Trojan Odyssey

"But how could they have crossed six thousand miles of ocean in eleven hundred B.C.?"

"A tough question," Perlmutter admitted. "Those who lived on the Atlantic shores were a seafaring people, often called 'people of the oars.' They are known to have sailed into the Mediterranean from ports in the North Sea. But there are no legends of Celts crossing the Atlantic, other than possibly Saint Brendan, the Irish priest, whose voyage of seven years is thought by many to have reached the east coast of America."

"When did this the voyage occur?" Dirk asked.

"Sometime between 520 and 530 a.d."

"Fifteen hundred years too late for our find," said Summer.

Dirk reached down and petted Fritz, who promptly sat up and licked his hand. "We seem to strike out with every pitch."

Summer looked down and smoothed her dress. "So where do we go from here?"

"The first item on your list of enigmas to be solved," Perlmutter advised, "is to find out when and if Navidad Bank sat above the surface of the sea three thousand years ago."

"A geomorphologist who studies the origin and age of land surfaces might come up with some theories," Summer suggested knowledgeably.

Perlmutter gazed at the model of the famed Confederate submarine Hunley. "You might begin with Hiram Yaeger and his computer wizardry. The world's most extensive accumulation of data on marine sciences is in his library. If any scientific study on the geology of Navidad Bank was ever conducted, he'd have a record of it."

"And if it were compiled by a German or Russian team of scientists?"

"Yaeger will have a translation. You can count on it."

Dirk came to his feet and began pacing the floor. "Our first stop on returning to NUMA headquarters is to meet with Hiram and ask him to probe his files."

Summer smiled. "And then what?"

Dirk didn't hesitate. "Next stop, Admiral Sandecker's office. If we want to get to the bottom of this thing, we must persuade him to loan us a crew, research ship and the necessary equipment to conduct a thorough investigation of the sunken chambers and retrieve their artifacts."

"You mean, go back."

"Is there any other way?"

"I suppose not," she said slowly. For some reason she could not fathom, a fear welled up inside her. "But I don't think I could bring myself to look at Pisces again."

"Knowing Sandecker," said Perlmutter, "he'll save NUMA funds by combining your exploration with another project."

"You have to agree that's a reasonable assumption," Dirk said, turning to his sister. "Shall we go? We've taken up enough of St. Julien's time."

Summer gave Perlmutter a cautious hug. "Thank you for the glorious lunch."

"Always a joy for an old bachelor to have a pretty young girl for company."

Dirk shook Perlmutter's hand. "Goodbye and thank you."

"Give your dad my best and tell him to drop by."

"We will."

After the kids had left, Perlmutter sat for a long time lost in his thoughts, until the phone rang. It was Pitt.

"Dirk, your son and daughter just left."

"Did you steer them in the right direction?" asked Pitt.

"I whetted their appetite a bit. Not a great deal I could offer them. There is little recorded history of the seafaring Celts."

"I have a question for you."

"I'm here."

"Ever hear of a pirate named Hunt?"

"Yes, a buccaneer who achieved minor fame in the late sixteen hundreds. Why do you ask?"

"I'm told he's a restless ghost known as the Wandering Buccaneer."

Perlmutter sighed. "I've read the reports. Another Flying Dutchman fable. Although, several of the ships and boats that radioed that they'd seen his ship disappeared without a trace."

"So there is cause to be concerned when sailing in Nicaraguan waters?"

"I suppose so. What's your interest?"

"Curiosity."

"Would you like whatever history I have on Hunt?"

"I'd be grateful if you could send it to my hangar by courier," said Pitt. "I've a plane to catch first thing in the morning."

"It's on its way."

"Thank you, St. Julien."

"I'm having a little soiree in two weeks. Can you make it?"

"I never miss one of your fabulous parties."

After he rang off, Perlmutter assembled his papers on Hunt, called a courier service and went to his bedroom, where he stood before a case tightly packed with books. Unerringly, he pulled one from the shelf and walked heavily to his study, where he reclined his bulk on a leather Recamier doctor's couch made in Philadelphia in 1840. Fritz jumped up and lay on Perlmutter's stomach, staring at him through doleful brown eyes.

He opened the book by Iman Wilkens titled Where Troy Once Stood and began reading. After an hour, he closed the cover and gazed at Fritz. "Could it be?" he murmured to the dog. "Could it be?"

Then he allowed the lingering effects of the vintage Chardo

18

Pitt and Giordino left for Nicaragua the next day on a NUMA Citation jet to Managua. There, they switched to a commercial Spanish-built Cassa 212 turboprop for the hour-and-ten-minute flight over the mountains and across the lowlands to the Caribbean sea and over an area known as the Mosquito Coast. They could have made the short flight in the NUMA jet, but Sandecker thought it best they arrive like ordinary tourists, in order to blend in.

The setting sun in the west bathed the mountain peaks gold before the rays were lost in shadows on the eastern slopes. It was hard for Pitt to imagine a canal crossing such difficult terrain, and yet throughout history Nicaragua was always considered the better route for an inter-oceanic cha

Before the turn of the century, as with too many far-reaching and historic turning points, politics crawled out of its lair and came to a bad verdict. Panama had a powerful lobby and worked hard to push their cause and disrupt relations between Nicaragua and the U.S. government. For a while, it was a toss-up, but with Teddy Roosevelt working behind the scenes to hammer out a sweet deal with the Panamanians, the pendulum swung the extra mile away from Nicaragua when Mount Pelee, a volcano on the Caribbean island of Martinique, erupted, killing more than thirty thousand people. In a case of incredibly bad timing, the Nicaraguans issued a series of stamps advertising the country as the land of volcanos, one of them depicting an eruption behind an illustration of a wharf and a railroad. That clinched it. The Senate voted for Panama as the site of the U.S.-built canal.

Pitt began studying a report on the Mosquito Coast soon after takeoff from Washington. Nicaragua's Caribbean lowlands were isolated from the more populated western side of the country by the rugged mountains unfolding below and dense tropical rain forests. The people and the region were never a part of the Spanish empire but came under British influence until 1905, when the entire coast fell under the jurisdiction of the Nicaraguan government.

His destination, Bluefields, was Nicaragua's main Caribbean port, named after the infamous Dutch pirate who used to hide his ship in the coastal lagoon near the city. The population of the area was made up of Miskitos, the dominant group whose diverse ancestors came from Central America, Europe and Africa; the Creoles, who are the black descendants of colonial-era slaves; and the Mestizos, whose bloodlines are a mixture of Indian and Spanish.