Rienzi had apparently seen something of great value in this story. Goliath’s name was underlined in bold strokes. Oddest of all was a strange drawing in the upper right corner of the page. It was a stick figure of some sort. A series of dots of various sizes were linked by straight lines, creating an oddly familiar image.
Kaylin returned to translating Rienzi’s notes, while Dane reviewed Maxie’s work, and Bones looked over the research Jimmy had done on Rienzi.
“I don’t get it,” Bones said. “Whatever Rienzi found, he obviously lost it when the Dourado sank. That’s not exactly a secret. Neither is the location of its sinking.”
“What do you not get?” Dane asked.
“Maxie was after the Dourado. Why don’t the guys who are following us just try to beat us to the ship? What do we have that they need?” He tossed the stack of papers onto the table, and sat back. Hands folded behind his head, he looked up at the ceiling and sighed loudly. “It’s enough to make a guy crave a bottle of Jose.”
“Not a chance, pal.” Dane didn’t like Bones when he was drunk. In fact, Bones didn’t like Bones when he was drunk. The big man did not reply.
“It’s a good question, though,” Dane mused. “Maybe they don’t know what they’re looking for.”
“Why would that matter?” Bones asked.
“Think about what we know of the Dourado,” Dane said, turning the details over in his mind as he spoke. “The wreck turned up some distance from where it sank, with very little of the cargo remaining. Obviously, everything inside the ship spilled out over the course of several miles. There must have been something unique about this one object that made Maxie believe he could find it.”
Bones sat in silent contemplation for a minute.
Kaylin looked up from her work, a thoughtful expression on her face. She seemed about to say something, but then shook her head and returned her attention to her task.
“All right,” Bones said. “We almost have to assume you’re right. Nothing else has made sense so far. If that’s the case, then what is it about this object that would make him, or us for that matter, believe that we could find it?” He folded his arms across his chest and fixed Dane with a challenging stare.
Dane had wrestled with this question since reading Rienzi’s journal two days earlier. It was crazy to believe they could find a single object that had lain on the seabed for almost two hundred years. But he knew, without a doubt, that Hartford Maxwell was anything but crazy. If Maxie thought something could be done, it most likely was quite possible, if not probable.
“It could be a very large object,” Dane said. “Something he could have hoped to find with sonar.”
“Like what? A statue?” Bones shook his head. “It could be buried in silt, maybe pitted and misshapen, grown over with all kinds of organisms. It’s possible, but I don’t like the odds.”
“It’s not totally out of the question that the cargo could be found, is it?” Kaylin asked, looking up again from her reading. “I remember reading about the discovery of some Roman artifacts. When the ship started taking on water, the crew threw things overboard in an effort to stay afloat. Underwater archaeologists were able to trace the ship’s path by the trail of relics scattered across the seabed.”
“That was in deep water,” Bones protested. “The water between Singapore and Bintan is relatively shallow in most places. Storms and currents have more effect on shallow water wrecks than they do in deep water.” He paused for a moment, stroking his chin, his brown eyes narrowed. “Still, you’re right. It’s not out of the question.”
“Okay,” Dane said. “Let’s explore a completely different line of thinking. What if whoever is after us only knows that Maxie was on to something big, but they don’t know what? The fake journal he planted probably wouldn’t have mentioned anything about Rienzi or the Dourado. They might have discovered right away that the information was no good, and come after Kaylin to get the real story.”
“That could be.” Bones’ frown indicated that he was not satisfied with Dane’s idea. “But they’re coming at us awfully hard for something they know very little about.”
“The information from Jimmy said that the church was ready to excommunicate Rienzi over the ramifications of whatever it was he claimed to have found. We also know from the journal that even the scholars of the day rejected his claims, whatever they were.” Dane chose his words carefully. “What if the implications of this discovery would be just as controversial today as they were back then?”
“Too many what-ifs for me,” Bones groaned, rubbing his temples. “I just don’t see…”
“Look at this!” Kaylin’s soft voice trembled with excitement. She had returned to her examination of Rienzi’s bible. Dane and Bones leaned toward her. Her slender finger was pointing to a single word, “vraiment,” written in the margin next to an underlined passage.
“What does that mean?” Bones asked. “Sounds like some kind of stinky cheese.”
“It means ‘truly,’ or ‘truthfully,’” Dane answered, drawing a raised eyebrow from Kaylin. “I took high school French. Good way to meet hot girls.”
Kaylin narrowed her eyes and fixed him with a withering stare. When she was annoyed, she reminded Dane a little bit of Melissa. Melissa… he was definitely not going to travel down that road right now. It was almost sad how easily he could push those thoughts away these days.
“Listen to the passage Rienzi underlined. Kaylin’s knuckles whitened as she tightened her grip on the book. “And the priest said, ‘The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod, if you will take that, take it, for there is none but that here.’ And David said, ‘There is none like it; give it to me.’” She slammed the bible closed, dropped it hard on the table and smiled triumphantly.
“So he likes Goliath’s sword,” Bones said.
“Wait a minute!” Dane snatched Rienzi’s journal off the table and flipped to the last page. He read aloud, “I will say only that truly, there is none like it.”
Bones whistled between his front teeth. “Son of a… Do you think he might have…”
“He found Goliath’s sword,” Kaylin said. She held the aged bible in trembling hands. “That’s what Dad was after. It would stand to reason. Rienzi was the first to rediscover those ancient cities in the Holy Land. Why wouldn’t he find biblical artifacts?”
“The sword of Goliath.” Bones said the words slowly, as if trying them on for size. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“Jimmy can run it through NAILS,” Dane said. “Right now, we need to get ready for a dive.”
CHAPTER 7
Dane sat in the cabin of the Queen’s Ransom, the ship they had hired off a British expatriate living in Kuala Lumpur. They were cruising the northern coast of the island of Bintan in search of the wreck of the Dourado.
It had been no mean feat to arrange the needed ship and equipment, as well as a crew, without drawing the attention of the people who were looking for Kaylin. Perhaps Dane was being paranoid, but he had insisted on playing it safe. They had made the arrangements through a friend of a friend: one who asked few questions. An old Navy buddy had arranged transportation for the group on a cargo plane. No tickets were required, and thus no record of their flight. Dane, Bones, and Kaylin had been careful not to use their credit cards, or do anything that might give away their whereabouts or their destination.