Although just twenty linear miles from Heraklion, it took Pierce nearly two hours to make the drive, the last five miles of the trip on a dusty road that wound up the mountainside. Ideon Andros was yet one more tourist destination on an island that was renowned for places of historic interest, but what Pierce and Fiona sought was not in any of the guidebooks.
They left the car near the small museum and gift shop that serviced visitors. Then they hiked in the darkness to the mouth of the cave, checking frequently to ensure that they had not been followed. The mountain air was chilly, and Fiona hugged her arms close, but did not complain as they slipped through a small fence that kept local goats out of the cave. Pierce kept the red filter on his MagTac until they finished descending the stairs that led down into the enormous opening beneath the mountain. Once they reached the main gallery, Pierce removed the cover and played his light on the high walls, which were rippling with stalactite growth. He quickly located a shadowy recess at the rear of the cavern. The surrounding area was cordoned off with wooden barricades and caution tape, indicating that an excavation was currently in progress, but Pierce had learned through the grapevine of the archaeological community that the dig had hit a wall. Literally.
“There it is,” Pierce said, motioning with the light. He moved to the narrow fissure and lowered himself into it, shining the beam into its depths. The bright flashlight illuminated a flat stone wall, clearly worked by a human craftsman and adorned with a strange symbol.
“The Horns of Consecration,” Fiona said. “The symbol of the Sacred Minoan Bull. Just like the monuments in the palace at Knossos.”
Pierce nodded. They had seen several examples of bull iconography at the museum, ranging from the simple motif like that carved into the cave wall—dubbed ‘The Horns of Consecration’ by Sir Arthur Evans, the archaeologist whose work in Knossos had laid the foundation for the modern concept of the Minoan civilization—to much more realistic paintings and sculptures. Despite being lost to history for three millennia, the significance of the bull to the Minoan civilization had been immortalized in Greek mythology, particularly in the legend of the Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull chimera that roamed the subterranean Labyrinth, devouring human sacrifices.
There was even a connection to the story of Hercules. One of the legendary Labors imposed upon Hercules by King Eurystheus, as penance for killing his family in a fit of madness, had been the capture of the monstrous Cretan Bull. Pierce knew that much of that story was a fabrication—there had been no mental lapse, no family tragedy—but the stories hid an account of actual deeds. He had seen ample evidence that some of the Labors were based on real events, and of them all, the tale of the capture of the Cretan Bull seemed the least fantastic. It might simply have been a metaphor for a victory against the bull-worshipping Minoans, but Pierce suspected that there was probably a real bull in the story somewhere.
However, it was not the petroglyph of the horns on the wall that had drawn him to Ideon Andros, but rather a set of smaller images carved into the rock between the bull’s horns.
Pierce took the Phaistos Disc from his satchel and held it at arm’s length. He oriented it so that the outermost totem in the spiral—the beginning or the end, depending on whose interpretation was to be trusted—was in the six o’clock position.
Fiona looked over his shoulder. “It’s a match. You were right.”
“Of course I was right,” Pierce answered with a grin. “You didn’t think I’d come all this way on a hunch.”
Fiona’s shrug suggested that she thought him capable of doing exactly that.
“Alexander wrote that the Phaistos Disc was a key,” Pierce went on. “He established a protocol in the event that a discovery like this was made.”
“Right. More protocols. In this case, steal the Disc. Only we replaced it with an exact replica. I’m not sure how that changes anything.”
Pierce held up the Disc. “I was a little worried about that, too. But the likeness of the Disc is everywhere, especially here on Crete, so if it was just a matter of hiding the message…well, that ship sailed a long time ago. I thought there might be something important about the physical disc itself, though. And guess what? I was right again. The Disc reacts to magnetic fields.”
“No one ever noticed that?”
“I don’t think it occurred to anyone to check. It’s just a clay tablet after all. My guess is that there are flakes of magnetized iron embedded in the clay.”
Fiona narrowed her eyes. “We didn’t come all the way out here in the middle of the night just to compare the script, did we?”