Pitt turned away to suppress his laughter. Sandecker rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. The President looked blank, not knowing if the little Italian was joking or serious.
"I think what my friend is trying to get across," said Pitt, "is that he and I are quite content to remain anonymous."
At that point, everyone in the room began asking questions, mostly about how they had crossed the ice in the Snow Cruiser and saved the Special Forces teams. Then the President stared down and saw the spear in Giordino's hand.
"Is that the Holy Lance I've heard so much about?" he asked.
Giordino nonchalantly laid the lance in the President's hands. "Yes, sir, it is."
Wallace held the lance over his head, as everyone in the room stared in awe.
"The most sacred relic in all of Christendom," proclaimed Pitt. "It's said the man who wields it can command the destiny of the world for good or evil."
"Obviously, Hitler chose the latter," said Admiral Sandecker.
"Is it truly the spear that pieced Christ's body on the cross?" Wallace asked reverently, gazing at the spear point as if expecting to see a hint of dried blood.
"So says the legend," said Pitt.
The President handed the lance to Secretary of State Reed. "You'd better take it, Paul."
"What do you intend to do with it, Mr. President?" asked General South.
Cooper lightly touched the ancient spearhead. "I'm told the lance belongs in the treasure room of the Royal Palace in Vienna, from which Hitler stole it in 1938."
Reed shook his head. "Never," he said emphatically. "I'm sorry, Mr. President, but it must be hidden away, never to fall into malignant hands again and be used as a symbol for tyranny."
After they had all examined the Blood Flag and the small bronze plaque thought to have saved Hitler's life, Pitt went out to the desk of the President's secretary, where he'd left the urn, and carried it into the Oval Office. He set it on the table before the fireplace. "The ashes of Hitler and Eva Braun."
Then he stood back as the crowd in the Oval Office moved in closer to inspect the words etched in the silver. Their voices soon hushed and became quiet murmurs as they examined the container of the accursed remains of history's most infamous despot.
"It makes me shudder simply to look at it," said Loren, clutching Pitt's arm.
Pitt gripped her around the waist. "I'm sure you're not alone."
"Too abhorrent to contemplate," muttered the President.
General South looked at the President and said, "Sir, I think we should inspect the interior of the urn to make absolutely certain that ashes are truly inside."
President Wallace looked around the office. "Does anyone object?"
"I also think it wise," said Secretary of State Reed, "that the FBI labs do a thorough examination to prove they're human."
"Will you please remove the lid, General?" the President asked South.
Even the tough old soldier found it repulsive to touch the urn. Very reluctantly, he gently placed his fingers around the black eagle atop the urn and twisted it cautiously as he lifted. The lid came free and he set it on the desk as if it were tainted with a virus.
Everyone stood back whisper-silent as the President warily peered into the urn. His face took on a puzzled expression, and he looked up into a sea of grim, expectant faces.
"It's empty," he said vaguely. "There are no ashes inside."
The word "empty" was repeated throughout the room. "This certainly is a twist no one counted on," said Vice President Kingman, equally mystified.
"Is it possible the Wolfs took the ashes and rehid them?" General South said, voicing the thoughts of everyone present.
Only Giordino looked strangely contemplative. Then his face brightened as if he had suddenly witnessed a revelation. He turned and looked at Pitt queerly. "Oh no!" he muttered softly. "You didn't?"
"I did," Pitt answered honestly.
"What are you talking about?" asked Loren. "Do you know who took the ashes?"
"I do."
"Then who?"
"Me," Pitt replied, his opaline green eyes reflecting fiendish mirth. "I flushed them down the toilet in the White House men's room."
FINAL BLESSING
September 10, 200
Washington, D. C.
The day was typical for the nation's capital, the climate hot and sultry. The leaves hung green on their branches and the cool breeze of the coming fall was nowhere to be felt. Crowds of people were standing in long lines to view the recently opened wing of the Natural History Museum, which housed more than three thousand Amenes treasures and artifacts that had been recovered from St. Paul Island, the Ulrich Wolf, and the ongoing excavation of the lost city in the Antarctic.
Members of the Wolf family, as expected, walked free from the courts. But an international investigative force was formed for no other purpose than to keep all family members under strict surveillance. There was no way the Wolfs would be allowed to attempt another world-domination scheme without being discovered and stopped dead in their tracks. Destiny Enterprises was no more, and with the death of Karl, the family was rudderless. And without their enormous hoard of wealth and assets, most were forced to endure a far less luxurious lifestyle.
The Chilean government had promptly appropriated the four gigantic Destiny Enterprises ships. After the fjord was extensively dredged to allow their access to open water, the giant superships began sailing the seven seas, carrying vast numbers of passengers and gargantuan cargos that had been thought inconceivable a few short years before. The Ulrich Wolf was sold to a conglomerate of shipping lines for a reported three billion dollars. With minor modifications, she was put into service as a round-the-world cruise city with short-term staterooms and privately owned apartments and condominiums. She was renamed the Ocean Paradise, and proved extremely popular because international flights could land and take off on her long upper deck runway while she was cruising far offshore.
