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  BOOK TWO

  NINETEEN

  Siwa

  THE shockwave of the twin explosions thundered through the total darkness, battering Skarda’s eardrums. An acrid stench made his eyes water. On the stairwell a wall of limestone boulders collapsed under its own weight, sending seething billows of dust boiling toward him.

  Coughing, he groped in his pack for the LED and switched it on, playing the beam over April’s unconscious face. Her eyes were closed, but her breasts rose and fell in a regular rhythm. Twisting around, he aimed the shaft of light at Flinders, a hazy shape in the dust cloud.

  “You okay?” he called out.

  Without saying anything, she scuttled toward the source of the light. Her face was streaked with tears and grime. Her shoulders shook, her eyes wide with terror. “We’re sealed in. We’re going to die.”

  “We’re not going to die.” Even though he was fighting down a surge of panic, he kept his voice empty of emotion. Emotions weren’t going to help them get out of here. “I’m going to need you to pull yourself together, okay?”

  “You think there’s a way out?” A wave of hope washed over her face. Her eyes bored into his.

  He showed her a confident smile. “There’s always a way out. The only way to lose is to give up. Our first job is to get April back on her feet.” He handed her the lamp. “Here. Hold this while I clean her up.”

  Flinders took the LED, shining it on April’s head while Skarda checked the pack. The woman had left them the lamp, the tripod, and a first-aid kit. Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, he examined the wound. It was a deep gash, running from her temple into the hairline. With a surgical scissors he snipped off clumps of her dark hair, then cleaned the wound with antibacterial solution and taped it with Vet-Wrap.

  She let out a low groan. Her eyes opened. A split second later she had rolled up on one knee, her gaze probing the darkness. Her right hand reached up and touched the bandage.

  “You got hit by a chunk of rock,” Skarda told her. “The woman blew the entrance. We’re sealed in.”

  She accepted the news without emotion.

  He helped her to her feet and she glanced over at Flinders. “Is there another way out of here?”

  Flinders was still on her knees, staring at them with an unfocused expression. Her shoulders shook. “I don’t know.”

  Bending over, Skarda took her arm while she got her feet under her. He knew he had to keep her moving, to give her a sense of direction. She was close to shock.

  April glanced at the rubble-choked staircase. “Well, we’re not getting out that way. Let’s head for the back.” Striding ahead, she stopped suddenly and swung around, a thought striking her. “Wait a minute,” she said to Flinders. “Didn’t you say the sibyl used a speaking tube to give her oracles at the altar?”

  Flinders stared at her, not comprehending the implication of her question. “Yes…”

  “Could she have been down here when she gave her prophecies? So the other end of the speaking tube was down here?”

  “I guess so...”

  “Then how did she get down here? The altar lid would have been a pain to use on a regular basis and she wouldn’t want to risk being seen out in the open like that.”

  Flinders adjusted her glasses, her thoughts clearing. “Maybe…” she started. A sudden flare of realization darted across her face. “You’re right! Sure!” She laughed out loud. “Did you see all those limestone ridges in the background outside? I’ll bet they’re just riddled with caves. They could easily have dug a tunnel out to one of them for the sibyls to sneak in from the outside!”

  “So what are we looking for?” Skarda asked.

  “A doorway, I guess. Some kind of opening to a tunnel.”

  “Let’s move.”

  ___

  The palm-log door had rotted to dust millennia ago, but the copper hinges were still attached to the sheath of copper plating that had once covered the wood. While Flinders bent close to examine them, Skarda shone his LED into the mouth of a narrow passage whose darkness swallowed up the light.

  April had already stepped into the opening, her boots crunching on fallen limestone rubble.

  Skarda tugged on Flinders’ arm, but she paid no attention. Her fingers caressed the ancient metal. “I can’t tell you how incredible this is,” she said.

  “Come on,” Skarda insisted. “We can come back when this is over.”

  Reluctantly, she turned away from the ancient plating.

  From the tunnel, April called out. “Looks clear!”

  He waited until Flinders moved ahead and then he stepped into the darkness. The passageway had been roughly hacked out of the limestone bedrock so that he had at least a foot on either side of him, but the ceiling was low enough that he to move forward in a stoop.

  Up ahead Flinders suddenly stopped, then let out a little gasp and dropped to a crouch.

  April’s face appeared out of the darkness, her light flashing. “Problem,” she told Skarda. Arcing the lamp around, she illuminated a wall of rock further down the tunnel where a section of the roof had caved in. Tumbled blocks of limestone and rubble filled the passageway like a solid wall. It would take hours of digging to break through—if they had the tools.

  He fought down a wave of despair.

  Now on her knees, Flinders was examining a skeleton buried under a landslide of rock. “It’s a man,” she said. “It looks like his head was crushed. Horrible.”

