The train was surprisingly sophisticated, made up of old Budd Streamliners like the old 20th Century Limited. The dining cars had real tablecloths and linen napkins, and there was even a domed observation car. If he hadn't been a fugitive wanted on two continents the trip might have been a pleasant little adventure. As it was he spent all his time alone in his private roomette trying to figure out just what was really going on. He barely saw Meg except for meals, and they both avoided talking about Quince and the events surrounding their kidnapping.

There was almost no doubt that the men who'd attacked the cottage were more of the mysterious Blackhawk Security bunch, but according to Quince he was just a hired gun as well. But groups like Blackhawk were usually hired by governments, or at the very least by giant multinational corporations. In fact, they were usually owned by multinational corporations.

So what multinational was interested in a piece of Middle Ages mythology to the extent that they'd send in people like Quince and his heavies or the Blackhawk people? It just didn't make any sense.

Someone had been on their tail since the bald guy who'd followed them all the way from Mont Saint-Michel to Prague. It was almost as if they knew more about the so-called True Ark than he and Meg did.

He wrestled with the problem all the way across the Canadian provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick and into Nova Scotia, but couldn't figure out a reasonable solution. By the time they arrived in Halifax at three thirty the following afternoon, the only conclusion Holliday had reached was that somewhere along the line he'd overlooked something, the missing puzzle piece that solved the problem.

Halifax itself had left behind much of its maritime past and now concentrated on being a government center and a modern, well-heeled tourist trap complete with menus without prices, obsequious waiters who gave you their first name before they took your order, a variety of city tours in a.s.sorted double-decker buses, and even a fleet of Vietnam War Lark amphibians that lumbered across the city and into the waters of the harbor, their aluminum hulls painted with bright green and yellow frogs.

Unfortunately, real frogs would never survive in the harbor. Eighty-two million gallons of raw sewage was pumped into the water each day due to a malfunctioning water treatment plant, and giant deodorant pucks were now being used to control the rank odor that regularly swept across the revitalized waterfront, complete with its hotels and casinos.

Eventually Holliday and Meg found what they were looking for on the other side of the wide harbor channel in the town of Dartmouth, Halifax's industrial heart and the Atlantic home of the Canadian navy. Dartmouth had always been the rough edge of Halifax, far from maritime society, such as it was. There were no tourist attractions or tony restaurants in Dartmouth, but there were plenty of seafaring men who worked the docks and the navy yards and more than a few waterfront bars to slake their thirst after a long day of work.

The Admiral Benbow was located on a side street halfway up a steep hill that led up from the waterfront at Tuft's Cove, one of a dozen forgotten commercial byways on the Dartmouth waterfront. Once upon a time Tuft's Cove had been a thriving harbor for local lobstermen, but the big companies had long since made small-scale lobstering a marginal profession at best, and with the economy the way it was, it was easier to go on welfare than it was to waste gas and risk your life roaming around on the Atlantic.

Oddly, the Benbow, named after Jim Hawkins's pub in Treasure Island, had adopted a cowboy theme, complete with waitresses in spurs, bright yellow hot pants and ten-gallon hats, something called the Gal Corral for line dancing and a bull ride named Old Tex, which was restricted to young ladies with bust sizes exceeding thirty-six inches. Even the food on the bar menu had been westernized. Chili dogs were "snake bites," jalapeno fries were "critter fritters," and chicken wings were "w.a.n.g dang thangs." According to a prominent sign over the bar, w.a.n.g dang thangs were complimentary with a pitcher of draft between seven and midnight on Wednesdays. The big, high- ceilinged, onetime net warehouse had been redecorated within an inch of its life to look like the inside of a barn, but the lingering smell of fish was still there. It was early evening and the place was jammed. Big-breasted waitresses in cowboy boots hauled foaming pitchers of beer, Old Tex was going full steam ahead and the Gal Corral was full of lonely, generally plain women line dancing like rows of cowgirl penguins trying to attract a mate. It wasn't a pretty sight.

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this," said Meg as they sat down at the bar. She was dressed in reasonably fashionable jeans and a man's white shirt with the tails out, but the look of disapproval on her face said it all: this was not a woman who spent a lot of time in bars.

"You don't look very comfortable with it, either," said Holliday. "You'd better lighten up or this isn't going to work."

"Why do we have to come to a place like this to find a boat?" Meg asked.

