Into the Black

FIFTEEN

Using the winch, they drew the two boats closer together. Kismet leapt over to the deck of the golden ship, tying a second line in place so that trawler was fixed firmly to the galley, which rode slightly higher in the water than Anatoly's trawler. As he turned, surveying the golden ship for the first time under normal circumstances, he was overcome by the knowledge of where he was. Bold adventurers, kindred spirits who lived thousands of years before his birth, had stood aboard this vessel. There was nothing to compare with what he was feeling.

Science had no real knowledge about the design of ancient, pre-Hellenistic sailing vessels. It was all conjecture, really. Even the seafaring Phoenician culture had not been survived by as much as a single ship. Only a few incomplete wall murals and the words of ancient historians, who had given little thought to the fact that those ships would someday crumble to dust, remained to reveal how the ancients had roamed the seas.

While it would have been far simpler to just enter the enclosure and grab the Fleece, that would have meant abandoning the galley and all its other secrets to Severin. And since the galley was completely intact and relatively small, raising it in its entirety was only a matter of hard work, not technical know-how. The fact that it now bobbed a few feet away seemed to bear witness to his abilities as an amateur marine salvager.

The canvas blankets concealed much of the ship from his view, but he immediately began comparing the suppositions of contemporary scholars with what he was seeing. The colonnaded superstructure was inconsistent with theory, but other features were right on the mark. A girdle of ropes, now gilded, encircled the hull like a net. Kismet recalled that the purpose of this arrangement was to add strength to the overall structure, especially when battle conditions required the sailors to ram another vessel.

The bow of the ship-a galley, and not an early Bronze Age explorer scout as the Argo would have been-rose high above the gangway, even above the roof of the enclosure. Kismet could make out a gilt ladder ascending to the bowsprit and the carved foremast. The latter, an ornate spar that protruded out over the water ahead of the vessel, had been crafted to resemble a woman both delicate and fear-inspiring. Remembering the altar stone he had first viewed in Harcourt's photograph, Kismet wondered if he wasn't looking at a likeness of Medea herself. Directly below the bowsprit, the hull swept ahead at the waterline and continued forward beneath the surface to form the galley's ram.

Irene crossed over to stand beside him. "I'm really very impressed, Nick."

"You're not the only one. Come on; let's clear some of this stuff away."

As they started removing the three remaining makeshift float bladders from the net slings, Irene noticed something that Kismet had missed. "It's not glowing anymore."

Kismet stood up and scanned the golden surface. He could see the impressions of their footprints, stamped in the soft metal overlay, but there was no hint of the illumination that had pierced the undersea darkness. A sudden wind came up, blowing against the tarps and causing them to flap noisily. "That's strange." His words were lost in the clamor.

Anatoly crossed over to join them. "May I see it?"

Kismet nodded and led the way back to the entrance to the hold. The interior was dark, no longer illuminated by the glowing metal. "I guess we'll need a light or something. Wait here."

Before either of them could protest, Kismet had ducked out of the hold and jumped back over to the trawler. Anatoly quickly followed, but Kismet waved him off.

"I'll just be a minute. Stay there."

He knew exactly where his flashlight was; tucked in his waist pack, the batteries still relatively fresh. But he had another purpose for returning to the fishing boat; a detail which had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since the failure of his previous attempt to recover the Golden Fleece. It was a matter that he had not been able to resolve, primarily for lack of an opportunity, but now a chance had presented itself.

The instruments were basic; the trawler was almost as much an antique as the golden galley. He quickly located the bulky marine band radio transmitter and laid a hand on the case; it was still warm. The radio had been used recently. He drew back his hand and stared at the metal box, as though it had confirmed his suspicions. There was nothing he could do about it now.

A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the others had not left the golden ship. He raised the headphones to one ear and switched on the radio, making a note of the frequency to which it was tuned. He then adjusted that knob to another position and sent out a brief message, nothing more than a greeting, but using code words in the Russian language. He continued to do this, nudging the tuner until he received a reply. He then rattled off several sentences, all of which would have seemed harmless and not especially noteworthy to any eavesdroppers. He waited for a confirmation then switched the set off, after which he quickly loosened the antenna wire. He had almost passed from the wheelhouse before remembering to return the tuner to its original frequency. As he departed the wheelhouse a second time, his gaze fell on a battered electric lantern, powered by a large dry cell battery. Deciding that the lamp was better suited than his MagLite to the pretense upon which he had made his exit, he scooped it up then raced back to the golden ship, painfully aware that he had been gone for nearly five minutes.

"Here it is," he called, waving the light like a trophy. He pushed past them into the hold and switched the lamp on. Its beam shot through the darkness, glinting off of the now dormant metal and was reflected throughout the structure.

"It's beautiful," gasped Irene.

The cargo had not shifted dramatically during the ascent. The ship had rolled over almost right away, guided to an upright position by the air bladders strategically positioned on the hull. The cask which had contained the Golden Fleece itself had tipped over, and was now lying in the aisle at the center of the hold. "Give me a hand here."

With Anatoly's help, he turned it over so that the opening he had made was facing up. He then set the lantern down, and thrust both hands into the crate. "It's still here," he said, grinning.

It felt profoundly heavier as he lifted it from the confines of the box. Anatoly and Irene reached out to help him lay it out flat on the empty crate.

"So that's the Golden Fleece," Irene remarked.

Spread out before them, Kismet had to admit that it seemed rather ordinary; an animal skin, maybe large enough to be worn as a shawl over the shoulders but for the prodigious weight of the gold. He brushed a hand through the gilt wool, and then inspected his fingertips in the lamplight. Tiny particles of metal dust glinted in the whorls of his fingerprints. Impelled by curiosity, he flipped back one corner of the Fleece, revealing sodden leather.

"Not what you were expecting?" Anatoly inquired.

"I'm not sure what I was expecting," confessed Kismet. He played the beam of the flashlight around the hold once more, inspecting the dozens of almost identical cargo crates that lined the walls.

"Shall we open them?"

"Maybe in a minute. First, I want to test a theory." He set his flashlight down beside the Fleece and switched it off, plunging them into darkness. Irene's sigh of irritation was audible in the sudden blackness that filled the hold.

"Scientific method," he muttered. His fumbling fingers unscrewed the wire leads from the battery terminals. He then brought the wires in contact with the Fleece and was instantly rewarded with illumination. "Aha! I think we can safely say that it is an electrical phenomenon at work here, not a magical…"

The light at his fingertips suddenly flared with blinding intensity. Before he could even think about letting go, the bulb imploded with a pop that startled all of them and returned them once more into darkness.

"Was that part of the experiment?" remarked Irene.

"As a matter of fact, it was," he replied, matching her sarcastic tone. "Anyway, there's not much more we can do in here now. We'll wait until we're safely ashore to find out what other secrets this ship is hiding."

"I agree," rumbled Anatoly, breaking his long silence. "I don't like the feel of this wind. I don't want to have to navigate the harbor, towing this ship, in the middle of a storm." The big Russian turned to leave the hold, but Kismet forestalled him.

"Wait. We can't go back there."

The fisherman faced him, his features growing stern. "We must. There's nowhere else to go."

"We've got to get this ship away from Russian waters. Severin's jurisdiction extends to the Georgian Coast. If we go back, he'll just kill us and tow the ship back to Sevastopol."

"I don't believe that would happen," Anatoly replied in a grave voice. "But it does not matter. This discovery belongs to my people, Nikolai Kristanovich. Surely you must respect that."

"I'm afraid I agree with him," Irene intoned. "If you take the ship away from Georgia, then you'll be no better than Grimes and his thugs."

"Under normal circumstances, I would agree. But these aren't normal circumstances. Listen, I don't care who claims ownership of this galley. But if we don't let the world know what we've found, then no one will ever learn of it. This is a secret that the Russians would kill to protect."

"You're being paranoid."

"I don't think I am. Severin tried to do away with me once already. Not only that, if we take this ship back to harbor, do you think Grimes won't notice? Our only hope is to get into Turkish waters. Then, when I've announced the discovery to the world under the aegis of my office, we can worry about whose property it is."

As he spoke, Kismet became increasingly aware of the ship's undulations. The sea was no longer the calm surface it had been during the salvage. Anatoly had been correct about one thing: a storm was rising.

"We must put into port," Anatoly urged. "I understand your concerns, but the sea is not a safe place for us to be right now. As long as my boat tows this ship, both vessels are in danger of being battered against each other."

Kismet couldn't argue with the immediacy of the threat posed by nature's fury. "You're right. You take Irene back to Poti. I'll ride the storm out aboard the galley."

Irene jumped forward, shouting into his face. "Are you out of your mind? You'd never survive."

"It's either that, or we sail for Turkey. You decide."

Anatoly's eyes drew into narrow slits. "You risk all our lives with this foolishness, but I will do as you ask."

"Great. You go back to the trawler and let out the tow cable. Irene and I have some work to do here."

Both the Russian and Irene asked simultaneously. "What?"

"An ancient Greek galley, overlaid in gold is a bit obvious, don't you think? We'll try to rearrange the tarps to camouflage it. Make it look more like an ordinary boat. We'll float over on the inner-tubes as soon as we're done."

As they moved out onto the gangway, it became apparent that the weather was changing more rapidly than Kismet would have thought possible. "Storms rise quickly on the Black," Anatoly shouted over the roaring wind. Nevertheless, Kismet could not believe that the clear night had so quickly become filled with thunderheads. Distant lightning licked at the water, and the rolling detonations of thunder, followed quickly. The storm was not far off.

Anatoly loosened the ropes binding the two vessels and the galley immediately began to drift away. Larger and heavier than the trawler, the golden vessel seemed a perfect target for the tempest; the wind and swells quickly pushed it away to the full length of the towrope. The cable snapped out of the water, springing taut, and then the galley, driven by the persistent wind, started pulling the fishing boat along backwards through the water. Anatoly corrected this problem by revving the engine, but the strain on the tow cable was audible over the howl of the storm.

Kismet and Irene worked quickly, first stowing the inner-tubes between the columns and the hold, then draping tarpaulins and nets along the hull. The gusting wind made this task all but impossible. At one point, a sustained blast tore a canvas blanket from their combined grip. It sailed away into the night, skimming along the waves like a magic carpet.

"This is crazy!" Kismet admitted, shouting to be heard, as fat raindrops began pelting them at a forty-five degree angle. He took Irene's hand and led her back to the hold. The sound of the storm was muted, but when the rain changed to hail, it banged on the gold-covered enclosure like an enormous snare drum.

"I agree," replied Irene, when they were sheltered. "Why didn't you just let Anatoly tow us back to port?"

"Because Anatoly is an FSB agent, or at least an informant."

"That's ridiculous. You weren't there when Captain Severin questioned us. He hates Anatoly. He thinks he's a traitor for helping my father escape."

"All an act. Ask yourself this; how did Severin find us out here?"

"An informant in the city. Severin admitted as much."

Kismet shook his head. "An informant might have seen us leave, but he wouldn't have known where we were going. Only Anatoly could have supplied that information."

"Severin said that he found us when Anatoly radioed for a weather report."

"Well, I think that he called for another weather report just after we raised this galley. Funny that he didn't mention that a storm was rising. I'd say the forecast calls for trouble."

The slopes on the eastern face of the Caucasus were calm. No wind stirred the dusting of snow that had fallen earlier in the day; no breeze caused the bare limbs of the trees to sway. But something was passing through the woods, something unseen like the wind, but with a greater potential for destruction.

The men were by no means invisible, but the white camouflage shells that covered their winter parkas blended in with the snowscape and made them almost impossible to see. Their stealthy progress through the forests and up the slopes would not have attracted the notice of a casual observer.

After hours of hiking and climbing, their destination was nearly in site. As they crested a hill, getting a good look at the German encampment, they paused briefly to go over the plan and make a few last minute modifications, and then fanned out, encircling the small tent city.

Lysette Lyon took the opportunity to review her objectives: recover the plans for the EMP bomb, capture or terminate Halverson Grimes, and if possible, bring back the Golden Fleece. This raid, if successful, would accomplish the second of the three.

So far, Kismet had mostly outmaneuvered her efforts to recover the data, smuggled from Germany to the United States via Morocco. She had received a severe dressing-down for having involved her former lover in the first place, a civilian in the employ of the United Nations, though to Lyse it had seemed like a perfect plan. However, that indiscretion was quickly forgotten when she had delivered the spy, captured at Kismet's apartment, as well as the news that Halverson Grimes was a traitor, to her section leader.

The confirmation of Grimes' treachery was important, but what mystified her was the response of her superiors to the news of Kismet's search for the Golden Fleece. Though she was given explicit instructions that Kismet should not know of their interest, she was left with no illusions about the intention of the United States government to gain sole possession of the legendary relic. Lyse was awarded an unexpected commendation, and given command of a Crisis Operation Liaison Team — the CIA equivalent of the German Special Forces team they would be facing — in order to secure her objectives. Little had Kismet realized when demanding her help that he was playing right into their hands.

Nevertheless, she still did not comprehend everyone's interest in the Golden Fleece; she had seen a movie about it and it hadn't struck her as being especially useful. When she had convinced Kismet to give up a copy of the plans at the shore side rendezvous, she had believed one of those directives to be more or less satisfied. But the news that Grimes was in the mountains and not in Germany as everyone had assumed was welcome beyond words. With luck, she and her team would be able to snatch the traitor out of the Caucasus without having to risk an international incident with Germany.

Their penetration of the camp went unnoticed by the bored sentries who patrolled the perimeter under the glare of klieg lights. Lyse and the COLT squad leader went from tent to tent, listening and observing for any clue that might direct them to their target. Finally, they reached the edge of the big tent concealing the dig site. Lyse lifted the heavy canvas and peeked inside.

