The Minoan Cipher (A Matinicus “Matt” Hawkins Adventure Book 2)

by Paul Kemprecos

  “Well. Do you have her?” she said.

  “We’re in the apartment now. We came here immediately after your call but she was gone when we arrived.”

  “Then you must wait until she returns.”

  “I don’t think she will be coming back soon. Clothes are missing from the closet and drawers. We found no luggage.”

  “Show me.”

  The face disappeared and the screen showed a sofa and chairs in a living room. The camera spun slowly around, then the view moved into the kitchen and bedroom. The hangers were empty in the bedroom closet and spaces in the drawers showed where items had been removed. There was no sign of a toothbrush or hairbrush in the bathroom.

  The camera phone moved into a small office. On the neat desktop were photos of Kalliste with her colleagues on a research vessel, and a picture of white, cube-shaped houses hugging black cliffs. The drawers were pulled open, but contained only office supplies. Of course, Kalliste would keep her files electronically and would have taken her computer with her. The face reappeared in the screen.

  “Enough,” Lily said. “Go back into the bedroom and examine the pillows on her bed. Look for hair. Do the same in the shower drain.”

  Less than a minute later, the voice came on again, “I found two long hairs.”

  “Now go into the kitchen and place the hairs in a plastic bag. Bring the bag and its contents to me at the Cadiz Airport. I want you to carry it personally.” Lily clicked off and made a call to Salazar. “Send a plane to pick me up. I’ll need a helicopter in Cadiz, as well.”

  “I’ll order an Auroch jet to Le Bourget right away,” Salazar said. “The helicopter will be at the Auroch corporate hangar. Anything further I can assist you with?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Lily went back to the party and stayed only long enough to excuse herself. She said the office called and assigned her to scope out a new assignment. She thanked the crew for its work, posed for photos with the French woman, who had donned the werewolf mask, and said she would see them back in New York. She took a cab to the hotel and asked the front desk to arrange for a limo to the airport while she packed.

  Le Bourget Airport is used primarily for business aviation. The executive jet that landed minutes after her arrival was distinguished from the other corporate aircraft only by the stylized bull horns insignia of Auroch Industries on the fuselage. The jet taxied up to the limo where she was waiting. The jet kept its engines going while she boarded and an hour later it touched down in Cadiz. A tall thin figure dressed in black was standing near the Auroch hangar. He handed her the plastic bag as she walked to the helicopter.

  The helicopter lifted into the air, headed east at two hundred miles per hour and soon approached its destination. Lily felt the tension slip away as she glimpsed the crenelated towers of the old castle looming like dragon’s teeth against the blue-black sky. The helicopter touched down inside the castle walls. Lily got out and strode across the courtyard under a translucent roof that had been built over a structure consisting of three towers, the tallest resting between the others.

  Lily entered the door of the middle tower, walked through a dimly lit antechamber, then descended a wide set of stairs.

  She placed the axe medallion hanging around her neck against the metal pad next to the doors to identify herself. When the doors opened, she stepped through into a passageway lit by electrical wall torches to a second set of steel doors and opened them with another press of her medallion on an ID plate. As she stepped into this new room and the doors silently closed behind her, she was enveloped by a sickly sweet odor of ancient decay. Anyone else would have retched, but Lily inhaled the miasma deep into her lungs. With each breath, she underwent a transformation.

  The soft features of her face became rock hard. The corners of the lush mouth turned downward. The brow dipped into a shallow V. The warmth drained from her eyes. She elevated her chin at a haughty, uncaring angle and her long fingers curled into claws. The friendly, outgoing woman who had caroused with the film crew in Paris just a short time ago disappeared. In its place was a cruel caricature of herself.

  She was in a huge chamber lined on four sides by red and black columns. The panels that decorated the walls between the columns included none of the finer aspects of Minoan art, such as flying fish or graceful swallows. These were pictures of death and destruction: An erupting volcano; bloody battle scenes on land and at sea; a bull being sacrificed.

