The Last Oracle: A Sigma Force Novel

by James Rollins

  Gray recalled his discussion with Painter, about how the Delphic E grew to symbolize a cult of prophecy, a code trailing throughout history in art and architecture.

  Luca stepped forward. “I may also know of this letter.”

  Gray turned to the Gypsy clan leader.

  “I told you of the children who were stolen from us,” he said. “Those of my people who first came upon the massacred camp spoke of a stone church there. The door had been broken open, but upon the shattered planks a large bronze E was found. No one knew what it meant. The only ones who knew were buried in that mass grave. The secret died with them. Perhaps this is the same E?”

  Marking the chovihanis, Gray thought. Gypsy fortune-tellers. Another cult of prophecy.

  “All well and good,” Masterson persisted, plainly growing tired, too. “But what does it matter if the E is missing here?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Gray admitted, but he said it with little conviction. He turned to Abe. “When did you first show Dr. Polk this site?”

  He shrugged. “I took Dr. Polk here the first time a year ago. He looked around, took notes, and left.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes looked wounded. “He didn’t tell me anything about this discovery.”

  “Because he respected our secrets,” Abe said stiffly. “He was a good man.”

  Gray studied Masterson’s sour expression. The professor had initially been surprised by the discovery, but after the shock faded and he found no real worth to his own line of research, his interest had waned. Had Dr. Polk experienced the same? The archaeological discovery was significant, but because he couldn’t connect it to his own research, he’d respected the achuta’s secret and had kept quiet about it.

  If so, why the sudden urgency to come out here just before he disappeared? He must have discovered some new connection, something bearing on his own line of study.

  Gray asked Abe, “Was there anything that triggered Dr. Polk’s sudden need to come here? Anything unusual that led up to that day?”

  The man shook his head. “He came to visit the village. Like he had done many times. We were talking about an upcoming election where an achuta candidate was up for a mayoral position. I had found a new coin and showed him, but he asked to see the one with the temple on it again. He glanced at it without too much interest, even spinning it on the table as we spoke. Then suddenly his eyes got huge, and he jumped up. He wanted to immediately come here, but I had obligations with the election. I asked him to wait until I returned…”

  His voice trailed off and was picked up by Elizabeth. “My father was not known for his patience.”

  Masterson nodded. “That was the day I got the frantic call from him. He claimed that he had discovered something that would shake our understanding of the human mind once it was known.”

  As an idea jangled through him, Gray turned to Rosauro. “Let me see that coin again.”

  She passed it over.

  Gray examined it: temple on one side, chakra wheel on the other. “Elizabeth, you said your father obtained that position for you at Delphi so you could explore how it might connect to his own research. What did you end up telling him about Delphi’s history?”

  “Just the basics,” she said. “He was less interested in the history than he was in the discovery of ethylene gases near the temple site. My father wanted more details into the Oracle’s rituals, looking again for physiological support for her intuitive powers.”

  “So if he wasn’t interested in the history, when did he learn about the significance of the Greek letter epsilon?”

  “I sent him a paper on it.”

  “When?”

  “About a month before he—” Her eyes suddenly widened.

  Gray nodded. He knelt on the marble floor and placed his flashlight down. Propping the coin up on its edge, Gray flicked it and sent it spinning on the floor, lit by the flashlight beam.

  He leaned down, studying it.

  The spinning coin formed a blurry, silvery globe. The E, positioned in the center of the coin, now rested at the core of the whirling globe. Gray sensed the symbolism. Painter had said that the E may have had its roots in the earliest worship of the Earth mother, Gaia. Now it rested at the center of the silvery sphere, like Gaia herself in the physical world. But the letter also represented human’s intuitive potential, rising out of the core of the human body, out of the brain.

  Gray let his own mind relax, seeking significance.

  What had Archibald Polk realized?

  The coin spun, a silvery mystery, hiding an ancient secret.

  But what—?

  Then Gray knew.

  Reaching out, he slapped the coin flat against the marble.

