“What does it entail?” queried James.
“Well, a big bonus for starters,” Derek chuckled before taking another sip. “But really, James, it’s as simple as this. I want you to compile a theoretical report on the means of gaining complete control of Sub-Saharan Africa, with the assumption that an executive body could be devised to govern it.”
“Complete control? Like a takeover?”
“No, no, nothing to that extreme, of course,” said Derek, waving his hand as if to shoo the very idea away. “Think of it more like an African E.U.—all the countries happily combined under one governing head. Now, naturally, since the state of many African countries is, well, below par, we can assume that at its theoretical implementation, this all-encompassing government would have more ruling power than what we’ve seen with the European Union simply for the sake of raising the bar. It would control the economy, education, development, social and medical needs. You know, in order to bring progress, peace, and prosperity to these countries. To benefit them and, in turn, the entire world. You see what I’m saying?”
James looked pensively out of the window at the high rises accentuating the skyline. Uniting all of Sub-Saharan Africa into a single union had always politically been in the realm of the “unthinkable.” Although he hated to admit it, James knew that the main reason for this was that keeping African countries divided and, generally, in a poverty-stricken state was more beneficial to those in political and financial power - those who were in the habit of just taking what they wanted from the resource-rich continent. Uniting all the countries geographically set below the Sahara Desert and placing them under the protective authority of a powerful government would, no doubt, put a stop to this “take-what-you-want” mentality and force the world to finally give Africa the respect it deserves as a political entity. It was a worthy goal, but a logistical nightmare.
“Huh,” James couldn’t help but express an opinion. “That’s a pretty tall order.”
“But we both know that you can do it, eh?” Derek affirmed with a wink. “I’ve seen your work. Just think of it in simple terms: Write me a report on how you, James Mode, would go about acquiring the needed authority and using it to effectually run Sub-Saharan Africa. And be sure to use your expertise in the actual workings of the governments as they are today—we're interested in theoretical reality, not wishful fantasy.”
With these words, he stood up and made his way to the recycle bin to toss his empty cup. James followed thoughtfully.
“But, Sir, isn’t it fantasy to even think that this kind of union, as beneficial as it would be, could ever become a reality? I mean, for starters, how could someone ever get all these individual governments to simply—?”
“Give up their control?” finished Derek, with a knowing twinkle in his eye.
“Well, yeah.”
“James.” Derek chuckled as he reached out a bulky arm and thumped his colleague on the shoulder in the same manner as a seasoned coach encourages a new player. “Just draw up the blueprints and leave the rest to us.”
Chapter 18
Cheerful rays of morning sunshine spilled in through the ornate glass ceiling of the British Museum’s famous Great Court—Europe’s largest covered public square. Enclosing an entire two-acre courtyard within the museum, the more than 3,300 clear panes seemed to revel in the warmth and bestow upon the bustling mortals below the promise of another successful and satisfying day under their watch. One triumphant beam, in particular, seemed to fall directly upon a tall man in a neatly-cut charcoal suit. His lean figure stood uncommonly straight and motionless against the Court’s towering brownstone wall next to a true-sized relief of four Grecian pillars upholding a lofty pediment. It seemed to some in the crowd who noticed that the man’s demeanor suggested he himself were a prized piece of one of the museum’s rare collections. To others, this rigid appearance did not exude standoffishness, but a welcoming attentiveness toward the myriad of visitors eager to explore the many treasures displayed throughout the esteemed institute. Those who assumed the latter would find themselves correct in their assessment, for the man poised so stately against the wall was none other than Museum Commissioner Pierre Moreau finishing up his morning round of voluntary inspections. As a long-time commissioner of the British Museum, Mr. Moreau was not only duly aware of his duties and responsibilities toward the institution; he also took much pleasure in them. And though he wasn’t required to personally inspect the exhibits after his initial approval of them, the commissioner could often be found strolling through the dignified rooms offering assistance to visitors and simply enjoying for himself the worlds of history, culture, and art that the museum had to offer.
This morning, after personally assisting in a couple of guest inquiries and feeling satisfied that the museum staff was up to scratch for the busy day, Mr. Moreau had been heading back to his office and stopped at one of his favorite spots to observe the general contentment of the incoming crowd. After about ten minutes, the commissioner’s lithe figure detached itself from the surveying position and, with smooth measured steps, made its way through a large doorway into the exhibition galleries. Reflecting the grandeur of the Great Court, the well-traveled museum halls were designed to lead visitors through history in space and splendor.
Offering courteous nods of greeting to anyone who came into eye contact with him, Moreau briskly made his way across the vast hallways of respective Egyptian and Assyrian artifacts. He was continuing on toward the stairway at the north end of the Grecian and Roman sculpture exhibit when a muffled buzzing sound snagged his attention. Quickly, he stepped aside and pulled out his phone. He barely scanned the brief message before slipping the device back into his pocket and hurrying off to the building’s lower levels and loading docks.
*
“Well, look who it is!” announced the Commissioner. “Kate and John Caldwell. Welcome back!” Without hesitation, he strode across the loading dock’s smooth concrete floor and embraced the somewhat worn-looking couple with friendly affection.
