The Atlantis Code

CHAPTER 9

What did you go to the library to get?” Natasha demanded as she steered the car through traffic. She cut her eyes to the rearview mirror. The two cars following them stood out among the other vehicles. Despite the calm demeanor she showed to her “guests,” nervous energy raked claws through her.

“What?” Lourds gazed at her as though she’d just sprouted a second head.

Natasha ignored him for a moment as she went out left wide around the car ahead of her. As soon as she was past the front of the car, she cut back to the right and took the first side street there. Tires shrilled in protest. Horns blared behind her.

“You went to the library to retrieve something.” Natasha cut her eyes to the rearview mirror. The two cars made the turn and kept after her.

“Something your sister left for me.”

“What did she leave you?” Natasha demanded.

“A micro flash drive.”

“What’s on it?”

“I don’t know.”

Natasha shot him a look.

“It’s the truth,” Lourds said. “You were there. I didn’t have time to examine it.”

“What do you think is on it?” Natasha took another side street. Moscow University was in the Sparrow Hills region. There were a number of small, narrow roads in the area. She planned to take advantage of that shortly.

“Yuliya was working on something,” Lourds said. “She wanted me to look at it.”

“The cymbal?” Natasha interrupted.

“Did she talk to you about it?”

Irritation shattered the sadness and pain that gripped Natasha. The American professor’s questions came faster than her own. Of course, she was distracted by the driving.

“A little.”

“What did she say?”

“I’m asking the questions, Professor Lourds.” Natasha swerved again. This time she headed down a narrow alley filled with garbage cans. Two trash cans went down under the car streaking headlong through the alley. “What do you know about the cymbal?”

“Not enough,” he admitted.

“Then why did she contact you? Why would she have left information for you about it?”

“I don’t know that she did. The flash drive’s contents might concern another matter entirely.” Lourds braced himself against the dash again as Natasha swung out wide from the alley’s mouth. Rubber shrilled as the tires skidded across the street.

Natasha laid on the horn, tapped the brakes, and accelerated again for a moment. When she cut the wheel to navigate the traffic and head into the next alley across the street, she saw Lourds involuntarily flinch as they closed on a small bus. For a moment Natasha didn’t think she was going to make it.

“Ohmigod,” the woman in the back gasped.

Then the car shot down the alley. More trash cans crumpled or rebounded away.

“Was Yuliya killed because of the cymbal?” Natasha asked.

“Maybe. Was the cymbal recovered last night?” Lourds countered.

Natasha checked the rearview mirror in time to see the lead car smash into the corner of the building and spin out of control. The second car zipped past and continued the chase.

“No,” Natasha answered. “The artifact wasn’t recovered. But the fire destroyed many things inside that room.” She glanced at Lourds. “So you believe these men killed my sister.”

“Watch the road.” Lourds braced himself again.

The bumper struck a stack of trash cans and sent them flying. One of the trash cans came back over the front of the car and smashed against the windshield. Several cracks ran the length of the remaining glass in a spiderweb pattern.

“If it wasn’t these men,” Lourds said in answer to her question, “then it was men associated with them. Or their employer.”

Gunshots rang out behind them. At least one bullet ricocheted from the car’s body. Another bullet cored through the back glass and punched through the last fragments of the shattered front windshield.

“I’m sorry about Yuliya,” Lourds said. “She was smart and charming. I’m going to miss her quite a lot.”

Natasha felt certain that Lourds was telling the truth. But he did know more than she did.

More gunshots echoed inside the alley.

One she’d driven out of the alley, Natasha dropped her pistol into her lap, took the wheel in both hands, and downshifted as she pulled hard to the left. The car shivered as she brought it around in a sharp 180-degree turn. She ended up facing the oncoming vehicle.

“What are you doing?” Lourds asked nervously.

“She’s lost it, dude!” Gary yelled. “She’s going to get us all—!”

Ignoring the anxiety that rattled through her, Natasha scooped the pistol up in her left hand, took aim through the open front windshield, and clicked off the safety. The pistol chugged in her hand as she fired. Brass spun against the broken windshield as she squeezed off rounds as quickly as she could.