  Of course!

  11:35 P.M.

  Pripyat, Ukraine

  “The Americans have Sasha,” Nicolas said sharply as he stepped into the bedroom. He was naked under an open robe, but his anger kept him warm.

  Elena lay draped across the bedspread, nude. She had one leg up, and an arm draped to the side, waiting for him. They had returned from the gala to their hotel outside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where many of the dignitaries were being housed prior to tomorrow’s event.

  Nicolas had spent the past half hour on a scrambled satellite phone, making sure every last detail was addressed before the morning. A call to his mother at the Warren revealed the latest bit of upsetting news. With her ties to former operatives in the KGB, she had heard the rumblings coming out of Washington’s intelligence communities. The city had been in turmoil over the past twenty hours, searching for a girl. It must be Sasha. Then things had gone deathly quiet. Even Yuri went silent. Both he and his mother knew what that implied.

  Someone had found her.

  And Nicolas suspected who it was.

  His fingers clenched into a fist.

  It was likely the same organization that had been plaguing him in India, dredging up Dr. Polk’s research, stirring something that Nicolas had thought had ended with the man’s death. One attempt to quash that trail had already failed. But maybe it was just as well.

  He’d had one communication, brief, after the failure.

  It seemed the team in India was closing in on a secret that Dr. Polk had kept from everyone. Something vital to the professor’s research. Something significant about the children. But what?

  Elena stirred on the bed and lifted to an elbow. Concern rang in her voice. “What will you do about little Sasha?”

  Nicolas knew all the children grew close. Raised together in the Warren, the older children often took on parental roles with the younger ones. Elena had been especially fond of little Sasha and her brother.

  The pair was important to Nicolas, too.

  He sank to the bed, and she curled into him, worried and angry. One of her hands slid up under his robe and rested on his thigh. Her skin was hot, feverish. He had kept her waiting too long.

  Then long fingernails suddenly clamped onto his thigh, stabbing deeply.

  Elena stared up at him. Fire burned behind her eyes, waiting to be unleashed. A trickle of blood ran down Nicolas’s inner thigh, as exciting as the tip of a hungry tongue.

  A hard certainty entered Elena’s voice. It brooked no argument, demanding, commanding. “Nothing must happen to little Sasha.”

  Her fingers tightened yet again, sending pain shooting to his groin.

  He gasped and promised her. “Measures are already under way. All we need—”

  Nails dragged up his leg, trailing pain.

  “—is something to trade.”

  11:45 P.M.

  Punjab, India

  As thunder boomed and lightning lit up the temple chamber, Elizabeth followed Gray to the giant chakra wheel on the wall. He laid his palm there. Since spinning the coin, he had clearly come to realize something.

  But what?

  Gray spoke as he stared upward. “From my studies of Indian philosophy, the center of a chakra wheel usually holds a Sanskrit letter, representing one of the energy cente
rs. Muladhara, the root chakra at the base of the spine. Manipura, in the region of the solar plexus. Anahata, the heart.” He stared upward. “This one is empty. Blank.”

  “The same on the coin,” Elizabeth said tentatively, not understanding where this was leading.

  “Exactly.” Gray had collected the coin and passed it to her now. “But flip the coin over. If you could stare through the center of the chakra wheel to the other side of the coin, what’s positioned there?”

  Elizabeth turned the coin back and forth. The capital epsilon lay in the center of the temple, in the exact position as the axle of the chakra wheel on the other side. “It’s the E,” she mumbled.

  “It stands on the reverse side of the wheel.” Gray turned to Masterson. “May I borrow your cane?”

  The professor passed it reluctantly.

  Gray stepped back, reached up, and pushed on the edge of the center circle of black marble. His muscles strained, and the small circle shifted out of place, pivoting around a vertical axis, like a valve in a pipe.

  “A secret door,” Masterson exclaimed.

  Gray waved to Kowalski. “Give me a leg up.”

