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

by Paul Kemprecos

  “I can give you room 311, Mr. Healy. Your friend is in room 308. That’s the best I can do.”

  “That would be fine. Please don’t let him know I called. I’d like to surprise him.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  He booked the room and thanked the clerk, then went into his bedroom. He made up a face with the features of a man in his sixties. The gray wig was in need of a trim. He dressed in tan slacks, a blue Oxford shirt under a navy blazer. Standing in front of the mirror, he practiced a slight hunch of the shoulders. Not bad. Middle-aged men were practically invisible.

  Leonidas took a small, flat, plastic box from his suitcase and tucked it into his jacket pocket, then he wiped down the .22 pistol and placed it in Isabel’s hand. He carried a spare pistol to replace the one from the holster. The police would ID her as a prostitute. Maybe they’d figure the dead guys were her pimps. It was a thin story but might just keep the cops occupied for a while.

  He blew Isabel a kiss and slipped out of the room. Minutes later, he was in a cab heading for the hotel.

  The clerk remembered his call. “You’re in luck, Mr. Healy. Your friend just returned and is in the lounge.”

  Leonidas bought a Financial Times and walked into the lounge. He sat at a table against a wall, ordered a club soda with lime, and unfolded the pink newspaper pages. Hawkins was sitting at the bar, head bent over an electronic tablet, when a couple entered the lounge.

  The man with the shaved head was slightly less than six feet tall, although the muscular shoulders that bulged against the seams of his olive suit made him seem even bigger. He moved with an easy confidence in his step. Leonidas sized him up. Military. Probably seen combat. The attractive auburn-haired woman by his side was dressed in a black business suit. Leonidas thought at first that she was corporate, but there was an assertiveness in her slender body suggesting she also had military training on her resume.

  The couple walked to the bar, and the man said, “Hey, Hawk. Brought you a surprise.”

  Hawkins swiveled on his stool. Leonidas would have been dead long ago if he couldn’t read people from a distance. The oak-carved face of the American engineer displayed a mixture of amazement and pleasure. A stare. A hike of the brows, and a wide grin.

  Leonidas placed his cell phone on the table in front of him and stuck a set of ear buds into his ears. An app allowed the phone to be used as a directional receiver. Keeping his eyes on the newspaper, he adjusted the volume.

  This was going to be interesting.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Hawkins slid off his stool and wrapped his arms around his ex-wife.

  “You never cease to amaze me, Abby.”

  She pecked him on the lips. “Where’s your Greek friend? The stuffy old archaeologist.”

  “I never said Kalliste was stuffy,” Hawkins said. “I said she was highly-respected. Too bad you can’t meet her. She went back to Greece.”

  “Good thing. I looked her up on the internet. She’s quite attractive for a middle-aged woman. Actually, for any age.”

  “C’mon, Abby. You flew across the Atlantic because you were jealous?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Hawkins. I came to Spain because I heard you’d gotten yourself into a pile of trouble.”

  Hawkins gave Calvin a look. “It was no big deal.”

  “I’d say having a boat shot out from under you and almost drowning is a big deal.”

  His friend shrugged. “The lady is very persuasive.”

  “Don’t blame Calvin,” Abby said. “You and I were only married a short while, Matt, but long enough for me to know when you’re being disingenuous with that cavalier attitude of yours. I would have worn Calvin down eventually and wormed the story out of him. I’m glad you weren’t seriously hurt.”

  “I’ve got some bumps and bruises. That’s nothing compared to my new submersible. Tough seeing a multi-million dollar piece of equipment sink under your feet.”

  Abby put her hand on his arm. “What can I do to help, Matt?”

  Hawkins glanced at the entrance to the lounge. “I can tell you more in detail after we talk to these gentlemen.”

  He waved Captain Santiago and Miguel over, made the introductions and suggested they all move to a table, which put them beyond the range of the smart phone amplifier Leonidas was using to eavesdrop. He could have edged closer, but he didn’t want to attract attention. He put some cash down, unplugged the ear buds, and went to the reception desk for his room key.

