S
ERENA LOOKED OUT ACROSS
the stormy skies from inside the mouth of the southern star shaft near the top of P4. Whiteout conditions threatened, the clouds over the ice deserts in the distance were heavy with snow, and bolts of lightning flashed on the distant horizon.
Then she heard a familiar whirring noise overhead and looked up in stunned disbelief to see a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter drifting across the stormy sky. She waved frantically.
A rope ladder dropped down like something out of a dream, and she took a firm hold. She glanced back down the dark shaft and saw something shiny. She hesitated and looked closer. It was water, coming up like a geyser. She tugged the rope ladder and was lifted away as a spray of water shot into the air, barely missing the chopper.
An American airman grabbed her shoulders and dragged her into the Black Hawk. She could see from the faces of the crew that they were as shocked to see Mother Earth as she was to see them. Almost as shocked as they were to survey the ruins below. Their commanding officer introduced himself as Admiral Warren and shouted to the pilot over the roar of the helicopter and waters outside.
“Take us out!” Warren ordered.
“No,” Serena said, her teeth chattering. “We have to find Conrad, Doctor Conrad Yeats. He’s still down there.”
Warren stared at her. “You mean General Griffin Yeats?”
“No, I mean his son.”
Warren looked at the pilot who shook his head. “Believe me, no one’s down there now.”
The Black Hawk began to pull away.
“No!” Serena tried to climb in front and grab the controls. But four airmen restrained her and shoved her back against the medical supplies. She tried to get up, but all energy left her. Then the medic stabbed a needle in her arm.
“Calm down, Sister, you’ve been through a lot,” Warren said as he wrapped a navy jacket around her shivering body. She felt dizzy and light-headed.
She brushed back wet strands of hair from her face and looked out the window. A whirlpool of water had nearly swallowed the city. Only the peak of P4 stabbed out from the murky deep. She had often imagined as a child what it must have been like when the Red Sea parted for the children of Israel to pass through and later came together again to drown all of Pharaoh’s horses and chariots. Now the picture was all too clear.
She prayed to God that Conrad was safe but knew better. In her delirium, she could picture herself searching for him. Then, through the sheets of ice, Conrad would be spotted stumbling across the plain, miraculously having survived. He would emerge from the mist whiter than snow, his eyebrows and hair white, almost glowing, like he had come forth from the shiny veils of the holiest of shrines. The Americans would be forced to land the chopper. She would run to Conrad and embrace him. He would return with her to the awaiting chopper, his past buried behind him. They would hold each other tightly as snowflakes fell around them like stars.
But there was no Conrad, she realized bitterly. And God didn’t always answer her prayers the way she liked. As the chopper lifted off and away, she looked down to see the flattened tip of P4 barely showing above the water. It was as if they were flying over the Southern Ocean now. Not a trace of the city below—or Conrad. It was all gone, swept clean as if it had never been there.
Warren started shouting something again. She couldn’t pick up much of what he said under the whine of the blades and howl of the
winds. Then she looked up to see him hanging out the open doorway. The Black Hawk swung toward whatever he was pointing at.
Serena was on her feet in an instant, clinging to Warren, peering out. There was a lone figure atop P4. The man who waved frantically was in a U.N. uniform.
“That’s him!” she said with as much force as she could muster.
“Get lower!” Warren ordered the pilot, who was struggling against the wind gusts.
Serena grabbed Warren’s binoculars as the Black Hawk started down. When they were no more than thirty feet away, she could see the man look up. With dismay she realized that the face she was looking at wasn’t Conrad’s at all. It belonged to one of the Egyptians, and his arm came up holding a machine gun.
“Admiral, pull back!” she said.
“We got him, don’t worry,” Warren said, and Serena looked back to see two marksmen with rifles trained on the man. “I want him alive.”
Serena felt a pop of air brush past her ear and looked down to see a bullet catch the Egyptian in the leg and send him down with a splash.
Warren nodded approvingly. “Move in.”
As soon as the chopper came in, however, the Egyptian rose from the water and started shooting wildly into the air.
