Atlantis Found

22

Premier opera houses throughout the world are judged by singers and musicians for their acoustics, the quality of sound that carries from the stage to the box seats and then to the gallery far up in the stratosphere. To the opera lovers who buy the tickets, they are ranked and admired more for their elegance and flamboyance. Some are noted for their baroqueness, others for pompousness, a few for trappings and festoons. But none can hold a candle to the unmatched grandiloquence of the Teatro Colon on the Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires.

Construction began in 1890, and no expense was spared. Completed when Puccini reigned supreme in 1908, the Teatro Colon opera house stands sidewalk to sidewalk on one entire block of the city. A spellbinding blend of French art deco, Italian Renaissance, and Greek classic, its stage has felt the feet of Pavlova and Nijinsky. Toscanini conducted from its podium, and every major singer from Caruso to Callas has performed there.

The horseshoe interior is decorated on a grand scale that boggles the eye. Incredibly intricate brass molding on the upper railings, sweeping tiers with velveted chairs and gold brocaded curtains, spanned by ceilings filled with masterworks of art. On dazzling opening nights, the society elite of Argentina sweep through the foyer with its Italian marble and beautiful stained-glass dome up the magnificent stairways through the glitter to their luxuriously appointed seats.

Every seat in the house was occupied sixty seconds before the overture to the opera The Coronation of Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi, except for the preeminent box on the right side of the stage. That was still empty. Poppea had been the Roman emperor Nero's mistress during the glory of Rome, yet the singers wore costumes from the seventeenth century, and to rub salt in the wounds, all the male parts were sung by women. To some opera lovers, it is a genuine masterpiece, to others it is a four-hour drone.

A few seconds before the houselights dimmed, a party of one man and four women flowed unobtrusively into the remaining empty box and sat in the maroon velvet chairs. Unseen outside the curtains, two bodyguards stood alert and fashionably dressed in tuxedos. Every eye in the opera house, every pair of binoculars, every pair of opera glasses automatically turned and focused on the people entering the box.

The women were dazzlingly beautiful, not simply pretty or exotic, but shimmering beauties in the classical sense. Their matching flaxen blond hair was coiffed in long ringlets below their bare shoulders, with tightly woven braids running across a center part on top. They sat regally, delicate hands demurely laid on their laps, staring down at the orchestra pit through uniform blue-gray eyes that gleamed with the intensity of moonlight on a raven's wing. The facial features were enhanced with high cheekbones and a tanned complexion that might have come from skiing in the Andes or sunbathing on a yacht anchored off Bahia Blanca. Any one of them could have easily passed for twenty-five, although they were all thirty-five. It took no imagination to believe they were sisters- in fact, they were four of a brood of sextuplets. Enough of their body proportions could be discerned through their dresses to show that they were trim and fit from arduous exercise.

Their long, shimmering silk gowns with dyed fox trim were identical except for color. Sitting in a semicircle in the box, they radiated like yellow, blue, green, and red sapphires. They were bejeweled in a glittering display of comparable diamond chokers, earrings, and bracelets. Strikingly sensuous and sultry, they had an ethereal, untouchable goddess quality about them. It seemed unthinkable, but they were all married and each had given birth to five children. The women were attending the opening night of the opera season as a family affair, graciously nodding and smiling to the man who sat in their midst. Ramrod-straight, the male centerpiece possessed the same hair and eye color as his sisters, but there any further resemblance ended. He was as handsome as his sisters were stunning, but ruggedly so, with thin waist and hips accented by lumberjack shoulders and a weight lifter's arm and leg muscles. His face was square-cut, sporting a chin indented with a dimplelike cleft, an arrow-straight nose, and a head jangled with thick blond hair through which women dreamed of running their fingers. He was tall- at six-feet six-inches, he towered over his five-foot ten-inch sisters.

When he turned and spoke to his siblings, he smiled, flashing brilliantly white teeth framed by a friendly mouth that found it impossible to turn down in a grimace. The eyes, though, showed no warmth. They stared as if they belonged to a panther gazing over the grasslands in search of prey.

Karl Wolf was a very wealthy and powerful man. The chief executive officer of a vast family-owned financial empire that stretched from China through India and across Europe over the Atlantic, and from Canada and the United States into Mexico and South America, he was stupendously rich. His personal wealth was estimated at well over a hundred billion dollars. His vast conglomerate, engaged in a multitude of scientific and high-technology programs, was known throughout the business world as Destiny Enterprises Limited. Unlike his siblings, Karl was unmarried.

Wolf and others of his family easily could have slipped into the new Argentine celebrity society. He was sophisticated, confident, and prosperous, and yet he and the other members of his family lived frugally, considering their vast fortune. But the Wolf family dynasty, consisting of, incredibly, over two hundred members, was seldom seen at fashionable restaurants or high-society functions. The Wolf women almost never made their presence known in the exclusive stores and boutiques around Buenos Aires. Except for Karl, who made a show of openness, the family remained low-profile and reclusive, and was a great mystery to Argentineans. There were no friendships with outsiders. No one, not even celebrities and high government officials, had ever cracked the Wolf family shell. The men who married the women in the family seemed to have come from nowhere and had no history. Strangely, they all took up the family name. Everyone, from the newest born to the most recently wed, carried the name of Wolf, whether male or female. They were a fraternal elite.

When Karl and his four sisters showed up on opening nights at the opera, it was a major gossip event. The overture ended and the curtains pulled open and the audience reluctantly turned their attention from the stunning and resplendent brother and sisters sitting in the premier box and gazed at the singers on the stage.

Maria Wolf, the sister sitting immediately to Karl's left, leaned over and whispered, "Why must you subject us to this terrible ordeal?"

Wolf turned to Maria and smiled. "Because, dear sister, if we didn't display the family on different occasions, the government and the public might begin to think of us as a gigantic conspiracy wrapped in an enigma. It's best to make an appearance occasionally to let them know we're not extraterrestrial aliens bent on secretly controlling the country."

"We should have waited until Heidi returned from Antarctica."

"I agree," whispered Geli, the sister on Wolf's right. "She's the only one who would have enjoyed this awful bore."

Wolf patted Geli's hand. "I'll make it up to her when La Traviata opens next week."

They ignored the stares of the audience, who were torn between observing the elusive Wolf family and the singing and acting on stage. The curtain for Act III had just risen when one of the bodyguards entered from the rear hall and whispered in Wolf's ear. He stiffened in his chair, the smile vanished, and his facial expression turned grave. He leaned over and spoke softly. "My dear sisters, an emergency has come up. I must go. You stay. I've reserved a private room at the Plaza Grill for a little after-show dinner. You go ahead, and I'll catch up later."

All four women turned from the opera and looked at him with controlled trepidation. "Can you tell us what it is?" asked Geli.

"We'd like to know," said Maria.

"When I know, you'll know," he promised. "Now, enjoy yourselves." Wolf rose and left the box, accompanied by one of the bodyguards, while the other remained outside the box. He hurried out a side exit and slipped into a waiting limousine, a 1969 Mercedes-Benz 600, a car that after more than forty years still retained its reputation as the world's most luxurious limousine. The traffic was heavy, but then it was never light in Argentina. The streets were busy from late evening through to the early-morning hours. The driver steered the big Mercedes to the barrio of Recoleta, which was centered around the lush gardens of the Plaza Francia and Plaza Intendente Alvear. It was considered Buenos Aires' answer to Michigan Avenue in Chicago and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, with its tree-lined boulevards featuring chic stores, exclusive hotels, and palatial residences.

The car passed the renowned Recoleta cemetery, with its narrow stone paths squeezed between more than seven thousand ornate and statued mausoleums with bands of concrete angels watching over the inhabitants. Eva Peron rests in one belonging to the Duarte family. Foreign tourists are usually amazed that her epitaph on the gate to the crypt actually reads, "Don't cry for me, Argentina. I remain quite near you."

The chauffeur turned through guarded gates, past a spectacular wrought-iron fence, and up a circular drive, stopping at the portal of a huge nineteenth-century mansion with tall colonnades and ivy-covered walls that had been the German Embassy prior to World War II. Four years after the war, the German government had moved its diplomats to a fashionable enclave known as Palermo Chico. Since then, the mansion had served as the corporate headquarters of Destiny Enterprises Limited.

Wolf exited the car and entered the mansion. The interior was anything but sumptuous. The marble floors and columns, the richly paneled walls, and the tile-inlaid ceilings were a reminder of a fabulous past, but the furnishings were sparse and any sign of elaborate decor was nonexistent. There was a white marble staircase leading to the offices above, but Wolf stepped into a small elevator concealed in one wall. The elevator rose silently and opened into a vast conference room, where ten members of the Wolf family, four women, six men, were waiting seated around a thirty-foot-long teakwood conference table.

They all stood and greeted Karl. The most astute and perceptive of his vast family, at only thirty-eight he was accepted and respected as the family's chief adviser and director.

"Forgive my tardiness, my brothers and sisters, but I came as soon as I received word of the tragedy." Then he walked over to a grayhaired man and embraced him. "Is it true, Father, the U-2015 is gone, and Heidi with it?"

Max Wolf nodded sadly. "It's true. Your sister, along with Kurt's son Eric and the entire crew, now lie on the bottom of the sea off Antarctica."

"Eric?" said Karl Wolf. "I wasn't told at the opera that he was dead, too. I did not know he was on board. Can you be certain of all this?"

"We've intercepted the National Underwater and Marine Agency's satellite transmissions to Washington," said a tall man seated across the table who could have passed for Karl's twin. Bruno Wolf's face was a mask of anger. "The transcriptions tell the story. While carrying out our plan to eliminate all witnesses to the Amenes' artifacts, our U-boat was firing on the NUMA research ship when a United States nuclear submarine arrived and launched a missile, destroying the submarine and everyone on board. There was no mention of survivors."

"A terrible loss," Karl murmured solemnly. "Two family members and the venerable old U-2015. Let us not forget that she transported our grandparents and the core of our empire from Germany after the war.

"Not forgetting the valuable service she provided over the years," added Otto Wolf, one of eight of the family's physicians. "She will be sorely missed."

The men and women at the table sat hushed. This was clearly a group who had never experienced failure. For fifty-five years, since its inception, Destiny Enterprises Limited had operated with success piled on success. Every project, every operation, was planned with detailed discipline. No contingency was overlooked. Problems were expected and dealt with. Negligence and incompetency simply did not exist. The Wolf family had reigned supreme until now. They found it nearly impossible to accept reverses beyond their control.

Wolf settled into a chair at the head of the table. "What are our losses in family and hired personnel over the past two weeks?"

Bruno Wolf, who was married to Karl's sister, Geli, opened a file and examined a column of numbers. "Seven agents in Colorado; seven on St. Paul Island, including our cousin Fritz, who directed the operation from his helicopter; forty-seven crewmen of the U-2015, plus Heidi and Eric."

"Sixty-seven of our best people and three of our family in less than ten days," spoke up Elsie Wolf. "It doesn't seem possible."

"Not when you consider the people responsible are a bunch of academic oceanographers who are little more than spineless jellyfish," Otto snarled angrily.

Karl rubbed his eyes wearily. "I might remind you, dear Otto, those spineless jellyfish killed twelve of our best agents, not including the two we were forced to eliminate to keep them from talking."

"Marine scientists and engineers are not professional killers," said Elsie. "Our agent working undercover at the National Underwater and Marine Agency in Washington sent me the personnel files of the men who were responsible for our dead in Colorado and on St. Paul Island. They are not ordinary men. Their exploits within NUMA read like an adventure-novel series." Elsie paused and passed several photographs around the table. "The first face you see belongs to Admiral James Sandecker, the chief director of NUMA. Sandecker is very respected among the political power elite of the United States government. After an enviable war record in Vietnam, he was personally selected to instigate and run the agency. He carries great weight among members of the American Congress."

"I met him once at an ocean sciences conference in Marseilles," said Karl. "He is not an adversary to underestimate."

"The next photo is of Rudolph Gunn, the deputy director of NUMA."

"An insignificant-looking little fellow," observed Felix Wolf, the corporate attorney for the family. "He certainly doesn't look like he has the strength to be a killer."

"He doesn't have to know how to kill with his hands," said Elsie. "As near as we can tell, he was the genius behind the loss of our search group on St. Paul Island. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, he went on to a brilliant career in the Navy before joining NUMA and becoming Admiral Sandecker's right-hand man."

Bruno held up a third photo. "Now, this one looks like he could tear coins from your stomach and give you change."

"Albert Giordino, NUMA's assistant special projects director," explained Elsie. "A graduate of America's Air Force Academy. He served in Vietnam with distinction. Bruno is right, Giordino is known as a very tough customer. His record at NUMA is remarkable. The file on projects he has directed to successful conclusions is quite thick. He has been known to kill, and from what little information we have been able to gather, it was he, along with Gunn, who is responsible for the annihilation of our St. Paul search team."

"And the final photo," Otto prompted Elsie gently.

"His name is Dirk Pitt. Considered a legend among oceanographic circles. The special projects director for NUMA, he is known as something of a Renaissance man. Unmarried, he collects classic cars. Also a graduate of the Air Force Academy, with several decorations from Vietnam for heroism. His achievements make for heavy reading. It was he who frustrated our plans in Colorado. He was also present in the Antarctic during the sinking of the U-2015 by the American nuclear submarine."

"A great pity," said Otto in quiet anger. He looked from one face to the next around the table. "A mistake to have used her instead of a modern surface ship."

"A misguided attempt on all our parts," said Karl, "to confuse our enemies."

Bruno pounded the desk with his fist. "We must exact vengeance from these men. They must die."

"You ordered an assassination attempt on Pitt without the approval of the rest of us," said Karl sharply "An attempt that failed, I might add. We cannot afford the luxury of vengeance. We have a schedule to maintain, and I do not want our attentions misdirected to petty revenge."

"I see nothing petty about it," argued Bruno. "These four men are directly accountable for the deaths of our brothers and sister. They cannot go unpunished."

Karl looked at Bruno icily. "Did it ever occur to you, dear brother, that when the New Destiny Project reaches its climax, they will all die violent deaths?"

"Karl is right," said Elsie. "We cannot afford distractions from our true purpose, regardless of how tragic they are to the family."

"The matter is settled," stated Karl firmly. "We concentrate on the work at hand and accept our grief as part of the cost."

"Now that the chambers in Colorado and St. Paul Island have been discovered by outsiders," said Otto, "I see little to be gained by continuing to expend time, money, and more lives in concealing the existence of our ancient ancestors."

"I agree," said Bruno. "With the inscriptions now in the hands of American government officials, we should stand in the shadows while they decipher the message and announce the Amenes' warning of disaster through the international news media, thereby saving us the effort."

Karl stared at the surface of the table, his expression pensive. "Our gravest concern is having the story come out too soon before the New Destiny Project is launched and the disinformation leads to our doorstep."

"Then we must muddy the waters before scientific investigators penetrate our ruse."

"Thanks to those meddling rogues from the National Underwater and Marine Agency, the world will be onto us in two weeks." Bruno gazed across the table at Karl. "Is there any chance, brother, that our people at Valhalla can move up the timetable?"

"If I explain the urgency and make them aware of the dangers arising around us, yes, I believe I can inspire them to move up the launch date to ten days from now."

"Ten days," Christa repeated heatedly. "Only ten days before the old world is destroyed and the Fourth Empire rises from the ashes."

Karl nodded solemnly. "If all goes according to the carefully laid plans of our family since 1945, we will completely alter mankind for the next ten thousand years."

23

After being airlifted to an ice station and flown across the western end of the Indian Ocean to Cape Town, Pitt joined Pat O'Connell, who had flown down from Washington. She was accompanied by Dr. Bradford Hatfield, a pathologist/archaeologist who specialized in the study of ancient mummies. Together, they flew to St. Paul Island by a tilt-rotor aircraft. A heavy drizzle, unleashed by hostile clouds and hurled by a stiff breeze, stung their exposed faces like pellets shot from air rifles. They were met by a team of SEALs, an elite group of fighters belonging to the United States Navy. They were big quiet men, dead set with a purpose, dressed in camouflage fatigues that matched the gray volcanic rock of the island.

"Welcome to Hell's lost acre," said a big, lanky man with a friendly smile. He was toting a huge weapon slung over one shoulder upside down. It looked like a combination automatic rifle, missile launcher, sniper rifle, and twelve-gauge shotgun. "I'm Lieutenant Miles Jacobs. I'll be your tour guide."

"Admiral Sandecker isn't taking any chances of terrorists returning," Pitt remarked, as he shook Jacobs's hand.

"He may be retired from the Navy," said Jacobs, "but he still carries a lot of weight in the upper echelons. My orders to protect you NUMA people came direct from the secretary of the Navy."

Without further conversation, Jacobs and four of his men, two in front, two bringing up the rear, led Pitt and his party up the slope of the mountain onto the ancient road leading to the tunnel. Pat was half soaked beneath her rain gear and couldn't wait to get out of the damp. When they reached the archway, Giordino stepped out to greet them. He looked weary but swaggered as boldly as if he were the winning captain of a football team.

Pat was mildly surprised to see such rugged, staunch men greet each other with warm hugs and backslapping. There was such sentiment in their eyes, she swore they were on the verge of tears.

"Good to see you alive, pal," said Pitt happily.

"Glad you survived too," Giordino replied with a wide smile. "I hear you took on a U-boat with snowballs."

Pitt laughed. "A story greatly exaggerated. All we could do was shake our fists and call them names until the timely arrival of the Navy."

"Dr. O'Connell." Giordino bowed gallantly and kissed her gloved hand. "We needed someone like you to brighten up this dingy place."

Pitt smiled and curtsied. "My pleasure, sir."

Pitt turned and introduced the archaeologist. "Al Giordino, Dr. Brad Hatfield. Brad is here to study the mummies you and Rudi found."

"I'm told you and Commander Gunn struck an archaeological bonanza," said Hatfield. He was tall and skinny with light cork-brown eyes, a smooth narrow face, and a soft voice. He hunched over when he spoke, and peered through little round-rimmed spectacles that looked as if they had been produced in the 1920s.

"Come on in out of the rain and see for yourself."

Giordino led the way through the tunnel into the outer chamber. From fifty feet away, an overwhelming stench of smoke and charred flesh invaded their nostrils. A generator had been brought in by the SEALs, who'd laid a hose from the exhaust pipe to the archway outside to remove any fumes. Its electrical output powered an array of floodlights.

None had expected the awesome state of devastation. The entire interior was blackened by fire and covered with soot. What few objects were lying in the chamber before the blast had been vaporized.

"What hit this place?" asked Pitt in astonishment.

"The pilot of the attacking helicopter thought it might be cute to launch a rocket through the tunnel," explained Giordino, as placidly as if he were describing how to eat an apple.

"You and Rudi couldn't have been in here."

Giordino grinned. "Of course not. There's a tunnel leading to another chamber behind this one. We were protected by a pile of rocks from an old cave-in. Rudi and I won't hear soft-spoken words for a few weeks and our lungs are congested, but we survived."

"A miracle you weren't barbecued like your friends here," said Pitt, staring down at the charred remains of the attackers.

"The SEALs are going to clean up the mess and transport the bodies back to the States for identification."

"How ghastly," murmured Pat, her face turning pale. But her professional manner quickly took over and she began running her fingers over what was left of the inscriptions on the wall. She stared in sudden sorrow at the cracked and shattered rock. "They've destroyed it," she said in a faint whisper. "Obliterated it. There isn't enough left to decipher."

"No great loss," Giordino said, unruffled. "The good stuff survived in the inner chamber without a scratch. The mummies were coated with a little dust, but other than that they're as sound as the day they were propped up."

"Propped up?" Hatfield repeated. "The mummies are not lying horizontal in burial cases?"

"No, they're sitting upright in stone chairs."

"Are they wrapped in cloth?"

"No again," replied Giordino. "They're sitting there as if they were conducting a board meeting, dressed in robes, hats, and boots."

Hatfield shook his head in wonder. "I've seen ancient burials where the bodies were wrapped tightly in gauze in coffins, in fetal positions inside clay pots, lying facedown or faceup, and in standing positions. Never have I heard of mummies sitting exposed."

"I've set up lights inside so you can examine them and the other artifacts."

During the hours Giordino was waiting for Pitt and Pat O'Connell to appear, he had enlisted the SEALs to help clear the rockfall, carry the rocks outside, and dump them down the mountain. The tunnel to the inner crypt was now open, and they could walk straight through without climbing over fallen debris. Floodlights lit the crypt even brighter than sunlight, revealing the mummies and their garments in colorful detail.

Hatfield rushed forward and began examining the first mummy's face almost nose to nose. He looked like a man lost in paradise. He went from figure to figure, examining the skin, the ears, noses, and lips. He opened a large leather folding case and removed a surgeon's metal headband that mounted a light and magnifying lens in front of the eyes. After slipping it over his head, turning on the light, and focusing the lenses, he lightly brushed the dust away from a mummy's eyelids with a soft-bristled artist's brush. The others watched in silence until he turned, lifted the headband, and spoke.

His words came as if he were giving a sermon in church. "In all my years of studying ancient cadavers," he said softly, "I have never seen bodies so well preserved. Even the eyeballs appear to be intact enough to tell the color of their irises."

"Perhaps they're only a hundred years old or less," said Giordino.

"I don't believe so. The fabric of their robes, the style of their boots, the cut and style of their head coverings and clothing is unlike any I've ever seen, certainly unlike those in historical records. Whatever their embalming methods, these people's techniques were far superior to that found in mummies I've studied in Egypt. The Egyptians mutilated the bodies to remove the internal organs of their dead, extracting the brain through the nose and removing the lungs and abdominal organs. These bodies are not disfigured inside or out. They appear virtually untouched by embalmers."

"The inscriptions we found in the mountains of Colorado were dated at nine thousand B.C.," said Pat. "Is it possible these people and their artifacts are from the same millennium?"

"Without dating technology, I can't say," replied Hatfield. "I'm out of my depth at drawing time conclusions. But I'm willing to stake my reputation that these people came from an ancient culture that is historically unknown."

"They must have been first-rate seafarers to have found this island and used it to inter their leaders," observed Pitt.

"Why here?" inquired Giordino. "Why didn't they bury their dead in a more convenient place along a continental shoreline?"

"The best guess is that they didn't want them found," answered Pat.

Pitt stared at the mummies pensively. "I'm not so sure. I think they eventually wanted them to be discovered. They left descriptive communications in other underground chambers thousands of miles apart. From what I understand, you and Hiram Yaeger have established that the inscriptions in Colorado are not messages to gods governing the land of the dead."

"That's true as far as it goes. But we have a long way to go in deciphering all the symbols and their meanings. What little we've learned until now is that the inscriptions are not of a funerary nature, but rather a warning of a future catastrophe."

"Whose future?" asked Giordino. "Maybe in the last nine thousand years, it already happened."

"We haven't determined any time projections yet," answered Pat. "Hiram and Max are still working on it." She walked over to one wall and wiped away the dust covering what looked like figures carved in the rock. Her eyes widened with excitement. "These are not the same style of symbols we found in Colorado. These are glyphs portraying human figures and animals."

Soon they were all working to remove the dust and grime of centuries from the polished rock. Beginning in the four corners of the wall, they worked toward the middle until the inscriptions were revealed in distinct detail under the bright floodlights.

"What do you make of it?" Giordino asked no one in particular.

"Definitely a harbor or a seaport," Pitt said quietly. "You can make out a fleet of ancient ships with sails and oars, surrounded by a breakwater whose ends support high towers, probably some kind of beacons or lighthouses."

"Yes," agreed Hatfield. "I can easily discern buildings around the docks where several ships are moored."

"They seem to be in the act of loading and unloading cargo," said Pat, peering through her ever-present magnifying glass. "The people are carved in meticulous detail and are wearing the same type of clothing as the mummies. One ship looks like it's unloading a herd of animals."

Giordino moved in close to Pat and squinted at the glyphs. "Unicorns," he announced. "They're unicorns. See, they only have one horn coming from the top of their heads."

"Fanciful," muttered Hatfield skeptically. "As fanciful as sculptures of nonexistent Greek gods."

"How do you know?" Pitt challenged him. "Perhaps unicorns actually existed nine thousand years ago, before they became extinct along with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers."

"Yes, along with Medusas with snakes for hair and Cyclops with only one eye in their forehead."

"Don't forget gargoyles and dragons," added Giordino.

"Until bones or fossils are found that prove they existed," said Hatfield, "they'll have to remain a myth from the past."

Pitt didn't debate further with Hatfield. He turned and walked behind the stone chairs still holding the mummies and stared at a large curtain of sewn animal hides that covered the far wall. Very gently, he lifted one corner of the curtain and looked under it. His face took on a mystified expression.

"Careful," warned Hatfield. "That's very fragile."

Pitt ignored him and raised the curtain in both hands until it had curled above his head.

"You shouldn't touch that," Hatfield cautioned irritably. "It's a priceless relic and might crumble to pieces. It must be handled delicately until it can be preserved."

"What's under it is even more priceless," Pitt said in a impassive voice. He nodded at Giordino. "Grab a couple of those spears and use them to prop up the curtain."

Hatfield, his face flushed crimson, tried to stop Giordino, but he might as well have tried to halt a farm tractor. Giordino brushed him aside without so much as a sideways glance, snatched two of the ancient obsidian spears, planted their tips on the floor of the chamber, and used their butt ends to hold up the curtain. Then Pitt adjusted a pair of floodlights until their beams were concentrated on the wall.

Pat held her breath and stared at the four large circles carved into the polished wall, with strange diagrams cut within their circumferences. "They're glyphs of some kind," she said solemnly.

"They look like maps," spoke up Giordino.

"Maps of what?"

A bemused smile spread Pitt's lips. "Four different projections of the earth."

Hatfield peered through his glasses over Pat's shoulder. "Ridiculous. These glyphs don't look like any ancient maps I've ever seen. They're too detailed, and they certainly bear no resemblance to geography as I know it."

"That's because your shallow mind cannot visualize the continents and shorelines as they were nine thousand years ago."

"I must agree with Dr. Hatfield," said Pat. "All I see is a series of what might be large and small islands with jagged coastlines surrounded by wavy images suggesting a vast sea."

"My vote goes for a butterfly damaged by antiaircraft fire on a Rorschach inkblot test," Giordino muttered cynically.

"You just dropped fifty points on the gray matter scale," Pitt came back. "I thought that of all the people, I could count on you to solve the puzzle."

"What do you see?" Pat asked Pitt.

"I see four different views of the world as seen from the continent of Antarctica nine thousand years ago."

"All jokes aside," said Giordino, "you're right."

Pat stood back for an overall view. "Yes, I can begin to distinguish other continents now. But they're in different positions. It's almost as if the world has tilted."

"I fail to see how Antarctica fits into the picture," Hatfield insisted.

"It's right in front of your eyes."

Pat asked, "How can you be so dead sure?"

"I'd be interested in knowing how you reached that conclusion," Hatfield scoffed.

Pitt looked at Pat. "Do you have any chalk in your tote bag that you use to highlight inscriptions in rock?"

She smiled. "Chalk went out. Now we prefer talcum powder."

"Okay, let's have it, and some Kleenex. All women carry Kleenex."

She dug in her pocket and handed him a small packet of tissues. Then she fished around in her tote bag through the notebooks, camera equipment, and tools used for examining ancient symbols in rock, until she found a container of powdered talc.

