The Sword of Cyrus: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 4)

by JC Ryan

  Today, having found the plans already and now that he was certain he’d located every reference, and turned them over to Sinclair for processing, he began searching for a way to render the data in the Great Gallery into pictures that made any sense. The Fibonacci skip sequences had already been applied to the large number of blocks there, with no comprehensible result. Now Raj had the idea of assigning a shade of gray to each of the blocks, according to their dimensions, and lining them up in rows, much as a black-and-white TV screen painted a grayscale picture with tiny pixels.

  The first attempt revealed that there was a picture there, but it didn’t make much sense. Raj wracked his brain for the key to giving the right weight to each different symbol. Then it hit him. The largest concentration of a single dimensional result; that is, the number represented by the multiplication of the height, width and diagonal measurement of the block, seemed to be in the upper corners. This must represent either white or black on the color scale. Everything else must line up in numerical order, based on the experience they’d gained of the rest of the pyramid. Everything was a mathematical equation, the results of which were Fibonacci numbers.

  Taking a guess that in a gray-scale picture, the upper corners would represent sky, he assigned a light gray to the symbol that had the largest number of instances. With each new dimensional result, he gave a small increment of darker gray, until he had assigned values to all the numbers represented. Then he ran a simple switch program to replace the numbers with blocks in shades of gray. Again, he had a picture, but not a sensible one. The thing to do was to figure out the width, in pixels, of the pictures. He was off by a few, it seemed.

  A little more thought brought him the inspiration. He’d use the highest Fibonacci number represented in the symbols as the width of the finished picture. The idea held a certain symmetry that he thought would have appealed to the 10th Cyclers, whom he’d come to know through their work as well as anyone could know someone who was more than 26,000 years dead. Adjusting the switch program, Raj held his breath as he ‘painted’ the picture on his screen one more time.

  This time, it made a weird sort of sense, but what was he seeing? It looked like a ruined city, broken buildings standing tall above miles of rubble. What looked like human bodies were everywhere, too charred to tell much about them. In the bottom left-hand corner, there was a caption embedded in the picture itself. It looked to Raj like the date references he’d seen, first in the greeting and later on many library documents. He still couldn’t read the data like Sinclair could, but he was curious enough to instant message Sinclair with a copy of it electronically snipped from the picture, asking for a translation.

  The answer was not long in coming. “It translates to July 29, 2020. Where did you get that?”

