'I told her those records were worthwhile,' Dorothea said.
Malone faced Taperell. 'Seems that's where we're going.'
Taperell pointed to the map. 'This area here, on the coast, is all ice shelf with seawater beneath. It extends inland about five miles in what would be a respectable bay, if not frozen. The cabin is on the other side of a ridge, maybe a mile inland on what would be the bay's west shore. We can drop you there and pick you back up when you're ready. Like I said, reckon you're in luck with the weather, it's a scorcher out there today.'
Minus thirteen degrees Celsius wasn't his idea of tropical, but he got the point. 'We'll need emergency gear, just in case.'
'Already have two sleds prepared. We were expecting you.'
'You don't ask a lot of questions, do you?' Malone quizzed.
Taperell shook his head. 'No, mate. I'm just here to do my job.'
'Then let's eat that tucker and get going.'
EIGHTY-FOUR
'MR. PRESIDENT,' DAVIS SAID. 'WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO simply explain yourself. No stories, no riddles. It's awfully late, and I don't have the energy to be patient and respectful.'
'Edwin, I like you. Most of the assholes I deal with tell me either what they think I want to hear or what I don't need to know. You're different. You tell me what I have to hear. No sugarcoating, just straight up. That's why when you told me about Ramsey, I listened. Anybody else, I would have let it go in one ear and out the other. But not you. Yes, I was skeptical, but you were right.'
'What have you done?' Davis asked.
She'd sensed something, too, in the president's tone.
'I simply gave him what he wanted. The appointment. Nothing rocks a man to sleep better than success. I should know-it's been used on me many times.' Daniels' gaze drifted to the refrigerated compartment. 'It's what's in there that fascinates me. A record of a people we've never known. They lived a long time ago. Did things. Thought things. Yet we had no idea they existed.'
Daniels reached into his pocket and removed a piece of paper. 'Look at this.'
'It's a petroglyph from the Hathor Temple at Dendera. I saw it a few years ago. The thing's huge, with towering columns. It's fairly recent, as far as Egypt goes, first century before Christ. Those attendants are holding what looks like some kind of lamp, supported on pillars, so they must be heavy, connected to a box on the ground by a cable. Look at the top of the columns, beneath the two bulbs. Looks like a condenser, doesn't it?'
'I had no idea you were so interested in things like this,' she said.
'I know. Us poor, dumb country boys can't appreciate anything.'
'I didn't mean it that way. It's just that-'
'Don't sweat it, Stephanie. I keep this to myself. But I love it. All those tombs found in Egypt, and inside the pyramids-not a single chamber has smoke damage. How in the crap did they get light down into those places to work? Fire was all they had, and lamps burned smoky oil.' He pointed at the drawing. 'Maybe they had something else. There's an inscription found at the Hathor Temple that says it all. I wrote it down.' He turned the drawing over. 'The temple was built according to a plan written in ancient writing upon a goatskin scroll from the time of the Companions of Horus. Can you imagine? They're saying right there that they had help from a long time ago.'
'You can't really believe Egyptians had electric lights,' Davis said.
'I don't know what to believe. And who said they were electric? They could have been chemical. The military has tritium gas-phosphor lamps that shine for years without electricity. I don't know what to believe. All I know is that petroglyph is real.'
Yes, it was.
'Look at it this way,' the president said. 'There was a time when the so-called experts thought all of the continents were fixed. No question, the land has always been where it is now, end of story. Then people started noticing how Africa and South America seem to fit together. North America, Greenland. Europe, too. Coincidence, that's what the experts said. Nothing more. Then they found fossils in England and North America that were identical. Same kind of rocks, too. Coincidence became stretched. Then plates were located beneath the oceans that move, and the so-called experts realized that the land could shift on those plates. Finally, in the 1960s, the experts were proven wrong. The continents were all once joined together and eventually drifted apart. What was once fantasy is now science.'
She recalled last April and their conversation at The Hague. 'I thought you told me that you didn't know beans about science.'
'I don't. But that doesn't mean I don't read and pay attention.'
She smiled. 'You're quite a contradiction.'
'I'll take that as a compliment.' Daniels pointed at the table. 'Does the translation program work?'
'Seems to. And you're right. This is a record of a lost civilization. One that's been around a long time and apparently interacted with people all over the globe, including, according to Malone, Europeans in the ninth century.'
Daniels stood from his chair. 'We think ourselves so smart. So sophisticated. We're the first at everything. Bullshit. There's a crapload out there we don't know.'
'From what we've translated so far,' she said, 'there's apparently some technical knowledge here. Strange things. It's going to take time to understand. And some fieldwork.'
'Malone may regret that he went down there,' Daniels muttered.
She needed to know, 'Why?'
The president's dark eyes studied her. 'NR-1A used uranium for fuel, but there were several thousand gallons of oil on board for lubrication. Not a drop was ever found.' Daniels went silent. 'Subs leak when they sink. Then there's the logbook, like you learned from Rowland. Dry. Not a smudge. That means the sub was intact when Ramsey found it. And from what Rowland said, they were on the continent when Ramsey went into the water. Near the coast. Malone's following Dietz Oberhauser's trail, just like NR-1A did. What if the paths intersect?'
'That sub can't still exist,' she said.
'Why not? It's the Antarctic.' Daniels paused. 'I was told half an hour ago that Malone and his entourage are now at Halvorsen Base.'
She saw that Daniels genuinely cared about what was happening, both here and to the south.
'Okay, here it is,' Daniels said. 'From what I've learned, Ramsey employed a hired killer who goes by the name Charles C. Smith Jr.'
Davis sat still in his chair.
'I had CIA check Ramsey thoroughly and they identified this Smith character. Don't ask me how, but they did it. He apparently uses a lot of names and Ramsey has doled out a ton of money to him. He's probably the one who killed Sylvian, Alexander, and Scofield, and he thinks he killed Herbert Rowland-'
'And Millicent,' Davis said.
Daniels nodded.
'You found Smith?' she asked, recalling what Daniels had originally said.
'In a manner of speaking.' The president hesitated. 'I came to see all this. I truly wanted to know. But I also came to tell you exactly how I think we can end this circus.'
MALONE STARED OUT THE HELICOPTER'S WINDOW, THE CHURN OF the rotors pulsating in his ears. They were flying west. Brilliant sunshine streamed in through the tinted goggles that shielded his eyes. They girdled the shore, seals lounging on the ice like giant slugs, killer whales breaking the water, patrolling the ice edges for unwary prey. Rising from the coast, mountains poked upward like tombstones over an endless white cemetery, their darkness in stark contrast with the bright snow.
The aircraft veered south.
'We're entering the restricted area,' Taperell said through the flight helmets.
