Serpent nf-1

by Clive Cussler

  Zooming around Harvard Square, on a chopped antique Harley Davidson was not something done by most tenured professors. A few years earlier he gained more widespread notoriety by hypnotizing UFO abductees and announcing publicly that he believed they had been kidnapped by aliens. His telephone number had gone into the card file of every freak beat newspaper reporter in the city Whenever reporters needed a quick quip on any subject in the universe, particularly the weird, they could rely on good old Doc the Harvard professor.

  He carefully kept his more esoteric interests separated from his academic specialty. You would never find him claiming that Aztec temples were built by refugees from the lost continents of Atlantis and Mu. The hierarchy at Harvard would tolerate his oddities, every university has its resident fruitcakebut in his own field Doc's credentials had to remain without blemish. Some who had noticed that the gleam in Orville's eye was one not of madness but of intense amusement suggested Doc's eccentricities were well calculated so that he would meet women and be invited to all the right parties.

  Doc had forsaken his UFO phase by the time Nina met him at one such gathering. Orville spied her across the room, brushed aside the attractive female grad student he was entertaining, and made a beeline in Nina's direction. She had never met him before but recognized his mop of long red hair, the style referred to by his students as "retro Einstein." Within minutes he was going on about his latest passion: past lives.

  Nina listened attentively, then asked, "Why has everyone who has lived a past life been a king or a queen or other royal figure when most people were probably flea-infested farmers trying to scratch a life out of the mud?"

  "Aha," he said. eyes practically g with glee." A dangerous woman. A thinker The answer is very simple. These people choose whose body they will inhabit in their new life. What do you think of that?"

  "I think it's a lot of hooey, and I think I need a refill on my wine. Would you be so kind? I prefer red."

  "Charmed," he said, and set off to the bar like an obedient puppy, returning with a full glass and a plateful of shrimp and caviar.

  "Let's not talk about past lives," he said. "I only do that to meet fascinating women."

  "You do?' Nina said, with genuine shock at his frankness.

  And to get invited to parties. It works. Here I am, and here you are."

  "I'm disappointed. Everyone told me you were pixilated."

  "I don't even know how to spell that," he said with a sigh. "You know, we are such a dull gray stuffy bunch, we professors. We take ourselves far too seriously, harrumphing about as if we were truly wise men and not just overeducated nerds. What's wrong with being a little colorful to make oneself stand out from the crowd? There's the added advantage of being shunned by those stodgy old fussbudgets."

  "The UFO abductees. That was all a sham?"

  "Heavens no. I truly believe they believe they were kidnapped. Some of my colleagues do, too; they're just jealous because they weren't. But let's talk about you. I've heard good things about your work."

  And talk they did. Behind the nutty professor's mad facade lurked an interesting and interested person. They did not become romantically involved, as he would have liked. Even better, they were friends and colleagues who respected. each other.

  Orville," came the voice on the phone. Doc never said hello.

  "Hi, Doc. It's Nina" He hated what he called banalities, so she cut right to the chase. "I need your help with an odd request."

  "Odd is my middle name. What can I do for you?"

  Nina relayed Austin's query.

  "You know, that sounds vaguely familiar."

  "You're not joking, Doc."

  "Nononono. It was something in my Fortean file." Orville considered himself a modern day version of Charles Fort, the nineteenth-century journalist who collected stories about odd happenings such as red snow, unexplained lights, or frogs falling from the sky.

  "Why does that not surprise me?" Nina said.

  "I'm always reorganizing the file. You never can tell when someone will call arid ask a crazy question." He hung up; Orville was not known for saying goodbye, either.

  Nina shrugged and went back to her work. Before long the fax hummed and a single sheet slid out. At the top was a handscrawled note: Ask and ye shall receive. Love, Doc. It was a copy of a newspaper clip from the Boston Globe dated March 1956:

  MYSTERY ITALIAN ARTIFACT ON ITS WAY TO AMERICA

  Genoa, Italy (AP)A mysterious stone tablet unearthed in a dusty museum basement may soon yield its ancient secrets.

