The conversation was suspended as the stewardess served them a cold, jellied soup, followed by eggs benedict and a bottle of chilled rose wine.
‘If you’ve grasped what I’ve told you so far,’ Richards said, ‘you’ll have no problem understanding what we’re doing at my Washington shipyard. Project Neptune consists of two parts. The mother ship and a float slightly larger than a football field. The ship is very large – forty-two thousand three hundred tons -because its equipment includes a very powerful hydroelectric generator. That generator will supply the power that will release tons of iron shot after the float reaches the bottom. It also will operate the cranes that will be used when the float approaches the surface and its own power wanes. The float, of course, will be powered by its own compressed gasoline.’ He sat back and smiled.
Porter would have preferred another beer, but sipped his wine. ‘You’ve left out one angle. Are you planning to send men to the bottom in a bathyscaphe? And how do they attach the sunken submarine to your float?’
‘No bathyscaphe.’ Richards was enjoying himself. ‘And I know of no way that men could scoop up the submarine.’
‘That’s what bothers me,’ Porter said. ‘It weighs more than six thousand tons!’
‘That’s the reason for the football field float. The hydroelectric generator will supply the power for the electromagnets. The hull of the submarine, you must remember, is made of metal. Since it consists of one large hull, the pulling power of that metal is stronger than that of the iron shot we’ll use as ballast. We’ve devised a set of delicate instruments – I’m proud to say I helped design them myself. The key to the operation will be the substitution of the submarine for the ballast. We’ll use twelve thousand tons of shot when the float goes to the bottom. Gradually, as the magnets attach themselves to the submarine, we’ll release ballast. Bit by bit. When the submarine has been trapped and made secure, the rest of the ballast will be released. The float should rise, with the submarine beneath it. At a depth of about five hundred feet our underwater cranes will take hold and bring her the rest of the way.’
‘You make it sound simple,’ Adrienne said.
Franklin Richards’ smile faded. ‘I have nightmares when I think of all the things that could go wrong. One of our problems is that we don’t dare make any practice hoists. Anyone with a knowledge of submarines would know, seeing the equipment in action, that we could raise the Zoloto.
Which means we’ll have to do it the first time. Without a single rehearsal.’
‘You’re going on the expedition yourself?’ Porter asked.
The financier reached for his wife’s hand. ‘Marie and I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world.’
They waited until coffee was served before they resumed the conversation.
‘There’s one minor matter that needs to be settled before we arrive,’ Richards said. ‘Our Washington house is located only a few miles from the yards, so the security there is much looser than it is on the island. And the yard itself is a relative sieve. We try to keep out dissidents, of course, but it isn’t easy to guarantee the loyalty of more than fourteen thousand people. So we’ve arranged a cover for you. With the approval of your Mr Davidson. I spoke to him this morning.’
‘Anything Davidson approves will be fine with us, I’m sure,’ Porter said in a dry voice.
‘Because it’ll have to be,’ Adrienne added.
‘You’ll pose as a British banker, Mr Porter. A colleague of mine. Miss Howard will pose as your wife.’ Richards betrayed a trace of nervousness. ‘Mr Davidson thought it was a splendid idea.’
‘Mr Davidson would,’ Adrienne said. ‘I didn’t know when I left my apartment that I’d be making this trip, so I didn’t bring anything with me that will make me look like a banker’s wife.’
Marie was delighted to be of help. ‘I have dozens of things you can wear.’
‘And I’m sure, Mr Porter,’ her husband added, ‘that I can take care of you, too.’
Davidson, damn him, has already taken care of me, Porter thought. My mind is whirling with facts about compression and electromagnets and hydroelectric power. I’m going into a plant of fourteen thousand people, any of whom could be Russian or Chinese agents. And now I must waste time and energy putting up a domestic front with Adrienne Howard. Desk men never have the good sense to let field people do their own work in their own way.
It was small consolation to see that Adrienne shared his annoyance.
Woods of towering fir trees surrounded the house, remarkably similar to the Long Island property, that overlooked the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Franklin Richards explained that all seven of his homes around the world were virtually identical, giving him and Marie a feeling of permanence even when travelling. As nearly as Porter could judge, the large double bedroom to which he and Adrienne Howard were shown was furnished like the chamber in which he had changed clothes on Richards’ island.
He retired to the dressing-room to don one of the London-tailored suits and shirts that a butler brought him. A silk handkerchief in his breast pocket added a final touch, and he decided he actually resembled an off-duty English banker.
Adrienne was dressed in a tailored tweed suit that was an almost perfect fit, although the skirt was a trifle short, and when they descended the central staircase together they found their host and hostess waiting for them.
Richards took the wheel of a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud sedan, and they set out for the shipyard. ‘We’ve been fortunate,’ he said. ‘Shipyards all over the world have been going bankrupt in recent years, but our business is better than ever.’
‘That couldn’t be accidental,’ Porter said.
‘It isn’t.’ The financier looked like a child who had just eaten a large slice of chocolate cake. We build our ships in sections, using reinforced aluminium and other lightweight metals, and then we fuse the sections to each other in a patented process. This system not only reduces the work force by about one-third, but we can build a ship – anything from a ferry to a supertanker – in about half the time it takes under the old method.’
‘What he’s too modest to tell you,’ Marie said, ‘is that he invented the fusion process himself.’
‘Oh, I enjoy tinkering in a lab,’ he said. ‘It’s a form of relaxation, and I was lucky.’
His ‘luck’, Porter thought, was consistent, both -as a businessman and as a scientist. His guise of gregarious playboy served him in good stead, concealing his genius and making people less gifted feel comfortable in his presence..
They followed a road on a cliff high above the Pacific, and in places patches of fog obscured the sea. Thick clouds rolled in from the northwest, and the air was twenty degrees cooler than it had been on Long Island; the weather was typical for this section of the country in late June.
After a drive of a quarter of an hour they turned a bend, and in the distance could see the superstructures of four ships rising above the scaffolding of drydocks. ‘The second from the right is the Neptune,’ Richards said.
The fore section looked like a sleek passenger liner, with portholes on five or six decks, but it was the aft section that interested Porter. This portion resembled a container ship, the hull cutting off abruptly about twenty feet above sea level and surmounted by two mammoth cranes, one on the port side and the other on starboard.
‘The cranes,’ Richards said, ‘will be equipped with electromagnets, but they won’t be installed until we’re ready to sail. We’re making the sensitive instruments and tools in a special lab the Navy built for me at the San Diego Navy Yard, where they can be kept under close watch more easily than they can here, and we’ll fly them north at the last possible minute.’