The Atlantis Code

CHAPTER 4

The knock on the hotel door jarred Lourds’s senses back to the real world and out of the quiet place he habitually went into when he was unraveling a particularly knotty problem. His heart rate immediately accelerated. Glancing through the balcony windows, he saw that full night had descended upon the city. It was late. Especially for someone unannounced.

Although the attack on the television set had taken place three days ago and Lourds trusted the hotel security, a wave of panic still ran through him. He pushed it back into the dark corner of his mind it had come from. Then he straightened up, feeling the familiar ache in his back and shoulders from staying hunched over the desk too long.

With the help of Leslie Crane’s studio team, he’d blown up the pictures of the bell. In the hotel room, he’d taped them to the wall over the desk, then taken them down to study and try — in vain, so far — to crack the mysterious language. He didn’t doubt that he would eventually get it, but success, it seemed, was going to take time.

Crossing to the door in his bare feet, clad in a T-shirt and walking shorts, Lourds halted before his hand hit the doorknob, then thought better of where he was standing, considering recent events. He stepped into the closet beside the door. His hand curled around the iron mounted on the wall. It wasn’t much of a weapon perhaps, but at least with it in his hand he didn’t feel so vulnerable.

Ah, Lourds, you’re a Neanderthal at heart, aren’t you? He knew he wasn’t, though. Otherwise nearly getting killed three days ago wouldn’t have bothered him so much. He just wasn’t civilized enough — or foolish enough — to believe the Alexandrian police had everything in hand, no matter what they said. They still had no clue who had invaded the television studio.

Or who had killed poor James Kale. The sight of the man’s burned body in the hospital morgue, with the fingers cut off one hand, still gnawed at Lourds’s dreams. He’d gone with Leslie and the crew that day to identify the man’s remains.

The knock sounded again.

Lourds realized he’d hidden but forgotten to speak. “Who is it?” He was embarrassed at how his voice cracked, like he was going through puberty all over again.

“Leslie.”

Now that he knew the young woman was outside his door, Lourds wasn’t quite so concerned as he’d been about getting a bullet through his head when he checked the peephole. He peered through the fish-eye lens, saw only Leslie standing there, and opened the door.

She was dressed for the heat, clad in sandals, bronze capris, and a lime-green sleeveless crop top that showed a delicate diamond stud in her belly button. The gem winked up at Lourds in a fascinating manner. During the last three days he’d spent with her, he wouldn’t have guessed she would wear such a thing.

Something quite primitive and very interested stirred inside him, displacing all thoughts of the dead producer for the moment.

“Did I catch you ironing?” Leslie asked.

Perplexed, Lourds looked at her and wondered what she was talking about. Then he realized he was still holding his weapon du jour, the iron.

“Sorry. I was just feeling a little insecure. I don’t normally greet guests with an iron in my hand.” Lourds turned and replaced it on the mount in the closet.

“Personally, I prefer a golf club,” Leslie said.

“Do you golf?”

Leslie smiled. “Not as well as I’d like, but my dad gave me a pitching wedge for home protection. I asked for a Glock. He gave me a golf club.” She shrugged, clearly shorthand for, What are you supposed to do?

“Where did you learn to shoot?”

“Dad gave in to my love of firepower eventually. He taught me to do both — golfing and handling weapons. He spent time in Special Forces, then served as a trainer before he retired. He’s a great teacher. Good thing, huh?”

“After the incident the other day, I’d have to agree,” Lourds said. “Won’t you come in?”

Leslie entered and looked around. Lourds was curious. In the three days that Lourds had been there, she’d never come calling before.

“I’m impressed,” she said.

“At what?”

“The room’s clean. I figured since you’re a professor and a bachelor, things wouldn’t be so tidy.”

“Looking for a stereotype? The absentminded professor?”

“Expecting one, I suppose.”

“I don’t exactly fill the bill as curmudgeonly either.” Lourds waved her toward the chairs out on the balcony. The room was well appointed, with a work area and an entertainment area. “If you don’t mind, maybe we could sit outside. The view is incredible, and your company’s paying for it.”

Night draped Alexandria, and the city glistened like a jewel box in the darkness. The full moon hung high above, silver among the shadowed clouds scattered across the sable heavens. To the north, moonlight kissed the white curlers running in from the Mediterranean Sea. Far below, the discordant noise of the evening traffic and the joyous cries of the tourists who had indulged too much filled the streets.

