by Steve Berry
Crinkly eyes flashed as Dyals spotted him entering. “I always like it when you come by.”
Ramsey stood respectfully before his mentor until he was invited to sit.
“I thought I might hear from you,” Dyals said. “I heard this morning about Sylvian. He served on my staff once. An okay aide, but too rigid. He seems to have done all right, though. Nothing but glowing reports all day on his life.”
Ramsey decided to come to the point. “I want his job.”
The admiral’s melancholy pupils lit with approval. “Member, Joint Chiefs of Staff. I never made it that far.”
“You could have.”
The old man shook his head. “Reagan and I didn’t get along. He had his favorites, or at least his aides had their favorites, and I wasn’t on that list. Besides, it was time for me to leave.”
“What about you and Daniels? Are you on his favorites list?”
He caught something hard and unbending in Dyals’ expression.
“Langford,” Dyals said, “you know that the president is no friend of ours. He’s been hard on the military. Budgets have been slashed, programs curtailed. He doesn’t even think we need the Joint Chiefs.”
“He’s wrong.”
“Maybe. But he’s the president, and he’s popular. Like Reagan was, just with a different philosophy.”
“Surely there are military officers he respects. Men you know. Their support of my candidacy could make the difference.”
Dyals lightly stroked the cat. “Many of them would want the job for themselves.”
He said nothing.
“Don’t you find this whole business unsavory?” Dyals asked. “Begging for favors. Relying on whore politicians for a career. It’s one reason I opted out.”
“It’s the way of our world. We don’t make the rules, we just play by the ones that exist.”
He knew that many flag officers and a good number of those “whore politicians” could thank Ray Dyals for their jobs. Winterhawk had lots of friends, and knew how to use them.
“I’ve never forgotten what you did,” Dyals quietly muttered. “I often think about NR-1A. Those men. Tell me, again, Langford, what was it like?”
A haunting bluish glow seeped through the surface ice, its color gradually deepening with depth, finally evolving into an indigo blackness. Ramsey wore a bulky navy dry suit with tight seals and double layers, nothing exposed except a tiny strip of skin around his lips that had burned when he’d first entered the water but was now numb. Heavy gloves made his hands seem useless. Thankfully, the water dissipated all weight, and floating in the vastness, clear as air, he felt as if he were flying rather than swimming.
The transponder signal Herbert Rowland had detected led them across the snow to a narrow inlet where freezing ocean licked icy shore, a place where seals and birds had congregated for summer. The signal’s strength compelled a firsthand inspection. So he’d suited up, Sayers and Rowland helping him don his gear. His orders were clear. Only he went into the water.
He checked his depth. Forty feet.
Impossible to know how far down to the bottom but he was hoping he could at least catch sight of something, enough to confirm the sub’s fate. Rowland had told him that the source lay farther inland, toward the mountains that rose from the shoreline.
He kicked through the water.
A wall of black volcanic rock peppered with a dazzling array of orange anemones, sponges, pink staghorns, and yellow-green mollusks rose to his left. But for the fact the water was twenty-eight degrees he could have been on a coral reef. Light dimmed overhead in the frozen ceiling, and what had just appeared as a cloudy sky, in varying shades of blue, steadily went black.
The ice above had apparently been replaced with rock.
He unclipped a light from his belt and switched it on. Little plankton floated around him. He saw no sediment. He shone his light and the beam seemed invisible, as there was nothing to backscatter the photons. They simply hung in the water, revealing themselves only when they struck something.
Like a seal, which shot past, barely flexing a muscle.
More seals appeared.
He heard their trilling call and even felt it in his body, as if he were being sonar-pinged. What an assignment. An opportunity to prove himself to men who could literally make his career. That’s why he’d instantly volunteered. He’d also personally chosen Sayers and Rowland, two men he knew could be depended on. Rowland had said the signal source was maybe two hundred yards south. No more. He estimated that he’d swum at least that far. He searched the depths with light that penetrated maybe fifty feet. He was hoping to spot NR-1A’s orange conning tower rising from the bottom.
He seemed to be floating in a massive underwater cavern that opened directly into the Antarctic continent, volcanic rock now encircling him.
His gaze searched. Nothing. Just water dissolving into blackness.
Yet the signal was here.
He decided to explore a hundred more yards.
Another seal rocketed past, then one more. Ahead of him, their ballet was entrancing. He watched as they glided with no effort. One of them whirled in a broad somersault, then beat a hasty retreat upward.
He followed with his light.
The animal disappeared.
A second seal flicked its fins and ascended.
It, too, broke through the surface.
How was that possible?
Only rock should be above him.
“Amazing,” Dyals said. “What an adventure.”
Ramsey agreed. “My lips felt like I’d been kissing frozen metal when I surfaced.”
The admiral chuckled. “I would have loved to have done what you did.”
“The adventure’s not over, Admiral.”
Dread punctuated his words and the old man now understood that the visit contained a dual purpose.
“Tell me.”
