For a few long seconds Belisarius glared at her, his eyes drained of any trace of humanity. Then he spoke. "I traced the route of the U-boat to Ostrov Gukera, figuring the n.a.z.is would have used the base Byrd recorded in his diary to experiment with the energy potential of the Vril. But the war ended and they decided to sink the bars here until the time the Third Reich would rise again. But for some reason, they weren't able to transport all the bars, so they left a large number of them on the island, which we found." His lips drew back in a savage snarl. "Your mother was a fool. She wanted to turn the bars over to the government. She didn't see that we could make millions selling them."

"So you killed her?"

"I carried the bars by hand to an abandoned hangar at Tikhaya Station. It took me days. In twenty-five degrees below zero temperature. This is what it cost me." He stabbed a finger at his ruined face. Then he held up his blackened fingers. "And these!"

"You killed my mother?"

Belisarius just stared at her with his glacial eyes, bleak and desolate.

Finally he turned his back on her. "Get rid of them," he ordered Jaz.

With the fury of a sudden storm, the expression on Flinders' face changed from stunned shock to unrestrained rage. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she spat at her father, erupting from the deck and lunging at him, screaming and kicking.

But Belisarius stepped out of her path and made a motion. Jaz grabbed her roughly, spinning her around and shoving her at Skarda and April.

Her chest heaving, Flinders glared at the blonde woman with cold fury.

Jaz ran a hand over her face, considering. "Now...what would be a fun way to send you three off?" she wondered aloud.

From the northeast came the pulsing throb of a helicopter rotor. Jaz spun around, squinting into the sun.

Belisarius turned, seeing the chopper flying low over the surface of the water and approaching fast, directly at them. He swung around to Jaz. "Who are they?"

"That's the Mi-25 that's been d.o.g.g.i.ng us."

April glanced at Skarda. He saw the look in her eyes and flashed her a half-grin. Any enemy of our enemy is our friend.

"Do we have any more firepower?" Belisarius asked.

Jaz shook her head solemnly. "Nope. They outgun us a million to one. We're going to have to play it by ear."

With an angry snarl, Belisarius watched the attack helicopter charge toward the ship.

The Mi-25 zoomed closer, growing bigger and more menacing, the storm of its rotor wash beating down the surface of the sea in an exploding wall of spray. Finally the pilot hovered over the bow deck, tilting the nose to aim its full load of armaments at the dive ship. The fuselage door slid open, and two men tossed out a pilot ladder that unfurled, jerking spasmodically in the downdraft. At the top of the ladder Zandak appeared, climbing down quickly. Then he stood on deck, holding the ladder in place while another man descended.

Tomilin.

The Senator walked briskly across the deck toward Belisarius. "h.e.l.lo, Belisarius," he said.

Surprise twitched across the older man's face. "You. I know your voice."

"Me," the Senator affirmed. "Senator Austin Tomilin. It's better to finally meet in person rather than talk through a secure line in the back of a limo, don't you think?"

Belisarius stared. "Don't tell me I've been selling my bars to the American government!"

"Hardly."

"Daddy?" Flinders gaped at him. "You've been selling the orichalc.u.m to these people?"

The Senator regarded her, showing her a condescending smile. "Of course he has. In fact, I just paid him to sink a cache of them on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean."

More men in red jumpsuits were climbing down from the helicopter, including Pakosz and Macek, fanning out in a semi-circle when they hit the deck, with Zandak at point. He gestured at Jaz with his AK-47. She and her men threw their weapons to the deck.

At this Belisarius eyed Tomilin coldly, tossing a hand in the direction of the Mi-25. "You're in this with the Russians? You really think they're going to let an American get his hands on their oil? They're greedy fools, but they have a rather impressive army to back them up."

That earned a loud laugh from Tomilin. "Oil? This isn't about oil! It's about drowning the world, the same way our ancient homeland was inundated thousands of years ago. What myth has come to call Atlantis."

The older man stared. "You can't be serious."

Tomilin's gaze was implacable. "I couldn't possibly be more serious. The ancient G.o.ds punished the people of Atalatarte for their greed and corruption, drowning them in a great deluge." He waved a hand at Zandak and his men. "Like me, all these men are descendants of the survivors of the Atlantean flood, as evidenced by their DNA. It will be their descendants who will repopulate the world after the new flood. But this time it won't be the G.o.ds who cause the world to drown. It will be us. We are the new G.o.ds of this world."

"You're insane."

The Senator shrugged. "I'm practical. The Earth as we know it today is doomed. Human beings are nothing but c.o.c.kroaches, multiplying at an unstoppable rate and consuming all the resources of this planet. The human species is an evolutionary dead end, on the fast track for extinction. Someone has to stop the process and start over before it's too late. Before the Earth is stripped of all its resources."

