Treasured Dreams (24 page)

The driver rang ahead and Jimmy was waiting for them when they arrived back at the jetty.

‘Where's Archer?' Rosalina asked the moment Jimmy stepped up to help with the bags.

‘He's playing with the kids.'

Rosalina chuckled. ‘What?'

‘You'll see.'

Jimmy thanked Omar and gave him a generous tip before helping the ladies and their multitude of bags into the boat. He untied the rope, pushed off and started the engine. ‘How'd you go with my steak?' Jimmy said as he steered towards
Evangeline
.

‘We scored well! Lots of steak,' Ginger said with a grin.

‘Good.'

They dodged all the little children in tiny boats that they powered by using their hands as paddles. Rosalina wished she'd purchased a little something to give to them. As they neared
Evangeline
, Rosalina saw a splash off the dive deck, followed by a couple of smaller splashes. It was only when she saw Archer climb up out of the water that she realised what he was doing. Archer was jumping off the yacht with the kids.

He waved at her. His chiselled muscles glistened, and he smiled with boyish glee. Rosalina had never seen Archer with children before. Not like this, anyway. She suddenly realised how odd that was. They'd been together for five years, and although she grew up almost surrounded by children, she didn't have any interaction with kids the whole time she was in Australia. Archer tugged one of the boys to his side and motioned for all the boys to keep out of the way as the tender pulled up alongside the yacht.

‘Looks like you've had fun.' Archer pulled her in for a kiss, and all the kids giggled. He picked up one of the boys and the child squealed as Archer tossed him overboard. That created an avalanche of pleas to be thrown overboard by all the other boys. ‘These guys are insatiable.'

‘I can see that.'

‘Okay. Okay. Enough.' Archer held up his palms. ‘Off you go now.'

Rosalina picked up a couple of the shopping bags, and as she carted them up the stairs, she glanced over her shoulder to see Archer give each of the boys money and then toss them off the yacht one last time.

She smiled on the outside, but on the inside she was torn. They had never talked about having children, and she'd always thought his business mattered more than a family of his own, which suited her fine. After what happened to her mother, Rosalina had sworn off having children forever. But now, after seeing how happy Archer looked as he played with them, she had a horrible feeling she'd read him all wrong. Her stomach curdled at that thought.

As Rosalina instructed Ginger about where to store the food, Archer strode into the room, tightening a towel around his hips. ‘I hope you have something huge planned for dinner, Rosa, because Jimmy's talked about nothing but scuba diving and steak since you left. He's driving me crazy.'

She laughed. ‘Well, I can solve the steak part.'

‘And I can solve the scuba diving part. Want to come with us?' He cocked his head at her, and the way he did it had the afternoon sun highlighting the gold flecks around his dark irises. Out the corner of her eye she could see Ginger jiggling from foot to foot.

‘Okay.'

‘Yay. Can I come too?' Ginger said.

‘Of course. We'll get the dive gear ready and we'll head out to Palais of Cleopatra.'

‘Sounds exciting.'

‘Sure is. From what I understand, the visibility is really crap, but with a bit of luck we should see the palace and temple complex of Cleopatra.'

‘What? Queen Cleopatra?' Rosalina raised her eyebrows.

Archer nodded. ‘Yes.'

It was another half an hour before Alessandro returned, bursting at the seams with excitement. Rosalina felt sorry for him as they left him with all that energy and prepared for their dive.

Archer manoeuvred
Evangeline
to near the dive site, and by the time he let the anchor go they were all kitted up in their scuba gear. Rosalina put her regulator in her mouth and tested it for air. Then, her and Ginger took a giant stride overboard and dropped into the murky Egyptian waters. The green haze briefly filled her vision before she popped back up to the surface to indicate she was okay to Archer and Jimmy.

As soon as the men plopped in beside them, the foursome lowered below the surface. At first Rosalina could barely see her fingers before her mask, but the deeper they went, the clearer the water became. Soon she could see all three of her dive buddies around her.

