Treasure of Khan

Exiting Sarghov's cabin, he quickly searched the next three cabins before reaching the final starboard berth. It was the one cabin Gu

Across the passageway, Pitt saw the flickering light from Giordino, who had moved ahead of him and was searching the last port cabin.

Pitt turned the latch and leaned his body against the door to force it open against the invisible force of the water. Like the other cabins he searched, its interior appeared orderly, with no obvious disruptions from the flooding. Only, from the doorway, Pitt could see that there was something different about this cabin.

It still contained its occupant.

In the restrictive light, it might have been a duffel bag or a couple of pillows lying on the bunk, but Pitt had a feeling otherwise. Taking a step closer, he could see it was a man lying on the bunk, a pale and very dead man at that.

Pitt slowly approached the prone figure and cautiously leaned over the body, illuminating the corpse with the beam from his spotlight. The open eyes of the surly fishing boat captain stared up at him without blinking, a confused look permanently etched upon the dead man's face. The old fisherman was clad in a T-shirt, and his legs were tucked snugly under the covers. The tight blanket had kept him from floating off the bunk until the air in his lungs had slowly purged.

Shining his light closely at the fisherman's head, Pitt rubbed a finger across the man's hairline. Two inches above his ear, a slight indentation creased the side of his head. Though the skin had not broken, it was obvious that a heavy blow had cracked the man's skull. Pitt morbidly wondered whether the old fisherman had been done in by the blow itself or had drowned while unconscious when the cabin flooded.

As Giordino's light suddenly appeared in the doorway, Pitt took a careful look around the floor of the bunk. The carpeted deck was bare. He saw no porcelain pitchers, lead paperweights, or bottles of vodka that could have fallen off a shelf and struck the man by accident. The entire room was bare, a spare cabin given to the fisherman who brought no belongings of his own.

Pitt took another look at the old man and knew his initial instincts were right. From the first the minute he saw him, Pitt knew the old fisherman had not died by accident. He had been murdered.

-7-

"It's gone," Gu

Gu

"What about backups, Rudi?" Pitt asked.

"That's right. As a good computer geek, I know you save everything on backup disks, probably in triplicate," Giordino admonished as he hung up his dry suit on a hook.

"Our rack of backup DVDs is missing, too," Gu

"Our buddy Sarghov?" Giordino asked.

"I don't think so," Pitt replied. "His cabin didn't have the look of an impending escape artist."

"I don't understand. The research data would be of value only to the scientific community. We've shared everything with our Russian counterparts. Who would want to steal the information?" Gu

"Perhaps the intent was not to steal the data. Perhaps they just didn't want us to discover something in the data," Pitt reflected.

"Could be," Giordino agreed. "Rudi, that means your beloved computer is probably at the bottom of Lake Baikal snagging lures about now."

"Is that supposed to be a consolation?" he muttered.

"Don't feel bad. You still made out better than the old fisherman."

"True. He did lose his boat," Gu

"He lost more than that," Pitt replied, then told Gu

"But why murder an old man?" Gu

Were they abducted? Or did they leave willingly, after killing the fisherman and destroying our scientific data?"

The same questions percolated through Pitt's mind, only there were no answers.

***

By midday, an overhead city utility line was tapped from shore and wired to the Vereshchagin, providing electrical power to the grounded ship and activating the bilge pumps that had been disabled. Auxiliary water pumps were deployed on the aft deck, helping pump dry the flooded compartments under the whine of their attached generators. Slowly but surely, the submerged stern began to creep out of the water at a pace far too sluggish for the few remaining crew members watching from shore.

Around Listvyanka, residents continued the cleanup from the flood-ravaged waters. The town's celebrated open-air fish market was quickly pieced back together, with several vendors already offering an aromatic assortment of fresh-smoked fish. The sounds of sawing and hammering filled the air as a row of tourist kiosks, taking the brunt of the wave's carnage, were already being rebuilt.

Word gradually filtered in about other destruction around the lake caused by the quake and wave.

Extensive property damage had occurred along the southern shores of the lake, but remarkably no loss of life was reported. The Baikalsk paper mill, a landmark facility on the south coast, suffered the most costly damage, its operations forced to close for several weeks while debris was cleared and its flooded structures restored. At the opposite end of the lake, there were reports that the earthquake had severely damaged the Taishet-Nakhodka oil pipeline that skirted the northern shore. Ecologists from the Limnological Institute were already en route to assess the potential environmental damage should an oil spill approach the lake.

Shortly after lunch, Listvyanka's police chief boarded the Vereshchagin, accompanied by two detectives from Irkutsk. The police authorities climbed up to the ship's bridge, where they greeted Captain Kharitonov in a formal ma

The missing persons and attempted sinking of the Vereshchagin might be explained away as an accident, but a dead body complicated matters. A potential murder would mean extra paperwork and state officials looking over his shoulder. In Listvyanka, the occasional stolen bicycle or barroom brawl was the extent of his normal criminal dealings, and that was the way he preferred it.

"Nonsense," he retorted in a gravelly voice. "I knew Belikov well. He was a drunken old fisherman.

Drank too much vodka and passed out like an old goat. An unfortunate accident," he casually explained away.

"Then what about the disappearance of the two crewmen and the survey team that was rescued with the fisherman, as well as the attempted sinking of my ship?" Captain Kharitonov added with rising anger.

"Ah yes," the police chief replied, "the crew members who opened the sea cocks by mistake. Ashamed of their mechanical error, they have probably fled in embarrassment. They will turn up eventually at one of our fine drinking houses," he said knowingly. Realizing that the two Irkutsk men did not appear to be buying his rationale, he continued. "It will, of course, be necessary to interview the crew and passengers for an official accounting of the incident."