Lost City

The captain read the other note and raised his eyebrows.

"It seems that you have what Americans call 'clout," Mr. Austin. The central Coast Guard command has been contacted by the Admiralty. We are to treat you with the utmost courtesy, and to give you anything you want."

"Do British vessels still stock grog?" Austin said.

"I don't have any grog, but I have a bottle of fine Scotch whiskey in my cabin."

"That will do just fine," Austin said.

A WELCOME OF A different sort greeted the Scapa as it sidled up to the dock at Kirkwall, Orkney's capital. Lined up on shore, waiting for the Coast Guard boat to arrrve, were a bus, a hearse and about two dozen figures dressed in white hooded contamination suits.

Austin stood at the rail of the boat with Captain Bruce. He eyed the welcoming committee and said, "That's either a decontamination team or the latest in British fashion."

"From the looks of things, my crew won't be going on shore leave anytime soon," the captain said. "The Scapa and its crew have been quarantined in case you and your friends have left any nasty bugs behind."

"Sorry to cause you all this trouble, Captain."

"Nonsense," Captain Bruce said. "Your visit has certainly enlivened what would have been a routine patrol. And as I say, it's what we do."

Austin shook hands with the captain, then he and the other

refugees from the island walked down the gangway. As each passenger set foot on land, he or she was asked to don a clear plastic suit and cap and a surgical mask. Then they were escorted onto the bus and the dead were loaded into the hearse. The passengers were asked not to raise the window blinds. After a ride of five minutes, they stepped off the bus in front of the large brick building that once could have served as a warehouse.

A huge bubble tent had been set up inside the building to serve as a decontamination lab staffed by more people in white suits. Everyone who had been on the island was asked to shower and their clothes were stuffed in plastic bags and taken off to be analyzed. When they were finished showering, they were given cotton hospital outfits that made them look like mental patients, poked and prodded by a phalanx of plastic-wrapped doctors and pronounced fit to rejoin the human race. Despite the indignities, they were treated with the utmost politeness.

After being examined, Austin and his NUMA colleagues were given back their neatly folded and newly laundered clothes. Then they were taken into a small, mostly bare room furnished with several chairs and a table. At their entry, the man in the pin-striped suit who sat behind the table stood and introduced himself as Anthony Mayhew. He said he was with MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, and asked them to take a seat. Mayhew had finely chiseled features, and an upper-class accent that led Austin to say, "Oxford?"

"Cambridge, actually," he said with a smile. Mayhew talked in clipped sentences, as if he had taken verbal shears to extraneous words. "Distinction is hard to catch. My apologies for the folderol with the sawbones and those lab people in the space suits. Hope you weren't inconvenienced."

"Not all. We were badly in need of showers," Austin said.

"Please tell whoever does our laundry to use a little less starch in our collars," Zavala added.

A chuckle escaped Mayhew's thin lips. "I'll do that. MI5 are well acquainted with the work of NUMA's Special Assignments Team. But once the brass heard from Captain Bruce about dead bodies, secret experiments and mutants, they simply panicked like the good civil servants they are. They wanted to make sure you wouldn't contaminate the British Isles."

Austin grimaced. "I didn't think we smelled that bad."

Mayhew gave Austin a blank look, and then broke into laughter. "American humor. I should have known. I spent several years on assignment in the States. My superiors were less worried about odor than having a deadly virus be unleashed."

"We wouldn't dream of contaminating our English cousins," Austin said. "Please assure your superiors that this has nothing to do with biological warfare."

"I'll do that as well," Mayhew said. He looked from face to face. "Please, could someone please explain what the devil is going on?"

Austin turned to Trout. "Paul is in the best position to fill you in on island life. The rest of us were only there for a few hours."

Trout's lips tightened in a wry grin. "Let me start by saying that the island is not exactly a Club Med."

He then laid out the story, from the Alvin's aborted dive on the Lost City to his escape and rescue.

Austin expected a snort of disbelief when Trout described his work on the Philosopher's Stone, but instead, Mayhew slapped his knee in an un-British display of emotion. "This fits like a glove. I knew there was something big behind the scientists' deaths."

"I'm afraid you've lost us," Austin said.

"Pardon me. Several months ago, my department was called in to investigate a bizarre series of deaths involving a number of scientists.

The first was a fifty-year-old computer expert who went out to his garden toolshed, wrapped bare electrical wires around his chest, stuck a handkerchief in his mouth and plugged the wires into an outlet. No apparent motive for killing himself."

Austin winced. "Very creative."

"That was only the beginning. Another scientist on his way home from a London party drove off a bridge. The police said his blood alcohol level far exceeded the legal level. But witnesses at the party said he had not been drinking and his relatives said the man never drank anything stronger than port. He'd throw up if he did. On top of that, someone had put old worn-out tires on his meticulously maintained Rover."

"You're starting to interest me," Austin said.

"Oh, it gets better. A thirty-five-year-old scientist ran a car filled with gas cans into a brick wall. Apparent suicide, the authorities said. Another chap was found under a bridge. Suicide again, the police said. Evidence of alcohol abuse and depression. Family said he never drank alcohol in his life, out of religious conviction, and that there was no depression. Here's another. Chap in his twenties ties one end of a nylon cord around his neck, the other end to a tree, gets back in the car and speeds off. Decapitation."

"How many of these strange deaths did you investigate?"

"Around two dozen. All scientists."

Austin let out a low whistle. "What's the connection to the forbidden island?"

"None that we knew of at the time. A couple of the scientists were American, so we had a request from the U.S. embassy to look into it. Some MPs have asked for a full-scale inquiry. I was told to nose around and given a very small investigative staff, not to make a big thing of it, and report my findings directly to the prime minister's office."

"Sounds as if the brass wasn't anxious to stir things up," Austin said.

"Exactly my impression," Mayhew said. "Talked to the relatives and learned that all the dead men had formerly worked for the same research lab."

MacLean's former employer?" Trout said.

"That's right. When we couldn't find MacLean we assumed he had met an untimely end or had something to do with the deaths of his colleagues. Now here he turns up on your island, dead unfortunately, thereby establishing the connection to the lab."

Trout leaned forward in his chair. "What was the nature of the research?"

"They were supposedly doing research into the human immune system at a facility in France. It was apparently a subsidiary of a larger, multinational corporation, but they did a good job of hiding ownership in layer after layer of straw companies, dummy corporations and overseas bank accounts. We're still trying to trace the line of ownership."

"And if you do, you'll charge them with murdering those scientists," Austin said.

"That's the least of it," Mayhew said. "From Dr. Trout's account, it seems that the work they were doing created those mutants and condemned them to a living death."

"Let me sum up what we have so far," Austin said. "This lab employs scientists to work on a project to come up with the so-called Philosopher's Stone, an elixir based on ocean enzymes from the Lost City. The scientists are apparently successful in producing a formula that prolongs life, thereby ensuring their own premature deaths. Ma cLean escapes, but is brought back to lead a reconstituted scientific team to correct flaws in the formula. Flaws that produce awful mutations. Paul blunders into their mining operation and is drafted to work in their lab."

"The pieces fit together like clockwork," Mayhew said. "May I ask you a question, Mr. Austin? Why didn't you contact the British authorities immediately with this information?"

"Let me answer that with a question of my own. Would you have believed me if I showed up at your door raving about red-eyed fiends?"

"Absolutely not," Mayhew said.

"Thanks for being honest. You must know that it would have taken time going through regular channels. We felt that any delay might be fatal. Paul Trout is a friend as well as a colleague."

"I can understand that. As I said, I'm acquainted with the work of your Special Assignments Team and know you were probably more than up to the task. I had to ask you the question because my superiors would ask it of me."

Gamay said, "Is anyone in your government going to investigate the island?"

"A naval ship is on its way," Mayhew said. "It's carrying a contingent of Royal Marines who will be sent ashore. They'll attempt to find this submarine, seal off the labs, and neutralize the guards and these mutants."

"From what I saw, I doubt you'll find much left of the guards," Trout said.

There was a moment of silence as Trout's words sank in, then Mayhew said, "You had the most experience with these mutants, Dr. Trout. What was your impression?"

"They are savage, cannibalistic and incredibly strong. They are able to communicate, and judging from their raid on the Outcasts island, they can plan." He paused, thinking about his encounter with the mutant in the Zoo. "I don't think their essential human qualities have all been eliminated."

Mayhew replied with an enigmatic smile. "Fascinating. I think we're done here, but I wonder if you could spare a few more minutes. I have something of interest I'd like to show you."

Mayhew led them through a labyrinth of corridors until they came to a chilly room that had been set up as a medical examiner's lab. A plastic sheet covered a form that lay on a metal table illuminated by a spotlight. A middle-aged man in a white lab coat was standing next to the table.

Mayhew signaled the man and he pulled the sheet back to reveal the ravaged face of the red-eyed creature that had been shot aboard their boat. He didn't seem so terrible with his eyes closed. His face had lost its permanent snarl and seemed more in repose.

"A little rough around the edges," Mayhew said. "Not bad-looking for a Frenchman."

"Are you displaying your Anglo bias or do you know for a fact that he's French?" Austin said.

Mayhew smiled and reached into his pocket, producing a thin metal tab with a chain attached. He handed the object to Austin. "This was around this gentleman's neck. It's a little timeworn, but you can read the writing." .

Austin held the tab under the light and read the words: Pierre Levant Capitaine, L'Armee de la Republique de France, b. 1885.

"Looks like our friend here stole someone's dog tag."

"I had the same thought at first, but the tag actually belongs to this chap."

Austin responded with a quizzical look. Mayhew was not smiling as he would if he meant the wild assertion as a joke.

"That would make him more than one hundred years old," Austin said.

"Close to one hundred and twenty, to be exact."

"There must be some mistake. How can you be sure this is the man whose name is on the dog tag? Millions of men were lost during World War One."

"Quite true, but the armies did a tolerably good job of keeping records despite the chaos. Men were often identified by their comrades or officers. As the fighting moved on, bodies were cleared by special units and the director of graves registration took over, aided by the unit chaplain. There were cemetery maps drawn, information filtered through a casualty clearing station, hospitals and grave registrations and so on. That information has been put on a computer. We learned that there was a Pierre Levant, that he served as an officer in the French army and that he disappeared in action." "A lot of men disappeared in action."

"Oh, you skeptical Americans," Mayhew said. He reached into his suit and pulled out a pocket watch, which he handed to Austin. "We found this in his pocket. He was quite a handsome devil at one time."

Austin examined the inscription on the back of the watch. "A Pierre, de Claudette, avecamour." Then he flipped the watch open. Set into the cover was a picture of a young man and woman.

He showed the watch to the other members of the NUMA team. "What do you think?"

Gamay examined the tag and the watch. "One of the first things I learned in marine archaeology was the importance of establishing provenance. For instance, a Roman coin found in a Connecticut cornfield could mean that a Roman had dropped it, but it's just as likely the source was a Colonial-era coin collector."

Mayhew sighed. "Perhaps Dr. Blair can convince you." "I didn't believe it either," said the white-frocked pathologist. "We did an autopsy on the gentleman. The cells in this individual are comparable to those of a man in his late twenties, but the brain sutures, the joints of the skull, indicate the gentleman is " He cleared his throat. "Ah, more than a hundred years old."

"That would mean the work on the life extension formula goes back much further than we've assumed," Austin said.

"An incredible yet reasonable assumption," Mayhew said. "There

were rumors during World War One of attempts to develop a

"berserker," a super-soldier of sorts who would charge enemy trenches in the face of fierce fire."

"You're thinking that it's related to the life extension research?" "I don't know," Mayhew said. He drew the sheet back over the creature's face.

"Poor hombre," Zavala said, glancing at the happy couple in the watch photograph. "What a waste of a hundred years."

"We may only have uncovered the tip of the iceberg," Mayhew said. "Who knows how many have died to keep this terrible secret?"

"I don't blame them for not advertising failures like the one on that table," Gamay said.

"It goes beyond that," Mayhew said. "Suppose this elixir has been perfected. What kind of a world would we have if some people could live longer than others?"

"A world that will be very much off balance," Gamay ventured.

"My feelings exactly, but I'm a lowly detective. I'll leave that for the analysts and policymakers to deal with. Do you plan to stay long in the UK?" he asked Austin.

"Probably not," Austin said. "We'll talk about our plans and let you know what we decide."

"I'd appreciate that." Mayhew produced a business card with his name and phone number and handed it to Austin. "Please call. Night or day. In the meantime, I can't overemphasize the importance of keeping this to yourselves."

"My report will go only to Dirk Pitt and Rudi Gunn. I'm sure the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will be interested in the fate of its submersible."

"Fine. I'll let you know what our marines find on the island. Maybe we can track down the people behind this thing. Murder, kidnapping, hijacking, slave labor," he mused. "Immortality is a potent

motive for evil. I'd wager that anyone in this room would sell his firstborn rather than pass up the chance to live forever."

"Not everyone," said Austin.

"What do you mean? Given the chance, who wouldn't want to live forever?"

Austin gesturing toward the sheet-draped gurney. "Ask the old soldier lying on that table."

I HATE TO THROW cold water on this warmhearted reunion," Gamay said. "But with all this talk of red-eyed monsters and the Philosopher's Stone, we've~forgotten we have some unfinished business to attend to."

After the meeting with Mayhew, they had gone to their hotel lounge to discuss strategy. Sandy, the Alvin pilot, had been anxious to leave, and Mayhew had put her on a flight to London where she could catch a plane home. The scientists were still being debriefed.

"You're right," Zavala said, lifting his glass to the light. "I'm way behind in my goal to drink all the top-shelf tequila in the world."

"That's very laudable, Joe, but I'm more interested in the survival of the world, not its tequila supply," Gamay said. "May I sum the problem up in one word? Gorgon weed."

"I haven't forgotten," Austin said. "I didn't want to spoil your reunion with Paul. Now that you've brought the subject up, what's the situation?"

"Not good," Gamay said. "I've talked to Dr. Osborne, the infestation is spreading faster than anyone imagined."

"The mining operation has been stopped. Won't this halt the spread of Gorgon weed?" Austin said.

Gamay heaved a heavy sigh. "I wish. The mutated weed has become self-replicating and will continue to spread. We'll see harbors clogged along the east coast of the U.S. first, then Europe and the Pacific coast. The weed will continue its spread to other continents."

"How long do we have?"

"I don't know," Gamay said. "The ocean currents are moving the stuff all around the Atlantic."

Austin tried to picture his beloved ocean turned into a noxious saltwater swamp.

"Ironic, isn't it?" Austin said. "The Fauchards want to extend their lives, and in doing so they will produce a world that may not be worth living in." He looked around the table. "Any idea how we can stop this thing?"

"The Lost City enzyme holds the key to halting the weed's spread," Gamay said. "If we can figure out the basic molecular makeup, we may be able to find a way to reverse the process."

"My body is covered with bumps and bruises that tell me the Fauchards don't give up family secrets easily," Austin said.

"That's why Gamay and I should go back to Washington to set up a conference at NUMA with Dr. Osborne," Trout said. "We can try to get a flight out of here the first thing in the morning."

"Go to it." Austin looked around at the weary faces. "But first I suggest we all get a good night's sleep."

After bidding his friends a good-night, Austin found a computer room off the hotel lobby, where he did an abbreviated report for Rudi Gunn and sent it off by e-mail with the promise to follow up with a call in the morning. He rubbed his eyes a few times as he was typing and was glad when he pressed the SEND button and sent the message winging across the ocean.

He went up to his room and noticed that someone had called his cell phone. He returned the call, which turned out to be from Dar-nay. He had located Austin through his NUMA office.

"Thank God I have found you, Monsieur Austin," the antiquities dealer said. "Have you heard from Skye?"

"Not lately," Austin said. "I've been on the move or out at sea. I thought she was with you."

"She left here the same day she arrived. We had discovered what looked like a chemical equation etched into the crown of the helmet and she wanted to show it to an expert at the Sorbonne. I saw her off at the train. When I didn't hear from her after that night, I called the university the next day. They said she hadn't been in."

"Maybe she's been sick."

