Working fourteen and fifteen hours a day in her chosen field was almost like being on vacation for her. Her husband didn’t like that so much, but he understood because he felt that way about some of the construction projects he worked on.
Fortune had smiled on her when her grant had been approved to study the recently uncovered artifacts found in the archeological dig on the hill between the Oka and Pronya Rivers. Although the area had been sealed off in 2005 and further digging banned, a number of things hadn’t been properly cataloged from the original excavations.
And despite the ban, a few items had wandered in after the fact.
The area between the Oka and Pronya Rivers had been a meeting place or melting pot of a myriad of cultures from the Upper Paleolithic times to the early Middle Ages. A wooden structure that had resembled Great Britain’s Stonehenge had been uncovered in 2003 by Ilya Akhmedov, an archeologist and contemporary of Yuliya’s. Scientists believed that the structure, too, had been used for mapping the stars.
The thing that had interested Yuliya most—and infuriated her beyond all measure—was the cymbal made of clay that currently lay on one of the tables out in the lab. It was definitely celadon pottery, reminding her of delicate Chinese and Japanese musical instruments. But the cymbal had writing on it that she couldn’t decipher. Nor could any of the Russian linguists Yuliya had access to.
In the end, she’d shot some pictures of the cymbal and sent them to Thomas Lourds, hoping his expertise in ancient languages would churn out an answer to the puzzle that faced her.
When the cymbal had been discovered at the site, it was locked away in a protective bone case. Remnants of that bone lay around the cymbal now. The case had either been shattered or had simply decomposed with the passage of years. Yuliya wasn’t sure which. She’d sent fragments of the bone off for carbon dating, and was waiting for the answer. The artifact was old. Maybe even impossibly old.
Her mail client dinged, letting her know the contents had come through. This time Yuliya received a response from Lourds’s graduate assistant, Tina Metcalf.
Her hands trembled as she moved to open the file.
Dear Yuliya,
Sorry. The prof’s not in. And you know how he is about
checking his e-mail.
Yuliya did know how Lourds was about e-mail. She’d never met anyone who detested electronic communications more. She often exchanged long letters with Lourds, snail mail, of course, discussing various finds they’d both taken part in, as well as the ramifications of those studies. Over the years, she’d saved all those letters; had, in fact, used some of the materials in graduate-level archeology classes she taught at Kazan State University.
She loved his letters, and she loved Lourds’s mind. That was something Yuliya’s husband, a mason, was sometimes jealous of. But Yuliya also knew that no woman was ever going to completely claim Lourds’s heart. The professor’s true love was knowledge, and he would spend his life looking for what had been lost at the Royal Library of Alexandria. No mere woman could compete with a passion like that. Still, a few of the young ones seemed to catch his eye occasionally, and some even caught more than his attention for a time.
If he’d had the inclination, she thought, Lourds could have given Don Juan a run for the money.
However,
Tina’s e-mail message went on,
I’m happy to supply you with the e-mail contact I have for
him in Alexandria.
Alexandria, eh? Yuliya laughed. Lourds must have been drawn back into the arms of his true mistress—the search for remnants of the great library. She wondered how that mistress was treating him.
He’s over there shooting a program for the BBC. A documentary on languages or something. The dean was excited about the whole thing, tried to force him into the deal, but the BBC didn’t get the prof until the film company agreed to shoot in Alexandria. It was somewhere on their list of possible locations.
You know how he gets about Alexandria! The library and so forth. After a while, all you can hear when he opens his mouth is blah, blah, blah.
Yuliya suspected that maybe young Miss Metcalf had also been smitten by the professor, and was somewhat irritated that he hadn’t yet noticed she was female or available. Yuliya had seen women nearly swoon whenever Lourds entered the room. Not that he noticed.
I think he’s supposed to be over there for a few weeks. I don’t have a phone number for him yet, and you know he refuses to carry a cell phone. That man!
If you need anything (or if you find out how I can reach him!), please let me know.
Yours,
Tina Metcalf
Graduate Assistant to
Thomas Lourds, Ph.D
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Boylston Hall
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
So. No Thomas. Maybe for weeks.
Irritated, Yuliya abandoned the computer and walked back out into her borrowed lab. The clay cymbal still occupied the center of one of the tables.
It was almost like it was taunting her.
Understand me! it said.
She only wished she could.
The low ceiling of the basement felt oppressive, like the weight of the building was slowly sinking on top of her.
After a moment, Yuliya got the distinct feeling that someone was watching her.
Strange.
No one should be at the university at this time of night. And she wasn’t the type to have ridiculous fancies.
Then another thought hit her. Security, even when there was a lot of it, tended to be abysmal here by most standards.
Fear trampled through Yuliya’s body, filling her nervous system with a huge hit of adrenaline. Rape and murder occurred on university campuses with appalling regularity.
Acting casual, Yuliya reached out for the small knife she’d used to clean the mysterious and maddening inscription she’d found. Her hand curled around the wooden handle.
