“Well, it must have been very rusty for the iron to snap so easily.”
Mary, who had kept her distance, had the bright idea of taking her old cell phone out of the side pocket of her backpack. She switched it on and it immediately emitted a faint glow. Feeling rather nervous, she brought it over to Richard’s feet. “Shit! They’re bones!” she yelled, quickly standing up and taking a couple of steps back. “It’s a fucking tomb!”
“What?”
“They’re bones!” Mary shone what little light was coming from her cell phone onto Richard’s legs. His feet were tangled in filthy old rags of clothing and a couple of bones tied together with a rope. “I think that they’re two arms tied at the wrists.”
“Fuck!” cried Richard as he tried to shake them off by moving his feet. Nerves seized his body and he was momentarily frozen by fear until he eventually managed to sweep them away with his hands, revealing something else at the bottom of the hole in the process. There was a prominent jawbone complete with some teeth and two deep holes which seemed to look him right in the eye.
“They must be the remains of one of the city’s inhabitants.”
Mary made sure that all the bones were put back in the recess and switched off the light after they had continued on their way. “I don’t think those remains belong to an inhabitant. Their arms were tied with rope, it must have been some slave who was offered to the gods.”
They walked on for a couple more minutes until they could finally make out the exit. They went through it carefully, making sure that there was nobody inside. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing at first, it looked nothing like the hidden cave below the pyramid that they had expected to see. The hand of modern man could be seen across practically the whole room. The lighting was perfect.
“What’s all this?” asked James.
It was a rather expansive cave located right beneath the middle of the Pyramid of the Sun. The archaeologists had covered the whole cave from top to bottom, and judging by the cloth they had chosen, it must have been quite an ambitious project. Perhaps they were trying to protect it from damage, or even protect their equipment from the damp that reigned over the cave.
First, a canvas had been placed over the ground, on which there was wooden platform. Finally, a metal hut had been built, probably to store powerful electronic equipment.
“They must be looking for hidden chambers. There’s probably some sophisticated X-ray equipment inside that hut,” ventured Richard.
“I thought X-rays were useless in situations like these.”
“Exactly,” said Mary before Richard even had the chance to refute the idea. “X-rays can only penetrate a couple of inches of rock. A stronger form of radiation is needed, and one which would cover the whole pyramid at that.”
“So, what’s inside the hut?” asked James.
“When I was working in Cairo, we used a similar machine. In order for it to work, it depended on muons, which are among the particles that rain down on our planet on a daily basis. They are formed when cosmic rays interact with gases found in the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. Their high energy capacity enables them to travel through miles of rock.” Mary noticed that her companions were staring at her blankly, and she tried to explain it a little better. “Imagine you’re trying to ascertain the level of a liquid in a bottle. What do you do?”
“We’d put it in front of a light bulb,” James answered. “When the light comes into contact with it, it will show the exact level of the liquid.”
“Precisely! Well, this is something similar. The experiment is made up of three elements: firstly, the atmosphere - which would be the source of the muons - would be something like the light bulb in the previous example; secondly, the detector, which is that huge device inside the hut, would act as our eyes; thirdly, the pyramid to be analyzed would be somewhere between the two - in other words, it would be the bottle itself. When the muons come into contact with the pyramid, it will absorb a great deal of them, and the number which eventually reach the ground will vary according to the number of stones the particles have had to travel through. The detector will calculate the quantity which reaches it, and if any part of the pyramid has a higher reading than it should, it will indicate to us that there is probably a hidden chamber in that area.”
Richard grinned. The idea was truly incredible. “I’ve never heard of that experiment. Why don’t they use it to see if some ancient monuments have hidden cavities?”
“Because in order for it to work correctly, the detector needs to be placed under the building and very few have an underground cave below them. In fact, it is thought that the cavern existed long before the pyramid, and that it was built on top of the cave. Plus, the experiment lasts eighteen months, which might explain why they have gone to great lengths to protect the machine from the environmental conditions inside the cave. It is very delicate.”
“Counting particles is that complex?”
“It doesn’t just count muons. There are many particles which could penetrate the rocks. The machine has to verify how many are actually muons. So, it’s not as simple as it seems.”
James smiled. He was really impressed by the extent of Mary’s knowledge. In some ways she was very similar to him and they complemented each other perfectly. “Well, that’s enough for now. We don’t have much time. Have a quick look around the cave and see what you can find.”
As soon as they heard his words, as if he were a general, Richard and Mary set off in different directions. James stood before the hut for a few seconds, wrapped up in his own thoughts. It’s incredible what man has managed to create. I wouldn’t know where to start if I had to design a device like this. Fuck, I didn’t even know what a muon was until a minute ago!
Although the cave was rather large, they could perfectly see the four doors that Mary had mentioned to them, and which could represent the four paths in the text. The archaeologist was already standing in front of one of them, as was the famous paleographer. James walked towards the one nearest to him.
