"I'll borrow it and return it first thing in the morning."

"Don't rush. He's meeting with the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency until noon."

"You should be home with your wife and daughters," said Pitt.

"I was working late with Dr. O'Connell," said Yaeger, rubbing his tired eyes. "You just missed her."

"She came in and went to work without resting up after her trip?" Pitt asked in surprise.

"A truly remarkable woman. If I weren't married, I'd throw my hat in her ring."

"You always had a thing for academic women."

"Brains over beauty, I always say."

"Anything you can tell me before I wade through your report?" Pitt queried.

"An amazing story," said Yaeger, almost wistfully.

"I'll second that," Max added.

"This is a private conversation," Yaeger said testily to Max's image before he closed her down. He stood up and stretched. "What we have is an incredible story of a seafaring race of people who lived before the dawn of recorded history, and who were decimated after a comet struck the earth, causing great waves that engulfed the city ports that they had built in almost every corner of the globe. They lived and died in a forgotten age and a far different world than we know today."

"When I last talked to the admiral, he didn't rule out the legend of Atlantis."

"The lost continent in the middle of the Atlantic doesn't fit into the picture," Yaeger said seriously. "But there is no doubt that a league of maritime nations existed whose people had extensively sailed every sea and charted every continent." He paused and looked at Pitt. "The photos Pat took of the inscriptions inside the burial chamber and the map of the world are in the lab. They should be ready for me to scan into the computer first thing in the morning."

"They show placements of the continents far different than an Earth of the present," Pitt said contemplatively.

Yaeger's bloodshot eyes stared thoughtfully. "I'm beginning to sense that something more catastrophic than a comet strike took place. I've scanned the geological data my people have acc.u.mulated over the past ten years. The Ice Age ended quite abruptly in conjunction with a wild fluctuation of the sea. The sea level is over three hundred feet higher than it was nine thousand years ago."

"That would put any building or relics of the Atlanteans quite deep under the coastal waters."

"Not to mention deeply buried in silt."

"Did they call themselves Atlanteans?" asked Pitt.

"I doubt they knew what the word meant," replied Yaeger. "Atlantis is Greek and means daughter of Atlas. Because of Plato, it's become known through the ages as the world before history began, or what is called an antediluvian civilization. Today, anyone who can read, and most who don't, have a knowledge of Atlantis. Everything from resort hotels, technology and finance companies, retail stores, and swimming pool manufacturers to a thousand products including wines and food brands carry the name Atlantis. Countless articles and books have been written about the lost continent, as well as its being a subject of television and motion pictures. But until now, only those who believed in Santa Claus, UFOs, and the supernatural thought it was more than simply a fictional story created by Plato."

Pitt walked to the doorway and turned back. "I wonder what people will say," he said wistfully, "when they find out such a civilization actually existed."

Yaeger smiled. "Many of them will say I told you so."

WHEN Pitt left Yaeger and exited the elevator to the executive offices of NUMA, he couldn't help noticing that the lights in the hallway leading to Admiral Sandecker's suite were dimmed to their lowest level. It seemed strange they were still switched on, but he figured there could be any number of reasons for the faint illumination. At the end of the hallway, he pushed the gla.s.s door open into the anteroom outside the admiral's inner office and private conference room. As he stepped inside and walked past the desk occupied by Julie Wolff, the admiral's secretary, he smelled the distinctive fragrance of orange blossoms.

He paused in the doorway and groped for the light switch. In that instant, a figure leaped from the shadows and ran at Pitt, bent over at the waist. Too late, he stiffened as the intruder's head rammed square into his stomach. He stumbled backward, staying on his feet but doubling over, the breath knocked out of him. He made a grab at his a.s.sailant as they spun, but Pitt was caught by surprise, and his arm was easily knocked away.

Gasping for breath, with one arm clutching his midsection, Pitt found the light and switched it on. One quick glance at Sandecker's desk and he knew the intruder's mission. The admiral was fanatical about keeping a clean desk. Papers and files were put carefully in a drawer each evening before he left for his Watergate apartment. The surface was empty of Yaeger's report on the ancient seafarers.

