Serpent (55 page)

Trout moved the images to the left of the screen, arranging them top to bottom. Three new faces appeared to the right.

"Looks like they were separated at birth," Zavala observed of the pairings.

"The similarity is pretty obvious, isn't it?" Orville noted. "Let's go back to the full scene again. Dr. Kirov, as our marine archaeologist, we would be pleased to have your opinion."

Using a laser pointer Nina highlighted first one ship then another. "What we have here is basically the same vessel used for dual purposes. The features are identical. The long and

straight flat-bottomed hull. The absence of a boom; the brails or napes used to lower and raise sail hang from a fixed yard. The lines sweep back to an overhanging stern. Three decks.. Fore and aft stays. The carved bow." The red dot lingered for a second. "Here is the double steering oar. The protrusion at this other end is a ram. This is a row of shields along the deck."

"So it's a warship?" Zavala said.

"Yes and no," Nina said. "On the top deck of one of these ships are men with spears. Obviously soldiers or marines. There are lookouts in the bows and space for lots of rowers." The laser flicked to another ship. "But here the deck is reserved for a person of quality. See this figure of a man reclining in the sunshine. The staff has a crescent on top, indicating the admiral's flagship. This thing hanging off the stern could be a decoration, a rich carpet maybe, that indicates the admiral is in authority."

"How long would this ship be?" Austin asked.

"My guess is that they're somewhere in the range of one to two hundred feet. Maybe longer. That would put them at around. a thousand tons."

Orville interjected. "Nina, could you mention that comparison you used with us landlubbers?"

"I'd be glad to. This ship is much longer than an English ship of the seventeenth century. The Mayflower, for example, was only one hundred eighty tons."

Orville asked, "So in your opinion, Nina, what are we looking at?"

Nina stared at the images, as if she were reluctant to vocalize what was in her brain. The scientist won out, however, and she said, "In my opinion as a nautical archaeologist, the ships shown in this rendering reflect the characteristics of Phoenician ocean-going vessels. If that sounds a little vague, yes, I am hedging my bets until I have more evidence."

"What sort of evidence would you need, Nina?" Austin said.

An actual ship, for one thing. What we know about Phoenician ships we learned mainly from their pictures on coins. There have been some reports that they were as long as three hundred feet. I'd take that with a grain of salt, but even if you cut that length down by half you still have a substantial vessel for its day."

"Substantial enough to cross the Atlantic?"

"Without a doubt," she replied. "These vessels were a lot bigger and more seaworthy than some of the minuscule sailboats that have made the crossing. People have rowed across the ocean in a dory, for heaven sakes. This vessel would have been ideal. You can't beat the square sail for an ocean passage. With a fore-and-aft rig you've always got the possibility of a dangerous jibe, the boom swinging violently over with a shift of the wind. With the brails they could shorten sail in a brisk wind. They'd get a roll with that shallow keel, but the rowers could help keep her steady, and the length of the ship would help. A trireme like this could sail more than a hundred miles a day under ideal circumstances.

"Short of an actual ship, what would you need to convince you this is Phoenician?°

"I'm not talking about convincing me," Gamay said. "I'm already convinced. Could we go back to those fares again, Paul?" The six carved heads came up on the screen again. The laser dot touched on one depiction of the bearded man, then flicked to his twin. "The pointed hat on these gentlemen is consistent with those worn by Phoenician mariners."

"Which should come as no surprise," Orville interjected, "because the picture on the right came from a Phoenician stela discovered near Tunisia. The gentleman below him is identical to African-type faces found at La Venta, Mexico. The third physical type is from the Mayan ruins at Uxmal."

"I hear a conclusion lurking in there," Austin said.

Orville sat back in his chair and made a tent with his fingertips. "Basing conclusions on pictorial matching is fine if you're a pseudoscientist trying to sell a paperback book, but it's not good archaeology," Orville said. He took a deep breath. "My colleagues would drag what's left of my tattered reputation from one end of Harvard Yard to the other if they heard me say this. Marine

archaeology is not my forte, so I can't assess Nina's statements. What I do know is that the inscriptions on these rocks show Phoenicians, Africans, and Mayans together in one place. Furthermore, Dr. Chi and I have translated the glyphs together and independently, and we've come, up with the same results each time. The stones say that those ships arrived in Maya country after fleeing a disaster in their homeland. What's more, they were greeted not as strangers but as old acquaintances."

"Did the glyphs indicate a date?"

"Knowing the Maya's obsession with timekeeping, I'd be surprised if there weren't one. The ships arrived in what would be 146 B.C. in our calendar."

Nina stared at the projection and whispered in Latin.

Seeing all eyes turned in her direction she explained, "It's something you learn in first-year Latin. 'Delenda est Carthago.' Carthage must be destroyed! Cato the Elder ended every speech he made in the Roman senate with the phrase. He was trying to whip up public sentiment in favor of a war against the Phoenician city of Carthage."

"It worked, as I recall. Carthage was destroyed," Austin said.

"Yes. In 146 B.C."

"Which means these ships could have been escaping the Romans.

