Eighteen hours later, Collins stood at semiattention before the desk of his director. He had not taken the seat offered by Niles, preferring to wait until the director got off his chest that which had to be said.
'Bring back any fish, Colonel?' Niles asked as he looked at the debrief folder that Jack and the others had filed.
'All we brought back was a hangover and an Ethiopian field team.'
Niles flipped a page in the file and then looked at Collins. He tossed the filed report onto his desk and then gestured for the colonel to sit.
'Take a seat, Jack ... please.'
Collins finally relented and sat. The silver bird on his collar sparkled in the soft light of the office.
'You take too many chances, Jack,' Niles stated flatly as he looked straight at Collins.
Collins was about to speak when Niles held his hand up.
'Save it. For people like me who only see science and numbers, we can't even begin to imagine what it's like to have the ability you have. It is a hard thing for us to conceive of risking one's life to save a stranger. Cannot fathom it. I just want you to think before you leap. You are too damn valuable to this Group.
Collins watched the director. While he and Niles had never become close, they had a mutual respect for each other that went far beyond the normal working relationship. He may not have expressed himself to the director the way he should have, but Jack knew that the bookish director was the smartest man he had ever had the pleasure of meeting. In addition, the two worked well as a team, always thinking about the safety of their people.
'You and many others sell yourselves too short around here, Niles. My abilities are no greater than any one of the five hundred people assigned to Group. In my time you've made choices I could never imagine making--life-or- death decisions for people out in the field--and I must say you have never come up short. All soldiers ever ask for is a superior to have his back. They all know that you do.'
Niles Compton nodded, signaling an end to that discussion. He cleared his throat, undid his top button, and then slid the knot in his tie down. He picked up the file with the field report in it.
'This Addis Abba archaeology team--their dig was similar to our own?'
'As far as we know, it was an information-and-acquisition dig only. No one knew what would be found.'
Niles turned in his chair and typed a command on his computer. The main ten-by-fourteen-foot monitor came alive, and he and Jack looked into the clean room on level forty-three of the artifact-sorting room.
A straitlaced technician no older than thirty stepped up to the monitor. Professor Alan Franklin smiled and nodded at Niles.
'Mr. Director, good morning.'
'What have you got so far?' Niles asked.
'Well, the team brought back some very rare finds. Artifacts, I may add, that had no business being in the area where they were unearthed. For instance,' he turned away and pulled up a shard of pottery, which he held very delicately in glove-encased fingers, 'this little item: I can tell you, even before my assistant hands me the carbon-14 test results, that it predates anything we or anyone else in the world has on record. The pottery is almost porcelainlike in looks and made from a material civilizations have never used before in the making of pottery. Initial analysis says it's made from crushed volcanic glass.'
'That's interesting, but--'
'Now here's the twilight-zone moment, Mr. Director. The shard itself had no business being in Ethiopia. We suspect that a great and powerful flood event may have carried it
'Your point is ...?'
'You don't see? It should not exist. A cultural exchange between Egypt and Greece couldn't have happened before 3700 BCE.' The professor accepted a handed printout. 'Just as I suspected, carbon-14 dating places the aggregate material in the shard between 11,000 BCE and 14,000 BCE, give or take five hundred to a thousand years. This is totally amazing!'
'Have your team run the carbon-14 testing again. Test everything our team came back with.'
'Yes, sir, we're on it.'
Niles turned off the monitor and faced Collins. 'You're steeped in history, Jack; tell me, have you ever heard of anything that old?'
'No.'
'You know why?'
Collins knew he was not going to like the answer.
'The Egyptian and Greek civilizations didn't even exist at that time.'
'Then who made this little item that was unearthed two thousand miles away from where it was made? And what event could have been powerful enough to make the Nile River reverse its flow?'
'That's what we need to find out. In addition, what artifact could those mercenaries have been looking for that was important enough to kill for?'
'I think maybe I'll bring in our new operatives at the FBI we recruited last year, it's time they earn their keep anyway. They can also find out who was on the other end of that cell-phone conversation in Africa.'
Director Compton nodded, agreeing that Jack should contact FBI Special Agent William Monroe in New York to bring him up to speed on Ethiopia.
'This could be a find that changes the face of history. It would predate any known civilization by at least four thousand years.'
The Event Group had a mission.
The large conference room was situated 160 feet below street level, under one of the oldest manufacturing firms in Europe. Grouped around this table were men and women from most western nations of the world, plus Japan, India, and Hong Kong.
The flags arrayed along the walls of the conference room were bright red and each carried a symbol handed down since the time of the Caesars, and each one differing only slightly from the others. A large golden eagle was prominent on all of them. Some had sloping lines that resembled a bent swastika clutched in the eagle's powerful talons, while others depicted more bizarre symbols from antiquity. The prevalent theme of all the flags was the golden eagle emblazoned over a scarlet field.
The most recently designed flag, the symbol of the Third Reich, was not present. The episode in the 1930s and '40s had almost dealt the Coalition a deathblow and the flag had become an embarrassment, especially to the younger and far more radical element now sitting among the old guard.
'Gentlemen, gentlemen and ladies, this meeting will come to order,' said the small man known as Caretaker. He rapped a gavel on his small desk in the rear of the luxuriously appointed room. 'We have many items to discuss this evening.'
The twenty-six men and five women who made up the Juliai Coalition, named for the esteemed Roman family that was the precursor to the Caesars, calmed and took their seats. Though many were there for reasons outside that of legacy, they had many things in common. One of these was the fact that they were the richest private citizens in the world. Not one name would ever show up on any registry of the world's richest people, and you would never find the likeness or name of any Coalition member in a gossip column or tabloid. They did not bicker with governments in courts of law over the cornering of markets or the breakups of conglomerates so large that their value could not be computed. The Juliai Coalition answered to no power in the world.
'We will forgo the reading of the last meeting's minutes to concentrate fully on this first day of initial operational testing.'
There were nods and smiles around the conference table. Then a lone figure at the center stood and chimed a knife against a water glass.
'The gentleman from Austria, Mr. Zoenfeller, has the floor,' announced Caretaker.
'Before we have the report read to us from operations, I would like to bring to the attention of this council that we have ongoing missions to find the Atlantean Key. Without it, I daresay we will have more episodes like the one this afternoon.'
There were a few nods and words of agreement with the large, gray-haired man, but they were far fewer
