Текст книги "Lost City"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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"This is marvelous! We can use these carvings to make site maps of ruin locations."

In the sculpted scene, the ice field had covered even more of the valley centuries before when it was carved by some unknown artist. The sculptor had managed to imbue his work with a majesty and power that went beyond a mere objective rendering of what he saw. They made several sweeps of the chamber and found no markers or a sarcophagus.

"I was all wrong about this place," she said. "It's not a tomb. It's a temple."

"A reasonable assumption given the lack of bodies. If we're done here, I'd like to unravel another lake mystery." He unfolded the side-scan sonar printout he'd brought with him and pointed at the anomaly on the lake's bottom.

"It looks like a plane," Skye said. "What's a plane doing down here? Wait. The man in the ice?"

Austin answered with an enigmatic smile, the sub's horizontal thrusters whirred, and they whisked through the temple door back out into the lake. He slowed the sub when they neared the position designated on the printout and kept his eyes peeled. Before long, a cigar-shaped object came into view.

As they drew closer, Austin saw that the cylindrical wood framework was partially covered with tattered and faded red fabric. The conical engine housing had been torn off and lay on the bottom and the engine gleamed in the sub's lights. The cold lake temperatures had kept the fuselage clear of marine vegetation that would have covered it in warmer climes. The propeller was gone, probably snapped off in the crash. He circled around the fuselage and found what was left of the missing wing several yards away. Then he brought the sub back to the plane.

Skye pointed to the emblem painted on the tail. "I saw that same design the triple-headed eagle on the helmet that was found under the glacier."

"Too bad we don't have the helmet now." "But we do. I brought it out with me. It's on the ship." Austin remembered Skye clutching a bag as she climbed aboard the SEA mobile He was learning quickly that this attractive woman with the smile like a sunny day was not someone to be underestimated. Austin stared at the eagle, and then let his gaze shift to the empty cockpit.

"Now we know where the Ice Man came from. He must have bailed out and his plane crashed in the lake."

Skye responded with an evil laugh. "I was thinking of Renaud. He said that the Ice Man didn't just drop out of the sky. He was wrong. From what you've found, that's exactly what happened."

The submersible circled the wreck, with Austin shooting video and digital photos of the wings and surrounding bottom, and then headed for the surface. Before long, they were stepping out of the cockpit onto the deck. Skye had been babbling with excitement about their find, but she went silent when she caught a glimpse of the glacier. She walked over to the rail and stared off at the ice field.

Sensing her change in mood, Austin put his arm around her shoulders.

"Are you all right?"

"It was so peaceful underwater. Then we surfaced and I saw the glacier." She shuddered. "It reminded me that I almost died under that thing."

Austin studied the troubled expression in Skye's lovely eyes, which were fixed in the hundred-yard stare that shell-shocked troops sometimes get. "I'm not a shrink, but I've always found it helpful to confront my demons," he said. "Let's go for a boat ride."

The unexpected suggestion seemed to bring her back to reality. "Are you serious?"

"Grab a couple of bagels and a thermos of coffee from the mess and I'll meet you at the skiff. I like my bagels with raisins, by the way."

Skye was skeptical, but she had come to have a great deal of confidence in Austin, and would probably have followed him to the moon on a pogo stick if he asked. Austin got the power skiff ready while she rounded up coffee and bagels from the galley and they set off for shore. They dodged floating chunks of ice and pulled the boat up at a dark gravel beach a few hundred yards from where the glacier narrowed and broke up in pieces as it encountered the lake.

A short hike along the shore brought them to the glacier's sidewall. The icy bulwark rose several stories above the plain; its surface was pockmarked with caves and craters and twisted free-form sculptures created by freezing, melting and unimaginable pressures. The ice

was covered with dirt and a deep, unearthly blue light emanated from the wrinkles and grottos.

"There's your demon," Austin said. "Now, go up and touch it." Skye smiled wanly, approached the glacier as if it were alive and reached out and touched an icy knob with a fingertip. Then she placed both palms on the glacier and leaned her weight against the ice, eyes closed, as if she were hoping to push it away. "It's cold," she said with a smile.

"That's because your demon is nothing but a big ice cube. It's the same way I think about the sea. It's not out to get you. It doesn't even know you exist. You touched it. You're still breathing." He lifted the pack he'd been carrying. "Consultation has ended. Time for brunch."