Lourds pulled out her chair and sat her at the small circular table. “Egyptian nights are full of mystery. While we’re here, you should get out and see as much of the city and the outlying areas as you can. It’s incredible. Do you know who C. S. Forester is?”

“A novelist. He wrote the Horatio Hornblower books.”

Flabbergasted, Lourds dropped into the wicker chair across the table from Leslie. Over the past three days, he’d grown quite enchanted with her wit, personality, and charm. He could easily see why the television producers had chosen her to be the show’s moderator. “You’ve read the books?”

Leslie shook her head and looked a trifle embarrassed. “I watched the movies. I’m not much of a reader. No time.”

“You’re a fan of old movies?” At least that was something. “I thought Gregory Peck was particularly good in that film.”

“I didn’t see the classic version, just the remakes with Ioan Gruffudd. I purchased them all on DVD.”

“They can’t be as good as the novels.” Lourds waved that idea away as pure folly. “Anyway, C. S. Forester wrote, ‘The best way of seeing Alexandria is to wander aimlessly.’ ”

Leslie leaned over the table and tucked her chin onto her interlaced fingers. “Surely seeing the city would be better if I had a guide.” Her green eyes glittered.

Lourds placed his elbows on the table and leaned toward her. “If you find yourself in need of a guide here, just ask me.”

Leslie smiled a bit impishly and said, “I will.”

“So what brings you here?”

“Curiosity.”

“About?”

“Every night after dinner, you just disappear. I was beginning to think that I’d somehow offended you.” Leslie hesitated. “Or that maybe you were spending time with a loved one on the phone. Or even sending pictures over the Internet.”

“No. On all counts. No offense taken. I have no significant other. I’m not avoiding you. I’ve been consumed by the puzzle of the bell.”

“When I walked in and saw all the pictures in your room, I gathered that. The bell is one of the reasons I decided to drop by. I thought perhaps you needed a diversion.”

“A diversion?”

“When I get stymied on a project, I usually try to get out of my work environment and go talk it over with my friends. Sometimes that will lift something from my subconscious mind that’s been waiting for the chance to get out.”

“Are you suggesting a walk? Me and you?”

“I am.” Leslie met Lourds’s gaze directly.

Lourds looked at the wall covered with photos of the bell. He didn’t worry about leaving them here. The bell looked like what it was: a curious antique.

The question was, did he want to leave the puzzle of the bell alone long enough to spend time with an interesting and beautiful woman in one of the most romantic cities on earth?

It seemed he did.

“I can get dressed and meet you downstairs,” he said.

“Nonsense. You look fine.”

Lourds grinned at her. “Well, I need shoes, at least.” He was ready in less than a minute.

Frustration and excitement chafed at Professor Yuliya Hapaev as she sat at the tiny desk in the basement office she’d borrowed at Ryazan’ University while she worked on a pet project. The underground room held a chill she hadn’t been able to shake, even with a sweater under her lab coat.

Without any real hope of finding an answer, Yuliya checked her e-mail. Again. She stared at the industrial gray walls and waited for her mail client to pump out the latest messages.

She checked the time, discovering that it was almost 11 P.M. She groaned. She’d promised herself she would get back early tonight to the dorm she’d been assigned while she was working. The feeling that she’d forgotten something else nagged at her, though she couldn’t imagine what that something was. Her family was in Kazan. She had no meals to prepare, no laundry to do, nothing outside of her work to distract her here.

Working fourteen and fifteen hours a day in her chosen field was almost like being on vacation for her. Her husband didn’t like that so much, but he understood because he felt that way about some of the construction projects he worked on.

Fortune had smiled on her when her grant had been approved to study the recently uncovered artifacts found in the archeological dig on the hill between the Oka and Pronya Rivers. Although the area had been sealed off in 2005 and further digging banned, a number of things hadn’t been properly cataloged from the original excavations.

And despite the ban, a few items had wandered in after the fact.