“If I’d truly wanted to hurt you, you’d be too late. In fact, you’d probably already be dead.”
Anger exploded inside Yuliya as she recognized the taunting voice. She spun to face her tormentor.
Natasha Safarov leaned against the wall in the mouth of the stairwell.
At least she didn’t creep up on me and touch the back of my neck! Yuliya absolutely hated it when her younger sister did that.
“Are you spying on me?” Yuliya demanded.
Natasha shrugged and showed Yuliya a disinterested moue. “Perhaps.”
At twenty-eight, ten years Yuliya’s junior, Natasha was an Amazon. She stood five feet ten inches tall, six inches taller than her sister. Her dark red hair fell to her shoulders and framed a model’s face. Sparkling brown eyes revealed her amusement. She wore slacks and a blouse under a long black duster. She looked like she was draped in Dior.
It was infuriating.
But Yuliya loved her sister anyway.
“Natasha, what are you doing here?” Yuliya put the knife down on the table and walked over to her sister. They hugged, fiercely, because they had always been close, even though they seldom saw each other these days.
“I called Ivan and found out you were here,” Natasha said. Ivan was Yuliya’s husband. “Since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d drop by.”
“I’ve got some coffee on. And rolls that are almost fresh. Would you care for some?”
Natasha nodded and followed her sister into the office. She took one of the straight-backed chairs at one of the desks. To Yuliya, she looked like royalty sitting there, despite the wretched decor of the little kitchen.
After microwaving the coffee and the rolls, Yuliya placed the plate and the cups on the desk and sat.
“This reminds me of what it was like when we were girls,” Natasha said as she took a roll. “You making breakfast for us before we went to school. Do you remember?”
“I do.” Sadness touched Yuli
ya’s heart. Their mother had been taken from them too young by a respiratory illness. Sometimes, late at night, Yuliya thought she could still hear her mother’s agonized wheezing. And she remembered the night that the sound suddenly went away . . . forever.
Yuliya had been fourteen. Natasha had been four. Although she tried, Natasha could never remember their mother—a big woman who loved to bake—except from photographs and from the stories Yuliya told. Their father had worked in a warehouse.
“As I recall,” Yuliya went on, “you almost made me late every morning.”
“As I recall, you were always primping for some boy.”
“I primped for Ivan. And it worked for me. We are married and have two beautiful children.”
“They get their looks from their aunt.” Natasha grinned.
“No,” Yuliya declared, going along with the old joke. “You’ll not take that from me. I am their mother. I made them beautiful.”
They nibbled on their rolls and sipped coffee in silence for a moment.
“I miss you making breakfast for me,” Natasha said quietly after a bit.
From her sister’s words, Yuliya knew Natasha had been off in some corner of the world that had briefly flamed into a private hell for her. Yuliya knew better than to ask where or how, though. Natasha would never talk about it.
“Well, then,” Yuliya stated matter-of-factly, “as I see it, you have only two choices.”
“Two?” Natasha arched her eyebrows.
Yuliya nodded. “You can hire a maid, whom I can train to take care of you—”
“Train her?”
“Of course. It’s the only way. But to do it properly, she’ll have to spend a few years with me.”
“A few years.”
“If you want her trained to my satisfaction.”
“I see.”
Yuliya almost giggled and spoiled the moment. Natasha was always so in control of herself, always able to keep a straight face. “Or . . .”
“Good,” Natasha said. “There’s an ‘or,’ because I didn’t care for the other suggestion.”
“Or,” Yuliya went on unperturbed, “you can move in with Ivan and me.”
Natasha went quiet and still.
Yuliya knew that she’d dared too much, but she couldn’t stop herself. “The children would love it. They love you, Natasha. You’re their favorite aunt.”
“They have good taste,” Natasha said.
“You’re also their only aunt.” Yuliya couldn’t resist the dig. They were sisters and they’d never allowed each other to posture too much. Ivan had three brothers and no sisters. As yet, none of the brothers were married. She missed her little sister something fierce, and not just because of the lack of female blood relations currently in her life.
Natasha smiled. “Thank you. But I would only be intruding.” She took another roll and broke it. “Tell me what you’re doing here—Ivan said you’d found someone’s unwashed plate.”
Sadly, Yuliya dropped the subject of her sister sharing her home, knowing that Natasha would speak of it no more. Yuliya leaned back in her chair. “It’s not a dirty plate. It’s a cymbal. Several thousand years old, from the looks of it. Maybe more. I’m waiting for confirmation.”
Natasha shook her head in mock sadness. “My big sister, who went to university to learn to prowl through someone’s garbage.”
They bickered for a moment as they always did; then Yuliya told the story of the cymbal as she knew it. As always, Natasha was more interested than Yuliya had thought she’d be.
And in this case, that interest was much deserved.
ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT
AUGUST 19, 2009
“You believe there’s more than one language on the bell?” Leslie walked arm in arm with Lourds down one of the side streets not far from the hotel.
“Yes. At least two,” Lourds agreed.
