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

by Paul Kemprecos

  “Lucky buyer.”

  “The Salazar family has always made its own luck.”

  “Who are the Salazars?” Hawkins asked.

  “They are a prominent family that go back a long time. They are very rich and own many businesses. Their biggest one is Auroch Industries. It started as a mining company and now has holdings around the world.”

  “Impressive.”

  “That’s the who. More important is what the Salazars are. The family has a bad reputation. There are stories of their rivals mysteriously disappearing in the old days. It’s very strange, but the Salazar family was never prosecuted. Most of the family has died out in recent years so you rarely hear anything about them.”

  “Your message mentioned ‘evil deeds’,” Abby said. “Were you talking about the family’s criminal activities?”

  “What I mentioned is the sort of thing you would expect of any criminal organization. The document suggests that the Salazars have a past that is much more evil than I knew of.”

  “More evil than murdering rivals?” Abby said.

  “Sadly, yes. I’m a simple mariner. If you’re ready, I’ll introduce you to an expert on evil.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Minutes later, they were in the captain’s car heading out of the city. After about a half-hour’s drive, Miguel parked in front of a chapel at the end of a quiet street. A man was kneeling at the edge of a flowerbed in front of the building.

  With the others following him, Santiago got out of the car and went over to the gardener. “Buenos Dias, Father Francisco. Good to see you on your knees doing honest work.”

  The man turned and a broad grin came to a face that closely resembled the captain’s, except for the pale complexion and the shorter haircut.

  “Buenos Dias, Brother. Have you come to my church to confess your sins?”

  “You would need a bigger church to hold all my sins.”

  “Then we had better start now.”

  Both men burst into laughter. The gardener stuck the trowel into the flowerbed and extended his hand to the captain who helped him to his feet. He brushed the dirt off his sweatshirt and the knees of his baggy pants, then the two men gave each other a big hug. The priest offered the same greeting to the captain’s son.

  Santiago then introduced Hawkins and Abby. “These are the friends I told you about. This is my twin brother, Francisco, who chose to follow the church instead of the sea.”

  “We are not so different. My brother salvages ships and I salvage souls. Excuse my un-priestly appearance. The diocese considers my church too small to employ the services of a gardener, so I tend the grounds myself. Come, I’ll show you around.”

  Father Francisco led the way through the front door into the chapel. The interior was of simple design, long and narrow, with rows of oak pews squeezed between whitewashed walls. The air was heavy with the smell of incense. An ornately carved gilded altarpiece was flanked by statues of saints and angels.

  Abby glanced around the chapel, and said, “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you, senora. The 16th century, when the Capilla de St. Vincent was built, was a time when the visual arts flourished. Unfortunately, it was a time when the Church succumbed to the basest of human instincts.”

  “I told my friends that you were better qualified than I to speak of evil deeds,” the captain said.

  “That description doesn’t even approach what happened during the more than three hundred years of the Spanish Inquisition. The torture and killing have been well-documented, but one of the most pernicious aspects was the right the Inquisition gave itself to confiscate the property of the accused. They were held prisoner, sometimes for years before their trial. Those who were part of the inner circle of the Inquisition became very wealthy at the expense of the poor souls who suffered.”

  “Which meant that they had little incentive to judge someone as innocent,” Abby said.

  “The senora is astute. Stolen property fueled the Inquisition and made it an unstoppable force. At first confiscated wealth went to the king and queen. Later, the loot went to the Holy Office and made its way down the line to the central council, tribunals, and the various officials who processed the victims like animals on a slaughterhouse conveyor belt.”

  “Where does the document figure in?” Hawkins asked.

  “The Inquisition kept detailed records of its financial dealings to aid in its persecutions, to justify their criminality and, like any big business, to keep track of cash flow. The document my brother showed me is a letter regarding the transfer of property from a victim to a new owner.”

  “Captain Santiago said the property was a castle in Castilla La Mancha.”

