Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler Page A

way of proving it, of course, but I’ve always had a haunting feeling that the Société des Mines de Lorraine was in back of it.”
    â€œWho were they?”
    â€œThey were and still are to France what Krupp is to Germany, what Mitsubichi is to Japan, what Anaconda is to the United States.”
    â€œWhere does the Société—whatever you call it—fit in?”
    â€œThey were the French financiers who hired Joshua Hays Brewster as their engineer-manager of exploration. They were the only ones with enough capital to pay nine men to vanish off the face of the earth.”
    â€œBut why? Where is the motive?”
    Young gestured helplessly. “I don’t know.” He leaned forward and his eyes seemed to burn. “But I do know that whatever the price, whatever the influence, it took my uncle and his eight-man crew to some unnamed hell outside the country.”
    â€œUntil the bodies are recovered, who’s to say you’re wrong.”
    Young stared at him. “You are a courteous man, Mr. Donner. I thank you.”
    â€œFor what? A free lunch at the government’s expense?”
    â€œFor not laughing,” Young said softly.
    Donner nodded and said nothing. The man across the table had just spliced one tiny strand of the frayed puzzle to the red-bearded bones in the Bednaya Mountain mine. There was nothing to laugh about, nothing to laugh about in the least.

15
    Seagram returned the farewell smile from the stewardess, stepped off the United jet, and prepared himself for the quarter-mile trip to the street entrance of the Los Angeles International Airport. He finally reached the front lobby, and unlike Donner, who had rented his car from No. 2, Seagram preferred dealing with No. 1 and signed out a Lincoln from Hertz. He turned onto Century Boulevard, and within a few blocks entered the on-ramp south to the San Diego Freeway. It was a cloudless day and the smog was surprisingly light, allowing a hazy view of the Sierra Madre mountains. He drove leisurely in the right-hand lane of the freeway at sixty miles an hour, while the mainstream of local traffic sped by the Lincoln, doing seventy-five and eighty with routine indifference to the posted fifty-five miles an hour limit. He soon left the chemical refineries of Torrance and the oil derricks around Long Beach behind and entered the vastness of Orange County, where the terrain suddenly flattened out and gave way to a great, unending sea of tract homes.
    It took him a little over an hour to reach the turnoff for Leisure World. It was an idyllic setting: golf courses, swimming pools, stables, neatly manicured lawns and park areas, golden-tanned senior citizens on bicycles.
    He stopped at the main gate and an elderly guard in uniform checked him through and gave him directions to 261-B Calle Aragon. It was a picturesque little duplex tucked neatly on the slope of a hill overlooking an immaculate park. Seagram parked the Lincoln against the curb, walked through a small courtyard patio filled with rose bushes, and poked the doorbell. The door opened and his fears vanished; Adeline Hobart was definitely not the senile type.
    â€œMr. Seagram?” The voice was light and cheerful.
    â€œYes. Mrs. Hobart?”
    â€œPlease come in.” She extended her hand. The grip was as firm as a man’s. “Goodness, nobody’s called me that in over seventy years. When I received your long-distance call regarding Jake, I was so surprised I almost forgot to take my Geritol.”
    Adeline was stout, but she carried her extra pounds easily. Her blue eyes seemed to laugh with every sentence and her face carried a warm, gentle look. She was everyone’s idea of a sweet little old snow-haired lady.
    â€œYou don’t strike me as the Geritol type,” he said.
    She patted his arm. “If that is meant as flattery, I’ll buy it.” She motioned him to a chair in a tastefully furnished living room. “Come and