The Minoan Cipher (A Matinicus “Matt” Hawkins Adventure Book 2) (23 page)

Sutherland had picked up the weakened fledgling and put it in her camera bag. Back home, she lined a wicker basket with a towel to provide a nest. The bird looked to be at death’s door but, like Lazarus, it’d recovered and started to eat the scraps of raw meat she fed it. Before long, it could stand, spread its wings, and clack its beak.

The bird was too young to be released. If she brought it to the museum, it would be put in a cage. It would be well fed and cared for. Visitors would gawk and take pictures. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Like the eagle, she had been attacked and thrown out of her army nest.

Molly knew she couldn’t keep the bird forever. This was no canary. The Golden eagle was one of the deadliest birds of prey in the world. Falconers used teams of the raptor to hunt down antelopes and wolves.

The eagle now measured more than two feet from the top of its head to its tail and could easily grow to more than a yard. When it stretched its wings the span was nearly six feet. The four talons on each yellow foot were like curved daggers and the hooked beak was more than two inches long. Gold-colored feathers grew around the back of the crown and the nape. The white plumage of a juvenile bird were quickly being replaced by feathers of rusty brown.

She had named the eagle Wheeling after the capital of her home state of West Virginia. The name fit the way the eagles flew—in wide, lazy circles. Since she didn’t know whether the bird was male or female, the uni-sex name would work for now. The bird was used to her, but if she got too close, it would spread its wings and shift from claw to claw. She didn’t know if Wheeling would attack when provoked, but this wasn’t a creature to be toyed with.

Since moving to mellow Oregon, the emotional numbness of her post-Army days had ebbed. She was making connections at the museum, but nothing strong or permanent. She had done better at making friends with a fierce raptor. Pathetic. She would be sad to see it go, but she knew that it was time to release the bird.

“Fixin to let you go by an by,” Molly said. “Better enjoy the room service while you can.”

She left the shed and returned to the kitchen to toast a bagel. Tromping around in the woods with a load of camera equipment was good exercise, but she knew that if she didn’t modify her own diet she’d blow up like a tick having dinner. She didn’t want to be like her triple-chinned Auntie Flo who used to wash French fries down with Diet Coke. So, instead of slathering the bagel with an inch of cream cheese, butter and jelly, she only used a dab, skimming the mixture lightly over the crust. It made her feel good, but she knew it was only a gesture.

After breakfast she went into her office and powered up the computer. Dozens of photos needed editing and filing. She read the email Calvin sent after his visit to Amsterdam and put the photo project aside. Finding someone who had been in the armed services would take little effort. Some people saw hacking into a database as a sneaky intrusion. She pictured it more like parting curtains and stepping into the room. The trick was to make yourself invisible to those already in the room.

She clicked on the Department of Defense site and parted the curtains wide enough to peek inside for her first sighting of Chad Williams.

Within fifteen minutes a photo popped up on her screen. Even with his buzz haircut Chad Williams was good-looking enough to be a movie star. Digging around, she learned he had been injured in Iraq and spent several months in Walter Reed hospital. She got into the hospital files and saw that he had extensive plastic surgery. He was honorably discharged. There was no forwarding address, so she tracked down family listed in the DOD files. Unmarried. Only child. Father and mother deceased. Molly forwarded the information to Calvin and Hawkins and went back into the kitchen for another bagel. This time she left out the jelly.

Seven thousand miles away from Oregon, Hawkins sat in the Gulfstream, reading the professor’s book. The cover art was a reproduction of the bull and acrobats fresco from the museum. Hawkins opened to the index section and looked under the
R
’s. He found
Robsham, Howard
, turned to the page and read the professor’s words.

“Howard Robsham was a self-educated Englishman whose family fortune allowed him to pursue his obsession with the ancient world. Professional scholars worked from their offices and conducted research in libraries and archives. They never went into the field, and looked down with disdain at those who scratched the dirt from an ancient ruin with a trowel. They castigated self-schooled archaeologists, like Heinrich Schliemann and Arthur Evans, for the sometimes destructive methods of investigation they used. To the dismay of these desk-bound academics, amateur Indiana Jones’s had made the big discoveries.

“Evans uncovered the ancient capital of Knossos and the palace that had been at the center of a lost civilization. He called it ‘Minoan’ after its leader, King Minos, and named the two writing scripts Linear A and Linear B. Michael Ventris was an architect by training, but he deciphered Linear B. It was a close-knit community. Howard Robsham had been a friend of Ventris.

“In the last year of his life, Robsham had come to Athens to read a paper at a conference of philologists, people who study historic languages. After the conference, he sailed to Crete looking for examples of the Minoan script known as Linear A. He heard about some inscribed tablets and tracked down the shepherd who had found them in what was apparently a cave shrine. Robsham negotiated the sale of more than two dozen tablets. A short time later, Robsham drove his car off a mountain road and died in the crash.

“It was a double blow to Minoan investigation. In a strange coincidence, the same year, only months earlier, Ventris died in a car accident in London. What has come to be called the Robsham Collection was never found; it was presumed the tablets had been destroyed in the accident.”

Hawkins put the book down and stared out the window at the shimmering turquoise sea. The accidental deaths of two major Minoan scholars was a strange coincidence. But what did it mean? Did it mean anything? He looked over at Abby, who had dozed off. He let his eyes rove over her perfect nose and lush lips. Many things had changed since their divorce, but he still thought she was the loveliest woman he had ever met.

“Beautiful,” he whispered.

He had forgotten that Abby had the hearing of a cat. She woke up, saw Hawkins looking at her, and said, “What did you say?”