"I wish that were so. I called her apartment. There was no answer. I spoke to her landlady. Mademoiselle Skye never returned to her home after visiting me in Provence."

"I think you had better call the police," Austin said without hesitation.

"The police?"

"I know you have an understandable aversion to the authorities," Austin said in a firm voice, "but you must do this for Skye. Make an anonymous call from a pay phone if you'd like, but you must call them and report her missing. Her life may depend on it."

"Yes, yes, of course. I'll call them. She's like a daughter to me. I warned her to be careful, but you know how young people are."

"I'm in Scotland now, but I'll return to France tomorrow. I'll call you again when I get to Paris." He hung up so Darnay could notify the police and stared into space for a few moments, trying to make

sense of Skye's disappearance. His cell phone rang. It was Lessard, the manager of the glacier power plant.

"Lessard? Thank God. I've been trying to get you," he said.

"Sorry. I've been away from the phone," Austin said. "How are things at the glacier?"

"The glacier is as it always is," Lessard said. "But there are some strange things going on here."

"What do you mean?"

"A few days ago, a boat came with divers on the lake. I wondered whether NUMA had come back to finish its survey, but the boat was not the color I remember."

"The survey is over," Austin said. "There was no NUMA activity planned that I know of. What else is happening?"

"An incredible thing. The tunnels under the glacier are being drained."

"I thought you said that was impossible."

"You misunderstood. It would have been impossible to do it in time to save the people who were trapped in the tunnel. It has taken a few days to divert and pump water, but the observatory tunnel is almost dry."

"Was this a decision of the power company?"

"My superiors hinted to me that the decision was the result of some influence at a very high level. The work is funded by a private scientific foundation."

"Is Dr. LeBlanc involved?"

"I thought so at first. His little car Fifi is still here, so I assumed he was coming back. One of the men who had been diving in the lake came to the plant, showed me the authorization, and his men have taken over the control room. They are a hard-looking bunch, Mr. Austin. They watch my every move. I am afraid for my life. I am talking now at great risk. I've been told not to intervene."

"Have you told your boss of your feelings?"

"Yes. He told me to cooperate. The decision is out of his hands. I didn't know where else to turn. So I called you."

"Can you leave?"

"I think it will be difficult. They sent my crew home, so there is only me. I will try to shut down the turbines. Maybe headquarters will take me seriously when the power stops."

"Do as you see best, but don't take any chances."

"I'll be careful."

"What was the name of the man who came to you?"

"Fauchard. Emil Fauchard. He reminds me of a snake."

Emil Fauchard.

"Behave as if everything is okay," Austin said. "I'll be at Lu Dormeur tomorrow."

"Merci beaucoup, Mr. Austin. It would not be wise for you to show up at the front door, so how will I know when you've arrived?"

"I'll let you know."

They hung up and Austin pondered the turn of events. Then he picked up the hotel phone and called Joe and the Trouts to say that there had been a change of plans. When they showed up at his room, Austin told them about the phone calls.

"Do you think the Fauchards have kidnapped Skye?" Zavala said.

"It's a reasonable assumption, given their previous interest in the helmet."

"If they have the helmet, why would they need Skye?" Gamay asked.

"One guess."

Light dawned in Gamay's face. "I get it. They're using her as bait to lure you into a trap."

Austin nodded. "My first impulse was to go directly to Chateau Fauchard," Austin said. "But then I thought that is exactly what they would expect me to do. We should do the unexpected and go after Emil instead. He might be able to give us some leverage, and I'm

worried about Lessard, too. I think he may be in immediate danger. They'll keep Skye alive until I take their bait."

"What would you like us to do?" Paul said.

"Probe the defenses around the chateau. See if there is a way in. But be careful. Madame Fauchard is much more dangerous than her son. He's a violent sociopath. She's smart as well as murderous."

"Charming," Gamay said. "I can hardly wait to meet her."

They bid each other good-night and returned to their rooms. Austin called the number on the card Mayhew had given him, told the intelligence agent that he needed to get out of Scotland as soon as possible and asked for his help. Mayhew said he was leaving the next morning on an executive jet and would be glad to give Austin and the others on the NUMA team a ride to London, where they could catch a shuttle to Paris.

Austin thanked him and said he would return the favor one day, and then went to catch a few hours of sleep. He lay in bed on his back and brushed aside distracting thoughts so he could concentrate on the task at hand, which was to rescue Skye. Before long, he fell into a restless sleep.

THE EXECUTIVE JET lifted off at daybreak the next morning, but instead of heading toward London's Heathrow airport it set a direct course for Paris. Before the plane was in the air, Austin had talked Mayhew into changing his flight plan. He said he didn't have time to go into details, but that it was a matter of life and death.

Mayhew asked only one question: "Does this have anything to do with the matter we discussed last night?"

"It could have everything to do with it."

"Then I should expect that you will keep me up-to-date as to the progress of your investigations?"

"I'll give you the same report I send to my superiors at NUMA."

Mayhew smiled and they shook hands on the deal. By late morning, they were at Charles De Gaulle airport. The Trouts split off and headed to chateau country and Austin and Zavala hopped aboard a charter flight to the quaint alpine village nearest the glacier.

Zavala had called his friend Denise in the French parliament. After extracting a promise from Zavala to see her again, she arranged

to have a fast eighteen-foot powerboat waiting for them at the village. They had traveled up the twisting river all afternoon and arrived at Lac du Dormeur at dusk. Not wanting to announce their arrival, they kept their speed low as they crossed the misty, mirror-still lake waters and wove their way around the miniature icebergs that spotted the surface. The four-stroke outboard motor was whisper-quiet, but to Austin's ears it was like someone shouting in a cathedral.

Austin steered the boat toward a single-engine float plane that was anchored a few feet off the beach. The boat pulled alongside the plane and Austin climbed onto a float to peer inside the cockpit. The plane was a de Havilland Otter with space for nine passengers. Three seats were stacked with scuba gear, confirming Lessard's observation that the plane was being used as a dive platform. Austin got back in the boat and surveyed the beach. Nothing moved in the gray light. He ran the boat farther along the shore, pulled it behind a rock outcropping, and then he and Zavala made the long hike up to the power plant.

They traveled lightly, carrying water, power bars, handguns and extra ammunition. Even so, it was dark when they reached the plant. The door to the portal building was unlocked. The interior of the building was hushed except for the hum of the turbine. Austin slowly pivoted on his heel as he stood in the power plant lobby, his ears tuned to the beehive humming that issued from the bowels of the mountain. His coral-blue eyes narrowed. "Something's wrong," he said to Zavala. "The turbine is working."

"This is a power plant," Zavala said. "Isn't the generator supposed to be working?"

"Yes, under normal circumstances. But Lessard told me on the phone that he would try to shut down the turbine. The power loss would start bells clanging at the main office and they'd have to send someone in to investigate."

"Maybe Lessard changed his mind," Zavala said.

Austin shook his head almost imperceptibly. "I hope it wasn't changed for him."

After exploring the office and living quarters, Austin and Zavala left the lobby and made their way to the control room. Austin paused outside the door. All was quiet, but Austin's sixth sense told him that there was someone in the control room. He drew his pistol, signaled Zavala to do the same and stepped inside. That's when he saw Lessard. The plant manager looked as if he had fallen asleep, but the bullet hole in his back proclaimed otherwise. His right arm was outstretched, his fingers inches away from the blood-spattered line of switches that would have stopped the generator.

A look of barely restrained rage came to Austin's face. He silently vowed that someone would pay for killing the gracious Frenchman whose expertise had enabled Austin to rescue Skye and the other scientists trapped under the glacier. Pie touched Lessard's neck. The body was cold. Lessard was probably killed shortly after he called Austin.

The fact that it would have been impossible to save the Frenchman gave Austin little solace. He went over to the computer monitor that displayed a diagram of the tunnel system and sat down in front of the screen to study the flow of water through the tunnels. Lessard had done a masterful job of diverting the water from the glacial streams away from the observatory tunnel using a complex system of detours.

"The tunnels are color-coded," he explained to Zavala. "The blinking blue lines show the tunnels that are wet and the red lines indicate the dry water conduits." He tapped a red line. "Here's the tunnel we used in the rescue."

Zavala leaned over Austin's shoulder and with his finger traced a convoluted route from the observatory access tunnel back to the

power plant. "Quite the maze. We'll have to double back a few times and make a couple of jogs."

"Think of it as a cross between a fun house and a water park," Austin said. "We should come out where our pal Sebastian blew off the sluice gate. From there it's a short walk to the observatory. Now for the bad news. We've probably got ten to fifteen miles of tunnels to navigate."

"It could take hours, longer if we get lost."

"Not necessarily," Austin said, recalling something Lessard had said about Dr. LeBlanc.

He ran off a printout of the computer display and cast a sad glance at Lessard's body, and then he and Zavala left the control room. Moments later, they were on the observation platform where Lessard had shown Austin the power of the glacier's melt water. The torrent that had reminded Austin of the Colorado River rapids had become a narrow stream a few yards wide and a foot deep.

Satisfied that the tunnel had been drained, he and Zavala went back through the lobby and out the front door of the plant. They walked a couple of hundred yards from the plant's entrance to a sheet-metal garage butted up against the mountain wall. The garage housed two vehicles, the utility truck that had picked Austin up on his first visit to the power plant, and, under a plastic cover, Dr. LeBlanc's beloved Citroen 2C.

Austin removed the cloth. "Meet Fifi," he said.

"Fifi?"

"It belongs to one of the glacier scientists. He has a thing for her."

"I've seen prettier women," Zavala said, "but I've always said that it's personality that counts."

With its humped back and sloping hood, the tough little Citroen 2C was one of the most distinctive cars ever produced. The auto's designer had said he wanted "four wheels under an umbrella," a car that could cross a plowed field without breaking eggs carried in a basket. Fifi had seen some hard miles. Her half-moon rear wheel covers were dented, and the faded red paint almost pink and pitted by sand and gravel. Yet she had the jaunty air of a woman who was never beautiful but infinitely sure of her ability to cope with life.

The key was in the ignition. They got in the car and started the engine with no problem. Then he and Zavala drove along a gravel road that followed the base of the mountain wall until they came to a set of high double doors. Austin consulted the map and saw that they were at the site marked Porte de Sillon. He wasn't sure of the correct translation, but he reasoned that the huge drilling machines that bored out the tunnels must have had a way to get in and out of the mountain.

The doors were made of heavy steel, but they were well balanced and opened easily. Austin drove Fifi through the opening into the tunnel, where the whine of her tiny engine echoed off the walls and ceilings. The tunnel went straight into the mountain past the turbine room and entered the main system. They would have been lost in the maze of intersecting tunnels if not for the map. Zavala did yeoman service as a navigator, despite Austin's heavy foot and his quick turns. Fifteen minutes after they had entered the tunnels, Zavala told Austin to take a left at the next intersection.

"We're almost at the observatory tunnel," he said.

"How far?"

"About a half of a mile."

"I think we'd better leave Fifi and walk from here."

Like the rest of the system, the tunnel had a string of lights running along the ceiling. Many of the bulbs had burned out and not been replaced. The sporadic lighting intensified the blackness of the unlit sections between the pale circles of light. As the two men trudged along, the dripping orange walls gave off a damp raw cold that numbed their faces and the chill tried to sneak in around the collars of the down jackets they had found in the crew quarters.

"They told me that when I joined NUMA I would go places," Zavala said. "But I didn't know I'd have to walk there."

"Think of it as a character-building experience," Austin said cheerfully.

After a few more minutes of character building, they came to a ladder that ran up the side of a wall to a catwalk. A section of the walkway was enclosed by plastic and glass. Austin remembered Lessard mentioning satellite control rooms scattered throughout the tunnel system. They kept on walking and had just turned into a new tunnel when Austin's keen ear picked up a sound that was loud enough to drown out the ongoing chorus of gurgles and drips.

"What's that?" he said, cupping his hand to his ear.

Zavala listened for a moment. "Sounds like a locomotive."

Austin shook his head. "That's no ghost train. Run!"

Zavala was transfixed. He stood in place, as rigid as a statue, until Austin's voice pulled him out of his trance. Then he took off like a sprinter at the starting gun, keeping a step behind Austin. They splashed through puddles, ignoring the spray that soaked their clothes from the waist down.

The rushing grew louder and became a roar. Austin made a quick right-angle turn into another tunnel. Zavala tried to follow, but skidded on the wet floor. Austin saw Zavala fall. He went back and pulled his friend up by the wrist and they were off again, running from the unseen menace. The floor seemed to vibrate under their pounding feet as the noise reached a mind-numbing level.

Austin's frantic eyes saw the metal ladder that ran up the wall to the catwalk. He grabbed onto the first rung and pulled himself up like a circus acrobat. Zavala had hurt his knee in his fall and was having trouble climbing with his usual agility. Austin reached down and pulled his partner onto the catwalk and they dove into the control booth.

Just in time.

A second after they had slammed the watertight door shut, a huge blue wave cascaded through the tunnel. The catwalk disappeared under the rushing, foaming water that battered the windows like seas slamming into a ship in a storm. The catwalk shook from the impact, and for a moment Austin feared that the whole structure, control booth and all, would be washed away.

After the first shock, the torrent moderated, but the height of the river still reached the bottom of the catwalk. Austin went over to the control panel and stared at the diagram. He was worried that a sluice gate had given way, allowing the full force of the glacial melt water to pour through the tunnel. If that were the case, they would be stuck in the control room until they died or the glacier melted entirely.

The tunnel line was still red, indicating that it was dry. He saw this as a ray of hope because it meant that the flow of water came from a pocket of water and might have a beginning and an end.

It turned out to be a very large pocket. Five minutes that seemed like five years went by before the flow of water began to abate. Once the water level started to drop, it did so with great rapidity until they were able to go out onto the catwalk without danger of being washed off.

Zavala watched the still-formidable torrent and yelled over the sound, "I thought you said this would be like a fun house. Some fun. Some house."

"I think I said something about a water park, too."

It took another ten minutes for the water flow to diminish to a point where it was safe to descend the ladder. Austin considered the possibility of other pockets bursting open, but put the thought out of his mind and led the way through the maze of tunnels. On one occasion, a tunnel that was supposed to be dry proved to be otherwise. They would have become dangerously wet instead of uncomfortably damp if they had tried to ford the stream, and chose to detour around it.

According to the map, they were within minutes of the access tunnel to the glacial observatory. Eventually, they came to a massive steel door that was similar to the sluice gates they had seen in other tunnels. This one was different from the others they had encountered. The thick steel was peeled back like the skin of an orange.

Zavala went over and gingerly touched the twisted steel. "This must be the door that Fauchard's goon blew off its hinges."

Austin borrowed the map and pointed to a tunnel line. "We're here," he said. "We go through the door and take a right and the observatory is about a half a mile walk. We'd better stay alert and keep the noise down."

"I'll do my best to keep my teeth from chattering, but it won't be easy."

Their lighthearted bantering was deceptive. Both men were well aware of the potential danger they faced, and their concern was evident in the care they used to check their firearms. As they entered the main tunnel, Austin gave Zavala a whispered description of the lab setup. He told him about the lab buildings, then the staircase leading to the observatory tunnel and the ice chamber where Jules Fauchard was entombed.

They were nearing the lab trailers when Zavala started limping again. His injured knee was giving him trouble. He told Austin to go ahead, and he'd catch up in a minute. Austin thought about checking out the trailers, but the windows were dark and he assumed that Emil and his men were in the observatory itself. He learned that he was wrong when a door swung quietly open behind him and a man's voice told him in French to get his hands in the air. Then he was ordered to turn around, slowly.

In the murky light, Austin could make out a hulking figure. Although the tunnel was dim, stray shafts of light reflected off the gun pointed in his direction.

"Hello," Sebastian said in a pleasant voice. "Master Emil has been waiting for you."

THE ROADSIDE BISTRO was like a desert watering hole to the Trouts, who had been on the go for most of the day. They beat a path to the door of the converted farmhouse and were soon seated in a dining room that overlooked a formal flower garden. Although the stop was motivated by hunger and thirst, it proved to be a stroke of luck. Not only was the food excellent, the bistro's handsome young owner was the equivalent of a chamber of commerce information booth.

