Sanskrit Cipher: A Marina Alexander Adventure

by C. M. Gleason

  “No. She’s safe. And well.” Roman knew this—he made certain he was kept informed of his daughter’s activities. Despite the fact that she had rejected him as her parent, and the Skaladeska way as a whole, Roman would never leave her unprotected and ignored.

  Someday, she’d return to them and she’d stay. They had so much for her here—so much that would make her happy. And they needed her.

  “Very well. Is all else well, Roman?”

  He inclined his head. “Yes. There is little to report otherwise, Father.”

  “Very well, then. I have something to tell you.” Lev’s expression was grave. “There is a danger coming. We are threatened.”

  Roman frowned. “Are we not always threatened?”

  “This is a different sort of threat,” replied his father. “A deeper one that strikes at the core of Gaia, and of the sacred.”

  “The sacred?”

  “At one of Her centers,” Lev said.

  Roman wasn’t certain he fully understood, but from the expression on his father’s face, he knew it was a serious concern. “What must I do?”

  “Find Hedron. I sense he is at the core of this threat.”

  Roman gritted his teeth and nodded. “I’ll redouble our efforts.” He wavered for a moment, wondering if he should tell his father what he knew. But before he could make the decision, Lev spoke.

  “I wish you to journey with me.”

  Roman jolted, jerking his attention up to his father’s face. A sudden, all-encompassing joy rushed through him. “Father.” Again, he felt like a ten-year-old boy, but this invitation was so unexpected…and so long desired.

  The warmth that lit Lev’s eyes was a balm to Roman. “I thank you for that, my son,” he said, and Roman understood that his parent was just as touched about his response as he was about the invitation.

  “I shall be ready whenever you say,” Roman replied, and Lev nodded, still with that gentle, beatific smile.

  “Soon. Very soon.”

  The gulf between father and son had narrowed some, and it was good.

  Seventeen

  Cleveland, Ohio

  July 9

  By eight a.m., Fil was exhausted and stressed—and still without caffeine.

  He’d contacted all of the drivers to let them know what happened, though most of them had already heard through the radio network—which meant that he had to field a bunch of questions he didn’t have answers to. He’d met with the safety enforcement people—from a variety of agencies, including law enforcement and FEMA—multiple times, as well as with his boss and his boss’s boss. He’d contacted everyone who worked in the warehouse to let them know whether to come in or not—because they sure as hell weren’t going to be accepting any loads today.

  There were lawyers crawling all over the place, which Fil didn’t really understand, since there was no way Cargath was responsible for whatever weird thing happened to the truck drivers. It’d be like Domino’s Pizza taking the rap for a delivery guy’s tire blowing—stupid. The drivers took care of their own tractors, period. They weren’t even employees of Cargath—just contractors. Yeah, they’d been toting hazmat material, true, but that still didn’t make Cargath liable. At least, not that he could figure.

  “Hey, Fil.”

  He turned to find Sandy standing there in the middle of the empty dock area. She looked like she hadn’t gotten much sleep either, but it sure as hell wasn’t because someone called her out of the marital bed at freaking midnight.

  Her pink hair spiked every which way except on one side, where it was smashed flat like she’d gone to bed with it wet, and she looked really different. Kinda sickly. It took him a moment to realize that was because she wasn’t wearing makeup. Normally, she had bright blue or green or pink stuff above the eyes, real dark lashes and brows, and shiny, colorful lipstick. But today, her face was bare of paint and even looked like it was sagging a little bit.

  “I can’t believe all of this.” She appeared bewildered and shocked.

  “Tell me about it.” Fil looked around blankly, then back at her. “I thought I left a message that you didn’t have to come in. Didn’t I? I meant to.” Everything was a damned blur.

  “You did. But I just couldn’t stay away. I just had to do something. Poor guys,” she said, her voice cracking. “I wonder if they—you know—knew…you know, what was happening.”

