THE NEXT MORNING, Austin caught a cab to the Bosphorus archaeological dig and walked down a makeshift wooden ramp that had been set up for wheelbarrow traffic. He wove his way past the hundreds of workers who were hacking away at the exposed sea bottom with picks and shovels.

Hanley knelt in the hardened mud, examining pieces of broken pottery. The archaeologist got to his feet and extended a mud-caked hand.

“Good to see you, Kurt. Ready to get back into some good old Marmara muck?”

“I’ll have to take a rain check,” Austin said. He surveyed the activity on the site. “Looks like the project is going well.”

Hanley’s face flushed with excitement. “This is the most fantastic dig I’ve ever participated in.”

“I hope you won’t be too busy to do me a small favor,” Kurt said.

“I still owe you and the young lady for your volunteer work. Where is Carina, by the way?”

“Freshening up. I’m meeting her for lunch.”

“Please give her my best regards. Now, what can I do for you?”

Austin reached into a canvas bag he had borrowed from Captain Mustapha and pulled out the latex molds of the second Navigator. “Could you make plaster of paris casts from these?”

Hanley held a mold at an angle to view the relief. “No problem. It will take a couple of hours for the stuff to dry.”

“We’ll come by after lunch.”

Hanley took the bag and its contents. “Where’s Joe?”

“Nursing his submersible. It got a bit banged up on a dive and probably won’t be of use to you.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Hanley said. “It would have helped us explore the site’s perimeter, but, as you can see, most of the excavation is dry.”

Austin said he would be back after lunch. He hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him to the TopkapiPalace. The sprawling complex of buildings, courtyards, pavilions, and parks dominated Seraglio Point, a hilly promontory at the junction of the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosphorus. The Ottoman sultans and their retinues had lived at Topkapi for four hundred years during the heyday of the Ottoman Empire.

The palace grounds had been transformed into a museum. Austin strolled between the twin turrets into a park shaded by leafy trees and teeming with tourists from every part of the world. He passed the treasury, which guarded a fortune in precious jewels, and made his way to the building housing the Konyali Restaurant.

Carina sat at a table in the courtyard, gazing out at the sun-sparkled water. She had changed from the casual outfit she wore on the TurquoiseCoast and wore a long-skirted dress of dark russet that complemented her cinnamon-and-cream complexion. Austin wore tan slacks, foregoing his standard Hawaiian color riot for a more-conservative dark green polo shirt.

He pulled up a chair. “The sultans really knew their real estate. Location, location, and location.”