He overheard Paul and Gamay speaking English and he came over to their table to introduce himself. His name was Bertrand, "Bert" for short, and he had been a chef in New York City for a few years before returning to France to open his own place. He was pleased at the chance to talk American English and they answered his queries about the States with good-natured patience. As a Jets fan, he was particularly interested in football. As a Frenchman, he was intrigued as well by Gamay and her unusual name.

"C'est belle," he said. "C'est tres belle."

"My father's idea," she explained. "He was a wine connoisseur, and the color of my hair reminded him of the grape of Beaujolais."

Bert's appreciative eyes took in Camay's long swept-up coif and her flashing smile. "Your father was a lucky man to have such a lovely daughter. And you, Monsieur Trout, are fortunate to have a beautiful wife."

"Thank you," Paul said, putting his arm around Gamay's shoulder in an unmistakable male gesture that said, You can look but don't touch.

Bert smiled in understanding as the subtle message sunk in and again became the professional host. "Are you here on business or for pleasure?"

"A bit of both," Gamay replied.

"We own a small chain of wine shops in the Washington area," Paul explained, using the cover story he and Gamay had cooked up. He handed Bert one of the business cards he and Gamay had hastily printed up at an airport copy shop during they- Paris stopover. "As we travel about, we like to keep an eye out for small vineyards that might be able to offer something special for our discerning customers."

Bert clapped his hands as if in light applause. "You and your wife have come to the right place, Monsieur Trout. The wine you're drinking is from an estate not far from here. I can get you an introduction to the owner."

Gamay took a sip from her glass. "A robust red. Precocious and lively. It has high notes of raspberry."

"There's a hint of mischievousness to it that I like," Paul said. "Combined with low notes of pepper."

Both Trouts tended toward microbrewery beer, and their knowledge of wine was gleaned mostly from the labels, but Bert nodded sagely. "You are true wine aficionados."

"Thank you," Gamay said. "Do you have any other vineyard suggestions?"

"Oui, Madame Trout. Many." Bert jotted down several names on a napkin, which Paul tucked into his pocket.

"Someone mentioned another vineyard," Gamay said. "What was that name, dear?"

"Fauchard?" Paul said.

"That's it." She turned back to Bertrand. "Do you carry the Fauchard label?"

"Mon Dieu. I wish I did. It's a superb wine. Their production is very limited and their wine is bought by a select group of wealthy people, mostly Europeans and rich Americans. Even if I could get it, the wine is much too expensive for my customers. We're talking a thousand dollars a bottle."

"Really?" Gamay said. "We'd love to visit the Fauchard estate and see what sort of grapes can fetch prices like that."

Bert hesitated and a frown came to his handsome face. "It's not far from here, but the Fauchards are ... how can I put it? Odd."

"In what way?"

"Not very friendly. Nobody sees them." He spread his hands. "They are an old family and there are stories."

"What sort of stories?"

"Old wives' tales. Farmers can be superstitious. They say the Fauchards are sang sues Bloodsuckers."

"You mean vampires?" Gamay said with a smile.

"Oui." Bert laughed and said, "I think they simply have so much money they are always afraid people will steal it. They are not typical of the people who live here. We are very friendly. I hope the Fauchards don't give you the wrong impression."

"That would be impossible after enjoying your fine food and hospitality," she said with a sly smile.

Bert beamed with pleasure and, using another napkin, wrote down

directions to the Fauchard estate. They could get a glimpse of the vineyards, he said, but the no trespassing signs will warn them when they get closer to the estate. They thanked him, exchanged hugs and cheek busses in the French manner and got back in their car.

Gamay broke into laughter. "A mischievous wine? I can't believe you said that."

"I'd rather have a mischievous wine than a precocious vintage," Paul said with a haughty sniff.

"You must admit it had high notes of raspberry," she said. "And low notes of pepper, too," Paul replied. "I don't think Bert noticed our viticultural pretensions. He was fixated on you. "You 'ave a beeyootiful wife," " Trout said in an accent like that of the old film star Charles Boyer.

"I think he was quite charming," Gamay said with a pout. "So do I, and he was completely right about how lucky I am." "That's more like it," she said. She consulted the map Bert had drawn on the napkin. "There's a turnoff that goes to the chateau about ten miles from here."

"Bert made it sound like Castle Dracula," Paul said. "From what Kurt told us, Madame Fauchard makes Dracula look like Mother Teresa."

Twenty minutes later, they were driving down a long dirt road that ran through rolling hills and neatly terraced vineyards. Unlike the other vineyards they had passed on the way, there were no signs identifying the owners of the grapevines. But as the surrounding countryside changed to woods, they began to see signs on the trees warning in French, English and Spanish that they were on private property. The road ended at a gate in a high chain-link electrified fence topped with razor wire. The sign at the gate had an even sterner warning, again in three languages, saying that trespassers venturing farther would encounter armed guards and watchdogs. The threat of bodily harm to unauthorized persons was unmistakable.

Paul read the signs and said, "It appears that Bert was right about the Fauchards. They're not the warm-and-fuzzy type."

"Oh, I don't know," Gamay said. "If you look in your rearview mirror, you'll see that they sent someone out to greet us."

Paul did as Gamay suggested and saw the grille emblem of a black Mercedes SUV through the window of their rented Peugeot. The Mercedes blocked the road behind them. Two men got out of the vehicle. One was short and stocky and had a shaved head shaped like a bullet. He held the leash of a fierce-looking Rottweiler who wheezed as he strained against his choke collar. The second man was tall and dark-complexioned and had the fleshy nose of a prizefighter. Both men wore military-style camouflage uniforms and sidearms.

The bald man came over to the driver's side and spoke in French, which was not Paul's strong suit, but he had no problem understanding the order to get out of the car. Gamay, on the other hand, was fluent. When the bullet-headed man asked what they were doing there, she handed him a business card, produced the napkin Bert had given them and showed them the vineyards listed on it.

The man glanced at the names. "This is the Fauchard estate. The place you want is that way," he said, pointing.

Gamay seemed to get agitated. She burst into a nonstop stream of French, gesturing frequently at Paul. The guards started laughing at the husbandly harangue. Bullethead gave Gamay a head-to-toe body sweep with his eyes that was more than casual. Gamay returned his unabashed interest with a coy smile. Then he, his companion and the dog got back into the Mercedes. They moved the SUV out of the way so that Paul could back out. As the car drove off, Gamay gave the guards a wave that was eagerly returned.

"Looks like we met Kurt's skinhead friend Marcel," Trout said.

"He certainly fits the menacing description," Gamay said.

"He was a lot friendlier than I expected," Trout said. "You even had the dog smiling. What did you say?"

"I told them that you were an idiot for getting us lost."

"Oh," Trout said. "And what did baldy say?"

"He said he would be glad to show me the way. I think he was flirting with me."

Trout gave her a sidelong glance. "This is the second time you've used your feminine charms. First with Bert, then on Bullet Head and his mutt."

"All's fair in love and war."

"It's not the war I'm worried about. Every Frenchman we meet seems to have bedroom eyes."

"Oh, shush. I asked him if we could drive around and look at the grapes. He said that was all right, but to stay away from the fence."

Trout turned off at the first dirt road and they bumped along through acre after acre of vineyards. After a few minutes, they pulled over and got out of the car near a crew of grape pickers who were taking a cigarette break by the roadside. There were about a dozen dark-skinned workers talking to a man who seemed to be in charge. Gamay introduced themselves as American wine buyers. The man frowned when she explained that Marcel had given them permission to drive through the vineyards.

"Oh, that one," the man said with a frown. He said his name was Guy Marchand and he was the foreman of the work crew.

"They are guest workers from Senegal," he said. "They work very hard, so I go easy on them."

"We stopped at the bistro and talked to Bertrand," Gamay said. "He told us the wine produced here is wonderful."

"Oui. C'est vrai. Come, I'll show you the vines."

He waved the grape pickers back to work and led the Trouts down a line of vines. He was a voluble talker and enthusiastic about his work, and the Trouts had no need to do their wine snob act. They had only to nod their heads as Guy went on about soil, climate and grapes. He stopped at a vine trellis and plucked a few grapes, which

he handed to Gamay and Paul. He squeezed the grapes, sniffed them and tasted the juice with the tip of his tongue. They followed suit, clucking with admiration. They headed back to the road and saw that the workers were dumping grapes into the back of a truck.

"Where is the wine bottled?" Paul said.

"On the estate itself," Guy said. "Monsieur Emil wants to make sure every bottle is accounted for."

"Who is Monsieur Emil?" Gamay said.

"Emil Fauchard is the owner of these vineyards."

"Do you think it would be possible to meet Monsieur Fauchard?" Gamay said.

"No, he keeps to himself."

"So you never see him?"

"Oh yes, we see him," Marchand said. He rolled his eyes and pointed toward the sky.

Both Trouts looked up. "I don't understand," Gamay said.

"He flies over in his little red plane to keep watch."

Guy went on to explain that Emil personally dusted the crops. He told them that Emil had once dusted one of the work crews with pesticides. Some workers became violently ill and had to be transported to the hospital. They were all illegal immigrants, so didn't complain, but Marchand threatened to quit and the workers were given paltry gifts of money in compensation. He'd been told the dusting was an accident, although it was clear from the tone of his voice that he thought Emil had done it on purpose. But the Fauchards had paid him well and he didn't complain.

While Marchand talked, the workers finished loading the truck. Paul's eyes followed the truck as it trundled along the dirt road. After going about a quarter of a mile, it took a left-hand turn and headed toward a gate in the electrified fence. As a fisherman, Paul had developed a keen eye for detail and he could see a couple of guards standing in front of the gate. He watched the truck slow down, then it was waved through and the gate closed behind it.

Paul tapped Gamay's shoulder and said, "I think it's time to go."

They thanked Marchand, got in their car and headed back to the main road that would take them out of the vineyards.

"Interesting conversation," Gamay said. "Emil sounds just as lovely as Kurt described him." Paul only grunted in return. Gamay was used to Paul's sometimes taciturn nature, a trait he had inherited from his New England forebears, but detected something deeper in his monosyllabic reply. "Is there anything wrong?"

"I'm fine. The story about the 'accidental' dusting got me thinking again about all the misery Emil and his family have caused. They're responsible for the death of Dr. MacLean and his scientific colleagues, and that Englishman, Cavendish. Who knows how many more they've killed through the years?"

Gamay nodded. "I can't get those poor mutants out of my mind. They've had to endure a living death."

Paul whacked the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. "It makes me want to punch someone in the nose."

Gamay was surprised at the uncharacteristic outburst. She arched an eyebrow. "We'll have to figure out a way to get past that fence and guards before we do any nose punching."

"That may be sooner than you think," Paul said with a smile, and he began to describe his plan.

SEBASTIAN SEARCHED Austin with a rough hand, relieving him of his gun, and then ordered him to move toward the stairs. They climbed the stairway and went along the Y-shaped passageway and up the wooden ladder to the ice cavern. A loud hissing came from the cavern and a steam cloud obscured its opening. Austin closed his eyes against the hot swirling steam and when he opened them he saw a silhouette in the mist.

Sebastian called out to the figure. Emil Fauchard materialized from the steam cloud like a magician making his appearance onstage. When he saw Austin, his lips contorted in rage and his pale features writhed into a Greek mask of fury. Wrath boiled within him like hot oil and he seemed barely able to contain himself. Then his mouth softened into a mirthless smile that was even worse. He closed a nozzle valve on the hose he was holding and the steam dissipated. "Hello, Austin," he said in a knife-edged voice. "Sebastian and I hoped we'd meet again after you left our costume party without saying good-bye. But I must admit I expected you to go to the chateau to rescue your lady friend."

"I couldn't resist your warm snakelike personality," Austin said, his voice cool. "And I never did thank you for the loan of your plane. Why did you kill Lessard?"

"Who?"

"The plant manager."

"He had outlived his usefulness as soon as he drained the tunnels. I let him live until the last moment, letting him think he could stop the turbine and bring in outside help." Fauchard laughed at the memory.

Austin smiled as if he appreciated Fauchard's evil humor. He had to use all the self-discipline at his command to resist the fatal urge to tear the Frenchman's head off. He bided his time, knowing that he was in no position to take revenge.

"I saw your plane on the lake," Austin said. "It's a little cold for scuba diving."

"Your concern is appreciated. The Morane-Saulnier was exactly where you said it would be."

Austin glanced around the cavern. "You went through a great deal of trouble to flood this place," Austin said. "Why drain it again?"

The smile dissolved into a frown. "At the time, we wanted to keep Jules locked away from the prying eyes of the world."

"What changed your mind?"

"My mother wanted Jules's body back."

"I was unaware that the Fauchard family was so sentimental about its kinfolk."

"There's a lot about us you don't know."

"Glad I could make it to his coming-out party. How is the old boy?"

"See for yourself," Emil said, and stepped aside.

A section of wall had been melted and chipped away to create a blue grotto. Jules Fauchard lay on the raised platform like a human sacrifice to the god of the glacier. The body was on its side, curled up in a fetal position. Jules was still wearing his heavy leather flying

coat and gloves, and his black boots were as shiny as if they had just been polished. He wore a parachute harness, but the actual parachute had been ripped off by powerful glacial forces. Although the corpse had been locked in the ice for nearly a century, the cold had kept it well preserved. The skin on the face and hands had a burnished copper look and the heavy handlebar mustache was coated with frost.

The hawk nose and firm jaw on the frozen face matched the features of the man in the Fauchard family gallery. Austin was especially interested in the hole that had punctured the fur-trimmed leather aviator's cap.

"Nice of your sentimental family to give Jules a going-away present," Austin said.

"What are you talking about?"

Austin gestured toward the hole. "The bullet in his head."

Emil sneered. "Jules was on his way to see the pope's emissary when he was shot out of the sky," Emil said. "He carried documents that would prove our family's complicity in starting the Great War. He also wanted to offer the world a scientific discovery that would be a boon to all mankind. He hoped to avert war with his actions."

"Laudable and unusual goals for a Fauchard," Austin said.

"He was a fool. This is where his altruism landed him."

"What happened to the documents he carried with him?"

"They were useless, ruined by water."

"Then it was all a big waste of time."

"Not at all. Look. You are here. And you will wish that you were chained in the chateau catacombs when I am through." Emil pointed to the ragged edge of ice that framed the opening to the grotto. "See? The ice is already re-forming. In a few hours, the tomb will again be resealed. And this time you will be inside, keeping Jules company."

Austin's mind was racing.

Where the hell was Zavala?

"I thought your mother wanted the body."

"What do / care about the body? My mother won't always be in power. I intend to lead the Fauchards to their greatest achievements. Enough stalling. I'm not going to indulge your pathetic effort to forestall the inevitable, Austin. You stole my airplane and treated it shabbily, and have caused me a great deal of trouble. Get over there next to Jules."

Austin stayed where he was. "Your family didn't give a rat's ass about being blamed for the war. It was an open secret that you and the other arms merchants wanted the bullets to fly. It was something bigger than any war. Jules was carrying the formula for eternal youth."

A startled expression flashed across Emil's face. "What do you know?"

"I know that the Fauchards will destroy anyone who stands in the way of their goal of living forever." He glanced at. the frozen corpse of Jules. "Even a family member proved to be expendable when it came to the fountain of youth."

Emil studied Austin's face. "You're an intelligent man, Austin. Wouldn't you admit that the secret of eternal life is worth killing for?"

"Yes," Austin said with a wolfish grin. "If you're the one being killed."

"Your civilized veneer is wearing thin," Emil said with a chuckle. "Think of the infinite possibilities. An elite group of immortals imbued with the wisdom of ages could rule the world. We'd be like gods to the life-deprived."

Austin glanced at Emil's henchman. "What about Sebastian over there? Does he fit in with your group of elites? Or will he join the rest of the 'life-deprived," as you call them?"

The question caught Emil by surprise. "Of course," he said after a moment. "Sebastian's loyalty will earn him a place in my pantheon. Will you join me, old friend?"

