"I justify nothing. Duty to the New Destiny demands no justification."

"Who and what is the New Destiny?"

"The Fourth Empire, but you'll be dead before you see it." There was no hate, no arrogance in the killer's tone, just a simple statement of supposed fact. The killer spoke with a trace of a European accent.

"The chamber, the black skull, what is their significance?"

"A message from the past." For the first time, there was a hint of a smile. "The world's greatest secret. Which is all you'll ever know."

"You may become more cooperative after you've spent hard time in prison for murder."

There was a slight shake of the head. "I'll never stand trial."

"You'll recover."

"No, you're mistaken. There will be no opportunity to question me further. I die having the satisfaction of knowing you will soon follow, Mr. Pitt."

Before Pitt could stop him, the killer raised one hand to his mouth and inserted a capsule between his teeth. "Cyanide, Mr. Pitt. As functional and effective as it was when Hermann Goring took it sixty years ago." Then he bit down on the capsule.

Pitt quickly put his mouth to the killer's ear. He had to get in the last word before Tom Ambrose's slayer drifted into the great beyond. "I pity you, you pathetic slime. We already know about your moronic Fourth Empire." It was a nasty lie, but it gave Pitt wicked satisfaction.

The dark eyes widened, then slowly glazed and stared sightlessly as the killer died.

"Is he dead?" Pat whispered.

"As an Egyptian mummy," Pitt said coldly.

"Good riddance." Giordino shrugged indifferently. "A shame we can't donate his organs to the vultures."

Pat stared at Pitt. "You knew," she said quietly. "No one else noticed, but I saw you remove the ammo from his gun."

"He would have killed all three of us," Marquez muttered. "What put you onto him?"

"An educated guess," answered Pitt. "Nothing more. He struck me as too calculating, too cold. The bogus Dr. Ambrose didn't act like a man whose life was at risk."

The phone in the kitchen rang, and Marquez answered it, listened for a minute, spoke a few words, and hung up. "Sheriff Eagan," he reported. "Two of his deputies were seriously wounded in a gun battle at Pat's bed-and-breakfast. The unidentified armed suspect was mortally wounded and died before he could talk."

Pitt stared pensively at the body of the bogus Dr. Ambrose. "Who said dead men tell no tales?"

"Is it safe to come out?" asked Lisa Marquez in a tone slightly above a whisper, peering fearfully around the kitchen doorway and seeing the body lying on her floor.

Pitt walked over and took her by the hand. "Perfectly safe."

Marquez put a solicitous arm around her. "How are the girls?"

"They slept through most of it."

"The cave-in sealed off the tunnel for good," he said to Lisa slowly. "It looks as if our mining days are over."

"I won't lose any sleep over it," Lisa said, with a growing smile. "You're a wealthy man, Luis Marquez. It's time we embraced another lifestyle."

"It is also imperative," advised Pitt, as the shriek of the sirens on the sheriff's car and the ambulance could be heard approaching down the road. "Until we know who these people are and what their objective is," he paused to stare angrily down at the killer's body, "you and your family will have to leave Telluride and disappear."

Lisa stared at her husband with a faraway look in her eyes. "That small hotel surrounded by palm trees on the beach at Cabo San Lucas we always wanted to buy ..."

He nodded. "I guess now is the time."

Pat touched Pitt's arm, and he turned and smiled down at her. "Where am I supposed to hide?" she asked softly. "I can't simply drop my academic career. I've worked too hard to get where I am with the university."

"You life isn't worth two cents if you return to the cla.s.sroom and your research studies," said Pitt. "Not until we know what we're facing."

"But I'm an ancient language specialist, you're an underwater engineer. Hunting down murderers isn't our job."

"You're right," he agreed. "Government investigative agencies will take over from here. But your expertise will be invaluable in solving the puzzle."

"You don't think this is the end of it?"

He slowly shook his head. "Call it a complicated conspiracy or a Machiavellian plot-something is going down that goes far beyond mere murder. I don't have to possess psychic gifts to know the inscriptions and the black skull inside the chamber have far deeper consequences than we can possibly imagine."

When Sheriff Eagan arrived and began questioning Giordino, Pitt walked outside into the cold night and looked up at the great carpet in the black sky that was the Milky Way. The Marquez house was at nearly ten thousand feet of alt.i.tude, and here the stars were magnified into a sparkling sea of crystal.

He looked beyond the skies and cursed the night, cursed his helplessness, cursed the unknown murderers, cursed himself for being lost in a maelstrom of bewilderment. Who were the madmen and their crazy New Destiny? Answers were lost in the night. He couldn't see the obvious, and the inevitable became remote and distant.

He knew for certain that someone was going to pay, and pay big-time.

He began to feel better. Beyond his anger lay an icy confidence, and beyond that a heightened lucidity. A thought was already forming in his mind, racing and developing until he saw clearly what he must do.

First thing in the morning, he was going back into the mines and bring out the black obsidian skull.

8

UNABLE TO USE THEIR original escape route because of the b.o.o.by-trap explosive that had collapsed the roof of the tunnel, a team consisting of Pitt, Giordino, Eagan, Marquez, and two deputies traveled the course Pitt had taken from the Buccaneer Mine twenty-four hours earlier. Relying on Pitt's directional computer for guidance, the men quickly reached a flooded shaft that dropped to the tunnels below and led into the Paradise Mine.

Pitt stood on the edge of the shaft and stared into the black, ominous water, wondering if this was such a good idea. The flooding had risen two mine levels higher than the day before. During the night the pressure from far below had slowly diminished, until the water finally found its level.

Sheriff Eagan thought he was crazy. Pat O'Connell thought he was crazy, as did Luis and Lisa Marquez. Only Giordino refrained from calling Pitt crazy, and that was because he insisted on going along as backup in case Pitt ran into trouble.

The dive equipment was basically the same as that Pitt used before, except that now he intended to wear a dry suit. The wet suit had proven practical for movement out of water and protected him from cold during the hike through the mines, but the dry suit was more efficient in insulating the body against the frigid thermal temperatures of the underground water. For the hike back to the shaft, however, he wore warm, comfortable clothing, planning to change into the dry suit only when it came time to go under.

Luis Marquez had accompanied the expedition after recruiting three of his neighboring miner friends to help carry the dive equipment, which included rope ladders to ease the trip through vertical shafts. Sheriff Eagan firmly believed his services would be required to direct a rescue operation that he saw as inevitable.

Pitt and Giordino slipped out of their street clothes and, for added thermal protection, pulled on nylon-and-polyester inner suits that were shaped like long john underwear. Then they climbed into Viking vulcanized-rubber dry suits with attached hood, gloves, and traction-soled boots. Once they were suited up, their equipment and gauges checked, Pitt glanced into Giordino's face. The little Italian looked as unruffled and tranquil as if he were about to dive into an eight-foot-deep swimming pool. "I'll guide us with the directional computer and leave it to you to focus on the decompression tables."

Giordino held up a decompression computer strapped to his left arm. "Figuring an approximate dive time of thirty minutes in water one hundred and ten feet deep, at an alt.i.tude of ten thousand feet above sea level, took a bit of prodigious calculation for our decompression stops. But I think I can get you back to this rock garden without narcosis, an embolism, or the bends."