The bullets slammed into the driver’s side of the oncoming car’s window. Natasha watched the driver jerk under the impacts. Then the car slewed out of control. The vehicle caught the front corner of Natasha’s car, crumpled the fender, and slid past them to crash into the side of a clothing store.

Natasha shoved the gearshift into reverse and backed out into the street. She ground the gears, burned rubber, and shot through the traffic.

She glanced at Lourds. “We’re going to talk, you and I. Then I’m going to figure out what I’m going to do with you.”

The sounds of sirens filled the air, closing in on the wreckage behind them.

The crowd that gathered at the crash site choked traffic. Gallardo gazed in frustration as the car he drove became mired in the vehicles. Giving up, he flung the door open and strode forward. Snarling curses, he roughly pushed through the crowd. A few men cursed him back, but none of them tried to stop him.

Four men still remained inside the wrecked vehicle. The driver lay slumped over the steering wheel. Taking care not to touch the car and leave fingerprints, Gallardo grabbed the man by the hair and pulled him back.

Bullets had almost destroyed his face.

Cursing again, Gallardo released the dead man. The body teetered over to the side onto the man in the passenger seat. The man seated there roughly shoved the dead man from him and cursed.

“Move it!” Gallardo ordered. “Out of the car!”

Police sirens split the air as the authorities got closer.

“Follow me!” Gallardo turned and retraced his steps through the crowd. All the gawkers remained at a distance. They backed up even farther as the three men still alive got out of the vehicle with weapons in their hands. They ran after Gallardo, weapons up and ready.

Returning to his car, Gallardo climbed inside, motioned for the others to pile in, and looked at DiBenedetto. “Get us out of here.”

As the doors slammed shut behind them, DiBenedetto backed rapidly through the alley.

Seething with rage, Gallardo fished his own phone from his pocket. He still remembered the ease with which the woman had come up behind him and taken him. Like he’d been a child. It was embarrassing and unforgivable. He promised himself he would see her again. When he did, he was going to kill her. Slowly.

He dialed Murani’s phone number.

The knock on the door woke Cardinal Murani. Fatigue held him in its thrall. He felt like he’d been drugged. He still lay abed in pajamas. One of the heavy tomes he’d been studying lay in his lap.

“Cardinal Murani,” a young man’s voice called.

“Yes, Vincent,” Murani replied in a hoarse voice. Vincent was his personal valet. “Come in.”

Vincent opened the bedroom door and entered the bedroom. He was little more than five feet tall and thin as a rake. His bones stuck out at his elbows and forearms. As a result, his head looked too large for his body. He wore an ill-fitting dark suit and had his hair neatly parted.

“You weren’t at breakfast, Cardinal,” Vincent said. He didn’t look Murani in the eye. Vincent never looked anyone in the eye.

“I don’t feel well this morning,” Murani said.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like to have breakfast brought to you?”

“Yes. See to it.”

Vincent nodded and excused himself from the room.

Murani knew the young man didn’t believe him, but he also didn’t care. Vincent was the least of his concerns. The young man was his vassal, totally under his control. Vincent had seen Murani call in sick several times over the last few weeks.

Sitting up, Murani reached for the phone and called his personal secretary. He gave orders to cancel his appointments and the lunch he’d scheduled with one of the pope’s yes-men.

Clearing the day to work on the secrets hidden within the bell and cymbal felt good. He switched the television on and watched CNN. There was no mention of the dig at Cádiz, but Murani knew there would be in short order. The dig had taken over the news like the sudden death of some drug-addicted starlet.

He got up, intending to shower before breakfast, but his cell phone rang. He answered and recognized Gallardo’s voice at once.

“Things haven’t gone well,” Gallardo said without preamble. “We lost the package.”

Murani easily read between the lines. “What happened?”

“We followed the package to the state university here,” Gallardo said.

“Why did he — it — go there?”

“There was another package waiting. He got it.”

Murani’s heart thudded. Another package? “What was in the other package?”

“We don’t know.”

“How did he know the package was there?”

“We don’t know that either. But we do know we were followed. And we do know that the person who followed us is now there with the package. What we don’t know is why.”

