"Mike Graham is an expert on ancient coins. One of his specialties is dating sites around the Mediterranean. He might identify it."
"Won't cost us a nickel for an appraisal," said Gronquist agreeably.
"Come along. Mike can examine it while we have that brandy."
Lily donned her heavy fur-lined gloves, adjusted the hood of her parka and turned down the Coleman. Gronquist switched on a flashlight and held the door open for her. She stepped into the agony of the numbing cold and wind that groaned like a ghost in a churchyard. The freezing air struck her exposed cheeks and made her shudder, a reaction that always seemed to sneak up on her even though she should have been quite used to it by now.
She grasped the rope that led to the living quarters and groped along behind the protecting bulk of Gronquist. She stole a glance upward. The sky was unclouded and the stars seemed to melt into one vast carpet of shimmering diamonds illustrating the barren mountains to the west and the sheet of ice that ran down the fjord to sea in the east. The strange beauty of the Arctic was a compelling mistress, Lily decided.
She could understand why men lost their souls to its spell.
After a thirty-yard hike through the dark, they entered the storm corridor of their hut, walked another ten feet and opened a second door to the living quarters inside. To Lily, after the abominable cold outside, it was like stepping inside a furnace. The aroma of coffee caressed her nostrils like perfume and she immediately pulled off her parka and gloves and poured herself a cup.
Sam Hoskins, neck-length blond hair matching an enormous blond handlebar mustache, was hunched over a drafting board. A New York architect with a love for archaeology, Hoskins allowed two months a year out of his busy schedule to rough it on digs around the world. He provided invaluable assistance by rendering detailed drawings of how the prehistoric village might have looked seventeen hundred years ago.
The other team member, a light-skinned man with thinning sandy hair, reclined on a cot, reading a dog-eared paperback novel. Lily couldn't remember seeing Mike Graham without an adventure book in one hand or stuffed in a coat pocket. One of the leading field archaeologists in the country, Graham was as laid back as a mortician.
"Hey, Mike!" Gronquist boomed. "Take a look at what Lily dug up."
He flipped the coin across the room. Lily gasped in shock, but Graham expertly snatched it out of the air and peered at the face.
After a moment he looked up, his eyes narrowed doubtfully. "You're putting me on."
Gronquist laughed heartily. "My exact words when I laid eyes on it. No gag. She excavated it at site eight."
Graham pulled a briefcase from under his cot and retrieved a magnifying glass. He held the coin under the lens, examining it from every angle.
"Well, what's the verdict?" Lily asked impatiently.
"Incredible," murmured Graham, captivated. "A Gold Miliarensia. About thirteen and a half grams. I've never seen one before. They're quite rare. A collector would -probably pay between six and eight thousand dollars for it."
"Who is the likeness on the face?"
"A standing figure of Theodosius the Great, Emperor of the Roman and Byzantine Empires. His position is a common motif found on the face of coins from that era. if you look closely, you can make out captives at his feet while his hands hold a globe and a labarum."
"A labarum?"
"Yes, a banner bearing the Greek letters XP and forming a kind of monogram meaning the the name of Christ." The Emperor Constantine adopted it after his conversion to Christianity and it was handed down through his successors."
"What do you make of the lettering on the reverse?" asked Gronquist.
Graham's eyeball enlarged out of proportion through the glass as he studied the coin. "Three words. First one looks like TRIVMFATOR. Can't make out the other two. They're nearly worn smooth. A collector's catalogue should give a description and Latin translation. I'll have to wait until we return to civilization before I can look them up."
"Can you date it?"
Graham stared at the ceiling thoughtfully. "Coined during the reign of Theodosius, which, if I remember correctly, was from A.D. 379 to 395."
Lily stared at Gronquist- "Right in the ballpark."
He shook his head. "Sheer fantasy, to suggest fourth-century Eskimos had contact with the Roman Empire."
"We can't rule out the infinity of chance," Lily persisted.
"Once this gets out, there will be a flood of speculation and hype by the news media," said Hoskins, inspecting the coin for the first time.
Gronquist took a swallow of his brandy. "Ancient coinage has turned up in odd places before. But the date and source of its deposit could rarely be proven to the full satisfaction of the archaeologists'
community."
"Perhaps," said Graham slowly. "But I'd give my Mercedes convertible to know how it turned up here."
They all gazed at the coin for a few moments without speaking, each lost in their own thoughts.
Finally Gronquist broke the silence. "It seems the only thing we know for certain is that we have a real mystery on our hands.
Shortly before midnight, the imposter began his practiced drill to abandon the jetliner. The air was sparkling clear and the dim smudge that was Iceland rose above the flat, black horizon line of the sea. The small island country was outlined by a faint but eerie display of greenish rays from the Aurora Borealis.
He was oblivious to the dead men around him. He had grown used to the smell of blood and it no longer sickened him. Death and gore simply went with the job. He was as indifferent to mutilated bodies as a pathologist or the neighborhood butcher.
The imposter was quite clinical about killing. Numbers of dead were merely mathematical sums. He was paid well; he was a mercenary, as well as a religious fanatic who murdered for a cause. Oddly, the only part of his work that offended him was being called an assassin or a terrorist. He detested the words. They had a political ring about them, and he nurtured a passionate dislike for politicians.
He was a man of a thousand identities, a perfectionist who rejected random gunfire in crowds or sloppy car bombs, considering them tools for juvenile idiots. His methods were far more subtle. He never left anything to chance. International investigators found it difficult to separate many of his hits from what appeared to be accidents.
The death of Hala Kamil was more than an assigned task. He considered it a duty. His elaborate plan had taken five months to perfect, followed by the patient wait for the opportune moment.
Almost a waste, he mused. Kamil was a beautiful woman. But she was a threat that had to be nullified.
He gently eased back on the throttles and nudged the control column forward, beginning a shallow rate of descent. To anyone but another pilot the slight drop in speed and altitude was imperceptible.
The main cabin crew had not troubled him. By now the passengers were dozing, attempting but failing to fall into the deep sleep so elusive on long aircraft flights.
for the twentieth time he re-checked his heading and studied the computer he had reprogrammed to indicate the time and distance to his drop zone.
Fifteen minutes later the jetliner crossed over an uninhabited section of Iceland's southern coastline and headed inland. The landscape below became a montage of gray rock and white snow. He lowered the flaps and reduced speed until the Boeing 720-B was flying at 352 kilometers an hour.