Dourado

CHAPTER 19

They arrived in Professor Sowell’s office to find him seated at his desk, an expression of amused bewilderment on his face. He motioned for them to take seats opposite him.

“We’ve run tests on the composition of the sword. Frankly, it does not belong.”

“It doesn’t belong in that time period, you mean?” Dane asked, dropping down into an uncomfortable, straight-back wooden chair.

“I mean it doesn’t belong on this planet.” The professor paused while this bit of information sank in.

Next to him, Dane heard Bones chuckle.

“What’d I tell you?” He stood behind Dane, and clapped a hand on Dane’s shoulder.

Sowell ignored Bones’ comment and continued.

“The component elements are terrestrial. The metal, however, is an unknown alloy. Whatever that alloy is, it gives the sword its strength, durability, and lightness. The blade is harder than titanium, lighter, and has an extremely high melting point, though I have only managed a rough estimate. There are other tests I could do, but I do not want to risk damaging it. Not that I have any confidence that I could damage it with anything short of a nuclear explosion.”

“You think it’s an alien artifact,” Bones stated, squeezing Dane’s shoulder.

“I can’t tell you what it is,” Sowell said, “I can only tell you what it is not. And it is not of this earth, at least not of any known alloy.”

“Did you learn anything from the inscription on the blade?” Dane asked, eager to change the subject.

“Yes,” Sowell said. “I was able to scan the images and send the information to your friend Jimmy. He just updated me on his findings. The writing resembles hieroglyphics, and will take some time to decipher. That is, if we can decipher it all. He has managed to translate a small portion, and is confident that he is correct.”

“Forgive my ignorance, but why are hieroglyphics so hard to translate?” Kaylin asked.

“No frame of reference,” Sowell explained. “Decrypting an alphabetic cipher, for example, involves finding patterns such as frequency of occurrence of certain letters, or finding double letters and using them to identify words. Once the code is broken, its child’s play. With hieroglyphics, each symbol can represent a word, a sound, a concept, or even a story. That is why Egyptian hieroglyphics were a mystery for so long. Until the Rosetta Stone was discovered, there was no reference from which to translate them.”

“How did Jimmy manage to break any of the code, considering the sword may not be of earthly origin?” Dane asked. “It almost sounds too easy.”

“Apparently the computer found matches from a variety of sources: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Viking runes, even some Central and South American Indian pictographs. Much of what he has at present are bits and pieces that are meaningless out of context.”

“You said he was able to translate a portion of the writing. What does it say?” Dane’s curiosity was piqued. Having been the one to first notice the writing on the sword, he was eager to learn what it said.

“Not what, but where,” Sowell said, pushing a computer printout of a map across the desk. He turned it around so that the three of them could see it. “The writing pinpoints a location in southwest Jordan.” He circled a spot on the map with a ballpoint pen. “A few of the other words he has translated include “rock” and “red.” Coupled with these coordinates, we are confident that the writing on the sword is pointing to this location.”

“Petra.” Kaylin breathed the word more than spoke it. She turned to Dane, her eyes wide with excitement. “Rienzi claimed to have been the first to rediscover Petra. Many of the artifacts he lost on the Dourado were discovered at Petra. That must be where he found the sword.”

“I take it this is good news?” Sowell asked, his smile unreadable.

“Absolutely,” Dane said. Standing, he clasped the professor’s hand. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

“I should thank you,” Sowell said, also rising to his feet. “It is the most amazing artifact I’ve ever seen.”

“It certainly seems to be so. Well, I guess we’ll be taking it with us now,” said Dane. “Where is it?”

A sudden change came over Sowell. His face seemed to harden. His ears reddened, and his fists clenched.

“The sword?” he asked in a clipped voice.

“What else would I mean?” Dane asked. Warning bells were going off inside his head. He stepped closer to the desk. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bones position himself between Sowell and the door.

“Mr. Maddock, the sword requires further study. If we could reproduce this metal, do you have any idea what the implications for industry and defense would be?”

“Give me my sword,” Kaylin said in a cold voice that caught Dane by surprise.

“Why do you need it?” Sowell asked. “You completed your father’s quest. We will pass all our findings along to you. You have had the satisfaction of finding it. Now let us, your countrymen, get something out of it as well.”

“My father bought that sword with his blood. It belongs to me, and it’s not for you to ask why I need it.” Her voice remained calm, but her eyes were shining with barely contained rage.

Kaylin’s expression suggested she was on the verge of climbing over the desk to get at Sowell. If that were to happen, Dane did not know if he would try to stop her.

“Give us the sword, Sowell,” Dane said firmly. “You have your test results to study. Don’t make this hard on us, and depending on how things unfold, Ms. Maxwell might permit you to study it again at some point in the future.”

