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  “A Geiger counter?” Nabinger asked.

  “Yes. That is what I have heard it called.”

  “The black box was radioactive?” Nabinger said, more to himself than Kaji. Nabinger looked at the Egyptian, who returned his gaze levelly. Although there was no logical reason to believe the old man, for some reason Nabinger did. What had been sealed in the sarcophagus? What had the ancient Egyptians possessed that was radioactive?

  There was no doubting that the MRI was picking up some form of residual radiation.

  Nabinger sorted the story out in his mind. There was only one clue to pursue: the name on the dagger. Von Seeckt. Who was — or probably more appropriately — who had he been?

  “What are you doing?” Kaji asked, as Nabinger tucked the dagger into his waistband.

  “I am keeping this,” Nabinger said. “I paid for your story and this is the only proof.”

  “I did not agree to that,” Kaji said.

  “Do you wish me to tell your men of your deal? Of the money I just gave you?” Nabinger asked. “They would want their share.”

  Kaji eyes narrowed. Then he stood and shrugged. “You may keep it. It is an evil thing. I should have gotten rid of it long ago.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Nashville, Tennessee

  T — 134 Hours, 45 Minutes

  “This is Johnny. I’m out of town for a bit. Back on the tenth. Talk to you then. Leave a message at the beep. Bye.”

  Kelly slowly put the receiver down, not bothering to leave a message. It was after nine in the morning on the tenth. “Oh, Johnny, you’ve done it now,” she whispered to herself.

  There was no doubt in her mind that Johnny Simmons was in trouble. He had a strange sense of humor, but he wouldn’t have sent her that tape and letter as a joke. She knew he was dead serious when he went on an assignment.

  After the little he had related to her about what had happened in El Salvador, she could well understand his seriousness. He had listed nine in the morning three times in his letter. He would not have forgotten or blown it off. At the absolute minimum he would have changed his message by remote as he had said he would.

  She turned on her computer and accessed her on-line service. To find out where Johnny was, she would have to follow him, and information was the way to start. There were two avenues of investigation to pursue, and she knew they were the same two areas that Johnny would have looked into before he went on assignment. The first would be to get background information about Area 51 and Nellis Air Force Base. The second would be to get more specific and look into the UFO phenomenon as it related to Area 51.

  Kelly had more than a glancing background in the field of UFOs, which was why, in addition to their friendship, Johnny had sent her the package in the first place. Her trouble eight years ago with the Air Force at Nellis Air Force Base had had to do with that subject and had for all practical purposes destroyed a promising career in the documentary filmmaking field. What had appeared at the time to Kelly as an excellent opportunity had turned into a disaster.

  Kelly took the package Johnny had sent her and went through it one more time, this go-around making notes of key words on a legal pad. When she was done, she looked at what she had:

  Las Vegas Postmark

  The Captain

  23 Oct. transmissions, Nellis AFB

  Red Flag

  F-15

  “Mailbox”

  Dreamland

  Groom Lake

  Kelly accessed her on-line database and set up a Boolean keyword search. She started with the date in question, combining it with Nellis Air Force Base, and drew a blank. Then she switched to both the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of October and accessed any news about F-15’s. This time she got a hit. She drew up the article, from the Tucson Citizen, dated the twenty-fourth of October:

  F-15 Crashes, Pilot Killed

  Officials at Davis-Montham Air Force Base confirmed last night that an F-15 fighter jet from the 355th Tactical Training Wing crashed during training yesterday on the Luke Air Force Base reservation.

  The pilot, whose identity is being withheld pending notification of next of kin, was killed in the crash.

  The aircraft went down in rough terrain and recovery operations are under way. (No further information was available at press time.)

  Kelly checked, but there was nothing on the crash in the following day’s paper, which was unusual. Kelly flipped open her atlas. Luke Air Force Base was in Arizona, hundreds of miles from the Nellis Air Force Base Range. She hit the delete key. This had nothing to do with what she was looking for.

  Then she paused. Or did it? How often did F-15’s crash? Not exactly every day of the year. Was it just coincidence?

  Kelly did not believe much in coincidence. She felt her gut tighten further. What had Johnny stumbled upon? If this F-15 was the F-15 on the tape, the Air Force had gone through a lot of trouble to point the finger in a different direction from Nellis and Area 51. And not only was the plane reported as having crashed, the pilot was dead. He had been very much alive on that tape.

  Next, Kelly tried mailbox in conjunction with UFOs. This produced three hits, all of which identified the mailbox as an actual mailbox along a dirt road outside of the Groom Lake complex where UFO enthusiasts gathered to watch for strange craft over the mountains. Obviously the man who had sent Johnny the tape — the Captain — was one of those people. At least she now knew where she could find that link in the puzzle if she needed it.

  Trying Dreamland and Groom Lake brought her a wealth of stories about the site there. They were both cross-referenced to Area 51, which was another one of the many names for a place whose purpose was unknown and whose existence was officially denied.

