“About as solid as they get,” Austin said. He dialed the number. A woman answered the phone. Austin hesitated. He didn’t want to give anyone a heart attack. But there was no gentle way to break the news.

He asked if she were related to Chester Hutchins.

“I am. I mean, I was. He’s been dead for many years. Who is this, please?”

“My name is Kurt Austin, with the National Underwater and Marine Agency. A friend and I were diving on a wreck in the Chesapeake today and we found a diving helmet. We traced it to your husband.”

“Dear God,” she said. “After all this time.”

“Would you like us to bring you the helmet, Mrs. Hutchins?”

“Please, yes. I’ll give you my address.”

They spoke a few more minutes before Austin hung up.

Zavala had been listening to the conversation. “Well?” he said.

Austin crooked his forefinger and thumb.

“Bingo,” he said with a grin.

NUMA 7 - The Navigator

Chapter 37

CARINA FELT AS IF she were walking on clouds.

The lunch with two exhibition organizers in the Metropolitan Museum of Art garden café had gone far better than she had expected. Things were going her way. Finally.

The organizers had enthusiastically embraced her suggestion that the well-publicized theft of the Navigator would bring people into the museum. They could barely contain their excitement as she traced her long search for the statue, described the attempted theft and the successful one.

The organizers had tossed ideas back and forth like table tennis players and jotted notes down in their electronic organizers.

The Navigator would have its own room. It would be an exhibition within an exhibition, filled with giant National Geographic photographs of the statue being excavated in Syria. Photos of the Iraqi museum. The Egyptian Pyramids. The containership. The Smithsonian. All pieces of the puzzle. The centerpiece would be an empty stage, reserved for the statue, adding an air of mystery.

The exhibition’s theme was a natural: Missing.

The show would be the supreme achievement in museum parlance. A blockbuster.

As Carina took the elevator down from the roof café she smiled inwardly. Americans. They may have their problems competing in a global economy, but they hadn’t lost their ability to sell air.

The thought of Americans reminded her to call Austin.

She was tempted to explore some of the museum’s impressive exhibitions, but a glance at her watch told her that the luncheon meeting had gone longer than expected.

She walked briskly through the Great Hall and out the main entrance. She stood between the tall columns at the top of the wide stairway that spilled down to Fifth Avenue and dug her cell phone out of her purse. She scrolled down but stopped short, as she remembered Austin throwing his phone into the Turkish sea.