He recounted the Magellan Billet’s breach of NR-1A’s investigative file. Cotton Malone’s involvement. His successful effort to retrieve the file. And White House access into the personnel records of Zachary Alexander, Herbert Rowland, and Nick Sayers. He omitted only what Charlie Smith was handling.
“Someone’s looking,” he said.
“It was only a matter of time,” Dyals said in a whisper. “Secrets seem so hard to keep anymore.”
“I can stop it,” he declared.
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Then you must.”
“I’ve taken measures. But you ordered, long ago, that he would be left alone.”
No name was needed. The he was known between them.
“So you’ve come to see if that order still stands?”
He nodded. “To be complete he must also be included.”
“I can’t order you any longer.”
“You’re the only man I willingly obey. When we disbanded thirty-eight years ago, you gave an order. Leave him alone.”
“Is he still alive?” Dyals asked.
He nodded. “Sixty-eight years old. Lives in Tennessee. Teaches at a college.”
“Still spouting the same nonsense?”
“Nothing has changed.”
“And the other two lieutenants who were there with you?”
He said nothing. He didn’t have to.
“You’ve been busy,” the admiral said.
“I was taught well.”
Dyals continued to stroke the cat. “We took a chance in ’71. True, Malone’s crew agreed to the conditions before they left, but we didn’t have to hold them to it. We could have looked for them. I’ve always wondered if I did the right thing.”
“You did.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“The times were different. That sub was our most secret weapon. There’s no way we could have revealed its existence, much less that it sank. How long would it have been before the Soviets found the wreckage? And there was the matter of NR-1. It was on missions then, and it’s still sailing today. No question—you did the
right thing.”
“You believe the president is trying to learn what happened?”
“No. It’s a few rungs lower on the ladder, but the man has Daniels’ ear.”
“And you think all this might destroy your chances at nomination?”
“Without a doubt.”
No need for him to add the obvious. And also destroy your reputation.
“Then I rescind the order. Do as you see fit.”
FORTY-ONE
AACHEN, 9:50 PM
Malone sat on the floor in a tight empty room that opened off the upper gallery. He and Christl had taken refuge inside after avoiding the tour group. He’d watched through a one-inch space beneath the door as lights inside the chapel were dimmed and doors banged shut for the night. That had been over two hours ago and there’d been no sounds since, except the hushed murmur of the Christmas market leaking in through the room’s solitary window and a faint whistle of the wind that ravaged the exterior walls.
“It’s strange in here,” Christl whispered. “So quiet.”
“We need time to study this place without interruptions.” He was also hoping that their disappearance would confuse Hatchet Face.
“How long do we wait?” she asked.
“Things need to settle down outside. You never know, there still could be visitors inside before the night is finished.” He decided to take advantage of their solitude. “I need to know some things.”
In the greenish light from the exterior floodlights he saw her face brighten. “I was wondering when you’d ask.”
“The Holy Ones. What makes you think they’re real?”
She seemed surprised by his inquiry, as if she’d expected something else. More personal. But she kept her composure and said, “Have you ever heard of the Piri Reis map?”
He had. It was supposedly created by a Turkish pirate and dated to 1513.
“It was found in 1929,” she said. “Only a fragment of the original, but it shows South America and West Africa in correct longitudes. Sixteenth-century navigators had no way to confirm longitude—that concept wasn’t perfected until the eighteenth century. Gerardus Mercator was one year old when the Piri Reis map was drawn, so it predated his method of projecting the earth on a flat surface, marking everything with latitude and longitude. But the map does just that. It also details the northern coast of Antarctica. That continent wasn’t even discovered until 1818. It wasn’t until 1949 that the first sonar soundings were made under the ice. Since then, more sophisticated ground radar has done the same thing. There’s a near-perfect match between the Piri Reis map and the actual coastline of Antarctica, beneath the ice.
“There’s also a notation on the map that indicates the drafter used information from the time of Alexander the Great as source material. Alexander lived in the early part of the fourth century before Christ. By then Antarctica was covered in miles of ice. So those source materials showing the original shoreline would have to be dated somewhere around ten-thousand-plus years before Christ, when there was much less ice, to around fifty thousand years BCE. Also, remember, a map is useless without notations indicating what you’re looking at. Imagine a map of Europe with no writing. Wouldn’t tell you much. It’s generally accepted that writing itself dates from the Sumerians, around thirty-five hundred years before Christ. That Reis used source maps, which would have to be much older than thirty-five hundred years, means the art of writing is older than we thought.”
“Lots of leaps in logic in that argument.”
“Are you always so skeptical?”
“I’ve found it’s healthy when my ass is on the line.”
“As part of my master’s thesis I studied medieval maps and learned of an interesting dichotomy. Land maps of the time were crude—Italy joined to Spain, England misshapen, mountains out of place, rivers inaccurately drawn. But nautical maps were a different story. They were called portolans—it means ‘port to port.’ And they were incredibly accurate.”
“And you think that the drafters of those had help.”