Pitt spent the short wait wetting the tissue with water out of a canteen and dampening the glyphs carved on the wall so the talc would adhere in the etched stone. Then Pat passed him the talc, and he began dabbing it on the smooth surface around the ancient art. After about three minutes, he stood back and admired his handiwork.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Antarctica."

All three gazed intently at the crude coating of white talc Pitt had dabbed on the polished rock and then wiped clean, outlining the etched features. It now bore a distinct similarity to the South Polar continent.

"What does all this mean?" Pat asked, confused.

"What it means," explained Pitt, gesturing toward the mummies sitting mute in their throne chairs, "is that these ancient people walked on Antarctica thousands of years before modern man. They sailed around and charted it before it was covered with ice and snow."

"Nonsense!" Hatfield snorted. "It's a scientifically proven fact that all but three percent of the continent has been covered by an ice sheet for millions of years."

Pitt didn't say anything for several seconds. He stared at the ancient figures as if they were alive, his eyes moving from one face to the next as if trying to communicate with them. Finally, he gestured toward the ancient, silent dead. "The answers," he said with steadfast conviction, "will come from them."

24

Hiram Yaeger returned to his computer complex after lunch carrying a large cardboard box with a basset hound puppy inside that he'd saved from the city pound just hours before it was scheduled to be put to sleep. Since the family golden retriever had died from old age, Yaeger had sworn that he had buried his last family dog and refused to replace it. But his two teenage daughters had begged and pleaded for another one and even threatened to ignore their school studies if their retriever wasn't replaced. Yaeger's only consolation was that he wasn't the first father to be coerced by his children into bringing home an animal.

He had meant to find another golden retriever, but when he'd looked into the sad, soulful coffee-cup eyes of the basset and seen the ungainly body with the short legs, big feet, and ears that dragged on the floor, he'd been hooked. He laid newspapers around his desk and allowed the puppy to roam free, but it preferred to lie on a towel in the open box and stare at Yaeger, who found it next to impossible to steer his concentration away from those sad eyes.

Finally, he forced his attention on his work and called up Max. She appeared on the monitor and scowled at him. "Must you always keep me waiting?"

He reached down and held up the puppy for Max to see. "I stopped off and picked up a doggy for my daughters."

Max's face instantly softened. "He's cute. The girls should be thrilled."

"Have you made progress in deciphering the inscriptions?" he asked.

"I've pretty much unraveled the meaning of the symbols, but it takes a bit of doing to connect them into words than can be interpreted in English."

"Tell me what you have so far."

"Quite a lot, actually," Max said proudly.

"I'm listening."

"Sometime around 7000 B.C., the world suffered a massive catastrophe."

"Any idea of what it was?" inquired Yaeger.

"Yes, it was recorded in the map of the heavens on the ceiling of the Colorado chamber," explained Max. "I haven't deciphered the entire narrative yet, but it seems that not one, but two comets swept in from the far outer solar system and caused worldwide calamity."

"Are you sure they weren't asteroids? I'm no astronomer, but I've never heard of comets orbiting in parallel."

"The celestial map showed two objects with long tails traveling side by side that collide with the earth."

Yaeger lowered his hand and petted the dog as he spoke. "Two comets striking at the same time. Depending on their size, they must have caused a huge convulsion."

"Sorry, Hiram," said Max, "I didn't mean to mislead you. Only one of the comets hit the earth. The other circled past the sun and disappeared into deep space."

"Did the star map indicate where the comet fell?"

Max shook her head. "The depiction of the impact site indicated Canada, probably somewhere in the Hudson Bay area."

"I'm proud of you, Max." Yeager had lifted the basset hound onto his lap, where it promptly fell asleep. "You'd make a classic detective."

"Solving an ordinary people crime would be mere child's play for me," Max said loftily.

"All right, we have a comet crashing to the earth in a Canadian province about 7000 B.C. that caused worldwide destruction."

"Only the first act. The meat of the story comes later, with the description of the people and their civilization that existed before the cataclysm and the aftermath. Most all were annihilated. The pitiful few who survived, too weakened to rebuild their empire, saw it as their divine mission to wander the world, educate the primitive stone-age inhabitants of the era who endured in remote areas, and build monuments warning of the next cataclysm."

"Why did they expect another threat from space?"

"From what I can gather, they foresaw the return of the second comet that would finish the job of complete destruction."

Yaeger was nearly speechless. "What you're suggesting, Max, is that there really was a civilization called Atlantis?"

"I didn't say that," Max stated irritably. "I haven't determined what these ancient people called themselves. I do know that they only vaguely resembled the tale passed down from Plato, the famed Greek philosopher. His record of a conversation that took place two hundred years before his time, between his ancestor, the great Greek statesman Solon, and an Egyptian priest, is the first written account of a land called Atlantis."

"Everyone knows the legend," said Yaeger, his thoughts spinning into space. "The priest told of an island continent larger than Australia that rose in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean west of the Pillars of Hercules, or the Strait of Gibraltar, as we know it today. Several thousand years ago, it was destroyed and sank beneath the sea after a great upheaval, and vanished. A riddle that has puzzled believers, and is scoffed at by historians to this day. Personally, I tend to agree with historians that Atlantis is nothing more than an early saga of science fiction."

"Perhaps it was not a total fabrication after all."

Yaeger stared at Max, his eyebrows pinched. "There is absolutely no geological basis for a lost continent to have disappeared in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean nine thousand years ago. It never existed. Certainly not between North Africa and the Caribbean. It's now generally accepted that the legend is linked to a catastrophic earthquake and flood caused by a volcanic eruption that took place on the island of Thera, or Santorini as it is known today, and wiped out the great Minoan civilization on Crete."

"So you think Plato's portrait of Atlantis, in his works Critias and Timaeus, is an invention."

"Not portrait, Max," Yaeger lectured the computer. "He told the story in dialogue, a popular genre in ancient Greece. The story is not related in the third person by the author, but presented to the reader by two or more narrators, one who questions the other. And, yes, I believe Plato invented Atlantis, knowing with glee that future generations would swallow the con, write a thousand books on the subject, and debate it endlessly."

"You're a hard man, Yaeger," said Max. "I assume you don't believe in the predictions of Edgar Cayce, the famous psychic."

Yaeger shook his head slowly. "Cayce claimed he saw Atlantis fall and rise in the Caribbean. If an advanced civilization had ever existed in that region, the hundreds of islands would have produced clues. But to date not so much as a potsherd of an ancient culture has been found."

"And the great stone blocks that form an undersea road off Bimini?"

"A geological formation that can be found in several other parts of the seas."

"And the stone columns that were found on the seafloor off Jamaica?"

"It was proven they were barrels of dry concrete that solidified in water after the ship carrying them as cargo sank and the wooden staves eroded away. Face facts, Max. Atlantis is a myth."

"You're an old poop, Hiram. You know that?"

"Just telling it like it is," said Yaeger testily. "I prefer not to believe in an ancient advanced civilization that some dreamers believe had rocket ships and garbage disposals."

"Ah," Max said sharply, "there lies the rub. Atlantis was not one vast city populated by Leonardo da Vincis and Thomas Edisons and surrounded by canals on an island continent, as Plato described it. According to what I'm finding, the ancient people were a league of small seafaring nations who navigated and mapped the entire world four thousand years before the Egyptians raised the pyramids. They conquered the seas. They knew how to use currents, and developed a vast knowledge of astronomy and mathematics that made them master navigators. They developed a chain of coastal city-ports and built a trading empire by mining and transporting mineral ore they transformed into metals, unlike other people of the same millennium who lived at higher elevations, led a nomadic existence, and survived the disaster. The seafarers had the bad luck to be destroyed by the giant tidal waves and were lost without a trace. Whatever remains of their port cities now lies deep underwater and buried beneath a hundred feet of silt."

"You deciphered and collected all that data since yesterday?" asked Yaeger in undisguised astonishment.

"The grass," Max pontificated "does not grow under my feet, nor, I might add, do I sit around and wait for my terminal innards to rust."

"Max, you're a virtuoso."

"It's nothing really. After all, it was you who built me."

"You've given me so much to contemplate, I can't digest it all."

"Go home, Hiram. Take your wife and daughters to a movie. Get a good night's sleep while I sizzle my chips. Then, when you sit down in the morning, I'll really have information that will curl your ponytail."

25

After Pat had photo-recorded the inscriptions and the strange global maps inside the burial chamber, she and Giordino were airlifted to Cape Town, where they met with Rudi Gunn in the hospital soon after his operation. Causing a scene bordering on an uproar, Gunn ignored the orders of the hospital staff and enlisted Giordino to smuggle him on an airplane out of South Africa. Giordino gladly complied, and with Pat's able assistance sneaked the tough little NUMA director past the doctors and nurses through the utility basement of the hospital and into a limousine, before speeding to the city airport, where a NUMA executive jet was waiting to fly them all back to Washington.

Pitt remained behind with Dr. Hatfield and the Navy SEAL team. Together, they carefully packed the artifacts and directed their airlift by helicopter to a NUMA deep-ocean research ship that had been detoured to St. Paul Island. Hatfield hovered over the mummies, delicately wrapping them in blankets from the ship and carefully arranging them in wooden crates for the journey to his lab at Stanford University for in-depth study.

After the last mummy had been loaded onto the NUMA helicopter, Hatfield accompanied them and the artifacts on the short flight to the ship. Pitt turned and shook hands with Lieutenant Jacobs. "Thank you for your help, Lieutenant, and please thank your men for me. We'd have never done it without you."

"We don't often get an assignment chaperoning old mummies," Jacobs said, smiling. "I'm almost sorry the terrorists didn't try and snatch them from us."

"I don't think they were terrorists, in the strict sense of the word."

"A murderer is a murderer by any other name."

"Are you headed back to the States?"

Jacobs nodded. "We've been ordered to escort the bodies of the attackers, so ably dispatched by your friends, to Walter Reed Hospital in D.C. for examination and possible identification."

"Good luck to you," said Pitt.

Jacobs threw a brief salute. "Maybe we'll meet again somewhere."

"If there is a next time, I hope it's on a beach in Tahiti."

Pitt stood in the never-ending drizzle and watched as a Marine Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft hung in the air above the ground, and the Marines climbed on board. He was still standing there when the plane disappeared into a low cloud. He was now the only man on the island.

He walked back into the now-empty burial chamber and took one final look at the global charts etched into the far wall. The floods had been removed, and he beamed a flashlight on the ancient nautical charts.

Who were the ancient cartographers who'd drawn such incredibly accurate maps of the earth so many millennia ago? How could they have charted Antarctica when it was not buried under a massive blanket of ice? Could the southern polar continent have possessed a warmer climate several thousand years ago? Could it have been habitable for humans?

The picture of an ice-free Antarctica wasn't the only incongruity. Pitt had not mentioned it to the others, but he was disturbed by the position of the other continents and Australia. They were not where they were supposed to be. It appeared to him that the Americas, Europe, and Asia were shown almost two thousand miles farther north than they should be. Why had the ancients, who otherwise calculated the shorelines with such exactness, have placed the continents so far off their established locations in relation to the circumference of the earth? The observation puzzled him.

The seafarers clearly had a scientific ability that went far beyond the cultural races and civilizations that followed them. Their era also appeared more advanced in the art of writing and communication than others that came thousands of years later. What message were they trying to pass on across the constantly moving sea of time that was imperishably engraved in stone? A message of hope, or a warning of natural disasters to come?

The thoughts running through Pitt's mind were interrupted as the sounds of rotor blades and engine exhaust echoed through the tunnel, announcing the return of the helicopter that was to carry him to the research ship. With a sense of reluctance, he turned off his mind at the same instant he switched off the flashlight and walked from the dark chamber.

Without wasting time waiting for government transportation, Pitt flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg, where he caught a South African Airlines flight to Washington. He slept most of the way, taking a short walk to stretch his legs when the plane landed in the Canary Islands to refuel. When he stepped out of the Dulles Airport terminal, it was nearly midnight. He was pleasantly surprised to find a dazzling 1936 Ford cabriolet hot rod with the top down, waiting at the curb. The car looked like something out of California in the 1950s. The body and fenders were painted in metallic plum maroon that sparkled under the lights of the terminal. The bumpers were the ribbed type from a 1936 De Soto. Ripple moon disks covered the wheel in front, while those in the rear were hidden by teardrop skirts. The seats in front and in the rumble seat were a biscuit-tan leather. The elegant little car was powered by a V-8 flathead engine that had been rebuilt from top to bottom to produce 225 horsepower. The rear end was fitted with a fifty-year-old Columbia overdrive gear system.

If the car wasn't enough to turn heads, the woman sitting behind the wheel was equally beautiful. The long cinnamon hair was protected from the light breeze outside the airport by a colorful scarf. She had the prominent cheekbones of a fashion model, enhanced by full lips and a short, straight nose and charismatic violet eyes. She was wearing an alpaca chunky autumn leaf brown turtleneck with taupe wool tweed pants under a taupe shearling coat that came down to her knees.

Congresswoman Loren Smith of Colorado flashed an engaging smile. "How many times have I met you like this and said, `Welcome home, sailor'?"

"At least eight that I can think of," said Pitt, happy that his romantic love of many years had taken the time out of her busy schedule to pick him up at the airport in one of the cars from his collection.

He threw his duffel bag into the rumble seat, then slid into the passenger's seat and leaned over and kissed her, holding her in his arms for a long while. When he finally pulled back and released her, she gasped, catching her breath, "Careful, I don't want to end up like Clinton."

"The public applauds affairs by female politicians."

"That's what you think," Loren said, pressing the ignition lever on the steering column and pushing the starter button. It fired on the first rotation and emitted a mellow, throaty roar through the Smitty mufflers and dual exhaust pipes. "Where to, your hangar?"

"No, I'd like to drop by NUMA headquarters for a moment and check my computer for the latest word from Hiram Yaeger on a program we're working on."

"You must be the only single man in the country who doesn't have a computer in his apartment."

"I don't want one around the house," he said seriously. "I have too many other projects going without wasting time surfing the Internet and answering E-mail."

Loren pulled away from the curb and steered the Ford onto the broad highway leading into the city. Pitt sat silent and was still lost in thought when the Washington monument came into view, illuminated by the lights at its base. Loren knew him well enough to flow with the current. It was only a question of a few minutes before he came back down to earth.

"What's new in Congress?" he asked finally.

"As if you cared," she replied indifferently.

"Boring as that?"

"Budget debates don't exactly make a girl horny." Then her voice took on a softer tone. "I heard that Rudi Gunn was shot up pretty badly."

"The surgeon in South Africa, who specializes in bone reconstruction, did an excellent job. Rudi will be limping for a few months, but that won't stop him from directing NUMA operations from behind his desk."

"Al said you had a rough time in the Antarctic."

"Not as rough as they had it on a rock that makes Alcatraz Island look like a botanical garden."

He turned to her with a reflective look in his eyes and said, "You're on the International Trade Relations Committee?"

"I am."

"Are you familiar with any large corporations in Argentina?"

"I've traveled there on a few occasions and met with their finance and trade ministers," she answered. "Why do you ask?"

"Ever hear of an outfit calling itself the New Destiny Company or Fourth Empire Corporation?"

Loren thought a moment. "I once met the CEO of Destiny Enterprises during a trade mission in Buenos Aires. If I remember correctly, his name was Karl Wolf."

"How long ago was that?" Pitt asked.

"About four years."

"You've got a good memory for names."

"Karl Wolf was a handsome and stylish man, a real charmer. Women don't forget men like that."

"If that's the case, why do you still hang around me?"

She glanced over and gave him a provocative smile. "Women are also drawn to earthy, coarse, and carnal men."

"Coarse and carnal, that's me." Pitt put his arm around her and bit her earlobe.

She tilted her head away. "Not when I'm driving."

He gave her right knee an affectionate squeeze and relaxed in the seat, looking up at the stars that twinkled in the brisk spring night through the branches of the trees that flashed overhead, their new leaves just beginning to spread. Karl Wolf. He turned the name over in his head. A good German name, he decided. Destiny Enterprises was worth looking into, even if it might prove to be a dead end.

Loren drove smoothly, deftly passing the few cars that were still on the road that time of morning, and turned into the driveway leading to the NUMA headquarters building's underground parking. A security guard stepped out of the guardhouse, recognized Pitt, and waved him through, lingering to admire the gleaming old Ford. There were only three other cars on the main parking level. She stopped the Ford next to the elevators and turned off the lights and engine.

"Want me to come up with you?" Loren asked.

"I'll only be a few minutes," Pitt said, stepping from the car.

He took the elevator to the main lobby, where it automatically stopped and he had to sign in with the guard at the security desk, surrounded by an array of TV monitors viewing different areas of the building.

"Working late?" the guard asked pleasantly.

"Just a quick stop," Pitt remarked, fighting off a yawn.

Before taking the elevator up to his office, Pitt stepped off on the tenth floor on a hunch. True to his intuition, Hiram Yaeger was still burning the midnight oil. He looked up as Pitt entered his private domain, eyes red from lack of sleep. Max was staring out of her cyberland.

"Dirk," he muttered, rising from his chair and shaking hands. "I didn't expect you to come wandering in this time of night."

"Thought I'd see what you and Dr. O'Connell had raked from the dirt of antiquity," he said genially.

"I hate banal metaphors," said Max.

"That's enough from you," Yaeger said in mock irritation. Then he said to Pitt, "I left a printed report of our latest findings on Admiral Sandecker's desk as of ten o'clock this evening."

"I'll borrow it and return it first thing in the morning."

"Don't rush. He's meeting with the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency until noon."

"You should be home with your wife and daughters," said Pitt.

"I was working late with Dr. O'Connell," said Yaeger, rubbing his tired eyes. "You just missed her."

"She came in and went to work without resting up after her trip?" Pitt asked in surprise.

"A truly remarkable woman. If I weren't married, I'd throw my hat in her ring."

"You always had a thing for academic women."

"Brains over beauty, I always say."

"Anything you can tell me before I wade through your report?" Pitt queried.

"An amazing story," said Yaeger, almost wistfully.

"I'll second that," Max added.

"This is a private conversation," Yaeger said testily to Max's image before he closed her down. He stood up and stretched. "What we have is an incredible story of a seafaring race of people who lived before the dawn of recorded history, and who, were decimated after a comet struck the earth, causing great waves that engulfed the city ports that they had built in almost every corner of the globe. They lived and died in a forgotten age and a far different world than we know today."

"When I last talked to the admiral, he didn't rule out the legend of Atlantis."

"The lost continent in the middle of the Atlantic doesn't fit into the picture," Yaeger said seriously. "But there is no doubt that a league of maritime nations existed whose people had extensively sailed every sea and charted every continent." He paused and looked at Pitt. "The photos Pat took of the inscriptions inside the burial chamber and the map of the world are in the lab. They should be ready for me to scan into the computer first thing in the morning."

"They show placements of the continents far different than an Earth of the present," Pitt said contemplatively.

Yaeger's bloodshot eyes stared thoughtfully. "I'm beginning to sense that something more catastrophic than a comet strike took place. I've scanned the geological data my people have accumulated over the past ten years. The Ice Age ended quite abruptly in conjunction with a wild fluctuation of the sea. The sea level is over three hundred feet higher than it was nine thousand years ago."

"That would put any building or relics of the Atlanteans quite deep under the coastal waters."

"Not to mention deeply buried in silt."

"Did they call themselves Atlanteans?" asked Pitt.

"I doubt they knew what the word meant," replied Yaeger. "Atlantis is Greek and means daughter of Atlas. Because of Plato, it's become known through the ages as the world before history began, or what is called an antediluvian civilization. Today, anyone who can read, and most who don't, have a knowledge of Atlantis. Everything from resort hotels, technology and finance companies, retail stores, and swimming pool manufacturers to a thousand products including wines and food brands carry the name Atlantis. Countless articles and books have been written about the lost continent, as well as its being a subject of television and motion pictures. But until now, only those who believed in Santa Claus, UFOs, and the supernatural thought it was more than simply a fictional story created by Plato."

Pitt walked to the doorway and turned back. "I wonder what people will say," he said wistfully, "when they find out such a civilization actually existed."

Yaeger smiled. "Many of them will say I told you so."

When Pitt left Yaeger and exited the elevator to the executive offices of NUMA, he couldn't help noticing that the lights in the hallway leading to Admiral Sandecker's suite were dimmed to their lowest level. It seemed strange they were still switched on, but he figured there could be any number of reasons for the faint illumination. At the end of the hallway, he pushed the glass door open into the anteroom outside the admiral's inner office and private conference room. As he stepped inside and walked past the desk occupied by Julie Wolff, the admiral's secretary, he smelled the distinctive fragrance of orange blossoms.

He paused in the doorway and groped for the light switch. In that instant, a figure leaped from the shadows and ran at Pitt, bent over at the waist. Too late, he stiffened as the intruder's head rammed square into his stomach. He stumbled backward, staying on his feet but doubling over, the breath knocked out of him. He made a grab at his assailant as they spun, but Pitt was caught by surprise, and his arm was easily knocked away.

Gasping for breath, with one arm clutching his midsection, Pitt found the light and switched it on. One quick glance at Sandecker's desk and he knew the intruder's mission. The admiral was fanatical about keeping a clean desk. Papers and files were put carefully in a drawer each evening before he left for his Watergate apartment. The surface was empty of Yaeger's report on the ancient seafarers.

His stomach feeling as if it had been tied in a huge knot, Pitt ran to the elevators. The one with the thief was going down, the other elevator was stopped on a floor below. He frantically pushed the button and waited, taking deep breaths to get back on track. The elevator doors spread and he jumped in, pressing the button for the parking lot. The elevator descended quickly without stopping. Thank God for Otis elevators, Pitt thought.

He was through the doors before they opened fully and ran to the hot rod just as a pair of red taillights vanished up the exit ramp. He threw open the driver's door, pushed Loren to one side, and started the engine.

Loren looked at him questioningly. "What's the emergency?"

"Did you see the man who just took off?" he asked, as he depressed the clutch, shifted gears, and stomped the accelerator pedal.

"Not a man, but a woman wearing an expensive fur coat over a leather pantsuit."

Loren would notice such things, Pitt thought, as the Ford's engine roared and the tires left twin streaks of rubber on the floor of the parking garage amid a horrendous squealing noise. Shooting up the ramp, he hit the brakes and skidded to a stop at the guardhouse. The guard was standing beside the driveway, staring off into the distance.

"Which way did they go?" Pitt shouted.

"Shot past me before I could stop them," the security guard said dazedly. "Turned south onto the parkway. Should I call the police?"

"Do that!" Pitt snapped, as he slung the car out onto the street and headed for the Washington Memorial Parkway only a block away. "What kind of car?" he tersely asked Loren.

"A black Chrysler 300M series with a three-point-five-liter, 253 horsepower engine. Zero to fifty miles an hour in eight seconds."

"You know its specifications?" he asked dumbly.

"I should," Loren answered briefly. "I own one, have you forgotten?" "It slipped my mind in the confusion."

"What's the horsepower of this contraption?" she shouted above the roar of the flathead engine.

"About 225," Pitt replied, back-shifting and throwing the hot rod into a four-wheel drift upon entering the parkway.

"You're outclassed."

"Not when you consider we weigh almost a thousand pounds less," Pitt said calmly, as he pushed the Ford through the gears. "Our thief may have a higher top-end speed and handle tighter in the turns, but I can out-accelerate her."

The modified flathead howled as the rpms increased. The needle of the speedometer on the dashboard behind the steering wheel was approaching ninety-five when Pitt flicked the switch to the Columbia rear end and pushed the car into overdrive. The engine revolutions immediately dropped off as the car accelerated past the hundred-mph mark.

Traffic was light at one o'clock in the morning on a weekday, and Pitt soon spotted the black Chrysler 300M under the bright overhead lights of the parkway and began to overhaul it. The driver was traveling twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, but not pushing the sleek car anywhere near its potential speed. The driver moved into the empty right-hand lane, seemingly more intent on avoiding the police than worried about the possibility of a car pursuing her from the NUMA building.

When the Ford was within three hundred yards of the newer car, Pitt began to slow down, tucking in behind slower-moving cars, attempting to remain out of sight. He began to feel supremely self-confident, thinking his quarry hadn't noticed him, but then the Chrysler swung a hard turn onto the Francis Scott Key bridge. Reaching the other side of the Potomac River, it cut a tight left turn and then a right into the residential section of Georgetown, fishtailing around the corner, the tires screeching in protest.

"I think she's on to you," said Loren, shivering from the cold wind sweeping around the windshield.

"She's smart," Pitt muttered in frustration at losing the game. He gripped the old banjo-style steering wheel and swung it to its stop, throwing the Ford into a ninety-degree turn. "Instead of speeding away in a straight line, she's taking every corner in hopes of gaining enough distance until she can turn without us seeing which direction she took."

It was a cat-and-mouse game, the Chrysler pulling ahead out of the turns, the sixty-five-year-old hot rod regaining the lost yardage through its greater acceleration. Seven blocks, and still the cars were an equal distance apart, neither one gaining or closing the gap.

"This is a new twist," muttered Pitt, grimly clutching the wheel.

"What do you mean?"

He glanced at her, grinning. "For the first time I can remember, I'm the one who's doing the pursuing."

"This could go on all night," said Loren, clutching the door handle as if ready to eject in case of an accident.

"Or until one of us runs out of gas," Pitt shot back in the middle of a hard turn.

"Haven't we already circled this block once?"

"We have."

Whipping around the next corner, Pitt could see the brake lights of the Chrysler suddenly flash on as it came to an abrupt halt in front of a brick town house, one of several on the tree-lined block. He braked and skidded to a stop in the street alongside the Chrysler, just as the driver vanished through the front door.

"Good thing she gave up the chase when she did," Loren said, pointing to the steam that was rising above the hood around the radiator.

"She wouldn't have quit unless it's a setup," said Pitt, staring at the darkened town house.

"What now, Sheriff? Do we call off the posse?"

Pitt gave Loren a crafty look. "No, you're going up and knock on the door."

She looked back at him, her face aghast under the glow of a nearby streetlight. "Like hell I will."

"I thought you'd refuse." He opened the door and stepped from the car. "Here's my Globalstar phone. If I'm not back in ten minutes, call the police and then alert Admiral Sandecker. At the slightest noise or movement in the shadows, get out- and get out quick. Understand?"

"Why don't we call the police now and report a burglary?"

"Because I want to be there first."

"Are you armed?"

His lips broke into a wide grin. "Who ever heard of carrying a weapon in a hot rod?" He opened the glove box and held up a flashlight. "This will have to do." Then he leaned into the car, kissed her, and merged into the darkness surrounding the house.

Pitt didn't use the flashlight. There was enough ambient light from the city and the streetlights for him to see his way along a narrow stone sidewalk to the rear of the house. It seemed hauntingly dark and silent. From what he could see, the yard was well maintained and groomed. High brick walls covered with vines of ivy separated this house from the ones on either side. They also looked dark, their occupants blissfully sleeping in their beds.

Pitt was ninety-nine percent sure the house had a security system, but as long as there were no bloodthirsty dogs, he ignored any attempt at stealth. He was hoping the thief and her pals would show themselves. Only then would he worry about which way to jump. He came to the back door and was surprised to find it wide open. Belatedly, he realized the thief had dashed into the front of the house and out the rear. He took off running for the garage that backed onto an alley.

