He followed with his light.
The animal disappeared.
A second seal flicked its fins and ascended.
It, too, broke through the surface.
How was that possible?
Only rock should be above him.
"Amazing," Dyals said. "What an adventure."
Ramsey agreed. "My lips felt like I'd been kissing frozen metal when I surfaced."
The admiral chuckled. "I would have loved to have done what you did."
"The adventure's not over, Admiral."
Dread punctuated his words and the old man now understood that the visit contained a dual purpose.
"Tell me."
He recounted the Magellan Billet's breach of NR-1A's investigative file. Cotton Malone's involvement. His successful effort to retrieve the file. And White House access into the personnel records of Zachary Alexander, Herbert Rowland, and Nick Sayers. He omitted only what Charlie Smith was handling.
"Someone's looking," he said.
"It was only a matter of time," Dyals said in a whisper. "Secrets seem so hard to keep anymore."
"I can stop it," he declared.
The old man's eyes narrowed. "Then you must."
"I've taken measures. But you ordered, long ago, that he would be left alone."
No name was needed. The he was known between them.
"So you've come to see if that order still stands?"
He nodded. "To be complete he must also be included."
"I can't order you any longer."
"You're the only man I willingly obey. When we disbanded thirty-eight years ago, you gave an order. Leave him alone."
"Is he still alive?" Dyals asked.
He nodded. "Sixty-eight years old. Lives in Tennessee. Teaches at a college."
"Still spouting the same nonsense?"
"Nothing has changed."
"And the other two lieutenants who were there with you?"
He said nothing. He didn't have to.
"You've been busy," the admiral said.
"I was taught well."
Dyals continued to stroke the cat. "We took a chance in '71. True, Malone's crew agreed to the conditions before they left, but we didn't have to hold them to it. We could have looked for them. I've always wondered if I did the right thing."
"You did."
"How can you be so sure?"
"The times were different. That sub was our most secret weapon. There's no way we could have revealed its existence, much less that it sank. How long would it have been before the Soviets found the wreckage? And there was the matter of NR-1. It was on missions then, and it's still sailing today. No question-you did the right thing."
"You believe the president is trying to learn what happened?"
"No. It's a few rungs lower on the ladder, but the man has Daniels' ear."
"And you think all this might destroy your chances at nomination?" "Without a doubt."
No need for him to add the obvious. And also destroy your reputation.
"Then I rescind the order. Do as you see fit."
FORTY-ONE
MALONE SAT ON THE FLOOR IN A TIGHT EMPTY ROOM THAT opened off the upper gallery. He and Christl had taken refuge inside after avoiding the tour group. He'd watched through a one-inch space beneath the door as lights inside the chapel were dimmed and doors banged shut for the night. That had been over two hours ago and there'd been no sounds since, except the hushed murmur of the Christmas market leaking in through the room's solitary window and a faint whistle of the wind that ravaged the exterior walls.
"It's strange in here," Christl whispered. "So quiet."
"We need time to study this place without interruptions." He was also hoping that their disappearance would confuse Hatchet Face.
"How long do we wait?" she asked.
"Things need to settle down outside. You never know, there still could be visitors inside before the night is finished." He decided to take advantage of their solitude. "I need to know some things."
In the greenish light from the exterior floodlights he saw her face brighten. "I was wondering when you'd ask."
"The Holy Ones. What makes you think they're real?"
She seemed surprised by his inquiry, as if she'd expected something else. More personal. But she kept her composure and said, "Have you ever heard of the Piri Reis map?"
He had. It was supposedly created by a Turkish pirate and dated to 1513.
"It was found in 1929," she said. "Only a fragment of the original, but it shows South America and West Africa in correct longitudes. Sixteenth-century navigators had no way to confirm longitude-that concept wasn't perfected until the eighteenth century. Gerardus Mercator was one year old when the Piri Reis map was drawn, so it predated his method of projecting the earth on a flat surface, marking everything with latitude and longitude. But the map does just that. It also details the northern coast of Antarctica. That continent wasn't even discovered until 1818. It wasn't until 1949 that the first sonar soundings were made under the ice. Since then, more sophisticated ground radar has done the same thing. There's a near-perfect match between the Piri Reis map and the actual coastline of Antarctica, beneath the ice.
"There's also a notation on the map that indicates the drafter used information from the time of Alexander the Great as source material. Alexander lived in the early part of the fourth century before Christ. By then Antarctica was covered in miles of ice. So those source materials showing the original shoreline would have to be dated somewhere around ten-thousand-plus years before Christ, when there was much less ice, to around fifty thousand years BCE. Also, remember, a map is useless without notations indicating what you're looking at. Imagine a map of Europe with no writing. Wouldn't tell you much. It's generally accepted that writing itself dates from the Sumerians, around thirty-five hundred years before Christ. That Reis used source maps, which would have to be much older than thirty-five hundred years, means the art of writing is older than we thought."
"Lots of leaps in logic in that argument."
"Are you always so skeptical?"
"I've found it's healthy when my ass is on the line."
"As part of my master's thesis I studied medieval maps and learned of an interesting dichotomy. Land maps of the time were crude-Italy joined to Spain, England misshapen, mountains out of place, rivers inaccurately drawn. But nautical maps were a different story. They were called portolans-it means 'port to port.' And they were incredibly accurate."
"And you think that the drafters of those had help."
"I studied many portolans. The Dulcert Galway of 1339 shows Russia with great accuracy. Another Turkish map from 1559 shows the world from a northern projection, as if hovering over the North Pole. How was that possible? A map of Antarctica published in 1737 showed the continent divided into two islands, which we now know is true. A 1531 map I examined showed Antarctica without ice, with rivers, even mountains that we now know are buried beneath. None of that information was available when those maps were created. But they are remarkably accurate-within one half-degree of longitude in error. That's incredible considering the drafters supposedly did not even know the concept."
"But the Holy Ones knew about longitude?"
"To sail the world's oceans they would have to understand stellar navigation or longitude and latitude. In my research I noticed similarities among the portolans. Too many to be mere coincidence. So if an oceangoing society existed long ago, one that conducted worldwide surveys centuries before the great geological and meteorological catastrophes that swept the world around ten thousand years before Christ, it's logical that information was passed on, which survived and made its way into those maps."
He was still skeptical but, after their quick tour of the chapel and thinking about Einhard's will, he was beginning to reevaluate things.