Cassie stared at her in bemusement.
Griffin stepped in to finish the introductions. “Cassie, Erik, this is the newly-appointed Maltese trove keeper. Thea Xara.”
“Shara?” Erik repeated the last name. “Is that Maltese?”
“Yes,” Thea replied. “But it is spelled x-a-r-a. The Maltese alphabet pronounces x like sh.”
“That’s odd,” Cassie said.
“No, that’s phonetics,” the scrivener chimed in. “Every language has its peculiarities. How else can one explain the pronunciation of ‘light’ in English?”
The trove keeper turned to shake hands with the men. Now that she had shrugged off the effects of her word puzzle, she grew increasingly animated. “I am so very glad to meet such important people—the chief scrivener, the pythia and her bodyguard.”
Erik frowned slightly at the description of himself as a mere bodyguard.
Thea continued. “Let us go out to my auto. It’s in the car park just across the way. Please follow me.”
The trio hoisted their luggage and did as instructed.
The glare of sunlight outdoors was even more intense than when viewed from the plane window. It jolted Cassie out of her jet lagged state. She shielded her eyes. “Is the sun closer to the earth here or something?”
Griffin squinted upward. “In terms of latitude, and given that we’re approaching the autumn equinox, I think not.”
“That was a rhetorical question,” Cassie grumped. Her gaze followed the trove keeper who had gone ahead of them. The woman was steadily bearing down on something that looked like a circus clown car.
“Holy cats!” Cassie exclaimed, stopping dead in her tracks.
Erik collided with her back. “Hey, watch where you’re walking.”
“Dude, look,” she whispered.
The security coordinator mirrored her amazement. “What the hell is that?”
Griffin, who was bringing up the rear, said, “What are you two going on about? Haven’t either of you ever seen an electric car before?”
“Not one that was made for hobbits,” Cassie replied.
The car was squat, square and a bright orange color. Its front grille seemed to be leering at them below wall-eyed headlights.
“How are we all gonna fit?” she asked in dismay.
By this time, Thea had unlocked the doors and was motioning them forward. “This way, please.”
Apparently, Griffin’s complacency evaporated the closer he got to the car and compared its relative size to his own. “Good goddess!” he exclaimed. “It’s a physical impossibility.”
Thea overheard him. “You mustn’t worry. Everything will be alright. This vehicle is built to hold four people. Perhaps with the luggage, it will be a bit snug, but it is only a short drive to your hotel. I think it will be best if the ladies sit up front. That way, we can pull the seats forward and allow the gentlemen to be more comfortable.”
“Never gonna happen,” Erik murmured under his breath as he waited for Griffin to slide in.
Cassie sent a pitying glance to her teammates. Griffin’s knees would have been touching his chin if not for the duffle bag wedged onto his lap. Even though Erik was shorter, he didn’t fare much better. One bag was pressed behind his head with another on his lap and a third sandwiched sideways on the seat between himself and Griffin.
The pythia sighed and squeezed herself and her bag into the passenger side of the front seat. “You drive on the wrong side of the road here,” she observed to the trove keeper.
Thea squinted hard at her, trying to understand the comment.
Griffin, his voice muffled by his hunch-backed position, explained. “You’ll have to forgive Cassie, Thea. Like all Yanks, she believes that a car should be driven on the right side of the road instead of the correct side.”
“Oh, I see.” Thea laughed airily. She punched a few buttons on the dashboard, and the car sprang noiselessly to life. Maneuvering the vehicle out of the parking lot, she explained, “For a long time, Malta was part of the British Empire so when automobiles first came here, it was natural that we should drive the way the English do.”
Within five minutes they were beyond the airport environs and on the outskirts of a large town.
“This is Valleta, yes?” Griffin hazarded a guess.
The trove keeper happily fell into the role of tour guide. “You are correct. Valletta is the capital, and it is very crowded.”
“Malta has the highest population density in Europe,” the scrivener observed.
“Really?” Cassie noted the swarm of cross traffic and pedestrians. “I can understand that most cities are super-crowded but what about the rest of the island?”
“The island itself is only one hundred and twenty square miles,” the trove keeper said.
“So, what is that?” Cassie asked. “About the size of Rhode Island?”
“No,” Griffin corrected. “It would be about half the size of your Cape Cod.”
“And yet almost half a million people live here,” Thea said. “That is without counting the tourists. People come here on holiday from all over the world. Every year we see two million visitors.”
“That explains the overcrowding.”
“Perhaps it also explains the size of your vehicle,” Griffin murmured, shifting his face toward the other end of his duffle bag to ease his neck.
“I can see why a little car would be a good idea,” Cassie admitted.
“Oh, yes,” Thea agreed seriously. “Parking is very difficult, especially in the old section of the city.”
The tiny auto zipped nimbly through traffic. Fountains, plazas, churches, and harbors whizzed past.
“All the buildings here look like something out of Renaissance Italy,” Cassie noted.
Thea nodded. “That is because so much of the city was constructed during the sixteenth century.”
Abruptly she swerved the car into a parking spot reserved for valet service. “We are here. This is your hotel, is it not?”
Griffin peered turtle-like up at the marquee, “Yes, quite right.”
When the hotel doorman opened the rear passenger door, the scrivener tumbled out along with half the luggage.
“Oww! Watch it, bro!” Erik exclaimed. “You hit me in the eye with your elbow.”
“Very sorry,” Griffin