"Melting the polar ice isn't going to flood the entire world," Skarda said.

Tomilin turned to him, lifting a supercilious eyebrow. "Not by itself, no. That's why we've already sunk bars-kindly supplied by Mr. Belisarius-in all the major oceans, plus the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, the Nile, the Ganges..." He broke off, flourishing at the water surrounding them. "And now, thanks to you, the Black Sea as well. Just imagine...Britain, the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards of America, the coasts of mainland Europe, Africa, South America, j.a.pan, China, India-all hit by hundred-foot-tall tsunamis and submerged under two hundred feet of water. The farmlands of middle America and central Europe flooded out as the land surface is drowned. Volcanoes chain-reacting all over the globe, which will themselves trigger ma.s.sive earthquakes. Disease and famine will be widespread."

Flinders stared at him, her jaw dropping. "You're talking about murdering millions of innocent people!"

Skarda fixed him with a cold stare. "You still have to set the bars off," he pointed out. "You're going to need powerful lasers."

"That's why I set up the DRO," the Senator said. "The United States government funded the building of four modified NROL-14 satellites, each equipped with a COIL laser. Lasers that I control. The Atlanteans should be positioning them into the correct orbits now. Ironic, isn't it? The American taxpayers paid for the gallows that will hang them all.

"So while the rest of the world disappears under the waves, we, the hand-picked chosen survivors, will be safe in a fortress on Mount Tavrida, high above the Crimean Peninsula. On a neighboring mountain, Roman-Kosh, there will be food stores and women selected for their Atlantean DNA, so when the waters subside, the repopulating of the Earth can begin."

Skarda's face set in grim lines. "You are insane."

The Senator's laugh was chilling. "I'm a realist. And I like to be on the winning side."

Skarda's eyes narrowed to blue slits. "We're going to stop you," he said quietly.

Tomilin dismissed him with an indifferent shrug. "No one's going to stop us. At any rate, it certainly isn't going to be you." He turned to Zandak and nodded. "I guess there's no reason not to start the extinction process right now."

Zandak lifted his rifle. At his gesture, his men stepped forward, bringing their Kalashnikovs to bear on the captives.

"I have more bars," Belisarius said in a flat voice.

For a moment, Tomilin studied him curiously, his cold gaze shrouded with distrust. "I think you're lying," he said finally. "You sold us the last of your bars."

Belisarius' lips drew back in a greedy smile. "That's what I wanted you to think. Scarcity puts a premium on any remaining bars. Besides, I have the Emerald Tablet."

Tomilin's head snapped up. "You have the Tablet?"

Skarda saw an emotion skitter across the man's face and vanish just as quickly.

It looked like raw greed.

Narrowing his eyes, Belisarius judged the man's reaction. "I have it. If you let me join you, I'll give it to you as a gesture of good faith. But I'll keep the location of the bars secret as a bargaining chip."

Again the Senator studied him. At last his face set in decision. "Done. But when the flood subsides, you leave."

Belisarius nodded his a.s.sent. "Fair enough." He gestured at Jaz. "My a.s.sociate comes along, too."

Tomilin took in her bloated, acne-pocked face, making no effort to disguise his revulsion. "She won't be allowed in the breeding population."

Jaz threw her head back laughed out loud. "I'm in no shape to breed with anybody, honey!" She took a step toward Belisarius as Tomilin dropped his hand in a slicing motion.

Zandak's men raised their rifles, st.i.tching a line of bullets across the chests of Jaz's crew, the heavy slugs punching through their body armor at close range. Their corpses slammed against the gunwale and flopped to the deck.

Watching in horror in the Sport 33, the pilot reacted instantly, ramming the throttle forward and spinning the wheel. The boat surged forward, its bow lifting out of the water.

The Mi-25 pivoted around. Its four-barreled Gatling gun stuttered, letting loose a fusillade of 12.7mm rounds that exploded into the stern, shredding it to pieces. The pilot's body danced, jerking left to right as the bullets cut his torso in half. Thirty seconds later the motor yacht was a shattered hulk listing to starboard in a spreading pool of marine fuel.

A rocket zoomed from the chopper's wing pod. The remains of the Sport 33 exploded in a gush of flame and black smoke, the stench of burning fuel thick in the air.

Jaz swung around to Skarda.

He fought down a surge of panic. Flinders was free, but he and April were encased in the nearly immobile diving suits. There was no escape.

He glanced over at April, but her face was impa.s.sive, her eyes locked on Jaz.

