by K. T. Tomb
“You’ve got to remember that Ethan had his own ideas about Artemesia’s ships and often told us that he was only on our dig to gain some credibility and funding from his father for the excavation that he really wanted to do; a search for the site of the Battle of the Heracleidae. Now Ethan assumes he knows as much as we do, but someone with as many resources as he does is bound to take out a few insurance plans and from what we know about him, he can be ruthless.”
“Chyna, do you really think he could pose a serious threat to us?” Fariha asked skeptically.
“You do remember what he tried to do to you in the field, right?”
Fariha nodded silently.
“This could become very dangerous, very quickly for any one of us. Be very cognizant of this, Fariha.”
Her counterparts all nodded in agreement. Lana rose from the table to push the beverage cart out from the living room and invited everyone to make themselves the drink of their choice while they awaited the arrival of their lunch. Drinks in hand, they chose to lean over the charts on the table for the rest of their discussion, the shade from the huge potted palms on the balcony and the cool breeze made for a comfortable atmosphere to work in. Fariha produced more detailed digital maps of the coastline near Cesme and showed the group the shadowy formation on the ocean floor.
“Of course, it could just be a coral bed, Chyna,” she mentioned. “But I think the water is too deep and cold right there for coral formations.”
“That is why I suspect it’s what we are looking for, Fariha.”
“So what’s our next move?” the professor asked Chyna.
“We need to get ready to go to Turkey,” she replied. “Got any connections over there, Fariha?”
“As a matter of fact, there’s a young archaeologist on the historical society board in Izmir that I can call. He should be able to get us any clearance we might need. Of course you know that in order to bargain for the possession of the Minoan Mask, should we find it, we would have to turn over and possibly agree to curate everything else that we find there.”
Chyna nodded her agreement. “Of course, we would be excavating in Turkish maritime space so anything found legally belongs to them. All I’m interested in is the mask. It would be priceless to have it to complete our exhibit along with maybe Sir Evan’s cuneiform tablet of the labyrinth’s contents.”
“Any luck with that, professor?” Lana pitched in.
“I did manage to get in touch with the head of the museum that houses it in Heraklion, but I think it’s going to be a power struggle between the Athenian and the Cretian authorities. I can only hope that they will come to some agreement over it seeing it’s a bit disjointed from the Heraklion exhibit as it stands right now,” Professor Cartwright responded.
“That’s true,” agreed Fariha.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. Their lunch had arrived. As Lana went to the door to let the room service waiter in, the rest of the group moved to fix themselves fresh drinks. None of them heard the closing of the sliding door on the balcony above them.
***
Chyna awoke to the sound of her cell phone ringing. She snatched it up from the bedside table in her hotel room and looked at the clock, it was 3 A.M. Who could be calling at that hour of the morning?
“Hello,” she answered. She didn’t even look at the caller ID.
“Chyna,” said the professor, “I’m sorry to call at this hour but I’ve got to go back to Crete this morning. I left quite a few of my research papers and equipment there to be shipped back to Scotland but I think I’ll need them if we’re to go straight on to Turkey as we planned.”
“Fair enough, Cartwright. When will you be back?”
“I’d say tomorrow afternoon. Are you going to go ahead and make the travel arrangements?”
“Sure am! The girls and I meet at 9 to finalize all the plans.”
“Okay! Well, count me in and I’ll see you all tomorrow afternoon.”
“See you then. Travel safely.”
The call cut off before he could say another word in reply. It seemed strange, but Chyna was in too much of a fog, given the time of the morning, to think about it and went straight back to sleep.
The girls heard nothing from Professor Cartwright the next day. All their attempts to reach his cell phone, his base camp in Heraklion and his hotel in Athens came up empty. The attendant in Heraklion said that he hadn’t seen Cartwright at all since they had left for Athens the month before. Chyna started to worry.
“We can’t leave for Izmir without him,” she told the others. “What if something’s happened to him?”
Lana walked into the living room and sat down with a grim look on her face.
“He didn’t board his flight yesterday morning. He was booked on it, but the airline said he never made it onboard.”
“Do you think he’s been kidnapped?” Fariha asked.
“I’m not sure what to think, Fariha,” Chyna replied, and then turned to Lana. “Did you make contact with his students; the rest of the dig team from Knossos?”
“I did, the day before yesterday. They were supposed to pack up the base camp and be on a flight into Athens for a debriefing this morning. I haven’t heard from them either.”
Chyna was crestfallen. She put her head in her hands for a minute trying to unravel the mystery in her mind. She ran through the 3 a.m. conversation with Cartwright, which in and of itself was odd. Had there been anything in his voice or any other background sounds? She simply couldn’t recall much of the conversation other than the words which were spoken.
“Check their flight, Lana. See if they left Heraklion and if they arrived in Athens. See if they made it to the hotel and then if you can get them on the phone.”
“Right away, boss lady.”
Turning to Fariha, Chyna said, “I told you this might get dangerous.”
