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  "Before we have coffee, would you be so kind, Lieutenant, as to escort me to the baggage cargo hold?"

  Church stared at him. "Yes, sir, if you wish."

  "Thank you," said Gottschalk. "I need something from one of my trunks."

  If Church thought the request unusual, he said nothing, simply nodded and started off toward the forward part of the ship with the fat little consul general huffing in his wake. They made their way topside and walked along the runway leading from the aft deckhouses toward the forecastle, passing under the bridge superstructure awkwardly suspended on steel stiltlike stanchions. The steaming light, suspended between the two forward masts that formed a support for the skeletal grid connecting the coaling derricks, cast a weird glow that was reflected by the eerie radiance of the approaching swells.

  Stopping at a hatch, Church undogged the latches and motioned Gottschalk down a ladder, illuminating the way with his flashlight. When they reached the bottom deck of the cargo hold, Church found the switch and flicked on the overhead lights, which lit the area with an unearthly yellow glow.

  Gottschalk shouldered past Church and walked directly to the crate, which was secured by chains whose end links were padlocked into eyebolts protruding from the deck. He stood there for a few moments, a reverent expression on his face as he stared at it, his thoughts wandering in another place, another time.

  Church studied the crate up close for the first time. There were no markings on the stout wooden sides. He judged its measurements at nine feet long by three feet high by four feet wide. He couldn't begin to guess the weight, but knew the contents were heavy. He recalled how the winch had strained when it hoisted the crate on board. Curiosity overcame his mask of unconcern.

  "Mind if I ask what's inside?"

  Gottschalk's gaze remained on the crate. "An archeological artifact on its way to a museum," he said vaguely.

  "Must be valuable," Church probed.

  Gottschalk did not answer. Something along the edge of the lid struck his eye. He pulled out a pair of reading spectacles and peered through the lenses. His hands trembled and his body stiffened.

  "It's been opened!" he gasped.

  "Not possible," said Church. "The top is so tightly secured by chains that the links have made indentations on the edges of the wood."

  "But look here," he said, pointing. "You can see the pry marks where the lid was forced up."

  "Those scratches were probably caused when the crate was sealed."

  "They were not there when I checked the crate two days ago," said Gottschalk firmly. "Someone in your crew had tampered with it."

  "You're unduly concerned. What crew member would have any interest in an old artifact that must weigh at least two tons? Besides, who else but you has the key to the padlocks?"

  Gottschalk dropped to his knees and jerked one of the locks. The shackle came off in his hand. Instead of steel, it was carved from wood. He looked frightened now. As if hypnotized, he slowly rose, looked wildly about the cargo compartment, and uttered one word.

  "Zanona."

  It was as if he triggered a nightmare. The next sixty seconds were locked in horror. The murder of the consul general happened so quickly that Church could only stand frozen in shock, his mind uncomprehending of what his eyes witnessed.

  A figure leaped from the shadows onto the top of the crate. He was dressed in the uniform of a Navy seaman, but there was no denying the racial characteristics of his coarse, straight black hair, the prominent cheekbones, the unusually dark, expressionless eyes.

  Without uttering a sound, the South American Indian plunged a spearlike shaft through Gottschalk's chest until the barbed point protruded nearly a foot beyond the shoulder blades. The consul general did not immediately fall. He slowly turned his head and stared at Church, his eyes wide and devoid of recognition. He tried to say something, but no words came out, only a sickening, gurgling kind of cough that turned his lips and chin red. As he began to sag the Indian put a foot on his chest and yanked out the spear.

  Church had never seen the assassin before. The Indian was not one of the Cyclops' crew and could only be a stowaway. There was no malevolence in the brown face, no anger or hate, only an inscrutable expression of total blankness. He grasped the spear almost negligently and silently jumped from the crate.

  Church braced himself for the onslaught. He deftly sidestepped the spear's thrust and hurled the flashlight at the Indian's face. There was a soft thud as the metal tube smashed into the right jaw, breaking the bone and loosening several teeth. Then he lashed out with his fist and struck the Indian's throat. The spear dropped onto the deck and Church snatched up the wooden shaft and lifted it above his head.