Soldiers milled about, some standing guard and others laboring in the pit. She ignored them, focusing on a table near the edge of the dig where three men were conversing in heated tones. She recognized Grimes instantly. The tall blond man with whom he was arguing she identified as Sir Andrew Harcourt, Kismet's nemesis. The third man she did not know, but took him for a German commando. His impudence in conversing with the other men suggested he was more than just an aide-de-camp. Lyse cupped one hand over her ear, to make out the argument.

"…failure, Harcourt," Grimes roared. "Kismet would have found it days ago."

"Kismet is an amateur," retorted the seething British archaeologist. "He is a cowboy. Like the rest of you Americans, if he can't find something in a few days, he gives up. Archaeology is about patience and persistence…."

"Spare me your lectures," the commando officer interjected tersely. "I am here for results."

"I beg your forgiveness Colonel," Grimes remarked, as though he found the man's ire merely inconvenient. "My 'expert' was apparently vastly overrated."

"If you think Kismet is so vital to the success of this endeavor," snapped Harcourt, "then you ought to have kidnapped him, as you did Chereneyev. That seems to be the way you fellows operate."

"That's not a bad idea," observed the colonel.

"As a prisoner, Kismet would accomplish nothing. I had believed that he would undertake a search on his own that would prove more successful than our excavation here. But my observers report that he has not left the city. Perhaps the artifact does not exist, as Mr. Kismet has repeatedly asserted.”

"It does exist." Harcourt was insistent. "Chereneyev verified its existence by bringing us here. Your scientists verified it when they analyzed the metal fragments."

"Nothing has been 'verified.' A rare metal was discovered. It was you that made the connection to the Golden Fleece. And a tenuous connection it has proven to be."

"Then our work here is in vain." Lyse had difficulty understanding the German officer's heavily accented English; she could not tell if it was a question or a statement. "We risk war with the Russians so that you, Herr Harcourt, can chase a wild goose? Or to find your magic metal, Herr Grimes? This madness must end. This operation is over."

"I agree," intoned Grimes.

"Well then," Harcourt huffed. "When I find the Golden Fleece, we shall see who has the last laugh."

From her vantage point, Lyse resisted the urge to chuckle at the stuffy Brit's indignation. Before the three men could go their separate ways however, a soldier in blank white fatigues approached the colonel, snapping to attention. The officer addressed the soldier in German then took a brief report.

"What is it?" Grimes inquired. "Kismet?"

Lyse's heart skipped a beat. Had her team been detected?

"There is an unusual storm on the sea," the German explained. "If we do not make haste, we will be trapped up here."

"Give the order."

"In what respect is the storm unusual?" Harcourt asked.

"What?"

"You said that the storm was 'unusual.' What makes this storm different than any other?"

The German turned to the soldier and snapped off a question. As the young trooper answered, the colonel translated. "The storm rose out of nowhere, just a few kilometers offshore. It has grown quite intense; lightning and wind. At present, it is hanging out over the sea."

"Why do you ask, Sir Andrew?" Grimes' tone suddenly grew deferential.

"I think we need to find out what caused that storm."

"'What caused the storm?'" echoed the German. "God caused the storm. Storms simply happen."

Grimes, however, was more thoughtful. "I think Sir Andrew may be right. Oversee the dismantling of the camp, Colonel. Sir Andrew and I will be leaving presently."

Lyse pulled away from the tent as the three men started moving. Snafu, she thought bitterly. There was no way they would be able to grab Grimes now. The traitor would soon be heading down the mountain, and she and her men would be left behind, far from their support base.

She shadowed Grimes and a group of others through the maze of tents. A detachment of troopers, along with a few people that Lyse recognized from the church basement in New York City, climbed onto the rear of a snow cat while Grimes, Harcourt and another soldier got in the cab. Within minutes, the tracked troop mover was plowing up snow on its way down the mountain.

Lyse and the COLT leader slipped back to the perimeter of the camp and called the rest of the unit in for a huddle. It was clear what they would have to do. Lyse outlined her new plan, and after a brief weapons check, the men dispersed again.

Five minutes later, the stillness of the mountain camp was shattered by gunfire.

The hail passed after a few moments and returned to heavy rain punctuated by flashes of lightning spaced at intervals that were becoming shorter by the minute. Realizing that the fury of the storm was still building, Kismet led Irene back onto the deck. They lashed themselves to one of the inner-tubes and lowered it into the churning sea. The swells instantly drove the inflated rubber circle into the side of the ship. He ignored the violent pounding and gripped the tow cable with gloved hands. Little by little, he pulled them away from the galley and across the open expanse between the two vessels. They were both soaked through and shivering by the time Kismet heaved the inner-tube, with Irene still tied fast, onto the trawler's deck. He quickly loosened the knot, and they both hastened to find Anatoly.

The Russian was almost frantic. He had one shoulder braced against the rudder wheel, while his right hand feathered the throttle controls. His eyes flashed between the compass, which was spinning wildly, and the engine gauges.

"We're being driven away from shore!" he shouted when he saw them. "It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen! Take the wheel."

Uncomprehending, Kismet took Anatoly's place at the controls, while the Russian seated himself at the radio and began frantically shouting out a distress message. The urgent call was repeated several times before the fisherman threw the headset down in disgust. "There's no reply. I must know where the storm is coming from or we might sail into the worst of it."

A weather report, thought Kismet gritting his teeth. Anatoly was right. Even though it would potentially reveal their location and purpose to the Russian Navy, it might also get them through the night alive. "Maybe there's a short in the transmitter," he offered. "Or a loose antenna wire."

Anatoly turned the unit around. "Da. That is it." He quickly reconnected the wire Kismet had disabled, and resumed sending the message. This time he smiled as he heard a reply in the headphones. He continued sending and receiving for several minutes, then tore the headset off.

"They do not know where the storm came from. But we seem to be in the heart of it. None of the weather stations were reporting any storm activity. Not even a drop in the barometer. It is most unusual."

"So what are we supposed to do?"

"We cannot push through it, and it is between us and the shore. If we are to survive, we must ride with the storm."

Kismet immediately cranked the wheel, steering the trawler toward the east. He felt an instant surge of forward movement as the power of the engine aligned with the thrust of the gale. "Irene, go check on the galley. I don't want the wind to blow her past us. Or into us."

She nodded and ventured out onto the deck, returning less than a minute later. "It's gaining on us, but not too quickly."

"Which way? Will she ram us?"

"No. It will pass on the right."

Kismet immediately cut hard to starboard, then let the wheel straighten itself. "Now where is she?"

"Swinging to our left," Irene reported after another quick trip aft.

"Perfect." He turned to Anatoly. "I think we'll be fine, as long as this storm doesn't change directions."

The Russian nodded, but his expression was troubled. "This storm…it is not natural." He shook his head, as if his thoughts had crossed into a forbidden area.

"What? Do you mean to say it's supernatural?"

The big fisherman raised his hands. "You spoke of the Fleece creating electrical fields, did you not? Perhaps, when we salvaged the ship, those fields began to influence the weather."

"The storm started right after the galley came up," Irene agreed. "Maybe the Fleece is causing the storm. Or the storm is nature's way of protecting it, the same way the fish tried to keep you from approaching it when it was underwater."

"Do you realize how crazy that sounds?" Kismet knew in his heart that his skepticism was insincere. Something extraordinary was happening; he had no doubt of that.

"Is the Fleece's causing a storm any crazier than it creating air underwater or making the whole ship glow?" retorted Irene.

"It was you who suggested the theory of electrical fields from the Fleece, Kismet. And what is lightning but electricity from the sky?"

"If that's true, then we'll never be able to ride out the storm. It will stay on top of us indefinitely."

"Maybe that's what sunk the galley in the first place," suggested Irene. "Didn't Jason use the Fleece to end a drought in his kingdom? Maybe this is how; weather control."

"So what should we do? Cut the galley loose and make a run for it? Not after all we've been through to bring it up."

"I agree," voiced Anatoly. "That should only be a last resort, if conditions get worse."

Kismet nodded. "Why don't you two try to get some rest? I can handle the wheel for now. We can trade off after a few hours. Maybe the storm will blow itself out."

Neither Irene nor Anatoly seemed eager to leave, but there was little they could do to assist him. After they left to go below decks, Kismet turned his eyes forward, gazing through the water that poured across the windscreen as he held the wheel steady.

He contemplated trying to make a second covert radio contact but decided against it. There wasn't anything to report and it wasn't worth risking discovery if his suspicions about Anatoly were true. He was troubled by the possibility that the fisherman was working for the Russian intelligence service, primarily because the big man had been so helpful in their efforts to recover the Golden Fleece.

Irene reappeared after nearly half an hour, carrying a soggy sandwich and a half-filled cup of coffee. "This was full a minute ago," she complained, passing it to him. "It's a good thing I don't get seasick."

"Thanks. I thought you were going to get some rest?"

"With the boat pitching like this?" She shook he head. "I thought I'd try to make myself useful. Anatoly helped me get the stove going. I left him holding the coffee pot so that it doesn't end up getting spilled."

Kismet took a bite of the sandwich. Tucked between the two slices of bread were several fillets of oily sprat-a fish from the herring family. He managed to hide his lack of enthusiasm for the repast behind a more or less sincere smile.

Irene leaned against the bulkhead. "Well, you've brought us this far. What's next?"

"The compass is pretty much useless with this much electrical activity, so it's tough to say exactly where we are right now. But the coast of Turkey occupies all points to the south. If the storm breaks even a little, we'll turn and make a beeline in that direction."

"That's not exactly what I meant."

He raised an eyebrow. "Then I don't follow you."

"I have no doubt that you'll be able to get us safely to Turkey. For you, the impossible is routine."

"Thanks. Or was that not a compliment?"

"I mean, what will you do once you've succeeded? Once you've told the world about the Fleece?"

"If things work out as they usually do, the ship and everything on it will become a political bargaining chip. I might get a little credit for discovering it, but it will eventually be taken away from me. Since it was discovered off the coast of Georgia, they will have the most binding claim. But if it can be authenticated as a Greek artifact, then the Greek government will want it."

"And of course, if you take it to Turkey, they will want a piece of the action."

He laughed. "I think you're beginning to understand how the game of international antiquities is played."

"So why do you do it? Why chase all over the world for things that you'll never get to keep, or even get credit for?"

"I could give you my standard answer; insatiable curiosity and a thirst for knowledge of the ancient past."

"But we both know that's not really it."

"No." He unconsciously chewed his lip. The purpose that fired him, linked to that fateful night in the desert so many years before, was something he rarely revealed to anyone. He was not oblivious to the overtures Irene had made — not simply the mutual physical attraction, but something much deeper. Along with the kind of commitment she yearned for, there was a degree of trust, which he remained unwilling to share.

His personal quest was a jealous mistress, yielding precious little space in his heart for romance and even less time to pursue it. It had destroyed his relationship with Lyse, and God only knew how many other opportunities had been missed through the years. Yet, Irene deserved some kind of answer. "This is just something I have to do."

Even as he said it, the foolishness, not only of his words but of the very argument that generated them, rang in his head. Why indeed did he remain on a path he had chosen more than a decade previously, when years of searching had failed to yield a single clue? How many chances for happiness had he passed up because of his vendetta against an unknown and perhaps unknowable enemy? How many more chances would he get? He tried to meet her eyes; to make some small token to indicate that perhaps with just a little more coaxing, he might be persuaded to accept her implicit offer.

"Sounds like a lonely way to live." Her tone was solemn.

He couldn't match her stare. Deep down, he knew that, were he to attempt to lay aside his quest, the hunger for answers would consume him. There could be no rest, no ordinary life, not while those questions remained unresolved. He might not find those answers in the Golden Fleece, but recovering that mythic artifact was simply a facet of what he had become. As a tangible link to events shrouded in mystery, that gilt lambskin held answers to a different set of questions, but answers nonetheless. His eyes quickly returned to the rain-drenched windscreen. "I guess I've gotten used to it."

Somehow Irene must have sensed that she had lost him, for she made no further inquiries. After a few moments of silence, Kismet tried again to look at her, but discovered that she had already gone.

Dawn soon broke but the sky did not brighten noticeably. The thunder and lightning stayed with them, as did the wind, rain and occasional outpourings of hail. Kismet had not been able to turn south as hoped. Rather, the storm had chosen the next course change, and it was due north.

Though it flew in the face of reason, Kismet was beginning to accept that the storm and the salvage of the golden ship were indeed linked. He would not go so far as to accept that a supernatural intelligence was behind the weather — it was not mighty Zeus hurling thunderbolts down at them — but several undeniable facts were pointing to a similarly improbable conclusion. The weather system had definitely risen as soon as the galley and its spectacular cargo had been lifted from the depths, and the center of the storm had been chasing them for hours. An ordinary tempest would have eventually passed them by, but this phenomenal front seemed to match their pace, driving them ahead even as it tried to close the gap, not unlike a donkey chasing a carrot held out by its rider. He further surmised that the cyclic nature of the disturbance, due to the Coriolis effect, was responsible for what was pushing them in a gradual curve that would eventually bring them full circle. It was like being caught in a whirlpool. If the Golden Fleece was the shackle that bound them to the vortex, their only hope of survival might be to surrender their prize once more to the depths. It was a decision that would have to be made soon. Trying to ride out the storm was like playing Russian roulette; every wave that crashed over the bow might be the one that would capsize or crush the trawler.

Anatoly came up to the wheelhouse, confessing to them that he had finally nodded off for a while. Kismet turned the wheel over to the Russian, but did not leave the cabin. He was too keyed up to even think about sleep. The rational man that he was kept telling him to hang on just a little longer; that the weather would eventually pass and the Golden Fleece, as well as he and Irene, would be safe. However, his travels had taught him that there were a great many things that science and rationale could not explain. It was getting harder to deny that the events they were experiencing fell into that category.

