Nabinger ran a hand through his beard. How the hell had she made that connection?
Nabinger started to feel like he was getting off base, but he read further. The fall of the true line of man — the Atlanteans or Thulians — had come about because they had mated with lesser beings. Voila, the master race needed purity, which also worked quite well into the master-race theory of the Nazis.
So the Nazis had been interested in Atlantis? What did that have to do with Egypt? He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. Unsettling thoughts floated through his brain as he reviewed what he knew and what he had just learned. Why had the Nazis destroyed the book and what had happened to Sebottendorff? There didn’t appear to be any direct connection here with Kaji’s story other than the word Thule inscribed on the dagger, but Nabinger was used to having to dig intellectually as well as in the dirt. Perhaps there was more here than was readily apparent.
Nabinger opened his eyes and went back to the abstract on the book. Apparently the book had been destroyed and information about it suppressed because Hitler wanted people to think all his ideas had begun with him and were not borrowed from other sources.
Nabinger decided to press on for a bit along the present avenue of research. A search on Atlantis brought a large number of references — over three thousand. Obviously the Germans had not been alone in their interest. Nabinger searched the titles until he found one that seemed to give an overview of the history of the fabled continent.
Atlantis was often regarded as a myth mentioned in original source only by Plato. Most historians thought Plato had made the tale of Atlantis up to stress a point and that it was only a literary tool. For those who did think it represented an actual place, the fingers pointed to various locations. Some believe it to be the island of Thera in the Mediterranean, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption. The crater of the volcano Santorini had been investigated by leading oceanographers, searching for clues.
Others placed it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Azores were mentioned — the Lake of the Seven Cities on the island of Sao Miguel was a body of water in a volcanic crater. The main city of Atlantis was supposed to lie beneath that lake, or so the supporters of that site claimed.
Nabinger scanned down, skipping most of the middle of the article, looking to see what the latest theories were.
Recent discoveries of large stones closely fitted together off the islands of Bimini in the Bahamas had caused quite a bit of excitement several years previously and the enigma of their creation and location had never really been adequately explained. That struck a bell with Nabinger. A speaker at an archeological conference he had attended the previous year had been from Bimini and had spoken of the site. And, if he remembered rightly, there were high runes there, too, that couldn’t be deciphered.
Nabinger put his briefcase on the table next to the computer and dug through. He had a binder in there with information that he always carried with him when he went overseas to work. In the back were several pages of document protectors, each sized to hold twelve business cards.
He found the card of Helen Slater, the woman from Bimini who had spoken at the conference. He removed it and put it in his breast pocket.
Nabinger hit the F-3 key to print out the article and moved on to another article. This one described a nineteenth century American congressman, Ignatius Donnelly, who had published a book called Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, which had been a best-seller in its own time. Donnelly’s hypothesis was based on similarities between pre Columbian civilizations in America and Egypt. Nabinger felt like he was reading the beginning of his own unpublished paper on the high runes. Both cultures had had pyramids, embalming, a 365-day calendar, and a mythology about an ancient flood. Donnelly’s theories had been torn apart by scientists of his own day, which didn’t surprise Nabinger. The same connection had been made by people in this century and received the same chilly reception, which was the major reason Nabinger’s paper was still unpublished.
Done with that article, he decided to get back to what had led him here: the cross-reference with the Nazis and Atlantis. The Nazis had launched expeditions during World War II to the cold wastelands on both ends of the earth, in search of both Atlantis/Thule and relics such as the Holy Grail. And also to Central America, where there were pyramids, not quite as large or of the exact same design as those in Egypt, but with high runes also.
Nabinger stroked his beard. What had the Nazis found that had led them back to the Great Pyramid and to a chamber that had been undisturbed for over four thousand years? Had they broken the code on the runes and found out important information? Was there something written in these other locations about the pyramids? If Kaji’s story was true, at the very least they had found information that had told them of the lower chamber.
Nabinger cleared the screen and went back to the word search. He slowly typed in the name Kaji had given him:
Von Seeckt.
One hit. Nabinger accessed the article. It was a fifty-year anniversary article about the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. It detailed the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Nabinger scanned down. Von Seeckt’s name was listed as one of the physicists who had worked on development and testing of the bomb.
But Von Seeckt had been with Germans, according to Kaji. How had he ended up in America in the middle of the war? And why had the Germans brought a nuclear physicist into the Great Pyramid? And, most importantly, what had Von Seeckt discovered and carried out of the lower chamber in 1942?
Nabinger’s fingers halted over the keyboard as something he had written earlier in the day came back to him.
He reached into his backpack and pulled out his sketchpad. He’d been working on the panels in the lower chamber that stood at the head of where the sarcophagus had once been. The partially deciphered rune text was there in pencil:
POWER SUN FORBIDDEN HOME PLACE (???) CHARIOT (???) NEVER AGAIN (???) DEATH TO ALL LIVING THINGS
Curses against interlopers in the monuments of ancient Egypt were not unknown. Did this curse relate to what Von Seeckt had taken out of the pyramid? And why had the Allies hidden all record of the invasion of the pyramid and the discovery of the lower chamber? It had to be something much more important than some simple archeological find.
