Sea of Greed

“And we need to do it quickly,” Rudi added. “This crisis is getting worse. This morning the Russians put out a statement saying they will no longer honor existing oil and gas contracts. All rates will be renegotiated to reflect spot prices as opposed to prices agreed upon months or years ago. OPEC is considering the same thing.”

“We all sense the urgency,” Paul said. “But if the French and Israelis haven’t been able to find this submarine after fifty years of searching, how are we supposed to find it in the blink of an eye?”

“By looking where they haven’t,” Kurt said. “We can rule out everything west of Toulon because Israel lies in the other direction. We can also rule out everywhere the French and Israelis have dragged sonar sleds over the last fifty years.” He turned to Rudi’s image on the screen. “Can you get that information for us?”

“I have the Israeli charts already,” Rudi said. “They spent a great deal of time searching for the Dakar publicly and privately. After the recovery of the logbooks, they spent two years in a clandestine search for the Minerve. They covered a large swath of the Med.”

“Getting the French data will be a little more difficult,” Paul said. “I’m sure they don’t want to admit their part in this.”

“No doubt,” Rudi said, “but I briefed the President before contacting you and he’s going to ratchet up the pressure to what he calls an unbearable level. I expect we’ll have the French records by nightfall.”

On the other half of the screen, Hiram spoke up. “And if that doesn’t work, we’ll turn Max loose on their records and see what we can dig up.”

Kurt broke out a chart of the Mediterranean and spread it across the table. He worked backward from their current position to Toulon. “Do we know the Dakar’s full route from the intercept point to the spot where the French caught and sank her?”

“We do,” Rudi said. “Why?”

“Because if the plan was to split up and double their chances of survival, we can rule out the Minerve taking the same course.”

“The Dakar took the straightest line possible,” Rudi said. “They were hoping speed would be their ally.”

Paul looked over Kurt’s shoulder. “If the Dakar kept to the northern Mediterranean, then perhaps the Minerve swung to the south, maybe even hugging the coast of Libya and Egypt.”

“You can rule Egypt out,” Rudi said. “The Israelis searched Egyptian waters, both in secret and in a rare moment of cooperation with the Egyptian government, in the eighties.”

“That still leaves a hundred thousand square miles to look through,” Gamay said. “I hate to be a pessimist, but we could have a fleet out here and not find anything for years.”

“We have had a fleet out here,” Kurt said. “For years.”

The glare came back. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve done at least twenty surveys covering various parts of the Mediterranean myself,” Kurt said. “You and Paul have done similar work, three months off the coast of Italy last year. Two months around Elba the year before. Other NUMA teams have been doing similar work out here over the decades and NUMA isn’t alone in that.”

Gamay brightened and said, “I don’t recall spotting anything that looked like a sunken submarine. But we did catalog a large number of sonar returns, including ten different aircraft, an Italian destroyer sunk by the British during World War Two and a containership that broke up in a storm off Tripoli.”

“And even though that wasn’t what you were looking for, the data was recorded,” Kurt said. He turned to the screen again. “Hiram, ask Max how many surveys NUMA has done in the Mediterranean since 1968. Limit it to surveys that used equipment capable of detecting a sunken submarine.”