Sowell’s eyes flitted rapidly between Dane, Kaylin, and the door where Bones stood.

“Commander Wrexham deems it in the interest of national security that the Navy takes possession of the sword.” He swallowed hard. “He took it this morning.”

“You’re lying,” Dane said flatly. Sowell reached for the bottom drawer of his desk, but before he could get it open, Dane grabbed him by the wrist and yanked, dragging him face down across the desk.

“I’m telling the truth,” Sowell sputtered.

“Shut up,” Dane ordered. Sowell lay on his desk, head hanging off one side, legs off the other. Dane grasped the hair on the back of his head with one hand. The other held Sowell’s arm pinned behind his back. Dane knew just how far the arm would bend before popping out of its socket, and he held it at the threshold.

“You forget that my friend, Bones, is a Cherokee. Indians have ways of making people talk, don’t they Bones?” He looked at Bones, who nodded, smiling wickedly, his white teeth gleaming like fangs.

“You don’t think I believe that voodoo hocus-pocus, do you?” Sowell wheezed. The pressure Dane was putting on the back of his head was forcing his throat down against the edge of the desk. His face was turning purple from lack of oxygen.

Bones knelt down in front of the man. “We Indians do have our ways,” he crooned. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his Swiss Army knife. “But they aren’t mysterious, spiritual ways. They’re just plain nasty.” He opened the corkscrew and held it up to Sowell’s eye.

The professor squirmed and kicked, but Dane held him firmly in place. The man had to be running out of air by now. After a moment, the struggling ceased, and Dane felt the man relax.

“It’s in the safe,” he said, his voice a faint whisper.

Dane decreased the pressure on Sowell’s neck enough for the man to draw a breath and tell them the combination to the safe, which was, predictably, hidden behind a framed Ansel Adams print. While Dane continued to hold the professor, Bones opened the safe and retrieved the sword which, along with its scabbard, was now protected by a layer of bubble wrap, which seemed odd considering what they knew about the sword’s durability. He supposed it was a good idea to protect the aging scabbard.

“The commander was going to pick it up tomorrow,” Sowell said, as Dane let him stand. A miniscule flick of his eyes toward the clock on the wall was enough to give lie to his statement.

“Tell him we knocked you out and stole the sword,” Dane said, and drove the heel of his palm into Sowell’s temple. As the professor crumpled to the floor, Dane doubled up his fists and struck the man a two-handed blow to the base of the skull. He turned to the others.

“Sowell was lying about Wrexham picking it up tomorrow. We’ve got to get off this campus now. He’s probably going to be here any second.”

The three of them scrambled out of the basement office and hurried to the elevator. Dane looked at the numeric display. The elevator had stopped on the first floor and was now descending to the basement.

“Come on!” he shouted, dragging Kaylin down the hall. Behind him, the bell rang and he heard the elevator doors begin to open. They were not going to make it to the end of the hall in time. Their options exhausted, he darted through an open door, with Kaylin and Bones right behind him.

It was another office, much like Sowell’s. Fortunately, the occupant was out as was the light. There was no way to shut the door without drawing attention to whoever might get out of the elevator. They stood just inside the office door. Dane strained to listen, but did not hear anything. For a moment he thought he had overreacted, that the elevator had been empty, but then he heard footsteps. Someone knocked on a door.

“Sowell?” a voice boomed down the tiled hallway. “Open up!” The person knocked again. A pause, then the sound of a doorknob turning. Dane heard the sound of the commander entering Sowell’s office. “Sowell, what in the…” He heard thumps as if someone were shoving furniture aside. Wrexham had found the professor. Perhaps there was a chance.

“Go,” Dane mouthed to Kaylin, and bobbed his head toward the door. To his surprise, she neither questioned him nor protested.

Hastily removing her shoes, Kaylin hurried to the door, glanced toward Sowell’s office, then sprinted in the opposite direction. Dane watched her disappear around the corner, and then moved to the door himself, with Bones behind him. Just then, he heard the sound of the commander coming back out of the office.

After a moment, footsteps again echoed down the hall, followed by an insistent tapping sound, which Dane took to be Wrexham pressing the elevator button. The metallic ring of the elevator bell a moment later confirmed his instinct. He heard the doors open, then close seconds later.

Dane placed his hand on Bone’s chest. They needed to make certain that the commander was really gone. He silently counted to twenty, all the while listening for the sound of footsteps that would indicate that they were not alone in the basement of the building.

Twenty seconds.

Nothing.

He nodded to Bones, then peered around the door.

Still nothing.

He moved silently on the balls of his feet out into the empty hallway. He had taken no more than five steps down the hallway when a firm voice rang out from behind him.

“Stop right there.”