I was savoring a Cohiba and enjoying a spectacular Aegean sunset, as I sat in the cockpit of my boat Argo. Argo’s a Bermuda-rigged Beneteau-42, roomy and fast, with a deep-draft keel that gives her superior windward ability. I had crossed over from Corfu on the Adriatic side the day before, braving the harrowing walls of the Corinth canal along the way, and laid up for the night at Kea. Kea is in the Saronic Gulf off the tip of the Attic peninsula. I’d chosen to stop there because it is never a good idea to night-sail with all the ship traffic coming out of Athens.

I pushed off in the morning across Homer’s wine dark sea, headed for the number one party island in the Cyclades - Mykonos. I have all the time in the world now. So, tricks for squeezing out a few extra knots by fiddling with the boom vang are just too geeky to bother with. Instead, I relax in the shade of the dodger with a cold bottle of Mythos and enjoy the magic of the fabulous Aegean sunshine.

Thanks to the Meltemi northerlies, I made the Tourlus Marina on Mykonos by late afternoon. The clubs on Mykonos are up the beach from where I was tied up. But I had no interest in visiting them. In fact, I had no interest in interacting with the human race in general. I just sat in the fading twilight, sipping a finger of Lagavulin 16, thinking about how my life had changed since the fiery apocalypse that had so painfully ended it.

Before the extinction event ... I was a happy archaeologist, and my wife Lisa taught classical studies at an East Coast liberal arts college. I know that sounds like two nerds living in poverty. But archaeology pays okay if you dig up the right stuff, especially if you aren’t too picky about who you market it to.

The Saudis, in particular, are willing to outbid each other for items originating from the dawn of Western civilization. Naturally, the people whose cultural heritage you’re appropriating get a little bit testy if they catch you making a profit off their stuff. But I was plugged into a network of dealers who kept me on the long end of an intricate supply chain.

That’s how Leonidas’s crown made me an overnight multi-millionaire. Gerard Butler notwithstanding – the historical Leonidas was an actual king, and he brought some cool stuff with him when he journeyed up to Thermopylae. It stayed there thanks to the Persians who killed the dude and all of his hoplite pals.

During the ensuing decade ... the Persians were occupied attempting to end Western civilization and the Greeks were just as bent on saving it. Hence, nobody wasted their time looking for Leonidas’s stash. And all that Spartan booty just sat there untouched for 2,400 years.

I got rich because Leonidas left his personal stuff in the Greek camp— rather than where he was killed at Kolonos Hill. I uncovered that camp using Herodotus - not the fancy metal detectors and ground-penetrating radar that modern archaeology is so enamored with.

The old boy said that the Greeks were camped at Alpenoi, on the shoreline of the Malian Gulf. The problem is that the shoreline at the time of the battle of Thermopylae is literally miles inland from where it is today. So, I spent a summer digging trenches along what I calculated to be the ancient coastline.

It was helpful that I could use the actual spot where the actual battle took place, to estimate where that old shoreline was. The site of the battle of Thermopylae is marked by a wall that the Greeks built even before the war with the Persians. The wall marks the width of the narrow pass that the Spartans were defending. It’s still there almost twenty-five centuries later.

The choke point in the pass was bounded by the waters of the Malian Gulf to the north and Mount Kallidromo to the south. The ancient coastline is still clearly delimited by ancient silt and marine life. Following it took a lot of digging and sweating. But I was highly motivated by recent events in my life.

Every other archaeologist thought I was nuts, because the place where all of the action took place was nearly a mile from where I was working. So, it looked like I was industriously digging up a farmer’s field. I never corrected that misperception because of what I found.

There was a small rise just west of the old waterline, and I made the educated estimate that that hill would be where Leonidas would set up a camp. I knew that I’d guessed right when our trenches began to uncover the detritus of camp life - all the things a busy Greek hoplite might drop, including the stuff in the latrines.

I realized that I’d found the area of Leonidas’s tent when we dug up the first skeleton. There were three hundred Spartans of the elite warrior class at Thermopylae. But they brought a much larger group of Helots with them. Helots weren’t warriors. They were Spartan slaves. Everybody died. But the Helots died in the camp, not on Kolonos Hill - where the last stand took place.

