“You only have to look at it long enough to verify it’s genuine. Anyway, that’s not your area of expertise, is it Professor.” Number Nine said it as a statement not a question. “You’re an interpreter, not an archeologist or a restoration specialist.”

  “I’m not an interpreter,” the man snapped. “I’m a translator. One does not interpret ancient texts—one translates them.”

  The leader could see Number Nine was angry. Still, he said nothing but sat and watched.

  The man bent over the copper scroll and made several exclamations of delight. He took it over to the rudimentary wooden table by the television and placed it there on a linen handkerchief.

  “Is it genuine?” the leader asked.

  The man was clearly exasperated. “Give me time. I’m only just having a look at it now.”

  “Well, what does it say?” Number Nine pressed him.

  The academic held up one hand, palm outward, to both of them. “Give me a minute, won’t you? This is written in classical Greek.”

  Number Nine’s eyes narrowed. “Should it be written in classical Greek? Or Lydian?”

  “Croesus was very generous to the Greeks and they were on excellent diplomatic terms. I expected it to be in Lydian, but it makes sense that it’s in Greek.”

  The leader and Number Nine exchanged glances. Still, the leader didn’t share Number Nine’s impatience. He figured translating an ancient text would take some time.

  Number Nine appeared to have reached the same conclusion. “I’m not asking you to interpret—I mean translate—it all right now, but if you could tell me if it is genuine or not, that would be a big help. Are you able to tell us that now?” Number Nine spoke slowly.

  The man nodded. “Probably. It’s in better condition than I expected.”

  The leader didn’t like the sound of that. He had an uneasy feeling something was wrong and in all his years as a mercenary, he had learned to rely on his instincts. If he had to lay odds on it, he would bet this copper scroll wasn’t genuine. Maybe he had underestimated Bulut, after all.

  The academic continued to peer at the tablet. “I need to have a better look at this, but it’s not listing any treasure. It seems to be an inventory all right, but it doesn’t mention treasure. It mentions firewood, honey, oil, wheat, meat, as well as hides from sacrificial animals.”

  “Does it mention gold or treasure anywhere at all?” Number Nine asked urgently.

  “I’m looking for words for gold, jewelry, or any precious metals and I can’t see a single mention of them. I’ve only had a quick look, mind you, but it doesn’t mention Croesus or Lydia or anything that could be construed as treasure. I’d say this copper scroll has nothing to do with the treasure.”

  “So it’s a fake?” the leader asked.

  “No, it’s a genuine document,” the academic said. “I’m fairly certain of that. The only thing is, it has nothing to do with the Croesus treasure.”

  Number Nine strode over to the leader who drew himself to his full height. “And this was all he had in his possession?”

  The leader pointed to the briefcase. “That’s all that was in the briefcase. His wallet wasn’t in there, only that copper scroll. There was nothing else in there.”

  Number Nine walked over to the briefcase and turned it upside down on the bed. Nothing fell out of it. He produced a knife from his pocket and ripped the lining apart. By the time he had finished, the briefcase was in shreds.

  Number Nine turned back to the leader. “Bulut definitely thought he was meeting Professor Hobbs, right?”

  The leader nodded. “That’s right. He thought he was meeting Hobbs.”

  “So obviously something tipped him off,” Number Nine said. “We’ll have to go back to his house and search it.”

  “We can’t do that now.” The leader nodded to the television screen. The sound was off, but the channel had just flipped to the evening’s news. A journalist was interviewing a police officer outside Eymen Bulut’s store. “The police will be crawling all over the place tonight,” the leader pointed out.

  “You need to find the scroll, or…” Number Nine’s voice faded away. “You need to find the scroll,” he repeated. “And those RHTF agents will be looking for it too.”

  A look of disgust spread across the leader’s face. “You leave them to me.”

  7

  EN ROUTE TO TURKEY

  ALTITUDE: 51,000 FEET

  “Don’t keep us in suspense,” Ellis said.

  Abigail bit her lip. They mightn’t understand. Still, she had no choice but to attempt an explanation. “I think Jason was telling us the man isn’t to be trusted.”

  Ellis raised one eyebrow before running his hand through his thin head of hair. “Man?”

  “Obviously the man with the copper scroll. Jason was saying he wasn’t to be trusted.”

  “And how do you come to that conclusion?”

  Abigail shot Ellis a look. “This verse mentions false apostles. In the Greek, an apostle is someone who was sent out, anybody who was sent out. ‘Apostle’ itself is a made-up word. Early Bible translators transliterated the Greek word.”

  “Plain English, please,” Ellis said with a sigh.

  Abigail thought she had been speaking in plain English. “A transliteration is not a translation. As you would know, Greek doesn’t have the same characters of the alphabet as English. Most of the letters look entirely different. If you put the Greek word for ‘someone sent out’ straight into English letters you get ‘apostle’. That’s what the translators did—they simply put the Greek words into English letters.” She waved one hand through the air. “But all that aside, my point is that the Greek word ‘apostle’ is translated as ‘somebody who is sent out’.”

  Ellis leaned forward. “Are you saying this word in Revelation means an apostle or what?”