The hulking man opened his mouth to reply but said nothing. He had caught the hesitation in Emil's voice and there was confusion in his eyes.

Austin twisted the verbal knife. "Don't count on living forever, Sebastian. Emil's mother wants you out of the picture."

"He's lying," Emil said.

"Why would I lie? Your boss here intends to kill me, no matter what I say. Madame Fauchard told me at the masquerade ball that she had ordered Emil to get rid of you. We both know Emil always does what his mother tells him to do."

A doubtful expression came to the bland face. Emil saw himself losing control of the situation.

"Shoot him in the arms and legs," he barked. "Make sure you don't kill him. I want him to beg for death."

Sebastian stood there, unmoving. "Not yet," he said. "I want to hear more."

Emil uttered a curse and snatched the gun from Sebastian's hand. He aimed at Austin's knee.

"You'll soon find that your life is all too long."

Austin's ploy to turn Sebastian against Emil had bought him a little time, but it had failed, as he knew it would in the end. The master-and-servant bond between the two men was too strong to be dissolved by a few doubts. He braced himself for the shattering pain. But instead of a gunshot, he heard a sharp hissing sound from the passageway outside the ice cave. Then a hot cloud of steam surged into the chamber.

Emil had turned his head in reflex toward the source of the noise. Austin lunged forward in a low boxing stance and drove his right fist

into Fauchard's midsection. Fauchard let out an explosion of air and his legs buckled. The gun flew from his fingers.

Sebastian saw his master under attack, and he tried to grab Austin by the neck. Instead of trying to elude Sebastian, Austin bulled right at him, using his palm to straight-arm the big man under the chin. As Sebastian reeled from the attack, Austin shouldered him aside and then sprinted through the blinding steam.

He heard Zavala calling. "Kurt, over here!"

Zavala stood in the passageway holding a cutoff section of hose that was spewing hot water onto the walls to create the cloud that rolled into the ice cavern. Zavala dropped the hose, grabbed Austin and led him through the steam cloud. They could hear Emil shouting in incoherent rage.

Gunfire raked the passageway. Austin and Zavala were racing down the stairs and the bullets went high. Hearing the gunfire, the rest of Fauchard's men emerged from the lab trailer. They saw Austin and Zavala and gave chase. As they made their way into the tunnel, Zavala got off two quick shots to give their pursuers something to think about. He was still limping, but managed a loping run, and they made it back to the sluice gate Sebastian had blown off. They plunged through the opening a second ahead of a hail of bullets.

Austin searched his pockets for the tunnel map. It was nowhere to be found. He remembered he had left it in the Citroen. They must get back to Fifi. He pictured the system in his mind. The flow in the system could be manipulated in the same way electricity pulses through the grid on a circuit board.

They headed back to the Citroen, only to halt at the sound of voices echoing along the passageway ahead. Austin led the way into another tunnel and he and Zavala were able to make their way in roundabout fashion back to their intended route. The detour cost them precious minutes that allowed Fauchard to organize the chase,

and Austin wasn't surprised when they heard Emil's voice behind them eerily exhorting his men on.

Austin and Zavala had been proceeding with haste tempered with caution, but they picked up the pace, following a bewildering course of lefts and rights. Austin was acting mostly on gut instinct, trusting the internal compass that he carried around in his head and using a crude form of land-based dead reckoning.

Despite Austin's fine-tuned sense of direction, the detours took their toll. He lost his bearings completely. Emil's voice was getting closer. Austin was as close to despair as he had ever been when they came to an intersection of four tunnels. Austin's coral-blue eyes probed the gloom.

"This looks familiar," Zavala said.

"We're near the mid station control booth," Austin said.

They entered the right-hand tunnel that would take them back to Fifi, only to stop after taking a few steps. Rough male voices could be heard coming in their direction. They ran back to the intersection and tried going straight, but a sluice gate barred their way. They came back to the intersection. The distant sound of booted footfalls was coming from the passageway at the left.

"We're surrounded," Zavala said.

A desperate plan was hatching in Austin's brain. He turned into the left-hand tunnel.

Zavala held back. "Hold on, Kurt. Fauchard's goons are coming that way, too."

"Trust me," Austin said. "But do it fast. We don't have a second to spare."

Zavala shrugged and sprinted into the dimly lit passageway a step behind Austin. He mumbled to himself in Spanish as they splashed through the puddle-covered floor. He had worked with Austin on many missions since joining the NUMA Special Assignments Team. Zavala had developed an abiding faith in Austin's judgment. There were times, however, like the present, when Austin's behavior seemed completely irrational, and that confidence was put to the test.

Zavala pictured them bumping into Fauchard's thugs in a deadly version of a Keystone Kops silent movie. But they reached the control booth unimpeded and scrambled up the ladder onto the catwalk. Fauchard's men materialized in the dim tunnel and gave out with a hoarse cry of triumph at having brought their game to roost. They unleashed a blistering attack on the booth.

Bullets pinged and ricocheted off the metal catwalk, the tunnel walls amplifying the racket to D-day proportions. Austin dove into the control booth, pulled Zavala in behind him and slammed the door shut. The rest of Fauchard's men heard the gunfire, came running and joined in the turkey shoot. They peppered the booth with hundreds of rounds. The windows disintegrated and the sustained barrage of lead threatened to punch through the steel walls.

Austin crawled across the shards of glass littering the floor, got up on his knees and, keeping his head low, ran his hands onto the control panel keyboard. A diagram of the tunnel system appeared on the screen. The racket of bullets slamming into the booth was deafening and Austin tried to stay focused. He typed out several commands and was gratified when he saw the colors change on the diagram.

Zavala started to rise, hoping to get off a shot or two, but Austin pulled him down.

"You'll get your head shot off," he yelled over the sound of gunfire.

"Better than getting my ass shot off," Zavala said.

"Wait," Austin said.

"Wait? For what}"

"Gravity."

Zavala's reply was drowned out by a new volley. Then the gunfire stopped abruptly and they could hear Emil's mocking voice.

"Austin! Are you and your friend enjoying the view?"

Austin put his finger to his lips.

When Austin didn't answer, Emil taunted, "Don't tell me you're shy. I want you to listen to the plans my mother has for your lady friend. She's going to give her a face-lift. You won't recognize her when she's through with the transformation."

Austin had had enough of Fauchard. He signaled for Zavala to hand over his gun and moved closer to the control booth wall. Disregarding his own advice, he squeezed the trigger until it was a feather's touch away, then he popped up like a hand puppet, fired once and ducked down. He had honed in on Fauchard's voice, but his aim was off. Fauchard and his men scattered in search of cover. Once they saw that there was no follow-up attack, they again sprayed the booth with lead.

"You really showed them that time," "Zavala yelled over the racket. "Emil was starting to irk me." "Did you get him?"

"Emil? Unfortunately, no. I missed Sebastian, too. But I nailed the guy standing next to him."

"That is unfortunate," Zavala said, raising his voice a few decibels. "Brilliant strategy, though. Maybe they'll run out of bullets."

Bullets were starting to punch through the floor of the booth. Austin knew he had to stop the shooting and buy time. "Do you have a white hanky?" he asked Zavala.

"This is a funny time to be blowing your nose," Zavala said, ducking as a round ricocheted off the wall. He saw from Austin's face that he wasn't joking and said, "I've got my Mexican 'do-rag." " Zavala fished his multipurpose red bandanna out of his back pocket and handed it over.

"This will do," Austin said, tying the bandanna to the gun barrel. He poked the impromptu flag out the door and waved it.

The gunfire again stopped. Emil's sharp-edged laughter echoed throughout the tunnel.

"What is that rag, Austin?" he said. "I'm no bull to be taunted by your antics."

"I didn't have a white flag," Austin shouted down.

"A white flag? Don't tell me you and your friend are prepared to come to terms with your fate?"

Austin cocked his ear, listening. He thought he heard a distant whispering, like the surf along the shore. But his ears were still ringing from the gunfire and he couldn't be sure.

"You misunderstood, Fauchard. I'm not ready to surrender."

"Then why are you waving that ridiculous piece of cloth?"

"I wanted to say good-bye before the freight train comes through."

"Have you gone mad, Austin?"

The whispering had become a low rumble.

Emil gave the order to start firing again.

Bullets whined and splattered around their heads in a nonstop crescendo. The concentrated gunfire was punching through the walls. In another few minutes, the booth would beAno more protection than the slice of Swiss cheese that it was starting to resemble.

Then the firing stopped abruptly.

The gunmen had felt the vibration. With the guns silent, they, too, had picked up the rumble of distant thunder.

Austin got to his feet and stepped out onto the catwalk. Emil had a puzzled look on his face. He looked up, saw Austin staring down at him and knew he had been bested.

"You've won for now, Austin," he yelled up, shaking his fist in defiance, "but you haven't heard the last from the Fauchards."

Austin grinned, stepped back into the booth, grabbed onto one of the metal legs supporting the console table and told Zavala to do the same.

Emil shouted one last oath, and then he turned and he and his gang of thugs ran for their lives. Sebastian lurched after the others.

It was too late.

Seconds later, the wave hit Fauchard and his men with an explosion of blue water that swept them away like a giant broom. Heads bobbed for an instant in the cold foam, arms flailed ineffectually. Sebastian's face was pale against the dark water. Then he was gone along with Emil and his men.

Unlike their previous experience, when Austin and Zavala stayed high and dry inside the undamaged watertight booth, this time the cascading water flowed in through the broken windows, flooded the control room and tried to pull Austin and Zavala from their anchor. They hung on with every ounce of strength.

Just when their lungs were ready to burst, the main force of the wave spent itself and the water began to subside.

They stood on shaky legs and peered through the jagged-edged framework, which was all that was left of the window.

Zavala looked down on the river flowing under their feet, amazement on his dark features. "How did you know that high tide was coming?"

"I opened and closed a few sluice gates in another part of the system and diverted water this way."

Zavala grinned and said, "I hope that Fauchard and his pals are all washed up."

"My guess is that they're feeling a bit flushed by now," Austin said. Miraculously, the control monitor was in a secure housing and had escaped damage. Austin punched in some keyboard commands. The water level dropped until the rushing river became a narrow stream. Both men were shivering in their wet clothes by then. They had to get out of the tunnels to someplace dry and warm before hypothermia set in. They climbed down the ladder. This time, no one tried to stop them.

They plodded through the tunnels with no idea of where they were going. Their teeth had started to chatter from the cold. The batteries in their flashlights were getting low, but they kept on because

they had no alternative. Just when they were about to give up all hope, they saw an object ahead.

Zavala yelled with joy. "Fifi!"

The Citroen had been picked up by the wave and deposited sideways in the tunnel. It was covered with mud and the paint was scraped off in a dozen places where it must have banged against the walls. Austin opened the door. The map was floating in a few inches of water on the floor. The key was still in the ignition. He tried to start the car but the engine wouldn't turn over.

Zavala fiddled around in the hood and told Austin to try it again.

This time the motor started.

Zavala got in and said, "Loose battery cable."

It took a half hour of driving through the tunnel grid before they figured out where they were, then another half hour to find their way back through the system. The car was running on gas vapors when they saw gray daylight ahead, and moments later they drove out of the mountain.

"What next?" Zavala said.

Austin didn't even have to think about it. "Chateau Fauchard."

WHEN SKYE WAS a girl her father had taken her to the Cathedrale de Notre Dame and she had seen her first gargoyle. The grotesque face leering down from the ramparts looked like a monster from her worst nightmares. She had calmed down after her father explained that gargoyles were nothing more than rain spouts Skye had wondered why such talented sculptors could not have fashioned things of beauty, but she had put aside her childhood fears. Now, as she blinked her eyes open, the gargoyle of her restless dreams was back. Even worse, it was talking to her.

"Welcome back, mademoiselle," said the cruel mouth only inches away. "We have missed you."

The face belonged to Marcel, the bullet-headed man in charge of the private army at Chateau Fauchard. He spoke again.

"I'll be back in fifteen minutes," he said. "Do not keep me waiting."

She closed her eyes as a wave of nausea swept through her body. When she looked again, he was gone.

Skye glanced around and saw that she was in the chamber where she'd changed into the cat costume for the Fauchard masquerade ball. She recalled walking up to her apartment building. She dug deeper into her recollection and remembered the lost American couple, the bee sting on her backside and the slide into oblivion.

Dear God, she had been fydnapped.

She sat up in the bed and swung her legs over the side. There was a brassy taste in her mouth, probably the remnant of the chemical that had been injected into her veins to render her unconscious. She took a deep breath and stood up. The room began to swirl around her. She staggered into the bathroom and vomited into the sink.

Skye gazed at her reflection, hardly recognizing the face in the mirror. Her face was ghostly pale, her hair lank and straggly. She felt better after she had rinsed her mouth and splashed cold water on her face. She brushed her hair back with her fingers and patted the wrinkles out of her clothes as best she could.

She was ready a few minutes later when Marcel opened the door without knocking and beckoned for her to follow. They walked down the long carpeted corridors, eventually passing through the gauntlet of faces lining the walls of the portrait gallery. She looked for the painting of Jules Fauchard, but it was gone, leaving only blank wall in its place. Then they were standing outside Madame Fauchard's office.

Marcel gave Skye an odd smile, and then he knocked gently and opened the door. He pushed Skye inside. Skye saw that she was not alone. A blond woman with her back to Skye sat at Madame Fauchard's desk, staring out the window. She swiveled around in the chair at the click of the door shutting and stared at Skye.

The woman was in her forties, with creamy skin set off by probing gray eyes. She parted her red, almost voluptuous lips. "Good afternoon, mademoiselle. We've awaited your return. You left in such a spectacular fashion."

Skye's mind reeled. She wondered if she were still feeling the aftereffects of the knockout drug.

"Sit," the woman said, pointing to a chair in front of the desk.

Skye obeyed, moving like a zombie.

The woman regarded Skye with amusement.

"What's wrong? You seem distracted."

Skye was more confused than distracted. The voice that came from the woman's mouth was that of Madame Fauchard. It had lost its cracked, old lady quality, but there was no mistaking the hard-edged words. Crazy thoughts ran through Skye's mind. Did Racine have a daughter? Maybe this was a clever ventriloquist.

Finally, she found her own voice.

"Is this some sort of trick?"

"No trick at all. What you see is what there is."

"Madame Fauchard?" The words came out falteringly.

"One and the same, my dear," she said with a wicked smile. "Only now I am young and you are old."

Skye was still skeptical. "You must give me the name of your plastic surgeon."

Heat came to the woman's eyes, but only for a moment. She rose from her chair and came around to the other side of the desk with silken movements. She leaned over, took Skye's hand and placed it on her cheek.

"Tell me if you still think this is the work of a surgeon."

The flesh was warm and firm, and the skin was creamy without a trace of wrinkles.

"Impossible," Skye said in a whisper.

Madame Fauchard let the hand drop, then stood upright and returned to her chair. She tented her long, slender fingers so that Skye could see that they were no longer gnarled.

"Don't worry," she said. "You're not going mad. I am the same person who invited you and Mr. Austin to my costume party. He's well, I trust."

"I don't know," Skye said, guardedly. "I haven't seen him in days. How "

"How did I turn from a cackling old crone into a young beauty?" she said, a dreamy look in her eyes. "A long, long story. It would not have been so long had it not been for Jules absconding with the helmet," she said, spitting out the name with bitterness. "We could have saved decades of research."

"I don't understand."

"You're the antique arms expert," Madame Fauchard said. "Tell me what you know about the helmet."

"It's very old. Five hundred years or possibly older. The steel was of extremely high quality. It may have been made with iron from a meteorite."

Madame Fauchard arched an eyebrow.

"Very good. The helmet was made with star metal and this strength saved the lives of more than one Fauchard in battle. It was melted and recast through the centuries and was passed down through the family to the true leaders of the Fauchards. It rightfully belonged to me, not my brother Jules."

The words took a second to sink in, but when they did, Skye said, "Your brother?"

"That's right. Jules was a year younger than me."

