His secretary sighed thankfully. "Yes, sir, I'll tell her. Good night.
"Good night."
Nichols slipped his pipe between his teeth but didn't pack or light the bowl. He set his attache case off to the side of his desk, and, still wearing his overcoat, he sat down and examined Yazid's file.
Farquar had not exaggerated. It was slim pickings. Although the last six years were heavily reported, Yazid's life before his rapid rise from obscurity took up little more than a paragraph. His debut in the news media began with his arrest by Egyptian police during a sit-in demonstration for Cairo's starving masses inside the lobby of a luxury tourist hotel. He had distinguished himself by preaching in the worst slum areas of the country.
Akhmad Yazid stated he was born in squalid poverty in a mud hut among the decaying mausoleums of the City of the Dead that spilled into the garbage dumps of Cairo. His family lived on the thin margin between survival and death until his two sisters and father died from disease brought on by hunger and filthy living conditions.
He had no formal schooling except what was given during his adolescent years by Islamic holy men, none of whom were found to back up this assertion. Yazid claimed Muhammad the Prophet spoke through him, uttering divine revelations to the faiffiffil and urging them to return Egypt to a utopian Islamic state.
Yazid possessed a resonant speaking voice. He had the skilled mannerisms and delivery to enrapture a crowd of listenets, slowly building them to a fever pitch at the finish. He insisted Western philosophy was incapable of resolving Egypt's social/economic problems.
He preached that all Egyptians are members of a lost generation who must find themselves through his moral vision.
Though he vehemently claimed otherwise, evidence indicated he was not above using terrorism to achieve his goals. Five separate incidents, including the murder of a high-ranking Air Force general, a truck explosion outside the Soviet Embassy, and the execution-style killing of four university teachers who spoke out in favor of Western ways, were traced to Yazid's doorstep. Nothing was proven but through sketchy information gained from Muslim infomiants, CIA analysts felt certain Yazid was planning a masterstroke to eliminate president Hasan and sweep into power on a rising wave of public acclaim.
Nichols laid down the file and finally filled and lit his pipe.
A tiny, indefinable thought tugged at him from the far reaches of his mind.
Something about the report struck him as vaguely familiar. He laid aside a glossy photo of Yazid glaring malevolently at the camera.
The answer suddenly struck Nichols. It was simple and it was shocking.
He picked up his telephone and punched the coded number of a direct line, impatiently drumming the desk top with his fingers until a voice answered on the other end.
"This is Brogan."
"Martin, thank heavens you're working late. This is Dale Nichols."
"What can I do for you, Dale?" asked the Director of the CIA. "Did you get the packet on Akhmad Yazid?"
"Yes, thank you," replied Nichols. "I've gone through it and found something you can help me with."
"Sure, what is it?"
"I need two sets of blood types and fingerprints."
"Fingerprints?"
"That's right."
"We use genetic codes and DNA tracing nowadays," Brogan answered indulgently. "any particular reason in mind?"
Nichols paused to collect his thoughts. "If I tell you, I swear to God you'll think I should be fitted for a straitjacket."
Yaeger pulled off his granny reading glasses, tucked them into the pocket of a denim jacket, shuffled and stacked a pile of computer reports, then settled back in his chair and sipped from a can of diet soda.
"Zilch," he said almost sadly. "A wasted effort up and down the line. A 1,600-year-old trail is too cold to follow without solid data. A computer can't go back in time and tell you exactly how it was."
"Maybe Dr. Gronquist can determine where the Serapes made landfall after he's had a chance to study the artifacts," Lily said optimistically.
Pitt sat two rows below and off to one side from the others in NUMAs small amphitheater. "I talked to him by radio an hour ago. He's found nothing that isn't Mediterranean in origin. "
A three-dimensional projection of the Atlantic Ocean showing land folds and the irregular geology of the sea bottom filled a screen above the stage. Everyone seemed obsessed by it. Their eyes were drawn to the contoured imagery even as they spoke.
Everyone, that is, except Admiral James Sandecker. His eyes suspiciously observed Al Giordino, particularly the large cigar sprouting from one side of the Assistant Project Director's mouth as if it had grown from a seedling.
"When did you start buying Hoyo de Monterrey Excaliburs?"
Giordino looked at the Admiral with an innocent expression. "You talking to me, Admiral?"
"Since you and I are the only ones in the theater smoking Excaliburs, and I'm not in the habit of talking to myself, yes."
"Great, full flavor," said Giordino, holding up the fat cigar and expelling a gush of blue smoke. "I commend your discriminating taste."
"Where did you get it?"
"A little shop in Baltimore. I forget the name."
Sandecker wasn't fooled for an instant. Giordino had been stealing his expensive cigars for years. What drove the Admiral up the wall was that he never discovered how. No matter how well he hid or locked them away, his inventory count always showed two missing every week.
Giordino kept the secret from Pitt so his best friend would never have to lie if asked how it was done. Only Giordino and an old buddy from the Air Force who was a professional burglar for an intelligence agency knew the technicalities of Operation Stogie.
"I've a good notion to ask to see a receipt," growled Sandecker.
"We, ve been attacking this thing from the wrong angle," Pitt said, steering the meeting back on course.
"There's another angle?" asked Yaeger. "We took the only logical approach open to us."
"Without any reference to direction, it was an impossible job," Lily backed him.
"A pity Rufinus didn't log his daily positions and distance traveled,"
mused Sandecker.
"He was under strict orders not to record anything."
"Could they determine a position back then?" asked Giordino.
Lily nodded. "By positions of earth landmarks by figuring their latitude and longitude a hundred and thirty years before Christ."
Sandecker laced his hands across his trim stomach and gazed at Pitt over his reading glasses. "I know that lost look in your eyes.
Something's nagging at you."
Pitt slouched in his seat. "We've been judging facts and using guesswork without considering the man who conceived the smuggling plan."
"Junius Venator?"
"A brilliant guy," Pitt continued, "who was described by a contemporary as 'a daring innovator who struck out into areas other scholars feared to tread." The question we've overlooked is, if we were in Venator's shoes, where would we have taken and hidden the great art and litemq treasures of our time?"
"I still say Africa," volunteered Yaeger. "Preferably around the Cape somewhere up a river along the eastern coastline."
"Yet your computers couldn't make a marriage."
"They never came close," Yaeger admitted. "But God only knows how land formations have changed since Venator's day."
"Could Venator have taken the fleet northeast into the Black Sea?" Lily queried.
"Rufinus was specific about a voyage of fifty-eight days," said Giordino.
Sandecker, puffing his cigar, nodded. "Yes, but if the fleet was hit by foul weather or adverse winds, they could have traveled less than a thousand miles in that time."
"The Admiral has a point," Yaeger conceded. "Ancient ships of the period were constructed to run with the sea and before the wind. Their rigging was not efficient for willdward sailing. Heavy-weather conditions could have cut their progress by eighty percent."