Best known for his short-lived cable television series "Ancient Riddles of the Universe", Dr. Yeats first attracted the ire of Middle East countries and archeological preservationists during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 when he reportedly provided the Pentagon with a detailed strategy on how to blow up the Pyramid at Ur, the ancient capital of Sumer in modern-day Iraq, where dictator Saddam Hussein was thought to be hiding out.

Even before the Ur incident, Dr. Yeats, a former professor of megalithic archeology at the University of Arizona, was one of the most celebrated and controversial young archeologists in postmodern times, known for his deconstructionist theory that stated the value of ancient ruins lay not in themselves but in the information they yield about their builders.

It was a philosophy that would ultimately lead him to his nemesis, Dr. Serena Serghetti, the Vatican linguist and environmentalist known as "Mother Earth". Sister Serghetti and Dr. Yeats first met amid the ruins of Tiahuanaco in Bolivia in the late 1990s. Serghetti, 22 at the time, was working with local Aymaran tribes to dissect the origins of their language. Dr. Yeats, then 34, was dragging the bottom of Lake Titicaca in a submersible in search of a lost city.

"He's a thief and a liar and the greatest, most dangerous archeologist I've ever met", she told local authorities. "He has no respect for antiquity. He believes the information gleaned from a discovery is more important than the discovery itself. Consequently, in his haste to uncover a virgin find, he will often destroy the integrity of the site, future generations be damned."

She accused Dr. Yeats of "raping the land" and organized locals to successfully halt his expedition. Dr. Yeats claimed to have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in private funding as a result, as well as his tenure at the University of Arizona. Sister Serghetti, meanwhile, went on to achieve worldwide fame as ?Mother Earth? for her devotion to the environment.

Despite all this, or because of it, Serghetti often has interceded on Dr. Yeats’ behalf. She is said to be sympathetic to Dr. Yeat’s search for the “mother culture that birthed the world’s oldest civilizations, telling intimates she believes it symbolizes Dr. Yeats unsuccessful search for his biological parents. He was adopted by Gen. Griffen Yeats after being abandoned on the steps of an infirmary at Cape Kennedy in 1970.

Once Serghetti went so far as to rescue Dr. Yeats from the entire Peruvian army, which was hunting him across the Andes. About that infamous episode, all she ever said was, "Doctor Yeats had found a certain generalissimo’s daughter to be more interesting than the ruins."

Indeed, the relationship between the roguish American archeologist and the beatific nun has been an open secret within the archeological community and Vatican for years. The question now revolves around the nature of their relationship and how that will impact the mounting international standoff in Antarctica between the Americans and the United Nations Antarctica Commission (UNACOM), for which Sister Serghetti is an official adviser.

"Doctor Serghetti and Doctor Yeats—quite a paradox," mused a former French ambassador who once bailed Dr. Yeats out of an Egyptian prison at the bequest of Dr. Serghetti. "She is the protector of all things sacred. He is the proverbial thief in the temple. I’d say things are heating up on the ice."