“Good to see you, Pierre,” replied John.
“And you, my friends,” continued the commissioner with a joking smile. “You know, it worries me when I get funding for people and they disappear on me. You’ve been out of contact for the last several weeks. I was about to call in a favor and have some hired muscle hunt you down.”
John and Kate’s eyes didn’t reflect the spirit of the banter, and Pierre’s excited demeanor faded fast as he suddenly noticed the unusual charged atmosphere surrounding the harangued pair before him.
“What is it?” he asked alertly. “Did something happen?”
“Let’s just say,” Kate spoke up, a sarcastic edge in her worried voice, “that it seems we’ve suddenly become very popular with some violent, gun-wielding men.”
“Gun wielding!” exclaimed the commissioner in shock. “What on earth do you mean? You were digging at Babylon, right? Did you get into trouble with the local authorities?”
“We don’t know who we got in trouble with,” John said as he reached to the floor and lifted up a large steel case that had been resting behind him. “But we’re pretty sure it has to do with these.”
Pierre blanched, wondering how he hadn’t noticed the huge case immediately. He eyed the smooth-edged rectangular container contemplatively before a light of understanding switched on.
“The stones from your last blog entries?” he guessed. Kate nodded in affirmation.
“I have to say I didn’t study the photographs well,” admitted the commissioner. “But your description of the two was greatly intriguing.”
“Three,” John amended. “We found three tablets all together. Though,” he added with a hint of chagrin, “We’ve only got half of the last one. It broke off while we were...ah...making a quick exit of the site.”
The commissioner’s brows knit together in perplexity as several tracks of thought sped through his mind. Three tablets? One carelessly broken? Chased off the site?
&nb
sp; “I don’t understand,” he said, taking up the line of his last thought. “If the Iraqi government had happened to read your blog and wanted to see the tablets for themselves, they could possibly have come to the site. Though certainly not in violence. The stones are no doubt unique with their glassy face and etched cuneiform-like symbols; but why would anyone feel the need to resort to such unorthodox measures to see them…or obtain them?” The commissioner was pacing back and forth as he thought out loud.
“There’s more,” Kate blurted out. “More that wasn’t mentioned in the blog. On the third tablet, the piece we have, there are markings which are similar to ancients writings found around the world.”
“What’s that? How do you mean?”
John replied. “Egyptian. Chinese. Mesoamerican, and maybe more.”
“That’s impossible…not even conceivable.” The stunned commissioner looked back and forth between the pair as if he were waiting for one to yell out something to the effect of “April Fools!” But their severe faces demonstrated that if there was, indeed, a trick of some sort going on here, it was not being played by them. This cheery morning just became more serious than he had anticipated.
“Come,” he said, placing a guiding hand on each of the Caldwell’s shoulders. “Let’s talk about this in my office.”
Chapter 19
Commissioner Moreau’s brow was locked in a deep furrow as he leaned over his desk studying the mysterious tablets resting upon it. Old, open tomes, which he had pulled from his ceiling-high bookshelves, lay scattered across several tables whose previous contents had been pushed aside. John was leaning over a book, but his eyes were watching Kate pace about the room. He noticed she kept looking out the windows in worry, and he couldn’t blame her. Since their narrow escape from the desert, their paranoia had been on high alert. They had thought that getting the stones to London would cause their pursuers to ease up, or disappear altogether. After landing in London International Airport yesterday, they had both dared to breathe a sigh of relief. But it had been a false hope. After dinner last night, they had come back to their hotel room to find it had been completely ransacked. Though they had arguably been through worse, it was still a tremendous shock to find their suitcases flipped upside down and their clothes lying all over the place. Even the mattress had been pushed off its base, the bedding disheveled upon it. The room had been searched, but nothing had been taken. As much as Kate and John wanted to chalk it up to a random burglary attempt, deep inside they knew better; and John was relieved they had checked the case with the stones into the hotel vault upon their arrival. Frightened, but unwilling to get the police involved (they didn’t yet want to give out any information concerning their strange stones), they had checked out first thing this morning and come to see Pierre. Once safely tucked away in the commissioner’s office, John had explained in hurried bursts of detail the untruthfulness of where they were digging and what they had really been looking for, their finding of the stones, their unexpected visitors, their subsequent escape into the sandstorm and eventually from Iraq, and their subvert travels across the continent in effort to avoid being followed. And after relaying their hotel trouble just the night before, Pierre became thoroughly alarmed at their tale and in genuine fear for his friends’ safety. Immediately, he had suggested they stay in the museum dormitories—a barely-used living space in the basement that they could take up in for now. Against their uncertainty, Pierre assured them that the room was mostly used in the event of extensive research sessions, which he would make sure would not be happening while they needed the space.
After getting everything settled as to the new arrangements, the next order of business was obvious. Everything that had happened to them had to be because of the mysterious tablets. There was no other explanation. Whoever was looking for them seemed to want them very badly, and it was time to start figuring out why. What exactly had they found buried in the sand? And how could somebody else already know so much about them?