  The massive inscribed stela, carved with lifesized figures and strange writing, was discovered in the Museo Archeologico. Florence, in March of this year.

  Preparations are being made to ship it to the United States where it will be examined by experts.

  The museum was planning an exhibition entitled "Treasures from the Basement." to bring to light items from its collection that had languished in storage for decades.

  The stone artifact is in the shape of a rectangular slab, giving rise to speculation that it might have been part of a wall. It is more than six feet tall, four feet wide, and a foot thick.

  What have puzzled scholars who have seen it and stirred up controversy in the scientific community are the carvings on one side.

  Some maintain that the figures and writing are without a doubt of Central American, probably Mayan, origin.

  "This is not a great mystery," says Dr. Stephano Gallo, head curator at the museum. "Even if it is Mayan it could have been brought back from the Americas during the Spanish Conquest."

  Why they transported the stone across the ocean is another question. "The Spanish were primarily interested in gold and slaves, not archaeology. So someone must have seen some value in this artifact to go to the trouble of moving it. It is not like some miniature statue a soldier of Cortez might have picked up as a souvenir."

  Efforts to learn where the artifact came from have met with limited success. The museum catalog indicates that the slab was donated by trustees for the Alberti estate. The Alberti family can trace its maternal lineage to the Spanish court during the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.

  A spokesman for the estate says the family has no information available, unlike other items in the collection. The Alberti family was originally from Genoa and purchased many Christopher Columbus papers and memorabilia from Luis Columbus, grandson of the explorer.

  Historians who have scoured records of the four Columbus voyages can find no mention of the artifact.

  The stone will soon be on an ocean voyage of its own. It will be shipped to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., for study by Central American experts. This time it will be traveling in style aboard the luxury Italian liner Andrea Doria.

  Because of its size and weight, it will be shipped in an armored truck that is carrying other valuable items to America.

  The article was illustrated with a photo of the slab taken at a distance to include the whole tablet in the frame. An unidentified man stood awkwardly next to the artifact, where he was dwarfed by its mass. The photographer must have grabbed the nearest body to pose beside the object and give it scale. The newspaper was printed back in the days of letterpress, and the. photo reproduction wasn't very sharp. Nina could make out faint symbols, glyphs, and figures carved into the stone's surface. She examined the picture using a magnifying glass. No use. The enlarged dot reproduction was even fuzzier than the original.

  She called Doc.

  "Well, what do you think?" he said.

  "The important thing is what you think. You're the expert in this area."

  "Well, you're right, of course." Orville's modesty could be underwhelming. "It's tough without ,seeing the actual thing, but it looks to me to be similar to the Dresden Codex, one of the few Mayan books that the Spanish didn't burn. I'm thinking about the calendar pages, cycles of the planet Venus, and so on. Venus was very important to the postclassic Maya. The planet represented Kukulcan, the lightskinned bearded
god the Toltecs called Quetzalcoatl. The Feathered Serpent. The. Maya plotted the travels of Venus practically to the second. Beyond that it's difficult to say without seeing the real thing."

  "Nothing else?"

  "Not unless I come across a good picture or artistic rendition."

  "What about Professor Gallo's comment, about this thing being no great mystery?"

  "Oh, he's absolutely right. The fact that a Mayan artifact may have been found in Italy is not a big deal. No more than the fact that you can walk into the British Museum in London and find the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon. The important part of the equation is provenance, as you know. Not just where the artifact was found but how it got there."

  "What about the Columbus letter I told you about? It mentions an object similar to this. How does that tie in with the mention of the Alberti family's Columbus collection?"

  "You cannot jump to conclusions on the basis of an old newspaper article. You also told me there are doubts as to the authenticity of this letter. Even if the letter were the real McCoy, we'd need more proof that the objects were one and the same. Tantalizing thought, though. It was entirely possible for Columbus to have shipped it home without anyone knowing. He was known as a devious man. Some believe he falsified his mileage readings on his first voyage so the crew wouldn't know how far they were from land. It would have been in character for Columbus to hide something. Unfortunately we have to remember we're scientists, not writers of popular semifictional archaeological claptrap."

