The Oracle Code (Thomas Lourds, Book 4)

by Brokaw, Charles

  “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

  “I suspected as much, Comrade Fursin. I don’t run into many fans this far from Moscow.”

  “Well, you have today. I read your pieces in The Moscow Times on a regular basis.”

  “Oh really?” Anna cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

  Fursin put his hand over his heart. “Truly. I do. You wound me. I especially loved the piece you did on President Nevsky’s comparisons of himself to Alexander Nevsky. The artist you had working with you on that piece has a fantastic eye.”

  “Zagnetko? Yes, she is wonderful. Very witty all on her own as well.” Anna warmed slightly to the man as he mentioned other articles she had written. “What can I do for you?”

  “I am told that Professor Glukov is only allowing select members of the media in to the cave.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I’m also told that you are one of those members.”

  “I am.”

  “You also did the piece on the dig months ago not far from here where Professor Glukov first picked up the trail to this place.”

  “You are very well informed.”

  He smiled again and appeared even more dashing than ever. “I would like very much to get inside that cave when Professor Glukov performs his unveiling.”

  Anna smiled and shook her head. “Sadly, that is beyond my power to do.”

  “Please.” He placed his hand over his heart again and looked entreating. “This will mean very much to my career.”

  “You can be charming all you want, Comrade Fursin. I will enjoy your efforts, but in the end it will be for naught. The passageway, I am told, is very small, and Professor Glukov is keeping a short list of attendants. I am sorry. But hopefully this story will be big enough that you will get something that helps your career.”

  Fursin nodded. “I completely understand. Please do not hold my need to ask against me.”

  Anna laughed. “You were very pleasant. You should see how much I push, beg, shove, and plead to get my foot in the door for a story.”

  “Be well.” Fursin bowed his head and walked away.

  For a moment, Anna watched the man. There was something about him that caught her subconscious attention. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she thought that beneath that charming exterior, there was a very hard man.

  In that way, he reminded her of her father.

  ***

  As he walked away from the woman, Colonel Sergay Linko gazed in frustration around the campsite and cursed his situation. During the flight to Herat, he’d learned his orders were to get close to Professor Glukov and find out what the man had discovered.

  The news stations Linko had watched had revealed that Glukov had found something related to the missing tomb of Alexander the Great. Glukov had stated as much but had given nothing further.

  Linko didn’t know why President Nevsky would be interested in Alexander the Great’s tomb, and Linko hadn’t even known the man’s tomb was missing. And he was only vaguely knowledgeable about who Alexander the Great had been.

  To Linko’s way of thinking, Alexander the Great had been on the same par as the bogatyr of Slavic mythology. When he had been a child, his grandmother had read him epic poems written by the storytellers of the Kievan Rus’, the old nation of Rus. Linko had liked the stories of the wandering knights, then discovered they were much like the European knights, such as King Arthur.

  But it wasn’t real. And childhood things had to be put away. Just as he had put his grandmother away when it fell to him to take care of her when she grew too frail to live without assistance.

  Linko’s mother and father were gone by that time, one to cancer and the other to drink, and no one had survived to take care of the old woman. After a month of assisted care and the first bill had come due, Linko had decided he didn’t want to pay the monthly fee. So he had visited her late one night, pinched her nose shut, and held a hand over her mouth.

  The next month’s bill was reduced, and that was the end of it.

  Calm in his frustration, Linko went to the next group of journalists and hoped he would have better luck. He would not be deterred.

  ***

  Lourds got out of his rented four-wheel-drive pickup and walked down to the dig site. To his relief, none of the media pointed him out or came hurrying over for a quote.

  During the short flight to Herat, Lourds had looked at the photographs of the tomb that Boris had sent him through e-mail. He’d downloaded them while at Kabul International Airport, then examined them at his leisure while in flight.

  He was thankful for the diversion because it had kept his mind from being preoccupied with thoughts of Layla, but she was never far from his mind.

  It was confusing.

  And it was daunting.

  He needed to get his head back in the game.

  Except that he had the ring in his backpack, and thoughts of it and Layla weren’t going away.

  He walked up to one of the ANP patrolmen and showed his passport to the man.

  The young man nodded gravely. “Professor Lourds. We’ve been expecting you.” He made a path through the sawhorses.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Watch your step as you go up.”

  “I will.” Lourds started up the incline, and then the feeding frenzy hit.

  “There’s Professor Lourds!”

  Lourds didn’t know who had first vocalized his arrival, but the hue and cry rose.

  “Professor Lourds. Could we get a picture?”

  Lourds turned back toward the crowd and waved. Several cameras and camcorders were in evidence.

  “Professor Lourds, could we get an interview?”

  “In a little while, perhaps. At present, I’m afraid you people know more than I do.”

  The ANP talked to a lithe young woman in a blue parka for a moment then let her through. She leaped up the incline, quick as a deer, and joined Lourds.

