impishly, 'or should I lock it?'
'Just a gut feeling,' answered Pitt, 'but I have the feeling it's not going anywhere.'
They exited the car and walked over to the uniformed guard, who wore the three stripes of a sergeant on his sleeves. He nodded and greeted them. 'You must be Dirk Pitt and Albert Giordino. You're the last to arrive.'
'Don't you want to see our IDs?' asked Giordino.
The guard smiled. 'I've studied your photos. Knowing which is which is like comparing Joe Pesci to Clint Eastwood. You're not difficult to tell apart.'
He pressed a button beside the door and it slid open, revealing a short hallway leading to another metal door. 'When you reach the inner door, stand still for a moment until the guard on the other side ID's you with a security camera.'
'Doesn't he trust your judgment?' asked Giordino.
The guard never cracked a smile. 'Insurance,' he said tersely.
'Aren't they overdoing the security routine?' muttered Giordino. 'We could have just as easily reserved a couple booths at Taco Bell to hold a briefing.'
'Bureaucrats have a fetish for secrecy,' said Pitt.
'At least I could have had a burrito.'
They were passed through the door into a vast carpeted room whose walls were covered with drapes to mute the acoustics. A twenty-foot-long kidney-shaped conference table dominated the room. A huge screen covered the entire far wall. The room was comfortably lit, and easy on the eyes. Several men and one woman were already seated around the table. None stood as Pitt and Giordino approached.
'You're late.' This from Admiral James Sandecker, the head of NUMA. A small athletic man with flaming red hair and a Vandyke beard, he had commanding cold blue eyes that took in everything. Sandecker was as canny as a leopard sleeping in a tree with one eye open- he knew that a meal would come to him sooner or later. He was testy and irascible but ran NUMA like a benevolent dictator. He motioned now to a man sitting on his left.
'I don't believe you two know Ken Helm, special agent with the FBI.'
A gray-haired man, dressed in a tailored business suit, with speculative, quiet hazel eyes that peered over reading glasses, half rose out of his chair and extended his hand. 'Mr. Pitt, Mr. Giordino, I've heard a great deal about you.'
Which means he's perused our personnel files, Pitt thought to himself.
Sandecker turned to the man on his right. 'Ron Little. Ron has a fancy title over at Central Intelligence, but you'd never know it.'
Deputy director was the title that ran through Pitt's mind at meeting Little.
He looked through collie-brown eyes set in a deeply lined face- pious, middle-aged, a face etched with experience. He simply nodded. 'Gentlemen.'
'The others you know,' Sandecker said, nodding down the table.
Rudi Gunn was furiously taking notes and didn't bother to look up.
Pitt stepped over and placed a hand on Pat O'Connell's shoulder and said softly, 'Sooner than you thought.'
'I adore a man who keeps his promises.' She patted his hand, uncaring of the stares from the men around the table. 'Come sit by me. I feel intimidated by all these important government officials.'
'I assure you, Dr. O'Connell,' said Sandecker, 'that you'll leave this room with every lovely hair intact.'
Pitt pulled out a chair and slid next to Pat, while Giordino took a seat next to Gunn. 'Have Al and I missed anything of relevance?' Pitt asked.
'Dr. O'Connell briefed us on the skull and underground chamber,' said Sandecker, 'and Ken Helm was about to report on the initial results of the forensic examination on the bodies flown in from Telluride.'
'Not much to tell.' Helm spoke slowly. 'Making a positive identification from their teeth has become difficult. Preliminary examinations suggest that their dental work came from South American dentists.'
Pitt appeared dubious. 'Your people can distinguish the difference in dental techniques of different countries?'
'A good forensic pathologist who specializes in identification through dental records can often name the city where the cavities were filled.'
'So they were foreign nationals,' Giordino observed.
'I thought their English was a bit odd,' said Pitt.
Helm stared over his reading glasses. 'You noticed?'
'Too perfect without an American accent, although two of them spoke with a New England twang.'
Little scribbled on a yellow legal notepad. 'Mr. Pitt, Commander Gunn has informed us that the murderers you apprehended in Telluride referred to themselves as members of the Fourth Empire.'
'They also referred to it as the New Destiny.'
'As you and Commander Gunn have already speculated, the Fourth Empire may be the successor to the Third Reich.'
'Anything is possible.'
Giordino pulled a gigantic cigar from his breast pocket and rolled it around in his mouth without lighting it, out of consideration for the people at the table who didn't smoke. Sandecker shot him a murderous look at seeing that the label advertised it as one from his private stock. 'I'm not a smart man,' Giordino said modestly. The Humble Herbert routine was an act. Giordino had been third in his class at the Air Force Academy. 'For the life of me, I don't see how an organization with a worldwide army of elite killers can operate for years without the finest intelligence services in the world figuring out who they are and what they're up to.'
'I'm the first to admit we're stymied,' said FBI's Helm frankly. 'As you know, crimes without motives are the most difficult to solve.'
Little nodded in agreement. 'Until your confrontation with these people in Telluride, anyone else who came in contact with them did not live to describe the event.'
'Thanks to Dirk and Dr. O'Connell,' said Gunn, 'we now have a trail to follow.'
'A few charred teeth make for a pretty faint trail,' offered Sandecker.
'True,' agreed Helm, 'but there is the enigma of that chamber inside the Pandora Mine. If they go to such extremes to keep scientists from studying the inscriptions, slaughter innocent people, and commit suicide when apprehended- well, they must have a compelling motive.'
'The inscriptions,' Pitt said. 'Why go to such lengths to hide their meaning?'
'They can't be overjoyed at the outcome,' said Gunn. 'They lost six of their professional killers and failed to secure photographs of the inscriptions.'
'It's bizarre that such an ordinary archaeological discovery would cost so many lives,' Sandecker said expressionlessly.
'Hardly an ordinary discovery,' Pat said quickly. 'If it is not a hoax perpetrated by old hard-rock miners, it could very well prove to be the archaeological find of the century.'
'Have you been able to decipher any of the symbols?' asked Pitt.
'After a cursory examination of my notes, all I can tell you is that the symbols are alphabetic. That is, writing that expresses single sounds. Our alphabet, for example, uses twenty-six symbols. The symbols in the chamber suggest an alphabet of thirty, with twelve symbols representing numerals, which I managed to translate into a very advanced mathematics system. Whoever these people were, they discovered zero and calculated with the same number of symbols as modern man. Until I can program them into a computer and study them in their entirety, there is little else I can tell you.'
'Sounds to me like you've done extremely well with what little you have had in such a short time,' Helm complimented her.
'I'm confident we can crack the meaning of the inscriptions. Unlike the complicated logosyllabic writing systems of the Egyptians, Chinese, or Cretans, which are as yet undeciphered, this one seems unique in its simplicity.'
'Do you think the black obsidian skull found in the chamber forms a link to the inscriptions?' asked Gunn.
Pat shook her head. 'I can't begin to guess. Like the crystal skulls that have come out of Mexico and Tibet,