Abruptly, the night silence was shattered by the loud roar of a motorcycle's exhaust. Pitt tore open the door to the garage and rushed inside. The old-fashioned rear doors had been swung outward on their hinges. A figure in a black fur coat over leather pants and boots had urged the motorcycle engine into life, and was in the act of shifting it into gear and turning the throttle grip when Pitt took a running leap and threw himself on the bike rider's back, circling his arms around the neck and falling off to the side, dragging his opponent with him.

Pitt knew immediately that Loren's observations were confirmed. The body was not heavy enough for a man, nor did it feel hard. They crashed to the concrete floor of the garage, Pitt falling on top. The motorcycle dropped onto its side and raced around in a full circle, rear wheel and tire screaming against the concrete floor before the kill switch cut in and the engine stopped. The momentum carried the motorcycle against the crumpled bodies on the floor, the front tire striking the head of the rider as the handlebars impacted with Pitt's hip, breaking no bones but giving him a huge bruise that would show for weeks.

He rose painfully to his knees and found the flashlight, still beaming in the doorway where he had dropped it. He crawled over, picked it up, and swept the beam over the inert body beside the motorcycle. The rider had not had time to slip on a helmet, and a head with long blond hair was exposed. He rolled her over onto her back and beamed the light onto her face.

A knot was beginning to form above one eyebrow, but there was no mistaking the features. The front tire of the bike had knocked her senseless, but she was alive. Pitt was stunned, so much so that he nearly dropped the flashlight from a hand that had never trembled until now.

It is a proven fact in the medical profession that blood cannot run cold, not unless ice water is injected into the veins. But Pitt's felt as though his heart were working overtime to pump blood that was two degrees below freezing. He swayed on his knees in shock, the atmosphere in the garage suddenly turning heavy with a heavy sense of horror. Pitt was no stranger to the person who lay unconscious beneath him.

Without the slightest question in his mind, he was looking at the same face he had seen on the dead woman who had tapped his shoulder on the sunken hulk of the U-boat.

26

Unlike most high-level government officials or corporate executive officers, Admiral James Sandecker always arrived for a meeting first. He preferred to be settled in with his data files and prepared to direct the conference in an efficient manner. It was a practice he had established when commanding fleet operations in the Navy.

Although he had a large conference room at his disposal for visiting dignitaries, scientists, and government officials, he favored a smaller workroom next to his office for private and close-knit meetings. The room was a shelter within a shelter for him, restful and mentally stimulating. A twelve-foot conference table stretched across a turquoise carpet, surrounded by plush leather chairs. The table had been crafted from a piece of the hull from a nineteenth-century schooner that had lain deep beneath the waters of Lake Erie. The richly paneled mahogany wall displayed a series of paintings depicting historic naval sea battles.

Sandecker ran NUMA like a benevolent dictator, with a firm hand, and loyal to his employees to a fault. Personally picked by a former president to form the National Underwater & Marine Agency from scratch, he had built a far-reaching operation with two thousand employees that scientifically probed into every peak and valley under the seas. NUMA was highly respected around the world for its scientific projects, and its budget requests were rarely denied by Congress.

An exercise fanatic, he maintained a sixty-two-year-old body that knew no fat. He stood a few inches over five feet and stared through hazel eyes surrounded by flaming red hair and a Vandyke beard. An occasional drinker, mostly at Washington dinner parties, his only major sin was a fondness for elegant cigars, grand and aromatic, that were personally selected and wrapped to his exacting specifications by a small family in the Dominican Republic. He never offered one to visitors, but was irritated and frustrated to extremes because he often caught Giordino smoking the exact same cigars and yet could never find any of his private stock missing.

He was sitting at the end of the table, and stood as Pitt and Pat O'Connell stepped into the room. He stepped forward and greeted Pitt like a son, shaking his hand while gripping a shoulder. "Good to see you."

"Always a pleasure to be back in the fold again," Pitt replied, beaming. The admiral was like a second father to him, and they were very close.

Sandecker turned to Pat. "Please sit down, Doctor. I'm anxious to hear what you and Hiram have for me."

Giordino and Yeager soon joined the others, followed by Dr. John Stevens, a noted historian and author of several books on the study and identification of ancient artifacts. Stevens was an academic and looked the part, complete with a sleeveless sweater under a wool sport coat that had a meerschaum pipe protruding from the breast pocket. He had a way of cocking his head like a robin listening for a worm under the sod. He carried a large plastic ice chest, which he set beside his chair on the carpet.

Sandecker set the sawed-off base of an eight-inch shell casing form a naval gun in front of him as an ashtray and lit up a cigar. He stared at Giordino, half expecting his projects specialist to light up, too. Giordino decided not to irritate his boss and did his best to look cultured.

Pitt could not help noticing that Yaeger's and Pat's faces seemed unduly strained and tired.

Sandecker opened the discussion by asking if they'd all had a chance to go over the report from Pat and Yaeger. All nodded silently, except Giordino. "I found it interesting reading," he said, "but as science fiction it doesn't measure up to Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury."

Yaeger gave Giordino a steady gaze. "I assure you, this is not science fiction."

"Have you discovered what this race of people called themselves?" asked Pitt. "Did their civilization have a name besides Atlantis?"

Pat opened a file on the desk in front of her and pulled out a sheet of notebook paper and peered at the writing. 'As near as I can decipher and translate into English, they referred to their league of seafaring city-states as Amenes, pronounced 'Ameenees.' "

"Amenes," Pitt repeated slowly. "It sounds Greek."

"I unraveled a number of words that could well be the origins for later Greek and Egyptian-language terms."

Sandecker gestured the end of his cigar at the historian. "Dr. Stevens, I assume you've examined the obsidian skulls?"

"I have." Stevens leaned down, opened the ice chest, lifted out one of the black skulls, and set it upright on a large silk pillow laid on the conference table. The glossy obsidian gleamed under the overhead spotlights. "A truly remarkable piece of work," he said reverently. "Amenes artisans began with a solid block of obsidian- one that was incredibly pure of imperfections- a rarity in itself. Over a period of at least ninety to a hundred years, and perhaps more, the head was shaped by hand, using what I believe was obsidian dust as a smoothing agent."

"Why not some type of hardened metal chisels tapped by a mallet?" asked Giordino.

Stevens shook his head. "No tools were wielded. There are no signs of scratches or nicks. Obsidian, though extremely hard, is very prone to fracture. One slip, one misplaced angle of a chisel, and the whole skull would have shattered. No, the shaping and polishing had to be accomplished as if a marble bust had been delicately smoothed by car polish."

"How long would it take to reproduce with modern tools?"

Stevens gave a faint grin. "Technically, it would be next to impossible to create an exact replica. The more I study it, the more I become convinced it shouldn't exist."

"Are there any markings on the base to suggest a source?" asked Sandecker.

"No markings," answered Stevens. "But let me show you something that's truly astonishing." With extreme care he slowly made a twisting motion, as he lifted the upper half of the skull until it came free. Next he removed a perfectly contoured globe from the skull cavity. Holding it devoutly in both hands, he lowered it onto a specially prepared cushioned base. "I can't begin to imagine the degree of artistic craftsmanship it took to produce such an astonishing object," he said admiringly. "Only while studying the skull under strong magnification did I see a line around the skull plate that was invisible to the naked eye."

"It's absolutely fabulous," murmured Pat in awe.

"Are there carvings on the globe?" Pitt asked Stevens.

"Yes, it's an engraved illustration of the world. If you care to view it more closely, I have a magnifying glass."

He handed the thick glass to Pitt, who peered at the lines inscribed on the globe that was about the size of a baseball. After a minute, he carefully slid the globe across the table in front of Sandecker and passed him the magnifying glass.

While the admiral was examining the globe, Stevens said, "By comparing the photographs taken inside the chamber in Colorado with those from St. Paul Island, I found that the continents perfectly match those of the obsidian globe."

"Meaning?" asked Sandecker.

"If you study the alignment of the continents, and large islands such as Greenland and Mozambique, you'll find they don't match the geography of the world today."

"I observed the differences, too," said Pitt.

"What does that prove?" asked Giordino, playing the role of skeptic. "Except that it's a primitive, inaccurate map?"

"Primitive? Yes. Inaccurate? Perhaps by modern standards. But I strongly support the theory that these ancient peoples sailed every sea on earth and charted thousands of miles of coastlines. If you look closely at the obsidian globe, you can see they even defined Australia, Japan, and the Great Lakes of North America. All this by people who lived more than nine thousand years ago."

"Unlike the Atlantis that was described by Plato as having existed on a single island or continent," Pat spoke up, "the Amenes engaged in worldwide commerce. They went far beyond the bounds of much later civilizations. They were not restricted by tradition or fear of the unknown seas. The inscriptions detail their sea routes and vast trading network that took them across the Atlantic and up the St. Lawrence River to Michigan, where they mined copper; and to Bolivia and the British Isles, where they mined tin, using advanced developments in metallurgy to create and produce bronze, thereby lifting mankind from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age."

Sandecker leaned across the table. "Surely they mined and traded in gold and silver."

"Strangely, they did not consider gold or silver useful metals, and preferred copper for their ornaments and art works. But they did journey around the world in search of turquoise and black opal, which they fashioned into jewelry. And, of course, obsidian, which was almost sacred to them. Obsidian, by the way, is still used in open-heart surgery, because it has a sharper edge that causes less tissue damage than steel."

"Both turquoise and black opal were represented on the mummies we found in the burial chamber," added Giordino.

"Which demonstrates the extent of their reach," said Pat. "The rich robin's-egg blue I saw in the chamber could only have come from the American Southwest deserts."

"And the black opal?" asked Sandecker.

"Australia."

"If nothing else," said Pitt thoughtfully, "it confirms that the Amenes had knowledge of nautical science and learned to build ships capable of sailing across the seas thousands of years ago."

"It also explains why their communities were built as port cities," Pat summed up. "And according to what was revealed by the photographs in the burial chamber, few societies in the history of man were so farthing. I've located over twenty of their port cities in such diverse parts of the world as Mexico, Peru, India, China, Japan, and Egypt. Several of them are in the Indian Ocean and a few on islands of the Pacific."

"I can back up Dr. O'Connell's findings with my own on the globes from the skull," said Stevens.

"So their world was not based around the Mediterranean, as later civilizations were?" said the admiral.

Stevens gave a negative shake of his head. "The Mediterranean was not open to the sea during the Amenes' era. Nine thousand years ago, the Med, as we know it, was made up of fertile valleys and lakes fed by European rivers to the north and the Nile to the south, which merged and then flowed through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. You might also be interested in knowing that the North Sea was a dry plain and the British Isles were part of Europe. The Baltic Sea was also a broad valley above sea level. The Gobi and Sahara deserts were lush tropical lands that supported huge herds of animals. The ancient ones lived on a planet very different from the one we live on."

"What happened to the Amenes?" asked Sandecker. "Why hasn't evidence of their existence come down to us before now?"

"Their civilization was utterly destroyed when a comet struck the earth around 7000 B.C. and caused a worldwide cataclysmic disaster. That's when the land bridge from Gibraltar to Morocco was breached and the Mediterranean became a sea. Shorelines were inundated and changed forever. Within the time it takes for a raindrop to fall from a cloud, the sea people, their cities, and their entire culture were erased from the earth and lost until now."

"You deciphered all that from the inscriptions?"

"That and more," Yaeger answered earnestly. "They describe the horror and suffering in vivid detail. The impact of the comet was gigantic, sudden, appalling, and deadly. The inscriptions go on to tell of mountains shaking like willows in a gale. Earthquakes shook with a magnitude that would be inconceivable today. Volcanoes exploded with the combined force of thousands of nuclear bombs, filling the sky with layers of ash a hundred miles thick. Pumice blanketed the seas as dense as ten feet. Rivers of lava buried most of what we call the Pacific Northwest. Fires spread under hurricanelike winds, creating towering clouds of smoke that blanketed the sky. Tidal waves, perhaps as much as three miles high, swept over the land. Islands vanished, buried under water for all time. Most of the people and all but a handful of animals and sea life disappeared in a time span of twenty-four hours."

Giordino put his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling, trying to picture in his mind the terrible devastation. "So that explains it- the sudden extinction in the Americas of the saber-toothed tiger, the humped-back camel, the musk oxen, that giant bison with a horn spread of six feet, the woolly mammoth, the small shaggy horse that once roamed the plains of North America. And the instant turning to stone of clams, soft jellyfish, oysters, and starfish- you remember we discovered them during projects coring under the sediments. These discrepancies have always been an enigma to scientists. Now maybe they can tie it to the comet's impact."

Sandecker stared at Giordino with an appraising look in his eyes. The short Etruscan possessed a brilliant mind, but worked to conceal it behind a sardonic wit.

Stevens pulled out his pipe and toyed with it. "It's well known in the scientific community that mass global extinctions of animals weighing over a hundred pounds occurred in unison with the end of the last ice age, about the same time as the comet's impact. Mastodons were found preserved by ice in Siberia, the food undigested in their stomach, establishing the fact that they died quite suddenly, almost as if sent into an instant deep freeze. The same with trees and plants that were found frozen while in leaf and in bloom."

The degree of horror could not be completely imagined by anyone sitting at the table. The scope was simply too enormous for them to conceive.

"I'm not a geophysicist," said Stevens quietly, "but I cannot believe that a comet striking the earth, even a large one, could cause such tremendous destruction on such a massive scale. It's inconceivable."

"Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid killed off the dinosaurs," Giordino reminded him.

"It must have been one enormous comet," said Sandecker.

"Comets can't be measured like asteroids or meteors that have a solid mass," Yaeger lectured. "Comets are a composite of ice, gas, and rocks."

Pat continued reciting the story of the inscriptions without reading from her notes. "Some of the inhabitants of Earth who survived lived, farmed, and hunted in the mountains and high plains. They were able to escape the aftermath of horror by going underground or hiding in caves, existing on whatever pitiful vegetation and flora that could revive and grow under unhealthy conditions, along with the few animals left to hunt. Many died of starvation or from the gaseous clouds smothering the atmosphere. Only a scant handful of the Amenes who happened to be on high ground during the tidal waves survived."

"The story of what has come down to us as the deluge," clarified Stevens, "has been recorded by Sumerian tablets dating back five thousand years in Mesopotamia- the legend of Gilgamesh and the flood predates the biblical story of Noah and the ark. Stone records of the Mayans, written records by Babylonian priests, legends handed down by every cultural race of the world, including the Indians throughout North America, all tell of a great inundation. So there is little doubt the event actually occurred."

"And now," said Yaeger, "thanks to the Amenes, we have a date of approximately 7100 B.C."

"History tells us that the more advanced the civilization," Stevens commented, "the more easily it will die and leave little or nothing of itself behind. At least ninety-nine percent of the grand total of ancient knowledge has been lost to us through natural disasters and man's destruction."

Pitt nodded in agreement. "A golden age of ocean navigation seven thousand years before Christ, but nothing to show for it but inscriptions in rock. A pity we can't have more to inherit from them."

Sandecker exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. "I sincerely hope that won't be our fate."

Pat took over from Yaeger. "Those who remained of the Amenes formed a small cult and dedicated themselves to educating the remaining Stone Age inhabitants in arts and written communication, as well as teaching them how to construct substantial buildings and ships to sail the seas. They tried to warn future generations of another coming cataclysm, but those who came later and had not lived during the comet's destruction and horrible aftermath could not bring themselves to accept that such a traumatic episode from the past would repeat itself. The Amenes realized the awful truth would soon become lost in the mists of time, recalled only in a score of myths. So they attempted to leave a legacy by building great monuments of stone to last throughout the centuries, engraved with their message of the past and future. The great megalithic cult they created became widespread and lasted for four thousand years. But time and the elements eroded the inscriptions and erased the warnings.

"After the Amenes finally died out, centuries of paralysis set in before the Sumerians and Egyptians began to emerge from primitive cultures and gradually build new civilizations, using bits and pieces of the knowledge from the distant past."

Pitt tapped a pencil on the table. "From what little I know on the subject of megaliths, it would seem that later cultures, having lost the original intent of the Amenes through the centuries, used monumental structures as temples, tombs, and stone calendars, eventually building thousands of their own."

"In studying the available data on megaliths," said Yaeger, "the very early structures show that the Amenes had a distinct form of architecture. Their style of building was mostly circular, with triangular-shaped stone blocks cut like interlocking pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, making them almost impervious to any movement of the earth, regardless of how severe."

Stevens spoke very deliberately, as he replaced the globe in its socket inside the black skull. "Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Yaeger and Dr. O'Connell, it's beginning to look as if elements of the Amenes culture and ancient heritage were passed through the centuries and eventually absorbed by the Egyptians, Sumerians, the Chinese, and Olmecs, who preceded the Mayans, and both the Asian Indians and the American Indians. The Phoenicians, more than any other civilization, took up the torch of deep-ocean navigation.

"Their revelations also help to explain why most of the gods and deities from nearly every later civilization in every part of the world came from the sea, and why all the gods setting foot in the Americas came from the east while the gods appearing in the early European cultures came from the west."

Sandecker stared at his cigar smoke spiraling to the ceiling. "An interesting point, Doctor, that answers any number of questions about our ancient ancestors that we've puzzled over for hundreds of years."

Pitt nodded at Pat. "What finally happened to the last of the Amenes?"

"Frustrated that their message would not be received and acted upon, they built chambers in different parts of the world that they hoped would not be found for thousands of years, and only then by future civilizations with the science to understand their message of danger."

"Which was?" prompted Sandecker.

"The date of the second comet's return to earth's orbit and the almost certain impact."

Stevens wagged his finger to make a point. "A recurring theme in mythology is that the cataclysm with its accompanying deluge will repeat itself."

"Hardly a cheery thought," said Giordino.

"What made them so certain there would be another devastating visitor from outer space?" wondered Sandecker.

"The inscriptions describe in great detail two comets that arrived at the same time," answered Yaeger. "One impacted. The other missed and returned to space."

"Are you suggesting the Amenes could accurately predict the date of the second comet's return?"

Pat simply nodded.

"The Amenes," said Yaeger, "were masters not only of the seas but of the heavens as well. They measured the movement of the stars with uncanny accuracy. And they did it without powerful telescopes."

"Suppose the comet does come back," said Giordino. "How could they know it wouldn't miss the earth and sail off into the great beyond again? Was their science so sophisticated they could calculate the time of impact at the exact position of the earth's orbit in space?"

"They could and did," Pat retorted. "By computing and comparing the different positions of the stars and constellations between the ancients' star map in the Colorado chamber with present astronomical star positions, we were able to arrive at our own date in time. It matched the Amenes prediction within an hour.

"The Egyptians devised a double calendar that's far more intricate than what we use today. The Mayans measured the length of the year at 365.2420 days. Our calculation using atomic clocks is 365.2423. They also computed incredibly accurate calendars based on the conjunctions of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The Babylonians determined the sidereal year at 365 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes. They were off by less than two minutes." Pat paused for effect. "The Amenes' computation for the earth's circuit of the sun was off by two-tenths of a second. They based their calendar on a solar eclipse that occurred on the same day of the year at the same site on the zodiac every 521 years. Their celestial map of the heavens, as observed and calculated nine thousand years ago, was right on the money."

"The question on all our minds now," said Sandecker, "is at what point in time did the Amenes predict the reappearance of the comet?"

Pat and Yaeger exchanged sober looks. Yaeger spoke first. "We learned from a computer search of ancient archaeoastronomy files and papers from the archives of several universities that the Amenes were not the only ancient astronomers to predict a second doomsday. The Mayans, the Hopi Indians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, and several other pre-Christian civilizations all came up with dates for the end of the world. The disturbing part is that, collectively, they arrived within a year of each other."

"Could it be simply a coincidence or one culture borrowing from another?"

Yaeger shook his head doubtfully. "It's possible they copied what was passed on by the Amenes, but indications are that their studies of the stars only confirmed the impact time passed on by those they considered as ancients."

"Who do you think were the most accurate in their prediction?" asked Pitt.

"Those of the Amenes who survived, because they were present during the actual catastrophe. They predicted not only the year but the exact day."

"Which is?" Sandecker prompted expectantly.

Pat sank in her chair as if retreating from reality. Yaeger hesitated, looking around the table from face to face. At last he said in a halting voice, "The time the Amenes predicted the comet would return and shatter the earth is May 20, in the year 2001."

Pitt frowned. "This is 2001."

Yaeger massaged his temples with both hands. "I'm well aware of that.

Sandecker hunched forward. "Are you saying doomsday is less than two months away?"

Yaeger nodded solemnly. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."

27

After the meeting, Pitt returned to his office and was greeted by his longtime secretary, Zerri Pochinsky. A lovely lady with a dazzling smile, she was blessed with a body that would make a Las Vegas showgirl envious. Fawn-colored hair fell to her shoulders, and she peered at the world through captivating hazel eyes. She lived alone, with a cat named Murgatroyd, and seldom dated. Pitt was more than fond of Zerri, but exercised iron discipline in not coming on to her. As much as he often imagined her in his arms, he had a strict rule about socializing with any members of the opposite sex employed with NUMA. He had seen too many office affairs inevitably lead to disaster.

"FBI Special Agent Ken Helm called and would like you to return his call," she announced, handing him a pink slip of paper with the number of Helm's private line. "Are you in trouble with your government again?"

He grinned at her and leaned over Zerri's desk until their noses were less than an inch apart. "I'm always in trouble with my government."

Her eyes flashed mischievously. "I'm still waiting for you to sweep me off my feet and fly me to a beach in Tahiti."

He pulled back a safe distance, because the scent of her Chanel was beginning to stir unnatural feelings within him. "Why can't you find some nice, stable, home-loving male to marry, so you can stop harassing an old, unanchored, derelict beach bum?"

"Because stable home-lovers aren't any fun."

"Whoever said women are nest-oriented?" He sighed.

Pitt pulled away and stepped into his office, which looked like a trailer park after a tornado. Books, papers, nautical charts, and photographs littered every square inch of space, including the carpet. He had decorated his workplace in antiques he'd bought at auction from the American President Lines elegant passenger ship President Cleveland. He settled behind his desk, picked up the receiver, and dialed Helm's number.

A voice answered with a terse "Yes?"

"Mr. Helm, Dirk Pitt returning your call."

"Mr. Pitt, thank you. I just thought you'd like to know that the Bureau has identified the body you shipped from the Antarctic and also the woman you apprehended last night."

"That was fast work."

"Thanks to our new computerized photo ID department," explained Helm. "They've scanned every newspaper, magazine, TV broadcast, state motor vehicle driver's license record, company security face shot, passport photo, and police record to build the world's largest photo identification network. It consists of hundreds of millions of enhanced facial close-ups. Combined with our fingerprint and DNA files, we can now cover a vast spectrum for identifying bodies and fugitives. We had a make on both women within twenty minutes."

"What did you discover?"

"The name of the deceased from the submarine was Heidi Wolf. The woman you apprehended last night is Elsie Wolf."

"Then they are twin sisters."

"No, actually, they're cousins. And what is really off the wall is that they both come from a very wealthy family and are high-level executives of the same vast business conglomerate."

Pitt stared in contemplation out the window of his office, without seeing the Potomac River outside and the Capitol in the background. "Would they happen to be related to Karl Wolf, the CEO of Destiny Enterprises out of Argentina?"

Helm paused, then said, "It seems you're two steps ahead of me, Mr. Pitt."

"Dirk."

"All right, Dirk, you're on the mark. Heidi was Karl's sister. Elsie is his cousin. And, yes, Destiny Enterprises is a privately owned business empire based in Buenos Aires. Forbes has estimated the combined family resources at two hundred and ten billion dollars."

"Not exactly living on the streets, are they?"

"And I had to marry a girl whose father was a bricklayer."

Pitt said, "I don't understand why a woman of such affluence would stoop to committing petty burglary."

"When you get the answers, I hope you'll pass them on to me."

"Where is Elsie now?" asked Pitt.

"Under guard at a private clinic run by the Bureau on W Street, across from Mount Vernon College."

"Can I talk to her?"

"I see no problem from the Bureau's end, but you'll have to go through the doctor in charge of her case. His name is Aaron Bell. I'll call and clear your visit."

"Is she lucid?"

"She's conscious. You gave her a pretty hard rap on the head. Her concussion was just short of a skull fracture."

"I didn't hit her. It was her motorcycle."

"Whatever," said Helm, the humor obvious in his tone. "You won't get much out of her. One of our best interrogators tried. She's one tough lady. She makes a clam look talkative."

"Does she know her cousin is dead?"

"She knows. She also knows that Heidi's remains are lying in the clinic's morgue."

"That should prove interesting," Pitt said slowly.

"What will prove interesting?" Helm inquired.

"The look on Elsie's face when I tell her I'm the one who recovered Heidi's body from Antarctic waters and air-shipped it to Washington."

Almost immediately after hanging up the phone, Pitt left the NUMA building and drove over to the unmarked clinic used exclusively by the FBI and other national security agencies. He parked the '36 Ford cabriolet in an empty stall next to the building and walked through the main entrance. He was asked for his identification, and phone calls were made before he was allowed admittance. An administrator directed him to the office of Dr. Bell.

Pitt had actually met the doctor several times, not for care or treatment but during social functions to raise money for a cancer foundation that his father, Senator George Pitt, and Bell served on as directors. Aaron Bell was in his middle sixties, a hyper character, red-faced, badly overweight, and working under a blanket of stress. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and drank twenty cups of coffee. His outlook on life, as he often expressed it, was "Go like hell and go to the grave satisfied."

He emerged from behind his desk like a bear walking on its hind legs. "Dirk!" he boomed. "Good to see you. How's the senator?"

"Planning on running for another term."

"He'll never quit, and neither will I. Sit down. You're here about the woman who was brought in last night."

"Ken Helm called?"

"You wouldn't have crossed the threshold if he hadn't."

"The clinic doesn't look highly guarded."

"Stare cross-eyed at a surveillance camera and see what happens."

"Did she suffer any permanent brain damage?"

Bell shook his head vigorously. "One hundred percent after a few weeks. Incredible constitution. She's not built like most women who come through these doors."

"She it very attractive," said Pitt.

"No, no, I'm not talking about looks. This woman is a remarkable physical specimen, as is, or should I say was, the body of her cousin you shipped from the Antarctic."

"According to the FBI, they're cousins."

"Nonetheless, a perfect genetic match," said Bell seriously. "Too perfect."

"How so?"

"I attended the postmortem examination, then took the findings and compared the physical characteristics with the lady lying in a bed down the hall. There's more going on here than mere family similarities."

"Helm told me Heidi's body is here at the clinic."

"Yes, on a table in the basement morgue."

"Can't family members with the same genes, especially cousins, have a mirror image?" asked Pitt.

"Not impossible, but extremely rare," replied Bell.

"It's said that we all have an identical look-alike wandering somewhere in the world."

Bell smiled. "God help the guy who looks like me."

Pitt asked, "So where is this leading?"

"I can't prove it without months of examination and tests, and I'm going out on a limb with an opinion, but I'm willing to stake my reputation on the possibility that those two young ladies, one living, one dead, were developed and manufactured."

