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aide.
    The man removed his parka and in the harsh lighting of the portable lamps he glared at the three men before him.
    “You will remove the survey team from Antarctica and sequester them until they can be debriefed by me, and me alone. Is that clear?”
    “But—”
    “Is that clear?” he insisted. He turned his gaze from the men before him back to the object. His eyes traveled the length of the find and he could not help but be amazed at its sheer size.
    “Yes, sir,” the aide finally said.
    “Not even the palace is to know what we have here. This find may make the American discovery from 1947 seem trivial. It seems that strange group headquartered underneath Nellis Air Force Base in their Nevada desert that we suspect is there is not very forthcoming as far as secrets are concerned.” He turned toward the other three men from British intelligence. “It seems we now have a bargaining chip to trade for the future.” He smiled. “I love secrets, don’t you?”

 
    PART ONE
    THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
—Ambrose Redmoon

 
    1
    UNITED STATES PENITENTIARY, LEAVENWORTH
    LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS
    PRESENT DAY
    The man in the rumpled three-piece suit waited in front of Warden Hal Jennings’s desk. He stood with his battered briefcase clutched in both hands and was using it as if it were a talisman of some sort as he waited for his ruse to either pass muster, or for his deception to be found out. If he was found out it would be nothing more than an embarrassing episode and predicament he would eventually talk his way out of.
    He watched the warden’s eyes as he read the letter. Without looking up at the man in the light blue suit, horn-rimmed glasses, and thinning red hair, the warden—who had been running the federal side of Leavenworth—placed his hand on his phone and picked up the receiver.
    “Annie, connect me with the FBI field office in Topeka, I need a name run … Yes, tell Special Agent-in-charge Klinemann it’s for me, right. Thank you.”
    The visitor in the blue suit smiled as the warden hung up the phone.
    “Precautionary. It’s not that we don’t trust you … it’s more like—”
    “It’s that you don’t trust me.” The man in the rumpled suit smiled.
    The warden smiled and then relaxed. “Yeah, something like that. More or less. I was giving you a chance to back out of here without getting arrested if you’re lying to me. Trying to see this man you believe is here, if that man existed, could get you placed right next to him in an available cell, or worse.”
    “Oh, the man exists. That’s what we do in our business, Warden Jennings—we make sure we have precise information.”
    The phone buzzed and the warden picked up the receiver just as the door opened to the office and a large prison guard stepped in. He stood at the door with his eyes on the warden’s visitor. The speaker button was pushed and the phone was placed back into the cradle. Jennings wanted this man to hear his report firsthand from the secretary outside.
    “Go ahead, Annie.”
    “His credentials check out. Hiram Vickers, federal employee number 397-12-0989. Departmental information is unavailable but he is a confirmed employee at the Langley, Virginia headquarters facility.”
    “Thank you, Annie, that’s enough. We just needed to match his identification with his story.”
    The visitor watched the warden end his call and slide Vickers’s CIA identification back to him across the large desk.
    “You will speak to Prisoner 275698 on his one-hour exercise period. If he refuses to speak to you that is his prerogative. The only men and women that have direct contact with him are corporate types or weapons theorists in which he has an obligation to speak to according to presidential order, and right now those orders do not include you. I am doing this as a favor to a sister agency. Any deviation from speech or