The Minoan Cipher

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Molly rolled the raw hamburger into little balls that she put in a saucepan. She carried the pan outside to the shed behind her house. She flipped the latch, went inside and closed the door behind her.

A mesh cage sat on a wooden table, visible in the sunlight streaming in from the windows. The cage door was wide open. A large bird with dark brown feathers hopped out of its home onto the table, opened its beak and fluffed its wings. Molly placed the pot with the raw meatballs on the table.

“Suppertime,” Molly said.

Several weeks earlier, Molly had been shooting photos in the forest near Mount Bachelor and discovered the injured bird lying on the ground, blood clotting on its wing. She had learned at the museum about Cainism, named after the Biblical brother Cain who’d killed his sibling. The oldest Golden eagle hatchling attacks its younger siblings, killing them or driving them from the nest.

Sutherland had picked up the weakened fledgling and put it in her camera bag. Back home, she lined a wicker basket with a towel to provide a nest. The bird looked to be at death’s door but, like Lazarus, it’d recovered and started to eat the scraps of raw meat she fed it. Before long, it could stand, spread its wings, and clack its beak.

The bird was too young to be released. If she brought it to the museum, it would be put in a cage. It would be well fed and cared for. Visitors would gawk and take pictures. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Like the eagle, she had been attacked and thrown out of her army nest.

Molly knew she couldn’t keep the bird forever. This was no canary. The Golden eagle was one of the deadliest birds of prey in the world. Falconers used teams of the raptor to hunt down antelopes and wolves.

The eagle now measured more than two feet from the top of its head to its tail and could easily grow to more than a yard. When it stretched its wings the span was nearly six feet. The four talons on each yellow foot were like curved daggers and the hooked beak was more than two inches long. Gold-colored feathers grew around the back of the crown and the nape. The white plumage of a juvenile bird were quickly being replaced by feathers of rusty brown.

She had named the eagle Wheeling after the capital of her home state of West Virginia. The name fit the way the eagles flew — in wide, lazy circles. Since she didn’t know whether the bird was male or female, the uni-sex name would work for now. The bird was used to her, but if she got too close, it would spread its wings and shift from claw to claw. She didn’t know if Wheeling would attack when provoked, but this wasn’t a creature to be toyed with.

Since moving to mellow Oregon, the emotional numbness of her post-Army days had ebbed. She was making connections at the museum, but nothing strong or permanent. She had done better at making friends with a fierce raptor. Pathetic. She would be sad to see it go, but she knew that it was time to release the bird.

“Fixin to let you go by an by,” Molly said. “Better enjoy the room service while you can.”

She left the shed and returned to the kitchen to toast a bagel. Tromping around in the woods with a load of camera equipment was good exercise, but she knew that if she didn’t modify her own diet she’d blow up like a tick having dinner. She didn’t want to be like her triple-chinned Auntie Flo who used to wash French fries down with Diet Coke. So, instead of slathering the bagel with an inch of cream cheese, butter and jelly, she only used a dab, skimming the mixture lightly over the crust. It made her feel good, but she knew it was only a gesture.

After breakfast she went into her office and powered up the computer. Dozens of photos needed editing and filing. She read the email Calvin sent after his visit to Amsterdam and put the photo project aside. Finding someone who had been in the armed services would take little effort. Some people saw hacking into a database as a sneaky intrusion. She pictured it more like parting curtains and stepping into the room. The trick was to make yourself invisible to those already in the room.

She clicked on the Department of Defense site and parted the curtains wide enough to peek inside for her first sighting of Chad Williams.

Within fifteen minutes a photo popped up on her screen. Even with his buzz haircut Chad Williams was good-looking enough to be a movie star. Digging around, she learned he had been injured in Iraq and spent several months in Walter Reed hospital. She got into the hospital files and saw that he had extensive plastic surgery. He was honorably discharged. There was no forwarding address, so she tracked down family listed in the DOD files. Unmarried. Only child. Father and mother deceased. Molly forwarded the information to Calvin and Hawkins and went back into the kitchen for another bagel. This time she left out the jelly.

Seven thousand miles away from Oregon, Hawkins sat in the Gulfstream, reading the professor’s book. The cover art was a reproduction of the bull and acrobats fresco from the museum. Hawkins opened to the index section and looked under the R’s. He found Robsham, Howard, turned to the page and read the professor’s words.

“Howard Robsham was a self-educated Englishman whose family fortune allowed him to pursue his obsession with the ancient world. Professional scholars worked from their offices and conducted research in libraries and archives. They never went into the field, and looked down with disdain at those who scratched the dirt from an ancient ruin with a trowel. They castigated self-schooled archaeologists, like Heinrich Schliemann and Arthur Evans, for the sometimes destructive methods of investigation they used. To the dismay of these desk-bound academics, amateur Indiana Jones’s had made the big discoveries.

“Evans uncovered the ancient capital of Knossos and the palace that had been at the center of a lost civilization. He called it ‘Minoan’ after its leader, King Minos, and named the two writing scripts Linear A and Linear B. Michael Ventris was an architect by training, but he deciphered Linear B. It was a close-knit community. Howard Robsham had been a friend of Ventris.

“In the last year of his life, Robsham had come to Athens to read a paper at a conference of philologists, people who study historic languages. After the conference, he sailed to Crete looking for examples of the Minoan script known as Linear A. He heard about some inscribed tablets and tracked down the shepherd who had found them in what was apparently a cave shrine. Robsham negotiated the sale of more than two dozen tablets. A short time later, Robsham drove his car off a mountain road and died in the crash.

“It was a double blow to Minoan investigation. In a strange coincidence, the same year, only months earlier, Ventris died in a car accident in London. What has come to be called the Robsham Collection was never found; it was presumed the tablets had been destroyed in the accident.”

Hawkins put the book down and stared out the window at the shimmering turquoise sea. The accidental deaths of two major Minoan scholars was a strange coincidence. But what did it mean? Did it mean anything? He looked over at Abby, who had dozed off. He let his eyes rove over her perfect nose and lush lips. Many things had changed since their divorce, but he still thought she was the loveliest woman he had ever met.

“Beautiful,” he whispered.

He had forgotten that Abby had the hearing of a cat. She woke up, saw Hawkins looking at her, and said, “What did you say?”

Hawkins pointed out the window at the black cliffs and crescent shape that distinguished Santorini from other Aegean islands. A moment later the pilot asked them to make sure their seat belts were fastened.