Tom followed the river round in a large u-shape.
Sam asked, “You know where you’re going?”
“No!”
His eyes turned to Goddard. “What about you?”
Goddard glanced at his surroundings, recognition filling his eyes. “Yes. Where are you trying to get to?”
“Out of here. Fastest route possible.”
Goddard squinted, then moving up ahead, toward Tom, he said, “Take this left.”
Tom took the left, swerving past another gondola.
At the end of the canal it opened up to a much wider river.
“Go right!” Goddard said. “This is the Grand Canal.”
Clear from the constraints of the narrow canals, Tom opened up the throttles, and the motorboat raced ahead.
Sam expelled a deep breath of air as they tore away with the breeze in his hair, as every second took them farther away from their attackers. Nearly at the mouth of the Grand Canal Sam could practically taste freedom on the horizon.
Round the next bend, they came face to face with the black stealth boat.
Tom swerved to the right down Rio de Noale, sending a sharp bow wave in an ever-expanding arc, across the Grand Canal.
The stealth boat must have circled around on the outside of the Venetian Lagoon — or they had a second vessel — either way, it meant they were dealing with a well-funded, well-equipped, and well-orchestrated team of mercenaries.
The Rio de Noale was a particularly narrow canal that cut through the bulk of Venice in a straight line out to the Isola di San Michele — an island cemetery.
Being in a straight canal, Tom was able to bring the boat up to its maximum speed, but it was going to do nothing to help them escape. They already knew it was impossible to escape the faster motorboat.
“I can’t outrun them!” Tom said, “You got a plan?”
“I’m working on it,” Sam said, through gritted teeth.
He fumbled with a yellow twenty-gallon reserve fuel container, and EPA be damned, he dropped it over the stern.
The yellow container bobbed up and down on the surface of the water in the middle of the canal.
Sam placed his eye up to the sniper rifle’s telescopic scope.
Through his right eye he lined the crosshairs up with the gasoline container. He blinked, and his left eye spotted the stealth boat as it raced into the canal.
He squeezed the trigger.
The shot struck the fuel container.
It sparked, causing the gasoline to light up in a giant ball of fire.
A torrent of heat burst through the narrow confines of the canal, hitting the stealth boat head on. The boat ploughed through the flames and flipped upside down, where its momentum dragged it forward, smashing into the pontoon of a masonry bridge — sending its fiberglass hull splintering into hundreds of fractured pieces.
Tom eased off the throttle, taking their speed to a more survivable pace, and came out the opposite end of Rio de Noale. Back in the open waters of the outer lagoon, he opened the throttles fully, and they raced toward the Marco Polo International Airport.
Goddard said, “Well, I think that got rid of them this time.”
“I’d say so.” Sam grinned. “Now do you want to tell me why someone went to the trouble of stealing an entire passenger jet just to get to you — and for that matter, why you should be so surprised that I of all people have turned up to protect you?”
Goddard opened his mouth to speak, turned his head to gaze back at Campanile di San Marco, the bell tower, and highest point in Venice, and then said, “What do you know about the Eternity Masks?”
Chapter Forty-Two
Sam searched his mental memory banks for the reference, but was coming up blank. “Nothing. Why? What should I know?”
“I don’t know. I thought, given your knowledge of the Master Builders, you might have heard about them.”
The Master Builders were an ancient race of highly intelligent people who Sam believed helped design and build some of the greatest engineering feats on Earth, including the great pyramids. Most archeologists dismissed his theory as being fanciful at best.
Sam’s lips curled into a wry smile. “What do you know about the Master Builders?”
“I know enough,” Goddard said, his voice in a tone that inflected he didn’t need to be questioned further on his knowledge. “I know that you’ve spent years trying to prove their existence.”
Sam wanted to know more about how Goddard knew about the Master Builders, but realized he wasn’t going to get anything yet. Instead, he asked, “How do the Master Builders fit in with the Eternity Masks?”
Goddard’s gaze returned from the now distant skyline of Venice, landing directly on Sam’s searching eyes. “Everything. It has everything to do with the Master Builders.”
Sam smiled. “So, are you going to fill us in, or should we just drop you off at the wharf and we’ll go our separate ways?”
Goddard ignored his quip. “Do you know how many relatively intelligent bipeds sharing the genus of Homo roamed the Earth up until a hundred thousand years ago?”
“Seven,” Sam replied without hesitation, meeting Goddard’s eye. “In addition to Homo sapiens, there were still Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo habilis, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo naledi, and Homo neanderthalensis.”
Goddard laughed. “Well done. Good to see you were paying attention, somewhere along the way.”
Sam was starting to see what this was all about, but he asked, “Seven subspecies of human, reduced to just one, Homo-sapiens — the most successful, albeit most destructive of the lot.”
“Right.”
Sam sighed, waiting for him to continue.
Goddard’s eyes drifted toward the San Giuliano bridge, and then said, “Given what we know about the human race, how do you think seven subspecies of humans would have fared if they were still alive today?”
Nearly eight billion Homo sapiens are probably enough for the world. “Poorly.”
“Exactly. That’s what the ancient Master Builders thought.”
“The Master Builders wiped out the other six sub-species of human?”
Goddard crossed his arms. “No. I’m afraid we did that ourselves without their help.”
“Then what?”
“The Master Builders gave us the Eternity Masks.” Goddard searched Sam’s face for recognition, finding none, he continued. “The Master Builders knew that the world couldn’t sustain all seven. Legend goes that they devised a plan to make the two most successful species thrive, taking their rightful position on the top of the evolutionary ladder.”
Sam asked, “What was supposed to happen to the other species?”
“I don’t know, but I guess they expected them to become extinct, or simply accept a lower position in the intelligence chain — think about apes that were smart enough to perform complex tasks.”
“Like a slave race?”
Goddard spread his hands and shrugged. “Hey I didn’t make the rules.”
The Master Builders were setting up a game of wits. The winners won the divine right to live. The losers, became extinct, or submitted to slavery.
Sam rolled the concept around in the back of his mind.
It made sense to him.
The Master Builders, although human, had a genetic disorder that prevented their telomeres from shortening, and as a consequence, lived exceptionally long lives, in excess of three hundred or more years. They were used to being smarter than those around them, more powerful, and treated like Gods.