Pitt looked at him. "You can't be suggesting androids."

"No, no." Bell waved his hands. "Nothing so ridiculous."

"Cloning?"

"Not at all."

"Then what?"

"I believe they were genetically engineered."

"Is that possible?" asked Pitt, unbelieving. "Does the science and technology exist for such an achievement?"

"There are labs full of scientists working on perfecting the human body through genetics, but to my knowledge they're still in the mice-testing stage. All I can tell you is that if Elsie doesn't die in the same manner as Heidi, or fall under a truck, or get murdered by a jealous lover, she'll probably live to celebrate her hundred and twentieth birthday."

"I'm not at all sure I'd want to live that long," said Pitt thoughtfully. "Nor I," said Bell, laughing. "Certainly not in this old bod."

"May I see Elsie now?"

Bell rose from his desk chair and motioned for Pitt to follow him out of the office and down the hall. Since entering the clinic, the only two people Pitt had seen were the administrator in the lobby and Dr. Bell. The clinic seemed incredibly clean and sterile and devoid of life.

Bell came to a door with no guard outside, inserted a card into an electronic slot, and pushed it open. A woman was sitting up in a standard hospital bed, staring through a window whose view was interrupted by a heavy screen and a series of bars. This was the first time Pitt had seen Elsie in daylight, and he was awed by the incredible resemblance to her dead cousin. The same mane of blond hair, the same blue-gray eyes. He found it hard to believe they were merely cousins.

"Ms. Wolf," said Bell, in a cheery voice, "I've brought you a visitor." He looked at Pitt and nodded. "I'll leave you two alone. Try not to take too long."

There was no warning to Pitt about communicating with the doctor in case of a problem, and though he didn't see any TV cameras, Pitt knew without a doubt that their every movement and word was being monitored and recorded.

He pulled up a chair beside her bed and sat down, saying nothing for nearly a minute, staring into the eyes that seemed to peer through his head at a lithograph of the Grand Canyon hanging on the wall beyond. At last, he said, "My name is Dirk Pitt. I don't know if the name means anything to you, but it seemed to register with the commander of the U-2015 when we communicated with each other on an ice floe."

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but she remained silent. "I dove on the wreckage," Pitt continued, "and retrieved the body of your cousin, Heidi. Would you like me to arrange for her to be transported to Karl in Buenos Aires for proper burial in the Wolf private cemetery?"

Pitt was treading a narrow path, but he assumed that the Wolfs had a private cemetery.

This time he scored points. Her eyes went reflective as she tried to cut through his words. Finally, her lips pressed together with obvious anger, she began to tremble and move. "You!" she spat. "You are the one responsible for the deaths of our people in Colorado."

"Dr. Bell was wrong. You do have a tongue."

"You were also there when our submarine was sunk?" she asked, as if confused.

"I plead self-defense for my action in Colorado. And yes, I was on the Polar Storm when your sub went down, but I was not responsible for the incident. Blame the US. Navy if you must. If not for their timely intervention, your cousin and her bloody band of pirates would have sunk a harmless ocean research ship and killed more than a hundred innocent crewmen and scientists. Don't ask me to shed tears for Heidi. As far as I'm concerned, she and her crew got what they deserved."

"What have you done with her body?" she demanded.

"It's here in the clinic's morgue," he answered. "I'm told the two of you could have grown from the same pod."

"We are genetically unblemished," Elsie said arrogantly. "Unlike the rest of the human race."

"How did that come about?"

"It took three generations of selection and experimentation. My generation has physically perfect bodies and the mental capacity of geniuses. We are also exceedingly creative in the arts."

"Really?" Pitt said sarcastically. `And all this time I thought inbreeding generated imbeciles."

Elsie stared at Pitt for a long moment, then smiled coldly. "Your insults are meaningless. In a short time, you and all the other flawed individuals who walk the earth will be dead."

Pitt studied her eyes for a reaction. When he replied, it was with detached indifference. "Ah yes, the twin of the comet that destroyed the Amenes nine thousand years ago returns, strikes the earth, and decimates the human race. I already know all about that."

He almost missed it, but it was there. A brief glint in the eyes of elation mixed with rapture. The pure sense of evil about her seemed so concentrated he could reach out and touch it. It disturbed him. He felt as though she was keeping a secret far more menacing than any he could remotely conceive.

"How long did it take your experts to decipher the inscriptions?" she asked casually.

"Five or six days."

Her face grew smug. "Our people did it in three."

He was certain she was lying, so he continued to fence with her. "Is the Wolf family planning any festivities to celebrate the coming of doomsday?"

Elsie shook her head slowly. "We have no time for foolish revelry. Our labors have been spent in survival."

"Do you really think a comet will strike in the next few weeks?"

"The Amenes were very precise in their astronomical and celestial charts." There was a flick of the eyes from his face to the floor and a lack of conviction in her voice that made Pitt doubt her.

"So I've been told."

"We have… connections with some of the finest astronomers in Europe and the United States, who verified the Amenes' projections. All agreed that the comet's return was plotted and timed with amazing accuracy."

"So your family of uncharitable clones kept the news to themselves rather than warn the world," Pitt said nastily. "And your connections kept the astronomers from talking. Benevolence must not be in the Wolf dictionary."

"Why cause a worldwide panic?" she said carelessly. "What good would it do in the end? Better to let the people die unknowing and without mental anguish."

"You're all heart."

"Life is for those who are the fittest, and those who plan."

"And the magnificent Wolfs? What's to keep you from being killed along with the rest of the foul-smelling rabble?"

"We have been planning our survival for over fifty years," she said decisively. "My family will not be swept away by floods or burned by raging fires. We are prepared to weather the catastrophe and endure the aftermath."

"Fifty years," Pitt repeated. "Is that when you found a chamber with the Amenes inscriptions telling of their near extinction after the comet's impact?"

"Yes," she answered simply.

"How many chambers are there in total?"

"The Amenes told of six."

"How many did your family find?"

"One."

"And we found two. That leaves three that remain undiscovered."

"One was lost in Hawaii after a volcano spewed tons of lava into it, effectively destroying it. Another disappeared forever during a great earthquake in Tibet during A.D. 800. Only one remains unfound. It's supposed to lie somewhere on the slopes of Mount Lascar in Chile."

"If it remains unfound," said Pitt carefully, "why did you murder a group of college students who were exploring a cave on the mountain?"

She glared at him, but refused to answer.

"Okay, let me ask you the location of the Amenes chamber your family discovered?" he pressed her.

She gazed at him almost as if he were a lost soul. "The earliest inscriptions we found of the Amenes are inside a temple that stands amid the ruins of what once was one of their port cities. You need not ask more, Mr. Pitt. I have said all I'm going to say, except that I suggest you bid farewell to your friends and loved ones. Because very soon now, what is left of your torn and shattered bodies will be floating in a sea that never existed before."

That said, Elsie Wolf closed her eyes and shut herself off from Pitt and the world around her as effectively as if she had entered a deep freeze.

28

By the time Pitt left the clinic it was late in the afternoon, and he decided to head for his hangar rather than return to the NUMA building. He was moving slowly through the rush-hour traffic that crawled over the Rocheambeau Bridge before finally exiting onto the Washington Memorial Parkway. He was just approaching the gate at the airport maintenance road leading to his hangar when the Globalstar phone signaled an incoming call.

"Hello."

"Hi, lover," came the sultry voice of Congresswoman Loren Smith.

"I'm always happy to hear from my favorite government representative."

"What are you doing tonight?"

"I thought I'd whip up a smoked salmon omelet, take a shower, and watch TV," Pitt answered, as the guard waved him through, staring at the '36 Ford with envy in his eyes.

"Bachelors lead dull lives," she said teasingly.

"I gave up barhopping when I turned twenty-one."

"Sure you did." She paused to answer a question from one of her aides. "Sorry about that. A constituent called to complain about potholes in the road in front of his house."

"Congresswomen lead dull lives," he retorted.

"Just for being testy, you're taking me to dinner at St. Cyr's."

"You have good taste," said Pitt. "That will set me back a month's wages. What's the occasion?"

"I have a rather thick report on Destiny Enterprises sitting on my desk and it's going to cost you big-time."

"Did anybody ever tell you, you're in the wrong business?"

"I've sold my soul to pass legislation more times than any hooker has sold her body to clients."

Pitt pulled to a stop at a large hangar entry door and pressed a code into a remote transmitter. "I hope you have reservations. St. Cyr's isn't known for taking commoners off the street."

"I did a favor for the chef once. Trust me, we'll have the best table in the house. Pick me up in front of my place at seven-thirty."

"Can you get me a discount on the wine?"

"You're cute," said Loren softly. "Goodbye."

Pitt wasn't in the mood to wear a tie to a fancy restaurant. As he pulled the Ford up in front of Loren's town house in Alexandria, he was wearing gray slacks, a dark blue sport coat, and a saffron-colored turtleneck sweater. Loren spotted him and the car from her fourth-story balcony, waved, and came down. Chic and glamorous, she wore a charcoal lace-and-beadwork cardigan with palazzo pants pleated in the front under a black, knee-length imitation fur coat. She carried a briefcase whose charcoal leather matched her outfit. She'd seen from the balcony that Pitt had put the top up on the Ford, and so, since she did not have to worry about windblown hair, she didn't bother to wear a hat.

Pitt stood on the sidewalk and opened the door for her. "Nice to see there are still a few gentlemen left," she said, with a flirty smile.

He leaned down and kissed her cheek. "I come from the old school."

The restaurant was only two miles away, just across the Capitol Beltway into Fairfax County, Virginia. The valet parking attendant's face lit up like a candle inside a Halloween pumpkin when he spotted the hotrod roll up in front of the elegant restaurant. The mellow tone from the exhaust pipes sent quivers up his spine.

He handed Pitt a claim check, but before he drove away, Pitt leaned in and scanned the odometer. "Something wrong, sir?" asked the parking attendant.

"Just reading the mileage," replied Pitt, giving the young man a knowing look.

His dream of taking the hot rod out for a spin while its owner was inside having dinner now suddenly dashed, the attendant drove the car slowly into the lot and parked it next to a Bentley.

St. Cyr's was an intimate dining experience. Established in an eighteenth-century colonial brick house, the owner-chef had come to Washington by way of Cannes and Paris after having been discovered by a pair of wealthy Washington developers with palates for fine food and wine. They'd bankrolled the restaurant, giving the chef a half interest. The dining room was decorated in deep blues and golds, with Moroccan-style decor and furniture. There were no more than twelve tables served by six waiters and four busboys. What Pitt especially enjoyed about St. Cyr's was the acoustics. With heavy curtains and miles of fabric on the walls, all sounds of conversation were cut to a bare minimum, unlike most restaurants, in which you couldn't hear what the person across the table was saying and the din literally ruined any enjoyment of a gourmet meal.

After being seated at a table in a small private alcove off the main dining room by the maitre d', Pitt asked Loren, "Wine or champagne?"

"Why ask?" she said. "You know a good Cabernet puts me in a vulnerable mood."

Pitt ordered a bottle of Martin Ray Cabernet Sauvignon from the wine steward and settled comfortably into the leather chair. "While we're waiting to order, why don't you tell me what you've found on Destiny Enterprises?"

Loren smiled. "I should make you feed me first."

"Another politician on the take," he said satirically.

She leaned down, opened her briefcase and retrieved several file folders. She passed them discreetly under the table. "Destiny Enterprises is definitely not a corporation that delights in public relations, promotional programs, or advertising. They have never sold stock, and are wholly owned by the Wolf family, which consists of three generations. They do not produce, nor do they distribute, profit-and-loss statements or annual reports. Obviously, they could never operate with such secrecy in the U.S., Europe, or Asia, but they wield enormous clout with the Argentine government, beginning with the Perons soon after World War Two."

Pitt was reading the opening pages of the file when the wine arrived. After the wine steward poured a small amount in his glass, he studied the color, inhaled the scent, and then took a mouthful. He did not daintily sip the Cabernet but gently swirled it around in his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. He looked up at the wine steward and smiled. "I'm always amazed at the finesse yet the solid soul of a Martin Ray Cabernet Sauvignon."

"A very excellent choice, sir," said the wine steward. "Not many of our patrons know it exists."

Pitt indulged in another taste of the wine before continuing his study of the file. "Destiny Enterprises seems to have materialized out of nowhere in 1947."

Loren stared into the deep, fluid red in her wineglass. "I hired a researcher to examine Buenos Aires newspapers of the time. There was no mention of Wolf in the business sections. The researcher could only pass on rumors that the corporation was made up of high Nazi officials who had escaped Germany before the surrender."

"Admiral Sandecker talked about the flow of the Nazis and their stolen wealth by U-boat to Argentina during the final months of the war. The operation was orchestrated by Martin Bormann."

"Wasn't he killed trying to escape during the battle of Berlin?" asked Loren.

"I don't believe it was ever proven the bones they found many years later were his."

"I read somewhere that the greatest unsolved mystery of the war was the total disappearance of the German treasury. Not one Deutschmark or scrap of gold was ever found. Could it be Bormann survived and smuggled the country's stolen wealth to South America?"

"He heads the list of suspects," answered Pitt. He began sifting through the papers in the files, but found little of interest. Most were merely newspaper articles reporting business dealings of Destiny Enterprises that were too large to keep confidential. The most detailed analysis came from a CIA report. It listed the various activities and projects the corporation was involved in, but few if any details of their operations.

"They seem quite diversified," said Pitt. "Vast mining operations for recovering gemstones, gold, platinum, and other rare minerals. Their computer software development and publishing division is the fourth largest in the world behind Microsoft. They're heavily into oil field development. They're also a world leader in nanotechnology."

"I'm not sure what that is," said Loren.

Before Pitt could answer, the waiter approached the table for their order. "What catches your fancy?" he asked her.

"I trust your taste," she said softly. "You order for me."

Pitt did not attempt to pronounce the menu courses in French. He held to straight English. "For the hors d'oeuvres, we'll have your house pate with truffles, followed by vichyssoise. For the main course, the lady will have the rabbit stewed in white wine sauce, while I'll try the sweetbreads in brown butter sauce."

"How can you eat sweetbreads?" Loren asked, with an expression of distaste.

"I've always had a craving for good sweetbreads," Pitt replied simply. "Where were we? Oh yes, nanotechnology. From what little I know on the subject, nanotechnology is a new science that attempts to control the arrangement of atoms, enabling the construction of virtually anything possible under natural law. Molecular repairs inside human bodies will be possible and manufacturing will be revolutionized. Nothing will be impossible to produce cheaply and with quality. Incredibly tiny machines that can reproduce themselves will be programmed to create new fuels, drugs, metals, and building products that would not be possible with normal techniques. I've heard that mainframe computers can be built with a volume as small as a cubic micron. Nanotechnology has to be the wave of the future."

"I can't begin to imagine how it works."

"It's my understanding the goal is to create what nanotechnology experts call an assembler, a submicroscopic robot with articulated arms that are operated by computers. Supposedly they could construct large, atomically precise objects by controlled chemical reactions, molecule by molecule. The assemblers can even be designed to replicate themselves. Theoretically, you could program your assemblers to build you a new custom set of golf clubs out of metals yet to be developed, a television set of a particular shape to fit a cabinet, even an automobile or an airplane, including special fuel to run them."

"Sounds fantastic."

"The advances over the next thirty years should prove mind boggling."

"That explains the file on Destiny's project in Antarctica," said Loren, pausing to sip her wine. "You'll find it in file 5-A."

"Yes, I see it," acknowledged Pitt. "An extensive facility for mining minerals from the sea. They have to be the first to have ever profitably exploited seawater for valuable minerals."

"It seems Destiny's engineers and scientists have developed a molecular device capable of separating minerals such as gold from seawater."

"I assume the program is successful?"

"Very," said Loren. "According to Swiss depository records obtained covertly by the CIA- I swore to them on a thousand Bibles that this information would remain strictly confidential- Destiny's deposits of gold into Swiss vaults come close to matching the hoard at Fort Knox."

"Their retrieval of gold would have to be held on a select level, or world gold prices would plummet."

"According to my sources, Destiny's management has yet to sell so much as an ounce."

"For what purpose would they squirrel such an enormous hoard away?"

Loren shrugged. "I have no idea."

"Maybe they've slowly and discreetly sold to keep market prices up. If they suddenly flooded the market with tons of gold, their profits would go down the toilet."

The waiter arrived with their pate with truffles. Loren took a dainty forkful into her mouth and made a gratified expression. "This is wonderful."

"Yes, it is good," Pitt agreed.

They relished the pate in silence, finishing the last morsel before Loren resumed the conversation. "Although the CIA has accumulated a mass of data on a neo-Nazi movement after the war, they did not find evidence of an underground conspiracy involving Destiny Enterprises or the Wolf family."

"Yet according to this," said Pitt, holding up a stapled file of papers, "it was no secret that the loot stolen by the Nazis from the treasures of Austria, Belgium, Norway, France, and the Netherlands, plus much of the gold and financial assets of the Jews, were slipped into Argentina by U-boats after the war."

Loren nodded. "Most of the gold and other hard assets were converted to currency and then diverted through central banks."

"And the holder of the funds?"

"Who else? Destiny Enterprises, soon after it was organized in 1947. What's strange is that there is no record of a Wolf on their board of directors in the early years."

"They must have taken control later," said Pitt. "I wonder how the family shoved aside the old Nazi who fled Germany in 1945?"

"Good question," Loren agreed. "Over the past fifty-four years, the Destiny empire has grown to where their power influences world banks and governments to an unimaginable degree. They literally own Argentina. One of my aides has an informant who claims a significant amount of money goes into campaign funds for members of our own Congress. That's probably the reason why no government investigation of Destiny Enterprises ever got off the ground."

"Their tentacles also reach into the pockets of our honored senators and House representatives, and many of the people who have served in the White House."

Loren held up both hands. "Don't look at me. I never knowingly got a dime under the table from Destiny for my campaign funds."

Pitt threw her a foxlike look. "Really?"

She kicked him under the table. "Stop that. You know perfectly well I've never been on the take. I happen to be one of the most respected members of Congress."

"Maybe the prettiest, but your esteemed colleagues don't know you like I do."

"You're not funny."

The bowls of vichyssoise were set before them and they savored the taste, enhanced by an occasional sip of the Martin Ray Cabernet. The wine didn't take long to course through their veins and mellow their minds, and the attentive waiter was always nearby to refill their glasses.

"It's beginning to look like what the Nazis couldn't achieve by mass slaughter, destruction, and warfare, they're accomplishing through economic power," said Loren.

"World domination is passé," Pitt disagreed. "The Chinese leaders might have it in the back of their heads, but as their economy builds the country into a superpower, they'll come to realize that a war will only bring it crashing down. Since Communist Russia fell, the major wars of the future will be economic. The Wolfs understand that economic power ultimately leads to political power. They have the resources to buy whatever and whoever they want. The only question is what direction are they headed in."

"Did you get anything out of the woman you apprehended last night?"

"Only that doomsday is just around the corner, and the entire human race, with the exception of the Wolf family, of course, will be wiped out when a comet strikes the earth."

"You don't buy that?" asked Loren.

"Do you?" Pitt said cynically. `A thousand doomsdays have come and gone with little more upheaval than a passing rain shower. Why the Wolfs are disseminating such a myth is a mystery to me."

"What do they base their reasoning on?"

"The predictions of the ancient race of people known as the Amenes."

"You can't be serious," she said, bewildered. "A family as affluent and shrewd as the Wolfs buying a myth from a race that died out thousands of years ago?"

"That's what the inscriptions said in the chambers we found in the Indian Ocean and Colorado."

"Admiral Sandecker briefly mentioned your discoveries in our phone conversation before I picked you up at the airport, but you've yet to tell me about your discoveries."

Pitt made a helpless gesture with his hands. "I haven't had a chance."

"Maybe I should begin putting my affairs in order."

"Before you prepare to meet your maker, wait until we run it by astronomers who track asteroids and comets."

The soup dishes were removed and their entrees were placed on the table. The chef's presentations of both the stewed rabbit and the sweetbreads were works of art. Pitt and Loren admired the sight in anticipation of the taste. They were not disappointed.

"The rabbit was an excellent choice," she said between mouthfuls. "It's delicious."

Pitt had an expression of ecstasy on his face. "When I'm served sweetbreads from a master chef, I hear bells with every bite. The sauce is a triumph."

"Try my rabbit," said Loren, holding up her plate.

"Care to try my sweetbreads?" queried Pitt.

"No, thank you," she said, wrinkling her nose. "I'm not keen on internal organs."

Fortunately, the portions were not as large as dishes served in lesser restaurants, and they did not feel stuffed when it was time for dessert. Pitt ordered the peaches cardinal- poached peaches with raspberry puree. Later, over Remy Martin brandy, they resumed their discussion.

"None of what I've seen or heard about the Wolfs makes sense," said Pitt. "Why amass a fortune if they think their financial empire will go up in smoke after the comet's impact?"

Loren swirled the brandy in her glass, staring at the golden sparkle of the liquid in front of the light from the table's candle. "Perhaps they intend to survive the catastrophe."

"I've heard that from Elsie Wolf and one of their assassins in Colorado," said Pitt. "But how can they survive a worldwide disaster better than anyone else?"

"Did you read file eighteen?" Loren asked.

Pitt did not immediately answer, but sifted through the folders until he found the file marked "eighteen." He opened it and read. After two or three minutes, he looked up and stared into Loren's violet eyes. "Is this verified?"

She nodded. "It's as though Noah built an entire fleet of arks."

"Four colossal ships," Pitt said slowly. "One passenger liner, actually a floating community, six thousand feet in length by fifteen hundred feet wide, thirty-two stories high, displacing three and a half million tons." He looked up, his brow furrowed. "A fanciful concept, but hardly practical."

"Read the rest of it," said Loren. "It gets better."

"The gigantic oceangoing vessel has a large hospital, schools, entertainment centers, state-of-the-art engineering technologies. An airport with an extensive runway on the upper deck will house and maintain a small fleet of jet aircraft and helicopters, and living quarters and office facilities will accommodate five thousand passengers and crew" Pitt shook his head in disbelief. "A huge vessel like that should hold at least fifty thousand people."

"Actually, twice that number."

"Check out the other three vessels."

Pitt continued reading. "They also have the same mammoth dimensions. One is a cargo and maintenance vessel, housing machinery and manufacturing facilities with an immense cargo of vehicles, construction machinery, and building materials. The second is a veritable zoo-"

"See," Loren interrupted. "There is an ark."

"The last vessel is a supertanker built to carry tremendous amounts of oil, natural gas, and various other fuels." Pitt closed the folder and gazed at Loren. "I heard such vessels were on the drawing boards, but I had no idea they were actually built, and certainly not by Destiny Enterprises."

"The hulls were built in sections and then towed to a secluded shipyard owned by Destiny Enterprises on an isolated fjord on the southern tip of Chile. There, the exterior superstructure and the interior build-out was completed, and the ships furnished and loaded. Estimates state the passengers and crews of the fleet should be self-sufficient, with enough food and supplies to last them twenty or more years."

"Haven't outsiders visited the vessels? Hasn't the news media written articles on what has to be the world's largest seagoing vessels?"

"Read the CIA's report on the shipyard," explained Loren. "The area is heavily restricted and patrolled by a small army of security guards. No outsiders get in or get out. The shipyard workers and their families are housed in a small community ashore without ever leaving the ships or the yard. Surrounded by the Andes, a hundred mountainous islands, and two peninsulas, the only way in and out of the fjord is by sea or aircraft."

"The investigation by the CIA seems cursory. They haven't studied the Destiny Enterprises project in depth."

Loren finished the last sip of her brandy. `An agent assigned to brief my office claimed the agency did not conduct a major investigation because they saw no threat to United States security or interests."

Pitt stared thoughtfully beyond the walls of the restaurant. "Al Giordino and I were in a Chilean fjord several years ago during a search for a liner hijacked by terrorists. The hijackers had hidden the ship near a glacier. From what I recall of the islands and waterways north of the Straits of Magellan, there are no channels wide and deep enough to permit passage of such gargantuan vessels."

"Maybe they were not intended to sail the seven seas," suggested Loren. "Maybe they were built simply to ride out the predicted cataclysm."

"As fantastic as it seems," said Pitt, attempting to accept the incredible concept, "you're close to the truth. The Wolfs must have spent billions betting on the end of the world."

Pitt became quiet, and Loren could see he was absorbed in his thoughts. She rose from the table and walked to the ladies' room, allowing him time to sift through the conceptions running through his head. Although he found it difficult to accept, he began to see why the later generations of the Wolf family were genetically engineered.

The old Nazis who'd fled Germany were long gone, but they had left in their place a family of superpeople who would be strong enough to survive the coming cataclysm and then take over what was left of the civilized world and rebuild it into a new one, controlled and directed under their exacting standards of superiority.

29

The gray granite cliffs of the gorge rose like giant shadows before they were blotted out by the night sky. Below, the blue-white ice of the glacier glittered and flashed from the glow of a three-quarter moon. The 11,800-foot snow-mantled peak of Cerro Murallon, starlit and cloud-free, soared above the western slopes of the southern Andes before dropping steeply toward the sea, as its chasms became filled with age-old glaciers from a distant past. The night was clear and sharp and the sky ablaze. Revealed from the light of the Milky Way, a small vehicle darted through the menacing walls of the gorge like a bat scanning a desert canyon for food.

It was fall in the Southern Hemisphere, and light snow had already fallen on the upper elevations. Tall conifers marched up the rugged slopes before stopping at the timberline, where the barren rocks took over and rose to the sharp and jagged mountain summits. There wasn't a man-made light to be seen in any direction. Pitt imagined that the scene in daylight would have been one of majestic beauty, but at ten o'clock at night, the steep cliffs and rocky crags became dark and threatening.

The Moller M400 Skycar wasn't much larger than a jeep Cherokee, but it was as stable in flight as a much larger aircraft, and capable of being piloted down city streets and parked in a residential garage. The aerodynamic design, with its sloping, conical bow, gave it a look somewhere between a General Motors car of the future and a rocket fighter out of Star Wars. The four lift/thrust nacelles each held two counter-rotating engines, enabling the Moller to lift off the ground like a helicopter and move horizontally like a conventional aircraft at a cruising speed of three hundred miles an hour, with an operational ceiling of 30,000 feet. Lose an engine or two and it could still land safely without discomfort to the passengers. Even if it suffered a catastrophic component failure, dual airframe parachutes would be deployed to lower the Skycar and its occupants to the ground, undamaged and unhurt.

Sensors and fail-safe systems protected against all errors in the flight mechanisms or computers. The vehicle's four computers constantly monitored all systems, and maintained automatic control on a preset flight path directed by Global Positioning System satellites that guided it over rivers and mountains and through valleys and canyons. The enormously efficient guidance system eliminated the need for a pilot.

Pitt's view of the environment outside the cockpit was limited. He seldom bothered to stare through the canopy. He didn't care to see the plane's shadow under the dim light from the moon whisking over the uneven rocks below, flitting over the tops of the trees, lifting over sharp rises before they could be seen ahead. He especially wasn't interested in seeing how the plane and its shadow almost blended into one. He could watch the flight's path through the virtual reality topographical display, while the automatic navigation equipment flew the Skycar to its preprogrammed destination. Turbulence was dampened by the quick, automatic reaction of the vanes below the engines commanded by the automatic stabilization system.

