A faint grin touched Sandecker's face. "While you're in a generous mood, Joe, what're the chances of borrowing the Modoc?"

    "The Modoc?" Kemper repeated. "She's the finest deepwater salvage vessel the Navy's got."

    "We could also use the crew that comes with her," Sandecker pushed on.

    Kemper rolled the beer can's cool surface across his sweating forehead. "Okay, you've got yourselves the Modoc and her crew, plus whatever extra men and equipment you need.

    Seagram sighed. "Thank you, Admiral. I'm grateful."

    "You're straddling an interesting concept," Kemper said. "But one fraught with problems."

    "Nothing comes easy," Seagram replied.

    "What's your next step?"

    Sandecker answered that one. "We send down television cameras to locate the hull and survey the damage."

    "God only knows what you'll find-" Kemper stopped abruptly and pointed at Sandecker's jerking bobber. "By God, Jim, I believe you've caught a fish."

    Sandecker leaned lazily over the side of the boat. "So I have," he said smiling. "Let's hope the Titanic is just as cooperative."

    "I am afraid that that hope may prove to be an expensive incentive," Kemper said, and there was no answering smile on his lips.

    Pitt closed Joshua Hays Brewster's journal and looked across the conference table at Mel Donner. "That's it then."

    "The whole truth and nothing but the truth," Donner said.

    "But wouldn't this byzanium, or whatever you call it, lose its properties after being immersed in the sea all these years?"

    Donner shook his head. "Who's to say? No one has ever had a sufficient quantity in their hands to know for sure how it reacts under any conditions."

    "Then it may be worthless."

    "Not if it's locked securely in the Titanic's vault. Our research indicates that the strong room is watertight."

    Pitt leaned back and stared at the journal. "It's a hell of a gamble."

    "We're aware of that."

    "It's like asking a gang of kids to lift a Patton tank out of Lake Erie with a few ropes and a raft."

    "We're aware of that," Donner repeated.

    "The cost alone of raising the Titanic is beyond comprehension," Pitt said.

    "Name a figure."

    "Back in 1974 the CIA paid out over three hundred million dollars just to raise the bow of a Russian submarine. I couldn't begin to fathom what it would run to salvage a passenger liner that grosses forty-six thousand tons from twelve thousand feet of water."

    "Take a guess then."

    "Who bankrolls the operation?"

    "Meta Section will handle the finances," Donner said. "Just look upon me as your friendly neighborhood banker. Let me know what you think it will take to get the salvage operation off the ground, and I'll see to it the funds are secretly transferred into NUMA's annual operating budget.

    "Two hundred and fifty million ought to start the ball rolling."

    "That's somewhat less than our estimates," Donner said casually. "I suggest that you not limit yourself. Just to be on the safe side, I'll arrange for you to receive an extra five."

    "Five million?"

    "No." Donner smiled. "Five hundred million."

     After the guard passed him out through the gate, Pitt pulled up at the side of the road and gazed back through the chain-link fence at the Smith Van and Storage Company. "I don't believe it," he said to no one. "I don't believe any of it." Then slowly, with much difficulty, as if he were fighting the commands of a hypnotist, Pitt dropped the shift lever into "Drive" and made his way back to the city.

29

    It had been a particularly grueling day for the President. There were seemingly endless meetings with opposition party congressmen; meetings in which he had struggled, vainly in most cases, to persuade them to support his new bill for the modification of income-tax regulations. Then there had been a speech at the convention of near hostile state governors, followed later in the afternoon by a heated session with his aggressive, overbearing secretary of state.

    Now, just past ten o'clock, with one more unpleasant involvement to reckon with, he sat in an overstuffed chair holding a drink in his right hand while his left scratched the long ears of his sad-eyed basset hound.

    Warren Nicholson, the director of the CIA, and Marshall Collies, his chief Kremlin security adviser, sat opposite him on a large sectional sofa.

    The President took a sip from the glass and then stared grimly at the two men. "Do either of you have the vaguest notion of what you're asking of me?"

    Collies shrugged nervously. "Quite frankly, sir, we don't. But this is clearly a case of the end justifying the means. I personally think Nicholson here has one hell of a scheme going. The payoff in terms of secret information could be nothing less than astonishing."

    "It will cost a heavy price," the President said.

    Nicholson leaned forward. "Believe me, sir, the cost is worth it."

    "That's easy for you to say," the President said. "Neither of you has the slightest hint as to what the Sicilian Project is all about."

    Collies nodded. "No argument there, Mr. President. Its secret is well kept. That's why it came as a shock when we discovered its existence through the KGB instead of our own security forces."

    "How much do you think the Russians know?"

    "We can't be absolutely certain at this point," Nicholson answered, "but the few facts we have in hand indicate the KGB possesses only the code name."

    "Damn!" the President muttered angrily. "How could it have possibly leaked out?"

    "I'd venture to guess that it was an accidental leak," Collies said. "My people in Moscow would smell something if Soviet intelligence analysts thought they were onto an ultrasecret American defense project."

    The President looked at Collies. "What makes you sure it has to do with defense?"

    "If security surrounding the Sicilian Project is as tight as you suggest, then a new military weapon emerges as the obvious theory. And there is no doubt in my mind that the Russians will soon come up with the same conclusion."

    "I would have to go along with Collies' line of thinking," Nicholson concurred.

    "All of which plays right into our hands."

    "Go on."

    "We feed Soviet Naval Intelligence data on the Sicilian Project in small doses. If they take the bait . . ." Nicholson's hands gestured like the closing of a trap, ". . . then we literally own one of the Soviets' top intelligence-gathering services."

    Bored by the human talk, the President's basset hound stretched out and peacefully dozed off The President looked thoughtfully at the animal for several moments, weighing the odds. The decision was a painful one. He felt as though he was stabbing all his friends from Meta Section in the back.

    "I'll have the man who is heading the project draw up an initial report," he said finally. "You, Nicholson, will tell me where and how you want it delivered so the Russians do not suspect the deception. You will go through me, and only me, for any further information concerning the Sicilian Project. Is that clear?"