She let go and laughed. The skin on his face flushed purple, but his scarred lips curved in a carnal smile.

From a case at her side she took out a hypodermic and a vial filled with a pale yellow fluid. She jammed the needle into the vial and extracted it, then jabbed the hypo into a bulging artery in her left arm and pressed the plunger.

"That stuff's going to kill you," Belisarius muttered.

She shuddered as the steroid solution hit her system. The juice made her feel like a G.o.ddess, invincible. "We all gotta go sometime."

Then she shot to her feet, grabbed Belisarius by the shirt, and smashed her mallet-like fist into his face.

___.

Forty minutes later, Belisarius lay on his back in bed, looking like a man who had just had every bone in his body broken by a medieval rack. Blood trickled from the sides of his mouth.

Beside him, propped up by three pillows, Jaz plunged a second needle into her bicep. "You ready, lover?" she asked.

He nodded. Even though his tortured muscles screamed with pain, his mind was sharp and hungry. With a gasp, he pushed himself to a sitting position.

Flipping open a laptop, she accessed a schematic of the Gakkel Ridge, surrounded by an oval of six blinking lights. She tapped a series of keys, then brought up another file and entered a code.

Immediately a time readout flashed on the screen, counting down the seconds from ten.

When the clock reached one, she glanced over at Belisarius and grinned. "Bombs away!"

The screen glowed with the billowing graphic of a fiery explosion.

___.

Arctic Ocean Two miles below the ice-packed surface of the Arctic Ocean, inside the t.i.tanium case secured in the icebreaker hulk's cargo hold, the signal from Jaz's laptop triggered the fuse on an embedded detonator. A millisecond later a deep water-engineered thermobaric bomb erupted in a ma.s.sive fireball of white heat, fusing in a t.i.tanic chain reaction with explosions from the other five sunken ships, instantaneously boiling the sea water to twelve thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

BOOK TWO.

NINETEEN.

Siwa THE shockwave of the twin explosions thundered through the total darkness, battering Skarda's eardrums. An acrid stench made his eyes water. On the stairwell a wall of limestone boulders collapsed under its own weight, sending seething billows of dust boiling toward him.

Coughing, he groped in his pack for the LED and switched it on, playing the beam over April's unconscious face. Her eyes were closed, but her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose and fell in a regular rhythm. Twisting around, he aimed the shaft of light at Flinders, a hazy shape in the dust cloud.

"You okay?" he called out.

Without saying anything, she scuttled toward the source of the light. Her face was streaked with tears and grime. Her shoulders shook, her eyes wide with terror. "We're sealed in. We're going to die."

"We're not going to die." Even though he was fighting down a surge of panic, he kept his voice empty of emotion. Emotions weren't going to help them get out of here. "I'm going to need you to pull yourself together, okay?"

"You think there's a way out?" A wave of hope washed over her face. Her eyes bored into his.

He showed her a confident smile. "There's always a way out. The only way to lose is to give up. Our first job is to get April back on her feet." He handed her the lamp. "Here. Hold this while I clean her up."

Flinders took the LED, shining it on April's head while Skarda checked the pack. The woman had left them the lamp, the tripod, and a first-aid kit. Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, he examined the wound. It was a deep gash, running from her temple into the hairline. With a surgical scissors he snipped off clumps of her dark hair, then cleaned the wound with antibacterial solution and taped it with Vet-Wrap.

She let out a low groan. Her eyes opened. A split second later she had rolled up on one knee, her gaze probing the darkness. Her right hand reached up and touched the bandage.

"You got hit by a chunk of rock," Skarda told her. "The woman blew the entrance. We're sealed in."

She accepted the news without emotion.

He helped her to her feet and she glanced over at Flinders. "Is there another way out of here?"

Flinders was still on her knees, staring at them with an unfocused expression. Her shoulders shook. "I don't know."

Bending over, Skarda took her arm while she got her feet under her. He knew he had to keep her moving, to give her a sense of direction. She was close to shock.

