The night before, he and Tommy had spent over an hour carefully opening the stone cylinder. They’d been surprised at how well the wax had sealed the cap into place, especially after such a long time and what had to be extreme conditions on the mountain. Temperatures would drop to well below freezing during the winter, and the summers could get fairly hot. Tommy reasoned that inside the miniature cave of the spring, temperatures would stay more consistent, and thus not damage the object or its contents.
With white gloves and special tools, the two managed to remove the cap and open the ancient tube. Sean held the cylinder up to the light and looked inside. The hollowed out space was about half an inch in diameter, only big enough to hold a small piece of paper, or in this case, a tiny scroll. Sean reached in with a pair of tweezers and ever so gently removed the roll of animal skin.
After twenty minutes of cautiously rolling the scroll out a few millimeters at a time, the two men stared down at what appeared to be a map of ancient Greece. The detail was remarkable, even given the abilities ancient cartographers displayed in many instances. Whoever had drawn it had taken into account most of the surrounding islands, along with providing their names.
Tommy’s wonder at the aged document rapidly turned to confusion. “I don’t understand. This is just an old map of Greece. I expected there to be an X or something marking the spot.”
Sean would normally have laughed at his friend’s comment; instead, his irritation had overridden his sense of humor. “Why would Caesar go to all that trouble to leave a map with no directions on it?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Tommy agreed.
Sean removed the white gloves and rested both palms flat on the work table, leaning over it and scanning the map slowly, taking in every single detail. “We have Corfu right here,” he said, pointing at the map. He moved his finger to a place where another city had been labeled. “Thessaloniki is here.” Then he waved the finger around at all the islands on the bottom of the scroll. “He even made sure to detail the names of all these islands. But why?”
Sean lay in the soft bed, staring at the window with a dazed consciousness. They’d gone to bed, unable to figure out what the meaning of the map could be. What good was a map that didn’t tell the reader where to go? Sean had sealed the map in a large plastic bag to preserve it and left it on the desk. Both men were exhausted and decided that maybe a fresh pair of eyes would help them see things a little more clearly in the morning.
Outside his hotel room window, Sean could hear the streets of Rome beginning their morning activities. He rolled over and stared at the ceiling for a second before a deep voice nearly startled him right out of the bed.
“Good morning. Sleep well?”
Sean quickly flipped over, grabbing the gun from under the pillow next to the one he’d used. He let go of the weapon when his eyes adjusted to see who had spoken to him. Agent Yarbrough sat in the corner near the closet with one leg crossed over his knee. His right arm was in a sling, but he was dressed in his usual secret service attire as if he were going back to work that same day.
“Jeez, Yarbrough. You scared the crap out of me. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.” Sean swung his legs over the edge of the bed and planted his feet on the thinly carpeted floor. He always slept in a T-shirt and boxers. His left hand reached out and grabbed the khakis from the back of a nearby chair. He stood up, slid the pants on, and stared curiously over at the agent. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be in the hospital.”
“I was…for a few hours,” he answered with a sly grin. “Gonna take more than a sniper bullet to keep me down. I was lucky. Whoever the shooter was didn’t use a big round.” He glanced down at the sling. “It’ll be a while before I throw a baseball again, but I’m okay.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Sean said as he zipped up his pants. “But that still doesn’t answer the question as to why you’re here.”
“Always direct, huh?”
“Usually. I don’t like to beat around the bush.”
Yarbrough smiled. “I like that. I’m sure the president would too.” The agent paused for a second and then went on. “He wants an update on your progress.”
“The president?”
Yarbrough nodded. “According to our sources, Gikas has been buying up companies left and right in Greece.”
“Yeah, you guys mentioned that before.”
“It would seem he is becoming more aggressive now. One of Gikas’s main rivals has disappeared, along with his wife. They have a young boy named Niki who has also disappeared.”
Sean’s eyebrows furrowed. “You think Gikas killed them?”
“We don’t know for sure,” Yarbrough shrugged. “But it’s only a matter of time until he makes a power play to take over the Greek government.”
Sean shook his head and made his way over to the workstation where the map still lay on the surface, shrouded in clear plastic. “So what?” he asked and turned back around to face Yarbrough. “If the people want a new leader, isn’t it their right to choose who that leader is? If they don’t want Gikas they can pick someone else.”
“Sure,” Yarbrough said with a slow nod. “But not if he begins to starve his people into submission.”
The dubious look on Sean’s face transitioned to concern. “Starve?”
“Our intel on the Greek situation is that Gikas controls a significant percentage of food distribution companies all across the country. Right now, those channels are only running at 70 percent capacity, down 20 percent from two weeks ago.”
“He’s closing the supply chains,” Sean realized out loud. “When too many people begin to starve, they’ll riot in the streets. Government officials will be publicly executed.”
“And they will be all too happy to vote for someone who can feed them,” Yarbrough finished Sean’s thought.
Sean considered the theory. Would Gikas really starve tens of thousands of his fellow countrymen? If he did, chaos would certainly ensue. “A lot of people will die,” he said finally.
“Yep. And we have a feeling that would only be the tip of the iceberg.”
Sean pulled a chair over and sat in it backward, resting his arms on the top of its back. “Why do I feel like you’re about to tell me why the president wanted me involved from the beginning?”
Yarbrough held up a hand. “It’s not like that, Sean. We didn’t have enough information to be sure at first. Now it looks like our suspicions were right all along.” He swallowed hard and then started speaking again. “We believe that Gikas is going to try to crash the European stock market.”
The absurd-sounding sentence hung in the air for a moment as Sean took in the information. His eyes narrowed. “How would he do that, with a computer virus? The world’s stock exchanges are the most secure computer systems around. The best hackers on the planet wouldn’t dare touch them with a ten-foot fiber optic pole.”
The joke was lost on Yarbrough. Instead, he stayed locked in on Sean’s eyes. “He isn’t going to use a virus. He’s going to use the Eye of Zeus.”
Things quickly began to add up in Sean’s mind. “If the device really can tell the future, Gikas could make every correct move on the stock market. He could buy and sell at just the right times. He’d make billions in a matter of weeks.”
“And worse,” Yarbrough added. “He could destroy companies if he wanted. In a position of power, where money doesn’t matter, Gikas would be able to inflate the value of his holdings. He could send prices of everything from corn to toilet paper through the roof. If he had access to what the markets were going to do, he could become the most powerful man in Europe in less than a month. And he would have the power to bring much of the continent to its knees.”