Francesca's mouth dropped open in surprise. Recovering quickly she said, “Is there anything you people at NUMA do not know?”

“Quite a bit, I'm sorry to say. We know very little about this stuff other than the fact that it can affect the hydrogen atom in strange ways.”

“That's its most important property. It's a very complex relationship. This material is at the heart of my desalting process. Only a few people know of its existence. It's extremely rare.”

“How did you come across it?”

“By chance. I read an obscure paper written by a former Los Alamos physicist. Rather than try to improve on the existing methods of desalting, I wanted to deal with it at a molecular or even nuclear level. A solution had eluded me until I heard about this substance. I contacted the scientist who wrote the article. He had a small amount of the material and was willing to part with it when I told him why I needed it.”

“Why is it so rare?”

“Several reasons. With no apparent economic use for it, the demand was nonexistent. Then, too, the refinement process is quite complicated. The main ore source is in a troubled part of Africa that is constantly at war. I had several ounces, enough for a working model. I would have proposed that the nations of the world pool their resources to produce enough anasazium to set up pilot projects. Working together we could have viable quantities of this substance within a short time.”

“Gogstad was running an installation off the coast of Mexico. It was destroyed in a tremendous explosion.” “Tell me more about this installation.”

Austin gave her a quick summary, starting with the death of the whales. He described the storage cylinder after the explosion and how he traced it to the flying wing. Sandecker filled her in on the cold war mission to Siberia.

'A fantastic tale. It's too bad about the whales,“ she said sadly. ”My process produces heat which can be turned into energy. The material can be unstable and under certain circumstances becomes a powerful explosive. These people must have been trying to replicate my desalination process and were unaware of the material's instability. Where would they have acquired the anasazium?"

“We don't know,” Austin said. “We are aware of a large source but don't know its exact location.”

“We must find it so I can resume my research,” Francesca insisted.

“There's an even more important reason,” Sandecker interjected.

“I know no more important reason than to continue my work,” she said defensively.

“In time, Dr. Cabral, in time. Your work will have little meaning if Gogstad succeeds in its plans. Whoever controls the world's water controls the world.”

“It sounds as if you're talking about global domination, Admiral Sandecker.”

“Why not? Napoleon and Hitler failed, but their attempts were made through force of arms. In each case they came up against somebody with a bigger stick.” He took a smooth puff on his cigar and watched the cloud of smoke. “The people protesting globalization, all that business with the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, were onto something. The danger is not in these entities but in the fact that it is easier now for someone to exert total control over a economic sector.”