Quest (Dane Maddock Adventures) (8 page)

“Wait a minute. A Greek city somewhere in the middle of South America?” Bones frowned. “How does that make sense?”

“It doesn’t.” Kaylin turned a knowing smile upon him. “But you and Maddock, of all people, should know something doesn’t have to make sense in order to be true.” She turned back to the computer. “Kephises is a legendary lost city of Amazonia, settled in ancient times by the Greeks. Nothing else of substance, though.”

“Do you think that might be what Thomas was searching for?” Dane asked.

“It doesn’t sound like him. He’s a scientist, so I can’t envision him searching for lost cities. I could see him searching for Bigfoot before he went after a lost city.” She shook her head. “Then again, I wouldn’t have expected him to have any interest in someone like Percy Fawcett, either. I guess I didn’t know him as well as I thought.”

“Okay, so we have the possibility that Thomas was looking for the lost city of Z. That’s not much to go on.” Dane cracked his knuckles and picked up the picture. “If he truly believed this picture was enough for someone to come after him, there’s got to be much more here than meets the eye.” He gazed intently at the picture, as if the famed explorer could speak to him. “How about the book? Is there a connection between Fawcett and…” He took a close look at the picture, turning it so he could make out the title on the cover. “
The Lost World
by Arthur Conan Doyle?”

“I loved that book when I was a kid.” Bones smiled and, for a moment, his eyes took on a faraway cast. “Seems like the connection would be obvious, though. That book was written around the time Fawcett was exploring. What other book would you put in his portrait?” Then his eyes lit up. “Dinosaurs! Kaylin, you said Thomas might go after Bigfoot. What if he believed dinosaurs still live somewhere in the Amazon? Would that be something he’d go off in search of?”

“I… suppose.” Kaylin frowned. “It doesn’t feel right, though.”

“I agree,” Dane said. They were thinking about this all wrong. They were looking at the picture from the perspective of a Fawcett scholar, deepening the mystery about his quest for Z. What they should be doing, however, was put aside what they thought they knew about Fawcett and Z, and instead, treat this image as a set of bread crumbs that would lead them to Thomas. “Look up Fawcett and
The Lost World
.”

Kaylin typed the terms into the search engine, and the screen filled with hits. “Wow!” she whispered. “Look at all of these.” Dane and Bones scooted closer to the monitor. “It appears that Fawcett and Conan Doyle were friends. Some of Fawcett’s explorations inspired the story, and the main character in
The Lost World
was even modeled after Fawcett.” She continued reading. “Conan Doyle presented Fawcett with a signed copy of the book, and…” An excited smile spread across her face as she went on. “Percy Fawcett took it with him on his next-to-last expedition in the Amazon. Members of his party said he used it as sort of a personal journal, making notes in the margins.”

“That’s got to be it!” Bones pounded his fist into his palm. “Thomas must have found something written inside that book that told him where Fawcett was headed on his final expedition. Find the book, find Thomas.” 

“But why wouldn’t someone have discovered it before now?” Kaylin looked as if she was afraid to believe it could be true.

“Maybe it’s in code or something, like what was on the back of the picture,” Bones said. “We don’t have any better ideas, do we?”

“Does it say where this book is kept?” Dane’s heart was racing. This felt right. “Is it in a museum somewhere?”

“It’s kept in the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society in London.”

“Did Thomas make a trip to England at any time in the last few years?”

Kaylin frowned, her brow furrowed. “He actually did, shortly after we started dating. I remember thinking it was odd because he was gone much longer than he had planned, but I didn’t want to be nosy. We weren’t serious at the time. You know, he seemed excited when he got back, and he stayed that way. I assumed it was because he and I were getting along so well, but maybe it was something else.” Her face flushed and she hastily called their attention to a thumbnail-sized image of the book inside a glass display case.

“Here’s the book.” She clicked on the image and the snapshot filled the screen.

There was nothing remarkable about the book itself, but something else had caught Dane’s eye.

“Go back to the previous screen for a minute.” Kaylin clicked the back arrow. “Click on this picture here.” He pointed to a thumbnail image farther down on the page. Kaylin clicked it, opening an image of one of the rooms in the Royal Geographical Society.

“Look at the picture hanging on the wall in the background.” The resolution was low, and the image blurred, but there was no mistaking the portrait.

“It’s the same picture,” Kaylin whispered. “Thomas’s picture. Our picture!”

“You know what this means.” Dane smiled. “Time to pack our bags for England.”

“Well, I have mixed feelings about this.” Bones frowned, looking disheartened.

“What’s wrong?” Kaylin asked.

“I’ve been to England,” he said. “The beer’s okay, but the food sucks.”

“You are telling me that this is the sole piece of evidence you have collected?” It was only with the greatest of effort that Salvatore Scano kept his voice calm. He found cold serenity to be much more intimidating than anger or annoyance. Let them wonder what was going on behind that calm façade, and they would always fear that you were about to do something rash. “With all the resources you have at your disposal, the best you can offer me is nothing more than a poor quality photograph of an early twentieth-century painting?”

Silence reigned in the conference room as everyone exchanged sideways glances. No one wanted to be the first to speak. Finally, Alex, his son, cleared his throat. “That is the only piece of evidence there is, Father. Thornton left no other clues regarding his plans.” He fell silent, wilting under his father’s cold gaze.