Warren, standing in the open door, took a bullet in the throat and fell back against Serena, dead. She struggled to push his heavy body off her and called for help. But when she looked over her shoulder, she saw one of the Americans, also hit, falling backward. As he went down, his machine gun raked the cockpit with bullets. Serena heard the pilot cry out.
The Black Hawk lurched forward, and Serena grabbed at a strut for support. Then the chopper lifted violently, and she was thrown out through the open door. She felt herself falling through space. Then she splashed onto the top of P4.
She rolled onto her back and looked up. The Black Hawk bucked twenty or thirty feet up in the air, veered sharply to the left, and exploded in a great ball of fire. Burning debris scattered like shrapnel, destroying any hopes she had for escape.
Soaked to the bone and waist-deep in water, she stood up and faced the wounded Egyptian. The lone remnant of Zawas’s army, blood spurting from his leg, pointed his unsteady AK-47 at her.
She didn’t bother to put her hands up as he approached her with a desperate expression on his face. Or was he looking at something over her shoulder?
She turned to see another military chopper sweep in, this one with U.N. markings. Its heavy machine guns exploded and bullets kicked up water along the P4 summit, hitting the Egyptian and driving him backward over the edge and into the water.
Serena looked up as the chopper circled overhead. A ladder was lowered for her. She grabbed the first rung and started climbing. When she reached the top a strong hand helped her in. She looked up to see the face of Colonel Zawas. In his right hand was an automatic pistol and it was pointed at her.
She was numb with shock as Zawas smiled, the wind blowing his cap off.
“You do not disappoint, Doctor Serghetti.” He held up her green thermos. “Now that I have the Sonchis map there is nothing to stop me from returning one day to complete that which I’ve begun. History, as I’ve mentioned, is written by the victors.”
Maybe, she thought, but a quick glance told her it was just Zawas and the pilot aboard. “Tell me, Colonel, did you twist the thermos shut clockwise or counterclockwise?”
“Clockwise.” Zawas eyed her dubiously. “Why do you ask?”
She smiled and said, “Oh, nothing.”
Zawas’s confidence began to waver. He lowered his gun to untwist the thermos. As he did, Serena tried to kick the gun out of his hand. She missed the gun but hit his arm and the gun went off. The chopper veered up, throwing Zawas off balance, but not before he put two more bullets through the window in his efforts to kill her.
Serena looked at the pilot and saw that he had been hit. She jumped in front, shoved the man aside, and grabbed the controls. She looked over her shoulder in time to see an angry Zawas rise to his feet.
“Colonel!” she screamed. “Do you know how to fly a helicopter?”
Zawas frowned. “Of course, woman.”
“So do I.”
She banked sharply and watched Zawas tumble out the door. He dropped like a stone, his arms windmilling until he hit the surface of the churning water and disappeared.
She took a deep breath and steadied the chopper. A quick scan of the instruments told her she might, if she was lucky, have enough fuel to make it within radio range of McMurdo and land on more solid ice. But she couldn’t make herself proceed without looking back. She scanned the ice below, fighting back the tears. The city was gone and her fuel gauges were dropping.
As she hovered in the gusty skies over the hardening ice, she prayed for the soul of Conrad Yeats. Then she turned the chopper in the direction of McMurdo Station on the Ross Ice Shelf and flew away.
A
T
0600
HOURS
Z
ULU,
Major General Lawrence Baylander, a hard-nosed New Zealander, led his UNACOM weapons inspection convoy of Hagglunds around a fissure and crossed into the target zone.
The area had been wind-whipped, and any evidence of American nuclear testing would not be visual. Dosimeter readings, thermal scans, and seismic surveys would be necessary to detect any radiation, buried facilities, and the like. Even then they would have to drill for subglacial core samples, he thought. If only they had more time.
But Baylander had already pushed the search and rescue team too far, he realized, and supplies and thus time were running low. He had already concluded they’d have to abandon the tractors and fly back once air support arrived. Worst of all, international politics and funding being what they were, he knew there would be no returning to this wasteland. About the only thing he would get out of this frozen hell was the grim satisfaction that the U.N. would stick the Americans with the tab.
