The Minoan Cipher (A Matinicus “Matt” Hawkins Adventure Book 2) (30 page)

As he peeled the tourist face off and begin to apply his new features over the scarred flesh, he was already praising himself that this would be one of the best make-up jobs he’d ever done.

Hell, maybe it would even earn him an Oscar.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Kalliste peered through a magnifying glass at the inked symbols on the vellum. To the left of the scroll was a thick lexicon of archaic Greek. On the other side was a yellow, legal-sized notepad filled with symbols and pictograms. Calvin sat patiently at the table waiting to give the handle another crank.

When she finally raised her head from her work, Kalliste had a weary, but triumphant smile on her face.

“Eureka,” she said. Her voice came out as a croak. “I’ve got it. Correction. I’ve got
part
of it, but I don’t know what I’ve got.”

She turned the pad around so Calvin could see what she had written below the word Minotaur. The first sentence of the scroll read:

“O my King as thou hast (commanded) thy humble protector of thy treasure(s) has (written) the story of thy greatness and wisdom.”

Calvin had listened to Kalliste’s sighs of frustration for the last hour. He tapped the notebook with his fingertip. “Looks like you’re getting somewhere.”

“After the first flush of victory with the Minotaur I thought I would quickly make progress, but this is the best I can do after hours of painstaking work. It reinforces my decision to seek outside money from the Hidden History channel for linguistics expertise. Maybe I should put this off until I know if that’s a possibility.”

Calvin tried to back her up. “That might not be a bad idea,” he said. “Why don’t we decide what we want to do after we go over the latest stuff?”

“A good idea. My brain is frazzled. Tell me what you think this means. The words in parenthesis are educated guesses.”

He read the sentence again. “Easy call. Our pal Minotaur worked for the king who ordered him to write his boss’s biography. Like anyone in that position, he’s gonna butter up the guy who signs his paycheck.”

“Very good, Calvin. As to the author?”

“He’s been given an important and sensitive job. That means he’s pretty close to the king. Maybe even a confidant.” He paused. “He describes himself as a protector, which may mean he’s military.” Calvin read the notebook again. “You’ve got
treasures
, plural. Is that a mistake?”

“It could be, but I’m pretty sure I got it right. There was more than one treasure. Based on the link to the Minotaur, I’m assuming this was the treasure of King Minos. He was one of the richest rulers in the world.”

Calvin shook his head. “Treasure could mean diamonds and gold. Land holdings and ships. The list could go on forever.”

“There’s something else you should see. Minotaur left another mystery.”

She turned vellum over. On the other side of the scroll was a diagram drawn with the same ink used for the text. “Do you know what this is, Calvin?”

“Looks like a maze.”

“Yes. Maybe
the
maze. When I was young I used to imagine myself in the Labyrinth I think I could navigate the network of passages with my eyes shut. This diagram must have been drawn by the person who calls himself the Minotaur. Looks like our work is just beginning,” she said.

“I heard from Matt while you had your nose in the scroll. The captain and his wife asked them to stay overnight. He and Abby will fly back tomorrow morning.”

“Maybe we’ll have something exciting to tell them. I relax best when I’m cooking. Why don’t we have dinner on the rooftop? The view will calm my inner turmoil.”

“Fine with me. I picked up some shrimp at the market.”

“Wonderful. I’ll whip up a shrimp and feta casserole.”

Kalliste rummaged through the refrigerator and discovered she was out of tomatoes.

“I’ll borrow some from the old yiayia who lives on the square,” Kalliste says. “She stays up late and watches reruns of
Dallas
on the television. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Calvin volunteered to peel the shrimp and pop the wine.

Kalliste took a ceramic bowl from the cupboard, left the house and climbed the stairs to her neighbor’s. As she had predicted, the elderly woman was watching a Greek-speaking Larry Hagman on the small television set. She filled a bowl with tomatoes and went back to her program to watch J.R. Ewing plot against his brother Bobby.

As Kalliste hurried across the square to the stairway two figures in black darted from the shadows and came up behind her. One put his over her mouth. The other placed a shiny object on her neck. The bowl fell from her hands and shattered on the pavement. Seconds later her body went limp and she was dragged back into the shadows.

Leonidas was watching from the rooftop, and had seen Kalliste walk from the stairway to a house on the square. When she emerged minutes later carrying the bowl, he assumed that she had borrowed something. He was taken off-guard by the swiftness of the kidnapping. An alarm clanged inside his skull. All hell was about to break loose. His experience and training kicked in. With calm deliberation, he slipped the bag containing his arsenal onto his right shoulder, slung a leg over the low wall and dropped off the roof into the darkness.

Salazar waited with his men who’d taken up positions close to Kalliste’s house. When he gave the order, one man would go up to the door and knock. As soon as the door opened, the point man would blast his way in. The others would follow and take care of business.

The phone in his shirt pocket vibrated. He brought the phone to his ear. The Prior leader, North, spoke, “We’ve got the Greek woman.”

Salazar tempered his rage. “Good work. I can’t talk now. The operation is about to commence. We’ll see you at the plane with the device.”

North clicked off. Salazar cursed under his breath. Those ferret-faced fools had spoiled his plans. No matter. He would still deal with Hawkins. And he would soon have the device. He pursed his lips in a soft whistle. The point man waved to show he heard the signal, then brought his machine pistol to his hip and advanced toward the door.

Calvin had cleaned the last of the shrimp and rinsed them in a plastic colander. As he worked, he hummed a variation on the old New Orleans standby.

