“The basis for this whole ruthenium claim still seems rather flimsy,” he said, examining the pages. “A trader purchased the ore in 1917 from an Inuit whose grandfather acquired the stuff some seventy years earlier. The grandfather was from Adelaide but claimed the ruthenium came from the Royal Geographical Society Islands. On top of that, he called it Black Kobluna and said the source was cursed with dark spirits. Hardly the basis of a scientific mining claim.” He peered at Zak, unsure whether the whole thing might be a ruse on the part of the paid assassin.

Zak stared back without blinking. “It may be a long shot. But the Inuit ruthenium had to come from somewhere, and we’re talking one hundred and sixty years ago in the middle of the Arctic. The journal has a map of the island, showing exactly where it was mined. The Inuit didn’t have front-end loaders and dump trucks back then, so they would have had to pretty much find the stuff lying on the ground. There has to be more there. While this Mid-America Company has appeared in the area, they’re looking for zinc, and on the opposite side of the island. Yes, Mitchell, it may well be a long shot. But there could be an enormous payoff if it’s there, and an enormous cost to you if someone else gets to it first.”

“Aren’t we the only ones who know about the Inuit deposits? ”

Zak squinted slightly, his lips pressed in a tight grimace.

“There is the possibility that Dirk Pitt is aware of the trail,” he said.

“Pitt?” Goyette asked, shaking his head in nonrecognition.

“He’s the Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency in the United States. I ran into him at the research lab in Washington and noticed him giving aid to the lab manager after the explosion. He appeared again in Ontario, at the Miners Co-op, just after I took these journal entries. I tried to arrange an accident on the road out of town, but some old man helped him escape. He’s obviously aware of the importance of ruthenium in triggering the artificial-photosynthesis process.”

“He might be on to you as well,” Goyette said, a crease crossing his troubled brow.

“I can take care of that easily enough,” Zak said.

“It’s not a good idea to be blowing up high-visibility government officials. He can’t do anything from the States. I’ll have him tailed just to make sure he stays there. Besides, I’ll need you to go to the Arctic and investigate the Royal Geographical Society Islands. Take a security team with you, and I’ll send along some of my top geologists. Then figure out a way to put Mid-America out of business. I want you to find the ruthenium. Obtain it at any cost. All of it.”

“That’s the Mitchell Goyette I know and love,” Zak said with a twisted smile. “We haven’t talked about my share.”

“It’s a pipe dream at the moment. Ten percent of the royalties is more than generous.”

“I was thinking of fifty percent.”

“That’s absurd. I’ll be incurring all of the capital costs. Fifteen percent.”

“It’s going to take twenty.”

Goyette clenched his teeth. “Get off my boat. And enjoy the cold.”

40

Despite Loren’s pleas for him to stay in bed and rest, Pitt rose early the next morning and dressed for work. His body ached worse than it had the day before, and he moved slowly until his joints gradually limbered up. He contemplated drinking a tequila with orange juice to deaden the pain but ultimately thought better of it. The aches of injury took longer to vanquish, he thought, cursing the mark of time and its toll on his body.

Loren summoned him to the bathroom, where she cleaned the scrape on his head and applied a fresh bandage.

“At least your hair will cover that one up,” she said, scraping her finger across several scars on Pitt’s chest and back. Numerous bouts with death in the past had left their share of physical marks, as well as a few mental ones.

“A lucky blow to the head,” he quipped.

“Maybe it will knock some sense into you,” she replied, wrapping her arms around his torso. While Pitt had told Loren of the events in Ontario, he had neglected to mention that the landslide had not occurred by accident. She reached up and lightly kissed his scalp, then reminded him that he had promised to take her to lunch later in the day.

“I’ll pick you up at noon,” he promised.

He reached his office by eight o’clock and sat through a pair of research briefings before phoning Dan Martin later in the morning. The FBI director sounded excited to hear from Pitt.

“Dirk, your tip yesterday was a good one. You were correct, the janitorial service at the George Washington University lab works in the evenings. We reviewed the lab’s security video and found a clean shot of your wayward morning janitor. He fit your description to a tee.”

Sitting in the airport lounge in Elliot Lake, Pitt had finally made the connection between the man at the Co-op and the janitor he had bumped into at the lab just prior to the explosion.

“Have you been able to identify him?” Pitt asked.

“After confirming that he was not part of the building maintenance and janitorial staff, we ran his photo through the Home-land Security identification database. Not an exact science, mind you, but we came up with a potential hit list and one pretty good match in particular. On this side of the border, he goes by Robert Ford of Buffalo, New York. We’ve already confirmed that the registered address is a fake, as well as the name.”

Pitt repeated the name Robert Ford, then thought of the alias he had used in Blind River, John Booth. Too coincidental, Pitt thought. John Wilkes Booth was the man who had shot Lincoln, while Robert Ford had killed Jesse James.

“He has an admiration for historical assassins,” Pitt offered.

“Might be his line of work. We crossed our records with the Canadian authorities, and they think they have him pegged as a fellow named Clay Zak.”

“Are they going to pick him up?”

“They would if they knew where to find him. He’s a suspect in a twenty-year-old murder at a Canadian nickel mine. His whereabouts have been unknown ever since.”

“A nickel mine? Might be a tie to his use of dynamite.”

“We’re following up on that now. The Canadians might not find him, but if he sets foot in the country again we’ll have a good chance at picking him up.”

“Nice work, Dan. You’ve accomplished a lot in short order.”

“A lucky break that you recalled your encounter. There’s one more thing that you might be interested in knowing. Lisa Lane’s lab assistant, Bob Hamilton. We were able to obtain a search warrant on the guy’s financial records. It seems that he just had fifty thousand dollars wired into his bank account from an offshore entity.”

“I suspected something was amiss with that one.”

“We will do a little more digging, then bring him in for questioning at the end of the week. We’ll see if there is a connection, but I have to say, things look promising at the moment.”

“I’m glad the investigation has legs. Thanks for your efforts.”

“Thank you, Dirk. You’ve given us a nice jump on the case.”

Pitt wondered how his own research was going and took the stairwell down to the tenth-floor computer operations center. He found Yaeger seated at his console conversing again with Max, who stood before a large projection screen. A flattened map of the globe was displayed, with dozens of pinpoint lights flashing from scattered points across the oceans. Each light represented a buoy that relayed sea and weather info via satellite link to the headquarters building.

“Problem with the sea buoy system? ” Pitt asked, taking a seat beside Yaeger.

“We’ve had an uplink problem with a number of segments,” Yaeger replied. “I’m having Max run some software tests to try and isolate the problem.”

“If the latest software release had been properly tested before going operational, we wouldn’t be incurring this problem,” Max injected. Turning to Pitt, she said good morning, then eyed Pitt’s bandage. “What happened to your head?”