Zandak stepped forward to Tomilin, gesturing at Flinders. "She can translate the ancient language. She might be useful."

"All right," he agreed.

Belisarius turned to Jaz. "We go back to the castle, then we'll join them in Crimea in a few hours."

"Can I take her with us?" Jaz purred, her voice thick with l.u.s.t as she contemplated Flinders. "There's still a lot of time for fun. You don't care what I do to your daughter, do you?"

"I couldn't possibly care less," Belisarius said in an emotionless voice.

Stunned, her face still drained of blood, Flinders could just gape at him.

Tomilin pulled out a smartphone and consulted the screen. "When the current storm subsides over the Arctic and the weather clears, we fire. According to our meteorologists, you have thirty-four hours, thirty-three minutes. If you're not on Tavrida by 1:33 A.M., the day after tomorrow, you'll drown with the rest of them."

Turning his back on the crowd, he strode off towards the helicopter.

___.

Jaz ran her eyes over Skarda and April with cold curiosity, as if she were trying to decide where to start dissecting them. Then she came to a decision. "I want the helmets back on these two and their thrusters disabled," she ordered Zandak's men. "Then bleed the air from their tanks. Leave them half an hour or so."

Marching closer up to Skarda, she ogled him with her verdigris eyes, the fat vein on her forehead writhing. "You're going back down, handsome. Only this time you're not coming back up. At the bottom of the ocean with no way to get back to the surface...fun, huh? I'm going to leave your intercoms operational, so you can scream at each other with your last breaths as the air runs out."

FORTY-SEVEN.

THE darkness of the depths closed rapidly around Skarda. Casting his gaze toward the surface, he watched its shimmering blue plane grow dimmer and dimmer and finally wink out as he sank toward the bottom of the Black Sea. Immersed in the water, he could maneuver his arms and legs easily, but without the directional force of the thrusters, he was at the mercy of the currents. In the heavy suit, swimming was impossible.

He glanced down at April, about ten feet below him. "Lean your body forward, like you're freefalling," her voice crackled in his intercom. "We need to make it to the sub. It's our only chance."

In spite of the danger, he smiled to himself. It was her philosophy to never give up, no matter what the odds or chance of success. Kicking his legs up behind him, he tilted his body at a steep angle, heading for the bottom. His rate of descent increased, his halogen lamp carving a path ahead of him through the sunless gloom.

Within minutes the distinctive outline of the U-boat coalesced out of the darkness. To Skarda, its bow pointed toward the surface looked as if it, too, had been trapped down here against its will and was vainly hoping to see bright sunlight again.

April aimed herself at the conning tower, extending her manipulating claw to grasp at the top ladder rung bolted to its front face. But the force of momentum drove her forward and she swung around in a tightly-focused arc, her suit slamming against the starboard side of the tower.

She held on, turning her head inside her helmet to look for Skarda. In a moment he materialized out of the gloom in a halo of light, rushing toward her.

Too fast.

"Park!" Her voice was loud in his intercom. His eyes snapped open. April was looming large in his vision, zooming at him.

Blood pounded in his head. His chest was heaving and his lungs screamed for oxygen.

What the h.e.l.l had happened?

Something must be wrong with his air feed. His senses swam. He could barely keep his eyes open. With a start he realized that he was shooting past her, past the safe bulk of the U-boat and out into the open sea.

Metal clanked. Then his head spun as centrifugal forced whipped him around and he smashed against the side of the tower.

"Park!"

Somehow he realized that she had latched onto his port thruster as he sailed past, stopping him.

"My air supply..." he managed to croak.

"Hang on!" she called to him. "I've got an idea! We need to head for the bow!"

"Okay..."

"Watch out!" With all the force of her arm she dragged him against the tower. Inches from where he'd been an L-shaped chunk of steel came hurtling past, disappearing into the gloom in a wake of bubbles. Then more ragged hunks of fibergla.s.s and steel rained down around them, some glancing off the U-boat's hull before ricocheting away and sinking into the depths.

She wrenched her suit out of the way as a chunk of metal hurtled past her helmet. "They blew up the dive boat!" she yelled.

She was still hanging onto the conning tower. Now she began to spider down the rungs of the ladder. When she came to the last rung she held on, stretching her legs out to touch the deck. As Skarda descended after her, she guided him to do the same. Together they hung like apples on a tree on the vertically-sloped deck.

"How are you doing?" she asked into her intercom.

In his ears her words seemed very far away. He struggled to hold on to his concentration. "I'm not going to last much longer," he answered.

"Okay," she said. "Hang on! Follow me! We're going for the deck rail!"