by Tom Pollack
WAYWARD
SON
by TOM POLLACK
with JIM ALVES and JOHN LOFTUS
Cascada Productions
[email protected]
READERPEDIA®
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Motion picture credit for Tom Pollack:
Walt Disney Pictures
“Morning Light”
A 2008 film based on an
original idea by Thomas J. Pollack
Cascada Productions
2901 West Coast Highway, Suite 200
Newport Beach, CA 92663
[email protected]
Copyright © 2011 by Cascada Productions
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Cascada Productions.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-1-4507-6958-7
Book Cover Design by Tim Green of Faceout Studios
Illustrations by Connie Gabbert of The Spare Button
Print interior design by Robin Black of Blackbird Creative
E-book conversion by Green E-Books
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, events, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead or actual events is entirely coincidental.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Epilogue
About the Authors
Take the Quiz
For my loving father,
Thomas C. Pollack,
who passed away in 2010
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We extend our recognition and sincere thanks to the dear people in our loyal “reader posse,” numbering nearly one hundred, who devoured the various versions of the manuscript and offered their thoughtful suggestions for creating a better novel. Their names are listed below. Jim Madden—you win the patience award for the most reads!
Also, we wish to thank Don Jacobson and Jason Myhre of D. C. Jacobson & Associates for their encouragement and expert guidance as we took the decision to launch Cascada Productions and publish this novel ourselves.
We also owe a huge debt of gratitude to our talented editors, David Jacobsen and Steffany Woolsey.
And of course, we honor our lovely wives, Jennifer Pollack, Jackie Alves, and Lori Loftus for their encouragement and support. We simply don’t know how you put up with the three of us as we forsook your company for one another’s during this endeavor. We promise you some wonderful vacations before we try anything like this again!
Tom, in particular, has some additional thanks to express.
Muchas gracias to H. M. Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, for inviting me to Europe in 2004, where we collaborated in helping to establish a professional grand prix sailboat racing circuit called the Audi Medcup. This venture allowed me to spend free time near ancient ruins in Rome, Herculaneum, Athens, and other exotic locations, where the core ideas for this novel germinated and were then researched.
Thank you, Betty Pollack, my amazing and loving mother, for encouraging me to travel the world in search of adventure. I found it!
To my buddy Jim Demetraides, with whom I spent enormous amounts of “spare” time at Loyola Marymount engaging in strategy/role-playing games and creating fascinating characters.
My eternal love and respect for Jennifer and our fabulous children, Lance and Fallon, for patiently listening to me think out loud about the novel in the car, at home, on vacation, etc., etc.
And finally, my dear friend Roy Disney, a terrific, down-to-earth guy who loved his New York Times crossword puzzles and taught me more than a few lessons about storytelling later in life. I miss you.
Many thanks to the reader posse: Adam Alves, Michael Alves, Michael Badran, Michael Baynes, Edward Bonlarron, Jamie Bott, Kari Bretschger, Jim Burke, Brenda Clauss, Peter Clayton, James Cocara, Lynn Coleman, Carol Dalton, Cornell Dascalu, Margaret Dascalu, Kim Delaney, Jim Demetriades, Nancy Demetriades, Janet Demetriou, Pete Demetriou, Linda Dillon, Erin Doe, Warren Duffy, Mark Eisele, Catherine Faddis, Debbie Farquhar, William Fecia, Erich Friedman, Kari Garrett, Tom Garrett, Ken Giacommuzzi, Danni Good, Eric Grasmeyer, Jim Grasmeyer, John Grasmeyer, Ken Grasmeyer, Jenny Green, Steven Hornyak, Richard Jacobsen, Andrew Johnson, Terry Kerr, Paul Kim, Marjorie Koss, Becky LaForge, Pa
stor Pete Lasutschinkow, Peggy Lobdell, Jason Loftus, Lori Loftus, Heather Madden, Jim Madden, Patsy Marshall, Albert Mason, Fran Messenger, Helene Mochedlover, Gina Moish, Betty Mulford, Dave Mulford, George Munz, Erin Nagle, Rob Nagle, Anne Najar, Richard Najar, Mike Nash, Kristin Orloff, Ross Pake, Tony Petruzzi, Betty Pollack, Dave Pollack, Debra Pollack, Fallon Pollack, Kate Pollack, Lance Pollack, Lisa Pollack, Sam Pollack, Steve Pollack, Thomas C. Pollack, Fr. Michael Pontarelli, Jan Potter, Keri Jo Raz, Kent Riley, Marisa Rudder, Ann Scanzaroli, James Scanzaroli, Peter Smrechek, Val Smrechek, Kendall Souza, Laura Steil, Tim Timmons, Sr., Judith Toor, Dr. Jean Traux, Ed Underwood, Susan Valera, Jerry Walker, Alex Wasilewski, Jim West, and Clarence Yoshikane.