  “This is true. It was originally owned by a lesser nobleman named Hernandez. Someone wanted the property. That was that. He was imprisoned, tortured, tried and put to death.”

  “What crime was he accused of?” Abby said.

  “Heresy, which was broadly defined. People were arrested for offenses as trivial as wearing clean linen or not eating pork.”

  “Even Cervantes came to the attention of the Inquisition,” the captain said. “He had to censor his writing to avoid prosecution.”

  “Cervantes was lucky,” Father Francisco said. “Hernandez was doomed to the stake for being a negativo, which meant he denied the charges and refused to confess. Of course had he admitted his heresy, he would have been convicted as well.”

  “Captain Santiago said that the castle went to the Salazar family.”

  “Correct. Eduardo Salazar was a mining tycoon who must have enjoyed favor with the Inquisition to have been the recipient of such largesse. It’s a mystery why he was chosen, seeing as that most of the people who benefited from the confiscations were part of the Inquisition bureaucracy.”

  “Maybe it was for services rendered,” Hawkins said.

  “What kind of services would get him such a big pay-off?” Abby said.

  “There is mention in the document of Salazar providing labor to do some work on the castle.”

  “Maybe it was a run-down property that needed work. What American real estate agents call a fixer-upper,” Abby said. “Salazar ran mining operations. He could have provided people from his labor pool to do the work.”

  “Perhaps,” the priest said. “Whatever the reason, he apparently enjoyed great favor of the Promotor Fiscal, the public prosecutor for that council. His name was Henrique del Norte.”

  “Norte, meaning North?” Abby said.

  “Yes. I can show you his portrait. It’s in the church library.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” Hawkins said.

  They went through a door into a room lined with ornately-bound books and smelling of old paper. Father Santiago slid one volume off a shelf and placed the book on a table. He slipped on a pair of white cloth gloves and carefully turned the pages. He stopped at a back-and-white portrait that took up a full page.

  “May I introduce you to Senor del Norte.”

  The man dressed in a dark robe and floppy hat had piercing, almond-shaped eyes set in a cruel face. His dark hair hung in bangs over his forehead. The chin was pointed and the nose far too large for the narrow face. Even more interesting, except for having hair, he was a clone of the blue-headed man Hawkins had killed on the fortress island of Spinalonga. Hawkins had to do everything he could to keep from bursting out in the colorful language he had picked up as a Navy SEAL.

  Instead, he said, “Thank you for your time, Father Santiago.”

  “No trouble at all. I needed a rest from my gardening. And it’s always good to see my brother. Please let me know if I can be of further help.”

  On the drive back into Cadiz, Hawkins asked the captain to drop them off near the harbor. Their plane back to Santorini didn’t leave for a few hours. Captain Santiago said to call him for a ride to the airport.

  As the car pulled away, Abby said, “Okay, what gives? I saw the way your jaw dropped when you looked at the portrait of Se
nor del Norte. I know from experience that it takes a lot to make that happen.”

  “This was a lot. Except for the hair, Del Norte was a dead ringer for the guys who chased us all over Crete.”

  It was Abby’s chin that now dropped. “How could that be?”

  “Dunno.” He jerked his thumb at a nearby waterfront café. “Let’s talk about it over a cup of coffee.”

  They sat at a table and ordered a couple of espressos. When the waiter went off to retrieve their order, Abby said, “I noticed that you didn’t give the captain the section of document written in Linear A.”

  “I wanted him to focus,” Hawkins said. “It would have been confusing.”

  She hiked an eyebrow. “How much more confusing can it get?”

  Hawkins smiled. “What do you make of all this, Ab?”

  Abby’s keen mind had propelled her to the top of her class at Annapolis and her analytical skills had built the foundation of a successful worldwide corporation, so she was definitely the person to ask.

  She gazed off at the harbor.

