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  Ruth Hartzler

  Ruth Hartzler Books

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  Relic Hunters Taskforce Book 1

  Copyright © 2019 by Ruth Hartzler

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The personal names have been invented by the authors, and any likeness to the name of any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All translations are the author’s, apart from the Herodotus quote inscribed on the James Farley Post Office in New York City which was by Professor George H. Palmer.

  Contents

  FACT

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Connect with Ruth Hartzler

  Next Book in This Series

  Other Thrillers and Mysteries by Ruth Hartzler

  About Ruth Hartzler

  FACT

  “As Rich as Croesus”

  This book is based on fact—the treasure of Croesus of Lydia. Croesus lived in Sardis, an incredibly wealthy city. Sardis is one of the cities mentioned in the Seven Churches of Asia in the Book of Revelation.

  Croesus was indeed wealthy. Sardis stood alongside the Pactolus River which was rich in gold deposits. No one has ever found the Croesus treasure, apart from a few items. The robbery of some of those items is recounted accurately in this book. The Croesus treasure would be worth billions.

  Teams from Harvard and Cornell universities have been excavating at Sardis for years, but the site is huge and the going is slow.

  All descriptions of Ephesus, Sardis, Pergamon/Pergamum, Selcuk, Oxford, and other locations, whether ancient or modern, are accurate.

  The famous copper scroll, 3Q15, is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1952 at Qumran. However, the copper scroll of this book is fictional.

  The history mentioned in this book is accurate, but the underground Temple of Artemis and the Lydian copper scroll are fictional.

  There is no Temple of Artemis under the Acropolis North at Sardis—not as far as I know! Nobody knows what, if anything, is there.

  There do exist several exposed sections of the tunnel that connected the Acropolis North with the dry stream-bed which once ran between ByzFort and Field 49.

  Roman tunnels dug by tomb robbers under a burial mound have been discovered. It is thought the tunnels run to the chamber of a member of the Lydian royal family. Archeologists have dug over one hundred meters of tunnels but have not yet discovered the chamber.

  1

  LYDIA, 546 B.C.

  Gordias looked over his shoulder. They were closing on him. He clutched the bag of electrum coins to his chest.

  He was close now, so close he could almost taste the gold.

  For a minute he hesitated, weighing up his options. Did he have time to reach the tunnel? Maybe it would be better to lead the others away even though that would mean his certain death. His mission was to keep the treasure safe.

  He ducked behind a boulder and looked at his pursuers.

  No, they were far enough away. He would reach the tunnel without discovery.

  He took another deep breath and wiped the sweat from his brow. His throat hurt and he could taste blood but was aware it was purely from the exhaustion. He was uninjured, for now at least. Gordias knew they wouldn’t be able to track him over the rubble and the rocky pathway made by wild mountain goats.

  As he lowered the bag of coins, he heard a noise.

  Gordias ducked under a bush as a mountain goat scurried past him. Whoever was closing in on him had frightened the goat.

  His only weapon was a knife, and his pursuers were bigger and stronger than he. Besides, he was vastly outnumbered, apart from the one pursuer who was rapidly closing in.

  Gordias silently shuffled backward under the bush. As he did so, some scree tumbled down the rock face directly above him. It was the goat, but maybe his pursuer didn’t know that. He held his breath as the man’s legs came into view, as did his short sword swinging from his belt beside his left thigh. Gordias gazed on the man’s ostentatious clothing with disapproval: multi-colored long pants and a bright purple and crimson cloak.

  The pursuer’s pace quickened and he hurried along the path to the left from where the rockfall had come.

  Gordias sighed with relief. He wished to go to the right. It would be a while before his pursuer realized he was chasing a goat, if he ever did. Gordias held his breath and inched out carefully, in case the other Persians were closer. Behind the shelter of a tree, he looked out over the landscape once more. Now he couldn’t see them, but he couldn’t hear them either and he was certain they hadn’t made up much ground. Their fancy clothes would prove a hindrance over the rocks.

  With that, he hunched over and ran to the right as fast as his burden of treasure would allow him.

  It was dusk now, the time of day in which it is hardest to see. Still, he knew that would hinder his pursuers as much as it would hinder him and the tunnel entrance was well hidden. He had made himself a camp at the entrance to the tunnel, a rough bed of leaves and a stash of supplies: figs, grapes, and apples, and some now-stale bread. He even had a column krater filled with wine. Lydian soldiers were as prepared as the Persians were flamboyant. A trickle of water ran down a rock and pooled at the bottom. He could live there for a while if he could catch small game from time to time.

  Gordias knew the route to the entrance well, being one of the guards entrusted by Croesus himself. The Persians wouldn’t find him there.