He could feel his opportunity to nail the Americans slipping away. Exhausted and irritated, he was about to radio back to base to tell them that his team was ready to turn around when the convoy found the way blocked.
A red Hagglunds tractor, half protruding from the ice, had apparently sunk into a fissure, its wafer treads locked. It was still upright, slightly skewed. The forward cab was smashed.
Baylander swore and radioed the convoy to brake to a halt.
Pausing just long enough to square up his custom-made polyplastic snowshoes, he decided to keep his engine running. He yanked his cab door open, jumped down, and started across the waist-deep snow in long, slow strides.
He surveyed the wreck grimly and circled it once. Something behind the cracked, fogged-up windshield caught his attention and he leaned over for a closer look. There was a figure inside, curled up in a fetal position. A frozen corpse. If it was an American, he had his proof. Baylander straightened and ran over to the cabin door.
He knew the handle would be useless, but he tried anyway. It was frozen solid. He then took his metal staff and smashed the side window and carefully crawled in.
The man was lying across the leather seats. Baylander turned him over. The pasty white face had once belonged to a relatively young, handsome man. For a long minute Baylander stared down at the ghostly apparition, then bent down to listen for shallow breathing. There was none.
Baylander proceeded to unbutton the corpse’s coat to discover a UNACOM uniform underneath. Bloody hell, he thought. He must be one of ours, from the first team. He could find no identification.
He studied the body to determine a time of death. It must not have been too long, he decided, maybe twenty-four hours, because the corpse was only now turning a dull shade of blue. Remarkable, considering how long it had been there. The cabin must have provided enough of a shield from the elements to enable the inspector to have survived far longer than he expected. Baylander suspected the man’s last hours were an unforgiving mix of semiconsciousness, delirium, and the slow shutdown of vital organs. It must have been an altogether unpleasant way to go.
Baylander removed his thick gloves and put two fingers on the carotid artery. To his astonishment he could detect the faintest rhythm of a pulse.
C
ONRAD
Y
EATS AWOKE
the next afternoon in a private room inside the main infirmary at McMurdo Station. He lay still for a long time, becoming slowly aware that his hands were swathed in bandages and one shoulder was in a sling. His head, meanwhile, pounded like a drum. He found a buzzer and pushed it with a bandaged hand, but the navy nurse who came told him to lie quietly.
So he lay and, piece by piece, recollected the events of the previous day until the middle of the morning. Along the way he drew a picture by gripping a pen between his bandaged hands. After that he dozed off again. When he woke, a woman was sitting by his bed. She smiled.
He stared at her. “Just like the hospital rooms in the old days—a bed and a sister,” he said. He tried to smile, but it hurt. His voice was not much stronger than a whisper. “How long have you been here?”
“Only a few minutes,” she said, her smile warming him.
But Conrad knew she was lying. He had awakened in the middle of the night and seen her sleeping in that chair. At the time he thought he was dreaming. “You’re alive.”
He reached for her hand, and she touched his bandage. “So are you, Conrad.”
“And the rest of the world?”
“Everything’s fine.” A tear sparkled on her cheek. “Thanks to you.”
“What about Yeats?”
She seemed to stiffen. “Past Pluto by now, I should imagine.”
“You think what he said about me was crazy?” Conrad searched her eyes.
“No more than a lost city under the ice cap.”
Conrad paused. “Does that mean yes it’s crazy or no it’s true?”
“There is no city, Conrad,” she said. “The whole affair’s over. Complete. Finished. Do you understand?”
“Not quite,” he told her. “I’ve made one hell of a discovery, Serena. Look at this.”
He showed her the rough sketch he had made of the Solar Bark.
Serena frowned. She looked so beautiful.
“Don’t tell me I made that up, Serena,” he said.
“No, you didn’t, Conrad,” she said. “I’ve seen it before. The original blueprints for the Washington Monument looked exactly like this about two hundred years ago, including the now-missing rotunda at the base.”