Near the edge of the lake they found a couple of flat rocks to use as chairs and sat facing the water. Skye doled out the bagels and said,

"Thanks for the exorcism. You were right about facing your fears."

"I've had good experience in that area."

She arched a brow. "Somehow I don't see you being afraid of anything."

"That's not true. I was very afraid that I would find you dead." "I appreciate that, and I owe you my life. But I meant it in a different way. You seem fearless when it comes to your own well-being." He leaned close to her ear and whispered, "Would you like to know my secret?" She nodded.

"I put on one hell of a good act. How's your bagel?" "Fine, but my head is awhirl. What do you make of this craziness?" Austin stared off at the anchored NUMA boat, thinking of Coleridge's description of a painted ship on a painted sea, and tried to put events in order.

"Let's deal with what we know for starters." He sipped his coffee. "The scientists working the glacier find a man's body frozen in the

ice, and it has been there for some time. An old helmet and a strongbox are found near the body. A man posing as a reporter takes the box at gunpoint and floods the tunnel. Apparently, he knows nothing about the helmet."

"That's where my logical mind bogs down. Why did he try to kill us? We were in no position to do him any harm. By the time we got out of the tunnel, he would have been long gone."

"I think he flooded the tunnel to cover up the Ice Man. You and the others happened to be in the way. Like the glacier. Nothing personal."

She nibbled thoughtfully on her bagel. "That makes morbid sense, I suppose."

Skye paused, her eyes going past Austin's shoulder. A cloud of dust was approaching at a high rate of speed. As the cloud neared, they could see that a Citroen was kicking up the dust. Fifi. The car skidded to a stop, and LeBlanc, Thurston and Rawlins got out and came over.

"I'm so glad we caught you," LeBlanc said, his broad face wreathed in a smile. "I called the ship from the power plant and they said you had gone ashore."

"We wanted to say good-bye," Thurston said.

"You're leaving?" Skye said.

"Yes," the glaciologist said, waving in the direction of the glacier. "There's no point in staying here with our observatory underwater. We're heading back to Paris. A helicopter will run us to the nearest airport."

"Paris?" Skye said. "Do you have room for me?" "Yes, of course," LeBlanc said. He extended his hand. "Thank you again for saving our lives, Monsieur Austin. I would not like Fifi to be an orphan. She will stay at the power plant with Monsieur Lessard. We're going to talk to the power company about draining the observatory. Perhaps we can return next season."

"I'm so sorry to be running off like this," Skye said to Austin. "But there's nothing more to be done here and I want to compile all my data for analysis."

"I understand. The Mummichugs project is coming to an end. I'll stay on board to write up my report while the ship's heading back up the river. Then I'll catch a ride to the nearest railroad station and take the high-speed train to Paris for our dinner date." "Bien. Under one condition. I'm buying."

"How could anyone in his right mind refuse an enticing offer like that? You can show me the town."

"I'd like that," she said. "I'd like that very much." Austin brought Skye back to the ship to collect her belongings and gave her a ride to the beach where the helicopter awaited. She kissed him on both cheeks and on the lips, made him promise to call when he got to Paris, and climbed into the helicopter. Austin was on his way across the lake when the chopper passed overhead and he saw Skye waving at him from a window.

Back on board, Austin unloaded the videocassette and digital disk from the submersible's cameras. He took them into the ship's dry lab and fed the digital images into a computer. He ran off prints showing the design on the plane's fuselage and examined them. Next, he zeroed in on the photos he had taken of the plane's engine until he found the one he was looking for. It showed markings on the engine block.

He selected the engraved area with his cursor, zoomed in, refining the image as he enlarged it, until he could see the name of the manufacturer and a serial number. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the image for a moment, and then he reached for a phone that could connect him anywhere in the world and punched out a number.

"Orville and Wilbur's flying bike shop," said a reedy voice. Austin smiled as he pictured the hawk nose and narrow face of the man at the other end of the line. "You can't fool me, Ian. I happen to know that the Wright Brothers closed their bicycle shop a long time ago."

"Hell, Kurt, can't blame me for trying. I've been up to my earlobes trying to raise private funds for the Udvar-Hazy Center out at Dulles airport and I don't want to waste my time with small talk."

