Moving silently along at the posted speed, the Rolls-Royce made the trip to Fredericksburg in an hour and a half. Mulholland steered the majestic car onto a circular drive that led to a picturesque colonial house on the heights of the town above the Rappahannock River, overlooking the killing field where 12,500 Union soldiers fell during one day in the Civil War. The house, built in 1848, was a gracious reminder of the past.
'Well, here we are,' said Perlmutter, as Mulholland opened the door.
Pitt went around to the rear of the car, raised the trunk lid, and lifted out the crate containing the skull. 'This should prove interesting,' he said, as they walked up the steps and pulled a cord that rang a bell.
Christine Mender-Husted could have passed for anyone's grandmother. She was as spry as they came, white-haired, with a hospitable smile, angelic facial features, and twenty pounds on the plump side. Her movements came as quick as her sparkling hazel eyes. She greeted Perlmutter with a firm handshake and nodded when he introduced his friend.
'Please come right in,' she said sweetly. 'I've been expecting you. May I offer you some tea?'
Both men accepted and were led to a high-ceilinged, paneled library and motioned to sit in comfortable leather chairs. After a young girl, who was introduced as a neighbor's daughter who helped out around the house, served the tea, Christine turned to Perlmutter.
'Well, St. Julien, as I told you over the phone, I'm still not ready to sell my family's treasures.'
'I admit the hope has never left my mind,' said Perlmutter, 'but I've brought Dirk for another reason.' He turned to Pitt. 'Would you like to show Mrs. Mender-Husted what you have in the box?'
'Christine,' she said. 'My maiden and married names together are a mouthful.'
'Have you always lived in Virginia?' asked Pitt, making conversation while opening the latches on the wooden box containing the skull from the Pandora Mine.
'I come from six generations of Californians, many of whom still live in and around San Francisco. I happened to have had the good fortune of marrying a man who came from Virginia and who served under three presidents as special adviser.'
Pitt went silent, his eyes captivated by a black obsidian skull that was sitting on the mantel above the flickering fire. Then slowly, as if in a trance, he opened the crate. Then he removed his skull, walked over, reached up, and placed it beside its double on the mantel.
'Oh my!' Christine gasped. 'I never dreamed there was another one.'
'Neither did I,' Pitt said, studying the two black skulls. 'As far as I can tell by the naked eye, they're perfect duplicates, identical in form and composition. Even the dimensions appear to be the same. It's as if they came out of the same mold.'
'Tell me, Christine,' said Perlmutter, a cup of tea in one hand, 'what ghostly tale did your great-grandfather pass down about the skull?'
She looked at him as if he had asked a dumb question. 'You know as well as I do that it was found on a ship frozen in the ice called the Madras She was bound from Bombay to Liverpool with thirty-seven passengers, a crew of forty, and carrying a varied cargo of tea, silk, spices, and porcelain. My great-grandparents found the skull in a storeroom filled with other ancient artifacts.'
'What I meant was, did they find any indication of how the artifacts came to be onboard the Madras.'
'I know for a fact the skull and other oddities did not come on board the ship in Bombay. They were discovered by the crew and passengers when they stopped for water at a deserted island during the voyage. The details were in the logbook.'
Pitt hesitated and, fearing the worst, repeated, 'You say were in the log?'
'Captain Mender did not keep it. The dying wish of the Madras's captain was that it be forwarded to the owners of the ship. My great-grandfather dutifully sent it by courier to Liverpool.'
Pitt felt as if he had run against a brick wall in a dead-end alley. 'Do you know if the Madras's owners sent an expedition to find the derelict and backtrack its course to the artifacts?'
'The original ship's owners, as it turns out, sold the trading company before Captain Mender sent the log,' explained Christine. 'The new management sent out a two-ship expedition to find the Madras, but they vanished with all hands.'
'Then all records are lost,' Pitt said, discouraged.
Christine's eyes flashed. 'I never said that.'
He looked at the elderly lady, trying to read something in her eyes. 'But-'
'My great-grandmother was a very sharp lady,' she cut him off. 'She made a handwritten copy of the Madras's log before her husband sent it off to England.'
To Pitt, it was as if the sun had burst through black clouds. 'May I please read it?'
Christine did not immediately answer. She walked over to an antique ship captain's desk and gazed up at a painting hanging on the oak-paneled wall. It depicted a man sitting in a chair with his arms and legs crossed. But for a great beard that covered his face, he might have been handsome. He was a big man, his body and shoulders filling the chair. The woman who stood behind him with one hand on his shoulder was small in stature and stared through intense brown eyes. Both were dressed in nineteenth-century clothing.
'Captain Bradford and Roxanna Mender,' she said wistfully, seemingly lost in a past she had never lived. Then she turned and looked at Perlmutter. 'St. Julien, I think the time has come. I've held on to their papers and letters out of sentiment for far too long. It's better they be remembered by others who can read and benefit from the history they lived. The collection is yours at the price you quoted.'
Perlmutter came out of the chair as lightly as if he had the body of an athlete, and hugged Christine. 'Thank you, dear lady. I promise all will be properly preserved and stored in archives for future historians to study.'
Christine came over and stood beside Pitt at the mantel. 'And to you, Mr. Pitt, a gift. I place my obsidian skull in your trust. Now that you have a matching pair, what do you intend to do with them?'
'Before they go to a museum of ancient history, they'll be studied and analyzed in a laboratory to see if they can be dated and tied to a past civilization.'
She looked at her skull for a long time before exhaling a long sigh. 'I hate to see it go, but knowing it will be properly cared for makes it much easier. You know, people have always looked at it and thought it was a precursor of bad luck and tragic tunes. But from the minute Roxanna carried it over the melting ice pack to her husband's ship, it has brought nothing but good fortune and blessings to the Mender family.'
On the trip back to Washington, Pitt read the entries from the log of the Madras as exactingly copied in a leather-bound notebook in Roxanna Mender's delicate and flowing hand. Despite the smooth ride of the Rolls, he had to look up from time to time and gaze into the distance to keep from getting carsick.
'Find anything interesting?' Perlmutter asked, as Mulholland drove over the George Mason Bridge, which spans the Potomac River.
Pitt lifted his eyes from the notebook. 'Indeed I have. Now we know the approximate location where the crew of the Madras discovered their skull, and much, much more.'
12
The Rolls-Royce came to a stop at the old aircraft hangar that Pitt called home on a deserted end of Washington's International Airport. The decrepit-looking hangar, built in 1936, looked as if it had been long abandoned. Weeds surrounded its rusting corrugated walls and the windows were heavily boarded over.
No sooner had Hugo slipped from behind the wheel than two heavily armed men, dressed in camouflage fatigues, seemed to materialize out of nowhere and stand with automatic rifles at the ready. One leaned in the window, while the other stood face-to-face with Mulholland, as if daring him to make a menacing move. 'One of you better be Dirk Pitt,' snapped the man peering into the backseat.
'I'm Pitt.'
The guard studied his face for a moment. 'ID, sir.' It was not a quest but an order.
Pitt flashed his NUMA identification, and the guard raised his weapon and smiled. 'Sorry for the inconvenience, but we're under orders to protect you and your property.'
Pitt assumed the men were with a little-known federal protective security agency. Their agents were highly trained to protect government employees whose lives were threatened. 'I'm grateful for your concern and