Shane Kennedy took up the explanation from there. “We searched everything, Sir. Thornton’s office, his apartment, even his girlfriend’s apartment. Nothing that would tell us where he’s going. We were thorough.” Few men could meet Salvatore’s stare for very long, but, when it came to Kennedy, nothing seemed to intimidate the gritty former Marine, a quality that Salvtore both appreciated and found annoying.

“Details.” He reached for his cup of espresso, his eyes never leaving Kennedy’s.

“Breaking the encryption on his office computer was child’s play, but all the files dealing with the Amazon expedition pertained to the trip he was
supposed
to take with his students—not the one he actually took. He had no computer at home. It’s either hidden, been destroyed, or he’s taken it with him. No paper trail, either. He cleaned up after himself nicely.”

“What about his phone records, credit card charges and such?” Salvatore took a small sip of the hot, dark liquid, its bitter taste a perfect match for the information Kennedy relayed.

“Nothing helpful in the phone records. We believe he used a disposable cell phone for whatever calls he needed to make. We’re still working on obtaining the rest of his credit card information, though what do we have doesn’t reveal much.” He drew a sheet of paper from a manila envelope and slid it along the table to Salvatore, who eyed it dispassionately. It was a copy of a credit card statement with a charge for a round-trip ticket to London highlighted. “Thornton went to London several months before his expedition. While this doesn’t tell us anything specific, it suggests that the painting is of significance. Percy Fawcett was from the U.K. after all.”

“Anything else?”

“Not yet, Sir, but we are still working.”

“I expect nothing less.” Salvatore nodded and returned his attention to his son, Alex, who sat chewing his lip and staring daggers at Kennedy. “And what of the man we have in custody? Thornton’s colleague?”

“A waste of our time.” Alex’s voice was scarcely audible across the long conference table. “He knows nothing.”

“What
did
he tell you?” Salvatore took another sip and waited.

“Thornton gave him the picture with instructions to use it to find him should Thornton not return from the Amazon. The man’s a Literature professor, a school teacher, he didn’t know what to do with it, so he passed it off first chance he got.”

“And he confirms that this picture is the only piece of evidence Thornton left behind?”

“Yes.” Alex feigned a yawn. He thought his reticence made him look strong and aloof, but it served only to make him appear childish. More and more, Salvatore had considered the likelihood that Alex would not be a suitable choice to take the reins of ScanoGen. Alex was not half the man his brother had been. If only…

“You’re sure of this?” Noticing Salvatore’s distraction, Kennedy had taken over the questioning. “He’s not hiding anything?”

“He is a worm.” Alex’s twisted frown suggested a hint of something foul in the air. “He broke under questioning in less than ten minutes. I worked on him several other times just to be certain. He knows nothing else.” Alex actually smiled, something he seemed to do only when he was inflicting pain on someone, or thinking about doing so. How was it possible he was Salvatore’s progeny?

“Very well.” Salvatore resumed control of the conversation. “What about the girlfriend?”

“We are still working on that as well, sir.” Kennedy consulted his notes. “Our contact with the Charleston Police Department tells us she left the hotel they put her up in, and now she’s disappeared.”

“She is completely off the grid?” David Romani was ScanoGen’s Chief Operations Officer, and Salvatore’s best friend since college. “You can find no trace of her anywhere?”

“Our contact confirms that she hasn’t used her credit card at all in the past two days, and hasn’t drawn out any cash since shortly after she disappeared.” Kennedy consulted his notes once again. “She made two calls to a cell phone number in southern Florida. That’s all.”

“Our guest insists that the girl knows nothing. She was shocked to learn her
boyfriend
,” Alex sneered as he spoke the word, “had hidden so much from her. She was quite heartbroken over it. Such a tragedy.” He breathed on his fingernails and polished them on his shirt. “I don’t think she is of much concern to us. As soon as Thornton’s friend gave her the picture, she headed straight to the police station and handed it over to them.”

Salvatore turned his attention to Mitchell Vincent, an agent who was reasonably bright, but severely lacking in the backbone department. “Returning to the topic of Doctor Thornton. I assume your inquiries in the Amazon region have not uncovered any helpful information?”

Vincent shook his head.

“I am sorry Mister Vincent, I did not hear you.”

“No, sir.” Mitchell’s face reddened. “We located the town where he and his students began their expedition, but we don’t know where they went from there. No one admits to having seen them.”

Salvatore rose to his feet and looked down the table. “We invested a great deal of time and money on the Pan project. Doctor Thornton has clearly betrayed us. If we cannot locate him and force him to deliver on his promises, the project is dead in the water, and ScanoGen is in serious trouble.” He paused to let that sink in.

“Mister Vincent, you will continue the search for Thornton.” He next turned to his Chief Research Officer, Julius, who had remained silent thus far. “Mister Julius, I want you to take all the information we have on Thornton’s work and have our people conduct their own research. Perhaps we can discover his secrets independently.” Julius nodded, but the look on his face mirrored Salvatore’s thoughts. It was unlikely they could replicate Thornton’s work—they knew too little of what he had discovered, and much of his information was comprised of nuggets sifted from heaps of myth and legend. “David, Kennedy, you two stay with me. The rest of you are dismissed.”

Everyone except Alex hurried out of the conference room.