  All color drained from Raj’s face. What city was this? The date, marked on a picture more than 26,000 years old, was a mere forty days from today.

  ~~~

  When Raj didn’t answer, Sinclair was worried enough to intercom Daniel and ask him to meet at Raj’s office. The pair found Raj frantically pounding his keyboard, ‘developing’ picture after picture and printing them out. All had the same date reference on them, they realized as they picked up the printouts and tried to make sense of what they were seeing.

  “Raj, what the hell is this?” Daniel demanded, when his friend ignored his presence and kept at his task.

  “I’m trying to find out what cities these are,” Raj answered, with a little less information than he thought he was conveying. Daniel walked over to his desk and put his hand down on Raj’s flying fingers.

  “Raj. Stop. Tell us what these pictures are,” Daniel said, catching and holding Raj’s attention. He was worried about his friend’s color, a peculiar gray under his usual brown tones. It made him look ill.

  “Is it not plain to see?” Raj answered. Taking up the first picture, he pointed to a familiar-looking spire surrounded by rubble. “Is that not the Washington Monument?” Seeing his friend’s blank stare, he pointed to the caption in the lower left-hand corner. It is a date; I had Sinclair confirm it. Now Sinclair looked thunderstruck, and Raj continued. “The date is 29 July, just forty days from now. The 10th Cyclers captured an image of what the Washington Monument will look like on that date.”

  Daniel stared at it, unable to process what he was seeing. It looked damaged, like someone had taken a bite out of one side. And where was the reflecting pool? He handed it to Sinclair for his opinion, just as Raj found another picture of a famous landmark.

  “Is this not Buckingham Palace?” Raj asked. Daniel stared at the image. No, he couldn’t make it out to be Buckingham Palace; it was leveled, just a pile of debris to mark it. But the famous Victoria Memorial stood, virtually untouched, in front of it. A wave of grief went through him for King William and his young family, who had become avid supporters of the Rossler Foundation even before William ascended to the throne after his father’s unexpected death. Daniel devoutly hoped they hadn’t been in the Palace when this happened. Or wouldn’t be when it happens. How the heck was he supposed to talk about time, now? And, could they change this outcome by warning them? Sure, they could, couldn’t they? Had to.

  Raj had continued pulling out pictures and naming landmarks where he could. Slowly, the three of them came to see the big picture. On a date forty days from now, a terrible cataclysm would take place that would level many of the major cities in the world. Daniel couldn’t help but remember all the times Sarah had brought up the 10th Cycle prediction that unless a civilization could learn to live without war, each cycle would have their own cataclysm. This certainly looked like her belief in its accuracy come true.

  He couldn’t bear to tell her of it, but how could he not? Should they take little Nick and the rest of their families and head for some sanctuary away from the larger cities? What would be left for them if everything were destroyed? He didn’t notice the tears streaming down his face until Sinclair put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

  “Buck up, boyo. We’ve work to do.” Seeing that he had Daniel’s full attention, Sinclair clapped him on the back. “I think it’s time to get the rest of the translators working on the time viewing stuff. And you’d better give your friend President Harper a call.”

  Daniel agreed; the president would have to be informed first thing. But before that, he needed a few minutes, or hours, to get his own head around the information. He’d have to present it in a way that was believable, and this was the most unbelievable thing he’d ever discovered in his entire career. Furthermore, he’d better have both an explanation and an assessment of the total effect. He was going to have to identify as many of the cities in Raj’s printouts as possible.

  “Raj, you’ve identified most of these places, right?”

  “Yes, Daniel.”

  “Can you write the cities in the margins? I need to figure out how extensive this attack is going to be, and then we’ll need help in stopping it.”

  “I can. And I found a text file in the gallery as well. It was small, we must have overlooked it before. I’ll send it to Sinclair for translation.”

  “Do that, and tell him to put a rush on it. Maybe it explains these pictures.” Daniel had a number of other people to talk to before he contacted Harper. He had to get started, because there was not a second to waste.

  However, his top priority was to let Sarah in on what they’d found. It was true that her field of research was far removed from much of the 10th Cycle data. On the other hand, she had been with him from the beginning, and had been instrumental in discovering the meaning of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Furthermore, she had a good head on her shoulders. As much as he wanted to protect her from this knowledge, she had a right to know. He instructed Raj to keep at it, stared down the hallway at Sinclair’s receding back, and then made a beeline for Sarah’s office.

