Escorted by a protective ring of deputies, courtesy of Sheriff Eagan, the three of them- Pitt, Giordino, and Pat O'Connell- boarded a NUMA jet and took off for the nation's capital. As the turquoise painted Cessna Citation Ultra V jet banked over the snow-mantled peaks of the San Juan Mountains and set a course northeast, Pat relaxed in her leather seat, reached out, and took Pitt's hand in hers.

"You're sure my daughter is safe?"

He smiled and gently squeezed her hand. "For the tenth time, she's in the capable hands of the FBI. You'll have her in your arms in a few hours."

"I can't picture us living like hunted animals the rest of our lives."

"Won't happen," Pitt assured her. "Once the lunatic nutcases of the Fourth Empire are rooted out, arrested, and convicted, we'll all be able to live normal lives again."

Pat looked over at Giordino, who had fallen asleep before the wheels lifted off the runway. "He doesn't waste any time drifting off, does he?"

"Al can sleep anywhere, anytime. He's like a cat." He held up her hand to his lips and give her fingers a light kiss. "You should get some sleep, too. You must be dead on your feet."

It was the first display of affection Pitt had offered since they'd met, and Pat felt a pleasurable warmth course through her. "My mind is too busy for me to be tired." She pulled her notebook from her case. "I'll use the flight to begin an initial analysis of the inscriptions."

"The aircraft has a computer facility in the rear cabin, if it would be of any help."

"Does it have a scanner to convert my notes onto a disk?"

"I believe so."

The fatigue seemed to ebb from her face. "That would be a great help. A pity my film was ruined after being immersed in the water."

Pitt reached down into his pants pocket, retrieved a plastic packet, and dropped it into her lap. "A complete photo survey of the chamber."

She was quite surprised as she opened the packet and found six canisters of film. "Where in the world did you get these?"

"Compliments of the Fourth Empire," he answered casually. "Al and I interrupted their photo shoot in the chamber. They were finishing up when we arrived, so I'm assuming they recorded the entire text. I'll have the rolls developed first thing in the NUMA photo lab."

"Oh, thank you," Pat said excitedly, kissing him on a cheek thick with stubble. "My notes only covered a smattering of the inscriptions." As if he were merely a passing stranger on a busy street, she turned away from him and hurried toward the aircraft's computer cabin.

Pitt eased his aching body from his seat and walked forward to the compact little galley, opened a refrigerator, and lifted out a soft drink can. Sadly, to his way of thinking, Admiral Sandecker permitted no alcoholic beverages on board NUMA ships or aircraft.

He stopped and stared down at the wooden crate that was firmly strapped in an empty seat. The black obsidian skull had not been out of his sight from the time he carried it from the chamber. He could only imagine the empty eye sockets staring at him through the wood of the crate. He sat in a seat across the aisle and raised the antenna of a Globalstar satellite telephone and punched a stored number. His call was linked to one of seventy orbiting satellites that relayed it to another satellite that relayed the signal to earth, where it was connected with a public telephone network.

Pitt gazed out the port at the passing clouds, knowing the party on the other end seldom answered before the seventh or eighth ring. Finally, on the tenth, a deep voice came through the receiver. "I'm here."

"St. Julien."

"Dirk!" St. Julien Perlmutter boomed, recognizing the voice. "If I'd known it was you, I'd have answered sooner."

"And step out of character? I don't think so."

Pitt could easily picture Perlmutter, all four hundred pounds of him in his ritual silk paisley pajamas, buried amid a mountain of nautical books in the carriage house he called home. Raconteur, gourmand, connoisseur, and acclaimed marine history authority, with a library collection of the world's rarest nautical books, private letters, papers, and plans on almost every ship ever built, he was a walking encyclopedia of man and the sea.

"Where are you, my boy?"

"Thirty-five thousand feet over the Rocky Mountains."

"You couldn't wait to call me in Washington?"

"I wanted to shift a research project into first gear at the first opportunity."

"How can I help you?"

Pitt briefly explained the mysterious chamber and the inscriptions on the walls. Perlmutter listened thoughtfully, interrupting to ask an occasional question. When Pitt finished, Perlmutter inquired, "What specifically do you have in mind?"

"You have files you've accumulated on pre-Columbian contact in the Americas."

"A whole room full of data. Material and theories on all the seafarers who visited North, Central, and South America long before Columbus."

"Do you recall any tales of ancient seafarers who traveled deep inside other continents and built underground chambers? Built them for the sole purpose of leaving a message for those who came later? Were such acts ever mentioned in recorded history?"

"I can't recall any off the top of my head. There are any number of accounts of ancient trade between the peoples of the Americas and seafarers from Europe and Africa. It's thought that extensive mining of copper and tin to make bronze took place as far back as five thousand years ago."

"Where?" asked Pitt.

"Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin."

"Is it true?"

"I, for one, believe so," Perlmutter continued. "There is evidence of ancient mining for lead in Kentucky, serpentine in Pennsylvania, and mica in North Carolina. The mines were worked for many centuries before Christ. Then, mysteriously, the unknown miners vanished within a very short time, leaving their tools and other artifacts of their presence right where they were dropped, not to mention stone sculptures, altars, and dolmens. Dolmens are large prehistoric horizontal stone slabs supported by two or more vertical stones."

"Couldn't they have been created by the Indians?"

"American Indians rarely produced stone sculptures and built few, if any, monuments out of stone. Mining engineers, after studying the ancient excavations, estimate that over seven hundred million pounds of copper were removed and transported away. No one believes the Indians were responsible, because the copper that has been found by archaeologists amounts to only a few hundred pounds' worth of beads and baubles. The early Indians worked very little metal."

"But no indication of underground chambers with enigmatic inscriptions?"

Perlmutter paused. "None that I'm aware of. The miners of prehistory left few signs of pottery or extensive records of inscriptions. Only some logographs and pictographs that are for the most part unreadable. We can only guess at them being, perhaps, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Norsemen, or possibly even an earlier race. There is evidence in the southwest of Celtic mines, and in Arizona it is claimed that Roman artifacts were found outside of Tucson just after the turn of the century. So who can say? Most archaeologists are unwilling to go out on a limb and sanctify pre-Columbian contact. They simply refuse to buy diffusion."

"A spread of cultural influence from one people to another through contact."