She was going to drown! Professor Philby had been right: her hunt for Atlantis would get her killed-

No, there was no way she was going to let him be right!

But she couldn’t do anything to stop it. She was trapped in a car that was plunging to the bottom of the Hudson, and the pounding in her head would at any moment overcome her reason and force her to take a fatal breath…

Someone grabbed her.

She was so surprised that the breath froze on her lips. An arm tightened around her waist, pulling. Her dress ripped, and her savior dragged her through the window, kicking forcefully upwards as the Bentley disappeared into the darkness below.

Her heart slamming desperately inside her chest, Nina breached the surface and pulled in a whooping, painful gasp, not caring about the foul taste of the water. One arm still around her, her rescuer pulled her towards shore. Her pain and panic subsiding, Nina looked to see who it was.

The man in the leather jacket grinned back at her, revealing a prominent gap between his two front teeth. “Ay up, Doc?”

“You?”

“Tchah! That’s bloody gratitude for you!”

They reached the pier, the man guiding her to a rusted ladder. Nina wearily climbed it, dragging herself onto a concrete dock below the main level of the wharf itself. The man followed, water streaming from his jacket. “Nice dress.”

“What?” Nina asked, confused, before realizing that her skirt had been torn away practically to her crotch. “Oh my God!” She clapped her hands protectively between her legs.

“Well,” said the man, running a hand over his short hair, “if that’s all you’re worried about, you’re probably okay.” His accent was English, but not from a region Nina could pin down. “Which is good, ’cause we need to get out of here. Right now.” He held out a hand. Nina stared at it in bewilderment for a moment, then took it. With considerable strength, he hauled her to her feet. It was only then that she realized she’d lost both her shoes.

“Who are you?” she demanded, as he quickly led her to a flight of steps leading up to the wharf. “What’s going on?”

“My name’s Chase. Eddie Chase. Don’t worry, I’m not some nutter.” He looked back to give her a smile that wasn’t entirely reassuring. “Just mad enough to dive into a river to rescue the woman I’ve been hired to look after.”

“Hired?”

“Yeah. I’m your bodyguard!”

They reached the top of the steps. A small group of people were waiting for them, looking amazed. A few of them applauded. “Used to be in the SAS-you know, Special Air Service. Now I’m… sort of a freelancer.” Nina saw that his Range Rover, its front end the worse for wear, was parked on the wharf with a door open and the engine still running.

An overweight man in the uniform of a security firm jogged towards them, panting. “Hey! What the hell’s going on here?”

“It’s all right, mate,” said Chase. “Everything’s under control.”

“The hell it is! A car just smashed through the gates and went off the end of the pier! I want some answers!”

Chase sighed, then reached into his jacket and pulled out his massive gun. It looked even more menacing to Nina close up, the long barrel reinforced by a slotted steel bar along its top. “Mr. Magnum here’ll answer any questions,” he said, waving it in the guard’s general direction. The little crowd hurriedly backed away. “You got any?”

The guard fought to keep the fear off his face, with little success. “They can wait.”

“Good. You might want to find the bloke who bailed out of the car before it crashed, though-he’s the real bad guy. But right now I need to get this lady somewhere safe. All right?”

“Sure!” the guard agreed, backing off.

Still keeping his gun raised, Chase opened the Range Rover’s passenger door for Nina, then ran to the driver’s side and jumped in. He drove off down the wharf at high speed. At the end he made a tight turn, then sped along the empty sidewalk for a few hundred yards before passing the tangle of stationary cars and swerving onto the West Side Highway. “Better put the heater on, I suppose,” he said, glancing at the shivering Nina as he accelerated. In the distance, the sound of sirens wailed through the night air.

She clenched her teeth. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Short version? Bad guys want to kill you. Good guys want to stop them. I’m one of the good guys.”

“Why do they want to kill me? What did I do?”

“It’s not what you’ve done, Doc. It’s what they’re afraid you might do. That bloke in the Bentley, Starkman? Used to be a mate of mine back in the day-we worked together, joint ops around the world-until he went rogue.”

“He said he worked for the Frost Foundation, for Kristian Frost,” said Nina.

Chase laughed. “Well, I know for a fact that he doesn’t.”

“How?”

“Because I work for Kristian Frost. You want to meet him?”

THREE

Norway

Check it out, Doc,” said Chase. “Pretty nice, isn’t it?” “It certainly is,” Nina agreed, gazing at the starkly beautiful landscape below.

Kristian Frost’s home and corporate headquarters were both at Ravnsfjord, three miles inland of the Norwegian coast south of Bergen. The fjord that gave the area its name bisected his expansive property. On the southern side was a campus of office buildings that, while ultramodern in design, nevertheless perfectly complemented their surroundings. A road led from them to a slender arched road bridge across the fjord. Over looking the bridge-overlooking the entire area, she realized-was another large, sleek building, its colors and curves blending into the bluff on which it stood.

“That’s Frost’s house,” Chase told her.

“That’s a house?” Nina gasped. “My God, it’s huge! I thought it was another office building!”

“Bit bigger than your flat, eh?”

“Just a bit.” The plane-a Gulfstream V business jet in Frost’s corporate livery-banked to cross over the fjord. Nina spotted another cluster of ultramodern buildings farther east of the house at the base of a cliff, then on the northern side of the waterway their destination-a private airport. “All of this belongs to Kristian Frost?”

“Pretty much, yeah. He runs his whole business from here, almost never leaves. Guess he doesn’t like traveling.”

Nina took a last look through the porthole before sitting back. The Gulfstream was moving into its final descent. “It’s a lovely place to live, that’s for sure. A bit isolated, though.”

“Well, when you’re a billionaire, I suppose the world comes to you.”

The plane landed and taxied to the small terminal building. Nina wrapped her coat more tightly around herself as she stepped down onto the concrete. “Bit nippy?” Chase asked.

“Are you kidding? I’m used to New York winters. This is nothing!” Actually, it was close to freezing even without the chill wind blowing in from the coast, but now that she’d opened her big mouth she had to endure it.

“Well, we’ll be going somewhere a lot warmer soon.” Nina looked at Chase for an explanation, but he just grinned. “Here’s our ride.”

A white Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up next to the plane. A thick-necked man with close-cropped blond hair and muscles practically bursting the seams of his tailored dark suit, got out to greet them. “Dr. Wilde,” he said, his accent German. “I am Mr. Frost’s head of security here at Ravnsfjord, Josef Schenk.” He extended his hand, which Nina shook. Although his grip was light, she could tell that if he chose, he could crush every bone in her hand. “Good to meet you.”

“Thank you,” said Nina. Chase and Schenk were eyeing each other up almost like boxers before a fight. They had similar builds; she wondered if they also had similar-or rival-military backgrounds.