The bottom was at a depth of just nine metres but, careful not to stir up the sediment, they hovered about two metres off and swam along in pairs. It was a different dive to what she was used to, as there was literally nothing to see. No marine life, no coral, no plants. No colour. It was like swimming in a mouldy bath.

A shape materialised out of nowhere and Archer played his torch over it. It was a large column, like the kind you'd see at a temple. It appeared to be made of red granite, and it was centred on a giant rectangular pedestal. Beyond that pillar was another and another.

In amongst the pillars was the statue of a lion. The beast was as big as Jimmy. The head of the lion was carved to show off a thick mane of hair, and the lion's mouth was open, like it was letting out an almighty roar. Rosalina was amazed that it still had teeth. Resting beneath the lion's paw was a sphere. She was so struck with fascination at the underwater city that she had to remind herself to breathe.

Jimmy had moved farther away, and his torch was centred on the face of an enormous statue of a man with a long rectangular beard. The statue was easily five times Jimmy's size.

Rosalina's mind raced over questions that she had no answers for. How the statues got here was at the top of her list. They looked like they'd been positioned on purpose. If they'd fallen off a ship, then surely some of them would be on their sides. But they were all upright. And, once they'd been discovered, why weren't they put into a museum? Their sheer size might have been the answer to that. Raising them to the surface would be a mammoth effort. The ancient cannon they'd raised in Anafi was only a fraction of these in size, and yet it took days to lift it onto
Evangeline
.

A little farther along was another group of columns, however these had tumbled over. Just one statue stood amongst them. It was a man draped in a robe, and he clutched at something—a jar maybe. She couldn't quite work it out.

Rosalina knew their evening was going to be filled with Alessandro's history lesson about this area, and after seeing this, she was looking forward to it.

It only seemed like twenty minutes and not an entire hour had passed before they headed back up the anchor line to
Evangeline
. They stopped at the five-metre mark to decompress, and it was only now that marine life materialised. Small silvery fish, no bigger than her hand, appeared by the hundreds. They swam about in a massive school and seemed to be in a hurry to get where they were going. It was a great distraction as they waited to push through the green murk to surface.

‘That was amazing,' she said, after popping the regulator out of her mouth.

‘Holy shit, those things were huge.' Jimmy tugged his fins off and tossed them onto the dive deck. ‘What the hell are they still doing down there?'

‘No idea.' Archer removed his tank and climbed up the ladder.

Rosalina unclipped her buoyancy vest and air tank and manoeuvred them to the edge so Archer could lift them onto the dive deck with his own gear. ‘I think we're in for one of those nights were Alessandro gets centre stage,' she said.

‘Shit,' Jimmy said with a smirk. ‘I better get my good rum out then.'

Ginger slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You love it.'

‘Yeah, like a hole in the head.' Jimmy grinned.

He really did love it. They all did. Without Alessandro, it would've taken so much longer to find the treasure in Anafi. His knowledge of history, and in particular his skills in researching it, was outstanding.

Rosalina left the men to sort out the dive gear and headed straight to the master suite for a quick shower. Being as hungry as she was, she knew the others would be too. The dish she planned to cook required a little preparation, so she needed to start quickly or she'd have a mutiny on her hands.

She towel-dried her hair, tossed on a maxi dress and headed to the kitchen. Ginger and Alessandro walked in moments later, holding hands.

‘Want some help?' Ginger offered.

‘That'd be great.'

As Rosalina started placing ingredients on the kitchen bench, Helen walked into the room. Archer's mother looked tired, although that wasn't unusual; she often looked that way. It was likely that she'd only just woken up.

Rosalina walked around the bench and gave her a hug.

‘Where are we?' said Helen.

‘Egypt.'

Helen nodded, as if waking up in Egypt was something she did every day. ‘Are we looking for Occhio del Vento?'

Eye of the Wind, Rosalina translated in her head, and frowned at Helen. ‘What's that?'

‘One of the ships that held the Calimala treasure. It went to Egypt. Didn't you know?'