The area between the Oka and Pronya Rivers had been a meeting place or melting pot of a myriad of cultures from the Upper Paleolithic times to the early Middle Ages. A wooden structure that had resembled Great Britain’s Stonehenge had been uncovered in 2003 by Ilya Akhmedov, an archeologist and contemporary of Yuliya’s. Scientists believed that the structure, too, had been used for mapping the stars.

The thing that had interested Yuliya most — and infuriated her beyond all measure — was the cymbal made of clay that currently lay on one of the tables out in the lab. It was definitely celadon pottery, reminding her of delicate Chinese and Japanese musical instruments. But the cymbal had writing on it that she couldn’t decipher. Nor could any of the Russian linguists Yuliya had access to.

In the end, she’d shot some pictures of the cymbal and sent them to Thomas Lourds, hoping his expertise in ancient languages would churn out an answer to the puzzle that faced her.

When the cymbal had been discovered at the site, it was locked away in a protective bone case. Remnants of that bone lay around the cymbal now. The case had either been shattered or had simply decomposed with the passage of years. Yuliya wasn’t sure which. She’d sent fragments of the bone off for carbon dating, and was waiting for the answer. The artifact was old. Maybe even impossibly old.

Her mail client dinged, letting her know the contents had come through. This time Yuliya received a response from Lourds’s graduate assistant, Tina Metcalf.

Her hands trembled as she moved to open the file.

Yuliya did know how Lourds was about e-mail. She’d never met anyone who detested electronic communications more. She often exchanged long letters with Lourds, snail mail, of course, discussing various finds they’d both taken part in, as well as the ramifications of those studies. Over the years, she’d saved all those letters; had, in fact, used some of the materials in graduate-level archeology classes she taught at Kazan State University.

She loved his letters, and she loved Lourds’s mind. That was something Yuliya’s husband, a mason, was sometimes jealous of. But Yuliya also knew that no woman was ever going to completely claim Lourds’s heart. The professor’s true love was knowledge, and he would spend his life looking for what had been lost at the Royal Library of Alexandria. No mere woman could compete with a passion like that. Still, a few of the young ones seemed to catch his eye occasionally, and some even caught more than his attention for a time.

If he’d had the inclination, she thought, Lourds could have given Don Juan a run for the money.

Alexandria, eh? Yuliya laughed. Lourds must have been drawn back into the arms of his true mistress — the search for remnants of the great library. She wondered how that mistress was treating him.

Yuliya suspected that maybe young Miss Metcalf had also been smitten by the professor, and was somewhat irritated that he hadn’t yet noticed she was female or available. Yuliya had seen women nearly swoon whenever Lourds entered the room. Not that he noticed.

So. No Thomas. Maybe for weeks.

Irritated, Yuliya abandoned the computer and walked back out into her borrowed lab. The clay cymbal still occupied the center of one of the tables.

It was almost like it was taunting her.

Understand me! it said.

She only wished she could.

The low ceiling of the basement felt oppressive, like the weight of the building was slowly sinking on top of her.

After a moment, Yuliya got the distinct feeling that someone was watching her.

Strange.

No one should be at the university at this time of night. And she wasn’t the type to have ridiculous fancies.

Then another thought hit her. Security, even when there was a lot of it, tended to be abysmal here by most standards.

Fear trampled through Yuliya’s body, filling her nervous system with a huge hit of adrenaline. Rape and murder occurred on university campuses with appalling regularity.

Acting casual, Yuliya reached out for the small knife she’d used to clean the mysterious and maddening inscription she’d found. Her hand curled around the wooden handle.

“If I’d truly wanted to hurt you, you’d be too late. In fact, you’d probably already be dead.”

Anger exploded inside Yuliya as she recognized the taunting voice. She spun to face her tormentor.

Natasha Safarov leaned against the wall in the mouth of the stairwell.

At least she didn’t creep up on me and touch the back of my neck! Yuliya absolutely hated it when her younger sister did that.

“Are you spying on me?” Yuliya demanded.

Natasha shrugged and showed Yuliya a disinterested moue. “Perhaps.”

At twenty-eight, ten years Yuliya’s junior, Natasha was an Amazon. She stood five feet ten inches tall, six inches taller than her sister. Her dark red hair fell to her shoulders and framed a model’s face. Sparkling brown eyes revealed her amusement. She wore slacks and a blouse under a long black duster. She looked like she was draped in Dior.

It was infuriating.

