The Navigator, Page 6

  A car horn beeped at the bottom of the hill. A man standing next to a beat-up old Land Rover had one hand in the car and the other waving in the air. Saxon waved back, slipped into his desert robe and turban, and led the way down the slope. The man blowing the horn in the sandblasted vehicle was an aristocratic-looking Arab whose upper lip was hidden under a luxuriant mustache.

  “What’s up, Mohammed?” Saxon said.

  “Time to go,” the Arab said. “Bad people come.”

  He brandished the barrel of the Kalashnikov automatic rifle toward a point about a half mile distance. An oncoming vehicle was kicking up a dust cloud.

  “How do you know they’re bad people?” Saxon asked.

  “They all bad people around here,” the Arab said with a gold-toothed smile. Without another word, he got behind the wheel of the car and started the engine.

  Saxon had learned to respect Mohammed’s skill at keeping him alive in the Wild West atmosphere of Yemen’s backcountry. Every chieftain in the area seemed to have his own private army of brig-ands, and larceny and murder in his heart.

  He slid onto the passenger seat. The Bedouin piled into the back. Mohammed mashed the accelerator. The Land Rover kicked up dirt and sand. As the driver ground through the gears, he managed somehow to steer and hold on to his weapon as well.

  Mohammed kept checking his rearview mirror. After several minutes, he patted the dashboard as if it were the neck of a trusty steed.

  “We’re okay,” he said with a wide grin. “You find your queen?”

  Saxon told him about the sarcophagus and the mummy of the young girl.

  Mohammed jerked his thumb at the Bedouin in the backseat. “I told you. This son of a camel and his village are all crooks.”

  Thinking that he was being praised, the Bedouin displayed a toothless grin.

  Saxon sighed and shifted his gaze to the barren countryside. The locale changed, but the scene was always the same. A native con man would tell him in excited tones that the queen he was looking for was literally beneath his nose. Saxon would make a hair-raising crawl into the middle of an ancient necropolis that the con man’s forebears had looted hundreds of years before. He couldn’t count the number of mummies he had encountered. He had met a lot of nice people along the way. Too bad they were all dead.

  Saxon dug a few riales out of his shorts pocket. He handed the coins to the delighted Bedouin and declined the man’s offer to show him another dead queen.

  Mohammed dropped the Bedouin off at a cluster of desert tents, then he drove to the old city of Ma’arib. Saxon was staying at the Garden of the Two Paradises Hotel. He asked Mohammed to come by the hotel the next morning and they would decide on his plan.

  After a hot shower, Saxon changed into long cotton slacks and shirt and went down to the lounge, his mouth feeling as if he’d swallowed a pound of desert sand. He sat at the bar and ordered a Bombay Sapphire martini, and the drink’s astringent sweetness washed the grit out of his throat.

  He chatted with a couple of Texas oil company rednecks. A second martini revived his spirits, until one of the oilmen asked him what he was doing in Ma’arib.

  Saxon could have responded that it was the last leg of a doomed quest to find the fabled Queen of Sheba among the ruins of old Ma’arib, the city that was said to be her home base.

  He said simply, “I’m here to test the waters.”

  The oilmen exchanged puzzled glances and then broke into hearty laughter. Before they headed back to their quarters, they bought Saxon a third martini.

  Saxon was at that wonderful point where all brain activity was clouded by an alcoholic haze when an elderly bellhop shuffled into the bar and handed him a sheet of hotel stationery with a brief message scrawled on it:

  I believe I can introduce you to the man of the sea. If you are still interested in meeting him let me know soonest.

  He blinked the blurriness from his eyes and read it again. The sender was a Cairo antiques finder named Hassan, whom he had spoken to by phone before coming to Yemen. He scrawled an answer at the bottom of the note and handed it to the bellhop with a tip and instructions to arrange transportation for a morning departure. Then he ordered the first of several pots of strong black coffee and buckled down to the job of getting sober.

  NUMA 7 - The Navigator

  Chapter 6

  ZAVALA HAD HIS DUFFEL BAG packed and was ready to go when Austin swung by the former library building in Alexandria, Virginia, that his friend had converted to a bachelor pad with a southwestern flair. The two men caught a morning Air Canada flight, and their plane touched down on the tarmac at St. John’s, Newfoundland, late in the afternoon, after a stop-off in Montreal.

