“I told you I will never help you. Besides, I don’t even know how I could help you.”
“Don’t be coy. We have the full translation of Fleetwood’s work, you forget. I know you have the first golden arc — and presumably the second one by now, and so what I propose is very simple. I will trade your three lives for both halves of the golden disc. Joe Hawke has an hour to bring them both to me or I will shoot one of you every hour until both halves are in my hands.”
Zaugg took a final sip of the wine and patted his mouth dry with a silk napkin. He rose from the table. “If you’ll excuse me.”
He walked to the back of the yacht with his hands in his pockets and watched as Grasso was hauled out of the water and dumped on the deck a second time, this time dead.
“Cut the ropes and throw him over for good this time.” He turned to Lea. “We must recycle, after all.”
Then he called out to Baumann. “Take them below and secure them. Kill them if they try to escape.”
Zaugg surveyed the sparkling blue water and descended to the lower decks.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Before Hawke and Scarlet could enter Demetriou’s apartment his neighbor came running into the street, hysterical and babbling in Greek. She was pointing at the upstairs apartment. Demetriou’s apartment.
“What’s going on, professor?” Hawke asked.
“She says some men came here today, to my apartment. She said they had guns. I see now you weren’t exaggerating when you said my life was in danger. Thank heavens I wasn't at home or they would have me. At least this way no one was hurt.”
Hawke and Scarlet shared a glance. “Yeah… about that.”
“What?”
“When we arrived in Athens we split into two groups,” Scarlet explained. “Joe and I went to the museum, while our friends came here.”
“So today you rifle through my office, shoot at me in the museum and now as if that were not all bad enough you have people break into my apartment and go through my personal belongings? You break into my computer!”
The old woman began talking again, this time much calmer, steadied by the professor’s reassuring hands on her arms.
Demetriou turned to Hawke and Scarlet, confused. “She says three people were taken away at gunpoint. I’m sorry — these must be your friends.”
Hawke sighed. Scarlet surveyed the street for anything that might offer them a lead.
The woman spoke once more and handed Demetriou a cell phone.
“It’s Lea’s.” Hawke took the phone. “I recognize the cover.”
He flipped the screensaver off to see a picture of Lea with a gun to her head. She was trying to look unfazed, but Hawke saw the same look in her eyes that he’d seen that night in New York when she started to talk about her past.
“That picture was taken up there in my study!” Demetriou said, suddenly much more nervous than usual. “I recognize my books…”
Scarlet stepped away to make a phone call, and returned a few moments later: “All right — they traced the origin of the call. They tried to mask it but this is the location.”
“Good work, Cairo,” Hawke said. “What are the coordinates?”
He typed them into his phone as she read them out, the two of them standing together, working together just like old times. “Well, that’s unexpected!” he said.
“What is it? They’re not in bloody Antarctica or something are they?”
“No, according to these coordinates, they’re in the middle of the Ionian Sea. Must be a boat.”
“You think?” Scarlet said. “It could be Zaugg’s secret underwater base.”
Hawke glanced at her and offered a fake smile. “The cheeky bastard’s holding them on a boat.”
“I’ll get on to Eden and find out if he knows anything else,” Scarlet said, putting the phone to her ear.
“So what does it all mean?” Demetriou asked, walking his neighbor to her door and reassuring her it was all over.
“It means we have to get my friends back before those turdwipes hurt them.”
“Sorry, but what is a turdwipe?”
“Just an expression, professor. I wouldn’t use it at an academic conference or anything like that if I were you.”
Inside Demetriou’s apartment, the professor asked to see the golden arcs again.
“I think there is more to this than the riddle,” he said, turning over the two halves in his hand.
“What do you mean?” Hawke asked.
“The riddle is a problem in itself — Beneath the Highest City, Where The Samian’s Sacred Work Shall Guide — The Kingdom Of The Eldest Is Where What You Seek Doth Hide — I don’t know what this means yet, not fully at least — but look at the way the golden arc fits together to form a perfect disc.”
Demetriou placed the two pieces together, forming a whole. “If you look closely, the two halves of the sun wheel in the center align to form a kind of circular ridge, and the cross inside it is raised from the base — here, look closely at it — also please note the outer edge is made of polished ivory, elephant’s I should imagine.”
Hawke took the golden fragments in his hands and Scarlet peered over his shoulder as he pushed them together.
“I see what you mean,” he said, “but what’s the significance?”
Demetriou shook his head doubtfully, as if he were unsure of his next words. “It’s making me think of a particular book in Homer’s The Odyssey, where Odysseus hides his magnificent treasure from the world in his great storeroom. In that story, Penelope takes a key with an ivory handle and uses it to open the door to Odysseus’s storeroom — the place where he stored his gold and iron.”
“You think this is some kind of key, don't you?”
“I do.”
“You mean not only is it telling us the way to Poseidon’s tomb, but it’s also the key to gain entry once we get there?” asked Scarlet.
“Exactly!” Demetriou’s eyes flashed as he stared at the golden arcs in Hawke’s hands. “I think it is not really a simple golden disc, but a key disguised as one. It is a key! A key to the legendary vault of Poseidon.”
“And all we have to do is work out where in the entire world it is,” Hawke said skeptically.
“This cannot be so hard,” said Demetriou dismissively. “It must surely be in Greece, and even then we can narrow it down again — let me look at that riddle once more.”
Hawke handed him what they now knew was a key, and took a deep breath as the professor took it in his hands and ran his fingers over the ancient inscription.
“Ah — the kingdom of the eldest!” Demetriou said, rising from his chair and pacing excitedly up and down his study.
“What about it?” asked Scarlet. “You know what it means?”
“Possibly. I’ve been thinking about this part of the riddle since we left the museum.” He reached for a book on one of his shelves and opened it on his desk at a certain page. “Look here — you will see that Poseidon had two immortal brothers, Zeus and Hades.”
“And?”
“And each was given control of part of the world by their father, the mighty Kronos, the leader of all the Titans. Zeus was given dominion over the sky, Poseidon, as we all know, power over the oceans, and Hades was made god of the underworld.”
“Ryan was talking about this earlier,” Hawke said. “Kronos is the aftershave guy.”
“I’m sorry?” Demetriou looked confused.