Pitt found it disconcerting to sit with his arms crossed while the aircraft swept in and around mountains in the dead of night without the slightest assistance from a human brain and hands. He had little choice but to put his trust in the computer guidance system and let it do the flying. If Giordino, seated next to him, was unduly concerned about the computer failing to avoid collision with the side of a mountain, no trace of it showed in his face. Giordino calmly read an adventure novel under a cockpit light, while Pitt turned his attention to a nautical chart showing the underwater depths of the fjord leading to the Wolf shipyard.

There was no plan to fly at safe heights above the tallest of the peaks. This was a stealth mission. The powerful, efficient rotary thrusters were taking them to their destination well out of sight of radar and laser detection.

Both men's bodies were sweating up a storm inside their DUI CF200 series dry suits, which were worn over radiant insulating underwear, but neither of them complained. By dressing for cold-water diving before the flight, they saved time changing after touchdown.

Pitt punched in a code and read the numbers on the box. "Two hundred and twelve miles since we lifted off the ship at Punta Entrada outside of Santa Cruz."

"How much farther?" asked Giordino without looking up from the pages of his novel.

"A little less than fifty miles and another fifteen minutes should put us in the hills above the Wolf shipyard." The exact landing site had been programmed into the computer from an enhanced photo taken from a spy satellite.

"Just enough time to knock out another chapter."

"What's so interesting that you can't tear yourself away from the book?"

"I'm just to the part where the hero is about to rescue the gorgeous heroine who is within seconds of being ravished by the evil terrorists."

"I've read that plot before," Pitt said wearily. He refocused his eyes on the virtual reality display that pictured the terrain ahead in extreme detail through a powerful night-vision scope mounted in the nose of the M400. It was like traveling inside a pinball machine. The mountainous landscape approached and flashed past in a blur. A box in the corner displayed speed, altitude, fuel range, and distance to their destination in red and orange digital numbers. Pitt recalled using a similar system on the aircraft they had flown searching for the hijacked cruise ship over an area of the Chilean fjords not more than a hundred miles south of their present position.

Pitt looked out the bubble canopy at the glacier below. He breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the worst of the mountains fall behind. The moon's rays reflected on a smooth glacier with irregular crevasses slicing through its surface every half mile. The ice spread wider as it flowed toward its rendezvous with the fjord before melting and emptying into the sea.

They were through the worst of the mountains now, and Pitt could discern lights on the horizon beyond the glacier. He knew they were not stars, because they were clustered and twinkling at too low an altitude. He also knew that because of the crisp atmosphere, the lights were much farther away than they looked. Then gradually, almost imperceptibly, he became aware of other light clusters against a plain of pure black. Another five minutes and they were solidly, unmistakably there, the lights of four monstrous ships that blazed like small cities in the night.

"Our objective is in sight," he said evenly, without emotion.

"Damn!" muttered Giordino. "Just when I was coming to the exciting climax."

"Relax. You have another ten minutes to finish it. Besides, I already know how it comes out."

Giordino looked over at him. "You do?"

Pitt nodded seriously. "The butler did it."

Giordino gave a menacing Fu Manchu squint to his eyes and went back to his book.

The Moller M400 did not fly directly over the lights of the shipyard and the great ships nearby in the fjord. Instead, as if it had a mind of its own, which it did, it banked on a course southwest. Pitt could do little but gaze at the blaze of lights rising on the starboard side of the aircraft.

"Finished." Giordino sighed. "And in case you're interested, it wasn't the butler who killed ten thousand people, it was a mad scientist" He stared out the canopy at the thousands of lights. "Won't they pick us up on their detection systems?"

"A slim possibility at best. The Moller M400 is so small, it's invisible to all but the most sophisticated military radar."

"I hope you're right," said Giordino, stretching. "I'm very modest when it comes to welcome committees."

Pitt beamed a little penlight on his chart. "At this point the computer is giving us a choice between swimming underwater for two miles or walking four miles across a glacier to reach the shipyard."

"Hiking across a glacier in the dark doesn't sound inviting," said Giordino. "What if Mrs. Giordino's little boy falls down a crevasse and isn't found for ten thousand years?"

"Somehow I can't picture you lying in a display case in a museum, being stared at by thousands of people."

"I see nothing wrong with being a star attraction from another time," Giordino said pompously.

"Did it ever occur to you that you'd probably be viewed in the nude? You'd hardly set an example as a manly specimen from the twenty-first century."

"I'll have you know I can hold my own with the best of them."

All further conversation came to an end as the Moller's ground speed began to fall away and it lost altitude. Pitt elected to make their approach underwater, and he programmed the computer, instructing it to land at a preplanned site near the shoreline that had been pinpointed by satellite photo analysts at the CIA. Minutes later, the M400's cascade vane systems on the engines altered their thrust through the duct exits and the craft came to a complete stop, hovering in the air in preparation for setting down. All Pitt could see in the darkness was that they were about thirty feet over a narrow ravine. Then the Moller descended and lightly touched the hard-rock ground. Seconds later, the engines ceased their revolutions and the systems shut down. The navigation readout proclaimed that it had landed only four inches off its programmed mark.

"I've never felt so useless in my life," said Pitt.

"It does tend to make one feel redundant," Giordino added. Only then did he peer out of the canopy. "Where are we?"

"In a ravine about fifty yards from the fjord."

Pitt unlatched the canopy, raised it, and stepped out of the flying vehicle onto the hard ground. The night was not silent. The sounds of shipyard machinery working around the clock could be heard over the water. He opened the rear seat and storage section and began passing the dive gear to Giordino, who laid the air tanks, back-mounted buoyancy compensators, weight belts, fins, and masks in a parallel row. They both pulled on their boots and hoods, slipped into the compensators, and hoisted the twin air tanks onto each other's back. Both carried chest packs, containing handguns, lights, and Pitt's trusty Globalstar phone. The final items of equipment they removed from the M400 were two Torpedo 2000 diver propulsion vehicles, with dual battery-powered hulls, attached in parallel, that looked like small rockets. Their top speed under water was 4.5 miles an hour, with a running time of one hour.

Pitt strapped a small directional computer, similar to the one he'd used in the Pandora Mine, on his left arm and set it to lock in on the GPS satellites. He then punched in a code that translated the data onto a tiny monitor that showed their exact position in relation to the shipyard and the fjord's channel leading to it.

Giordino adjusted a spectral imaging scope over his face mask and switched it on. The landscape suddenly materialized before his eyes, slightly fuzzy but distinct enough to see pebbles on the ground half an inch in diameter. He turned to Pitt.

"Time to go?"

Pitt nodded. "Since you can see our way on land, you lead off and I'll take over when we reach the water."

Giordino simply gave a brief nod and said nothing. Until they could safely penetrate the security defenses around the shipyard, there was nothing to say. Pitt did not require telepathic powers to know what was in Giordino's mind. He was mentally reliving the same thing as Pitt.

They were back six thousand miles in distance and twenty hours in time in Admiral Sandecker's office in the NUMA headquarters, talking their way into what had to be a scheme born under a cloud of madness.

"MISTAKES were made," said the admiral solemnly. "Dr. O'Connell is missing."

"I thought she was under round-the-clock surveillance by security agents," Pitt said, annoyed at Ken Helm.

"All anyone knows at this point is that she drove her daughter to get some ice cream. While the wards sat outside the store in their car, Dr. O'Connell and her daughter went inside and never came out. It seems impossible that such a spur-of-the-moment event by O'Connell could be known in advance by the abductors."

"Meaning the Wolfs." Pitt slammed his fist on the table. "Why do we continually underestimate these people?"

"I suppose you'll be even less happy to hear the rest," Sandecker said somberly.

Pitt looked at him, his face clouded with exasperation. "Let me guess. Elsie Wolf has disappeared from the clinic, along with the body of her cousin, Heidi."

Sandecker wiped an imaginary speck from the polished surface of the conference table. "Believe me, it must have taken a magician," said FBI agent Ken Helm. "The clinic has the latest technology in security-detection equipment."

"Didn't your surveillance cameras reveal her escape?" asked Pitt irritably. "Elsie obviously didn't walk through the front door with her dead cousin thrown over her shoulder."

Helm gave a brief tilt of his head. "The cameras were fully operational, and the monitors observed every second. I'm sorry- no, shocked- to say that no trace of the breakout was recorded."

"These people must have the ability to slip through cracks," said Giordino, who had seated himself at the opposite end of the table from Sandecker. "Or else they developed a pill for invisibility."

"Neither," said Pitt. "They're shrewder than we are."

"All that we have, and it's fifty percent speculation," Helm admitted, "is that an executive jet belonging to Destiny Enterprises took off from an airport near Baltimore and set a course due south-"

"To Argentina," Pitt finished.

"Where else would they take her?" added Giordino. "Doesn't figure they'd keep her in the States, where they have little or no control over government investigative agencies."

Ron Little of the CIA cleared his throat. "The question is why? At one time we were led to believe they wanted to eliminate Mr. Pitt, Mr. Giordino, and Dr. O'Connell because of their discoveries of the chamber in Colorado and its inscriptions. But now, too many people are knowledgeable about the messages left by the ancient people. So the effort to keep it secret becomes immaterial."

"The only practical answer is that they need her expertise," suggested Helm.

"When I asked Elsie Wolf how many Chambers the Amenes had built, she claimed there was a total of six," Pitt said. "We had found two and they had found one. Of the others, two were destroyed by natural causes. Only one remains unfound, and she said it was somewhere in the Andes of Peru, but the directions were vague. I'll bet that despite all the experts in their computer software division, they couldn't crack the code giving instructions on how to find the remaining lost chamber."

"So they snatched her, thinking she could crack the code," said Sandecker.

"Makes sense," Helm said slowly.

Giordino leaned across the table. "Knowing Pat only a short time as I do, I have my doubts she'd cooperate."

Little smiled. "They also have Dr. O'Connell's fourteen-year-old daughter. All the Wolfs have to do is threaten to harm her."

"She'll talk," Helm said gravely. "She has no choice."

"So we go in and get her out," said Pitt.

Little looked at him doubtfully. "We have no way of knowing exactly where they're holding her."

"Their shipyard in Chile. The Wolfs are so maniacal about a coming doomsday that I'm betting the family has congregated on the ships in preparation for the deluge."

"I can provide you with satellite photos of the shipyard," said Little. "But I have to tell you, our analysts believe their security systems make the ships inaccessible and unapproachable by land, sea, or air."

"Then we'll go in underwater."

"You can expect underwater sensors."

"We'll find a way around that problem."

"I can't agree to this," Sandecker said quietly. "Too much is on the line for NUMA. This is a job for Special Operations Forces or a Navy SEAL team."

"Finding and rescuing Pat O'Connell and her daughter is only part of our plan," explained Pitt. "No one is better qualified than Al and I to investigate Destiny Enterprise's immense shipbuilding project. Less than a year ago, we performed a clandestine search under the hull of the former liner United States in a submersible at a shipyard in Hong Kong. In this circumstance, there has to be a method to the madness behind the Wolf family spending billions of dollars to build ships that can't reach the sea."

"The FBI can't help you on this one," said Helm. "It's half a world out of our territory."

Little nervously folded and unfolded his hands. "Other than providing information, I'm afraid my agency's hands are tied. The State Department would squelch any involvement by the CIA to intervene."

Pitt looked at Sandecker and smiled tightly. "It seems we're elected."

Sandecker did not smile in return. "Are you sure there is a desperate urgency to penetrate the Wolfs' operation?"

"I do," Pitt said heavily. "I also believe, and I can't tell you why, that there is a far more sinister purpose behind their undertaking. A purpose with horrible consequences."

THE narrow ravine meandered for a hundred yards before opening onto the waters of the fjord. The western shoreline sloped upward onto a peninsula with the strange name of Exmouth. The eastern coast was split by channels gouged by receding glaciers. The bright lights of the Wolf shipyard and those of the four floating cities reflected across the water on the north end of the fjord.

Giordino stopped and gestured for Pitt to stay in the shadows of a large rock. Two patrol boats running side by side on opposite sides of the channel moved across the black water, sweeping the surface and shore with searchlights. Giordino studied the patrol craft through his spectral imaging sensors, which turned darkness into a dusky daylight.

"You're the powerboat expert," said Pitt. "Can you identify them?"

"Thirty-eight-foot Dvichak Industries boat," Giordino replied easily. "Usually built as an oil spill response boat, but in this case they've loaded them with weapons. A good, tough, reliable boat. Not fast, about eighteen knots max, but the three-hundred-horsepower engine gives them enough torque to push and tow large barges. Serving as armed patrol boats is a new practice."

"Can you make out the type of guns?"

"Twin automatics, big millimeter, fore and aft," answered Giordino. "That's all I can recognize."

"Speed?"

"They seem to be loafing along at four knots, taking their time to look for intruders."

"Slow enough for our Torpedo 2000s to keep pace," said Pitt.

"What evil is swirling in your mind?"

"We wait underwater until they turn and begin sweeping back toward the shipyard," answered Pitt. "Then, when the boat passes over, we follow astern of its wake. The prop wash will screen our presence from their underwater security sensors."

"Sounds like a winner."

While the patrol boats continued their sweep to the south, Pitt and Giordino checked their equipment for a final time before slipping on dry hoods over their heads and gauntlet-style quarter-inch neoprene gloves onto their hands. Next they pulled their swim fins over the attached boots of their dry suits. They wore full face masks over their hoods, with Aquacom underwater communicators. Lastly, they each clipped a thin umbilical line to their weight belts. This line ran from one man to the other to keep them from becoming separated and losing one another in the pitch-black water.

After purging the air from his dry suit, Giordino gave a thumbs-up sign to indicate that he was ready. Pitt returned a brief wave and entered the water. The bottom near the shore was rocky and slippery with slimy growth. Loaded down by their equipment, they had to walk carefully to maintain their balance until the water rose to their waists and they could launch themselves forward and swim just beneath the surface. The bottom quickly fell away and Pitt descended to ten feet, where he paused and vented the last of the air out of his suit. He was breathing shallowly, and his descent gathered momentum until the water pressure compressed the suit and he added a small amount of air to maintain near-neutral buoyancy so he could hover motionlessly.

After he had moved fifty yards from shore, Pitt surfaced and looked south. The patrol boats had reached the end of their circuit and were turning to come back. "Our escort is heading our way," he spoke through the communicator. "I hope you're right about them doing four knots. That's about as fast as our propulsion vehicles can pull us."

Giordino's head slipped from the black water beside him. "It will be close, but I think we can hang with them. Let's hope they have no infrared underwater cameras."

"The fjord is at least half a mile wide- too large an area to be effectively covered by cameras." Pitt swung around and gazed at the lights to the north. "With three shifts working twenty-four hours, the Wolfs must be paying a king's treasury in wages."

"What do you bet they don't tolerate employee unions?"

"What do you figure the patrol boat's draft at?"

"Less than two feet, but it's the prop we worry about. It's probably almost three feet in diameter."

They watched closely as the patrol boat on their side of the fjord approached. Estimating its course, they swam out another ten yards and then curled over and swam down to twelve feet, before the searchlight could catch their heads protruding above the surface. Underwater, the boat's engine and thrashing propeller sounded four times louder than they did in the air. They rolled onto their backs and waited. They stared at the fjord's surface from below, watching the searchlight beams come closer at they danced over the icy water.

And then the boat's shadowed hull swept overhead, propelled by the big screw that churned past in a cyclone of froth and frenzied bubbles. Almost instantly, Pitt and Giordino pressed the magnetic speed switches against their stops, gripped the handles, and merged into the seething wake of the patrol boat.

At four knots, the prop wash was not as extreme as it would have been if the boat had been speeding along at its maximum of eighteen. They easily maintained a stabilized course behind the patrol boat without being pitched and buffeted. Their most pressing dilemma was that it was almost impossible to see where they were going. Fortunately, a bright stern light was visible to Pitt through the agitated water, so he kept his eyes locked on it, his hands gripped around the handles of the propulsion vehicle as he manhandled its torpedo-rounded bow so that it maintained a steady course through the turbulent water.

They trailed the boat for the next two miles, six feet below the cold surface water of the fjord, barely keeping pace, pushing their propulsion vehicles to their limits. They were draining the batteries at a rapid rate. Pitt could only hope they would have enough juice for the return trip to the ravine and the Skycar. His only consolation was that he and Giordino would not be easily visible so close to the surface under the brilliant lights from the shipyard. Though they were shielded by the wake and with their black dry suits blending into the freezing depths, a sharp-eyed crewman just might catch a glint of something suspicious. But no assault came. Pitt had correctly assumed that the crew had their eyes focused on the sweep of the searchlights forward.

"Can you hear me okay?" asked Pitt through the communicator inside his full face mask.

"Every syllable," replied Giordino.

"My monitor shows we've covered almost two miles. The boat should be ready to begin a turn for its next pass down the fjord. The second we feel the wake cut either left or right, we head down to a safe depth for a few minutes before surfacing to get sight bearings."

"I'll tag along," said Giordino, as calmly as if he were waiting for a bus to come around the corner.

In less than three minutes, the patrol boat began a wide 180-degree turn. Sensing the wake begin to curve, Pitt and Giordino dove to twenty feet and hung in the water until the searchlight faded into the distance and could no longer be seen from underwater. Slowly, cautiously, they kicked their fins and ascended, not knowing exactly where they would surface in the shipyard.

Both heads inched above the water surface, both pair of eyes scanning the surrounding water. They found themselves drifting only seventy-five yards from the first of four enormous docks that extended over a mile into the fjord. A colossal floating city was moored along the nearest dock, while the three other immense ships were tied beside parallel docks. They presented a dazzling sight as they glittered under the night sky. To Pitt and Giordino, staring up at the colossus from the water, its size was inconceivable. They could not conceive that such an unbelievable mass not only floated but could cruise the world's seas under its own power.

"Can it be real?" Giordino murmured in awe.

"Stupendous comes to mind," Pitt said, barely above a whisper.

"Where does one begin?"

"Forget the ships for now. We've got to find a place to get out of our dive gear before we hunt down the shipyard offices."

"You think Pat is kept there?"

"I don't know, but that's as good a place as any to start."

"We can move beneath the dock until we reach the rocks along the shore," said Giordino, holding up a hand to gesture at the water between the great dock pilings. "There are some darkened sheds off to the right. Hopefully, we can gain entry and change into our work clothes."

The work clothes were orange coveralls, similar to American prison uniforms, that had been custom-made from blown-up, enhanced photos of the workers. The pictures had been recorded by a spy satellite and given to Admiral Sandecker, along with detailed maps of the shipyard and a photo-analysis identification of the many buildings.

Punching a program into his direction finder, Pitt then held the monitor against his face mask and saw the pilings of the dock materialize before his eyes as if he were standing on dry land under a bright sun. He felt as if he were swimming through an underwater corridor with shimmering lights filtering down from above.

They moved over large pipes and electrical conduits that led from the shore to the end of the dock. Visibility had increased to over a hundred feet beneath the reflection of thousands of lights so bright it was as if they were along the Las Vegas strip.

Pitt swam, with Giordino at his side and slightly behind, over a bottom layered with smooth rocks. Gradually, the rock-strewn bottom began to rise until the divers were pulling themselves along by hand. Stopping and lying in the shallows, they saw steps leading up from a small concrete quay not far from the dock pilings. A single light globe cast its paltry glow over the quay, in contrast to the galaxy of lights illuminating from the shipyard, lighting up the front of small buildings that Pitt had memorized from the satellite photo as tool sheds. Only the side walls away from the bright lights were lost in the shadows.

"How does it look?" asked Giordino.

"Deserted," Pitt answered. "But there is no way of telling if anyone is lurking out there in the dark." He had no sooner spoken than Giordino, who was peering through his spectral image scope, spotted movement along the side of the nearest tool shed. He gripped Pitt's shoulder as a warning, as a uniformed guard with an automatic weapon slung over one shoulder emerged into the light and briefly glanced down at the quay. They lay unmoving and half submerged, partially hidden by the dock pilings.

As Pitt half expected, the guard looked bored, since he had never seen any suspicious person attempting to sneak into the shipyard. No burglar, thief, or vandal would have bothered to rob a facility over a hundred miles from the nearest town, and especially not one that was on the other side of several glaciers and the Andes Mountains. He soon turned and walked back into the gloom along the row of tool sheds.

Even before the guard faded into the darkness, Pitt and Giordino were on the quay, fins in hand, propulsion vehicles under their arms, stealing up the steps and moving hurriedly out from under the glare of the lights. The door to the first shed was unlocked, and they thankfully stepped inside. Pitt closed the door.

"Home at last," Giordino said blissfully.

Pitt found a painter's canvas tarpaulin and hung it over the only window, stuffing the edges into any cracks. Then he switched on his dive light and beamed it around the shed. It was filled with marine hardware- bins heaped with brass and chrome nuts, bolts and screws, shelves neatly arranged with electrical supplies consisting of coils and bales of wire, cabinets stacked with gallon cans of marine paint- all precisely organized and labeled.

"They certainly have a fetish for neatness."

"It carries down from their German ancestry."

Swiftly, they removed their dive equipment and dry suits. The orange uniforms were pulled from their chest packs and slipped on over their insulated underwear. Next, they removed their boots and replaced them with sneakers.

"I just had a thought," said Giordino apprehensively.

"Yes?"

"What if the Wolf personnel have names or some kind of advertising on their overalls the satellite photos didn't pick up?"

"That's not half our problem."

"What can be worse?"

"We're in South America," said Pitt mildly. "Neither of us can speak enough Spanish to ask directions to a toilet."

"I may not be fluent, but I know enough to fake it."

"Good. You do the talking, and I'll act as though I have a hearing disability."

While Giordino studied the photo map of the shipyard, figuring the shortest path to the Wolf corporate offices, Pitt dialed his Globalstar phone.

THE atmosphere inside Sandecker's condominium at the Watergate was heavy with foreboding. A fire shimmered in the fireplace, a warm, restful kind of fire that looked comforting though it didn't throw off a wave of heat. Three men were seated on opposite sofas across a low glass table holding a tray of coffee cups and a half-emptied pot. Admiral Sandecker and Ron Little sat and stared spellbound at an elderly man in his middle eighties with snow-white hair, who related a story never told before.

Admiral Christian Hozafel was a former highly decorated officer in the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. He'd served as captain aboard U-boats from June 1942 until July 1945, when he'd formally surrendered his boat in Veracruz, Mexico. After the war, Hozafel had bought a Liberty ship from the US. government under the Marshall Plan and had parlayed it over the next forty years into an extremely successful commercial shipping venture, eventually selling his interest and retiring when the Hozafel Marine fleet numbered thirty-seven ships. He'd become a U.S. citizen and now lived in Seattle, Washington, on a large estate on Whidbey Island, where he kept a two-hundred-foot brigantine that he and his wife sailed throughout the world.

"What you're saying," said Little, "is that the Russians did not find the scorched remains of Hitler's body outside his bunker in Berlin."

"No," Hozafel answered firmly. "There were no scorched remains. Adolf Hitler's and Eva Braun's bodies were burned over a period of five hours. Gallons of gasoline siphoned from wrecked vehicles around the Reich Chancellery were used to douse the bodies, which were lying in a crater that had been blown in the ground outside the bunker by a Soviet shell. The fire had been kept blazing until there were only ashes and a few tiny bits of bones. Loyal SS officers had then placed the ashes and bones in a bronze box. Nothing was left. Every bit of ash and every scrap of bone was carefully swept up and deposited in the box. Then the SS officers had placed the badly charred and unrecognizable bodies of a man and woman who had been killed during an air raid in the crater, where they were buried along with Hitler's dog Blondi, who had been forced to test the cyanide capsules later used by Hitler and Eva Braun."

Sandecker's eyes were fixed on Hozafel's face. "These were the bodies found by the Russians," Sandecker said.

The old former U-boat commander nodded. "They later claimed that dental records firmly established the identities of Hitler and Braun, but they knew better. For fifty years, the Russians carried out the hoax, while Stalin and other high Soviet officials thought Hitler had escaped to either Spain or Argentina."

"What became of the ashes?" asked Little.

"A light airplane landed near the bunker amid the flames and bursting Soviet shell fire as Russian armies closed in on the core of the city. The minute the pilot had swung his aircraft around for a fast takeoff, SS officers rushed forward and placed the bronze box in the cargo compartment. Without a word of conversation, the pilot gunned the engine and the plane raced down the runway, quickly vanishing in the pall of smoke rising above the city. The pilot refueled in Denmark and flew across the North Sea to Bergen, Norway. There he landed and turned over the bronze box to Captain Edmund Mauer, who in turn had the box carried aboard the U-621. Numerous other crates and boxes containing precious relics of the Nazi party, including the Holy Lance and the sacred Blood Flag and other prized art treasures of the Third Reich, were loaded aboard another submarine, the U-2015, under the command of Commander Rudolph Harger."

"This was all part of the plan conceived by Martin Bormann and given the code name of New Destiny," said Sandecker.

Hozafel looked at the admiral respectfully. "You are very well informed, sir."

"The Holy Lance and the Blood Flag," Sandecker pressed on. "They were included in the cargo of the U-2015?"

"Are you familiar with the Lance?" Hozafel inquired.

"I studied and wrote of the Lance as a class project at Annapolis," replied Sandecker. "Legends handed down from the Bible claim that a metalsmith by the name of Tubal Cain, a direct descendent of Cain, the son of Adam, forged the Lance from the iron found in a meteorite that was sent by God. This was sometime before 3000 B.C. The sacred lance was passed down from Tubal Cain to Saul, then to David and Solomon and other kings of Judea. Eventually, it came into the hands of the Roman conqueror Julius Caesar, who carried it in battle against his enemies. Before he was assassinated, he gave it to a centurion who had saved his life during the war with the Gauls. The son of the centurion passed it on to his son, who gave it to his son, who also served in the Roman legions as a centurion. It was he who stood on the hill and watched as Christ was crucified. The law of the land required that all crucified criminals be declared dead before the sun fell so they would not defile the coming Sabbath. The thieves on the crosses beside Jesus had their legs broken to speed up their demise. But when it was Jesus' turn, they found that he was already dead. The centurion, for reasons he took to the grave, pierced Jesus' side with his lance, causing an inexplicable stream of blood and water. As the holy blood spewed forth, the stained lance instantly became the most sacred relic in Christendom, next to the True Cross and the Holy Grail.

"The Holy Lance, as it became known, came down to King Charlemagne and was inherited by each of the following Holy Roman emperors over the next thousand years, before ending up in the hands of the Hapsburg emperors and being placed on display in the royal palace in Vienna."

"You must also know the fable behind the lance's power," said Hozafel, "the fable that drove Hitler to possess it."

" `Whosoever possesses this Holy Lance, and understands the powers it serves, holds in his hand the destiny of the world for good and evil,' " quoted Sandecker. "That's why Hitler stole the lance from Austria and held it until his dying day. He imagined that it would give him mastery of the world. If Hitler had never heard of the lance, it would be interesting to speculate if he might not have sought the path of power toward world domination. His final request was that it be hidden from his enemies."

"You mentioned a Blood Flag," said Little. "I'm not familiar with that relic, either."