  Suddenly, the world inside the cargo compartment went mad and Church found himself fighting to keep his balance as the deck canted nearly sixty degrees. He somehow kept his footing, running downhill with gravity until he reached the slanting forward bulkhead. The Indian's inert body rolled after him, coming to rest at his feet. Then he watched in helpless terror as the crate, unbound by its locks, hurtled across the deck, crushing the Indian and pinning Church's legs against the steel wall. The impact caused the lid to twist half off the crate, revealing the contents.

  Church dazedly stared inside. The incredible sight that met his eyes under the flickering overhead lights was the final image burned into his mind during the fractional seconds that separated him from death.

  In the wheelhouse, Captain Worley was witnessing an even more awesome sight. It was as though the Cyclops had abruptly dropped into a fathomless hole. Her bow pitched sharply into an immense trough and her stern rose steeply into the air until her propellers came clear of the water. Through the gloom ahead, the Cyclops' steaming lights reflected on a seething black wall that rose up and blotted out the stars.

  Deep in the bowels of the cargo holds came a dreadful rumbling that felt and sounded like an earthquake, causing the entire ship to shudder from stem to stern. Worley never had time to voice the alarm that flashed through his mind. The shorings had given way and the shifting manganese ore increased the Cyclops' downward momentum.

  The helmsman stared out the bridge port in mute astonishment as the towering column, the height of a ten-story building, roared toward them with the speed of an avalanche. The top half crested and curled under. A million tons of water crashed savagely into the forward part of the ship, completely inundating the bow and superstructure. The doors to the bridge wings shattered and water shot into the wheelhouse. Worley gripped the counter railing, his paralyzed mind unable to visualize the inevitable.

  The wave swept over the ship. The entire bow section twisted away as steel beams snapped and the keel buckled. The heavy riveted hull plates were ripped away as if they were paper. The Cyclops plunged deeper under the immense pressure of the wave. Her propellers bit the water again and helped impel her into the waiting depths. The Cyclops could not come back.

  She kept on going, down, down, until her shattered hull and the people it imprisoned fell against the restless sands of the sea floor below, leaving only a flight of bewildered seagulls to mark her fateful passage.

  <1>THE PROSPERTEER

  October 10, 1989

  Key West, Florida

  <<1>>

  The blimp Hung motionless in the tropical air, poised and tranquil, like a fish suspended in an aquarium. Her bow nudged against a yellow mooring mast as she balanced daintily on a single landing wheel. She was a tired-looking old airship-- her once silver skin had wrinkled and turned white and was spotted by numerous patches. The gondola, the control car that hung beneath her belly, wore an antique boat-like look, and its glass windows were yellowed with age. Only her two 200-horsepower Wright Whirlwind engines appeared new, having been carefully restored to pristine condition.

  Unlike her younger sister ships that plied the skies above football stadiums, her gas-tight envelope was made from aluminum with riveted seams instead of rubber-coated polyester and was supported by twelve circular frames
like the back of a fish. Her cigar shape was 149 feet in length and held 200,000 cubic feet of helium, and if no headwinds attacked her rotund nose, she could barrel through the clouds at sixty-two miles an hour. Her original designation was ZMC-2, Zeppelin Metal Clad Number Two, and she had been constructed in Detroit and turned over to the United States Navy in 1929. Unlike most airships with four massive stabilizing fins, she sported eight small fins on her tapered tail. Very advanced for her era, she had given solid and dependable service until 1942, when she was dismantled and forgotten.

  For forty-seven years the ZMC-2 languished in an abandoned hangar along the runway of a deserted naval air station near Key West, Florida. Then in 1988, the property was sold by the government to a financial conglomerate headed by a wealthy publisher, Raymond LeBaron, who intended to develop it as a resort.

  Shortly after arriving from his corporate headquarters in Chicago to inspect the newly purchased naval base, LeBaron stumbled onto the dusty and corroded remains of the ZMC-2 and became intrigued. Charging it off to promotion, he had the old lighter-than-air craft reassembled and the engines rebuilt, calling her the Prosperteer after the business magazine that was the base of his financial empire, and emblazoning the name in huge red letters on the side of the envelope.