  His king, Croesus, had retreated from the battle on the eastern bank of the Pactolus River to the impenetrable fortress at Sardis. Sadly, the acropolis turned out to be not so impenetrable, not in the face of Cyrus the Great and the mighty Persian army. They had taken Croesus, maybe even killed him. Just before the Persian army captured the acropolis, Gordias and other soldiers were sent to ascertain whether the Persians had discovered the treasure in various locations. Gordias was to make sure the biggest stockpile of all was safe.

  Gordias’s thoughts turned to his situation. He was grateful to the goat. Maybe it had saved his life. He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he turned by a yellow-flowering shrub and rounded the corner.

  As he made to climb over a boulder, the ground shook. Surely it wasn’t an earthquake? Gordias had experienced slight earth tremors, but this seemed stronger. Besides, it wasn’t as if the ground was shaking—it was as if the very air around him was shaking.

  Maybe that’s why the birds had been conspicuous by their absence that afternoon. Gordias heard some rocks fall and hoped they were falling on his pursuers. Still, he was sure they had all gone in the wrong direction, but more would come. What was he to do? He needed help and no help was coming. The mighty Lydian Empire had fallen.

  Gordias approached his d
estination. Now he had to climb what appeared to be a vertical rock face and then he would be in the cave. He pulled himself up, reaching for the handholds he knew to be there and then threw himself onto the ledge. He looked around to make sure he hadn’t been seen before rolling into the cave.

  Gordias shimmied inside backward and then stood. He deposited his bag on the ground before stretching his shoulders and arms, sore from the burden. He lowered the bag of coins and smiled widely.

  He was still shaking from his narrow escape but was hungry. He reached for a handful of figs and stuffed them in his mouth. That’s when the rumbling came again.

  There was a loud sound like thunder and it was as if the walls were leaning toward Gordias, closing in on him. He put his hands above his head as he heard rocks falling. Gordias threw himself back against the rock wall, terrified, as everything continued to shake.

  Boulders fell past the entrance to the cave and one landed on the ledge, blocking most of the light.

  Gordias looked up as the cavern roof fell on top of him.

  2

  THE PRESENT DAY

  OXFORD

  Professor Jason Hobbs slunk along the walls of the ancient Bodleian Library, looking over his shoulder in fear. His destination: the Rare Books and Manuscripts Reading Room in the Duke Humfrey’s Library.

  A Professor of Iron Age Greece and Anatolia, Hobbs had been in Oxford only a few days and had taken a room in the Old Bank Hotel, a short walk from the Bodleian Library. He had engaged in a spot of sightseeing to throw whomever was following him off the track. For three days, he had traipsed through the Ashmolean Museum, the Botanic Gardens, and Christ Church College where scenes from Harry Potter were filmed and where Henry George Liddell, known to most as the father of the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland but known to Hobbs as a celebrated ancient Greek lexicographer, was Dean more than a century earlier.

  He flattened himself against the walls and held his breath. The footsteps echoing softly along the corridor stopped. Just as he feared, someone was following him now. Hobbs waited, the only sound being the beating of his heart.

  The lower reading room of the Bodleian Library was the main reading room for the study of Classics and Ancient History. Hobbs knew the classical Greek section was on the north side and that the central Tower Room now displayed new books in the classical Greek collections. However, today Hobbs wasn’t interested in anything those collections had to offer; his interest lay solely in a rare text which could confirm the location of a hoard of treasure.

  Hobbs did not want the treasure for himself. Rather, he was afraid the treasure would fall into the wrong hands. Small portions of the treasure had already been found, but the majority of it had never been discovered. It could fund the terrorist activities of some small countries and even the nefarious activities of world powers. He shuddered at the thought.

  Hobbs took a few steps and then stopped again. This time, he couldn’t hear any footsteps. Maybe he had been wrong. It was early evening and people were sure to be around, despite the fact he hadn’t seen anyone in this particular section of the reading room. Maybe someone had simply paused to look at a book. Having managed to assure himself he was safe, he pushed on.

  The sixth century B.C. King Croesus of Lydia was famous for his untold wealth. After all, that’s where the expression ‘As rich as Croesus’ had come from. Hobbs knew Croesus had funded many public projects and had been generous to the Greeks.

  It was only by coincidence Hobbs had stumbled across an ostracon that mentioned the copper scroll. The broken piece of pottery stated that a copper scroll held the whereabouts of the main repository of Croesus’s treasure.

  Copper scrolls were uncommon. There was the famous one, 3Q15, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1952 at Qumran. That scroll too was a list of treasure, of sixty-four locations along with an inventory of treasures in each location. If that treasure were to be found today, it would be worth billions. That scroll was dated some six hundred years after the Croesus copper scroll, but one thing was certain, the treasure of Croesus would be worth billions also. Hobbs had to stop the scroll from falling into the wrong hands.