Eager to behold the source of the trouble, Pierre had expertly donned a pair of white cotton gloves, opened the large silver case, and gently removed the tablets to a special velvet mat covering his desk. John and Kate gave him a few moments of silence for a preliminary study, though John wasn’t sure that his wife’s nervous pacing wasn’t just as distracting as talking. But Pierre had straightaway commenced to trying to decipher the exact cultural language being depicted on the stones.
“You say it looks like a cuneiform style of Sumerian,” he spoke, still looking at the lines of etched symbols. “I agree, it looks like it, but I’m not so sure. Cuneiform is, after all, not a language, but a system of writing. Much in the same way the “ABC’s” are not exclusive to the English language, but are also used to express words in Latin, Spanish, French, German, Italian, etc.; the symbols for the alphabet letters remain the same; but how they are put together, pronounced, and defined differ, depending on the culture.
“And cuneiform is even more tricky to work out, as you well know.” Pierre began turning through pages of a large book holding pictures of cuneiform tablets from several ancient cultures which had already been translated. “It’s tricky because it is not defined by the kind of ‘alphabet’ used, but only by how the symbols are formed.”
“Right,” said Kate, suddenly quitting her worried pace and assuming an air of scholarship. As she made her way to the desk to search the book with Pierre, John couldn’t help but smile at her sudden transformation. No matter what else was going on around her, the science of history has always been her stronghold - her secure foundation.
“Cuneiform is specifically defined by wedge-shaped marks having been made by using a carved wooden stylus, not by the actual symbols being made,” she reiterated.
“Precisely,” nodded Pierre, “and here we have our problem. Akkadians, Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, just to name a few. People from each of these civilizations used the cuneiform method, but the ciphers they made with the stylus do not necessarily hold the same meanings across the cultures—”
“Here!” Kate suddenly exclaimed, pointing simultaneously to a marking in the book and on the side of the first tablet. John leapt to her side as Pierre leaned over to examine the find. The page was titled “Examples of 5th Century Elamite Cuneiform and Translations.” There was no doubt as to the similarity between the symbol in the book and the symbol on the stone, and a ray of hope began to rise within the commissioner. Perhaps this puzzle could be solved faster than he had first thought.
Chapter 20
“It means ‘gather,’” Kate announced triumphantly. John rotated the book so he could see the picture better and, curious, started flipping the pages backwards. No one noticed, however, as at that moment the commissioner spotted something that really surprised him.
“Look, Kate! That cipher is also on this tablet, and in the same location.” Using a small, wooden pointer similar to a chopstick that had been lying on his desk, he indicated to a place on the second tablet where the same marking, indeed, rested.
“Could it be a signature?” wondered Kate. “Maybe one is also on the missing half of the third—”
“Hold it guys.” John set down the book and spun it so they could see. On the page was the same symbol, though its lines were slightly narrower than the one in Elamite script.
“6th Century Old Persian,” Pierre read the title. “Hmm…and here it means ‘a well.’”
A sinking feeling weighed upon the three as they realized this was going to be a lot harder than they had hoped it would be; possibly taking years’ worth of study and research.
“What we need to do,” Pierre declared with all the authority of a tested and tried museum curator, “is get them into the lab to be dated and authenticated. That will, at least, give us a sure place to start from. If we can get an estimate of the date, we can narrow down the cuneiform scripts to ones used in that time period.”
“And what about these?” John motioned toward the section of the
third tablet holding the seemingly cross-cultural symbols.
Pierre gave an audible sigh, as if he was finally forced to confront a fact he had been working hard to ignore. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “I don’t even know where to begin with these.”
“How about logically,” Kate suggested. “But skipping over the part about how logically they shouldn’t even be here.”
Both John and the commissioner raised an eyebrow at Kate, but as neither had any better ideas, they consented to give it a try.
“Okay,” Pierre said with a deep breath. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” Taking his wooden pointer, he traced over several icons which looked like they had roots in ancient Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphs, respectively. Then, over curved markings that appeared similar to Sanskrit, he began his analysis, “I think we can assume that, based on the meticulous care with which these tablets were carved, these symbols were not placed here randomly, even though they seem to form no legible pattern. And these,” he gently tapped one of the larger spiraled forms with crosses of lines intersecting it. “I will have to do some checking to be sure, but off the top of my head they remind me of mystical ciphers often used in various cult worship ceremonies.
“Hmm…” Pierre sunk deeper into his thoughts. “Perhaps this symbol is meant to invoke a kind of energy. But it lacks the typical form of a character used to express a sound. Perhaps it is not meant to be uttered in order to invoke its power, but drawn on something or even outlined with a sacred instrument while an incantation is being chanted.”
“Excuse me, what?” interjected Kate. “Are you talking about magic? Like…real magic?” As an archeologist, Kate had spent a lot of time not just studying social and political aspects of ancient history, but religious ones as well. Being deprived of our modern day sciences and truisms, most early cultures were steeped in magical practices as a means to try to control or even comprehend the inexplicable forces to which they were subjected.
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