by Toby Tate
Suddenly, there were multiple hands on him, turning him toward the exit. “Come on, Hunter, I think we need to leave before we end up on the wrong side of the law,” Lisa’s voice said.
Eleven
“That went well,” Gabe said as they left the Heraklion police station and walked out to the parking lot. “I think Hunter’s right, though. I think they know what happened. Did you see the captain’s face when Hunter confronted him?”
“You don’t think it could be human trafficking, do you?” Hunter asked. “That kind of stuff happens overseas all the time. In the US, too.”
“I’m not going to rule it out, but in this case, I don’t think so. I think it has something to do with whatever is in that container. I’d really love to go and take a look at the dig site. Is there any way we can do that, Dr. Jensen?”
“There’s not much to see, but you’re welcome to do anything that might help.”
* * *
The site was huge, dusty and hot. Hunter didn’t understand how someone could spend months, even years, working in a place like this. It was definitely not the glamour job portrayed by Hollywood. Everyone on the site was dirty and wore shorts and sandals. Most of them didn’t look happy. But Hunter knew it wasn’t about the fame or glory for them—it was about discovering history. Being a journalist, he could understand that.
Standing beneath the baking sun, however, he found himself wishing he had drunk more water and less Raki. He removed his NC State Wolfpack hat and mopped his forehead with a forearm, slid the hat back on and followed the group across the terrain. He eyed his pregnant wife, who walked in front of him, a little miffed that she was having an easier time than he was.
They finally stopped in front of a triangular hole next to a mound of dirt and stared down.
“Well, that’s where it was,” Jensen said. “It wasn’t buried all that deeply, relatively speaking, as if someone had put it there in a hurry.”
“Do you have any hypothesis at all about what it might be, doctor?” Gabe asked.
“The only thing I can think of was that whoever buried the box was running from someone…or something…and was trying to hide it quickly, somewhere no one would suspect. The early Minoans were deeply religious, so this person may have figured it would be well-guarded by the gods.”
“I hate to ask this, but while I’m here, I need to get some kind of story to turn in to the wire service, since they’re the ones paying for this trip,” Hunter said.
“Of course, I understand. Come on over to my tent and you can ask all the questions you want.”
The group shuffled through the dirt toward the other side of the dig site, past long, rickety wooden tables covered with pottery shards and rocks, and around several deep square-cut excavations. People worked around the site with shovels, picks and small paintbrushes and were all covered with dirt and sweat, but none of them seemed to mind it, Hunter noted. He figured this type of tedious work would probably drive him bat-shit crazy and was glad he was only an observer.
They all found places inside the sparse tent to sit—chairs, cots, crates—as an old electric fan buzzed in the corner, oscillating from side to side and blowing small gusts of warm air in their direction. They talked about the different aspects of the excavation and what they meant, as well as where Lisa’s cousin Jade might be.
All the while they spoke, Hunter couldn’t fight the feeling that someone outside the tent was watching, and listening.
Twelve
Dr. Nikolas Petrakis stared down at the crude paper and pencil impressions made by Sam Jensen of symbols from the lid of some kind of case, found only a day or so ago at the Anemospilia dig site.
As the resident philologist at the University of Crete, it was Petrakis’s job to make sure the translation was accurate. But he had seen this type of writing only one other time—on the Phaistos Disc, which dated back to the Minoan Bronze Age. Many scholars agreed that the writing on the disc was not Minoan at all, but from somewhere else entirely—although exactly where, no one knew. It seemed nearly impossible that there would be a second artifact with similar writing.
Yet here it was again.
He had been the only person to come close to deciphering the symbols from the disc. Now he had another reference point from which to work. If he were to study both objects, the chances were good that he could crack the code on this paper.
Whatever the symbols meant, he was sure they had to do with the contents of the case. He was told it had been radioactive. If that was true, then they were likely to be rocks or stones or even meteorite fragments. That should give him a good reference point.