Hawkins pointed out the window at the black cliffs and crescent shape that distinguished Santorini from other Aegean islands. A moment later the pilot asked them to make sure their seat belts were fastened.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Paris, France

The man splashed through the Paris sewers with a look of sheer terror on his handsome face. He would have run faster, but he was carrying an unconscious young woman over his shoulder and the dead weight slowed him down. In the other hand was a sputtering torch. He kept glancing over his shoulder, but the danger lay ahead. The creature that stepped out of an alcove and crouched in his path wore a ragged shirt and pants, and was standing on two legs like a human. But its face, hands and paw-like bare feet were covered with thick fur. The teeth that it bared as it uttered a low growl were those of a canine. With no other weapon to protect him, the running man thrust the torch into the creature’s face. It reeled and let out a loud howl, then turned and disappeared into the darkness.

Someone yelled, “Cut!” and the tunnel was flooded with light.

The woman slung over the man’s shoulder lifted her head, “Let me down, you brute.”

He set her on her feet and squinted against the glare of floodlights.

“Where’s Wolfie?”

The creature walked into the light, and said, “Where do you think I’d be after you tried to set my whiskers on fire?”

The woman laughed, “Poor doggy. You wouldn’t get such rough treatment if you didn’t jump out and scare people.” She went over and kissed the furry cheek. “Ugh. Smells like burnt plastic.”

The young man grinned, “Sorry Wolfie. Didn’t mean to singe you. We’ll buy you some dog biscuits after the shoot.”

The creature lifted the mask off his face to reveal another handsome actor. “I’ll settle for a Pernod, unless I have to do another take.”

Lily Porter stepped out from behind the lights. “If this was Masterpiece Theatre that’s exactly what I’d do. The Hidden History channel is a cheapskate and we can’t afford to wreck another mask. But I think there’s room in the budget to celebrate the end of the shoot. Let’s put
Werewolves of Paris
in the can with style.”

The three actors cheered, joined by the electricians and cameraman. No one liked working in the damp, smelly, rat-infested sewer system. The technical crew started to take down the lights and pack up the camera. Chatting happily, Lily and the actors headed for the ladder that would take them to the street. Yellow tape had been stretched on pylons around the manhole opening.

Lily said she would meet them in a nearby brasserie after they had a chance to shower and change their clothes. She waited for the technical crew to emerge from below the street and filled the team in on the plans, then headed to the hotel to clean up.

She showered for a long time, dried her reddish-blonde hair, and changed from her coveralls into a short leather black dress, high boots, horizontally-striped leggings and a waist-length black leather jacket. Lily was tall and slender and would have looked good in a burlap bag. She left the hotel and was walking to the brasserie when she heard her phone chirp. She put the phone to her ear and looked up the street.

“I see you,” she said.

The black Citroen sedan pulled up to the curb seconds later. A rugged-looking driver got out and opened the back door. She slid in beside Salazar who ordered the chauffeur to take them for a drive.

“You should have told me you were coming,” Lily said. “I don’t like surprises.”

“My apologies. I thought it best to meet in person and was on my way to your hotel. I heard from Crete. The news is not good.”

“Don’t waste my time with unnecessary drama, Salazar.”

“Then I’ll get right to the point. Hawkins has escaped.”

“And the device escaped with him, I assume.”

“As far as we know, it is still with him. It gets worse. Two of the Priors who went after him are dead.”

Lily’s jaw hardened.

“Tell me what happened. From the beginning. Omit no detail.”

“Our informant told us that Hawkins was going to Crete to see Professor Vedrakis at Gournia. As you asked, I passed the information on to the team of Priors, who went there, killed the professor, making it look like an accident, and waited to ambush Hawkins, only to flee when someone started shooting at them.”

“Did they see the shooter?”

“No. He or she was hiding behind some rocks.”

“Is Gournia where the Priors died?”

“That came later. They followed Hawkins to the island of Spinalonga. A short time later, the Priors were found dead. The police believe that they fell down some stone stairways.”

“What of the others in their team?”

“The Priors, called North and South, stayed on the mainland to cut off escape. When they lost contact with the other men, they followed them to Spinalonga. The bodies of East and West had been found by then. Hawkins. He had escaped.”

The temperature in the car seemed to drop twenty degrees. Salazar squirmed under the unrelenting stare. When Lily spoke again, her voice was harsh.

“Priors are trained assassins, Salazar. They don’t fall down stairways. Was Hawkins alone?”

“No. He was with a woman.”

“Find out who she is. Where are the surviving Priors?”

“Still on Crete, waiting for orders.”

She thought for a moment about the crone’s comment back at the Paris sanatorium. How the descendant of King Minos was disturbing the equilibrium of the Way of the Axe. It had all started with Kalliste’s intention to identify the ancient shipwreck. It was Kalliste who brought Hawkins in, Kalliste who connected Hawkins to Vedrakis. It had been right in front of her eyes all this time.

“Tell them I want them to go to Athens immediately,” she snapped. “Kalliste Kalchis has an apartment there.” She rattled off the address of the apartment building. “Make her tell them where Hawkins is.”

“Should she be disposed of once she does that?”

“No. Keep her alive. Now tell me about the status of the event in the United States.”

“Good news there. The demolition team has the explosive charges in place. All is ready when you give the word. Nothing can go wrong.”

“Things have been going wrong since the discovery of the ship. This is too much to be coincidence. There are unseen forces at work here, Salazar.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Mother Goddess is angry. She is warning us that she is thirsty for blood. The sacrifice must be of the highest order. No prostitutes dragged off the street as in the past.”

The car had gone in a circle and was back where it had originally picked Lily up. She got out and watched it disappear into the Paris traffic. She stood there as if in a bubble that insulated her from the noise of the city. In that unnatural silence, the voice of the crone called from afar.