“I see you’ve done your homework. Not surprising, I suppose. You are quite an accomplished man, I have learned. And rather dogged in the chase.”

Pitt stared at Zak, angry with himself for not bringing the percussion-cap pistol. With an injured arm and no weapon, he was nearly helpless against the assassin. Perhaps if he could stall for time, Giordino would come looking armed with his shotgun.

“I’m afraid that all I know about Clay Zak is that he is a lousy janitor and enjoys murdering innocent people,” Pitt said coldly.

“Joy doesn’t enter into it. A necessity of business, you might say.”

“And exactly what business of yours requires ruthenium at any cost?” Pitt asked.

Zak flashed a humorless grin. “It is little more than a shiny metal to me. But it is worth much more to my employer. And it is obviously of strategic value to your country. If one were to prevent the mineral from feeding your artificial-photosynthesis factories, then my employer continues to be a very rich man. If he can control the supply of ruthenium outright, then he becomes an even richer man.”

“Mitchell Goyette has more money than he could ever hope to spend. Yet his pathological greed outweighs the potential benefit to millions of people around the world.”

“A sentimentalist, eh?” Zak said with a laugh. “A sure sign of weakness.”

Pitt ignored the comment, still stalling for time. Zak didn’t seem to notice or care that the gunfire above deck had ceased. Perhaps he assumed that Giordino had been killed.

“A pity that the ruthenium is but a myth,” Pitt said. “It would appear that both of our efforts have been in vain.”

“You searched the ship?”

Pitt nodded. “There’s nothing here.”

“A clever deduction that the Inuit ore had come off a ship. How did you rationalize that? I was searching for a mine on the island.”

“ The records that you neglected to steal from the Miners Co-op referred to the ore as Black Kobluna. The name and dates matched up to Franklin’s ship Erebus, but it was a wrong assumption on my part,” Pitt lied.

“Ah, yes, that decrepit Miners Co-op. Apparently, they obtained all the ruthenium that was aboard. And it was aboard,” he added with a penetrating gaze.

Zak picked up one of the glass plates and slid it across the table. Pitt picked it up and studied it under the candlelight. It was a daguerreotype, the output of an early photographic process whereby an image was captured on a polished silver surface, then encased in glass for protection. Pitt recalled Perlmutter’s having mentioned that Franklin had carried a daguerreotype camera on the expedition. The exposed plate showed a group of Erebus crewmen hauling a number of heavy sacks aboard that bulged as if loaded with rocks. A glimpse of the horizon behind the ship showed an ice-covered terrain, indicating that the ore had been taken on somewhere in the Arctic.