Black anger stole over Murani. On the television, CNN had started spinning the story about Father Sebastian’s dig at Cádiz again. Murani knew time was working against him now. Every moment was precious.

“I don’t pay you not to know things,” Murani said coldly.

“I’m aware of that. But you don’t pay me well enough to take the risks I’m taking now.”

That declaration was a shot fired across Murani’s bows, and the cardinal knew it. This far into the search for the instruments, there wasn’t anyone else he could call in on such short notice, much less anyone of Gallardo’s caliber, and with his connections. He made himself breathe out and remain calm.

“Can you retrieve the packages?”

Gallardo was silent for a moment. Then he said, “For the right price, we can try.”

“Then do so,” Murani replied.

Lourds sat braced in the passenger seat of the car as Natasha Safarov sped through traffic. She spoke quickly on her cell phone. Though he was fluent in Russian, she spoke so quickly and cryptically that he wasn’t certain exactly what the conversation was about.

Leslie and Gary sat quietly in the back. They’d had enough. Leslie had demanded to know what was going on and then asked to be taken to the British Consulate. Natasha had addressed the young woman only once. She’d told her that if she couldn’t keep her mouth shut, she would be taken to the nearest police station.

Leslie hadn’t said anything since.

After traveling for nearly an hour through traffic, passing through historic parts of Moscow that Lourds had often visited before as well as old residential areas he doubted a tourist had ever seen, Natasha pulled up in a small parking area behind a nondescript building.

Natasha switched off the engine and pocketed the keys. She opened the door and got out. Leaning down to the window, eyeball to eyeball with Lourds, she ordered, “Get out. All of you.”

With some concern, Lourds got out. His legs shook — aftershocks from the enforced stillness of the ride and the emotional letdown from the escape and the gun battle.

The building was six stories tall and looked like it had been constructed back in the 1950s. Its grim and forbidding appearance tied a knot in Lourds’s stomach.

“What are we doing here?” Leslie asked.

Natasha’s immediate irritation tightened her face. Lourds saw the emotion and felt certain the woman wasn’t going to answer.

But she gained control of herself.

Her expression once again emotionless, Natasha said, “It’s a hideout. You’ll be safe here. We need to talk. I want to see if we can sort this out before anyone else has to die. I’m sure you want the same thing.”

When Natasha gestured to the fire escape clinging to the building’s side, Lourds nodded and took the lead. The front-door entrance wasn’t an option. He put his foot on the first rung and started climbing. He knew that Leslie and Gary would follow.

Natasha stopped them on the fourth-floor landing. She used a key to let them inside the building, then directed Lourds to the third door on the left. Another key allowed them entrance into a small apartment.

The apartment consisted of a living room/dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. There was a shower but no bathtub. It wasn’t spacious and it didn’t look comfortable for the number of people in their group, but it felt safe.

Still, Lourds knew that was probably an illusion.

“Sit,” Natasha told them.

“Are we under arrest?” Leslie challenged. She made no move to sit.

Lourds folded himself into a wingback chair and relinquished the floor. He’d suspected Leslie would show some resistance and didn’t intend to add to the confusion. Unless he had to.

And deciding which side to support would be tricky. He felt loyalties to Leslie, but Natasha might offer the best opportunity to decipher the puzzle of the cymbal and the bell.

She was clearly a cool head in a crisis.

The hard edges of the plastic case under his jacket pressed against his side. He was surprised Natasha hadn’t demanded possession of it so far.

“Would you like to be under arrest?” Natasha responded. “I can arrange it.”

Bulldog fierceness swelled onto Leslie’s face. “I’m a British citizen. You can’t frivolously cast aside my rights.”

“And you can’t just walk into my country, drag carnage behind you, and take something produced by a government employee — my sister,” Natasha retorted. “I’m quite certain your government wouldn’t condone your actions.”

Leslie wrapped her arms under her breasts and stuck her chin out. No signs of surrender there.

“Perhaps,” Lourds interjected as smoothly as he could, “we could all keep in mind the fact that no one wants us incarcerated at the moment.” He shot Natasha a glance to underscore what he meant by no one.