"I'm going to go out on the deck and check the tow line!" He had to shout to be heard over the howling wind, but Anatoly did hear and nodded affirmatively. Kismet stole a glance at the radio, wondering if he should trust the Russian, but his momentary suspicion passed; there were more pressing matters to attend to.

Irene followed him out into the storm. If the hours under cover had allowed their clothes to dry out a little, the torrential downpour quickly reversed that condition. The driving wind tore at his jacket, dumping rivers of chilly water down his collar. He pulled the lapels of the jacket tight at his neck, but the damage was already done.

A night spent enduring the constant pitching had given him sea legs and he was able to make the traverse to the stern without falling. A quick inspection of the tow winch showed some wear, but he felt confident that the cable would hold at least a little while longer. He then peered through the rain and spray to see how the golden ship was holding up.

The galley had not been designed for prolonged journeys under harsh conditions; it had been built by seafarers who never sailed beyond sight of the shore. When seas were rough, they drove their ship onto the beach rather than attempt to ride out the storms. Notwithstanding the intentions of her shipwrights, the vessel was holding up remarkably well. It was both light enough to ride over the swells and broad enough to avoid being rolled over.

"Nick!" He turned to see what she wanted and found her pointing urgently in the general direction of the galley. He tried to follow the line of her finger, but for a moment saw nothing.

"What is it?"

"Just watch. There it is again."

This time he too saw the flash of orange light; not lightning, but something artificial. "There's someone else out here. But no one in their right mind would be out in this storm. That means they must be looking for us."

"Do you think Anatoly called the Boyevoy?"

That Irene voiced the suspicion only reinforced Kismet's distrust. If she was no longer confident of her old friend's fidelity, how could he believe that the fisherman was not a spy? "Let's go ask him."

He half expected to catch Anatoly in the act of transmitting a signal to the destroyer, but the Russian had his hands full trying to wrestle control of the rudder from the storm.

"Do you have a pair of binoculars?" Kismet asked. "There's another boat following us."

Anatoly looked genuinely surprised. He reached into a cabinet and withdrew a pair of binoculars. Kismet thanked him and went back out into the tempest.

The lenses became smeared with rain as soon as he attempted to peer through them. He wiped it away, but was unable to keep them clear for more than a few seconds. Nevertheless, through the distorting rivulets of water, he could make out the silhouette of the other vessel as it crested a swell.

"Is it Severin?" Irene shouted.

"No. It's too small. But it's military all right. Probably a patrol boat." He motioned for her to join him below decks.

"Then maybe they aren't after us," she suggested, once they were out of the storm. She futilely tried to squeeze the water from her hair then gave up in disgust.

"No. They know we're here. But maybe they haven't been in contact with Severin. We might be able to bluff our way past them."

"And if not?"

Kismet contemplated returning to the wheelhouse, where he had left the captured AK-47 with a half-full magazine of ammunition. "The odds will be a lot better than if we were taking on the Boyevoy."

Irene swallowed, but said nothing more. A moment later, Anatoly stepped onto the deck and moved close enough to speak without shouting. "I've tied the wheel down. It's useless to try to navigate in this storm anyway. Well, is there another ship out there?"

"Yes. It's looks like a patrol boat though, not Severin's destroyer."

Shock registered on the Russian's face. "Not possible," he whispered in Russian, then abruptly turned and hastily fled the cabin.

"What the hell do you suppose that was about?"

Irene shrugged. "He must know something we don't. Should we clue him in on your plan?"

"As soon as I figure out what it is, I'll tell you, then him. Any ideas?"

"We could tell them we were taking a cruise in our Greek galley when the storm came up. And that Anatoly found us, and was trying to tow us back to port."

Though she spoke half in jest, Kismet suddenly brightened at the idea. "It might work." He raced once more out into the storm and stared across the water at the valiant golden ship.

"Mind sharing that with me?" Irene yelled, her dark hair once more plastered to her head by the driving rain.

"Okay, try this!" The wind seemed to steal the enthusiasm from his voice, and his words came out in terse blocks of speech. "World renowned adventurer Nick Kismet and his lovely assistant attempt to recreate the historic voyage of Jason and the Argonauts by building a replica of the Argo and sailing it across the Black Sea. My dad used to do things like that all the time."

"That's crazy." She drew closer so that her argument would not be lost in the tempest. "They'll never buy it."

"It suits the situation. A gunboat isn't going to be crewed by suspicious officers like Severin. We'll probably end up talking to some poor lieutenant who'd give his left testicle to be back on dry land. We can pull this off. We just have to speak with authority."

Irene gazed through the sheeting rain at the approaching patrol vessel. It was no longer a flashing light in the distance. The patrol boat's more powerful engine was stabbing through the tumultuous seas, gaining on them with every passing second. "Speak with authority? That doesn't seem like your style."

"That will be the easy part. Remember, I'm a lawyer. Besides, these guys probably won't understand English. You can translate for me."

"Wonderful." She made no attempt to hide her sarcasm. "Shall we at least let Anatoly in on this little scheme?"

When they entered the wheelhouse, the big Russian was hunched over the radio, listening intently. Somehow, Kismet wasn't surprised. "Who are you calling?"

"Silence!" His outburst caused him to lose his concentration and he pounded the counter in frustration. Composing himself, he fired off a message that Kismet found impossible to decipher. They watched in mute confusion as he continued this way for several minutes. He then tore the headset off, and started out of the wheelhouse.

"Anatoly!" Irene shouted. "We've got a plan!"

The Russian either did not hear or chose to ignore her. Kismet chased after him. "Just a damn minute—"

Anatoly stood at the stern, staring intently at the approaching gunboat. It was now close enough that they could easily discern the radio mast, as well as the forward mounted machine gun emplacement. Just above that, a light was flickering on and off.

"Listen Anatoly," Kismet began, trying to calm the fisherman. "We've got a plan that just might work."

"Are you still ignorant?" ranted the Russian. "Or just a fool? Look!"

He was pointing to the flashing light, and Kismet realized that it was a signal being sent in Morse code. He had learned the antiquated method of communication as a Boy Scout, and despite a few mental cobwebs, began to piece together the sequence of long and short flashes into a comprehensible message. Though he had missed the first half, he got the gist of it just from the last few letters.

"What are they saying?" demanded the Russian.

"'Heave to and prepare to be boarded.' Or they'll open fire. I thought all mariners knew Morse code." Even as he said it, he knew the answer. "They're sending in English."

"Those are not Russians!" Anatoly spun on his heel and vanished below decks.

Kismet's mind raced for another explanation. If the Russian sailors knew he was aboard, it would make sense that they would communicate in English. But whom had Anatoly been talking to, and why was he so upset? Frustrated, he made his way back to the wheelhouse where Irene was waiting.

"What was that about?"

"I'm not sure." Kismet checked the engine speed indicator, and then shifted the throttle to idle position. "But I don't think we can count on Anatoly for help."

"So what do we do?"

"Stick to Plan A for now. Let's go out on deck and prepare to be boarded."

"Is that like waiting for the axe to fall?" she asked, dismally.

"Let's hope not." He took her hand and guided her outside. With the screws no longer turning in the water, the trawler was completely at the mercy of the storm. The golden ship appeared to be moving closer, but it was the approaching gunboat that held Kismet's attention. It had closed to within hailing distance and another minute would bring it alongside the trawler. Despite what Anatoly had implied, the Russian tri-color flag and the Navy jack snapped in the wind on the bow line. Kismet threw an insincere wave to the crewmen on its deck, but received only steely stares by way of reply; the sailors had no intention of moving their hands away from the triggers of their guns to be polite.

Two of the sailors on the opposing craft lofted grapples across the distance. Kismet took no action as the hooks bit into the gunwale and the trawler was pulled in like a prize catch. Though the gunboat rode higher in the water, the crew of the naval vessel had no difficulty jumping down onto the smaller boat. Kismet raised his hands to indicate that he was not armed.

"Is that how you project authority, counselor?" Irene observed, imitating his posture.

Before he could answer her sarcastic quip, another group of men appeared on the deck of the patrol boat and one by one lowered themselves onto the trawler. Kismet groaned aloud as he recognized two of them, Halverson Grimes and Sir Andrew Harcourt. "So much for Plan A."

SIXTEEN

As torrential rain continued to hammer down from the heavens, the boarders herded them toward the stern where all had a clear view of the vessel in tow. Despite the dark clouds and curtain of precipitation, the ancient outline of the galley was unmistakable.

Harcourt gaped in breathless amazement. "You’ve done it, Kismet! You've actually found the Argo!"

Kismet laughed in spite of the situation. "You're doing it again Andy; confusing mythology with archaeology. This is exactly what got you into trouble with the Beowulf fiasco."

Harcourt whirled on him, his tone strident as he shouted to be heard over the wind. "Do you dare to deny that the Golden Fleece is on that ship? We've followed the storm all night, and the storm has followed you. You've found it! I know you have!"

"Be silent," Grimes barked. "I am sick of your prattle."

Harcourt glared at the portly traitor, nursing his wounded pride, but said nothing more.

"Nice boat," Kismet remarked. "I had almost forgotten that the first thing you did after getting here was capture a Russian patrol boat and enslave its crew."

"I am not interested in discussing trivial matters with you Kismet." Grimes motioned for two of his soldiers to man the winch. They immediately complied and began reeling in the towline. "I gave you every opportunity to join me in this historic endeavor. Now, thanks to you, I have what I want, but Sir Andrew will get to take all the credit. There's nothing left to say."

Kismet glanced at the British archaeologist. "If he's going to take all the credit, then he should at least get his facts straight."

"And what facts are those?" snapped Harcourt.

"When you go on TV to tell the world that you've found the ship of Jason, you'll end up looking like a rank amateur. If you're going to use mythology as a basis for identifying your discoveries, then you really need to review the legend. The Argo, the ship built by Argus and sailed by Jason and the heroes, returned to the Greek Isles. With, I might add, the Golden Fleece. Why on earth would he sail her back here with the Fleece? That makes no sense. Besides, according to the legend, the Argo was beached and fell apart. If I remember correctly, Jason was killed when a timber from the Argo fell on him."

"Then pray tell us," Grimes interjected. "What is it that you have found here, Mr. Kismet?"

The distance between the galley and the trawler was closing rapidly. Despite the ragged tarpaulins and nets that Kismet and Irene had tied along its hull, the gleaming gold overlaying every square inch of the ancient craft seemed to shine in the stormy gray dawn.

"Would you believe that we built this ship ourselves? We're re-enacting the voyage of the Argo." He turned his head to Irene. "What the hell. It's worth a shot."

"Expensive paint you've chosen," remarked Grimes as the bowsprit of the galley loomed over the trawler, nearly at arm's length.

"Why, it's made of gold." Harcourt reached out to touch the galley, but was restrained by one of the soldiers. The ferocity of the storm had not abated and the danger of being crushed between the boats was very real. Harcourt acknowledged the need for caution. "Try to secure it. I want to go aboard." He turned to Grimes. "It's just like the helmet fragment; a thin layer of gold."

"But it isn't really gold, is it." Kismet directed his words at Grimes. "You told me as much that day in my office, Andy. You called it 'ubergold.' It's not an ordinary metal. I'm right, aren't I?"

"What difference does it make?" retorted Harcourt. "It takes nothing away from the significance of this discovery."

"I don't think you understand the significance of this discovery, Andy—"

"Stop calling me that." Harcourt sounded petulant. "And just what do you think is the true importance of finding the Golden Fleece?"

"Do you want to tell him, Grimes? Or shall I?" The traitor ignored him. Kismet continued, "It's not the Fleece he's after. It's the ubergold, or whatever you want to call it. And you're right about it having unusual properties."

"It caused the storm somehow, didn't it?" Harcourt speculated.

"Sir Andrew," Grimes cautioned. "I'll thank you to remember that Kismet is our enemy."

"The storm," Kismet confirmed, ignoring the threat. "But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Your partner here wants to turn it into a superbomb."

"Preposterous."

"I've seen the plans."

Grimes now took an interest. "If such plans existed, how would you of all people, know about them?"

Kismet grinned at the tacit admission, but refused to let Grimes take control of the conversation. "That's not really the issue here. We are discussing the future of the Fleece. It took me a while to figure out what your interest was, Hal. All your talk of shadow governments rang hollow. You're a military man, and it makes a lot more sense that you're looking for a way to turn this into a weapon."

Harcourt's lips formed an unspoken question. "Weapon?"

Kismet pressed his point. "You don't give a damn about science or history, Grimes. There had to be some other reason for you to go to all this trouble; you could start a war with Russia, for God's sake. Or is that what you really wanted all along?" He swung his attention back to Harcourt. "Grimes and his buddies at Alb-Werk believe that the ubergold is the key element to an electromagnetic pulse bomb. Not just one that would knock out computer circuits. No, this little gem will microwave you where you stand." He made a gesture with his hands like a magician. "Poof. Vaporized just like that. What do you think of that, Sir Andrew? Do you want to be responsible for helping them create the ultimate weapon?"

Harcourt broke in. "A clever argument, Nick. But I'm onto your game. The quest for the Golden Fleece was always my project. I brought it to Alb-Werk, not the other way 'round. The fact that you were actually the one to find it is nothing more than a fluke. I deserve the credit, and I'm going to get it."

"But I'm telling you that you've become part of something terrible," said Kismet. "If you stand by and do nothing, you'll share a corner in hell with him."

"You've said quite enough, Kismet." Grimes interrupted the conversation, ordering his soldiers to hold Kismet and Irene at gunpoint. Others from the boarding party began stringing rope ladders from the trawler to the bow of the galley, just aft of the bowsprit.

