Giordino nudged him back to the task at hand.

“Ready to move aft.”

“The clock is ticking,” Pitt said quietly. “Let’s get it done.”

65

A dense, icy fog crept across the Otok as dusk settled over Victoria Strait. The Narwhal was long lost from physical view, and Zak searched for her on the radarscope, finding the research ship as a narrow smudge on the top of the screen. Across the bridge, the icebreaker’s captain paced back and forth, having grown bored with holding his ship stationary for the past few hours.

But the captain saw no signs of boredom in Zak’s face. On the contrary, there was an odd intensity about him. Like in the moment before an assassination, he was fully alert, his senses in high gear. While he had murdered many times before, he had never done so on a large scale. It was a test of cunning, he liked to think, that made his blood run fast. It gave him a sensation of invincibility, inflated by the knowledge that he had always come out on top.

“Bring us to within eight kilometers of the Narwhal,” he finally directed the captain. “And do so nice and easy.”

The captain engaged the helm and brought the ship and attached barge around on a southerly heading. Aided by the swift-moving current, the icebreaker ran just above idle, covering the distance in less than an hour. Reaching the new position, the captain swung his bow around to the current in order to remain stationary.

“Eight kilometers and holding,” he reported to Zak.

Zak eyed the gloomy darkness outside the bridge window and creased his lips in satisfaction.

“Prepare to release the barge at my command,” he said.

The captain stared at him as if he were insane.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“You heard me. We are going to release the barge.”

“That’s a ten-million-dollar vessel. In this fog and current, there’s no way we’ll be able to tie back up to her. She’ll rip her hull open on some ice or run aground on the islands. Either way, Mr. Goyette will have my head.”

Zak shook his head with a thin smile. “She won’t be traveling very far. As for Goyette, please recall the signed letter I gave you in Kugluktuk giving me complete authority while I’m aboard this ship. Believe me, he will consider it a small price to pay to eliminate a problem that could cost him hundreds of millions of dollars. Besides,” he added with a conniving grin, “isn’t that what marine insurance is for?”

The captain reluctantly ordered his deckhands to the stern of the ship to man the towlines. The men waited in the cold while Zak ran down to his cabin, then returned to the bridge carrying his leather satchel. At Zak’s command, the captain reversed power and backed down on the barge until the thick towlines fell slack in the water. The deckhands released a lock plate, then heaved the looped ends of the towlines up and off the stern bollards. The men watched morbidly as the lines slid down the stern and disappeared into the black water below.

When the bridge received an all-clear signal, the captain pulled the ship forward, then came around the barge’s starboard flank at Zak’s urging. The dark mass of the barge could barely be seen a few yards away as the fog continued to thicken. Zak reached into his satchel and pulled out a high-frequency radio transmitter, then stepped out onto the bridge wing. Extending a small antenna, he powered on the device and immediately pushed a red TRANSMIT button.

The radio signal only had to travel a short distance to trigger the detonator cap planted on the stern of the barge. Less than a second later, the dynamite charge ignited.

The explosion was neither loud nor visually impressive, just a resounding pop that reverberated within the barge, followed by a light puff of smoke that rose from the rear deck. Zak observed the scene for just a few seconds, then returned to the warmth of the bridge, putting the transmitter back into his bag.

“I don’t like having the blood of those men on my hands,” the captain grumbled.

“But you have it all wrong, Captain. The loss of the barge was quite accidental.”

The captain simply stared at Zak with a look of dismay.

“It’s very simple,” Zak continued. “You shall write in your log, and report to the authorities back in port, that the American research ship inadvertently collided with our barge in the fog and both vessels sank. We, of course, were most fortunate to release the towlines in the nick of time and suffered no casualties. Regrettably, we were unable to find any survivors in the water from the NUMA ship.”

“But the NUMA ship has not sunk,” the captain protested.

“That,” Zak replied with a snarl, “is about to change.”

66

A thousand feet below the surface, the intervening hour had been one of complete frustration for Pitt and Giordino. While guiding the Rover aft along the lower deck, Giordino watched as the ROV jerked to a standstill and refused to move forward. Retracing its trail of cable, he found the power cord had become tangled in some debris at the head of the galley. Matters only got worse when the ROV’s thrusters kicked up a huge cloud of silt around the snagged area. He had to wait ten minutes just for the visibility to return before he could see enough to free the cable.

The interior of the submersible had finally grown hot, and sweat dribbled down Giordino’s face as he tensely guided the ROV back through the crew’s quarters and down the main passageway toward the stern of the ship.

“Where’s the lounge on this boat? I think Rover and I could both use a cold beer about now,” he muttered.

“You would have needed to break into the Spirit Room belowdecks, where the rum was stored. Of course, if this is the Erebus, then you might be out of luck, as Franklin was a teetotaler.”

“That seals it,” Giordino said. “No further proof required. My present state of luck dictates that this has to be the Erebus.”

Despite the minutes ticking down on their bottom time, neither man was ready to give up. They pressed the ROV onward, striking down the single aft passageway, past the cramped officers’ cabins, until finally arriving at a large compartment at the very stern of the ship. Called the Great Cabin, it stretched from beam to beam, offering the one truly comfortable haven for the men of the ship, or at least its officers. Stocked with a library, chess sets, playing cards, and other sources of entertainment, it was also a potential repository for the ship’s log. But like the rest of the vessel, the Great Cabin offered no clues to the ship’s identity.

Scattered across the deck and around an upturned table was a knee-deep pile of books. Lined on wide shelves across each side of the cabin, the large collection of books had smashed through the glass cases during the sinking and been strewn everywhere. Giordino slowly flew the ROV back and forth across the cabin, surveying the wall-to-wall mess.

“Looks like the San Francisco Library after the great earthquake,” Giordino said.

“The ship’s library contained twelve hundred volumes,” Pitt replied, studying the mess with disappointment. “If the ship’s log is buried in there, it will take a couple of fortnights and a good rabbit’s foot to find it.”

Their frustration was interrupted by another radio transmission from Dahlgren.

“Sorry to break up the fiesta, but the big hand on the clock says it’s time for you to begin your ascent,” he said.

“We’ll be on our way shortly,” Pitt replied.

“Fair enough. The captain says to tell you that our shadow has closed to within four miles and is sitting pretty again. I think the captain would feel a whole lot better if you boys got yourselves aboard pronto.”

“Understood. Bloodhound out.”

Giordino looked at Pitt and noticed a look of concern in his green eyes.