  Back in the lounge, Hawkins began, “Captain Santiago owned the Sancho Panza, the salvage boat that sank during our survey. If it weren’t for the captain and his son, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. Could you tell my friends what happened before the boat went under, Captain Santiago?”

  After the Spaniard repeated the story he had told the police, Abby said, “I don’t get it. Who would want to stop you from diving to simply look at the wreck?”

  “Maybe the ship was carrying treasure,” Calvin drawled. “Folks figured you were poaching on their stash.”

  “That’s possible, Cal. But how many treasure hunters would have Spike missiles in their back pockets?”

  “Yeah, I catch your drift. Hardware’s available on the black market, but the shooters would need intel about what you were doing, and where you’d be doing it. Takes money and contacts. That suggests a tight organization. Maybe a government.”

  “The big question is still, why?” Abby said.

  “I don’t know,” Hawkins said. “I’m hoping I can find that out when I make another run at the site. Cal’s going to handle security.”

  “Is this a no-girls-allowed boy’s club adventure?” Abby said. “Just sayin’.”

  “Molly has already agreed to help with research. I’d love to have you on board, but the last time we talked, you were barely holding your company together.”

  “Women are better multi-taskers than men, Matt. Besides, my transports and executive jets will come in handy.”

  Hawkins knew that Abby had gone through Navy weapons training, kept herself in top-notch physical condition and had a quick mind that almost always made the right decision. But he hesitated. “You sure you want to do this? Things could get complicated,” he said.

  Abby folded her hands, looked him straight in the eye and in a level voice, said, “When have things not been complicated between us?”

  Hawkins smiled. “Just sayin’.”

  “When do we start?”

  “Tomorrow morning. The captain has arranged for a boat. He and his son will take us out to the site. I see this as a three-fold mission. First, find Falstaff and assess salvage possibilities. Second, Cal, I’d like you to make a forensic inspection of the captain’s boat.”

  “I can do that. What’s the third fold, Hawk?” Calvin said.

  Hawkins powered up the tablet. The screen showed a shaky, greenish-gray image of the bones of the wreck illuminated in Falstaff’s floodlights.

  “Kalliste took this video with her cell phone. The quality could be better, but she was shooting through the passenger sphere. The picture gets cloudy where we used the thrusters to blow sand off the wreck. It will clear after a second. Here.”

  He froze the image and zoomed in on the tapering, conical object partially buried under the sand.

  Abby leaned forward. “What is that thing, Matt?”

  He tapped on the tablet. An album of black-and-white prints appeared on the screen. The pictures showed different views of an object that looked like an inverted bucket suspended in the sea by ropes or chains. The final image showed a man in the bucket, which was being lowered into the water using pulleys and gears attached to a heavy framework.

  “Damn,” Calvin said. “It’s a diving bell.”

  “A real old one from the looks of it,” Hawkins said. “Diving bells go back to Alexander the Great, but they didn’t become technically feasible until Dr. Edmund Halley improved on earlier models. This is Halley’s bell design.” He called up another imag
e. “The model in the video looks even more sophisticated than that.”

  “Does this mean what I think it means?” Abby said.

  “We’ll know better once we get a vehicle down for a closer look. But the implication is pretty clear. Kalliste and I weren’t the first divers to make it down to this wreck.”

  After he left the lounge, Leonidas had gone to his room and taken a miniature recorder from his suitcase. He switched it on and propped it up against a desk lamp. He made sure that the corridor was deserted. Then he went to room 308, slipped a plastic case from his pocket and took out a thin metal card. He ran the card through the door lock to pick up the combination and used it as a master key. Slipping into the room, he placed one electronic bug in the living room area and another in the bedroom.

  Using a miniature battery-powered tool he drilled holes in the walls for the tiny microphone transmitters. Each cylinder was smaller in diameter than a thumbtack. He placed a ballpoint pen containing a micro-transmitter on the writing desk. The pen actually wrote.

  He stood in the middle of the room and in a low voice, said, “Testing. Testing.”

  Leonidas returned to his own room and hit the play button on the recorder. His test came through loud and clear.

