Treasure Page 11

  "You must be crazy."

  "No, just stupid for thinking I could outrun an Arctic storm."

  They both laughed and the tension fell away. Lily began to climb out of the excavation trough. Pitt took her arm and helped her up. She winced and he quickly released his grip.

  "You shouldn't be on your feet."

  Lily smiled gamely. "Stiff and a little sore from a sea of black-and-blue marks I can't show you, but I'll live."

  Pitt held up the lantern and peered around the oddly grouped rocks and excavations. "Just what is it you have here?"

  "An ancient Eskimo village, inhabited one hundred to five hundred years after Christ."

  "Have you a name for it?"

  "We call the site Gronquist Bay Village after Dr. Hiram Gronquist, who discovered it five years ago."

  "One of the three men I met last night?"

  "The big man who was knocked unconscious."

  "How's he getting along?"

  "Despite a large purplish dome on his forehead, he swears he doesn't suffer from headaches or dizziness. When I left the hut he was roasting like a turkey."

  "Turkey?" Pitt repeated, surprised. "You must have a firstrate supply system."

  "A vertical-lift Minerva aircraft, on loan to the university by a wealthy alumnus, flies in once every two weeks from Thule."

  "I thought excavations this far north were limited to midsummer when above-freezing temperatures thawed the ground."

  "Generally speaking that's true. But with the heated prefab shelter over the main section of the village, we can work from April through October."

  "Find anything out of the ordinary, like an object that doesn't belong here?"

  Lily gave Pitt a queer look. "Why do you ask?"

  "Curiosity. "

  "We've unearthed hundreds of interesting artifacts representing prehistoric Eskimo lifestyles and technology. We have them in the hut, if you care to examine them."

  "How's chances of looking at them over the turkey?"

  "Good to excellent. Dr. Gronquist cooks gourmet."

  "I had hoped to invite you all to the ship's galley for dinner, but the sudden storm messed up my plans."

  "We're always happy to see a new face at the table."

  "You've discovered something unusual, haven't you?" Pitt asked abruptly.

  Lily's eyes widened suspiciously. "How could you knowt' "Greek or Roman?"

  "Roman Empire, Byzantium, actually."

  "Byzantium what?" Pitt pushed her, his eyes turned hard.

  "How old?"

  "A gold coin, late fourth century."

  He seemed to relax then. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out while she looked at him in confusion and no small degree of irritation.

  "Make your point!" Lily snapped at him.

  "What if I was to tell you," Pitt began slowly, "there is a trail of amphoras scattered along the seabed that leads into the fjord?"

  "Amphoras?" Lily repeated in astonishment.

  "I have them on videotape from our underwater cameras."

  "They came." She spoke as in a trance. "They really crossed the Atlantic. The Romans set foot on Greenland before the Vikings."

  "The evidence points in that direction." Pitt eased his arm around Lily's waist and aimed her toward the door. "Speaking of direction, are we stuck here for the duration of the storm or does that rope outside the door lead to your hut?"

  She nodded. "Yes, the line stretches between the two buildings." She paused and stared into the excavation where she had discovered the coin.

  "Pytheas, the Greek navigator, made an epic voyage in 350 B.c. The legends say he sailed north into the Atlantic and eventually reached Iceland. Strange there

  are no records or legends telling of a Roman voyage this far north and west, seven hundred and fifty years later."

  "Pytheas was lucky: he made it home to tell the tale."

  ,,You think the Romans who came here were lost on the return voyage?"

  "No, I think they're still here." Pi pinned her with a determined grin,

  "And you and i, lovely lady, are going to find them."

  -PART II

  The Serapis

  October 14, 1991

  Washington, D.C.

  A cold, bleak drizzle shrouded the nation's capital as a taxi pulled to a stop at Seventeenth and Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the old Executive Office Building. A man dressed in a deliveryman's uniform stepped from the rear seat and told the driver to wait. He leaned back in the taxi and retrieved a package wrapped in red silk. He hurried across the sidewalk and down several steps, passing through a doorway into the reception area of the mail room.

