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“Magnificent,” Napoleon murmured.
“Here’s what Pelletier found just inside the entrance,” Laurent said, moving toward the wall. Napoleon walked over to where Laurent was shining his lantern on an object on the floor. It was a shield.
Roughly five feet tall, two feet wide, and shaped like a figure 8, it was made of wicker and covered in leather painted with faded red and black interlocking squares.
“It’s ancient,” Napoleon murmured.
“At least two thousand years is my guess,” Laurent said. “My history isn’t what it used to be, but I believe it’s called a gerron. It was used by Persian light infantry soldiers.”
“Mon dieu . . .”
“There’s more, General. This way.”
Winding his way through the forest of stalactite columns, Laurent led him to the rear of the cavern and another tunnel entrance, this one a rough oval four feet tall.
Behind them, Pelletier had dropped the coil of rope and was knotting one end around the base of a column under the glow of the lantern.
“Going down, are we?” Napoleon asked. “Into the pits of hell?”
“Not today, General,” Laurent answered. “Across.”
Laurent aimed his lantern into the tunnel. A few feet inside was an ice bridge, not quite two feet wide, stretching across a crevasse before disappearing into another tunnel.
“You’ve been across?” Napoleon asked.
“It’s quite sturdy. It’s rock beneath the ice. Still, you can’t be too safe.”
He secured the line first around Napoleon’s waist, then his own. Pelletier gave the knotted end a final tug and nodded to Laurent, who said, “Watch your footing, General,” then stepped into the tunnel. Napoleon waited a few moments, then followed.
They began inching their way across the crevasse. At the halfway point, Napoleon looked over the side and saw nothing but blackness, the translucent blue ice walls sloping into nowhere.
At last they reached the opposite side. They followed the next tunnel, which zigzagged for twenty feet, into another ice cavern, this one smaller than the first but with a high, arched ceiling. Lantern held before him, Laurent walked to the center of the cavern and stopped beside what looked like a pair of ice-covered stalagmites. Each one was twelve feet high and truncated at the top.
Napoleon stepped closer to one. Then stopped. He narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t a stalagmite, he realized, but a solid column of ice. He placed his palm against it and leaned his face closer.
Staring back at him was the golden face of a woman.
CHAPTER 1
GREAT POCOMOKE SWAMP, MARYLAND PRESENT DAY
Sam Fargo rose from his crouch and glanced over at his wife, who stood up to her waist in oozing black mud. Her bright yellow chest waders complemented her lustrous auburn hair. She sensed his gaze, turned to him, pursed her lips, and blew a wisp of hair from her cheek. “And just what are you smiling at, Fargo?” she asked.
When she’d first donned the waders he’d made the mistake of suggesting she looked like the Gorton’s Fisherman, which had earned him a withering stare. He’d hastily added “sexy” to the description, but to little effect.
“You,” he now replied. “You look beautiful—Longstreet.” When Remi was annoyed at him she called him by his last name; he always responded in kind with her maiden name.
She held up her arms, coated to the elbows in slime, then said with a barely concealed smile, “You’re crazy. My face is covered in mosquito bites, and my hair is flatter than paper.” She scratched her chin, leaving behind a dollop of mud.
“It simply adds to your charm.”
“Liar.”
Despite the look of disgust on her face, Sam knew Remi was a trouper without peer. Once she set her mind on a goal, no amount of discomfort would dissuade her.
“Well,” she said, “I have to admit, you do look rather dashing yourself.”
Sam tipped his tattered Panama hat at her, then went back to work, scooping mud from around a length of submerged wood he hoped was part of a chest.