Natasha shrugged slightly. It was an unconscious body movement that not many might have noticed. Lourds had trained himself to watch for inaudible communications as well as verbal ones — it was a part of being a linguist. Often the most important parts of human communication weren’t spoken. Those little gestures — and the meta-messages they conveyed — were generally the ones that crossed cultural barriers first, long before words.

“This is a safe house,” Natasha said. “We use this place and others like it to keep important prisoners safe. The Russian mob has a long reach.”

Leslie bridled at the word prisoners. Thankfully she didn’t voice her objections.

“The men who pursue you should not be able to find us here. We’ll have some time to work through things,” Natasha went on.

“That depends,” Gary said. “I mean, if your cop buddies know about this place and they see you’ve gone missing, they could come round here looking for you. And if they think we’ve kidnapped you, which might explain why you didn’t come back round there, they might come in guns blazing, mightn’t they? Makes sense, dude, doesn’t it?”

Despite the way it was phrased, Lourds had to admit it was an astute observation. Gary obviously had a fertile mind when it came to projecting scenarios.

“They won’t come here,” Natasha said. “Even they don’t know about this place.”

“Why not?” Leslie asked.

“Because I haven’t told them about it. I am a high-ranking officer. I pursue the most dangerous cases. I’m given a certain amount of… latitude… in my investigations.”

“I don’t suppose the police will come round later,” Leslie said. “When it’s more convenient?”

“Nothing about spiriting you people off the street is convenient,” Natasha said. “I killed a man back there. I don’t know what kind of impression you have about my country, but killing is frowned upon here as well as in your country. In fact, judging from the leniency in your court systems versus ours, I’d say America is much more lenient than Russian judges.” Her voice grew sharper.

“I’m not American,” Leslie said. “I’m British. It’s a civilized society compared to either Russia or America.”

“If we’re through with all the posturing,” Natasha said, “maybe we could get on to figuring out what we’re going to do next?”

“If I may,” Lourds stated quietly, “I’d like to suggest that we cooperate. For the moment, I think we can all agree that we have something to gain by learning more about our present predicament, and quite a lot to lose if we’re caught.”

The two women stared at each other. Leslie acquiesced first, with a short nod that Natasha finally echoed.

“Good.” Lourds took the plastic case from his jacket and popped it open to survey the micro flash drive inside. “Then first let’s all have a look at what Yuliya left.”

Lourds sat at the dinette table with his notebook computer open before him. The flash drive Yuliya had left was connected through a USB port.

“Copy the information from the flash drive to your computer.” Natasha stood behind him. He felt the heat of her body radiating against his back.

“Why?” Leslie sat on Lourds’s left so that she could see the screen.

“In case something happens to the flash drive.”

Although he was certain he knew what Natasha planned to do, Lourds did as the Russian suggested. As soon as the task bar showed complete, Natasha took the flash drive from the notebook computer and pocketed it.

“So much for trust,” Leslie commented bitterly.

“Trust goes only so far,” Natasha said without animosity. “It’s also not mutually exclusive of good sense. You have been robbed, yes? And followed? Having two copies is smart. Having them kept separate is smarter.”

Lourds declined to comment. He agreed with Natasha, but didn’t think saying so would improve matters between the two women. He fingered the mouse pad and brought up the directory he’d created for the flash drive’s contents.

One of the folders was marked OPEN FIRST in English. Lourds did so, knowing that the action would forestall any further argument on the part of the women. They were both too curious about what Yuliya had left to waste time arguing.

Gary had more important matters on his mind than the contents of the flash drive. After ascertaining the presence of a well-stocked pantry — small but effective — Gary had declared himself the cook of the group and set to the task. Judging by the aroma coming from the kitchen, the young man had a flair for his chosen contribution.

A video window opened on the notebook computer. Yuliya Hapaev’s image blurred for a moment, then took center stage. She sat at her desk with the camera obviously propped before her. She wore a lab coat over a pink sweatshirt.

Natasha’s breath drew in sharply, but she didn’t say anything.

