Taking an overnight bag from the passenger's hand, he said, “Right this way, Congressman Kinkaid.”

They got into the vehicle, which headed along a blacktop drive through thick forest. Minutes later it pulled up in front of a complex of buildings that looked like a redwood version of the fabled Hearst castle of San Simeon. The late-afternoon sun threw the turrets, walls, and towers into fantastic silhouette. A whole forest of giant trees must have been leveled merely to provide the facing. The sprawling edifice was the ultimate log cabin, squared and cubed in size, a series of connecting outbuildings clustered around a three-story main house.

Congressman Kinkaid muttered, “This place is bigger than the Mormon Tabernacle.”

“Welcome to Valhalla,” the driver said noncommittally.

He parked the vehicle in front, took the congressman's bag, and led him up a wide stairway to a deck as long as a bowling alley, then into a large foyer paneled and beamed in dark, almost black wood. They followed a series of passageways done in the same dark paneling, finally stopping at a set of high metal doors cast in relief and shaped in a Gothic arch.

“I'll take your bag to your quarters, sir. The others are waiting. You'll find a nameplate designating your seat.”

The guide pressed a button on the wall, and the doors opened silently. Kinkaid stepped inside and sucked his breath in as the doors clicked shut behind him. He was in a massive, high ceilinged chamber. The great hall was lit by the fire from a huge hearth and blazing wall torches that vied for space with brightly decorated shields and pennants, spears, battle-axes, swords, and other instruments of death that recalled a time when war was an exercise in personal butchery.

The lethal artifacts paled next to the object occupying the center of the room. It was a Viking ship about seventy feet in length, its oak planking curved into an upswept bow and stern. The single square hide sail was set as if to catch a following breeze. A gang way near the stern allowed access to the deck and to a long table that ran lengthwise with the mast as its center point.

Kinkaid was a Marine veteran who had seen action in Vietnam and was not put off by the intimidating surroundings. Setting his jaw in an unmistakable expression of determination, he crossed the hall to the ship and went up the gangway. Seated around the table were about two dozen men who halted their conversation and looked at him with curiosity. He sat in the last empty chair and glowered at the others. He was about to strike up a conversation with the man on his right when the double doors at the end of the hall were flung open.

A woman entered and strode toward the boat in the flickering light of the torches, her long legs quickly eating up the distance. As she made her way across the hall, her close-fitting green coveralls emphasized the athletic body, but it was her height that was most imposing. She was nearly seven feet tall.