  When he re-entered the lounge, he saw that Hawkins and his friends were wrapping up their business with handshakes. As Hawkins gave the woman a quick embrace he happened to look in Leonidas’s direction. They locked gazes. Leonidas smiled and nodded, playing the part of an old man approving of young love.

  Leonidas watched Hawkins and his friends leave the lounge and silently scolded himself. Hawkins had noticed him staring, and it had stirred a defensive curiosity. Leonidas should have known better. Hawkins had served in Afghanistan, where interest from a stranger was often the precursor to an attack. Sloppy move on his part. It was a strong reminder of what he should have learned by now. Not to underestimate Matt Hawkins.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The fishing boat Santa Maria plowed through the mounding sea under a clear blue sky. The well-maintained wooden-hulled craft was about two-thirds the length of the Sancho Panza. Captain Santiago had leased the boat from a fisherman who had been laid up with a back injury and was glad to get the money.

  Abby was with the captain in the wheelhouse. They were deep into the subject of Cervantes.

  Hawkins stood at the bow, arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the sea. He was thinking about the diving bell on the old wreck. As a Navy SEAL, Hawkins had dropped into the ocean from a helicopter, wearing full combat and dive gear, rolled off a speeding boat into the surf, and assaulted a shore position in the belly of a miniature submarine. Yet he was finding it difficult to imagine how it must have been to descend to the wreck in a claustrophobic contraption shaped like an upside-down beer mug.

  “How’re you doing, Hawk?” said Calvin, who had come down from the pilot house.

  “Fine, thanks,” Hawkins replied. “Just wondering why anyone would make a suicide dive in that bell. The divers must really have wanted to get down to that ship. You saw the video. What do you think?”

  Calvin spread his arms wide. “Thinking about how great it is to be out here with you and Abby. Especially Abby.”

  “Don’t blame you there, Cal. Abby is pretty special.”

  “Well?” Calvin drawled the word out into two syllables. Way-all. “What’s going on with you and the lady?”

  “We haven’t talked to each other in months, so you can assume not much is going on.”

  Calvin grinned. “I’ve known you both too long to fall for that line.”

  “Dang. Shoulda known you’d be onto me. But like Abby said, it’s complicated. Maybe I should write Ann Landers for advice.”

  “She’d probably tell you that you’re both worrying too much about getting burned again.”

  Hawkins felt the boat slowing under his feet and was glad to change the subject. “Looks like we’re coming up on the site, Cal. Let’s get Minnie prepped for the dive.”

  The storm that had swept in after the first dive had left clear weather in its wake. Low seas, cloudless skies, a light breeze.

  Hawkins and Cal went to the stern deck where Miguel stood next to a heavy-duty plastic container, roughly the size of a large shipping carton that sat under a crane used to haul in fishnets. Hawkins unlatched the box and pushed the cover back on its hinges. Nestled in a contoured foam bed was a remote-operated vehicle around four feet long and almost as wide, with runners like those found on an old sled.

  Hawkins had named the vehicle Minnie, after Mickey Mouse’s girlfriend. It was a wordplay on the ROV’s compact size, but also because the twin spotlights on top of the vehicle looked like mouse ears. Turbines on both sides of the battery housing powered the vehicle.

  It was not unusual in ROV design to have one or more mechanical arms called manipulators. Hawkins had wanted this model to be a workhorse. Instead of jointed manipulators, he built it with two sturdy arms that could extend from the main body and lift heavy loads into a basket under the camera.

  Following his conversation with Cal, he had called Howard Snow back in Woods Hole, checked on his dog and asked Snowy to put the ROV on a truck to Boston. Calvin picked Minnie up at Logan Airport during a stop-off on his trip to Spain.

  They connected it to a 500-foot-long fiber-optic emergency cable coiled onto a drum. Next they set up the control console. Hawkins linked the units and placed the control and thirteen-inch TV monitor on a wooden workbench under the shade of a canvas canopy.