Skye tried to do the calculation, but her thoughts were whirling around in her head. "That would make you "

"Never ask a lady her age," Madame Fauchard said, with a languid smile. "But I'll save you the trouble. I'm past the century mark."

Skye shook her head in disbelief. "I don't believe it."

"I'm hurt by your skepticism," Madame Fauchard said, but her expression belied her statement. "Would you like to hear the details?"

Skye was torn between her scientific curiosity and her revulsion.

"I saw what happened to Cavendish because he knew too much of your business."

"Lord Cavendish was a bore as well as a blabbermouth. But you flatter yourself, my dear. When you're as old as I am, you learn to keep things in perspective. You're no good to me dead. Live bait is always more effective."

"Bait. For what?"

"Not what. Whom. Kurt Austin, of course."

SHORTLY AFTER FIVE O'CLOCK, the workers at the Fauchard vineyards ended the day that had started with the rising sun. As the men headed back to their crude do/mitories, a fleet of dump trucks laden with newly picked grapes rolled along the dirt roads that ran through the rolling hills and converged on the gate in the electrified fence. A bored guard waved the line through the gate and the trucks headed to a shed where the grapes would be offloaded for crushing, fermentation and bottling.

As the last truck slowed to a halt near the shed, two figures jumped off and darted into the woods. Satisfied that they had not been seen, Austin and Zavala brushed the dirt off their clothes and tried to wipe the grape juice off their faces and hands, but it only made the stain worse.

Zavala spit out a mouthful of damp earth. "That's the last time I let Trout talk me into one of his crazy schemes. We look like a purple version of the Blue Man Group!"

Austin was picking twigs out of his hair. "You must admit it was

a stroke of genius. Who'd expect anyone to disguise themselves as a bunch of grapes?"

Trout's plan was deceptively simple. He and Gamay had taken another tour of the vineyards. This time Austin and Zavala were hunkered down in the backseat. The Trouts stopped and got out to say hello to Marchand, the foreman they had met on their first visit to the Fauchard vineyards. As they chatted, the dump truck pulled up in front of the car. Austin and Zavala waited until the truck was loaded, then they slipped out of the car, climbed onto the back of the moving vehicle and burrowed into the grapes.

The dark woods were like something out of a Tolkien novel. Austin carried a device Gandalf the wizard would have envied. The miniaturized Global Positioning System could put them within yards of the chateau. Using a compass in the initial stages of their journey, they struck out through the woods in the general direction of the chateau.

The woods were thick with clawing brambles and foot-catching underbrush, as if the Fauchards had somehow extended their malevolence into the flora surrounding their ancestral home. As the sun sank lower in the sky, the woods grew darker. Traveling in the dusky light, the two men stumbled over roots, and needle-sharp thorns caught at their clothes. Eventually, they broke out of the forest onto a dirt path that led to a network of well-used trails. Austin frequently consulted the GPS and it proved its worth when he saw a glow through the trees from the turrets of Chateau Fauchard.

At the edge of the woods, they crouched in the trees and watched a lone guard make his way along the edge of the moat. When the guard rounded the far wall of the chateau, Austin set the timing mode on his watch.

"We're in luck," Zavala said. "Only one sentry."

"I don't like it," Austin said. "Nothing in my brief acquaintance

with the Fauchard family leads me to believe that they treat their own security lightly."

Even more suspicious, the drawbridge was down and the portcullis up. The water in the strange war-the med fountain tinkled musically. The tranquil scene stood in stark contrast to his last visit, when he'd driven the Rolls into the moat under a hail of bullets. It seemed all too inviting.

"You think it's a trap?" Zavala said. "All that's missing is a big hunk of cheese." "What are our options?"

"Limited. We can turn around or keep moving and try to stay one step ahead of the bad guys."

"I've had my fill of grapes," Zavala said. "You didn't say anything about an exit strategy."

Austin clapped Zavala on the shoulder. "Here you are, about to take an exciting tour of Chateau Fauchard, and you're already thinking of leaving." .

"Sorry I'm not as blase as you are. I was hoping for a more dignified exit than driving a Rolls-Royce into a moat."

Austin cringed at the memory. "Okay. Here's the plan. We will offer to trade Emil for Skye."

"Not bad," Zavala said. "There's only one little hitch. You flushed Emil down the drain."

"Madame Fauchard doesn't know that. By the time she finds out, we will be long gone."

"Shame on you, bluffing an old lady." Zavala pursed his lips in thought. "I like it, but what if she doesn't bite? Is that when we call in the gendarmes?"

"I wish it were that easy, old pal. Picture this. The cops knock on the chateau door and the Fauchards say, "Search all you want." I've been in those catacombs, you could hide an army in that labyrinth. It could take weeks to find Skye."

"And time isn't on our side."

A thoughtful look came to Austin's eyes. "An hour is worth a hundred years," he murmured, checking his watch.

"Is that from one of your philosophy books?" Zavala said. Austin was a student of philosophy and the bookshelves in his Potomac boat-house were crammed with the works of the great thinkers.

"No," he replied thoughtfully. "It's something Dr. MacLean said to me."

The guard emerged from the other side of the chateau, cutting their discussion short. Austin clicked his watch again. The sentry had taken sixteen minutes to perambulate the chateau.

As soon as the guard started on another round, Austin signaled Zavala. They dashed across the open space and followed the moat to the arched stone bridge, then sprinted across the drawbridge into the courtyard. In their black clothes, they were almost invisible in the shadows along the base of the wall. Lights glowed in the first-floor windows of the chateau, but no guards patrolled the grounds, further raising Austin's suspicions.

He was sure his instincts were on target when he and Zavala came to the gate guarding the staircase to the ramparts. When he and Skye had inspected the gate, it was locked. Now it was wide open, an invitation to climb to the wall and cross over a narrow bridge to the turret. Austin had other plans. He led the way across the cobblestones to the rear of the chateau and descended a short stone staircase to an ironbound wooden door.

Austin tried the handle. The door was locked. He extracted a portable drill and a handsaw from his pack, drilled several holes in the door and sawed out a circular section. He reached in through the hole, raised the bar and opened the door. The putrid mustiness of the catacombs welled through the doorway like the exhalation of a corpse. They switched on their electric torches, stepped inside and closed the door behind them.

They went down several short flights of stairs. Austin paused briefly at the dungeons, where Emil had paid his bloody homage to Edgar Allan Poe. The pendulum hovered over the wooden table, but there was no sign of the unfortunate Englishman, Lord Cavendish.

Austin blundered down a few blind alleys, but his mariner's sense of direction held him in good stead. Before long, they passed through the bone-filled ossuary and followed the route to the armory. Again, a door was unlocked. Austin pushed it open and he and Zavala stepped into the altar area. The armory was in darkness except for a glow that came from the far end of the nave. The flickering yellow light glinted off the highly polished armor and weapons.

Zavala glanced around at the display. "Cozy. I like the combination of Gothic and heavy metal. Who's their interior decorator?"

"Same guy who worked for the Marquis de Sade."

They made their way along the long nave past the lethal relics that were the foundation of the Fauchard fortune. The light grew brighter as they came up behind the mountedTcnights. Austin went first, and as he stepped around to the front of the display he saw Skye.

She was seated in a sturdy wooden chair that was flanked by braziers, facing the charging figures on horseback. Her arms and legs were bound tightly with rope and a piece of duct tape had been stretched across her mouth. Two shiny suits of armor stood at her sides, as if ready to defend Skye against the fierce onslaught.

Skye's eyes widened. She shook her head vigorously, becoming more frantic as Austin drew nearer. He was reaching for his sheath knife so he could cut Skye's bindings when out of the corner of his eye he detected motion. The armored suit on his right was on the move.

"Oh hell," he said for want of a better reaction.

Clanking with each step, the suit raised its sword hand and advanced on Austin like an antique robot. He backed away.

"Any suggestions?" Zavala said, doing the same.

"Not unless you brought a can opener."

"How about our guns?" "Too noisy."

The other suit had sprung into life and was advancing as well. The armored figures closed in with unexpected speed. Austin realized that the knife he had in his hand would be about as effective as a toothpick. Skye was struggling in her chair.

Austin wasn't about to be sliced up like a salami. He put his head down, charged toward the nearest suit and threw a football body block across the jointed knees. The suit teetered, dropped the sword and, with arms flailing, toppled over backward and hit the stone floor with a horrendous crash. The suit's occupant gave a feeble jerk of his legs and arms and then he was still.

The other suit hesitated. Zavala duplicated Austin's body block with equal effectiveness. The second suit of armor crashed to the floor. While Austin cut away Skye's ropes, Zavala bent over one fallen figure, then the other.

"Out cold," he said with pride. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

"It felt like tackling a Bradley fighting vehicle. All those misspent hours watching NFL football weren't a waste of time after all."

"I thought you were worried about the noise. That little dustup sounded like a couple of skeletons making love on a tin roof."

Austin shrugged and carefully peeled back the duct tape covering Skye's mouth. He helped her rise from the chair. She stood on shaky legs, threw her arms around Austin and gave him one of the longest and warmest kisses he had ever experienced. "I never thought I'd see you again," she said.

A silvery laugh issued from the shadows of a nearby cloister. Then a tall slender figure whose face was obscured by a gauzy veil stepped into the flickering light from the braziers. The diaphanous fabric covered her form down to her ankles. Light filtered through the veil, outlining her perfect figure.

"Charming," she said. "How utterly charming. But must you always be so dramatic in your comings and goings, Monsieur Austin?"

Marcel stepped out behind the woman, a machine pistol cradled in his hands. Then six more armed men melted from dark corners. Marcel relieved Austin and Zavala of their weapons.

Austin glanced at the motionless suits of armor. "From the looks of that pile of tin, I'm not the only one with a flair for the dramatic."

"You know I like the theater. You were at my masquerade ball."

"Masquerade ball "

She slowly unwound the veil from her face and head. Hair that looked as if it had been spun from gold thread tumbled to her shoulders. Slowly, seductively, she removed the rest of the veil as if she were taking the wrapping off a precious gift and let it drop from her body to the floor. Underneath the veil, she wore a long, low-cut gown of pure white. A gold belt with a three-headed-eagle design encircled her slim waist. Austin peered into the cold eyes and felt as if he'd been struck by lightning.

Even though Austin knew about the mysterious workings of the Lost City enzymes, the logical part of his mind had never fully accepted them. It was easier, somehow, to believe that the formula for the Philosopher's Stone, misused, could produce ageless nightmarish creatures than to imagine that it could create a mortal of such astonishing godlike loveliness. He had assumed that the formula would extend life, but not that it could roll back the effects of fifty years of aging.

Austin found his tongue. "I see that Dr. MacLean's work was far more successful than anyone could have imagined, Madame Fauchard."

"Don't give MacLean too much credit. He was the midwife at the birth, but the formula for the life that burns within me was created before he was born."

"You look a lot different from a few days ago. How long did this transformation take?"

"The life-extending formula is too powerful to be taken at once," she said. "It calls for three treatments. The first two doses produced what you see before you within twenty-four hours. I am about to take the third."

"Why do you need to gild a lily?"

Racine preened at the unlikely comparison to a delicate flower. "The third dose makes permanent the effects of the first two. Within an hour of completing the treatment, I will begin my journey through eternity. But enough talk of chemistry. Why don't you introduce me to your handsome friend? He seems unable to put his eyes back into his head."

Zavala had not seen Madame Fauchard in her former, older incarnation. He knew only that he was in the presence of one of the most dazzling females he had ever encountered. He had muttered words of amazement in Spanish. Now a slight smile cracked the ends of his lips. The guns pointed in his direction did nothing to cool his appreciation for a woman who was apparently perfect in every physical way.

"This is my colleague, Joe Zavala," Austin said. "Joe, meet Racine Fauchard, the owner of this charming pile of stone."

"Madame Fauchard?" Zavala's mouth dropped down to his Adam's apple.

"Yes, is there a problem?" she said.

"No. I just expected someone different."

"Monsieur Austin no doubt regaled you with descriptions of me as a bag of bones," she said, her eyes flashing.

"Not at all," Zavala said, absorbing Madame Fauchard's slim figure and striking features with wondering eyes. "He said you were charming and intelligent."

The answer seemed to please her because she smiled. "NUMA evidently chooses its people for their gallantry as well as their expertise. It was a quality I saw in you, Monsieur Austin. That's why

I knew you would try to rescue yon fair maiden." She eyed their purple-stained skin. "If you wanted to sample our grapes, it would have been far less trouble to buy a bottle of wine than to bathe in them."

"Your wine is out of my price range," Austin said.

"Did you really think you could enter the chateau without being detected? Our surveillance cameras picked you up after you crossed the drawbridge. Marcel thought you would climb to the outside wall and come in that way."

"It was kind of you to leave the stairway gate unlocked."

"You were obviously too smart to take the bait, but we never dreamed that you could find your way through the catacombs. You knew the chateau was well defended. What did you hope to accomplish by coming here?"

"I had hoped to leave with the mademoiselle."

"Well, you have failed in your romantic quest."

"So it seems. Perhaps, in the interests of romance, you would offer me a consolation prize. At our first meeting, you said you would tell me someday about your family. Here I am. I'd be glad to tell you what I know in exchange."

"You could never equal what I know about you, but I admire your audacity." She paused a moment, crossed her arms and lightly pinched her chin. Austin remembered seeing the old Madame Fauchard make the same gesture of thought. She turned to Marcel and said, "Take the others away."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Austin said to Marcel.

He stepped protectively in front of Skye. Marcel and the guards moved in but Madame Fauchard waved them away.

"Your chivalry appears to know no bounds, Monsieur Austin. Have no fear; your friends will only be taken a short distance away where you can see them. I want to talk to you alone."

Madame Fauchard motioned for him to sit in Skye's vacated chair,

and snapped her fingers. Two of her men brought over a thronelike chair of heavy medieval construction and she settled into it. She said something in French to Marcel, and he and some of his men escorted the prisoners a short distance, but still in view, while others dragged away the suits of armor.

"Now there are just the two of us," she said. "Lest you entertain any illusions, my men will kill your friends if you do anything foolish."

"I have no intention of making a move. This encounter is much too fascinating to end so soon. Tell me, what's with the high priestess outfit?"

"You know how I enjoy costumes. Do you like it?" Austin couldn't take his eyes off Madame Fauchard in spite of himself. Racine Fauchard was stunning in the way a finely crafted wax figure is perfect in every feature considered important, except one. Her soulless eyes held all the warmth of the cold steel that the Fauchards had used to fashion their swords and armor. "I find you absolutely enchanting, but "

"But you don't readily consort with a hundred-year-old woman." "Not at all. You've aged quite well. I don't usually consort with a cold-blooded killer."

She raised a finely arched eyebrow. "Monsieur Austin, is this your strange way of flirting with me?" "Far from it."

"Too bad. I've had many lovers in the last hundred years, but you're a very attractive man." She paused and studied his face. "Dangerous, too, and that makes you even more attractive. First, you must fulfill your part of the bargain. Tell me what you know."

"I know that you and your family hired Dr. MacLean to find the elixir of life he called the Philosopher's Stone. In the process, you killed anyone who got in your way and created a group of wild-eyed mutants."

"A cogent summary, but you've only scratched the surface."

"Scratch it for me, then."

She paused, letting her memory drift back through the years.

"My family traces its ancestry back to the Minoan civilization that flourished before the great volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini My ancestors were priests and priestesses in the Minoan snake goddess cult. The snake clan was powerful, but power rivals drove us off the island. A few weeks later, the volcano erupted and destroyed the island. We settled in Cyprus, where we went into the arms business. The snake evolved into the Spear, then to Fauchard."

"How did you get from spears to mutants?"

"It was a logical outgrowth of our arms business. Around the turn of the century, Spear Industries set up a laboratory to try to design a super-soldier. We knew from the American Civil War that trench warfare would make future battles a stalemate. First one side would charge, then the other, with little gain in ground. They would retreat in the face of the automatic weapons that were being developed. We wanted a soldier who would charge the trenches without fear, like a Viking berserker. In addition, this soldier would have super endurance and speed, and fast-healing wounds. We tried the formula on a few volunteers."

