The Minoan Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Gulfstream G650 executive jet lifted off the tarmac, ascending over the meadows around Zurich Airport, and rapidly reached a speed of more than six hundred miles an hour on a course that would take it southeast across Europe and the Mediterranean to the island of Crete.

Hawkins and Abby were the only passengers on the eight-seat plane. Abby spent most of the flight on the phone talking with company headquarters in Virginia. Hawkins pecked away at his tablet, continuing the insurance claims process for Falstaff that he had started earlier in the flight.

It was going to be a formidable task. The insurance company wanted to know what happened. Hawkins explained that it had been an equipment malfunction. He omitted one detail. That the equipment failed after being hit by a sinking ship. Asked if the submersible could be lifted off the ocean floor, he wrote that it had been damaged beyond repair.

He detested paperwork and was ecstatic when the pilot announced that the plane was starting its approach. Hawkins shut down his tablet and glanced out the window. An ash-colored crescent rose from the turquoise sea. The unmistakable contours of Santorini, the volcanic island directly north of Crete.

He heaved a sigh of relief. “Escaping certain death at the bottom of the sea is a breeze compared to dealing with an insurance company.”

“Will they cover the loss?” Abby said.

“Eventually, maybe. My claim must sound a bit fishy.”

“Simply tell them the truth. A sinking ship hit Falstaff after a missile attack. The submersible was later depth-bombed by black helicopters. Probably because of a mysterious artifact people are willing to die and/or kill for.”

Hawkins pinched his chin, like Sherlock Holmes pondering a puzzle. “Sounds reasonable when you put it that way. The choppers were gray and white, though.”

She dismissed him with a wave of her long fingers. “Whatever. Tell me about Professor Vedrakis.”

“Good sense of humor. Very serious about his work.” Hawkins pointed to the knapsack buckled in the seat next to him. “When I showed him the trinket, his response was scientific. But his excitement was obvious. If he weren’t so dignified, he would have done a Greek dance.”

“The dancing professor. I can’t wait to see that.”

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom advising them to buckle their seat belts. Minutes later the landing gear thumped down. The plane taxied to within a few hundred yards of the terminal at Nikos Kazantzakis airport, named after the famed author of Zorba the Greek. They stepped through the plane’s door into the withering heat and descended the gangway. The tarmac baked under the sun, even with the lateness of the day and the cool breeze skimming off the Cretan Sea. They had changed into shorts and casual shirts and merged easily into the lines of tourists at the Customs gate. Their passports were quickly stamped.

The car rental agency was across from the terminal. They piled their two duffel bags in the trunk of the compact Renault hatchback. Offering to drive, Hawkins got behind the wheel and followed the line of traffic from the busy commercial sprawl around the airport. Traffic thinned out and soon they were heading east on E75, the highway along the island’s northern coastal plain.

The road gradually rose higher. Hawkins glanced off at the turquoise sea on one side and the mountains on the other, and felt liberated after the confines of the plane’s cabin. He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Professor Vedrakis when he returned to his hotel room.

“I’ve been thinking about the mechanism you showed me,” the professor had said. “I hesitate to make a definitive assessment until I hold the artifact in my hands, but I’ve become convinced that what you discovered is an ancient translating computer.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?”

“The mechanism is a system of interlocking gears, or wheels. There are Egyptian hieroglyphics inscribed on a large wheel. The other gears are inscribed with eastern Mediterranean pictographs and script. What has me hyperventilating is the wheel etched with the Minoan script known as Linear A. We know of two written scripts — Linear A and Linear B.”

“One script was decoded, if I recall,” Hawkins said.

“Correct. Michael Ventris deciphered Linear B. The other script has defied all efforts at translation. This device may be the key that unlocks the secret to understanding a language that hasn’t been understood for four thousand years.”

“A mechanical Rosetta Stone, in other words.”

“An apt comparison. But this is far more important than the stele Napoleon’s soldiers discovered in Egypt. The Rosetta Stone had the same decree written in Greek and Egyptian, which allowed for the translation of hieroglyphics. With this wonderful machine, we may translate Linear A and possibly other lost languages.”

“Can’t wait to get started,” Hawkins said. “I’ll bring the artifact to the museum as soon as we arrive in Heraklion.”

“That’s the reason I called. I won’t be in Heraklion,” Vedrakis said. “I’ll be at the archaeological museum in Sitia looking over rubbings of Linear A Minoan tablets from the Robsham collection.”

“Not familiar with the name,” Hawkins said.

“The tablets were found in a mountain cave and acquired by an English amateur archeologist named Howard Robsham, back in the 1950s. He died in a car accident on one of our treacherous roads. The tablets were destroyed in the crash, but what’s not generally known is that the museum had made paper copies of some inscriptions shortly after he acquired them.”

Sitia was around two hours from Heraklion. Vedrakis proposed that they meet halfway at the ruins of Gournia, an ancient Minoan settlement being excavated by the students from the University of Buffalo. As project supervisor, Vedrakis would be checking on the progress of the dig after the students left for the day.

“I’ll leave the gate open for you,” he said. “The ruins will be a great setting for the opening chapter when we write the book on this discovery.”

“You’re way ahead of me, but I’ll be sure to sharpen up my quill pen,” Hawkins said.