The other three gigantic ships were purchased by cargo transport lines and oil companies and soon became familiar sights in the few major port facilities that could receive them. Because they showed that leviathan superships could be profitable, it was not long before six other ships of comparable size were under construction.
Admiral Sandecker, along with Pitt, Loren Smith, Giordino, and Pat, who had flown in to help set up the display of Amenes descriptions, were members of a party of VIPs who were invited to preview the exhibits before they were open to the general public. No matter how many times they had seen them, Pitt and Giordino were still amazed at the magnitude of the treasures on display. No one who beheld them could believe they came from a race of people who vanished nine thousand years ago, long before most prehistoric civilizations had emerged from the stone age.
The centerpiece under a spacious stained-glass rotunda was a grouping of the beautifully preserved mummies of the Amenes rulers found on St. Paul Island by Giordino and Rudi Gunn. Everyone stood in awe in the presence of those who had lived and died so far in the past. Pitt found himself wondering if one of these ancient people might have been his direct ancestor.
Nearly five hours later, they exited the exhibit through a side door held open by a guard and began walking across the mall toward the newly built Smithsonian Transportation Museum. Loren looked dazzling, her cinnamon hair falling to her shoulders and accented by the sun. She was dressed comfortably in a light blue sleeveless silk dress that was cut short, revealing a shapely pair of tanned legs. Pitt wore a green golf shirt and light-tan slacks. Al and Pat, shunning any formal look in the heat, both wore light T-shirts and shorts. Like a pair of young lovers, they held hands as they walked across Madison Drive and took the pathway across the Mall, with Sandecker in the lead, puffing on one of his elephantine cigars.
"When are you returning to Okuma Bay?" Loren asked Pat.
"Next week."
Loren smiled at Giordino. "There goes your love life."
"Haven't you heard? The admiral is sending m
e back to the ancient city on a sabbatical. He's directed me to study and record the seafaring activities of the Amenes for Hiram Yaeger's computer archives. Pat and I will be working together for the next six months."
"That leaves just you and me," said Loren, squeezing Pitt's hand.
"Not for long." Pitt brushed his lips against her hair. "I'm leaving in two weeks to head up a research project on an underwater volcano that's rising toward the water surface southeast of Hawaii."
"How long will you be?"
"No more than three weeks."
"I guess I can endure three weeks without you," Loren said, with a faint little grin.
They crossed Jefferson Drive between the traffic and walked through the entrance of the Transportation Museum. Inside, on four acres of open space, were displayed hundreds of vehicles dating back to the late 1890s. They were laid out in chronological order from the early brass cars to the latest-concept cars from the auto manufacturers. Besides automobiles, every kind of conceivable vehicle was represented from manufacturers of trucks, farm tractors, motorcycles, and bicycles.
The gem of the collection was Admiral Byrd's Snow Cruiser. She sat in a gallery five feet below the main floor so the public could peer through the windows and open doors at eye level. Her new red paint and orange stripe gleamed under overhead lights, revealing the great machine in all her glory.
"They certainly did a masterful job restoring her," said Pitt quietly.
"Hard to believe," murmured Giordino, "considering how we left her."
Sandecker's gaze traveled from one end of the Snow Cruiser to the other. "A majestic piece of machinery. Remarkably modern lines for a vehicle designed nearly sixty-four years ago."
"I can't help wondering what she could do with a pair of new six hundred-horsepower turbodiesels in her gut," Giordino speculated.
"I'd have given my right arm to put her in my collection," said Pitt wistfully.
Loren looked at him. "This has to be the only time I can remember when you couldn't take home a souvenir with wheels on it from your adventures."
He gave a helpless shrug. "It belongs to the people."
They stood around for several minutes gazing at the Snow Cruiser, while Pitt and Giordino reminisced about their wild ride over the Antarctic wasteland. Then, reluctantly, they left the great vehicle and walked through the aisles, viewing the other exhibits until they reached the main entrance again.
Sandecker bent his wrist and glanced at his watch. "Well, I have to be running along."
"A hot date?" asked Giordino. It was well known that since his divorce many years before, the admiral was one of the most sought-after bachelors in town by the city's eligible ladies. Never making a commitment, he managed to adroitly keep his feminine friends happy without angering or disillusioning them.
"I'm dining with Senator Mary Conrow, and I'd hardly consider her a hot date."
"You old dog," said Loren. "Mary is a ranking member of the budget committee. You're getting cozy so you can sweet-talk her into voting an increase in NUMA's budget."
"It's called mixing business with pleasure." He gave the women a kiss on their cheeks, but didn't shake the hands of the men. He saw them on a daily basis and felt there was no call to act chummy, despite the fact that Pitt and Giordino were like sons to him.
