Zero Hour - Cussler Clive. Страница 33

“Tesla was older by then,” Yaeger said. “And broke. Maybe he needed money.”

“From what I’ve read, he always needed money. Why should 1937 be any different?”

“What are you suggesting?”

Pitt shrugged as if it were obvious. “He buried this Wardenclyffe project when he could have saved it or at least kept it afloat. Then, thirty years later, he insists he’s ready to spring the theory on the world. What are the chances he would do that unless he thought he’d found a solution?”

Again it was the computer that answered. “Considering Tesla’s adherence to his principles, the chances are less than ten percent.”

“I was asking Hiram,” Pitt said. “But thank you anyway.”

“You’re welcome.”

Pitt made a strange face.

“This is how we work,” Yaeger said. “I talk. It talks back. This is how I’ve always worked.”

“I liked it better when there was a hologram involved,” Pitt said.

“Only because she flirted with you.”

“You might be right about that. Can we get back to Tesla?”

Yaeger nodded. “You’re suggesting Tesla found a way to eliminate the danger, these anomalies he talks about in the letter.”

“It fits,” Pitt said.

“Maybe,” Yaeger said, “except he still never published his theory. And when he died, it vanished.”

“I wonder where,” Pitt said sardonically.

“You think the NSA has it?”

“They have something.”

“That I don’t doubt,” Yaeger said.

Pitt considered calling Sandecker and asking him to lean on the NSA, but the VP was in London at a G-20 meeting, and that kind of fire took a while to stoke.

“What would happen if we nudged their database?” Pitt asked.

“Nudged it?”

“You know,” Pitt said, “like a vending machine that you put your money in but then it doesn’t give you what you paid for. You shake it a little until something falls out. What would happen if we did that to the NSA’s computers?”

“Aside from prison and hard labor?”

“Yeah, aside from that.”

Hiram sighed. “Maybe we can find another way.”

“You can always blame it on the…” Pitt nodded his head toward the computer display, wondering if the machine could pick up on the inference he was making.

“I don’t think we’ll need to do that,” Yaeger said.

“Maybe not,” Pitt said. “What about this Watterson character? You find anything on him?”

Yaeger sighed. “He didn’t really do much after working with Tesla. As I recall, he died young.” He cocked his head. “Computer, are there any events in Daniel Watterson’s life of material relevance to our current project?”

The computer calculated for a second, scouring billions upon billions of records, cross-referencing them and looking for any link, connection, or bit of data they might have missed. Finally, it spoke:

“No meaningful influence on this project can be derived from Daniel Watterson’s post-1905 actions,” it said. “One statistical improbability detected.”

Yaeger turned toward the main screen. “What would that be?”

“According to obituary records, Daniel Watterson and General Harold Cortland both died on the same day. Their deaths occurred in separate states and from different causes. However, both obituaries were exactly fifty-one words in length and contained identical phrasing, except for the name of the deceased, cause of death, and location. Statistical probability of that occurring, considering the difference in their ages, occupations, and domiciles, computes to less than.01 percent.”

Pitt and Yaeger exchanged glances. “Sounds like I’ll be nudging the NSA’s database,” Yaeger said.

“Sometimes, it’s easier to apologize than get permission,” Pitt noted.

Yaeger nodded. “Remind me of that when we’re breaking rocks at Leavenworth.”

TWENTY-TWO

Patrick “Padi” Devlin stood on the black-painted deck of the sailing abomination that had once been the Pacific Voyager. The wind was bitterly cold as it whipped around the front of the ship. Sleet had begun spitting from the steel gray sky, and mist in the air had reduced visibility to less than a mile for the past few hours.

Devlin pulled his coat tight, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and wished mightily for a scarf. Still, he didn’t want to go back inside.

“Thank you for letting me out on deck,” he said to a figure, hovering behind him: Janko Minkosovic, his old crewmate and current jailer.

“I can’t see any harm in it. Not like you’re going to swim back to Jakarta.”

“I noticed you didn’t extend the same courtesy to the others in the hold.”

“There are twenty-six of them,” Janko said. “They come from a pair of vessels we hit. Together, they could be a danger.”

Devlin considered that. Did it mean Janko had only a small crew on board?

The wind gusted and the sleet intensified. From the temperature and the cobalt blue of the sea, Devlin guessed they’d been traveling south. He couldn’t see the sun, but he guessed they were well into the Roaring Forties now, maybe even farther south. It looked like a storm was brewing.

“Remind you of anything?” Janko asked.

“The day this hulk went down,” Devlin replied.

“The day you cut us loose.”

“You know that was the captain’s choice,” Devlin shot back. “I begged him to hold on.”

“Stop blaming him,” Janko said. “For that matter, stop blaming yourself, Padi. Look at you. You’re a worse wreck than this ship. And you thought you’d make captain someday.”

Devlin cut his eyes at Janko.

“There was nothing any of you could have done,” Janko said. “We set it up that way. If you hadn’t released the cable, we’d have cut through it ourselves.”

“Who?” Devlin asked sharply. “Who’s we? And why? To fake the ship’s destruction? She was already a derelict. She wasn’t even insured.”

“The man I work for bought her,” Janko explained, “years before. All that time in dry dock at Tarakan, he had people working on her. Making changes. When the moment came, he needed her to disappear. So he ordered us to tow her into the storm.”

Devlin stared at Janko. “But you were part of the crew. Our crew!”

“For six months, along with the other two. He arranged that with your employer.”

“Fine,” Devlin said. “So he got you on with us and had you put aboard the Java Dawn. But the ship—this ship—it went down. I saw it. That was no illusion.”

Janko exhaled like a parent tiring of questions from a curious child. “No, Padi, it wasn’t.”

“How the hell did you do it, then?”

“Follow me,” Janko said. “You’re about to find out.”

Janko led Devlin in through the main hatch and then through a second, inner hatch. For the first time, Devlin noticed that the outer section of the ship was left pretty much as it had been when he’d seen it years back. It looked neglected, disused. But once they passed the inner hatch, things were different.

Soon, Devlin found himself in a modern control room. Chart tables, propulsion gauges, radarscopes, and graphic displays surrounded him. Large screens on the front wall were set up like the forward view from the bridge; in fact, they showed the gray sky and the cold sea ahead of the ship, piped in from the highest vantage point of a group of video cameras.

“When did all this get done?”

“I told you,” Janko insisted, “the changes were made before the ship was towed off the beach.”

“But we inspected it for leaks.”

“The outer hull only,” Janko reminded him. “Besides, I was with you to make sure you didn’t stray into any sensitive areas.”

Devlin remembered now. They’d checked the repair job and the lower decks, the engine room and the bilge. No one had bothered with the inner spaces of the ship.

Janko turned his attention to one of the crewmen. “Switch to infrared.”