  Orville was entirely right. It would be unprofessional to jump to conclusions.

  "The Italian professor made a good point," Nina pointed out. "The Spanish were interested in plunder, not science."

  "True. Cortez was certainly no Napoleon, who brought along the scientists who discovered the Rosetta Stone."

  Interesting. She, too, had been thinking about the Rosetta Stone, the pivotal discovery that provided, with the same message in Greek and Egyptian, the key to translating hieroglyphics. "I'd give almost anything to see this thing in the flesh."

  "Hmm. I wish I could take you up on your inviting offer. Alas, our artifact is not easily obtainable."

  "Of course. How dumb of me. The Andrea Doria. It was in a collision with another ship."

  "Correct. The Stockholm. As a result of that unfortunate incident our artifact lies more than two hundred feet underwater, at the bottom of the Atlantic. We can only hope that the fishes appreciate it. Too bad. Perhaps it could prove the existence of Atlantis, something to make for some catchy headlines.Nutty professor strikes again and that sort of thing."

  "I'm sure you'll find something equally controversial," Nina said warmly. "Thanks for your help, Doc.*

  "I was glad to hear from you. You've been away a lot. How about lunch this week?"

  Nina asked him to call in the morning after she had a chance to check her calendar. As soon as she hung up she dialed the number of the Boston Herald and asked for an extension in the newsroom. A female voice answered: "K. T Pritchard."

  "Hi, Kay Tee. This is your friendly archaeologist calling for a favor. Do you have a minute?"

  "I've always got time for you, Dr. Kirov. You're in luck. I just wrapped up a story, but as long as I look as if I'm working no one will bug me with a new assignment. What can I do for you?"

  Pritchard had used Nina as a background source on a prize-winning series she wrote when Boston's patrician Museum of Fine Arts unknowingly bought a stolen Etruscan vase. She was always anxious to pay the favor back. Nina told the reporter she was looking for any mention of an archaeological artifact being transported from Italy on the Andrea Doria.

  "I'll check out the morgue and call you back"

  The phone rang about an hour later. It was Pritchard.

  "That was fast," Nina said with amazement.

  "Stuff's all on microfilm, so it scans pretty quickly. There were tons of pieces written on the Andrea Doria at the time of the accident itself. Then more on the inquiry, but I skipped that. The ship carried piles of valuable cargo. She was apparently a floating art museum. No mention of anything like you described. So I flipped to the anniversary editions. You know how papers like to memorialize disasters so they can write about them ad nauseam on slow news days. I found an article on the thirtieth anniversary. It was about heroes and cowards. Some of the crew bailed while the others should have been given medals. Anyhow, there was an interview with one of them. A waiter. Didn't you tell me this thing was being transported in an armored truck?"

  "That's right. According to the Associated Press article."

  "Hmm. Well, anyhow, this waiter said he saw an armored truck being robbed as the ship was going down."

  "A robbery!"

  "That's right. A group of armed men. The truck was in the hold of the ship."

  "That's incredible! What else did he say?"

  "Nothing. The story just slipped out as he was telling the reporter how he went into the hold of the ship looking for a car jack to free one of the victims. I called the guy who interviewed him. Charlie Flynn. A real war horse. He's retired now. He tried to pry more info from the guy Thought he could make this the lead. The untold story. Sinking ship. Masked men. Drama below decks and that sort of thing. But he said the guy dammed up. Wouldn't talk about it. Changed the subject. Got very upset. Asked Charlie not to use this in the story."

  "He went ahead and did it anyhow?"

  "That's the way it was in the old days. What you said got in the paper. Not like today with libel lawyers breathing down your neck. It was buried, though, way down at the' bottom of the story. Copy editor probably thought it was too thin on the facts to use up in the lead but interesting enough as a tidbit. Charlie talked to a few Daria survivors to see if he could get the story through another source. Nobody had ever heard anything about it."