"We're off, too," said Pat. "We promised Megan to take her out for a hamburger and a movie."
"How about dinner at my place on Friday?" Loren said, with her arm around Pat's waist.
"You're on." She turned to Giordino. "All right with you, lover?"
Giordino nodded. "Loren makes a to-die-for meat loaf."
"Meat loaf it shall be." Loren laughed.
THE sun was setting toward the horizon, growing from a small golden ball into a vast orange sphere as Pitt and Loren sat in the apartment of his hangar and enjoyed a glass of Don Julio silver tequila on the rocks while listening to music. She was nestled on the couch, leaning against him, legs curled under her.
"I never understood how women can do that," he said, between sips of his tequila.
"Do what?"
"Sit on their legs. I can't bend mine that far, and if I could, they'd lose circulation and go numb."
"Men are like dogs, women like cats. Our joints are more limber than yours."
Pitt raised his hands languidly in the air and stretched. "So much for Sunday. Tomorrow it's back to studying oceanographic project reports for me and making trivial speeches in Congress for you."
"My term is up next year," she said slowly. "I'm thinking of not running for reelection."
He looked at her curiously. "I thought you said you were going to grow old in Congress?"
"I changed my mind. After seeing how happy Pat and Al are, I realized that if I ever want to have babies while I'm still able, I'd better find a good man and settle down."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this."
She threw him a mock, inquiring look. "Don't you want to marry me?"
It took a few moments for Pitt to absorb her words. "As I recall, I proposed marriage in the Sonoran Desert after the Inca Gold affair and you turned me down."
"That was then," she said airily.
"I never asked you again. How do you know I haven't had second thoughts?"
She stared into his eyes, not certain whether he was serious or simply being funny. "You've gotten cold feet?"
"Can we both really change our lifestyles?" he asked with a straight face. "You still have your seat in the House of Representatives and a luxurious town house in Alexandria. I have my apartment and car collection in an old rusty hangar with noisy aircraft taking off and landing overhead. How can we possibly work it out?"
She put her arms around him and stared at him through eyes misty with love. "I've had my day playing the independent, individualist woman. I enjoyed it. But now it's time to get practical. There are other projects I'd like to take on."
"Such as?"
"I've been asked to take over the directorship of the National Child Abuse Foundation."
"That takes care of the career. What about the lifestyle?"
"We can alternate- one week here, one week in my town house."
"You call that practical?"
She suddenly became flippant. "I don't know what your problem is. We spend most of our free time together anyway."
He pulled her close and kissed her. "Okay, since you begged me nicely, I'll give some thought to marrying you."
She pushed him away and acted as if she were pouting, knowing full well he was teasing her. "On the other hand, I just may look around. There must be hundreds of men out there who would appreciate me. I'm sure I can do better than Mister High-and-Mighty Dirk Pitt."
Pitt pressed her body against his tightly, stared into her violet eyes, and said softly, "Why waste your time? You know that's impossible."
"You're incorrigible."
"A lot can happen in the next year."
Loren curled her arms around his neck. "That's true, but the fun is in making it happen."
POSTSCRIPT
In 1960, archaeologists discovered the ancient bones of a woman on Santa Rosa, one of the channel islands off California. After she lay in the basement of the Santa Barbara museum for forty years, a team of scientists conducted sophisticated DNA and radiocarbon tests on the skeletal remains. Results revealed the bones to be as old as thirteen thousand years, making the lady the oldest known human skeleton found in North America.
During the era in which she lived, the lady would have seen glaciers the size of Australia, woolly mammoths, and saber-toothed tigers, and she could have walked from island to island, since the sea level was 360 feet lower than it is today. Her discovery challenged traditional theories that the first people to live in the Americas came across the land bridge over what is now the Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska.
The Spirit Caveman, as another human relic is called, lived more than 9,400 years ago in Western Nevada and has a cranial profile that suggests his or
igins are Japanese or East Asian. The Wizard's Beach Man, whose skull was also found in Nevada, closely resembles both the Norse and the Polynesians. Other skulls found in Nebraska and Minnesota, all at least eight thousand years old, resemble both Europeans and South Asians.
New evidence suggests that the first settlers might have been Polynesians and Asians who inhabited the western end of North and South America while the eastern seaboard was settled by Europeans who arrived by boat, navigating along the ice pack that spanned the North Atlantic during the ice age and following the migratory birds that flew west.
It is known that people traveled by boats from southern Asia to Australia more than forty thousand years ago, so sea travel is hardly an invention of civilizations around the Mediterranean. The seas beckoned ancient mariners, who explored and discovered far more of the world than they were given credit for, and whose history is only now being written.
FB2 document info
Document ID: beb71796-3acf-45c5-b553-61bf876d6673
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 3.8.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.42, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
Document history:
1.0 — создание документа fb2
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
Atlantis Found dp-15 Page 53