Lourds felt bad for the young woman, but at the moment it was all he could do to keep his own emotions in check. Yuliya had been a vibrant woman and a good mother. Knowing she was gone hurt him deeply. His eyes misted and he blinked them clear.

“Hello, Thomas.” Yuliya smiled.

Hello, Yuliya, Lourds thought to himself.

“If you have this little parcel, then I have to assume something has happened to me.” Yuliya shook her head and grinned again. “It sounds so silly saying that, but you and I both know I don’t mean something as outlandish as in a spy novel. I have to assume that something happened to me in a traffic accident.” She frowned. “Or perhaps I was mugged. Or my bosses shut me down.”

Lourds forced himself to watch her trying to muddle along, knowing she’d felt foolish trying to find the words. A lump formed in the back of his throat.

“This is only the third time I’ve made one of these little presentations,” Yuliya admitted. “We agreed to do this all those years ago over cognac while at the archeology retreat in France.” She smiled. “We were so serious about it when we were drunk.”

In spite of himself, in spite of the loss, Lourds smiled. They had met a handful of times before that encounter in France. But the friendship they shared had seemed to cement there.

“You probably considered the deal we made to be merely a lark,” Yuliya said. “A joke summoned up by too much to drink, good companionship, and the fact that we both love the same tawdry spy novels. But I hope you find this.” Seriousness hardened her face. She picked up the cymbal and held it for display. “My inquiry into the nature of this artifact has turned out to be quite interesting. I think it would be a shame if no one found out the truth of it.”

Especially since it led to her murderer, Lourds thought.

Yuliya put the cymbal aside. “I’ve been trying to reach you for a couple of days.” She smiled ruefully. “I have to assume you’re out on some junket the university has insisted on. Or perhaps you’re chasing some big find. A book from the Alexandrian library, hopefully. I know you’d like that. And I know nothing else would take you away from your students.” The image on the computer screen paused. “At any rate, I’ve arranged the files on here to show you what I’ve learned from the cymbal. Where it was found. How it was found. And what my conclusions are.”

Though he didn’t want to, Lourds checked the meter at the bottom of the video screen and saw that the presentation was almost finished. He wasn’t ready to just see Yuliya fade away. He had to restrain himself from pausing the video.

“I hope what I’ve put together helps,” the image of Yuliya said. “I hope you figure out the significance of the cymbal.” She smiled and shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps someone from my department will have all the answers before you find this. But most of all, I hope that I’m simply discussing this with you in a few days. Over a cognac. In front of the fireplace. And with my husband and children watching us and thinking we’re the most boring people on the planet.”

Lourds’s throat grew impossibly tight. He felt a tear at the corner of his eye. Unashamed, he let it fall.

The screen blanked.

No one talked after the video finished. There was too much pain and regret in the room. Leslie left Lourds and Natasha alone with their tears and regrets, but she didn’t leave the table.

Lourds shook away the ghosts of his friend and colleague.

He had a murderer to track and a mystery to solve. Moping did Yuliya no good.

Taking out a yellow legal tablet, his favorite tool for free-form associating his thoughts, Lourds wrote down the architecture of Yuliya’s documents. He made note of the dates of their creation, then of their updates as Yuliya had discovered more information.

In that way he was able to retrace her thinking and her chain of logic.

“Is there anything you need?” Natasha asked after a while.

“No.” Lourds flipped through screens of text Yuliya had prepared on the cymbal. “I just need to get through this material.”

“All right.” Natasha fell silent again, but she never left his side, watching every keystroke.

Within the hour, Gary laid a feast upon the table around Lourds’s computer and tablet.

The young man hadn’t had any fresh vegetables to work with, but he’d still cobbled together a thick hearty stew from canned potatoes, carrots, beans, and corn. He’d put it together with some kind of beef stock. Panfried bread slathered in olive oil accompanied the big bowls of stew.

Drawn by the heavenly scent of food when he hadn’t eaten in nearly a day, Lourds pushed back from the computer. As soon as he did, though, he was hit by questions.

“Did Yuliya know who killed her?” Natasha asked.

