The Charlemagne Pursuit (Cotton Malone 4)

"Professor," she said. "In order for us to learn why they want you dead, we need to know what's involved. You have to tell us about your work with the navy."

Scofield bowed his head. "Those three lieutenants brought me crates full of rocks. They'd been collected during Highjump and Windmill back in the 1940s-just sitting in a warehouse somewhere. No one had paid them any mind. Can you imagine? Evidence like that and nobody cared.

"I was the only one allowed to examine the crates, though Ramsey could come and go as he pleased. The rocks were engraved with writing. Unique curlicue-like letters. No known language corresponded to them. Making it even more spectacular was that they came from Antarctica, a place that has been under ice for thousands of years. Yet we found them. Or, more accurately, the Germans found them. They went to Antarctica in 1938 and located the initial sites. We went back in 1947 and '48 and collected them."

"And again in '71," Davis said.

Disbelief spread over Scofield's face. "We did?"

She could see he truly didn't know, so she decided to offer a bone. "A submarine went, but was lost. That's what started all this now. There's something about that mission somebody doesn't want anyone to know."

"I was never told about that. But that's not surprising-I didn't need to know. I was retained to analyze the writing, To see if it could be deciphered."

"Could it?" Davis asked.

Scofield shook his head. "I wasn't allowed to finish. Admiral Dyals ended the project abruptly. I was sworn to secrecy and dismissed. It was the saddest day of my life." His manner matched his words. "There it was. Proof that a first civilization existed. We even had their language. If we could somehow learn to understand it, we'd know all about them-know for certain if they were the ancient sea kings. Something told me that they were, but I never was allowed to find out."

He sounded both thrilled and brokenhearted.

"How would you have learned to read the language?" Davis asked."It would be like writing down random words and trying to know what they say."

"That's where you're wrong. You see, on those rocks were also letters and words I recognized. Both Latin and Greek. Even some hieroglyphs. Don't you see? That civilization had interacted with us. There was contact. Those stones were messages, announcements, pronouncements. Who knows? But they were capable of being read."

Her annoyance with her own stupidity changed to a strange uncertainty, and she thought about Malone and what was happening to him. "Did you ever hear the name Oberhauser?"

Scofield nodded. "Hermann Oberhauser. He went to Antarctica in 1938 with the Nazis. He's partially the reason we went back with High-jump and Windmill. Admiral Byrd became fascinated with Oberhauser's views on Aryans and lost civilizations. Of course, at that time, post-World War II, you couldn't speak of those things too loudly, so Byrd conducted private research while there with Highjump and found the stones. Since he may have confirmed what Oberhauser had theorized, the government slammed a lid on the whole thing. Eventually, his findings were simply forgotten."

"Why would anyone want to kill over this?" Davis muttered out loud. "It's ludicrous."

"There's a bit more," Scofield said.

MALONE AWOKE WITH A START AND HEARD CHRISTL SAY, "COME on, get up."

He shook sleep from his eyes and checked his watch. He'd been out two hours. When his eyes adjusted to the room's lamps he saw Christl staring at him with a look of triumph.

"I did it."

STEPHANIE WAITED FOR SCOFIELD TO FINISH.

"When you view the world through a different lens, things change focus. We measure locations with latitude and longitude, but those are relatively modern concepts. The prime meridian runs through Greenwich, England, because that was the point arbitrarily chosen in the late nineteenth century. My study of ancient maps revealed something quite to the contrary and quite extraordinary."

Scofield stood and found one of the hotel's notepads and a pen. Stephanie watched as he sketched a crude world map, adding latitude and longitude markings around its perimeter. He then drew a line down the center from the thirty-degree east longitude position.

"This is not to scale, but it'll do for you to see what I'm talking about. Believe me, applied to a scaled map everything I'm about to show you is proven clear. This center line, which would be thirty-one degrees, eight minutes east, passes directly through the Great Pyramid at Giza. If this now becomes the zero-degree longitude line, here's what happens."

He pointed to a spot where Bolivia would be in South America. "Tiahuanaco. Built around 15,000 BCE. The capital of an unknown pre Inca civilization near Lake Titicaca. Some say it may be the oldest city on earth. One hundred degrees west of the Giza line."

He pointed to Mexico. "Teotihuacan. Equally as old. Its name translates as 'birthplace of the gods.' No one knows who built it. A sacred Mexican city, one hundred twenty degrees west of the Giza line."

The pen's point rested in the Pacific Ocean. "Easter Island. Loaded with monuments that we can't explain. One hundred forty degrees west of the Giza line." He moved farther out into the South Pacific. "The ancient Polynesian center of Raiatea, sacred beyond measure. One hundred eighty degrees west of the Giza line."

"Does it work the other way?" she asked.

"Of course." He found the Middle East. "Iraq. The biblical city of Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham. Fifteen degrees east of the Giza line." He shifted the pen point. "Here, Lhasa, the holy Tibetian city, old beyond measure. Sixty degrees east.

"There are many more sites that fall at defined intervals from the Giza line. All sacred. Most constructed by unknown peoples, involving pyramids or some form of raised structure. It cannot be a coincidence that these are located at precise points on the globe."

"And you think whoever carved the writing in the stones was responsible for all that?" Davis asked.

"Remember, all explanations are rational. And when you consider the megalithic yard, the conclusion becomes inescapable."

She'd never heard the term.

"From the 1950s until the mid-1980s, Alexander Thom, a Scottish engineer, undertook an analysis of forty-six neolithic and Bronze Age stone circles. He eventually surveyed more than three hundred sites and discovered that there was a common unit of measure used in every one of them. He called it the megalithic yard."

"How is that possible," she asked, "considering the varied cultures?"

"The fundamental idea is quite sound.

"Monuments like Stonehenge, which exist all over the planet, were nothing more than ancient observatories. Their builders deciphered that if they stood in the center of a circle and faced the sunrise, marking the location of the event each day, after one year 366 markers would lie on the ground. The distance between those markers was a constant 16.32 inches.

"Of course those ancient people did not measure in inches," Scofield said, "but that was the modern equivalent from reproducing the technique."

Those same ancient peoples then learned that it took 3.93 minutes for a star to move from one marker to the next.

"Again, they didn't utilize minutes, but they nonetheless observed and noted a constant unit of time." Scofield paused. "Here's the interesting part.

"For a pendulum to swing 366 times over 3.93 minutes, it has to be exactly 16.32 inches long.

"Amazing, wouldn't you say? And no way coincidental. That's why 16.32 inches was chosen by the ancient builders for the megalithic yard."

Scofield seemed to catch their disbelief.