“Choose this day whom you will
serve…”
- Joshua 24:15, NLT
PROLOGUE
North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii
AMANDA KNEW THIS WAS the moment of decision.
Hurtling down the steep curl of the biggest wave yet, she trailed her hand along its glassy face to slow her descent and stay slotted inside the iridescent green tube. She’d never been in the barrel this long before, and her instincts were to kick out, but the rush was incredible. Maybe just a little longer…
This morning’s waves at the Banzai Pipeline were beyond belief. Gorgeously shaped double overheads broke some two hundred yards farther out than normal. She’d already ridden several monsters that barreled and re-formed two or three times.
Now, as she savored the precarious balance between gravity and speed, Amanda heard the faint, rhythmic sound of gongs pealing from the shore.
“Bells?” she thought. “That old church is miles from here.”
The distraction proved costly.
Her board slid upward, and the wave pitched her over the falls, slamming down on her with a thunderous roar and plunging her under the water. Amanda was caught in a powerful washing-machine surge that left her with no sense of up or down.
She knew from experience to stay calm and wait it out, but the undercurrent was relentless, seemingly eternal. Even worse, she felt a wrenching tug on her ankle as her tether snagged in the coral beneath. Amanda began to struggle, but the Pacific was too powerful an adversary.
Then the bells sounded once again.
CHAPTER 1
Malibu, California
ROLLING OVER ONTO HER side, she opened her eyes, reached to the nightstand, and fumbled for her iPhone. The insistent bell tower ringtone indicated an unknown caller, and the display read Blocked. Breathing a deep sigh of relief, she drowsily answered the phone and brought it to her ear. Who could be calling at 4:07 in the morning?
“Amanda?” The voice was tentative, yet startlingly familiar.
“Juan Carlos!” She blinked hard and shook her head slightly.
“Did I wake you up?”
“Actually, I’m glad you did. Are you in LA?”
“No, I’m in Ercolano helping with the new excavations.”
“You’re in Italy? What about Real Madrid?”
“Oh, soccer is history now. I tore up my knee last season and had to quit. I moved here in the fall. I’ve been here almost a year now. My grandfather Silvio got me the job.”
“So you’re back to archaeology.” From their days in college together at UCLA, Amanda knew it was his first love. She pictured Juan Carlos in Erco-lano—ancient Herculaneum, the Roman resort town on the Bay of Naples in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius. The volcano’s catastrophic eruption had buried the town, together with neighboring Pompeii, in the first century AD. It was an archaeologist’s dream.
His voice pulled her back. “Yes, yes, but we can catch up on all that later. I’m sorry to call you so early, but it’s really urgent that we talk about the nuovi scavi.”
“Digame, Johnny.” Spanish to his Italian, accompanied by the pet name only she was allowed to use.
“You read about the earthquake last month?”
“Everyone did. It was so weird. August 24. The exact anniversary of Vesuvius in 79 AD.”
“Right! Well, our team is exploring a site near the Villa dei Papiri. Up to now, no one rated it as very interesting. But the earthquake opened up a narrow crack in a wall of rock, only half a meter wide at its entrance but very deep. We sent in a robot with a fiber-optic camera, but even its path was partially blocked by fallen rocks.”
“And…?” The romance of archaeology was one of the links that had brought them together.
“And we have distant pictures of a half-obscured bronze door—perhaps the entrance to a large underground chamber. But it’s what’s inscribed on the door that’s amazing. Latin and Greek, of course. But we can also make out Aramaic, Hebrew, and Chinese!”
Amanda nearly dropped her phone. “Aramaic? Chinese?”
“Incredibile, ma vero. You must see the pictures. I would e-mail a few, but this find is highly confidential at the moment. But that’s not really why I’m calling. No one here has the language skills to handle this. Plus we need someone with field experience and a slim figure who can navigate the long crevice. I want you to come to Italy…”
“But Johnny, I can’t just pick up and leave my job for—”
“Amanda,” Juan Carlos cut in with an urgent tone, “Silvio has reason to believe that this could be bigger than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Maybe even than the Rosetta Stone. We need you. You can fit through that crack easily, brush away the dust, and decipher the rest of the words. If we can get the door open, no one is as qualified as you to make a survey of the chamber. And time is of the essence!”