“I don’t think so,” Lourds replied. “I found no mention of anyone stalking her in the text. She didn’t seem to be worried about anyone — just political issues over the artifact. The usual fears of any academic.”

“No collectors or antiques traffickers were mentioned in the papers?”

“Not that I’ve seen so far.”

“But it has to be someone from that world who took it,” Natasha insisted.

“Why?” Leslie asked.

“Because of the way they located the cymbal,” Natasha answered. She made notes in Cyrillic on her PDA. Lourds read enough of them to realize they were shorthand notes for herself that he couldn’t really make head or tail of.

“I still don’t see how you inferred that,” Leslie pressed.

Gary broke a piece of pan bread off and dunked it into the stew. “Because the killers learned about the cymbal from the Web site, man. Either they were looking for that piece or they were watching Professor Lourds’s e-mail. Otherwise they would have taken it when it was first found at the dig site.”

Everyone looked at him.

“Hey,” Gary said, looking slightly unsettled, “I’m just saying is all. It’s what I’d do if I wanted something bad enough to kill for it. Grab it before it gets around. Doesn’t take much of a brainy bloke to figure out how the murderers happened to turn up at Professor Hapaev’s lab.” He paused. “Besides, they were looking for that bell Leslie found down in Alexandria, too. That was also listed on a Web site. The bad guys have a pattern.”

“Professional collectors, then?” Leslie said.

“Or professional thieves,” Natasha replied.

“Either way,” Gary said, “you’re looking for someone who knows a lot about what’s going on in the antiquities arena. They swooped down on the goodies long before you professional blokes knew what you had.”

“The bell and cymbal don’t offer much of a draw for collectors. They’re clay, not precious metal, they have inscriptions that haven’t been translated and maybe won’t be, and they come from a culture that seems to be unknown. Collectors love ancient objects, but they gravitate to the familiar and the coveted — Shang and Tang Chinese bronzes, Ming vases, Egyptian royal funerary items, Greek marbles statues, Mayan turquoise and gold, Roman bronzes and inlays. Things like that. Collectors love objects associated with powerful or famous rulers. I know people who would happily kill for a life-sized bronze charioteer from the tomb of Emperor Chin, for example.

“These objects are different; they’re ancient and mysterious, so they appeal to scholars and historians. But it’s not like they’re the kinds of items that will attract the interest of rich or obsessed collectors. They have no provenance. They have no certificate of authenticity. We don’t even know what culture they come from. They’re old, and they’re interesting, but they’re not some kind of Holy Grail.”

“If they aren’t after the instruments,” Leslie asked, “then what are they after?”

“I think they are after the instruments,” Lourds said. “I believe Gary is right: I believe they have been looking for those instruments. But I don’t think it was for the instruments themselves. Rather, it was for what the instruments represented.”

“So we’re looking for a specialized interest,” Natasha said. “And for the people that have it?”

“Yes. I believe so.” Lourdes noted the cold glint in the woman’s eye. He had no doubt she could be a cold-blooded killer if she so chose. But he had no pity for the men who killed Yuliya. He wished her a clear shot, in fact.

“Did Professor Hapaev have any clues as to the origins of the cymbal?” Leslie asked.

“She did,” Lourds said. “Yuliya believed that the cymbal came out of West Africa. More than that, she was certain it was made by the Yoruba people. Or their ancestors.”

“Why?”

“The Yoruba people were noted for trade,” Lourds said. “They still are.”

“They were also captured and sold by slavers by the boatload,” Gary put in.

Everyone looked at him again.

“Hey, I watch a lot of Discovery Channel and History Channel. Since we were going to do this special with Professor Lourds, I boned up on some of the material we might touch on. Cool stuff. It didn’t turn out like I expected it to, though. I figured on more digging, fewer bad guys, man.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Lourdes said. “According to Yuliya, the language of the Yoruba people is widespread as a result of the slave trade,” Lourds went on. “The language follows the AVO pattern.”

“Now that one I don’t know,” Gary said, then stuffed more stew in his mouth.

