Medusa

“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” Caleb said. “How is Captain Dobbs?”

“Not long for this world, I’m afraid. I’ll take you to him.”

The mansion’s spacious parlor and adjoining hallways overflowed with the captain’s ten children and countless grandchildren. There was a murmur as Nathan Dobbs entered the parlor with Strater and the strange hooded figure. Nathan asked Strater to make himself comfortable and escorted Caleb to the captain’s room.

Captain Dobbs lay in his bed, tended by his wife and family doctor. They had wanted to keep the sickroom dark, as was the medical practice then, but he insisted that the curtains be opened to let in sunlight.

A shaft of honeyed autumn sunlight fell on the captain’s craggy face. Although his leonine mane had gone silver-gray, his features were more youthful than would have been expected for a man in his sixties. But his eyes had a far-off look, as if he could see death creeping closer. The captain’s wife and doctor withdrew, and Nathan lingered by the door.

Dobbs saw Caleb and managed to crack a smile.

“Thank you for coming, Caleb,” the captain said. The voice that once boomed across a ship’s decks was a hoarse whisper.

Caleb pushed the hood back from his face. “You told me never to question the captain’s orders.”

“Aye,” Dobbs wheezed. “And I’ll give you more good advice, green hand. Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. Tried to fix a balky loom. Didn’t move fast enough when it keeled over.”

“I’m sorry for your misfortune, Captain.”

“Don’t be. I have a faithful wife, handsome children, and grandchildren who will carry on my name.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Caleb said in a wounded voice.

“You’ve done well, Caleb. I know all about your generosity.”

“Generosity is easy when there’s no one to share your fortune with.”

“You have shared it with your neighbors. And I have heard of your wonderful library of books on the old trade.”

“I don’t smoke or drink. Books are my only vice. Whaling gave me the life I have. I collect every volume I can on the old trade.”

The captain closed his eyes and seemed to drift away, but after a moment his eyelids fluttered open. “I have something I want to share with you.”

The captain’s son stepped forward and presented Caleb with a mahogany box. Caleb opened the lid. Inside the box was a book. Caleb recognized the worn blue binding.

“The log of the Princess, Captain?”

“Aye, and it’s yours,” the captain said. “For your great library.”

Caleb drew back. “I can’t take this from you, sir.”

“You’ll do as your captain says,” Dobbs growled. “My family agrees that you should have it. Isn’t that right, Nathan?”

The captain’s son nodded. “It’s the family’s wish as well, Mr. Nye. We can think of no person more worthy.”

Unexpectedly, the captain raised his hand and placed it on the log. “A strange business,” he said. “Something happened on that island of wild men. To this day, I don’t know if it was God’s work or the Devil’s.”

The captain closed his eyes. His breathing became labored, and a rattling sound came from his throat. He called his wife’s name.

Nathan gently took Caleb’s arm and escorted him from the room. He thanked him again for coming, and then told his mother that the captain’s time had come. The loyal family streamed into the bedroom and adjacent hallway, leaving Strater and Caleb alone in the parlor.

“Gone?” Strater said.

“Not yet but soon.” Caleb showed Strater the logbook.

“I’d prefer some of the Dobbs fortune,” Strater snorted.

“This is a treasure to me,” Caleb said. “Besides, you have more money than you could spend in a lifetime, my friend.”

“Then I’ll have to live longer,” Strater said with a glance toward the bedroom.

They left the house and climbed into Strater’s carriage. Caleb clutched the logbook closer and his mind went back to the remote island and its savage inhabitants, his masquerade as an ’atua, the sickness, and the strange blue lights. He turned around for a last look at the mansion and recalled the captain’s dying words.

Dobbs was right. It had been a strange business indeed.

CHAPTER 1

MURMANSK, RUSSIA, PRESENT DAY

AS THE COMMANDER OF ONE OF THE MOST FEARSOME KILLING machines ever devised, Andrei Vasilevich once held in his hands the power to wipe out entire cities and millions of people. If war had ever broken out between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Typhoon-class submarine Vasilevich had commanded would have launched twenty long-range ballistic missiles at the U.S. and sent two hundred nuclear warheads raining down on American soil.

In the years since he had retired from the navy, Vasilevich had often breathed a sigh of relief that he had never been told to unleash a salvo of nuclear death and destruction. As a captain second rank, he would have carried out the orders of his government without question. An order was an order, no matter how evil it was. A nuclear sub commander was an instrument of the state and could have no room for emotions. But as the tough old undersea Cold Warrior said good-bye to his former command, the submarine unofficially known as Bear, he could not hold back the sentimental tears that rolled down his plump cheeks.

He stood on the dock overlooking the port of Murmansk, his eyes following the sub as it glided toward the harbor entrance. He raised a silver flask of vodka high in the air in toast before taking a slug, and his thoughts drifted back to those years prowling the North Atlantic in the monster vessel.

With a length of five hundred seventy feet and a seventy-five-foot beam, the Typhoon was the biggest submarine ever built. The long forward deck stretched out from the massive, forty-two-foot-tall co

The unique hull design extended past its metal exterior. Instead of one pressure hull, as in most submarines, the Typhoon had two parallel ones. This arrangement gave the Typhoon a cargo capacity of fifteen thousand tons and room in the starboard hull for a small gym and a sauna. Escape chambers were located above each hull. The submarine’s control room and attack center were both in compartments located under the sail.

The Bear was one of six 941 Typhoons commissioned in the 1980s and introduced into the Northern fleet as part of the first flotilla of nuclear submarines based at Nerpichya. Leonid Brezhnev called the new model “the Typhoon” in a speech, and the name stuck. They were deployed as the Russian Akula class, meaning “shark,” which was the name the U.S. Navy used for them.

Despite its huge size, the Typhoon clipped along at more than twenty-five knots underwater and around half that speed on the surface. It could turn on a ruble, dive to the ocean depths, and stay down a hundred eighty days, accomplishing these maneuvers with one of the quietest power systems ever designed. The sub carried a crew of more than one hundred sixty. Each hull had a reactor plant that powered a steam turbine which produced fifty thousand horsepower to drive the two huge propellers. Two propulsion pods allowed the sub to hover and maneuver.

The Typhoon subs eventually outlived their military and political usefulness and were taken out of service in the late 1990s. Someone had suggested that they might be converted to carry cargo under the arctic ice by replacing the missile tubes with cargo space. The word went out that the Typhoons were for sale to the highest bidder.

The captain would have preferred to see the subs scrapped rather than have them turned into undersea cargo scows. What an ignoble end for a fine war machine! In its day, the terrible Typhoon was the subject of books and movies. He had forgotten how many times he had seen The Hunt for Red October.