Park Skarda-April Force: Emerald Part 4

Ten minutes later she was standing on the sun-filled plaza near the Port Said Street entrance in the shadow of the twenty-three-foot-high colossus of Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Her head reeled. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Across the bay, whose waters bobbed with brightly-painted red, yellow, and blue fis.h.i.+ng boats, she could see the sandy embankment of the Silsilah Peninsula, and far away to her left, along the taxi-choked highway that was the Corniche, the dun-colored battlements of Fort Qait-bey at the tip of the western sweep of the harbor's crescent arm, where once the ancient Pharos lighthouse guided sailors to safety.

If the scroll was right...

Inhaling a lungful of salt-laced air, she pulled out her smartphone to call Skarda.

An incongruous sound interrupted her.

Quick footsteps approaching.

She turned to see a muscular Egyptian man with a shaved head and a cheap dark suit blocking her way, staring at her.

"Dr. Laura Carlson?" His Arabic accent was thick.

Flinders didn't answer. For some reason she couldn't explain, her guard went up at the sight of this man. There was something menacing-violent-about him. Something cheap and greasy. And behind him, she caught sight of two more identically-dressed men standing in the background, their hands hovering at their sides, as if waiting for a signal to strike.

"You are Dr. Laura Carlson?" he repeated.

In spite of her reservations, she found herself nodding. Immediately she cursed herself.

"Come with me," the man ordered.

"Who are you?"

"Come with me, he repeated." Menace weighted his tone. He took a step forward, reaching for her arm.

Adrenaline spiked through her bloodstream. She took a step back, glancing around for a security guard. "Leave me alone!" Then she realized she was clutching her smartphone. Her fingers stabbed at the keyboard.

The man snarled and grabbed her arm, digging his fingers hard into her muscle. The phone dropped to the pavement, shattering.

Blood rushed to her head. "I'll scream!"

"Go ahead," the man said. It was a sneer.

His free hand shot out to clamp over her mouth. His fingers reeked of s.h.i.+sha tobacco, making her empty stomach roil.

Flinders' senses reeled. She kicked out wildly, spasmodically, but the man easily sidestepped her. Past his shoulder she saw the other two men moving toward her.

And one was holding a hypodermic.

She bucked against the hands clamped on her arm and mouth, squirming to wrench herself free. But the more she struggled, the tighter his grip dug into her.

Jellyfish.

Jellyfish? From somewhere in the dark recesses of her consciousness, her brain was yelling at her about jellyfish.

And then she remembered: yesterday she'd overheard two British tourists talking about a jellyfish infestation at Agami, just down the coast.

With a sudden lurch, she twisted her neck, rolling her eyes toward the oncoming men. The man with the hypodermic had almost reached her. Bright sunlight silvered the needle, magnifying it in her imagination.

Jellyfis.h.!.+

Without another thought she willed her muscles to go limp, as if she were a living puddle of flesh. Surprised, her attacker just marginally loosened his grip, but it was enough. She slid away from his grasp, at the same time stomping her foot down on his toe with all the power she could muster. He yelped, then swore loudly in Arabic.

She twisted away, free.

Flinders ran, her heart battering her ribcage. A flock of teenagers with backpacks burst from the edge of the granite faade and she merged into their midst, pivoting around, feeling suddenly safe in their numbers.

The three men had vanished.

The teenagers swarmed around her like a school of fish and then they were gone, running and laughing down the expanse of the plaza. For a moment she stood there, alone.

Then she ran for the safety of the library.

NINE.

THEY were sitting at an outdoor table at a coffee bar in Saad Zaghloul Square, its pastel green walls cooled by the serrated shadows of clacking palm fronds. April sat with her back to one of the walls, keeping one eye on the door and the other on the crush of taxis, yellow trams, and donkey carts parading past the Cecil Hotel. The air was heavy with the scents of cardamom and falafel.