"Like Pierre Levant?"

"I don't recall the name," she said with a frown.

"Captain Levant was a French officer. He became one of the first mutants your research created."

"Yes, he seems vaguely familiar. A dashing, handsome young man, as I recall."

"You'd never recognize him these days."

"Before you condemn me, you must know that they were all volunteers, soldiers who were excited at the prospect of becoming supermen."

"Did they know that along with these superhuman powers, their appearance would change rather drastically?"

"None of us did. The science was crude. But the formula worked, for a time, anyhow. It gave the soldiers superhuman strength and quickness, but then they deteriorated into uncontrollable, snarling beasts."

"Beasts who could enjoy their new bodies forever."

"Life extension was an unexpected by-product. Even more exciting, the formula promised to reverse aging. We would have succeeded in refining the formula if not for Jules."

"He turned out to have a conscience?"

"He turned out to be a fool," she said, with undisguised vehemence. "Jules saw our findings as a boon to mankind. He tried to persuade me and others in the family to stop the march toward war and release the formula. I led the family against him. He fled the country in his airplane. He carried papers that would have implicated the family in the war plot and intended to use them as blackmail, I suppose, if he had not been intercepted and shot down."

"Why did he take the helmet?"

"It was a symbol of authority, passed down to the family leader of each generation. He lost his right to the helmet by his actions, and it should have passed to me."

Austin leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "So Jules is gone, along with the threat that the family's war scheme will be exposed. He was in no position to stop your research."

"He had already stopped it. He destroyed the computations for the basic formula and etched them into the helmet. Clever. Too clever. We had to start all over again. There were a million possible combinations. We kept the mutants alive with the hope that one day they might reveal the secrets of the formula. The work was interrupted by wars, the Depression. We were close to succeeding during World War Two when our laboratory was bombed by Allied planes. It set back our research by decades."

Austin chuckled. "You're saying that the wars you promoted hurt your research. The irony must not have escaped you."

"I wish it had."

"In the meantime, you got older."

"Yes, I got older," she said with uncharacteristic sadness. "I lost my beauty and became a crackling old crone. Still, I persisted. We made some progress in slowing aging, which I shared with Emil, but the Grim Reaper was catching up with us. We were so close. We tried to create the right enzyme, but with limited success. Then one of my scientists heard about the Lost City enzyme. It seemed to be the missing link. I bought the company doing research on the enzyme, and enlisted Dr. MacLean and his colleagues to pursue round-the-clock research. We built a submarine that could harvest the enzyme and set up a testing laboratory."

"Why did you have the scientists at MacLean's company killed?"

"We're not the first to dispose of ^scientific team so they won't talk about their research. The British government is-still investigating the deaths of scientists who worked on a Star Wars missile defense project. We had created a new batch of mutants and the scientists threatened to go public with the news, so we got rid of them."

"The only problem with your scientists is that they hadn't really finished their work," Austin said. "Pardon me, but this operation sounds like a clown convention."

"Not an inaccurate analogy. I made the mistake of letting Emil handle things. It was a big mistake. Once I took control again, I brought back Dr. MacLean to reconstitute a research team. They managed to recoup much of the work."

"Was Emil responsible for flooding the glacier tunnel?"

"Mea culpa again. I had not brought him into my confidence about the true significance of the helmet, so he never tried to find it before flooding the tunnel."

"Yet another mistake?"

"Luckily, Mademoiselle Labelle removed the helmet, and it is now in my possession. It provided the missing link and we closed down the lab. So you see, we make mistakes, but we learn by them. Apparently, you don't. You escaped from here once, yet you came back to certain disaster."

"I'm not certain that's the case."

"What do you mean?"

"Have you heard from Emil lately?"

"No." For the first time there was doubt in her face. "Where is he?"

"Let us go and I'll be glad to tell you," Austin said.

"What are you saying?"

"I stopped off at the glacier before coming here. Emil is now in custody."

"A shame," she said with a flip of her fingers. "Too bad you didn't kill him."

"You're bluffing. This is your son we're talking about."

"You needn't remind me of my familial obligations," she said coldly. "I don't care what happens to Emil or his cretinous friend Sebastian. Emil planned to usurp me. I would have had to destroy him myself. If you've killed him, you did me a favor."

Austin felt as if he had just been dealt a pair of deuces in a high-stakes poker game.

"I should have known that mother snakes sometimes eat their eggs."

"You can't insult me with your silly taunts. Despite its internal friction, our family has grown ever more powerful through the centuries."

"And created a river of blood in the process."

"What do we care for blood? It is the most expendable commodity on earth."

"Some people might argue with that."

"You have no idea what you have gotten yourself into," Madame Fauchard said, with a sneer. "You think you know us? There is layer upon layer invisible to you. Our family has its origins in the mists of time. While your forebears were clawing at rotten logs searching for grubs, the first Spear had already fashioned a flint point, attached it to a shaft and traded it to his neighbor. We are of no nation and every nation. We sold weapons to the Greeks against the Persians and the Persians against the Greeks. The Roman legions marched across Europe wielding broadswords of our design. Now we will forge time, bending it to our will as we once did steel."

"And if you live another hundred or even a thousand years, then what?"

"It is not how long you live but what you do with your time. Why don't you join me, monsieur? I admire your resourcefulness and courage. Maybe I could even find a place for your friends. Think of it. Immortality! Deep down, isn't that your most fervent wish?"

"Your son asked me the same question."

"And?"

A cold smile crossed Austin's face. "My only wish is to send you and your pals to join him in hell."

"So you did kill him!" Madame Fauchard clapped her hands in light applause. "Well done, Monsieur Austin, as I would expect. You must have known I wasn't serious with my proposal. If there is one thing I have learned in a century, it is that men of conscience are always a danger. Very well, you and your friends wanted to be part of my masque, so it will be. In return for removing my son, I will not kill you right away. I will allow you to be present at the dawn of a new day on earth." She reached into the bodice of her dress and extracted a small amber phial, which she held above her head. "Behold, the elixir of life."

Austin was thinking about something else: MacLean His eyes glimmered with a faint light of understanding as he pondered the scientist's last words.

"Your mad scheme will never work," Austin said quietly. Racine glared at Austin and her lips curled in contempt. "Who is going to stop me? You? You dare to pit your puny intellect against the lessons of a hundred years?"

She uncorked the phial, which she put to her lips, and drank the contents. Her face seemed to glow with an aura. Austin watched in fascination for a moment, aware that he was witnessing a miracle, but he quickly snapped out of his spell. Racine noticed him push the timing button on his watch.

"You might as well throw that timepiece away," she said derisively. "In my world, time will have no meaning."

"Pardon me if I ignore your suggestion. In my world, time still has a great deal of meaning."

She regarded Austin with an arrogant tilt of her head, then signaled Marcel, who came over. Together with the other prisoners, they marched to the door that led down to the catacombs.

As the thick wooden door swung open and Austin and the others were prodded into the depths at gunpoint, the warning from the French pilot flashed through his mind. The Fauchards have a past.

Then he looked at his watch and prayed to the gods who look over fools and adventurers, often one and the same. With any kind of luck, this evil blight of a family might not have a future.

RACINE GRABBED a torch from the wall and plunged through the doorway. Reveling in the freedom of her newfound youth, she bounded gracefully down the sjairs leading into the catacombs. Her schoolgirl enthusiasm stood out in sharp contrast to the morbid surroundings, with their dripping walls and lichen-splotched ceilings.

Behind Racine came Skye, followed by Austin and a guard who watched his every move, then Zavala and another guard. Last in line was Marcel, ever watchful, like a trail boss keeping his eye out for straying cattle. The procession moved past the boneyard and the dungeons, and then it descended staircases that plunged guards and prisoners ever deeper into the catacombs. The air grew more stale and hard to breathe.

A narrow, barrel-roofed passageway about a hundred feet long led off from the last set of stairs and ended at a stone door. Two guards rolled the door aside. It opened quietly, as if the rollers had been well oiled. As the prisoners were marched along another corridor, Austin assessed their options and decided that they had none.

At least for now. The Trouts had instructions to stand by until he called.

He could kick himself for assuming too much. He had miscalculated badly. Racine was ruthless, as shown by the fact that she had had her brother killed, but he never dreamed she would be so callous about the fate of her son. He glanced ahead at Skye. She seemed to be bearing up well, too busy brushing cobwebs out of her hair to dwell on her long-term prospects. He only hoped that she would not have to pay for his miscalculation.

The passageway ended in another stone door, which was also rolled aside. Racine stepped through the opening and waved her torch in the air so that the flame crackled and snapped. The dancing torchlight illuminated a stone slab about two feet wide that seemed to jut out into empty space from the edge of a precipice.

"I call this the "Bridge of Sighs," " Racine said, her voice echoing and reechoing off the deep walls of the chasm. "It's much older than the one in Venice. Listen." The wind wailed up from below like a chorus of lost souls and tousled her long flaxen hair. "It's best not to pause."

She dashed across the slab with seemingly reckless abandon. Skye hesitated. Austin took her hand and, together, they shuffled across the narrow bridge toward Racine's fluttering torch. The wind tugged at their clothes. The distance was about thirty feet, but it might as well have been thirty miles.

Zavala was a natural athlete, who had boxed in college, and he strode across with the surefootedness of a high-wire walker. The guards, and even Marcel, took their time as they made their way across and it was obvious they didn't like this part of their duty.

The guards unlocked a thick wooden door and the procession stepped out of the catacombs into an open space. The air was dry and heavily scented with a strong piney smell. They were in an aisle

around a dozen feet across. Racine walked over to a low wall between two massive square columns and beckoned for the others to follow.

The walkway was actually the top tier of an amphitheater. Three more tiers of seats lit by a ring of torchlight descended to an arena. The seats were occupied by hundreds of silent spectators.

Austin gazed through an arch at the vast open space. "You never cease to surprise, Madame Fauchard."

"Few strangers have ever seen the sanctum sancto rum of the Fauchards."

Skye's fears had been momentarily overshadowed by her scientific curiosity. "This is an exact replica of the Coliseum," she said with an analytical eye. "The orders of columns, the arcade, everything is the same except for the scale."

"That should come as no surprise," Racine said. "It's a smaller version of the Coliseum, built by a homesick Roman proconsul for Gaul who missed the amusements of home. When my ancestors were searching for a site to build the chateau, they thought that by having the great house rest on a place where gladiators shed their blood they could fuse with the martial spirit. My family made a few modifications, such as adding an ingenious ventilation system to bring air to this place, but otherwise all is as they found it."

Austin was puzzled by the spectators. There should have been a murmuring of voices, a rustling or coughing. But the silence was palpable.

"Who are all these people?" he asked Racine.

"Let me introduce you," she replied.

They descended the first of several crumbling interior staircases. At ground level, a guard unbolted an iron gate and the group passed through a short tunnel. Racine explained that it was the access for the gladiators and other entertainment. The tunnel led to a circular arena. Fine white sand covered the floor.

A carved marble dais about five feet high stood at the center of the arena. Steps had been cut into the side of the rectangular platform. Austin was studying the stolid faces of a contingent of guards who stood at attention around the arena's perimeter when he heard a gasp from Skye, who hadn't let go of his hand since crossing the chasm. She squeezed his fingers in a viselike grip.

He followed her gaze to the lowest row of seats. The yellow torchlight fell upon skeletal grins and parchment yellow skin and he realized he was staring at an audience of mummies. The dried bodies filled row after row, tier after tier, staring down at the arena with long-dead eyes.

"It's all right," he said evenly. "They won't hurt you." Zavala was awestruck. "This is nothing but a big tomb," he said. "I'll admit I've played to livelier audiences," Austin said. He turned to Madame Fauchard. "Joe's right. Your sanctum sancto rum is a glorified mausoleum."

"To the contrary," Racine replied. "You're standing on the family's most sacred ground. It was there on that podium that I challenged Jules in 1914. And here is where he stood and told us that he would abide by the wishes of the family council. Had not Emil failed, I would have placed my brother's body with the others so he could see my triumph."

Austin tried to imagine Racine's brother making his case for mankind to deaf ears.

"It must have taken a great deal of courage for Jules to defy your murderous family," Austin said.

Racine ignored his comment. She pirouetted on her heel like a ballerina, seemingly at home in this dread place of death, and pointed out several family members who had rejected Jules's appeal so long ago. "Pardon me if I don't get misty-eyed," Austin said. "From the look on their faces, they still haven't gotten over your brother's defection."

"He was not just defying us; he was going against five thousand years of family history. When we returned to France with the Crusaders, we moved our ancestors here to be with us. It took years, with long caravans of the dead winding their way thousands of miles from the Middle East, until, at last, the mummies were brought to this place of rest."

"Why go through so much trouble for a bunch of skin and bones?"

"Our family has always dreamed of eternal life. Like the Egyptians, they believed that if the body were preserved, life would go on after death. Mummification was a crude attempt at cryogenics. The early embalmers used pine resin rather than liquid oxygen as they do now." She looked past Austin's shoulder. "I see our guests have begun to arrive. We can begin the ceremony."

Ghostly figures dressed in white robes were filing into the arena. The group was equally divided between men and women. There were about two dozen people, and their white hair and wrinkled faces seemed only decades removed from the silent mummies. As the figures came into the arena, they kissed Madame Fauchard's hand and gathered in a circle around the dais.

"You already know these people," Racine said to Austin. "You met them at my party. They are the descendants of the old arms families."

"They looked better in costume," Austin said.

"The ravages of time are kind to no one, but they will be the elite who will rule the world with me. Marcel will be in charge of our private army."

Austin let out a deep laugh. Startled faces turned in his direction.

"So this is what this insanity is all about? World domination?"

Racine stared at Austin like an angry Medusa. "You find this humorous?" she said.

"You're not the first megalomaniac to talk about taking over the world," Austin said. "Hitler and Genghis Khan were way ahead of

you. The only thing they accomplished was to shed a lot of blood, nothing more."

Racine regained her composure. "But think of how the world would be today if they had been immortal."

"It's not a world most people would care to live in."

"You're wrong. Dostoyevsky was right when he said mankind will always strive to find someone new to worship. We will be welcomed as saviors once the world's oceans have been turned into fetid swamps.

Surely someone from NUMA must know about the undersea plague that is spreading through your oceanic realm like a green cancer." "Gorgonweed?"

"Is that what you call it? A colorful name, and most apt." "The epidemic is not general knowledge. How did you hear about it?"

"You pathetic man! I created it. Long life alone would not give me the power I desired. My scientists discovered the mutant weed as a by-product of their work. When they brought their findings to me,

I knew it was the perfect vehicle for my plan. I turned the Lost City into a breeding ground for this noxious weed."

Austin had to admire the complex workings of her villainous mind. She had been one step ahead of everyone.

"That's why you wanted the Woods Hole expedition wiped out." "Of course. I couldn't have those blundering fools jeopardizing my plans."

"You want to become empress of a world in chaos?"

"That's the point. Once countries are in bankruptcy, suffering from famine and political anarchy, their rulers impotent, I will come to remove this scourge from the world." "You're saying you can kill the weed?"

"As easily as I can kill you and your friends. The 'death-bound' will come to worship the immortals who will be created here tonight.

These people will go back to their respective countries and gradually assume the mantle of power. We will be superior beings whose wisdom will be a welcome relief to democracy, with its fickleness and demands on the ordinary people. We will be gods!"

"Demigods who live forever? Not an appetizing prospect." "Not for you and your friends. But cheer up. I might let you live in a somewhat altered state. A pet, perhaps. It only takes a few days to turn a human being into a snarling beast. Quite a remarkable process. It would be amusing to let you watch the changes in your lady friend and see if you still want to hold her in your arms."

"I wouldn't count on it," Austin said. "Your miracle elixir may be in short supply."

"Impossible. My laboratories will continue to supply as much as I need."

"Have you been in contact with your island recently?" "There has been no need to be in contact. My people there know what to do."

"Your people are no more. Your island laboratories have been destroyed. I was there to witness it."

"I don't believe you."