We found a substantial pile of bones in one spot, which meant that we were near the center of the camp. I had a hunch that I was going to dig up valuable stuff and I didn’t want anybody to know what I’d found. So, I sent the Greek workers away. I knew what had happened the last time I had put my trust in somebody, and I didn’t want a repeat.

Leonidas was one of the two “Kings” of Sparta. Although Spartan warriors were very “spartan,” Leonidas didn’t run around in body oil and Speedos like in the 2007 movie. He had all the trappings of power, including a solid gold diadem with a huge lapis lazuli embedded in the center. He wore that whenever he wanted to inspire the troops. I found that diadem in a deteriorating oak box underneath the skeleton of the guy who’d died trying to protect it. After that, I had a choice...

I could have—no!! I should have—surrender my find to the authorities. Leonidas’s diadem was a priceless historical artifact. It had been worn by a cultural hero whose name had survived down the annals of time. In fact, Leonidas, in many respects, represented the triumph of courage and self-sacrifice over totalitarianism. So, its symbolic value was beyond estimation.

But I was alone on a windswept plain, the object of mockery for my “fruitless” efforts to dig up a barren stretch of farmland that no one else considered important and the victim of a brutal betrayal. Better yet ... nobody knew I’d found anything. So, Karma owed me.

Ask yourself ... how unethical would you have to be to make yourself unimaginably rich by simply tucking the thing that you were holding in your hand, into your satchel ... rather than give it to the authorities because it was the right thing to do? Frankly, there wasn’t much agonizing about THAT decision. Which probably makes me a bad person ... but also a very rich one.

The myth of shadowy artifact dealers selling looted art is more fiction than fact. But there are plenty of dubious people with contacts in the antiquities world. They hang around digs like jackals. Hence, all I had to do was put the word out.

That set off a dick measuring contest of epic proportions among the uber wealthy. I let them outbid each other until we reached a final price of forty-seven million, just pocket cash for an oil Shiekh. I hear the guy who bought it was thrilled because he identified with the other side – e.g., the Persians. The idea of owning the crown of the fellow who’d frustrated their grand plans pleased him no end.

After the “commission,” - I stashed forty-five million with our dour friends, the Swiss. Seriously! The IRS can be so annoyingly greedy. My only goal was to vanish off everybody’s radar after that. I was a new man - reborn without the emotional baggage from my former life.

There are very few novel scenarios when it comes to cheating, and mine was so mundane it was downright boring. I met Lisa at the Joukowsky School. It wasn’t like we discovered each other by chance. There were perhaps a dozen archaeology majors at Brown, and we all needed fieldwork to graduate.

So, Lisa, and I spent a summer digging, brushing, and filtering at the Villa of Quintus Horatius Flaccus in Vacone, Italy. Folks who are into all things Roman call him “Horace” and consider the dude the leading romantic poet of Augustus’s age.

Vacone itself is in the Apennines, approximately 40 miles outside of Rome. It’s hilly, not flat - like the Latin plain where Rome is located. So, it provided a pleasing and lush setting for Roman aristocrats, fleeing the heat and smells of the big city.

Lisa was in several of my classes. I knew her as an unremarkable nerd-girl, all bundled up to survive the Providence weather. But ... notwithstanding the elevation ... the Lazio region is hot in summer, and it was an entirely different story when I saw Lisa bending over wearing a sweat-soaked T-shirt and short jean shorts, while she carefully cleaned an emerging terrazzo floor in the villa’s bathhouse.

The studious Lisa had been replaced by a Roman sex goddess – broad shoulders, muscular back and tight, round hips, which screamed fertility. The two big tits hanging down as she delicately brushed the tile completed the picture. My interest sprang to attention. Lisa might have an ordinary face. But with a body like that I wasn’t looking above her neckline anyhow.

Lisa and I vaguely knew each other. But we had never actually talked. She was double majoring in Classical Studies. Hence, her interests were more artsy than mine. My specialty was Roman building techniques. So, I was working on the foundation of the first terrace’s cryptoporticus. Which put Lisa and me on opposite sides of the site during the workday.