April glanced at the rubble-choked staircase. "Well, we're not getting out that way. Let's head for the back." Striding ahead, she stopped suddenly and swung around, a thought striking her. "Wait a minute," she said to Flinders. "Didn't you say the sibyl used a speaking tube to give her oracles at the altar?"

Flinders stared at her, not comprehending the implication of her question. "Yes..."

"Could she have been down here when she gave her prophecies? So the other end of the speaking tube was down here?"

"I guess so..."

"Then how did she get down here? The altar lid would have been a pain to use on a regular basis and she wouldn't want to risk being seen out in the open like that."

Flinders adjusted her gla.s.ses, her thoughts clearing. "Maybe..." she started. A sudden flare of realization darted across her face. "You're right! Sure!" She laughed out loud. "Did you see all those limestone ridges in the background outside? I'll bet they're just riddled with caves. They could easily have dug a tunnel out to one of them for the sibyls to sneak in from the outside!"

"So what are we looking for?" Skarda asked.

"A doorway, I guess. Some kind of opening to a tunnel."

"Let's move."

___.

The palm-log door had rotted to dust millennia ago, but the copper hinges were still attached to the sheath of copper plating that had once covered the wood. While Flinders bent close to examine them, Skarda shone his LED into the mouth of a narrow pa.s.sage whose darkness swallowed up the light.

April had already stepped into the opening, her boots crunching on fallen limestone rubble.

Skarda tugged on Flinders' arm, but she paid no attention. Her fingers caressed the ancient metal. "I can't tell you how incredible this is," she said.

"Come on," Skarda insisted. "We can come back when this is over."

Reluctantly, she turned away from the ancient plating.

From the tunnel, April called out. "Looks clear!"

He waited until Flinders moved ahead and then he stepped into the darkness. The pa.s.sageway had been roughly hacked out of the limestone bedrock so that he had at least a foot on either side of him, but the ceiling was low enough that he to move forward in a stoop.

Up ahead Flinders suddenly stopped, then let out a little gasp and dropped to a crouch.

April's face appeared out of the darkness, her light flashing. "Problem," she told Skarda. Arcing the lamp around, she illuminated a wall of rock further down the tunnel where a section of the roof had caved in. Tumbled blocks of limestone and rubble filled the pa.s.sageway like a solid wall. It would take hours of digging to break through-if they had the tools.

He fought down a wave of despair.

Now on her knees, Flinders was examining a skeleton buried under a landslide of rock. "It's a man," she said. "It looks like his head was crushed. Horrible."

"Is there another way out of here?" he asked her.

But she wasn't listening. Sc.r.a.ping away the rubble with both hands, she picked up what looked like an ornate safety pin, green with verdigris. She flashed her light on it so they could see. "It's a fibula. Bronze, it looks like. But it could be gold. Greek probably, from the design. It was used to fasten a chlamys, which was a woolen cloak that covered the body and pinned with this at the right shoulder."

April let out a little growl of impatience.

Skarda hooked a hand under Flinders' armpit and gently pulled her to her feet. "Is there another way out of here?"

She got to her feet, still staring at the skeleton. Then she tore her gaze away and turned, suddenly seeing the wall of stone blocking their way. "We're going to die!" Her eyes, wide with fear, locked onto Skarda's.

His tone hardened a bit. "Think!"

But Flinders just stared at him, her mind numb with shock.

Then an explosion boomed, m.u.f.fled by distance. It came from the ruins outside.

Instantly April spun and raced for the outer chamber.

Another muted roar rocked the ruins. Skarda heard stones rattling down in the hall, smacking against the granite floor.

April rushed back. "Rockets. I think it's our friends from St. Mark's. They're blowing a hole to get down here."

From the stairway came another ear-shattering boom. Fractured rocks crashed and banged, louder this time.

"They're through," April said. "Park, take Flinders and put your backs to the cave-in. Stay there."