“Oh when the shrimp go marching in, oh when those shrimp go marching in…”

Hearing the knock at the door, he stopped singing. Maybe Kalliste was back and needed help. He rinsed the shrimp juice off and dried his hands on a dishtowel. The few seconds it took for that task saved his life.

As he started toward the door, a man’s voice called from behind.

“I wouldn’t open that. A bunch of guys are on the other side waiting to gun you down.”

Calvin turned and a grin came to his face. “Hey, Hawk. What are you doin’ here, man? Thought you were still in Spain. How’d you do that voice?”

Leonidas had copied every detail he could of Hawkins’s face. He’d started with the usual blank mask, dyed it an oaken complexion, and trimmed the dark wig.

“Been working on it.”

Doubt crossed Calvin’s face. The stranger’s shoulders were not as broad as those of his friend and he was shorter than Hawkins.

“You’re not Matt.”

Leonidas smirked. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m not your pal. You gotta admit it’s pretty close, though.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the guy who saved your buddy’s ass on Crete and I’m trying to do the same for you.”

Calvin glanced at the pistol hanging by Leonidas’s thigh.

“If you’re thinking of grabbing for my gun I’ll save you the trouble.” Leonidas hooked his finger through the trigger guard and handed the weapon to Calvin, who hesitated, thinking the offer was a trick.

There was another knock at the door. Louder.

Calvin shouted over his shoulder, “That you, Kalliste?”

No reply.

Leonidas knew that they had seconds to act. “They got your lady friend and they’re going to get us if we don’t get outta here.”

Calvin weighed the warning. Kalliste would have answered his voice. He snatched the pistol and tucked it into his belt. Then he stuffed the device, the scroll, and the notebook into the knapsack and slipped his arms through the straps.

“You got in. Maybe you can get us out,” he said.

Leonidas had produced another pistol from a holster in the small of his back. He gestured with the barrel at the stairway leading to the second floor. Then he dashed for the patio door, with Calvin right behind. There was a thud from the front entryway followed by the sound of wood splintering. By then the two men were on the patio.

As Leonidas led Calvin to the iron fence, he said, “I had you made as military. What branch were you in?”

“Navy SEALs. Why you askin’?”

“I don’t want to carry you around piggy-back. See if you can keep up with an Army Special Ops.”

Leonidas climbed over the fence and disappeared. Calvin didn’t have to be coaxed. He followed Leonidas over the fence, grabbed onto the rope and began his hand-over-hand descent down the face of the cliff.

Salazar entered Kalliste’s house on the heels of his men, who had cleared the first floor and streamed up the stairs to the second level. His fierce eyes glanced around the living room. He expected to see the bodies of Hawkins and whoever was unlucky enough to be in his company. But there was no one. Salazar was at his most dangerous when his blood lust went unsatisfied. No sign of the mechanism either. His frown deepened. He picked up a
demitasse
cup from the table. The coffee was still warm.

His lead man called from the patio.

“Something you should see here, Mr. Salazar.”

He went out to see his man pointing his electric torch at the end of the rope knotted to the fence. Salazar borrowed the torch and leaned over the railing. The rope dangled down to the narrow shelf of rock at the base of the house’s foundation. Salazar handed the torch back.

“Give me your pistol,” he said.

He held the gun so he could see the screen of the night vision sight and surveyed the cliffs. Two ghostly blurs were moving off to the left.

“There,” he said, pointing. “They’re trying to escape along the cliffs. We could lose them if they make it to the stairs that run from the village to the harbor. Split your men into teams of three. One team will follow them. The other will cut them off at the stairway. Get moving.”

“What do you want us to do when we spot them?”

He handed the gun back.

“My orders haven’t changed.
Kill
them.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Calvin stumbled blindly along the rim of the ancient volcanic caldera behind the pseudo version of Hawkins. The black lava cliffs sloped down to a ragged edge a few feet off to his right. Below the cliffs a striated wall dropped more than two hundred feet as if it’d been sheared off by a giant cleaver. Calvin’s feet kept slipping on the loose pieces of pumice that covered the ground. A single misstep and he’d slide over the cliff to his death.

“Hey,” he called out. “You know where you’re going?”

“Yeah. Away from the posse on our ass,” Leonidas replied without slowing his pace. “The guy back there was carrying a Cobray M11 with sound suppressor and night vision scope.”

“I know all about Cobrays,” Calvin said. “You can empty the magazine in the time it takes to sneeze. You still haven’t told me where we’re headed.”

“I’m following a goat path along the ridge. Scouted it out in the daylight. Not exactly the LA Freeway, but we’ve only got a short way to go.”

“Hope so. They’re moving faster and can see in the dark. Bound to catch us at this pace.”

“Not if we disappear.”

“You got a Harry Potter invisibility cloak on you?”

“Better. Whoops!”

Leonidas caught his toe on a black lava knob. He pitched forward, twisting his body to avoid a face plant and a deathly slide down the slope. Calvin’s arm shot out and his thick fingers closed on a wrist, but Leonidas kept sliding. Calvin jammed his downhill foot into a crease in the lava to keep from slipping, leaned into the hill and braced himself. His arm felt as if it were being pulled from its socket. Leonidas came to a jerking stop; one leg dangled over the cliff. His weight pulled Calvin closer to the edge.

“Climb or you’ll take us both down!” Calvin yelled.

Leonidas dropped the pistol. The weapon clattered down the slope and disappeared over the edge. He reached out and clawed at the pumice until his groping fingers found a crease in the rock. Calvin got both hands around the wrist and pulled him to a standing position.

They backed away from the edge and paused to catch their breath. “Thanks, man,” Leonidas said. “Almost lost it.”

“You must have something damned important in that bag of yours. It almost pulled us over the edge.”