Petrakis moved to the lab computer and typed in “Phaistos Disc.” The forty-five unique signs copied from the disc appeared in blocks like a spreadsheet on his monitor, and he began to compare the symbols with the ones on his paper. There were six circles, each containing six symbols, and a seventh symbol which stood on its own, outside the circles. The seventh symbol he recognized almost immediately, at least partially, but none of the symbols resembled anything from the disc except in style. These were symbols that had never been seen before.
Petrakis sighed deeply and pulled off his coat, loosened his tie. This was going to be a long day.
But less than two hours later, he had discovered the answer.
* * *
The group discussion was winding down and although it was only mid-afternoon, Hunter was starting to feel a little jet-lagged. He was about to say so when Jensen’s cell phone rang. He picked it up off a dusty cot and glanced at the number.
“It’s somebody from the university—the philology department. Must be about the symbols I sent them.” Jensen put the phone up to his ear. “Hello?”
Silence.
“Uh huh.”
More silence.
Jensen furrowed his brow. “You’re kidding.”
Everyone in the tent sat watching and listening to the one-sided conversation. After a few seconds, Jensen leaned forward in his chair and grabbed an old, beat-up notebook from his back pocket and pulled a pen from his shirt pocket.
“Okay, go ahead,” he said, shouldering the phone and writing furiously on the pad. “You say the writing is similar to the Phaistos Disc? That’s incredible. That would mean they were created around the same time period, about two thousand BCE”
After a few more minutes, he clicked the phone off and stared down at his notes as the group sat watching. Hunter finally spoke up.
“So, what’s going on, Dr. Jensen? Anything important?”
Jensen nodded, and then held up the paper for all to see. Hunter saw six rows with six numbers each. They looked somehow familiar, but he couldn’t place it.
“Using a set of symbols discovered on another archeological artifact from the same era, Dr. Petrakis was able to deduce that the drawings are actually sets of numbers, lined up in six rows of six. He managed to figure out the numbers, but he has no idea what they mean, and neither do I, at the moment.”
“I think I do,” Mac said.
Thirteen
When Lilith was eight, John had gone off to the Naval Academy and she had felt sad and lonely in the days since. He had always been her strength, her refuge—now he was gone. She loved her father as much as any little girl could, she supposed, but it wasn’t the same. The closeness, the bond of a brother and sister was one that couldn’t be matched as far as she was concerned. She could always talk to John, tell him anything, but not so with her father. He was an authority figure, a provider, and a source of strength in his own way, but she longed to have her brother back, longed for the intimacy and the friendship that she felt with him. Besides John, she had no other friends. Her mother certainly wasn’t a tower of virtue and strength—she was more like a cyborg that passed herself off as a human female. John had called frequently from the university, but the time between calls was beginning to get longer and longer.
To make matters worse, they had moved when her father had gotten a job as a defense
attorney in Washington, DC. But at least they were closer to John now, for all the good it did her.
To try to ease his daughter’s anxiety, he bought her a dog, a basset hound she had named Tater because of his potato-shaped head. She and the dog had bonded almost immediately. Wherever she went, Tater was there—they had become inseparable, could practically read each other’s minds, it seemed. In essence, Tater the basset hound had become her new brother.
“Hold tight to the leash, honey,” her father said as they strolled across the grass of Meridian Hill Park. She was glad to at least see her gray-haired father in a pair of khakis and a polo shirt instead of the suit and tie he constantly wore as a lawyer.
“Don’t worry, dad. Tater wouldn’t run away.”
But minutes later, she was proven wrong by the sudden appearance of a busy squirrel with a mouthful of walnut. Tater gave chase and yanked the leash out of the ten-year-old girl’s hand, darting off across the lawn and toward the sidewalk. Lilith yelled after the barking dog as her father ran behind her, yelling her name. The dog ran down the sidewalk and out of the park, then into the street, chasing after the terrified rodent. The next thing Lilith heard sent her heart into her throat—the screeching of tires and the yelping of her dog, Tater.