Ian MacDougal was a former marine fighter pilot in charge of the archives division at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. He was the airborne equivalent of St. Julien Perlmutter, whose extensive library of nautical books was the envy of many academic institutions, and whose grasp of sea history was known the world round. The tall and lean MacDougal was the physical antithesis of the rotund Perlmutter, and he was far less flamboyant, but his encyclopedic knowledge of aircraft and their history matched St. Julien's grasp of the sea. "You can rely on me for a hefty contribution, Ian, and I'll try to spare the small talk," Austin said. "I'm in France and I need to identify a plane I found at the bottom of a glacial lake in the Alps."

"I can always depend on you for a challenge." MacDougal sounded delighted to be distracted from fund raising. "Tell me about it." "Crank up your computer and I'll send you some digital photos." "Consider it cranked." ^

Austin had already programmed the photos for transmission, and the pictures taken at the lake bottom whisked on cyber wings across the Atlantic in a millisecond. MacDougal had stayed on the line and Austin could hear him muttering to himself. "Well?" Austin said after a few moments.

"I'm taking a guess, but from the distinctive cone-shaped engine housing, I'd say we're looking at a Morane-Saulnier. She was a World War One mono-wing fighter plane based on a racing plane. The little buzzard could out fly and outmaneuver almost any other fighter aircraft of the day. The gun and propeller synchronization setup was truly revolutionary. One of the Allied planes crashed, unfortunately,

and Fokker copied the system and improved upon it. There's a moral there somewhere."

"I'll let you deal with the moral complexities. Given what you know, do you have any idea how this plane got to the bottom of the lake?"

"Fell out of the sky, obviously, which is what planes sometimes do. I can guess on the rest, but I'd probably be wrong. I do know someone who might be able to help you. He's only a couple of hours from

Paris."

Austin jotted down the information. "Thanks," he said. "I'll get my museum contribution to you as soon as I get back to Washington. In the meantime, give my regards to Wilbur and Orville."

"I'll be glad to oblige."

Austin hung up, and a moment later he was calling the number Ian had given him.

SKYE SLAMMED the cover down on the thick reference book she had been reading and shoved it across her desk to join a tall stack of similar well-worn volumes. She hunched her shoulders and stretched her arms to work the kinks out of her muscles, and then leaned back in her chair, lips pursed, and stared at the helmet in front of her. She had always considered ancient weapons and armor simply as tools, nothing more than inanimate objects used in the bloody business of war, but this thing made her shiver. The oxidized black surface seemed to exude a malevolence she had never before encountered.

After she had returned to Paris, Skye had taken the helmet to her office at the Sorbonne expecting that identification would be easy with the reference tools at her command. She had photographed the helmet, fed the images into her computer and searched through an extensive database compiled from hundreds of sources. She had started with her French archives, and then moved on to Italy and Germany, the countries that were once the primary armor centers.

Finding no match, she'd expanded the country search to take in

all of Europe, and when that search had bottomed out she moved to Asia and the rest of the world. She combed records going back as far as the Bronze Age. After the computer search fell flat, she turned to the printed page and exhumed every musty reference book in her library. She pored over old prints, manuscripts and ivory and metal carvings. In desperation, she researched the Bayeux Tapestry, but the conical headgear its warriors wore in battle bore no resemblance to the helmet sitting in front of her.

The helmet was a contradiction. The workmanship was extraordinary and more characteristic of an ornamental than a war helmet, although the nicks and gouges marring the surface suggested that it could have been worn in battle. The apparent bullet hole was a puzzle all to itself.

The design suggested an early origin. The weight was borne by the head as in the earlier helmets. Later models had an armet, the flared bottom that allowed the weight to be transferred to the shoulders via a collar called a gorget. The helmet was topped with a fan-shaped crest, another later innovation that added protection from a mace or sword.

Helmet style evolved from the conical shape in the eleventh century to rounded helms in the twelfth century. The nose guards had expanded to protect the face, developing eye slits known as "sights," and ventilation openings called "breaths" came into being. German helmets tended to be heavy and spiky; the Italian models were rounder, reflecting the Renaissance influence.

