"Your timing is ideal," said Pitt. "Come on inside. Let's get out of the heat. I've something I want to show you."
Giordino had his back to the cabin door as Pitt and Gunn entered. "What did the goochers want?" he asked irritably.
"For you to drop dead," Gunn answered, laughing.
Giordino spun around, recognizing the little man, and affecting great surprise. "Oh for God's sake!" He came to his feet and shook Gunn's outstretched hand. "What are you doing here?"
"To transfer you to another project."
"Great timing."
"My thoughts exactly," Pitt grinned.
"Hi, Mr. Gunn," greeted Gary Marx, ducking into the electronics cabin. "Good to have you on board."
"Hello, Gary."
"Am I being transferred too?"
Gunn shook his head. "No, you have to stay here on the project. Dick White and Stan Shaw will be arriving tomorrow to replace Dirk and Al."
"A waste of time," said Marx. "We're ready to wrap up."
Gunn stared at Pitt questioningly for a moment, then understanding grew iii concert with his widening eyes. "The pharaoh's funeral barge," he muttered. "You found it?"
"A lucky hit," Pitt revealed. "And only the second day on the job."
"Where?" Gunn blurted.
"You're standing on it, in a manner of speaking. She's resting 9 meters under our keel."
Pitt displayed the digital isometric model of the wreck on the computer monitor. The hours spent in enhancing the colored imagery paid off with a vivid, extremely detailed view of every square meter of the centuries-old ship.
"Indescribable," muttered Gunn in awe.
"We've also recorded and positioned over a hundred other wrecks dating from 2800 B.C. to 1000 A.D.," said Giordino.
"Congratulations to the three of you," Gunn beamed warmly. "You've pulled off an incredible accomplishment. One for the history books. The Egyptian government will pin medals on you."
"And the Admiral?" Giordino asked succinctly. "What will he pin on us?"
Gunn turned from the monitor and looked at them, his face suddenly turned dead serious. "A dirty, rotten job, I suspect."
"Didn't he drop a hint?" Pitt pressed.
"Nothing that made any sense." Gunn stared at the ceiling, recalling. "When I asked him why the urgency, he quoted a verse. I don't remember the exact words. Something about a ship's shadow and charmed water being red."
Pitt quoted:
Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoarfrost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burned away,
a still and awful red.
"A verse from `The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge."
Gunn looked at Pitt with new respect. "I didn't know you could quote poetry."
Pitt laughed. "I memorized a few verses, that's all."
"I wonder what Sandecker has on his evil mind?" said Giordino. "Not like the old buzzard to get cryptic."
"No," Pitt said with uneasy trepidation, "not like him at all."
<<8>>
The pilot of the Massarde Enterprises helicopter flew north and eastward from the capital city of Bamako. For two and a half hours the vast desolation unrolled below like miniature scenery pasted on a scroll. After two hours, he spotted the sun's glint off steel rails in the distance. He banked and began following the tracks that seemingly traveled to nowhere.
The railroad, only completed the month before, ended at the immense solar waste detoxification project in the heart of the Malian desert. The facility was called Fort Foureau after a long-abandoned French Foreign Legion fort several miles away. From the project site the tracks ran 1600 kilometers in a nearly straight line across the border into Mauritania before finally terminating at the man-made port of Cape Tafarit on the Atlantic Ocean.
General Kazim peered from the lush comfort of the executive helicopter as the pilot caught and passed a long train of sealed, hazardous waste container cars pulled by two diesel locomotives. The train was outbound to Mauritania, having emptied its deadly cargo and turned around.
He smiled craftily as he turned his stare from the waste cars and nodded to the steward, who refreshed his glass of champagne and offered a tray of hors d'oeuvres.
The French, Kazim mused, they never seemed out of reach of champagne, truffles, and pate. He considered them an insular race who only halfheartedly tried to build and maintain an empire. How the general citizenry must have sighed with collective relief, he thought, when they were forced to give up their outposts in Africa and the Far East. Deep down it angered him that the French had not disappeared entirely from Mali. Though they severed their colonial leash in 1960, the French had maintained their influence and a taut grip on the economy, exercising strong control over most all of the nation's mining, transportation, industrial and energy development. Many French businessmen saw investment opportunity and bought heavily into Malian ventures. But none had dug their money shovel deeper into the Sahara sands than Yves Massarde.
Once the wizard of France's overseas economic agency, Massarde had carved a profitable niche on the side, using his contacts and influence to take over and turn around ailing West African corporations. A tough and shrewd negotiator, his methods were cutthroat and it was rumored that he was not above using strong-arm tactics to consummate a deal. His wealth was estimated to be between two and three billion dollars, and the hazardous waste disposal project in the Sahara at Fort Foureau was the centerpiece of his empire.
