Dragon (34 page)

Pitt turned his head and looked at the men of the German Navy dive team who stood helpless and saddened at the loss of their friends. They were clustered around the folding tables and chairs of a portable command post manned by a group of police underwater rescue divers. A trio of men in civilian clothes, who Pitt assumed were government officials, questioned the divers in low voices.

“When did the last man go in?” Pitt asked.

“Four hours before you arrived,” said the young dive officer, who had introduced himself as Lieutenant Helmut Reinhardt. “I had a devil of a time keeping the rest of my men from following. But I’m not about to risk another life until I know what’s going on in there.” He paused and tipped his head toward the police divers, who were attired in bright orange dry suits. “Those idiot police, however, think they’re invincible. They’re planning to send one of their teams inside.”

“Some people are born for suicide,” said Giordino with a yawn. “Take me for example. I wouldn’t go in there without a nuclear submarine. No daredevil ventures by Mrs. Giordino’s boy. I intend to die in bed entwined with an erotic beauty from the Far East.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him, ” said Pitt. “Put him in a dark place and he hallucinates.”

“I see,” murmured Reinhardt, but obviously he didn’t.

Finally Pitt rose and nodded in Frank Mancuso’s direction. “Booby-trapped,” he said simply.

Mancuso nodded. “I agree. The entrances to the treasure tunnels in the Philippines were packed with bombs rigged to go off if struck by digging equipment. The difference is the Japs planned to return and retrieve the treasure, while the Nazis intended for their booby traps to destroy the loot along with the searchers.”

“Whatever trapped my men in there,” said Reinhardt bitterly, unable to say the word “killed,” “was not bombs.”

One of the official-looking men walked over from the command post and addressed Pitt. “Who are you, and whom do you represent?” he demanded in German.

Pitt turned to Reinhardt, who translated the question. Then he refaced his interrogator. “Tell him the three of us were invited.”

“You are American?” the stranger blurted in broken English, his face blank in astonishment. “Who gave you authorization to be here?”

“Who’s this mook?” Giordino inquired in blissful ignorance.

Reinhardt couldn’t suppress a slight grin. “Herr Gert Haider, Minister of Historic Works. Sir, Herr Dirk Pitt and his staff from the American National Underwater and Marine Agency in Washington. They are here at the personal invitation of Chancellor Lange.”

Haider looked as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He quickly recovered, straightened to his full height, half a head short of tall, and attempted to intimidate Pitt with a superior Teutonic demeanor. “Your purpose?”

“We’ve come for the same reason as you,” replied Pitt, studying his fingernails. “If old interrogation records of Nazi officials in your Berlin archives and our Library of Congress are correct, eighteen thousand works of art were hidden in excavated tunnels under a secret airfield. This could very well prove to be that secret airfield with its art depository chamber extending somewhere beyond the water barrier.”

Haider wisely realized he couldn’t bluster the tough, purposeful-looking men dressed in loose blue-green Viking dry suits. “You know, of course, any art that is found belongs to the German Republic until it can be traced and returned to the original owners.”

“We’re fully aware of that,” said Pitt. “We’re only interested in one particular piece.”

“Which one?”

“Sorry, I’m not allowed to say.”

Haider played his last card. “I must insist the police dive team be the first to enter the chamber.”

“Fine by us.” Giordino bowed and gestured toward the dark water. “Maybe if one of your deputies is lucky enough to make it in and back, we’ll find out what’s eating people in that hell hole down there.”

“I’ve lost four of my men.” Reinhardt spoke solemnly. “They may be dead. You cannot allow more men to die through ignorance of the unknown.”

“They are professional divers,” Haider retorted.

“So are the men I sent in there. The finest divers in the Navy, in superior condition and more extensively trained than the police rescue team.”

“May I suggest a compromise,” said Pitt.

Haider nodded. “I’m willing to listen.”

“We put together a seven-man probe team. The three of us because Mancuso here is a mining engineer, an expert on tunnel construction and excavation, while Al and I are experienced in underwater salvage. Two of Lieutenant Reinhardt’s Navy men, since they’re trained in defusing any demolitions we might encounter. And two of the police divers as rescue and medical backup.”

