"And the final photo," Otto prompted Elsie gently.
"His name is Dirk Pitt. Considered a legend among oceanographic circles. The special projects director for NUMA, he is known as something of a Renaissance man. Unmarried, he collects classic cars. Also a graduate of the Air Force Academy, with several decorations from Vietnam for heroism. His achievements make for heavy reading. It was he who frustrated our plans in Colorado. He was also present in the Antarctic during the sinking of the U-2015 by the American nuclear submarine."
"A great pity," said Otto in quiet anger. He looked from one face to the next around the table. "A mistake to have used her instead of a modern surface ship."
"A misguided attempt on all our parts," said Karl, "to confuse our enemies."
Bruno pounded the desk with his fist. "We must exact vengeance from these men. They must die."
"You ordered an assassination attempt on Pitt without the approval of the rest of us," said Karl sharply
"An attempt that failed, I might add. We cannot afford the luxury of vengeance. We have a schedule to maintain, and I do not want our attentions misdirected to petty revenge."
"I see nothing petty about it," argued Bruno. "These four men are directly accountable for the deaths of our brothers and sister. They cannot go unpunished."
Karl looked at Bruno icily. "Did it ever occur to you, dear brother, that when the New Destiny Project reaches its climax, they will all die violent deaths?"
"Karl is right," said Elsie. "We cannot afford distractions from our true purpose, regardless of how tragic they are to the family."
"The matter is settled," stated Karl firmly. "We concentrate on the work at hand and accept our grief as part of the cost."
"Now that the chambers in Colorado and St. Paul Island have been discovered by outsiders," said Otto, "I see little to be gained by continuing to expend time, money, and more lives in concealing the existence of our ancient ancestors."
"I agree," said Bruno. "With the inscriptions now in the hands of American government officials, we should stand in the shadows while they decipher the message and announce the Amenes' warning of disaster through the international news media, thereby saving us the effort."
Karl stared at the surface of the table, his expression pensive. "Our gravest concern is having the story come out too soon before the New Destiny Project is launched and the disinformation leads to our doorstep."
"Then we must muddy the waters before scientific investigators penetrate our ruse."
"Thanks to those meddling rogues from the National Underwater and Marine Agency, the world will be onto us in two weeks." Bruno gazed across the table at Karl. "Is there any chance, brother, that our people at Valhalla can move up the timetable?"
"If I explain the urgency and make them aware of the dangers arising around us, yes, I believe I can inspire them to move up the launch date to ten days from now."
"Ten days," Christa repeated heatedly. "Only ten days before the old world is destroyed and the Fourth Empire rises from the ashes."
Karl nodded solemnly. "If all goes according to the carefully laid plans of our family since 1945, we will completely alter mankind for the next ten thousand years."
>
After being airlifted to an ice station and flown across the western end of the Indian Ocean to Cape Town, Pitt joined Pat O'Connell, who had flown down from Washington. She was accompanied by Dr.
Bradford Hatfield, a pathologist/archaeologist who specialized in the study of ancient mummies.
Together, they flew to St. Paul Island by a tilt-rotor aircraft. A heavy drizzle, unleashed by hostile clouds and hurled by a stiff breeze, stung their exposed faces like pellets shot from air rifles. They were met by a team of SEALs, an elite group of fighters belonging to the United States Navy. They were big quiet men, dead set with a purpose, dressed in camouflage fatigues that matched the gray volcanic rock of the island.
"Welcome to Hell's lost acre," said a big, lanky man with a friendly smile. He was toting a huge weapon slung over one shoulder upside down. It looked like a combination automatic rifle, missile launcher, sniper rifle, and twelve-gauge shotgun. "I'm Lieutenant Miles Jacobs. I'll be your tour guide."
"Admiral Sandecker isn't taking any chances of terrorists returning," Pitt remarked, as he shook Jacobs's hand.
"He may be retired from the Navy," said Jacobs, "but he still carries a lot of weight in the upper echelons. My orders to protect you NUMA people came direct from the secretary of the Navy."
Without further conversation, Jacobs and four of his men, two in front, two bringing up the rear, led Pitt and his party up the slope of the mountain onto the ancient road leading to the tunnel. Pat was half soaked beneath her rain gear and couldn't wait to get out of the damp. When they reached the archway, Giordino stepped out to greet them. He looked weary but swaggered as boldly as if he were the winning captain of a football team.
Pat was mildly surprised to see such rugged, staunch men greet each other with warm hugs and backslapping. There was such sentiment in their eyes, she swore they were on the verge of tears.
"Good to see you alive, pal," said Pitt happily.
"Glad you survived too," Giordino replied with a wide smile. "I hear you took on a U-boat with snowballs."
Pitt laughed. "A story greatly exaggerated. All we could do was shake our fists and call them names until the timely arrival of the Navy."
"Dr. O'Connell." Giordino bowed gallantly and kissed her gloved hand. "We needed someone like you to brighten up this dingy place."
Pitt smiled and curtsied. "My pleasure, sir."
Pitt turned and introduced the archaeologist. "Al Giordino, Dr. Brad Hatfield. Brad is here to study the mummies you and Rudi found."