  “Is there another way out of here?” he asked her.

  But she wasn’t listening. Scraping away the rubble with both hands, she picked up what looked like an ornate safety pin, green with verdigris. She flashed her light on it so they could see. “It’s a fibula. Bronze, it looks like. But it could be gold. Greek probably, from the design. It was used to fasten a chlamys, which was a woolen cloak that covered the body and pinned with this at the right shoulder.”

  April let out a little growl of impatience.

  Skarda hooked a hand under Flinders’ armpit and gently pulled her to her feet. “Is there another way out of here?”

  She got to her feet, still staring at the skeleton. Then she tore her gaze away and turned, suddenly seeing the wall of stone blocking their way. “We’re going to die!” Her eyes, wide with fear, locked onto Skarda’s.

  His tone hardened a bit. “Think!”

  But Flinders just stared at him, her mind numb with shock.

  Then an explosion boomed, muffled by distance. It came from the ruins outside.

  Instantly April spun and raced for the outer chamber.

  Another muted roar rocked the ruins. Skarda heard stones rattling down in the hall, smacking against the granite floor.

  April rushed back. “Rockets. I think it’s our friends from St. Mark’s. They’re blowing a hole to get down here.”

  From the stairway came another ear-shattering boom. Fractured rocks crashed and banged, louder this time.

  “They’re through,” April said. “Park, take Flinders and put your backs to the cave-in. Stay there.”

  Sprinting ahead, she dropped to a crouch when she reached the mouth of the tunnel. A quick glance through the arched doorway showed watery shafts of moonlight piercing through clouds of dust. A shout rose to her ears and then men in red jumpsuits came slip-sliding down the avalanche of debris on the stairway. The beams of powerful halogen lamps crisscrossed the chamber, flashing gleams of gold and green as they raked across the pillars and focused there.

  April shrank bank, then returned to the others. “They want the pillars.”

  The clatter of a jackhammer roaring into life made Flinders start. Realizing what the sound meant, she erupted to her feet, but Skarda grabbed her, wrestling her to the floor. Her eyes went wild.

  “No! I can’t let them destroy—“ she started.

  He clamped his hand over her mouth. For a moment she wriggled, then went limp. Her eyes shot silent accusations at him.

  Another sound joined the staccato pounding of the
jackhammer: the whirring whine of a saw. A grating, dental-drill-like screeching noise assaulted their ears as the carbide-tipped saw blade bit into stone.

  Flinders struggled.

  “Keep her quiet!” April snapped.

  Scuttling forward, she returned to the mouth of the tunnel, inching her head past the doorway opening. Through a haze of dust she could see four men, including Pakosz and Macek, easing the golden pillar, now severed from floor to ceiling, onto a transport cart. At the bottom of the stairway a man was already hitching cables to a matching cart which held the emerald pillar. From outside, the muted thud of rotor blades reached her ears. At the man’s signal, the cart lumbered forward up the slope of rubble, winched by the unseen helicopter.

  Repeating the process with the second pillar, the men followed the cart up the stairway and were lost to sight.

  Half-turning, April signaled her companions. They scrambled up next to her. Flinders gasped, then raced into the chamber, sinking to her knees next to the gaps where the pillars had stood. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  April moved toward the staircase and disappeared up the incline into the moonlight.

  A minute later she was back. “All clear. Land Rover’s gone.”

  Skarda had figured as much.

  Still on her knees, Flinders’ eyes were focused on nothing. “They’ve got the laptop. Now they’ve got the pillars. We don’t have a chance of finding the Tablet.”

  But Skarda grinned. “Don’t forget, I hid the Stealth outside. It’s got the photos and the translation. I’ll call Candy Man. He’ll get a ride for us.”

  Suddenly Flinders let out a sharp cry. Stabbing his LED in her direction, he saw her reach out and clutch something from the floor.

  She scrambled to her feet and ran back to their position. “Look!” she said, holding open her palm.

  He aimed his beam. In her hand lay a broken chunk of the emerald column, about two inches wide by four inches long. The thin layer of green gemstone encased a core of a silvery-gray metal that reflected back a reddish tint. It seemed to glow in the lamplight.

  Flinders stared at it in wonder. “The emerald was just an outer shell.” She lifted her eyes to Skarda. “I think what’s inside is orichalcum.”

  TWENTY

  Lubyanka Prison, Lubyanka Square, Moscow

  FROM the rain-streaked window on the third floor of the Lubyanka Prison, the dull yellow-brick building where once stone-faced KGB officials had turned indifferent ears to the tortured screams of enemies of the State, Belisarius looked down past the iron-black statue of Felix Dzerzhinksy to the lights of a distant car reflecting wetly on the cobblestones. His thoughts were dark. It pissed him off that he’d been forced to travel to this God-forsaken country in the first place, and it pissed him off that he was here simply for a dressing-down. But the Russians were like that. They were power-mad control freaks and wanted to make sure you knew who was boss.

