The Oracle Code

40

Getting into the country wasn’t a problem, but obtaining the necessary papers for Fitrat and his men to carry weapons had been difficult. Lourds had been forced to cool his heels in the hotel while the ANP officer had worked out the details.

“It would be easier to just buy guns from black market dealers here.” Lourds had gotten frustrated by the enforced wait and from the lack of sleep. He knew he was on the verge of putting together everything the scroll hid.

Fitrat had looked at him, obviously shocked. “You know about such things from the novels you read?”

The discussion of Lourds’s reading matter had come up on the six-hour plane flight. He hadn’t wanted to bring out the scrolls for obvious reasons, and his mind was too active to simply veg out. The captain had had his own emergency details to iron out, not the least of which was street clothing for himself and his men. Not to mention getting the proper credentials for the guns they now carried.

Lourds had simply nodded to the question. He hadn’t wanted to get into the gun acquisitions made by Natashya Safarov or Cleena MacKenna or Miriam Abata when they’d traveled with him.

Finally, the papers had come through diplomatic channels. According to them, Lourds was there seeking information about an archeological find based in Afghanistan that was important to that country and had to be protected from the Taliban.

Lourds hadn’t exactly been thrilled when he’d read the classification. “You do realize that if the Taliban weren’t interested before, if they weren’t behind Boris’s death and the pursuit we’ve been avoiding, they’ll be interested now. They have spies in many places.”

Fitrat nodded. “It is a risk, but one we must take in order to protect you. If we carry illegal weapons and a situation arises where we must employ them, then they will be taken away.”

“You can get more.”

“Not if we, too, are taken away. On the chance that you are not arrested with us, you will then be alone. Easier prey than if you remained with us.”

Lourds acknowledged that.

“And if you are arrested and put into jail with us, it would be in a very bad environment. It would be too easy for whoever is pursuing us to find you and to have you killed.”

“You’re right.”

So Lourds had remained an unwilling hostage in his room. This morning they had finally been able to leave.

Lourds sat in the back seat of the rented boat with Captain Fitrat as it sped across the green expanse of the Aegean Sea. One of the captain’s men drove and another rode shotgun. There was another boat carrying armed men ahead of them. Although everybody would have fit in one boat, Fitrat hadn’t wanted to reduce them to one vehicle with no options.

“Why do you think this place is so important?”

“Because it was mentioned in the scroll.” Lourds peered across the sea at the island as they neared it.

“Then why didn’t we come here sooner?”

“It wasn’t mentioned by name. There was a code for it, and it isn’t a simple letter-substitution code. The paragraph I broke regarding this place reduced Delos to the place where the dead do not rest.“

The young soldier in the passenger seat nearest the pilot looked over his shoulder at Lourds. “Zombies? You’re talking about zombies?”

“No. What is it with your generation and this love of zombies?”

The man shrugged and smiled. “How can you not love zombies? Have you not seen The Walking Dead?”

“No, but I’ve heard of it. If you ask me, it’s a lot like Anabasis.”

“Is that a movie or a television show? I am not familiar with it.”

“It’s a book written by a professional Greek soldier named Xenophon. It tells the story of a group of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger, a Persian king, to take the throne from his brother, Artaxerxes II. Cyrus led them into battle at Cunaxa in Babylon but was killed, so putting him on the throne would have been moot. The rest of the book was about the struggles of the Greek mercenaries to return to their homes without getting killed.”

The young soldier thought for a moment. “It sounds interesting.”

“Yes, it is. They were harried by the king’s men the whole way, and they had to cross the snow-covered mountains to reach the Greek cities. You should try reading it.”

“If Cyrus the Younger had turned out to be a zombie, then they could have still placed him on the throne. That would have been more interesting.”

“Because everything is better with zombies.”

“Of course.”

Fitrat chuckled but politely turned his head.

Lourds sighed. He saw the same kind of behavior in his college students all the time. “Getting back to my point, Delos was a meeting place for all the cults of Greece. Temples were built there to the gods, including the temple of the Delians, which was dedicated to the sun god Apollo. There was also a place dedicated to the Poseidoniasts — merchants, sea captains, and innkeepers who worshiped Poseidon, the god of the sea. All of the gods were supposed to have temples there, including Hera, Dionysus, Artemis, and the others of the big twelve. In fact, Apollo and Artemis were supposed to have been born there. The place became a pilgrimage for the Greeks, and people from all over the world went there to see the temples and fountains and other landmarks.

