The desk clerk called a car rental for them, and while the Peugeot they rented was no Rolls, the drive back to Paris through the sunny countryside helped clear away the lingering cobwebs from the Fauchard catacombs. Austin kept a heavy foot on the gas. The more distance he put between them and the chateau, the better.

Austin almost launched into the "Marseillaise" when he saw the spike of the Eiffel Tower looming in the distance. A short while later, they were in Paris. Austin swung by Skye's apartment and she called the antiques dealer to let him know she was coming to Provence. Darnay was delighted to hear her plans, saying they had much to discuss. Skye packed an overnight bag and Austin dropped her off at the railroad station, where she kissed him on both cheeks before boarding a train south.

The hotel desk clerk smiled broadly when Austin came up for his key.

"Ah, Monsieur Austin. We're so glad to have you back. A gentleman has been waiting here for some time to see you." He glanced toward the lobby.

A figure was stretched out in a comfortable leather chair, apparently asleep. A copy of Le Figaro covered his face. Austin went over,

lifted the paper and saw the dark-complexioned features of Joe Zavala.

Austin tapped Zavala's shoulder. "Hotel security," he said in an Inspector Clouseau accent. "You'll have to come along with me."

Zavala blinked his eyes open. "About time."

"Feeling's mutual, old pal. I thought you were in the Alps improving Franco-American relations."

Zavala sat up in the chair. "Denise wanted me to meet her parents. That's always a bad sign. Where have you been? I tried calling, but there was no answer on your cell."

Austin flopped down in a chair. "There's a good explanation for that. My cell phone is at the bottom of a castle moat."

"I must admit that's one excuse I've never heard before. Should I ask how it got there?"

"Long story. What was so urgent that you had to camp out in a hotel lobby?"

Zavala's face became uncharacteristically som be "Rudi called me when he couldn't reach you." Rudi Gunn was Pitt's second-in-command. "There's been an accident at the Lost City site. Paul and Gamay dove in the Alvin. They never came up. There was a pilot aboard, too."

"Oh hell," Austin said. "What happened?"

"No one seems to know. There was an attack on the research vessel at about the same time they lost contact with the submersible."

"Doesn't make sense. Who would attack a peaceful scientific expedition?"

"You got me. I took a fast train to Paris last night, planted myself here and checked with the poor desk clerk every fifteen minutes." "How long have they been missing?" "More than twenty-four hours without contact." "I assume Dirk and Rudi have been alerted?" Zavala nodded. "Dirk wants us to keep him posted. He's called on

the navy for help. I talked to Rudi a half hour ago. He sent the research vessel Searcher in so we could hear something at any minute." "What's the life support situation on the Alvin?" "About forty-eight hours of food and air left." Zavala glanced at his watch.

Austin silently cursed. While he'd been dallying over croissants with Skye, the Trouts, if they were still alive, were in desperate need of help. "We have to move fast."

"There's a NUMA executive jet at De Gaulle airport. We can be in the Azores in a few hours and Rudi's arranged transportation for the next leg of the trip."

Austin told Zavala to stay put while he went up to his room. He shed his new wardrobe in exchange for his standard uniform of jeans and sweater, then threw some clothes in a duffel bag and was back in the lobby within minutes. The jet was warming its engines when they arrived at the airport. After a fast trip to the Azores, they hopped onto a seaplane and headed out into the Atlantic.

The NUMA research vessel Searcher had been on its way home from Europe when Gunn's call diverted it to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Austin was glad to learn that the Searcher was on site. The research vessel was only a few months old and it was crammed with state-of-the-art remote sensing equipment and undersea robots.

As the seaplane began its descent, Austin looked out the window and saw that the navy had lost no time reacting to Pitt's request. The NUMA vessel and the Atlantis had been joined by a navy cruiser.

The seaplane touched down on the water near the sleek-hulled NUMA vessel. Alerted by the seaplane pilot, the Searcher had a boat waiting to shuttle Austin and Zavala to the ship. The skipper, a tall, olive-skinned Californian named Paul Gutierrez, was waiting for them. Captain Gutierrez wasted little time and led them to the bridge. In the wheelhouse, Austin's coral-colored eyes stared off at

the sea, where a powerboat was approaching the Atlantis from the navy ship.

"Looks like we're about to have company."

"The navy arrived within hours. They've been keeping an eye out for further attacks. Let me show you what we've been doing." He spread out a chart of the area. Sections of the chart were crosshatched with a black grease pencil. "We've been lucky with weather conditions. This will give you an idea of the area we've covered. We've run sonar surveys and sent down our Remote Operated Vehicles." "Impressive."

"Thanks. The Searcher's gear can spot a dime at a thousand fathoms. We've covered the entire Lost City and some of the outlying areas where we discovered more fields of hydrothermal vents. The Atlantis has been checking out the ridge as well. The capabilities of the Searcher are awesome, if I say so myself." He shook his head. "Can't figure it. The Alvin % one of the toughest little subs in the world. She's gone down hundreds of times without a problem." "No sign of the submersible so far?" "~No Alvin, but that's not the end of the story." Gutierrez handed Austin a printout showing the bottom as seen on the sonar monitor. "Once we covered the Lost City, we began to look beyond the immediate area. There are at least three other vent cities of comparable or larger size located on the ridge. Check out what we found in one of them, which we're calling "LC II." It's got us baffled as hell."

Austin borrowed a magnifying glass. Years of survey work had given him a skilled eye in reading sonar, but the markings he saw were puzzling. "What are these strange double lines?"

"We wondered the same thing. So we sent down an ROV and shot these pictures."

Austin studied the glossy eight-by-ten photos. The tall columns of

the Lost City were clearly defined, as were the tracks that wound through the towers.

"They look like tread marks from a big bulldozer or a tank," Austin said.

"Very big," the captain said. "When we used the columns for scale, we estimated that the treads must be at least thirty feet apart." "What's the depth here?" "Twenty-five hundred feet."

Zavala whistled. "A respectable engineering feat, but not impossible. Remind you of something, Kurt?"

"Big John," Austin said with a smile. In answer to the captain's quizzical expression, he explained that Big John was the nickname for a bottom-crawling vehicle NUMA had developed several years before as a moving deep-ocean lab. He pointed to a photo that showed the tracks coming to an abrupt end. "Whatever was down there seems to have lifted off. Unlike Big John, this mechanical turtle can swim as well as crawl."

"And my guess is that it took the Alvin with it," Zavala said. "It seems too much of a coincidence having the Alvin disappear near these tracks," Captain Gutierrez said with a nod of his head.