  Fil didn’t want to think about it. He’d been thinking about it and talking about it enough today. He’d even seen a few photographs—not that he wanted to, but it had been impossible to avoid them. One thing was sure: those images were going to stick with him for a long while.

  Man, he needed coffee. Or something to get rid of the incessant pounding deep inside his skull. Maybe a steel spike driven into his brain would help.

  “What do they think happened?” asked Sandy. Without her colorful makeup, she seemed so much less vibrant and assured.

  Fil could only shake his head and throw up his hands in a weak gesture. “Don’t know. Have no idea. But since it wasn’t one but three of them, I think they’re trying to pin it on us somehow.” That made his head thud harder, and his stomach pinch painfully.

  “Us? Cargath? But how?” Sandy’s outrage mollified him a little. “We don’t even go near their tractors— I just— It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I know, I know. No one even goes out there in the yard except the drivers. For the most part, anyway. What do they think happened?” He was mostly talking to himself, because he was running on two hours of sleep and a hell of a lot of stress.

  “I know. It’s— Wait…” Sandy suddenly looked at him with big eyes. “What about the guy cleaning the tractors yesterday?”

  Fil was rubbing the bridge of his nose, pressing really hard in the hopes that it would somehow relieve the pounding inside his head. Or at least distract him from it.

  He pulled his hand away and looked at her. “The guy cleaning the tractors.” Suddenly, he felt ill and cold and hot all at once. Then he dismissed it. “I don’t know who he was, but there’s no way him cleaning the rigs caused anything.”

  But Sandy wasn’t convinced. “What if he wasn’t cleaning them? What if he was—I don’t know, spraying them with some sort of acid or something? Something that made them malfunction?”

  “They didn’t malfunction,” Fil replied, glancing over as he realized his boss was trying to get his attention. “They just sort of… Well, we don’t know. But it wasn’t the engine. It might have been the axles or something that just collapsed. No one’s sure yet.” He gave a brief wave to let Gallagher know he was coming. “I gotta go. Probably another meeting.”

  “But what if it was something that messed up the trucks?” Sandy asked, walking with him a few steps. “Somehow? I mean, we didn’t send him out there, and you said Ritter didn’t know what was going on…so who did?”

  Fil shook his head again. “I don’t know who sent him or what, but whatever he was spraying was harmless—I got it all over the front of me when I threw away the canister. It was just water. Thanks anyway, Sandy, but I gotta go,” he said grimly. “So much for my hundred twenty-third day of safety.”

  Eighteen

  Champaign, Illinois

  July 9, Wednesday morning

  Eli was reasonably sure he hadn’t been followed.

  After the unsettling event at his hotel room, he’d arranged for an Uber to meet him outside the front lobby. The place was silent and empty, though well lit, as he walked through carrying the box of Patty’s papers.

  Whoever had tried to break into his room surely wasn’t stupid enough to try again—at least right away. So Eli took up the box and slipped out of his room as soon as he gathered his thoughts. The hall was empty, and he waited inside the ice vending room for a few minutes to make sure no one was around. Then, feeling like Jason Bourne, he jogged down the three flights of stairs to the lobby, pausing on each floor to check the hallway.

  It was three thirty in the morning. He encoun
tered no one.

  Once downstairs, he found a chair tucked in the far corner of the lobby and parked himself there in the shadows—watching, watching—until his Uber driver arrived.

  This would be the test—either the intruder was waiting for him to leave and would follow him and the vehicle, or not.

  Either way, Eli had a contingency plan.

  While he waited, he dug out the business card of the police officer who’d interviewed him about Tina’s death and the car bomb. Detective Perle. He didn’t want to wait in town to talk to the man sometime tomorrow—or today. He had the need to get out of here, to get home, to figure out what the hell was going on with Patty’s notes.

  But he had to report the incident. Someone had—he was pretty damned sure—tried to break into his hotel room. With a syringe.

  And now, with two of his students dead… He didn’t want to get wrapped up in this any more than he’d already been, but it was out of his control.

