After a hot shower, Saxon changed into long cotton slacks and shirt and went down to the lounge, his mouth feeling as if he’d swallowed a pound of desert sand. He sat at the bar and ordered a Bombay Sapphire martini, and the drink’s astringent sweetness washed the grit out of his throat.

He chatted with a couple of Texas oil company rednecks. A second martini revived his spirits, until one of the oilmen asked him what he was doing in Ma’arib.

Saxon could have responded that it was the last leg of a doomed quest to find the fabled Queen of Sheba among the ruins of old Ma’arib, the city that was said to be her home base.

He said simply, “I’m here to test the waters.”

The oilmen exchanged puzzled glances and then broke into hearty laughter. Before they headed back to their quarters, they bought Saxon a third martini.

Saxon was at that wonderful point where all brain activity was clouded by an alcoholic haze when an elderly bellhop shuffled into the bar and handed him a sheet of hotel stationery with a brief message scrawled on it:

I believe I can introduce you to the man of the sea. If you are still interested in meeting him let me know soonest.

He blinked the blurriness from his eyes and read it again. The sender was a Cairo antiques finder named Hassan, whom he had spoken to by phone before coming to Yemen. He scrawled an answer at the bottom of the note and handed it to the bellhop with a tip and instructions to arrange transportation for a morning departure. Then he ordered the first of several pots of strong black coffee and buckled down to the job of getting sober.

NUMA 7 - The Navigator

Chapter 6

ZAVALA HAD HIS DUFFEL BAG packed and was ready to go when Austin swung by the former library building in Alexandria, Virginia, that his friend had converted to a bachelor pad with a southwestern flair. The two men caught a morning Air Canada flight, and their plane touched down on the tarmac at St. John’s, Newfoundland, late in the afternoon, after a stop-off in Montreal.

A taxi took them to the busy waterfront, where the two-hundred-seventy-foot-long Leif Eriksson was tied up. The forty-six-hundred-ton vessel was a brawny ship, less than five years old, its hull reinforced for protection against the punishing North Atlantic ice.

The captain, a native Newfoundlander named Alfred Dawe, knew when their flight was coming in and was waiting on deck in anticipation of their arrival. As the men came up the gangway, he introduced himself and said, “Welcome aboard the Eriksson.”

Austin extended his hand in a bone-crushing grip. “Thanks for having us, Captain Dawe. I’m Kurt Austin, and this is my colleague, Joe Zavala. We’re your new iceberg wranglers.”