"In 1923," Hozafel clarified, "Hitler attempted a coup against the existing German government in Munich. It was a disaster. The army fired into the crowd and several people were killed. Hitler escaped but was later tried and sentenced to jail, where he spent nine months writing Mein Kampf. The coup forever became known as the Munich Putsch. One of the early swastika Nazi flags was carried by one of the wouldbe revolutionaries, who was shot and was splattered with his blood. Naturally, it became the bloodstained symbol of a Nazi martyr. This Blood Flag was then used in ceremonies to consecrate future Nazi flags at party rallies by holding it against them as a blessing."

"And so the Nazi treasures were smuggled out of Germany, never to be seen again," said Little meditatively. "According to old CIA archive records, no trace of the lance and other Nazi hoards, including stolen art treasures and the loot from banks and national treasuries, was ever discovered."

"Your submarine," Sandecker said evenly, "was the U-699."

"Yes, I was her captain," Hozafel admitted. "Shortly after a number of influential Nazi military officers, high party officials, and Hitler's ashes were safely loaded on board, I sailed from Bergen in the wake of the U-2015. Until now, the disappearance of Hitler has been a mystery. I am telling you the story only at the urging of Mr. Little, and because of the possibility, as I understand it, that the world will be in upheaval after a coming comet strike. If true, this makes my sworn silence irrelevant."

"We're not ready to cry doom yet," said Sandecker. "What we want to know is if the Wolf family is truly spending untold sums of money building huge arks in a fanatical belief that a cataclysm will destroy the Earth and every living creature on it- or if they have some other motive."

"An interesting family, the Wolfs," Hozafel said pensively. "Colonel Urich Wolf was one of the most trusted men on Hitler's staff. He saw that Hitler's irrational orders and simplest wishes were carried out. The colonel was also the leader of a group of devoted Nazis who formed an elite group of SS officers dedicated to defending the faith. They called themselves the Guardians. Most of them died fighting in the final days of the war- all, that is, except Colonel Wolf and three others. He and his entire family- a wife, four sons and three daughters, two brothers, and three sisters and their families- sailed aboard the U2015. I was told by an old naval comrade who's still living that Wolf was the last of the few Guardians and created some kind of contemporary order called the New Destiny."

"It's true. They operate as a giant conglomerate known as Destiny Enterprises," Sandecker informed Hozafel.

The old German sea dog smiled. "So they gave up their uniforms and propaganda for business suits and profit-and-loss statements."

"No longer calling themselves Nazis, they've modernized their manifesto," said Little.

"They've also created a race of superior humans," said Sandecker. "Through genetic engineering, the new generation of Wolfs not only resemble each other in appearance but their physical anatomy and characteristics are identical. They have the minds of geniuses and an extraordinary immune system that enables them to live extremely long lives."

Hozafel stiffened visibly, and his eyes took on a look of deep dread. "Genetic engineering, you say? One of the canisters that was transported aboard my U-boat was kept frozen at all times." He drew a deep breath. "It contained the sperm and tissue samples taken from Hitler the week before he killed himself."

Sandecker and Little exchanged tense looks. "Do you think it's possible Hitler's sperm was used to procreate the later generation of Wolfs?" asked Little.

"I don't know," said Hozafel nervously. "But I fear it is a distinct prospect that Colonel Wolf, working with that monster at Auschwitz known as the Angel of Death, Dr. Joseph Mengele, may have experimented with Hitler's preserved sperm to impregnate the Wolf women."

"There's an abhorrent thought if I ever heard one," muttered Little. Suddenly a muted tone interrupted the conversation. Sandecker punched the speaker button on a phone in front of him on the coffee table.

"Is anyone home?" came Pitt's familiar voice.

"Yes," Sandecker answered tersely.

"This is the Leaning Pizza Tower. You called in an order?"

"I did."

"Did you want salami or ham on your pizza?"

"We would prefer salami."

"It's going in the oven. We will call when our delivery boy is on his way. Thank you for calling the Leaning Pizza Tower."

Then the line cut off and a dial tone came through the speaker.

Sandecker passed a hand across his face. When he looked up, his eyes were strained and grim. "They're inside the shipyard."

"God help them now," Little murmured softly.

"I don't understand," said Hozafel. "Was that some sort of code?" "Satellite phone calls are not immune to interception by the right equipment," explained little.

"Does this somehow have to do with the Wolfs?"

"I do believe, Admiral," Sandecker dropped his voice and answered slowly, "that it's time you heard our side of the story."

30

Pitt and Giordino had no sooner stepped through the door of the tool shed than a voice in Spanish hailed them from around the corner of the building.

Giordino calmly replied and made empty motions with his hands.

Evidently satisfied with the answer, the guard went back to walking his beat around the tool sheds. Pitt and Giordino waited a moment, then moved out onto the road that led toward the heart of the shipyard.

"What did the guard say, and what did you answer?" asked Pitt.

"He wanted a cigarette, and I told him we didn't smoke."

"And he didn't challenge you."

"He did not."

"Your Spanish must be better than I thought. Where did you learn it?"

"Haggling with the vendors on the beach at my hotel in Mazatlan," Giordino answered modestly. "And when I was in high school, I was taught a few phrases by my mother's cleaning girl."

"I'll bet that wasn't all she taught you," Pitt said ironically.

"That's another story," said Giordino, without missing a beat.

"From now on, we'd better lay off English when we're within earshot of the shipyard workers."

"Out of curiosity, what kind of side arm are you packing?"

"My old tried-and-true Colt .45. Why do you ask?"

"You've carried that old relic ever since I've known you. Why don't you trade it in for a more modern piece?"

"It's like an old friend," Pitt said quietly. "It's saved my tail more times than I can count." He nodded at the bulge in Giordino's coveralls. "How about you?"

"One of the Para-Ordnance 10+1s we took off those clowns at the Pandora Mine."

"At least you have good taste."

"And it was free, too," Giordino said, smiling. Then he nodded toward the main buildings of the shipyard. "Which one are we heading for?"

Pitt consulted his compact directional computer, whose monitor was programmed with the layout of the shipyard. He looked up the road running adjacent to the docks on one side and bordered on the other by giant metal warehouses. He pointed at a twenty-story building rising above the warehouses a good mile up the road. "The tall building on the right."

"I've never seen a shipbuilding facility this big," said Giordino, staring over the giant complex. "It beats anything in Japan or Hong Kong."

They stopped suddenly and stared at the nearest supership, like yokels from the boondocks, heads tilted back looking up at their first view of tall city buildings. An executive jet aircraft whined in on its approach before flaring out and touching down on the long landing deck atop the behemoth. The sounds of the engines echoed across the water, up the slopes of the mountains, and back again. The sight was staggering. Even the most sophisticated Hollywood special effects could not come close to replicating the real thing.

"None of the shipyards around the world have the capacity to build ships this grand," said Pitt, standing and gazing overwhelmed at the gargantuan ship moored along the dock, its hull seeming to stretch nearly to infinity. No single building on earth, including the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York placed end to end, could have matched the inconceivable size of the Wolfs' ark.

Except for the great bow, the vessel did not resemble a ship. Rather, it looked like a modern skyscraper laid on its side. The entire superstructure was sided in armored and tinted glass with the strength of low-alloy steel. Gardens with trees could be seen on the other side of the glass, flourishing amid rock gardens set in large parklike atmospheres. There were no promenade or outer decks or balconies. All the decks were completely enclosed. A conventional pointed bow swept up the superstructure on a gradual angle to the landing deck in what Pitt recognized as an apparent strategy to reduce the crushing impact of a giant tidal wave.

He observed the stern of the ship with more than a passing interest. Beginning at the waterline, twenty parallel pierlike projections that Pitt reckoned to be two hundred feet in length extended astern, beneath a high roof supported with fifty-foot-high Grecian-sculpted pillars. The piers doubled as shrouds for the ship's propellers and as piers to moor fleets of powerboats, hydrofoils, and hovercraft. Wide staircases and glass elevators rose from the forward end of the piers into the main superstructure. Improbable as it seemed, the gigantic vessel had its own marina, where boats could be moored and lifted from the water between the piers when the ship was under way.

Pitt studied the thousands of workers who crowded the docks and open decks. The operation to fit out and supply the ship seemed to be in a frenzied rush. Towering cranes rolled on rails up and down the dock, lifting wooden crates into huge open cargo hatches set into the hull. The spectacle was too unreal to grasp. It seemed unbelievable that these floating cities were never meant to sail through the fjord and reach the sea. Their primary purpose was to survive great tidal waves before being carried by the backwash into deep water.

There was no slinking in the shadows, because the bright lights eliminated them. Pitt and Giordino walked leisurely along the wide road quay, waving to an occasional passing guard, who didn't give them a second look. Pitt quickly observed that most of the workers moved around the immense facility and the ships in electric golf-type carts. He began looking around for one, and soon spied several parked in front of a large warehouse.

Pitt set off toward the carts, followed by Giordino, who could not tear his eyes from the ships. "This place is too vast to cover on foot," said Pitt. "Me, I'd rather ride."

The battery-operated carts looked to be available to any worker who wanted to requisition one. Several were parked around a large charging unit, cords running to sockets beneath the front seats. Pitt pulled the plug on the first one in line. Throwing the electrical spools and paint cans in the rear cargo bed of the cart, they climbed onto the front seat. Pitt turned the ignition key and set off as though it were a procedure he had executed at the yard for years.

They drove past a long string of warehouses until they came to the tall building that held the shipyard offices. The entrance of the second dock extended from the road along the shore. The second floating leviathan that was moored alongside had a more austere appearance than the one that was expected to carry its residents into a new world. This vessel was designed to carry agricultural cargo. Various species of trees and shrubbery were hauled aboard in big trailers that were pulled up wide cargo ramps into the hull. Hundreds of long cylindrical containers, labeled "Plant Seed," were stacked on the dock waiting to be loaded aboard. A long convoy of farm equipment, trucks and tractors of different sizes, harvest combines, plows, and every other piece of machinery imaginable was driven inside the cavernous hull.

"These people mean to launch a new world order on a grand scale," Pitt said, still trying to absorb the immensity of it all.

"What do you want to bet one of the other ships is carrying two of every kind of animal?"

"I won't bet," Pitt replied curtly. "I just hope they had the foresight to leave the flies, mosquitoes, and venomous reptiles behind."

Giordino spread his lips to make some suitable comeback, thought better of it, and stepped out of the cart, as Pitt parked it beside the steps leading into the modern, glass-walled office building. Retrieving the electrical cable and paint cans, they walked inside and approached a long counter manned by two security guards. Giordino flashed his most sociable smile and spoke softly in Spanish to one of the guards.

The guard simply nodded and threw a thumb in the direction of the elevators. "What line did you feed him this time?" queried Pitt, as they stepped inside, but not before he peered with one eye around the elevator door and spied one guard pick up a phone and speak excitedly. Then he stepped back and the doors closed.

"I said we were ordered by one of the Wolfs to make electrical repairs behind a wall in the penthouse suite on the tenth floor, then mend and repaint the wall when we were finished. He didn't give me the least argument."

Pitt scanned the elevator for TV cameras but found none. It's almost as if they have no fear of covert actions, he thought. Or else they know we're here and have laid a trap. He might have been whistling in the dark, but he didn't trust the Wolfs as far as he could throw that floating monstrosity outside. He also sensed that the guards in the lobby had been expecting them.

"Time for an ingenious scheme," he said.

Giordino looked at him. "Plan C?"

"We'll stop on the fifth floor to throw off the guards who are probably monitoring our movements. But we remain inside and send the elevator up to the penthouse, while we climb through the roof and ride up the rest of the way."

"Not half bad," said Giordino, pressing the button to stop the elevator on the fifth floor.

"Okay," said Pitt. "Hold me on your shoulders while I climb through the ceiling." But Pitt made no move. Though he did not detect the presence of TV cameras, Pitt was dead sure the elevator contained listening devices. He stood quietly still and grinned darkly at Giordino.

Giordino immediately understood and pulled out his P-10 automatic. "Damn, you're heavy," he grunted.

"Give me your hand and I'll pull you up," Pitt said quietly, as he gripped the old .45 Colt in his right hand. Remaining inside the elevator, they stood on opposite sides of the doors and pressed themselves into the corners.

The doors opened, and three guards, wearing identical coveralls, black with matching stocking caps on their heads, rushed inside, handguns drawn, eves staring up at the open maintenance door in the ceiling. Pitt stuck out his leg and tripped the third man, who fell against the first two, sending them all sprawling in a tangled heap on the floor. Then he punched the door-close button, waited until they descended several feet, and pressed the red emergency stop button, freezing the elevator between floors.

Giordino had expertly clubbed two of the guards on the head with the butt of his automatic before they could recover, then held the muzzle against the forehead of the third and snarled in Spanish, "Drop your gun or go brain-dead."

The guard was as tough and coldly efficient as the mercenaries they had encountered in the Pandora Mine. Pitt tensed, sensing the guard might attempt a lightning move to get in the first shot. But the man detected the cold look of composure in Pitt's eyes and recognized a deadly threat. Knowing the slightest flick of his eyes would bring a bullet smashing into his head, he wisely dropped his gun onto the elevator floor, the same model Para-Ordnance that Giordino was pressing between his eyes.

"You clowns are going nowhere!" the guard spat in English.

"Well, well," said Pitt. "What have we here? Another mercenary hit man like we met in Colorado. Karl Wolf must pay you guys handsome wages to murder and die for him."

"Give up, pal. You're the one who's going to die."

"You people have a nasty habit of repeating the same old song." Pitt pointed his old Colt an inch from the guard's left eye until it was lined up to fire across his face. "Dr. O'Connell and her daughter. Where are they held?" Pitt wasn't trying to imitate the rattle of a diamondback, but he gave a pretty good impression of it. "Talk or I pull the trigger. You'll probably live, but you won't have any eyeballs to see with. Now, then, where are they?"

Pitt was tough, but he wasn't sadistic. The look on his twisted face and the malice in his eyes was enough to fool the guard into thinking a madman was about to blow his eyes out. "They're confined on one of the great ships."

"Which ship?" demanded Pitt. "There are four of them."

"I don't know, I swear I don't know."

"He's lying," said Giordino, his tone cold enough to freeze oil.

"The truth," Pitt said menacingly, "or I'll blast both your eyeballs into the far wall." He pulled back the hammer of the Colt and pressed the muzzle against the edge of the guard's right eye in line with the left.

The guard's face did not transform from defiance to pure fright, but still, staring from eyes filled with loathing, he gasped, "The Ulrich Wolf' They're being held on the Ulrich Wolf."

"Which ship is that?"

"The ship-city that will carry the people of the Fourth Empire to sea after the cataclysm."

"It would take two years to search a ship that size," Pitt pressured. "Give a more exact location or go blind. Quickly!"

"Level Six, K Section. I don't know which residence."

"He's still lying," said Giordino coarsely. "Pull the trigger, but wait till I look away. I can't stand to see blood spray all over the furniture."

"Then kill me and get it over with," the guard growled.

"Where do the Wolfs find murdering scum like you?"

"Why would you care?"

"You're American. He didn't hire you off the street, so you must have come out of the military, an elite force, unless I miss my guess. Your loyalty to the Wolf family goes far beyond rationality. Why?"

"Giving my life for the Fourth Empire is an honor. I'm repaid by knowing, as we all are, that my wife and sons will be safely onboard the Ulrich Wolf when the rest of the world is devastated."

"So that's your insurance policy."

"He has a human family?" Giordino said in amazement. "I'd have sworn he curls up and lays eggs."

"What good is a bank account with a billion dollars when the world's population is about to perish?"

"I hate a pessimist," said Giordino, as he swung the barrel of his automatic against the nape of the mercenary's neck, dropping him unconscious onto the inert bodies of his comrades. In almost the same instant a series of alarms began to sound throughout the building "That tears it. We'll have to shoot our way out of town."

"Style and sophistication," Pitt said, seemingly unconcerned. "Always style and sophistication."

Six minutes later, the elevator stopped at the lobby level and the door opened. On the floor of the lobby, nearly two dozen men, with automatic weapons raised and aimed into the elevator, stood and knelt in the firing position.

Two men in the black coverall uniforms of security guards, with stocking caps pulled down almost to their eyes, raised their hands and shouted with lowered heads in both English and Spanish. "Do not shoot. We have killed two of the intruders!" Then they dragged two bodies dressed in orange coveralls by the feet out onto the lobby's marble floor and unceremoniously dumped them. "There are others who were working from the inside," Giordino said excitedly. "They've barricaded themselves on the tenth floor."

"Where is Max?" inquired a guard who acted as if he was in command.

Pitt, his arm over his face as if wiping away perspiration, turned and pointed upward. Giordino said, "We had to leave him. He was wounded in the fight. Hurry, send for a doctor."

The well-trained security force rapidly broke down into two units, one heading into the elevator, the other rushing up the emergency fire stairs. Pitt and Giordino knelt over the two unconscious guards they had pulled from the elevator and made a show of examining them, until they saw an opportunity to walk quietly from the lobby through the front doors.

"I can't believe we pulled it off," said Giordino, as they commandeered a cart and sped off toward the dock where the Ulrich Wolf was moored.

"Luckily, they were all too focused on apprehending the evil intruders to take a good look at our faces and recognize us as strangers."

"My security uniform is too long and too tight. How about yours?"

"Too short and too loose, but we don't have time to stop off at a tailor," Pitt muttered, as he steered the cart back toward the first dock while dodging around a soaring crane that was moving ponderously over its rail track. He kept his foot flat on the pedal, but the cart had a top speed of only about twelve miles an hour and the pace seemed agonizingly slow.

They traveled alongside the stupendous floating city, avoiding the busy loading activities. The dock was packed with a milling horde of workers, many moving about in electric carts, others on bicycles, with quite a few darting in and around all obstacles on rollerblades. Pitt had to frequently ram his foot onto the brake to keep from colliding with workers who moved carelessly into his path, absorbed in their jobs. Huge forklifts also ignored their approach and crossed in front of them to deliver their loads, moving up ramps and into the cavernous cargo holds. There were any number of raised fists and angry shouts as Pitt careened around all obstacles, humans or solid objects.

If it wasn't for the black security uniforms, stolen off the guards in the elevator, they would have surely been stopped and threatened with a beating for such reckless driving. Seeing an opportunity to board the ship without climbing long gangways, Pitt cramped the steering wheel and sent the cart into a hard right turn up a ramp empty of loading vehicles, across the main deck, and then down another ramp into the bowels of the floating city, to where the cargo was stored and all ship maintenance was performed. Inside a yawning cargo depot, with huge passageways leading in all directions through the lower warehouse bays of the ship, Pitt spotted a man in red coveralls who looked to be in charge of loading supplies and equipment. He alerted Giordino on what to ask in Spanish and came to an abrupt stop.

"Quickly, we have an emergency at Level Six, K Section," shouted Giordino. "Which is the shortest route to take?"

Recognizing the black uniform of the shipyard security guards, the man asked, "Don't you know?"

"We've just been transferred from shore security," Giordino answered vaguely, "and we're not familiar with the Ulrich Wolf."

Accepting the presence of security people on an emergency mission, the loading director pointed down a passageway. "Drive to the second elevator on the right. Park your cart and take the elevator up to Deck Floor Four. That will put you at Tram Station Eight. Board the Tram to K Section. Then take the corridor leading amidships to the security office and ask again, unless you know which residence you're looking for."

"The one where the American scientist and her daughter are being confined."

"I have no idea where that would be. You'll have to ask the chief security officer or the leader of K Section when you arrive."

"Muchas gracias," Giordino said over his shoulder, as Pitt sped off in the direction indicated. "So far so good, said the man on his way down to the sidewalk after jumping from the Empire State Building." Then he added, "My compliments. Swapping our orange goon suits for black security uniforms was a master stroke."

"It was the only way I could think of to get through the trap," said Pitt modestly.

"How much time do you think we have before they cut us off at the pass?"

"If you struck the guard a good clout, he won't come around anytime soon and give the show away. All they'll discover in the next ten minutes is that we drove straight to the Ulrich Wolf and came on board. They still don't know who we are or who we're after."

They followed the Cargo Deck leader's directions and brought the cart to a halt next to the second elevator. It was built to carry heavy freight, and it was expansive. Workers were accompanying a pallet piled with boxes of canned food. Pitt and Giordino joined them and stepped off onto Level Six, near a boarding platform raised above twin tracks that encircled the entire ship. They paced the platform impatiently for five minutes, before an electric tram with five cars painted a soft yellow outside and hyacinth violet inside approached and quietly rolled to a stop. The doors slid open with a soft hissing sound. They stepped inside the first car and found a forty-passenger vehicle that was half full of people clothed in a rainbow of coverall uniforms. As if drawn by a magnet, Giordino sat down next to an attractive woman with silver-blond hair and blue eyes whose coveralls were a soft blue-gray. Pitt tensed as he recognized the unvarying image of one of the Wolf family.

She looked at them and smiled. "You look like Americans," she said in English with a touch of a Spanish accent.

"How can you tell?" asked Pitt.

"Most all our security people were recruited from the American military," she replied.

"You are a member of the Wolf family," he said softly, as if speaking to a member of the elite.

She laughed lightheartedly. "It must look to strangers as if we all came out of the same pod."

"Your resemblance to one another is quite striking."

"What is your name?" she asked, in a tone of authority.

"My name is Dirk Pitt," he said brazenly, actually stupidly, he thought, studying her eyes for a reaction. There was none. She had not been advised of his menacing actions toward the family. "My little friend here is Al Capone."

"Rosa Wolf," she identified herself.

"A great honor, Miss Wolf," Pitt said, "to be associated with your family's great venture. The Ulrich Wolf is a glorious masterwork. My friend and I were recruited from the United States Marines only two weeks ago. It is indeed a privilege to serve a family that has created such an extraordinary work of genius."

"My cousin Karl was the driving force behind the construction of the Ulrich Wolf and our other three Fourth Empire floating cities," Rosa sermonized from pride, obviously pleased with Pitt's praise. "He assembled the world's finest naval architects and marine engineers to design and construct our vessels, from the blueprint stage to completion, under a cloak of extreme secrecy. Unlike most large cruise liners and supertankers, our ships have no single hull but employ nine hundred watertight sealed compartments. If, during the massive surge expected from the coming cataclysm, a hundred cells are damaged and flooded on any of our vessels, they will sink no more than ten inches."

"Truly astounding," said Giordino, acting enthralled. "What is the power source?"

"Ninety ten-thousand-horsepower diesel propulsion engines that are geared to push the ship through the water at twenty-five knots."

"A city of fifty thousand inhabitants capable of moving around the world," said Pitt. "It doesn't seem possible."

"Not fifty thousand, Mr. Pitt. When the time comes, this ship will carry one hundred and twenty-five thousand people. Between them, the other three vessels will carry fifty thousand people, for a total of two hundred and seventy-five thousand, all trained and educated to launch the Fourth Empire from the ashes of archaic democratic systems."

Pitt fought the urge to instigate a heated debate, but he turned his attention out the window of the train. He watched as a landscaped park of at least twenty acres unfolded along the tram tracks. He was repeatedly stunned by the impact of such an immense project. Bike and jogging paths wound through trees and ponds with swans, geese, and ducks.

Rosa noticed his captivation by the pastoral scene. "This is one of a network of parks, leisure and recreation areas, that total five hundred acres. Have you seen the sport facilities, swimming pools, and health spas yet?"

Pitt shook his head. "Our time has been limited."

"Are you married, with children?"

Recalling his conversation with the security guard, Pitt nodded. "A boy and a girl."

"We have recruited the world's finest educators to teach in and direct our schools, from the nursery level through college-level courses and postgraduate studies."

"That is very comforting to know."

"You and your wife will be able to enjoy theaters, educational seminars and conferences, libraries, and art galleries filled with historical art treasures. We also have compartments housing the great artifacts passed down from the ancient ones, so that they can be studied while we wait for the earth's environment to regenerate itself after the coming cataclysm."

"The ancient ones?" asked Pitt, playing dumb.

"The civilization our grandfathers discovered in Antarctica, called the Amenes. They were an advanced race of people who were destroyed when Earth was struck by a comet nine thousand years ago."

"I'd never heard of them," Giordino played along.

"Our scientists are studying their records so we can learn what to expect in the coming months and years."

"How long do you think it will take before we can begin our work on land?" asked Pitt.

"Five, perhaps ten, years before we can go forth and establish a new order," explained Rosa.

"Can a hundred and twenty-five thousand people subsist that long?"

"You're forgetting the other ships," she said boastfully. "The fleet will be totally self-supporting. The Karl Wolf has fifty thousand acres of tilled soil already planted with vegetables and fruit orchards. The Otto Wolf will carry thousands of animals for food as well as breeding. The final ship, the Hermann Wolf, was built purely for cargo. It will haul all the equipment and machinery to construct new cities, roads, ranches, and farms when we are able to walk the earth again."

Giordino pointed up to a digital sign above the doors. "K Section coming up."

"A great pleasure meeting you, Ms. Wolf," said Pitt gallantly. "I hope you will remember me to your cousin Karl."

She looked at him questioningly for a moment, then nodded. "I'm sure we'll meet again."

The train slowed to a stop, and Pitt and Giordino disembarked. They walked from the boarding platform into an antechamber with corridors leading off like wagon wheel spokes into a vast labyrinth.

"Now which way?" asked Giordino.

"We go dead amidships and follow the signs to the K Section," Pitt said, as he set off into the center corridor. "We want to avoid the security office like the plague."

Walking along what seemed to be an endless corridor, they passed numbered doors, several of them open while the rooms were being furnished. They looked in and saw spacious living quarters on a par with luxury condominiums. Pitt could understand now why the guard had referred to them as residences. The plan was for the occupants to live as comfortably as possible during the long wait before they could establish their community on what was left of the earth after the comet's collision.

Paintings were spaced every thirty feet along the walls between the doors to the residences. Giordino stopped briefly and examined a landscape in vivid colors. He leaned close and peered at the artist's scrawled name.

"No way can this be a Van Gogh," he said skeptically. "It must be a forgery or a reproduction."

"It's genuine," said Pitt, with conviction. He motioned toward the other art hanging on the walls. "These works doubtless come from the museums and the private collections of Holocaust victims that were looted by the Nazis during World War Two."

"How charitable of them to save art treasures that never belonged to them."

"The Wolfs plan to carry the great masterworks to the promised land."

How could the Wolfs be so positive that the second coming of the comet would strike the earth? Pitt wondered. Why wasn't it possible the comet would miss again, as it had nine thousand years before? There were no ready answers, but once he and Giordino could escape the shipyard with Pat and her daughter, he was determined to find solutions.

After what Giordino estimated as a quarter of a mile, they came to a large door marked "Security, Level K." They hurried past and finally came to a tastefully decorated reception area with tables, chairs, and sofas in front of a large fireplace. It could have passed for a lobby in any five-star hotel. A man and a woman dressed in green coveralls sat behind a counter beneath a large painting of Noah's Ark.

"Somebody in authority must have a color-code mania," Giordino muttered under his breath.

"Ask them where the American epigraphist, who is deciphering the ancient descriptions, is confined," Pitt instructed.

"How in hell would I know what `epigraphist' is in Spanish?"

"Fake it."

Giordino rolled his eyes and approached the counter in front of the woman, thinking she might be more helpful.