  A taxi took them to the busy waterfront, where the two-hundred-seventy-foot-long Leif Eriksson was tied up. The forty-six-hundred-ton vessel was a brawny ship, less than five years old, its hull reinforced for protection against the punishing North Atlantic ice.

  The captain, a native Newfoundlander named Alfred Dawe, knew when their flight was coming in and was waiting on deck in anticipation of their arrival. As the men came up the gangway, he introduced himself and said, “Welcome aboard the Eriksson.”

  Austin extended his hand in a bone-crushing grip. “Thanks for having us, Captain Dawe. I’m Kurt Austin, and this is my colleague, Joe Zavala. We’re your new iceberg wranglers.”

  Dawe was a compact man in his fifties who liked to brag that he’d been born in a place with the forlorn name of Misery Cove, and that his family was so dumb they still lived there. Schoolboy mischief lurked in his clear blue eyes, and he had a dimpled grin that came easily to his ruddy face. Despite his self-deprecating humor, Dawe was an accomplished skipper with years of experience running ships in the cantankerous waters of the Northwest Atlantic. He had often encountered NUMA’s distinctive turquoise-hulled research ships, and knew that the American agency was the most highly respected ocean exploration and study organization on the globe.

  When Austin had called and asked to go on an iceberg cruise, the captain had checked with the ship’s owners for permission to have guests aboard. He’d gotten a go-ahead and called Austin back with the date for the ship’s next departure.

  Dawe had been eager to meet the two men ever since Austin had faxed him a copy of their résumés. Austin had wanted Dawe to know that he and Zavala were not landlubber dilettantes who’d need constant watching for fear they’d fall overboard.

  The captain knew about Austin’s master’s degree from the University of Washington, his training as an expert diver proficient in a variety of underwater specialties, and his expertise in deepwater salvage. Long before former NUMA director James Sandecker had hired Austin away from the CIA, Austin had worked on North Sea oil rigs and with his father’s Seattle-based ocean-salvage company.

  Zavala’s curriculum vitae said that he was an honors graduate of New YorkMaritimeCollege, a skilled pilot with hundreds of hours on, above, and under the sea, and a brilliant engineer with expertise in the design and operation of underwater vehicles.

  Given his guests’ impressive academic credentials, the captain was intrigued when he met the NUMA engineers in person. Austin and Zavala came across more like gentlemen swashbucklers than the scientific types he’d expected. Their soft-spoken manner couldn’t mask a barnacle-like toughness and a brass balls brashness that was only partly tempered by their veneer of politeness.

  His guests were obviously rugged physically. Austin was over six feet tall and around two hundred pounds, without an ounce of fat on his sturdy frame. With his broad shoulders and powerful build, the brawny man with the mane of prematurely gray, almost-white, hair looked like a one-man wrecking crew. His chiseled face was deeply tanned from constant outdoor exposure, and the ocean winds and sun had given his skin a metallic burnishing. Laugh wrinkles framed intelligent, coral-hued eyes that calmly gazed out at the world with an expression that suggested nothing they saw would surprise them.

  Zavala was a few inches shorter. He was flexibl
y muscular, and he moved with the catlike lightness of a matador, a holdover from his college days when he had boxed professionally as a middleweight. He had earned his tuition with a devastating right cross–left hook combination. With his movie star good looks and athletic build, he looked like the male lead in a pirate saga.

  The captain showed his guests to their small but comfortable cabin.

  “I hope we haven’t crowded anyone out,” Austin said as he tossed his duffel on a bunk.

  Dawe shook his head. “We’ve got a crew of twelve on this cruise—two short of our normal contingent.”

  “In that case, we’ll be glad to lend a hand,” Zavala said.

  “I’m counting on it, gentlemen.”

  Dawe conducted a quick stem-to-stern tour of the ship, and then they went up to the bridge, where he gave the order to get under way. The deckhands cast off the mooring lines, and the ship steamed out of St. John’s harbor. After passing between FortAmherst and Point Spear, the most northeasterly spit of land in North America, the ship headed up along the Newfoundland coast under layers of slag-gray clouds.