As it turned out, the team had left Crete and arrived the night before in Athens. What had happened to them after that was the mystery. No one at the hotel had seen them and their rooms had never been checked into. The baggage claim clerk remembered the strange group of foreigners and even showed Lana the receipts he had collected from them for their checked luggage but the trail went cold at the ground transportation concourse. They seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth, just like the professor.
“Lana, pack our things quickly. We’re leaving.” Chyna announced.
She pulled her laptop out of her bag and booked a hotel room for them across town; right across the street from the U.S. Embassy. Then she turned to Fariha.
“Do you have your bags in the car?”
“Yes, I came ready to leave. I was hoping Cartwright was already here.”
“Good. You’re coming with us. Give me your cell phone.”
Fariha looked puzzled and paused as she took her phone from her pocket and handed it to Chyna. She opened the phone and removed the SIM and Media cards then threw the phone on the floor and stepped on it. Fariha gasped in horror.
“I sorta liked that phone, you know.”
“Sorry, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve been bugged so now we have to be more careful and take some extreme precautions.”
Chyna went into her bedroom to retrieve the contents of the room safe. She took her motorcycle jacket from the hanger above where the safe was located, slid it over her shoulders, and then squatted to enter the digital code. She pulled out two small black cases and a tiny tool kit, which she carried back into the common room at placed on the table before them. Lana joined them at the table. From the first kit she took out a Blackberry® and placed Fariha’s electronic chips inside it.
“Military grade security,” she said as she handed it to Fariha. “No one can track that GPS unless they work for the C.I.A. and as soon as it’s activated they will know to place a full security block on it.”
“Aren’t you changing yours as well?’ she asked.
“We don’t need to,” Lana said smiling. “We’re always f
lying under the radar. Precautions.”
“I am going to sweep our phones for external bugging devices though. Just in case someone decided to get smart.”
Chyna pulled a tiny device from the tool kit and ran it several times over both her and Lana’s phones. They were clean. From the second bag, Chyna took out a SIG Sauer®M-11 pistol and unceremoniously loaded it. She placed it on the table, stood to shed the jacket and strap the holster to her left shoulder, and then holstered the gun before replacing the jacket. She took her firearms license, a spare clip of bullets and a wad of cash from the bag and placed them in the inside pocket of the sporty leather jacket as well.
“Y’all ready?” she asked both women as she picked up her things from the table and stood.
Chapter Two
They arrived at the hotel under the cover of night, bypassing security and were let up to their penthouse rooms by way of private elevator from the exclusive underground parking lot.
Lana and Fariha were amazed that Chyna had found such secure lodging instantaneously, though Lana less so than Fariha. She knew how resourceful her boss was and even more so, how well connected. When they alighted from the elevator they were ushered straight into a living room by two bodyguards in black suits who had already swept the suite for bugs and intruders. One would remain stationed inside the elevator while the other manned the private parking bay and the elevator doors.
When they had left, Chyna turned to the others and said, “Well ladies, let’s get down to business.”
She rolled out two corkboards from the storage closet in the entryway and positioned them side by side in front of the living room windows, essentially blocking the view in and also protecting any information they would have spread out on the table or pinned up for study. Lana pinned up Fariha’s more detailed satellite image of the supposed wreck site on one board and the photos of all the missing members of their team on the other.
“When is Oscar going to get here?” she asked Chyna.
“He should be here within the hour,” she replied, checking her watch.
“Who’s Oscar?” Fariha asked, pouring herself a glass of Coke from the refrigerator.
“He’s our tech guy from Found History,” Lana replied.
“We are hoping that since the kidnapper didn’t have the opportunity or the technology to bug Lana’s and my phones, that he hasn’t thought to use the GPS feature to locate us and therefore won’t expect us to use it to locate the professor.”
“We’re pretty good with computers and that stuff but since we might be dealing with international espionage here, we didn’t want to take any risks so we called in the big guns.” Lana added.
“I’m impressed,” Fariha said. “I’m thinking of sending in my resume and application to Found History now. The professor was right; archaeology isn’t as boring as everybody thinks.”
The girls laughed, but their light-hearted moment was cut short by the sharp ringing of Chyna’s cell phone. She dug into her pocket and answered. It was John Lightyear, the exhibition curator at the University of Athens.
“Hi John,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Chyna, I really don’t know how to tell you this but I just got word from the university administration that the students from Professor Cartwright’s team never made it to their hotel or back to their office this morning.”
“Yes, John,” she said softly, “we know. They went missing yesterday, right from the airport. That’s where their trail went cold.”
“We’re all wondering what happened to them. We were really hoping that they were with you guys.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not the case, John. Cartwright’s gone missing as well. We already reported it to the police but any follow up you could give to the matter would be appreciated, especially since we feel strongly that they have been kidnapped. We can’t follow their case at the moment; we’ve had to go underground ourselves.”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” he said, not quite knowing what else to say. “I was going to let the envelope I received from university administration stay on his desk until he got back but its addressed to both of you and in light of this news I think its best I get it to you as soon as possible.”