“Since this land was so important to the ancient Greeks, they didn’t want it tainted. Didn’t want to offend the gods and goddesses. They tried to purify the island. In the sixth century BCE, the tyrant Peisistratos founded the Panathenaic Festival, a series of games that lasted for days.”

“Like the Olympics.”

“Yes. Only never as big.”

“It is hard to be as big as the Olympics.”

“Peisistratos ordered that all graves that could be moved from any of the temples had to be relocated.

“Nearly a hundred years later, the Delphic Oracle declared that all graves on the island had to be emptied and that no one could be born there or die there.”

“You are talking about the Oracle created by Apollo?” Interest showed in Fitrat’s eyes.

“Absolutely. The Oracle was in full sway then. What do you know of her?”

“Only that Apollo chose the first woman.”

“That’s not exactly how it was, but that seems to be the common conjecture. According to legend, Apollo chose Cretans from Minos to be his priests, jumped onto their ship in the form of a dolphin, and led them to the site of the Oracle.

“Another story says that a goat herder named Coretas noticed that one of his goats was acting strangely after having fallen into a rift in the earth. When he went to investigate, he was overcome by strange visions that allowed him to peer into the future and the past.”

“This I know more about.” Fitrat shifted in his seat. “Scientists actually found that the visions might have been elicited by gas that was trapped within the earth. Carbon dioxide or something.”

“Close, but carbon dioxide was only one of the possibilities.” Lourds smiled. “Originally the gas was believed to have been ethylene, a byproduct of an oil deposit there. Although there are some who say the more likely culprit was methane or hydrogen sulfide.”

“That wouldn’t have made the Oracle a great environment to be in.”

“No, but it didn’t stop people from going there. Aristotle, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Xenophon, and Plutarch — among others — are reputed to have visited the site.”

“So they cleaned the island of the dead, and that became the land of temples to the Greek gods.”

“Among others, yes. There were some Egyptian gods worshipped there too.” Lourds grinned. “One of the most interesting pieces is the Stoivadeion, the temple dedicated to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. It’s a giant phallus.”

The two soldiers in the front of the boat totally lost it and started laughing hysterically. Even Fitrat laughed, and he wiped his eyes. “Who would do such a thing?”

“It was erected — if I may be so bold—”

The soldiers howled with glee.

“—by an ancient Greek grammarian named Carystius. Sadly, this phallus is practically all that remains of his works. Even that is broken.”

“Broken?” The young soldier in the front seat turned around again. He had changed to speaking English.

“Yes. In half.”

“So now it’s half-cocked? Is that how you say this in your slang?”

The soldier laughed and pounded his thigh with a fist.

“Yes.” Lourds covered his face with his hat and wanted to throw himself overboard.

The young soldier hopped out of the boat and quickly tied it up at the dock. Lourds grabbed the line from the stern and tied it to a cleat as well, wrapping it snugly.

“Where are we going?”

“To the Agora of the Delians. Remember, I told you that Aristotle and Plato were connected with that long-dead organization that wasn’t so long dead during Alexander’s time.” Lourds looked around at the island and the blue sky surrounding them. He’d been to Delos several times, but he never failed to be impressed by the pomp and pageantry that the sight brought to mind.

Now all that remained were fragments of what had once been. Broken, stone houses, tall, Doric columns that looked solitary and lonely, and stone parquets that showed wear from the countless visitors who toured the island even now.

“Why are we going there?” Fitrat adjusted his sunglasses. In casual clothes, he almost looked touristy.

“There’s an inscription that was mentioned in the scroll as being key to the parts that I haven’t yet figured out.”

Lourds took the lead, and they followed bare earth walkways and the stone-lined path that wound through the island.

“This is a beautiful place.” Fitrat walked at his side. “I could live somewhere like this with my family.”

“No one can live here, actually. It’s against the law. The only residents here are a French archeological group that have been working digs on the island since the 1870s.”

“They still haven’t finished?”

Lourds waved around them. “There’s a lot to dig up on this island. You’re talking about almost three thousand years of history since the Greeks landed here, and there were people who lived in these islands before that. It’s just harder to get to them. And with all the sites, space gets cramped.”

They walked past the shops in the Agora of the Competaliasts, the paved square directly behind the harbor. Lourds pointed to it.

“That’s an ancient marketplace. Slaves were sold on the island. Sometimes as many as five thousand a day. That particular market was devoted to the Competaliasts, a union of freemen and slaves who worshipped the Roman gods of crossroads.”

