by Alex Archer
“It does,” Annja said. “It gives me some new directions to think in.”
“I gotta go. The zombies are about to take this to a whole new level. Bye.”
The screen blanked before Annja could reply.
Garin reentered the room carrying a protective briefcase. He glanced at the tablet PC. “You’re through talking to the brat?”
“Yes,” Annja said. “He’s not a brat.”
“He’s annoying.”
“He’s also clever,” Roux said.
“Whatever.” Garin placed the briefcase on the counter, worked the locks and opened it.
The clockwork butterfly lay secured in a formfit section of foam. Gently, Annja took the device out of the container, already consumed with possibilities.
27
Hours later, her back stiff from sitting at the counter working on the butterfly mechanism, Annja leaned back and stretched. At one time, the butterfly might have moved and taken on new shapes. Those days were over. The parts were all crusted over and immovable.
At least, at present.
The site Chandler had given her on Michalis was tantalizing but not that helpful. The man, if he existed, was more myth than flesh and blood.
She repacked her computer in her backpack and slung it over a shoulder, then went up on deck to the pilothouse.
One of Garin’s security people nodded at her. “You’re looking for Mr. Braden and the older gentleman?”
“I am.”
“They are forward. Taking in the sea, they said.”
Annja thanked him. Taking in the sea?
She strode across the rolling deck, having already easily acclimated to her sea legs. However, the lack of sleep was catching up to her. She knew she was going to have to rest soon or fall down.
Roux and Garin stood at the front of the vessel, staring out as the waves crashed over the bow. Terns glided on the breeze, and Roux flicked pieces of bread onto the wind, which the birds caught, jockeying like fighter pilots. They talked quietly between themselves, and occasionally even laughed. Annja didn’t know if the unaccustomed civility was the product of good memories or the bottle of wine they passed back and forth.
Evidently they shared some preternatural sense, as well, because they turned around at the same time.
“Spying?” Garin demanded.
“Light-headed. Stopped to get my footing.” Annja walked over to join them, disappointed to have broken up the moment. And she was also a little sad. No matter how much they shared with her, she’d never experience the camaraderie they had after so many years. Of course, periodically Garin still tried to kill Roux. That she could do without.
“You need to sleep,” Roux said.
“I will. Soon. What are you two doing out here?”
“Admiring the sea.” Roux handed her the bottle and she drank. “It’s the only thing in the world that hasn’t really changed as long as we’ve been around. People are born and die. Cities are built and razed. Empires and nations rise and fall.” He shook his head. “But the sea? That’s eternal.”
“You’ve had too much wine,” Garin growled. He snatched the bottle from Annja and took a pull. “Have you found out anything?”
“Thodoros Papassavas called me regarding the translation on the butterfly.”
“Ah.” Roux waited in anticipation.
“Not much information, I’m afraid. The inscription was put there by a Roman centurion named Gabinius, who logged the artifact in the name of Julius Caesar. So there’s no information.”
“The inscription doesn’t say where the clockwork was found or why Caesar wanted it?” Roux asked.
Annja shook her head. Standing there in the wind, feeling the ocean all around her and the rolling deck of the ship beneath her, she could understand why Roux and Garin were so drawn to the ocean. It was exhilarating.
“Michalis the Toymaker is incredibly interesting, though. According to my research, Michalis was thought to be a demigod.”
“A child of the gods?” Roux asked.
“Yes. The son of Hephaestus, the god of fire and blacksmiths, craftsmen, sculptors, metals and volcanoes. In Greek legend, Hephaestus was also known as the lame god because he had a clubfoot. He was the only god to be thrown out of Olympus and return.”
“The gods are not real,” Garin said.
“Neither are people who live hundreds of years, or swords you can pull out of the air.” Annja reached into the otherwhere and pulled out the sword. “Yet here we are.” She allowed the sword to vanish.
“You don’t truly think Michalis was a demigod.”
“No, but why is Roux so interested in him and the clockworks he made?” Annja shifted her attention to Roux.
He pursed his lips.
Garin cursed. “He’s not going to tell you. So Michalis was thought to be a demigod. Do you know where he lived?”
“No, but Dr. Papassavas believes the inscription on the butterfly was in a language native to Mycenaean Greece.”
“Why would a Roman soldier write in that language?” Roux asked.
“The inscription was written in code. That makes me think Gabinius was working on the down low. Used a local dialect so it wouldn’t be as noticeable when he illegally ‘exported’ the clockwork he had found for Caesar.”
Roux pulled at his beard. “It’s also possible Gabinius was hiding what he’d found from other Romans who were looking to sabotage Caesar. I understand Caesar had many enemies in his final days. All throughout his career, actually, but they were more active at the end.”
“Using a local language is something I would do,” Garin agreed. “Do you know who Gabinius was?”
Annja shook her head. “That’s another mystery.”
“Then let us hope Troiai’s lucky strike leads us to answers we can use,” he said.
“How long till we reach the site?” Annja asked.
“Probably after dark this evening. So we won’t be able to go into the water until morning.”