As she flew out of the park entrance and down the steps to the street, Lilith’s worst fears were justified. A young man in a white navy uniform stood outside the open door of his blue Chevy Malibu looking behind his car at the still form of her dog lying in the street, his midsection flattened and tongue hanging out like a piece of raw bacon. Lilith began to hyperventilate as she stood there in the street, cars piling up behind the Malibu, and stared down at Tater. She wanted to cry, to scream, to turn back time just a few minutes and stop all this from ever happening, but instead, she turned and vomited in the middle of the street.
Then, the storm clouds began to gather, and she stood and glared at the sailor, hatred burning in her eyes like an unquenchable fire. Her father knew what was about to happen, and put his hands on Lilith’s shoulders, trying to console her. But she wouldn’t be consoled. People began to get out of their cars, staring up at the sky, baffled that a storm could gather so quickly. A cloud as dark as a black hole swirled above them with unnatural speed, and as the wind became nearly strong enough to pick them up off the ground, they ran across the street for the cover of the nearby buildings. But the sailor remained frozen in place, transfixed by the young girl’s face, a mask of rage and fury.
“Lilith,” her father whispered in her ear, “don’t do this. I can take care of this. He’ll go to jail and never drive a car again. But don’t give yourself away. It’s not your time yet.”
Something seemed to click inside at her father’s words. The anger dissipated like a fleeting summer rainstorm, and she turned her eyes from the sailor to her poor dog, then walked to him and gently scooped him up in her arms. John Sr. talked to the sailor and Lilith made her way back toward the park entrance with Tater’s body. People filed out of the buildings across the street, glancing up at the sky as the clouds slowly disappeared from view.
Fourteen
They all stood staring at the screen of Jensen’s laptop as Mac punched the numbers into a website. “They’re not really six rows of six, they’re six rows of three and three. Big difference.”
As Hunter watched from behind Mac, sudden realization began to dawn. How had Mac figured this out?
As if he had read Hunter’s mind, he said, “I’m an intel officer in the Navy. I get paid to know this stuff.”
After a few minutes, Mac turned the screen so everyone could see.
“I knew what they were when I realized they were all within a certain range, as if they described something finite in size.”
“Something like a globe, you mean?” Lisa said.
“Exactly. They’re longitude and latitude coordinates, all in proximity to the Mediterranean. Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Sicily, Romania, and Crete in the middle.”
“Yeah, but what the hell does that mean?” Hunter asked.
“What’s more incredible is that whoever did this knew anything about longitude and latitude, or globes, for that matter,” Jensen said. “This was made over three thousand years ago.”
“And they’re all spaced apart at approximately the same distance,” Mac said. “In fact, it looks like they’re spaced at exactly the same distance.”
“Wait a minute,” Gabe said. “Those countries you just named. They all have something in common.”
“What’s that?” Mac said.
“But I don’t see how it could tie in to the artifact. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t make any sense?”
“We need to find out what’s inside that case.”
“What doesn’t make any sense?” Mac repeated.
“Every one of those countries on that map harbors an obelisk, the ones commissioned by David Lawrence.”
“I don’t get it,” Hunter said. “What does David Lawrence have to do with these map coordinates?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I might as well tell you, Hunter. David Lawrence is not who you think he is. You know him by another name. Lawrence Hendricks.”
Hunter suddenly felt like throwing up. “Lawrence Hendricks is alive?”
“He’s a very rich man, and a well-known humanitarian, responsible for feeding and housing thousands of needy families all over the world.”
“Humanitarian, my ass. He’s using that to hide his real intentions, whatever they are. We need to find out what these coordinates have to do with those obelisks. They could be bombs for all we know.”
“I don’t think they’re bombs, but I agree we need to find out what they are. I suggest we go inspect a couple of the obelisks, besides the one here in Crete, and see if we can find any clues.”
“Are any of your colleagues helping out on this?” Lisa asked.
“I’m afraid the whole thing has been disavowed. We’re on our own.”
“Dr. Jensen, do me a favor and make me a copy of those coordinates, if you don’t mind,” Hunter said.
