Read Online Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler - Free Book Online

was cunningly obscured,” Koplin continued. “It took me the better part of the afternoon to figure which slope it was on.”
    â€œOne minute, Sid.” Seagram touched Koplin’s arm. “Are you saying the entrance to this mine was purposely concealed?”
    â€œAn old Spanish trick. The opening was filled until it was even with the natural slope of the hill.”
    â€œWouldn’t the waste dump have been on a direct line from the entrance?” Donner asked.
    â€œUnder normal circumstances, yes. But in this case they were spaced more than a hundred yards apart, separated by a gradual arc that ran around the mountain’s slope to the west.”
    â€œBut you did discover the entrance?” Donner went on.
    â€œThe rails and ties for the ore cars had been removed and the track bed covered over, but I managed to trace its outline by moving off about fifteen hundred yards and studying the mountain’s slope through binoculars. What you couldn’t see when you were standing on top of it became quite clear from that distance. The exact location of the mine was then easy to determine.”
    â€œWho would go to all that trouble to hide an abandoned mine in the Arctic?” Seagram asked no one in particular. “There’s no method or logic to it.”
    â€œYou’re only half right, Gene,” Koplin said. “The logic, I fear, remains an enigma; but the method was brilliantly executed by professionals—Coloradans.” The word came slowly, almost reverently. “They were the men who excavated the Bednaya Mountain mine. The muckers, the blasters, the jiggers, the drillers, the Cornishmen, the Irishmen, Germans, and Swedes. Not Russians, but men who emigrated to the United States and became the legendary hard-rock miners of the Colorado Rockies. How they came to be on the icy slopes of Bednaya Mountain is anybody’s guess, but these were the men who came and mined the byzanium and then vanished into the obscurity of the Arctic.”
    The sterile blankness of total incomprehension flooded Seagram’s face. He turned to Donner and was met by the same expression. “It sounds crazy, absolutely crazy.”
    â€œâ€˜Crazy’?” Koplin echoed. “Maybe, but no less true.”
    â€œYou seem pretty confident,” Donner muttered.
    â€œGranted. I lost the tangible proof during my pursuit by the security guard; you have only my word on it, but why doubt it? As a scientist, I only report facts, and I have no devious motive behind a lie. So, if I were you, gentlemen, I would simply accept my word as genuine.”
    â€œAs I said, it’s your game.” Seagram smiled faintly.
    â€œYou mentioned tangible evidence.” Donner was calm and coldly efficient.
    â€œAfter I penetrated the mine shaft—the loose rock came away in my hands, and I had only to scoop out a three-foot tunnel—the first thing my head collided with in the darkness was a string of ore cars. The strike of my fourth match illuminated an old pair of oil lamps. They both had fuel and lit on the third try.” The faded blue eyes seemed to stare at something beyond the hospital room wall. “It was an unnerving scene that danced under the lamp’s glow—mining tools neatly stacked in their racks, empty ore cars standing on rusting eight-gauge rails, drilling equipment ready to attack the rock—it was as though the mine were waiting for the incoming shift to sort the ore and run the waste to the dump.”
    â€œCould you say whether it looked as if someone left in a hurry?”
    â€œNot at all. Everything was in its place. The bunks in a side chamber were made, the kitchen was cleared up, all the utensils were still on the shelves. Even the mules used to haul the ore cars had been taken to the working chamber and efficiently shot; their skulls each had a neat round hole in its center. No, I’d say the departure was very