  So he left a voice mail for the detective and gave as much detail as possible. Then, having done his duty—and knowing full well he’d hear back from the cop—he set his phone aside and waited to see whether he’d be able to leave the hotel safely.

  But when his Uber, a Corolla, pulled out of the hotel drop-off area with Eli in the back seat and eased out of the parking lot, there were no other vehicles nearby, no headlights in sight. It was almost four o’clock, and the night was just pushing up against dawn.

  Nevertheless, Eli kept watching out the back of the Corolla. He must have made the driver nervous, for at last Chuck (that was his name) gave an uncomfortable laugh and said, “You running away from an angry husband or something?”

  “No.” Eli relaxed in his seat, holding the shipping box carefully. He was eager to dig around inside and see what the hell might have upset someone so much, and at the same time was certain there was nothing in there that could have done so.

  Much as he loved his Coleopteroids and Apis and other insects, Eli knew they simply weren’t that exciting to an average Joe. Or Jane.

  So he was probably mistaken.

  Still. The man had been trying to get into his room. While waiting for his driver, Eli had done a quick YouTube search for how to break into a hotel room and found several videos showing how easy it was to slide open a U-bolt using a standard hotel-issue Do Not Disturb sign.

  Just went to show that maybe camping out under the stars in the Amazon jungle was less dangerous than staying in a supposedly secure hotel room in the suburbs.

  Still channeling Jason Bourne—while picturing himself as Idris Elba, because why not?—Eli had his driver drop him off at an all-night grocery store, where he connected with a second ride—this time, a Lyft driver—and had that person take him to a twenty-four-hour breakfast place. He was getting a little hungry, and needed to bide time till he could get to the car rental place.

  But all that clandestine activity was more than six hours ago, and now Eli was just about to exit I-74 at Urbana when he realized maybe he didn’t want to go home just yet.

  A little prickle of unease washed over him as he drove past his exit while considering the situation. He’d planned to drop off the rental car then have an Uber take him home, but was it safe to even go there?

  Probably, because surely the man who’d tried to break into his hotel room hadn’t seen him leave and was likely still in Cincinnati—or just on his way here. The idea that he was being followed was so crazy, yet possible, that Eli’s stomach tightened painfully around the coffee he’d been swilling over the last two hundred miles.

  In the end, he decided not to take any chances someone might be waiting at his apartment.

  So he dropped the car at the rental place and had an Uber take him to campus. He had a change of clothes and toiletries in his office at the lab for when he worked out at the ARC, and he felt secure, since no one could get into the lab’s elevators without an ID badge—which, fortunately, had been in his wallet and not in his computer case when the car blew sky high.

  He huffed out a sad, heartfelt breath as he thought again of Tina Janeski. He’d have to send out a message to the entire department, and he’d call her parents with his condolences as soon as he got their contact info.

  Once inside his office, Eli locked the door. He sank onto the chair and stared at the shipping box.

  Well, here goes nothing.

  He pushed back the flaps and began unloading Patty’s effects.

  The computer tablet, stamped with the school name, was on top in its rugged field case.

  Books—some familiar texts and others he didn’t recognize, like a tourist guide to India and Nepal and a memoir about Buddhism and beekeeping. He set the latter aside because it looked like something he’d want to read regardless of whether it was relevant.

  A well-equipped toolkit for gathering specimens. This one, in a leather case, had Patty’s monogram on it, and Eli felt a pang of grief. He recognized it, for it had been a gift from her parents. He was surprised they’d included it.

  That was it, besides the half-empty bottle of tequila and the syringe he’d added to the box.

  Eli reached for the tablet; it was the obvious answer to the question what are they after?—whoever they were.

  But he was stymied again—the tablet was, of course, drained of battery. Muttering to himself, Eli scrabbled around in his office for a charging cord, since there wasn’t one in the box, and realized he’d have to obtain Patty’s login information before he could access it anyway.

