The Grecian Manifesto (18 page)

Before she could ask anything
else, Gikas disappeared into the doorway and slammed it shut.

Adriana took a slow breath,
grimacing at the pain each time she took in air. Right now her primary concern
wasn’t her own health. This madman had something big planned, and she needed to
figure out how to stop him.

Chapter 34

Apennine
Mountains, Central Italy

Sean considered breaking the
wax seal right away, but he feared that the cold, moist air on the mountain
might not be the best environment to expose a potentially delicate and vital
piece. His curiosity desperately wanted to know what was inside, but it would
have to wait until they got back to the hotel where they had a few things that
could aid in the preservation of the tube’s contents.

“It’s a marble cylinder,” Sean
said loudly to Tommy. “There’s an image of Julius Caesar on one side.”

“What do you think is in it?”
Tommy asked, ready to explode from excitement.

Sean carefully made his way
back across the stepping stones, much faster than he did the first time. When
he reached the embankment, he placed the cylinder in Tommy’s hand. “Not sure, but
it’s probably the map we’re looking for. We should take it back to the hotel
and open it in a safe environment in case it’s written on some kind of paper.”

“Good idea,” Tommy agreed as he
examined the object with a sense of reverence and jubilation.

He had always been like that
when the two discovered something out in the field. Ancient artifacts were a
link to people from the past, real lives that had walked the same earth,
breathed the same air. What Tommy held in his hand right now was a direct
connection to one of the most influential and famous people in the entire
world’s history. Julius Caesar had held that very cylinder in his hands. The
thought overwhelmed him for a moment.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Sean said,
observing his friend’s reaction to the piece.

“It’s always awesome when we
find something like this,” Tommy said, his voice still distant.

Sean put a hand on his friend’s
shoulder. “I know, buddy, but we can admire it later. We have to get this back
to the hotel and get it open. Right now, it’s the only thing that can give us
an in with the man who took Adriana.”

Tommy nodded and handed the
cylinder back to Sean, who gripped it tightly. The two friends climbed back
over the fence and started to head down the trail toward the parking area when
they simultaneously froze in their tracks. Something flashed in the darkness
about a hundred yards down from where they stood. It was only for a second, but
both of them saw it. Someone was coming up the path, trying to conceal their
lights.

Instinctively, Sean grabbed
Tommy and pulled him off the trail and behind the wide trunk of an oak. He
watched from around the back of the tree, seeing the faint light flash again.
Whoever was trying to shade the flashlight was doing a poor job of it.

“You think it’s a park ranger
or something?” Tommy whispered, hopeful with the question.

Sean shook his head and
responded in an even quieter tone. “A ranger wouldn’t be trying to sneak up on
us. And there are two of them.”

“Gypsies?”

“Doubtful.” Sean gave a quick
twist of his head, along with a derisive glance. He put his finger to his lips,
motioning for Tommy to stop talking.

Sean pulled out his gun and
held it close to his face. Tommy copied the gesture.

The two figures continued to
sneak up the trail toward the spring. When they reached the crest of the hill
and left the shadows of the forest, Sean realized who the men were. Standing in
the moonlight on the edge of the clearing, the Roman police officers looked
around confusedly. They ceased their efforts of trying to hide their flashlight
beams and began flashing them around, searching desperately for their quarry.

The skinny officer, who Sean
had noticed was staring at him at the jail, was saying something in Italian. He
was a little too far away to understand everything, but it sounded like he was
giving orders. Sure enough, the thicker cop started to fan out, walking around
the fence, searching the area. The one in charge went around to the right,
following the path in a direction that wound its way uphill.

