“Diamonds? And where do we come by those?”
Elena smiled. “That would be telling,” she said. “One never inquires where a lady gets her diamonds, but I assure you, this lady is not without resources.”
“Alright, alright,” said Morgan. “Supposing we can book passage, or even charter an entire ship, that act alone would be ahistorical. It might seem like an innocent cruise out to the Greek islands and back, but we’ve no way to know that. Anything could happen, and the chance that we would introduce some contamination is very high. In fact, I’d say it was inevitable. It will be 1804, the farther back you go, the greater the damage each footfall we make on that ground could do. We’ll change lives. The ship we charter was never supposed to go there, and every soul aboard will be on an altered life meridian from the moment we tip our hats at the gunwales of their ship. I find it hard to imagine that we could pull this off without introducing changes.”
“But they might only be small changes,” said Elena, “like a scratch on the skin that Time might easily heal.”
“Here we sit with an ex-Daring class destroyer riding roughshod all through this history,” said Morgan. “We’ve fought battles here, influenced the Atlantic convoy campaign, made that raid on Saint Nazaire, not to mention the fact that Prime Movers in this era know all about us—Churchill, Wavell, Tovey, Cunningham. God only knows what history will arise from this altered time line. Weren’t you preaching it yourself a while back? What was all that talk about some kind of Grand Finality. If that wasn’t doom and gloom, then what is? Now we’re talking about going back another 139 years! Anything we do back there could influence this time—1943—and profoundly.”
“So we’ll have to be very careful.”
“Aye, careful indeed. Here it’s loose lips, sink ships. Back there it will be one errant whisper and the whole damn world could spin off in a new direction.”
Mack Morgan was exaggerating to make his point, but then again, he wasn’t too far from the truth. One errant whisper in the ear of Sergei Kirov in 1908 had done much to change this entire world, and Morgan was also correct in wondering what the future might arise from this version of the war.
“Bottom line,” said Morgan, making his close. “This is dangerous—damn dangerous. We’ll have to ask ourselves if that key is worth the trouble. Why do we even need it? Forgive me, Mum, but aren’t we just trying to satisfy our own curiosity as to what these keys are all about. Well, curiosity killed the cat.”
“And satisfaction?” Elena gave him a wink. “Look Mack, I’m not sure I buy the image of that fly in a teacup. I’ll admit that commandeering a ship is out of the question. We’ll want to be as inconspicuous as possible. If we’re careful, nice and polite, I’m thinking our presence there will be more like one more fish in the sea. It’s a very big world out there. We might not change anything at all if we’re discrete.”
“Then again,” said Morgan, still the Devil’s advocate. “Suppose this ship we charter does run into trouble. It might be weather, it might be pirates—god only knows. We’re out to investigate the salvage operation for the wreck of the Mentor. Get that? The wreck! I’m sure Lord Elgin wanted to be very discrete himself, and spirit off his ill-gotten marbles as inconspicuously as possible. But then life is what happens to you after you make your plans, isn’t it? His ship got caught in weather, ran aground, foundered on the rocks and went down with all his cargo. Alright… Suppose fate deals us a safe hand, and we play this out to get to Kythros without incident. Then what? How do we get at this Selene Horse without having to get ‘pushy’?”
“I haven’t thought about that yet,” said Elena. “I suppose we’d still have the gold and diamonds.”
“The people running this salvage operation may not be interested in selling anything, not for any amount. After all, this is all supposed to be the property of Lord Elgin. Even if they would take your offer seriously at all, they would certainly have to obtain the good Earl’s permission. That would take time, and more than we have to spend there. Besides, he would certainly refuse. He wouldn’t sell his precious cargo, not for any price, at least not at this time.”
“Probably not. But I won’t be offering to purchase. I’d merely be asking to see the wonders the good lord Elgin has secured. I could make up a story—anything. I could tell the crew I’m affiliated with the British Museum, and that after hearing of the Earl’s ‘acquisition’ of the Marbles, I came all this way to see them first hand.”
“Wasn’t he touchy about his find? He kept referring to the Marbles as ‘stones of no value to anyone other than Lord Elgin.’ Try that line and you’ll be presenting yourself as someone who knows that’s a load of bullshit. The keepers of that salvage might get just a wee bit curious, and touchy. You say it was guarded night and day on that damn beach.”
“True, but we only are interested in one piece—the Selene Horse. Perhaps it’s in one of the eleven boxes they’ve already recovered. Believe me, I can be very persuasive. I’m certain I could persuade the site supervisor to let me have one little look.”
“With a hammer and chisel?” Morgan objected immediately. “Wasn’t this key supposed to be embedded in the base? How do you suppose to get at it without doing deliberate damage to the statue?”
“Actually,” said Elena. “I was rather hoping the piece was in one of the missing boxes, still at the bottom of the sea. That’s where my Argonauts come in handy. We’re bringing along some diving equipment, very compact, but very effective. I could offer the expertise of my team, and speed along their recovery of the other boxes. They would probably be very glad about that.”
“Possibly, but the supervisor might just be a curmudgeon. He might not want us anywhere near his precious charge.”
“We’d change his mind rather quickly,” said Elena. “I’ll just send the men down to have a look. We’ll use the hand-held radar, and believe me, the first box we bring up will change their attitude considerably.”
“OK, then we’re back where we were just a moment ago. They won’t want you mucking about with a hammer and chisel.”
“They won’t even know about it.” Now Elena folded her arms. “We’ll have the men do that while they are still underwater—assuming we get lucky. We have a six in seventeen chance the Selene Horse is still submerged. If not. I’ll come up with a plan B.”
“You have to give it to her, Mack,” said Gordon. “She’s thought of everything.”
“Everything but the unexpected. No offense, Mum.”
“Don’t worry, Mack. You’re doing exactly what you should to wrangle this out with me. We’ll need to really be on our game this time. I’ll want the best men we have, expert seamen, diving experience, and good at hand-to-hand combat. No assault rifles, gentlemen. Pistols would be acceptable, but kept well hidden, and to be used only in a pinch. The last thing we would want to do is shoot anybody.”
Chapter 3
“Most of our Argonauts will fill that bill,” said MacRae. “A pity we just can’t take the whole ship back. Then we’d have the X3 Helos to fly about and make a real grand spectacle as well. Talk about a fly in the teacup then!”