"We can move beneath the dock until we reach the rocks along the sh.o.r.e," said Giordino, holding up a hand to gesture at the water between the great dock pilings. "There are some darkened sheds off to the right. Hopefully, we can gain entry and change into our work clothes."

The work clothes were orange coveralls, similar to American prison uniforms, that had been custom-made from blown-up, enhanced photos of the workers. The pictures had been recorded by a spy satellite and given to Admiral Sandecker, along with detailed maps of the shipyard and a photo-a.n.a.lysis identification of the many buildings.

Punching a program into his direction finder, Pitt then held the monitor against his face mask and saw the pilings of the dock materialize before his eyes as if he were standing on dry land under a bright sun. He felt as if he were swimming through an underwater corridor with shimmering lights filtering down from above.

They moved over large pipes and electrical conduits that led from the sh.o.r.e to the end of the dock. Visibility had increased to over a hundred feet beneath the reflection of thousands of lights so bright it was as if they were along the Las Vegas strip.

Pitt swam, with Giordino at his side and slightly behind, over a bottom layered with smooth rocks. Gradually, the rock-strewn bottom began to rise until the divers were pulling themselves along by hand. Stopping and lying in the shallows, they saw steps leading up from a small concrete quay not far from the dock pilings. A single light globe cast its paltry glow over the quay, in contrast to the galaxy of lights illuminating from the shipyard, lighting up the front of small buildings that Pitt had memorized from the satellite photo as toolsheds. Only the side walls away from the bright lights were lost in the shadows.

"How does it look?" asked Giordino.

"Deserted," Pitt answered. "But there is no way of telling if anyone is lurking out there in the dark." He had no sooner spoken than Giordino, who was peering through his spectral image scope, spotted movement along the side of the nearest toolshed. He gripped Pitt's shoulder as a warning, as a uniformed guard with an automatic weapon slung over one shoulder emerged into the light and briefly glanced down at the quay. They lay unmoving and half submerged, partially hidden by the dock pilings.

As Pitt half expected, the guard looked bored, since he had never seen any suspicious person attempting to sneak into the shipyard. No burglar, thief, or vandal would have bothered to rob a facility over a hundred miles from the nearest town, and especially not one that was on the other side of several glaciers and the Andes Mountains. He soon turned and walked back into the gloom along the row of toolsheds.

Even before the guard faded into the darkness, Pitt and Giordino were on the quay, fins in hand, propulsion vehicles under their arms, stealing up the steps and moving hurriedly out from under the glare of the lights. The door to the first shed was unlocked, and they thankfully stepped inside. Pitt closed the door.

"Home at last," Giordino said blissfully.

Pitt found a painter's canvas tarpaulin and hung it over the only window, stuffing the edges into any cracks. Then he switched on his dive light and beamed it around the shed. It was filled with marine hardware: bins heaped with bra.s.s and chrome nuts, bolts and screws; shelves neatly arranged with electrical supplies consisting of coils and bales of wire; cabinets stacked with gallon cans of marine paint-all precisely organized and labeled.

"They certainly have a fetish for neatness."

"It carries down from their German ancestry."

Swiftly, they removed their dive equipment and dry suits. The orange uniforms were pulled from their chest packs and slipped on over their insulated underwear. Next, they removed their boots and replaced them with sneakers.

"I just had a thought," said Giordino apprehensively.

"Yes?"

"What if the Wolf personnel have names or some kind of advertising on their overalls the satellite photos didn't pick up?"

"That's not half our problem."

"What can be worse?"

"We're in South America," said Pitt mildly. "Neither of us can speak enough Spanish to ask directions to a toilet."

"I may not be fluent, but I know enough to fake it."

"Good. You do the talking, and I'll act as though I have a hearing disability."

While Giordino studied the photo map of the shipyard, figuring the shortest path to the Wolf corporate offices, Pitt dialed his Globalstar phone.