The sun beat down on them as they walked. Lourds took off his hat and mopped his brow. He couldn’t help looking around for gunmen to come charging out of nowhere.

“Feel safe while you are here.” Fitrat clapped him on the shoulder. “The good thing about an island as flat and small as this one is that no one can sneak up on you without you seeing them come.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.” Taken away by the history surrounding them, Lourds felt his fears melt away for the moment. He pointed at a small, circular building made of marble stones in the center of the agora. “There is the temple that was dedicated to Hermes, the god of commerce. This is where the slave trade proliferated.”

“It is a shame for a thing of beauty to be tied to such an ugly business.”

“Living is an ugly business, my friend. Many things haven’t changed.”

They stepped onto a stone path that was forty feet wide.

“This is the Sacred Way. It leads to the Sanctuary of Apollo.” Lourds pointed at the columns nearby. It looked like a large, stone square that had large porches that led up to it. Ex-votos, offering places meant to give tribute to the gods, lined the Sacred Way.

“I assume since he was the god of the sun that he found the idea of a roof offensive?”

Lourds grinned. “Perhaps. But inside there — see the long building? — that’s the Oikos of the Naxians, the house of the people from Naxos. That’s a nearby island, the largest in the Cyclades. The Cycladic civilization that lived there dates back to 3000 BCE. Some truly fascinating artifacts have been found there.”

He led the way down into the Agora of the Delians, where more long porches stood beside ex-votos. Carefully, Lourds began inspecting the porticos, looking for the name that had turned up in the scroll.

Fitrat began looking as well. “What are you looking for?”

“An inscription made by Pittacus of Mytilene.” Lourds kept moving, reading the inscriptions quickly. “And unless you’ve suddenly learned how to read Ancient Greek, you’re not going to be much help.”

Fitrat sighed. “I feel useless.”

“You can make dinner tonight as a way of apology.”

The captain grinned. “Sure. Who was Pittacus?”

“One of the Seven Sages of Greece, and that’s with capital letters. Each of the sages was supposed to represent an edict of worldly knowledge. Something everyone should know.”

“And what did Pittacus propose?”

“‘You should know which opportunities to choose.’”

“Under the circumstances, I suppose that is fitting.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Why Pittacus? Because of what he said?”

“I don’t think so.” Lourds kept moving and reading names. “Pittacus was from Mytilene, the people on the self-named island that was also called Lesbos.”

“Where Aristotle went for a time. I remember you mentioning that.”

“Exactly. Aristotle studied and taught there, and one of the people he would have covered in his material was Pittacus. Callisthenes knew that. I think the final bits of the code I’m struggling with are from the saying here because Pittacus was mentioned as having words of wisdom at Delos in the House. Furthermore, Lesbos tried to secede from the Delian League. As a result, the League made an example of them, ordering all men to be killed. They finally stopped the gendercide, to borrow a term from Mary Anne Warren, after killing a thousand men. The word lesbian was actually coined from the name of the island and referred to the fact that all those women were left alone, and too, the poet Sappho lived there. Sappho, as it turned out, was quite the ladies’ lady. If you read through her poetry, you’ll discover that it focuses almost exclusively on women and her sexual attraction to them.”

“Amazing.”

“What? The story?”

“No. That you know so many things. I think if I knew so many things, my head would blow up.”

Lourds brushed away some dirt on his latest find. And there, carved into the marble, was the name Pittacus. He grinned. “I found it.”

“What does it say?”

Lourds took out his phone and shot pictures of the inscription. Then he took a piece of paper from a drawing pad inside his backpack and placed it over the inscription. “Basically, it’s a repeat of what he was known for. Making the right choice. But the words are different. I suspect Callisthenes used some of them as replacements for the nonsense text I’m reading now. Hold this paper.”

While Fitrat helped him hold the paper in place, Lourds used a charcoal stick from his art box to take a rubbing. Then he carefully rolled the paper up and put it inside the protective case with the scrolls.

“All right. We’re finished here. Unless you want to take a look around.”

Fitrat shook his head. “Perhaps another time.”

Together, they headed back to the harbor. Lourds’s head was spinning as some of the words — now that he had them — were already dropping into place. But he wanted confirmation of his ideas and thought he knew exactly where to get it.

“We need to make another stop, Captain.”

Fitrat glanced at him. “Here?”

“No. In Athens. Will your gun permits work there as well?”

“As long as we are protecting you, and as long as the places you go have some relevance to the document, then, yes.”

“Trust me, this place has relevance.”