  “It all goes back to Crete,” she began. “Crete is the hub of a big wheel. Spokes reach from the center. The sunken ship came from Crete. So did the device. Robsham visited Crete, where he found his collection of Linear A tablets and died. Professor Vedrakis was murdered there.”

  “The wheel is good analogy as far as it goes. We’ve found more spokes. Now we’ve got the Inquisition, Auroch Industries, castles in Spain, the Salazar family past and present, and del Norte.” Hawkins said. “All apparently unconnected to Crete.”

  “Maybe we don’t see the connection because the spokes are a blur as long as the wheel is moving. Let’s try a linear approach. Start with the Salazars and work our way backwards to Eduardo Salazar who leads to del Norte, who leads to someone or something else. Maybe Molly could work up a time line.”

  “Good suggestion, Abby. I’ll get her on it right away.”

  He texted a message on his cell to Molly asking her to dig up what she could on the Salazars and Auroch. He said he would give her a complete update after he returned to Santorini. After contacting Sutherland, he texted Calvin, asking how things were going.

  Calvin replied almost immediately. Hawkins read the message to Abby.

  “Device working. Slow going. But have deciphered the name of the scroll’s author.”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense,” she said. “Who was the author?”

  Hawkins relayed the question.

  Calvin’s text came back in a flash. When Hawkins read the word, the right side of his mouth turned up in a smirk.

  “You remember asking, how much more confusing it could get?”

  “I remember saying something like that.”

  He handed the phone over so Abby could see the reply displayed on the screen.

  “This is the name of the guy who wrote the scroll. That’s how confusing it can get.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Calvin had fashioned a hand crank for the device after rummaging in a kitchen drawer. Using a paring knife, he carved the narrower end of an old-fashioned potato masher to fit the square opening. Then he screwed the handle of a meat-grinder into the wider end. He inserted the makeshift crank into the socket and cautiously turned the handle. A wide grin came to his face.

  “How old did you say this gadget is?” he asked Kalliste.

  “Four thousand years or so.”

  He chuckled softly. “Folks who designed this gadget would have a good laugh if they saw the primitive operating system I’ve rigged.”

  Kalliste had been watching with doubt in her eyes, but she applauded when the olive oil lubricated gears began to turn.

  “It’s working! You’re amazing, Calvin.”

  “Matt and I had to improvise a few times back in Afghanistan.”

  “Matt told me about his Navy experiences. I’m glad to see that he is not as bitter as he was when we first met.”

  “Me, too. I’m surprised Matt opened up to you. He kept things close to his chest for a long time.”

  “We had both suffered personal loss, so we had lot in common. I was pleased to meet Abby. Matt talked about her a lot. They are obviously good friends. Too bad they can’t be closer.”

  Calvin made a zipping motion across his lips. “Matt’s told me in so many words to butt out of his personal life.”

  She mimicked the gesture. “Then I will, too. For now.” She glanced down at the scroll and thought back to the hours she had spent as a girl gazing at the symbols until they seemed to dance before her eyes. “I will choose a pictogram. You will line it up to the corresponding Egyptian hieroglyph. Then we’ll go from there.”

  “Sounds good,” Calvin said. “Ready when you are.”

  She unrolled the scroll further. “There is a word at the end of the text, where we would place a signature. Maybe if I start there we can learn the name of the scroll’s author.”

  She copied a symbol onto a pad of paper. Calvin cranked the handle until the pictograph matched a hieroglyph on an adjoining disk. At the same time, another part of the gear was placed in line with the disk Kalliste had identified as archaic Greek. She copied the Egyptian pictograph and the Greek letter, as well.

  They went to the next letter, going through the same labor-intensive procedure, until Kalliste had listed eight symbols. She told Calvin to take a break while she tried to figure out the Greek script. This entailed going through a couple of thick textbooks to translate the archaic language into ancient Greek, then into modern-day language.