"Nick?" Irene spoke in a barely audible whisper, as Grimes and Harcourt were helped to board the ancient vessel. "Where's Anatoly?"

"Are you coming, Kismet?" Grimes stood nearly six feet above him, gazing down from the deck of the golden ship. His tone was triumphant, mocking; He knew he had won, and wanted to rub Kismet's nose in the victory.

But with Anatoly missing, there was still hope. "Why not? You guys need at least one voice of reason."

As the commandos hustled them onto the galley, Kismet got a look at what the storm had done to the ancient vessel. It had held up well, but eighteen inches of water was sloshing about in the bilges. "Looks like you'd better start bailing," he suggested. "Unless you're prepared to salvage this ship a second time. And if my knowledge of the Black Sea serves me correctly, it's about four hundred fathoms to the bottom."

"Excellent observation," Grimes commented. He turned to one of his subordinates and ordered the man to fetch a pump, then returned his attention to Kismet. "Are you reconsidering your loyalties?"

"I'm not a traitor, if that's what you mean."

If the words stung, Grimes did not let it show. "I believe we've already discussed that matter, Kismet, and it has grown tiresome. Now, if you would please be so kind, show us the Golden Fleece."

"It's in there." He gestured toward the colonnade encircling the hold. The portal, which led into it, was on the opposite side. "Look for yourself."

Grimes nodded to one of his men. Kismet realized it was Rudy the behemoth from the hall of the Teutonic Knights in New York. The hulking figure moved toward him with surprising swiftness, but before Kismet could so much as take a step back, Rudy took hold of Irene and yanked her away.

"I want you to show me," Grimes clarified. "I think Miss Chereneyev has already demonstrated her usefulness as leverage in getting what I want. I have no compunction about letting Rudy toss her overboard—" He looked at the giant and shrugged—"or whatever else he feels like doing. He can be a little vindictive, you know."

"Save your threats, Grimes. I'll open it for you." He stalked aft, followed by the others, then circled around to the sternward end of the enclosure and pulled open the hatch, revealing the darkness that lay beyond the golden columns. He then looked back to Grimes, who nodded for him to step inside. With a shrug, he complied.

"No booby traps? I'm almost disappointed."

"I wasn't expecting you," replied Kismet. "Good idea, though. Wish I'd thought of it.". He stared straight ahead into the darkness of the enclosure, wondering if the Fleece would be able to save him this time.

"Kismet?" The whisper from the shadows startled him.

"Anatoly?"

"You must distract them. I have a plan, but there is no other way for me to get out of here."

"Kismet?" Grimes called, sticking his head through the opening. "Who are you talking to?"

"Just praying to Zeus for a miracle." He reached out to the Fleece and lifted it in his arms, and then muttered under his breath: "I think he might have been listening this time."

Harcourt pushed past the stout traitor and attempted to snatched the gold-laden sheepskin from Kismet. He was unprepared for its heaviness; the transfer threw him off balance and he teetered backwards. Only Kismet was near enough to prevent the British archaeologist from toppling over, but he merely watched his rival fall with a grin.

The indignity of his clumsiness did not seem to register with Harcourt. He struggled to his knees on the deck, gripping the Fleece with both hands. "I can feel its power," he crooned. "Tingling in my fingertips. This truly is the Golden Fleece."

"Yeah? Well, congratulations Sir Andrew. It's another feather in your cap. I'm sure Oxford will be buzzing with talk of your triumphant act of piracy. You'll finally get the respect you really deserve."

"My goodness," Grimes clucked. "Kismet, you sound like a child who's lost his toy."

Kismet grinned again. "As for you, Grimes, I'm surprised you can be so calm, when there's an FSB agent hiding just inside the hold."

Grimes' expression instantly turned severe. "Explain."

"The owner of the fishing boat, Anatoly Grishakov, works for Russian intelligence. He's probably already informed his superiors that we're out here. I expect they'll be showing up any time."

"You're bluffing," Harcourt spouted, struggling to lift the Fleece off the deck.

Kismet shrugged. "Ask him yourself."

Grimes nodded to his subordinates and two of the soldiers swung their rifles around, and advanced on the dark hold. Before they could enter, a muffled voice issued from beyond the colonnade. "Don't shoot. I will come out."

Anatoly stepped through the hatchway, hands raised, flashing a betrayed look toward Kismet, who spread his hands in an apologetic gesture.

"Are you a spy?" Grimes demanded.

"Of course not. Kismet is lying, though I can't imagine what he hopes to gain."

A faint grin crossed Grimes' expression. "You are speaking English. But the other night, you pretended not to understand. Isn't learning English a requirement of the FSB?"

"I told you," Anatoly spluttered, his accent noticeably thickening. "I do not work for that agency."

"I know that he's sent several messages," supplied Kismet. "He sent one as soon as he saw you guys." He glanced over to Irene. She was listening intently, but he could not tell if she approved of what he was doing. "He's been in contact with a Russian destroyer. Two days ago, he tried to kill me to keep the discovery of Fleece secret. If you think he's going to let you just sail away with it, you're in for a big disappointment."

Anatoly glowered. "This is the act of a coward, Nikolai Kristanovich. I expected better of you."

Kismet faced the big fisherman. "You were pretty convincing. What I can't figure out is why you let Petr escape in the first place. That must have gotten you in hot water."

The big fisherman continued to glare, but his frown changed from a look of betrayal to one of contempt. "You understand nothing. Petr Ilyich Chereneyev was — is — my friend. Always. I would die myself, before allowing harm to come to him. Or his daughter. Even from them."

"Anatoly?" Irene's tone was soft, almost inaudible in the fury of the storm, and full of confused sympathy. “Is it true? Are you FSB? Were you, even then, with the KGB?"

"If he defied the order to have your father killed," Kismet suggested, "and didn't end up dead himself, I'd say he must be pretty important in the organization."

"There are those who are in my debt." The Russian's statement indicated that his denials were finished. "In turn, I owe a debt to my country. Thieves and grave robbers must not be allowed to steal a great treasure."

"I am afraid you can do little to prevent that," intoned Grimes. "You've lost."

"I do not need to act. This storm will sink the galley before you can loot its gold. If we do not leave this ship quickly, we will all sail it to the bottom."

"Perhaps you are right about that. Sir Andrew, please get up off the deck. It's unbecoming of you to grovel like that." Harcourt did manage to stand, with the Fleece weighing heavily over his left shoulder. Grimes began passing along orders to his men. He ordered them to continue pumping the bilge water, while another group made fast a second tow line; this one leading to the gun ship. "With two boats towing, we can beat this storm."

"Aren't you listening?" Anatoly hissed. "If we do not leave, right now, we will all die!"

The urgency in the Russian's voice seemed out of place. He had spent the night towing the ship through the storm and Kismet couldn't understand why he was suddenly so eager to get off the galley. He gazed at the fisherman, looking for an explanation, and saw in Anatoly's eyes a desperation that frightened him. Acting on an impulse, he moved closer to Irene. Rudy-Grimes’ pet behemoth-still held her in his grip, and threw Kismet a threatening stare.

"What's the rush, Anatoly?" Kismet spoke in order to distract both the giant and the Russian. He managed another step toward Irene, almost close enough to touch her. "She's not going to sink, not after riding out the storm all night."

Anatoly seemed to draw into himself, like a snake coiling before a strike. "If the storm does not sink her, then my bomb will."

Irene mouthed the word "bomb" as if unable to comprehend, but Kismet understood all too well. Anatoly suddenly launched into motion, pushing away from the soldiers who guarded him.

In a heartbeat, chaos broke out. Kismet hurled himself at Rudy, gouging at the giant's eyes. In the same instant, Anatoly dove from the galley, leaping out into the storm tossed sea. His escape commanded the attention of the soldiers who, as one, rushed to the gunwale.

Rudy's reflexes proved faster than Kismet would have believed. He swatted Kismet's hands away, delivering a follow-through punch that dumped Kismet onto the gangway, sending him sliding backwards on his tail bone.

Four semi-automatic rifles spoke, splitting the howl of the wind with their deafening report. Bullets sprayed the water where Anatoly had splashed a moment before, but he did not resurface. The commandos stopped firing and waited to see if he ever would.

Kismet looked up from where Rudy had knocked him. Grimes and Harcourt were staring down with amused expressions. The giant was positively gleeful, taking a step forward, balling his enormous fists in preparation to take Kismet apart, limb-by-limb. Kismet scrambled backward without rising, and scooted along the deck to put some distance between himself and the enormous fighter. His escape was abruptly blocked. He turned his head and saw that he had backed into the column that stood to the right of the hatchway. Somewhere in the blackness of the hold, the explosive device Anatoly had planted was ticking inexorably toward zero. About five seconds had passed since the big Russian's flight. Rudy took another step toward Kismet, towering over him.

Suddenly, a brilliant flash of light burst at the far end of the cargo compartment. A tongue of flame and a wave of compressed air as hard as concrete raced through the structure, driving gold covered cargo crates and debris ahead of it.

Anatoly's bomb had detonated.

SEVENTEEN

The explosive device, placed near the far end of the enclosure, was relatively small; it was the same design as the depth charges Kismet had employed to eliminate the threat posed by the sentry fish near the wreck site. Anatoly, realizing that Grimes and his men were about to seize the galley, had rigged a timer to one of the bombs and planted it in the rear of the cargo area, then waited for his chance to escape. But Kismet had stalled him too long, and forced him to take a desperate plunge into the sea.

In the hyper-awareness of adrenaline, Kismet could see the ball of flame rolling through the hold toward the opening. He was directly in its path.

Unlike Rudy, Kismet was expecting the bomb to go off and did not require a split-second in which to decide what to do. As the blast hurtled toward him, he rolled forward at an angle that took him a hair's breadth from Rudy's size sixteen boots.

The former boxer may have had lightning-fast reflexes when it came to blocking a punch, but he was totally unprepared for the detonation of an improvised explosive device. His eyes widened slightly as a pillar of fire erupted from the portal and erased him from existence.

The entire superstructure swelled like a balloon about to burst. The columns bowed outward as the enclosure changed from a roughly cubic shape to something more closely resembling a sphere. However, that seemed to be the extent of the damage caused by the explosion. The blast did not rip apart the hold as Kismet had expected; it was as if the enclosure had almost completely absorbed the violent release of energy. Almost. Though barely perceptible to the naked eye, under the skin of gold, the wooden frame of boat had been smashed into splinters, and those splinters had been driven outward, through the foil-thin layer, allowing water to begin seeping in.

The flames that had vomited from the hatchway ceased immediately. Kismet felt the blast beating against his back, but was unhurt. Grimes and Harcourt had likewise passed through the explosion unscathed, although the British archaeologist was having difficulty keeping his balance.

"Back to the gunboat!" Grimes shouted. "Quickly, before it sinks!"

Harcourt protested. "We can't just abandon ship. This discovery is too important."

Kismet ignored them and searched for Irene. He found her on hands and knees, thankfully untouched by the blast. "Stay there!" he shouted at her, but stopped motionless after only a step.

Something else was happening. At first, it was nothing more than an unsettling sensation, but that premonition quickly manifested into something more profound, if no more tangible. An invisible crackle of energy passed through the length of the ship. Kismet felt it tingling on his skin; a spider web of static electricity that tickled his face and caused his hair to stand on end.

The phenomenon was not limited to the ship. As if harmonizing with the vessel's energetic discharge, the pitch of the storm changed abruptly. The sky directly above the galley began to swirl like a vortex of shadow, and the golden ship was now the nexus of the tempest.

Grimes prevailed in his argument. A loud, eerie groan shivered through the ship, and Kismet felt the galley begin slowly rolling to starboard. Though no leaks were evident, the vessel was nonetheless taking on water and beginning to list. The time remaining before the golden ship began her final voyage, the one that would take her to the unreachable depths of the Black Sea, would be measured in mere minutes.

The soldiers stumbled over one another in their haste to flee. Harcourt watched them in mute amazement, as if he were merely a spectator. Grimes too, hastened to the edge of the galley and lowered himself to the deck of the trawler.

No one seemed to care any longer about Kismet or Irene. He crossed to her and embraced her as if they had all the time in the world. "Are you all right?"

She nodded into his chest. "Anatoly?"

"I don't know. But Grimes was right about one thing: this ship is going to sink." He glanced down at the trawler. The commandos had already cast off the belaying lines that secured the Anatoly’s vessel to the gunboat. Grimes stood at the rail of the patrol craft, gazing over at the prize that had been denied him, while his men pushed away from the doomed galley and the smaller boat that would inevitably be dragged down when the golden ship went under. As if to punctuate their peril, a blinding tongue of lightning licked across the water, less than a stone's throw from the port side of the galley. The ear-splitting concussion of thunder that followed made the explosion in the hold seem insignificant by comparison.

"That was too close," Kismet muttered. He wasn't sure if he had actually spoken; his ears were ringing and no other sound was audible. He looked at Irene to see if she had heard him but found her gaping in amazement at something behind him. She spoke but her words were indistinct. He turned to look, expecting to find Rudy, back from the dead and seeking vengeance.

Instead, he saw something wonderful. Golden light was pouring from the passageway that opened into the hold, the same hue he had witnessed when first discovering the ancient ship on the coastal shelf off the Georgian shore. That light had fallen when their salvage efforts brought the galley to surface, but now it was back.

The radiance was momentarily limited to the interior of the hold, but as he watched, luminescence pooled on the exterior surface, spreading like puddles of fire, connecting and redoubling until the columns glowed incandescent.

