At other times, most other times, he would not have bothered to answer the phone, but he was waiting for this call. He reached back and took the handset; as he brought it to his ear he felt a sharp pain in his chest, a difficult feeling of remorse—what if the Picassos were fake?

The Italian and his partner would be eliminated, but that would be no consolation, none at all.

“Yes,” said Elata. His voice was hushed, the syllables of the word drawn out.

Morgan said nothing, reaching back and hanging up the phone instead. He slid one hand beneath the oversized divan, reaching for the alphanumeric pager so he could set the exchange in motion.

His other hand slipped onto Minz.

“Be with you in a moment, hon,” he said, turning his full attention to the pager’s miniature keyboard. “But we’ll have to make it quick; I have to meet a helicopter at the airport in ten minutes.”

FOURTEEN - NEAR COLD CORNERS BASE VICTORIA LAND, ANTARCTICA MARCH 13, 2002

FOURTEEN

NEAR COLD CORNERS BASE VICTORIA LAND, ANTARCTICA MARCH 13, 2002

THE SNOWMOBILES DESCENDED TOWARD COLD CORNERS through razor bends in the slope, tacking between rock falls, ramparts of drifted and avalanche-piled snow, blue ice pinnacles that soared hundreds of feet into the dusky hanging clouds.

Out front, Burkhart again coaxed the team to speed, his engine greedily pulling fuel from the tank. The wind bragged in the faces of his riders, pelted them with freezing precipitation. Spiral blooms of snow and hail exploded in the beams of their headlamps. Bullets of electrically charged graupel smacked their helmets, flattened out with little coughs of static that went rasping up and down their encrypted radio communications link.

If his task went off as Burkhart intended, the storm would be their only resistance. But in matters like this there could be sudden and unexpected turns, and he had done all he could to prepare his men for a change in plans.

Their firearms had been an easy choice. Lightweight, compact, field-tested after hours sheathed in ice at minus- 300°F cold-chamber temperatures, the Sig Sturmgewehr

552’s were optimally designed for extreme-weather commando action. Their hinged trigger guards could be moved to the left or right to facilitate firing with alpine-gloved hands. The variable-magnification optics were frost-resistant and reticulated with luminous tritium markings, their foresights hooded against glare and snow. Each of the transparent three-stack magazines under their barrels held thirty rounds of 5.56 × 45mm NATO ball ammunition. Attached side by side for rapid open-bolt reload, they effectively gave the guns a ninety-round capacity.

The riders carried these assault weapons on their backs in biathlon harnesses, as Burkhart had done on ski-patrol drills with the Swiss special forces, where he’d had to unclip his weapon from its straps and zero in on a line of numbered targets from both prone and standing positions, firing after rapid downhill runs, his performance measured to a rigorous standard of time and accuracy.