Knight's Cross (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 3)

by Christine Kling

  “Morning,” Theo said. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “I’d be happy to help myself.”

  “He won’t hear of it,” Riley said. “He’s got a new cappuccino machine back there, and he’s been up for an hour, hoping you’ll give him the chance to try it out.”

  “I would love a cappuccino.”

  “Coming right up,” Theo said.

  “Help yourself to a plate,” Riley said. “There’s croissants, fruit, yogurt. I think Theo is trying to spoil us.”

  “Have you all been up long?” Hazel asked her.

  “I didn’t sleep well,” Riley said. “I couldn’t get my brain to slow down. I got up a little over an hour ago, and I’ve been bringing Theo up to speed on what happened in Rome. We didn’t have time to talk last night.”

  Hazel sat down with a small plate of fruit and yogurt. “Where’s Cole?”

  “He ran down to take a look at something in the engine room. Honestly, I think he’s just gone down there to remind himself that he really does own a boat with an engine room all clean and organized like that. You should have seen what was on the last boat.”

  Theo said, “Not that he does all that much work in there.”

  “Shhhh,” Riley said. “Don’t tell him that.”

  “Too late,” Cole said as he stepped through the doors to the aft deck. “I heard Theo maligning my reputation.”

  Theo stepped into the salon and set a frothy coffee on the table. “The truth hurts, mon. The way I hear it, you’ve just spent the last twenty-four hours working your way through flutes of champagne on private yachts and helicopters. And you want to claim that’s work.”

  “While you’ve been back here slaving away in these deplorable conditions.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Take a seat, man.”

  Theo sat in the empty chair opposite Hazel.

  Cole said, “Hazel, we can’t thank you enough for getting us home.”

  “My pleasure. In fact, the gentleman who owns that yacht and helicopter emailed me this morning that he found the whole adventure quite entertaining—sending his helicopter for you, racing down to Palermo with the yacht, and then sending us on his jet on to Malta last night. I told him you both work for an international drug task force. He made a large donation to my foundation this morning to thank me for all the excitement.”

  “In that case, glad we could oblige,” Cole said. He tapped his coffee cup against Hazel’s and said, “Cheers. But the fun’s over now. We know Virgil and his friends aren’t sitting around doing nothing. By now, they’ve already had a chance to examine the real sea atlas. And while we were on that yacht yesterday, Riley and I took a look at the photos of the charts on her phone. There are some scratchings and notes on the pages. Most of them look like calculations for navigation. The original owner of the atlas sailed all over the Med. It’s going to be very difficult to know which ones mean anything. And then there’s the drawing on the back page.”

  “You know, while you all have been off having fun, I’ve been busy, too,” Theo said.

  “Okay. What did you find?”

  “I put Yoda to work. I took lots of photos of the shield. Probably more than necessary, but my aim’s not so good. Yoda processed them and searched the engravings. His eyes aren’t fooled by optical illusions. Whoever did the additional engravings was quite talented.”

  “What do you mean by additional?”

  “I suspect the engravings we’re interested in are almost one hundred years more recent than the original age of the shield.”

  “So what did you find?”

  “There’s an extra band around the outside edge that is of a different style altogether. In one section, the leaves actually form some almost hieroglyphic-like symbols.”

  “Can you show us?”

  “Sure. As smart as Yoda is, there is still lots that he has yet to learn. So, while he did find the letters in the engraving, he didn’t pick up on some of the symbols as separate from the design. I used my new embossing printer that now prints high-resolution graphics up to 100 dpi.”

  Hazel said, “That doesn’t sound very high-res.”

  “It might not sound very high-resolution to you, but think of Braille. Blind people read those dots with their fingers. Embossing printers turn graphic designs into tactile images. I have to feel all those dots with my fingertips. I printed out what is like a 3-D relief map of the design on the shield. And this is what we found. Yoda?”

  “Yes, Theo.”