Another flash of lightning, more distant than the first, overwhelmed the glory of the golden ship and underscored the need for a hasty departure. It seemed a shame to abandon their discovery, especially with its power suddenly waking, but that power would be of little help when the ship slid beneath the waves. Kismet turned back to Irene. "We've got to get to the trawler!" he yelled.

The list of the galley was already at twenty degrees. The bilge pump on the port deck began to whine as the slope carried the water away from its intake, causing it to suck air, while the starboard pump was completely flooded and stalled. In that instant however, before they could take a single step, the radiance of the gold began to shine beneath their feet.

Kismet gripped Irene's hand as they made their way down the length of the tilted deck toward the rope ladder that led to the trawler. The list of the larger, ancient vessel was causing the fishing boat, still lashed to its bowsprit, to twist dangerously in the water. As they looked down from the galley they saw Harcourt, standing alone in the stern of the trawler with the Golden Fleece still weighing on his shoulder. The archaeologist was fumbling with the belays, trying to free the smaller craft from the galley’s death grip.

"Harcourt! Help us!"

The Englishman looked up, as if surprised that Kismet was still alive. "Sorry, old boy!" he shouted over the din. "Not going to let you take this one away from me."

"For Christ's sake—" Before Kismet could complete the invective, a dark shape appeared in the air right in front of him. He jerked back instinctively, but not before being struck in the jaw.

He turned as he fell, landing face down on the pitching deck, and slid toward the starboard gunwale, which was just dipping under the surface. He was unable to arrest his fall in time to keep from splashing into the swirling waters, but as he went in, he heard Irene gasp the name of his assailant:

"Anatoly!"

The Russian fisherman looked like the walking dead. Blood streamed from his forehead and from ragged wounds in his torso; the gunshots of the soldiers had found their mark but had failed to kill the Russian agent. He had survived by diving deep beneath the galley and clinging to the nets which had earlier been draped over its sides for camouflage, waiting for a chance to exact his retribution on the man he held most responsible for the situation: Nick Kismet.

Hurtling over the side of the galley, Anatoly plunged past Irene. Kismet raised his head from beneath the water in time to see the Russian's boots moving on a collision course with his face. He tried to twist away, but was too late. The tread on Anatoly's boot sole glanced along his cheek and smashed into his right shoulder, burying him once more in the turbulent water. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Kismet braced himself against the side of the ship and stood up underneath Anatoly, catapulting him away. As the Russian splashed down, Kismet waded toward him.

Anatoly recovered quickly, whirling in the knee-deep accumulation, with one foot on the sloping deck and the other against the gunwale. A bitter smile creased his bearded visage as he raised his hands. Kismet took a step toward him, brandishing his own fists. When Anatoly's gaze seemed to lock onto his hands however, Kismet lashed out with his foot, planting it in the larger man's crotch.

The big Russian grunted and his intimidating smile fell. He cupped a hand to his bruised groin and staggered backward a step, but that was the limit of his reaction. He recovered quickly and advanced to deliver a roundhouse punch that split Kismet's cheek open. The force of the blow spun him around again, dropping him to his hands and knees.

"Why doesn't that ever work?" he muttered under his breath, shaking his head to clear away the fireworks. Then his head went underwater as Anatoly landed on his back. Kismet thrashed, but Anatoly's knees were on his shoulder blades and his arms were pinned so that he could do little more than turn his head.

After a few seconds of futile struggle, Kismet felt the burden on his back grow even heavier, forcing the last gasp from his lungs. Then the weight suddenly vanished. He squirmed free and hastily crawled forward, sucking fresh air in desperate gasps, then turned to face his assailant.

Irene was on Anatoly's back, clawing at his eyes. Despite his professed fondness for her, the Russian grabbed her wrists, lifted her over his head and hurled her toward Kismet. She crashed into him, driving both of them into the water. Kismet felt Irene bounce off of him, then saw her splash into the open sea. She flailed in the water, her soaked clothing weighing her down.

Forgetting Anatoly, Kismet reached out to her, but she was too far away. He quickly shed his leather jacket, holding onto one sleeve while flinging the other toward her. She caught it, but then vanished beneath a wave. When he hauled her in, she came up choking on seawater but tenaciously clinging to the jacket sleeve. Another pull brought her close enough to grasp the inundated starboard gunwale.

The big Russian chose that moment to renew his attack. Another stunning roundhouse blasted Kismet toward the bow. There was no way he could hope to overpower the fisherman. Anatoly not only outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, but was also in the grip of a primal anger that Kismet's own desperation could never equal. He would have to outwit the Russian, not outfight him — a difficult prospect since Anatoly was knocking his wits out with each blow.

Anatoly stalked past the still submerged form of his best friend's daughter, ignoring her life and death struggle. Without his help she managed to pull herself from the sea and got to her feet, sagging against the deck, which now rose to a forty-five degree angle beside her.

Kismet did not attempt to make a stand against the Russian. Instead, he retreated along the bow, climbing onto the tilted bowsprit. Anatoly was literally at his heels, grasping at his boots in an effort to trip him as he attempted to climb up to the spar protruding from the bow.

Below him, Harcourt had succeeded in cutting the mooring lines that had tightly secured the trawler to the ancient sailing vessel. The fishing boat popped upright with a suddenness that surprised the archaeologist, causing him to topple over. The trawler then bobbed away from the galley, taking with it Kismet's best plan for escape.

Anatoly's fingers snared the cuff of Kismet's right trouser leg. He was yanked back, stretched between the Russian's grip on his leg and his own desperate hold on the ladder to the bowsprit. He slipped his left foot off of the rung and drove it repeatedly toward Anatoly's face.

At first, the Russian seemed impervious to the blows, but the insistent pounding of Kismet's boot savaged his face, tearing skin and smashing cartilage and bone. Kismet felt the grip on his leg weakening and yanked himself away, scrambling to the top of the spar.

Normally, the bowsprit would have been the highest point on the galley, save for its mast when the ship was whole. But now the deck leaned over drunkenly, borne down by the weight of the water that was inundating the galley. Kismet crawled out onto the exterior of the bowsprit, along the port side edge that now faced skyward, clinging to the foremast. Anatoly's bloodied face rose alongside him.

Kismet took a swing at the Russian, hoping to knock his foe into the sea, but the impact of the blow rebounded, causing him to lose his own grip. He slid along the smooth surface of the hull, his feet flopping out into empty space. He managed to grasp the foremast, his fingers finding a purchase in the intricate whorls of the design. The carved hair of the image, layered with gold, was the only thing that prevented him from tumbling into the storm tossed waves. It was as if Medea had once more intervened to rescue her champion.

Anatoly now pulled himself erect and loomed over Kismet like an executioner. He stood with his feet apart, bracing himself against the inexorable roll of the galley. Blood streamed from his shattered nose and dripped down onto the shining gold, where the rain and spray washed it away. "We die together, Nikolai Kristanovich Kismet." The trauma to his face distorted his words even more than his accent, but Kismet understood all too well. "You will not steal this treasure from my people."

"What about Irene?"

His remark had the desired effect of causing Anatoly to hesitate, but the pause benefited him little. He was stuck, dangling from the bowsprit, unable to pull himself up or to get a foothold. The big Russian looked away, staring down at the place where Irene now struggled to get above the rising water. "Forgive me, Petr Ilyich," he whispered apologetically then returned his attention to Kismet. "I cannot save those who join with the enemies of the Rodina."

Kismet started to reply, but was overcome by an unusual sensation. A preternatural stillness enshrouded the bow of the galley, a faint hum and tingle pervading the void in the fury of the storm. Later, he would swear that everything began to glow with blue light in the moment before he let go. Heeding the premonition, he surrendered himself to gravity. He opened his hands, released the foremast, and dropped two stories into the frothing Black Sea. When he hit the water, he stabbed nearly as deep into it, before his own buoyancy arrested his plunge. He did not bob back to the surface however, but was bogged down by his sodden clothing and boots.

Suddenly, the world above was filled with light. Though it lasted for only a heartbeat, Kismet knew what it was — his prescient moment had saved him from a deadly bolt of lightning.

Rather than struggling to swim impeded by the weight of his boots, he doubled over and began unlacing his footwear. The knots were swollen with water and resisted for a moment, but in his desperation he succeeded in breaking the heavy strings. He kicked the boots off, and stroked toward the surface.

Medea was gone. The lightning blast had sheared off the top of the bowsprit, sending the carved image of the sorceress into the depths. Black scorch marks obscured the glowing metal along the point of severance. There was no sign of Anatoly.

Kismet swam toward the nearly vertical deck and sighed in relief when he spied Irene clinging to the distended columns around the hold. She was sobbing when he reached her, but he did not press for an explanation. She had just witnessed her oldest friend burned to a cinder by lightning. Whether it was Anatoly's death, or his treachery, she had good reason to be upset. He silently enfolded her in his embrace and waited for the end.

Grimes stood on the deck of the captured gunboat, calmly watching the demise of the golden ship. To lose such a great prize was tragic, but that failure was mitigated by the primary success of the entire endeavor. They had recovered the Golden Fleece. From his vantage, he could see his hired archaeologist likewise watching Kismet's final journey with the mythic sheepskin still adorning his shoulder.

Grimes cared not for the legendary — purportedly supernatural — origins attributed to the Fleece. A nominal Christian, he was quite certain that the gods and heroes of Greek mythology had never really walked the Earth, so there could only be a mundane explanation for the astonishing properties of the ubergold, and that was for the scientists to unravel.

Despite Kismet's casual accusations, the decision to alienate himself from the country of his birth had not come easily. In his heart, he remained a patriot, sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States from enemies both foreign and domestic. The problem was that America's true enemies had risen from inside her very leadership. After years of trying to right those wrongs from the within, he had come to realize that the mechanism of American government could not be adjusted incrementally; something more dynamic would be needed to put not only America, but all the nations aligned under the North Atlantic Treaty back on the track to global military and economic supremacy. The weapon proposed by his new acquaintances at Alb-Werk had the potential to do just that.

It was a terrible device, to be sure. It had to be. No one feared or respected a threat that did not promise extremes of destruction. Its very existence would send a message to the insurgents and extremists buried in the civilian populations of developing countries around the world: resist and you will be obliterated. Not merely blown apart or burned beyond recognition, but atomized; not even ashes would remain to inspire the next generation of terrorists.

The menace of such a device would no doubt have been adequate to force the hand of the Iraqi dictator without necessitating the war that had fractured years of diplomatic progress in Europe and inflamed the Arab world. Alb-Werk's scientists had promised a working prototype within two years and Grimes had lobbied the President to exercise patience, but his arguments had been in vain. The timetable was unrealistic and the Commander in Chief did not like the idea of waiting on a former enemy nation — Germany — to develop and ultimately exercise control over a strategic weapon. An ultimatum had followed and Grimes had made a hard choice, but not one that he had cause to regret. When Germany added the EMP weapon to NATO's arsenal, subjugating the last of the free world's enemies, the wisdom of his decision would become manifest.

The ubergold in the Fleece alone was adequate to supply a dozen warheads, but Grimes had full confidence in the ability of Alb-Werk's scientists to crack the atomic code of the strange metal in order to synthesize an endless supply. The loss of the golden vessel was merely inconvenient.

He turned to the leader of the small commando unit. The German Special Forces officer had been champing at the bit to return to the Georgian coast in order to link up with his superior and the bulk of the contingent. Since their hasty departure the night before, they had been unable to establish radio communications with the main force that had remained behind to sterilize the mountain camp. The squad leader was justifiably concerned, and with success so near at hand, eager to get his men back home with the prize.

"Bring us around to the Russian's boat," Grimes ordered. "We'll pick up Sir Andrew and then proceed to the rendezvous."

Before the officer could turn to execute the command, a shrieking whistle cut through the dull roar of the wind, causing both men to freeze where they stood. The sound grew louder and lower in pitch, then abruptly fell silent.

Grimes knew the sound: the unique whistle caused by the fins of an artillery round as it descended toward its target. It was a noise every soldier knew and dreaded. But the screech had not reached its lowest note — the precursor to impact and detonation. There could be but one explanation for the sudden quiet. As he looked up and around, he heard the German colonel cry in alarm; a harsh sounding German phrase which he both understood and echoed.

Like the eye of a hurricane, the one place where the shriek of an incoming round could not be heard was at ground zero. Somewhere high overhead, the projectile — fired from God only knew where — had completed its parabolic arc and was descending directly onto the target.

"Scheisse, indeed," Halverson Grimes muttered, repeating the commando's oath.

Then he vanished in a spray of smoke and tissue.

In the distance, beyond the exploding gunboat, Kismet could make out the broadside silhouette of the Boyevoy, materializing wraith-like from the veil of storm clouds on the horizon, arriving too late to rescue the agent that had summoned her, but not so tardily as to let the rest of her prey escape. Her guns were lobbing anti-ship mortars with startling accuracy toward the renegade patrol craft.

The first shell — the one that had blown Grimes out of existence — landed amidships to port, knocking a sizeable chunk out of the hull. That shot alone was fatal to the gunboat, but Severin's artillery men did not relent. The patrol vessel never got a chance to sink; shells from the destroyer blasted its flaming wreckage across the water.

The commandos that survived the initial blast quickly abandoned the doomed vessel, hurling themselves into the storm-tossed water. Random discharges of lightning illuminated them as they struggled in the driving rain amidst oil slicks and debris. Some were trying to reach the galley, though that seemed akin to leaving the safety of the frying pan for the fire; the golden ship would likely sink before any of them could get there.

The Boyevoy came around, plowing through the tempest toward the wreckage. Although her big guns had fallen silent, the destroyer continued to visit death upon her enemies. Sniper fire was picking off the derelict survivors. Kismet wondered idly if Severin would bother to take him and Irene prisoner, or just machine-gun them and leave them to sink with the golden ship.