But Yuliya loved her sister anyway.

“Natasha, what are you doing here?” Yuliya put the knife down on the table and walked over to her sister. They hugged, fiercely, because they had always been close, even though they seldom saw each other these days.

“I called Ivan and found out you were here,” Natasha said. Ivan was Yuliya’s husband. “Since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d drop by.”

“I’ve got some coffee on. And rolls that are almost fresh. Would you care for some?”

Natasha nodded and followed her sister into the office. She took one of the straight-backed chairs at one of the desks. To Yuliya, she looked like royalty sitting there, despite the wretched decor of the little kitchen.

After microwaving the coffee and the rolls, Yuliya placed the plate and the cups on the desk and sat.

“This reminds me of what it was like when we were girls,” Natasha said as she took a roll. “You making breakfast for us before we went to school. Do you remember?”

“I do.” Sadness touched Yuliya’s heart. Their mother had been taken from them too young by a respiratory illness. Sometimes, late at night, Yuliya thought she could still hear her mother’s agonized wheezing. And she remembered the night that the sound suddenly went away… forever.

Yuliya had been fourteen. Natasha had been four. Although she tried, Natasha could never remember their mother — a big woman who loved to bake — except from photographs and from the stories Yuliya told. Their father had worked in a warehouse.

“As I recall,” Yuliya went on, “you almost made me late every morning.”

“As I recall, you were always primping for some boy.”

“I primped for Ivan. And it worked for me. We are married and have two beautiful children.”

“They get their looks from their aunt.” Natasha grinned.

“No,” Yuliya declared, going along with the old joke. “You’ll not take that from me. I am their mother. I made them beautiful.”

They nibbled on their rolls and sipped coffee in silence for a moment.

“I miss you making breakfast for me,” Natasha said quietly after a bit.

From her sister’s words, Yuliya knew Natasha had been off in some corner of the world that had briefly flamed into a private hell for her. Yuliya knew better than to ask where or how, though. Natasha would never talk about it.

“Well, then,” Yuliya stated matter-of-factly, “as I see it, you have only two choices.”

“Two?” Natasha arched her eyebrows.

Yuliya nodded. “You can hire a maid, whom I can train to take care of you—”

“Train her?”

“Of course. It’s the only way. But to do it properly, she’ll have to spend a few years with me.”

“A few years.”

“If you want her trained to my satisfaction.”

“I see.”

Yuliya almost giggled and spoiled the moment. Natasha was always so in control of herself, always able to keep a straight face. “Or…”

“Good,” Natasha said. “There’s an ‘or,’ because I didn’t care for the other suggestion.”

“Or,” Yuliya went on unperturbed, “you can move in with Ivan and me.”

Natasha went quiet and still.

Yuliya knew that she’d dared too much, but she couldn’t stop herself. “The children would love it. They love you, Natasha. You’re their favorite aunt.”

“They have good taste,” Natasha said.

“You’re also their only aunt.” Yuliya couldn’t resist the dig. They were sisters and they’d never allowed each other to posture too much. Ivan had three brothers and no sisters. As yet, none of the brothers were married. She missed her little sister something fierce, and not just because of the lack of female blood relations currently in her life.

Natasha smiled. “Thank you. But I would only be intruding.” She took another roll and broke it. “Tell me what you’re doing here — Ivan said you’d found someone’s unwashed plate.”

Sadly, Yuliya dropped the subject of her sister sharing her home, knowing that Natasha would speak of it no more. Yuliya leaned back in her chair. “It’s not a dirty plate. It’s a cymbal. Several thousand years old, from the looks of it. Maybe more. I’m waiting for confirmation.”

Natasha shook her head in mock sadness. “My big sister, who went to university to learn to prowl through someone’s garbage.”

They bickered for a moment as they always did; then Yuliya told the story of the cymbal as she knew it. As always, Natasha was more interested than Yuliya had thought she’d be.

And in this case, that interest was much deserved.

“You believe there’s more than one language on the bell?” Leslie walked arm in arm with Lourds down one of the side streets not far from the hotel.

“Yes. At least two,” Lourds agreed.

“But you don’t know either one of them?”

“No, not yet.” Lourds looked at her and smiled. “Does that shake your confidence in me?”