“Do you notice something strange?”
“These doors are less than ten years old,” pointed out Richard, concerned.
The doors were made of dark brown oak. In spite of the dampness which prevailed in the atmosphere, they had remained as good as new, probably due to some kind of special varnish that preserved the material.
“Look at the wall to the left of this door. There’s a carving.”
Both Mary and Richard looked at their doors. In both cases, the illustration was of Tlaloc, the most important deity in Teotihuacan civilization and which looked nothing at all like what they were looking for. In James’ case, the carving was made up of a series of wavy lines, reminiscent of waves on the sea. That wasn’t what they were looking for, either.
“There’s one missing,” said Mary, not holding out much hope.
The fourth door was just in between the two professors, completing the form of the flower with four petals. They both walked towards it at the same time, neither one able to disguise their smile when they saw the carving. Mary, who reached it a little later, couldn’t contain her enthusiasm either and she hugged James tightly.
Before them, also chiseled into the stone to the left of the door, they could see the crest which had been with them every step of the way.
“Incredible,” said James trying to open it, but it didn’t even move an inch. It was locked.
“Let’s get out of here before they find us. We’ll come back tomorrow and find out what’s hidden behind it.”
Chapter 46
On one of the nearby roads which surrounded the site, two men were watching the entrance to the Pyramid of the Sun with their long-range binoculars. The instructions were clear: ‘wait until I tell you otherwise,’ the boss had said.
More than half an hour had probably passed since the trio had gone down the hole, and although they had prepared their equipment to take action at any moment, they couldn’t kill them unless the boss order
ed it.
“They’re coming out now,” said Alpha 2 without putting down his binoculars. He was following all their movements carefully.
Alpha 1 was cleaning his revolver. He had dissembled it into various pieces, which was no obstacle to him putting it together in less than ten seconds. He was a true professional. He immediately grabbed the binoculars he had left on the dashboard and lifted them up to his eyes, adjusting the focus by turning the little wheel between the two lenses. He could see everything clearly - it was them.
“We have to wait.”
“And what if they’ve got what we’re looking for?”
Alpha 1 cast him a threatening look. He hated repeating orders twice, and he hated insubordination even more. He would gladly have taught him the right way to behave on the spot, but he needed him.
His phone began to vibrate before he had a chance to answer.
“Hello?”
“Don’t act.” The boss’ words reached the assassin’s ears without any problem. “They still haven’t got the second fragment. They’re going to try again tomorrow morning and I’m sure they will get it, so be prepared. Nothing can go wrong, for your own good.”
Alpha 1 was really irritated by the constant mistrust shown towards him by his boss. It had been hugely difficult for him to amass his reputation. He was one of the best, if not the best in his field, and this person wouldn’t stop intimidating them in order to get them to fulfill their obligations.
“You’re paying us to get the object and make sure no trace is left behind. Don’t threaten us again or you’ll regret it.”
The tension on the line was palpable. The boss squeezed his cellphone in rage, it seemed like he was going to break it. He would never tolerate anybody speaking to him in that tone of voice, least of all somebody who was such a despicable lowlife, human scum. He had to put up with it for the sake of the mission.
When he had calmed down, he spoke. “I’ll speak to my informer tonight and we’ll plan our strategy. Tomorrow morning you’ll receive the relevant orders. Do not take action without my consent.” Then, he hung up.
Alpha 1 picked up his long range binoculars again and with gentle yet precise movements from left to right, he turned the wheel until he located his prey. “They’re leaving.”
Without wasting a second, Alpha 2 started the car and waited for his colleague to tell him the route they had to take.
Damn Yankee. If only I had in front of me one day - he wouldn’t know what hit him, he thought as he sped away.
Chapter 47
When the faint light from the corridor had faded away, a figured emerged out of the darkness. Wearing a uniform of a light blue and white checked dress, she was pushing a cart with hundreds of dirty sheets. She turned up the volume slightly on her MP3 player as she drew closer to Richard’s door, shaking her body to the beat of the music. She ran her fingers through her long hair and pulled out a black hair clip. With a few deft movements she managed to unfold it and fashion it into a kind of picklock. The locks in the hotel were quite old, so it might just work. She inserted the object into the hole and started to twist it in all directions until a subtle click broke the silence which had descended.
After hanging a sign on the door which read “ROOM SERVICE” and pushing the cart to the other side of the suite, she closed the door behind her and starting singing loudly along to the last verse of her favorite song.
Before the young woman opened the curtains, out popped James’ head. He was showing signs of being suffocated by the huge quantity of sheets gathered on the cart. “Shit! I’m almost throwing up here. The sheet you put over my face smells of rotten sardines.”
Mary couldn’t help but laugh and she stroked his face, giving him a kiss on his cheek. “Poor thing. It was probably from the ninety year old man who sleeps in the room opposite.” Mary smiled again before she finished what she had to say. “he’s so obese, he must sleep completely naked.”
