“He smashed it with this hammer?”

“Why?”

“Why’d he do any of this? He was sick.”

“What was it?”

“Hard to tell. A figurine of some sort.”

“Is it pure gold?”

“I’d say at least two pounds. Say, thirty thousand dollars.” Mark peered into a knapsack that also was within Gangle’s reach. It made a sound like broken glass scraping together when he lifted it. He peered inside, then dumped the contents on the floor.

It was impossible to know what had been in the bag originally because all that fell out was opaque greenish sand and small bits of similar-colored rock. Like with the golden statuette, Andy Gangle had hammered at something until all that remained was dust and fragments no bigger than a thumbnail.

There was also an odd tube made of what looked like cast bronze in the bag. One end was closed off and the other was shaped like a dragon’s open mouth. The body of the tube was scalloped to resemble a dragon’s scaly skin. Mark examined it more closely.

“This is a pistol.”

“What?”

“Look, here at the closed end there’s a small hole for a wick or taper. It’s a single-shot muzzle-loading pistol.”

“Looks Chinese, with the dragon and all.”

“And ancient,” Linda added. “I assume all this stuff, whatever it was, goes with our mystery friend in the box?”

“That’s my read,” Linc replied.

“Weird,” Mark opined.

Linc asked, “What now?”

“Report our findings back to the Oregon so we can let the CIA know what happened. My guess is, Overholt will want us to pay a visit to the Argentine base to see what’s happening there. In the briefing material I read, it said no one has laid an eye on their facility in two years. I say we anticipate him and head out on our own.”

“I’m not walking thirty miles across Antarctica,” Mark griped.

Linda tapped the front of the nearest snowcat. “Neither am I.”

After making a radio call to their ship and fulfilling Dr. Huxley’s request for tissue and blood samples from Andy Gangle and the mummy in the trunk, it took almost an hour to get one of the big vehicles fired up. Without electricity for the plug-in engine warmer, the oil had turned as viscous as tar. It had to be drained and warmed over a camp stove twice since the first time it cooled too quickly to crank the motor. Despite his nerd chic, Mark Murphy was a nimble mechanic.

Heat from the snowcat’s ventilators was a welcome breath, and only a few miles from Wilson/George it was warm enough for them to unzip their outer parkas and remove the heavy mittens over their Gore-Tex gloves. Linc drove, and Linda relinquished the shotgun seat to Murph.