Clive Cussler - Serpent

Fisel looked up as if an annoying mosquito had just landed on the tip of his nose. He was not unused to women in the workplace. Many Moroccan women worked as professionals. He simply had trouble dealing with a female who was his equal in academic rank, his superior in the number of degrees held, and at least a foot taller. As a nondiver, Fisel was at Nina's mercy on the underwater site, and he didn't like not being totally in control.

Nina cut right to the chase. "I think there was a small but important port here, and that it was Phoenician."

Fisel said, "More tea, Kassim." The young man hurried over to the camp's cooking area. Fisel turned to Knox as if Nina were not there. "Your assistant has a vivid imagination. You've told her, of course, that our excavations at the primary site have produced Greek and Roman artifacts." He had a quick, nervous way of speaking, firing off sentences like bursts from a machine gun.

Nina had deferred to Fisel, but she could ignore his rudeness no longer. "First of all, I'm not Dr. Knox's assistant," she said coolly. "I'm his colleague. And second, while I have no doubt of Greco-Roman influence, the main center of activity was in the water, not on dry land. And it was Phoenician."

The sketch pad plopped onto the table, and Nina tapped the drawing of the cothon. "The Phoenicians were the only ones who cut artificial harbors like this out of dry land. I believe these shards will provide the dating to back me up:"

She dumped out her pottery fragments, not caring that they might be mixed with the others. Taking his time, Fisel picked up a piece, examined it, then studied another one. After a few minutes he looked up. His moist brown eyes boggled behind the thicklensed glasses, but he was trying hard not to show his excitement.

He cleared his throat and addressed Knox. "Surely you're not going to accept this as definitive proof of Dr. Kirov's theory."

"Of course not, Dr. Fisel. There's much work to be done, and Dr. Kirov knows that as well as we do. You must admit it's an intriguing beginning, however.

Assuming he had detected a crack in Knox's advocacy, Fisel's putative scowl turned into a fourteenkarat smile. "I am compelled to admit nothing until the case is made."

Kassim arrived with a glass of hot tea. Fisel nodded and picked up his magnifies The audience with the cousin of the king had ended.

Nina seethed with anger as she and Knox walked away from Fisel's tent. "Imperious little bastard! He knows damned well that I'm right."

Knox gave an avuncular chuckle. "My guess is that Fisel agrees entirely with your findings and will waste no time reporting them."

She grabbed the professor's arm and peered into his dusty face. "I don't understand. Why the act?"

"Oh, it's perfectly dear. He wants to claim the credit for discovering your Phoenician port."

"That's it!' She started back toward Fisel's tent. "If he thinks he's going to get away"

"Hold on, my dear. I promised you'd get credit for all underwater finds, and I meant it. Remember, we hold the important cards. You're the only one on this expedition who knows how to dive."

"He can bring in other divers."

"Yes, he can. Short, plump, bald, and nearsighted though he may be, Fisel swings a lot of weight, figuratively and literally, within his antiquities department. He can bring in all the resources he will need. In the meantime, I want you to finish your sketches, classify what you've found, and continue your survey using scientific methods."

She was still unconvinced. "What if he tries to stop me from diving?"

"This is a joint expedition. I am equal in command to him. He can only go so far until he gets permission. It will take days. If you think our red tape is formidable, remember Morocco is heavily influenced by the French, who invented the word bureaucrat. I will massage his ego, but I want you to do a very difficult thing. Consider giving Fisel some credit for this coup, if it truly turns out to be Phoenician. This is his country that we're digging up, after all. He may have some Phoenician forebears." .

Nina calmed down and allowed herself a laugh. "You're right. I'm sorry for the outburst. It's been a long day."

"No need for an apology. He is a bastard, but I'll remind him that if he doesn't have our cooperation in making this a joint find, he will have the credit taken from him by one of his own bastards at a higher level."

Nina thanked the professor, kissed him on the cheek, and returned to her tent. She worked on her sketches until the dinner bell rang. Fisel avoided her eyes at the table. The Iowa couple, who had dug up an intact water jug handle, held center stage. No one paid attention when Nina excused herself and went back to her tent.

After she finished writing a report of her findings on an IBM laptop computer, Nina propped up her noted and shot some pictures of the sketches with her digital camera. Then she fed images from the camera into the computer. The photos and sketches were razor sharp.

"Okay Fisel, let me see you try to get a jump on this. "

The computer was hooked up to a small suitcase that contained a satellite phone. The solarpowered package cost her an arm and a leg, but it put her in touch with her home base from anywhere in the world. She punched out a number and sent the electronic packet of words and photos winging through the ether until it bounced off a loworbit Inmarsat global communications satellite, which inlayed it to a dish that fed the information at the speed of light into the database at the University of Pennsylvania.

Nina clicked off her computer, satisfied that her reports and pictures were safely in the databank at the university. She was unaware that even on the 'information highway, there are such things as dangerous detours.

San Antonio, Texas

3 ON OFFICIAL BLUEPRINTS THE WINDOWLESS room near the top of the glass office tower overlooking the peaceful waters of the San Antonio River did not exist. Even the city inspectors had no idea it was there. The subcontractors who installed the soundproof walls, the separate electrical conduits, and the voiceactivated security locks were paid well to keep their mouths zipped. If they thought it strange to build a secret door through the shower stall of a private bathroom, they kept their opinions to themselves.

The room's decor was as clinically functional as a laboratory. Uncluttered beige walls. A bank of oversized IBM computer monitors and hard drives, a document safe, and a center worktable. A man sat in front of a computer, his hardened face washed by the cold light from the oversized monitor. He scrolled down several pages of type and photos and stopped at a series of line drawings.

With a click of the cursor he enlarged one particular sketch and zoomed in on a section of the screen, hard blue eyes taking in every detail. Satisfied he had seen the entire file, he saved it on a floppy disk and pressed the print command. As the highspeed printer whirred away, he put the disk in an envelope and locked it in the safe. He gathered the printed file into a manila folder, stepped through the shower stall, went through another door into his office, and switched on an intercom.

"I'll need a few minutes. Right away" he said.

"He has time now," a female voice replied. "Ten minutes in between appointments."

He left his office with the folder and walked through a maze of thickly carpeted hallways. He was tall, at least six feet, no longer young, but the only concession to age was his close-cropped silver hair and a slight stoop to his muscular shoulders. His athletic body was still limber and rock hard thanks to a Spartan regimen of diet and exercise. Because he rarely smiled or frowned, his face was relatively unlined around the mouth and eyes, as if the skin had been lifted off and stretched over the square jaw and high cheekbones.