Tommy glanced at Sean as if to
ask what he should do. Sean held up a finger and motioned for his friend to
follow around the broad tree trunk. As the man in uniform neared their line of
sight, Sean and Tommy shifted to the right, keeping their position behind the
tree. Sean took a quick look across the clearing at the other officer. He was
at least sixty yards away at that point, and moving cautiously up the hill,
shining his light into the woods. Satisfied the leader was far enough away to
make his move, Sean stepped out from his hiding place and back onto the trail’s
soft dirt. He moved quickly on the balls of his feet, careful not to step on a
twig that would snap and draw his target’s attention. He held his weapon level,
belt high, aiming it straight at the back of the chubby policeman.

Sean was only a few feet away
from the man when something rustled in the woods off to his left. He didn’t
know if it was a squirrel, a chipmunk, or something bigger. It didn’t matter
what it was, because the cop spun around at that noise, waving both his flashlight
and his gun as he turned. His eyes grew wide when he realized one of the men he
was searching for was right behind him. He tried to raise his gun to fire, but
Sean was on him before he could make the move. Sean leapt at him and lashed out
with his right foot in a flying sidekick. The force of the blow struck the
man’s hand hard enough to knock the weapon to the ground. The cop’s next move
was an attempt to call his partner for help, but Sean nipped that as well,
striking the man across the jaw with a dramatic upper cut. The stunned Italian
policeman staggered backward before falling flat on his back.

Sean wasted no time rolling the
man over and finding a pair of handcuffs on the left side of his belt. He
slipped them out of the holster and cuffed the cop’s hands behind his back,
leaving him lying face down in the dirt.

Tommy shook his head in mock
condemnation from his hiding place behind the tree. Sean deftly returned to the
spot next to his friend, his breathing slightly elevated from the brief
encounter.

“Good job,” Tommy said,
admiring the handiwork. “But what are we gonna do about that one?”

Sean stared up the hill. The
other cop was nearly a hundred yards away, his flashlight weaving back and
forth as he scanned the woods. “When he comes back down the hill, we flank him
just as we did with his partner.”

Tommy nodded his approval.

Sean glanced down at the ground
and found a medium-sized rock, about the size of his palm. He handed it to his
friend who took it with a confused look on his face. “When I tell you to, throw
that into the water over there. It will get the other cop’s attention and he’ll
come back down to check it out. When he does, I’ll be waiting for him over
there behind that other tree.” Sean pointed to a similar oak about twenty yards
away on the edge of the trail.

“You don’t think I could take
him?” Tommy asked, feigning insult.

Sean raised an eyebrow.
“Please, be my guest. I’ll throw the rock if you’d prefer.”

Tommy pulled the stone away,
shielding it from his friend. “No, it’s cool. Go ahead. I’ll do it next time.”

Sean grinned and passed his
friend a suspicious glance. He gave a single nod and took off toward the other
tree, staying low as he moved. Tommy watched as Sean worked his way through the
shrubs and undergrowth until he reached his destination. Sean stood up behind
the tree and held up his hand, motioning for Tommy to wait.

Tommy shrugged, wondering what
he needed to wait for, but obeyed nonetheless. A second later, Sean made a
throwing motion with his hand, giving the signal for Tommy to do his thing.

He stepped back to toss the
rock, but slipped on some loose leaves. The slip caused his balance to shift
and the trajectory of the rock to change dramatically. Tommy chucked the stone
high through the air and over the water, landing it on the hill above the mouth
of the spring.

The noise startled the police
officer who’d been searching off to the right of the trail. He swiveled around
instantly, shining his flashlight to his left, where the rock had landed among
some leaves and sticks. Tommy glanced over at Sean, who was glaring at him with
a disapproving and questioning expression.

Up on the hill, the skinny
officer had left the trail and was checking around the area where the stone had
landed. Tommy was frustrated with himself for screwing up, a feeling that
compounded as the policeman noticed his partner lying on the ground in the
moonlight.

The cop instantly turned
paranoid and started waving his gun around in every direction. He flashed the
beam of his light into the woods, desperately trying to find the men who’d
attacked his fleshy partner. After a few moments of uncertainty, he made his
way down to the other side of the spring and back onto the trail. The officer
reached his partner, who was beginning to regain consciousness, signaled by his
moaning.