“But you don’t know either one of them?”
“No, not yet.” Lourds looked at her and smiled. “Does that shake your confidence in me?”
Leslie looked into his clear gray eyes. They were beautiful eyes, warm and honest and . . . sexy. Definitely sexy. Just looking into them made her tingle.
“No,” she answered. “That doesn’t shake my confidence at all.”
“I’ll break those languages,” he told her.
“It’s what you do.”
“Yes. It is.” Lourds munched on a piece of the baklava they’d gotten from an outdoor café serving the late-night crowd. “Have you heard of the Rosetta Stone?”
“Of course.”
“What do you know about it?”
“It was . . .” Leslie thought about her answer. “Important.”
Lourds chuckled. “Yes, it was.”
“And it’s kept in the British Museum in London.”
“That’s true as well.” Lourds took another bite of baklava. “The important thing about the Rosetta Stone was it was written in two languages, Egyptian and Greek.”
“I thought it was three.”
“Two languages, but there were three scripts used. Hieroglyphic, demotic Egyptian, and Greek. When Napoléon’s army found that stone, the artifact gave us, eventually, a path to understanding the ancient Egyptian language. We knew what the Greek inscription said. By assuming all the passages said the same thing, scholars eventually cracked the meaning of the hieroglyphs. All they had to do to crack the hieroglyphic code was to match the hieroglyphics to the meanings we had from the other two sections. Finding that stone allowed the decryption and translation of all the writings from ancient Egypt that we’d stared at, for millennia, on tomb and temple walls, without having a clue what they said. Of course, it took over twenty years, and a number of brilliant minds to get there, even with the existence of the Stone.”
“Do you think the bell is like the Rosetta Stone?” The ramifications of that cascaded through Leslie. “A missive from antiquity in two languages waiting to be translated?”
“I don’t know,” Lourds replied. “I don’t know, for example, if the two languages say the same thing. That was one of the reasons the Rosetta Stone was so important. It repeated. And I can’t read either language—another reason the Rosetta Stone was such a breakthrough. We could translate the Greek. But I’ve got no frame of reference. All I know is that two languages are written on it that I can’t understand. And I don’t like it. I’m not accustomed to drawing a blank with ancient languages.”
“It would be so brill if the bell were some kind of Rosetta Stone.”
“The Rosetta Stone had only one language on it that we didn’t understand. And it was a single message that repeated three times. I don’t believe that’s the case here.”
“You believe there are two different messages?”
“I don’t know yet. But the length of the passages and the structure differences in the text indicate to me that might be the case. All of which means that it’s going to take longer to work out than I like. I’ll apologize in advance for my distraction. This is a puzzle that calls to me.”
“Not a problem. I totally understand.” Leslie finished the baklava. “You aren’t alone, you know. When I put pictures of the bell on the Internet on some appropriate academic boards and sent it to all the scholars I knew, no one could tell me what language was on it. Or languages, I suppose.”
Lourds stopped walking and looked at her. “You put pictures of the bell on the Internet?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone respond to your Internet postings?” Lourds asked.
“A few people did.”
Excited, Lourds gripped Leslie’s elbow and turned her. He glanced around, got his bearings—only then did Leslie realize he’d been following C. S. Forester’s advice of wandering aimlessly through the city—and headed back to the hotel.
“Where are we going?” Leslie asked.
“Back to the hotel,” Lourds answered. “I think we may have just discovered how the thieves targeted us.”
RYAZAN CITY, RYA
ZAN’
RUSSIA
AUGUST 19, 2009
Gallardo waited in the Russian-made GAZ-2705 cargo van outside Ryazan State Medical University, where Professor Yuliya Hapaev was working. Magnetic signs on the van’s sides advertised a local cleaning company that had contracts with the university.
Shifting in the seat, Gallardo forced himself to remain detached and not take the long wait personally. He’d expected the woman to step out of the building before now and return to the dorm where she was staying.
So where was she? Even a workaholic wouldn’t work this late.
“Someone’s coming out,” Farok called over the radio.
Gallardo picked up the night-vision binoculars from the glove compartment.
“It’s her,” Farok said.
Training the binoculars on the lone figure that walked out of the building, Gallardo studied her. The night-vision capability washed out the woman’s color, turning everything into soft greens. He couldn’t tell if she was a brunette or not, but the size and shape looked right.
Gallardo knew that Farok and DiBenedetto’s team would close in and prepare to take the woman. “Is she carrying anything?”
“No,” Farok answered.
Gallardo thought about that. “The object must still be inside the building.”
“Yes.”
Gallardo opened the van door and got out. The light didn’t come on, because he’d removed the dome light as a precaution. He caught a brief glimpse of the woman, striding purposefully back to the parking lot; then she was gone.
“Take the woman,” Gallardo instructed. “I’ll get the prize.”
After Farok responded that they would take the woman alive if possible, Gallardo transferred his pistol from its shoulder holder to the right pocket of his coat. Then he trotted toward the building, staying in the shadows as much as he could.
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