All of a sudden, the galley lurched forward. At first, he thought it was a final shift, angling toward the bottom, but then he realized that the golden ship was starting to move. "What the hell?" He loosened his hold on Irene. "Wait here."

Grasping the port gunwale, he traversed the length of the deck like a rock climber, hand over hand, with his stocking feet braced against the sloping deck. As he moved forward, he saw that his first assumption was partially correct; the bow was indeed shifting downward, and would precede the rest of the vessel in the journey to the bottom. But the movement was caused by something altogether different.

"Harcourt!" he shouted. "You bloody fool!"

He could not see the British archaeologist aboard the trawler, but it was evident that Harcourt had succeeded in engaging the idling motor. The trawler had started forward, but moved only a short distance before hitting the end of the tow cable. In his ignorance, Harcourt had failed to disconnect the line when cutting the mooring ropes. The trawler's small engine was still capable of tugging the ancient vessel, but when the galley went under, the fishing boat would sink with it.

The Englishman now appeared on the deck. Harcourt apparently realized his peril, and was investigating the umbilical attachment. Kismet noted that his rival still had the Golden Fleece draped over one shoulder. Its weight caused him to stagger as he crossed to the stern and inspected the winch assembly. He fumbled with it for a moment and managed to release the ratchet, allowing the cable to unspool. The trawler immediately shot forward leaving the golden ship behind, but his efforts only temporarily forestalled disaster. The winch continued turning until the line was played out. After only a few seconds, the tow cable snapped taut, rising out of the water with a thrumming vibration, and the fishing vessel stopped dead.

Harcourt stumbled and fell onto his back, but managed to crawl over to the winch. Though he was now almost a hundred yards away, Kismet could see the archaeologist beating out his frustration on the capstan housing, like a child throwing a tantrum. There was no way for him to release the cable. Heavy bolts secured the last loop in the winch; the towline could only be cast off from the galley.

Kismet lost interest in Harcourt's struggle as the sea rushed up to meet him. The bow of the galley was plunging downward rapidly. Before he could even begin moving, the water was up to his waist.

"Irene! Get to the hold—"

His words were cut off as the sea washed over his head. The stern of the galley suddenly rose out of the water, and then the entire vessel, like a golden needle, pierced the darkness below and vanished.

Once the galley, overlaid in one of the heaviest elements known to man, committed to its downward plunge, it sank rapidly. Kismet could feel the rush of water passing him by. At the same time, his inner ear throbbed painfully with the rapid changes in pressure. He tried to compensate by working his jaw to pop his ears, but could not equalize fast enough. Howling the last air from his lungs, he released his hold on the ship and clamped his hands ineffectually against the sides of his head.

An instant later he was struck from above and borne down once more. He opened his eyes, and through the blur of seawater, saw that he had become entangled in the colonnade around the superstructure. The golden columns were blazing with magical illumination, like beacons of false hope. Then Kismet remembered what he had shouted to Irene, and why.

He snaked through pillars distorted by the blast of Anatoly's bomb, letting them fall past, one by one. In moments he reached the open portal to the hold. Bubbles were streaming from the enclosure as the air in the structure was displaced by water. Without hesitation, he plunged into the torrent.

Whether because of his shouted admonition, or because there was nowhere else to go, Irene had sought refuge within. Lost in the agony caused by the increasing pressure inside her head, she struggled in the rising water, floating at arm's length from where Kismet treaded.

He tried to close the hatch, but was repelled by the blast of water flooding into the hold. Then the last of the air vanished and the hatch slipped into place, sealing them in — a golden coffin for their burial at sea.

EIGHTEEN

Harcourt felt no satisfaction as the galley vanished. His joy at having found the prize and proving superior to his old foil had been supplanted by a more immediate concern: survival. The Golden Fleece, his trophy, hampered his movement, but never for a moment did he even think about laying it aside. Unable to release the tow cable, he had impotently pounded the winch with his fists. When the golden ship went under, he knew that he wound soon face a similar fate.

He tried to think logically; he was a scientist after all. The cable, a mere three-quarters of an inch thickness of braided metal wires, was the chain that bound him to disaster. It was anchored to the motorized winch that was bolted to the wooden deck in four places. The solution was obvious: cut the cable, knock the winch free…either would do. He raced to the cabin in search of an axe, a hammer, or any heavy implement that he might use to bludgeon his way to safety.

He got about halfway before the trawler shifted beneath his feet. The sinking galley had been steadily pulling the fishing boat backward, against the thrust of its engine. Now, the ancient ship was directly below the fishing boat, exerting its full weight on the cable. The bow of the trawler rose up suddenly, its stern buried in the water. The abrupt rise of the deck catapulted Harcourt out over the roiling sea.

In that instant, the full weight of the submerged ship tore the winch mechanism away from the deck of the trawler. The boat bobbed on its stern for a moment, then toppled forward, splashing heavily into the water. Because her screws were still turning, the fishing vessel immediately chugged forward, turning a lazy circle that would eventually bring it back to where the archaeologist had splashed down.

Salvation was offered, but for Harcourt, the price was too high. The weight of the Golden Fleece quickly bore him into the depths. His pulse pounded loudly inside his head, a clock by which to measure the seconds remaining in his life. The pressure between his ears grew with each thump of his heart until he felt his head would implode.

At no point during the final thirty seconds of his conscious awareness did it occur to him that he could save himself by letting go of the Golden Fleece. That was unthinkable. Nick Kismet would never let something like dying stand in the way of victory. Kismet would find some other way to survive, emerging with both his life and the treasure.

But Sir Andrew Harcourt did not find that answer. Clinging to the Golden Fleece, he sank into the darkness. His descent to the bottom of the Black Sea would take several more minutes, but for Harcourt, the golden voyage was already finished.

In the sudden stillness that permeated the hold, Kismet felt an overwhelming sense of finality. Completely immersed in water, he realized that he had not taken a breath in what seemed like ages. The stale air in his lungs demanded to be replaced. His diaphragm convulsed in an unsuccessful attempt to inhale. It seemed that his only choice was to open his mouth and take that final liquid breath.

Irene floated face down beside him, air trickling from her nostrils. She had ceased struggling. The sight wrenched at his heart, impassioning him to continue fighting the inevitable. He swam toward her, clamping a hand over her mouth in a futile effort to prevent more water from flooding her deluged lungs.

Misshapen lumps crowded the space near the door; the remains of cargo casks battered out of symmetry by the force of Anatoly's bomb. It took him a moment to comprehend that the crates were floating.

Inspiration dawned more brightly than the luminescent metal surrounding him. The casks could only be buoyant because they were full of air. He released Irene and tore at the nearest crate with his fingers. The metal overlay shredded under his nails, releasing a shower of effervescence, after which the cask came apart and disgorged a single enormous bubble, which spread out across the bulkhead to form a pocket of air a fraction of an inch thick. A lumpy yellow shape, emitting a trail of gas globules, fell from the broken wooden fragments and sank through the hold.

It was a second Golden Fleece.

Ignoring this revelation, Kismet kicked up to the air pocket, pressed his lips to the bulkhead, and greedily sucked in the air. The fire in his lungs instantly abated, but he did not pause to savor the respite.

He snatched hold of Irene, pinched her nose shut and exhaled into her mouth. She reflexively gagged on the breath, but her eyes fluttered open. Despite her violent reaction, Kismet turned her over, so that the air at the top of her lungs could force out the water. She immediately began coughing and thrashing spasmodically, but his firm grip compelled her into the tiny gap where water became breathable atmosphere. He caught her eye, making sure that she understood, and then seized another of the battered crates.

More air bubbled up to the pocket as the crate came apart. Then, yet another sheepskin heavy with gold, settled through the enclosure.

Kismet muttered an oath into the water. How many Golden Fleeces were there?

In the next moment, as he tore apart another cask to reveal a fourth Golden Fleece, he realized how terribly close Grimes had come to unleashing a Pandora's Box of evil upon the world. The traitor had sought a single Fleece to help his new allies build an EMP bomb. What would have resulted if they had gained control of the golden ship's true cargo — not one, but perhaps dozens of Golden Fleeces?

As Kismet liberated the air and cargo from one crate after another, the pocket of gas against the bulkhead grew. It was not just air from the crates that filled the growing space however; the Fleeces piled up beneath them were rapidly breaking the water apart at the molecular level, converting it into its gaseous components. With six of the crates opened, Kismet swam up to take another breath.

"Nick," Irene gasped, when his head broke the surface. "What are you doing?"

"Getting us out of here. Don't go away. I'll be right back."

He plunged once more into the water, and dived into the aisle between the cargo rows. Near the doorway, the casks had been spared the impact of the explosion. The nets that had secured the containers for centuries were still intact and the crates themselves showed no sign of damage. It seemed as if the gold had absorbed most of the energy from the violent eruption. He wondered if the blast had somehow acted as a catalyst to the metal's unusual properties — properties he was counting on to save them once more.

A glowing crate came free with a little prying, and then rose gently toward the bulkhead. Kismet followed it up, but did not tear it open as he had done with the others. Instead, after returning to the top for a deep breath, he dove down to find the bottom of the cask and peeled away the gold to reveal bare wood.

It required more force to pry apart the slats on the underside of the cask, and he did so carefully so as not to allow the container to rotate and fill up with water. When the first board came away, he could see another sheepskin, matted with gold. He pushed it back and loosened the next board. The Fleece slid toward the opening and broke through the thin wood.

He caught the Fleece with the crooks of his elbows, both hands still gripping the box to prevent it from flipping over. He was surprised that the buoyancy of the boxes was not offset by the heaviness of the gold; it certainly felt like dead weight in his arms, tugging against his handholds in an effort to tear him loose from the crate. He brought his knees up to brace the sheepskin, and then cautiously moved his hands until he felt he could safely hold the container upright with one hand. Now fully immersed, this new Golden Fleece immediately began to trickle bubbles of gas up into the cavity.

When Irene felt the gentle pull on her ankle, and looked down to find Kismet with his head inside one of the golden crates, she immediately understood what to do. A moment later she popped up inside the cask with him.

"Irene, I need you to hold this thing steady."

She nodded, grasping his plan, insane though it seemed. When her hands were firmly in place, he let go.

The Fleece instantly tried to sink him. He wrestled the shapeless mass away from the well created by the aisle, and laid it on another of the cargo crates. He was determined to find a way to bring it to the surface, but that was not his most immediate concern. He swam up to the doorway and inspected the hatch cover. Although it opened inward, the cover resisted him. It was as if the door had fused to the bulkhead.

His eyes flashed around the hold, looking for some object rigid enough to be used as a pry bar, but everything he laid eyes on was made of soft gold. Then he saw the one thing in the hold that was not left over from its original owners: the remains of Anatoly's electric lantern.

He had not gone back for the lamp after the electrical discharge from the first Golden Fleece had melted the bulb into a lump of metal and glass. The housing and battery were still intact, but seemed useless without a bulb. Nevertheless, he scooped it up and made a quick adjustment to the remains of the filament wires, then reattached the power source. He prayed that the dry cell had not shorted out upon being immersed.

Before executing his plan, he returned to the Fleece and lifted it over his shoulder. He then braced his legs against the secured cargo and jumped, kicking furiously to compensate for the added weight of the Fleece. At the apex of his underwater leap, he thrust the light into the uppermost recesses of the hold and flipped the switch.

Because he had shortened the distance between the filament posts, the flow of electricity was able to momentarily bridge that gap in a single unrestrained blue spark before the short completely discharged the battery. That lone spark however, was all he needed.

From the moment he had begun exposing the many Golden Fleeces to seawater, the process of electrolysis had been stripping apart the fluid molecule into its atomic gaseous components — two atoms of hydrogen and a single atom of oxygen. The latter element had the potential to be both poisonous in pure concentrations and a highly flammable accelerant when exposed to fire, yet at the same time remained essential to the existence of life. Hydrogen, the lightest of all elements, was simply reactive, and when the insignificant blue arc of electricity sizzled through a nearly pure pocket of the gas, it ignited.

Kismet was not able to snatch his hand away in time to avoid a flash burn, nor could he do anything to prevent being pummeled by the force of the explosion. The shockwave felt like being hit by a bus. Yet, the second explosion to occur within the small enclosure, like the first, was muted by the strange properties of the ubergold. The destructive energy triggered a sympathetic display of light, but caused no real damage to the vessel. It was just enough however, to blow the door open.

In the relative safety of the container, Irene began to ascend, buoyed by the air trapped in the box. As she slid through the portal, Kismet snared her foot, and then managed to pull himself up until his head was above the water line. They pressed their bodies together, legs entwined, and kept a fierce grip on the cask as they rose toward the surface.

The golden ship vanished quickly beneath them, shrinking to a pinpoint of light in the black beyond, and then disappeared forever.

Captain Gregory Severin of the Russian Naval destroyer Boyevoy, Sovremenny class out of Sevastopol, stood at the prow of his ship and gazed down at the oil slicks and smoldering debris — all that remained of the Svetlyak class patrol vessel Zmeya. His keen eyes picked out yet another straggler clinging to a ship timber.

"Twenty degrees off starboard," he called. The message was passed back to the sailor manning the aft deck gun. Although the 30-millimeter battery was intended to blast attacking planes and incoming cruise missiles from the sky, Severin derived a perverse satisfaction from watching bullets as thick as his fingers, tear apart the flesh of his enemies. The AA gun released only a short burst, but it was enough to shred the struggling commando.

