won in the end."

Pitt smiled back courteously as the SEALS herded Prevlov, Merker, and Drummer up the grand staircase to a stateroom where they would be secured under heavy guard.

But Pitt's smile was not genuine. Prevlov was right.

The barbarians always won in the end.