“Then I’m going to sleep while I can.” Annja adjusted her backpack over her shoulder.
“Would you like us to wake you for dinner?”
“Please.”
* * *
KESTREL DROPPED ANCHOR off the west coast of Elba. Annja stood at the railing and surveyed the island. The Greeks had named it Aethalia because they’d mined iron there and the furnaces had filled the air with powerful fumes. Those mines had led the Etruscans and the Romans to invade. Jason and his Argonauts were supposed to have visited there.
But the most famous resident to have lived there was Napoleon Bonaparte after his exile in 1814. And despite his connection to the place, he’d only stayed a year.
“You’re up early,” Garin said from behind her, startling her.
Annja wiped away the coffee she’d spilled as she watched the sun rising out over the Mediterranean with him. “I barely remember stumbling back to my cabin after dinner. I assumed you weren’t up this early.”
“I’ve been up a few hours.”
“What about Roux?”
Garin frowned. “Still sleeping. He didn’t appear to be resting well when I checked on him. I think he’s haunted by nightmares he hasn’t had in a long time. I believe Melina Andrianou’s presence in his life again has brought back unpleasantness.”
Memory of the burning warehouse and the dead bodies and destruction had haunted Annja’s sleep, as well. “She leaves quite an impression.”
“Until that moment six years ago when I found him in such bad shape, I’d never truly believed Roux could die. Even when I’d tried to kill him.”
“I know. I’ve never seen the―” there was nothing else to call it “―fear I saw in him yesterday.”
“While he was fevered, he talked abo
ut the torture, raving. Even after everything I’ve seen during my long life, it was horrible to listen to. And if he didn’t heal the way we all seem to now, he would be a broken man.”
During the time she’d spent with Roux and Garin, Annja had seen both men recover from wounds and injuries that would have killed lesser men. As Garin mentioned, her recovery rate also seemed...much more efficient than it had been. Whatever had extended the two men’s lives had also seen to it that they healed faster and better than ordinary flesh and blood. That made her wonder if her lifespan would also be affected by her being the bearer of Joan of Arc’s sword. Only time would tell.
“Let’s discuss what’s waiting for us down there. I’ve been busy while you and Roux have been napping.” Garin headed for the wheelhouse. “Come with me.”
* * *
“I BROUGHT REMOTE operated vehicles to do the preliminary work. Diving time is limited, so I wanted to ensure we could make the most of it.” Garin nodded toward the workstation where a young man manipulated joysticks. “This exploration has paid off quite well. It appears Sebastiano Troiai keeps a very accurate log of his salvage work.”
The computer screen revealed an underwater view of the seafloor and gave her the sensation that they were slowly flying. On the screen, the world was a deep blue. Beautiful fish swam around coral reefs and through kelp beds. The ROV startled a squid into quickly jetting away, leaving a fog of dark ink behind.
Annja watched, mesmerized, as the submersible glided through the water and rendered the seafloor in sharp relief. “How deep is it here?”
“Eighty-seven feet to one hundred eleven. It’s within scuba depth.”
“Unless the shipwreck we’re looking for lies in deeper water.”
“The ocean floor here remains pretty consistent.”
“Any sign of the Andrianous?”
Garin shook his head. “None so far. But we won’t be able to stay hidden for long. It won’t be long before they find one of Troiai’s crewmen who can give them an approximate site location.”
Annja sighed. She hated being this helpless when they were up against the clock.
“These people know what they’re doing, Annja. Let’s leave them to it and get something to eat.”
“I want to be doing something.”
“I know. But one of the first things Roux taught me when he took me under his wing all those years ago was to rest when I was able. After the action starts, there will be no time for it.”
Reluctantly, Annja went with him.
* * *
HOURS LATER, WHILE sitting in the wheelhouse and taking a turn with the ROV, Annja found part of a ship’s hull sticking up from the seafloor. Roux and Garin were out on the deck—how they weren’t fixated on the ROV searches, Annja didn’t understand.
Cautiously, she brought the ROV around and scanned again, more slowly now. As she continued the search, her excitement grew. She had one of the men get Roux and Garin.
“This is a Roman galley,” Annja said when Roux and Garin joined her. “It looks like a liburnian, a small bireme that carried twenty-five pairs of oars. This was one of the most commonplace ships on the Mediterranean.”
“That also means it was one of the most sunken ships in these waters,” Garin observed. “It might not be the ship Gabinius sailed on.”
Annja panned the ROV around. “Troiai said he found a few artifacts. He didn’t say he found the ship. When a ship gets sunk, it usually goes down in pieces. Sometimes a shipwreck can float for miles underwater, and it can lose cargo all along the way. Usually you can map a spread of that cargo.” She piloted the ROV up and back, then zoomed the magnification out. “You can see a hint of a trail. See the amphoras here?” She pointed out the containers visible on and in the seafloor. “They’re in a fairly straight line.”
Roux tapped the screen. “What’s that over there?”