  She made her way between two lines of marble platforms. Lying on the biers were the mummified remains of high priestesses going back four thousand years. She walked further through the centuries with every step until she stopped at an altar surmounted by two up-swept stone horns. On a dais behind the altar was the first of the high priestesses.

  Unlike the other mummies, she sat upright on a granite throne flanked on each side by a metal stand holding a double-edged axe. The round eyes that stared out through the horns at the lines of mummies were made of ivory. She wore the traditional dress of the priestess; the open bodice and long ruffled skirt. On her skull was a flat cap with a wide brim. Her desiccated skin was the color of old leather.

  Lily gazed at the figure as if in a drug-induced haze. Although the silent thing on the throne was nothing but a pile of dry skin and bones, the High Priestess still exerted a power that was only somewhat diminished since that ancient time when she spoke with the voice of the Mother Goddess.

  Lily had been aware that she was considered special even as a girl, when she was removed from an orphanage in California and placed under the guardianship of a foundation that had moved her to the Paris mansion where she was educated by the priestesses who lived there. Later she learned that she had been chosen because her blood contained what some psychologists canned “the murder gene,” an inherited characteristic that blots out normal human traits, such as empathy and sympathy. Her cold-blooded persona had been refined by bloody rituals that stretched back to the dawn of time, grooming her for the role she would play. Now…that time had come. Only the faint heartbeat of the crone lying in a room of the Paris sanitarium separated her from joining the line of high priestesses that stretched back forty centuries.

  Set in the folds of the mummy’s apron, clutched in boney fingers, was a skull. The long ragged hole in the crown of the skull suggested that the owner had died a swift and violent death. Lily reached into a bronze chest at the feet of the mummy and came out with a dagger that would have been used for sacrifices. With the skill of a surgeon, she scraped a shaving of bone from the skull’s forehead into the plastic bag and put it in her pocket.

  Lily turned to face the altar. Lifting the dagger in both hands, holding it high above her head with the deadly blade pointed downward, her voice rang out, echoing off the walls of the huge tomb.

  “She is near. And she will die.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Calvin leaned back in his chair. “I’ve figured out how this contraption works.”

  Sitting at the table with Calvin were Hawkins, Abby and Kalliste, who brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead, saying, “And I think I understand the linguistic program the ancients loaded onto this amazing mechanism.”

  “Kudos to both of you,” Hawkins said. “Let’s start with the hardware. Then Kalliste can tell us about the software.”

  Calvin said, “The engineering is similar to the Antikythera computer. Sizes are also comparable. Roughly sixteen inches high, half that wide and around three inches thick.”

  “Are those dimensional similarities more than a simple coincidence?” Abby asked.

  “I’m just a dumb mechanic. What do you think, Kalliste?”

  “Some experts think Archimedes designed the Greek computer. He lived in Sicily when it was a Greek colony. The Minoans had established settlements on the island years before.”

  “That establishes a link,” Abby said.

  Kalliste nodded. “The provenance is comparable as well. Not the exact location, but the fact
that both computers were found on cargo ships and both were designed for navigation. Using the Greek computer a ship could navigate the sea. With the other, Minoan traders could find their way through the cultural seas of different languages.”

  “Might have a military application too,” Hawkins observed. “It would come in handy if you intercepted the enemy’s battle plans.”

  Calvin tapped the top of the device with a ballpoint pen. “Both computers were housed in wooden boxes, although the wood has disintegrated. They both used bronze gears. Thirty wheels in the Greek device; less than a dozen in the older gadget. The biggest gear meshed with smaller ones in both computers. When you spun the large disk in the Greek gadget it gave you the position of the moon, sun, eclipses, phases, even the years for the Olympic games.”

  “How was the big gear powered?” Hawkins said.

  Calvin stuck the pen into an opening on the side of the mechanism. “Both devices had a crank. Give it a turn and your computer starts computing.”

  “How accurate was it?” Abby asked.

