The elevator doors slid open and they stepped inside. They rode to the penthouse floor in silence, soft jazz playing through the speakers in the ceiling. When the elevator pinged and the doors started to open, Joyce said, “I’m glad you came, Gabriel.” She walked out of the elevator before he could answer.
He followed her into a long hallway with plush carpeting and creamy silk wallpaper. He watched Joyce walk ahead of him and thought about how she’d slept through most of the flight from Borneo, turning in her sleep at one point so that her head fell against his shoulder. She’d looked calm, peaceful for the first time since he’d pulled her out of that cage in the jungle.
She’d looked beautiful.
Cool it, he thought, carrying his suitcase down the hallway. You knew her when she was seven, for God’s sake.
But she’s not seven anymore, another part of his mind pointed out.
They found room 3002 around the corner from the elevators. When Joyce knocked on the door, it swung open and Daniel Wingard rushed out, crushing Joyce in a bear hug.
“Thank god you’re all right,” he said. He looked her over, frowning over her bruises and black eye. “Oh, my dear girl, what did they do to you?”
“I’m fine,” Joyce said. “Really, I’m okay.”
“And Gabriel! Thank you for finding her, thank you!” He pumped Gabriel’s hand like he expected to draw water. “My god, look at you. I haven’t seen you since the memorial service. That’s what, eight years now?”
“Nine,” Gabriel said. “It’s good to see you, Professor.” Daniel Wingard looked exactly as Gabriel remembered him, if a little grayer on top and a little more wrinkled around the eyes and mouth. He was a full head shorter than Gabriel, with round features and the belly of a man who enjoyed hotel buffets.
“Only my students call me Professor,” he said, waving a dismissing hand. “It’s Daniel, my boy. Ambrose and Cordelia were among my dearest friends—I won’t stand on ceremony with their son. Now, come in, come in.” He held the door open for them.
Directly inside was the suite’s living room, an enormous chamber with arched doorways leading off on either side to bedroom and bathroom, study and kitchenette. Daniel had them to put their bags in the study, and when they returned to the living room he held out two glasses of scotch for them.
“Tell me everything, my dear,” Daniel said. “From the beginning, don’t leave anything out.”
While Joyce brought him up to speed, Gabriel sipped his scotch—it tasted smooth, smoky and expensive—and walked restlessly around the room. Hadn’t they gone over this on the phone already? If not, what had made that call last an hour? He didn’t begrudge Daniel the information, of course, but every minute they delayed setting off to find the second Eye gave Grissom that much more of a head start.
He walked over to a set of three metal cylinders standing against the living room wall beside a long wooden table. Each cylinder stood about three feet tall and bore a sticker in German that warned the contents were under pressure.
“Oh, be careful,” Daniel said, rushing over. “You shouldn’t touch those. They’re acetylene gas for the dig site. They only just arrived today, I haven’t had a chance to bring them over yet.”
“You had them delivered to your hotel room?” Gabriel asked.
Daniel nodded. “We’ve had a lot of items go missing from the site. It seems we have a thief on our hands, probably one of the local kids we hired. They can make a lot of money selling tools and instruments on the black market. They could get a lot for acetylene. Better to keep it here until it’s needed. Out of harm’s way.” He turned back to Joyce. “Same reason I sent the Star to you. Speaking of which, I am dying to see what you worked out, the way it operates with the map—will you show me?”
Joyce fetched her bag from the study, took out the Star and unfolded the map. “Grissom has the first of the Eyes—but you’ll help us find the second, won’t you?”
“Absolutely, my dear.” He shook his head disbelievingly. “To think that the Three Eyes of Teshub, the Spearhead, might all be real. How could I possibly say no to that?”
Joyce set the map on the floor. “We’ll need a light,” she said. Gabriel fished a flashlight out of his suitcase while Daniel went around the room drawing the curtains in front of all the windows and the glass doors to the terrace.
As Daniel pulled this last curtain shut, Gabriel thought he saw something, a movement glimpsed out of the corner of one eye. He looked over more closely. A man’s silhouette crouched outside—
“Get down!” he shouted, and Joyce and Daniel dropped to the floor. Gabriel ran for the curtain and threw it open. Beyond, the terrace was empty. He blinked in surprise.
Joyce came up behind him. “What is it?”
“I thought I saw someone,” he said. He unlocked the door, slid it open and stepped out onto the terrace, a rectangle of tiled cement enclosed by a waist-high brick wall. A table stood at the far end, its umbrella folded, flanked by two matching lounge chairs. There was no one in sight. With all the carvings providing handholds and footholds, the wall of the hotel would be easy enough to scale; and the neighboring terraces were close enough to jump to, or from. Someone could have been there. He scanned the row of terraces stretching to either side, then leaned over the edge of the terrace and looked down. No one. He turned to look up at the roof of the hotel, just above their room. There was no sign of movement.
Maybe it was just his nerves. He’d felt on edge in the lobby too.
Daniel poked his head out. “What was it?”
Gabriel walked back inside. “Don’t know. Maybe I’m jumping at shadows.”
Daniel slid the door closed and locked it again. “I’m not surprised, after what you’ve been through.”
Daniel may not have been surprised, but Gabriel was. He could have sworn he’d seen a shape moving out there. He glanced at the terrace one more time. There was nothing but sunlight and the cityscape beyond.
“Can we…get back to the…?” Daniel waved an arm at the map on the floor.
Joyce held the Star in position over the map and Gabriel switched on the flashlight. He angled the beam so the light passed directly through the artifact. Joyce rotated the inner ring till the projected cuneiforms began to line up.
“All right, I see it,” Daniel said. “That’s the one you found in Borneo, the one marked with the symbol for earth.”
“Right,” Joyce said. “Now let’s see the second.” She turned the central starburst further until the Nesili symbol for “water” was opposite her. She moved the Star until the symbol’s silhouette lined up perfectly with its twin below. The beam from Gabriel’s flashlight passed through the tiny green jewel at the end of the starburst’s shortest arm, sending a pinpoint of emerald light down to strike right in the open Mediterranean Sea.
“Mm,” Daniel said. He got down on his hands and knees next to the map and peered at the penciled-in grid. “The question is, what’s there? An island, perhaps?” He rose to his feet. “Wait here, I’m going to get my atlas.” He hurried off into the bedroom and returned a moment later with a big hardcover volume in his hands. “Here we go.” He sat next to the map again and flipped through the pages of the atlas until he found one showing a detailed view of the relevant portion of the Mediterranean. He pulled a small stub of a pencil from one of his pockets, licked its tip and made a mark on the page. “It appears to be about thirty-three degrees longitude,” he looked at the map again, then back at the atlas, “twenty-seven degrees latitude.” He made another mark and put the pencil down, frowning in confusion. “But there’s…” He looked at the atlas again. “There’s nothing there, just open sea all the way from Rhodes to Egypt.”