September 1858: An Antarctic whaler stumbles upon an aged wreck, its grisly frozen crew guarding crates of odd antiquities - including a beatifully carved obsidian skull. March 2001: A team of anthropologists gazes in awe at a wall of strange inscriptions, moments before a blast seals them deep within the Colorado rock. April 2001: A research ship in the Antarctic is set upon and nearly sunk by an impossibility - a Nazi submarine thought to have been distroyed 56 years before. Dirk Pitt knows that somehow these incidents are connected, and his investigations soon land him in the midst of an ancient mystery with very modern consequences, racing to save not only his own life - but the future of the world itself.