"We've been sent to move Dr. O'Connell and her daughter to another part of the ship," he said softly, in an attempt to muffle his American accent.

The woman, attractive in a mannish sort of way, with a pale complexion and her hair swept back in a bun, looked up at Giordino and noted his security uniform. "Why wasn't I notified earlier that she was scheduled to be moved?"

"I was told only ten minutes ago myself."

"I should verify this request," said the woman in an official tone.

"Better yet, my superior is on his way. I suggest you wait and settle the matter with him."

She nodded. "Yes, I'll do that."

"Meanwhile, you might point out the residence where she is being held, so we can prepare her for the move."

"You don't know?" the woman asked, suspicion growing in her mind.

"How could we?" Giordino asked innocently, "since she is under your charge as section leader. My partner and I are simply paying you the courtesy of checking with you rather than just going in and taking her. Now, tell me where she is and we'll wait until my superior shows with the proper authority, if that will make you sleep easier."

The female section leader yielded. "You will find Dr. O'Connell locked in residence K-37. But I can't give you the key until I see a signed order."

"There's no need for us to enter just yet," Giordino said, with an indifferent shrug. "We'll stand outside and wait" He tilted his head in a gesture for Pitt to follow him, and he began walking back the way they had come. Once out of earshot, he said, "She's held in K-37. I think we passed residences numbered in the thirties on the way from the elevator."

"Is her residence guarded?" asked Pitt.

"Wearing this security outfit, I'm supposed to know if guards are posted. No, I wasn't about to bring up the subject and look like a suspicious idiot."

"We'd better be quick," said Pitt. "They must be on our tail by now."

When they reached K-37, they found a guard standing outside. Giordino walked up casually and said, "You're relieved."

The guard, a man who was a good foot taller than the short Etruscan, stared down with a questioning look on his face. "I have another two hours left on my shift."

"Aren't you lucky we were sent early."

"You don't look familiar," said the guard uneasily.

"Neither do you." Then Giordino made as if to turn away. "Forget it. My partner and I will wait in the dining room until your shift ends."

The guard suddenly changed his tune. "No, no, I could use the extra time to get some sleep." Without further procrastination, he began walking swiftly toward the elevator.

"A productive performance," said Pitt.

"I have a persuasive personality," Giordino said, grinning.

As soon as the guard stepped into the elevator at the end of the long corridor, Pitt kicked his foot hard against the door near the latch and smashed it open. They charged into the residence almost before the door thumped against its stop. A young girl was standing in the kitchen, wearing blue coveralls and in the act of drinking a glass of milk. In fright, she dropped the glass in her hand onto the carpet. Pat came running out of the bedroom, also dressed in blue coveralls, her long red hair spread behind her like a fan. She stopped frozen in the doorway and stared unbelievingly at Pitt and Giordino, her mouth open but unable to utter words, eyes mirroring total confusion.

Pitt grabbed her by the arm as Giordino swept up the girl. "No time for hugs and kisses," he said quickly. "We've got a plane to catch."

"Where did you two beautiful men come from?" she finally mumbled, incredulous, still unable to understand.

"I don't know if I care to be described as beautiful," Pitt said, as he grabbed her around the waist and hustled her toward the shattered door.

"Wait!" she snapped, twisting out from his encircling arm. She darted back inside and reappeared in seconds, clutching a small attaché case to her breast.

The time for caution and furtive movements was gone- if either had truly existed in the men's minds. Tearing down the long corridor, rushing past workers who were putting the finishing touches on the ship, they were stared at queerly, but no one made a move to stop or question them.

If the alarm was out by now, and Pitt was certain it was, the thought of a confrontation with the merciless Wolfs spurred him on. Getting off the ship, reaching the end of the dock, and disappearing into the old water of the fjord for a two-mile swim was only half his problem. Though pulled faster than they could swim by the diver propulsion vehicles, Pat and her daughter would probably die of hypothermia before they could reach the ravine and the Skycar.

His fears suddenly mushroomed when the eerie sounds of high-pitched alarms began sounding throughout the shipyard just as they reached the nearest elevator.

Luck was with them this far. The elevator was stopped on Level Six with the doors open. Three men in red coveralls were in the act of unloading office furniture. Without a word of explanation, Pitt and Giordino muscled the startled movers into the foyer, pushed Pat and her daughter inside, and sent the elevator moving downward in the space of fifteen seconds.

While they temporarily caught their breath, Pitt smiled at Pat's daughter, a pretty young girl with hair the color of shimmering topaz and Capri-blue eyes. "What's your name, dear heart?"

"Megan," she said, her eyes wide with fear.

"Take a deep breath and relax," he said softly. "My name is Dirk, and my burly little munchkin friend is Al. We're going to take you safely home."

His words had a soothing effect, and her expression of dire anxiety slowly altered to simple uneasiness. She placed her explicit trust in him, and Pitt began to dread for the second time that night what he might find when they reached their stop and the elevator doors opened. They could not shoot their way out, not with the women beside them.

His fears were groundless, as it turned out. There was no army of guards with drawn guns waiting on the cargo level. "I am totally lost," he said, looking at a labyrinth of corridors.

Giordino grinned ruefully. "Too bad we didn't pick up a street map."

Pitt pointed at a golf cart parked in front of a door marked "Circuit Room." "Salvation is at hand," he said, jumping into the driver's seat and twisting the ignition key. Everyone climbed in, and he punched the accelerator to the floorboard almost before their feet left the deck. Unable to use his little direction finder except for course headings, he made a lucky guess after crossing the tram tracks and found a large freight passageway that opened onto a loading ramp leading down to the dock.

The army of guards with drawn guns he was concerned about had arrived.

They were pouring out of trucks and dispersing on the dock, weapons drawn and at the ready, as they clustered around the loading ramps. Pitt estimated that there were nearly four hundred of them, not counting a thousand already on duty aboard the ship. He instantly sized up their dilemma and shouted, "Hold on! I'm heading back toward the elevator." He slammed on the brake, spun the cart in a U-turn, and turned back into the freight passageway.

Looking behind, all Giordino could see were black coveralls swirling like ants around the dock. "I hate it when things don't go right," he said morosely.

"We'll never escape-" Pat broke off, clutching her daughter. "Not now.

Pitt looked at Giordino. "Wasn't there an old war song called 'We Did It Before, and We Can Do It Again'?"

"World War Two was before my time," said Giordino. "But I get your drift."

They quickly reached the elevator, but Pitt didn't stop. The doors were still open, and he drove the cart inside just before they began to close. He pressed the button for the sixth level, pulled out the .45 and gestured for Giordino to do the same. As soon as the doors spread open, they came face-to-face with the three furniture movers they had thrown out of the elevator earlier. Still stunned by their eviction, the movers were shouting and gesturing at a man wearing yellow coveralls, who looked to be someone in command. At seeing Pitt and Giordino come charging out of the elevator on the cart like unleashed starving German shepherds, their guns drawn and aimed, the four men froze and threw their hands into the air.

"Into the elevator!" Pitt ordered.

The four men stood blank and uncomprehending until Giordino shouted the command in Spanish.

"Sorry," said Pitt, suddenly self-conscious. "I got carried away by the drama of the moment."

"You're forgiven," Giordino absolved him.

The routine they'd hastily improvised in the office building was repeated. Six minutes later, they were all on their way again, leaving the four men in their underwear bound with duct tape and lying on the floor of the elevator. As soon as the doors opened wide, Pitt drove the cart onto the main cargo entry deck, stopped, and ran back. He sent the elevator upward and jammed the controls, leaping out before the doors closed. Then he followed the direction signs and drove toward the tram. Three of them now wore the red coveralls of interior ship workers, while the fourth- himself- was dressed in the yellow uniform of a supervisor.

Security guards were already stationed at an intersection just short of the tram station. One of them stepped forward and held up his hand. Pitt brought the cart to an unhurried stop and looked at the guard questioningly.

Not knowing that Pat and her daughter had been whisked from their quarters, the guard was not unduly disturbed at seeing two women in the uniforms of cargo loaders, since many of them had been recruited to operate forklifts and tow vehicles. Pat squeezed her daughter's arm as a warning not to speak or move. She also turned Megan's face away from the guard, so he wouldn't notice her tender age.

Pitt figured the yellow coveralls he had appropriated represented authority, and the respectful look in the guard's eyes confirmed it.

"What's going on here?" Giordino demanded, his Spanish improving with practice.

"Two intruders in security guard uniforms have infiltrated the shipyard and are believed to have boarded the Ulrich Wolf."

"Intruders? Why didn't you stop them before they entered the shipyard?"

"I can't say," the guard replied. "All I know is that they killed four of our security force guards in an attempt to escape."

"Four dead," Giordino said sadly. "A great pity. I hope you catch the murdering swine. Right, group?" He turned to the others and nodded spiritedly.

"Si, Si," Pitt said, agreeing with a vigorous display of disgust.

"We have to check everyone going on or coming off each ship," the guard persisted. "I must see your identification cards."

"Do we look like trespassers in security guard uniforms?" Giordino demanded indignantly.

The guard shook his head and smiled. "No."

"Then let us pass!" Giordino's friendly voice went suddenly cold and official. "We have a cargo to load and a deadline that we won't meet sitting around the dock talking to you. I'm already late for a meeting with Karl Wolf. Unless you don't want to be left behind when the cataclysm hits, I suggest you step aside."

Properly browbeaten, the guard lowered his weapon and yielded. "I'm sorry to have detained you."

Not able to translate the exchange, Pitt stepped on the cart's accelerator pedal only after Giordino elbowed him in the ribs. Thinking it best to appear like ordinary shipyard workers on a job-related assignment, he continued toward the nearest tram station at a moderate pace, drowning an urge to run the cart at its full speed. With one hand on the steering wheel, he dialed the Globalstar phone with the other.

Sandecker pounded the speaker button halfway through the first ring. "Yes?"

"This is the Leaning Pizza Tower calling. Your order is on its way."

"Do you think you can find the house all right?"

"The issue is in doubt whether we can arrive before the pizza gets cold."

"I hope you hurry," said Sandecker, suppressing an urgent tone in his voice. "There are hungry people here."

"Traffic is heavy. Will do my best."

"I'll leave a light on." Sandecker set down the phone and stared at Admiral Hozafel with a heavy face. "Forgive the rather silly talk, Admiral."

"I understand perfectly," said the courtly old German.

"What is their situation?" asked Little.

"Not good," replied Sandecker. "They have Dr. O'Connell and her daughter, but must be facing enormous odds in escaping the shipyard. `Traffic is heavy' meant that they were under pursuit by Wolf security forces."

Little looked directly at Sandecker. "What do you think their odds of making a clean getaway are?"

"Odds?" Sandecker's expression seemed pained. He looked as though he had aged ten years in the past hour. "They have no odds."

31

The tram moved slowly out of the station, passing another tram going in the opposite direction. Though it picked up speed until it was gliding over the rails at nearly thirty miles an hour, Pitt felt as if the tram were crawling and he wanted to get out and help push it. Stations designated in the letters of the alphabet came and went, each one met with their expectation of security guards flooding on board and seizing them. When the tram exchanged passengers at W Station, Pitt's hopes began to rise, but at X Station, their luck ran out.

Six black uniformed security guards boarded the end car and began checking the passengers' identification tags, which Pitt only now observed were carried on bracelets around their wrists. He cursed himself for not knowing earlier so he could have stolen the bracelets from the furniture movers. Too late, it occurred to him that the guards would make a special effort to search for people without them. He also noted that they seemed to be taking extra time to check any workers wearing red or yellow coveralls.

"They're working their way closer," Giordino noted without emotion, as the guards entered the second car of the five-car tram.

"One at a time," said Pitt, "move casually to the first car."

Without a word passing between them, Giordino went first, followed by Megan and then Pat, with Pitt bringing up the rear.

"We might make the next station before they reach this car," said Giordino. "But it's going to be close."

"I doubt if we'll get off that easy," Pitt said grimly. "They'll probably be waiting there, too."

He walked forward and peered through the window of the door leading to a small control cab in the front of the car. There was a console with lights, buttons, and switches, but no driver or engineer. The tram was fully automatic. He tried the door latch, but wasn't surprised to find it locked.

He studied the symbols and markings on the console panel. One in particular struck his eye. Gripping the Colt, he rapped the barrel against the glass window and shattered it. Ignoring the startled looks of the car's passengers, he reached inside and unlocked the door. Without the slightest pause, he reached out and moved the first of five toggle switches connected to the tram's electronic couplings. Next he reset the computer that actuated the speed of the tram.

The desired effect gave him a surge of pleasure. The four rear cars detached from the lead car and began to fall back. Though each car had its own power source, their preset speed was now slower than that of the forward car. The security guards could only contact other search teams and watch helplessly as the distances between the cars rapidly widened and their quarry gained a growing lead.

Four minutes later, the car with Pitt and the others swept past Y Station without stopping, to the frustration of a team of security guards and the dumb expressions of the workers who stood on the platform. Pitt felt as if his stomach were being squeezed by a cold hand, and his mouth felt as though it were stuffed with dry leaves. He was playing a desperate gamble, with the dice loaded against him. He glanced behind him into the car and caught sight of Pat, sitting with an arm around Megan's shoulder, one arm still clutching the attaché case, her face pale and strangely sad and forlorn. He walked back and ran his hand through her streaming red hair.

"We'll get through this," he said, with an air of conviction. "Old Dirk will take you over the water and the mountains."

She looked up and managed a faint smile. "Is that a guarantee?"

"Ironclad," he said, with a growing conviction inside him.

Half a minute passed. Pitt walked back into the control cabin and saw that they were approaching the marina at the stern of the ship. Up ahead, he could see the tracks begin their curve toward the marina, where the tram, he was certain, was supposed to stop at Z Station before continuing around the ship. He didn't need mystical powers to know security guards had reached the station platform first and were waiting to blast them with an arsenal of weapons.

"I'm going to slow the car to about ten miles an hour," Pitt said. "When I give the word, we jump. The edge of the tracks is planted with vegetation, so our landing should be fairly soft. Try to roll forward when you hit. At this point we can't afford to have anybody suffer a fractured ankle or leg."

Giordino put his arm around Megan. "We'll go together. That way you'll have lots of fat to cushion your fall." It was a broad misstatement. Giordino didn't have an ounce of fat on his muscular body.

Pitt reset the controls and the car slowed abruptly. The instant the red numbers on the speed scale dropped to ten miles an hour, he yelled, "All right, everyone out!"

He hesitated, making sure they all had leaped from the tram. Then he punched up the numbers until the dial read sixty miles an hour, before running from the cab to the door and jumping as the tram car quickly accelerated toward its fastest speed. He struck soft earth feet first before rolling with the momentum of a cannonball into a bed of ornamental bonsai trees, crushing their distorted branches and mashing them into the soil with his weight. He staggered to his feet, one knee protested in pain, but he was still capable of active movement.

Giordino was beside him, helping him regain his balance. He was relieved to see Pat and Megan, their faces clear of expressions of pain. They seemed more concerned with brushing the soil and pine needles from their hair. The tram had disappeared around the bend, but the stairway leading to the first pier was no more than fifty feet away, and no guards were nearby.

"Where are we going?" Pat asked, regaining a small measure of composure.

"Before we catch our plane," answered Pitt, "we have to take a little boat trip."

He caught her by the arm and dragged her behind him, as Giordino hustled Megan along. They ran along the track until they reached the stairs leading down to Pier Number One. As Pitt suspected, the security guards had encircled the station at Z Section two hundred yards farther up the track in the center of the marina. Confusion reigned, as the tram car shot past the station and around the next bend on its way along the port side of the ship. The guards, completely deluded into thinking their prey was still hiding in the speeding car, hurriedly launched a pursuit, as the security director in command ordered the power circuits for the tram system to be closed down.

Pitt figured it would take them another seven minutes before the guards could reach the stopped car and realize that it was empty. If he and the others weren't off the ship by then, capture was a foregone conclusion.

None of the workers on the pier paid any attention to them as they calmly strolled down the steps and onto the pier. There were three boats moored between the first and second piers, a small twenty-four-foot sailboat, a vessel that Pitt recognized as a forty-two-foot Grand Banks cabin cruiser, and a twenty-four-foot classic runabout. "Climb aboard the big powerboat," said Pitt, walking placidly across the pier.

"I guess we're not going to retrieve our dive gear," said Giordino.

"Pat and Megan could never make it back alive in the water. Better we take our chances on the surface."

"The runabout is faster," Giordino pointed out.

"True," Pitt agreed, "but the security force will be suspicious of a fast boat speeding away from the shipyard. The Grand Banks powerboat, cruising calmly across the water, won't create near the attention."

There was a dockhand hosing down the deck when Pitt walked up and stopped at the gangway. "Nice boat," he said, smiling.

"Heh?" The dockhand looked at him, unable to understand English.

Pitt moved up the gangway and gestured at the no-nonsense lines of the Grand Banks 42. "She's a nice boat," he repeated, boldly stepping into the bridge cabin.

The dockhand followed him inside, protesting his trespass on the boat, but once they were out of sight of other workers on the pier, Pitt lashed out with his fist and decked him with a solid blow to the jaw. Then he leaned out the doorway and announced, "Al, cast off the lines. You ladies, all aboard."

Pitt stood for a moment and studied the instruments on the console. He turned the key and hit the twin starter buttons. Down below in the engine compartment, a pair of big marine diesel engines turned over, the fuel inside their firing chambers compressing and igniting to the tune of high-pitched clacking. He slid open the starboard window and peered out. Giordino had untied the fore and aft lines and was climbing on board.

Pitt engaged the reverse drive and very slowly began edging the boat away from the pier and backing it toward the open water twenty yards astern. He passed two dockworkers installing a railing around the pier, and waved. They waved back. It's so much easier to be sneaky, he thought, than to burst out of the corral like a wild bull.

The boat passed the end of the pier into open water. Now the stern of the great ship soared above them. Pitt moved the shift lever into Forward and steered the Grand Banks on a course along the Ulrich Woof. To reach the fjord and escape the shipyard, they had to cruise entirely around the floating titan. Pitt set the throttles until the speed instruments read eight knots, a pace that he hoped would not arouse suspicions. So far, there had been no shouts, no bells or whistles, no signs of a chase or searchlights pinning them against the dark water.

At this speed, it would take fifteen minutes to pass the entire length of the supership and turn the bow until they could move a safe distance away and out from under the glare of the lights from the shipyard. Fifteen agonizing minutes that would seem like fifteen years. That was only the first hurdle. They still had the patrol boats to contend with, and by then there was every possibility their crews would have been alerted to the fugitives' escape in the Grand Banks cabin cruiser.

There was nothing they could do except remain inside the main cabin out of sight and stare up at the immense monster as they crept alongside. From bow to stern, the great mass of glass was a blaze of light inside and out, giving it the effect of a baseball stadium during a night game. The famous classic liners of their time, Titanic, Lusitania, Queen Mary, Queen Elisabeth, and Normandy, if anchored in a row, would still have come up short next to the Ulrich Wolf.

"I could use a hamburger about now," said Giordino, trying to relieve the tension.

"Me, too," said Megan. "All they fed us was yucky nutritional stuff."

Pat smiled, though her face looked strained. "It won't be long, honey, and you'll get your hamburger."

Pitt turned from the helm. "Were you treated badly?"

"No abuse," answered Pat, "but I've never been ordered around by so many nasty and arrogant people. They worked me twenty hours a day."

"Deciphering Amenes inscriptions from another chamber?"

"They weren't from another chamber. They were photos taken of inscriptions they found at a lost city in the Antarctic."

Pitt looked at her curiously. "The Antarctic?"

She nodded solemnly. "Frozen in the ice. The Nazis discovered it before the wax."

"Elsie Wolf told me they'd found evidence the Amenes built six chambers."

"I can't say," admitted Pat. "All I can tell you is that I got the impression they're using the ice city for some purpose. What, I didn't find out.

"Did you learn anything new from the inscriptions they forced you to decipher?"

As she talked, Pat no longer looked sad and forlorn. "I was barely into the project when you burst through the door. They were extremely interested in what me deciphered in the Colorado and St. Paul chambers. It appeared that the Wolfs were desperate to study the accounts passed down by the Amenes describing the effects of the cataclysm."

"That's because any inscriptions they found inside the lost city came before the cataclysm." He paused and nodded toward her briefcase.

"Is that what's in there?"

She held it up. "The photos from the Antarctic chamber. I couldn't bring myself to leave them behind."

He looked at her steadily. "They don't make women like you anymore."

Pitt might have said more, but a boat was crossing his bow about a hundred yards ahead. It looked to be a workboat, and its course remained steady as it turned and passed on the Grand Bank's port side. The crew seemed intent on their labors and didn't pay the slightest attention to the cabin cruiser.

Relaxing a bit as they neared the forward section of the Ulrich Wolf without any sign of pursuit, Pitt asked, "You said they're studying what conditions will be like in the aftermath of the cataclysm?"

"In a big way. I assume they want every bit of data they can glean for their survival."

"I'm still at a loss as to why the Wolfs are so positive a comet is going to return and collide with Earth within days of the prediction made by the Amenes nine thousand years ago," Pitt said.

Pat shook her head slowly. "I have no answers to that."

Still crawling along at eight knots, Pitt gently turned the wheel, sending the Grand Banks on a wide arc around the bow of the Ulrich Wolf and passing the end of the dock, now swarming with shipyard workers and security guards checking the identification of every man and woman in red coveralls. He passed a small powerboat running with no lights that ominously swung around in a 180-degree turn and began following in their wake. He set his directional computer on the frame of the windshield and studied the readings that would lead him through the darkness to the ravine that held the Skycar.

Three miles to the ravine, three miles over water in a boat that offered no protection from probing lights or automatic weapons and heavy machine guns. All they carried were a pair of handguns. And there were the patrol boats that surely must have been alerted by now of a stolen powerboat carrying intruders attempting to escape the shipyard. His only consolation was that the patrol boats were at the far end of the fjord, giving them an extra few minutes of time. A slim consolation at best. With their superior speed, the patrol boats could easily intercept the Grand Banks before they could reach the mouth of the ravine.

"Al!"

Giordino was at his side immediately. "Aye, aye."

"Find some bottles. There must be some on board. Empty, then fill them with whatever you can find that's highly inflammable. Diesel fuel is too slow-burning. Look for gas or solvent."

"Molotov cocktails," said Giordino, grinning like a demon. "I haven't thrown one of those since kindergarten." Two steps, and he was dropping down a ladder to the engine compartment.

Pitt brushed aside an urge to shove the throttles to their stops, judging that it was more productive to play out a passive role. He stared over one shoulder at the twenty-five-foot runabout behind them, its big, powerful outboard motor clamped to its transom- it had increased speed and was drawing alongside. The lights from the shipyard revealed only two men in black uniforms, one steering the boat, the other standing in the stern gripping an automatic rifle. The one at the helm was motioning at his ear. Pitt understood the message and turned on the radio, leaving it on the frequency it was set.

A voice crackled over the speaker in Spanish, with an indisputable inflection that Pitt knew was a command to lay to. He picked up the microphone and answered "No habla espanol."

"Alto, alto!" the voice shouted.

"Get down below and lay flat on the deck," he ordered Pat and Megan. They silently complied and hurried down the ladder to the main cabin.

Pitt slowed the boat and stood in the doorway, his Colt cocked and stuffed under his belt. The guard in the stern of the runabout crouched in readiness to jump on board the Grand Banks.

Pitt then pulled back the throttles but kept a slight headway, measuring the distance between the two boats and moving at just enough parallel speed so that the boarder would come over the railing almost in line with the doorway to the bridge. His timing would have to be exactly on the mark. He waited patiently, like a hunter in a blind watching the skies for a passing duck.

At the precise moment the security guard crouched to leap between the two boats, he shoved the twin throttles forward in a brief burst of speed, before abruptly pulling them back again. The sudden movement threw off the balance of the guard, and he landed sprawling on the narrow port deck of the Grand Banks.

Pitt smoothly stepped through the cabin door, jammed the heel of his right foot into the guard's neck, bent down and snatched up his automatic rifle, a Bushmaster M17S, and clubbed him behind the neck with the butt end. He leveled it at the guard at the helm of the outboard and fired. He missed, as the guard dropped to his knees, cramped the wheel over, hit the throttle, and turned the outboard on a sharp angle away from the Grand Banks. With a loud roar from the motor, the boat leaped away in a cloud of spray and churning water. Without waiting to see more, Pitt stepped back into the cabin and pushed the throttles as far as they would go. The stern of the Grand Banks dug down in the water, the bow lifted, and soon it was rushing across the black waters at nearly twenty knots.

Now Pitt focused on the patrol boats that had swung around on a course back up the fjord, coming at full speed, the searchlights playing the water in ever-closer sweeps toward the Grand Banks. It was a given that the guard driving the outboard had radioed a report. The lead boat was a good half mile ahead of its escort. From Pitt's view through the windshield, it was impossible to predict when the nearest patrol boat would meet the Grand Banks on a converging course. The only certainty was that it would cross his bows before they reached the mouth of the ravine. Another six or seven minutes would spell the difference between survival and death.

They were well clear of the shipyard now, with less than two miles to go.

The outboard cruiser was less than a hundred yards off and slightly behind. The only reason the remaining security guard had not opened up with his own Bushmaster rifle was that he was afraid of hitting his partner.

Giordino returned to the cabin, carrying an armload of four bottles filled with solvent from a can used to clean oil and grease within the engine compartment. Thin strips of rags were stuffed in the bottle necks. He carefully set the bottles on the cushions of a bench. The beefy Italian was nursing a large bruise on his forehead.

"What happened to you?" Pitt asked.

"Some guy I know can't drive a boat. I was thrown all over the engine compartment and bounced my head off a water pipe during a series of wild gyrations." Then Giordino spotted the unconscious body of the security guard lying partially in the door. "My sincerest apologies. You had a social caller."

"He failed to produce an invitation."

Giordino moved beside Pitt and stared through the windshield at the rapidly approaching patrol boat. "No warning shot across the bow with this crew. They're armed to the teeth and looking for any excuse to blow us out of the water."

"Maybe not," said Pitt. "They still need the expertise of Pat to decipher their inscriptions. They might rough her up and slap Megan around, but they won't kill them. You and I will be history. I plan on giving them a bit of a surprise. If we can suck them in close enough, we might give them a bonfire to enjoy."

Giordino stared Pitt in the eyes. Most men would have reflected inevitable defeat, but Giordino saw no such reflection. What he saw was calculated determination and a faint gleam of anticipation. "I wonder how John Paul Jones would see it."

Pitt nodded. "You'll be busy with your toys. Lend me your piece. Then lay low on the far side of the bridge until you hear shooting."

"You or them?"

Pitt gave Giordino a dour look. "It doesn't matter who."

Giordino handed over his Para-Ordnance automatic without question, as Pitt pushed against the throttles in a fruitless attempt to goad a few more revolutions out of the engines. The Grand Banks was giving everything it had, but it was a boat built for comfortable cruising, not speed.

The commander of the patrol boat had no reservations about closing in on the Grand Banks. He had no reason to believe that anyone on board was crazy enough to take on a boat armed with twin machine guns plus the weapons held by men who were trained to kill at the slightest provocation. He studied the Grand Banks through night glasses, saw only one man standing at the helm on the bridge, and made the ultimate mistake of an aggressor- he profoundly underestimated his adversary. The searchlights were trained on the Grand Banks, illuminating the boat in a blinding glare.