I got down into her trench feigning curiosity. It was only about five feet deep at the Roman layer. Lisa gave me a vague nod of greeting. I said, in my most cordial voice, “We’ve been bumping into each other all season. But I never introduced myself.”

I added, “Since we’re both from the same school I thought you should at least know my name.” I extended my hand and said, “Ryan.” Lisa blushed nearly purple as she stood and took my hand. Without looking directly at me she said, in a small voice, “Lisa.” That was interesting, the woman was painfully shy. I really looked at her for the first time.

Lisa was unremarkable back home. Of course, I hadn’t seen her body because it was wrapped in sweaters and cold weather gear. She never wore makeup nor did anything with her hair. So, she didn’t activate my visual sensors. Guys are sighthounds by nature. I mean ... really!! Do you think Sports Illustrated sells so many swimsuit editions because of our interest in swimming?

Anyhow ... Lisa had an average face along with that fantastic body. Her nose was a bit too long. But all in all, she had the basics of a good-looking woman. She had her brown hair in a thick braid down to her shoulder blades. It was real peasant hair too, thick and lush. Right now, however, she looked like she wanted to do anything but talk to me.

So, I tried the conversational gambit. I offered her a drink from the bottle of water that I was carrying and said, “I’m working on the foundations of the peristyle columns. There’s less brushing but a heck of a lot more digging and man ... is it ever hot!”

Lisa gave me a tentative smile as she took the bottle and said, “Thank you ... there isn’t the slightest breeze down here in this trench.” Her sweat-soaked T-shirt, which revealed massively interesting objects, was a testament to that.

I said, casually, like I’d just thought of it, “Hey! Let’s get together for dinner at Solo Per Du and compare notes.” We students were housed in various Vacone hostels and there was a decent restaurant just east of the Villa ruins.

Lisa turned purple as she said, “I’m not dressed for that.” It was interesting watching the interplay of shy hesitancy and eagerness play across her face.

I said, “Hell ... The Italians don’t eat until the chickens go to bed, anyhow.” The heat of the day doesn’t begin to dissipate until around nine. So, that’s when they sit down to eat. I added, “You’ll have plenty of time to change before then.”

That evening, I found myself across from a totally different woman. This wasn’t the Lisa I’d known at school. This version knew how to use makeup and dress for the occasion. It wasn’t anything ostentatious. But my God!! The woman had booty!

We mainly talked about our projects. It was easy to get Lisa talking about things she was interested in ... and she was passionate about working on the tesserae floor. I understood what she was feeling because it had led me to archaeology in the first place.

The thing about ancient archaeology is that you are handling things that were last touched two-thousand years ago ... by people who lived in a totally different but similar universe - and the sense of association with that alien time just flows into your fingertips.

I mean, seriously ... it took fourteen hundred years for our civilization to crawl back to the same level of social, organizational, and technical sophistication as the Romans. So, you’re always cognizant of the connection between our time and theirs. You get a sense of all that when you study any aspect of their era from their art to their construction techniques and maybe we can learn something from what eventually happened to them.

Lisa was not as much interested in ancient artifacts as she was in Horace himself. The dude was the Roman equivalent of an Eliot, or an Angelou. Or more accurately in Roman times – a rock star like Mick Jagger, or Taylor Swift - and Horace’s work has survived for 20 centuries. So, for Lisa, the unearthing of his bath tiles ... something he might have touched in his daily life ... was a hallowing experience.

Okay – I understand how nerdy that sounds and I’ll admit it - we were both geeks. Even so, I was tall and relatively good looking, and Lisa was an absolute bombshell if you discounted a nose like a dachshund. Everybody knows what that first romantic instant feels like – this was one of those moments.

By the time we left the restaurant, we were both in love – or perhaps the more accurate verb is lust. Lisa was staying in the girls’ hostel, and I was in the male version a little further up the hill in Vacone. But the road into town had secluded wooded areas where a guy and a girl could stop for a passionate kiss and a fondle. By the time we reached her place, we were a couple.