  As he plugged in the tablet, he thought about the syringe his would-be room invader had dropped, and picked up the phone to text his friend in the biochem lab over at Noyes. Maybe Milea could identify what the asshole had intended to use on him.

  He sent a message for her to call him or let him know when he could meet up with her urgently, then decided to walk over to the ARC and clean himself up a bit in the shower.

  After that…well, who knew?

  He was just picking up his gym bag when the email dinged on his desktop. He’d bumped the mouse while unloading the box, waking up the computer, and now all of his emails had downloaded.

  Probably a good thing, since his laptop was in ashes back in Cincinnati. He didn’t have time to go through them all now. He skimmed the list. Many were condolences about Patty, and others were staff notices that he usually filed in the trash.

  But then he remembered something, and began to scroll back up through his old emails until he found it.

  Yes, it was the last email he’d received from Patty other than the excited text (which would have cost a fortune to send) two days later telling him she was going to change her thesis.

  He clicked to open it.

  Eli:

  Just a short note…I’ve gotten to know one of the local guys here in Thiksey, which is one of the little mountain towns in Ladakh. He took me out to see the dorsata hives and—you told me they were huge, but they’re really huge! Totally covering the side of a small mountain. Wish I was going to be here during honey-hunting season—I’d love to see those guys knocking down the hives.

  The most exciting thing is this guy, Manish, was telling me about a very rare bee. Its hive is tucked away in the mountains—his English isn’t great, and my Pashto is even worse, so I think that’s what he was saying. He showed me pix on his phone (everyone here has a phone—and solar chargers!—but they mostly use them for taking pictures). I wanted him to send me the pictures, but he refused.

  Anyway, this bee is like nothing I’ve ever seen—I’m dying to know what you think. We couldn’t figure out how to get the pix to my phone from his, so he’s taking me up there to look at them—I think he likes me ;-)—but he says it’s a couple hours’ journey.

  Eli, from the picture, this bee looks incredible. You wouldn’t believe it. Tiny bees, gorgeous rose-gold in color, absolutely glorious colors all over—and the legs are really light. Almost golden yellow! I’m not sure whether to believe the colors in the photos are real, and I wo
n’t until I actually see them in person, but he swears (at least, as far as I can understand with our language barrier) that they’re accurate.

  As near as I can tell, they would be Apis melliflera, senso strictu, except: size and color. He also was trying to tell me they had more than one queen, but he must be talking about the splitting of the colony or something like that—like I said, we aren’t communicating perfectly. At least, not verbally. ;-) Did I mention he likes blondes?

  Eli laughed at this. Tall, fair, and gorgeous Patty surely attracted a lot of attention from the dark-skinned, dark-haired people in India.

  Anyway, he’s going to take me up there tomorrow, I think. If this turns out to be something exciting, you better believe I’m changing my thesis!

  Hope you’re well back in super-boring (but much cooler) Champaign and aren’t being chased by too many wide-eyed undergrads (ha, ha!)—I’ll write back and send pix (I hope!) as soon as possible. Thanks again for the satellite converter.

  Can’t wait to show you more. Miss you! Patty.

  Eli sighed as a renewed rush of grief swept over him. Hard to believe he’d never see the enthusiastic, smart-as-a-whip, and funny-as-hell Patricia Denke ever again. What a loss.

  He decided to print the email so he’d have it, because if his suspicions were correct, this message had more information than he’d been able to get so far from her dead tablet. And now, he needed to get out of here and figure out what was going on. He glared at the tablet, which was still charging, and mentally ordered it to hurry.

  Just then, there was another ding in his email box and he automatically glanced at the new message. The subject line snagged his attention: Weird bee—can you help my colleague?

  He really didn’t have time to mess around with stuff like this (he already knew it was going to be a Halictid, like these “weird” bees always were—their metallic green color really set people off) when someone was blowing up cars and breaking into hotel rooms with syringes, but being an entomologist first and a reluctant Jason Bourne second, Eli couldn’t help but click on the email, which was from a friend currently at the University of Chicago.