  Daniel, Sarah, Raj, Roy, Luke and Sinclair worked tirelessly to ferret out every bit of information they could about the images Raj had found and t
he technology that had produced them during the 10th Cycle. While they worked on a presentation for the president, Luke discovered that Raj had found coordinates on each picture. They now had a list of the targets represented by the pictures, and he worked with Roy to determine what kind of weapon of mass destruction would be required to destroy them so thoroughly. They were operating on the assumption that it was Iran deploying those weapons, or a consortium of Middle Eastern countries led by Iran, based on the information that the translator-spies had stolen, and the location of the computers they’d traced so far as receiving the information. They were a long way from discovering the ringleaders, but the stakes had just gotten higher.

  To Luke’s dismay, Roy was of the opinion that the destruction could be carried out by bombs no larger than a briefcase; or a series of much smaller bombs if they were arrayed correctly.

  It wouldn’t take that many bombs to level the city centers or important locations in each city. With the centers devastated, governments, police agencies, commerce and banking would all be in chaos, if not utterly destroyed as well. Furthermore, some of the pictures Raj had found after he called Sinclair and Daniel in looked a lot like military installations. Hit those, and you eliminated any ability for counterstrike. This was even worse than it looked at first, and that was the worst thing Luke could have imagined anyway.

  This news couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Luke checked with Daniel to be sure he was ready, and then called Sam Lewis’s private cell phone. It was nearly midnight, Boulder time.

  “Do you know what the hell time it is?” demanded the angry voice on the other end of the line.

  “Sorry, Sam. I do. If it could have waited, I wouldn’t be calling.” Luke didn’t identify himself. Sam knew his voice.

  “Luke? Oh, shit, now what?” Lewis wished that Luke would just once call him at a reasonable hour and invite him to go fishing. Every time he heard Luke’s voice, a new crisis loomed. This must be a bad one, if it couldn’t wait another four or five hours.

  “You’re not going to believe it, old friend. We need to come and show it to the president. But it can’t even wait until we get there. Can you pave the way again? We need to talk to him tonight.” Luke was aware of what he was asking, and of what Lewis was thinking. It didn’t take a genius to know that if you called a guy over and over again with bad news, he was sooner or later going to wish he didn’t know you. But Sam was good folks. He’d do what was asked of him, because he knew they’d never cried wolf.

  Fasten your seatbelt

  June 19, 2020, D-day minus 39; Washington DC, 4 a.m.

  “Daniel, if I didn’t know you so well, I’d say you’d slipped a cog,” Harper said. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Mr. President - Nigel - would I have gotten you out of bed if I weren’t absolutely sure?” Daniel was bone weary, and not in the mood to verbally spar with Harper. He was as certain as he could be. The evidence was overwhelming. Pictures from a future that was too close for comfort, showing every major city in the US, in a state resembling Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombs. And they hadn’t identified every image, much less determined whether they’d found all of them. Raj and Sinclair were hard at work identifying those that had recognizable landmarks, and it appeared Jerusalem, the first non-US target they’d found, was at equal risk. That set them on a quest for other US allies’ identifiable cities, in case the attack were a widespread, even global effort.

  “We’ll be on our way to you in a few hours, to show you the evidence. But we don’t have any hours to waste. Lewis’s investigative team has dispersed, and we need them back on the job immediately. We’ve got to find the organization that’s behind this, and we’ve got little over a month in which to do it. That’s if we can do anything about it. Maybe its fait accompli and all we can do is participate in the end of the world as we know it. Please, brief Lewis now and let him get started.” He looked at his watch as he spoke. He had just two hours to make his flight, and he still needed to go home and pack for a day or two. He wasn’t going to make it.

  “No need to brief him, Daniel. He’s been right here all along, and you’re on speaker. What do you want him to do?” For an intelligent man, the president was asking a foolish question. Lewis would have a far better idea of what to do than Daniel could suggest.

  “I don’t know, Nigel. Pull out their fingernails? He’s got to find a way to make them talk!”

  “Okay, Daniel, settle down. I’ll see you in a few hours.” Harper had detected the desperation in Daniel’s last remark and knew he couldn’t push him any further. Rossler would be in his office as soon as he could, and he could tell Lewis then if he had any suggestions they hadn’t already put into place. “Wait, Daniel, how are you getting here?”

  “Commercial flight if I can make it.” Daniel’s delivery was impatient. The clock was ticking away, and he needed to end this call.