  Hazel shook her head. “I love it.”

  A ghost of a smile flitted across Theo’s features, but he continued, “Put the image titled Shield up on Display One in the main salon, please.”

  The monitor switched on, and a photo of the shield appeared.

  “Zoom in on the letters in the design.”

  On the screen, they saw the engraving of a series of leaves and flowers.

  “If you look closely at the stems of the vine, you will see two letters right here.”

  Riley stared, then suddenly she saw it. In the middle were what looked like two letters: KK.

  “The first thing we identified were the two letters K here followed by the letter S, then what looks like the symbol for ‘less than,’ and then the letter V. Then I realized that beneath the letters KK were graphics that could be part of the letters. The graphics could be a series of ocean waves.”

  “Yes,” Riley said. “I can see that.”

  “And can you tell what it is between the two Ks and the letter S?”

  Riley stood up and walked closer to the screen. “There’s something there, but I can’t make out what it is.”

  “Yoda, zoom in on the symbol between the letters K and S.”

  “What is it?” Riley said.

  “An abstract drawing of a human eye.”

  “Okay, I see it now.”

  Cole said, “What do you think it’s supposed to mean?”

  “I have no idea,” Theo said.

  Riley looked at the image on the screen. There was something familiar about it. She pulled out her phone and began going through the photos of Joseph Roux’s charts.

  Hazel said, “I’m incredibly impressed with how you did this, Theo.”

  “Because I’m blind.”

  “That’s a small part of it, but mostly it’s the computer work. You programmed a computer to search for letters in the photo?”

  “Oh, well, that. Yeah. But what I meant is that I’m better able to do some things because I’m blind.”

  “And you are able to search graphics yourself by using a special embossing printer? Where’d you get such a machine?”

  “They do make some rudimentary ones now that are very expensive. I designed my own. Once you get used to it, seeing with your fingers works great. Your eyes simply build constructs in your mind. My fingers do.”

  “Found it!” Riley held up her phone.

  “What?” Cole asked.

  “I knew there was something in that drawing that I’d seen before. Theo, can I get the photos on my phone to display on the monitor there?”

  “Sure. Are you on the boat network?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tap AirPlay and find the one listed as Display One.”

  A few seconds later, the photo of a chart appeared on the monitor.

  “Look,” Riley said. “This is the chart of the Greek islands, Crete, and part of Turkey in Joseph Roux’s sea atlas.”

  “That doesn’t look much like our modern charts,” Hazel said.

  “Yeah,” Cole said. “We’re spoiled today by satellite accuracy. Surveying is very difficult and time consuming. These old charts aren’t very accurate by today’s standards, but they were quite amazing for their day.”

  “You see what I’m talking about in the lower-right corner?” Riley said. “There are these strange letters. See, it starts with the letter X with a small lowercase e, then those lines and more letters?” She got up and walked over to the monitor and p
ointed to the symbols on the screen:

  Xe | | XIe = KK.

  “It was the double K that I remembered.”

  Cole said, “It might be significant or it might be some navigator’s doodling.”

  “It’s definitely not calculations for navigation.”

  Hazel said, “What’s the title of this book again?”

  Riley picked up her phone again. “I can read it right off the title page. It’s called Carte de la mer Méditerranée en douze feuilles.”

  “Okay,” Hazel said. “So that translates to Map of the Mediterranean Sea in Twelve Leaves.”

  “Leaves?” Theo said.

  “Like a table with leaves,” Riley said. “It folds out and becomes bigger. All twelve of the charts in this book are on pages that are folded. That way the book isn’t so big, but the charts are big enough to be usable.”

  Hazel said, “Riley, I’m surprised you don’t see this. You’ve not been thinking in French much lately, have you?”

  “Not really. What do you mean?”

  “There are twelve charts, twelve pages. How would you say tenth and eleventh in French?”