  “Not very. Engineering was impressive, but the hand-made gears didn’t allow for precision. I’ll turn it over to the software expert.”

  Kalliste borrowed the pen and pointed to the largest gear on the Minoan mechanism. “The gears contain letters or language symbols rather than celestial information. The big disk moves the smaller ones into position so that the corresponding letters are aligned.”

  “What languages does it translate?” Hawkins asked.

  “The alphabets used by Minoan trading partners: Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece. The script doesn’t match symbol for symbol. That was an issue in the Rosetta Stone. But you have enough matches to make a rudimentary translation. We have computers now that could fill in the blanks, but it is going to be a slow process at first.”

  “How soon can we start translating the scroll?” Hawkins said.

  “I’ll rig a crank and give the gears a lube job,” Calvin said. “We’ll have to run tests on the movement to make sure it doesn’t fall apart, since we can’t send it back to the manufacturer to repair.”

  Hawkins said, “In that event, let’s turn in, get a good night’s sleep and attack the problem first thing in the morning.”

  Calvin yawned. “Good idea. Where’s my rack?”

  “Take the bedroom on the first floor. I’ll stretch out on the sofa. The master bedroom is upstairs, if you ladies don’t mind sharing. There should be plenty of room for two.”

  Hawkins noticed Abby’s raised eyebrow. He realized too late that he had stepped off a cliff, and flapping his arms wouldn’t help. He could have thanked the gods of Olympus when his phone chirped, signaling a text message. He excused himself and went outside to sit at the table on the terrace overlooking the caldera. The text was from Sutherland.

  Bingo. Found a Howard Robsham in London.

  Molly had added an email address and links to a number of articles about Robsham, who was a successful international financier. Hawkins scanned the stories, then wrote a quick email to Robsham.

  “Dear Mr. Robsham. My name is Matt Hawkins. I’m a robotics engineer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I’m working on an archaeological project where your grand-uncle’s name has been mentioned a few times. Wondered if we might talk?”

  A reply with a phone number came back almost immediately.

  Call me. HR

  Hawkins punched in the number. A man with a crisp patrician accent answered. “Thank you for getting back to me, Mr. Hawkins. I’m well acquainted with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. You say you’re in robotics?”

  “That’s correct. I design underwater vehicles for the military and scientific community.”

  “I’m not unfamiliar with the ocean technology field through my investment companies. Fascinating stuff. What can I tell you about my grand-uncle Howard?”

  “As I wrote you, I’ve been helping an archaeologist survey involving a shipwreck that may have originated in Crete. A researcher at the Heraklion museum said that Howard Robsham specialized in Minoan studies.”

  “Uncle Howard was an imposing figure. Looked like those Punch Magazine cartoons of John Bull. I live in his house, which he left to my father who passed it down to me. As a boy I loved to come over here. Place was full of exotic artifacts. I’d read King Solomon’s Mines, and Uncle Howard was Allan Quatermain in my young imagination.”

  “What can you tell me about the Robsham collection?”

  “Apparently the collection was destroyed in the car crash that killed Howard. Bloody shame. He was far and above many professionals. Good friend of Ventris and Evans and the other amateurs who brought passion and knowledge to their work.”

  “What happened to the artifacts you saw as a boy?”

  “My father turned them over to the British Museum and the museum in Heraklion you mentioned. You can see them there.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Robsham. You’ve been a great help.”

  “Wish I could do more. Hold on. There was one document that the museums weren’t interested in because it was written in Spanish. Luckily, Uncle Howard had left it with a colleague in Athens, so it wasn’t destroyed in the car crash. I had a Spanish translator look at it. Said it’s a real estate transaction going back to the 1400s. Sandwiched in between a couple of pages was a document written in another language as well. Odd script. Pictures, symbols and so forth.”

  The comment about ‘script’ caught Hawkins attention.

  “I’d love to see a copy. You never know.”

  “I have a photo on my computer. I’ll send it to you via email.”

  “That would be very kind of you.” He thanked Robsham for his trouble.