His stomach feeling as if it had been tied in a huge knot, Pitt ran to the elevators. The one with the thief was going down; the other elevator was stopped on a floor below. He frantically pushed the b.u.t.ton and waited, taking deep breaths to get back on track. The elevator doors spread and he jumped in, pressing the b.u.t.ton for the parking lot. The elevator descended quickly without stopping. Thank G.o.d for Otis elevators, Pitt thought.

He was through the doors before they opened fully and ran to the hot rod just as a pair of red taillights vanished up the exit ramp. He threw open the driver's door, pushed Loren to one side, and started the engine.

Loren looked at him questioningly. "What's the emergency?"

"Did you see the man who just took off?" he asked, as he depressed the clutch, shifted gears, and stomped the accelerator pedal.

"Not a man, but a woman wearing an expensive fur coat over a leather pantsuit."

Loren would notice such things, Pitt thought, as the Ford's engine roared and the tires left twin streaks of rubber on the floor of the parking garage amid a horrendous squealing noise. Shooting up the ramp, he hit the brakes and skidded to a stop at the guardhouse. The guard was standing beside the driveway, staring off into the distance.

"Which way did they go?" Pitt shouted.

"Shot past me before I could stop them," the security guard said dazedly. "Turned south onto the parkway. Should I call the police?"

"Do that!" Pitt snapped, as he slung the car out onto the street and headed for the Washington Memorial Parkway only a block away. "What kind of car?" he tersely asked Loren.

"A black Chrysler 300M series with a three-point-five-liter, 253-horsepower engine. Zero to fifty miles an hour in eight seconds."

"You know its specifications?" he asked dumbly.

"I should," Loren answered briefly. "I own one, have you forgotten?"

"It slipped my mind in the confusion."

"What's the horsepower of this contraption?" she shouted above the roar of the flathead engine.

"About 225," Pitt replied, back-shifting and throwing the hot rod into a four-wheel drift upon entering the parkway.

"You're outcla.s.sed."

"Not when you consider we weigh almost a thousand pounds less," Pitt said calmly, as he pushed the Ford through the gears. "Our thief may have a higher top-end speed and handle tighter in the turns, but I can out-accelerate her."

The modified flathead howled as the rpms increased. The needle of the speedometer on the dashboard behind the steering wheel was approaching ninety-five when Pitt flicked the switch to the Columbia rear end and pushed the car into overdrive. The engine revolutions immediately dropped off as the car accelerated past the hundred-mph mark.

Traffic was light at one o'clock in the morning on a weekday, and Pitt soon spotted the black Chrysler 300M under the bright overhead lights of the parkway and began to overhaul it. The driver was traveling twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, but not pushing the sleek car anywhere near its potential speed. The driver moved into the empty right-hand lane, seemingly more intent on avoiding the police than worried about the possibility of a car pursuing her from the NUMA building.

When the Ford was within three hundred yards of the newer car, Pitt began to slow down, tucking in behind slower-moving cars, attempting to remain out of sight. He began to feel supremely self-confident, thinking his quarry hadn't noticed him, but then the Chrysler swung a hard turn onto the Francis Scott Key bridge. Reaching the other side of the Potomac River, it cut a tight left turn and then a right into the residential section of Georgetown, fishtailing around the corner, the tires screeching in protest.

"I think she's on to you," said Loren, shivering from the cold wind sweeping around the windshield.

"She's smart," Pitt muttered in frustration at losing the game. He gripped the old banjo-style steering wheel and swung it to its stop, throwing the Ford into a ninety-degree turn. "Instead of speeding away in a straight line, she's taking every corner in hopes of gaining enough distance until she can turn without us seeing which direction she took."

It was a cat-and-mouse game, the Chrysler pulling ahead out of the turns, the sixty-five-year-old hot rod regaining the lost yardage through its greater acceleration. Seven blocks, and still the cars were an equal distance apart, neither one gaining or closing the gap.

"This is a new twist," muttered Pitt, grimly clutching the wheel.