The Atlantis Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The plane journey that followed was not as comfortable as the last.

It transpired that the paragliders had been piloted by a Chinese Special Forces team who also tortured and killed Carl Kirke. This news came from the surveillance net that Heidi had set up around Kirke’s house when the team infiltrated it. The same surveillance that had originally warned them of the approaching force. It was safe to say that, by now, this Chinese faction knew as much as the Moroccan Bratva and Bodie’s team about Atlantis, even though only one group held the real compass in their hands.

DC was furious. The Chinese government denied all knowledge of the incursion and consequent attack. But they would, wouldn’t they? Heidi spent precious hours fielding time-wasting questions from DC stuffed shirts wanting to vent their gratuitous wrath. By the time she finished, their plane was among the clouds with nowhere to go.

“So we took a hit,” she said when she’d finally found time for them. “Mr. Kirke got himself killed and you met the Moroccan Bratva, an offshoot of the friendly bunch who tried to abduct Jack Pantera’s family. You lost the compass”—she sucked at her teeth in disappointment—“but you redeemed yourselves by taking a photo of it. Clearly, the best course of action here is to let Lucie examine the photos. Jemma?”

Bodie bristled at the rebuke. It wasn’t simply that Heidi was correct; it wasn’t that she deliberately ignored the circumstances; it was mostly that none of them wanted to be under her thumb anyway. They were here through blackmail, and they were doing their goddamn best.

“If you think we’re below par,” he said quietly, “call in a fucking special forces team to help you.”

“Ah, but then you guys will be superfluous and headed to prison. Is that acceptable?”

Bodie gritted his teeth. “So much for the bond I thought we’d made.”

Heidi inclined her head. “Look, I realize you’re not soldiers and don’t have military training. I understand you’re doing your best. You just… have to do it better.”

A minute later and the pictures on Jemma’s cell phone had been uploaded to the plane’s computer. Lucie approached the screen and started to take notes.

“And as for you”—Heidi stared down the aisle straight at Cross—“is there anything we need to know?”

Cross hadn’t spoken a word since they vacated the scene. Now, he latched on to the inquisitive faces as if seeing them for the first time in a week.

“How do you mean? Sorry, no. Yasmine is a long-lost friend. Very long lost. I couldn’t imagine meeting her now in the Swiss Alps. I had… forgotten about her.”

Bodie wanted to respect Cross’s privacy, but saw right away that Cassidy would not. The redhead was itching to get down to the raw, penetrating questions.

“Is that it?” he asked.

Cross nodded, more distracted than Bodie had ever seen him. In the end, though, the career thief closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. “Damn, I realize you need to know this. We work primarily from information. We need information. It’s wrong of me to hold it back, but…” He trailed off, lost again in another world, another time.

Cassidy stepped in, handling the situation in her own inimitable way. “Dude.” She walked down the aisle until she stood right before Cross. When he didn’t look up immediately, she reached out, caught hold of his shirt, and shook him.

“Who’s the old flame, Eli?”

Cross snapped out of it. “Stop fishing. I’m thinking it through. Just… just give me a minute. I’m not zoning out; I’m putting the story together.”

“Yeah, you appeared to zone out for a while, mate,” Bodie said, worried for his closest friend. He’d never seen Cross so upset, so obviously off-kilter.

Cassidy laughed. “I’ve seen men zone out during battle, in the ring, on the streets when their courage gets tested, but I’ve never seen a man zone out after meeting a woman. And what was all that stammering, spluttering claptrap? She got you tongue-tied?”

Cross took the barrage and then sat back. Eventually, he eased around Cassidy and poured himself a stiff drink. With the whisky glass half full, he faced them with an awkward, strained expression.

“Right, I guess you guys deserve some kind of explanation. I love my family, you know I do, but before them, before everything, there was Yasmine. She was eighteen, fiery, hot as hell, and wise as the world. I was in my early twenties and completely bowled over. First time I’d ever been in love.” Cross drained the glass and poured another, three fingers high. “We shared a year, I guess. One of those times that passed me by when, later in life, you look back and see all the big opportunities you missed. But that’s just part of living. We all have those. And it wasn’t just for fun.”

Cassidy sat herself down in an aisle seat. Bodie wasn’t sure whether to feel pleased that Cross was sharing or uncomfortable because he felt he had to.

“This wasn’t just Morocco — Marrakesh, Casablanca. It was Seville and Lisbon. Gibraltar, mostly. Memories everywhere.”

“And what were you doing there?” Cassidy asked. “I mean apart from the obvious?”

