It was an opening, and she had to grab for it. "Yes, I do. It's my right to know a hell of a lot more than I do right now. I'm sick of 'classified.' I want to know what you know."

"I thought that was where we were heading when you walked into the kitchen this evening."

"And you tried to distract me by bringing everything down to a personal level."

"No." He smiled. "I didn't need to do that. Everything has been on an intensely personal level between us since the moment we met. Haven't you noticed?"

She couldn't deny it. Fear, anger, frustration, and now pity had drawn them together in the most basic fashion. "I want to know about those plates on the sub."

He was silent a moment, then said, "Ten years ago much of the Atlantic fleet, including Silent Thunder, was engaged in military exercises in the North Sea. Then the fleet commander radioed Captain Vladzar and ordered him to break off the exercises. We were told to navigate the sub toward a remote atoll about four hundred miles south of the fleet."

"Why?"

"We didn't know," Kirov said. "Usually the fleet command would give us some indication why, but this time they were damnably cryptic. We were all nervous about this, because we were carrying warheads with bacteriological agents that were notoriously difficult to contain. The sooner those capsules were off the sub, the better for all of us."

"Germs?"

His lips tightened. "Why are you so horrified? The U.S. has its own germ warfare program. It was just a nasty fact of life. Anyway, I assumed we were going to a testing range for them, but I soon found out I was wrong. We were on a recovery mission."

She frowned. "Recovering what?"

"One large capsule, sixteen feet long."

"A misplaced weapon?"

"No, the captain was being asked to endanger the lives of everyone on his ship for a treasure hunt."

"What?"

"Oh, it wasn't just any treasure. This was special. The treasure was seized from Czechoslovakia during the years of Soviet occupation. There were the requisite jewels and priceless statues, but there was one object there that made the cache truly priceless."

"What object?"

He leaned closer. "Have you ever heard of Czechoslovakia's Golden Cradle?"

She shook her head. "Should I have?"

"Most Eastern Europeans know the legend. Supposedly, a wise, mystical Czech princess in the second century A.D. tossed her son's golden cradle into the depths of the Vitava River, claiming that the country would emerge from chaos and reach greatness only after it reappeared. Both Princess Libushe and the story were thought to be mythology, only remotely linked with any kind of reality. Rather like the King Arthur legend."

"Are you telling me the cradle exists?"

"Yes, I've seen it."

"When?"

"Soviet engineers uncovered it during a construction project in the 1950s in the Vitava River. It's been authenticated. The cradle is almost two thousand years old, but it's beautiful to behold. There are markings on it that link it to Libushe's eldest son."

"That's amazing."

"Yes, it's something that many people would give anything to possess. Czech politicians, insurgents, tycoons, art collectors."

Hannah could imagine that to be true. Both the legend and the prophecy would make it even more valuable than the actual material was worth. She had run across that factor during the Titanic expedition and this treasure was even more mystical. "How did Pavski come into this?"

"Why, my dear, Igor Pavski was the fleet commander."

"What?"

"Did you think he was a common criminal? Oh, no, Pavski is totally brilliant and was one of the youngest officers ever to become commander of the fleet."

"And he'd risk losing that high office to go after the cradle?"

"He'd risk anything. Pavski had an obsession for obtaining the cradle from childhood. He had a general idea where the cache was located, and he spent months secretly directing resources to find it. It was under the pretense of finding an undetonated classified missile. After he found it, he redirected my vessel from the testing trials to launch a recovery operation. We brought it aboard without much trouble."

"When did you realize it wasn't a weapon?"

"Almost immediately, but most of the crew still didn't know. The captain was furious that we'd been forced to go hundreds of miles out of our way with an unstable bacteriological agent aboard-all for Pavski's personal quest. Captain Vladzar, the first officer, I, and a few other senior officers made a stand against him and we were promptly relieved of our commands and placed under arrest. Some Pavski loyalists had been transferred in just before the mission, so I suspect Pavski knew we wouldn't be happy. We were boarded, taken off the sub, and placed into the brig of a destroyer."

"Along with the treasure?"

"No, Pavski had other plans. He brought in a Captain Heiser to take command, and Heiser headed for coordinates that Pavski gave him. Heiser was brilliant at navigation and a computer genius, but his main qualification for Pavski was that he always obeyed without question." His lips twisted. "But the crewmen whom Pavski had brought on board with Heiser weren't familiar with bacteria containment, and they screwed up." He added bitterly, "Damn them to hell. The capsule drum was ruptured and the bacteria were released. The crew became infected."

"My God."

"Heiser radioed the fleet commander for assistance, but all ships in the area were ordered to stand down. They couldn't risk spreading the infection."

She shuddered at the thought. Alone and sick and no one to help them. "It reminds me of the Kursk."

"Yes," he said harshly. "And those were my men, my friends, on that sub. Their only crime was trusting their government and believing in their commanding officers. Then Heiser did something smart; he discharged the capsule and tried to use its location as a bargaining chip against the fleet commander. I have transcripts of the radio communications, and it was obvious that Pavski was trying to persuade Heiser to disclose where he'd hidden the cradle. Heiser wouldn't tell him. He was trying to leverage his knowledge for a rescue attempt that never came. The bacteriological agent did its work quickly, as it was designed to do. Everyone aboard was dead within twenty-four hours. The strain was engineered to die quickly without live hosts, so after a brief period of quarantine, the Silent Thunder was boarded and searched. None of the logs or journals or the captain's personal books gave any indication of where the cradle was hidden, and time ran out for Pavski. The outbreak of disease on the sub made the government very nervous. They were in the process of denying they had such weapons to the U.S. Solution: Cover up. Silent Thunder had to disappear quickly. They insisted the sub be immediately decommissioned and taken to the shipyards in Helsinki to be scrapped."

"Which would have happened if it hadn't been for a corrupt Russian bureaucrat."

"Yes, and our Fleet Commander Pavski scrambled to cover up his involvement in the crew's deaths. It was difficult to do. But fear and bribes can accomplish miracles. He kept his post and was soon busy climbing higher."

"With all those deaths at his door?"

"He had power. Anyway, in the intervening years, there was a persistent rumor that Heiser might have hidden the location of his prize somewhere on the Silent Thunder. It was based on something he said to his father on the radio in the last hours of his life. He quoted an obscure Polish writer, which people later traced to a poem in which the narrator hides the key to his treasure in the room where he lay dying. And at one point he told his father how he'd like to go back with him to the Rioni River, where they'd gone when he was a child. There were a few other references that might have been clues, but no one could make the connection. No one really thought that much of it, since the sub was thought to have been scrapped."