The call from FSB informant Anatoly Grishakov had almost come too late. Severin had prematurely congratulated himself on disposing of Kismet and was halfway to port before the alert was sounded. Anatoly should have reported the American's resurrection immediately, but for some reason, the agent had not made contact until late the previous evening, some ten hours ago. The destroyer's chief engineer had to push the boilers into the red to catch up to the fishing trawler and the vessel it towed. Even at that, they had not arrived in time to save the prize for the Rodina. An urgent message from the undercover operative had revealed that foreign infiltrators were about to seize the golden ship. Severin had personally given the order for Anatoly to scuttle the galley. Boyevoy had arrived just in time to see the ancient wonder vanish once again into the Black Sea.

At least the fate of poor Zmeya was now apparent. No word had been received of her crew, but obviously the invading foreigners had captured or killed the young, inexperienced sailors, and commenced using the patrol craft for clandestine acts of war. Severin had not hesitated to give the order to blow her out of the water.

The FSB agent's fishing boat was still turning lazy circles in the sea. Severin noted absently that the ferocity of the storm, which had repelled them throughout the night, now seemed to be abating. He scanned the trawler with a pair of binoculars to see if Anatoly had somehow reached its relative safety. The boat appeared to be deserted. One of the lookouts had reported seeing someone that matched Grishakov description being struck by lightning during a struggle aboard the doomed galley. If it was the Russian agent, it seemed unlikely that he could have survived.

"Our enemies, if any still live, might try to escape in that boat," he said, thinking aloud. "Remove it."

The order was passed down, and Severin knew that when the shell was finally fired it would unfailingly strike its target; his gunnery officer was a prodigy. The Boyevoy’s artillery had pounded the patrol craft when it was nothing but a spot in the distance. A deafening noise roared from behind him and a moment later the trawler vanished in a cloud of smoke and spray. One less thing to worry about.

"A good day," he said, still speaking mostly to himself. "Our enemies are dead. The treasure they tried to steal is safe from them forever. Even that American meddler has gone to the depths. And with Grishakov dead, perhaps we can finally deal with the traitor Chereneyev."

The destroyer cut a straight line through the wreckage, and then came about for a second pass, along the outer edge of the flotsam. They had dispatched half a dozen surviving commandos, and administered the coup de grace to a handful of other motionless, face down corpses just to be sure. Severin was satisfied that his work was done.

"Captain, we have a new sighting. Distance, five hundred yards. Ninety degrees astern, moving to starboard."

"What the devil…?" Severin stalked along the length of his ship, to make a personal identification of the new visual contact. The position given was on the other side of the ship. It was inconceivable that any of the stragglers could have drifted so far from the wreckage. Severin reached the observer's station and demanded more information.

"They just surfaced a moment ago," answered the sailor, passing his binoculars to the captain. The ship's speed had carried them even farther past the bobbing shape.

Severin swiveled his head slightly and adjusted the focus until he locked onto the floating shape. "It is only a crate. Wait…I'll be damned." He handed the glasses back to the sailor. "Keep an eye on them. Bring us about, and then cut to one-quarter ahead."

As the ship carved a tight one hundred and eighty-degree turn, its captain raced to the bow, his hand on the butt of the Glock automatic pistol he had taken from Nick Kismet. The destroyer's new heading would bring it within shouting distance of the target. After about a minute, he could, with the naked eye, discern the bedraggled pair that treaded water furiously in the open sea.

"All stop."

Severin heard the message passed down, and then returned: "Answering all stop." He leaned out over the rail to gaze helpless pair in the water now almost directly below and sighted down the barrel of the Glock.

"It is better this way!" he shouted. "I should be the one to kill you, Nikolai Kismet."

NINETEEN

The water they had passed through immediately after escaping the galley was bone chilling. Irene's teeth still chattered uncontrollably. Nevertheless, both of them could feel it growing warmer as they ascended.

Their rate of travel seemed to increase the higher they rose. The air trapped in the container expanded, nearly doubling in volume to spill out past their fingers. As they moved through the water, Kismet could not tell if the Golden Fleece was continuing to supply them with air to breathe, but that was irrelevant; there was enough air trapped in the box to last for several minutes.

"Don't hold your breath," Kismet cautioned, as soon as he felt the air pressure increasing. "The air will expand as the atmospheric pressure diminishes. If you're holding your breath, you might burst your lungs."

She nodded, making a visible effort to breathe regularly. "Will we get the bends?"

"There's no reason we should. They're caused by prolonged breathing of pressurized air at depth. We haven't been under long enough."

When the crate broke the rough plane of the surface, its momentum tore it from their grasp and shot it into the air. Kismet and Irene scrambled to keep the box from crashing down on their heads, and then to prevent it from filling with water and sinking. Only when they were clinging to its smooth sides did they become aware that Boyevoy was still on the prowl.

A roar and a plume of smoke signaled that the ship's guns had fired. Kismet was unable to follow the shell, but an explosion on the far side of the ship revealed the target. "They just blew up Anatoly's boat," he observed. "I guess Harcourt didn't make it."

Irene stared in horror at the destroyer. "Maybe they won't see us."

He scanned the horizon in all directions. Swells occasionally brought pieces of debris into view, but there were no other vessels. The shores of the Black Sea, in any of the countries that bordered it, lay well beyond the horizon. "It might be better if they do. Otherwise, we'll die of exposure out here."

"Better that than to give Severin the satisfaction of gunning us down."

"Maybe they'll fish us out and send us to Siberia." His tone was not hopeful.

The destroyer suddenly turned hard in their direction.

"Well, I guess we won't die of exposure" Kismet observed darkly.

"Come on, Nick. You're Mr. Lucky, remember. You've gotten us out of every scrape so far. Tell me you've got one more trick up your sleeve."

Before he could even begin to formulate a plan, the swells from the wake of Boyevoy's first pass washed over them. Kismet's hold on the crate slipped for a moment. The golden cask flipped onto its side and was instantly inundated. Irene cried out, but was forced to let go as it sank into the sea.

"Where's that plan, Nick?" Irene shouted as she thrashed to stay afloat.

"Sorry. It just went under."

The destroyer slowed as it came abreast of them. The eager faces of the crew looked down from high overhead and Kismet recognized many of the sailors from their earlier ride aboard the warship. The rugged features of Captain Gregory Severin loomed largest. The hungry look in his eye and the set of his jaw, advertised his intentions. Kismet held his breath as the Russian naval officer extended his gun arm and took aim.

He made one last desperate play. "Irene! Dive under and swim closer to the ship."

"Closer?"

"Now!" He placed a hand on her head and forced her beneath the surface as he himself dove. There was a report of a shot and Kismet saw something strike the water at an angle not far from where he had been a moment before. A diagonal line, the path of the bullet in the water, extended a few feet below the surface. If Severin's aim improved, the water would not save him.

They were still a few yards from the ship when burning lungs forced both of them to resurface. Kismet looked up at the destroyer, satisfied that they were now out of the line of sight for an observer standing on the deck. However, the Russian captain had climbed over the rail and was leaning out over the water to get a clear shot.

"Quick, Irene. If we can get to the ship, we might stand a chance."

She did not question his statement, but nodded tersely, took a deep breath and plunged below of her own volition. Kismet felt like a hypocrite. Her confidence was badly misplaced; even if they could get closer, there was virtually no way to board the ship, much less evade the crew or survive until the ship put into port.

He surfaced too close to the ship and banged his head on the steel armor plating. Muttering a curse, he then pushed away to get a look from this new vantage point. The dull gray hull sloped outward above him, an immense steel wall over a football field in length. They were close to the bow, but Kismet's best plan — to climb the anchor chain — was quickly thwarted; the anchor was secured to the hull twelve feet above the waterline, well out of reach.

"Nowhere to go, Kismet," said an all too familiar voice. "Nowhere but down."

He looked up at the Russian captain. "Then get it over with. I won't feed your ego by begging."

Severin laughed. "In a moment. But I think you have something that belongs to mother Russia. I don't want your lifeless body to sink to the bottom with such an important treasure. I will regret passing up this opportunity to kill you, but if you are willing to cooperate and let my men bring you aboard, I will let you live."

Kismet glanced at the Fleece still clinging to his shoulder. He had almost forgotten about it. Why hadn't its weight dragged him under? It looked different somehow….

"That doesn't sound like you, Greg. You're not that generous."

"Oh, you misunderstand. As a criminal and enemy of the State, you will certainly spend the rest of your days in prison. But I will be a hero for returning you alive to stand trial, as well as saving the treasure. You at least would live to die a more pleasant death." He leveled the pistol. He was too close to miss. "Or I can shoot you now?"

"Not good enough." He shrugged out from under the Golden Fleece, holding it at arm's length with one hand. It seemed impossibly light. "You're welcome to the Fleece. But you have to guarantee our safety, especially hers."

"Nick," Irene whispered. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Severin tilted his head sideways, considering Kismet's counter-proposal. He then snapped upright, his arm stiffening as he verified his aim. "No deal."

TWENTY

Suddenly the air was filled with shouting and a claxon began to wail aboard the ship. Severin lowered his arm, but before he could refocus his attention, the deck lurched. A vibration traveled the length of the vessel, and Kismet saw a cloud of smoke bellow from the stern. Severin flung his arms around the rail, losing his grip on the Glock. The automatic pistol bounced off the deck and dropped over the side, vanishing into the water.

Kismet could hear the Russian cursing, demanding both an explanation and assistance. Though he could not make out the reply, Severin’s subsequent orders revealed that the destroyer was under attack. The captain ordered evasive action, but the answer he got left him frustrated. After several seconds of clinging to the rail, a sailor rushed to help him back over onto the deck. Then the cries of alarm were renewed.

Kismet drew the Fleece back to his body, and looked around for some sign of the attacker. He saw no other ship, but something much smaller was burrowing through the sea just below the surface on a collision course with the hull of the destroyer.

"It's a torpedo!" Kismet swam closer to Irene, unable to hide his elation. "Here's that miracle we needed."

The torpedo finished its deadly journey by impacting the Boyevoy about twenty yards forward of the stern. The explosion ripped upward and tore a hole in the side of the warship. The aft end, where three of her four gun emplacements were situated, as well as the 30-millimeter anti-aircraft battery, was ravaged by the detonation and the subsequent fire. The destroyer was now a sitting duck, unable to maneuver or defend herself, and taking on water through two wounds.

"Oh, my God," Irene gasped. "Nick, what's that?"

Something was breaking through the surface, a pillar of dark metal, as tall as a man. The object was indistinct because they were looking at it head on, but it looked like a small boat with its deck below the surface. Men appeared on the exterior of the newly risen craft. Two of them deployed an enormous inflatable raft, while others hastened to affix a bulky shape to a pedestal in front of the upright column.

Before he could answer, the newly assembled gun on the deck of the surfaced craft spewed a burst of cover fire. The bullets raked the destroyer's bow gun, forcing the Russian sailors away from their last line of defense.

The inflatable raft, driven by an outboard motor, sped across the water directly toward them, bouncing as it hit each swell. Small arms fire from the destroyer imperiled the men in the rubber boat, but the submarine's deck gun swiveled to meet this challenge, sweeping the deck. In a lull between bursts, Kismet could hear the howling of wounded sailors high above him.

The men on the inflatable cut their engine at the last minute, turning so that the raft bumped against the hull of the ship. They wore the distinctive uniforms of Russian submariners, but did not speak as they reached out to Kismet and Irene. As she was lifted over the bulging rubber, Irene saw numbers and Cyrillic letters stamped on the vulcanized hull next to a five-pointed red star; the designation of the parent craft, a Russian Akula class submarine.

Kismet was helped aboard as well, sagging into the recesses of the raft in an effort to stay out of the way of their rescuers. One of the men waved toward the submarine, and his signal was answered when another hundred rounds of machine gun fire splashed the deck of the destroyer. Beneath that deadly curtain, the outboard engine roared to life and hastened them back to the mother vessel.

The impact of hitting the swells was ferocious. Kismet felt like he was taking repeated blows from a prizefighter. He had to cling to the rope strung along the sides of the boat like a rail, to avoid being catapulted into the sea. Slowing the craft could have minimized the turbulence, but the sailors had other reasons for haste.

Kismet heard a hissing near his head. He glanced up and saw a ragged hole in the rubber bladder. The sailor at the rudder also saw it, but could only shrug as he lowered his head. Despite the cover fire from the submarine, someone aboard Boyevoy was not going to let them go without a fight.

The leak in the raft posed no immediate danger. The inflatable hull was divided into several independent cells; the loss of pressure in a single one would not cause the craft to sink. But as the air escaped, the boat began to lose rigidity and allowed seawater to splash onto the passengers.

It took about two minutes for them to reach the sub. The sailor at the helm drove the rubber boat up onto the deck of the vessel, just aft of the sail. Through the salt spray in her eyes, she could barely distinguish the shapes of two men waiting near the sail, but there was no mistaking their uniforms: Russian naval officers. Her blood ran cold when she heard one of the men speak in heavily accented English. "So Kismet. Vee haf you, at last."

Kismet sounded merely irritated as he replied: "Cut it out, Lyse. Those Russians are shooting at us."

His tone confused Irene. She couldn't reconcile what she was seeing and hearing with what she thought she knew. Why was Kismet's friend Lyse an officer on a Russian submarine? Irene looked at both figures, and then faced the remaining officer.

"Hello, Irina." The man took off his hat, revealing the smiling face of her father.

Irene was paralyzed. Nothing made sense any more. Kismet took her elbow and guided her to the ladder that ascended to the top of the tower. Below, the sailors manning the forward gun fired off the last of their ammunition then abandoned the gun and joined the retreat to below decks. The men that had piloted the raft drew long knives and slashed the remaining cells, then pushed the shapeless mass into the sea and joined their comrades in boarding the submarine.

As they passed through the narrow hatch, a bottleneck that permitted only one person to descend into the submersible vessel, a siren blasted from the interior of the vessel.

"That's the dive warning," Lyse explained. "We have to hurry."