  Hawkins asked Miguel to be the ROV tender. His job would be to stand on deck, watch the ROV and signal his father when to move the boat. The job normally required experience, but Miguel seemed quick-witted and eager, and he had good rapport with his father. He and the captain ran the boat with hardly a word exchanged between them. Hawkins attached the winch cable’s quick-release hook to an eye-bolt on the top of the ROV frame and gave a thumb’s up to Miguel who stood at the winch controls.

  The winch motor growled, the cable went taut and the vehicle lifted out of its container trailing the tether as it unwound from the drum. The crane swung out until the vehicle was hanging over the water. The boat lurched to one side. The ROV was a light load compared to a net full of fish and the vessel took the weight easily. Hawkins crooked his thumb and forefinger in an OK sign and pointed downward with his other hand.

  Minnie swayed at the end of the cable as Miguel lowered the vehicle under the waves. When the ROV had reached the depth of a few feet, Hawkins asked Miguel to stop the winch. He tested the video camera and controls. Then he instructed Miguel to release the cable hook from the eye-bolt. The ROV had neutral buoyancy, meaning it would neither sink, nor bob back to the surface.

  The trick to operating an ROV is for the operator to act like a miniature pilot actually riding in the vehicle. Hawkins moved the joystick to point the front of the vehicle down and increased power to the turbines. Minnie’s lights cut through the deepening darkness. The monitor displayed depth and speed. Hawkins tracked the vehicle until the image of grayish-brown sand filled the screen. He called for the vehicle to hover several feet above the bottom. There was no sign of the wreck.

  “We’ll mow the lawn,” Hawkins said, using the term for a common search technique.

  The vehicle began to move back and forth in a series of parallel underwater rows that covered a large rectangular area. The first pass failed to uncover any sign of the shipwreck. After a few minutes, the camera picked up a dark shape on the bottom.

  “It’s Captain Santiago’s boat,” Hawkins said.

  The Sancho Panza lay at a forty-five degree angle. A big chunk of the pilot house was missing. Hawkins maneuvered Minnie until the vehicle was at right angles to the elevated side. As the ROV hovered, its lights picked out a ragged hole in the metal hull.

  Calvin let out a low whistle.

  “Nasty,” he said. “Spike was designed to penetrate plate armor. Missile would have gone through regular ship-building steel like i
t was cardboard.”

  Hawkins pivoted the vehicle and sent it along the hull a few feet, where it stopped like a pointer dog in front of a hole that was an exact twin of the first.

  Calvin squinted at the screen. “Run that attack sequence by me again, Hawk.”

  “There was one explosion, then a pause followed by two in rapid succession.”

  “Based on your recollection, I’d say the first missile was intended to disable the pilot house. After the pause, two more missiles were launched at the hull to sink the boat. Let’s work our way backwards.”

  Hawkins elevated the ROV above the angled hull, then sent it over the stern deck.

  “The captain said this was where Rodriguez, the bogus government observer, was standing when he was hit. The missile would have passed through his body into the sea, thus the lack of an audible explosion from the second Spike. That would have been the pause that I noticed.”

  “Like I said, that was no accident,” Calvin said.

  “Maybe a wave lifted the shooter’s boat as he was taking a bead on the hull.”

  “Can’t say for sure because I wasn’t there, but he had time to correct his shot. With Spike missiles you hit what you aim for.”

  “Then the only conclusion is that the shooter must have been aiming for that poor bastard.”

  “That’s my take on it. Don’t know why he’d waste a shot if the goal was to sink the boat. Missiles like those don’t come cheap.”

  “Maybe it tells us something about the shooter,” Hawkins mused. “Sending the Sancho Panza and everyone on it to the bottom wasn’t enough for him. He likes to kill people.”

  Hawkins pulled the ROV back and moved it around the ship in an ever-increasing spiral. The camera picked up Falstaff sitting on the bottom around fifty feet from the salvage boat. Abby had been standing behind Hawkins watching the monitor. She gave his shoulder a hard squeeze when the submersible appeared.

  “You and your friend were damned lucky to get out of that thing. And please don’t tell me it was no big deal.”