  LeBaron learned to fly the Prosperteer, mastering the fickle moods of the craft and the constant adjustments required to maintain steady flight under the capricious nature of the wind. There was no autopilot to relieve the chore of dipping the bow against a sudden gust and lifting it when the breeze slackened. The near-neutral buoyancy varied greatly with the atmosphere. Residue from a light rain could add hundreds of pounds to the blimp's vast skin, decreasing her ability to lift, while dry air blowing down from the northwest forced the pilot to fight the craft's insistence on rising to an undesired altitude.

  LeBaron reveled in the challenge. The exhilaration of second guessing the moods of the antique gas bag and wrestling with her aerodynamic whims far exceeded any enjoyment he received from flying any of the five jet aircraft belonging to his corporate holdings. He sneaked away from the boardroom at every opportunity to travel to Key West so he could island-hop around the Caribbean. The Prosperteer soon became a familiar sight over the Bahama Islands. A native worker, laboring in a sugarcane field, looked up at the blimp and promptly described her as a "little pig running backwards."

  LeBaron, however, like most entrepreneurs of the power elite, suffered from a restless mind and a driving urge to tackle a new project lying over the next hill. After nearly a year his interest in the old blimp began to wane.

  Then one evening in a waterfront saloon he met an old beach rat by the name of Buck Caesar, who operated a backwater salvage company with the grandiloquent title "Exotic Artifact Ventures, Inc."

  During a conversation over several rounds of iced rum, Caesar spoke the magic word that has fired the human mind into insanity for five thousand years and probably caused more grief than half the wars-- treasure.

  After listening to Caesar spin tales of Spanish galleons littering the waters of the Caribbean, their cargoes of gold and silver mingled with the coral, even a shrewd financial manipulator with the acute business sense of LeBaron was hooked. With a handshake they formed a partnership.

  LeBaron's interest in the Prosperteer was revived. The blimp made a perfect platform for spotting potential shipwreck sites from the air. Airplanes moved too fast for aerial survey, while helicopters had a limited flying time and churned up the surface of the water with wash from their rotor blades. The blimp could remain airborne for two days and cruise at a walk. From an altitude of 400 feet, the straight lines of a man-made object could be detected by a sharp eye a hundred feet beneath a calm and clear sea.

  Dawn was crawling over the Florida Straits as the ten-man ground crew assembled around the Prosperteer and began a preflight inspection. The new sun caught the huge envelope covered by morning dew, giving off an iridescent effect like that from a soap bubble. The blimp stood in the center of a concrete runway whose expansion cracks were lined with weeds. A slight breeze blew in from the straits and she swung around the mooring mast until her bulbous nose faced into it.

  Most of the ground crew were young, deeply tanned, and casually dressed in an assortment of shorts, bathing suits, and denim cutoffs. They took scant notice as a Cadillac stretch limousine drove across the runway and stopped at the large truck that served as the blimp's repair shop, crew chief's office, and communications room.

  The chauffeur opened the door and LeBaron unlimbered from the rear seat, followed by Buck Caesar, who immediately made for the blimp's gondola with a roll of nautical charts tucked under one arm. LeBaron, looking a very trim and healthy sixty-five, towered above everyone at six foot seven. His eyes were the color of light oak, the graying hair combed just so, and he possessed the distant, preoccupied gaze of a man whose thoughts were several hours in the future.

  He bent down and spoke for a few moments to an attractive woman who leaned from the car. He kissed her lightly on the cheek, closed the car door, and began walking toward the Prosperteer.

  The crew chief, a studious-looking man wearing a spotless white shop coat, came over and shook LeBaron's outstretched hand. "Fuel tanks are topped off, Mr. LeBaron. The preflight check list is completed."

  "How's the buoyancy?"

  "You'll have to adjust for an extra five hundred pounds from the dampness."

  LeBaron nodded thoughtfully. "She'll lighten in the heat of the day."

  "The controls should feel more responsive. The elevator cables were showing signs of rust, so I had them replaced."

  "What's the weather look like?"

  "Low scattered clouds most of the day. Little chance of rain. You'll be bucking a five-mile-an-hour head wind from the southeast on the way out."

