“The only ones I’ve told were you and Mr. Baltazar. You don’t think—”

“Another common denominator.”

Carina slumped down into her seat and stared straight ahead. After a few minutes spent deep in thought, she seemed to rally.

“All right. Where do we go from here?”

Austin pulled the disk out of his pocket and handed it over. “We’re going on an archaeological dig.”

NUMA 7 - The Navigator

Chapter 24

AS AUSTIN SLOTTED THE JEEP into the reserved space in the underground garage, Carina blinked her eyes open. Traces of the drug must have lingered in her bloodstream because she had dozed off within minutes of leaving Benson’s house. The last thing she had remembered was the rolling Virginia countryside.

She glanced around in bewilderment. “Where are we?”

“King Neptune’s lair,” Austin said with a poker face.

He got out of the car and opened the door on the passenger side. He gently took Carina’s arm and led her to the nearest elevator, which swooshed them to the main floor. The doors opened, and they stepped out into the lobby that formed the centerpiece of the imposing, thirty-story NUMA tower of tinted green glass in Arlington, Virginia.

Carina looked around the atrium, with its waterfalls and wall aquariums and the huge globe at the center of the sea green marble floor. The lobby bustled with activity, much of it having to do with milling tour groups that bristled with cameras.

“This is wonderful,” she said in wide-eyed wonder.

“Welcome to the headquarters of the National Underwater and Marine Agency,” Austin said with pride. “This building houses more than two thousand marine scientists and engineers. The people who work here provide the support for another three thousand NUMA people and ships scattered across the world’s oceans.”

Carina pivoted like a ballerina. “I could stay here all day.”

“You’re not the first one to say that. Now we’ll go from the sublime to the ridiculous.”

They got back in the elevator which silently rocketed them to another floor. They stepped out into a thickly carpeted corridor and followed it to an unmarked door. Austin ushered her inside his office with an Alphonse and Gaston swoop of his arm.

Austin’s modest corner space was the antithesis of the sweeping open vista that greeted visitors who came through the front doors of NUMA. It was what a real estate salesperson would describe as comfortable but cozy. There was a dark green rug on the floor. Furniture consisted of two chairs, filing cabinet, and a small sofa. A low bookcase held books devoted mostly to technical marine matters and philosophy.