There was no need to complete the sentence. Hunt strode to the hotel safe and unlocked it, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw the Anubis artifact — the original they’d dug up in the Azores — still there.
“That’s good,” Maddy said. “But, uh…guys? I can think of another reason to change rooms.”
“What’s that?” Hunt asked.
“Well, unless you two plan to share a bed…” She eyed the two beds. “We could get adjoining rooms.”
“Preferably on a different floor, to throw them off, if they do plan to come back,” Jayden added.
“All right, let’s get our stuff and check out.” They cleared out their minimal belongings, including two small bags and the Anubis artifact, which Hunt placed in his bag. Then they made the trip down to the front desk, where the concierge was able to assist them with the desired room change, still compliments of the hotel. When that was taken care of, the three of them checked into their new rooms, Maddy in her own next to Hunt and Jayden’s.
While Jayden raided the mini-bar, Hunt set the Anubis artifact up on a table and turned on the hanging light above it. Freshly showered, Maddy entered their room wearing a new sun dress and sandals, closing and locking the door behind her.
“Thanks, I feel a tiny bit safer now,” she said, looking out the window, which, while not quite as impressive as the last suite, still offered a fantastic view of the ocean beyond the sprawling, manicured grounds of the resort. “I tried to see if I could get a local news channel on my TV to see if they’d caught Daedalus yet, but they didn’t have anything about the story at all.”
“I’m sure they know it’s not in their best interest, for the island’s tourism economy, to have that kind of thing in the news. I’m sure it’ll break eventually, but they’ll keep it under wraps as long as they can. Daedalus himself may even be playing some part in that. I chose this location partly because he has no connections here that I know about, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t.”
“Great.” Maddy’s eyes were downcast until she looked up at the statuette and snapped out of it. “Hey, so let me check this guy out!” She moved to the table and took a seat in front of the artifact. From the small backpack she had with her, she removed a pair of latex gloves and put them on. “Should really have been wearing these all along, you know,” she said with a frown.
“Sorry,” Hunt offered. “We really weren’t expecting to find much.”
“Yeah, when he handed me the metal detector, I was really looking for old coins, I mean, seriously, that’s all I thought I would find. Maybe some cool souvenir type stuff, like those flattened pennies you buy in the machines, if I’m lucky.”
Maddy turned back to Anubis. “Don’t worry about it. Fortunately, this material, whatever it is — some kind of metal alloy inlaid with onyx — doesn’t seem prone to oxidation or other chemical reactions when exposed to the air.”
“Is there a way we can date the material to see how old it is?” Hunt asked. “That would give us a lot of clues as to its origins.”
Maddy held up her smartphone. “I can set it up, but we’d have to send in the whole thing or a sizable sample.”
“We already took a chunk out of his foot,” Jayden reminded.
Maddy picked up the artifact and took a look at the sole of the foot, where a small piece was missing. “That really is a weird-looking metal. At first, when Daedalus showed me the picture, I thought you were trying to pull the wool over his eyes, with Photoshop or whatever digital trickery.”
Jayden held his hands up. “We don’t have the skills for anything like that.”
“Maybe it really is orichalcum,” Hunt joked.
“Or some unknown alloy, at any rate,” Maddy added, picking up the artifact. “I’d really like to get a look inside.”
Jayden’s eyes bugged out. “Inside? Isn’t it solid?”
She nodded. “Probably. I just mean, so we could see the composition throughout the entire artifact. Judging the entire piece by that tiny chip you gouged out of the foot is hardly conclusive. It fooled Daedalus for just long enough, though.”
“Is there a way to get a look inside without breaking it open?” Hunt asked.
Maddy shrugged noncommittally. “X-ray machine might offer some information, but even that might miss some things. Besides, I don’t have access to one here. I miss my field lab already.”
“Maybe we should just break it open,” Hunt said.
The archaeologist looked horrified at the thought. “You don’t want to wait until we can x-ray it and see if it’s worth breaking open?”
Hunt and Jayden shook their heads in unison. “It could hold a clue to the whereabouts of Atlantis. Why was Daedalus so interested in it?”
Maddy exhaled sharply at the mention of his name. “He’s an artifact hound, sniffing around anything that might be of value. He might have had no idea of any significance it might hold.”
“Still,” Hunt went on, gesturing animatedly now, “it can’t be a coincidence that we dug it up in the Azores, of all places, near where the horse and rider statue was reportedly found by the Portuguese explorers.”
“Right, right,” Maddy said in an exasperated tone. “Go west. Well, here we are. In another supposed Atlantis hot-spot, the Bahamas. So I don’t see how you can be so sure that—”
A jarring cracking noise caused Hunt and Maddy to break off their conversation and look sharply to their left, in time to see Jayden holding half of the Anubis figurine in his right hand, while the other half — from the waist up to the dog’s head — lay on the table next to a few fragments that had separated from it. Jayden looked over at them with a sheepish grin.
“I took care of it.”
Maddy looked mortified. “Took care of it? You took care of it all right, it’s in pieces now!”
Hunt stood and moved to the table, holding up a hand. “Maddy, it’s okay. What’s done is done. You said yourself this piece may well have no archaeological value whatsoever, and meanwhile it could hold a clue to one of the greatest treasure troves mankind has ever known, so we may as well have a look inside and be done with the speculating. Because—”
“Whoa!” Jayden sounded excited. “Look at this!” He reached out onto the table and picked up the other half of the statuette.
“Something’s in there,” Hunt said.
“Wait, don’t touch it yet, let me document it.” Maddy activated the camera on her smartphone and snapped off a picture of the cracked-open find. Inside the statuette, a small, oblong object, golden in color, lay nestled inside the otherwise solid construction of the figurine. “A nested object!”
“Can I pull it out?” Hunt asked.
“That’s what she—”
“Jayden!” Hunt cut him off.
“Let me do it,” Maddy said, eliciting a smirk from Jayden. Maddy ignored the snickering men while she held the broken, top half of the Anubis figurine upside down a few inches over the table with her palm outstretched beneath it. Nothing happened, the golden object remained ensconced inside the figurine.
Maddy looked to Hunt. “Do me a favor and tap it—gently—from the top.”
Hunt shot Jayden a withering stare as he positioned his hand above the artifact. Balling his hand into a fist, he rapped on Anubis’ head three times. After the third knock, the piece of golden metal slid from the figurine into Maddy’s hand.
“Got it!” She stood and gently placed the piece of metal on a folded towel on the table’s surface. The specimen was roughly rectangular, but with rounded edges and a notch out of it in place, maybe a couple of millimeters thick.
“Looks like solid gold to me,” Hunt said.
Maddy picked it up, hefting its weight. She nodded while putting on a pair of reading glasses and leaning forward. “I’m looking for an inscription…” With her latex gloved hands, she turned the gold piece over. “Got something here!” She reached into her bag and pulled out a magnifying glass.