The helicopter arrived over the sprawling complex, and the pilot swung around the perimeter to give Kazim a good view of the sprawling solar detoxification complex and its vast field of parabolic mirrors that collected solar energy and sent it to concentrating receivers, creating an incredible 60,000 suns with temperatures as high as 5000 degrees C. This superheated photon energy was then directed to photochemical reactors that destroyed the molecules of hazardous chemicals.
The General had seen it all several times, and he was more interested in selecting another bite of truflled goose pate. He was just finishing his sixth glass of Veuve Clicquot Gold Label champagne when the helicopter slowly settled onto the flight pad in front of the project's engineering offices.
Kazim stepped to the ground and saluted Felix Verenne, the personal aide of Massarde, who stood waiting in the sun. Kazim gloated at seeing the Frenchman suffering from the heat. "Felix, how good of you to greet me," he spoke in French, his teeth flashing beneath his moustache.
"Did you enjoy your journey?" Verenne asked patronizingly.
"The pate was not up to your chef's usual standards."
A slender, bald-headed man in his forties, Verenne forced t a smile over his inner disgust for Kazim. "I'll see that it meets with your approval on the return flight."
"And how is Monsieur Massarde?"
"He's waiting for you in his executive suite."
Verenne led the way under an awning-covered walkway into a three-story black solar glass building with rounded corners. Inside, they crossed a marble lobby that was totally deserted, except for one security guard, and entered an elevator. The doors opened onto a teak-paneled entry halt that led to the main salon that doubled as Massarde's living quarters and office. Verenne showed Kazim into a small but luxuriously decorated study and pointed to a Roche Bobois leather sofa.
"Please have a seat. Monsieur Massarde will be with you-?'
"But Felix, I am here," came a voice from the opposite doorway. Massarde stepped forward and embraced Kazim. "Zateb, my friend, how good of you to come"
Yves Massarde had blue eyes, black brows, and reddish hair. His nose was slender and his jaws square. The body was thin and the hips trim, but the stomach protruded. Nothing about him seemed to match. But it was not his physical impression that lingered in the memories of those he met. They only remembered the intensity that burst from within his being in a manner like that of static electricity.
He gave a kno
wing look to Verenne, who nodded and quietly left the room, closing the door behind.
"Now then, Zateb, my agents in Cairo inform me that your people made a fiasco of frightening the World Health Organization from coming to Mali"
"A regrettable circumstance," Kazim shrugged indifferently. "The reasons are unclear."
Massarde gave the General a hard stare. "According to my sources of information, your assassins disappeared during a botched attempt to kill Dr. Eva Rojas."
"A penalty for their inefficient handling of the matter."
"You executed them?"
"I do not tolerate failure from my people," Kazim lied.
The failure of his men to kill Eva and their strange disappearance had baffled him. In frustration he had ordered the death of the officer who planned the murder, accusing him and the others of betraying his commands.
Massarde did not get where he was without being a shrewd judge of personalities. He knew Kazim well enough to suspect the General of laying a smoke screen. "If we have outside enemies, it would be a grave mistake to ignore them."
"It was nothing," Kazim said, dismissing the subject. "Our secret is safe."
"You say that when a UN World Health team of contamination experts is landing at Gao within the hour? Do not treat this matter lightly, Zateb. If they trace the source here-"
"They won't find anything but sand and heat," Kazim interrupted. "You know better than I, Yves, whatever is causing the strange sickness near the Niger cannot be coming from here. I see no way your project can be responsible for pollution hundreds of kilometers to the east and south of here."
"That's true," Massarde said thoughtfully. "Our monitoring systems show that the waste we burn for appearance sake .is well within the stringent limits set by international policy standards."
"So what's to worry," shrugged Kazim.
"Nothing, so long as every avenue is covered."
"Leave the UN research team to me."
"Do not hinder them," Massarde warned quickly.
"The desert takes care of intruders."
"Kill them and Mali and Massarde Enterprises will be at -great risk of exposure. Their leader, Dr. Hopper, called a news conference in Cairo and played on the lack of cooperation from your government. He went on record as claiming his research team might encounter danger after their arrival. Scatter their bones around the desert, my friend, and we'll have an army of news reporters and UN investigators swarming over the project."
"You weren't squeamish about having Dr. Rojas removed."
"Yes, but the attempt was not in our backyard where there could be suspicion of our involvement."
"Nor were you disturbed when half of your engineers and their wives went for a picnic drive into the dunes and vanished.
"Their disappearance was necessary to protect the second phase of our operation."
"You were fortunate I was able to cover the situation without headlines in Paris newspapers or on-site investigations by French government agents."