Leslie looked into his clear gray eyes. They were beautiful eyes, warm and honest and… sexy. Definitely sexy. Just looking into them made her tingle.

“No,” she answered. “That doesn’t shake my confidence at all.”

“I’ll break those languages,” he told her.

“It’s what you do.”

“Yes. It is.” Lourds munched on a piece of the baklava they’d gotten from an outdoor café serving the late-night crowd. “Have you heard of the Rosetta Stone?”

“Of course.”

“What do you know about it?”

“It was…” Leslie thought about her answer. “Important.”

Lourds chuckled. “Yes, it was.”

“And it’s kept in the British Museum in London.”

“That’s true as well.” Lourds took another bite of baklava. “The important thing about the Rosetta Stone was it was written in two languages, Egyptian and Greek.”

“I thought it was three.”

“Two languages, but there were three scripts used. Hieroglyphic, demotic Egyptian, and Greek. When Napoléon’s army found that stone, the artifact gave us, eventually, a path to understanding the ancient Egyptian language. We knew what the Greek inscription said. By assuming all the passages said the same thing, scholars eventually cracked the meaning of the hieroglyphs. All they had to do to crack the hieroglyphic code was to match the hieroglyphics to the meanings we had from the other two sections. Finding that stone allowed the decryption and translation of all the writings from ancient Egypt that we’d stared at, for millennia, on tomb and temple walls, without having a clue what they said. Of course, it took over twenty years, and a number of brilliant minds to get there, even with the existence of the Stone.”

“Do you think the bell is like the Rosetta Stone?” The ramifications of that cascaded through Leslie. “A missive from antiquity in two languages waiting to be translated?”

“I don’t know,” Lourds replied. “I don’t know, for example, if the two languages say the same thing. That was one of the reasons the Rosetta Stone was so important. It repeated. And I can’t read either language — another reason the Rosetta Stone was such a breakthrough. We could translate the Greek. But I’ve got no frame of reference. All I know is that two languages are written on it that I can’t understand. And I don’t like it. I’m not accustomed to drawing a blank with ancient languages.”

“It would be so brill if the bell were some kind of Rosetta Stone.”

“The Rosetta Stone had only one language on it that we didn’t understand. And it was a single message that repeated three times. I don’t believe that’s the case here.”

“You believe there are two different messages?”

“I don’t know yet. But the length of the passages and the structure differences in the text indicate to me that might be the case. All of which means that it’s going to take longer to work out than I like. I’ll apologize in advance for my distraction. This is a puzzle that calls to me.”

“Not a problem. I totally understand.” Leslie finished the baklava. “You aren’t alone, you know. When I put pictures of the bell on the Internet on some appropriate academic boards and sent it to all the scholars I knew, no one could tell me what language was on it. Or languages, I suppose.”

Lourds stopped walking and looked at her. “You put pictures of the bell on the Internet?”

“Yes.”

“Did anyone respond to your Internet postings?” Lourds asked.

“A few people did.”

Excited, Lourds gripped Leslie’s elbow and turned her. He glanced around, got his bearings — only then did Leslie realize he’d been following C. S. Forester’s advice of wandering aimlessly through the city — and headed back to the hotel.

“Where are we going?” Leslie asked.

“Back to the hotel,” Lourds answered. “I think we may have just discovered how the thieves targeted us.”

Gallardo waited in the Russian-made GAZ-2705 cargo van outside Ryazan State Medical University, where Professor Yuliya Hapaev was working. Magnetic signs on the van’s sides advertised a local cleaning company that had contracts with the university.

Shifting in the seat, Gallardo forced himself to remain detached and not take the long wait personally. He’d expected the woman to step out of the building before now and return to the dorm where she was staying.

So where was she? Even a workaholic wouldn’t work this late.

“Someone’s coming out,” Farok called over the radio.

Gallardo picked up the night-vision binoculars from the glove compartment.

“It’s her,” Farok said.

Training the binoculars on the lone figure that walked out of the building, Gallardo studied her. The night-vision capability washed out the woman’s color, turning everything into soft greens. He couldn’t tell if she was a brunette or not, but the size and shape looked right.

Gallardo knew that Farok and DiBenedetto’s team would close in and prepare to take the woman. “Is she carrying anything?”

“No,” Farok answered.