A date is a date," Nina said, digging in her heels before she got dragged too far into Austin's theory. "I simply pointed out the coincidence. I made no conclusion. As a scientist I'd be irresponsible to make a statement like that," she added, but she couldn't hide the excitement building in her gray eyes.

Austin said, "I understand why as scientists you can't come out and say what you're thinking without more solid evidence. But from what I've seen here today I'm convinced the inscriptions on these stones suggest that ancient voyagers arrived in America long before Columbus. You know the Phoenicians were capable of making the crossing.

"I know they were the world's greatest explorers up until the fifteenth or sixteenth century. They circumnavigated Africa and went as far as Cornwall on the English coast and Cape Verde. On one voyage they supposedly took thousands of people on sixty ships."

"I rest my case," Austin said with exaggerated smugness.

"Not so fast, Perry Mason. The doubters will say these inscriptions are interesting, but who's to say they are authentic? Years ago inscriptions in Brazil supposedly described a Phoenician expedition in 531 B.C. The consensus was that they were forged. It sounds crazy, but you'll get people saying the antiquities looters could have been carving this stuff to sell to gullible collectors. Sure, you could make a case that the 'ships of Tarshish' undertook transatlantic voyages, but you need more substantial and substantiated proof to get anyone in the scientific community to accept it."

"What about the astrolabe you and the professor found?"

"Even that wouldn't do it, Kurt. They would say someone with Cortez or a Spanish hidalgo brought this thing in, an Indian stole it and stuck it in an old temple. Close but no cigar until you know for sure how it got there."

"Did the writing indicate what the ships were carrying?"

"We've been saving that for last," Orville said, giggling like a schoolboy.

"Oh, yes. We brow what their cargo was," Chi said. "The Mayan writing says it was mainly copper, jewels, gold, and silver."

Austin looked like someone shaking off
 
a head punch. "You're saying the ships were loaded with treasure?"

Chi nodded.

"This wasn't a routine trading expedition," Austin said, his green eyes flashing. "Carthage was under siege by the Romans. The Carthaginians would have done everything they could to make sure the Romans didn't get their hands on the royal treasury."

Any idea what happened to the treasure?" Zavala asked.

"Unfortunately none of the carvings goes beyond the one you saw of the safe arrival of the ships," Chi said.

Nina frowned. All this talk of treasure is exciting," she said with impatience, "but the dazzle of gold and jewels should not keep us from trying to find the answer to the question of why my expedition was massacred in Morocco."

"Nina's right," Austin said. "Let's concentrate on the thread that connects these inscriptions to the other discoveries overseas. Christopher Columbus. We know that hundreds of years after these stones were carved Columbus heard tales of a great treasure." He pointed at the screen. "Could this be what he was looking for?"

"I hate to throw cold water on your theory," Orville countered. "The rumors Columbus was following could have had their basis in the real riches held by the Aztecs. As we know the Spaniards hit the jackpot later:" He paused. "You say Columbus was sailing a definite course. Do I understand he was following a map?"

"Not exactly" Austin said. "You remember that news clip Nina asked you to dig out of your files?"

"Oh, yes, the article from my Fortean file about the stone artifact."

"Columbus mentioned that he was being guided by a 'talking stone.' "

"Now I remember. The carved monolith they found in Italy It was being shipped in an armored truck Headed right here to the Peabody, in fact."

Austin said, "That stone could be the key to this whole mess. Treasure and assassinations."

"What a shame we can't take a look at it."

"Who says we can't? NUMA has tackled deeper and more difficult projects."

"Let. me see if I follow your line of thinking," Orville said with disbelief. "You're planning on diving more than two hundred feet into a wrecked ocean liner in God knows what condition to retrieve a massive stone artifact from a locked armored car?"

Zavala winked at Austin. "With any luck we can do it between breakfast and lunch and celebrate at dinner"

"Hmm," Orville said with a smirk. He leaned forward and pointed his finger at the two NUMA men "And they say I'm a nutcake."

Nantucket Shoals

39 THE MINI-SUBMERSIBLE WAS BARELY a few fathoms below Nantucket Sound's blue-green waters, and Austin was already having second thoughts about diving with Zavala. His misgivings had nothing to do with Zavala's skill as a pilot. There was hardly a craft in, on, or above the water Joe couldn't operate. It was his offkey singing. As the crane lifted the two-passenger craft off the deck and into the water Zavala had broken into a Spanish rendition of "Yellow Submarine."

Austin barked into his microphone, "Do you know any other songs?"

I'm taking audience requests."

"How about singing `Far Far Away'?"

Zavala's quiet laughter came over the earphones. "Gee, I haven't heard that one since I was a muchacho. "

"Desperate times call for desperate measures."

"No problema. It sounds better with a guitar anyway. Where do you want to go, amigo?"

"How about down for starters?"

Zavala's wave of acknowledgment was visible through the observation bubble that was so close Austin could have reached out and touched his colleague on the shoulder if not for the plexiglass that enclosed their heads. The twin domes were mounted at the front of the minisub, jutting at an angle from its flat green ceramic surface like the bulbous eyes of a frog.