  Once the ship hit the open sea and settled on its course, Dawe turned over command to his first mate and spread a satellite photo out on a chart table.

  “The Eriksson delivers food and equipment to the drilling rigs in the warm months. From February to July, we’re looking for big stuff floating down from Baffin Bay.” He tapped the photo with his forefinger. “This is where most of our North Atlantic bergs originate. Got around a hundred glaciers in West Greenland that turn out some ninety percent of the Newfoundland icebergs.”

  “How’s that translate into the actual number of icebergs?” Austin said.

  “I’d guess that about forty thousand medium-to-large bergs calve in Greenland. Only a fraction of that total comes this far south. Between four hundred and eight hundred make it to Iceberg Alley, the area forty-eight degrees north latitude off St. John’s. They drift for around a year after calving, and then they pass through the Davis Strait into the Labrador Current.”

  “Smack into the great circle shipping lanes,” Austin said.

  “You’ve been doing your homework,” Dawe said with a grin. “Yep. That’s where the trouble starts. You’ve got a steady flow of ships between Canada, the States, and Europe. The shipping companies want the voyages to be short and economical. The ships pass just south of the boundary of all known ice.”

  “Which is where the Titanic discovered unknown ice,” Austin said.

  Dawe’s genial smile dissolved. “You think a lot about the Titanic when you’re out here. It’s a constant reminder that bad seamanship can fetch you a one-way ticket to Davy Jones’s locker. The Titanic’s grave is near the Grand Banks, where the Labrador Current meets the Gulf Stream. There’s a twenty-degree water temperature difference that creates fog that’s as dense as steel wool. The ocean circulation in the area is pretty complex as well.”

  “That must make your job hair-raising at times,” Austin observed.

  “I wish it was something I could put in a bottle for bald-headed men. A berg can wander around the ocean like a drunk on his way home from a bender. North Atlantic icebergs are the fastest moving in the world. They’ll travel up to seven knots an hour. Fortunately, we’ve got a lot of help. The International Ice Patrol makes regular flights. Passing ships keep tabs on icebergs, and the Eriksson works with a fleet of small spotting planes hired by the oil and gas companies.”

  “How’d you get into towing?” Zavala asked.

  “We tried using water cannon to move bergs. That works with ‘growlers,’ chunks of ice about the size of a big piano. There isn’t a hose big enough to move a five-hundred-thousand-ton mountain of ice. Towing them to warmer water seems to work the best.”

  “How many bergs do you actually lasso?” Austin said.

  “Only those that are headed for an oil or gas drilling platform. Two or three dozen. Once a ship hears about a berg, it can adjust its course. A five-billion-dollar world-class rig doesn’t have that option. The floating platforms can move, but it takes time. There was a near collision a few years ago. Berg wasn’t sighted until it got about six miles from the platform. It was too late by then to tow the berg or evacuate the platform. The supply boats pulled it off at the last second. The berg went right over the wellhead.”

  “With all the surveillance, I’m surprised the berg got that close,” Austin said.

  “As I said, their course can be erratic, depending on shape, size, and wind. That one snuck by us. We’ll be keeping any eye out for a big lunker that disappeared in the fog after being sighted a few days ago. I’ve been calling her Moby-Berg.”

  “Let’s hope that we’re not Captain Ahab chasing white whales,” Austin said.

  “I’d prefer a white whale to an iceberg,” Dawe said. “By the way, did I ever tell you why Newfoundlanders like to drive in winter?”

  Austin and Zavala exchanged blank looks at the odd shift in conversation.

  “The snow fills in the potholes,” Dawe said. He laughed so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks. The captain had a seemingly endless supply of “Newfie” jokes that poked fun at his heritage. The jokes continued through dinner.

  The Leif Eriksson’s cook served up a meal that would have been worthy of a five-star diner. As Austin and Zavala dug into rare roast beef, canned green beans, and garlic mashed potatoes, covered with a layer of thick gravy, the captain unleashed his joke repertoire on his captive audience. Austin and Zavala weathered the barrage of marginal humor until they could take it no longer and excused themselves to turn in.