The most extraordinary thing about this helmet was the metal. Steel manufacture had started as early as 800 B.C." but it took hundreds of years to develop metal of such high quality. Whoever had forged this metal was a master. The strength built into this helmet's steel was evident in the dent in the crown known as a "proof mark." Someone had tested the metal with a pistol, or arquebus, and it had proved itself impenetrable. But as the bullet hole showed, each rise

in the efficiency of defense produced a corresponding response in the effectiveness of attack. Armor finally became obsolete in the 1522 Battle of Bicocca. The enemy was gravity, rather than projectiles; armor simply became too heavy to wear.

The face embossed on the visor was typical of sixteenth-century Italian armor. Artisans avoided embossing in combat helmets. Surface features had to be smooth and round, or shaped with planes to offer a glancing blow. Embossing could destroy the effectiveness of a glancing surface. She picked up her letter opener, actually an Italian dagger, and tried to catch the edge and point in the helmet. Despite the embossing and etching that covered the helmet, the metal had been cleverly fashioned to shed the blows.

She came back to the steel again. No detail distinguished one armorer from another more than his ability to temper metal. She rapped her knuckles on the helmet, which gave forth a clear, bell-like sound, and then with her forefinger she traced a five-point star with "legs." She turned the helmet around. Seen from another angle the etching depicted a shooting star. She recalled seeing a sword from an English collection that had been made with iron from a meteorite. The steel was capable of being sharpened to a razor's edge. Why not a helmet? She made a note to have a metallurgist check it oufT

Skye rubbed her tired eyes, and with a resigned sigh she reached for the phone and punched out a number. A man's voice came on the line. It was deep, and pleasantly cultivated. "Oui. Darnay Antiquites." "Charles. It's Skye Labelle."

"Ah, Skye!" Darnay was clearly glad to hear her voice. "How are you, my dear? How is your work going? Is it true that you were in the Alps?"

"Yes. That's why I'm calling. I came across an old helmet during my expedition. It's quite extraordinary and I'd like you to look at it. It has me stumped."

"What about your wonderful computer?" Darnay teased. Darnay and Skye had had friendly arguments over the technological tools she used. He felt empirical experience gained through constant handling of artifacts was more valuable than browsing any database. She countered that the computer saved her valuable time. "Nothing is wrong with my computer," she said with mock indignation. "I've looked through every book in my library as well. I can't find an exact match."

"I'm very surprised." Darnay was acquainted with Skye's reference library and knew it was one of the best he had ever seen. "Well, I'd love to look at it. Come over now if you'd like." "Bien. I'll be right along."

She wrapped the helmet in a pillowcase, then put it in a shopping bag from Au Printemps and headed out for the nearest Metro station. Darnay's shop was on the Right Bank, down a narrow street next to a boulangerie that sent out mouthwatering aromas of baking bread. Printed in small gilt letters on the shop's door was the word ANTI-QUITES. In the window was an odd, dust-covered assortment of powder horns, flintlock pistols and a few rusty swords. It was not a display that would entice anyone into the shop, which was Darnay's intention. The door bell tinkled as she entered the shop. The dingy interior was dark and narrow, and empty except for a rusty suit of armor and some flyspecked cabinets holding a few poor replicas of antique daggers. A velvet curtain at the rear of the shop parted, and a wiry man dressed in black emerged from the widening ribbon of light. He cast a furtive glance at Skye, brushed by as silently as a shadow and left the shop, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Another man stepped out of the back room. He was short, and in his seventies, and resembled the old film actor Claude Rains. He was impeccably attired in a dark blue suit and stylish red silk tie, but would have projected an air of elegance if he had been in a workman's smock. His dark eyes sparkled with intelligence. His hair and thin mustache were silver-gray and he was smoking a Gauloises in a cigarette holder, which he removed from his lips so he could kiss Skye on both cheeks.

"That was fast," he said with a smile. "This helmet of yours must be a very important find."

She returned the kisses. "That's for you to tell me. Who's that man who just left?"

"He is one of my, er, suppliers."

"He looks like a sneak thief."

An alarmed expression crossed Darnay's face. Then he laughed. "Of course. That's what he is."

Darnay flipped the sign on his door to CLOSED, and then led her past the curtain to his office. In stark contrast to the worn-at-the-heels seediness of his showroom, the office-workshop was well lit by track lights and the desk and work space were of contemporary design. The walls were hung with weapons, but most of them were inferior items that he sold to less knowledgeable collectors. His top-grade inventory he kept safe in a warehouse.

