Treasure

Clive Cussler

TREASURE

BY CLIVE CUSSLER

Books by Clive Cussler

Sahara

Dragon

Treasure

Cyclops

Deep Six

Pacific Vortex

Night Probe!

Vixen 03

Raise the Titanic!

Iceberg

The Mediterranean Caper

POCKET BOOKS New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Singapore

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Americas, New York, NY 10020

portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

for information address Simon & Schuster Inc., 1230 Avenue of the

Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-70465-6

First Pocket Books printing November 1988

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POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster

Printed in the U.S.A.

A NOTE TO THE READER

Please forgive the inconvenience of converting measurements from what

most Americans are used to. But in 1991 the United States finally

became the last nation on earth to convert to the metric system.

It's easy.

1 kilometer roughly equals a little more than 1/2 Mile.

1 meter is slightly more than a yard, about 39 inches.

THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY truly existed, and if it had remained unravished

by wars and religious zealots it would have given us not only the

knowledge of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman empires, but those

little-known civilizations that rose and fell far beyond the shores of

the Mediterranean.

In A.D. 391 Christian Emperor Theodosius ordered all books and art

depicting anything remotely pagan, which included the teachings of the

immortal Greek philosophers, burned and destroyed.

Much of the collection was thought to have been secretly saved and

spirited away. What became of it, or where it was hidden, remains a

mystery sixteen centuries later.

THE PRECURSORS

July 15, A.D. 391

A land unknown A small, flickering light danced eerily through the black

of the tunneled passageway. A man dressed in a woolen tunic that

dropped below his knees paused and raised an oil lamp above his head.

The dim glow illuminated a human figure inside a gold-and-crystal casket

while casting a grotesque, wavering shadow against the smoothly cut wall

behind. The man in the tunic stared into the sightless eyes for a few

moments, and then he lowered the lamp and turned away.

He studied the long line of stationary forms that stood in deathlike

silence, so great in number they seemed to trail off into infinity

before vanishing in the darkness of the long cavern.

Junius Venator moved on, his strap sandals scraping over the uneven

floor with a bare whisper of sound. Gradually, the tunnel widened into

a vast gallery. Soaring to a height of nearly thirty feet, the domed

ceiling was divided by a series of arches to give it structural

strength. Gutters carved in the limestone spiraled down the walls so

water seepage could run into deep drainage basins. The walls were laced

with cavities filled with thousands of strange-looking circular

containers made of bronze. Except for the large wooden crates stacked