  “Not at all. And thank you for reminding me what a wonderful character Howard was. Proud to be named after him.”

  Hawkins said goodbye. As he hung up, he heard the house door open and shut. Abby walked across the terrace and sat down next to him. She stared off at the vast darkness of the caldera. “It’s just as beautiful even when you can’t see it. Did you sit out here with Kalliste?”

  “A few times. Why do you ask?”

  “You seemed to know your way around Kalliste’s house, especially the master bedroom.”

  Hawkins chuckled. “I guess that’s pretty obvious, Abby.”

  “More than obvious.”

  “We were both in mourning. She had lost her husband. I’d turned into a gimp and had been tossed out on my butt by the Navy.”

  “Did it help? Being here, I mean?”

  “Yes. At the time.”

  Abby was silent for a few seconds, then said, “You made a good choice. Kalliste is special. That’s more than obvious, too. Goodnight.”

  She leaned across the table, kissed him on the cheek, then rose from her chair and went back into the house. Hawkins pondered the brief exchange. Abby always had a way of making his head spin. This time it was whirling like a top. He’d admitted to his ex-wife that he’d slept with another woman and she’d shown her approval with a kiss.

  He went back into the house. Everyone else had turned in. Before stretching out on the sofa, he checked his electronic tablet. The email from Robsham had come through. He called up the attachment, skipped past the Spanish text and studied the lines of symbols. He immediately recognized the script as Minoan. He forwarded the attachment to Captain Santiago, asking him to take a look at the Spanish text and get back to him.

  As he stretched out on the sofa, he thought about Abby again. What had he told Calvin? That their relationship was complicated. String theory is complicated. A Bach concerto is complicated. World peace is complicated. His relationship with Abby was just plain crazy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  From the balcony of the house set into the cliff above Kalliste’s place, Leonidas had watched Hawkins and Abby sitting on the terrace and wondered what they had talked about. He missed having a real conversation with a beautiful woman. Isabel had filled a niche in his life, but she was more like the nub
ile females in bikinis who flocked around him back in his lazy drug-filled days as a surf bum. Damn. He wished he had a joint.

  Putting the thought out of his mind, he concentrated on Hawkins. The guy had everything. Good looks, brains and babes. He was resourceful too. Leonidas had watched with amazement as Hawkins had coolly taken out that creep on the fortress island with nothing more than a sack full of rocks.

  The technique worked so well Leonidas used a modified version on the second man in black. Leonidas was able to get above him. He pried loose a boulder the size of a football out of a wall and waited. The man came to the intersection below and started to climb. Leonidas popped up from behind the wall like a jack-in-the-box and dropped the rock on the man’s head. Quick, effective, practically silent except for the wet melon sound.

  Leonidas had hurried back to the dock and lost himself in the crowd waiting for an incoming boat. Two men who looked like clones of the dead guys disembarked, brushed right by him and headed for the fortress.

  On the way back to the mainland the ferry passed a police boat screaming out to the island with lights flashing. One or both bodies must have been found. He figured the local gendarmes would write it off as an accident. Back on land, Leonidas checked the parking lot. No other men in black, and Hawkins’s car was gone.

  No big deal. He’d planted a location device on the car at the Minoan ruins. His phone app picked up the signal. He drove to the main highway, expecting Hawkins to turn off at the airport. Instead, the blinking blue dot representing the Renault continued into the city. He found the car parked near the museum.

  He decided not to go in, seeing as that he was in his ‘Pouty’ outfit and Hawkins would spot him in a second. He quickly removed the positioning device from the bumper. It only took a few seconds to break into the car to retrieve the recorder he’d planted under the front seat. He locked the car, went back to the Suzuki and listened to the recording of the conversation.

  He heard Hawkins say he planned to go to Santorini and jotted down the address Hawkins had given to Calvin over the phone. A short time later, Hawkins and Abby came out of the museum and got in their car. Leonidas was right behind them. Watching them drop their own car off and head for the airport, he then returned his own rental.