“Why am I only just hearing about this?”
“Some will tell you that these discoveries are suppressed by the governments via their puppets and proxies in the academic community. They consider such knowledge would be highly detrimental to the public. If you ask me, I would say it’s because no one gives a shit.”
Hawke smiled. Maybe he could warm to Ryan after all. “And Zaugg?”
“He’s obviously a believer, but for his own reasons.”
“And he has this evidence, you say?”
“Yes. Beside the Dorchester Pot he also has other precious discoveries that he either made or bought, including the Kingoodie Hammer, a corroded manmade iron nail found embedded in Devonian sandstone four hundred million years ago, a Norwegian silver penny from the reign of Olaf Kyrre in the 11th Century, discovered at an old Native American settlement in New Hampshire, and his prized possession — the Antikythera Mechanism.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Only in terms of its sheer existence. It’s an ancient analog computer designed and built to make accurate astrological predictions such as eclipses. The mechanism was dated to at least one thousand years before clock mechanisms were known to have been built, and many people, including presumably Hugo Zaugg are convinced it was made not by man, but by a higher intelligence, perhaps even the ancient gods themselves. Zaugg paid the National Archaeological Museum of Athens a massive sum of money for it and it took pride of place in his collection — until now.”
“Now?”
“I mean now the way is clear to obtaining the vault of Poseidon, Joe. If it was found to exist then it would prove our understanding of time was all wrong — that our interpretation of history was totally wrong — and then all the out-of-place artifacts around the world would assume a new legitimacy.”
“I don't recall saying you could call me Joe.”
“Er, sorry, I…”
“I’m just kidding, Rupert. Relax. Zaugg can't be the first person to look for this?”
“He isn’t — I’ve been reading about it. Many people have tried to find it throughout history, including an attempt in 1887 by a Turkish archaeologist named Mustafa Özal, and another one in 1911 by a team of Russian treasure hunters in the Aegean.”
“Interesting.”
“They claim to have found conclusive evidence of it and given it to the Czar but after the revolution in 1917 it was seized by the Bolsheviks and moved to the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg. That turned out to be a hoax.”
“I can hardly believe any of this.” Hawke thought he maybe needed another vodka.
“The third attempt was in 1925 by a Greek shepherd who became very rich indeed when he successfully sold what he claimed were relics from the tomb to a private collector in Athens, but that turned out to be yet another hoax.”
Hawke shook his head in disbelief.
“The fourth attempt was after the war in 1946. It was made by Bernard Decaux, a French amateur collector. He was very rich and no one knows what happened there — he disappeared.”
“I don’t like the sound of any of this,” Lea said. “What happened to this Decaux character?”
“The last place he was seen was in Marseille in the south of France. He disappeared off the face of the earth in 1948. The final attempt — until Eden’s effort this year — was an excavation funded by J. Paul Getty in the 1950s. Again, no one knows if he really discovered anything or not.”
“And they were all searching for the lost tomb of Poseidon,” Hawke said, his mind slowly coming to accept the idea. “So these vases — what’s the deal?”
Ryan sighed. “From what I can tell, the Poseidon and Amphitrite vases are just regular works of pottery from the fourth century BC, and so is this inscribed golden arc that now we know must have been a disc which was broken into two halves and hidden in them.”
“But the vault of Poseidon is much older?”
“It must be. Poseidon was a god, and that would predate history as we know it. If we can work out the meaning of the inscription hidden in the vases by the Vienna Painter they could lead the way to the greatest treasure on Earth, something far older than even Hellenistic Greece.”
“And this ultimate power I keep hearing so much about?”
Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “Got to be the trident, an awesome doomsday weapon by all accounts — one of the most powerful ever wielded by any deity.”
Hawke took a deep breath. “And what does it do, exactly?”
“Oh, just the usual fire and brimstone stuff — earthquakes and tsunamis on an unprecedented scale. When Poseidon was insulted by the people he would strike the ground with it and cause terrifying earthquakes. He could flood any land, cause oceans to swell and smash ships but worst of all were the tsunamis.”
Lea frowned. “I don’t like where this is going, Ryan.”
“Poseidon used the trident to create massive tsunamis that raced across oceans and decimated entire coastlines.”
Hawke frowned. “I begin to see why Hugo Zaugg is so keen to find the tomb if it’s got that bloody thing in it.”
“Not to mention the gold.”
“Gold?”
“Naturally, any tomb like that would contain almost unbelieveable amounts of gold, both that collected by Poseidon himself and also the massive amounts given to him in tribute over the years.”
“This just gets better.”
Lea’s mobile phone rang. She took it into the bathroom, pausing in the door to say: “It's Sir Richard.”
Moments later she returned.
“What’s the news?” Hawke asked.
“He’s pleased we got the gold fragment,” she said. “And he says we need to meet him at once.”
“Back in London?”
“No, he wants to meet in Geneva. He says he has a lead for us there, and he wants us to talk to someone. He sounded worried.”
Hawke was considering these words when they heard screams outside their room and men trampling along the corridor. He reached for a weapon but before he got his hands on it the door was smashed open and officers from the NYPD rushed into the room.
“And we were having it so easy,” Lea said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They were sitting in a drab holding room somewhere in the undercover CIA station in Manhattan. Hawke had been in places like this before, and maybe Lea too, but he was sure this was Ryan’s first experience.
A tall man with a square head, bright blue eyes and the mother of all five o’clock shadows closed the door on his way in and fronted up to them with total confidence. This was his space and his time, he was saying, and you’d better not mess me about.
“Doesn’t look like he suffers fools gladly,” Ryan whispered.
Hawke coughed. “That’s you out of luck then.”
The man introduced himself as Agent Edward Kosinski, and spent a long time going through a manila folder on the desk in front of them. He was making them stew, Hawke thought, reading histories, raking over any old dirt the agency could wrap its long arms around.
“So you think you’re smart, huh?” said Kosinski finally. He closed the file, sniffed hard and stared at Hawke, right in the eyes. “You think you just fly into my country and start shooting the place up and exploding things?”
“You have your own country?” Hawke said.
“Answer the question, smart-ass.”
“It was self-defense,” said Hawke, taking a long look back at his interrogator. “Besides, they were Swiss — and honestly, how much do any of us really know about the Swiss?”