Blue Gold

"I have an idea why. Come, I'll show you."

Francesca rose from the table and led the way through torch lit hallways to a large bedroom. She reached into a chest and pulled out a battered and scarred aluminum case. She set it on top of her bed, then opened it. Inside was a jumble of broken wires and circuits.

"This was a model of the experiment I was carrying to Cairo. I won't go into the technical details, but if you pour seawater in on this end, the salt is extracted and fresh water comes out here."

"A desalting process?"

"Yes. It was a revolutionary approach unlike any devised be fore. It took me two years to perfect. The problem with desalination has been its cost. This process would transform hundreds of gallons for only pe

"I still don't understand," Paul said. "Why would someone want to prevent a boon like this from being made available to the world?"

"I've asked myself that question many times in the past ten years and still have no satisfactory answer."

"Was this your only model?"

"Yes," she said sadly. "I took everything with me from Sao Paulo. All my papers were burned in the plane crash." Brightening, she said, "I was able to put my hydraulic engineering skills to work here. It can be boring just sitting around being adored all day. I'm virtually a prisoner They hid me from search parties after the crash. The only place where I am truly alone is this palace. Only those who are invited can enter. My servants were handpicked for their loyalty. Outside the palace I'm watched by my Praetorian guard."

"Being a white goddess isn't all it's cracked up to be," Paul said.

"An understatement. Which is why I'm so happy you dropped out of the sky. Tonight you rest. Tomorrow I will give you a tour of the village, and we will start pla

"Pla

"Sorry, I thought that was obvious. Pla

Chapter 18

Austin had a quick breakfast of ham and scrambled eggs on the deck of his boathouse below the Potomac palisades in Fairfax, Virginia. He stared longingly at the slow-moving river, thinking that a brisk row in his scull would be far preferable to morning traffic on the Beltway. But the events of the last few days gnawed at him. Having narrowly missed being killed twice had injected a personal note into the case.

Driving a turquoise NUMA-issue Jeep Cherokee, Austin headed south and then east across the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge into Maryland, where he left the Beltway. In suburban Suitland he pulled off the road at a complex of metal buildings so boringly nondescript that they could only have been built by the federal government.

A docent in the visitor center took his name and made a call. Minutes later a trim middle-aged man arrived carrying a clip board. He wore paint-splattered jeans, a denim work shirt, and a baseball cap with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum logo. He gave Austin a firm handshake and introduced himself.

"I'm Fred Miller. We talked on the phone," he said.

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice."

"No problem." Miller raised a quizzical brow. "Are you the same Kurt Austin who found the Christopher Columbus tomb in Guatemala?"

"That's me." "That must have been some adventure." "It had its moments."

"I'll bet. I have to apologize. Aside from what I read in the papers of NUMA's undersea exploits, I don't know a lot about your agency."

"Maybe we can both learn something about our respective work. I don't know much about the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility. Your Web site says you restore historical and vintage airplanes."

"That's only the tip of the iceberg," Miller said, showing the way to the door. "C'mon, I'll give you a tour."

He led Austin outside and continued his narrative as they walked past a row of identical buildings, all with low roofs and big sliding doors. "Paul Garber was a plane nut, which was fortunate for us. When he was just a kid he saw Orville Wright fly the world's first military aircraft. Later he worked for the Smithsonian and was instrumental in creating the National Air Museum. The Air Force and Navy had collected examples of the planes that won World War II and some of the enemy planes they beat. They wanted to get rid of them. Garber did an aerial survey and found twenty-one acres owned by the federal government out here in the sticks. There are thirty-two buildings at the center." They stopped in front of one of the larger structures. "This is Building Ten, the workshop where we do the restorations."

"I saw some of your work on the live Web cam."

"You might have spotted me. I just came from there. I worked for years as a project manager for Boeing in Seattle, but I'm originally from Virginia, and when I had a chance to come to the center I jumped at it. At any given time we've got several projects going. We've been finishing up a Hawker Hurricane restoration. It's been a little delayed because of a parts problem. We're restoring the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that carried the A-bomb over Hiroshima. There's a nifty little biplane called Pitt's special 'Little Stinker' that's getting its fabric skin

painted. It's not just planes. We've had a Russian air-to-surface missile, plane engines, even the spaceship model they used in that movie Close Encounters. We can stop in for a look on the way back." "I'd like that. Sounds like an eclectic collection."

"Oh, it is. We've got aircraft from all over the world that we're getting ready for exhibition. Three buildings are devoted to exhibition restoration alone. This is a high-class club. The artifacts have to have a story behind them to qualify for a makeover. Something historical or technological, or maybe they're the last of their kind. Here, this is what you're interested in."

They entered a building laid out like a warehouse. High metal shelves ran from one end to the other. Stacked neatly on the shelves were hundreds of taped cardboard boxes of all sizes. "Storage is our third most important function, along with restoration and preservation," Miller explained. "We've got more than one hundred and fifty aircraft and tons of other artifacts spread throughout the complex. This is mostly parts in here."

Consulting a computer printout on a clipboard, he walked down one of the aisles with Austin trailing.

"How do you find what you're looking for?" Austin asked with bewilderment.

Miller chuckled. "It's not as bad as you might think. Every important part from every plane in the world has something stamped on it. We've got complete records of serial numbers, registration numbers, or letter codes. Here, this is what we're looking for."

Using a pocket knife, he slit the sealing tape on a cardboard box. After reaching inside, he pulled out a metal cylinder about two feet long. Austin thought it was the part he had sent from California, but it was too shiny, and its surface was free of dents and nicks.

"This is identical to the artifact you sent us." He extracted Austin's cylinder from the box. "We matched the two objects through their serial numbers. This first is from a plane that was

decommissioned and taken apart, which is why it's in such good condition."

He handed the cylinder to Austin, who hefted it. Like the other, it was lightweight aluminum and weighed only a few pounds.