Austin smiled, but there was a hard look in his coral-blue eyes. "The mutants escaped and made short work of Colonel Strega and his men. They wrecked your labs, but they would have been useless to you anyway, because the island and your submarine are now in the hands of British marines. Your star scientist MacLean is dead, shot by one of your own men."

Racine hardly blinked at the news. "No matter. With the resources at my command, I can build other labs on other islands. MacLean would have been disposed of with the others in any case. I have the formula and it can be replicated easily. I have won and you and your friends have lost."

Austin glanced at his watch. "Too bad you'll never see your Utopia," he said, with renewed self-confidence.

"You seem fascinated by the passage of time," Racine said. "Are we keeping you from an appointment?"

Austin stared into Racine's eyes, which now glowed with ruby-red intensity.

"You're the one who has the appointment." Racine seemed puzzled at Austin's reply. "With whom?" "Not with whom. What. The thing that you fear the most." Racine's features hardened. "I fear nothing and no one." She whirled away and strode over to the raised platform.

A white-haired couple had stepped forward from the encircling group. The woman carried a tray that held a number of round-bottomed amber phials similar to the one Racine had drunk from in the armory. The man held a carved wooden box of dark wood inlaid in ivory with a triple eagle.

Skye's grip on Austin's hand tightened. "Those are the people who kidnapped me in Paris," she whispered. "What should we do?"

"Wait," he said. He glanced at his watch, even though he had checked it a minute before.

Events were moving too fast. Austin began to formulate a desperate plan. He exchanged glances with Zavala to put him on alert. Joe gave a slight nod, indicating that he understood. The next few minutes would be crucial.

Racine reached into the box and extracted the helmet. There was a soft round of applause as she mounted the stairs to the platform. She raised the helmet high and then she placed it on her head and glanced around, her face wreathed in a triumphant smile.

"You have had a long journey to this holy of holies, and I am glad to see that you all made it across the Bridge of Sighs." There was muted laughter from the crowd. "Never mind. You will find the strength to leap across the chasm

on the way out. Soon we will all be gods, worshipped by mere mortals unable to fathom our power and wisdom. As you are, I once was. As I am, you soon will be."

Racine's acolytes drank in her beauty with hungry, yearning eyes.

"I took the final phase of the formula only an hour ago. Now, my honored friends, who have done so much in my service, you are next. You are about to drink the true Philosopher's Stone, the elixir of life that so many have sought in vain for centuries."

The woman with the tray walked around the dais. Eager hands reached for the phials.

Austin was waiting for Marcel and the guards to step forward. There would be a narrow window of opportunity when attention switched from the prisoners to the prospects of the wonderful new age that lay ahead. He was gambling that even Marcel would succumb to the excitement of the moment. Austin had been moving in barely noticeable side steps closer to the nearest guard. The guard was already transfixed by the spectacle on the dais and had lowered his weapon to his side.

The phials were being passed to Marcel and his men.

Austin planned to jump the guard and wrestle him down. Zavala could grab Skye and run for the tunnel. Austin knew it was a sacrifice bunt at best, but he owed it to his friends for getting them into this mess. He signaled Zavala with his eyes again and tensed his body for a leap, only to check his move as a murmur ran through the crowd.

Racine's followers had put the flasks to their lips, but their eyes were directed toward the stage.

Racine had raised her hand to her slender neck, as if something were caught in her throat. There was a puzzled look in her eyes. Then her hand moved up to her cheek. Her fair skin seemed to be withering. Within seconds, it was yellow and wrinkled as if it had been hit with acid.

"What's happening?" Racine said. She touched her hair. It could have been the light, but her long locks seemed to have gone from gold to platinum. She plucked gently at her hair with a clawlike hand. A tuft came out loose in her fingers. She stared at the clump with horror.

The wrinkles on her face were spreading like cracks in a drying mud flat

"Tell me what is happening!" she wailed.

"She's getting old again," someone said in a whisper that had the impact of a shout.

Racine stared at the speaker. Her eyes were losing their reddish glow and were sinking deeper into their sockets. Her arms were withering to sticks and the helmet weighed on her thin neck. She began to hunch over and curl up like a shrimp, seeming to shrink in on herself. Her beautiful face was a ruin, the marble skin flecked with age spots. She looked like a victim of a rapid-aging disease.

Racine realized what was happening to her. "No," she said, trying to shout, but her voice came out as a croak. "Nooooo," she moaned.

Racine's legs lost their ability to hold her up and she sank to her knees and then fell forward. She crawled a foot or so and reached out to Austin with a bony hand.

The horror of the moment was not lost on Austin, but Racine had been responsible for countless deaths and misery. He gazed at her with pitiless eyes. Racine's appointment with death was long overdue.

"Have a nice journey to eternity," he said. "How did you know?" she said, her voice a harsh cackle. MacLean told me before he died. He programmed the formula so that it would eventually accelerate age rather than reverse it," Austin said. "The trigger was the third shot of elixir. It compressed a century of aging into one hour."

MacLean she said, the word trailing out to a hiss. Then she shuddered once and lay still.

In the stunned silence that followed, Racine's acolytes lowered their drinks as if the contents had turned to molten glass and dropped the containers onto the sand.

A woman screamed, precipitating a mad rush for the exit tunnel. Marcel and the guards were swept aside by the panic-stricken exodus.

Austin lunged for the nearest guard, spun him around and dropped him with a knuckle-crunching right cross. Zavala grabbed Skye by the arm, and with Austin in the lead, they formed a flying wedge through the geriatric melee.

Marcel saw the prisoners bolting for safety. He was like a man possessed. He fired his gun from waist level, spraying the crowd with bullets. The fusillade cut a swath through the white-robed gods-in-waiting like an invisible scythe, but by then Austin and the others had gained the shelter of the tunnel.

While Skye and Zavala dashed for the stairs, Austin shot the bolt, locking the gate, and raced after his friends. Bullets splattered against the iron bars and the racket of metal on metal drowned out the cries of the dying.

Austin paused at the first level and told the others to keep moving. He ran into a passageway that led to the seating sections. As he feared, Marcel and his men had wasted little time trying to knock the gate down and were taking a more direct route. They had scaled the wall that separated the first row of seats from the arena.

Austin backtracked and climbed to the next level. Zavala and Skye were waiting for him. He yelled at them to keep moving, and then dashed through a passageway that took him out to a higher row of seats. Marcel and his men were halfway up the first tier, rapidly climbing higher, knocking aside mummies that exploded into dust. Marcel glanced up, saw Austin and ordered his men to shoot.

Austin ducked back out of sight. The hail of bullets peppered the wall where he'd been standing. Marcel would catch up within minutes. He had to be stopped.

Austin stepped boldly back into view. Before Marcel and his men could bring their weapons to bear, he snatched a blazing torch from its bracket, brought his arm back and threw the torch in a high sputtering arc. The flaming trajectory ended in a shower of sparks when the torch landed in a row of mummies.

Fueled by the resin used to preserve the mummies, the ancient remains ignited instantly. Flames leaped in the air and the grinning corpses exploded like a string of Chinese firecrackers. Marcel's men saw the amphitheater erupting into a circle of fire and they tumbled down the rows of seats in their haste to escape. Marcel stood his ground, his face contorted in rage. He kept firing until he disappeared behind a wall of flame and his gun went silent.

The conflagration enveloped the bowl-shaped stadium in seconds. Every tier was ablaze, sending up billowing black clouds of thick smoke. The inferno created in the confined space was incredible in its intensity. Austin felt as if he had opened the door to a blast furnace. Keeping his head low, he ran for the stairs. The smoke stung his eyes and he was practically blind by the time he reached the top tier of the amphitheater.

Zavala and Skye were waiting anxiously at the opening to the passageway that led back to the catacombs. They all plunged into the smoke-filled tunnel, groping their way along the walls until they emerged at the chasm spanned by the Bridge of Sighs.

Zavala carried a torch, but it was practically useless, its light sapped by the black plumes that poured from the tunnel. Then it went out completely. Austin got down on his hands and knees and groped in the darkness. His fingers felt the hard, smooth surface. He told Skye and Zavala to follow. Using the stone edges as guides, he inched his way forward across the narrow span in total blackness.

The hot wind that howled from the chasm was thick with choking smoke. Glowing cinders whirled around them. Coughing fits triggered by the smoke slowed their progress, but slowly and laboriously, they made their way to the other side.

The trip back through the catacombs was a nightmare. Smoke filled the labyrinth and made navigation confusing and dangerous, but they had picked up a couple more torches on the way and followed the torturous route back to the ossuary. Austin never thought he would be glad to see the Fauchard bone repository. The route to the courtyard would take them outside the chateau, but he wasn't sure he could find it. Instead, he opted to follow the passageway to the armory.

He had hoped that the air in the armory would be fresher than that in the catacombs, but when he stepped through the door behind the altar area, the atmosphere in the huge chamber was gray with a misty pall of smoke. Noxious fumes were pouring into the armory from a dozen heat gratings. Austin remembered what Rapine had said about the ventilation system that served the subterranean amphitheater and surmised that the air flow must be tied into the main system.

The visibility was still relatively clear, and they sprinted the length of the nave and dashed through the double doors into the corridor. They made their way through the chateau in fits and starts, eventually coming to the portrait gallery. A thick layer of roiling smoke obscured the painted ceiling and the temperature in the gallery approached Saharan levels.

Austin didn't like the way the smoke seemed to glow with a scorching heat and he urged the others to move faster. They came to the front door, found that it was unlocked and ran out into the courtyard, where they took fishlike gulps of air into their oxygen-starved lungs.

Fresh air rushed into the chateau through the open door. With a new source of oxygen, the superheated smoke in the portrait gallery

ignited with a loud whump. The flames flowed along the walls, feeding on the fuel provided by oil portraits of generations of Fauchards.

Figures could be seen running across the smoke-filled courtyard. Racine's guards. But they were intent on saving their own skins and no one bothered Austin and his friends as they crossed the drawbridge and the arched stone bridge. They paused near the grotesque fountain and ducked their heads in the cool water to wash the cinders from stinging eyes and soothe throats made raw by irritation.

The fire had grown in intensity in the few short minutes they took to revive themselves. As they continued along the driveway that would take them to the road leading through the forest, they heard a loud grumbling noise, as if tectonic plates were grinding against each other. They looked back and saw that the great house visible above the protective walls was fully enveloped, except for the turrets, which rose defiantly from the glowing gray-black billows.

Then the turrets were hidden behind the smoke. The noise repeated, louder this time, to be followed by a great muffled roar. Flames shot high in the sky. The air cleared for a second above the chateau, and in that instant Austin saw that the turrets had vanished.

The chateau had fallen in on itself. A greasy mushroom-shaped cloud obscured the site. Showering the grounds around the chateau with glowing cinders, the slag-hued cloud writhed and twisted like a living thing as it climbed toward the heavens.

"Dear God!" Skye said. "What's happened?"

"The House of Usher," Austin said with wonderment.

Skye wiped her eyes on the edge of her blouse. "What did you say?"

"Poe's story. The Usher family and their house were both rotten to the core. Just like the Fauchards, they collapsed under the weight of their deeds."

Skye gazed at the place where the chateau had been. "I think I like Rousseau better."

Austin put his arm around her shoulders. With Zavala leading the

way, they started on the long walk that would take them back to civilization. A few minutes after they had emerged from the tree tunnel, they heard the sound of a motor. Moments later, a helicopter came into view. They were too tired to run, and only stared dumbly at the helicopter as it landed in front of them. Paul Trout stepped out of the cockpit and loped over.

"Need a ride?" he said.

Austin nodded. "I wouldn't mind a shower, too."

"And a shot of tequila," Zavala said.

"And a long hot bath," said Skye, getting into the swing of things.

"All in due time," Trout said, leading them back to the helicopter, where Gamay sat at the controls. She greeted them with a flashing smile.

They belted themselves in, and a moment later the helicopter rose above the trees, circled around the dark smoldering hole where Chateau Fauchard had been and headed for freedom.

No one on the aircraft looked back..

THE LINE OF SHIPS was stretched out from Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Maine along the edge of the Continental Shelf off the Atlantic coast of the United States.

Days before, the fleet of NUMA vessels and naval warships had moved into place from all points of the compass and established their original defensive perimeter a hundred miles to the east of the shelf, in the hope of repelling the invasion far from shore. But they had been swept back by the inexorable advance of the silent enemy.

The turquoise NUMA helicopter had been in the air since dawn, following a course that took it over the elongated armada. The helicopter was east of Cape Hatteras when Zavala, who was at the controls, looked out the window and said, "It's like the Sargasso Sea on hormones out there."

Austin lowered his binoculars and he smiled thinly. "The Sargasso Sea is like a rose garden compared to this mess."

The ocean had developed a split personality. To the west of the ships, the water was its normal dark blue, flecked here and there by whitecaps. To the east, beyond the picket line, the dull sea was an un

healthy yellow-green, where interlocking tendrils of Gorgon weed had formed a mat on the surface as far as the eye could see.

Austin and Zavala had watched from the helicopter as various ships tried different techniques in an effort to halt the relentless drift of the weed. The warships had fired broadside salvos with their big guns. Soggy geysers erupted, but the holes the shells punched in the mat closed up within minutes. Planes launched from aircraft carriers attacked the weed with bombs and rockets. They proved as ineffectual as a mosquito biting an elephant. Incendiary devices fizzled on the top of the thick mat, whose main bulk lay below the surface. Fungicide sprayed from planes was washed away as soon as it hit the water.

Austin asked Joe to circle over two ships that were trying to stop the movement of the weed with the use of pipe booms that were strung between the vessels. It was an exercise in futility. The surface barrier worked for about five minutes. Pushed by the enormous pressure from a moving mass that extended backior miles, the weed simply piled up against the booms, surged over the pipes and buried them.

"I've seen enough," Austin said in disgust. "Let's go back to the ship."

Racine Fauchard was dead, nothing but shriveled flesh and brittle bones buried under the ruins of her once-proud chateau, but the first part of her plan had exceeded far beyond her dreams. The Atlantic Ocean was becoming the big swamp that she had promised.

Austin took consolation in the fact that Racine and her homicidal son Emil would not be around to take advantage of the chaos they had caused. But that still didn't solve the disaster the Fauchards had set into motion. Austin had encountered other human adversaries who, like the Fauchards, embodied pure evil, and he had managed to deal with them. But this unnatural, mindless phenomenon was beyond his ken.

They flew for another half hour. Austin saw from the wakes of the ships below that they were drawing back to avoid being caught up in the advancing weed.

"Stand by for landing, Kurt," Zavala warned.

The helicopter angled down toward a U.S. navy cruiser, and moments later it landed on the deck helipad. Pete Muller, the ensign they had met when his ship was guarding the vessels at the Lost City, was waiting to greet them.

"How's it look?" Muller yelled over the thrump of the rotors.

Austin was grim-faced. "About as bad as it gets."

He and Zavala followed Muller to a briefing room belowdecks. About thirty men and women were seated in rows of metal folding chairs drawn up in front of a large wall screen. Austin and Zavala quietly slipped into a couple of chairs in the back row. Austin recognized some of the NUMA scientists in the audience but knew only a few of the uniformed people from the armed forces and the suits from various governmental agencies charged with public security.

Standing in front of the screen was Dr. Osborne, the Woods Hole phycologist who had introduced the Trouts to the Gorgonweed menace. He was wielding a remote control in one hand and a laser pointer in the other. Displayed on the screen was a chart showing the circulation of water in the Atlantic Ocean.

"Here's where the infestation starts, in the Lost City," he said. "The Canaries' current carries the weed down past the Azores, flows westward across the Atlantic Ocean where it joins the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream moves northerly along the continental shelf. Eventually, it joins the North Atlantic current, which takes it back to Europe, completing the North Atlantic gyre." He swirled the red laser dot in a circle to make his point. "Any questions?"

"How fast does the Gulf Stream move?" someone asked. "About five knots at its peak. More than a hundred miles a day." "What's the present state of the infestation?" Muller asked.

Osborne clicked the remote and the circulation chart disappeared. A satellite photo of the North Atlantic took its place. An irregular yellowish band that resembled a great deformed donut ran in a rough circle around the edge of the ocean, close to the continents.