Sprinting ahead, she dropped to a crouch when she reached the mouth of the tunnel. A quick glance through the arched doorway showed watery shafts of moonlight piercing through clouds of dust. A shout rose to her ears and then men in red jumpsuits came slip-sliding down the avalanche of debris on the stairway. The beams of powerful halogen lamps crisscrossed the chamber, flashing gleams of gold and green as they raked across the pillars and focused there.

April shrank bank, then returned to the others. "They want the pillars."

The clatter of a jackhammer roaring into life made Flinders start. Realizing what the sound meant, she erupted to her feet, but Skarda grabbed her, wrestling her to the floor. Her eyes went wild.

"No! I can't let them destroy-" she started.

He clamped his hand over her mouth. For a moment she wriggled, then went limp. Her eyes shot silent accusations at him.

Another sound joined the staccato pounding of the jackhammer: the whirring whine of a saw. A grating, dental-drill-like screeching noise a.s.saulted their ears as the carbide-tipped saw blade bit into stone.

Flinders struggled.

"Keep her quiet!" April snapped.

Scuttling forward, she returned to the mouth of the tunnel, inching her head past the doorway opening. Through a haze of dust she could see four men, including Pakosz and Macek, easing the golden pillar, now severed from floor to ceiling, onto a transport cart. At the bottom of the stairway a man was already hitching cables to a matching cart which held the emerald pillar. From outside, the muted thud of rotor blades reached her ears. At the man's signal, the cart lumbered forward up the slope of rubble, winched by the unseen helicopter.

Repeating the process with the second pillar, the men followed the cart up the stairway and were lost to sight.

Half-turning, April signaled her companions. They scrambled up next to her. Flinders gasped, then raced into the chamber, sinking to her knees next to the gaps where the pillars had stood. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

April moved toward the staircase and disappeared up the incline into the moonlight.

A minute later she was back. "All clear. Land Rover's gone."

Skarda had figured as much.

Still on her knees, Flinders' eyes were focused on nothing. "They've got the laptop. Now they've got the pillars. We don't have a chance of finding the Tablet."

But Skarda grinned. "Don't forget, I hid the Stealth outside. It's got the photos and the translation. I'll call Candy Man. He'll get a ride for us."

Suddenly Flinders let out a sharp cry. Stabbing his LED in her direction, he saw her reach out and clutch something from the floor.

She scrambled to her feet and ran back to their position. "Look!" she said, holding open her palm.

He aimed his beam. In her hand lay a broken chunk of the emerald column, about two inches wide by four inches long. The thin layer of green gemstone encased a core of a silvery-gray metal that reflected back a reddish tint. It seemed to glow in the lamplight.

Flinders stared at it in wonder. "The emerald was just an outer sh.e.l.l." She lifted her eyes to Skarda. "I think what's inside is orichalc.u.m."

TWENTY.

Lubyanka Prison, Lubyanka Square, Moscow FROM the rain-streaked window on the third floor of the Lubyanka Prison, the dull yellow-brick building where once stone-faced KGB officials had turned indifferent ears to the tortured screams of enemies of the State, Belisarius looked down past the iron-black statue of Felix Dzerzhinksy to the lights of a distant car reflecting wetly on the cobblestones. His thoughts were dark. It p.i.s.sed him off that he'd been forced to travel to this G.o.d-forsaken country in the first place, and it p.i.s.sed him off that he was here simply for a dressing-down. But the Russians were like that. They were power-mad control freaks and wanted to make sure you knew who was boss.

The flicker of a smile touched his lips and was gone.

Let them think what they wanted to.

At the sound of the door opening he turned around to see a trim, square-shouldered man entering the room, wearing the high-collared, gold-embroidered jacket of a Russian general. Already seated in the austere room were Manucharov and Chekhol, looking out of place and uncomfortable in scarred metal chairs. Neither looked happy.

A flash of revulsion flattened the general's face as he took in Belisarius' red-scarred nose and cheeks, but it vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by an expression of grave disapproval.

He marched forward to stand in front of the American. "I am General Fyodor Saltykov, head of the Federal'naya sluzhba Bbezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii," he announced, not extending his hand. "You have failed us, Mr. Belisarius."