“Mary! For Christ’s sake!” James got out of the cart with a briefcase in his right hand, he shook it and looked at it in disgust. “Thanks to you, I’m not going to be able to get that image out of my head.”
The room was practically the same as the last time James had been there, except it was perhaps a little more untidy. The laptop was still on top of the desk, but the way the side lights were flashing indicated that it was on stand-by or in sleep mode.
He put the briefcase down one of the few parts of the bed that were uncluttered and sat down next to Mary. “We haven’t got much time before he comes back. Take out your laptop and connect it to the internet. We’ll need all the help we can get to crack his password.” Meanwhile, James started up Richard’s computer.
As soon as he opened it, the welcome screen from the operating system Windows flashed before him. There was only one user, which was Richard, and logically his password was needed to log in.
He tried all the combinations that came into his head - his date of birth (even in a different order), his telephone number, the city he lived in and the place he spent the summer, the names of his closest members of family, his identification codes… nothing worked. The message “PASSWORD INCORRECT” kept popping up, and James was beginning to hate the sight of it.
Mary had turned on her laptop and was waiting for James to tell her to look for some piece of information on the internet. She got up and sat down next to him. “Why don’t you try the password reminder? You know Richard very well and it might give you some kind of hint.”
“Nobody ever uses that system,” he said as he dragged the cursor over to the square icon to the right of the rectangular box for typing the password. He didn’t hold out much hope as he double-clicked on it.
Mary’s eyes shone with joy, while James couldn’t believe what he saw. He considered Richard to be a very intelligent person, so the thought of him leaving clues so that third parties could find out his password was absolutely ridiculous. James preferred to group all his accounts together under the same password, one which was incredibly difficult to guess but so easy to remember that he would never need such a thing as a password reminder.
A Windows text box flashed up in front of them with the following lines:
2, 5, 29, 869, (…) - 340704
2, 4, 18, 340, (…) + 6994
Before humanity puts an end to it,
it will put an end to us (N.E.).
“What do you think those numbers mean?”
“Richard isn’t just a frequent attendee of boring conferences about extinct languages, or an expert in paleography; he’s also an exceptional mathematician. He loves everything related to series and sequences as well as finding the possible relationships between them.”
Mary looked disheartened; math had never been her strong point.
“If you look closely, the first two lines represent two integer sequences with the next number is missing in both cases. Obviously they must feature in the password. Mary, type in the first four numbers from each sequence into an internet search engine. With a bit of luck, they are well-known sequences and we just don’t know it.”
She quickly tapped in the two sequences. On both occasions however, the numbers were interpreted as part of a phone number, so the only thing to appear was the names of various companies whose numbers comprised some of the digits she had typed in.
“What does the number after the parentheses mean?”
“I think the number we’re looking for is found by taking the fifth number from the sequence and then applying the corresponding mathematical operation.”
“And what if Richard put those numbers there to throw us off the scent, and one of them is actually the password? Maybe if we follow a certain pattern, we could put them in some kind of order so that - “
“No! That’s impossible. I know Richard inside out, and his fascination for mathematical puzzles is as well-known as his love for ancient languages.” James gently stroked his three-day stubble as he walked around in circles in what little space he had in the
room. “Look at the first sequence. What do you think the next number is?”
Mary hesitantly started to run through mathematical calculations in her head. With some difficulty, she could manage to explain the first two numbers and occasionally the third, but never the fourth. “What if each part of the sequence is the result of the square sum of the previous two numbers?”
James grinned in disbelief. It looked as if it could apply to the first three numbers, assuming that the series was supposed to begin with the number 1. “12 + 22 = 5, 52 + 22 = 29, 292 + 52 =…”
“866,” replied Mary, disappointed. “Three short.”
Suddenly, the sound of the elevator stopping on their floor made their hearts beat faster. Mary crept towards the door and carefully looked around the corridor through the spyhole. At first she couldn’t see who had gotten out of the elevator because her field of vision was obscured, but she could make out a man’s footsteps coming towards them. “I think someone’s coming.”
James didn’t know how to react. Although his heart implored him to stay right there and demand some explanations, his head told him to go and hide quickly. After scanning the room, he headed for the closet but Mary insisted on hiding under the bed. Now was not the time to argue. The steps were coming increasingly close so he paid heed to them and left a space wide enough for Mary to enter without problems.
When he had one last glance through the spyhole, he saw a well-built man of around three hundred pounds trying to open the door to the room opposite, using his brawn more than his brain. He slowly exhaled all the air from his lungs and rapped gently on the headboard of the bed. “You can come out. It was the obese tourist from across the hall.”
Time passed by quickly. They had already spent half an hour and still hadn’t managed to solve even the first sequence. Several sheets of paper covered with various mathematical formulae were scattered over the bed, tentative suggestions for a hypothetical solution. However, they had all been discarded for one reason or another.
Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) Page 28