There was a way to find out. The end of the article stated that Von Seeckt was still alive and living in Las Vegas.
Nabinger turned off the computer and stood. Budget be damned, there was a mystery here, and he was the only one who was on its trail. He left the university library and walked into the nearest travel agency to book a return flight to the States that evening, with one stop en route to see Slater in Bimini.
Once he knew when he would be arriving, he rang through the long-distance operator to information in Nevada. There was a Werner Von Seeckt listed and Nabinger copied down the number. After he’d dialed it, he found himself talking to voice mail. As the beep sounded, Nabinger quickly composed his message: “Professor Von Seeckt, my name is Peter Nabinger. I work with the Egyptology Department at the Brooklyn Museum. I would like to talk to you about the Great Pyramid, which I believe we have a mutual interest in. I just deciphered some of the writing in the lower chamber, which I believe you visited once upon a time and it says: Power, sun. Forbidden. Home place, chariot, never again. Death to all living things. Perhaps you could help shed some light on my translation. Leave me a message how I can get hold of you at my voice-mail box,” and Nabinger left his number.
CHAPTER 5
Las Vegas, Nevada
T — 133 Hours
“About a year, give or take six months, without treatment. With treatment you can add perhaps another half a year.”
The old man didn’t blink at Dr. Cruise’s pronouncement. He nodded and rose to his feet, a black cane with a wide silver handle grasped in his withered left hand.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“We can start the treatments tomorrow morning, Professor Von Seeckt,”
Dr. Cruise hastily added, as if to cushion his earlier words.
“That is fine.”
“Would you like something—” Cruise paused as the old man held up his hand.
“I will be fine. This is not a surprise. I was informed this would most likely be the case when I was hospitalized earlier this year. I just wanted to confirm it, and I also believe I was owed the respect of your telling me yourself. My security will take me home.”
“I’ll see you at the meeting later this morning,” Cruise said, stiffening at the implied rebuke in Von Seeckt’s words.
“Good day, Doctor.” With that Werner Von Seeckt made his way out into the hallway of the hospital and was immediately flanked by two men wearing black wind breakers and khaki slacks, their eyes hidden behind wraparound sunglasses.
They hustled him into a waiting car and headed to the airstrip at Nellis Air Force Base, where a small black helicopter waited to whisk him back to the northwest. As the helicopter lifted off, Von Seeckt leaned back in the thinly padded seat and contemplated the terrain flitting by underneath. The American desert had been his home for over fifty years now, but his heart still longed for the tree-covered slopes of the Bavarian Alps, where he had grown up.
He had always hoped he would see his homeland before he died, but now, today, he knew he wouldn’t. They would never let him go, even after so many years had passed.
He unfolded the piece of paper on which he had written the message he had taken off his answering service while waiting in Cruise’s office. Power, sun. Forbidden. Home place, chariot, never again. Death to all living things. He remembered the Great Pyramid.
Von Seeckt leaned back in the seat. It was all coming around again, like a large circle. His life was back where it had been over fifty years ago. The question he had to ask himself was whether he had learned anything and whether he was willing to act differently this time.
The Devil’s Nest, Nebraska
T — 132 Hours
Underneath the camouflage netting that Turcotte had helped rig during darkness, the mechanics made the three helicopters ready for flight, folding the rotors out and locking them in place. The pilots walked around, making their preflight checks.
On the perimeter of the primitive airstrip Turcotte was lying on his stomach in the middle of a four-hour guard shift, looking down the one asphalt road that led up to the airstrip. The road was in bad shape. Plants and weeds had sprouted up through cracks, and it seemed obvious this place had been abandoned for quite a while. That didn’t mean, of course, that someone in a four-wheel-drive vehicle couldn’t come wandering up and stumble over their mission support site. Thus Turcotte’s orders to apprehend anyone coming up the road.
The question that still had not been answered — albeit Turcotte had not asked it out loud — was what mission this site was set up to support. Prague had given orders through the night, but they had been immediate ones, directed to the security of this location, not shedding any light on what they would be doing once the sun went down this evening.
The Cube, Area 51
T — 130 Hours, 30 Minutes
The conference room was to the left of the control center as one got off the elevator. It was soundproofed and swept daily for bugs. The Cube had never had a security compromise and General Gullick was going to insure that the record remained intact.
A large, rectangular mahogany table filled the middle of the room with twelve deep leather chairs lining the edges.
Gullick sat at the head of the table and waited silently as the other chairs were filled. He watched as Von Seeckt limped in and took the chair at the other end of the table.
Gullick had already been briefed by Dr. Cruise on the confirmation of Von Seeckt’s terminal condition. To Gullick it was good news. The old man had long ago outlived his usefulness.
