The professor looked at it too. Then, at the man’s name tag. “Sergeant Cruz, you’d better read this to me. Or maybe you’d better come back to the command post and read it to me there.”
The sergeant shrugged. “It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, sir. He just said the same thing over and over again. And I have to get back to the OP, sir.”
Tremelo cocked his head and smiled. “Get me your colonel on the line, Sergeant.”
* * *
With Professor Tremolo, Liz, and Colonel McNamara peering over his shoulders, Sergeant Anibal Cruz pointed a thick forefinger at his pad. “Here’s what it says. ‘Twelve feet, six heads . . . six heads . . . six fucking heads.’ ”
His eyes avoided the female biologist. “I’m just quoting his exact words, sir. Ma’am. He said that a lot. And something about a sword. And what could be ‘help’ or ‘yelp.’ And that ‘Odesoos’ word. Oh, and here’s ‘black galley’ and ‘whirlpool.’ ”
Liz snorted. “I’d say you needed an historian more than a biologist. Swords and galleys! Fish we haven’t found for at least a hundred years. Cuttlefish from the Med. Mind you, the six heads stuff doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
Professor Tremelo sighed. “None of it does. But there must be sense in it somewhere. And I think you’re right—we do need an historian.”
Salinas stepped forward. “Want me to get you one?” he asked unctuously.
The colonel nodded. “Won’t do any harm, Lieutenant. It seems insane, but then so do the circumstances. Get us someone who is up on Mediterranean history. Who knows, it may produce something useful.”
If Liz read his look right, the unsaid part of his statement was: and it’ll get you out of my hair. But what the colonel actually said was: “Take the sergeant and Dr. De Beer with you, please. Perhaps they can tell the historian something first-hand.”
* * *
That brown-noser Salinas obviously decided his exercise in “not being taken seriously” by the old geezer at the last place called for more men. Salinas demanded a squad this time around.
Jim McKenna grimaced. It was just his luck that Major Gervase should have seen him smile at the policeman’s demand for “adequate personnel to ensure the success of his mission.” A sense of humor was a necessity for an NCO. It was a pain in the ass in an officer.
Cruz was looking a little pissed too. McKenna found himself half hoping the obnoxious police lieutenant would really piss the sergeant off. Anibal Cruz had the forearms of a gorilla. He took weight training seriously, and had a brown belt in one of the martial arts.
McKenna was even more disgruntled when Cruz ordered all the men in the squad to bring their rucksacks. He understood the logic of the order. The headquarters building was soon going to be flooded with soldiers from the 82nd. At best, their rucks would get trampled. But he didn’t much appreciate having to hoist the damn thing around.
* * *
Five minutes later, Jim’s irritation with the police lieutenant deepened. Of course, thought McKenna sarcastically, you can always rely on a prick like Salinas. He knew exactly where they were going. Which was why the building he led them to, less than two blocks away, didn’t say “History Department.” It said “Seminary Co-operative Bookstore.”
Cruz had the brains to ask a University of Chicago policeman directing traffic nearby. The man pointed across the street and suggested they try the Oriental Institute.
“Why not?” asked the female biologist, cheerfully shrugging her shoulders. “The Mediterranean’s east of here, isn’t it?”
She led the way, still swinging her bag like a deadly weapon.
8
Between Orient and accident.
When Lamont Jackson finally put away his tools and left the air handler room, intending to pay his visit to Dr. Lukacs, he was surprised to see the Institute apparently empty. At least on the ground floor. The museum was open, and it normally had plenty of visitors.
When he wandered into the front entrance area, heading for the stairs leading to the floors above, moderate surprise turned into sharp apprehension. A half drunk cup of coffee sat on the counter of the Suq, the Oriental Institute’s gift shop. The glass display case in the center was open, and a beautiful piece of onyx jewelry was lying on the counter.
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