Gallardo thought about that. “The object must still be inside the building.”

“Yes.”

Gallardo opened the van door and got out. The light didn’t come on, because he’d removed the dome light as a precaution. He caught a brief glimpse of the woman, striding purposefully back to the parking lot; then she was gone.

“Take the woman,” Gallardo instructed. “I’ll get the prize.”

After Farok responded that they would take the woman alive if possible, Gallardo transferred his pistol from its shoulder holder to the right pocket of his coat. Then he trotted toward the building, staying in the shadows as much as he could.

Natasha Safarov knew the men were following her. She’d been followed before, so she knew what to look for and what to listen for. Her heart rate increased slightly as her body readied itself for fight or flight. She kept her breathing slow and even. In the cold, anyone watching her could tell if that changed, because the gray puffs of her breath would give her away.

Her mind flew, taking in her options and laying out her odds. Everywhere she went was a potential battlefield. She’d been trained to take advantage of whatever was there. She always saw terrain, not scenery. It might not help her here, though. On the university grounds this time of night, there wasn’t much in the way of useful cover.

She wondered who the men might be, wondered if they were part of that bad business that had taken place in Beslan. A faction of militant Ossetians, rioting again for the return of their ancestral lands, had taken hostages. Natasha had gone in and retrieved them. There had been considerable bloodshed. She didn’t doubt that some of their number would want revenge. Nor that she would be a likely target.

And if it isn’t the Ossetians, Natasha reflected, it could be many others. She’d left a long line of enemies behind her. The job demanded it. Anger seeped into her because these men had brought violence so close to her family.

She focused, listening to the rhythm of her pursuers, picking out the sound of their feet from all the other noises that trickled through the quiet night. She had them now, all tracking on her personal defense systems, each one indelibly marked.

Sliding her hands into the pockets of her coat, she fisted the two Yarygin PYa/MP-443 Grach pistols she carried there. Both pistols held seventeen-round magazines. She had extra magazines tucked into an inside pocket. She hoped she wouldn’t need them.

The men were patient, though, closing gradually from three sides.

Without warning, Natasha turned and sprinted up the steps of a nearby building. Shadows filled the breezeway, and she felt fairly confident she would become invisible to her pursuers almost at once.

They were determined not to lose her, though. The sound of their footsteps, hesitating for just a moment, came hard after her.

Natasha ran, light on her feet and silent in her crepe-soled shoes. At the end of the breezeway, she leaped from the steps to her left and took cover against the building’s side behind a line of bushes. Taking out both pistols, flipping off the safeties with her thumbs, she waited.

Two men ran through, stopped, and peered out at the open expanse before them. It was too bad there wasn’t another nearby building. Natasha thought they would have been confused longer.

Both men drew weapons, obviously sensing that they were in danger. The presence of the weapons decided Natasha’s course of action. There were more of them. That number gave them the advantage. But she could make the odds stack more in her favor, right here, right now.

She leveled her pistols.

One of the men turned toward her. His pistol was raised, his arms bent to keep it close to his body as he held it in a shooter’s triangle before him. He looked at her just over the open sights.

Natasha squeezed the trigger of the pistol in her right hand just as he saw her. The 9 mm round blasted through the space between the man’s widening eyes. She fired again, shifting to the other pistol, and put two rounds through the second man’s neck. From the way he tumbled, she suspected one of the rounds had severed the man’s spinal cord.

Moving quickly, Natasha walked over to the two dead men. The flat, harsh cracks of her pistol shots echoed in the breezeway behind her.

Kneeling, replacing her left-hand pistol in her duster pocket just for the moment, Natasha frisked the men. They had no ID. That wasn’t unusual. On an assassination assignment, the handler usually took all of a hitter’s identification so he — or she — couldn’t be traced back to the people who’d initiated the hit.

The band on one of the dead men’s wrists caught Natasha’s attention as she heard voices over the radio headsets. They’d been alerted now. Whoever her attackers were, they knew she was armed.

Natasha studied the wristband, recognizing it as a tactic used by special forces around the world. She flipped open the protective cover, expecting to see her own face.

But the face in the picture wasn’t hers. It was Yuliya’s.

Rising, Natasha plucked her other pistol from her duster, turned, and ran back toward the building where she’d left her sister.