“I’m a career thief, Cass.” Cross took a sip. “You figure it out.”

Jemma spoke softly. “At that age I’m guessing you learned the trade with her. You figured out the ropes.”

“I lived and died with her. Took it to the next level. Failed and failed some more and barely escaped prison, twice… It became… incredibly complex. We did everything together.”

“You never speak about your family,” Jemma said. “Ever. For a year I thought you’d never married, let alone had a son. I understand this must be very personal, Eli.”

“Damn right.” Cross stared into his glass. “Damn right. But everything passes, doesn’t it? The good and the bad. Change is always just around the corner.”

“What happened?” Cassidy, when she spoke this time, was as gentle as Bodie had ever heard.

“Maybe it was the age gap, I don’t know. She was eighteen, flighty, still in love with the world and all it could offer. But later, I noticed she wasn’t quite the same. I noticed it for almost two months. Something was on her mind. In itself, that was odd, because we shared everything. I pressed her, but she never told me. I came home one day to find her gone. I waited, and she never came back.”

“You didn’t try searching for her?” Cassidy’s question was laced with steel.

“Of course I tried…” Cross paused, then finished his second drink and turned toward the small window. “But I never found her. Since then, many times I’ve been forced to wonder what happened to Yasmine. But now”—he held out his free hand—“I can find out.”

Bodie regarded his old friend compassionately. “If I can, I will help you,” he said.

“Right!” Lucie Boom’s voice cut across the profound, sad silence. “Now that’s out of the way, can we get to work?”

Bodie winced. “So, Lucie, in addition to your other striking traits, you also have little access to emotions?”

“Emotions are for children, Mr. Bodie, not historians. And what other traits do you mean?”

“Nothing. I’d rather help the CIA one more time and then get back to my life. It sounds like you have an idea?”

“Our big question — was the compass made by the same man? Very probably, but the runes upon it are completely indecipherable.”

Bodie hadn’t expected that. “What? You’re kidding me! The same man wrote in a different language?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s not an entirely different language. You have to remember the earliest known alphabet is Phoenician, known as the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. It was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew letters, and more. Latin stemmed from Phoenician. But”—she checked to make sure the students were all watching—“if your theories about Atlantis are true, we have to assume they developed what we call the Phoenician alphabet many thousands of years before that.”

“It makes sense,” Gunn said, relaxed and back to his normal self now that they were safe.

“Good to hear we’re on the same page. Well, Danel was clearly an educated man. I believe he carved these runes with vagaries to purposely test those who chased his secret. He changed the script. Deliberately. To make the cipher harder to crack.”

“Vagaries?” Heidi questioned.

“Yes, vagaries. It means there are slight modifications to the Phoenician alphabet, but those differences are crucial to help us figure out the text.”

“So that’s it?” Gunn looked like he wanted to open his laptop and start a new search for “vagaries.”

“Luckily, historians never give up.” Lucie tugged at today’s woolly sweater, all black and sporting the head of a moose. “I know an ancient-language expert who lives in Milan.”

Heidi looked dubious. “I’d prefer to do this in-house.”

“That does surprise me.”

“Civilians add risk, not only to the mission but especially for themselves. The Chinese Special Forces team, working in Europe, remember, had no qualms over committing murder. Their government gives them deniability and, even if they were caught, would never admit sanctioning their actions. So… they’re a splinter group. That’s how it has to be. And a damn deadly one at that.”

“Then tell me… who in the CIA can decipher a ten-thousand-year-old language created by a culture that never existed?” Lucie crossed her arms expectantly.

Heidi kept her mouth shut, knowing the answer and exactly why Lucie had asked the question.

“Wait,” Bodie butted in. “You’re not making sense. How could your Milan guy know the language?”

“A good question,” Lucie acknowledged. “Alessandro is widely regarded as the leading expert in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Phoenician, and Hebrew. It’s his calling, his lifelong career. If anyone can help us, he can. Even better, I know him and can arrange a meeting.”

Bodie stared at the computer screen and the mix of runes. Would this potential dead end fool both the Bratva and the Chinese, put them out of the chase? Were the Bratva even bothered about Atlantis, or was it just Bodie they were hunting? He wasn’t surprised when Heidi acquiesced to Lucie’s demands and asked her to arrange a meet.

“Change of plan,” Heidi told the pilot. “We’re going to Italy.”

Cross nodded his agreement. Cassidy leaned forward expectantly. Bodie sighed and tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong, as the pilot acknowledged the change of course.