A bartender wearing a Cross the Line Your a.s.s is Mine T-shirt with a picture of a mean-looking bull behind a barbed-wire fence on it took their orders; a virgin Caesar for Meg, which seemed to be a uniquely Canadian version of a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary that used clam juice instead of tomato juice, and a local Glen Breton straight up for Holliday. Holliday waited for their drinks to arrive before answering the question. Giant speakers suddenly started belting out a bawling rendition of Stompin' Tom Connors's "Bud the Spud," a song about a potato trucker.

"We went over it on the train," said Holliday. "This Sable Island place is protected. You can't legally make landfall there, so a legitimate hired boat wouldn't take you; you'd get your boat confiscated. But it's almost impossible to land a boat there anyway because of the currents and the tides; that's why anyone who does go to the island flies in."

"Then we rent a plane."

"I can't fly. Can you?"

"As a matter of fact, I can," she said primly. "Light planes anyway. I got my license when I was a kid. Single engines. My dad owned a Piper Cherokee."

"When was the last time you flew?"

"A while ago."

"How long is a while?"

Meg shrugged. "High school."

"No, thanks. The planes they use have special soft wheels for landing on the beach. You up for landing on sand?"

"I guess not."

"So it's a boat."

"But why here?"

"Because that guy I was talking to at the last place suggested we come here."

The last place was a hole- in-the-wall called Buddy's Bar and Grill back in Bedford Basin at the extreme end of the harbor. The owner had been surprisingly specific; after giving Holliday and Meg a once-over he told them that if you ever wanted things moved between point A and point B without government interference, go to the Benbow and wait for Arnie Gallant.

Arnie's nickname was Super Mario, and for good reason; he was squat, dark, broad-shouldered and had a heavy Groucho Marx mustache, just like the character in the video game, and to make the comparison even closer he wore brown workman's coveralls most of the time. Apparently Arnie Gallant loved w.a.n.g dang thangs more than life itself, and this being Wednesday evening he was almost sure to make an appearance.

Holliday had taken the time to find a book about Sable Island at a bookstore near their hotel in Toronto and he'd read it on board the train to Halifax. The book was called A Dune Adrift and chronicled the life and times of the deadly sandbar from its glacial origins to the present.

It was a fascinating story, but it certainly wasn't a pleasant one. The shifting crescent of sand, once a hundred miles long, was located at the center of every dangerous current and wind system in the Atlantic, perched on the edge of the continental shelf, its hidden shallows directly in the path of burgeoning hurricanes and perfect storms blowing in off the Grand Banks and Bermuda, a lurking trap for all sorts of shipping since man first crossed the Atlantic Ocean. A lot of lives and dreams had ended on Sable Island.

The place sounded decidedly unpleasant, and the more Holliday read the less he wanted to go there. If their quest for the True Ark hadn't stirred up such a deadly maelstrom of interest ensnaring him, Holliday would have opted out of the chase long ago. Now it was too late; he'd gone too far and was in too deep to give up. He still wasn't sure he believed in the existence of the ark, but other people--powerful ones--sure as h.e.l.l did.

"Keith's IPA, my love, and a bucket of thangs." A man in his late forties or early fifties plopped himself down on the bar stool next to Holliday. He looked like a scaled-down version of a defensive tackle: all shoulders and chest. He had dark curly hair, graying at the temples, a bull neck, big hands and a bushy mustache that was almost a joke. He wore bright red half-gla.s.s bifocals and his black eyes twinkled as though he'd just told a particularly dirty joke. His Keith's arrived in a stubby bottle without an accompanying gla.s.s and he took a long draw. He put down the bottle with a contented sigh and sucked the foam out of his mustache with his lower lip. He glanced at Holliday.

"You'd be Buddy's Doc," he said, peering over the funny little gla.s.ses.

"How'd you know that?" Holliday smiled.

"The Pirates of the Caribbean eye patch is a dead giveaway," said the man. He took another swig of Keith's. A red plastic basket lined with wax paper and filled with glistening, sauce-covered chicken wings was set down before him. He stripped the meat off one with practiced ease, wiped his mouth with a napkin and washed the chicken wing down with some more beer. He tossed the stripped bones back in the basket. "You want to rent me and my boat for some illicit purpose, as I understand it," he said. The strange tw.a.n.ging accent wasn't far off from Stompin' Tom and "Bud the Spud."

"Who said anything about illicit?" answered Holliday.