  “Dixième and onzième.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good grief,” Riley said. “I should have taken Theo up on that espresso. Of course. Like we write tenth in English with the numerals and the little t-h in the corner? In France in the 1700s, they would write the letter X followed by a little e up in the corner for tenth. The X is a Roman numeral.”

  “So what do the two parallel vertical lines mean?” Cole said.

  “My guess is it means to put them side by side. What if we put the tenth chart and the eleventh chart next to each other? What would that give us? Just a second. Let me pull up the other chart.” Riley tapped the screen of her phone and a new chart appeared.

  Cole stood up and walked over to the big TV screen. He pointed to a large island in the center. “I think that’s supposed to be Cyprus?”

  “Right. That’s southern Turkey above, and Egypt is at the bottom of the chart,” Riley said. “Hang on, I’ve got my iPad right here. Let me bring up a current chart.” She tapped on the screen and brought up an electronic chart in a navigation app.

  Cole said, “Yoda, place the last two images side by side on the screen.”

  Riley stood up and walked over to the big wall screen while holding up her iPad with the modern chart. “Okay, I would say that the tenth chart here, with Cyprus and southern Turkey, ends on the left side of the page on the parallel 30º east. But the eleventh chart’s right side doesn’t line up as a match. It’s closer to the parallel 29º east.”

  “So how much of the Turkish coast is missing?”

  “I’d guess forty-five to fifty nautical miles.”

  Cole walked over to the bar and picked up the thermos of coffee. He poured himself a cup and sat on a stool. “That gap is a lot of territory to search.”

  Hazel said, “And you don’t even know what you’re searching for.”

  “More like impossible,” Riley said.

  “That’s not entirely true,” Theo said. “I interpret the text as saying there is something between there that has two K’s in it. That’s just the sort of thing a computer excels at. Yoda, find all locations on the southern Turkish coast between 29º and 30º east that have two of the letter K in the spelling of the name.”

  “Where should I post the results?”

  “On the TV screen in the main salon.”

  The list of names appeared on the screen: Yeşilköy Köyü, Kalkan, Sicak Köyü, Gökkaya Limani, Kekova, Kaleköy, Kamislik.

  “That looks like a mouthful,” Riley said.

  “Yoda, cross-reference those locations with the Knights of Saint John.”

  “Found Kaleköy.”

  “Yoda, translate Kaleköy from Turkish to English.”

  “Translation Turkish to English: castle village.”

  “Castle!” Riley and Cole spoke in unison.

  “Yoda, search Kaleköy.”

  “Yes, Theo. Kaleköy is the name of the village on the hillside beneath this crusader’s castle built by the Knights of Saint John during their stay in Rhodes.”

  A photo appeared on the screen of saw-toothed turrets and castle ruins atop a hill surrounded by red-roofed houses. In the foreground, a Turkish yacht was moored to a dock floating in deep-blue water.

  “Gorgeous,” Hazel said.

  “Take a look at this,” Riley said. She tapped her phone, and the drawing of the castle appeared on the screen. “Yoda, can you place the last two images side by side?”

  “The perspectives are not the same,” Cole said, “and remember, the two images were created hundreds of years apart.”

  “They are still very similar,” Hazel said.

  Riley slid off the bench seat and headed for the coffee thermos. “Okay, that looks great, but let’s think about this. Why would our Knight, who sailed out of Malta in 1798 to save this manuscript, then sail right into the heart of Muslim lands to hide something from the Muslims?”

  “I think it was a brilliant move,” Cole said. “Hide it in the last place they would look.”

  “So what now?” Riley asked.

  “There’s no way we can get this boat back to Turkey fast enough. I suggest you and I fly back to Marmaris and take the Bonefish. It looks like it’s about a hundred miles down to Kaleköy. We can motorsail all night and be there within twenty-four hours of our arrival in Turkey.”

  “And what about us,” Hazel said. “What can we do?”

  “Us?” Theo said.