Irene was still confused. "We're going underwater?"

"It's already started," Lyse said, sliding off the ladder and stepping away. "We've all got to be inside and get that hatch shut. Move it, people!"

Kismet was next. The interior of the submarine was dark and claustrophobic. The electric lights were spaced far apart, offering minimal illumination, especially after daylight on the surface. Nevertheless, this metal cave beneath the waters was their salvation.

The top hatch clanked shut and was sealed. The sailor atop the ladder shouted the 'all clear' message, and then made his descent. Kismet thanked each of the men for risking their lives to rescue Irene and himself, but the sailors seemed uncomfortable with his gratitude. "Just doing our duty sir," one of them shrugged.

"Would someone please tell me what's going on?" Irene finally complained. "Father, why are you wearing that uniform? And what are you doing on a Russian submarine?"

Kismet's friend laughed at her confusion. "Let's go meet the captain. Then we'll explain everything."

A distant explosion rocked the sub as they moved through the cramped corridor toward the control room. "That was close," Lyse remarked.

An upright column dominated the center of the room. One man, a tall figure with wavy black hair, lightly peppered with gray, stood with his face pressed against the periscope viewport, slowly turning in a complete circle. Finally, he straightened and addressed the newcomers. "Not really," he said, contradicting Lyse's observation. "They're shooting in the dark. They have no idea where we went, and they're in no shape to pursue. Our first fish took out their screws, and I think the second might have knocked out the whole engine room."

Kismet was struck by the tall man's green eyes, which were oddly contrasted with the bright orange face of his diver's wrist chronometer. He had the unmistakable feeling that he had seen him before. "I guess we have you to thank for getting us out of that mess."

"No more than I have you to thank for giving me this little job. A fishing trip to get me out of the office was just what the doctor ordered."

Irene was still looking around in confusion, turning first to Kismet then to the rugged looking captain. The latter shook her hand. "My goodness, you're shivering."

He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. Kismet felt an almost adolescent twinge of jealousy at the man's act of kindness toward Irene, but Lyse distracted him. "I see you found it. The Golden Fleece."

He glanced down to the sheepskin on his shoulder, and then slipped it off to examine it more closely.

"One of them," Irene intoned. "Nick, would you please tell me what happened down there? How many Golden Fleeces are there?"

He knelt and spread the Fleece out on the metal deck. His fingers brushed through the damp wool, revealing an occasional auric glimmer, but that was all. Most of the metal had been rinsed away during the ascent from the galley. What gold remained neither glowed nor tingled with any discernible electric current. He estimated that the sodden sheepskin now weighed less than ten pounds.

A steward brought them steaming mugs of coffee and Kismet drank deeply before attempting to explain. "Here's what I think happened:

"Three thousand years ago, after the story of Jason and the Argonauts was already a legend, a group of adventurers, probably Greeks, decided to seek out the land of Colchis. Perhaps they knew something about the true nature of the Fleece, or maybe they were just crazy treasure hunters. In any event, they certainly believed in the legend, because they sought the protection of the witch Medea, Jason's lover in the myth, by erecting a shrine to her on their galley. When they arrived at the kingdom of Colchis, they headed up into the mountains. They weren't looking for the Golden Fleece; they were just looking for gold.

"An ancient Greek geographer, Strabo, speculated that the gold on the Fleece was the result of a mining technique called ‘gold washing.’ Ancient prospectors would lay a sheepskin in a gold bearing stream, and when the silt passed through the wool, the heavier gold particles stayed in the fleece. Well, that's what these adventurers did. They set out dozens of fleeces, and harvested a lot of gold dust.

"But it wasn't ordinary gold. For some reason, this gold could store, or under the right circumstances release, electricity.”

“How is that possible?” inquired Lyse. “Gold is just gold.”

“Maybe it came from somewhere else,” Kismet speculated. “According to the legend, the Golden Fleece was the skin of the flying ram Chrysomallus. Maybe instead of a flying ram, Chrysomallus was a gold meteorite that crashed in the Caucuses.”

Lyse raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like something from a comic book.”

Kismet shrugged. “Regardless of where it came from, those ancient explorers harvested a bunch of it. Then they abandoned their mining camp and prepared to sail home with their treasure, but the electrical field created by the huge quantity of this extraordinary gold caused an atmospheric disturbance. A storm arose that sunk the galley, taking its cargo to the bottom, only a few miles from shore.

"Over the centuries, the electrical field stayed active underwater, drawing more solvent gold particles out of the water. I know that sounds far-fetched, but the sea is full of dissolved metals and minerals. I think atoms of gold were pulled out of the water and gradually accumulated on the surface of the ship. Maybe the water itself perpetuated the reaction; I'm not a chemist, but there seems to be a connection."

"So when we raised the ship," Irene observed, "The electricity stopped."

"Not entirely. It was still powerful enough to blow out the lamp. I think what really happened was that it changed its manifestation. I think it created that storm with a massive electrical field." He took another sip of coffee. "When Anatoly's bomb went off, the kinetic energy was absorbed, recharging the gold."

"We can test your theory on this Fleece," suggested Lyse.

Kismet looked down at the gray wool on the deck. "I doubt you'll get any kind of reaction. Most of the gold has washed out of it.” He had mixed feelings about that. No ubergold meant no EMP bomb, and on balance, that seemed like a good thing. “But maybe what we learned about the ancient wanderings of the Greek adventurers is more valuable to the scientific world than this Fleece would have been. There are enough witnesses to document the existence of the galley and its cargo."

"Ah, Nick, I don't think you'll be able to tell anyone about this."

"And why not? This has nothing to do with your military secrets, Lyse. This is about history and culture."

"I think what the lovely Ms. Lyon means," the captain supplied, "is that your presence here, and for that matter our actions today, are illegal. We did just shoot up a Russian destroyer, you realize."

"But as far as they know, that action was carried out by a Russian submarine. There will be no contesting that identification. And since the Russians have sold off several of their older subs, there'll be no shortage of possible suspects."

The captain shook his head. "If you were to go public with your discovery, their government might be more scrupulous in demanding an accounting, both of the attack on the destroyer, and your presence in Georgia to begin with."

"You can't tell the world Nick," Lyse stated. "Not yet, at least. We can't afford to have Russia pissed off at us right now."

Kismet sighed. He knew she was right, but it irritated him to have worked so hard for nothing.

"Nick, there is yet one thing I do not understand." Kismet turned to hear out Peter Kerns. "I can accept your theory of the gold being drawn out of sea water, and accumulating on the ship. But the relics I found were not on the ship itself, but in the silt nearby, unaffected by the electrical field. The altar stone, for example, must have broken off when the ship went down. It did not have any gold on it. But the helmet fragment did. How is that possible?"

He reflected on the day Harcourt had brought the bronze and gold fragment to his office, nearly two weeks before; a dented and torn shard of a helmet that had been forged for a smaller head than his own…"It must have been plated prior to the sinking of the galley."

"Maybe the helmet really did belong to Jason," Irene suggested, unknowingly voicing Kismet's own wild speculation. "Remember that Medea used her magic to protect him when he slew the serpent that guarded the Fleece. And when he sowed the serpent's teeth, and fought the champions that grew out of the ground, her magic guarded him. If the gold was the source of her magic, perhaps she used it on his armor somehow. I seem to recall that at one point, Jason threw his helmet into the midst of the champions, causing them to turn on each other and kill each other in the confusion."

Kismet couldn't remember if the last part of her recollection was really part of the Argo legend, but he didn't contradict her. Her hypothesis was no more elaborate than his own.

"Then the helmet shard you spoke of was something the Greeks brought back with them," offered the captain. "Perhaps it was hidden beneath that altar stone; a sacred relic from the time of the real Jason."

"I guess we'll never know," Kismet concluded.

"Okay, I understand all of that." Irene faced her father again. "Now, why are we on a Russian submarine?"

"That was my idea," Kismet hastily supplied, trying to prevent the captain from grabbing any more glory. "When I first decided to go after Harcourt, both to rescue Peter and maybe find the Fleece, I made a deal with Lyse. She would back us up secretly, from a submarine, so that when we succeeded, we could sneak out unobserved."

"Almost sinking the Boyevoy isn't exactly my idea of stealth."

"It sure beats the alternative."

"You may have suggested using a sub, Nick, but it was the Colonel here—" Lyse nodded to the sub's pilot—"that gave us the K-322."

"Air Force, retired," explained the captain. "Nowadays I earn my pay with a certain maritime agency that disavows any knowledge of this little jaunt. After the end of the Cold War, the Russians sold off a few of their older boats, and this one found it’s way into the hands of a drug cartel. The Navy sank it in about four miles of water, and then the CIA asked my agency to help salvage it so they could use it for…well, for days like today.”

"They’ll be wise to the deception now,“ Kismet intoned. “What's next?"

"Well, now the fun really begins. The captain of that destroyer will have already sounded the alarm, so the entire Black Sea fleet will be after us. Unfortunately, there's only one way out the Black, through the Bosporus."

"Can we get there before they blockade the strait?"

"Officially, they can't blockade it. But that won't stop them. And the answer is: probably not. In any event, we won't be trying. We're now heading south, toward the Turkish coast. Once we get there we'll scuttle this boat, and make landfall. Then we'll break up into smaller groups and make our way home."

"They'll be looking for Irene and me."

"It would probably be best for you two to split up.” Lyse supplied. “Eventually, when you've made it back to the States, you can concoct some story about escaping from a rogue Russian military group with their own submarine."

"Wonderful," said Irene, sarcastically. "I thought all this insanity was finally over."

The captain smiled. "Well, I can promise you a few hours of peace. No one's using the officers' quarters. Why don't you grab some shut-eye? You look like you could use it." He proffered a hand, which, after a quick glance in Kismet's direction, she accepted. Kerns raised an eyebrow, and then moved to follow them.

Lyse threw a wry grin at Kismet. "Better watch out, Nick. He moves pretty fast with the ladies. Speaking as one, there is something…irresistible about him."

Kismet hefted the Fleece, avoiding her eyes. "Lyse, what makes you think that I would even give a damn?"

"Uh, oh. Things not working out between you and Svetlana?"

He considered matching her barb for barb, but thought better of it. "No. I guess there's not much room in my life for romance."

"Hell, I could have told you that. I figured that out years ago."

He chuckled, but there was no humor. "Yeah, I guess you did." He tossed the Fleece onto his shoulder and turned in the direction the others had gone, eager to find a quiet place to relax.

"Nick, wait."

"I'm keeping the Fleece, Lyse. You owe me that much."

"Sure, whatever. But there's something you owe me. The memory card? Remember? You told me you gave them to a friend. I need to know who that is."

Kismet almost laughed. It had all started with those plans; plans to build a super weapon using the mystery element contained in the Golden Fleece. Now that the ubergold was beyond reach, at the bottom of the Black Sea, Kismet wondered if the plans would do anyone any good.

"Why not?" He reached for his waist pack. The nylon bag, which had somehow survived the assault by Grimes and the final descent of the golden ship, was bloated with seawater. He turned it over, and the contents splashed on the deck, drenching Lyse's shoes. He laughed as she jumped back self-consciously, and then drew out the sheath of his kukri. The scabbard of carved wood, overlaid with black leather was probably ruined but it was replaceable. Using the blade of the big knife, he cut apart the seams that held the leather together along the backside of the sheath. The dyed covering spread apart, revealing the plastic bag with the SD card inside. He pulled it loose and tossed it to her.

Lyse was livid. "You told me you gave it to a friend."

He held the kukri up, inspecting it in the subdued light, and remembering a fateful night many years before when he had been given the blade as an almost sacred trust between warriors. "One of my oldest and dearest. And might I add, the only one I trust implicitly."

"What if you had gone down with that ship? Then it would have been lost forever."

"That probably would have been better. The world would be a better place without your superbombs."

She wagged her head in despair, and then went to work unwrapping the package, as if still convinced that he would again try to swindle her. Leaving her to inspect the SD card, he continued down the companionway, into the heart of the submarine. A narrow portal in the bulkhead opened into a cramped room with two vacant bunks. As he entered, he heard his name called yet again, but this time it was not Lyse.

"Irene?" He was mildly surprised to find her at his door. "Was this your room?"

"No." Her smile was coy and eager.

"Irene…" He tried to find the words that would make her understand that 'happily ever after' was something he could never offer, but something about her expression weakened his resolve. He shook his head and tried a different tack. "You forgot to give the captain his jacket."

"My goodness. Are you jealous?"

"Of course not." He tossed the now gold-less Fleece onto the upper bunk. "You’re an adult. You can…."

Before he could finish, she darted forward and shook her hand in the air above his head. A dusting of glitter drifted down from her fingertips, and Kismet felt as though he had walked through a cobweb. He brushed reflexively at his face and found specks of gold clinging to his fingertips. "What's this?"

"Magic dust," she replied, with a straight face. "I found it in my pocket. It must have brushed off when we were down there."

"Well why did you throw it at me?"

She shrugged. "Medea used it to make Jason fall in love her."

"No she didn't. Besides, that whole story is just a myth anyway."

She stopped him with a sultry look, moving closer. "Maybe she did," she continued, threading her arms around him and gazing up into his eyes. "Maybe it's more than just a story."

If he had a counter to her statement, it was restrained as her lips met his; her tongue silenced his own. He savored the kiss for a moment. "Magic dust," he whispered close to her ear. "So did it work?"

"Hmm?"

"When Medea used it on Jason — did it work? Did it make him love her?"

She drew back far enough to look him in the eyes. "What are you worried about? I didn't think you believed in the magic of the Fleece."

"Maybe I'm starting to."

He did not resist as she pulled him into the small space between the bunks. "Good," she said, her voice low and intent. "Because it works."