"Your conditions were you'd speak with only one man. We took that to mean no interpreter for our side. And since you do not wish to speak Spanish or English, I am the only ranking government official who has a tongue for Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs."

"You speak it very well."

"My family immigrated to America from the town of Escampo. They taught it to me when I was quite young."

"I know Escampo; a small village with proud people who barely survive."

"You claim you'll end poverty in Mexico. The President is most interested in your programs."

"Is that why he sent you?" Topiltzin asked.

Rivas nodded. "He wishes to open a line of communication. "

There was silence as a grim smile crossed Topiltzin's features. "A shrewd man. Because of my country's economic collapse he knows my movement will sweep the ruling Partido Revolutionary Institutional out of office, and he fears an upheaval in U.S. and Mexican relations. So he plays both ends against the middle."

"I can't read the President's mind."

"He will soon learn the great majority of Mexican people are finished with being doormats for the ruling class and wealthy. They are sick of political fraud and corruption. They are tired of digging garbage in the slums. They will suffer no more."

"By building a utopia from the dust of the Aztecs?"

"Your own nation would do well to return to the ways of your founding fathers."

"The Aztecs were the biggest butchers in the Americas. To fashion a modern government on ancient barbarian beliefs is . . ." Rivas paused.

He almost said "idiotic." Instead, he pulled back and said, "naive."

Topiltzin's round face tensed and his hands worked compulsively. "You forget, it was the Spanish conquistadors who slaughtered our common ancestors."

"Spain could say the same about the Moors, which would hardly justify restoring the Inquisition."

"What does your President want from me?"

"Merely peace and prosperity in Mexico," replied Rivas, holding the line. "And a promise you will not steer a course toward Communism."

"I am not a Marxist. I detest Communists as much as he does. No armed guerrillas exist among my followers."

"He'll be glad to hear it."

"Our new Aztec nation will attain greatness once the criminally wealthy, the corrupt officials, and present government and army leaders are sacrificed."

Rivas wasn't sure he interpreted right. "You're talking about the execution of thousands of people."

"No, Mr. Rivas, I'm talking sacrificial victims for our revered gods, Quetzalcoad, Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca."

Rivas looked at him, not comprehending. "Sacrificial victims?"

Topiltzin did not reply.

Rivas, staring at the stoic face, suddenly knew. "No!" he burst out.

"You can't be serious."

"Our country will again be known by its Aztec name of Tenochtitian,"

Topiltzin continued impassively. "We shall be a religious state.

Nahuatl will become our official language. Population will be brought under control by stern measures. Foreign industries will be the property of the state. Only the native born can be allowed to live within our borders. All others will be expelled from the country."

Rivas was stunned. He sat white-faced, listening in silence.

Topiltzin went on without pause. "No more goods are to be purchased from the United States nor will you be allowed to buy our oil. Our debts to world banks will be declared null and void, and all foreign assets confiscated. I also demand the return of our lands in California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. To ensure this return I intend to turn loose millions of my people across the border."

Topiltzin's threats were nothing short of frightening. Rivas's distraught mind could not conceive the terrible consequences.

"Pure madness," Rivas said desperately. "The President will never listen to such absurd demands."

"He will not believe what I say?"

"No sane man would."

Rivas in his uneasiness had stepped too far.

Topiltzin slowly rose to his feet, eyes unblinking, head lowered, and spoke in a toneless voice. "Then I must send him a message he will understand."

He raised his hands over his head, arms outstretched toward the dark sky. As if on cue four Indians appeared wearing white capes clasped at the neck and nothing else. Approaching from all sides, they quickly subdued Rivas, who froze in astonishment. They carried him to the stone altar sculpted with the skulls and crossbones and threw him on his back, holding him down by the arms and legs.

At first Rivas was too dazed to protest, too incredulous with shock to comprehend Topiltzin's intention. When horrorstruck realization came, he cried out.

"Oh, God! No! No!"

Topiltzin coldly ignored the terrified American, the pitiful fright in his eyes, and stepped to the side of the altar. He gave a nod, and one of the men ripped away Rivas's shirt, exposing the chest.

"Don't do this!" Rivas pleaded.

A razor-sharp obsidian knife seemed to materialize in Topiltzin's upraised left hand. The moonlight glinted from the black, glassy blade as it hung poised.

Rivas screamed-the last sound he would ever make.

Then the knife plunged.

The tall column-statues looked down upon the bloody act with stone-cold indifference. They had witnessed the horrible disPlay of inhuman cruelty thousands of times, a thousand years ago. There was no pity in their timeworn chiseled eyes as Rivas's still-beating heart was torn from his chest.

Despite the people and activity around him, Pitt was captivated by the dense silence of the cold north. There was an incredible stillness about it that seemed to overwhelm the voices and sounds of machinery. He felt as though he were standing in numbing solitude inside a refrigerator on a desolate world.

Daylight finally appeared, filtered by a peculiar gray mist that permitted no shadows. By midmorning the sun began to burn away the icy haze and the sky turned a soft orange-white. The ethereal light made the rocky peaks overlooking the fjord look like tombstones in a snow-covered cemetery.

The scene surrounding the crash site was beginning to resemble a military invasion. A fleet of five Air Force helicopters had been the first to arrive, ferrying an Army Special Service Force of heavily armed and determined-looking men who immediately cordoned off the fuselage and began patrolling the entire area. An hour later, Federal Aviation accident investigators landed and set about marking the scattered wreckage for removal. They were followed by a team of pathologists who tagged and removed the bodies to the helicopters, which quickly airlifted them to the morgue at Tule Air Force Base.

The Navy was represented by Commander Knight and the unexpected appearance of the Polar Explorer. All halted their grisly chores and turned their eyes toward the sea as a series of loud whoops from the ship's siren echoed -off the jagged mountains.

Dodging newly-formed ice calves, floating low and opaque, and the winter's first bergs, which resembled the ruins of Gothic castles, the Polar Explorer came about slowly and entered the mouth of the fjord. for a time the ash-blue sea hissed quietly past the scarred, and then it turned to white.

The immense prow of the icebreaker effortlessly bulldozed a path through the ice pack, heaving to less than fifty meters from the wreckage.