Lisa and I were rarely apart after that. We married after we graduated, and she got an immediate offer from a liberal arts university in Connecticut. Archaeology teaching positions are rarer than proverbial hen’s teeth. But I managed to score a Research Associate position at a nearby Ivy League college.

A guy doesn’t need or want much social interaction if he lives with the most interesting woman in the world. Don’t get me wrong. Lisa was not into bowling, camping or going down to a gun range with me. We weren’t those kind of folks. The two of us settled into a life of the mind – which is the one that all of us nerds inhabit.

Lisa was a voracious reader, her one concession to modern life being that it was on a Kindle. I read just as much as she did, and we would sit on our apartment’s little balcony with a bottle of wine and just talk about the interesting stuff that we’d read.

It was a solitary existence, just her and me. But Lisa provided all the companionship I ever needed. We had an infinite expanse of human experience to talk about and we explored that world with as much dedication as the woodsy types do the Great Outdoors.

You have to accept that people are different in order to understand our bond. Most of you would find an evening of exchanging ideas about the evolution of democratic institutions in classical Athens dull – or perhaps bordering on the peculiar. That was our idea of fun. Nerd love works that way. We were two outsiders who had found each other ... and that was our version of Kismet.

Nevertheless, the one thing that I have to mention is – even though Lisa’s public persona was “nerd girl with glasses,” my wife was a holy terror when the lights went out. It might just be me, but I have always equated sex with intelligence – smart women just do it better. They can get in touch with and channel their feelings in a way that maximizes both your pleasure – and theirs. Lisa was living proof of that.

My wife might be shy and self-conscious. But she loved sex. And Lisa had a superb body, with every one of the female contradictions – broad-narrow, full-slim, greedy-giving, demanding-compliant. She just FELT it right down to the tips of her brightly painted toenails. More relevantly Lisa wasn’t a once on a Saturday night kinda girl.

I asked my wife about that – we had the kind of relationship. She told me that no other man had made her want sex like I had. She said, “I can’t explain it. It’s an instinctual thing. Maybe it’s the underlying mating imperative. Females have to have frequent sex to have kids. But it has to be with the man we’ve chosen to father our children. I suppose that’s the child rearing instinct.” Which was a massively ironic statement as things transpired.

Whatever the reason, all the endorphins that sex releases kept us in a constant high for each other. And let me stop you right there ... those were the early days in our marriage, but I recognized even then that a physical relationship like Lisa and I had couldn’t last forever.

Nobody who teaches classical studies gets rich. But that wasn’t why we were in it. We did it because we couldn’t conceive of doing anything else ... and the quality of life made up for whatever we lost in terms of income. By then, we had a comfortable little two-bedroom house in greater New Haven and our careers were progressing. Lisa had gotten tenure, and I had established enough of a reputation that the grant funding was always there.

Money for archaeology comes from two sources, public sector grants, or individual interests of wealthy donors. I had always worked on Council on Archaeological Studies project grants primarily in-house, but I did an occasional dig as an advisor to student groups.

Because my specialty was classical Greek I would supervise summer expeditions in Greece, similar to the one where I’d met Lisa. Lisa would always accompany me since she was in the field herself. But we also just wanted to be together.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that my current dig was at Akrotiri on the Island of Thira, which the cruise line pamphlets call Santorini. Santorini is shaped like a backward letter “C”. The part of Santorini that attracts the tourists is near the top of the “C” and the site where we were digging is at the very bottom.

The island of Santorini is what remains of a much larger island, that got its current shape when the volcano that was at the center of the original erupted around 1,600 BC. The tsunami that that eruption spawned is the basis for the legends about Atlantis and the Biblical flood ... and the blast nearly wiped out the nearby Minoan civilization.

Lisa and I had an airy apartment, while the students were housed in various hostels. This was the first year I’d worked in ancient Akrotiri. We lived in modern Akrotiri, which is on the caldera side of the island. It was a short walk, to the ancient city of Akrotiri, which is on the ocean side. Each day we would commute to the dig on what the locals called a road but was more like a glorified goat path.

Ancient Akrotiri was buried when the volcano blew up. The burial must have happened so fast that intricate frescoes, pottery, furniture and even an advanced drainage system were preserved like they were at Pompeii.