Haider stared into Pitt’s eyes and saw only grim tenacity. It was a solid proposal fortified with logic. He forced a smile. “Who goes in first?”

“I do,” Pitt said without hesitation.

His two short words seemed to echo in the cavern for long seconds, and then the tension suddenly evaporated and Haider stuck out his hand.

“As you wish.” He shook Pitt’s hand and puffed out his chest to regain an image of authoritative dignity. “But I hold you responsible, Herr Pitt, if you trip any explosive devices and destroy the artworks.”

Pitt gave Haider a contemptuous grin. “In that case, Herr Haider, you may have my head—literally.”

Pitt set the time on the microelectronic computer attached by a line to his air tank and made a final check of his regulator and buoyancy compensator. For the fiftieth time since dropping down the ladder from farmer Clausen’s field he stared into the beckoning black pool.

“Your gears are turning,” observed Giordino as he adjusted the straps to his tank pack.

Pitt rubbed his chin thoughtfully without replying.

“What do you think is going on in there?” asked Mancuso.

“I think I’ve solved half the puzzle,” answered Pitt. “But the cutting of the lines? Now that’s downright puzzling.”

“How’s your acoustic speaker?” asked Mancuso.

Pitt inserted the regulator’s mouthpiece and spoke into it. “Mary had a little lamb…” The words came out muffled but understandable.

“I guess it’s time, fearless leader,” grunted Giordino.

Pitt nodded at Reinhardt, who was accompanied by one of his men. “Ready, gentlemen? Please try to stay within two meters of the man in front of you. Visibility appears to be four meters, so you should have no trouble keeping the distance. My team will communicate with you through our acoustic speakers.”

Reinhardt acknowledged with a wave and turned, relaying instructions in German to the police divers behind him. Then he threw a brief military salute to Pitt. “After you, sir.”

There was no delaying it any longer. Pitt held out both hands at arm’s length, index fingers pointing outward. “I’ll take the center point. Frank, two meters behind and to my left. Al, you take the right. Keep a sharp watch on any unusual mechanisms sticking out of the walls.”

With nothing more to be said, Pitt switched on his dive light, gave a tug on his safety line to make sure it was clipped, and launched himself facedown into the water. He floated for a moment, and then very slowly ducked his head and dove toward the bottom, his dive light held ahead of him.

The water was cold. He glanced at the digital readout of the computer. The water temperature stood at 14 degrees Celsius or 57 degrees Fahrenheit. The concrete bottom was covered with green slime and a thin layer of silt. He was careful not to drag his fins or kick them into the sediment, raising clouds that would block the vision of the men behind.

Pitt actually enjoyed it. Once again he was a man totally at home in his own element. He aimed the dive light upward and stared at the ceiling of the bunker. It had sloped downward, becoming fully submerged and narrowing into a tunnel as expected. The water along the bottom was murky, and the particles that floated past his mask dropped the visibility down to three meters. He stopped and advised the men behind to close up a bit. Then he continued, swimming easily and smoothly as the ghostly outline of the floor gradually dropped until it leveled out and became swallowed by the dark.

After covering another twenty meters, he paused again and hung suspended for a minute while he twisted around and looked for Giordino and Mancuso. They were only shadowy figures behind the dull glow of their lights, but they faithfully held their instructed positions. He checked his computer. The pressure readout indicated a depth of only six meters.

A short distance later the underwater tunnel seemed to narrow, and the bottom began to rise. Pitt moved cautiously, his eyes straining into the gloom. He lifted his free hand above his head and felt it break the surface. He rolled over on his back and shined the light. The surface flashed and rolled like unleashed mercury from his movements a few centimeters in front of his face mask.

Like some unspeakable creature rising from the deep, his rubber-helmeted head with mask and regulator, eerily illuminated by the dive light, broke the cold water into the musty damp air of a small chamber. He lightly kicked his fins and softly bumped into a short flight of concrete stairs. He crept up and pulled himself onto a level floor.

The sight he feared did not materialize, at least not yet. Pitt found no bodies of the German Navy dive team. He could see where they had scraped their fins across the slime of the concrete floor, but that was the only sign of them.