  "for the President," he said with a Spanish accent.

  A postal service employee signed in the package and the time. He looked up and said. "Still raining?"

  "More like a fine spray."

  "Just enough to make life miserable."

  "And slow traffic," the deliveryman said with a sour face.

  "Have a good day anyway."

  "You too."

  The deliveryman left as the postal worker took the package and ran it under the fluoroscope. He stood back and stared at the screen as the X-rays revealed the object under the wrapping.

  He easily identified it as a briefcase, but the picture puzzled him.

  There was no indication of files or papers inside, no hard object with a distinguishing outline, nothing that looked like explosives. He was an old hand at X-ray identification, but the contents of the case threw him.

  He picked up the phone and made a request to the person on the other end. Less than two minutes later a security agent appeared with a dog.

  "Got one for Sweet-pea?" asked the agent.

  The postal worker nodded as he set the package on the floor. "Can't make an I.D. on the scope."

  Sweet-pea hardly resembled her namesake. She was a mutt, the result of a brief affair between a beagle and a dachshund. Huge brown eyes, a fat little body supported by short spindly legs, Sweet-pea was highly trained to sniff out every explosive from the common to the exotic. As the two men watched, she waddled around the package, nose quivering like a plump dowager sniffing at a perfume counter.

  Suddenly she stiffened, the hair on her neck and back stood up, and she began backing away. Her face took on an odd, suspicious kind of distasteful expression, and she began to growl.

  The agent looked surprised. "That's not her usual reaction."

  "There's something weird in there," said the postal worker.

  "Who is the package addressed to?"

  "The President."

  The agent walked over and punched a number on the phone. "We better get Jim Gerhart down here."

  Gerhart, Special Agent in Charge of Physical Security for the White House, took the call during a brief lunch at his desk and left immediately for the mail reception room.

  He observed the dog's reaction and eyebafled the package under the fluoroscope. "I don't detect any wiring or detonation device," he said in a Georgia drawl.

  "Not a bomb," the postal worker agreed.

  "Okay, let's open it."

  The red silk wrapper was carefully removed, revealing a black leather attache case. There were no markings, not even a manufacturer's name or model number. Instead of a combination lock, both latches had inserts for a key.

  Gerhart tried the latches simultaneously. They both unsnapped.

  "The moment of truth," he said with a cautious gun.

  He placed his hands on each corner of the upper lid and slowly lifted until the case was open and the contents in view.

  "Jesus!" Gerhart gasped The security agent's face went white and he turned away.

  The postal worker made gagging noises and staggered for the lavatory.

  Gerhart slammed the lid shut. "Get this thing over to George Washington University Hospital."

  The security agent couldn't reply until he swallowed the acid-tasting bile that had risen in his throat. Finally he coughed, "Is that thing r
eal or is this some kind of Halloween trick or treat?"

  "It's genuine," said Gerhart grin-dy- "And believe you me, it ain't no treat."

  In his White House office, Dale Nichols settled back in his swivel chair and adjusted his reading glasses. for perhaps the tenth time he began scrutinizing the contents of a folder routed to him by Arrnando L6pez, the President's Senior Director Of Latin American Affairs.

  Nichols gave off the image of a university professor, which indeed he had been when the President persuaded him to switch his sedate campus classroom at Stanford for the political cesspool of Washington. His initial reluctance had turned to amazement when he discovered he had a hidden talent for manipulating the White House bureaucracy.

  His thicket of coffee-brown hair was parted neatly down the middle. His old-style spectacles, with small round lenses and thin wire frames, reflected a plodding temperament, a neversay-die type who was oblivious to everything but his immediate project. And, finally, the ultimate in academic clichds, the bow tie and the pipe.

  He lit the pipe without removing his eyes from the articles clipped from Mexican newspapers and magazines dealing with only one subject.