Rosalina bulged her eyes and Alessandro and Ginger both spun around. ‘No. We didn't know.' Helen's revelation made Rosalina's heart skip a beat. This was a significant clue to finding the Calimala treasure and Helen had probably known it all along. It was times like this, when Helen had a breakthrough, that made Rosalina realise just how exciting her life must've been prior to the shark attack. Helen and her husband, Wade, had travelled the world looking for treasure, and they didn't stop when Archer was born either.

Archer strode into the room, running his hands through his crazy mop of hair. ‘Archer.' Rosalina couldn't mask the urgency in her voice. ‘Your mum was just telling us about Occhio del Vento, the ship that carried some of the Calimala treasure to Egypt.'

It was Archer's turn to bulge his eyes. ‘Is that right? What were you saying, Mum?' Archer, as always, kept his tone with his mother very natural, and Rosalina was impressed at how he did it.

‘Oh well'—Helen placed her palm on her chest—‘when Rosalina said we were in Egypt, I thought we might be looking for the Calimala treasure here.'

Archer pulled out a kitchen bar stool and guided his mother onto the seat. ‘Why Egypt?'

Jimmy walked in, and out of the corner of her eye, Rosalina noticed Ginger hold her finger to her lips and wave him over.

‘Three ships left Italy as a convoy, but after a brief stop at Malta they separated. The Flying Seahorse headed for Greece. Occhio del Vento headed towards Egypt and …' she rolled her eyes and the sighed, ‘I can't remember the third one. It will be in Wade's notes.'

‘Do you think you can show us where?'

‘Where what?' She blinked up at him.

‘Where Dad wrote the notes about these ships in his book.'

‘Oh.' She blinked some more and then huffed. ‘He was always so funny with his notes. He wrote in lots of fake information so if anyone found the books they wouldn't be able to work out what was real and what was a decoy.'

Jimmy huffed. ‘You're not bloody wrong.'

‘What's wrong with you?' Helen admonished Jimmy like he was a naughty child, and Archer's jaw dropped. His mother hadn't done anything so forthright since he'd found her at the nunnery. Maybe she really was improving.

Jimmy scratched his hairy chest. ‘That husband of yours has had us guessing for months about what's in them notebooks.'

‘Well then.' Helen put her hands on her hips. ‘That's why you need me.'

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Alessandro worked quickly, laying out Wade's scrapbooks in order across the carpet. Other than typical wear and tear, each of them looked identical from the outside. Inside, they contained a crazy concoction of Wade's musings, and the cryptic notes had been driving him crazy. Drawings. Words Dates. Names. Places. Paper clippings. All of it random and in no specific order. Alessandro was more of a details man. If he'd created these books, there would be an obvious system to the notations, and they'd be catalogued and charted in various spreadsheets and then stored in several locations for safekeeping.

The only matching information each book contained was a list of four different countries inside the front cover. In addition to that, the middle of each book, where staples held the pages together, had a number with a circle around it. They numbered from one to thirty-four.

Rosalina's cooking had the area smelling amazing, and Alessandro tried to ignore the grumbling in his stomach as he focused on extracting important details from Helen before she tumbled back into the horrible world that trapped her.

‘Helen, would you mind telling us which book has information on Egypt?'

He enjoyed watching Helen's face light up. She sat forward on her seat. ‘Inside each book you'll find a list of countries. Show me one that has Egypt.'

Alessandro flicked from book to book, opening the front cover and searching for the word Egypt written in Wade's rough scrawl. ‘
Va bene
, here's one.' The book he'd selected had Hong Kong, Egypt, Germany and Brazil listed as the four countries.

Helen accepted the book from him, but she paused, not even turning the cover. Alessandro struggled to read the look on her face. Was it fear? Awe? Confusion? It was a long moment before she opened the flimsy cardboard cover. She turned it slowly and ran her finger down the list of countries.

‘Hong Kong. Egypt. Germany. Brazil.' The countries whispered off her lips.

Alessandro leant forward, not wanting to miss a single word she said. Helen blinked few times and frowned, as if searching for a way to arrange the words she wanted to say. She turned to the middle of the book where the staples were and put her finger on the number in the middle. ‘Seven. Can you find me book nine please?'