  She shook her head. “No. Hobbs was a Greek scholar. He was talking about the original Greek language, not the English translation. I’m sure Jason meant that someone who was sent out was someone who can’t be trusted. It was his way to tell us that Eymen isn’t to be trusted.”

  Riley too leaned forward, a movement which caused his arm to brush against her shoulder, sending a jolt of electricity through her. “Yes, that makes sense. Hobbs figured that Eymen had tricked him—sent him off on a wild goose chase to the Bodleian Library, so he could be killed.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” Ellis countered. “If someone wanted to kill Hobbs, they could simply kill him. They didn’t need to kill him in the Bodleian Library, of all places.” He uttered a snort of derision.

  Riley appeared unperturbed. “Yes, but Professor Hobbs obviously thought the whole thing was a setup. In his dying moments, he didn’t trust Bulut. Whether he was right or wrong about that is yet to be determined. We examined the correspondence between them and it did seem as though Eymen Bulut was on the level.”

  “But Jason didn’t think so at the end,” Abigail pointed out.

  Thatcher spoke for the first time. “This doesn’t really change anything except to make us more cautious, and we intended to be cautious to start with.”

  Abigail thought it over. “You’re right. Surely Jason could simply have said not to trust Eymen Bulut, or if he didn’t want to name him, simply said not to trust the man from Ephesus—maybe even said not to trust the man with the scroll. Why did he attempt to obfuscate matters?”

  Ellis was still wearing the same irritated expression on his face. “Because he didn’t want anyone to know what he was really saying.”

  “But why choose a verse from Revelation?” Abigail countered. “He was an ancient Greek scholar, specifically the Iron Age. He was not a Biblical scholar. His area of expertise was Herodotus and Homer. He was more interested in Doric and Ionic dialects than Biblical Greek which was some five hundred to six hundred years later. No, I’m sure there’s a reason why he quoted Revelation.”

  “Eymen was particularly interested in the Book of Revelation,” Riley said. “His emails to Hobbs mentioned it was of interest to him, particularly as he was so close to Ephesus, which is named as one of the seven churches of Asia in the Bible.”

  Ellis cleared his throat. “Can I have a word with you, Riley?”

  He stood up and walked to the back of the plane, followed by Riley, who looked back over his shoulder. “Coffee, Abigail? Thatcher?”

  Both said they would like some coffee. Abigail could see them having what looked to her like a heated argument. Even from the distance, she could see Ellis’s face was flushed. He was gesturing in an animated fashion.

  She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she was certain Ellis didn’t want her on the mission.

  On a more practical matter, Abigail wondered if she should have agreed to more coffee. She’d had a rushed day working on her paper for the upcoming conference, while keeping up her lecture schedule. She hadn’t eaten much that day and had lived on coffee and sugar. Right now, she was shaking and she didn’t know if it was from the situation in which she now found herself or from being over caffeinated—maybe both. She was starving. Her stomach rumbled loudly and she shot a look at Thatcher.

  He seemed to think that was an invitation to talk. “So, I suppose I should say welcome to RHTF.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “RHTF?”

  Thatcher looked over his shoulder. Riley and Ellis had ceased their argument and were making coffee, although were still in conversation. “I hope I didn’t let the cat out of the bag. But surely you signed some papers?”

  Abigail nodded. “Yes, I did.”

  Thatcher looked immensely relieved. “The name was on the papers. RHTF, Relic Hunters Taskforce.”

  Abigail felt a bit of a fool. “Oh yes, well, yes. I vaguely remember that now.” Truth be told, she did vaguely remember a name but hadn’t quite remembered what it was. “So, the four of us are working for RHTF?”

  Thatcher nodded again. “Yes, I’ve read your file, but the intricacies of your field of research escaped me. What exactly do you do again?”

  “My research interest is lexicography,” she told him. “I’m not sure if you’re familiar with lexicography?”

  The blank look on his face supplied the answer, so she pushed on. “A lexicon is a dictionary. Lexicography is the work of dictionary meaning. When people first translated ancient documents from ancient languages, not all the meanings were known at the time, so they made educated guesses at some of the words from the context. Centuries later, many inscriptions and papyri were discovered. These contained previously unknown words in a variety of different contexts. These conclusively show what the words mean. To put it in a nutshell, lexicographers search all these occurrences of words and figure out what the words mean.”

  “Like a puzzle?”

  She nodded. “Exactly. So, when the famous Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon was produced in 1843, they didn’t know the meaning of many of the words, so they made educated guesses. Many think that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who you would know by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, based Humpty Dumpty on George Liddell. There’s a line in Alice in Wonderland that says Humpty Dumpty could make a word mean whatever he wanted it to mean.”

  “Where in Alice in Wonderland does it say that?” Thatcher asked.

  Abigail quoted the passage.

  ‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected.

  ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’

  ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

  Abigail sighed. “Many people think that was Lewis Carroll being disdainful about George Liddell’s lexicography. Jason liked to tell his students that story.” She sighed again as she thought of poor Jason. She had known him for years. A likeable man, Jason had been a reputable scholar and a friend. She couldn’t believe he was dead.