"This real-time composite satellite photo gives you an idea of the current areas of Gorgonweed infestation," Osborne said. "Now I'll show you our computer projection of the further spread." The picture changed. In the new photo the ocean was totally yellow, except for a few dark blue holes in the central Atlantic.

A murmur ran through the audience.

"How long before it gets to that stage?" Muller asked.

Osborne cleared his throat as if he were having a hard time getting the words out. "A matter of days."

There was a collective gasp at his answer.

He clicked the remote. The picture zoomed in on the eastern seaboard of North America. "This is the area of immediate concern. Once the weed reaches the shallower waters of the continental shelf, we're really in trouble. For a start, it will destroy the entire fishing industry along the east coast of the United States and Canada and northwestern Europe. We've been trying various measures of at-sea containment. I saw Mr. Austin enter the room a few minutes ago. Would you like to bring us up-to-date, Kurt?"

Not really, Austin thought as he made his way to the front of the room. He scanned the pale faces in front of him. "My partner, Joe Zavala, and I just completed an aerial survey of the picket line that has been established along the edge of the continental shelf." He described what they had seen. "Unfortunately," he concluded, "nothing made a dent."

"What about chemicals?" a government bureaucrat asked.

"Chemicals are quickly dissipated by water and wind," Austin said. "A little seeps down, and it may kill a few tendrils, but Gorgonweed is so thick that the chemical doesn't go all the way through.

We're talking about a vast area. Even if you were able to cover it you'd end up poisoning the ocean."

"Is there anything that could destroy a large area?" Muller asked.

"Sure. A nuclear bomb," Austin said, with a bleak smile. "But even that would be ineffectual with thousands of square miles of ocean. I'm going to recommend that booms be erected around major harbors. We'll try to keep our major ports clear so we can buy time."

A beefy four-star army general named Frank Kyle stood and said, "Time for what} You've said yourself that there is no defense against this stuff."

"We've got people working on genetic solutions."

The general snorted as if Austin had suggested replacing his soldiers' rifles with flowers. "Genetics! DNA stuff? What the hell good is that going to do? It could take months. Years."

"I'm open to suggestions," Austin said.

The general grinned. "Glad to hear that. I'm going to pass your suggestion about nuclear bombs along to the president."

Austin had dealt with military types when he was with the CIA and found that they were usually cautious about using force against any enemy. General Kyle was a throwback to another nuclear general, Curtis LeMay, but in a climate of fear his recommendation might prevail.

"I was not suggesting it," Austin said patiently. "As you'll recall, I said a nuclear bomb would make a relatively small dent in the weed."

"I'm not talking about one bomb," General Kyle said. "We've stockpiled thousands of them that we were going to use against the Russians. We carpet bomb the ocean, and if we run out we can borrow more from the Ruskies."

"You're talking about turning the ocean into a nuclear waste dump," Austin said. "A bombing campaign like that would destroy all ocean life."

"This weed of yours is going to kill all the fish anyhow," Kyle replied. "As you know, shipping has already been disrupted and there is a loss of billions of dollars by the hour. This stuff is threatening our cities. It's got to be stopped by any means. We've got 'clean' nukes we can use."

Heads were nodding in the audience. Austin saw that he was getting nowhere. He asked Zavala to sit in on the rest of the strategy session while he went to the bridge. A few minutes later, he was in the wheelhouse, using the ship's radiophone to call the Trouts, who were on the Sea Searcher, over the Lost City. He made quick contact with the NUMA research vessel and a crewman tracked down Paul, who had been directing a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) from the deck.

"Greetings from the wild weird world of Dr. Strangelove," Austin said.

"Huh?" Trout replied.

"I'll explain in a minute. How's your work going?"

"It's going," Trout said, with no real enthusiasm. "We've been running an ROV to collect samples of algae and weed. Gamay and her team are busy in the lab doing analysis."

"What's she looking for?"

"She hopes they can find something in the weed's molecular structure that might help. We've been sharing information with NUMA scientists back in Washington, and with scientific teams in other countries. How about you?"

Austin sighed. "We've tried every trick we can think of, but with no success. The offshore wind is giving us a little reprieve. But it won't be long before every harbor on the east coast will be clogged up. The Pacific is showing patches of infestation as well."

"How long do we have?"

Kurt told him what Osborne had said. He could hear Paul suck his breath in.

"Are you having any problem navigating in the stuff?" Austin asked.

"The area around the Lost City is relatively clear. This is where the infestation starts, and it thickens as it goes east and west of here."

"That may be the only clear patch in the ocean before long. You'd better plot an escape route so you don't get caught up in the weed yourself."

"I've already talked to the captain. There's a channel open south of here, but we're going to have to leave within twenty-four hours if we expect to get out. What was that you said about Strangelove?"

"There's a general here by the name of Kyle. He's going to tell the president to nuke the stuff with every bomb in our arsenal."

Trout paused in stunned silence and then found his voice. "He's not serious."

"I'm afraid he is. There is tremendous political pressure on leaders around the world to do something, anything. Vice President Sandecker may be able to stall him. But the president will be forced to act, even if the scheme is foolhardy."

"This is more than foolhardy! It's crazy. And it won't work. They can blow the weed to pieces, but every stray tendril will self-replicate. It could be just as disastrous." He sighed. "When can we expect to see mushroom clouds over the Atlantic?"

"There's a meeting going on now. A decision could come as early as tomorrow. Once the machinery is set in motion, things could start moving fast, especially with the Gorgonweed lapping at our shores." He paused. "I've been thinking about MacLean Didn't he tell you that he could come up with an antidote for the weed using the Fauchard formula?"

"He seemed fairly confident that he could do it. Unfortunately, we don't have MacLean or the formula."

Austin thought about the helmet buried under tons of rubble.

"The key lies in the Lost City. Whatever caused the mutation in the first place came from the Lost City. There's got to be a way to use something from down there to fight this thing."

"Let's think about this," Trout said. MacLean knew that his life-extension formula was flawed, that it would reverse aging, but as Racine Fauchard learned the hard way, the formula was unpredictable. It also accelerated growth."

"That's what I was getting at. Nature is always out of balance."

"That's right. It's like a rubber band that snaps back after being stretched too far."

"I don't know if Racine Fauchard would like being compared to a rubber band, but it makes my point about nature seeking equilibrium. Mutations happen every day, even in humans. Nature has built a corrective device into the system or we'd have people running around with two or three heads, which might not be all that bad. When it comes to aging, every species has a death gene that kills off the old to make room for the new generation. Go/gonweed was stable until the Fauchards introduced the enzyme into the equation, tipping things out of balance. It's got to snap back eventually."

"What about the mutant soldiers who lived so long?"

"That was an artificial situation. Had they been on their own, they probably would have devoured each other. Equilibrium again."

"The constant here is the enzyme," Trout concluded. "It's the precipitating factor. It can retard aging or it can accelerate it."

"Have Gamay look at the enzyme again."

"I'll see how she's coming along," Trout said.

"I'm going back to the meeting to see if I can discourage General Kyle from a nuclear carpet bombing of the Atlantic Ocean, although I'm not optimistic."

Trout's head was spinning. The Fauchards were dead, but they were still managing to inflict harm on the world from their graves.

He left the bridge and went down to a "wet" lab where Gamay was working with a four-person team of marine biologists and those from allied marine sciences.

"I was talking to Kurt," Paul said. "The news isn't good." He outlined his conversation with Austin. "Have you turned up anything new?"

"I explored the interaction between the enzyme and the plant, but I didn't get anywhere, so I've been looking into DNA instead. It never hurts to revisit previous research."

She led the way to a table where a series of about twenty steel containers were lined up in a row.

"Each one of these containers contains a sample of Gorgon weed. I've exposed the samples to the enzymes that the ROV collected from the columns to see what would happen. I wanted to see if there would be any reaction if I overloaded the weed with various forms of enzyme. I've been busy following other avenues and haven't looked at the samples recently."

"Let me see if I understand what happened," Trout said. "The Fauchards distorted the molecular makeup of the enzyme during the refinement process, when they separated it from the microorganisms that created the substance. The irregularity was absorbed into the genetic makeup of the weed, triggering its mutation."

"That's a pretty good summation."

"Stay with me. Up until that time, the weed coexisted with the enzyme in its natural state."

"That's right," Gamay said. "Only when the enzyme was modified did it interact with the nearest life-form, which happened to be obnoxious but perfectly normal seaweed, transforming it into a monster. I hoped that an overdose of the stuff would speed up the aging even more, just the way it did with Racine Fauchard. It didn't work."

"The premise sounds logical there's something missing here."

He thought about it for a moment. "What if it isn't the enzyme but the bacteria that are the controlling influence?"

"I never thought about that. I've been fooling around with the chemical, thinking that was the stabilizing factor here, rather than the bugs that produce it. In extracting the enzyme from the water, the Fauchards killed off the bacteria, which may have been the governing factor that kept things on an even keel."

She went over to a refrigerator and extracted a glass phial. The liquid contents had a slight brown discoloration.

"This is a culture of bacteria we collected from under the Lost City columns."

She measured off some liquid, poured it into a Gorgonweed container and made a note.

"Now what?"

"We'll have to give the bacteria time to do their work. It won't take long. I haven't eaten. What say you get me some food?"

"What say you get out of here and we have, a real meal in the mess hall?"

Gamay brushed the hair back from her forehead. "That's the best invitation I've had all day."

Cheeseburgers had never tasted so good. Refreshed and full, the Trouts went back to the lab after an hour. Trout glanced at the container with the bacteria. The complex tangle of tendrils looked unchanged.

"Can I take a closer look at this stuff? It's hard to see in this light."

Gamay pointed to a long pair of tongs. "Use those. You can examine the specimen in that sink basin."

Trout extracted the glob of weed from its container, carried it to the sink and dropped it into a plastic tub. By itself, the clump of Gorgonweed looked so innocent. It was not a pretty plant, but it did have an admirable functionality, with spidery tendrils hooked onto other

pieces of weed to form the impenetrable mat that sucked nutrients from the ocean. Trout poked it with the tongs, then lifted it up by a tendril. The tendril broke off at the stem and the weed plopped wetly back into the tub.

"Sorry," he said. "I broke your weed sample."

Gamay gave him a peculiar look and took the tongs from his hand. She plucked at another tendril and it, too, came off. She repeated the experiment. Each time, the thin appendages broke off easily. She removed a tendril and took it over to a bench, where she sliced it up, put the thin sections on slides and popped them under a microscope.

A moment later, she looked up from the eye piece. "The weed is dying," she declared.

"What?" Trout peered into the sink. "Looks healthy to me."

She smiled and plucked off more tendrils. "See. I'd never be able to do this with a healthy weed. The tendrils are like extremely strong rubber. These are brittle."

She called over her assistants and asked them to prepare microscope slides from different parts of the sample. When she looked up from her microscope again, her eyes were red-rimmed, but her face was wreathed in a wide grin.

"The weed sample is in the first stage of necrosis. In other words, the stuff is dying. We'll try it with some of the other samples to make sure."

Again she mixed the bacteria in with the weed, and again they waited an hour. Microscopic examination confirmed their original findings. Every sample subjected to the bacteria was dying.

"The bacteria are essentially eating something in the Gorgon weed that it needs to survive," she said. "We'll have to do more research."

Trout picked up the phial with the original bacteria culture. "What's the most effective way to use these hungry little bugs?"

"We'll have to grow large quantities, then spread the bacteria far and wide and let them do the work."

Trout smiled. "Do you think the British government would let us use the Fauchard submersible to spread this stuff around? It's got the capacity and speed that we need."

"I think they'll bend over backward to keep the British Isles from being cut off from the rest of the world."

MacLean saved our hash again," Trout said, with a shake of his head. "He gave us the hope that we could beat this thing."

"Kurt deserves some credit."

"His instincts were on the nose when he said to go back to the Lost City and to think in terms of equilibrium."

Trout headed for the door.

"Are you going to tell Kurt the good news?"

Trout nodded. "Then I'm going to tell him that it's about time we had a send-off for a proper old Scottish gentleman."

THE LOCH WAS several miles long and half as wide and its cold, still waters reflected the unblemished Scottish sky like a queen's mirror. Rugged, rolling hills carpeted with heather held the loch in a purple embrace.

The open wooden-hulled boat cut a liquid wake in the tranquil waters as it headed out from shore, gliding to a drifting stop, finally, at the deepest part of the loch. The boat held four passengers: Paul and Gamay Trout, Douglas MacLean and his late cousin Angus, whose ashes were carried in an ornate Byzantine chest the chemist had picked up on his travels.

Douglas MacLean had met his cousin Angus only once, at a family wedding some years before. They had hit it off and vowed to get together, but as with many a well-meant plan made over a glass of whiskey, they'd never met again. Until now. Douglas was the only living relative Trout had been able to track down. Equally important, he played the bagpipe. Not well, but loudly.

He stood in the prow of the boat, dressed in full MacLean tartans, his kilted legs braced wide to give himself a steady platform. At a signal from Gamay, he began to play "Amazing Grace." As the haunting skirl echoed off the hills, Paul poured Angus's ashes into the loch. The gray-brown powder floated on the calm surface for a few minutes and gradually sank into the deep blue water.

"Aveatque vale," Trout said softly. Hail and farewell.

About the same time Trout was saying his good-bye, Joe Zavala was among the pallbearers carrying a simple wooden casket along a dirt path that ran between the moldering headstones in an ancient churchyard near the cathedral city of Rouen. The other pallbearers were all descendants of Captain Pierre Levant.

At least twenty members of the extended Levant family surrounded the open grave set next to the headstones that marked the final resting place of the captain's wife and son. The gathering included a contingent of men and women representing the French army. As the country priest intoned the last rites, the army people saluted briskly and Captain Levant was lowered into the grave, given the rest that had been denied him for so long.

"Ave atque vale," Zavala whispered.

By prearrangement, high above the Fauchard vineyards, the small red biplane circled like a hungry hawk. Austin checked the time, banked the Aviatik slightly and, by prearrangement, dumped out the ashes of Jules Fauchard, whose body had been removed from the glacier.

There had been some discussion whether Jules should be cremated, a practice frowned upon by the Catholic Church. But since there were no living relatives, Austin and Skye took the matter into their own hands, deciding to return Jules to the soil that nurtured his beloved vineyards.

Like Trout and Zavala, Austin, too, gave the old Latin funeral salutation.

"Well, that does it for Jules," Austin said, speaking into the microphone that connected him with Skye, who was in the other cock

pit. "He proved the best of the bunch. He deserved better than being frozen like a Popsicle under that glacier."

"I agree," she said. "I wonder what would have happened if he had made it to Switzerland?"

"We'll never know. Let's imagine that in a parallel time stream he was able to stop the bloody war."

"That's a nice thought," Skye said. Then, after a moment, she added, "How far can we fly in this thing?"

"Until we run out of fuel?"

"Can we make it to Aix-en-Provence?"

"Wait a minute," he said. He tapped the keys on the GPS and programmed in a route that showed airport fueling points. "It will take a few hours and we'll have to stop to refuel. Why do you ask?"

"Charles has offered us the use of his villa. He says we can even use his new Bentley if we promise not to drive it into the swimming pool."

"Tough condition, but I guess I can agree to that."

"The villa is a wonderful place," Skye said with growing excitement. "Quiet and beautiful with a well-stocked wine cellar. I thought it might be a good place to work on my paper. I must thank the Fauchards, for one thing. Using what Racine said about their family background, I'll be able to prove my theory linking Minoans with early European trade. We can talk about your theory that they went as far north as the Faroe Islands. Maybe even to North America. What do you say?"

"I didn't bring any clothes."

"Who needs clothes?" she said in a laugh that was ripe with promise. "That's never stopped us before."

Austin grinned. "I think that's what they call a deal clincher. We're picking up a tailwind. I'll try to get us to Provence in time for dinner."

Then he glanced at his compass and pointed the nose of the plane south, on a course that would take them toward the beckoning shores of the Mediterranean Sea.