'Jesus,' Everett said, looking from Krueger to Jack. 'This guy and his engineers should have been working for us.'
'You don't know what you're doing. You've just killed us all.'
Everett feigned shock at Krueger. 'Now that's a scary statement. Care to expand on it?'
Krueger closed his mouth into a tight line and looked away. His eyes did not follow Jack as he walked to the opening in the floor. Everett caught up with Collins and they both went down into the true light of the ancient past.
When they reached the bottom of the screwlike stairs, they couldn't believe what they were looking at. Row upon row and stack upon stack, layered a hundred thick, were scrolls of every shape and size. They had been neatly placed on specially designed mounts in hermetically sealed glass cabinets. As if they had entered an old library, Jack and Carl took in the most amazing collection of ancient writings they had ever seen.
The room was temperature and humidity controlled and they saw plastic clean-room suits, of the sort they had used on occasion when working with Europa, hanging on pegs in the corner. There were examination tables and viewing stands. In a clean area fifty feet to the rear was what Jack recognized as an electron microscope. There was a rolled-out scroll on the glass top in the process of examination; it was covered in thick plastic to protect it from any dust particles that filtered into the room.
Also lining the walls were a hundred different flags. Some were emblazoned with a symbol reminiscent of the swastika, different only in small and varying ways. The one constant symbol on every flag was the shape of a large golden eagle. Some had straight and unyielding outstretched wings, and others had the wings turned down.
'Holy shit--is this guy Krueger for real?' Everett asked, staring at the strange banners.
Jack shook his head as he moved on. Also arrayed on one of the walls were several large relief maps from ancient times, sealed in the same manner as the scrolls. There were signs beneath each, warning of severe shock if the frame was touched. Jack stepped up to one and examined it more closely. It was an ancient depiction of Africa before the continent of Antarctica had separated from it. The rest of the world's continents had just broken away from one another and were in the process of moving as depicted in the next four wall-mounted maps.
Everett turned to the rear wall and looked at a strange chart that had millions of lines running through a mosaic relief of the African, European, and even North American continents. The strange lines wiggled through the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Beneath this ancient diagram was a small table with a computer and a stack of research materials laid out upon it. Everett quickly rifled through it and then turned to face Jack.
'It looks like someone was trying to interpret this chart. Just what in the hell is this?'
Collins didn't answer. He was standing at the farthest end of the chamber, looking up at a giant glass- enclosed map that was by far the largest object in the room. A large spotlight shone upon it and illuminated the frame's meticulous construction, which showed specially designed nitrogen and air evacuation hoses built into it.
'Jesus,' Carl hissed as he saw the huge map.
Everett walked over to where Jack was standing and staring upward. He saw what looked to be the ancient Mediterranean. The map looked as if it had been painted on some form of exotic paper. He could also see the age- induced crumbling around the edges and corners. While the obvious age of the map was a striking feature, it was not the one that held the colonel's attention. Everett had to take a step back when he saw the ancient depiction. It showed a large island, made up of four distinct circles of land radiating outward from a center island, that was surrounded by the great inland sea that was one day to be known as the Mediterranean Ocean.
'What in the hell?'
'Mr. Everett, contact Group and inform them that we will be bringing some things back to the complex. We cannot let the FBI have these. I will let Agent Monroe know he'll have to prosecute Mr. Krueger with what stolen items he finds upstairs. I'm sure there is enough.'
'Right. Uh, by the way, Jack, are you thinking what I'm thinking?' he asked as his eyes centered on the island that should not have been in the middle of the sea that would someday be known as an ocean.
'You don't have to just think it,' he said as he reached out and touched the gold plate beneath the twenty- by-fifteen-foot map of a world long gone. 'I think this spells it out quite clearly.'
Everett stepped closer as Collins moved away so that he could read the plaque. Carl closed his eyes and shook his head.
'Yeah, I don't think the FBI would truly appreciate the value of this room as much as our people would.'
The gold plaque glittered in the illuminating spotlight and both men looked at it and felt numb inside.
Engraved on the plaque was only one word:
An hour later, the servants were in the process of being moved to a safe house where they would be informed of their possible prosecution for assisting their employer in his theft of stolen antiquities. That should worry them enough to guarantee their cooperation and silence, Jack thought.
Ernie's Fix-it Shop had just replaced the last door and fixed and replaced the fuse box. The Event Group specialists had cleaned up nicely and were just packing up when Special Agent in Charge Bill Monroe was allowed inside the mansion for the first time.
'Bill,' Collins said as he stepped toward the man with his hand outstretched.
The FBI agent shook Jack's hand.
'Colonel, I hear you took quite a haul?'
'Enough so that you'll get a nice little commendation in your Bureau file.' Jack released the man's hand and then gently pulled him aside. 'Look, this Krueger--there's far more to him than meets the eye. You need to find out all you can on him. He has stuff here that's pretty damn spooky and he keeps saying that we're all dead men for finding it.'
'Isn't that usually a standard statement tossed about by scared rich men?'
'There's something in his eyes, Bill. I can't touch on what it is, but this guy is not scared of being prosecuted; he's afraid of something else.'
'All right, I'll get what I can out of him. But too much might attract attention to who I really work for, Colonel.'
'Don't give yourself up to your FBI. Just get what you can and hold him as long as possible until the Group can examine some of the more obscure items he has. Can you get a judge to recognize that he's a flight risk and not allow bail, at least for the time being?'
'Yeah, I think we can pull that off for a while. So, I only get the upper room of artifacts and you get the really good stuff Ryan's loading up--that right?'
'Sorry, Director Compton says this other room's contents are off limits until researched by the Group. Don't worry, you're getting some great stuff, Billy. Hell, there's a crown in there that belonged to Charlemagne.'
'You're kidding?'
Jack Collins just smiled and walked into the darkness beyond the lights.
William Winthrop Tomlinson came from an old line of wealth that stretched back far before the Revolutionary War in the United States and then even further back in Europe. It would have taken a specialized team of IRS agents approximately a hundred years to unravel the intricate web of hidden properties and ownerships to discover the fact that he was three hundred times wealthier than the public figurehead who led the nation's and world's periodicals on that subject. He had used that family wealth wisely. He was now the most powerful man in the Coalition. Money was never an object to attain; it was a means to gather what he really craved--power, the power of rule.
Tomlinson was watching the dark sky outside his window as his private Boeing 777 streaked across the night sky, heading to New York. The remains of his salad and bottle of wine were still in front of him on the ornate cherry table.
He did not look around when one of his assistants leaned over with a fax. He absently continued to look out the wide window.
'Sir, this is quite important,' the young assistant stated quietly.
The expensively attired Tomlinson still watched the night sky. Ignoring the man at his side, he merely held up his left hand and accepted the fax. He waited until the assistant had turned silently away and gone back to the office areas of the large aircraft. Then he reached out, lifted the crystal wineglass, and sipped the two-hundred- year-old vintage that came from his private stock in the belly of the giant plane. After savoring the deep richness of