  "And a tail wind on the return trip. I prefer that."

  "Same radio frequency as the last trip?"

  "Yes, we'll report our position and condition, using normal voice communication, every half hour. If we spot a promising target we'll transmit in code."

  The crew chief nodded. "Understood."

  Without further conversation LeBaron climbed the ladder to the gondola and settled in the pilot's seat. He was joined by his copilot, Joe Cavilla, a sixty-year-old, sad-eyed, dour individual who seldom opened his mouth except to yawn or sneeze. His family had immigrated to America from Brazil when he was sixteen and he had joined the Navy, flying blimps until the last airship unit was formally disbanded in 1964. Cavilla had simply showed up one day, impressed LeBaron with his expertise in lighter-than-air craft, and was hired.

  The third member of the crew was Buck Caesar. He wore a constant smile on a gentle, middle-aged face that had the texture of cowhide, but his gaze was shrewd, and the body held the firmness of boxer. He sat hunched over a small table contemplating his charts, drawing a series of squares near a sector of the Bahama Channel.

  Blue smoke burst from the exhaust stacks as LeBaron turned over the engines. The ground crew untied a number of canvas sacks containing ballast shot from the gondola. One crewman, the "butterfly catcher," held up a windsock on a long pole so LeBaron could note the exact direction of the wind.

  LeBaron gave a hand signal to the crew chief. A wooden chock was pulled from the landing wheel, the nose coupling was released from the mooring mast, and the men holding the bow ropes heaved to one side and let go. When the airship was free and clear of the mast, LeBaron eased the throttles forward and spun the large elevator wheel next to his seat. The Prosperteer pointed her comic-opera snout upward at a fifty-degree angle and slowly drove into the sky.

  The ground crew watched until the huge airship gradually faded from view over the blue-green waters of the straits. Then their interest turned briefly to the limousine and the vague feminine shape behind the tinted windows.

  Jessie LeBaron shared her husband's passion for outdoor adventure, but she was an orderly woman, who preferred organizing charity balls and political fund ra
isers over a time-wasting hunt for dubious treasure. Vibrant and bouncy, with a mouth that had a repertory of a dozen different smiles, she was six months past fifty but looked closer to thirty-seven. Jessie was slightly heavy-bodied but firm, her facial skin was creamy smooth, and she had allowed her hair to turn a natural salt-and-pepper. The eyes were large and dark and bore no trace of the blank look usually left by plastic surgery.

  When she could no longer see the blimp, Jessie spoke into the limousine's intercom. "Angelo, please drive back to the hotel."

  The chauffeur, a somber Cuban with the etched face of a postage stamp engraving, touched two fingers to the brim of his cap and nodded.

  The ground crew watched the long Cadillac turn and head through the deserted front gate of the former naval base. Then someone produced a volleyball. Quickly they drew out the boundaries and set up a net. After choosing up sides, they began batting the ball back and forth to fight the boredom of waiting.

  Inside the air-conditioned truck, the crew chief and a radio operator acknowledged and recorded the reports from the blimp. LeBaron religiously transmitted every thirty minutes, never varying more than a few seconds, describing his approximate position, any changes in weather, and vessels passing below.

  Then, at half past two in the afternoon, the reports stopped. The radio operator tried to raise the Prosperteer, but there was no response. Five o'clock came and went with still no word. Outside, the ground crew wearily ceased their play and crowded around the door to the radio compartment as the uneasiness inside began to grow. At six o'clock, with no sign of the blimp over the sea, the crew chief put in a call to the Coast Guard.

  What no one knew, or possibly suspected, was that Raymond LeBaron and his friends on board the Prosperteer had vanished in a mystery that went far beyond any mere treasure hunt.

  <<2>>

  Ten days later, the President of the United. States stared pensively out the window of his limousine at the passing landscape and idly drummed his fingers on one knee. His eyes didn't see the picturesque estates amid the horse country of Potomac, Maryland. He took scant notice of the sun gleaming on the coats of the Thoroughbreds roaming the rolling pastures. The images that reflected in his mind coursed around the strange events that had literally hurled him into the White House.