“We’ve been here before,” Scarlet said, sighing and clearly calmer now. “Back when we were trying to stop our man Zaugg from breaking the world in two pieces with that damned trident — remember?”
Ryan nodded. “I do remember, yes — I’m not a bloody goldfish.”
“Easy there, tiger,” Scarlet said. “Remember what Alex just said about you having to stay calm.”
“Yeah, sorry… hang on — about me having to stay calm?”
Alex looked awkward again. “You two love each other really, right?”
Lexi smirked. “They do, I think.”
“Nothing can love Scarlet Sloane,” Ryan said sulkily.
“Right then,” Alex said, ignoring him and trying to diffuse the tension. “So we know we’re getting our asses kicked — fine. Let’s get our shit together and start thinking. What have we got?”
“Without Mazzarro or his notes — not much,” Ryan said, sighing.
Scarlet scowled. “Rich and Joe are going to Mazzarro’s apartment to get his notes — but there’s a chance Vetrov might have got there first — they say Kosma and his thugs slipped away while they were dealing with Kodiak.”
“We’re really going to need those notes,” Alex said, unconsciously biting her lip.
“Well, we haven’t got the sodding notes, have we?” Scarlet said, turning to Ryan. “What about all that bollocks about nectar you said you were working on earlier today, Ryan? Can’t you start there or something?”
Alex brightened up. “What nectar thing?”
Ryan almost beamed, but pulled himself back. “I was looking at the picture Lexi took of the map and it occurred to me that one of the glyphs looks similar to the Egyptian one for nectar.”
Alex smiled. “And we’re talking about the food of the gods and not the flowers, right?”
“Right, the food of the gods — the substance that is mentioned over and over again in so many ancient texts relating to their incredible longevity — isn’t restricted to the ancient Greeks, you realize.”
Scarlet frowned. “As far as this shit is concerned, boy, I know only what you tell me, and that just about drives me insane.”
“I know,” Ryan said. “Great isn’t it?”
“But he’s right,” Alex said, tying her hair back and rolling up her sleeves. “It’s true that the main sources referring to eternal life being conferred by some kind of food are mostly within the Greek myths — and this is mainly described as ambrosia, but other cultures had similar myths and legends.”
“Legends about custard…” Ryan said, his voice trailing away to a whisper as he thought about that day in Demetriou’s Athens apartment. That was the day he first noticed Sophie. It all seemed like so long ago — an age away, but it was just a few short weeks.
Alex looked at him, confused. “Huh?”
“Forget it,” he said, realizing that no one else understood the old joke.
“I don’t know anything about custard,” continued Alex, “but I know that the ancient Greeks believed ambrosia was derived from the horn of Amalthea, a goat who helped raise Zeus.”
Scarlet smirked. “Zeus was raised by a goat?”
“It’s a little more complex than that…” Alex said.
“Ah! What’s this then?” Ryan said, studying the line of hieroglyphics along the bottom of the map.
Scarlet took a step forward. “What have you found?”
“Here on the map could be a reference to Kemet.”
Scarlet sighed. “First custard and now the fucking Muppets!”
“Kemet, I said, not Kermit.”
“And that means what?” she said.
“Kemet is the ancient native word for Egypt — what the ancient Egyptians called their homeland. This reference is yet more evidence pointing to Egypt, plus there’s something else as well. If your excellent research work is right, Alex,” Ryan said, smiling at the American, “this glyph right here could be referring to the drinking of liquid gold, and if so then this here might be describing mystical white drops that can make a man god-like. Both those references are about the elixir of life.”
Scarlet shook her head. “A lot of coulds and mights in your vocabulary all of a sudden, boy.”
“Like we just explained, these glyphs are not easy to translate and we could really use those notebooks. All we have to go on at the moment is the work Alex has already done with Mazzarro himself.”
“Which is not that great, honestly. We’d only just started working together and I’m not sure he had really started trusting me yet.”
“But,” Ryan added optimistically, “if we’re even half right, it means not only does the map specifically mention the elixir of life, but that we’re sort of learning how to translate it.”
“Slow progress though…” Alex said.
“So what we really need is those sodding notes,” Scarlet said, lighting a cigarette and stepping out into the warm Italian day. “Let’s hope Joe gets hold of them.”
Hawke and Eden made their way across the square and returned to Mazzarro’s office in the Doge’s Palace. They breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the Egyptologist’s notes were exactly where he had told them they were — safely hidden behind a sliding partition in the bookcase behind his desk. There were five of them in all — just simple yellow notebooks covered in inky scrawls and strange hand-drawn hieroglyphs. Clearly Vetrov was satisfied with Mazzarro — the first prize — and had ordered his men to retreat.
“These are going to lead us to the greatest secret on earth?” Hawke said as he looked at the notebooks.
“Whatever they might look like,” Eden replied coolly, “Dario Mazzarro is the only man in the world who really understands the ciphers which will decode the glyphs on the map. If Lea and Karlsson can’t get him back, these are all we have.”
They shared a glance which was part excitement and part anxiety before pocketing the notebooks and heading back to the hotel. It was time Ryan and Alex got to work.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lea reached the mooring area out of breath, and watched with anger as Kodiak’s boat moved away up the Grand Canal at speed before disappearing into the water traffic of the busy Venetian day.
“What now?” Karlsson said.
“Over there, look!” She pointed at an older man mooring a sleek motorboat to the side of the square.
“Not just a pretty face, babe,” he said.
“And I’m taken, so cut it out, babe.”
“Roger that, but we’re in love for the next thirty seconds, all right with you?”
“Sure is,” Lea said, understanding at once what Karlsson was thinking.
They walked toward the man, arm in arm, and pretended to share an intimate conversation.
Lea approached him and started to ask for directions in terrible Italian, while Karlsson pretended to take in the view and walked around behind the man. He had his hands in his pockets and was whistling in an attempt to look as casual as possible.
As Lea distracted the man, Karlsson unhooked the mooring rope and stepped quietly into the boat, a thirty-three foot-long Aquariva Super with a polished mahogany deck which shone in the bright Venetian sun. He turned the key and the two powerful 370 horsepower Yanmar engines roared to life, causing the man to turn immediately and move toward the boat.
“Cosa fai?!”
Lea acted fast, pushing him into the water, where he landed with a mighty splash and screamed something about a zoccola while pointing at the boat-thieves. Lea wasted no time in leaping into the luxury sports boat. “Hit it, Brad!”
Karlsson pushed the throttle forward and at the stern, the twin bladed bronze propellers accelerated into a deep roar and drove them out into the Grand Canal to the south of San Marco.