  Kowalski crossed, dropped to a knee, and laced his fingers. Gray stepped into his grip and climbed high enough to shove the balanced slab of marble wider open. The lower edge of the secret door stood ten feet off the ground. With Kowalski’s boost, Gray wiggled through the opening.

  “There’re stairs!” he called back as his legs vanished. “Leading down! Cut into the sandstone back here!”

  Elizabeth could hardly wait. She crossed to Kowalski. “Help me.”

  She stepped to his knee, but he grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up. She squeaked a little in surprise. He was strong. She grabbed the edge of the opening to steady herself and blindly sought for a foothold to push through the door.

  “Ow, that’s my nose,” Kowalski griped.

  “Sorry.”

  He grabbed her ankle and shifted it to his shoulder. She shoved and fell the rest of the way through. She found Gray down a few steps, shining his light over the walls. Writing decorated all the surfaces, a mix of shapes and letters.

  “Harappan again,” she said with a strain, and gained her feet.

  “And look at this,” Gray said. He swung his flashlight and shone it on the reverse side of the black marble door. A large capital epsilon had been carved deep into the stone.

  He’d been right.

  Elizabeth freed her camera and took several pictures while Rosauro and Luca joined them, crowding the stairs.

  Gray leaned out. “Dr. Masterson?”

  Through the opening, Elizabeth saw the professor back away.

  “Such clambering is for younger folk than I,” he said, clearly exhausted, limping back with his cane. “Just let me know what you find.”

  “I’ll remain here, too,” Abe added, but his voice sounded more scared than tired. Elizabeth had noted how nervous he had grown the closer they got to here.

  Gray called down. “Kowalski, stay here. In case we get into trouble.”

  “Fine by me,” he answered. “Doubt I could fit through there anyway.”

  Kowalski’s eyes flicked to Elizabeth. He nodded, silently warning her to be careful.

  Thunder again rumbled, felt in the stones.

  “Let’s go,” Gray said.

  He led the way down with his flashlight. Elizabeth followed, trailed by Rosauro and Luca. Her fingers traced the wall. Harappan script flowed down the stairwell. The ancient language had never been deciphered, mostly because of the scarcity of the script that survived. Archaeologists were still searching for the Rosetta stone for this language, some codex that would allow them to crack their ancient code.

  She gazed around her. This could be it.

  Thrilled and amazed, her heart thumped in her chest. She was surprised no one else could hear it. At the same time, she pictured her father following these same footsteps. She imagined his heart had thundered the same as hers. In this moment, she felt a strange intimacy, a closeness they’d never shared in life. And never would. Her throat closed a bit as emotion racked through her.

  The stairwell was not long and ended in a small chamber, cut from the sandstone. Water gurgled and echoed on the far side. A natural spring poured out of a knee-high hole in the wall and flowed through a crack in the floor, then vanished out the opposite wall.

  “A Harappan well cave,” Elizabeth said, recognizing the configuration. “Living alongside the Indus River, the civilization grew skilled at irrigation.”

  Gray shone his light around the space. It was crudely circular. Cut into the stone floor was another chakra wheel. But the center of this one wasn’t empty. A large egg-shaped stone rested there.

  “It’s a copy of the omphalos,” Elizabeth said.

  She and the others were drawn to it. It stood as high as her midriff and was twice as large as the one from the Delphi museum. The dome’s outer surface was carved with trees and leaves.

  Elizabeth swallowed hard and stared around her. “Someone has re-created the original adytum, the inner sanctum of the Oracle, where she cast her prophecies.”

  Elizabeth stepped over to a toppled bronze chair. It had three legs. “Here’s a tripod. The classical seat of the Oracle.”

  “Or oracles.” Gray had wandered a few steps away. He pointed his flashlight to more toppled chairs.

  Five total.

  Elizabeth snapped several pictures. What was this place? What was it doing here?

  Rosauro called from the wall, hiking up her pack. “You might want to see this,” she said.

