Ghost Ship by Clive Cussler
“A part of me thinks I should be in mourning,” he said. “And, privately, I am. I miss my wife and children. They were the light of my life. But Sienna would be the first to say don’t wallow in grief or self-pity. She was the first to stand up and help others even when she was hurting herself. This program was hers. I’d like to think it’s her legacy. One that will help protect our country in what has become an undeclared war.”
A hush of respect lingered over the crowd before a few easier questions came his way. When he finished, the applause was loud and heartfelt. By the time he walked off the stage, Brian Westgate was glad he’d decided to push through.
Forrester met him on the steps and the two made their way back into the Smithsonian.
“Great work,” Forrester whispered.
They stepped inside and turned down the hallway toward the office they’d been allowed to use as a waiting room. As they neared the door, Westgate noticed two men approaching.
One of the men looked vaguely familiar. The square jaw, the bright blue eyes, the mane of platinum-gray hair.
“I have a question,” the man said.
“No more questions,” Forrester replied.
Westgate paused at the door, eyeing the man. It dawned on him suddenly. Kurt Austin. Before he got a chance to say anything, Austin spoke again.
“Where were you?”
“Excuse me?” Westgate said.
Forrester stepped between the two men. “I said no more questions.”
Forrester made the mistake of putting his hands on Austin and soon found himself spun around, his arm bent backward and his face shoved into the wall. The impact was so abrupt it cracked the drywall.
Pinned against the wall, Forrester shouted for security. A pair of guards at the end of the hall turned slowly and then began to run down the passageway toward them.
The second intruder, a man with dark hair and deep-brown eyes, tried to keep the peace. He was flashing some kind of badge. “We’re with the government,” he said. “Kurt Austin, Joe Zavala. We’re with NUMA.”
It didn’t work. Even as Austin released Forrester, the plainclothes officers pounced. Austin didn’t resist, and they took him down without a fight. He seemed only focused on Westgate.
Through a tangle of bodies he shouted at Westgate. “Where were you when the Ethernet went down?”
“This isn’t necessary,” Westgate said, trying to intervene.
“The hell it isn’t!” Forrester bellowed. “Arrest this son of a—”
“You were nineteen miles away,” Austin shouted. “Nineteen miles!”
“Shut up,” Forrester demanded.
A man appeared at the end of the hall, pulled out a camera phone, and aimed it their way. “Turn that camera off!”
A third officer entered the fray, pulling out a pair of cuffs and slapping them over Austin’s wrists, which were now behind his back. Austin wasn’t struggling a bit, he seemed to know better, but was still straining to see past all the men and look Westgate in the eye.
“Let him go,” Westgate shouted, putting a hand to his temple. “For God’s sake, there’s no need for this!”
The cops yanked Kurt up, hauling him to his feet.
“We have to take him in,” one of the officers explained. “Anything like this happens, we have to run them in.”
“Him too,” Forrester insisted, pointing to the dark-haired man.
“What did I do?” Zavala asked.
“You came with him,” one of the cops said. “Now, turn around!”
“You’re hiding something,” Austin insisted as they began to drag him off.
Forrester had had enough. He couldn’t get the police to gag this madman, but he could get his own guy out of there. He grabbed Westgate by the arm and hustled him into the office.
“Get that camera!” he yelled to an assistant. “I don’t care how you do it.”
Westgate was too stunned to do anything but go with Forrester. As he was pulled into the waiting room, he caught sight of Austin shouting at him one more time.
“What happened on that yacht, Westgate? What the hell happened out there?”
The door slammed, the intrusion ended, and Forrester sat Westgate on the couch. “Are you all right?”
Westgate blinked. “Of course I’m all right. Did you see someone hit me?”
“You may not feel like you were hit,” Forrester growled. “But if that tape gets out, you, me, and the entire company are going to have a problem.”
Westgate could hardly think. The pounding in his skull was relentless. “What are you talking about?”
Forrester didn’t explain but instead moved to a makeshift bar, poured a drink, and shoved it into Westgate’s hand.
“Here.”
Westgate took a few sips. He felt confused and dizzy.
Forrester sat down and poured a drink for himself. He chose to do more than sip. “This could be a disaster,” he mumbled.
The door opened and the assistant came in. He held the camera phone in question.
“How much?”
“Twenty K,” the assistant said.
Forrester nodded. “Good, take care of it. And give the guy a job, if he’ll take it. A highly paid spot. I don’t want him changing his mind.”
The assistant left and Westgate looked up. His wits were returning to him, the aching in his head subsiding. “Do you know who that was?”
“Of course I do,” Forrester said. “And I’m gonna have him locked away for assault, making threatening statements, and anything else I can think of.”
“Are you insane?” Westgate snapped. “That man dove from a helicopter in the middle of a hurricane to try to save me and my family. You’re going to prosecute him? How’s that going to look?”
Forrester exhaled in frustration. Westgate could see him thinking, coming to the only logical conclusion. The calculations were easy.
“I want to meet with him,” Westgate said.
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Forrester said.
“Because what?”