Although he teased Skye about her reliance on technology, he did business mostly through the Internet, and a glossy catalog, mailed to an exclusive list of buyers, that was hungrily awaited by dealers and collectors worldwide.

Skye had first sought Darnay out for advice in spotting forgeries. She soon learned that his knowledge of old arms and armor surpassed that of some academics, including herself. They had become good friends, although it became apparent that he dealt in the shadowy world of illegal antiquities. In short, he was a crook, but a classy one. "Let's see what you have, my dear." He pointed to a brightly lit table that was used to photograph objects for the catalog.

Skye removed the helmet from the bag and set it on the table, then pulled off the pillowcase with a flourish.

Darnay gazed with reverence at the object. Then he walked

around the table, puffing on his cigarette, bending low, with his face inches from the metal. After going through the dip-and-stand routine, he picked the helmet up, hefted the weight, held it high and then put it on his head. Wearing the helmet, he walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Grand Marnier.

"Brandy?" he offered.

Skye laughed at the sight and shook her head. "Well, what do you think?"

"Extraordinaire." He put the helmet back on the table and poured himself a brandy. "Where did you get this lovely objet dart?" "It was frozen into Le Dormeur glacier." "A glacier? Even more extraordinary."

"That's not half the story. It was found near a body that was embedded in the ice. The body may have been in the glacier less than a hundred years. The man probably parachuted from a plane whose wreckage was found in the nearby lake."

Darnay poked his forefinger through the hole in the helmet. "And this?"

"I think it's a bullet hole."

The antiquities dealer didn't seem surprised. "Then this Ice Man could have been wearing the helmet?" "Possibly."

"It's not a failed proof mark

"I don't think so. Look at the hardness of that steel. Musket balls would have bounced off the metal like peas. The hole was made by a more modern firearm."

"So we have a man flying over a glacier wearing an old helmet, shot with modern weapons." She shrugged. "It seems so." Darnay sipped his brandy. "Fascinating, but it all makes little sense.

"Nothing about this whole affair makes sense."

She settled into a chair and told Darnay about Renaud's summons to the cave and her harrowing rescue. Darnay listened with furrowed brow.

"Thank God you're safe! This Kurt Austin is an homme formidable Handsome, too, I suppose."

"Very much so." She felt herself blushing.

"I owe him my gratitude. I have always thought of you as a daughter, Skye. I would have been devastated if anything had happened to you."

"Well, nothing did, thanks to Mr. Austin and his colleague Joe Zavala." She gestured at the helmet. "Well?"

"I believe it's older than it looks. As you say, the steel is extraordinary. The metal used in its manufacture may very well have been forged in the stars. The fact that this is the only one of its kind that I have ever seen, and that you found no reference to it in your library, leads me to think it might have been a prototype"

"If the features were so innovative, why weren't these ideas picked up sooner?"

"You know the nature of arms and men. Good sense does not always prevail over intransigence. The Polish insisted on using horse cavalry against armored panzer divisions. Billy Mitchell had an uphill fight convincing the army hierarchy of the value of aerial bombardment. Maybe someone looked at this and said the old equipment was preferable to the untested."

"Any thoughts on the eagle motif I saw here and on the plane?"

"Yes, but none of them are scientific."

"I'd be interested to hear them anyhow. And perhaps I'll take that offer of brandy."

Darnay poured another snifter and they tapped glasses. "I'd say the eagle represents the joining together, an alliance of some sort, of three

different groups into one. Epluribus unum. "Out of many, one." It was not an easy arrangement. The eagle seems to be pulling itself apart, yet it must hang together or die. The weapons it is clutching in its claws would lead me to believe that this alliance has something to do with war."

"Not bad for an unscientific guess."

He smiled. "If we only knew who your Ice Man was." He glanced at his watch. "Excuse me, Skye, but I have a conference call with a dealer in London and a buyer in the United States. Would you mind if I kept this piece here for a few hours so I could study it further?"

"Not at all. Just call when you want me to pick it up. I'll either be at my office or my apartment."