  Luca stood farther down the wall. His arm was raised to the surface, but not touching. Even in the shadows, Elizabeth noted how his hand shook.

  Elizabeth crossed to Rosauro. A mosaic, nearly black with age, covered the wall. Several tiles littered the floor, fallen away. Someone had wiped sections of the mosaic down, removing centuries of mold and grime. It looked hastily done. Elizabeth imagined her father swabbing a cloth over the artwork, seeking what lay beneath.

  She stared at what was revealed.

  From floor to ceiling, it depicted a siege on a temple set amid mountains. “Parnassus,” Elizabeth mumbled. “Under attack by Romans. It’s showing the downfall of the Temple of Delphi.”

  The next section revealed a room not unlike the one they were in, even with an omphalos in the center—but the stone was shown in cross section. Hidden beneath its dome crouched a small girl, cradled in the arms of a young woman, curled tight together as a Roman soldier searched for them.

  Elizabeth glanced to the stone behind her. It couldn’t be…

  She stepped along the wall. The next tableaux revealed a caravan of horses, donkeys, and carts. At the head of the train, the same slender woman led the child. The long caravan climbed up and over a mountain. The last cart was hauled by two fiery stallions, clearly representing the steeds who drew Apollo’s sun chariot across the skies. But they were not dragging the sun here. In the back of the cart rested the same stone that had protected the woman and child. The omphalos of Delphi.

  Elizabeth turned and faced the stone behind her. She trembled all over. “That’s not a copy,” she said with a shudder. “That’s the original omphalos. The one spoken of in the histories of Plutarch and Socrates.”

  “And see this,” Rosauro said.

  The woman drew Elizabeth to the next scene. It was a picture of the canyon, a joyous scene of the Greeks building temples into the cliffs. The adytum was also depicted, but instead of one Oracle seated atop a tripod, there were five. They circled the omphalos, which smoked like a volcano from the hole at its top. The smoke formed a figure of a young boy with outstretched arms. His eyes were fire, and flames climbed from his open palms.

  Was the boy indicative of prophecy in general or something more specific?

  Either way, Elizabeth found those fiery eyes staring back at her.

  At her shoulder, Gray had also followed the story. He waved an arm along
the wall, encompassing the tale.

  “The last Oracle, the child, must have been spirited away after the downfall of the temple. In secret, the Greek temple guardians and supporters fled the Roman persecution and settled here, where they rebuilt among these Harappan ruins, and stayed hidden.”

  Elizabeth remembered Abe’s story of this place. “They remained safe for seven hundred years, perhaps intermingling with the local tribes in secret. And after so many generations, the Greeks were slowly absorbed into the Indian culture.”

  “Then they grew afoul of religious persecution and the growing Indian caste system,” Gray said. “All the bones. A massacre occurred here.”

  Luca spoke at the end of the wall. “And they fled again,” he said.

  They joined him. He stood a step from the churning spring. The art here was not mosaic tiles, but someone had painted a hurried frieze. It was done in black paint, showing the attack of the temples. People fled in all directions, but one group, highlighted by radiant streaks, escaped in a caravan of tall wagons with large wheels. It faded smaller and smaller across the wall, heading far away.

  Luca placed his fingers gently to the wagons. His voice cracked with emotion. “These are our people,” he said. “The Romani. This is where we came from. This is our origin.”

  Gray shifted back. He stared across the wall, his face stunned.

  The Greek guardians escaped with the last child and the omphalos, hiding in this valley and absorbing over the span of seven centuries into Indian culture, then that same culture persecuted them and sent them wandering once again, but under a new name.

  Gypsies.

  Gray waved an arm to encompass the wall. “The story depicted here must trace a genetic line that has been preserved throughout history. Flowing from Greece, to here, and out again. A genetic line of savant power.”

  “This is why we wander,” Luca said, still staring at the caravan. “As the Hindu man said, no place is safe forever. So we kept moving, trying to protect the secret held within the heart of our clans.”