Spartan Gold

“We’d already decoded eleven lines of riddles and hundreds of symbols,” Selma replied. “It’s starting to feel like a second language.”

After opening the box and confirming it did in fact contain a bottle from Napoleon’s Lost Cellar, Sam and Remi had faced a dilemma. Clearly Andrej didn’t know the value of what had been tucked away in his family’s catacombs for the past two hundred- plus years. Still, they weren’t about to give up the bottle. In truth, it didn’t belong to them or to Andrej, but to the French people; it was a part of their history.

“This is a rare bottle of wine,” Sam told Andrej.

“Oh?” he replied. “French, you say?”

“Yes.”

Andrej snorted. “Napoleon disturb Tradonico grave. Take bottle.”

“Let us give you something for it,” Remi said.

Andrej’s eyes narrowed. He stroked his chin. “Three thousand kuna.”

Sam did the conversion in his head. “About five hundred dollars,” he told Remi.

Andrej’s eyes brightened behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “You have U.S. dollars?”

“Yes.”

Andrej stuck out his hand. “We make deal.”

Now Selma said, “I just e-mailed the riddle.”

“We’ll call you when we’ve got an answer.” Sam hung up and checked his e-mail. Remi scooted her chair closer and looked over his shoulder. “A long one this time,” he said.

East of the dubr

The third of seven shall rise

The King of Iovis Dies

Alpha to Omega, Savoy to Novara, Savior of Styrie

Temple at the Conqueror’s Crossroads

Pace east to the bowl and find the sign.

“The first five lines fit the pattern,” Remi said, “but the last is different. They’ve never been so explicit, have they?”

“No. This is the first time they’ve come out and said, ‘go here’ and ‘find this.’ We may be coming up on the finish line, Remi.”

She nodded. “Let’s get cracking.”

They started as they had before, picking from the riddle what seemed like places and names. For “dubr” they narrowed the references to two likely candidates: Ad Dubr, a village in North Yemen, and dubr, a Celtic word meaning water.

“So something either east of Ad Dubr or east of some body of water. What’s east of Ad Dubr?”

Sam checked Google Earth. “About eighty miles of mountains and desert, then the Red Sea. Doesn’t seem likely. Up until now all of the locations have been in Europe.”

“I agree. Let’s move on. Try the ‘King of Iovis.’ When did he die?”

Sam checked. “No such person. Iovis wasn’t a kingdom or a territory. Here’s something. . . . We’re grouping the words wrong—‘Iovis Dies.’ The original Latin for Thursday.”

“King of Thursday?”

“Jupiter,” Sam said. “In Roman mythology, Jupiter is the king of gods, like Zeus is to the Greeks.”

Remi caught on: “Also known as the Jovian planet. So from the Latin Iovis they got Jovis, then Jovian.”

“You got it.”

“So try a search with ‘Jupiter,’ ‘dubr,’ ‘three,’ and ‘seven.’ ”

“Nothing.” He added and subtracted the search terms and again came up empty. “What’s the fifth line?”

“ ‘Temple at the Conqueror’s Crossroads.’ ”

Sam tried “Jupiter” combined with “Conqueror’s Crossroads,” turned up nothing, then tried “Jupiter” and “temple.” “Bingo,” he muttered. “There are lots of temples dedicated to Jupiter: Lebanon, Pompeii . . . and Rome. This is it. In Rome the Capitoline Hill is dedicated to the Capitoline Triad—Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. And here’s the kicker: it’s located on one of the Seven Hills of Rome.”

“Let me guess: the third one. ‘The third of seven shall rise.’ ”

“Yes.” Sam found an artist-rendered map of how the area would have looked during Rome’s peak. He turned the screen so Remi could see. After a few moments she smiled. “You see anything that looks familiar there?”

“You mean other than Capitoline Hill? No.”

“Look due west.”

Sam traced his finger across the screen and stopped on a blue serpentine line ru

“And what’s the Celtic word for water?”

Sam gri

“If those were the only lines to the riddle I’d say we’d need to go to Rome, but something tells me it isn’t going to be that easy.”

Having assumed the last line—Pace east to the bowl and find the sign—would sort itself out whenever they reached their destination, they turned their focus to the fourth and fifth lines—Alpha to Omega, Savoy to Novara, Savior of Styrie / Temple at the Conqueror’s Crossroads—and spent the next two hours filling their notepads and going in circles.

A little before midnight Sam leaned back in his chair and raked his hands through his hair. He stopped suddenly. Remi asked, “What is it?”

“I need the biographical sketch of Napoleon—the one Selma e-mailed us.” He looked around, grabbed his iPhone from the nightstand, and called up the correct e-mail. “There,” he said. “Styrie.”

“What about it?” She paged through her notes. “It’s a region in Austria.”

“It was also the name of Napoleon’s horse—or at least until the Battle of Marengo in 1800. He renamed Styrie to commemorate the victory.”

“So the ‘Savior of Styrie’ . . . someone who saved Napoleon’s horse. Are we looking for a veterinarian? Doctor Dolittle, perhaps?”

Sam chuckled. “Probably not.”

“Well, it’s a start. Let’s assume the two previous phrases—‘Alpha to Omega, Savoy to Novara’—have something to do with whoever did the saving. We know Savoy is a region in France and Novara is a province in Italy—”

“But they’ve also got a Napoleon co

“Right. Go back to the previous phrase: ‘Alpha to Omega.’ ”

“Begi

“Maybe it’s talking about whoever ran the Department of the Kingdom of Italy first, then took over in 1814. No, that’s not right. We’re probably looking for a single name. Maybe someone who was born in Savoy and died in Novara?”

Sam punched different terms into Google, playing with combinations. After ten minutes of this he came across an encyclical on the Vatican website. “Bernard of Menthon, born in Savoy in 923, died in Novara in 1008. He was sainted by Pope Pius XI in 1923.”

“Bernard,” Remi repeated. “As in Saint Bernard?”

“Yes.”

“I know this isn’t it, but the only thing that comes to mind are the dogs.”

Sam smiled. “You’re close. The dogs gained their notoriety from the hospice and monastery at the Grand St. Bernard Pass. We were there, Remi.”

Three years earlier they’d stopped at the hospice during a biking trip through the Grand St. Bernard Pass in the Pe

“I don’t know if there are any accounts of it,” Sam said, “but it doesn’t take much of a leap to imagine a grateful Napoleon handing Styrie over to the hospice’s farriers. In the middle of a blizzard it would have seemed like salvation.”

“It would at that,” Remi replied. “One last line: ‘Temple at the Conqueror’s Crossroads.’ Those mountains have seen their share of conquerers: Ha