source inside the Navy project.'
'But no-one has any thyrium yet,' Race said.
'Which is why everybody's down here looking for that idol.'
'Okay, so let me get this straight,' Race said. 'Even though the Supernova is officially a Navy project, the Army has been secretly constructing its own device. Then, when it discovers that there might be a source of thyrium out there, it gives Frank Nash and the Special Projects Unit the task of finding that thyrium before the Navy does.'
'That's correct.'
'Goddamn,' Race breathed. 'How far up does a thing like this go?' He was thinking about yesterday's motorcade out of New York. For someone to make that happen required some serious rank.
'All the way up,' Renee said in a low voice. 'All the way to the highest-ranking officers in the U.S. Army hierarchy.
And that's what really scares me. I've never seen the Army so desperate. I mean, God, look at this mission. This is it.
This is the home run. If the Army gets that stone'—she nodded at the idol on the empty seat next to Race 'they guarantee their future existence. And that means that Frank Nash will do anything to get it. Anything at all.'
Race picked up the idol. It glistened in his hands, the rapa's head snarling with menace.
He just stared at it sadly, looked at the newly hollowed- out section in its base.
'Then I guess there's really only one problem, then, isn't there?' he said.
'What's that?” Renee said.
“This idol.'
“What about it?'
'You see, that's the thing,' Race said. 'This idol isn't made of thyrium. This idol is a fake.'
'It's a what?' Renee gasped.
'It's a fake?' Van Lewen echoed.
'It's a fake,' Race confirmed. “Here, take a look.' He tossed the gleaming black idol to Van Lewen. 'What do you see?'
The big sergeant shrugged. 'I see the Incan idol that we came here to get.'
'Do you?' Race leaned forward, grabbing a water canteen that hung off Van Lewen's belt. 'Can I borrow this?'
He quickly unscrewed the lid and tipped the contents of the canteen onto the idol.
Water splashed all over the rapa's head, ran down its face, dribbled down onto the floor of the plane.
'Okay, so… ?' Van Lewen said.
'According to the manuscript,' Race said, 'when the idol gets wet, it's supposed to emit a low humming noise. This one isn't making a sound.'
“So?”
'So it's not made of thyrium. If it were made of thyrium, the oxygen in the water would make it resonate. This isn't the real idol. It's a fake.'
'But when did you know?' Renee asked.
Race said, “When I took this idol off the workbench a couple of seconds before the cabin blew, the sprinkler sys tem inside the control booth was dousing the whole room with water. It splashed all over the idol, but ever since that time it hasn't hummed at all.'
'So the Nazis' Supernova wouldn't have destroyed the world?' Van Lewen said.
'Nope,' Race said. 'Just us, and maybe a few hundred hectares of rainforest with the thermonuclear blast. But not the world.'
'If it isn't made of thyrium,' Van Lewen said, 'what is it made of?'
'I don't know,' Race said. 'Some kind of volcanic rock, I guess.'
'If it's a fake,' Renee said, taking the idol from Van Lewen, 'then who made it? Who could have made it? It was found inside a temple that no-one's been inside for over four hundred years.'
'I think I know who made it,' Race said.
'You do?'
He nodded.
'Who?' Renee and Van Lewen asked at the same time.
Race held up the leather-bound manuscript in his hand— the original Santiago Manuscript—the same manuscript that Alberto Santiago himself had once laboured over a long, long time ago.
'The answer to that question,' he said, 'lies in the pages of this book.”
Race retired to the rear section of the little seaplane.