  “Virgil and friends might have the charts,” Cole said, “but they won’t know what to do with them. They are going to come looking for us. I figure the only reason they aren’t here already is because Hazel got us out of Italy without leaving a trace. But they’ll figure we returned to Malta eventually, even if they couldn’t track us. That means it’s not safe for you here.”

  Hazel said, “We could take this boat back to Sicily. My friends are still there. I’d love to introduce Theo to them.”

  “You good with that, Theo?”

  Riley thought his smile was going to split his face in two.

  “Sounds great, Skipper.”

  Adakoy Shipyard

  Adakoy, Turkey

  April 28, 2014

  The taxi dropped them off outside the boatyard gates. After Cole paid the driver and the taxi drove off, they stood still outside, staring at the fence.

  “It’s difficult to believe we’ve only been gone two weeks,” he said.

  “A lot’s happened,” Riley said. Her phone dinged. She pulled it out of her pocket and looked at the screen. “Not again,” she said.

  “Your mother?”

  “Who else?” She shoved the phone back in her pocket.

  “Let’s go,” he said. He picked up their bags and crossed the road to the gate. He keyed in the combination, and they passed inside.

  “Cole!” He turned to look and saw Colin, coming out of the men’s head with a towel hung over his shoulder. He was carrying his toiletry kit. “How’s the new boat behaving, mate?”

  “It’s great,” Cole said. “No complaints.”

  “Hi, Colin,” Riley said. “Are you headed out to your boat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could you give us a lift out to Bonefish?”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “You off on a sailing trip now?”

  Riley started to answer, but Cole cut her off. “No, we’re just going to move the boat into a marina closer to town. We’ll probably put her on the market.”

  Riley sent him a questioning look, and he made a stern face meant to get her to drop it. It worked. Cole didn’t want to tell anyone where they were headed. No matter how careful they had been—clearing out of Malta with a crew list showing them on board Shadow Chaser II, then buying their airline tickets at the last minute before their flight while Theo and Hazel took the big boat out to sea—he knew they couldn’t count on staying ahead of V
irgil for long.

  A few minutes later, they had hoisted their gear into the cockpit of Bonefish and said good-bye to Colin, and Riley was opening the padlock on the hatch by the light of her cell-phone flash.

  Hot, stale air poured out when she opened the companionway doors.

  “It’s only been two weeks, but poor Bonefish already has that nasty closed-up boat smell. She doesn’t like being left alone. Better open all the hatches and air her out.”

  “And get out of all these heavy travel clothes.”

  “I’ll second that,” she said.

  Cole got straight to work going through his usual pretrip checklist. In all their miles of sailing, from the Philippines to the Med, they had worked out a comfortable system. He pulled the cover off the engine compartment to check the oil, raw-water strainer, and coolant while Riley sat down at the chart table. She checked the status of the batteries, started up the refrigeration, and turned on the navigation instruments.

  “Batteries look great. The solar panels and wind generator have been doing their jobs.”

  “Engine oil and water look good, too.” He replaced the engine cover.

  “There isn’t any fresh food aboard,” she said, “but we’ve still got plenty of canned goods and staples. I’ll put some beer, water, and UHT milk in the fridge.” She switched on the cockpit instruments. “We going with lights or no lights?”

  “Let’s go with no lights for now. We don’t need to show the marina busybodies which way we turn.”

  Riley started the engine, and, while it was warming up, she and Cole took the cover off the mainsail and readied the running rigging.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Riley leaned back and looked up at the night sky.

  “What?”

  “Getting ready for a night sail.”

  “I guess.”

  “Remember that first time in Guadeloupe? We sailed on Bonefish over to the bay where Shadow Chaser was anchored?”

  Cole looked at her, standing on the foredeck in shorts and a tank top, her hair loose and blowing around in the warm breeze. With her head tipped back like that, her neck looked more inviting than ever. Her body hadn’t changed at all since he’d first met her. “Oh yeah, that night I remember.”