  She threw back her parka hood and revealed strawberry blond hair and an innocent face. “Professor Lourds, you may not remember me, but I’m–”

  “Anna Cherkshan. Of course I remember you. Boris is delighted that you’re involved with this.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “Of course I am. I was deferring to Boris. This is his circus, after all.”

  “Thomas!”

  Gazing uphill, Lourds saw Boris emerge from the cave and couldn’t help thinking of the groundhog that came out and checked for its shadow. It wasn’t a very flattering comparison in one respect, but Boris’s presence had certainly changed the weather.

  The slight noise that had started at Lourds’s arrival became an avalanche of questions and demands for information.

  Anna gazed at the crowd in wide-eyed wonder.

  “Shocked to see your fellow journalists worked up into such a lather, Miss Cherkshan?”

  Anna turned to him, raked hair from her face with her fingers, and shook her head. “I’ve never been on this side of it, you know. It’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

  “It can be.”

  “Do you ever get used to it?”

  “No. Trust me, you don’t see this kind of thing every day in the field of archeology.”

  “You must. You have found so many amazing things.”

  “Well, I didn’t find this one. I was back in Cambridge while Boris was risking the elements and a broken neck climbing this mountain.”

  “Can I quote you?”

  Lourds smiled. “Of course. He’s only asked me in as a specialized consultant.”

  “To translate the documents he found inside the tomb?”

  “Exactly.”

  Boris waved Lourds up the mountain, and Lourds went. When he reached Boris, the Russian professor scooped him up in an immense bear hug that drew laughter and catcalls from the crowd of journalists.

  “It is good to see you, Thomas.” Boris placed him back on the ground.

  “It’s good to see you as well.”
/>
  “I see you discovered Miss Cherkshan.”

  “Actually, she found me.”

  “And Layla?”

  “Working, as I said.”

  “Ah, that is too bad.” Boris frowned, but the expression lasted only a moment before being replaced with his broad smile again. “Does she know what has been found?”

  Lourds smiled. “Boris, I still don’t know what you’ve found.”

  “Then come. Let me show you.” Boris made his apologies to Anna, promised that she would be the next person he brought into the tomb, and led Lourds into the cave.

  16

  Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation

  Lubyanka Square

  Moscow, Russian Federation

  February 14, 2013

  Seated at his desk, General Anton Cherkshan watched the live broadcast of President Nevsky in front of Lenin’s Tomb. A large crowd had gathered in Red Square, and Cherkshan waited anxiously for some sort of violence or terrorist attack to break out.

  He had wanted to be at the speech, but Nevsky had forbidden it. None of the military leaders were present. Nevsky had planned this to be a solo effort, a way to implore the Russian people to embrace his plans for the prosperity of their great country.

  However, there were snipers in the area, in the buildings surrounding the Tomb that had clear fields of fire into the crowd. Cherkshan knew this because he had signed off on the placement of those men.

  Nevsky looked good on the camera, but he didn’t look great. As always, he wore a gray suit, never changing his appearance, always remaining constant.

  “My friends, I come here today to face the accusations of the faceless detractors who hide in the shadows and tell you that I am somehow going to be responsible for the downfall of Russian freedom.” Nevsky spoke slowly, allowing his words to reach all who were listening. “They claim that I am stockpiling munitions, that I am planning to make war on the satellite countries that have left our fold.”

  Cherkshan had seen the figures reported in the newspapers. Someone inside the Kremlin was talking, and one of his jobs was to find out who it was. The newspapers didn’t have the exact numbers. In fact, they had less than half of them. But the numbers they had printed were enough to worry the people and some of the neighboring countries.

  As well as the West. Already the United States had started rattling its saber, but its military—for a change—was financially stressed as well after years of the Middle East involvement and the rising cost of fuel.

  The Russian scientists that Nevsky had funded had designed more economical war engines, and Russian oil corporations had found more ways to get to the oil resources within their own country. After all these years of the Cold War, the boot, so to speak, was finally coming back to the other foot. Even the Chinese were feeling the pinch of economic hardship as the spending by their citizens grew out of control.

  But the reporters didn’t have access to the figures that Cherkshan did. The actual amount of military buildup was staggering.

  Nevsky continued speaking. “My detractors fail to realize that I am simply trying to create business for this country. I am creating jobs for my fellow countrymen at a time when the West is staggered by the failure of their capitalist dreams.” He paused. “I am giving my countrymen jobs, providing a way for them to remain in their houses, and I am reshaping our dream for the future.”

  Cheers broke out in the crowd.

  “These accusers will tell you that I am going to take away the rights of the people. I say that they have already been taken away. Would any of you have thought that the day would come when you had to stand in line for bread, only to find out it had gone up in price as you had stood there waiting?”

  The crowd reacted again.

  “I did not. I find this evidence of capitalism ruin to be abhorrent to everything that is Russian. I see young people in our streets who wear American clothing they got through the black markets instead of outlets that are designed to protect our economy. I see men my age wearing expensive suits.” Nevsky pulled on his own jacket. “Do you know what this is, comrades? Russian manufacture. Made by Russian hands. Right here in Mother Russia. This is where my loyalty lies. Not with some seductive vision of a capitalist society like the West.”