Uncovering a city buried under 10 feet of pumice is hard work. Especially because everything from the target level had to be sifted to ensure we didn’t miss anything. There is evidence that, unlike Pompeii, the residents of ancient Akrotiri had enough warning that they were able to make an orderly get away. Since, no human remains, or items of value have ever been found. Pottery was the main thing they left behind – along with some incredible murals.

My only aim digging at ancient Akrotiri was to teach excavation techniques. But to our surprise, we uncovered a small golden idol hidden beneath the floorboards of one of the ancient houses. And that discovery brought the donor who had funded the project to Santorini.

Peter Paul was a man with two names. But he had none of Peter or Paul’s virtue. He had made his money doing what it took to win, even if that involved cheating, backstabbing and good old-fashioned double dealing. I mean, you might call him immoral if that concept applied to a person like Paul. In actual fact, Paul was the very model of a Modern Major Sociopath.

Paul was cruelty in a macho wrapper ... big, good looking and charismatic. He did what he wanted, and he dared anybody to stop him. His interest in archaeology was minimal. In fact, he considered intellectuals to be “eggheads” and “losers.” But the boost to his image that he got by funding projects like mine was worth the “pocket change” he invested.

My digging up the “little horned idol” changed the game for Paul. Because it generated fifteen minutes of fame - which he craved. So, naturally ... Paul had to be dead center in the limelight. That was why, I got an invitation – actually, a summons - to join the great man on his yacht for a reveal of the object, which would be covered – of course - by the mass media.

The locals call the island’s main city Fira. The tourists call it Santorini. You know what Santorini looks like because there’s a picture of it in every Greek restaurant in the world. Akrotiri is seven miles south of Santorini. So, Lisa and I drove our little Fiat 500 up to rendezvous with Paul’s representative.

Neither of us could dress for the occasion – we weren’t prepared for anything but digging. So, I was wearing a safari shirt and jeans, with topsiders. Lisa was wearing a modest yellow sundress, with her hair in her signature braid. We were both deeply tanned. Lisa’s smooth round shoulders sticking out of the top of the dress and her beautiful long legs hinted at the spectacular body underneath.

Santorini with its whitewashed buildings and blue tile roofs is perched on a cliff a couple of hundred yards above the caldera. We met Paul’s representative at the upper station for the cable cars. Those take you down the walls of the caldera to the water level.

Paul’s personal motorboat - a polished mahogany 1946 Chris Craft Runabout - was rumbling away at the dock. I helped Lisa into the passenger compartment in the back, while Paul’s minion sat up front, in the driver’s compartment - just like a chauffeur.

The sea offshore Santorini feels like a bay because it is surrounded by the chain of islands that form the lip of the caldera. Those were all created when the middle of the former island blew 3,600 years ago. The water is calmer near Nea Kameni, inside the caldera, which is where the dormant volcano is located.

A herd of cruise ships was pastured there. Our destination was anchored among them. Paul’s yacht wasn’t in the eight-hundred-foot class like the cruise ships. But it was easily two hundred feet. Coming alongside it felt like we were approaching the Titanic.

The Chris Craft was tied to a boarding platform that jutted off the back of the ship at the water level. There, we were greeted by another minion. Both minions wore uniforms that resembled Navy whites. The second guy led us up a flight of stairs and into the posh central lounge on the main deck. We were told to sit and offered drinks. We both declined. I wanted no distractions, and Lisa was visibly intimidated by both the setting and the prospect of meeting the man himself.

Paul’s arrival came immediately thereafter – almost like it was scripted. I had to hand it to him. He WAS charismatic. I suppose part of that charm came from his absolute certainty that he was the alpha pooch in any room. But Paul was also great at reading people.

He was my height, which was tall. But Paul carried a lot of fat. He was maybe two-fifty, while I carried two hundred and ten pounds on a runner’s frame. He could see that Lisa and I were both nervous. So, he pasted on a cordial grin, which didn’t quite reach his eyes and breezed over to greet us.