  The flicker of a smile touched his lips and was gone.

  Let them think what they wanted to.

  At the sound of the door opening he turned around to see a trim, square-shouldered man entering the room, wearing the high-collared, gold-embroidered jacket of a Russian general. Already seated in the austere room were Manucharov and Chekhol, looking out of place and uncomfortable in scarred metal chairs. Neither looked happy.

  A flash of revulsion flattened the general’s face as he took in Belisarius’ red-scarred nose and cheeks, but it vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by an expression of grave disapproval.

  He marched forward to stand in front of the American. “I am General Fyodor Saltykov, head of the Federal’naya sluzhba Bbezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii,” he announced, not extending his hand. “You have failed us, Mr. Belisarius.”

  Belisarius made no attempt to hide his scowl. “I didn’t fail you, General. The bombs failed you. The bombs whose payloads were calculated by your scientists. Don’t forget—I have as much to gain from melting the ice as you do.”

  Saltykov lifted his shoulders in dismissal. Either way, the outcome was the same, but he was going to blame the American. “And I hope you will not forget that a great deal of our country’s funds have been made available to you so that you will be able to realize this gain.”

  Belisarius’ eyes were chips of blue iron. “I’m also not forgetting that the Russian navy would cause a major international incident if it were caught sinking those bombs. You were paying my people to run a risk you couldn’t afford to take.”

  The point struck home. After a quick flare of anger, the Russian gave a slight bow of defeat. His lips parted in an arid smile. “Now the question is, how are you going to remedy the situation?”

  “The bombs weren’t powerful enough to melt the ice themselves, and they failed to ignite the dormant volcanoes.” Belisarius mimicked the general’s smile. “That puts the situation squarely in your lap. We need a more powerful explosive. Come up with new calculations and we’ll try again.”

  The general studied him, his eyes constricting to thin slits. “I have been briefed about your mythical Vril…“ He let the sentence drift off so that it formed a question.

  “It’s hardly mythical, General.”

  “You have found the source of this substance?”

  Belisarius shook his head. “Not yet. When I do, I’ll expect to be paid well for it.”

  For a few deliberate moments Saltykov fixed him with a hard stare. Then he came to a decision. “I will provide you with new calculations. But this time there will be no failures.”

  ___

  Outside in the rain-soaked parking lot, Belisarius climbed into the rear of an idling limo, waiting for the driver to slam the door shut. Then he glanced up at the third floor and smiled.

  What they didn’t know was, he’d already found the Vril. And he was going to make them pay dearly for it.

  But right now there was a bull-necked dominatrix waiting for him above a back-street bar, ready to beat him into paste for the price of a steak dinner.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

  RACHEL frowned. She had to report back to Tomilin, and she knew he didn’t like being told that the experts didn’t know the answer to his question. But then that’s why she’d driven up to Woods Hole from Washington in a miserable rain—to hopefully dig out in person something her phone call had failed to reveal.

  “We used to think Gakkel Ridge was non-volcanic,” the man walking beside her said. His name was Dr. Adrian Hatcher, head geophysicist for the Institution. He was in his early thirties, short and stocky, but with a long-strided, loping walk that made her scramble to stay up with him. “We’re talking two, two-and-a-half miles under the Arctic Ocean, where the water pressure and water weight are mega heavy-duty. We didn’t think volcanoes could form there, or if they did, the pressure would be so great that the CO2 gas and magma couldn’t blast outward.”

  Pushing open the door to his office, he showed her in. Books spilled out of a makeshift bookcase and papers and print-outs littered the desk and floor. Hatcher scooped up an armful of papers to clear a chair and waved at it with a flourish.

  “Have a seat. Sorry about the mess, but I always have other things on my mind.”

  Rachel sat, crossing her legs. She wanted him to keep talking, so she didn’t say a word.

  Hatcher tapped at his computer keyboard, then turned the monitor so she could see a schematic map of the Arctic Ocean. “See? This is the Gakkel Ridge, right here.” He ran his finger along the east-west angle of the formation. “It’s pretty awesome. Basically it’s a giant crack in the ocean crust where two rocky plates are pulling apart very, very slowly—maybe a centimeter a year. You’ve got some big volcanoes down there—some of them are more than a mile around. We’re talking bigger than the Alps.”

  He swung the monitor back around and leaned back in his chair. “So as I was saying, we used to think Gakkel was non-volcanic. But then in 2001 we found
evidence of hydrothermal vents, and in 2007 AGAVE—that’s the Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition—sent a robot down and found evidence of a huge volcanic eruption. I’m talking layers of ash, pyroclastic rocks thrown for five miles over the sea floor, talus, the whole works.”