“How do you think I’ll get permission from the Getty so fast?” Ever since her graduation from UCLA, the Getty had supported Amanda’s PhD in papyrology. Now she was full time on the staff of the Getty Museum’s Villa location in Malibu.
“No problem. Silvio spoke to Dr. Walker late yesterday. Arrangements are being made. You know that the Getty and Silvio’s employer are partners with the Italian authorities. I guarantee that Walker will let you come over. I think they may even pay for your airline ticket.”
Amanda wavered. She couldn’t just leave everything and jet over to Italy, could she? But what if it was bigger than the Rosetta Stone? Juan Carlos had always had a level head. And Silvio, his grandfather, was a world-renowned archaeologist, the head of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale for the past thirty years.
“When would I come?”
“Immediately. We don’t know how long we can keep the discovery under wraps. I already looked at flight schedules and…”
“Are you talking about today?”
“Absolutely. You can catch a British Airways flight from LAX tonight at 11:00. You’ll be at Fiumicino Airport in Rome tomorrow night at 11:30 our time. I’ll meet you there outside the baggage claim and we’ll drive a few hours to Ercolano.”
Amanda smiled. “You seem to have thought of everything. But I still have to talk to Walker. And I’ll need to make arrangements for Plato.” She looked down to the foot of the bed where her seal point Siamese lay curled up like a question mark.
“Plato? Who’s Plato?”
Was that jealousy in his voice? “Only the cat I got last year at the shelter.”
“Oh, of course. Can you call me back later today?”
“Right after I see Walker. What time is it there now?”
“Lunchtime. Just after one o’clock.”
“I’ll call you before you eat dinner.”
“It’ll be great to see you again.”
Amanda paused. “Before dinner, then. And Johnny, one last question.”
“Yes?”
“How did you find my cell number?”
“O chica mia, I never lost it. Ciao.”
As the line went dead, she could hear him smile.
***
Amanda slid her custom surfboard into the back of her Jeep. The yellow Wrangler had been a twenty-first birthday present from her dad, and although it was now seven years old, she couldn’t think of parting with it. The Jeep symbolized the special bond between
Amanda and her father, forged after her mom’s early death from cancer. For almost ten years he had been her only parent. Then, at the end of her senior year at UCLA, he died tragically. A product engineer for Pacific Oil & Gas and an ex-Marine, he had tried to save a group of trapped workers in a refinery fire in Nigeria. He saved them all, but paid with his life.
Since Roger James’s death, his only child had found solace in the ocean. Although bothered since her early teens by an occasional bad dream that, like this morning’s, usually involved drowning, Amanda was not one to give fear any reign in her life. As for many surfers, the waves helped to keep her centered. Amanda surfed in the early morning near the Getty Villa in Malibu whenever conditions were right. She had met some good buddies, but it was the sport’s solitude that appealed to her above all else—that and the moment of release that came with carving the face of the perfect wave.
Amanda knew from yesterday’s wave report that an offshore Santa Ana wind would combine with swells from a storm off the coast of Mexico to produce impressive waves on California’s south-facing beaches. And after the phone call from Juan Carlos Bribon, she needed some time to mull things over. Amanda did some of her best thinking on her board. At 5:15, as the morning light was barely a glimmer, she cruised through the residential streets of Malibu and picked up the main artery, the Pacific Coast Highway—PCH in local lingo—and headed north to Point Dume.
Amanda’s favorite break lay at the base of hundred-foot-tall sandstone cliffs that offered some of the most stunning ocean vistas in southern California. The mansions at Point Dume were the trophies of business tycoons rather than Hollywood stars. Amanda, who had lived all over the world because of her father’s job assignments, sometimes amused herself by conjuring up comparisons to Point Dume. There was Acapulco in Mexico, of course, with its countless red-tiled haciendas overlooking the azure waters of the Pacific; and Ercolano, playground for the elite of the early Roman Empire. The estates of Cap d’Antibes in the south of France were similar, as was Victoria Harbor as seen from the Peak in Hong Kong—anywhere that human materialism clung to natural beauty like a barnacle.