He carefully examined the walls of the chamber, finding no protrusion that appeared threatening. At the far end, the dive light lit up a large rust-coated metal door. He stepped awkwardly up the steps in his fins and approached the door. He leaned against it with his shoulder. The hinges turned in their pins with incredible ease and silence, almost as if they were oiled sometime in the past week. The door swung inward, and then quickly returned as Pitt released the pressure, forced back by springs.

“Hello, what have we got here?” The words were audible, but Mancuso sounded as if he was gargling through the acoustic speaker on his breathing regulator.

“Guess what’s behind door number one, and you win a year’s supply of Brillo pads,” said Giordino in a masterpiece of dry-rot humor.

Pitt pulled off his fins and knelt down and cracked the door a few more centimeters. He studied the threshold for a moment and gestured at the bottom edge of the rust-encrusted door. “This explains the severed phone and safety lines.”

Giordino nodded. “Cut by the sharp bottom edge of the door after the divers entered and the spring system slammed it closed.”

Mancuso looked at Pitt. “You said you solved the other half of the puzzle.”

“Yeah,” muttered Giordino, “the choice part, like what killed the German Navy’s finest.”

“Gas,” Pitt answered curtly. “Poison gas, triggered after they passed beyond this door.”

“A sound theory,” agreed Mancuso.

Pitt flashed his light on the water and saw the approaching air bubbles of Reinhardt and his teammate. “Frank, you stay and keep the others from entering. Al and I will go it alone. And whatever happens, make damn sure everyone breathes only the air from their tanks. Under no circumstance are they to remove their regulators.”

Mancuso held up an acknowledging hand and turned to greet the next team.

Giordino leaned against a wall, crooked one leg, and removed a fin. “No sense traipsing in there like a duck.”

Pitt removed his fins too. He scraped his rubber boots across the rough concrete floor to feel what little grip they had across the slick surface. The friction was nil. The slightest loss of balance and he’d go down.

One final check of his tank pressure on the computer. Enough breathing time at atmospheric pressure for another hour. Free of the cold water, the air temperature stood at a point where he was reasonably comfortable in his dry suit.

“Mind your step,” he said to Giordino. Then he pushed the door half open and stepped inside as lightly as though he was walking a tightrope. The atmosphere went abruptly dry, and the humidity dropped off to almost zero percent. He paused and swept the light beam on the concrete floor, carefully searching for trip-strings and cables leading to explosive detonators or poison gas containers. A thin broken fish line, gray in color and nearly invisible in the dim tight, lay snapped in two almost under his toes.

The light beam followed one end of the line to a canister marked
PHOSGENE
. Thank God, Pitt thought, deeply relieved. Phosgene is only fatal if inhaled. The Germans invented nerve gas during World War II, but for some reason lost in the dim past, they failed to rig it here. A fortunate stroke for Pitt and Giordino and the men who followed them. The nerve-type agent could kill on contact with flesh, and they all had skin exposed on their hands and around their face masks.

“You were right about the gas,” said Giordino.

“Too late to help those poor seamen.”

He found four more poison gas booby traps, two of them activated. The phosgene had done its deadly work. Bodies of the Navy divers lay in contorted positions only a few meters apart. All had removed their air tanks and breathing regulators, unsuspecting of the gas until it was too late. Pitt did not bother trying for a pulse. Their blue facial color and unseeing eyes gave evidence they were stone dead.

He played the light into a long gallery and froze.

Nearly eyeball to eyeball a woman stared back at him, her head tilted in a coquettish pose. She smiled at him from an adorable face with high cheekbones and smooth pink skin.

She was not alone. Several other female figures stood beside and behind her, their unblinking eyes seemingly locked on Pitt. They were naked, covered only by long tresses that fell almost to their knees.

“I’ve died and gone to Amazon heaven,” Giordino muttered in rapt awe.

“Don’t get excited,” Pitt warned him. “They’re painted sculptures.”

“I wish. I could mold them like that.”

Pitt stepped around the life-size sculptures and held the dive light over his head. Gold gleamed in an ocean of gilded picture frames. As far as the light could reach and beyond, way beyond, the long gallery was filled with tier upon tier of racks containing an immense cache of fine paintings, sculpture, religious relics, tapestries, rare books, ancient furniture, and archeological antiquities, all stored in orderly bins and open crates.