Polar Shift

where she swept the interior with her light, then stepped inside.

'Uncle Karl,' she called out, her voice echoing.

He strode over to where she knelt on the cavern floor. Illuminated in the bull's-eye of light from her flashlight was a brownish mass of vegetation.

'What is it?' Schroeder asked.

She didn't answer right away. After a moment, she said, 'It looks like elephant scat.'

Schroeder roared with laughter. 'Do you think the circus passed this way?'

She stood up and touched it with the toe of her boot. A musky, grassy smell arose from the mound. 'I think I need to sit down,' she said.

They found a wall outcropping to sit on and refreshed themselves from their water bottles. Karla told Schroeder about the baby mammoth that had been discovered not far from the cave entrance. 'I couldn't figure out how it could be so well preserved,' she said. 'No one has ever found a specimen like that. It seemed to have died only days or weeks ago.'

'Are you suggesting that there are woolly mammoths living in these caves?'

'No, of course not,' she said with a laugh. 'That would be impossible. Maybe they once did, though, and the scat is very old. Let me tell you a story. In 1918, a Russian hunter was traveling through the taiga, the great Siberian forest, when he saw huge tracks in the snow. For days, he followed the creatures that made them. They left behind piles of dung and broken tree branches. He described seeing two huge elephants with chestnut hair and massive tusks.'

'An apocryphal hunter's tale, with no evidence, meant to impress?'

'Possibly. But the Eskimos and North American Indians recounted legends of great shaggy creatures. In 1993, the skeletons of dwarf mammoths were found on Wrangel Island, between Siberia and Alaska, not far from here. Their bones were dated between seven thousand and thirty-seven hundred years ago, which means mammoths roamed the earth well past Paleolithic times, when men were building Stonehenge and the Pyramids.'

Schroeder chuckled and said, 'You'd like to explore further, wouldn't you?'

'I wouldn't want to waste an opportunity like this sitting around and twiddling our thumbs. Maybe we'll come across some well-preserved specimens.'

'I don't think preparing to repel a gang of desperate cutthroats qualifies as twiddling our thumbs, but I shouldn't be surprised. Once, when you were a child, I read you Alice in Wonderland. Not long after, I found you out in the yard trying to squeeze your head down a rabbit hole. You said you wished you had some tonic that would shrink you, like Alice.'

'It must have been your fault for reading me such stories.'

'Well, now it seems we have little choice,' he said wearily. He picked up his pack and limped toward the opening. 'Down the rabbit hole we go.'

26

The chestnut stallion galloped across the verdant Virginia countryside as if it were racing neck and neck in the Kentucky Derby. Jordan Gant crouched in the saddle like an overgrown jockey and whipped his crop repeatedly on his mount's haunches. The horse had been running a punishing pace. Its eyes rolled, its sleek coat was shiny with sweat and its tongue hung from its mouth. Still, Gant showed no mercy. It was not so much cruelty, which would have assumed emotion on his part, but rather the disregard he held for anything that came under his control.

Gant crossed meadows and pastures, and rode along the edge of a driveway bordered by poplar trees until he came to a sprawling country house. He headed to a stable area near the house, and allowed the exhausted animal to come to a trot, then a walk and finally to a halt. Gant slid easily out of the saddle, took a towel from a waiting groom and carelessly tossed him the reins. The horse was limping as it was led away.

Gant strode up a stone walkway toward the front door. He was dressed for polo in a black short-sleeved shirt and jodhpurs. Gant had a muscular, athletic physique, and he would have worn his clothes well even if they weren't custom-tailored. He whipped his knee-high boots of cordovan leather with his crop as he walked, as if his arm had a mind of its own. The massive wooden front door opened at Gant's approach, and he stepped into an enormous foyer with a fountain bubbling in the center. Gant handed his gloves and towel to the cadaverous butler who had opened the door.

The butler said, 'Your guest has arrived, sir. He's waiting in the library.'

'A Bombay Sapphire martini, straight up, and the usual for me.'

The butler bowed and disappeared down a long hallway. Gant went through a door off the foyer into a spacious chamber lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with the priceless volumes that he collected. Margrave stood near a set of French doors that overlooked manicured lawns that were as green as the top of a billiard table. He was perusing an antique book bound in red Moroccan leather.

'That's a rare edition of the Divine Comedy published in 1507,' Gant said. 'There are only three known copies. I own them all.'

'You've got quite the extensive collection of Dante.'

'Actually, it's the best in the world,' Gant said without pretense.

Margrave smiled and slipped the book back onto the shelf. 'I would expect no less. Did you have a good ride?'

Gant tossed the whip onto a side table. 'I always have a good ride. The horse does all the work. The animal that I rode today is new to my stables. It's a stallion that needed to be shown who the boss is. I always take a new horse out for a test-drive. Those that survive are treated like royalty. Those that don't end up in a glue factory.'

'Survival of the fittest?'

'I'm a great believer in Darwin.'

The butler arrived carrying a tray with two drinks. Gant handed one glass to Margrave, and took the sixteen- year-old, double-matured scotch whisky on the rocks for himself. Margrave sipped his drink. 'Perfect martini,' he said. 'You know exactly what I drink. I'm impressed.'

'You forget that I'm in a business where deals are often lubricated with alcohol,' Gant said. 'Nothing makes a favorable impression like remembering someone's particular poison.' He settled into a comfortable chair, and gestured for Margrave to take a seat. 'What's the latest on our project?'

'On schedule. But I'm worried about Spider. I haven't heard from him since he left the island a few days ago.'

'Barrett is a big boy,' Gant said. 'He can take care of himself.'

'I don't care about his health; it's his mouth I'm concerned about. He's had an acute attack of conscience. I don't want to see him on 60 Minutes telling Mike Wallace about our project.'

'You said he agreed to stay with the project until you made contact with Karla Janos.'

'That's right. He wanted a fail-safe option that could shut the project down in a hurry.'

'Then you have nothing to worry about. Barrett is probably off sulking somewhere. The main question is whether the project can proceed without him.'

'That's not a problem. Spider has already laid the groundwork that made him indispensable. We don't need him anymore. All is proceeding according to plan. I worked up this presentation for you.'

Margrave opened a carrying case and pulled out a portable DVD player, which he set up on a mahogany desk. He pressed the on button and the schematic profile of a ship appeared on the screen.

'This is one of the transmitter ships as originally designed. Here are the power plants in the hold leading to the electromagnetic low-frequency antenna, which can be lowered into the sea.' He forwarded the picture. 'This is the new ship that will do the work of our four experimental vessels.'

'A small ocean liner. Ingenious. How soon will it be on-site?'

'The old transmitter vessels have left the Mississippi shipyard and are on their way to the debarkation point in Rio. They can still be useful as decoys for insurance. The name of the liner is the Polar Adventure. She'll be in Rio as well, but no one will suspect she is carrying the payload.'