THE atmosphere inside Sandecker's condominium at the Watergate was heavy with foreboding. A fire shimmered in the fireplace, a warm, restful kind of fire that looked comforting though it didn't throw off a wave of heat. Three men were seated on opposite sofas across a low gla.s.s table holding a tray of coffee cups and a half-emptied pot. Admiral Sandecker and Ron Little sat and stared spellbound at an elderly man in his middle eighties with snow-white hair, who related a story never told before.

Admiral Christian Hozafel was a former highly decorated officer in the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. He'd served as captain aboard U-boats from June 1942 until July 1945, when he'd formally surrendered his boat in Veracruz, Mexico. After the war, Hozafel had bought a Liberty ship from the U.S. government under the Marshall Plan and had parlayed it over the next forty years into an extremely successful commercial shipping venture, eventually selling his interest and retiring when the Hozafel Marine fleet numbered thirty-seven ships. He'd become a U.S. citizen and now lived in Seattle, Washington, on a large estate on Whidbey Island, where he kept a two-hundred-foot brigantine that he and his wife sailed throughout the world.

"What you're saying," said Little, "is that the Russians did not find the scorched remains of Hitler's body outside his bunker in Berlin."

"No," Hozafel answered firmly. "There were no scorched remains. Adolf Hitler's and Eva Braun's bodies were burned over a period of five hours. Gallons of gasoline siphoned from wrecked vehicles around the Reich Chancellery were used to douse the bodies, which were lying in a crater that had been blown in the ground outside the bunker by a Soviet sh.e.l.l. The fire had been kept blazing until there were only ashes and a few tiny bits of bones. Loyal SS officers had then placed the ashes and bones in a bronze box. Nothing was left. Every bit of ash and every sc.r.a.p of bone was carefully swept up and deposited in the box. Then the SS officers had placed the badly charred and unrecognizable bodies of a man and woman who had been killed during an air raid in the crater, where they were buried along with Hitler's dog Blondi, who had been forced to test the cyanide capsules later used by Hitler and Eva Braun."

Sandecker's eyes were fixed on Hozafel's face. "These were the bodies found by the Russians," Sandecker said.

The old former U-boat commander nodded. "They later claimed that dental records firmly established the ident.i.ties of Hitler and Braun, but they knew better. For fifty years, the Russians carried out the hoax, while Stalin and other high Soviet officials thought Hitler had escaped to either Spain or Argentina."

"What became of the ashes?" asked Little.

"A light airplane landed near the bunker amid the flames and bursting Soviet sh.e.l.l fire as Russian armies closed in on the core of the city. The minute the pilot had swung his aircraft around for a fast takeoff, SS officers rushed forward and placed the bronze box in the cargo compartment. Without a word of conversation, the pilot gunned the engine and the plane raced down the runway, quickly vanishing in the pall of smoke rising above the city. The pilot refueled in Denmark and flew across the North Sea to Bergen, Norway. There he landed and turned over the bronze box to Captain Edmund Mauer, who in turn had the box carried aboard the U-621. Numerous other crates and boxes containing precious relics of the n.a.z.i party, including the Holy Lance and the sacred Blood Flag and other prized art treasures of the Third Reich, were loaded aboard another submarine, the U-2015, under the command of Commander Rudolph Harger."

"This was all part of the plan conceived by Martin Bormann and given the code name of New Destiny," said Sandecker.

Hozafel looked at the admiral respectfully. "You are very well informed, sir."

"The Holy Lance and the Blood Flag," Sandecker pressed on. "They were included in the cargo of the U-2015?"

"Are you familiar with the Lance?" Hozafel inquired.