“Giovanni,” Tommy heard the
leader say. “What happened?”

All he received was another
aching groan.

Tommy looked down and saw
another rock at his feet. It was slightly larger than the one he’d just thrown.
He eased his way down to one knee and picked up the stone, casting a glance
back at Sean as he stood up.

In the shadows, he could see
Sean mouth a sentence. “What are you doing?” He received no response.

Tommy ignored him, turned back
toward the two Italian policemen, and cocked his arm. He had played baseball
most of his life until his parents’ death. He’d even had some major league
teams scouting him when he was in high school. Tommy had shown a great deal of
promise as a pitcher, but when he’d had rotator cuff surgery it took a few too
many miles per hour off his fastball. He tried to rehabilitate the arm and get
it back to where it was, but things were never the same. His fastest pitch
could only reach into the low eighties, which might not have been a problem for
some teams. However, the issue of him being damaged goods at such a young age
scared away any of those teams that had an interest in Tommy Schultz.

He spent a few months trying to
reinvent himself as an outfielder. His arm was still good enough to play left
or right field. One tryout with the Cleveland Indians had gone particularly well,
and he made it down to the final cut, only to be told he wasn’t fast enough.
Running speed wasn’t an issue with pitchers, which made it a perfect place for
Tommy. After the Cleveland tryout, he resigned himself to playing
recreationally in town and pretty much gave up his dream.

Now he had a chance to put all
those years of hard work to good use. He twisted his body and stepped forward,
firing the rock at the Italian policeman who was busy trying to uncuff his
partner. The projectile covered the distance in less than a second, striking
the skinny cop on the bridge of his nose. The blow sent him toppling over,
dropping his flashlight and keys in the process. Blood gushed from his nasal
passages and oozed from a cut between his closed eyes. Tommy’s throw was a
perfect strike, and knocked the guy out cold.

Tommy rushed out from his
hiding place, sprinting across the span in a few seconds. He skidded to a stop,
grabbed the lead cop’s cuffs out of their holster, and quickly bound his hands.
Sean ran out from his position, unable to hide his surprise at the result of
his friend’s plan.

“I guess you still got it,” he
said with his hands on his hips.

“They said my fastball didn’t
have enough on it.”

“Looks like they were wrong.”

Tommy stared down at the two
men piled on top of each other. The fat one continued to moan and he was
starting to roll around a little.

“What should we do with them?”
Tommy asked.

Sean bent down and took both
sets of keys from the men. “Let the park ranger deal with them in the morning.”

Chapter 35

Rome, Italy

During the few hours’ drive
back to Rome, Sean and Tommy did everything they could to stay awake. They’d
been up for more hours than they could count, and their energy had been
depleted both by travel and by the exertion of their activities. Sean had never
been a good night driver, so Tommy had elected to take the wheel, thinking he
would be the safer option. At first, they’d tried to find something to listen
to on the radio. That had been a fruitless endeavor, however, as they quickly
learned that the local taste in music contrasted theirs remarkably. After
searching the channels in vain, Tommy elected the silence of the road over the
bad music options.

The two tried to keep up
conversation to make staying awake a little easier. Sean recounted a number of
times where he’d actually fallen asleep at the wheel, but been fortunate enough
to snap awake before his car went off the road.

That part of the conversation
had been less than comforting for Tommy, who, while a better driver in the late
hours, was still battling with heavy eyes. He redirected the conversation back
to the stone cylinder. “It’s amazing that you are holding something that was
last seen in this world over two thousand years ago, and the last eyes that saw
it likely belonged to Julius Caesar.”
 

“It is pretty remarkable,” Sean
agreed, taking a closer examination of the tube. The Latin engraved on the side
had suffered almost no erosion, and was just as clear as it must have been two
millennia before when it had been created.

