“So the CIA agent’s the hardest member of our team. Who’d have thought it?”
Bodie gritted his teeth. “It’s an eye opener,” he said. “And not necessarily a good one.” He then added, “In the long run.”
“You’re thinking after mission?”
“Always,” he said, then shook it off. “But now we have Jeff. Jeff the archaeologist.”
“Yeah. Why does that make me think of Gunn?” She shook her head.
“Oh, give the kid a break. He’s more than useful in his own way and you know it.”
“I’d prefer someone older.”
“Nearer thirty?”
“That age does not bother me,” Cassidy said, her tight-lipped comment betraying the truth.
“All right, then. Let’s see if Jeff can help.”
They boarded the chopper, the new flight path ready to take them straight back to Greece. Calculations revealed that the Hood they were chasing might have left the country by now, depending on how long it had taken him to procure a car, but the reality was they were laboring in the chase now, struggling to catch up.
Jeff crowded in beside Gunn and Jemma, the chopper’s interior now hot and crowded. Heidi had already given him the brief history of events, backed it up with proof and backed that up with news coverage of the death of the woman that had forwarded Jeff the original email. That woman had been Jeff’s teacher in Oxford, a woman he highly respected. Jeff took it all in, but barely responded.
Heidi didn’t want to bombard him with further atrocities. “The map,” she said. “It’s why we sought you. It’s why they sought you. It’s why your teacher and her colleagues were killed. What can you tell us about it?”
Jeff gave them a look that revealed his fear, his youth and his awkwardness all in one go. Cassidy patted him on the knee.
“Don’t worry, bud. We’re far more dangerous than the Hoods.”
“Ah, ok, well…” He didn’t look reassured. “Miss Brady like to push me. Saw something in me, I guess. I like to travel though—” he nodded back the way they’d come “—anywhere there’s history, I guess.”
“Stop guessing,” Heidi said quickly. “I want to hear your damn story before we run out of gas.”
Again Jeff looked scared, until he realized Heidi was cross with him. “Oh, okay. Miss Brady was always sending me something to tax my brain. I think she valued a second or third opinion, or whatever. She sent a map, recently discovered at the Olympia dig site, alleging to show the whereabouts of the Statue of Zeus.” He paused. “One of the seven ancient wonders?”
“Yeah, yeah, go on.” Heidi waved at him.
“I don’t remember it that well—”
Then Heidi whiplashed her head around. “What? Do not say that. I don’t believe you. You hear me? A young archaeologist gets a message from his revered teacher claiming to believe and know of the route to and existence of an ancient wonder? You’d have been stuck on that like maple syrup on bacon. Right now, boy, you are the only link we have to that map. Our quarry is out there, we don’t know where. So believe me — you will remember. Everything.”
Jeff gulped theatrically. Bodie leaned over to whisper in Cassidy’s ear. “Please don’t squeeze his knee again. The guy’ll leap through the window.”
“It was an old map,” Jeff tried again. “Seen on a computer screen. I believe it showed the journey of the statue after it was disassembled in the 5th century. From one place to another and where it rests now. All taken with a pinch of salt, of course.”
Bodie pursed his lips. “Why’s that?”
“Well, because the statue was destroyed around the 5th century AD. There were no copies, no imitations, only images on coins.”
“Who destroyed it? Why?” Cassidy wondered.
Gunn cleared his throat as if to speak but Jeff beat the internet geek to the punch. “Well, if I remember rightly it all started with Caligula. The mad Roman emperor? He decreed that all statues of the gods especially revered by the masses should be brought to Rome, their heads removed, and replaced with his own.”
Heidi blinked and turned around. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. History sure has placed some mega fools on the throne.”
“And repeats itself to this day,” Cross grumbled. “Go on.”
“Well, Caligula was assassinated before that could happen. But when Theodosius banned pagan cults and closed the temples, the statue and Olympia became abandoned. Nobody really knows what happened to the statue after that — lost to history — but the map posited a believable theory.”
“Which was?” Gunn asked, flicking around his cellphone.
“That the statue was dismantled and then shipped to Constantinople. This fits because it actually matches one of the original theories.”
“Damn,” Cassidy said, deadpan. “We’ve just come from Constantinople.”
“Yeah, but it’s not there anymore. The old theory was that the statue perished in the great fire of AD 475. The map suggested that it didn’t…” Jeff paused.
“You mentioned there were no representations of the statue?” Heidi pressed. “Isn’t that odd? How do we know it even existed?”
“Well, through the writings of ancient scholars. The engravings on old coins. And we have recently discovered the workshop of Phidias, the man that built the statue, at the very site it was erected. The tools, gold and ivory fragments and terracotta mold were dated back to the statue’s time. The molds were used to create sheets of glass that formed the statue’s robes, after which they were gilded.”
“So right now,” Heidi said. “You can travel to Olympia and see the very workshop and tools and items this Phidias used to create one of the seven ancient wonders of the world?”
Jeff nodded.
“I didn’t know that. How incredible.”
“Better than gawping at a pyramid, I’d say.”
“Any of the other ancient wonders still around?” Bodie asked.
“Who really knows? The Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse at Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis, were all destroyed. It’s possible that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon never existed. They came into being essentially because traveling Greeks saw great sights around the world and wanted to list them. It is believed that all seven could have existed at the same time, over a period of sixty years, before the Colossus was destroyed by an earthquake in 226 BC. Earthquakes and fire took most of them; but that was said of the Statue of Zeus.”
“So, of the seven, the only ones without a true image are the statue and the garden,” Heidi said. “But we digress. The map?”
“How long have you got?” Jeff asked.
Heidi rounded on him. “The longer you take, the more people will die. Do you really want that on your conscience, Jeffo?”
“Of course not. It’s just… just a bit much is all.”
“Take a minute,” Bodie said and turned to Heidi. “Where are we with the Hood?”
The CIA agent took a deep breath. “Nowhere. We’ve lost him and the map and any chance we had of finding them. For that — we got Jeffster here. He’d better be worth it.”
Now Bodie turned to Jeff with a grin. “You hear that, Jeffaroo? This is your chance to shine, my friend. Better make it good.”
The chopper came in to land, and the entire team transferred to a big SUV. Heidi directed Cross to drive north, purely because the original route of the Hood’s train put it on a northern path, twisting though Hungary and, potentially, Austria. The air-con kicked in fast and Bodie passed around some snacks.
Jeff took a long gulp of water. “All right,” he said. “This is everything I know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
“I have to say,” Jeff began. “That the one thing that made me suspicious, disbelieving, was the one thing that doesn’t seem to have occurred to you. I mean, how the hell did this map, showing the path of this ancient wonder from the sixth century to the present day end up buried back in Olympia, at the statue’s starting point?” He widened his eyes. “How did that happen?”