Blue Gold

Suppressing a smile, she bowed her head in submission and with a feigned catch in her voice said, "You win. I will help in developing the process."

'Agreed. I'll show you the facility you'll be working in. You'll be quite impressed."

"I want to talk to Gamay to make sure she is all right."

Brynhild punched a button on the intercom. Two men in dark green uniforms appeared. Francesca was relieved to see that they were not the Kradziks.

"Take Dr. Cabral to see our other guest," Brynhild ordered. "Then bring her back to me." She turned to Francesca. "You have ten minutes. I want you to get to work immediately."

Flanked by the guards, Francesca was led through a labyrinth of passageways to an elevator that dropped several levels. They stopped in front of an unmarked door opened by punching out the code on a keypad. The guards stood outside while Francesca entered the small windowless room. Gamay was sitting on the edge of her cot. She looked groggy, like a fighter who has taken one too many punches. She brightened and smiled when she saw Francesca. She tried to rise, but her legs buckled and she had to sit again.

Francesca sat on the cot and put her arm around her friend's shoulders. 'Are you all right?"

Gamay brushed her straggly hair aside. "My legs are wobbly, but I'll be fine. What about you?"

"They gave me a stimulant. I've been awake for some time. Your drugs will wear off soon."

"Did anyone mention what happened to Paul? He was up stairs when the kidnappers broke in."

Francesca shook her head. Putting aside her worst fears, Gamay said, "Do you have any idea where we are?"

"No. Our host didn't tell us."

"You mean you've spoken to someone I can thank for these glorious accommodations?"

"Her name is Brynhild Sigurd. Those were her men who kid napped us."

Gamay started to reply, but Francesca pursed her lips and shifted her eyes from left to right. Gamay caught the hint. They were being bugged and probably watched.

"I only have a few minutes. I just wanted you to know I've agreed to work with Ms. Sigurd on my desalting process. We'll have to stay here until the project is complete. I don't know how long it will take."

"You're going to work with the person who kidnapped us?"

"Yes," Francesca replied with a stubborn tilt of her chin. "I wasted ten years of my life in the jungle. There's a great deal of money to be made, but beyond that I believe Gogstad has the best chance of bringing my process to the world in an orderly and controlled fashion."

"Are you sure this is what you want to do?"

"Yes, I'm absolutely sure," she said.

The door slid open, and one of the guards motioned for Francesca to leave. She nodded, then leaned over and gave

Gamay a hug. Then she stood quickly and went off with the guards. Alone once more, Gamay pondered what had just happened. As their eyes met briefly, Francesca had winked. There was no mistake about it. Gamay was pleased to think there was more to Francesca's startling a

Chapter 35

The man floated high above the cobalt-blue waters of Lake Tahoe, suspended from the parasail under a red-and-white canopy that billowed over his head like an old-fashioned round parachute. He sat in a reclining Skyrider chair attached by a towline to the moving winch boat two hundred feet below.

The rider clicked on his handheld radio. "Let's go around for one more pass, Joe."

Zavala, who was at the wheel of the boat, waved to show that he had heard Austin's instruction. He put the ParaNautique winch boat into a big, slow turn that would take them back along the lake's California side.

The maneuver gave Austin a sweeping view of the lake. Lake Tahoe is on the California-Nevada border in the Sierra Nevada about twenty-three miles southwest of Reno. Ringed by rugged mountains that are covered with snow in the winter, Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in the United States. It is more than a mile high, more than sixteen hundred feet deep. The lake is twenty two miles long and about a dozen miles wide and lies in a fault basin created by ancient forces deep in the earth. Two-thirds of its two-hundred-square-mile area is in California. At the north end it empties into the Truckee River. At the south end a river of money empties into the coffers of the high-rise gambling casinos at Stateline. The first white man to discover the lake was John C.

Freemont who was on a surveying mission. To English speakers the Washoe Indian name for the lake, Da-ow, which means "much water," sounded like Tahoe, and the pronunciation stuck.

As the parasail brought Austin around in a wide arc he concentrated his attention on a particular stretch of shoreline and the dark forest rising behind it, imprinting the image on his mind. He would have preferred to use a video or still camera in stead of his imperfect memory, but traffic this close to Gogstad's lair was sure to come under close scrutiny. Any undue interest on his part, such as pointing a camera lens in the wrong direction, would set off alarms.

He drifted past a long pier that jutted from the rocky shore. A powerboat was tied up at the pier. Behind a boathouse or storage shed, the black rocks rose at a sharp angle, then leveled off into a heavily wooded natural tableland. Several hundred yards back from shore the land rose again in thick forest. The towers, roofs, and turrets peeking above the tall trees reminded Austin of the castle ramparts in a Grimm fairy tale.

Austin's eye was drawn by sudden movement. Several men in dark clothes had run out to the end of the pier. He was too far away to see details, but he wouldn't be surprised if pictures of him parasailing wound up in a Gogstad family album.

The pier disappeared in his wake as the winch boat towed him another mile south. When they were safely out of view he gave Zavala the okay to haul him in. The winch pulled the Skyrider in like a boy reeling in a kite. The reclining chair splashed down and floated in the water. Austin was grateful he wasn't using the old harness-style rig which would have dunked him in the lake. Even in summer the water temperature was in the sixties.

"See anything interesting?" Zavala asked as he helped Austin back into the winch boat.

"There's no welcome mat on the doorstep, if that's what you mean."

"I think I saw a welcoming committee on the dock."

"They came charging out the minute we did our second fly by. We were right about the tight security."

They had assumed the compound would be well guarded and that there would be no point sneaking around. Reasoning that the obvious was often the most i

Austin helped Zavala stow the Skyrider and parasail, then he opened a waterproof bag and dug out a sketch pad and pen. Apologizing for his draftsmanship, which was really quite good, he drew several sketches of what he had seen from the air. He had brought along the satellite photos Yaeger provided and com pared the sketches to them. At the top of the bluff the staircase from the dock co