Clive Cussler - The Navigator

He was hoping his ruminations would produce a picture with the clarity of a Rembrandt, but what he got was a Jackson Pollock abstract. He rose from his chair, went to a bookcase, and found Anthony Saxon’s book. He settled back into his chair and began to read.

ANTHONY SAXON was a true adventurer. He had hacked his way through the jungle to discover long-lost South American ruins. He had narrowly escaped death at the hands of nomadic desert tribesmen. He had rummaged through countless dusty tombs and made the acquaintance of numerous mummies. If only a tenth of what he wrote was true, Saxon was cut from the same mold as such famous explorers as Hiram Bingham, Stanley and Livingstone, and Indiana Jones.

Several years before, Saxon had launched what could have been his greatest adventure. He intended to sail a replica of a Phoenician ship from the Red Sea to the coast of North America. The Pacific Ocean crossing would have proven his theory that Ophir, the fabled site of King Solomon’s mines, was in the Americas. However, the ship burned to the waterline one night under mysterious circumstances.

Saxon believed that Ophir was not a single place but the code name for several sources of Solomon’s wealth. He theorized that Solomon launched two fleets under the direction of Hiram, the Phoenician admiral. One flotilla left from the Red Sea. The other flotilla crossed the Atlantic, after passing through the Straits of Gibraltar.

Saxon had found a strange glyph in a Peruvian ruin that matched similar symbols inscribed on tablets in Lebanon and Syria. He called the glyph the Tarshish symbol, and thought it might have been short-hand for “Ophir.” There were several photos of the glyph in his book.

Austin stared at the pictures.

The symbol was a horizontal line with back-to-back Z s at each end, identical to the mark carved into the Navigator ’s kilt and the side of the bronze cat.

Saxon had exhausted every avenue of research on Solomon and Ophir. Then, in a chapter entitled “Epiphany,” he described how he’d hit upon the idea of searching for the Queen of Sheba. No one was closer to Solomon than Sheba. Maybe they shared pillow talk. His quest for Ophir took a backseat to the search for Sheba’s tomb.

Saxon had spent years and traveled thousands of miles in his quest for the Queen of Sheba. He had become infatuated with the dead queen. Saxon believed that Sheba was real, not a legend as some experts contended; that she was dark-skinned, and probably from the Yemen area. He recounted the legend of Solomon and Sheba. Curious about the stories she had heard about Solomon’s wisdom, she went to visit him. Their attraction for each other blossomed; they had a child. Eventually, she returned home, to tend to her own kingdom. Their son was thought to have become king of Ethiopia.

A dark-skinned beauty with links to Ethiopia, Austin mused. He glanced toward the stairs leading to the turret bedroom.

Austin finished the last chapter an hour later and put the book down. He checked the doors, turned off the lights, and quietly ascended the spiral staircase to the bedroom. He undressed, slid under the sheets without awakening Carina, put his arm protectively around her warm body, and quickly fell asleep.

CARINA’S VOICE woke him up early the next morning. She had brewed a pot of coffee and was on the phone making train reservations and arrangements with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After they showered, dressed, and had breakfast, Austin drove Carina to Union Station. She planted a kiss on his lips and said she would return to Washington that night. She would call him when the train left New York.

From Union Station, Austin drove to the NUMA tower. He took the elevator from the underground garage to the fifteenth floor, followed a corridor, and stepped through a doorway into a large, dimly lit space. A wide, curving wall was lined with glowing television screens that projected information collected by NUMASat.

The all-seeing system had gained it the nickname as the “Eye of Sauron” among the more literary-minded at NUMA. Jack Wilmut, the keeper of the eye, bore no resemblance to the fearsome creatures from a Tolkien saga. Wilmut was a mild-mannered man in his forties who supervised the NUMASat system from an elaborate console in the center of the room.

On both sides of the console were smaller computer workstations. Satellite interpreters fielded the dozens of queries that came in from scientists, universities, and ocean-related organizations from around the world.

Austin wondered why geniuses tended to be eccentric when it came to hair. Einstein. Beethoven. Mark Twain. Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor. NUMA’s bearded computer whiz, Hiram Yeager. Wilmut, a plumpish man in his forties, affected a double comb-over parted just above the ears.

Austin came up behind Wilmut and in his deepest voice said, “Greetings, O all-seeing Sauron.”

Wilmut spun around in his chair and grinned with delight.

“ Greetings, Mortal. I was expecting you.”

“The Eye of Sauron sees all, knows all,” Austin said.

“Hell, no,” Wilmut replied. “I got your e-mail and pictures from Turkey. Pull up a seat and tell me how I can help.”

Austin plunked down in a swivel chair. “The photos show plaster casts made from the markings on an ancient statue. I think the squiggly lines are the contours of a map. Possibly a location on the East Coast. I wondered if the map could be compared to satellite photos.”

In answer, Wilmut clicked the computer mouse. The picture Austin had taken of the Navigator ’s cat appeared within a rectangle. The image was sharper than on the original photo. “I’ve enhanced the picture,” Wilmut explained. “Got rid of the gray areas, fuzzy edges, and miscellaneous garbage. The borders help in the visualization.”

Austin tapped the screen with his forefinger. “This symbol may denote a sunken ship. The problem is, I don’t know if that square is one mile across. Or ten. Or even a hundred.”

“The image is similar to a fingerprint,” Wilmut said. “Prints are matched according to ridge characteristics called Galton details, points of identity or minutiae. You ID prints by comparing minutiae points. Ridge characteristics. Islands. Bifurcation. I’ve created an algorithm that will match the points on the primitive map with satellite photos. I’ll have the NUMASat computer look at each one of those possibilities. It will take a little while.”

Austin told Wilmut he would be in conference but to call when he had some news, and took the elevator down to another floor. He met Zavala in the hallway and they walked to the conference room together. The walls were hung with pictures of sailing ships. The centerpiece was a long oak conference table that seemed to float like a ship at sea on the thick blue carpet.

The Trouts sat at the table with a serious-faced young woman Austin assumed was Angela Worth. Angela was still in something of a state of shock. In the space of a few hours, she had met the Trouts, her boss had been murdered, and an attempt made on her life. She was still reeling from those events when she was drawn into the very heart of NUMA, an agency whose exploits she had only heard about.

Then the door opened, and the two men who came into the room could have stepped out of an adventure novel. The husky man with the piercing blue-green eyes and strange pale hair came over and introduced himself and his darkly handsome friend. She was practically speechless.

They sat at the table and Paul handed them copies of the computer-generated ship of Tarshish. “We think this is the type of vessel that would have sailed to North America. We didn’t get far on the transatlantic route, so we tried another avenue. We noticed a series of connections to the Philosophical Society and followed it up. That’s when we met Angela.”