  "What was the crewman's name?"

  "I'll fax you the clip, but hold on. Here it is. He was Italian. His name was Angelo Donatelli."

  "Do you have an address for him?"

  "He was living in New York at the time. Charlie says he ran a fancy restaurant there. That's all he knew about the guy. Say Dr. Kirov, is there a story here?"

  "I'm not sure, Kay Tee. You'll be the first to know if there is."

  "That's all I ask. Call me anytime."

  After she hung up Nina stared off into space for a few minutes, trying to connect a massive stone artifact from the time of Columbus with a disaster at sea, an armed robbery, and a Moroccan massacre. It was no use. It would be easier linking Sumerian cuneiform with Minoan Linear B writing. She gave up and called Kurt Austin.

  Washington, DC

  31 ANGELO DONATELLI WAS SUPRISINGLY easy to trace. Austin simply looked up his name on the Internet and found fifteen references; including a Business Week article that described the rags-to-riches rise from lowly cocktail lounge waiter to owner of one of New York's most fashionable restaurants. The picture of Donatelli conferring with his head chef showed a silver-haired and middle-aged man who looked more like a distinguished European diplomat than a restaurateur.

  Austin called directory assistance in Manhattan, and a minute later he was talking to the restaurant's friendly assistant

  "Mr. Donatelli is not in today," she said.

  "When is the best time to get him?"

  "He's due back from Nantucket tomorrow. You can try calling here after three PM."

  Nantucket. Austin knew the island off the Massachusetts coast well, having stopped there several times while sailing to Maine. He tried to get a Nantucket phone number for Donatelli. It was unlisted. A few minutes later he was talking to a Lieutenant Coffin at the Nantucket Police Department. Austin identified himself as being with NUMA and said he wanted to get in touch with Angelo Donatelli. He was banking on the fact that small-town police know everything and everybody in their community.

  The police officer confirmed that Donatelli had a summer home on the island, but he was wary. "What's the National Underwater and Marine Agency want with
Mr. Donatelli?"

  "We're pulling together some historic stuff on collisions at sea. Mr. Donatelli was aboard the Andrea Doria when it was hit."

  "I've heard that. Met him a couple of times. Nice guy."

  . "I've tried calling him, but his number is unlisted."

  "Yeah, most of the people out where he lives kinda like it that way. They built those big houses so they can have their privacy."

  "I may try to get a flight to the island later today and take my chances on hooking up with him."

  "Tell you what. When you get on island drop by the police station on Water Street and ask for me. I can show you where he lives on a map."

  Good cop, Austin thought. He wasn't about to dispense information on one of the island's well-to-do property owners without checking Austin out in person.

  Austin never dreamed Nina would track down a lead so quickly.

  With Zavala in Texas and Trout in the Yucatan, maybe Austin could squeeze in a quick interview with Donatelli. He used his government clout to get a seat with a small commuter airline that ran regular shuttles between Washington and Nantucket. A couple of hours later he was on a puddle-jumper flying northeast.

  The flight gave him time to look over the file Yaeger had dropped on his desk as Austin was leaving his NUMA office. Austin had asked the computer whiz to scour, his electronic marvels for information on the Brotherhood, the sixteenth century secret society he and Perlmutter had discussed over lunch. And to run down any links Los Hermanos might have had to Christopher Columbus. Austin glanced out the window at the ocean sparkling far below, then opened the file and read Yaeger's note:

  Hi, Kurt.

  I think I've got it! I've been wading through secret societies up to my eyeballs, but the Columbus angle narrowed it down. I followed up one of those stray facts that go floating across your monitor screen from obscure sources. A one-sentence footnote that Columbus was said to be associated with an outfit called the Brotherhood of the Holy Sword of Truth. (They liked long titles back then.) Can't confirm if he was a member. Probably not.