Gullick shifted his attention to the youngest person in the room, who was sitting to his immediate right. She was a small, dark-haired woman with a thin face, dressed severely in a sharply cut gray suit. This was Dr. Lisa Duncan’s first meeting, and while inbriefing her on the project was one of the two priorities on the meeting schedule, it was not the primary one in Gullick’s mind. In fact, he resented having to take time out at such a critical juncture in the project to get a new person up to speed.
There was also the fact that Dr. Duncan was the first woman ever allowed in this room. But, since Duncan was filling the chair reserved for the presidential adviser, it paid at least to give the appearance of respect. The fingers of Gullick’s left hand lightly traced over his smooth skull, caressing the skin as if soothing the brain underneath. There was so much to do and so little time! Why had the previous adviser been reassigned? Duncan’s predecessor had been an old physics professor who had been so enraptured by what they were doing upstairs in the hangar that he had been no trouble.
A week ago Kennedy, the CIA representative, had been the first to notify Gullick of Duncan’s assignment and this visit. Gullick had ordered the CIA man to look into Duncan’s background. She was a threat; Gullick was convinced of that. The timing of her sudden assignment and this first visit couldn’t be coincidental. “Good afternoon, gentlemen — and lady,” Gullick added with a nod across the table. “Welcome to this meeting of Majic-12.” Built into the arm rest of his chair was a series of buttons and Gullick hit one of them, lighting up the wall behind him with a large-scale computer image. The same image was displayed on the horizontal console set into the tabletop just in front of Gullick for his eyes only:
INBRIEF PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER
CURRENT STATUS OF BOUNCERS
CURRENT STATUS OF THE MOTHERSHIP
PROJECTED TEST OF THE MOTHERSHIP
“This is today’s schedule.” Gullick looked around the table. “First, since we have a new member, introductions are in order. I will begin from my left and go around the table clockwise.
“Mr. Kennedy, deputy director of operations, the Central Intelligence Agency. Our liaison to the intelligence community.” Kennedy was the youngest man in the room. He wore an expensive three-piece suit. If they weren’t a quarter mile underground he’d probably have been wearing sunglasses, Gullick thought. He didn’t like Kennedy because of his age and his aggressive attitude, but he most certainly needed him. Kennedy had thick blond hair and a dark tan that looked out of place with the other men at the conference table.
“Major General Brown, deputy chief of staff, Air Force. The Air Force has overall administration and logistics responsibility for the project and for external security.”
“Major General Mosley, deputy chief of staff, Army. The Army supplies personnel for security support.”
“Rear Admiral Coakley, assistant director, Naval intelligence. The Navy is responsible for counterintelligence.”
“Dr. Von Seeckt, chief scientific counsel, Majic-12. Dr. Von Seeckt is the only man in this room who has been with the project from the beginning.”
“Dr. Duncan, our latest member, presidential adviser to Majic-12 on science and technology.”
“Mr. Davis, special projects coordinator, National Reconnaissance Organization. The NRO is the agency through which our funding is directed.”
“Dr. Ferrel, professor of physics, New York Institute of Technology. Our chief scientific counsel and in charge of our reverse engineering work.”
“Dr. Slayden, project psychologist, Majic-12.”
“Dr. Underhill, aeronautics, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Our expert at flight.”
“Dr. Cruise, MD.”
Gullick wasted no further time on the people. “I would like to welcome Dr. Duncan to our group for the first time.” He looked down the table at her. “I know you have been given the classified inbriefing papers on the history of the Majic-12 project, so I won’t bore you with that information, but I would like to run through some of the highlights of our operation as it currently stands. “First, everything and anything to do with the project is classified Top Secret, Q Clearance, Level 5. That is the highest classifi
cation level possible. Majic-12, which is the official designation for the people around this table, has been in existence for fifty-four years. Not once in all those years have we had a security breach.
“Our primary mission is twofold. First is to master flying the bouncer disks and reverse-engineer their propulsion system.” He flicked a button and an image of nine silvery disks appeared, lined up in a massive hangar. It was hard to tell details from the photo, but five of the disks appeared to be identical to one another, while the other four all differed slightly.
“We have been flying bouncers for thirty-three years and keep double flight crews current on their operation. But we have not had as much success discerning their method of propulsion.” He glanced down the table and arched an eyebrow. “I’m current on that research,” Duncan said.
Gullick nodded. “We are continuing flights of the bouncers to keep the flight crews current and also to continue tests on the propulsion system and their flight characteristics. We have several prototypes of the bouncer engine, but have not yet succeeded in engineering one that functions adequately,” he said, understating the massive problems they had encountered over the years and eager to get past the failures of the past and on to the future.
“Our second purpose — the mothership — is a different story altogether.” An elongated black cigar shape appeared on the screen, again nestled inside a hangar with rock walls. It was impossible to tell the scale of the ship from the photo, but even in the two-dimensional projection it gave the impression of being massive.
“For all these years the mothership has defied our best scientific minds, but we finally believe we have gained enough knowledge of the control system to activate the propulsion system. That is currently our number-one priority in the project. It will—”
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