Forrester hemmed and hawed for a second. “Because he’s crazy. From what I’ve heard, he’s been struggling. He was injured in the rescue and has been on medical leave. He’s locked into some conspiracy theory about the yacht not really sinking or your wife not being on board or surviving somehow. He thinks she’s working for the Iranians.”
Westgate was stunned for a moment; he felt dizzy. “Working for Iran? Are you kidding me?”
“Told you he was crazy,” Forrester said. “Now do you understand why you can’t meet with him?”
“Why would he think that?”
Forrester looked away. “Forget it, Brian. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Westgate insisted. “Could he be right? Is there any possible way?”
Forrester turned and fixed his gaze on Westgate. “Don’t do this to yourself. You know as well as I do that she drowned.”
Westgate looked away, his mind spinning. Of course he knew that. The question was, why didn’t Austin? He was the one who’d seen her. “How do you know Austin’s been on leave?”
“I keep an eye on things,” Forrester said. “That’s my job. And when I first got the details of the incident, I started looking into it.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Forrester leaned toward Westgate, cradling the drink in both hands. His tone changed. There was venom in it. “And what would you have done if I told you?”
Westgate didn’t answer.
“He’s a danger to us. Whatever ax he has to grind, we need to keep him far away from you.”
“Why would he have an ax to grind with me?”
“Come on, Brian,” Forrester said, “don’t be so naïve. He was engaged to your wife years ago. They were supposed to get married the same summer that you two met. Or didn’t she tell you that?”
Westgate took the statement for what it was, a barb to get him riled up against
“You’d be surprised what Sienna told me about Kurt Austin,” he said. “The biggest thing is that he’s a decent human being. As good as they come.”
“Well, that decent human being could destroy this company with one wrong word.”
Westgate saw fear light up in Forrester’s eyes. It was something he’d never seen before. “What are you talking about?”
Forrester was blunt. “You don’t know this but we’re teetering on the brink of financial collapse. Working on Phalanx to the detriment of all other products has put us in a desperate spot. So far, I’ve managed to hide this with a few accounting tricks I learned from my Wall Street days, and some recent cash flow that’s tiding us over.”
Westgate could guess where the money was coming from. “The yacht belonged to the company,” he said. “The fifty-four million from Lloyd’s . . . that’s what’s tiding us over. You’re worried they’ll stop the payout.”
Forrester waved as if he was way off. “That would be the least of our problems,” he said. “Sienna’s knowledge is the real threat. She designed the system. If a rumor that she’s alive and hiding out somewhere got traction . . . Can you imagine? We’d be dead in the water.”
Westgate looked away. “Dead in the water,” he whispered. “Like my wife and kids.”
“You know I didn’t mean that . . .”
Westgate nodded. “What if Austin’s right?”
Forrester narrowed his gaze, studying Westgate as if searching for something. He slid one hand into a pocket as if fishing for his keys and settled back on the couch. “We’ve talked about this before, Brian.”
Westgate felt the ringing in his head once again. “Yes . . . I guess we have talked about this . . .”
“Maybe we’d better go over it again.”
Westgate felt a migraine coming on. The pain was scalding, the room seemed too bright.
“What happened in the storm?” Forrester asked. “How did you end up on the raft?”
Westgate hesitated. He knew what to say. But the words stuck in his throat, and he took another swig of the gin to try and free up his vocal cords.
Strangely, Forrester began telling him the story. “The yacht was taking on water. You were prepping the raft. A huge wave hit and you got swept over the side.”
Westgate remembered this. He felt the cold of the sea. “I almost drowned,” he said.
“That’s right, Brian. You almost drowned.”
He looked over at Forrester. The pain in his head was now blurring his vision. Soon, Forrester was just a voice at the end of a tunnel. “You couldn’t get back to them.”
“I tried,” Westgate said. He could feel the pain in his shoulders from rowing with all his might. He could taste the salt on his lips from the sea, could feel his eyes burning. “The weather was so bad . . . In twenty minutes, I couldn’t even see the ship. I heard . . . I heard . . .”
“You heard the helicopter,” Forrester reminded him.
“But they didn’t see me.”
“And before that?” Forrester asked. “Before you went out on the deck?”
Westgate remembered something. Shouting. Chaos. It seemed to make the pain in his head flare again. Even with his eyes shut, he saw a scalding light. He recalled something about the pumps. A failed hatch. He remembered Sienna and their children huddled in their life jackets. But there was something odd about the memory. It was too still. No one was moving. No one was talking.
The voice in the fog pressed, “I need an answer, Brian. What happened on that yacht before you were swept overboard? Can you tell the story without help this time?”
Westgate fumbled for the words.
“Brian?”
The truth. For once, Westgate managed to speak it. “I wish,” he said. “I wish to God I knew.”
As Westgate said these words, the pain spiked to unbearable levels. His vision faded, his world shrank to nothing. Nothing except the sound of David Forrester’s voice.
“I’m sorry, Brian. But that’s not the answer I’m looking for.”
Dirk Pitt was the Director of NUMA, a post he’d held for several years since his mentor and friend, Admiral James Sandecker, had gone on to be Vice President of the United States.
