The sea remained glassy, and not a breath of air stirred the ship’s rigging. The plume of smoke from her still-fired boilers shot straight into the sky and hung over the Mohican like a pall.

For twenty minutes nothing changed, and then, as if a light had been switched off, the glow vanished entirely. In the next instant, a chop returned to the ocean’s surface, and the smoke began drifting aft as a wind swept across the ship from out of the north. To the west, where the phenomenon had first appeared, lay nothing but darkened skies sprinkled with a scattering of stars. A night at sea had never appeared more normal.

Urquhart huddled with his remaining officers in the back corner of the pilothouse while they detoured west to see if another ship had been at the epicenter of the otherworldly aura. He gave them orders to have Conner McTaggert sewn into his blankets and for his body to be slipped over the side. They were close enough to making Philadelphia that the engineer’s death could be concealed, and his absence, once they left port, could be explained away as him jumping ship.

They found no evidence of any other vessels in the area, and after an hour-long search Urquhart determined that they had wasted enough time. Still, when they reached Phili, he planned to report the incident in case any other ships had suffered from the strange effect. McTaggert’s death would remain a secret for the simple reason that it would delay them for days, or weeks, as statements were taken and investigations launched.

He wasn’t pleased at the disrespect he was showing his friend, but he felt certain that the unmarried McTaggert would understand.

—

As he’d promised himself, Charles Urquhart did report the incident to the Coast Guard, and his story was picked up by a local paper. No mention was made of the dead engineer. Nor was there any mention of another ship that had experienced the phenomenon. The Mohican managed to limp back to Philadelphia. But another ship, and its five-man crew, had vanished without a trace.

Chapter One

NORTH SIBERIA

PRESENT DAY

It was the landscape of another world. Towering black crags rose above vast glittering snowfields. Winds that could shriek out of the stillness blasted the air at over seventy miles per hour. A sky that was sometimes so clear it was as though the earth had no atmosphere. And sometimes clouds would cling to the land with such utter tenacity that the sun remained hidden for weeks on end.

It was a landscape not meant for human habitation. Even the hardiest natives avoided this location and lived far down the coast in tiny villages that they could pack up in pursuit of caribou herds.