“Trade shorthand,” Lourds said. “AVO means agent-verb-object. It’s the pattern — the order, if you will — in which words appear in the spoken and written sentence of a culture. It’s also known as SVO. Subject-verb-object. The English language, as well as seventy-five percent of all the languages in the world, follow the SVO pattern. An example sentence would be Jill ran home. Do you understand?”

Everyone nodded.

“The Yoruban language is also tonal,” Lourds continued. “Most languages in the world aren’t tonal. Generally, the older the language, the more likely it is to be tonal. Chinese, for example, is a tonal language. Fewer than a fourth of the world’s languages exhibit that feature. Yoruban’s fairly unique in that regard.”

“Why did Yuliya think the cymbal came from West Africa?” Leslie asked. “It was found here, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but she was sure it was a trade item, and that it wasn’t made here. The pottery doesn’t relate to the local types at all. Also, some of the inscriptions on the cymbal were done at a later date,” Lourds replied. “To denote ownership. Yuliya made note of that in her files. You can see those inscriptions in some of the pictures.”

“They were in the Yoruban language?” Natasha asked.

Lourds nodded. “I read enough of that language to recognize it. But the original language on the cymbal, what Yuliya believed was the original language, isn’t Yoruban. It’s something else.”

“Must have been maddening for her,” Leslie said. “And it’s why she was trying to contact you.”

“Yes.”

“Can you decipher the language on the bell and the cymbal?” Leslie asked.

Lourds scooped up a spoonful of stew. He chewed carefully and swallowed. “There are two distinct languages.” He shrugged. “Given time, I feel confident that I could decipher those inscriptions. It would help if I had more text to work with. The smaller the sampling a linguist works with, the more difficult the process.”

“How much time would you need?” Natasha asked.

Lourds looked at her and decided to answer honestly. “Anywhere from days to weeks to years.”

Natasha cursed in Russian. Then she let out a long breath. “We don’t have that kind of time.”

“A project like this,” he said finally, “can be daunting.”

Natasha’s eyes blazed. “Those men killed my sister to get that cymbal. I believe they’re facing some sort of timetable. That’s why they’ve gone to such desperate measures. If they’re on a schedule, it’s going to make them vulnerable.”

“If you’re right about them knowing about the bell and the cymbal before they turned up,” Gary said, “then whoever did this could have been looking for them for years. Maybe they were just desperate because they’d been looking for so long.”

“I can’t hide you out here in the city while you look for information,” Natasha said. “In addition to my own agency, there’s the matter of the men who have tried to kill you.”

“I don’t think we’ll find any more information here,” Lourds said. “If it was here to be had, I feel confident Yuliya would have turned it up.” He pulled the computer over to him and brought up another file. “She has left us something of a lead to follow.”

“What lead?” Natasha leaned in.

“She mentioned a man in Halle, Germany, who is something of an authority on the Yoruba people. A Professor Joachim Fleinhardt at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.”

“Germany?” Natasha frowned.

“According to Yuliya’s notes, Professor Fleinhardt is something of an authority on West African slave trade. She’d intended to contact him after she talked to me.”

Natasha straightened and walked over to the window. She moved the curtain aside and peered out.

Lourds ate the stew and bread. He watched her think. He couldn’t guess at everything that went through the woman’s mind, but he knew her desire to apprehend her sister’s killers had to be uppermost in her thoughts.

Finally, Natasha turned back to face them. “I will make some calls. Stay here till I return.”

Leslie bridled at once. “You can’t just order us about.”

“And I can’t protect you from those men if you go rushing through the streets of this city.” Natasha’s voice was hard. “They may want the information my sister left Professor Lourds. They do know you have it, you know. If you think you can do better without me, then leave. Perhaps I can figure out who they are when I investigate your murders.”

“Inspector Safarov does have a point, Leslie,” Lourds stated gently. “Getting out of the country could be problematic. At least, in the conventional ways.”

Leslie folded her arms under her breasts and didn’t look happy.

“I will go,” Natasha said. “With luck, perhaps I can figure out a way to get us to Halle.”

“ ‘Us’?” Leslie repeated.

“ ‘Us,’ ” Natasha said. “None of you are trained to combat men like these.” Without another word, she left the apartment. The door banged shut behind her.