  The crowd cheered again, but this time, a pocket of the group exploded into violence. Nearly a dozen people were locked in mortal combat before Moscow uniformed policemen pushed their way through to them, stunned them with Tasers, and carried the unconscious men and women from the crowd.

  Cherkshan picked up the phone on his desk.

  It was answered at once. “Yes, General Cherkshan.”

  “There has been an incident at the President’s speech. I want to know the names of the people involved immediately.”

  “Yes, General.”

  As Cherkshan hung up the phone, he looked at the pictures of his children sitting on his desk. Rodion was employed with the Alga Bank Group, one of the most powerful in the country, and was expecting his second child. Cherkshan was proud of his son.

  His daughter, Anna, was something else. While Rodion had been educated in Switzerland, Anna had chosen an American school, the Columbia School of Journalism. If Cherkshan had had his way, his daughter would not have gone to the United States. She had already been too defiant as it was, a victim of the encroaching capitalist ways.

  But Katrina had stepped in and insisted. Cherkshan loved his wife and would until the day he died. However, he would also regret sending Anna off to the United States. She was forever lost to him these days.

  He preferred to remember her as the small girl he had shared make-believe tea parties with. The one who’d insisted on taking care of him when he was sick or recovering from a bullet wound. That was the daughter he’d been proud to raise.

  The one he knew now would have been among those dozen or so protestors carried out by the Moscow Police.

  Thankfully, she was at the archeological dig at Herat. Cherkshan had been watching that, as well, because a link to Alexander the Great had come up. Since his promotion to his current position, he’d taken to heart the location of the top five historians who knew about Alexander the Great. All of them were currently digging through mounds of research material.

  He turned his attention back to Nevsky.

  “I will admit to this buildup, if that’s what my detractors want to call it. But I call it this: a munitions corporation. We are making Russian pistols and rifles that anyone would be proud to own. We’re going to sell them to buyers around the world. Like many other countries in the West, we are going to become munitions suppliers. People want guns. We will provide them. And it will create Russian jobs.”

  The crowd cheered again.

  After thanking the people for coming, Nevsky departed the podium with his personal security detachment from the Federal Protective Service. The FSO agents were watched over by FSB agents. Cherkshan didn’t feel relieved until the men had Nevsky inside the ZIL limousine provided by the Special Purpose Garage.

  A few minutes later, as Cherkshan knew it would, his phone rang. He picked it up and muted the television. “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “How do you think the address went?”

  “I think it went well. I also think that news services in the West are going to make a lot of the story.”

  “Let them. It doesn’t matter. They can’t stop what I am doing even if I were to announce it aloud.”

  Cherkshan knew that was true. The United States and NATO, due to the way they had been stretched throughout the Middle East and Africa lately, wouldn’t be ready to go head-to-head in retaliation. The United States had moved a few ships around in the Mediterranean Sea and the Pacific, but that was to be expected. They had to show strength.

  However, they weren’t going to pull the trigger.

  Using the remote control, Cherkshan flipped through channels, coming to a halt on a CNN feed. The view was of the dig site in Herat. He watched as the camera showed some
of the faces in the crowd, looking to see if Anna was there.

  “I would like to talk to you about another matter, Mr. President.”

  “Of course.”

  “The dig at Herat.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was announced that the tomb has something to do with Alexander the Great.”

  “So I heard last night. It seems I was a bit hasty in cutting Professor Glukov’s funding. I should have stayed with him.”

  Cherkshan chose not to respond to that. “I would like to send some agents out there. To look things over and see what—if anything—he has found.”

  “It’s already taken care of, General. I sent a man last night. I didn’t want to distract you from our plans for the Ukraine.”

  The Ukraine was a totally different issue. The former prime minister of that country had created difficulties concerning the natural gas supplies Russia shipped to Western Europe through the Ukraine. She had pushed for her nation to become a member of the European Union and step away completely from Russia.

  If that was done, and the West was hoping it would happen, the Russian economy would be dealt a devastating blow from which it might not ever recover.

  In a matter of days, Nevsky intended to send an invading force into the Ukraine, to turn the country back into a Russian satellite. It was going to be dangerous, but Cherkshan had confidence that the attack strategy he had worked out with his generals was feasible.

  If—when—they secured the Ukraine, things would be different. Russia would be different.

  “I want your focus to be totally on the Ukraine, General. That is why I took care of this situation myself.”

  “I understand, Mr. President. If you need anything from me regarding this matter, let me know.”

  “I need the Ukraine, my friend. Bring that country under Russian control, and you will lay the largest stepping-stone we have had in decades.”

  “It will be done.”

  Nevsky said goodbye and ended the call.

  For a moment, Cherkshan watched the television screen. He was thinking of Anna when he saw the camera suddenly zoom in on a man who had staggered and gone down. As the image came into better focus, Cherkshan saw the blood streaming from a huge wound in the man’s face as his eyes stared into the camera.