"Beware of friends bearing gifts," Cabrillo said before disconnecting.

AN HOUR LATER, Juan Cabrillo was finishing his last-minute arrangements.

Kevin

Nixon wiped his hands on a rag, then tossed it onto a bench

in the Magic Shop. The Magic Shop was the department aboard the Oregon that handled mission fabrications, equipment storage, specialized

electronics, disguises and costumes. Nixon was the shop overseer as well

as creative inventor.

"Without accurate measurement," Nixon noted, "that's the best I

can do."

SACRED STONE 41

"Looks great, Kevin," Cabrillo said, taking the object and placing it

in a box that he sealed with tape.

"Take these and these," Nixon said, handing packets to Cabrillo.

Cabrillo slid the packets into the backpack.

"Okay," Nixon said, "you have cold-weather clothes, communications

gear, survival food and whatever else I thought you might need.

Good luck."

"Thanks," Cabrillo said. "Now I need to head topside and talk to

Hanley."

Less than an hour later, after making sure Max Hanley, Cabrillo's

second in command, had the operation in Reykjavik progressing properly,

Cabrillo caught a ride to the airport for his flight to Greenland.

What seemed like a simple matter would grow increasingly complex.

By the time it was over, a nation would be threatened, and people

would die.

SACRED STONE 43

6

PIETER VANDERWALD WAS a merchant of death. As the former head of

South Africa's EWP, or Experimental Weapons Program, under apartheid,

Vanderwald had been overseer of such horrific experiments as human

chemical sterilization through food additives, the spread of toxic airborne

plagues and biological weapons in public areas, and the introduction of

chemical weapons into the population in liquid form.

Nuclear, chemical, biological, auditory, electrical-if it could be used

to kill, Vanderwald and his team built it, bought it or designed it themselves.

Their classified trials showed that a combination of agents, judiciously

applied, could be used to sicken or kill thousands of the black

South African population within thirty-six hours. Further studies detailed

that, within a week, 99 percent of the unprotected population from the

Tropic of Capricorn south, or half the entire tip of Africa, would eventually

perish.

For his work Vanderwald received an award and a cash bonus of

two months' salary.

Without long-range delivery systems such as ICBMs or SCUD, and

with only a limited air force to call upon, Vanderwald and his team had

perfected methods of introducing the death agents into the population,

then had them spread by the victims themselves. The name of the game

had been seeding the water supplies, allowing the wind to carry the plague,

or using tank trucks or artillery shells for dispersal.

EWP had been masters at the game, but as soon as apartheid ended

they were quickly and secretly disbanded, and Vanderwald and the other

scientists were left to fend for themselves.

Many of them took their payoffs and retired, but a few like Vanderwald

offered their specialized skills and knowledge on the open market,

where an increasingly violent world was interested in their unique talents.