"I'm told you and Commander Gunn struck an archaeological bonanza," said Hatfield. He was tall and skinny with light cork-brown eyes, a smooth narrow face, and a soft voice. He hunched over when he spoke, and peered through little round-rimmed spectacles that looked as if they had been produced in the 1920s.
"Come on in out of the rain and see for yourself."
Giordino led the way through the tunnel into the outer chamber. From fifty feet away, an overwhelming stench of smoke and charred flesh invaded their nostrils. A generator had been brought in by the SEALs, who'd laid a hose from the exhaust pipe to the archway outside to remove any fumes. Its electrical output powered an array of floodlights.
None had expected the awesome state of devastation. The entire interior was blackened by fire and covered with soot. What few objects were lying in the chamber before the blast had been vaporized.
"What hit this place?" asked Pitt in astonishment.
"The pilot of the attacking helicopter thought it might be cute to launch a rocket through the tunnel,"
explained Giordino, as placidly as if he were describing how to eat an apple.
"You and Rudi couldn't have been in here."
Giordino grinned. "Of course not. There's a tunnel leading to another chamber behind this one. We were protected by a pile of rocks from an old cave-in. Rudi and I won't hear soft-spoken words for a few weeks and our lungs are congested, but we survived."
"A miracle you weren't barbecued like your friends here," said Pitt, staring down at the charred remains of the attackers.
"The SEALs are going to clean up the mess and transport the bodies back to the States for identification."
"How ghastly," murmured Pat, her face turning pale. But her professional manner quickly took over and she began running her fingers over what was left of the inscriptions on the wall. She stared in sudden sorrow at the cracked and shattered rock. "They've destroyed it," she said in a faint whisper.
"Obliterated it. There isn't enough left to decipher."
"No great loss," Giordino said, unruffled. "The good stuff survived in the inner chamber without a scratch. The mummies were coated with a little dust, but other than that they're as sound as the day they were propped up."
"Propped up?"
Hatfield repeated. "The mummies are not lying horizontal in burial cases?"
"No, they're sitting upright in stone chairs."
"Are they wrapped in cloth?"
"No again," replied Giordino. "They're sitting there as if they were conducting a board meeting, dressed in robes, hats, and boots."
Hatfield shook his head in wonder. "I've seen ancient burials where the bodies were wrapped tightly in gauze in coffins, in fetal positions inside clay pots, lying facedown or faceup, and in standing positions.
Never have I heard of mummies sitting exposed."
"I've set up lights inside so you can examine them and the other artifacts."
During the hours Giordino was waiting for Pitt and Pat O'Connell to appear, he had enlisted the SEALs to help clear the rockfall, carry the rocks outside, and dump them down the mountain. The tunnel to the inner crypt was now open, and they could walk straight through without climbing over fallen debris.
Floodlights lit the crypt even brighter than sunlight, revealing the mummies and their garments in colorful detail.
Hatfield rushed forward and began examining the first mummy's face almost nose to nose. He looked like a man lost in paradise. He went from figure to figure, examining the skin, the ears, noses, and lips. He opened a large leather folding case and removed a surgeon's metal headband that mounted a light and magnifying lens in front of the eyes. After slipping it over his head, turning on the light, and focusing the lenses, he lightly brushed the dust away from a mummy's eyelids with a soft-bristled artist's brush. The others watched in silence until he turned, lifted the headband, and spoke.
His words came as if he were giving a sermon in church. "In all my years of studying ancient cadavers,"
he said softly, "I have never seen bodies so well preserved. Even the eyeballs appear to be intact enough to tell the color of their irises."
"Perhaps they're only a hundred years old or less," said Giordino.
"I don't believe so. The fabric of their robes, the style of their boots, the cut and style of their head coverings and clothing is unlike any I've ever seen, certainly unlike those in historical records. Whatever their embalming methods, these people's techniques were far superior to that found in mummies I've studied in Egypt. The Egyptians mutilated the bodies to remove the internal organs of their dead, extracting the brain through the nose and removing the lungs and abdominal organs. These bodies are not disfigured inside or out. They appear virtually untouched by embalmers."
"The inscriptions we found in the mountains of Colorado were dated at nine thousand B.C.," said Pat.
"Is it possible these people and their artifacts are from the same millennium?"
"Without dating technology, I can't say," replied Hatfield. "I'm out of my depth at drawing time conclusions. But I'm willing to stake my reputation that these people came from an ancient culture that is historically unknown."
"They must have been first-rate seafarers to have found this island and used it to inter their leaders,"
observed Pitt.
"Why here?" inquired Giordino. "Why didn't they bury their dead in a more convenient place along a continental shoreline?"
"The best guess is that they didn't want them found," answered Pat.
Pitt stared at the mummies pensively. "I'm not so sure. I think they eventually wanted them to be discovered. They left descriptive communications in other underground chambers thousands of miles apart. From what I understand, you and Hiram Yaeger have established that the inscriptions in Colorado are not messages to gods governing the land of the dead."
"That's true as far as it goes. But we have a long way to go in deciphering all the symbols and their meanings. What little we've learned until now is that the inscriptions are not of a funerary nature, but rather a warning of a future catastrophe."