  There were many theories, and Kelly was familiar with most of them. There were some who claimed the government had contact with aliens at the site, and they were trading for information and technology. The more radical theorists stated that, on their side of the barter, the humans were allowing the aliens to conduct mutilations on cattle and other livestock and also — from the truly radical fringe — to abduct humans for various nefarious experiments. There were some who even claimed that the aliens were interbreeding with the humans. Kelly shook her head.

  These were the sorts of stories that made headlines on the tabloid rags at the checkout counter, not something that legitimate journalists pursued. Another theory was that Area 51 was the place where the government was testing its own supersecret aircraft and that the F-117 Stealth fighter had been test-flown out there. The latest “secret” plane that was supposedly being tested was called Aurora and guesstimates had the plane — no one quite knew what it looked like — flying anywhere from Mach 4 to Mach 20 and being capable of going high enough to place satellites into orbit.

  The official government line was that the Groom Lake/Area 51 complex didn’t exist, which was a most interesting position considering the fact that the Air Force had been gobbling the terrain around the area for the past five years as quickly as it could.

  Obviously, something was going on at Area 51, Kelly decided from all the information in front of her. And she knew that Johnny must have done the same search, in fact, a much more in-depth one. And after completing that search he had felt it was worth going out there and taking the chance that the tape he had been sent was a fake or, given that Johnny knew about her own Nellis experience, a setup.

  Shifting through several of the articles, two names kept popping up: Mike Franklin, a self-styled Area 51 expert living in the town of Rachel, just outside the Nellis Air Force Base range complex; and Steve Jarvis, a scientist who claimed to have worked in the Groom Lake/Area 51 complex and actually seen alien craft that the government was test-flying. Johnny would have seen the same names.

  Kelly picked up the phone and got Franklin’s number from information. She dialed and waited as it cycled through five rings. Just as she was about to hang up, somebody came on the line. The voice on the other end was a woman’s and she sounded u
pset. “Yes?”

  “I’d like to speak to Mike Franklin. This is Kelly Reynolds.”

  “Mike’s not here,” the woman said.

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “He’s not here,” the woman repeated.

  “I’m doing an article on UFOs for a major magazine,” Kelly said, used to occasionally getting the cold shoulder, “and I’d like to talk to—”

  “I said he’s not here—” the woman snapped. Just as quickly the voice on the other end started sobbing. “Mike’s dead. He was killed in a car wreck last night.”

  Kelly’s hand tightened on the phone. “Where did the wreck occur?” “On Route 375, about fifteen miles outside of town.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “What?”

  “Was he alone in the car?”

  “Yes. The state police say he must have run off the road, maybe trying to avoid hitting a deer. They acted like he must have been drunk. But Mike never drank that much. He didn’t like it. And someone went through all his stuff here at the house. When I got here this morning I could tell, even though they tried to put it all back in place. I’m scared they’re going to come back here.”

  “Who are they?” Kelly asked. The woman gave a high-pitched laugh. “Them. You know.”

  “No, I don’t,” Kelly said. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Forget it,” the woman said. “Mike shouldn’t have been doing whatever he was doing. I told him.”

  “What’s your name?” Kelly asked.

  “I’m not talking to no one. I’m getting out of here. I don’t know what Mike was doing and I don’t want to know no more.” The phone went dead and Kelly slowly lowered the receiver.

  “Oh, Johnny, Johnny,” she said softly. “You hit the nail on the head, I think, but it looks like the nail was harder than you thought.”

  Kelly stood and looked at the dry-erase board where she kept all her appointments and job assignments for the next several weeks. There was nothing that couldn’t be put off for a while with a few phone calls.

  After making her work calls she dialed a travel agency and booked a flight out of Nashville into Las Vegas, departing at noon. Then she called information and got the number for a Steve Jarvis in Las Vegas. A male voice answered. “Hello?”

  “Is this Steve Jarvis?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “This is Kelly Reynolds. I’m a freelance writer doing an article for—” Jarvis cut in. “My fee for a print interview is five hundred dollars. That gets you one hour.”

  “Mr. Jarvis, I’m just trying to find—”

  “Five hundred dollars, one hour. Cash or a money order. No checks. No free questions.”

  Kelly paused and gathered in her emotions. “Can I see you this evening?” “The elephant bar at the Zanzibar. Be there at seven on the dot.”

  “How will I recognize you?” Kelly asked.

  “I’ll recognize you,” Jarvis replied. “Wear red. Something sexy. Order a slow, comfortable screw from the bartender.”

  Kelly clenched her teeth. “Listen, I’m a professional and I’m coming out to Las Vegas to do a legitimate job. I don’t need—”

  “Obviously,” Jarvis cut in again, “you don’t need to interview me, then. It was nice talking to you, Miss Reynolds.”

  Kelly waited. He didn’t hang up; she didn’t either. Electronic Mexican standoff.

  Finally Jarvis spoke. “Do you have the money? Five hundred? Cash?” “Yes.”

  “All right. Just ask the bartender for me. He’ll point you in the right direction. I’ll be there at seven.”

  As Kelly hung up the phone, a flicker of doubt crossed her mind. Was she overreacting to the situation?

  She reached down and pulled the Nellis file out of her desk and stared at it for a few minutes while she thought.