  Topiltzin.

  Included were interviews granted by the charismatic messiah to officials who represented Central and South American countries. But he had refused to talk to American journalists or government representatives and none had penetrated his army of bodyguards.

  Nichols had learned Spanish during a two-year tour in Peru for the Peace Corps, and easily read the stories. He took a legal pad and began making a list of claims and statements that came to light during the interviews.

  1. Topiltzin describes himself as a man who came from the poorest of the poor, born in a cardboard shack on the edge of Mexico City's sprawling garbage dump, with no idea of the day, month or year. Somehow he survived and learned what it was to live amid the stink and flies and manure and muck of the hungry and homeless.

  2. Admits to no schooling. History from childhood, until his emergence as a self-styled high priest of archaic TolteclAztec religion, is blank.

  3. Claims to be the reincarnation of Topiltzin, tenthcentury ruler of the Toltecs, who was identified with the legendary god Quetzalcoatl.

  4. Political philosophy a crazy blend of ancient culture and religion with vague sort of autocratic, one-man, noparty rule. Intends to play benevolent father role to Mexican people. Ignores questions on how he intends to revive shattered economy. Refuses to discuss how he will restructure government if he comes to power.

  5. Spellbinding orator. Has uncanny rapport with his audience. Speaks only in old Aztec tongue through interpreters. Language still used by many Indians of Central Mexico.

  6. Mainstream supporters are fanatical. His popularity has swept the country like the proverbial tidal wave. Political analysts predict he could will a national election by nearly six percentage points. Yet he refuses to participate in free elections, claiming, and rightly so, that corrupt leaders would never surrender the government after a losing campaign. Topiltzin expects to take over the country by public acclaim.

  Nichols set his pipe in an ashtray, stared at the ceiling thoughtfully for a few moments, and began writing again.

  SUMMARY: Topiltzin is either incredibly ignorant or incredibly gifted.

  Ignorant if he is what he says he is.

  Gifted if he has a method to his madness, a goat only he can see.

  Trouble, trouble, trouble.

  Nichols was going over the articles again, searching for a key to Topiltzin's character, when his phone buzzed. He picked up the receiver.

  "the President on one," announced his secretary.

  Nichols punched the button. "Yes, Mr. President."

  "any news of Guy Rivas?"

  "No, nothing."

  There was a pause on the President's end. Then, finally, "He was scheduled to meet with me two hours ago. I'm concerned. If he Encountered a problem, his pilot should have sent us word by now."

  "He didn't fly to Mexico City in a White House jet," explained Nichols.

  "In the interests of secrecy he booked passage on a commercial airliner and flew coach class as a tourist on vacation."

  "I understand," the President agreed. "If President De Lorenzo learned I sent a personal representative behind his back to make contact with his opposition, he'd take it as an insult and scratch our Arizona conference next week."

  "Our primary concern," Nichols assured him.

  "Have you been briefed on the U.N. charter crash?" the President asked, suddenly changing tack.

  "No, sir," replied Nichols. "My only information is that Hala Kamil survived."

  "She and two crew members. The rest died from poison."

  "Poison?" Nichols blurted incredulously.

  "That's the word from the investigators. They believe the pilot tried to poison everyone on board before parachuting from the plane over Iceland."

  "The pilot must have been an imposter."

  "We won't know till a body is found, warm or cold."

  "Christ, what terrorist movement would have a motive for murdering over fifty U.N. representatives?"

  "So far none have claimed credit for the disaster. According to Martin Brogan at CIA, if it is the work of terrorists, they stepped out of character on this one."

  "Hala Karnil might have been the target," suggested Nichols. "Akhmad Yazid has sworn to eliminate her."

  "We can't ignore the possibility," the President admitted.

  "Have the news media gotten wind of it?"

  "The story will be all over the papers and TV in the next hour. I saw no reason to hold it back."

