"I was on a secret trip to the North Pole for the greater glory of the Fatherland. We landed at the pole, but on the way back, we sighted the wreck of a boat frozen in the ice. The captain insisted on landing on the ice to investigate. It was a boat of great antiquity, probably hundreds of years old. We removed a frozen body, which we placed in the airship cooler, along with some unusual items.

"After rising from the ice and traveling a distance, we experi- enced mechanical problems, and had to land. The survivors de- cided to try to cross the ice, but I stayed to guard the zeppelin. I was near death when the local natives found me, and I was nursed back to health."

Mr. Heinz said that the natives spoke no English, but he learned that their name was 'Kiolya.' He said that they thought he was a god, having come from the skies, and when he requested through sign language that they bring him to the nearest settlement, they complied.

German authorities contacted by the Times said that they had no knowledge of Mr. Heinz nor of any dirigible voyage to the North Pole.

Austin asked Gleason to run off a copy of the article and thanked him for his time and information. "Sorry about your exhibition," he said on the way out.

"Thank you." Gleason shook his head. "It simply astounds me why they pulled up stakes so abruptly. By the way, have you heard about Senator Graham? That's another disaster. One of our strongest supporters."

Austin said, "I think I saw Graham last night at the reception."

"You did. While he was driving home to Virginia, his car was forced off the road by a truck. He's in critical condition. Hit-and- run."

Sorry to hear about that, too.

"Damn," Gleason said. "Hope it's not true about bad things run- ning in threes."

"There may be a simpler explanation for your run of bad luck," Austin said.

"Oh, what's that?" Austin pointed to the sky, and in all seriousness, said: "Toonook."

ST. JULIEN PERLMUTTER stepped into his spacious Georgetown carriage house and cast an appreciative glance around at the hundreds of volumes, old and new, that spilled off the sagging wall shelves and flowed like a vast river of words, breaking off into tributaries that ran into every room.

An ordinary human being confronted with this seeming confusion would have fled the premises. A beatific smile came to his lips, as his eye lingered on one stack, then moved on to another. He could rat- tle off titles, even quote whole pages, from what was generally ac- knowledged to be the world's most complete collection of literature regarding historic ships.

He was starving after dealing with the rigors of a trans-Atlantic flight. Finding space aboard a plane to accommodate his substantial bulk was not a problem; he simply reserved two seats. But even the Binary offerings of first class were, to Perlmutter's way of thinking, the equivalent of a church ham-and-bean supper. He headed for the kitchen like a heat-seeking missile and was glad to see that the house- keeper had followed his shopping instructions.

Even though it was early in the day, before long he was dining on a Provenale-style stuffed lamb with potatoes perfumed with thyme and washed down with a simple but well-balanced Bordeaux. Thus fortified, he was dabbing at his mouth and magnificent gray beard with a napkin when the phone rang.

"Kurt!" he said, recognizing the voice on the line. "How in blazes did you know I was back?"

"There was a report on CNN that Italy had run out of pasta. I as- sumed you would be coming home for a square meal."

"No," Perlmutter boomed. "Actually, I returned because I missed being taunted on the phone by impertinent young whippersnappers who should know better."

'You sound in fine fettle, St. Julien. It must have been a good trip."

'It was, and I do feel as if I've eaten all the pasta in Italy. But it's good to be back on my own turf."

"I wondered what you had turned up on my historical query." "I was going to call you later today. Fascinating material. Can you drop by? I'll brew up some coffee, and we can talk about my find- ings.

"Five minutes. I just happen to be driving through Georgetown." When Austin arrived, Perlmutter served two giant cups of cafe latte. He pushed aside a pile of books to reveal a chair for Austin, and another stack to make room for his own wide haunches on an over- sized sofa.

Perlmutter sipped his coffee. "Well, now, getting down to business… After you called me in Florence, I discussed your query about the Roland relics with my host, a Signor Nocci. He remembered a his- torical reference he had seen in a letter to the Medici Pope penned by a man named Martinez, who was a fanatical supporter of the Span- ish Inquisition, particularly where it applied to the Basques. Mr. Nocci put me in touch with an assistant curator at the Laurentian Li- brary. She dug out a manuscript written by Martinez in which he di- rects particular venom at Diego Aguirrez."

"The ancestor of Balthazar, the man I met. Good work." Perlmutter smiled. "That's only the start. Martinez says flatly that Aguirrez had the sword and the horn of Roland and that he would pursue him, and I quote, 'to the ends of the earth,' to retrieve these objects."

Austin let out a low whistle. "That establishes that the Roland relics were real and puts them directly in the hands of the Aguirrez family."

"It would seem to verify the rumors that Diego was in possession of the sword and horn."

Perlmutter passed over a folder. "This is a copy of a manuscript from the Venice State Archives. It was found at the naval museum in a file having to do with war galleys."

Austin read the title on the first page. "An Exoneration of a Man of the Sea." The publication date on the frontispiece was 1520. The preamble described the work as, An account by Richard Blackthorns an unwilling mercenary in the service of the Spanish Inquisition, a hum- ble sailor who has always stood in defence of His Majesty's name, in which he proves infamies that have been brought against him to be untrue and warns any and all never to trust the murdering Spaniards.

He glanced up at Perlmutter. "Blackthorne is surely a master of the never-ending sentence, but what does he have to do with Roland and the long-dead Aguirrez?"

"Everything, m'lad. frything." He looked into the bottom of his coffee cup. "While you're up, old boy, would you fetch me a re- fill? I'm feeling peaked after the rigors of travel. Get one for your- self."

Austin had no intention of getting up, but he rose from his chair and went for the refills. He knew that Perlmutter functioned best when he was eating or drinking.

Perlmutter sipped his coffee and ran his hand over the manuscript as if he were reading it with his fingers. "You can study this at your leisure, but I'll give you a quick summary now. Apparently, Black- thorne fell afoul of rumors that he had willingly served the hated Spaniard, and he wanted to set the record straight." "That came across loud and clear in the preamble." "Blackthorne was worried about the stain on his name. He was born of a respectable merchant family in Sussex. He went to sea as a youth and worked his way up from cabin boy to master of a merchant vessel plying the Mediterranean. He was captured by Barbary pi- rates and forced to become a rower on an Algerian galley. The gal- ley was shipwrecked, and he was rescued by the Genoese, who turned him over to the Spanish."

"Remind me never to be rescued by the Genoese." "Blackthorne was a hot potato. According to the Inquisition sys- tem, any Englishman was a heretic, and subject to torture, arrest and execution. English and Dutch sailors shunned Spanish ports for fear they would be arrested. If you were caught with a copy of the King James Bible or possessed some ancient classic deemed heretical, you were, to put it literally, toast."