  Abigail was still lost with her thoughts when Riley and Ellis returned. Riley placed a large mug of coffee in front of her. She looked into the liquid pool and saw it was dark. That’s all she needed—more caffeine, and strong at that. Her stomach growled loudly in protest.

  Nevertheless, she sipped the brew and was glad it was sweet. At least she was getting some carbohydrates into her, she thought with a rueful smile.

  “I’m afraid we’ve had news,” Ellis said, although he was addressing Thatcher. “Eymen Bulut is dead.”

  “Dead?” Abigail repeated in shock.

  “Yes, he was shot in the ruins of Ephesus.”

  Abigail realized her mouth had fallen open and hurried to shut it. “But what about the scroll?” she asked, not wanting to sound uncaring.

  Ellis shook his head. “We don’t have a clue.”

  Thatcher tapped himself on the chin. “So the police found his body in the ruins of Ephesus?”

  Ellis nodded.

  Thatcher pushed on. “Why would he visit there? He’s lived nearby all his life. Maybe he thought he was meeting with Hobbs?”

  “Well, that’s one conclusion we could draw,” Riley said. “It does certainly seem as though their email correspondence has been tampered with, as there’s no mention of any such meeting. It could be any number of things, but if that’s the case and someone was impersonating Hobbs, then they probably have the copper scroll.”

  Abigail gripped the chair as the plane suddenly banked hard to the left.

  8

  RHTF HEADQUARTERS: UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

  HOURS EARLIER

  Riley was never comfortable in the RHTF offices. He far preferred the outdoors, and the only greenery he could now see was the high-tech roof terrace covered by all sorts of exotic plants. To him, it looked more like a scene from Lost in Space than a suite of government offices.

  He averted his eyes from the glare of the sun pounding through the vast panorama of floor to ceiling glass windows and forced his attention back to the meeting.

  Ellis pushed a folder aside and leaned across the table. “I don’t like it.”

  The director folded his arms over his chest as his lips formed a thin line. “What’s the problem?”

  Riley always thought the director looked like the Smoking Man from The X-Files: the physical resemblance, the air of danger. He wasn’t someone to cross.

  Ellis winced. “The woman has no training.”

  “Exactly. She’s an academic. Her skills are the type we need for this mission,” Riley pointed out.

  “That’s my point.” Ellis drummed his fingers on the table, a movement so sudden he nearly knocked over his glass of water. “She’s a civilian. She’s an academic. She’s of no use in combat.”

  The director narrowed his eyes. “Let’s hope it won’t come to that. At any rate, she proved her worth on the mission.”

  Ellis’s face flushed. “But she didn’t recover the stones.”

  “Have you forgotten I was with her at the time?” Riley said.

  Thatcher spoke up. “I don’t understand your objections, Ellis. We do need her. We won’t have time to take photographs and send them back to her to translate. She needs to be on the spot.”

  Ellis appeared to be thinking it over. “You’re probably right, but I still don’t like it.”

  The director nodded his head. “If you’ll both step outside, I need a word with Riley.”

  Ellis and Thatcher stood, gathered their notes, and walked outside the door. As soon as the door shut, the director came straight to the point. “Riley, we could have a problem.”

  Riley arched one eyebrow.

  The director handed Riley a coin in a plastic bag. “A Lydian coin. Were you aware coins originated in Lydia?” He did not pause to allow Riley to respond. “They were gold, silver, or electrum, which is a naturally-occurring alloy of gold and silver. The coin you have there is of the lion and bull design. It’s been appraised as in Choice About Uncirculated condition, which is rare for a coin that age. That coin is worth around fifty-eight thousand dollars.”

  Riley quickly handed the coin back to the director.

  The director turned the coin over. “This was found in the tomb of a Lydian princess. In 1966, over one million dollars was paid for twenty pieces of the treasure found in her tomb by tomb robbers. We, of course, procured some other samples.”

  He paused. “The size of a Lydian coin represented different monetary values. A small coin today in a lesser condition would be worth at least four thousand dollars. You can imagine how much a whole chest of these coins would be worth, and one chest of coins would be but a minuscule fraction of the Croesus treasure.”

  He stood up, walked to the window, and then sat down again. “If you can’t retrieve the treasure, then make sure that nobody else can.”

  Riley nodded. Those were his usual orders. “You mentioned a problem?”

  “I think we have a mole.”

  Riley turned ice cold. “A mole?” he parroted. “Not in my unit?”

  The director’s expression did not change. “I have no idea. Just be on your guard.”

  “Can you tell me any more?” Riley asked.

  The director’s response was a curt, “No.”

  Riley leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. Great! He didn’t want to lead Abigail into danger. And if there was a mole, who could it be? Surely not Ellis or Thatcher? And why wouldn’t the director give him any more information?

  9

  TURKEY

  Abigail’s stomach clenched as the plane sped along the runway. She was relieved they had landed, but she wondered what lay ahead of her. During the last mission, she had been inside a dark, ancient cave and had walked only inches away from certain death in an abyss.