"You did well," Massarde sighed. "I could not do without your esteemed talents." Like most of his desert countrymen, Kazim could not exist without perpetual compliments to his genius. Massarde Loathed the General, but the clandestine operation could not exist without him. It was a contract made in hell by two evil men with Massarde getting the top end of the deal. He could afford to put up with the camel turd, as he called Kazim behind his back. After all, a payoff of fifty thousand American dollars a month was a pittance against the two million dollars a day Massarde was reaping from the waste disposal project.
Kazim walked over to a welt-stocked bar and helped himself to a cognac. "So how do you suggest we handle Dr. Hopper and his staff?"
"You are the expert in these matters," Massarde said with oily charm. "I leave it to your skills."
Kazim lifted a smug eyebrow. "Elementary, my friend. I simply eliminate the problem they came to solve."
Massarde seemed curious. "How do you accomplish that?"
"I've already made a start," answered Kazim. "I sent my personal brigade to round up, shoot, and bury any victims of contamination sickness."
"You'd slaughter your own people?" Massarde's voice was ironic.
"I'm only doing my patriotic duty to stamp out a national plague," replied Kazim with more than a hint of indifference.
"Your methods are a bit extreme." A worried crease appeared in Massarde's face. "I caution you, Zateb, do not provoke an uproar. If the world accidentally discovers what we truly do here, an international tribunal will hang us both."
"Not without evidence or witnesses, they won't."
"What about those freakish devils who massacred the tourists at Asselar? Did you make them disappear too?"
Kazim gave a callous smile. "No, they killed and ate themselves. But there are other villages suffering the same maladies. Should Dr. Hopper and his party become overly annoying, perhaps I can see they witness a massacre firsthand."
Massarde didn't need an illustrated explanation. He'd read Kazim's secret report of the slaughter at Asselar. His mind easily pictured disease-crazed nomads literally swallowing up the UN investigators as they had the tourist safari.
"A most efficient means of eliminating a threat," he said to Kazim. "It saves the expense of a burial party."
"I agree."
"But if one or two of them should survive and attempt to return to Cairo?"
Kazim shrugged, the thin bloodless lips under the moustache parted in an evil smile. "Regardless of how they die, their bones will never leave the desert."
<<9>>
Ten thousand years ago the sand-dry wadis of the Republic of Mali ran full to their banks with water while the barren flatlands were blanketed with forests filled with hundreds of varieties of plant life. The fertile plains and mountains were home to early man long before he rose out of the stone age and became a pastoral herdsman. For the next seven thousand years vast tribes hunted antelopes, elephants, and buffaloes as they herded their long-horned cattle from one grazing ground to another.
In time, overgrazing along with the decreasing rains caused the Sahara to dry out and become the barren desert it is today, ever expanding, ever creeping into the lusher, more tropical lands of the African continent. The great tribes gradually abandoned the region, leaving behind a desolate and nearly waterless area to the few nomadic bands who have lingered on.
By discovering the incredible endurance of the camel, the Romans were the first to conquer the desert wastes, utilizing the beast to carry slaves, gold, ivory, and many thousands of wild animals for shipment to the bloody arenas of Rome. For eight centuries their caravans plodded across the nothingness from the Mediterranean to the banks of the Niger. And when the glory of Rome faded, it was the camel that opened the Sahara frontier to the invading, light-skinned Berbers, who were followed by the Arabs and the Moors.
Mali represents the end of a line of powerful and long vanished empires to rule black Africa. In the early Middle Ages the kingdom of Ghana expanded the great caravan routes between the Niger River, Algeria, and Morocco. In 1240 A.D., Ghana was destroyed by the Mandingos to the south who emerged as an even greater empire called Malinke, the basis of the name Mali. Great prosperity was achieved and the cities of Gao and Timbuktu became widely respected as the centers of Islamic learning and culture.
Legends were spun of the incredible wealth carried by the gold caravans, and the empire's fame spread through the Middle East. But two hundred years later, the empire had spiraled into decay as the Tuareg and Fulane nomads encroached from the north. The Songhai people to the east gradually took control and ruled until the Moroccan sultans pushed their armies to the Niger and devastated the kingdom in 1591. By the time the French launched their colonial flow southward in the early nineteenth century, the old empires of Mali were ail but forgotten.
After the turn of the century, the French established the territories of West Africa into what became known as the French Sudan. In 1960, Mali declared its independence, drew
up a constitution, and formed a government. The nation's first president was removed by a group of army officers led by Lieutenant Moussa Traore. In 1992, after a number of unsuccessful coup attempts, President (now General) Traore was overthrown by (then Major) Zateb Kazim.