  "Is there anything you'd like me to do, Mr. President?"

  "I'd appreciate it, Dale, if you'd monitor reaction from President De Lorenzo's people. There were eleven delegates and agency representatives from Mexico on the flight. Offer condolences in my name and any cooperation within limits. Oh, yes, you'd better keep Julius Schiller over at the State Department informed so we don't stumble over each other."

  "I'll get my staff right on it."

  "And let me know the minute you hear from Rivas."

  "Yes, Mr. President."

  Nichols hung up and forced his attention back to the file. He began to wonder if Topiltzin was somehow connected with the U.N. murder. If only there was a thread he could grasp.

  Nichols was not a detective. He had no talent for coldly dissecting a prime suspect layer by layer until he knew what made the man tick. His academic specialty was in systems projections of international political movements.

  Topiltzin was an enigma to him. Hitler had a misguided vision of Aryan supremacy. Driven by religious fervor, Khomeini wanted to return the Middle East to the Muslim fulldamentals of the Dark Ages. Lenin preached a crusade of world Communism.

  What was Topiltzin's objective?

  A Mexico of the Aztecs? A return to the past? No modern society could function under such archaic rules. Mexico was not a nation to be run on the fantasies of a Don Quixote. There had to be another driving force behind the man. Nichols was conjecturing in a vacuum. He glimpsed Topiltzin only as a caricature, a villain in a cartoon series.

  His secretary entered unannounced and laid a file folder on his desk.

  "The report you asked for from the CIA-and you have a call on line three."

  "Who is it?"

  "A James Gerhart," she replied.

  "White House security," said Nichols. "Did he say what he wanted?"

  "Only that it was urgent."

  Nichols became curious. He answered the call. "This is Dale Nichols."

  "Jim Gerhart, sir, in charge of-"

  "Yes, I know," Nichols interrupted. "Yy'hat's the problem?"

  "I think you better come down to the pathology lab at George Washington."

  "The University Hospital?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What in hell for?"

  "I'd rather not say too much over the phone."

  "I'm very busy,
Mr. Gerhart. You'll have to be more specific."

  There was a short silence. "This is a matter concerning you and the President. That's all I can say."

  "Can't you at least give me a clue?"

  Gerhart ignored the probe. "One of my men is waiting outside your office. He will drive you to the lab. I'll meet you in the waiting room."

  "Listen to me, Gerhart-" That was as far as Nichols got when the snarl of the dial tone struck his ear.

  The drizzle had turned to rain and Nichols's disposition rrored the dismal weather as he was led through the University Hospital's entrance to the pathology laboratory. He hated the etherlike smells that permeated the halls.

  True to his word, Gerhart waited in the anteroom. The two men knew each other by sight and name but had never spoken. Gerhart came forward but made no effort to shake hands.

  "Thank you for coming," he said in an official tone.

  "Why am I here?" Nichols asked directly.

  "for an identification."

  Nichols was suddenly flooded with foreboding. "Who?"

  "I'd prefer you tell me."

  "I don't have the stomach for looking at dead bodies.

  "This isn't exactly a body, but you will need a strong stomach."

  Nichols shrugged. "All right, let's get it over with."

  Gerhart held the door open and guided him down a long corridor and into a room with large white tiles inlaid on the walls and floor. The floor was slightly concave with a drain in its center. A stainless steel table stood in stark solitude in the middle of the room. A white, opaque plastic sheet covered a long object that rose no more than an inch above the surface of the table.

  Nichols looked at Gerhart in bewilderment. "What am I supposed to identify?"

  Without a word Gerhart lifted the sheet and pulled it away, letting it drop in a crumpled wad on the floor.

  Nichols stared at the thing on the table, uncomprehendingAt first he thought it was a paper outline of a man's figure. Then he shuddered as the gory truth struck him. He leaned over the floor drain and threw up.

  Gerhart stepped from the room and quickly returned with a folding chair and a towel.