"Not much to tell." Helm spoke slowly. "Making a positive identification from their teeth has become difficult. Preliminary examinations suggest that their dental work came from South American dentists."

Pitt appeared dubious. "Your people can distinguish the difference in dental techniques of different countries?"

"A good forensic pathologist who specializes in identification through dental records can often name the city where the cavities were filled."

"So they were foreign nationals," Giordino observed.

"I thought their English was a bit odd," said Pitt.

Helm stared over his reading glasses. "You noticed?"

"Too perfect without an American accent, although two of them spoke with a New England twang."

Little scribbled on a yellow legal notepad. "Mr. Pitt, Commander Gunn has informed us that the murderers you apprehended in Telluride referred to themselves as members of the Fourth Empire."

"They also referred to it as the New Destiny."

"As you and Commander Gunn have already speculated, the Fourth Empire may be the successor to the Third Reich."

"Anything is possible."

Giordino pulled a gigantic cigar from his breast pocket and rolled it around in his mouth without lighting it, out of consideration for the people at the table who didn't smoke. Sandecker shot him a murderous look at seeing that the label advertised it as one from his private stock. "I'm not a smart man," Giordino said modestly. The Humble Herbert routine was an act. Giordino had been third in his class at the Air Force Academy. "For the life of me, I don't see how an organization with a worldwide army of elite killers can operate for years without the finest intelligence services in the world figuring out who they are and what they're up to."

"I'm the first to admit we're stymied," said FBI's Helm frankly. "As you know, crimes without motives are the most difficult to solve."

Little nodded in agreement. "Until your confrontation with these people in Telluride, anyone else who came in contact with them did not live to describe the event."

"Thanks to Dirk and Dr. O'Connell," said Gunn, "we now have a trail to follow."

"A few charred teeth make for a pretty faint trail," offered Sandecker.

"True," agreed Helm, "but there is the enigma of that chamber inside the Pandora Mine. If they go to such extremes to keep scientists from studying the inscriptions, slaughter innocent people, and commit suicide when apprehended- well, they must have a compelling motive."

"The inscriptions," Pitt said. "Why go to such lengths to hide their meaning?"

"They can't be overjoyed at the outcome," said Gunn. "They lost six of their professional killers and failed to secure photographs of the inscriptions."

"It's bizarre that such an ordinary archaeological discovery would cost so many lives," Sandecker said expressionlessly.

"Hardly an ordinary discovery," Pat said quickly. "If it is not a hoax perpetrated by old hard-rock miners, it could very well prove to be the archaeological find of the century."

"Have you been able to decipher any of the symbols?" asked Pitt.

"After a cursory examination of my notes, all I can tell you is that the symbols are alphabetic. That is, writing that expresses single sounds. Our alphabet, for example, uses twenty-six symbols. The symbols in the chamber suggest an alphabet of thirty, with twelve symbols representing numerals, which I managed to translate into a very advanced mathematics system. Whoever these people were, they discovered zero and calculated with the same number of symbols as modern man. Until I can program them into a computer and study them in their entirety, there is little else I can tell you."

"Sounds to me like you've done extremely well with what little you have had in such a short time," Helm complimented her.

"I'm confident we can crack the meaning of the inscriptions. Unlike the complicated logosyllabic writing systems of the Egyptians, Chinese, or Cretans, which are as yet undeciphered, this one seems unique in its simplicity."

"Do you think the black obsidian skull found in the chamber forms a link to the inscriptions?" asked Gunn.

Pat shook her head. "I can't begin to guess. Like the crystal skulls that have come out of Mexico and Tibet, its purpose could be ritual. There are some people- not accredited archaeologists, I might add- who think the crystal skulls came in a set of thirteen that can record vibrations and focus them into holographic images."

"Do you believe that?" asked Little seriously.

Pat laughed. "No, I'm pretty much of a pragmatist. I prefer hardcore proof before I advance wild theories."

Little looked at her pensively. "Do you think the obsidian skull-"

"Skulls," Pitt corrected him.

Pat gave him a queer look. "Since when do we have more than one?"

"Since yesterday afternoon. Thanks to a good friend, St. Julien Perlmutter, I obtained another one."

Sandecker looked at him intently. "Where is it now?"

"Along with the skull from Telluride, it was taken to NUMA's chemical lab for analysis. Obsidian obviously can't be dated by conventional means, but a study under instrumentation might tell us something about those who created it."

"Do you know where it came from?" asked Pat, burning with curiosity.

Without going into tedious detail, Pitt briefly described the finding of the skull inside the derelict Madras by the crew of the Paloverde in Antarctica. He then told of his meeting and conversation with Christine Mender-Husted, and how she graciously gave him the skull after accepting Perlmutter's offer for her ancestor's papers.

"Did she say where the crew and passengers of the Madras discovered the skull?"

Pitt tantalized her and the others seated around the table by taking his time to reply. Finally, he said, "According to the ship's log, the Madras was bound from Bombay to Liverpool when it was struck by a violent hurricane-"

"Cyclone," Sandecker lectured. "To a sailor, hurricanes occur only in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific oceans. Typhoons are in the Western Pacific and cyclones in the Indian Ocean."

"I stand corrected," Pitt sighed. Admiral Sandecker loved to show off his inexhaustible reserve of sea trivia. "As I was saying, the Madras ran into a violent storm and heavy seas that lasted for nearly two weeks. She was battered and driven far south of her course. When the wind and waters finally calmed, it was found that their water barrels had been damaged and much of their drinking supply lost. The captain then consulted his charts and made the decision to stop at a barren chain of uninhabited islands in the subantarctic south Indian Ocean. Now known as the Crozet Islands, they form a tiny overseas territory of France. He dropped anchor off a small island called St. Paul that was very rugged, with a volcanic mountain rising in its center. While the crew repaired the water barrels and began filling them from a stream, one of the passengers, a British army colonel on his way home with his wife and two daughters after serving ten years in India, decided to go on a little hunting expedition.

"The only real game on the island were elephant seals and penguins, but the colonel in his ignorance thought the island might teem with four-legged game. After climbing nearly a thousand feet up the mountain, he and his friends came upon a footpath laid with stones worn smooth with age. They followed the path to an opening hewn in the rock in the shape of an archway. They entered and saw a passageway that led deeper into the mountain."