“What envelope, John?” Chyna asked.
“I found it in the museums’ drop box this morning. I just put it in the “IN” tray on Cartwright’s desk.”
“I’m sending someone over there for it right away John,” she replied quickly. “His name is Demitri.”
“Okay Chyna,” he said. “You take care of yourself. We don’t need you to go missing as well.”
“I will. Thanks John.”
About an hour later there was a ding as the elevator opened into their living room and out stepped Oscar with his cases of equipment. Demitri followed him and handed a large yellow envelop over to Chyna.
“Set up over there,” Lana instructed.
“Good day to you too, Miss Ambrose,” he replied wittily. “So nice to see you.”
Lana stuck her tongue out at him and continued to stir the risotto she had going on the stove. Fariha looked up from the cutting board where she was attending to some plump shrimp to find Oscar staring at her. She blushed and quickly returned to what she was doing. No one had told her he was so good looking, they had all but summed him up as a red headed, computer geek who she had immediately assumed was scrawny, pock faced and maybe even had a hump on his back. She laughed to herself at the visual and looked up to steal another glance at him. Again, their eyes met as she caught him looking at her as well. The olive skin of her cheeks flushed an even deeper hue of red and she averted her eyes again.
Oscar was anything but what she had pictured. He was tall and well built, but not too tall or too well built. Fariha had found that those types of men, especially the Greek ones, always seemed to have the ego to match. His hair was actually more of a reddish blonde than really red. What did they call that again? she wondered. Ginger, yes, he was a ginger. He wore a well-kept moustache and beard and closely cropped hair which accentuated his clear, creamy skin. Such a fair complexion, he wouldn’t do well in the Mediterranean sun. What a handsome man.
“So what are y’all cookin’,” he asked suddenly, making Fariha jump. She looked up to find Oscar standing on the other side of the kitchen counter from her. She was so startled she could hardly speak. She looked at Lana who was watching her intently and motioning to her to answer him.
“Um, Shrimp risotto,” she finally managed.
“That sounds awesome,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “Do y’all need any help?”
Fariha couldn’t say another word; she dropped her gaze back to her cutting board and concentrated very hard on carefully cleaning and dissecting the shrimp one by one.
“Sure Oscar,” Lana finally replied. “Make us some of your super delicious sweet tea and stop scaring my friend. She’s probably never seen someone as ugly as you before.”
They all laughed at Lana’s joke, even Fariha, but before they could start up the conversation again, Chyna spoke up.
“All right, enough of that guys. You won’t believe what came in that envelop from Cartwright’s office.”
“What was it? Is it anything helpful about where he or the students are?” Fariha asked, happy to have a change of subject.
“Not exactly, but I think it’s a clue. I thought it strange that a letter addressed to the professor and I would arrive in an envelop from his set of personal stationery but the contents explains that well. There’s a letter in the professor’s handwriting but his fraternity ring is also in it.”
“Why would he send that to you?’
“I think it’s to prove that it’s really from him and that it wasn’t written or sent under duress.”
“Okay, so what does it say?” Oscar asked.
“The letter says that he’s realized someone has been following him since he left my hotel room the day before yesterday and that he tried to tell me when he called me in the middl
e of the night, but he had spotted the car following him again and worried that his call might be traced. He planned to send the letter from the airport when he was trying to get on the plane to Heraklion but if I was, at any point, reading it, then that meant he never made it back to Athens.” Chyna paused and the others all looked at one another, puzzled. Clearly their friend was in serious trouble.
“So, that means he made it to the airport,” Lana pointed out.
“He then says that we’re to go to his office at the university, use the code inscribed on the inside of the ring and open the safe there. A large file which is labeled “Artemesia the Traitoress”, not to be confused with “Artemesia I of Caria”, contains all the clues that we need to find him, the perpetrator, the wreck of the Battle of the Heracleidae and of course, the Minoan Mask.”
“Okay, so let’s get over there and get it,” Oscar said enthusiastically, reaching for his jacket.
“Oscar, please,’ Chyna admonished. “We’re operating on code red right now. High alert. Demetri will retrieve the file. I’ll just call John and ask him to let Demetri into the professor’s office.”
While Chyna made the call Lana called downstairs and gave Demetri his instructions. He returned a half hour later with the file in hand.
“Thank you Demetri. Would you call down to Thorin and let him know that dinner is ready?”
It was strict Found History procedure that when the team was on high alert, they did all their shopping at random large chain supermarkets and cooked their own meals, including the meals of their bodyguards. They never risked a possible poisoning or location compromise by ordering takeout. Even hotel room service was off limits, at the moment the only person on staff that knew who was in the penthouse was the hotel manager, a long time attaché of the U.S. Embassy. The rest of the staff could only see from the reservation system that the suite was occupied and by a guest named “Private Executive” whose express instruction was do not disturb under any circumstances. Even the service elevator that housekeeping would normally use had been shut down and only Chyna had the access card for it, there was only one way in and one way out for everyone except her team.
