Clive Cussler - Treasure

Nichols paused to collect his thoughts. "If I tell you, I swear to God you'll think I should be fitted for a straitjacket."

Yaeger pulled off his granny reading glasses, tucked them into the pocket of a denim jacket, shuffled and stacked a pile of computer reports, then settled back in his chair and sipped from a can of diet soda.

"Zilch," he said almost sadly. "A wasted effort up and down the line. A 1,600-year-old trail is too cold to follow without solid data. A computer can't go back in time and tell you exactly how it was."

"Maybe Dr. Gronquist can determine where the Serapes made landfall after he's had a chance to study the artifacts," Lily said optimistically.

Pitt sat two rows below and off to one side from the others in NUMAs small amphitheater. "I talked to him by radio an hour ago. He's found nothing that isn't Mediterranean in origin. "

A three-dimensional projection of the Atlantic Ocean showing land folds and the irregular geology of the sea bottom filled a screen above the stage. Everyone seemed obsessed by it. Their eyes were drawn to the contoured imagery even as they spoke.

Everyone, that is, except Admiral James Sandecker. His eyes suspiciously observed Al Giordino, particularly the large cigar sprouting from one side of the Assistant Project Director's mouth as if it had grown from a seedling.

"When did you start buying Hoyo de Monterrey Excaliburs?"

Giordino looked at the Admiral with an innocent expression. "You talking to me, Admiral?"

"Since you and I are the only ones in the theater smoking Excaliburs, and I'm not in the habit of talking to myself, yes."

"Great, full flavor," said Giordino, holding up the fat cigar and expelling a gush of blue smoke. "I commend your discriminating taste."

"Where did you get it?"

"A little shop in Baltimore. I forget the name."

Sandecker wasn't fooled for an instant. Giordino had been stealing his expensive cigars for years. What drove the Admiral up the wall was that he never discovered how. No matter how well he hid or locked them away, his inventory count always showed two missing every week.

Giordino kept the secret from Pitt so his best friend would never have to lie if asked how it was done. Only Giordino and an old buddy from the Air Force who was a professional burglar for an intelligence agency knew the technicalities of Operation Stogie.

"I've a good notion to ask to see a receipt," growled Sandecker.

"We, ve been attacking this thing from the wrong angle," Pitt said, steering the meeting back on course.

"There's another angle?" asked Yaeger. "We took the only logical approach open to us."

"Without any reference to direction, it was an impossible job," Lily backed him.

"A pity Rufinus didn't log his daily positions and distance traveled,"

mused Sandecker.

"He was under strict orders not to record anything."

"Could they determine a position back then?" asked Giordino.

Lily nodded. "By positions of earth landmarks by figuring their latitude and longitude a hundred and thirty years before Christ."

Sandecker laced his hands across his trim stomach and gazed at Pitt over his reading glasses. "I know that lost look in your eyes.

Something's nagging at you."

Pitt slouched in his seat. "We've been judging facts and using guesswork without considering the man who conceived the smuggling plan."

"Junius Venator?"

"A brilliant guy," Pitt continued, "who was described by a contemporary as 'a daring innovator who struck out into areas other scholars feared to tread." The question we've overlooked is, if we were in Venator's shoes, where would we have taken and hidden the great art and litemq treasures of our time?"

"I still say Africa," volunteered Yaeger. "Preferably around the Cape somewhere up a river along the eastern coastline."

"Yet your computers couldn't make a marriage."

"They never came close," Yaeger admitted. "But God only knows how land formations have changed since Venator's day."

"Could Venator have taken the fleet northeast into the Black Sea?" Lily queried.

"Rufinus was specific about a voyage of fifty-eight days," said Giordino.

Sandecker, puffing his cigar, nodded. "Yes, but if the fleet was hit by foul weather or adverse winds, they could have traveled less than a thousand miles in that time."

"The Admiral has a point," Yaeger conceded. "Ancient ships of the period were constructed to run with the sea and before the wind. Their rigging was not efficient for willdward sailing. Heavy-weather conditions could have cut their progress by eighty percent."

"Except," Pitt said, hanging on the word, "Venator loaded his ships

'with four times their normal supply of provisions."

"

"He planned for an extended voyage," said Lily, suddenly intrigued.

"Venator never intended to land every few days and resupply his fleet."

"All that that proves to me," said Sandecker, "is that Venator wanted to keep the entire voyage as secret as possible by never coming ashore and leaving a trail."

Pitt shook his head. "As soon as the ships cleared the Straits of Gibraltar, any need for secrecy evaporated. Venator was free and in the clear. Byzantine warships sent to stop him would be as much in the dark as we are of his next course heading."

"So we put ourselves in Yaeger looked quizzically at Pitt.

Venator's shoes or sandals or whatever they wore then. What's our plan?"

"Dr. Rothberg unknowingly came up with the key to the mystery," Pitt explained. "He thought Venator buried the artifacts where no one of his day would think to look."

Yaeger looked at him blankly. "That could be anywhere in the ancient world."

"Or outside of the world as the Romans knew it."

"Charted geography didn't extend very far below North Africa or east of the Black Sea and Persian Gulf," said Lily. "Nothing was explored beyond."

"We don't know that," Pitt disagreed. "Junius Venator had access to four thousand years of man's knowledge. He knew of the existence of the African continent and the great steppes of Russia. He must have known of trade with India, which in Turn imported and exported goods from China. And he'd have studied the records of voyages that sailed far beyond the usual Roman/Byzantine trade routes."

"We're certain the Alexandria Library had an entire section devoted to geographical records," said Lily. "Venator could have worked from source maps compiled from much earlier times."

"What do you think he discovered that influenced him?" asked Sandecker.

"A direction," Pitt answered.

All had focused their curiosity on Pitt, and he did not disappoint them.

He walked down to the stage and picked up a flashlight that shone a small arrow on the three-dimensional projection.

"The only question in my mind," said Giordino, "is whether the fleet turned north or south."

"Neither." Pitt moved the lighted arrow through the Gibraltar Straits and across the Atlantic. "Venator led his fleet west to the Americas."

His statement was greeted with stunned disbelief.

"There is no archaeological evidence supporting pre-Columbian contact in the Americas," Lily stated firmly.

"The Serapes is a pretty good indicator they could have made such a voyage," said Sandecker.

"It's a heated controversy," admitted Pitt. "But there are too many similarities in Mayan art and culture that cannot be ignored. Ancient America may not have been as isolated from European and Asian influence as we once thought."

"Frankly, I buy it," said Yaeger, his enthusiasm restored. "I'd bet my Willie Nelson record collection the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Vikings all landed on North and South American soil before Columbus."

"No self-respecting archaeologist would take you up on it," said Lily.