An ancient treasure stolen by Xerxes the Great . . . Discovered by Napoleon Bonaparte . . . The clues to its hidden location lost until now . . . Adventurers and treasure hunters Sam and Remi Fargo are on a wild-goose chase. Up to their waists in the Great Pocomoke Swamp in Maryland, they're hunting for lost gold. What they find instead is a small Second World War German U-boat. Inside the submarine they find a body - and a puzzling, incredibly rare bottle of wine. This bottle was one of twelve taken from Napoleon's 'lost cellar'. But it is also a clue to a fabulous, ancient treasure. One that Hadeon Bondaruk - a half-Russian, half-Persian millionaire - will do anything to get his hands on. For he claims descent from treasure's one-time owner. It will be his, no matter who stands in his way . . . About The Author Clive Cussler is the author of over twenty-five internationally bestselling books, including the Dirk Pitt adventure series, the NUMA FILES novels and the Oregon Files Adventures. He grew up in Alhambra, California. He later attended Pasadena City College for two years, but then enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War where he served as an aircraft mechanic and flight engineer in the Military Air Transport Service. Upon his discharge, he became a copywriter and later creative director for two leading ad agencies. At that time, he wrote and produced radio and television commercials that won numerous international awards, one at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Cussler began writing in 1965 and published his first novel featuring Dirk Pitt in 1973. His first non-fiction work, The Sea Hunters, was released in 1996. Because of this work the Board of Governors of the Maritime College, State University of New York considered The Sea Hunters in lieu of a Ph.D. thesis and awarded Cussler a Doctor of Letters degree in May of 1997. It was the first time since the College was founded in 1874 that such a degree was bestowed. Cussler is the founder the National Underwater & Marine Agency, (NUMA), a non-profit organisation that dedicates itself to American maritime and naval history. In addition to being Chairman of NUMA, Cussler is a fellow in both the Explorers Club of New York and the Royal Geographic Society in London. A noted collector of classic automobiles, Cussler owns 85 of the finest examples of custom coachwork and 50's convertibles to be found anywhere. They are garaged near Golden, Colorado. Today, Cussler divides his time between the mountains of Colorado and the deserts of Arizona. Grant Blackwood caught the fiction-writing bug at the age of eighteen while reading Clive Cussler's The Mediterranean Caper , and spent the next four years working in different styles of fiction before settling on novel-length work. Mr. Blackwood is a U.S. Navy veteran, having spent three years active duty aboard the guided missile frigate USS Ford as an Operations Specialist and a Pilot Rescue Swimmer. Two months after leaving the Navy in July 1987, Mr. Blackwood started the first draft of his first novel, which as he puts it, 'wasn't good enough to be published, but good enough to earn a spot in my sock drawer. It took me several more years of rewriting before I realized the publishers and agents who'd been saying 'no' were saying no for a good reason.' Twelve years to the day after leaving the Navy, Mr. Blackwood received an offer from Penguin-Putnam/Berkley to buy his second novel, The End of Enemies, which hit the stands May 8th. Mr. Blackwood is 36 years old and lives in Minnesota, where he is working on this next novel, the second in the Briggs Tanner series of thrillers, which is due out in Spring/Summer of 2002.