"Whose future?" asked Giordino. "Maybe in the last nine thousand years, it already happened."
"We haven't determined any time projections yet," answered Pat. "Hiram and Max are still working on it." She walked over to one wall and wiped away the dust covering what looked like figures carved in the rock. Her eyes widened with excitement. "These are not the same style of symbols we found in Colorado. These are glyphs portraying human figures and animals."
Soon they were all working to remove the dust and grime of centuries from the polished rock.
Beginning in the four corners of the wall, they worked toward the middle until the inscriptions were revealed in distinct detail under the bright floodlights.
"What do you make of it?" Giordino asked no one in particular.
"Definitely a harbor or a seaport," Pitt said quietly. "You can make out a fleet of ancient ships with sails and oars, surrounded by a breakwater whose ends support high towers, probably some kind of beacons or lighthouses."
"Yes," agreed Hatfield. "I can easily discern buildings around the docks where several ships are moored."
"They seem to be in the act of loading and unloading cargo," said Pat, peering through her ever-present magnifying glass. "The people are carved in meticulous detail and are wearing the same type of clothing as the mummies. One ship looks like it's unloading a herd of animals."
Giordino moved in close to Pat and squinted at the glyphs. "Unicorns," he announced. "They're unicorns. See, they only have one horn coming from the top of their heads."
"Fanciful," muttered Hatfield skeptically. "As fanciful as sculptures of nonexistent Greek gods."
"How do you know?" Pitt challenged him. "Perhaps unicorns actually existed nine thousand years ago, before they became extinct along with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers."
"Yes, along with Medusas with snakes for hair and Cyclops with only one eye in their forehead."
"Don't forget gargoyles and dragons," added Giordino.
"Until bones or fossils are found that prove they existed," said Hatfield, "they'll have to remain a myth from the past."
Pitt didn't debate further with Hatfield. He turned and walked behind the stone chairs still holding the mummies and stared at a large curtain of sewn animal hides that covered the far wall. Very gently, he lifted one corner of the curtain and looked under it. His face took on a mystified expression.
"Careful," warned Hatfield. "That's very fragile."
Pitt ignored him and raised the curtain in both hands until it had curled above his head.
"You shouldn't touch that," Hatfield cautioned irritably. "It's a priceless relic and might crumble to pieces. It must be handled delicately until it can be preserved."
"What's under it is even more priceless," Pitt said in a impassive voice. He nodded at Giordino. "Grab a couple of those spears and use them to prop up the curtain."
Hatfield, his face flushed crimson, tried to stop Giordino, but he might as well have tried to halt a farm tractor. Giordino brushed him aside without so much as a sideways glance, snatched two of the ancient obsidian spears, planted their tips on the floor of the chamber, and used their butt ends to hold up the curtain. Then Pitt adjusted a pair of floodlights until their beams were concentrated on the wall.
Pat held her breath and stared at the four large circles carved into the polished wall, with strange diagrams cut within their circumferences. "They're glyphs of some kind," she said solemnly.
"They look like maps," spoke up Giordino.
"Maps of what?"
A bemused smile spread Pitt's lips. "Four different projections of the earth."
Hatfield peered through his glasses over Pat's shoulder. "Ridiculous. These glyphs don't look like any ancient maps I've ever seen. They're too detailed, and they certainly bear no resemblance to geography as I know it."
"That's because your shallow mind cannot visualize the continents and shorelines as they were nine thousand years ago."
"I must agree with Dr. Hatfield," said Pat. "All I see is a series of what might be large and small islands with jagged coastlines surrounded by wavy images suggesting a vast sea."
"My vote goes for a butterfly damage
d by antiaircraft fire on a Rorschach inkblot test," Giordino muttered cynically.
"You just dropped fifty points on the gray matter scale," Pitt came back. "I thought that of all the people, I could count on you to solve the puzzle."
"What do you see?" Pat asked Pitt.
"I see four different views of the world as seen from the continent of Antarctica nine thousand years ago."
"All jokes aside," said Giordino, "you're right."
Pat stood back for an overall view. "Yes, I can begin to distinguish other continents now. But they're in different positions. It's almost as if the world has tilted."
"I fail to see how Antarctica fits into the picture," Hatfield insisted.
"It's right in front of your eyes."
Pat asked, "How can you be so dead sure?"
"I'd be interested in knowing how you reached that conclusion," Hatfield scoffed.
Pitt looked at Pat. "Do you have any chalk in your tote bag that you use to highlight inscriptions in rock?"
She smiled. "Chalk went out. Now we prefer talcum powder."
"Okay, let's have it, and some Kleenex. All women carry Kleenex."
She dug in her pocket and handed him a small packet of tissues. Then she fished around in her tote bag through the notebooks, camera equipment, and tools used for examining ancient symbols in rock, until she found a container of powdered talc.
Pitt spent the short wait wetting the tissue with water out of a canteen and dampening the glyphs carved on the wall so the talc would adhere in the etched stone. Then Pat passed him the talc, and he began dabbing it on the smooth surface around the ancient art. After about three minutes, he stood back and admired his handiwork.