Arnie laughed. By the sound of it he was at least a pack a day man.

"You want a lesson in how not to catch the lobsters that are no longer there and that no one can afford these days, is that it?" Gallant picked up another wing, sucked off the meat and took another slug of beer.

"Maybe we want to go sightseeing," Holliday said and shrugged. He took a small sip of the single malt. It was good, with a strange b.u.t.terscotch aftertaste. "Bud the Spud" came to an end, but Stompin' Tom went on; something that rhymed "glory" and "dory."

"Look. I'm not a cop, you're not a cop, so why don't we cut the bull and get down to business?" Gallant went through his wing routine again.

Holliday stared at Gallant for a moment. The squat little man looked like something out of a Grimm brothers fairy tale. He had to be the real thing.

"We want you to take us to Sable Island."

"That's against the law," said Gallant, eyes twinkling merrily. He ate another wing. As far as Holliday could tell the glory-dory song was a fisherman's version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

"Like you said, illicit."

"Illicit's expensive," said Gallant.

"I can pay."

"Why do you want to go to Sable?"

"Is that any of your business?"

"My boat, my business," Gallant said with a shrug. "My price."

"We're looking for something," broke in Meg. "Something lost on Sable Island."

"Buried treasure on Sable Island? Now, that's original. Any particular boat you're looking for? There's about five hundred of them." He ate another wing. "They even had one in the 1920s where a ship struck a submerged wreck and was wrecked itself." He tossed the bones in the basket and took another hit of the honey-colored beer. "You're crazy. The whole island moves, nothing stays in one place--that's why it's so dangerous."

"We know where to look," said Meg.

Holliday glanced at her curiously; this was the first he'd heard of a location. Now what was going on?

"What is it that you're looking for?" Gallant asked.

"A religious relic. Not a treasure really."

"Not gold doubloons or Blackbeard's pearls or the like, then," said Gallant, grinning.

"No," said Meg, her voice serious.

Gallant ate another chicken wing and then another, thinking, staring at the rows and tiers of bottles behind the bar. Finally he turned to Holliday.

"There's nothing like that on Sable Island," he said. "There's a h.e.l.l of a lot of sand and a few ponies left over from G.o.d knows when, but there's no religious relics there. If there had been they'd have been found long ago. There's nothing even faintly religious about Sable. You're talking fairy tales." He paused. "But that's your business, not mine. You're playing some sort of game or fulfilling some fantasy or following some treasure map some idgit sold you off the Internet--well, that's fine too, but know this, whoever you are, Sable Island is no joke and it's no fantasy either. It's a serious, dangerous place surrounded by serious, dangerous waters. Go there and you go there at your peril."

"When can we leave?" Meg said.

25.

Joseph Patchin sat at the elegant table in the Domingo Room at the Cafe Milano in Georgetown, happily working his way through his grilled lobster and heart of palm salad, knowing that it was Kate Sinclair's treat, since she was the one who'd called the meeting. He and Kate were the only ones in the secluded room off the main restaurant, discretion guaranteed by a row of descending wooden shutters that ensured their privacy. He took a sip of his very expensive gla.s.s of Gaja Alteni di Bra.s.sica Sauvignon Blanc and patted herbed b.u.t.ter off his lips with his starched linen napkin.

"We've been here for the better part of an hour, Kate. That's enough time for every CNN reporter and Washington Post writer inside the Beltway to know that the director of operations for the Central Intelligence Agency is having dinner with the last best hope of the Republican Party and to wonder loudly about it. Why don't we get down to business."

The brittle, hatchet-faced woman ignored the sumptuous-looking veal cutlet on the plate in front of her and reached into the Lana Marks one- of-a-kind clutch purse on her lap. She took out a plain gold Van Cleef & Arpels cigarette case that had belonged to her mother and the matching lighter. She removed a cigarette and lit it.

"I thought that was illegal in Washington restaurants," said Patchin.

"For the price I'm paying for this meal and this room, Franco can eat the fine," said Sinclair sharply. She took a healthy drag on the cigarette and sat back in her chair. "Tell me about this fiasco of yours in Canada," she said.

"My fiasco? We didn't have anything to do with it," answered Patchin, genuinely surprised.

"You're trying to tell me that Quince wasn't a Company man?"

"The operative word is 'was,' " responded Patchin. "As in twenty years ago. He went out when Clinton came in; part of George Tenet's new broom. He's been private ever since."

