Clive Cussler - The Navigator

“Ophir,” he said.

“I saw that. What does it mean?”

“Ophir was the legendary location of King Solomon’s mines.”

“I always thought that was something somebody made up,” Evans said.

“Perhaps,” Douglas said. “The fact is, Solomon amassed great amounts of gold in his lifetime. The source of that gold has always been a mystery.”

“Based on what you say, and this material, Jefferson believed Ophir was in North America. Isn’t that crazy?”

Douglas didn’t answer. He read the second translation.

“Sacred relic.”

“More craziness. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not sure. The most sacred relic associated with Solomon would have been the Ark of the Covenant.”

“You’re saying Jefferson’s biblical object is the Ark ?”

“Not necessarily. The sacred relic could be Solomon’s sock. ” Douglas fiddled with a ballpoint pen. “God, I wish I could smoke my pipe at times like this.”

“What’s wrong, Hank? Jefferson or not, this thing about the Ark sounds like a fairy tale. There probably isn’t a word of truth in this stuff.”

“Makes no difference if it’s true or not,” Douglas said. “It’s all about symbols. ”

“I don’t understand. What’s the big deal?”

“This is trouble any way you look at it. Remember what happened at the TempleMount in 1969, and again back in 1982?”

“Sure. An Australian religious fanatic set the mosque on the mount on fire, and later a religious group was arrested for plotting to blow it up.”

“What would have happened if they had been successful in clearing the mount to make way for the rebuilding of Solomon’s third temple?”

“Their action could have provoked a strong reaction, to say the least.”

“Now imagine that reaction if the discovery of Solomon’s sacred relic is used as an excuse to build a new temple and that the object is in the United States.”

“Given the paranoid nature of that part of the world, some people would say that it was another U.S. plot against Islam.”

“That’s right. The U.S. would be open to charges that it is scheming to clear the TempleMount of any Muslim presence. Every extremist of every major religion would be brought into this mess.”

“Damn!” Evans said. “This stuff is hot!”

“Firehouse material,” Douglas said.

The color drained from Evans’s face. “What do we do with it?” he said.

“We’ve got to go to the secretary of state. Who else knows about the Jefferson file?”

“Professor DeVries and his student from the NSA museum. Then there’s the researcher from the American Philosophical Society. The NSA people know how to keep their mouths shut.”

“Nothing stays a secret longer than six months in Washington,” Douglas said. “We’ve got to think of ways to undermine the story so that when it does come out, this country has plausible deniability.”

“How do we do that? The NSA says the material is authentic.”

“The NSA is a secret organization. It can say it never heard of this stuff. I say we attack the basic premise. That it would be impossible for a Phoenician ship to have made the trip from the eastern Mediterranean to North America. The sailing skills and technology of the day would not have allowed it.”

“Do we know that for a fact?”

“No. We’ll need a source to help lay the foundation for our argument.”

“How about the National Underwater and Marine Agency? NUMA has the experts, the database, and they know how to be discreet. I’ve got a few contacts over there.”

Douglas nodded. “You get busy on that. I’ll set up a meeting with the undersecretary. Get back to me in an hour.”

After Evans had departed, Douglas reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a pipe and tobacco pouch. Although his office was off-limits to smoking, he stuffed the pipe bowl with tobacco and lit up. With the smoke curling around his head, he leaned back in his chair and let his thoughts drift.

It all still seemed so fantastic. Maybe it was a hoax, as Evans theorized. He dove into the Jefferson file, reading every word this time.

Like many African Americans, Douglas was ambivalent about Thomas Jefferson. He recognized the man’s genius and greatness but found it hard to reconcile that with the fact that Jefferson kept slaves. As he reread the file material, he couldn’t help connect with its author on a human level. Although Jefferson’s correspondence with Lewis showed him as cool and competent, there was no doubt that the man was worried.

Douglas could have been excused if the hand holding the pages shook slightly.

The potential for chaos in today’s world was far greater than Jefferson could ever have dreamed of.

Chapter 19

AUSTIN SAT IN HIS STUDY hunting the sea marauders who had hijacked the containership. The magic carpet that carried him over the virtual sea was a satellite-imaging system operated by NUMA. Dubbed NUMASat, the sophisticated system had been developed by the agency’s scientists and technicians to provide instantaneous pictures of the world’s oceans. Satellites circled four hundred miles above the earth in orbits that allowed their cameras and other remote-sensing equipment to transmit information from any point on the globe.

The satellites transmitted optical or infrared pictures of water surface temperature, currents, phytoplankton, chlorophyll, cloud cover, meteorological and other vital data. The system was available free of charge to anyone with a computer, and was heavily used by scientists and nonscientists around the world.

Austin was sitting in front of a twenty-four-inch-wide computer monitor. He was casually dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and sandals. He washed down a couple of aspirin with a beer and punched ENTER on his keyboard. A satellite image of the rugged Newfoundland coast materialized on the screen.

“Okay, Joe,” he said into his speakerphone. “I’m looking at St. John’s and points east.”

“Gotcha.” Zavala had the same image on a computer screen in his NUMA office. “I’ll zoom in.”

A shimmering bluish white rectangle popped up on Austin’s screen, superimposing itself on a section of Atlantic Ocean. Zavala expanded the size of the square. Tiny black specks appeared. The specks grew in size and began to assume the long, slim shape of ships. The time and date in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen indicated that the picture had been taken several days before.

“How close can you go?” Austin said.

“Pick a target.”

Austin clicked his computer cursor on a blip. The camera seemed to rush at the target. Hundreds of flopping fish filled the screen. Then the camera pulled back to show a fish hold and a deck covered with the booms and winches of an oceangoing fishing boat.

“Impressive,” Austin said.

“Yeager used Max to pump some hormones into NUMASat’s normal search function. He says it can tell you the color of a sand flea’s eyes.”

Hiram Yeager was NUMA’s resident computer genius and director of the vast computer complex he called Max, which occupied the entire tenth floor of NUMA’s green-glass-faced tower overlooking the Potomac River.

“Their eyes are blue,” Austin said.

“Really?”

“Kidding. But the resolution is better than anything I’ve seen.”

“Before Yeager beefed up the system, the best we could get was one yard square in black and white and four yards in color. He’s got it down to one yard square in color,” Zavala said. “What you’re seeing on the screen has been enhanced by information coming in from other satellites and military and intelligence systems.”