The bone of foam cut by the bow fell away as the thirty-eight-foot patrol boat edged closer to the Grand Banks and gradually pulled alongside, until it was less than twenty feet away. From his position on the bridge, Pitt squinted his eyes against the bright light and made out a man behind each machine gun, pointing the barrels directly at him in the bridge cabin. Three other men stood shoulder to shoulder on the open deck aft of the cabin, armed with Bushmaster automatic rifles. Pitt was unable to see Giordino crouched on the opposite side of the cabin, but he knew that his friend was poised with either a match or a lighter to ignite the wicks on the bottles filled with the solvent. It was a nerve-prickling moment, but not one of total hopelessness, certainly not in Pitt's mind.

He had no burning desire to execute anyone, not even the species of hardened killers whom he was looking at across the water, and whose mercenary comrades he'd met in Colorado. It was no mystery that his life and that of Giordino weren't worth two cents if they were captured. He watched as the commander of the patrol boat raised a loudspeaker to his mouth.

Pitt recognized that the word alto meant "stop," and he could only assume the words that followed were a threat that if he didn't do what he was ordered, the security guards would open fire. He waved that he understood, took one more look at the distance separating him from the ravine, now down to less than half a mile, and a quick glance at the second patrol boat to estimate when it would arrive to back up its escort five to six minutes. Next he checked to make sure the two automatics were snug under the belt behind his back. Only then did he pull back the throttles to the idle position, but he kept the boat in gear so that it still maintained very slow headway.

He moved to the doorway of the cabin, no farther, raised his hands, and stood properly subdued in the dazzling beam of the light. He didn't bother using his limited Spanish vocabulary. He shouted back in English. "What do you want?"

"Do not resist," ordered the commander, now close enough to dispense with the loudspeaker. "I am sending men to board you."

"How can I possibly resist?" Pitt offered helplessly. "I have no machine guns like you."

"Tell the others to come on deck!"

Pitt kept his hands in the air, turned, and made as if he were relaying the commander's orders. "They are afraid you will shoot them."

"We're not going to shoot anyone," the commander answered, in a tone that was about as slimy as an eel.

"Please turn the light out," Pitt begged. "You are blinding me and frightening the women."

"Stand where you are and do not move," the commander shouted in exasperation.

In a few moments, the patrol boat slowed its engines to a slow throb and angled toward the Grand Banks. A few feet away, two of the guards laid down their rifles and began dropping bumpers over the rail of the patrol boat. It was the opportunity Pitt had been waiting for. Even the men behind the machine guns had relaxed. Sensing no sign of trouble, one lit a cigarette. The crew and their commander, their wariness sharply diminished at seeing not the slightest hint of a threat, felt they had the situation firmly under their control.

Their attitude was exactly what Pitt had hoped for. Coldly, precisely, he dropped his hands, whipped out the two automatics, aimed the one in his right hand at the man standing at the forward machine gun, and in the same moment in time lined up the left muzzle at the gunner in the stern, pulling both triggers as fast as his fingers could curl. At a range of fifteen feet, he couldn't miss. The machine gunner in the bow sank to his knees on the deck with a bullet in his shoulder. The gunner in the stern threw his hands in the air, stumbled backward, and fell over the gunwale into the water.

Almost simultaneously, flaming bottles of fuel soared over and past the Grand Banks' bridge like a meteor shower and dropped onto the cabin and decks of the patrol boat, erupting in a roar of flames as the glass shattered and the contents ignited. The fiery liquid pooled and spread across the patrol boat, turning it into a blazing funeral pyre. Virtually the whole open stern deck and half the cabin erupted into flame. Tongues of fire soon poked from every port. Finding themselves about to burn alive, the crew unhesitatingly hurled their bodies into the cold water. The wounded gunner on the bow also staggered across the deck through the flames and leaped overboard. His clothing afire, the commander ignored the flames and stared scathingly at Pitt, before shaking his fist and leaping over the side.

Truculent jerk, Pitt thought.

He didn't waste so much as a second. He rushed to the bridge console and thrust the throttles full forward again, sending the Grand Banks on its interrupted journey toward the ravine. Only then did he spare the time to turn and stare at the patrol boat. The entire craft was engulfed with contorted flames that danced high into the night sky. Black smoke curled and twisted upward, blotting out the stars. In another minute, the fuel tanks exploded, throwing burning debris into the air like a fireworks display. She began to sink by the stern, sliding backward with a hissing sound as the icy water met the blistering flames. Then, with a great sigh, as if she had a soul, the patrol boat sank out of sight.

Giordino came around the cabin and stood at the door, looking at the bits and pieces of burning debris and oil that floated on the surface. "Nice shooting," he said quietly.

"Good pitching."

Giordino inclined his head toward the second patrol boat that was hurtling across the fjord. Then he turned slightly and stared toward the shore. "It's going to be close," he said objectively.

"They won't fall for a sucker play like their buddies. They'll stand off at a safe distance and try and disable us by shooting at our engines."

"Pat and Megan are down there," Giordino reminded him.

"Bring them up," said Pitt, his eyes reading the numbers on the directional computer. He made a slight adjustment and swung the Grand Banks another five degrees to the southwest. Four hundred yards remained. The gap was rapidly narrowing. "Tell them to get ready to abandon the boat the instant we hit shore."

"You're going to hit the rocks at full throttle?"

"We don't have time to tie up to a rock and step ashore with confetti and bands playing."

"On my way," Giordino acknowledged with a brief wave.

The second patrol boat was driving directly toward them, unaware of Pitt's intention to run ashore. The searchlight illuminated the Grand Banks in its beam with unwavering steadiness, like a spotlight trained at a dancer on a stage. The two boats closed rapidly, running at an angle toward each other. Then the commander of the patrol boat sensed Pitt's intentions and steered to cut off the Grand Banks and block it from reaching the shore. With less than half the speed of his nemesis, Pitt was forced to accept the fact that he was engaged in a race he would surely lose. Yet he stood at the helm with unblinking eyes and a callous determination. The fight was extremely one-sided, but he wasn't about to turn the other cheek. The thought of failure never entered his mind.

Seeing an unexpected opportunity, Pitt yanked the gear lever and threw the Grand Banks into reverse. The boat shuddered from the strain under full throttle and came to a stop, its props beating the water in a maelstrom of froth. Then it began moving backward, its square transom pushing aside the water like a bulldozer.

Giordino appeared with Pat and Megan. He stared bemused at seeing the patrol boat about to cross the Grand Banks' bow while their own boat was surging backward. "Don't tell me. I'm keen to guess. You've conjured up another cunning plan."

"Not cunning, just desperate."

"You're going to ram him."

"If we play our cards right," answered Pitt quickly, "I do believe we can bloody his nose. Now, everyone lie on the floor. Use whatever solid cover you can find to shield yourselves. Because it's surely going to rain."

There was no time to say more. The commander of the second patrol boat, not comprehending the reverse movement of his prey, altered his course so that he would cross within ten feet of the Grand Banks' bow, come to a stop, and blast the Grand Banks at point-blank range. It was a naval tactic called crossing the T. He stood at the helm and raised one hand as a signal for the gunners to open fire.

Then two events happened in the same instant. Pitt crammed the gear lever back to full forward and the machine guns on the patrol boat opened up. The Grand Banks' props dug in the water and sent the boat surging forward, as bullets sprayed the bridge. The glass from the windshield shattered into a thousand shards and burst all through the cabin. Pitt had already thrown himself down behind the console, one hand raised and gripping the bottom arc of the helm. He didn't notice that the back of his hand had been gashed by flying glass until the blood began dripping into his eyes. The upper cabin of the Grand Banks was being methodically shot to pieces. The gunners were shooting high to throw sheer terror into the minds of those lying prone on the deck. The interior of the bridge was a bedlam of flying wreckage, as nine-millimeter shells shredded everything they smashed against.

The commander of the patrol boat had cut his speed and was drifting to a stop, since his gunners seemed to be enjoying close-up target practice. His satisfaction was premature, while Pitt's timing couldn't have been more perfect. The commander missed Pitt's intent until it was too late. Before he could steer his patrol boat out of the way, the Grand Banks had suddenly jerked forward, her engines pounding at full rpms.

There came a grinding sound of twisted and tortured fiberglass and wood. The Grand Banks' bow sliced through the starboard hull of the patrol boat and punched through to the keel. The patrol boat canted over on her port side, the crew grabbing at any solid object to keep from being pitched overboard, and began to settle almost immediately.

Pitt hauled himself to his feet, threw the gear lever into reverse, and backed the Grand Banks out of the gash in the hull of the patrol boat, allowing a rush of water to flood and gurgle into the cavity. For a moment, the patrol boat struggled back to an even keel, but then the black waters flowed over her deck and she slipped away, her searchlight still glaring as it plunged to the floor of the fjord, leaving her crew struggling to stay afloat in the frigid waters.

"Al," Pitt said in a conversational tone. "Check the forward compartment."

Giordino disappeared through a hatch and returned in seconds. "We're sucking in water like a giant douche bag. Another five minutes and we'll join our friends in the water, even faster if you don't stop this tub."

"Who said anything about going forward?" Pitt's eyes locked on the direction computer. The distance to shore and the mouth of the ravine was only fifty yards, but it was an impossible span for a fast-sinking boat. Trying to move ahead would only escalate the flood of water pouring in through the shattered bow. His mind raced with a strange clarity, as it always did during crisis, considering any and every option. He sent the Grand Banks barreling through the water in reverse, which lowered the stern and raised the bow. The flooding problem temporarily solved, he warned the others. "Go out on deck and brace yourselves for the shock when we strike the rocks."

"On deck?" Pat asked numbly.

"In case the boat rolls over when we ground, you're better off out in the open where you can jump in the water."

None too soon, Giordino herded the two females outside and made them sit down on the deck, backs against the cabin while reaching out and clutching the railing He sat in the middle with both strong arms encircling their waists. Pat was frozen in pure fright, but Megan, looking into Giordino's unperturbed face, took courage from it. He and the man at the helm had brought them this far. It was utterly incomprehensible to her that they wouldn't make good on their word and take her safely home.

The Grand Banks was settling lower from the water coming through the damaged hull below the waterline aft of the bow. The mouth of the ravine was very close now. Black heaps of rock that Pitt and Giordino had waded past, before commencing their underwater journey to the shipyard earlier that night, rose from the blackness, ominous and beckoning. Pitt did his best to dodge around the largest of the rocks, barely distinguishing their shapes, as they were outlined by the white foam of the fjord's two-foot waves that slapped against them.

And then one of the propellers struck with a loud metallic smack and sheared off, sending the engine racing out of control. More rocks swirled by Then came a heavier blow and the boat shuddered but kept going several more feet, before the port side of the transom crunched into a rock that smashed the yielding wood to pieces. As though a dam had burst, a gush of water flooded across the rear open deck, pulling down the stern. The next shock came with bone-jarring impact, as the boat struck hard on and split down the keel, the wooden-planked hull tearing itself to pieces. But then the terrible crunching and grinding sounds ceased as the battered Grand Banks finally came to a stop, with only ten feet separating her ruptured stern from the edge of the rocky shoreline.

Pitt snatched up the little directional computer and rushed out the bridge door. "Everybody ashore who's going ashore," he shouted. He snatched up Megan under one arm and smiled at her. "Sorry about this, young lady, but we can't hang around to find a ladder." Then he slid over the railing and lowered himself and Megan into the frigid water, his feet touching bottom in four feet. He knew Pat and Giordino were right behind him, as he struggled over the rocky bottom and slimecovered rocks toward dry land.

As soon as his feet cleared the water, he released Megan and checked his directional computer to make absolutely certain they had the right ravine. They did. The Skycar was only minutes away.

"You're hurt," said Pat, seeing the dark stream of blood on Pitt's hand under the light of the stars and falling crescent moon. "You've got a nasty gash."

"A glass cut," he said simply.

She inserted a hand under her red coveralls, ripped off her bra, and began using it to wrap Pitt's hand to stem the flow of blood. "Now, there's a bandage I've never seen before," he murmured with a grin.

"Under the circumstances," she said, tying the ends tightly in a knot, "it's the best I can do."

"Who's complaining?" He gave her a hug and then turned to the shadow that was Giordino. "All present and accounted for?"

Giordino had Megan by the hand. "Adrenaline still pumping."

"Then come on," said Pitt. "Our private plane awaits."

To Sandecker and Agent Little, the wait for the next contact from Pitt and Giordino seemed interminable. The fire had died to a few smoldering embers, and the admiral seemed to have no interest in rekindling it. He puffed on one of his big cigars, covering the ceiling with a haze of blue smoke. Both he and Little passed the time sitting spellbound, listening to the tales told by Admiral Hozafel, tales he had never told anyone in more than fifty-six years.

"You were saying, Admiral," said Sandecker, "that the Nazis sent expeditions to explore Antarctica several years before the war."

"Yes, Adolf Hitler was far more creative than people thought. I can't say what inspired him, but he acquired a fascination for Antarctica, primarily to populate and to use as a giant military establishment. He believed that if such a dream came true, his naval and air forces could control all the seas south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Captain Alfred Ritscher was put in command of a large expedition to explore the subcontinent. The Schwabenland, an early German aircraft carrier used to refuel seaplanes flying the Atlantic in the early 1930s, was converted for Antarctic exploration, and left Hamburg in December of 1938 under the pretense of studying the feasibility of setting up a whaling colony. After reaching their destination in the middle of the southern summer, Ritscher sent out aircraft with the newest and best German cameras. His flyers covered over two hundred and fifty thousand square miles and took more than eleven thousand aerial photographs."

"I've heard rumors of such an expedition," said Sandecker, "but until now I never learned the true facts."

"Ritscher returned with a larger expedition a year later, this time with improved aircraft with skis, so they could land on the ice. They also brought along a small zeppelin. This time they covered three hundred and fifty thousand square miles, landing at the South Pole and dropping flags with the swastika emblem every thirty miles as markers for their claim of Nazi territory."

"Did they discover anything of unusual interest?" asked Little.

"Indeed they did," replied Hozafel. "The aerial surveys recorded a number of ice-free areas, frozen lakes whose ice surface was less than four feet thick, and steam vents with signs of vegetation growing nearby. Their photographs also detected what looked like bits and pieces of roads under the ice."

Sandecker sat up straight and gazed at the old German U-boat commander. "The Germans found evidence of a civilization on Antarctica?"

Hozafel nodded. "Teams using motorized snow vehicles found natural ice caves. While exploring them, they stumbled onto the remains of an ancient civilization. This discovery inspired the Nazis to use their engineering and technical ingenuity to build a vast underground base in Antarctica. It was the best-kept secret of the war."

"To my knowledge," said Little, "Allied intelligence sources ignored rumors of a Nazi base in Antarctica. They considered them far-fetched propaganda."

Hozafel gave a crooked smile. "They were meant to. But once, Admiral Donitz nearly gave it away. During a speech to his U-boat commanders, he announced, `The German submarine fleet is proud of having built for the Fuhrer, in another part of the world, a Shangri-la on land, an impregnable fortress.' Fortunately for us, nobody paid attention. The U-boats I commanded earlier in the war were never sent to the Antarctic, so it wasn't until near the end, when I became commander of the U-699, that I learned of the secret base, whose code name was New Berlin."

"How was it built?" inquired Sandecker.

"After the war began, the first step the Nazis took was to send a pair of raiders into the southern waters to sink all hostile shipping and keep the Allies from obtaining any information concerning the project. Until they were eventually sunk by ships of the British navy, the raiders captured or destroyed entire fleets of Allied shipping and all fishing and whaling ships that strayed into the area. Next, an armada of cargo ships, disguised as Allied merchant vessels, and a fleet of huge U-boats, built not for warfare but to transport large cargoes, began moving men, equipment, and supplies to the area of the ancient civilization they thought might be Atlantis."

"Why build a base on ancient ruins?" said Little. "What military purpose did it serve?"

"The dead and lost city itself was not important. It was the vast ice cave they found under a field of ice that led from the city. The cave traveled twenty-five miles, before ending at a geothermal lake that covered a hundred and ten square miles. Scientists, engineers, construction teams, and every arm of the military- army, air force, navy- and, of course, a large contingent of SS to maintain security and oversee the operation, landed and began an immense excavation project. They also imported a large army of slave labor, mostly captured Russians from Siberia, who had built up a resistance to cold climates."

"What happened to the Russian prisoners after the base was completed?" asked Little, suspecting the answer.

Hozafel's face turned grim. "The Nazis could never allow them to be released and reveal Germany's best-kept secret. They were either worked to death or executed."

Sandecker studied the smoke spiraling from his cigar soberly. "So thousands of Russians lie under the ice, unknown and forgotten."

"Life was cheap to the Nazis," said Hozafel. "The sacrifice to build a fortress to launch the Fourth Reich was well worth the price to them."

"The Fourth Empire," Sandecker said darkly. "The last Nazi bastion and their final attempt at world domination."

"The Germans area very obstinate race."

"Did you see this base?" asked Little.

Again, Hozafel nodded. "After leaving Bergen, Captain Harger and the U-2015, followed by my crew in the U-699, sailed across the Atlantic without surfacing, to a deserted port in Patagonia."

"Where you off-loaded your passengers and treasures," added Sandecker.

"You're familiar with the operation?"

"Only the basics, not the details."

"Then you couldn't know that only the passengers and medical specimens went ashore. The art treasures, hoards of gold and other valuables, as well as the sacred Nazi relics, remained on board the U-2015 and U-699. Captain Harger and I then cast off for the base in Antarctica. After rendezvousing with a supply ship and refueling, we continued the voyage, arriving at our destination in early June of 1945. The product of German engineering was a marvel to behold. A pilot came out and took the helm of the U-2015. We followed in her wake and were led into a large cavern that was invisible from a quarter of a mile at sea. A large dock facility carved out of ice, capable of handling several submarines and large cargo vessels, greeted our amazed eyes. Captain Harger and I were ordered to moor behind a military transport that was unloading disassembled aircraft-"

"They flew aircraft from the base?" Little interrupted.

"The very latest in German aviation technology. Junkers 287 jet bombers converted to transports, fitted with skis, and specially modified for subarctic conditions. The slave labor had cut a large hangar in the ice, while heavy construction equipment had smoothed a mile-long runway. Over five years, an entire mountain of ice was hollowed out to form a small city supporting five thousand construction workers and slaves."

"Wouldn't the ice inside the caverns and tunnels begin to melt from the heat generated by that many men and their equipment?" asked Little.

"German scientists had developed a chemical coating that could be sprayed on the ice walls that insulated and prevented them from melting. The heat inside the complex was maintained at a constant sixty degrees Fahrenheit."

"If the war was over," Sandecker put to Hozafel, "what useful purpose could the base serve?"

"The plan, as I understood it, was for the remaining elite Nazis of the old regime to operate secretly from the base, infiltrate into South America, and buy great tracts of land and many technical and manufacturing corporations. They also invested heavily in the new Germany and in the Asian countries, using the gold from their old national treasury, some of the looted treasures that were sold in America, and counterfeit American currency printed with genuine U.S. Treasury printing plates that were obtained by the Russians and captured by the Germans. Finances were not a problem to launch the Fourth Reich."

"How long did you remain at the base?" asked Little.

"Two months. Then I took my U-boat and crew and sailed to the Rio de Plata River and surrendered to the local authorities. An officer of the Argentine Navy came on board and directed me to continue toward the Mar de Plata naval base. I gave the order, my last one as an officer in the Kriegsmarine before turning over a completely empty U-boat."

"How long after the war ended did this take place?"

"A week short of four months."

"Then what happened?"

"My crew and I were detained until British and American intelligence agents arrived and interrogated us. We were questioned for six solid weeks before we were finally released and allowed to return home."

"You and the crew, I assume, told Allied intelligence nothing."

Hozafel smiled. "We had three weeks during the voyage from Antarctica to Argentina to rehearse our stories. They were a bit melodramatic perhaps, but none of us broke and the interrogation teams learned nothing. They were highly skeptical. But who could blame them? A German naval vessel vanishes for four months and then turns up, its commander claiming that he believed that any radio contact stating that Germany had surrendered was an Allied scheme to make him reveal his position? Not a plausible story, but one they could not break." He paused and stared at the dying fire. "The U-699 was then turned over to the United States Navy and towed to their base at Norfolk, Virginia, where it was dismantled down to the last bolt and then scrapped."

"And the U-2015?" Sandecker probed.

"I don't know. I never heard what happened to her and never saw Harger again."

"You might be interested in knowing," said Sandecker, pleased, "that the U-2015 was sunk only a few days ago by a U.S. nuclear sub in the Antarctic."

Hozafel's eyes narrowed. "I've heard stories of German U-boat activity in the southern polar seas long after the war, but found no substance to them."

"Because many of the highly advanced XXI and XXII class of U-boats are still listed as missing," said Little. "We strongly suspect that a fleet of them was preserved by Nazi leadership for smuggling purposes during the years since the war."

"I would have to admit you're probably correct."

Sandecker was about to speak when the phone rang again. He engaged the speaker, almost afraid of what he might hear. "Yes?"

"Just to confirm," came Pitt's voice. "The pizza is on your doorstep and the delivery boy is on his way back to the store through heavy rush-hour traffic."

"Thank you for calling," said Sandecker. There was no sense of relief in his voice.

"I hope you call again when you get the urge for pizza."

"I prefer calzone." Sandecker closed the connection. "Well," he said wearily, "they reached the aircraft and are in the air."

"Then they're home free," said Little, suddenly buoyant.

Sandecker shook his head dejectedly. "When Dirk mentioned rush-hour traffic, he meant they were under attack by security force aircraft. I fear they have escaped the sharks only to encounter the barracuda."

Under its automatic guidance system, the Moller Skycar ascended into the night and skimmed across the black waters of the fjord, slowly increasing its altitude as it swept over the glacier flowing down from the mountains. If anyone on board thought that once they reached the Skycar, they had lifted off for a peaceful flight back to the NUMA ship waiting off Punta Entrada, they were sadly mistaken.

Not one but four helicopter gunships rose from the deck of the Ulrich Wolf and set a course to intercept the Skycar. One should have been enough, but the Wolfs sent out their entire fleet of security aircraft to stop the fleeing fugitives. There were no fancy formations, no tentative skirmishing- they came on abreast in a well-calculated deployment to cut off the Skycar before it could reach the sanctuary of the mountains.

Purchased by Destiny Enterprises from the Messerschmitt-Bolkow Corporation, the Bo 105LS-7 helicopter was designed and built for the Federal German Army primarily for ground support and paramilitary use. The aircraft chasing the Skycar carried a crew of two, and mounted twin engines that gave it a maximum speed of two hundred and eighty miles an hour. For firepower, it relied on a ventral-mounted, swiveling twenty-millimeter cannon.

Giordino sat in the pilot's seat this trip, with Pitt monitoring the instruments, while the women huddled in the cramped rear passenger seat. In a repeat performance of the incoming flight, there was little for Giordino to do but alter the throttle settings to maximum speed. Every other manipulation was computer-controlled and operated. Next to him, Pitt was studying the pursuing helicopters on the radar screen.

"Why, oh why, can't those big bullies leave us alone?" Giordino moaned.

"Looks like they sent the entire gang," said Pitt, eyeing the blips on the outer edge of the screen, which were closing in on the outline of the Skycar in the center as if it were a magnetic bull's-eye.

"If they have heat-seeking missiles that fly in and through canyons," said Giordino, "they may prove a nuisance."

"I don't think so. Civilian aircraft are rarely capable of carrying military missiles."

"Can we lose them in the mountains?"

"It will be a near thing," Pitt answered. "Their only hope is to take their best shot from half a mile before we're out of range. After that, we can outrun them. Their speed looks to be about thirty miles slower than ours."

Giordino peered through the canopy. "We're coming off the glacier and entering the mountains. Twisting through the canyons should make it awkward for them to get off a clean shot."

"Shouldn't you be concentrating on flying this thing?" said Pat, staring uneasily at the mountains silhouetted in the faint moonlight that were beginning to rise up on both sides of the Skycar. "Rather than chatting among yourselves?"

"How are you two getting on back there?" Pitt asked solicitously.

"This is like riding a roller coaster," said Megan excitedly.

Pat was more aware of the danger and not as enthusiastic as her daughter. "I think I'll keep my eyes closed, thank you."

"We'll be thrown around by turbulence, and the sudden shifts of direction through the mountains, because we'll be running at maximum speed," explained Pitt. "But not to worry. The computer is flying the aircraft."

"How comforting," Pat muttered uneasily.

"The bad guys are coming over the summit at nine o'clock," announced Giordino, warily staring at the glaring lights beamed by the helicopters that lit up the jagged mountain slopes.

The pilots of the assault helicopters played a smart game. They made no attempt to chase the faster Skycar through the hooks and crooks among the ravines that split the mountains. They realized they had one opportunity, and only one, to shoot down the strange-looking aircraft. They gained altitude as one and fired down into the ravine, their twenty-millimeter shells blasting through the dark in trajectories ahead of the Skycar.

Pitt instantly realized the tactic and elbowed Giordino's arm. "Take manual control!" he snapped. "Stop us in midair and back up!"

Giordino obeyed and completed the maneuver almost before the words were out of Pitt's mouth. He switched off the computer control and took command, bringing the Skycar to a gut-wrenching halt that threw them against their safety harnesses, then sending the aircraft back down the ravine in reverse.

"If we attempt to fly through that barrage," said Pitt, "we'll be shot t shreds."

"It's only a matter of seconds before they reposition and aim this way.

"That's the idea. I'm banking on them turning and deflecting their fire behind our path, expecting us to fly into it. But we shoot forward again, forcing them to realign- the same trick we pulled on the patrol boat. If things fall our way, we'll gain enough time to put a mountain between us before they can reconcentrate their fire again."

As they spoke, the gunships broke out of formation to converge their fire. In a few seconds, they had realigned and zeroed in, firing directly at the Skycar. It was the signal for Giordino to send the craft charging up the ravine again. The plan came within a hair of out-and-out success, but the seconds spent in reverse allowed the helicopters to move in closer. There was no concentrated barrage this time. The pilots reacted swiftly and began firing wildly at the rapidly fleeing Skycar.

Shells ripped into the vertical fins of the tail assembly. The landing wheels were shot off and the upper part of the canopy suddenly shattered and flew off into the darkness, allowing a rush of cold air to flood into the cockpit. The murderous but inaccurate fire sprayed all around the craft, but mercifully the engines remained unscathed. Unable to evade the salvo by twisting the Skycar obliquely- since the sides of the ravine were no more than fifty feet from the widest part of the aircraft- Giordino jerked it up and down instead.

The twenty-millimeter shells that missed chewed into the steep cliffs and threw up geysers of rocky fragments. Like a cat chased by a pack of dogs, Giordino hurled the Skycar up the canyon in a frenzied series of undulating maneuvers. Another two hundred yards, then a hundred, and suddenly, Giordino threw the aircraft into a sharp ninety-degree bank, skirting around a protruding rock-bound slope that blocked off the storm of shell fire.

By the time the Destiny Enterprises' gunships had reached the promontory and rounded it, the Skycar had vanished deep into the blackness of the mountains.