Tommy glanced at it out of the
corner of his eye and then quickly put his focus back on the road. “I’ve never
seen anything like that before. Do you remember finding a cylinder like that on
any of your IAA missions?”

Sean shook his head. “No. I
didn’t.” He turned the object over, reading the inscription again. He’d read it
a dozen times already, trying to figure out what it meant.

Both men could read Latin.
Being the foundation of several world languages, knowing Latin was how Tommy
and Sean were able to speak multiple languages. The meaning of the words wasn’t
the problem. Interpreting them had been easy enough. The problem was the
message itself.

The light that brings darkness.

Sean traced the outline of the
letters with the tip of his finger. “The light that brings darkness,” he said
quietly.

“That’s an odd thing to
inscribe on an old piece of rock,” Tommy said, casually. “Still no thoughts on
what it means?”

Sean put the object back in the
front pouch of his book bag and zipped it closed. “It sounds like a warning to
me. But to someone with an evil mind and even darker aspirations, it could be
exactly what they’re looking for.”

“Gikas?”

“Bingo. And if he gets his
hands on the Eye of Zeus, it could potentially be catastrophic.” Sean let the
words hang in the air.

Their car approached another
car in the right lane, driving much too slowly. Tommy steered into the left
lane and passed the slow moving minivan. When they were clear of the other
vehicle, he returned their car back over to the right. They hadn’t seen many
cars on the lonely highway, which was most likely because they were out in the
middle of nowhere between Rome and the mountains.

Tommy had another thought.
“What if this Eye of Zeus doesn’t do anything? What if it’s just an ancient
artifact used to navigate the seas?”

“Well,” Sean shrugged, “I don’t
know what to believe about the device. What I do know is that the guy who wants
it is also the guy holding Adriana against her will. I could take or leave the
ancient relic, but if finding it means finding her and getting her to safety,
then I will do everything in my power to do that.”

The mood shifted for a moment.
Tommy guided the conversation back to the issue of the warning on the stone
tube. “I mean, is it really possible that the ancient Greeks found a way to tap
into quantum fields around us?”

An exit sign passed by. Just
beyond it, another sign told them how many kilometers until they reached Rome.

“History never fails to
surprise me,” Sean answered the question after a minute of thought. “Just when
we think we’ve got it all figured out, there’s a new discovery that changes our
perceptions of the ancient world. We still don’t know how the people of the
past created the pyramids, Machu Picchu, moved the giant stones in Cuzco, or
any number of other things we can’t seem to explain.”

He stopped for a moment,
thinking quietly to himself. “Anything is possible. That’s one thing the
quantum universe has taught us. Literally, anything could be possible. So can I
rule out the notion that an ancient computer made from brass is capable of
telling the future? No, even though it sounds a little hokey.”

The mood settled into the
silent whine of the engine and the constant swoosh of the wind passing over the
side mirrors. Off in the distance, the faint glow of the city on seven hills
arose from the darkness.

“I guess after all we’ve seen I
can pretty much believe anything,” Tommy said, voluntarily breaking the
silence.

“When we find it, we’ll see
what it’s all about,” Sean said wearily. He yawned after speaking.

“Almost home, buddy. We’ll get
a good night’s rest and figure out what’s inside that thing in the morning.”

Sean was thinking differently.
“There’s no way I’ll be able to sleep tonight if we don’t open this first. I
have to know what’s inside it.”

Tommy glanced at him out of the
corner of his eye again. “Are you sure? I mean, we’ve been at it all day. We
need to get some shut-eye.”

“What if there’s nothing inside
it? I have to know.” He stared straight ahead at the long stretch of highway.

“Okay. We can do that. But once
we’ve opened it, we are going to get some sleep. Okay?”

Sean twisted his head to the
side and smirked at his friend. “Of course.”

Something about Sean’s
mischievous tone didn’t do much to convince Tommy, but it was all he would get
for now.