Treasure

Ammar clutched Ibn's hands for assurance. He tried to speak, but could no longer utter coherent words. Only animallike guttural sounds came through the blood-caked wrapping supporting his shattered jaw.

"We are in a small chamber inside one of the mine tu

Ibn spoke softly into his ear. "They came very close, but I had time to build a wall that concealed our hiding place."

Ammar nodded and desperately tried to make himself understood.

It was as though Ibn could reach through the pitch ess and read Ammar's thoughts. "You wish to die, Suleiman Aziz? No, you will not die. We will go together but not one minute before Allah decides."

Ammar slumped in despair. He had never felt so disoriented, so completely out of control. The pain was unbearable, and the thought of living out his days in a maximum-security jail cell, blind and mutilated, devastated him. All instinct for self--preservation had deserted him. He could not stand being dependent on anyone for his hourly existence-not even Ibn.

"Rest, my brother," said Ibn gently. "You will need all your strength when it comes time for us to escape the island."

A

He became more and more despondent. His failure had become a horror. He saw Akhmad Yazid standing over him, smirking; then a curtain slowly formed and parted deep in the recesses of Ammar's mind. A faint glow appeared, a glow that bloomed and then burst in a blinding flash, and in that one chilling moment he glimpsed the future.

He would survive through revenge.

Mentally he spoke the word over and over until at last his self-discipline returned.

The first decision he came to grips with was who should die at his own hands, Yazid or Pitt? He could not act alone. He was no longer physically capable of assassinating both men himself. Already a plan was forming. He would have to trust Ibn to share in the revenge.

Ammar anguished over the decision, but in the end he had no choice.

Ibn would draw the coyote, while Ammar's final act would be to slay the viper.

Pitt refused to fly home on a stretcher. He sat in a comfortable executive chair, leg propped on the seat of a facing chair, and stared out the window at the snowcapped spires of the Andes. Far off to the right he could see the green plateaus that marked the begi

meters the wind-mased water looked like a flat sheet of crepe paper.

The Air Force VIP transport jet was cramped-Pitt could not stand to his full height-but quite luxurious. He felt as though he were sitting inside a rich kid's high-priced toy.

His father was not in a talkative mood. The Senator spent most of the flight working out of a briefcase, making notes for his briefing to the President.

What little conversation took place was one-sided. When Pitt asked how he happened to be on the Lady Flamborough at Punta del Este, the Senator didn't bother to look up when he responded.

"A Presidential mission," he said tersely, closing off any further questions on the subject.

Hala also kept to herself and attended to business. She had the aircraft's in-flight telephone in constant use, firing off in structions to her aides at the United Nations building in New York. Her only acknowledgment of Pitts presence was a brief smile when their eyes happened to meet.

How quickly they forget, Pitt thought idly.

He turned his mind to the search for the Alexandria Library treasures.

He considered cutting in on Hala's phone monopoly for a progress report from Yaeger. But he drowned his curiosity with a dry martini, courtesy of the aircraft steward, instead, deciding to wait and learn whatever there was to learn at first hand from Lily and Yaeger.

What river had Venator sailed before burying the priceless objects? it could be any one of a thousand that course into the Atlantic between the Saint Lawrence in Canada to the Rfo de la Plata of Argentina. No, not quite. Yaeger theorized the Serapes had taken on water and made repairs off what was to become New Jersey. The unknown river had to be south, much further south than the rivers that flow into Chesapeake Bay.

Could Venator have led his fleet into the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi? Today's stream must be far different from what it was sixteen hundred years ago. Perhaps he had sailed into the OTinoco in Venezuela, which could be navigated for two hundred miles. Or maybe the Amazon?

He let his mind wander through the irony of it all. If Junius Venator's voyage to the Americas was absolutely proved by the discovery of the buried Library artifacts, history books needed to be revised and new chapters written.

Poor Leif Eriksson and Christopher Columbus would be relegated to footnotes.

Pitt was still daydreaming when he was interrupted by the steward telling him to fasten his seat belt.

It was dusk and the aircraft had dipped its nose and was dropping into the long glide toward Andrews Air Force Base. The twinkling sprawl of Washington slid past, and Pitt soon found himself hobbling down the steps on a cane hastily bent from an aluminum tube and presented by the grateful crew of the Lady Flamborough. He set foot on the concrete at almost exactly the same spot as on his arrival from Greenland.

Hala came down and bid him goodbye. She was continuing on with the plane to New York.

"You've become a treasured memory, Dirk Pitt."

"We never did make our di

"The next time you're in Cairo, it's on me."

The Senator overheard and came over. "Cairo, Ms. Kamil. Not New York?"

Hala gave him a smile worthy of the beautiful Aphrodite. "I am resigning as SecretaryGeneral and returning home. Democracy is dying in Egypt. I can do more to keep it alive by working in the midst of my people."

"What of Yazid?"

"President Hasan has vowed to place him under house arrest."

A frown crossed Senator Pitts face. "Be careful. Yazid is still a dangerous man."

"if not Yazid, there is always another maniac waiting in the wings." Her soft dark eyes belied the fear that rode in her heart. She gave him a daughterly hug. "tell your President Egypt will not become a nation of insane fanatics."

"I'll pass along your words."

She turned back to Pitt. She was on the brink of falling in love with him but fought her feelings with every bit of will she possessed. Her legs felt weak as she took both his hands and stared upward into his ageless face. for an instant, in her mind's eye, she saw herself entwilled with his body, caressing his muscled skin, and then just as quickly she erased the thought. She had found brief fulfillment with him, long denied, but she knew she could never divide her love for one man with that for Egypt.

Her life belonged to those who had no life except misery and poverty.

She kissed him tenderly.

"Do not forget me."

Before Pitt could answer, Hala had turned and hurried up the steps into the aircraft. He stood looking at the empty entrance for a long moment.

The Senator read his thoughts and interrupted them. "They've sent an ambulance to take you to the hospital."

"Hospital?" Pitt said vacantly, still watching as the door closed. The jet engines whistled as the pilot increased the rpm and began to taxi toward the main strip.