The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,89
Gibraltar.
“That’s where it went before,” Kowalski commented. “From there, I don’t know where—”
Bailey cranked and something metallic popped loudly from inside the map. The box jolted again, hard enough to fracture the Mediterranean Sea. Pieces flew out. The rest of the lapis lazuli jigsaw puzzle collapsed in on itself, leaving a few blue shards still hanging askew. Bronze gears and wires shone from inside, revealing the trick behind the magic.
Mac shook his head. “Maybe it’s best Monsignor Roe wasn’t here to see this.”
The priest looked sickened, continuing to wind the wheel. “There’s no more tension.”
Gray simply admitted what they all knew. “It’s broken.”
Proving this, the tiny silver ship tipped from its magnetic perch and toppled into the clockwork mechanism and vanished.
“There goes Odysseus,” Kowalski mumbled.
Bailey sagged. “Maybe we damaged it bringing it here.”
Seichan put a hand on the priest’s shoulder. “Or maybe it was never complete. Didn’t you say Da Vinci was working from partial plans? That he had to improvise sections?”
Bailey just sighed.
“No matter.” Gray stood up. “There’s nothing to be done about it. We go back to where we started.”
He turned to Kowalski with a clear intent. Any hope from here depended on how much Kowalski could remember.
Great.
Kowalski glared at the ruins of the map.
Stupid Da Vinci.
25
June 25, 12:35 P.M. CEST
Off the coast of Tunisia
Who can I trust here?
Elena sat at a desk in an opulent two-story library that stretched between decks three and four of the Morning Star’s superstructure. The space was paneled in tigerwood and mahogany, the railings sculpted of wrought iron in an angular Moorish design. A wealth of books and curated artifacts from Arabian navigational history were protected behind glass doors. A spiral staircase led up to the second level, where gilded ladders reached the tops of the tallest shelves.
She rubbed her sore eyes, ignoring her reading glasses sitting on a stack of books. She had not slept all night after boarding the yacht and being greeted by her father.
Why is he here? How could he be involved with these murderous people?
None of it made any sense. And her father had offered no explanation upon arriving, only giving her a hug and a promise to explain everything in the morning. Then he had vanished into the yacht with the man called Mūsā, his arm around the ambassador, as if they were the dearest friends.
Afterward, Nehir and Kadir had taken her to a sprawling stateroom, as richly appointed as this library. While being hauled there, Elena had noted the number of armed men and women in the halls. She had been marched through an entire level that doubled as a shipboard armory, seemingly equipped with enough firepower to take down a small nation. Clearly, beneath its skin, the Morning Star was an opulent war vessel.
Before locking her in the stateroom, Nehir had removed her ankle chains—though from the woman’s silence and dark countenance, she had not been happy to obey these instructions from her father. Still, Kadir had remained posted at her door all night. Even now he stood outside the library, his arms crossed, his back to the set of glass double doors.
A low murmur drew her attention to the side. The only section of the library not lined by bookshelves was an area cantilevered out from the superstructure, hanging over the water. A curve of windows offered a panoramic view of the seas and the nearby Tunisian coast of North Africa.
Two men sat at a table across from each other, as if playing a game of chess, only their board was the golden map. Earlier, the pair had introduced themselves to her, and they had all shared their respective stories. The injured man, Rabbi Howard Fine, had been cared for overnight. The bloody wad of cotton bandaged over his ear had been replaced with a clean, tidy wrap. His eyes this morning remained glassy from pain relievers. The other new arrival was Monsignor Sebastian Roe.
It was the priest who had told her how he—along with colleagues of Joe—had been ambushed on Sardinia. She had also discerned why these two men hadn’t been killed. Both were archaeologists, steeped in the line of mythology and history important to the task at hand. They were intended to serve as her research aides—and likely as hostages to be tortured if she failed to deliver.
Elena was under no misconception that the fundamentals of her situation had changed with the arrival of her father. While the accommodations were better, everything else was the same.