"I studied and wrote of the Lance as a cla.s.s project at Annapolis," replied Sandecker. "Legends handed down from the Bible claim that a metalsmith by the name of Tubal Cain, a direct descendent of Cain, the son of Adam, forged the Lance from the iron found in a meteorite that was sent by G.o.d. This was sometime before 3000 B.C. The sacred lance was pa.s.sed down from Tubal Cain to Saul, then to David and Solomon and other kings of Judea. Eventually, it came into the hands of the Roman conqueror Julius Caesar, who carried it in battle against his enemies. Before he was a.s.sa.s.sinated, he gave it to a centurion who had saved his life during the war with the Gauls. The son of the centurion pa.s.sed it on to his son, who gave it to his son, who also served in the Roman legions as a centurion. It was he who stood on the hill and watched as Christ was crucified. The law of the land required that all crucified criminals be declared dead before the sun fell so they would not defile the coming Sabbath. The thieves on the crosses beside Jesus had their legs broken to speed up their demise. But when it was Jesus' turn, they found that he was already dead. The centurion, for reasons he took to the grave, pierced Jesus' side with his lance, causing an inexplicable stream of blood and water. As the holy blood spewed forth, the stained lance instantly became the most sacred relic in Christendom, next to the True Cross and the Holy Grail.

"The Holy Lance, as it became known, came down to King Charlemagne and was inherited by each of the following Holy Roman emperors over the next thousand years, before ending up in the hands of the Hapsburg emperors and being placed on display in the royal palace in Vienna."

"You must also know the fable behind the lance's power," said Hozafel, "the fable that drove Hitler to possess it."

" 'Whosoever possesses this Holy Lance, and understands the powers it serves, holds in his hand the destiny of the world for good and evil,' " quoted Sandecker. "That's why Hitler stole the lance from Austria and held it until his dying day. He imagined that it would give him mastery of the world. If Hitler had never heard of the lance, it would be interesting to speculate if he might not have sought the path of power toward world domination. His final request was that it be hidden from his enemies."

"You mentioned a Blood Flag," said Little. "I'm not familiar with that relic, either."

"In 1923," Hozafel clarified, "Hitler attempted a coup against the existing German government in Munich. It was a disaster. The army fired into the crowd and several people were killed. Hitler escaped but was later tried and sentenced to jail, where he spent nine months writing Mein Kampf. The coup forever became known as the Munich Putsch. One of the early swastika n.a.z.i flags was carried by one of the would-be revolutionaries, who was shot and was splattered with his blood. Naturally, it became the bloodstained symbol of a n.a.z.i martyr. This Blood Flag was then used in ceremonies to consecrate future n.a.z.i flags at party rallies by holding it against them as a blessing."

"And so the n.a.z.i treasures were smuggled out of Germany, never to be seen again," said Little meditatively. "According to old CIA archive records, no trace of the lance and other n.a.z.i h.o.a.rds, including stolen art treasures and the loot from banks and national treasuries, was ever discovered."

"Your submarine," Sandecker said evenly, "was the U- 699."

"Yes, I was her captain," Hozafel admitted. "Shortly after a number of influential n.a.z.i military officers, high party officials, and Hitler's ashes were safely loaded on board, I sailed from Bergen in the wake of the U-2015. Until now, the disappearance of Hitler has been a mystery. I am telling you the story only at the urging of Mr. Little, and because of the possibility, as I understand it, that the world will be in upheaval after a coming comet strike. If true, this makes my sworn silence irrelevant."

"We're not ready to cry doom yet," said Sandecker. "What we want to know is if the Wolf family is truly spending untold sums of money building huge arks in a fanatical belief that a cataclysm will destroy the Earth and every living creature on it-or if they have some other motive."

"An interesting family, the Wolfs," Hozafel said pensively. "Colonel Ulrich Wolf was one of the most trusted men on Hitler's staff. He saw that Hitler's irrational orders and simplest wishes were carried out. The colonel was also the leader of a group of devoted n.a.z.is who formed an elite group of SS officers dedicated to defending the faith. They called themselves the Guardians. Most of them died fighting in the final days of the war-all, that is, except Colonel Wolf and three others. He and his entire family-a wife, four sons and three daughters, two brothers, and three sisters and their families-sailed aboard the U-2015. I was told by an old naval comrade who's still living that Wolf was the last of the few Guardians and created some kind of contemporary order called the New Destiny."

"It's true. They operate as a giant conglomerate known as Destiny Enterprises," Sandecker informed Hozafel.

The old German sea dog smiled. "So they gave up their uniforms and propaganda for business suits and profit-and-loss statements."

"No longer calling themselves n.a.z.is, they've modernized their manifesto," said Little.