A cloud passed over his brow. "My dear girl, there is more here than meets the eye. Someone was willing to kill for this artifact. It must have great value. We must be very careful. Does anyone know you have it?"

"Kurt Austin, the NUMA man I told you about. He's trustworthy. Some of those who were in the cave would know of it. And Renaud."

"Ah, Renaud," he said, drawing out the name. "That's not good. He'll want it back."

Her dark eyes snapped with anger. "Over my dead body." She smiled nervously, realizing the implication of her words. "I can stall him, say the helmet is at the metallurgist."

Darnay's phone rang. "That is my call. We'll talk later."

After leaving the shop, she went to her apartment instead of her office. She wanted to check her answering machine, hoping she would hear from Austin. Her discussion with Darnay had given her the jitters. She had the feeling that danger was lurking nearby, and hearing Austin's voice would have offered some reassurance. When she got home, she played her messages, but there was no word from Kurt.

She felt weary from her work. She lay down on the sofa with a fashion magazine, intending to relax before going back to the office.

But after a few minutes the magazine fell from her fingers to the floor and she drifted off into a deep sleep.

SKYE WOULD have slept less soundly if she knew what Auguste Renaud was up to. He sat in his office in a dangerous fury, head bent over his desk, compiling a list of complaints against Skye Labelle. His hand was mending, but his pride was still gravely wounded.

All his ill will centered on that insolent woman. He would pull every political string at his command, call in every IOU owed him to destroy her, ruin her career and that of anyone who had been even vaguely friendly to her. She had humiliated him in front of others and ignored his authority. She virtually ignored his demand that she produce the helmet. He would have her thrown out of the Sorbonne. She'd beg for mercy. He pictured himself as the Creator in one of those Renaissance paintings of God chasing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden with his flaming sword.

He had encountered her in the elevator that morning. She had said good morning and smiled at him, sending him off into a simmering rage. He had his anger under control by the time he got to his office and was directing it to the list of complaints he had in front of him. He was writing a detailed description of her loose morals when he heard a soft shuffle. The chair creaked in front of his desk. He assumed it was his assistant.

Head still bent to his work, he said, "Yes?"

When no one answered, he looked up and his bowels turned to ice water. The chair had been turned around. Sitting in it was the big puffy-faced man who had attacked him under the glacier.

Renaud was adept at survival. He pretended that he hadn't recognized his visitor.

He cleared his throat. "How can I help you?" he said. "You don't know me?"

"I don't believe so. You have business with the university?"

"No, I have business with you."

Renaud's heart sank.

"I'm sure you must be mistaken."

"You were on television," the man said.

Even before Renaud had arrived back in Paris, he had called a favored television reporter and arranged an interview in which he took complete credit for finding the Ice Man, and suggested that he was responsible for the rescue as well.

"Yes. You saw the interview?"

"You told the reporter that you found objects under the glacier. The box was one object. What were the others?"

"There was only one, a helmet. Apparently, it was very old."

"Where is the helmet now?"

"I thought it was left in the cave. But a woman smuggled it out."

"Who is this woman?"

A malicious gleam came to Renaud's eye. Maybe this cretin would leave him alone if he had a more tempting target. He could get rid of him and Skye at the same time.

"Her name is Skye Labelle. She's an archaeologist. Do you want her name and number?" He reached for the faculty directory and opened it. "She has an office on the floor below this one. The number is 216. Anything you do to her is all right with me." He tried to hide his joy. He'd give almost anything to see Skye's face when this madman arrived at her doorstep.

The man slowly stood up. Good, he was leaving.

"Is there anything else you want?" Renaud said with a magnanimous smile.

The big man smiled slowly in return.

From under his coat, he drew a .22 caliber pistol that had a silencer attached to the barrel.

"Yes," he said. "I want you to die."

The gun coughed once. A round red hole appeared in Renaud's forehead. He fell forward onto his desk, his smile frozen on his face.

The big man picked up the directory, tucked it in his pocket and without looking back at the lifeless body slumped over the desk, left the office as silently as he had entered.

THE ANTIQUE PLANE high above Austin's head danced in a graceful sky ballet in seeming defiance of the laws of gravity and physics. He watched in amazement from the edge of the grassy airfield south of Paris as the plane did an aerial spiral, then a half upward loop and half roll, reversing direction in a perfectly executed Immelmann.