THE THIEF DIRK PITT® ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER CRESCENT DAWN (with Dirk Cussler) ARCTIC DRIFT (with Dirk Cussler) TREASURE OF KHAN (with Dirk Cussler) BLACK WIND (with Dirk Cussler) TROJAN ODYSSEY VALHALLA RISING ATLANTIS FOUND FLOOD TIDE SHOCK WAVE INCA GOLD SAHARA DRAGON TREASURE CYCLOPS DEEP SIX PACIFIC VORTEX! NIGHT PROBE! VIXEN 03 RAISE THE TITANIC! ICEBERG THE MEDITERRANEAN CAPER FARGO ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER With Grant Blackwood THE KINGDOM LOST EMPIRE SPARTAN GOLD ISAAC BELL NOVELS BY CLIVE CUSSLER THE RACE (with Justin Scott) THE SPY (with Justin Scott) THE WRECKER (with Justin Scott) THE CHASE KURT AUSTIN ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER With Graham Brown DEVIL’S GATE With Paul Kemprecos MEDUSA WHITE DEATH THE NAVIGATOR FIRE ICE POLAR SHIFT BLUE GOLD LOST CITY SERPENT OREGON FILES ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER With Jack Du Brul THE JUNGLE THE SILENT SEA CORSAIR PLAGUE SHIP SKELETON COAST DARK WATCH With Craig Dirgo GOLDEN BUDDHA SACRED STONE NONFICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER AND CRAIG DIRGO THE SEA HUNTERS THE SEA HUNTERS II CLIVE CUSSLER AND DIRK PITT REVEALED BUILT FOR ADVENTURE: THE CLASSIC AUTOMOBILES OF CLIVE CUSSLER AND DIRK PITT® G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS Publishers Since 1838 Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Copyright © 2012 by Sandecker, RLLLP All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada ISBN: 978-1-101-57729-5 Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Book design by Brian Mulligan Endpaper and interior illustrations by Roland Dahlquist This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON Table of Contents Book One: Talking Pictures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Book Two: Flickers 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Book Three: Hollywood 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Book Four: Lights! Camera! Speed! 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 Epilogue THE CUNARD FLYER MAURETANIA CROSSING THE BAR “HEAR THAT?” “Hear what?” asked Archie. “Fast motorboat.” “You have ears like a bat, Isaac. All I hear is the ship.” Isaac Bell, a tall, lean man of thirty with a golden head of hair and a thick, impeccably groomed mustache, strode to the boat deck railing and stared intently into the dark. He wore the costume of a sober Hartford, Connecticut, insurance executive: a sailing day suit of Harris tweed, a low-crowned hat with a broad brim, made-to-order boots, and a gold watch chain draped across his narrow waist. “It’s not the ship.” They were sailing home to America on the Cunard flyer Mauretania, the fastest liner in the world, bound for New York with twenty-two hundred passengers, eight hundred crew, and six thousand sacks of mail. Down in the fiery darkness of her stokehold, hundreds of men labored, stripped to the waist, shoveling coal to raise steam for a four-and-a-half-day dash across the Atlantic Ocean. But she was still creeping quietly in the channel, crossing the Mersey Bar with mere inches of tide beneath her keel and a black night ahead. Six decks above her furnaces and five hundred feet ahead of the nearest propeller, Isaac Bell heard only the motorboat. The sound was out of place. It was the crisp rumble of a thirty-knot racer powered by V-8 gasoline engines—an English-built Wolseley-Siddeley, Bell guessed. But such exuberant noise spoke of a Côte d’Azur regatta on a sunny day, not a pitch-dark night in the steamer lanes. He looked back. No boat showed a light. All he saw was the dying glow of Liverpool, the last of England, eleven miles astern. Next to the ship, nothing moved in the invisible intersection of inky water and clouded sky. Ahead, the sea buoy flashed intermittently. The sound faded. A trick of the wind gusting in from the Irish Sea perhaps, rattling the canvas that covered the lifeboats suspended outside the teak rail. Archie opened a gold cigar case with a ceremonial flourish. He extracted two La Aroma de Cubas. “How about a victory smoke?” He patted his vest pockets. “Forgot my cutter. Got your knife?” Bell drew a throwing knife
