Back on board, Zavala peeled out of his wet suit, and glanced toward the wooded shore. “How did those guys find us way out here?”
Austin picked up his shirt and slipped the satellite phone from the pocket. “They may have zeroed in on the phone signal. Let’s not take any chances.”
He winged the phone as far as he could and watched it splash into the water. Then he thanked Mustapha for his quick-witted work with the boat hook and apologized for putting him and his boat in jeopardy and ruining his awning. The Turk took it in good spirits, but he wondered if he could call it a day and get paid. Austin peeled off enough Turkish lira to choke a horse.
“One more favor. We need to go somewhere we can be undisturbed,” he said.
“No problem.” The captain tucked the bills into his pocket. “There’s a place a few miles from here.”
LESS THAN half an hour later, Mustapha steered his boat into a quiet cove and anchored behind an outcropping of land. Mustapha said that local mariners avoided the inlet because the rocks hidden under the surface at the entrance made it tricky to navigate.
Zavala sat in the bow with the machine pistol resting in his lap. Carina gathered up a bag holding art supplies she had bought the day before and got into the skiff with Austin. He rowed to the launch platform, and they climbed aboard.
Carina leaned over the statue. “I feel guilty disturbing his sleep after all these years,” she said with undisguised tenderness.
“He’s probably glad to have a beautiful lady keep him company,” Austin said. “Look at his smiling face.”
Carina brushed away the dried marine vegetation clinging to the statue’s mouth. The face was that of a young bearded man with a strong nose and chin. Like the original statue, he wore a neck pendant engraved with a horse head and palm tree, a kilt around his waist, and sandals on his feet. The lack of arms gave him the grotesque aspect of a disaster victim.
Carina opened her bag, pulled out two sponges, and handed one to Austin. Working together, they cleaned every square inch of bronze. Carina laid out a brush, a square of cheesecloth, and a jar of liquid latex. She applied multiple layers of latex to the statue’s face, pendant, and other sections, then stiffened the layers with cheesecloth. The dried layers were peeled off, labeled with a marking pen, and carefully placed in the bag.
“It’s done,” she said, peeling off the final mold.
“What about the cat?” Austin said. “He was part of the crew.”
“Absolutely right,” Carina said with a smile. She applied the latex process to the side and half-turned face of the cat.
After the cast hardened, she removed it. Her work was done, but she was reluctant to leave.
“What should we do with him?” she said.
“We can’t bring the statue back,” Austin said. “It’s too heavy to move without specialized equipment, and transporting it overland would be a major problem. Someone is bound to see us. The Turkish authorities do not look kindly on foreigners who steal the country’s antiquities.”
Carina had a sad look in her eyes. She gave the statue a kiss on both cheeks. She patted the bronze forehead and got back into the skiff. Back on the boat, Austin asked Mustapha the depth of the water in the cove. The Turk said it was around fifty to sixty feet deep.
Austin and Zavala rowed back to the launch platform and, bracing their backs, shoved the statue with their feet. The statue teetered on the edge. One final push sent it over the side. The Navigator plunged into the depths, as if eager to return to the sea, and quickly disappeared from sight.
Chapter 30
THOUSANDS OF MILES FROM Turkish waters, the Navigator’s twin rotated slowly on a circular pedestal about a foot high, shimmering like an angry god under the battery of lights that bathed its bronze skin in a polarized glow.
A ghostly white, three-dimensional X-ray image of the Navigator pivoted on a large wall screen. Arrays of electronic probes surrounded the ancient statue.
Three men sat in leather chairs facing the screen. Baltazar was enthroned in the center. At his right was Dr. Morris Gray, an expert in the use of computed tomography. On Baltazar’s left was Dr. John Defoe, an authority in Phoenician history and art. Both scientists had been absorbed into Baltazar’s corporate empire with the expectation that the statue eventually would be found.
Gray aimed his laser pointer at the screen. “The X-ray technique we’re using here is similar to the CT scans employed in hospitals,” he said. “We take photographic slices of the object. The computer renders the photos into a 3-D image.”
Baltazar was slouched in his chair, his thick fingers entwined, his gaze fixed on the pale image projected against a dark blue background. He had waited for this moment for years.
“And what does your magic lantern tell us, Dr. Gray?” he rumbled.
Gray smiled slightly. He moved the laser’s red dot to a display panel, one of several that ran from top to bottom along the right side of the monitor.
“Each box shows information taken from the probes. This displays the statue’s metal composition. The bronze is the standard ninety percent copper and ten percent tin. The other boxes deal with thickness, tensile strength, as well as information that’s not pertinent.”
“What are those dark areas on the statue?” Baltazar asked.
“The statue was made with the lost wax process,” Defoe said. “The artist made a clay form, which was encased in wax, then clay again. The X-ray shows the channels and vents that were drilled in the outer shell to allow wax and gas to escape and molten metal to be poured in. The statue was fabricated in pieces, so we’re also looking at rivet points and hammer marks.”
“All very interesting,” Baltazar said. “But what is inside the statue?”
“The X-ray shows nothing behind the bronze exterior except for a hollow space,” Gray answered.
“What about the exterior?”
“A lot more promising.” Gray produced a slim remote control from his suit jacket and pointed it at the screen. The ghostly figure disappeared. Filling the screen was a close-up of the statue’s face. “I’ll let Dr. Defoe deal with this area.”
Defoe squinted at the screen through round-framed glasses. “The damage makes it difficult to gauge the subject’s age, but, judging from the muscular body, he is probably in his twenties.”
“Forever young,” Baltazar observed in a rare poetic moment.
“The conical hat is similar to that we see in pictures and sculptures of Phoenician sailors. The beard and hair have me puzzled. The way they are layered denotes someone of upper-class Phoenician society, yet he is garbed in the kilt and sandals of a simple sailor.”
“Go on,” Baltazar said. There was no discernible change in his expression despite his growing excitement.
The image morphed into a close-up view of the pendant around the Navigator’s neck. “This pendant replicates a Phoenician coin design,” Defoe said. “The horse is the symbol for Phoenicia. The uprooted palm tree to its right denotes a colony. Here’s where things get intriguing.”
The red dot jumped to a semicircular space below the horse head and palm tree where there was a horizontal line of squiggles.
“Runes?” Baltazar said.
“That was the common assumption when figures like these were seen on the coins. However, none matched any known Phoenician script. The markings remained a puzzle for years. Then a geologist at MountHolyokeCollege named Mark McMenamin came up with a startling new theory. He submitted the symbols to computer enhancement, which I will do here.”
The symbols on the screen became sharper and more defined.
“This pattern looks familiar,” Baltazar said.