At six foot three, Pitt was lean and a little on the lanky side. His opaline eyes conveyed an intensity and a sense of mirth equally well. With thick dark hair, broad shoulders, and a square jaw, he cut a striking figure. That was especially true tonight, clad in a tuxedo, freshly shaved, and doused with a splash of musky cologne.
A charity ball for wounded military veterans was on the agenda for the evening, a cause Pitt was glad to be part of. He would give a speech, present an award, and submit a private donation anonymously. For the rest of the night, he’d mix and mingle with a crowd of interesting people. Despite all that, Pitt knew the true star of the night would be his wife, Loren Smith.
She’d chaired the ball, overseen the committees and the invitations, and even chosen the orchestra. With her striking beauty and effortless charm, she would captivate all whom she encountered. No doubt she’d look resplendent in whatever she wore, and most of the attendees might remember Pitt only as that handsome gentleman who stood beside her. Which suited him just fine.
The only drawback was dressing for the evening. They were going to be late if Loren wasn’t ready soon.
Rather than badger her—which would only slow the process further—he stood calmly among a group of perfectly restored antique cars. The vehicles were part of his collection. They graced the ground floor of the aircraft hangar he lived in at Washington National Airport.
As the current Director of NUMA, and the head of the Special Projects Division prior to that, Pitt had been all around the world on various missions and expeditions. Many of the vehicles in the hangar had come back with him or were delivered shortly afterward by grateful colleagues or thankful governments.
To the victor went the spoils.
Before he could decide which of the magnificent vehicles to drive tonight, the intercom system buzzed. Pitt glanced at a monitor on the wall. He saw the face of an old friend with a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard standing at the door. Two larger men loomed behind him, no doubt members of the Secret Service.
Pitt touched a button that released the locks on the steel door. It swung open and the Vice President of the United States walked in. The bodyguards tried to follow, but Sandecker waved them back.
“At ease, men,” he said.
“Mr. Vice President,” Pitt said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until later on this evening. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I thought you might have some time to talk before the event,” Sandecker said.
Pitt glanced up the spiral staircase to the apartment above. No sign of Loren yet. “I think we’re onto the third wardrobe change,” he said. “You probably have at least one more before the big reveal.”
Sandecker grinned. “I played the odds. You have anything in this joint to quench a weary traveler’s thirst?”
Pitt walked Sandecker to the bar and filled a couple of shot glasses with Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch.
After handing a glass to the Vice President, Pitt opened the questioning. “Why doesn’t this seem like a social call?”
“Because I’m here on business,” Sandecker said. “Specifically, that business Kurt pulled this morning on Brian Westgate.”
Pitt nodded. “I’ve been fielding some blowback from that myself.”
“It didn’t put NUMA in a good light.”
If there was anything to get Sandecker riled up, it was bad publicity for NUMA, the organization he’d built from the ground up and still protected like an avenging angel.
“True,” Pitt said. “But I think Kurt’s earned a free pass or two at this point.”
Sandecker narrowed his gaze. “Is that what you told David Forrester? I heard he called y
Pitt grinned mischievously and took a sip of the scotch. “What I told Forrester,” he began, “shouldn’t be repeated in good company. But the gist of it went like this: If he was going to go after Kurt, he was going to have to get through me first.”
Sandecker grinned. “I should have guessed. Lucky for Kurt.”
“Kurt screwed up,” Pitt admitted, “but I’m not throwing him to the wolves. If it comes to a shoving match, I’ve got his record to stand on. That’s good enough for me.”
Sandecker nodded. There was an unmistakable sense of pride in his eyes. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else. Loyalty’s a two-way street and Kurt’s never let us down. So you’ll have my support. But there’s a bigger issue. What’s your take on Kurt’s state of mind?”
Pitt wasn’t sure how to answer. And he wasn’t used to Sandecker beating around the bush. “What are you getting at?”
“Kurt’s been contacting foreign sources. Wiring money to people who might work what we call the shady side of the street.”
This, Pitt didn’t know. “To what end?”
“Looking for any sign that Sienna Westgate might somehow be alive.”
Pitt’s eyebrows went up. “Are you sure?”
Sandecker nodded.
Pitt looked off into the hangar. That didn’t sound healthy. Nor, honestly, did it sound like Kurt. Kurt was pragmatic, not given to flights of fancy.
“Every man has his limits,” Pitt mused, considering Sandecker’s original question. “Even you and I have been close to ours a time or two. I suppose it’s possible Kurt’s reached his.”
“Possibly,” Sandecker said. “But in this case, there’s a twist. Trent MacDonald over at Central Intelligence handed me a file today. They’ve looked at the same photos Kurt received and they can’t rule out the chance that Kurt might be onto something.”
“‘Can’t rule out’? What does that mean?”
“It means they think he’s tilting at windmills, but they can’t prove it.” From his pocket, Sandecker produced a three-by-five glossy. It showed a woman who looked somewhat like Sienna Westgate getting in a car with a burly-looking bodyguard. “This was taken in Bandar Abbas.”
Dirk studied the image. It was a little grainy from being blown up. “Do they really think it’s her?”