“I studied many portolans. The Dulcert Galway of 1339 shows Russia with great accuracy. Another Turkish map from 1559 shows the world from a northern projection, as if hovering over the North Pole. How was that possible? A map of Antarctica published in 1737 showed the continent divided into two islands, which we now know is true. A 1531 map I examined showed Antarctica without ice, with rivers, even mountains that we now know are buried beneath. None of that information was available when those maps were created. But they are remarkably accurate—within one half-degree of longitude in error. That’s incredible considering the drafters supposedly did not even know the concept.”
“But the Holy Ones knew about longitude?”
“To sail the world’s oceans they would have to understand stellar navigation or longitude and latitude. In my research I noticed similarities among the portolans. Too many to be mere coincidence. So if an oceangoing society existed long ago, one that conducted worldwide surveys centuries before the great geological and meteorological catastrophes that swept the world around ten thousand years before Christ, it’s logical that information was passed on, which survived and made its way into those maps.”
He was still skeptical but, after their quick tour of the chapel and thinking about Einhard’s will, he was beginning to reevaluate things.
He crawled to the door and peered beneath. Still quiet. He propped himself against the door.
“There’s something else,” she said.
He was listening.
“The prime meridian. Virtually every country that eventually sailed the seas developed one. There had to be a longitudinal starting point. Finally, in 1884, the major nations of the world met in Washington, DC, and chose a line through Greenwich as zero degree longitude. A world constant, and we’ve used it ever since. But the portolans tell a different story. Amazingly, they all seemed to use a point thirty-one degrees, eight minutes west as their zero line.”
He did not comprehend the significance of those coordinates, other than they were east of Greenwich, somewhere beyond Greece.
“That line runs straight through the Great Pyramid at Giza,” she said. “At that same 1884 conference in Washington, an argument was made to run the zero line through that point, but was rejected.”
He didn’t see the point.
“The portolans I found all utilized the concept of longitude. Don’t get me wrong, those ancient maps did not contain latitude and longitude lines like we know today. They used a simpler method, choosing a center point, then drawing a circle around it and dividing the circle. They would keep doing that outward, generating a crude form of measurement. Each of those portolans I mentioned used the same center. A point in Egypt, near what’s now Cairo, where the Giza pyramid stands.”
A pile of coincidences, he had to admit.
“That longitude line through Giza runs south into Antarctica exactly where the Nazis explored in 1938, their Neuschwabenland.” She paused. “Grandfather and Father both were aware of this. I was first introduced to these concepts from reading their notes.”
“I thought your grandfather was senile.”
“He left some historical notes. Not a lot. Father, too. I only wish they both would have spoken of this pursuit more.”
“This is nuts,” he said.
“How many scientific realities today started out the same way? It’s not nuts. It’s real. There’s something out there, waiting to be found.”
Which his father may have died searching for.
He glanced at his watch. “We can probably head downstairs. I need to check a few things.”
He came to one knee and pushed himself off the floor. But she stopped him, her hand on his trouser leg. He’d listened to her explanations and concluded that she was not a crackpot.
“I appreciate what you’re doing,” she said, keeping her voice hushed.
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You’re here.”
“As you mad
e clear, what happened to my father is wrapped up in this.”
She leaned close and kissed him, lingering long enough for him to know that she was enjoying it.
“Do you always kiss on the first date?” he asked her.
“Only men I like.”
FORTY-TWO
BAVARIA
Dorothea stood in shock, Sterling Wilkerson’s dead eyes staring up at her.
“You killed him?” she asked her husband.
Werner shook his head. “Not me. But I was there when it happened.” He slammed the trunk shut. “I never knew your father, but I’m told he and I are much alike. We allow our wives to do as they please, provided we’re afforded the same luxury.”
Her mind filled with a swarm of confusing thoughts. “How do you know anything of my father?”
“I told him,” a new voice said.
She whirled.
Her mother stood in the church doorway. Behind her, as always, loomed Ulrich Henn. Now she knew.
“Ulrich killed Sterling,” she said to the night.
Werner brushed by her. “Indeed. And I daresay he might kill us all, if we don’t behave.”
Malone led the way out of their hiding place, back into the octagon’s upper gallery. He paused at the bronze railing—Carolingian, he recalled Christl noting, original to the time of Charlemagne—and gazed below. A handful of wall sconces burned as night-lights. Wind continued to wreak havoc against the outer walls, and the Christmas market seemed to be losing enthusiasm. He focused across the open space at the throne on the far side, backdropped by mullioned windows that splashed a luminous glow over the elevated chair. He studied the Latin mosaic that wrapped the octagon below. Einhard’s challenge wasn’t all that challenging.
Thank goodness for guidebooks and smart women.
He stared at Christl. “There’s a pulpit, right?”
She nodded. “In the choir. The ambo. Quite old. Eleventh century.” He smiled. “Always a history lesson.”
She shrugged. “It’s what I know.”
He circled the upper gallery, passed the throne, and headed back down the circular staircase. Interestingly, the iron gate was left open at night. At ground level he traversed the octagon and reentered the choir. A gilded copper pulpit dotted with unique ornamentations perched against the south wall, above an entrance to another of the side chapels. A short staircase led up. He hopped a velvet rope and climbed wooden runners. Luckily what he was looking for was there. A Bible.