The Minoan Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Professor Vedrakis was lost in the mists of time. His body existed in the present but his mind had traveled four thousand years into the past, when Gournia was a thriving seaport. He was exercising the most important talent an archaeologist can possess — the ability to see things not as they are, but as they were. In the eye of the virtual time-traveler, a shard of plaster becomes an ancient pot. A piece of rock becomes a tool used for cutting or pounding.

He stood in the central plaza of the old city. As he swept his eyes over the network of stone foundations spread across the slopes, his imagination reconstructed houses, storage buildings and workshops. People thronged the narrow streets. Potters and bronze smiths pursued their trades.

The professor brought his gaze back to the low stone platform at the summit of the hill and imagined a multi-story palace, similar except for its smaller size to the edifice at Knossos. The sound he heard in his ears was not the soughing of the wind in the stunted trees but the voices of kilted Minoans. Hundreds were gathered in the plaza before a sacrificial altar surmounted by the stone carved horns of consecration. Dancers gyrated to the piping of flutes.

The ruins only hinted at the original size of Gournia, which would have spread across what was now the E75 highway and down a valley to the port. Years of painstaking excavation would have to be done before the full extent of the city was known. The college students who sweated under the sun were enthusiastic and energetic, undaunted by the heat, dust and boredom that make up the less glamorous side of archaeology. The students had removed rectangular sections of topsoil marked out with stakes and twine in the central plaza. On most days, teams painstakingly scraped the earth with trowels while others ran shovelfuls of the loose soil through sieves that rested on four legs. The piles of earth under the sieves were high, which meant that the students had worked hard while he was in Sitia.

Vedrakis had made copies of a dozen Linear A tablet rubbings at the Sitia museum. He’d stuffed the rubbings into his briefcase along with a volume of commonly used Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was only a short while later that he was driving along the winding highway to Gournia.

He’d parked at the entrance, left the briefcase in the Land Rover and locked the car. The only thing he carried was a replica of the Phaistos disk he had acquired from the Heraklion museum gift shop. He hiked to the top of the hill. Good, he thought. The mournful wind blowing in from the sea would add drama to the first chapter of the book he had already started writing in his head.

He had worked out the Prologue on the drive from Sitia.

Alone amid four-thousand-year-old ruins, my only companions the ghosts haunting the remnants of this once-magnificent city, I anxiously awaited the discovery that would allow me to strip the veil off one of the most mysterious civilizations of all time.

Hawkins would arrive with the machine that would allow the translation of Linear A. Of course, he would give Hawkins credit for finding the device, but Vedrakis would quickly write him out of the narrative. He imagined himself holding the Phaistos disk high above his head to catch the rays of the setting sun.

Snap.

The noise of a breaking twig ended his literary reverie. He lowered his arms and turned around. He was no longer alone. A tall, slender figure dressed in black had emerged from behind an outcropping of rock.

The sun was setting behind the figure so the face was in shadow, but the professor could see that the man had a narrow waist and barrel chest.

“Hawkins?” Vedrakis asked.

No reply. Vedrakis frowned. This wasn’t the friendly man he’d talked to on the telephone.

Someone must have strayed through the gate he’d left open.

“This site is closed,” he said, making no attempt to disguise his annoyance. “You’ll have to leave. Come back tomorrow when you can buy a ticket.”

“When will Hawkins be here?” the man said in a deep, accented voice.

The tone was menacing. This was no tourist. Vedrakis pondered his response. Maybe he could say he didn’t know who Hawkins was, but he sensed the man would know he’d be lying. He went for a half-truth.

“I’m meeting Hawkins later at the museum in Heraklion,” Vedrakis said. “If you give me your name I’ll pass it on when I see him.”

The man ignored the offer. He moved closer.

“Give that to me,” he said.

The disk had only cost a few Euros, but Vedrakis clutched it to his chest. The man took a couple of steps forward until he was close enough for Vedrakis to see that his head was shaved and painted blue. Three other figures dressed in black emerged in the dusky light and closed in from behind and both sides. Astonishment overcame his fear.

They, too, had bald blue scalps. They wore identical jumpsuits snug to bodies that were narrow at the waist and wide at the shoulders. All four men had similar almond-shaped yellow eyes.

He realized he had seen them before, but not in real life. Surrounding him were men who seemed to have jumped off the walls of a Minoan fresco.

But these were not painted images. They were flesh and blood. And they were coming for him.

Leonidas crossed the service road and ducked behind the unoccupied ticket booth. He studied the diagram of Gournia on the fence, then took a circuitous route that led to the top of the hill.

Using bushes and rocks for cover, he made his way along the ridge until he came to the edge of the central plaza. He crossed the deserted open space and came to a boulder that stood at least ten feet high. He edged around the corner, only to pull back quickly.

Leonidas had almost stumbled into the midst of the four weird-looking guys who were holding the arms and legs of a body. He recognized the shock of white hair and beard. Vedrakis. They tossed the body off a cliff as if it were a rag doll.

Leonidas saw one of the men point at a car that had slowed at the entrance to the site and turned off the highway onto the access road.

It had to be Hawkins. Rather than trying to make a run for it, the men spread apart. They were setting up an ambush. They would allow Hawkins to enter, then close in, cutting off any escape. He didn’t know who these weirdos were, but he’d have to babysit Hawkins if he hoped to use him to get to Salazar.

Leonidas could be subtle but it wasn’t in his nature. He raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger. There was a soft thut and a puff of dust exploded from a waist-high rock next to one of the men who called out a warning and reached under his shirt.

He pulled out a handgun; the other men followed his lead. They stood back to back, looking in four different directions for the source of the fire.

Leonidas had moved a short distance from his original shooting position. He climbed some rocks to a position that was above the group and fired off two more rounds, aiming near the feet of his targets.

The strangers realized that they were dangerously exposed. At a word from one, who must have been the leader, they ran across the plaza. Leonidas sent a couple more rounds whizzing over their heads. He didn’t want to kill them. He was trying to herd them off the site. He emptied his pistol and slid a fresh magazine in, then followed the trail of the killers to the brow of the hill. Four figures could be seen from this viewpoint running single file along the service road. He hoped they wouldn’t double-back or reconsider their escape.

Shifting his attention to the base of the hill, Leonidas watched the Renault pull up directly behind the Land Rover.