He reached for my hand first and said, “It’s an honor meeting you Professor.” That was noblesse oblige - pure and simple. He didn’t know my name, or anything about me. Then Paul turned to Lisa. My wife is easy to discount because her face doesn’t have the perfection of a beauty queen. Even so, Paul was obviously skilled at scoping out spectacular bodies ... he paused in midsentence.

Lisa extended a visibly shaking hand to Paul - which he took in a warm two-handed grip and said with fake sincerity and something else in his voice, “And it’s delightful to make the acquaintance of such a beautiful young woman.” Lisa looked like she was going to pass out.

Paul gestured to the sectional behind us and said smoothly – at least to Lisa, “Come sit with me and tell me about the artifact. There will be a livestream discussion in a few minutes,” and he gestured toward the middle of the lounge where a TV crew was setting up equipment. Then he guided Lisa to a seat next to him - while indicating that I should sit across from the two of them.

I should have said something. But I know that every one of you has had moments when the pace of things is past your headlights, and that was my situation. So, I did the civilized thing rather than throw down with Paul over bogarting my wife.

Later on, I came to realize that that was part of Paul’s schtick. I mean ... society has common expectations about how to act, like ... always be polite. Those are drilled into us from childhood. Paul leveraged people’s innate courtesy to get what he wanted. Even so, it didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. I mean ... I thought the guy was a butt ... and he absolutely didn’t care what I thought.

I removed a small drawstring bag from my shirt pocket and opened it. I shook the horned idol out in my hand and laid it on the black velvet of the bag. I heard an intake of breath. Even Paul was impressed. The object was so beautiful and alien – advertising its ancient origins by its exotic shape.

The little idol was tiny ... twelve centimeters tall and nine centimeters long. It was made from raw gold, so it had a duller sheen than modern gold items. It was in the shape of a goat-like creature with exceptionally long pointed horns.

I said, trying not to sound too pedantic, “The creature has been validated as a Nubian Ibex. Those live strictly in Africa, which places the idol’s origin in Egypt. That is extremely meaningful because it tells us that some form of sea trade existed among the civilizations in the southern Mediterranean four hundred years before the Trojan war.”

Paul looked confused, so I added, “You know ... Homer ... The Iliad...” Paul continued to look puzzled and perhaps a bit pissed off, so I said, “Sixteen hundred years before the birth of Christ.” That registered.

At that point, a voice interrupted with, “We’re ready Mr. Paul.” Without even looking at me, Paul scooped up the idol and hustled over to sit with the interviewer. I was left sitting there with my mouth hanging open in astonishment.

What followed was a twenty minute presentation, hosted by a well-known American TV personality who was noted for his adventure documentaries. He carefully walked Paul through a discussion about ancient Akrotiri and the Santorini volcano and the significance of the find vis-à-vis our understanding of the ancient world.

Paul used my exact words to describe the idol’s significance, concluding with, “This proves that the sailing techniques of the ancients were much more advanced than anybody knew.” My name was never mentioned. Paul ended the interview by announcing that there would be drinks and nibbles in the dining salon. The TV crew and press all stampeded out to get to the food.

I had watched the proceedings with amazement ... seriously!! Falsely claiming somebody else’s work was so far outside the rules that I just sat there like a dork. I mean ... no sane person would EVER be that deliberately self-serving – right?

Then I looked at my wife ... Lisa was mesmerized. What the fuck was THAT all about?!! I said, a bit testily, “Snap out of it dear. I have a few things to say to our benefactor,” and I stood up, prior to storming into Mr. Paul’s lunch to set the record straight.

Lisa still looked like she had been walloped over the head. I said, anger creeping into my voice, “What’s wrong with you?” Lisa said admiringly, “That man is amazing.”

Everybody faces lack of bandwidth. You only have so much. So, you tend to concentrate on immediate things and miss the longer term issues. I should have confronted Lisa about her obvious hero worship. But I was angry. So, I lost the opportunity to nip the problem in the bud.

Lisa and I walked into a room amidships. Calling it a “compartment” was too nautical. It was perhaps 800 square feet of deep pile rugs and tasteful décor. It was a sunny day and the floor to ceiling windows had been retracted. So, it felt like you were standing on an opulent rooftop ashore – with a vista of nothing but sparkling blue water and whitewashed buildings in front of you.