Conrad stared at his drawing and realized that Serena was right. Suddenly he decided he would have to get back to Washington. There was his father’s estate, naturally, and tying up loose ends. Maybe some of those loose ends included files from his father’s office at DARPA.
A new journey was beginning to form inside Conrad’s head, but apparently Serena didn’t like what she was seeing.
“Listen, Conrad,” she told him gently, almost seductively. “You’re a great archaeologist, but a lousy amateur in every other way. You’re going to publish nothing. You’re going to produce nothing. For one thing, you’ve got nothing to produce. No Scepter of Osiris. Nothing. The only memento of our great escapade is the Sonchis map, and it’s going back to Rome with me, where it belongs.”
Conrad glanced over at his nightstand. “Where’s my camera?”
“What camera?”
He grew still. “What about us?”
“There is no us. There can’t be. Don’t you see?” There was pain in her eyes. “You have no story to tell. You have no evidence. The city is gone. All that remains is your personal word. If you insist on talking, nobody will believe you except some of Zawas’s friends in the Middle
East, and they’ll come after you. You were the victim of your own lunatic ambitions. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“And you?”
“I’m director of the Australian Antarctic Preservation Society and an adviser to the United Nations Antarctica Commission investigating breaches to the environmental protocols of the international Antarctic Treaty,” she said.
“You’re all that?”
“It was my team that found you in the ice,” she went on. “Since you’re the only eyewitness to alleged events, any information you can recall would be deeply appreciated. I’ll include it in my report to the General Assembly.”
“They picked you to write the report?” Conrad managed a weak laugh. Of course, he realized. Who else had the international standing or passion concerning the preservation of this great white virgin continent?
Serena stood up to leave. She looked down at him, eyes tender but her body stiff with resolve. “Oh, lucky man.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “God’s angels were watching over you.”
“Please, don’t leave.” He really meant it. He was afraid he’d never see her again.
She turned, hand on the doorknob. “Take a word of advice from Mother Earth, Conrad.” She spoke bravely, but he could tell she was fighting back tears. “Go back to the States, bang some more coeds, and stick to university lectures and cheap tourist haunts. Forget about everything you think you saw here. Forget about me.”
“Like hell I will,” he said as she closed the door.
He stared into space for what felt like an eternity, thinking about Serena. Then a nurse entered and the spell was broken. “There’s a phone call for you,” she said. “Oh, and the doctor said it’s OK for you to drink coffee if you’d like. It took me forever to find that thermos you wanted.”
“Sentimental value,” he said as the nurse placed the green thermos on the nightstand. “It was kind of Doctor Serghetti to keep it for me. I hope you replaced it as I requested.”
“I packed her one just like it with your little gift inside,” she said. “I’ll come back and pour your coffee for you in a couple of minutes.”
“Thanks,” he said as she left.
He looked thoughtfully at the coffee thermos, then awkwardly picked up the phone with his mitts for hands.
It was Mercedes, his
Ancient Riddles of the Universe
producer in Los Angeles, laughing on the line. Everything about their last encounter in Nazca was forgiven and forgotten. “I just saw the wires on the Internet,” she said. “What happened down there? Are you all right?”
Conrad cradled the phone on his good shoulder. Somehow he felt strangely content. “I’m fine, Mercedes.”
“Awesome. When are you going to be mobile?”
The door was cracked open and Conrad could see a couple of U.S. Navy MPs posted outside. “Give me a couple of days. Why?”
“The sweeps are over and the networks are looking for filler. We’ve cooked up a special that’s right up your alley. How does Luxor sound?”
Conrad sighed. “Been there, done that.”
“Picture yourself standing among the ruins of a slave city,” Mercedes said. “You’re revealing to the world how the Exodus is true. We’ve even got a Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian statuette of Ramses II to prove it. You’ll get twice the usual fee. Just make sure you patch things up with the Egyptians. When can you start?”
Conrad thought. “Next month,” he told her. “I have to stop over in Washington first.”
“Awesome. By the way, this Antarctica thing. Is there a find?”
“No, Mercedes,” said Conrad slowly. “No find.”