The motorcade sped through the streets of New York.
It was mid-morning, but the eight-car procession just raced through the soaking city streets, whipping through intersection after intersection, getting green lights all the way out of the city.
They must have set the traffic lights like they did for the President when he visited New York, Race thought.
But this was no presidential procession. The looks on the faces of the people on the sidewalk said it all.
This was a different kind of motorcade.
No limousines. No flapping flags. Just two black heavily- armoured Humvees hovering in the middle of a line of drab olive cars, slicing their way through the pouring rain.
With his bodyguard seated beside him and his earpiece and throat mike now in place, Race stared out the window of the speeding Humvee.
Not many people could claim to have experienced a clear passage out of New York City in the middle of the mid-morning rush, he thought. It was a strange experience; otherworldly. He began to wonder just how important this mission was.
He opened the folder that Nash had given him. The first thing he saw was a list of names.
CUZCO INVESTIGATION TEAM
CIVILIAN MEMBERS
1 NASH, Francis K—DARPA, Project leader, nuclear physicist
2 COPELAND, Troy B—DARPA, nuclear physicist
3 O'CONNOR, Lauren MnDARPA, theoretical physicist
4 CHAMBERS, Walter J—Stanford, anthropologist
5 LOPEZ, Gabriela S—Princeton, archaeologist
6 RACE, William HnNYU, linguist
ARMED FORCES MEMBERS
1 SCOTT, Dwayne T—United States Army (GB), Captain
2 VAN LEWEN, Leonardo M—United States Army (GB), Sergeant
3 COCHRANE, Jacob R—United States Army (GB), Corporal
4 REICHART, George P—United States Army (GB), Corporal
5 WILSON, Charles T—United States Army (GB), Corporal
6 KENNEDY, Douglas K—United States Army (GB), Corporal
turned the page and saw a photocopy of a newspaper The headline was in French: MASSACRES DES MOINES
DU HAUT DELA MONTAGNE.
He translated. 'Monks massacred in mountaintop read the article. It was dated 3 January 1999— yesterday.
it was about a group of Jesuit monks who had slaughtered inside their monastery high up in the mountains.
The authorities believed it to be the work of Islamic fundamentalists protesting against French interference in The Middle East.
Eighteen monks in all had been killed, all of them : at close quarters in the same manner as in previous slayings.
He turned to the next item in the folder.
was another newspaper clipping, this one from the Los
Times. It was dated late last year and the headline
FEDERAL OFFICIALS FOUND MURDERED IN ROCKIES.
It said that two members of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Set- had been found murdered in the mountains north of
Montana. Both officials had been skinned. The FBI been called in. They suspected that it was the work of of the local militia groups who seemed to have a natural hate toward any sort of Federal agency. It was thought that two Wildlife officials had stumbled upon some militia- hunting illegal game for heir pelts. Instead of skinning animals the militiamen had skinned the rangers.
Race winced, turned the page.
The next sheet in the folder was a photocopy of an article in a university journal of some kind. The article was in German and it was written by a scientist named Albert L. Mueller. It was dated November 1998.
Race scanned the article, rapidly translating the German in his head. It was something about a meteor crater that had been found in the jungles of Peru.
Underneath the article on the meteor crater was a police pathologist's report, also written in German. In the box marked
'NAME OF DECEASED' were the words 'ALBERT LUDWIG MUELLER'.