  Minutes stretched into hours. While Kalliste poured through her volumes Calvin made coffee, then whipped together a Greek salad which she ate as she worked. At one point she speared a black olive but, instead of eating it, placed the fork down on her plate.

  “Calvin,” she whispered. “I think I have figured out who wrote the scroll. It doesn’t make sense, though.”

  “You’re not going to tell me those pictures spell out ‘Kilroy Was Here.’ ”

  “Mr. Kilroy was definitely not here,” she said. She spun the notepad around so he could read the English translation:

  M-I-N-O-T-A-U-R

  “Joke’s on us, Kalliste. Guy used a pen name.”

  “I’m not sure why he would pick the name of such an ugly creature. The Minotaur was the half-man, half-bull monster buried in the core of the Cretan Labyrinth where he guarded the treasure of Knossos. Athenian youth were sacrificed to the Minotaur. An intended victim was Theseus, who killed the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne, the daughter of Minos.”

  “This Minotaur sounds like a busy guy. In between chewing on Athenians and getting killed, it’s amazing he had any time to do any writing at all.”

  She tapped the device with her pen.

  “At the rate we’re going, it might take another four thousand years to decipher the entire script.”

  Calvin looked at his watch and saw that it was afternoon. “What say we take a break? I’ll go into town to fetch some grub for when Matt and Abby return. When I get back, we’ll dig into it again. Maybe we can polish off the first thousand years before midnight.”

  “That’s a good suggestion, Calvin. I’ll go over my notes. Maybe ghosts of the past will rise from the caldera and whisper secrets in my ear.”

  “Whatever works, Kalliste. See ya in a bit.”

  Leonidas was returning from a stroll when he saw Calvin emerge from the house without Kalliste.

  With nothing else to occupy him, Leonidas followed Calvin down an alley and into the commercial section of the village. He lingered outside an all-purpose market until Calvin came out with some bags of groceries and headed back towards the house. Leonidas thought about following him, but Calvin might suspect something if he saw the same American tourist everywhere he went.

  He strolled to the main village square and was sitting at a taverna having a beer when a taxi pulled up at the curb and three men got out. His hand automatically slid under his shirt and rested on the holster at his belt. Th
e first two men exiting the cab looked like the thugs he had chased away from Gournia and later encountered on Spinalonga.

  Leonidas couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw who the third man was. Salazar. He was dressed casually and the brim of his Borsalino straw hat was pulled down over his dark sunglasses. Leonidas recognized the wide jutting chin and the muscular shoulders bulging under the blue linen jacket. The Spaniard paid the taxi driver, then he and the other men headed into the village. Leonidas was right behind them.

  Kalliste sat on the terrace behind her house and gazed out at the caldera. She pondered her situation. She had been blessed as an archaeologist to start unraveling not one, but a number of the mysteries that had defied historical scholars for centuries. The gods of Olympus must be laughing at their joke; the tantalizing gifts they had bestowed upon future humanity were still out of reach.

  She possessed the key to Linear A, but using the mechanism to decipher a lost language that consisted of hundreds of pictograms was a fool’s errand. She needed the help of expert linguists, philologists and computer capacity. And all that would cost money.

  She had cut her ties to the government, but Greece wouldn’t have the funds to sponsor her project even if they wanted to. She knew of only one potential source of financing. She went back into her house, picked up her phone and punched in a number.

  Lily Porter answered, “Kalliste! How wonderful to hear your voice.”

  “Yours, too, Lily. I have a great favor to ask.”

  “Yes, of course, Kalliste. I want to know all about it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Molly pointed her D3X Nikon camera at the olive and yellow bird sitting on the top branch of a rabbit bush. She sat on a folding stool, hidden in the wheat grass in the high desert region known as the Badlands Wilderness, around fifteen miles east of Bend. The camera rested on a carbon fiber tripod, the 600mm lens pointed at the fat, little short-tailed bird. She pressed the shutter release and banged off a dozen or so photos of the MacGillivray’s warbler before it flew away.