Sam switched the machine on, and the sound of its multiple propellers spinning suddenly whirred. The ROV was stored facing outward, in the same way you would park a car in a garage so that the exit was easier than the entry. The view on the primary screen was set to the frontal camera so it even looked as though you were peering through the windshield of a car.
Tom watched as Sam expertly navigated the ROV toward the shipwreck. His right hand made minor adjustments to the joystick like a kid playing a computer game. That was Sam though — a kid through and through, playing a game. The only difference was his toy was worth nearly two million dollars, and the stakes were life and death.
The ROV hovered over the top deck. Sam said, “I don’t believe this. There isn’t even a way inside. The damned hatches are still intact!”
Tom scanned the deck. “There! The aft castle has an entrance hatch.”
“I see it.” Sam whirred the ROV toward the hatch.
Peter asked, “The question is, can you open it?”
Sam grinned at the challenge. “I can open it.”
Sam changed the primary view to the left side. He hit a buoyancy maintenance button — similar to the one Tom had used to keep the Sea Witch II in an exact position — and then turned to a new joystick. Sam maneuvered the single robotic claw until it reached the hatch. A moment later the claw gripped the handle and pulled.
The entire hatch came free from its rotten hinges. Tom said, “That’ll work.”
Sam returned the primary monitor to the dashboard view and entered the aft castle. He then turned to Peter. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where this stone tablet was stored?”
“I don’t know for certain, but in Hammersmith’s journal he wrote that the stone map was seen as a gift from the gods. It was a map that was supposedly going to take them to great treasures. Where would you keep a treasure map secure from the greedy crew of a seventeenth century pirate ship?”
“The captain’s quarters!” Tom and Sam said in unison.
The Mary Rose had two decks that ran the length of the ship’s hull, plus an additional level in the aft and fore castle. Traditionally, the aft castle housed the captain’s quarters, but there was no telling that her original Spanish builder conformed to the normality of her time.
Tom watched as Sam maneuvered the ROV into the aft castle. Despite the surprising preservation of the outside hull and rigging, the inside of what might have once been the captain’s quarters had been reduced to a mass of silt. There was no sign of the stone tablet or any other definable structure.
Sam took the ROV down into the main deck, which ran the length of the ship. The ROV was equipped with a low amplitude sonar transducer in its belly — which basically meant that she could receive a graphical display of any structure below and in her immediate vicinity. The ROV took two sweeps of the first deck, without any sign of a stone structure. It then whirred through another opening amid ship that led to the second deck. Sam took another sweep of the sonar through this level, but the only stones it located were the broken ones in the bilge used for ballast.
“I don’t believe it!” Tom said. “We’ve overcome so much to find this, and the damned thing was never here to begin with.”
“All right,” Sam said, heavily. “I’ll take her back in and we’ll return to the surface. That storm’s coming, we might have to postpone another dive for a few days.”
The ROV turned and slowly retraced its path back to the open deck. It whirred loudly as it approached Sea Witch II. Tom glanced at the third monitor, where the sonar image provided a simple view of the terrain below. He went to switch the transducer off and then something stopped him.
“Wait!” he yelled.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Tom pointed at the monitor. “Does that look like something to you?”
Sam and Peter both studied the screen. It looked very much like the head of a tomb stone, only much smaller.
He watched as Sam descended the ROV until it was hovering just above the stone. The primary view was switched to the camera pointing straight down. The stone had been chiseled to form a very specific shape, but there was nothing written on it.
Peter asked, “Can you turn it over?”
Sam nodded.
Tom found himself unintentionally holding his breath. A moment later the ROV’s grappler tipped the stone over. There beneath them was a perfect delineation of the west coast of Africa and a whole bunch of numbers he couldn’t read.
Chapter Thirty- Nine
Sam stepped out of the submarine and onto the Maria Helena. He immediately set up a cleaning trough to wash the stone. He used a low pressure water jet to remove the silt until the image was clearly visible. The African coastline was unmistakable. This had to be the ancient map that Hammersmith had written about — the one they’d lost when the Mary Rose sank in 1653.
Veyron climbed down from the control box of the small crane. “Sam, you wanted to know about Elise as soon as you reached the surface?”
“Yes.”
“She called an hour ago. Said she needed to see you right away. Genevieve’s gone to pick her up right now.”
“That’s great,” Sam said.
He felt it, too. An hour ago he suspected he’d reached a complete dead end on his search for the Third Temple and for Billie. He couldn’t find the stone, and he was still waiting for Elise to tell him the truth about the painting in the hidden cavern inside Mount Ararat.
Within minutes he, Tom and Peter were staring at a perfectly restored stone tablet. He wondered what the original mason who chiseled the markings would think about it being read all these years later. The stone had one recognizable image and two sets of numbers. The numbers were in base eleven and he could decipher them easily enough, but he’d never seen the word after the numbers — although he could guess its purpose.
There were two numbers. Most likely two points of reference and where they intercept is the precise location. The unfamiliar word, Carrib, most likely represented a measured distance, such as a mile or a kilometer — only it didn’t. The purpose of the word was obvious. He stared at the numbers. Converted into base ten they read, 318 and 325.
But 318 and 325 what?
Sam breathed out, purposefully slow. He ran his fingers over his forehead and through his brown wavy hair. “It appears the Master Builders worked out a similar means of defining precise locations long before GPS.”
Peter said, “That even looks like a latitude and longitude reference.”
Sam swore. It was a sudden and loud show of frustration, and it was unlike him. “It may as well be the location of a secret treasure hidden on another planet for all the good it’s going to do us.”
“Why?” Peter asked.
Sam shook his head. They had come so far to find the map, and yet it was entirely useless to them. “Because by the looks of things, the Master Builders were using a completely different numerical reference point. This map shows us clearly where the Third Temple was located. It’s at the point where reference number 318 Carrib and 325 Carrib intercept — but I don’t have any clue what a Carrib is.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Peter said.
“I know it doesn’t. I just told you it doesn’t.”
“No, not that.”
Sam asked, “What then?”
“Hammersmith wasn’t a Master Builder, so how did he know how to follow the map?”
Sam paused, as he thought about it for a moment. “I have no idea. Maybe there’s an easy conversion.”