The Aussie sat in the chopper's forward right seat while a Norwegian piloted. Everyone else was huddled in an unheated rear compartment. They'd been delayed three hours by mechanical problems with the Huey. No one had stayed behind. They all seemed eager to know what was out there. Even Dorothea and Christl had calmed, though they sat as far away from each other as possible. Christl now wore a different-colored parka, her bloodied one from the plane replaced at the base.
They found the frozen horseshoe-shaped bay from the map, a fence of icebergs guarding its entrance. Blinding light reflected off the bergs' blue ice.
The chopper crossed a mountain ridge with peaks too sheer for snow to cling to. Visibility was excellent and winds were weak, only a few wispy cirrus clouds loafing around in a bright blue sky.
Ahead he spotted something different.
Little surface snow. Instead, the ground and rock walls were colored with irregular lashings of black dolerite, gray granite, brown shale, and white limestone. Granite boulders littered the landscape in all shapes and sizes.
'A dry valley,' Taperell said. 'No rain for two million years. Back then mountains rose faster than glaciers could cut their way through, so the ice was trapped on the other side. Winds sweep down off the plateau from the south and keep the ground nearly ice-and snow-free. Lots of these in the southern portion of the continent. Not as many up this way.'
'Has this one been explored?' Malone asked.
'We have fossil hunters who visit. The place is a treasure trove of them. Meteorites, too. But the visits are limited by the treaty.'
The cabin appeared, a strange apparition lying at the base of a forbidding, trackless peak.
The chopper swept over the pristine rocky terrain, then wheeled back over a landing site and descended onto gravelly sand.
Everyone clambered out, Malone last, the sleds with equipment handed to him. Taperell gave him a wink as he passed Malone his pack, signaling that he'd done as requested. Noisy rotors and blasts of freezing air assaulted him.
Two radios were included in the bundles. Malone had already arranged for a check-in six hours from now. Taperell had told them that the cabin would offer shelter, if need be. But the weather looked good for the next ten to twelve hours. Daylight wasn't a problem since the sun wouldn't set again until March.
Malone gave a thumbs-up and the chopper lifted away. The rhythmic thwack of rotor blades receded as it disappeared over the ridgeline.
Silence engulfed them.
Each of his breaths cracked and pinged, the air as dry as a Sahara wind. But no sense of peace mixed with the tranquility.
The cabin stood fifty yards away.
'What do we do now?' Dorothea asked.
He started off. 'I say we begin with the obvious.'
EIGHTY-FIVE
MALONE APPROACHED THE CABIN. TAPERELL HAD BEEN RIGHT. Seventy years old, yet its white-brown walls looked as if they'd just been delivered from the sawmill. Not a speck of rust on a single nailhead. A coil of rope hanging near the door looked new. Shutters shielded two windows. He estimated the building was maybe twenty feet square with overhanging eaves and a pitched tin roof pierced by a pipe stack chimney. A gutted seal lay against one wall, gray-black, its glassy eyes and whiskers still there, lying as if merely sleeping rather than frozen.
The door possessed no latch so he pushed it inward and raised his tinted goggles. Sides of the seal meat and sledges hung from ironbraced ceiling rafters. The same shelves from the pictures, fashioned from crates, stacked against one brown-stained wall with the same bottled and canned food, the labels still legible. Two bunks with fur sleeping bags, table, chairs, iron stove, and radio were all there. Even the magazines from the photo remained. It seemed as if the occupants had left yesterday and could return at any moment.
'This is disturbing,' Christl said.
He agreed.
Since no dust mites or insects existed to break down any organic debris, he realized the Germans' sweat still lay frozen on the floor, along with flakes of their skin and bodily excrescences-and that Nazi presence hung heavy in the hut's silent air.
'Grandfather was here,' Dorothea said, approaching the table and the magazines. 'These are Ahnenerbe publications.'
He shook away the uncomfortable feeling, stepped to where the symbol should be carved in the floor, and saw it. The same one from the book cover, along with another crude etching.
'It's our family crest,' Christl said.
'Seems Grandfather staked his personal claim,' Malone noted.
'What do you mean?' Werner asked.
Henn, who stood near the door, seemed to understand and grasped an iron bar by the stove. Not a speck of rust infected its surface.
'I see you know the answer, too,' Malone said.
Henn said nothing. He just forced the flat iron tip beneath the floorboards and pried them upward, revealing a black yawn in the ground and the top of a wooden ladder.
'How did you know?' Christl asked him.
'This cabin sits in an odd spot. Makes no sense, unless it's protecting something. When I saw the photo in the book, I realized what the answer had to be.'
'We'll need flashlights,' Werner said.
'Two are on the sled, outside. I had Taperell pack them, along with extra batteries.'
SMITH AWOKE. HE WAS BACK IN HIS APARTMENT. 8:20 AM. HE'D managed only three hours' sleep, but what an excellent day already. He was ten million dollars richer, thanks to Diane McCoy, and he'd made a point to Langford Ramsey that he wasn't someone to be taken lightly.
He switched on the television and found a Charmed rerun. He loved that show. Something about three sexy witches appealed to him. Naughty and nice. Which also seemed best how to describe Diane McCoy. She'd coolly stood by during his confrontation with Ramsey, clearly a dissatisfied woman who wanted more-and apparently knew how to get it.
He watched as Paige orbed from her house. What a trick. To dematerialize from one place, then rematerialize at another. He was somewhat like that. Slipping in, doing his job, then just as deftly slipping away.
His cell phone dinged. He recognized the number.
'And what may I do for you?' he asked Diane McCoy as he answered.
'A little more cleanup.'
'Seems the day for that.'
'The two from Asheville who almost got to Scofield. They work for me and know far too much. I wish we had time for finesse, but we don't. They have to be eliminated.'
'And you have a way?'
'I know exactly how we're going to do it.'
DOROTHEA WATCHED AS COTTON MALONE DESCENDED INTO THE opening beneath the cabin. What had her grandfather found? She'd been apprehensive about coming, both for the risks and unwanted personal involvements, but she was glad now that she'd made the trip. Her pack rested a few feet away, the gun inside bringing her renewed comfort. She'd overreacted on the plane. Her sister knew how to play her, keep her off balance, rub the rawest nerve in her body, and she told herself to quit taking the bait.
Werner stood with Henn, near the hut's door. Christl sat at the radio desk.
Malone's light played across the darkness below.
'It's a tunnel,' he called out. 'Stretches toward the mountain.'
