Andrej’s eyes narrowed. He stroked his chin. “Three thousand kuna.”
Sam did the conversion in his head. “About five hundred dollars,” he told Remi.
Andrej’s eyes brightened behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “You have U.S. dollars?”
“Yes.”
Andrej stuck out his hand. “We make deal.”
Now Selma said, “I just e-mailed the riddle.”
“We’ll call you when we’ve got an answer.” Sam hung up and checked his e-mail. Remi scooted her chair closer and looked over his shoulder. “A long one this time,” he said.
East of the dubr
The third of seven shall rise
The King of Iovis Dies
Alpha to Omega, Savoy to Novara, Savior of Styrie
Temple at the Conqueror’s Crossroads
Pace east to the bowl and find the sign.
“The first five lines fit the pattern,” Remi said, “but the last is different. They’ve never been so explicit, have they?”
“No. This is the first time they’ve come out and said, ‘go here’ and ‘find this.’ We may be coming up on the finish line, Remi.”
She nodded. “Let’s get cracking.”
They started as they had before, picking from the riddle what seemed like places and names. For “dubr” they narrowed the references to two likely candidates: Ad Dubr, a village in North Yemen, and dubr, a Celtic word meaning water.
“So something either east of Ad Dubr or east of some body of water. What’s east of Ad Dubr?”
Sam checked Google Earth. “About eighty miles of mountains and desert, then the Red Sea. Doesn’t seem likely. Up until now all of the locations have been in Europe.”
“I agree. Let’s move on. Try the ‘King of Iovis.’ When did he die?”
Sam checked. “No such person. Iovis wasn’t a kingdom or a territory. Here’s something. . . . We’re grouping the words wrong—‘Iovis Dies.’ The original Latin for Thursday.”
“King of Thursday?”
“Jupiter,” Sam said. “In Roman mythology, Jupiter is the king of gods, like Zeus is to the Greeks.”
Remi caught on: “Also known as the Jovian planet. So from the Latin Iovis they got Jovis, then Jovian.”
“You got it.”
“So try a search with ‘Jupiter,’ ‘dubr,’ ‘three,’ and ‘seven.’ ”
“Nothing.” He added and subtracted the search terms and again came up empty. “What’s the fifth line?”
“ ‘Temple at the Conqueror’s Crossroads.’ ”
Sam tried “Jupiter” combined with “Conqueror’s Crossroads,” turned up nothing, then tried “Jupiter” and “temple.” “Bingo,” he muttered. “There are lots of temples dedicated to Jupiter: Lebanon, Pompeii . . . and Rome. This is it. In Rome the Capitoline Hill is dedicated to the Capitoline Triad—Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. And here’s the kicker: it’s located on one of the Seven Hills of Rome.”
“Let me guess: the third one. ‘The third of seven shall rise.’ ”