“Sure. Don’t know what good it will do you.”
“You’re not planning on writing a story on this, are you?” Gabe asked.
Hunter smirked. “Are you kidding? Do you really think they would believe this? I’d just like to do a little more research, that’s all. Something about those coordinates strikes me as a little…odd.”
Jensen raised an eyebrow. “You mean other than the fact that they’re three-thousand years old?”
“I’m a reporter. I’m curious.”
As they stood up to leave, Hunter glanced outside just in time to see one of the local diggers staring in at him. Then the man disappeared.
“How many contract diggers do you have?” he asked.
“I don’t know, two or three. It’s not a huge site, so we don’t need that many people. Most of them are students and professors. Why do you ask?”
“Because one of them seems very interested in our conversation.”
Jensen glanced at the tent opening. “What did he look like?”
“Tall, curly black hair, dark skinned.”
“That’s probably Panos. He works on a lot of digs in the area.”
“Maybe we should have a talk with him,” Mac said. “He may know something.”
“Sure, I’ll get him.”
Thirty seconds later, Jensen returned to the tent.
“It seems Panos took off in a hurry, left the camp in his car. No one knows where he went, but I’m sure he’ll be back. We still have a lot of work to do.”
“If not, then I think we can be pretty sure who our mole is,” Hunter said.
Fifteen
Hunter glanced at the bedside clock as he lay in the hotel bed next to his sleeping wife. Six a.m. The sun would be rising soon. Yesterday’s events ran though his mind one after another, like a series of cable TV programs, though he had tried to ignore them.
Why woul
d anyone want to kidnap Jade? It just didn’t make sense. No one had asked for a ransom, and whatever was in that relic they uncovered really had nothing to do with her. She had just been along for the ride.
But the fact Lawrence Hendricks was involved put a much more sinister edge on things. If he was behind the kidnapping, Hunter couldn’t help but think it had something to do with revenge, payback for what he and Lisa had done to his lover, Lilith. She had become a raging beast, so they had really been left with no other choice but to bring her down, which they did—with a tranquilizer gun.
Later, they found Hendricks’s body, or what was left of it, mangled beyond recognition by Lilith herself. It had been positively identified as Hendricks. So how the hell could he be alive? Another mystery among a growing number of mysteries.
He would have to turn a story in to his editor at the American Wire Service soon, which was the whole reason he was here in the first place. He would leave out everything about his wife’s cousin being kidnapped, at least until he had a solid lead to go on. In the meantime, he would have to crank out something.
He glanced over at Lisa. Soon, she would give birth to his baby—their baby. They already knew it was a boy, but what they didn’t have was a name. They thought about naming it after Lisa’s father, Liang, or after Hunter’s father, Geoffrey, or Hunter Jr., but Lisa said she thought Junior was a horrible nickname. So far, they hadn’t agreed on anything. They would have to do so soon, though, because the baby was due in mere weeks.
They had already prepared the baby’s room, and the thought of it made Hunter smile. But the smile slowly faded as he remembered their first child, who had died at birth in a miscarriage.
He had just returned from an assignment when he received a call at work saying that Lisa had been rushed to the hospital. By the time he arrived, the baby had already been pronounced dead. He hadn’t even gotten to see the little body, to give their child a name, or to say goodbye. He quickly spiraled down into a black pit of darkness and depression, where he stayed for months, playing the phone call over and over again in his mind, seeing his wife lying there in the hospital bed, her tear-stained face lined with misery and despair. She had carried their child inside of her for months, carefully regulating her diet, her sleeping patterns, her working routine, painting the baby’s room, buying baby clothes and a crib, baby books, baby music CDs, talking to other mothers, including her own, about their experiences and what motherhood would be like, reading every book she could find. They had talked to the doctor who would have delivered the baby and decided that Hunter would be in the delivery room. He was determined to see the birth of his first child, no matter how bloody it was. He had even watched a few YouTube videos of live births just so he would know what to expect.