  Once before she’d been down this path. But this time was different. She wasn’t just after a story. There was Johnny, out there somewhere, hopefully still alive.

  But that didn’t mean she had to walk in blind. She looked up the article on Jarvis again and checked something. Then she picked up the phone and made another call.

  Cairo, Egypt

  T — 134 Hours, 40 Minutes

  Peter Nabinger was also trying to answer questions, but he didn’t understand the information that was appearing on the computer screen in front of him. He was in the research section of the University of Cairo, using their database to check on Kaji’s story. He was glad he had access to such a sophisticated system as the university’s computer, because much of what he was looking for had been reported only in academic and scientific journals or out-of-print books, and the computer held hundreds of thousands of such abstracts. The system also had the advantage of holding practically every bit of information about Egypt and Cairo that had ever been recorded.

  There was no record of Germans in the Great Pyramid during World War II; not that he had expected to find any.

  But, sorting through bits and pieces of local newspaper articles from 1945, it did appear that access to the Great Pyramid had been restricted for several months during that year and that some strange Allied military activity had centered around the building, as Kaji had said.

  Cross-referencing the word Thule with the Nazis brought a surprising result. Nabinger had been familiar with the word Thule in the traditional sense from ancient mythology: a northern, inhabited region. The Nazis, however, had perverted that concept — and many other myths and legends — for their own purposes and they had used the science of archaeology to try to support their claims.

  Even nonarchaeologists knew about the Rosetta stone, found in 1799 when Napoleon’s army had invaded Egypt.

  In many ways the stone had been the key that opened up study of ancient Egypt, because when Champollion finally broke the code to the traditional Egyptian hieroglyphics and deciphered it, a wealth of information was unleashed. Despite his having studied the history of archaeology in college and graduate school, the information Nabinger was now reading was new to him. What Nabinger had never been told was that in 1842 the King of Prussia had led an expedition to Egypt that had done further work on deciphering ancient Egyptian texts and markings. A German Egyptologist named Richard Lepsius had accompanied the king and remained there for three years, producing drawings and measurements of all three pyramids.

  Over the years that followed, the Germans had invested quite a bit of time and energy in the study of the pyramids, hieroglyphics, and high runes. Obviously — if Kaji’s story was true — that effort had borne some fruit.

  In the decade just prior to World War I various German groups had used myths and archaeology to weave a strange and convoluted web of doctrine to support their racial and anti-Semitic philosophies. The swastika, a symbol that had been used by several ancient peoples, was resurrected. List, an early influence on Hitler, used his own false deciphering of high runes to justify his beliefs.

  Nabinger stopped scrolling the computer for a second and stroked his beard. Although the deciphering of the Rossetta stone had greatly increased understanding of hieroglyphics, it had been of no help in the deciphering of the high runes. Nabinger’s own feeling was that the high runes were older than hieroglyphics.

  Nabinger remembered Kaji’s comments about the Germans using some sort of map with markings on it to find their way. What had the Germans uncovered? Had they discovered a way to decipher high rune text that still remained unknown to the rest of the world? Were they using some ancient document or perhaps something drawn by Lepsius in the nineteenth century? Or had they simply used a map, copied from someplace, and still been unable to read the high runes?

  Nabinger had heard about the German fascination with the myth of the Holy Grail and the search for the lance supposedly used on Jesus after his crucifixion, but his instructors in school had laughed away the Nazis as amateurs in the scientific field of archaeology, more interested in propaganda than science. But perhaps, Nabinger wondered, there had been oth
er searches with better results?

  Nabinger thought of his own hypothesis connecting the high runes in South and Central America with those in the pyramid. He knew he would be laughed at also if he tried to publish his results.

  Nabinger read on. At the end of World War I many of the occult groups that had been born in Germany prior to the war grew in strength, feeding off the deep and bitter dissatisfaction of the people with the defeat and peace imposed on their country. The name Thule was appropriated as a cover for these groups.

  Nabinger straightened. In 1933 a book had been published in Germany called Bevor Hitler Kam (Before Hitler Came). It was apparently about the connection between Hitler’s National Socialist movement and the Thule movement. The interesting thing was that after publication, the author disappeared under mysterious circumstances and all copies of the book that could be found in Germany were collected and destroyed by the Nazis. The author of the book was named Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff.

  Checking, Nabinger was surprised to see that the computer had an abstract on the book. Sebottendorff had taken the ancient myth of Atlantis and the myth of Thule and reinvented them with his own sick motivations.

  According to Sebottendorff, Thule was reported to have once been the center of a great civilization, but was subsequently destroyed by a great flood. This concept was based on an earlier theory postulated by the Theosophical Society. Nabinger said a brief prayer for the computer that gave him the ability to cross-reference so quickly as he requested information on this latest piece of information.

  The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 in New York City by a woman named Madame Helena Blavatsky. Her theory had the inhabitants of Atlantis — or Thule, as the Nazis had named it — representing the Fourth Race, the only true line of man, which of course, the Nazis found very convenient to use in their Aryan-race theory. According to the abstract the inhabitants of Thule looked very much like the figures carved into stone on Easter Island.