"If Quince wasn't yours, who was he?"

"I have no idea. You know as well as I do that we've adopted a wait-and-see att.i.tude about this matter." It was the CIA man's standard comeback and the senator's mother wasn't buying it.

"Don't play games with me, Joseph, you'll lose every time. If my son doesn't become senior adelphoi of Rex Deus he won't have the clout to get the nomination next year. That in turn means he won't become president and you'll lose your shot as secretary of state. It's like playing dominoes, Joseph--if one falls so do all the rest."

"We have a contingency for that," said Patchin quietly.

"Ironstone?" Sinclair asked. "That's the next best thing to treason."

"Nevertheless," said Patchin, pushing his plate away, his appet.i.te suddenly gone. "If the senator doesn't get the nomination Ironstone may be our only chance. Another four years of that starry-eyed socialist in the White House and you'll be able to use the Const.i.tution for toilet paper. He's already flushed the country down the c.r.a.pper."

"Could you guarantee Ironstone's success?" Sinclair asked. She doused her cigarette in a sixty-dollar gla.s.s of wine.

"With help from your friends? Yes." He shrugged. "However, it would be considerably better if he could become head of your . . . organization. Ironstone would fundamentally change the United States forever."

"Some would say for the better," said Sinclair.

"And some would call it the last gasp of a failing empire," answered Patchin. "Ironstone is not an alternative; it is something to be avoided at all costs."

"Then help me," said Kate Sinclair. "If the ark is discovered, help me to ensure that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands."

"Speaking of the wrong hands," said Patchin, "just who are we talking about here?"

"There are seven families of the Blood within Rex Deus, all descended from the Desposyni, the blood relatives of Christ, all families of royal blood."

"I don't really care about all the religious gobbledygook and the secret handshakes. I just want to know what we're dealing with. Do all seven of these families have an equal shot at taking over?"

"No," said the old Sinclair woman. "All of them are descended from the children of Mary--Christ's brothers and sisters--but ever since the dissolution of the Templars, Rex Deus only accepts members of those families who survived and came to America. Of the fifty-six signatories of the Declaration of Independence, eight were members of Rex Deus and knew of each other. It was those eight who formed Rex Deus as it now exists."

"I don't recall anyone named Sinclair having signed the Declaration," said Patchin.

"Rex Deus and the Desposyni follow a matriarchal line, just like the Jews, which of course Christ was by birth. They are less the children of Jesus than they are the descendants of Mary Magdalene."

"People still believe this stuff?" Patchin said. "It sounds like it's straight out of a novel."

"Are the Freemasons out of a novel, or the Bilderberg Group or the Roman Catholic Church, or Skull and Bones of Yale University out of a novel, Joseph? As I recall, you're a Bonesman. Cla.s.s of eighty- four, wasn't it?"

"Eighty-two," responded Patchin. He took a long swallow of the expensive wine, barely tasting it.

"Rex Deus is like all of those inst.i.tutions, Joseph; trappings aside, they are about money. A great deal of money and almost infinite power."

"Yet it's trappings we're talking about," argued Patchin.

Kate Sinclair lit another cigarette. "It's the one thing that Mr. Brown got right in his book, and probably accounts for its success--the power of symbols on people's lives, even when those people have no idea of the symbols' origins.

"The lucky horseshoe is actually the gilt remains from paintings of saints' halos when all the other paint had faded. The cross has been used since the Stone Age and has nothing to do with Christianity. The color white is used for funerals in j.a.pan, not weddings. The swastika was in use in Iceland as far back as the eighth century and was known as Thor's Hammer--it was in use in India long before that. But show a swastika to an Israeli and watch their reaction. An advertising person said it years ago--perception is everything." The older woman paused and tapped ashes into the remains of her veal.

"The perception in Rex Deus is that the True Ark and its contents are the most sacred icons and symbols of an ancient and holy order. You can't crown the British king or queen without the Sceptre, the Orb and the Crown. Philosophically it is Rex Deus's job, its holy goal, to save America until Armageddon and the Last Judgment. The United States itself is the vessel through which humanity will survive and the True Ark is the symbol of that survival."

"You believe all that?" Patchin said, dumbfounded.

"It doesn't matter what I believe, Joseph. What matters is that the person who returns the True Ark to its rightful place is guaranteed to be made adelphoi or chief elder of Rex Deus, with all the commensurate power such a position entails."