  It was only when an old friend of his, Dr. Abigail Spencer, had invited him to give a paper at the Conference of Iron Age Anatolia in celebration of the release of the Lydian Dictionary Project, that he remembered the ostracon. At the time, he had only translated the first part, which told of the fall of the Lydian Empire and the dispersal of the treasure.

  After he published an article on the ostracon, a man from Ephesus had contacted him to say he had a copper scroll mentioning the Croesus treasure. He said he wanted to protect the treasure and asked Hobbs not to publish further on the matter. At first, Hobbs thought the man was a fraud, and had not bothered to reply to his email.

  After Abigail got in touch, Hobbs translated the whole shard of pottery. He had no wish to give a paper at the conference but thought his research would help Abigail.

  As soon as he finished translating, he knew he had to uncover more information. The ostracon mentioned a copper scroll listing the locations of the treasures. He had emailed the man from Ephesus back, and the man had told him the copper scroll did not, in fact, mention all the treasure. He said it was broken.

  This struck Hobbs as true, because he knew the 3Q15 scroll was broken into two pieces when discovered. The man told Hobbs the ostracon was likely a copy of an earlier inscription which detailed the treasure in full. He said he had no idea of the inscription’s classification or location.

  Hobbs had tried to find out the man’s interest in the matter, and had failed convincingly. Still Hobbs, by a fortunate coincidence, was sure he knew the very inscription.

  Hardly any Lydian inscriptions survived, just over a hundred, and most were fragmentary. However, Hobbs’s doctorate had been on Hipponax of Ephesus, an ancient poet who spoke Lydian. He knew the very volume he needed: a single volume containing Greek translations of sixth century Lydian ostraca in the Bayriver Collection. These were earlier translations made before the last few decades’ significant advances in word meaning. He wasn’t a lexicographer and so he wanted Abigail’s opinion on this.

  Despite the fact the volume was the only one in existence, it was on the shelves.

  Hobbs stopped and looked around the library. For a moment, he stood still, struck by its beauty and grandeur.

  There was the footfall again—he forced himself to hurry on.

  Hobbs spotted the volume he needed but was sure he was being followed. He didn’t want to lead anyone to it, so he skirted around and pulled another book from the shelf, one of Ammonius’s commentaries on Aristotle.

  He pretended to read it and then put it back. He then went back to look for the volume he needed, made a mental note of where it was, and walked straight past it. He continued to another bookshelf in the nineteenth-century section and selected a rare book, a Greek patristic text from the library of Dr. Robert Holmes.

  Hobbs sat at the long table and pretended to study the book. If the man from Ephesus had set him up and someone was following him, then he would be sure to lead them to the wrong book.

  Hobbs leaned over the book. He took off his gold-rimmed, tortoiseshell reading glasses, polished them on his plain white shirt, and popped them back on the end of his nose.

  The footsteps were closer now. Hobbs looked up into the face of a man. This man did not look as though he were either a student or member of the academic staff. He looked more like a mercenary, a trained killer. Hobbs shook himself to dispel such foolish thoughts.

  He smiled at the man who was looking straight at him. The man afforded him a slight nod. The man had an aquiline nose and high cheekbones. Hobbs idly thought he looked like the image of Scipio Aemilianus, the Roman Emperor. The man walked over and selected a book and sat down at a nearby table to read it.

  The hair stood up on the back of Hobbs’s neck. He didn’t think this man was a scholar. He didn’t have that slightly worn look about him, nor di
d he show any excitement at reading a rare book.

  Hobbs stood up, put the book back on the shelf, and walked away briskly.

  As he did so, he heard footsteps. He looked around to see the man reaching for the Greek patristic text he had just put back on the shelf.

  The man saw him watching and ran at him. Hobbs took off at a sprint. He had played football in college and occasionally went for a jog, but he was in no fit shape for running. As he ran, he thought about pulling books off the shelves to delay his attacker, but he couldn’t bring himself to harm a rare book.

  Hobbs ran ever faster, all the while painfully aware of the footsteps closing on him.

  He rounded the corner, but the man had beaten him to the exit. Hobbs turned around and ran back the way he came. He tried to call for help, but he was running too fast to manage a shout.

  Hobbs rounded a corner and ran straight into the man’s stony chest.

  The man pulled a knife on Hobbs, but just as the tip reached Hobbs’s body, someone called out. The man swung away as he drove the knife in.

  His attacker took off, leaving Hobbs dying on the ground.

  Hobbs looked up into the face of a young student bending over him. “Tell her Revelation two, verse two.”

  Those were his last words.