  “You have an executive airport nearby, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Rocky Mountain Metropolitan, why?” Daniel was fidgeting, so anxious that he was considering hanging up on the president of the United States.

  “Ever wanted to catch a ride in a fighter jet?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “New Lockheed model is being tested in Colorado Springs. I’ll send it to pick you up at your convenience. Luke Clarke is coming too, right? Just get yourself to that airport as soon as you can. It will be waiting for you.”

  The long drive to DIA now off the table, Daniel had time to brief those who were staying behind to continue work on the viewing device and any further information they could gather.

  After doing so, Daniel took Sarah home. It was three a.m., and they’d been up since early the previous morning. While Sarah made coffee, Daniel went to the baby’s room and gazed at him for a moment, before carefully picking him up and holding him close. Daniel didn’t know what the next hour would hold, much less the next days and weeks. The comfort of holding his boy wouldn’t last very long without another chance to do so, but it was all he had for now. After a moment, he laid Nick back in his crib. He was getting too big for it, Daniel observed. When this was over, they’d need to get him a big-boy bed. He refused to think further than that.

  It took him only a few minutes to pack a couple of days’ changes of clothing and throw his shaving kit into the bag. Shouldering it, he went to the kitchen, where his coffee was already waiting for him.

  “We’ll find them, Sarah. We have to. We’ll find them and stop them. Sweetheart, I can’t stand to leave you right now, but it’s imperative I be on hand to help Nigel understand he has to throw everything the USA can muster at this with no delay. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  ~~~

  June 19, 2020; D-day minus 39, Washington, DC, 9 a.m.

  Daniel and Luke stood at attention and under Secret Service scrutiny in the anteroom of the Oval Office, waiting to be summoned. Daniel thought that if he looked as bad as he felt, it was no wonder the security agents didn’t trust him. Both he and Luke had been subjected to very personal searches, a new experience for Daniel, and not one he’d care to repeat. The laptop he’d brought with him and the map case that Luke carried with the photos printed out in folio size had both been confiscated. He only hoped that they’d reappear when Harper was ready to talk with them. For the hundredth time, he looked at his watch, surprised to see that they’d only been waiting about ten minutes.

  At last, the doors opened and they were ushered in. Harper barked at the agents to leave them alone, and under protest, they withdrew. Daniel looked around the office and found it strange that it was only the three of them, no sign of Sam Lewis or any other high ranking official. But he dismissed it, there was no time to think or ask about that.

  “Daniel, I can’t tell you what a hornet’s nest you’ve poked this time. I’ve just had the head of the Secret Service telling me you don’t seem to have had a mental breakdown, but I have my doubts. There’s nothing on the radar, nothing at all that corroborates what you tol
d me this morning.” Harper’s slumped shoulders told the story of what had been going on since Daniel’s early-morning call.

  “You had me investigated?” Daniel asked. He couldn’t really blame Harper, but it still felt like a stab in the back.

  “You, Luke, your wife, your father-in-law, and a few others. I’ve had a meeting of the National Security Council, every member of which believes you to be insane. Why should I think any differently?”

  “Nigel, you know me!” Daniel began. Then he reconsidered his approach. This was a waste of time. “Have you looked at the photos? Seen the presentation?” He thought it unlikely; the Secret Service had probably just made sure the laptop wasn’t wired to explode. He was right.

  “No. Why don’t you show me?” Harper said, a little less angry now, but still sounding weary. “I’m sorry, Daniel. I know you believe what you’ve told me but I have nothing that is convincing me of what you are saying.”

  Daniel looked around and spied their confiscated items on a side table. He opened the laptop and queued up the hurriedly-created presentation to keep him on track with his narration.

  “Okay, Nigel, fasten your seatbelt. You are in for a very rough ride. This started a couple of days ago. One of our translators had reached an impasse on a passage she was working on. As it turned out, she had it right, but didn’t believe what it was saying, so she took it to Sinclair O’Reilly.” He stopped and looked at Harper questioningly. Harper nodded. He remembered who Sinclair was.

  “So he translated it, and realized they’d made a very important discovery. Nigel, the 10th Cyclers had technology to view the future, and the past.”

  Harper made a strangled exclamation, but Daniel ploughed on, determined to have his say before Harper threw him out. It was their only chance.

  “To make a very long story short, we also found pictures, coded in the stones of the Great Gallery of the Giza Pyramid. We have printouts. They show cities, our cities, in rubble. They’re dated a little over a month in the future, and there are coordinates that prove they’re our cities. The 10th Cyclers saw our cataclysm, and recorded it, before their civilization was destroyed.”