  When they climbed to the bridge early the next morning, the captain must have felt sorry for them. He dispensed with the jokes and poured them mugs of hot coffee. “We’re making good time. We’ve seen a lot of growlers. That’s our first ‘bergy bit.’”

  Dawe pointed to an iceberg floating about a quarter of a mile off the starboard bow.

  “That’s bigger than any burger bit I’ve ever seen,” Austin said.

  “It’s nothing compared to the stuff we’ll see later,” the captain said. “It isn’t considered an iceberg unless it’s nearly twenty feet above the water and fifty feet long. Anything smaller is a bergy or growler.”

  “Looks like we’ll have to learn a whole new vocabulary out here,” Zavala commented.

  Dawe nodded in agreement. “Welcome to Iceberg Alley, gentlemen.”

  NUMA 7 - The Navigator

  Chapter 7

  SAXON PICKED UP HIS rental car at the CairoAirport and plunged into the automotive anarchy that passed for traffic flow in the ancient city of the Pyramids. The cacophony of beeping horns and the choking impact of dust and car exhaust was a strong antidote to weeks spent traveling in the lonely deserts of Yemen.

  He drove to the outskirts of Cairo and parked on the Sharia Sudan. Pungent barnyard smells and inhuman sounds came from a nearby fenced-in area, the Souq al-Gamaal. The old Cairo camel market. The corrals that had once been surrounded by green fields were hemmed in by apartment houses.

  Saxon had suggested the rendezvous. He wanted to meet Hassan in a public place for security. The dung-spattered oasis of old Egypt appealed to his sense of drama as well.

  Saxon paid the small entrance fee required of non-Egyptians and strolled among the corrals. Hundreds of camels brought up from the Sudan awaited the slaughterhouse or an even worse fate carrying overweight tourists at the Pyramids.

  Saxon paused to watch a protesting dromedary being loaded into the back of a compact pickup truck. He felt a gentle tug at his hand. One of the dirty-faced urchins who haunted the market begging for baksheesh was trying to get his attention.

  Saxon followed the boy’s pointing finger. A man was standing under a makeshift awning near a group of haggling camel buyers. Saxon gave the boy a tip and walked across the corral. The man had a café au lait complexion typical of many Egyptians, and a neatly trimmed beard decorated his chin. He wore a circular knit cap and a matching white galli
baya, the long cotton gown favored by many Egyptian men.

  “Sabaah ilkheer,” Saxon said. Good morning.

  “Sabaah innuur, Mr. Saxon. I am Hassan.”

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “You want to do business?” Hassan said. The offer should have made Saxon suspicious. Egyptians liked to linger over tea before talking business. But his eagerness overpowered his judgment.

  “I’m told you might be able to help me find a certain lost property.”

  “Maybe,” Hassan said. “If you can pay the price.”

  “I will pay whatever is reasonable,” Saxon said. “When might I see this property?”

  “I can show it to you now. I have a car. Come with me.”

  Saxon hesitated. The Cairo underworld sometimes had ties to shadowy political groups. He thought it prudent to size Hassan up before he put himself in the stranger’s hands.

  “Let’s go to Fishawi’s. We can talk and get to know each other,” he suggested. The popular outdoor café was near Cairo’s main bazaar and its oldest mosque.

  Hassan frowned. “Too many people.”

  “Yes, I know,” Saxon said.

  Hassan nodded. He led the way out of the market to a battered white Fiat that was drawn up to the curb. He opened the door for Saxon.

  “I’ll follow you in my car,” Saxon said.

  He walked across the street and slipped behind the wheel of his rental car. He inserted the key in the ignition to start the engine just as another car squealed to a stop next to his.

  Two men in black suits jumped out of the car and bulled their way into his vehicle. One sat in the back and the other next to Saxon. Both leveled guns at Saxon’s head.

  “Drive,” said the man in the front passenger seat.

  Saxon’s innards turned to ice water. But he reacted with characteristic calm. He had experienced many close calls in his years as an explorer and adventurer. He started the car, pulled away from the curb, and obeyed the order to follow Hassan’s car. He kept his mouth shut. Questions would only antagonize his uninvited passengers.