Working the joysticks, Annja piloted the ROV toward what had caught Roux’s eye. A few minutes later, she was looking down at a bronze statue of a Roman soldier that was missing his head.
“That’s not a clockwork, is it?” Garin asked.
“I can’t tell.” Annja moved in closer, but still wasn’t able to tell much about the figure other than it was a swordsman in what looked like leather armor.
Garin drummed his fingers on the workstation. “I don’t like the idea of getting into the water with a clockwork that might come to life at any moment.”
“You’re welcome to stay here and watch.” Annja looked at Roux. “What about you? Are your Spidey senses tingling?”
Roux shook his head.
“Okay, so maybe a clockwork isn’t down there.” Annja tried not to give in to her disappointment. “But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing down there to find. Where is the dive gear?”
28
Annja flipped over Kestrel’s stern railing and hit the water cleanly. She stroked down, feeling the cold that was kept at bay by the dive suit. Inside the full-face scuba mask, she breathed easily. No matter how many times she dived, she knew she would never get used to the strange world that spread out around her.
Underwater lamp in hand, she followed the anchor line down to the shipwreck. Roux, Garin and four other divers from the ship trailed after her.
Reaching the ocean floor, Annja checked her dive watch and depth gauge. The deeper divers went, the less time they could remain under and the faster oxygen was consumed.
She kicked her fins toward the shipwreck, not able to see it yet, but knowing where it was. Her heart raced and she worked to calm herself to preserve oxygen. Fewer than fifty feet from Kestrel’s anchor rope, she swam over the shipwreck.
In its day, the ship had been eighty feet long and ten feet across, not nearly as big as Lord Nelson’s ships-of-the-line that were one hundred and fifty feet long. And they were canoes compared to the container ships that plied the oceans these days.
But in first century BC, the biremes had been deadly ships.
Now, fewer than thirty feet of the ship’s prow remained intact. She had broken in half. The stern was two hundred yards away, indicating that she had gone down quickly and hadn’t moved much. It was just luck she hadn’t been found before.
She swam and dug and took pictures with the underwater camera she had brought. During her investigation, she turned up a few gold coins, more of the amphora, the missing head of the bronze statue—which wasn’t a clockwork and didn’t move when she swam near it—along with several pieces of pottery. She gathered and placed the finds in salvage bags Garin’s crewmen transferred back to Kestrel.
“Annja.” She heard excitement in Garin’s voice. “I found something.”
“What?”
“A box. A bronze box. And it looks like it’s still watertight.”
Annja swam back to join Garin in the stern section. Roux was slightly ahead of her, his fins moving in practiced flicks that propelled him steadily through the ocean.
Garin floated, gazing down at the bronze box he’d found. “Treasure, do you think?”
The box was almost two feet long by a foot and a half wide by six inches thick. The possibilities that it presented were staggering.
“I can’t open it down here, in case it is watertight.” Garin picked up one corner of the box. “And it’s heavy.”
Annja lifted, as well. “Very heavy.”
“Do you want to go up now to see what’s inside?”
“Of course I do, but we’re going to stay down here our full dive.”
“Still, it’s going to be hard to wait,” Roux said.
“Yes, it is.”
* * *
JUST AS ANNJA’S watch was showing they’d reached the outer limits of their dive time, she spotted a corner of what looked like a book sticking up near an amphora she’d swum by earlier
. She knew a book wouldn’t last any time at all unburied in the open ocean. Thank God it had been covered by sand.
Hovering over it, she worked to free it from the ocean bed, quickly discovering that it had been made of copper sheets and bound by copper hoops. She didn’t try to open it, afraid that she would damage it.
Securing it in a net bag she’d brought for artifacts, she swam back toward the anchor and prepared to surface.
* * *
THE BOOK WAS unreadable, but only because neither Garin, Roux nor Annja could decipher the small script that covered the copper pages. It did, however, look a lot like the inscription Papassavas had translated, so she set it aside to copy later and send to the professor.
The object that held everyone’s interest was the box Garin had found. He worked on it carefully down in the workspace in the middle of the ship. In the end, when he had it open, it held a small fortune in gold coins and gems.
Garin smiled, pleased with himself. “Nothing like finding a fortune to start your day out right.”
Roux was not impressed.
But on second look through the gold, they found a small clockwork cricket that was still in working order. When it was wound, the wings fluttered musically and it chirped.
“Not as impressive as the butterfly,” Garin said. “And if this thing was so active, you have to wonder what the butterfly did.”
Annja agreed as she took pictures of the copper book to send to Papassavas. “So we rest now, dive again later this afternoon?”
“Yes.”
* * *
ALL DAY THE next day, Annja worked the shipwreck. They started bringing up the amphoras, which were going to be interesting finds all on their own. Ships’ captains used to transport all kinds of goods in these because they were watertight. More importantly, the contents of the amphoras would help more accurately date the shipwreck. Annja also took a sample of the ship’s timbers, as well. During the time period, most of the ships had been constructed of elm. The wood could also be carbon dated, like much of the contents of the amphoras.