Peering at the screen of her laptop, Flinders was trembling, not only from the scare of the attempted kidnapping, but from the excitement of what she'd found on the papyrus. She lifted her head, glancing around at the other patrons as if she expected to see the three Egyptian attackers bearing down on her.

Skarda rested a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry. April will keep a lookout."

She nodded, grateful, but her eyes kept darting left and right as she rotated the screen to show him the photos of the papyrus she had taken. "What we have here is a hymn dedicated to Djehuty/Thoth. Dr. Cowell dated the shaft to the Gerzean period-starting about 4,000 BCE-which coincides with the introduction of writing on papyrus paper in Egypt. Gerzean script is proto-hieroglyphic-it's my specialty-and this script is similar, but its forms are much older, less formalized. I've never seen anything like this before." Lowering her face closer to the screen, she shook her head back and forth in amazement. "I'm willing to bet that this is a copy of a much older doc.u.ment, maybe something that was carved in stone."

"So what does that mean?" Skarda asked.

She sucked in a breath, not quite believing what she was seeing. Then she looked up, staring at him with wide eyes. "It means that the hieroglyphs on this scroll are at least seven thousand years old-two millennia before writing was supposedly invented." Excitement glowed on her face. "Let me fill you in with some basic background info. As we talked about before, my specialty is archaic Egyptian-meaning Predynastic-scripts. That would be prior to around 3,000 BCE, before the beginning of the Pharaonic monarchy starting with King Menes. We're talking Neolithic settlements here-small villages of nomads who built wattle-and-daub huts from reeds or animal skins, made pottery, wove cloth. This would be around 6,000 BCE. While there are quite a few archaic inscriptions from a couple of thousand years later, like the symbols on Gerzean pottery from 4,000 BCE and the Narmer Palette from 3,200, artifacts from this period are hard to come by because a lot were isolated symbols etched into the bottom of clay pots and much of the evidence has been buried by Nile silt over the millennia.

"But here's the good news. Recently some new finds have been uncovered in Lower Egypt-carved ivory tablets and pottery shards that show a remarkable resemblance to the Vinca script found in eastern Europe. Vinca is also known as 'Old European'. I personally believe it's a continuation of the language spoken by the Cro-Magnons, who spread into Europe around fifty thousand years ago. It's very clear that the Cro-Magnons had language-today it survives in isolates like Basque and Berber. For example, the Basque word for 'ceiling' means 'top of the cavern', and the word for 'knife' means 'stone that cuts'. I think that by 7,000 or so BCE a system of writing was being developed in eastern Europe around the Black Sea. Eventually this evolved into Vinca-pictogram inscriptions found mainly on pottery shards discovered in Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine, dating as far back as 5,300 BCE, but no doubt having their origins much earlier. Some scholars think the symbols are religious iconography or votive offerings, and some think they're a numeral system, but I think they're an syllabary for a spoken language. So far no one has been able to decipher the Vinca script."

She turned her laptop so he could see the screen covered with rectangles, inscribed circles, comb-like symbols, and triangles. "This is what Vinca looks like. The script has a remarkable resemblance to Minoan Linear A, which I think also evolved from Vinca."

She maneuvered the computer back around. "Now imagine," she went on, "a group of Neolithic people living on the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea seventy-five-hundred years ago. At that time the sea wasn't a sea at all, but a freshwater lake, which archaeologists call the Euxine Lake. There would have been villages and settlements all along the sh.o.r.e-probably a fairly large population. And here's what's amazing-using robot submarines researchers have found buildings from these settlements perfectly preserved on the anoxic bottom."

Skarda raised a quizzical eyebrow at the word.

Flinders grinned. "It means there's no oxygen on the bottom of the Black Sea, or at least very little. So anything organic, like wood, won't rot. It will be perfectly preserved through the millennia."

April kept her eyes on the crowd, but it was clear she'd been listening. "How about bodies?"

Flinders gave a little shudder of revulsion. "I guess they're probably down there. I guess they'd have to be."

"Cool."

Flinders scrunched up her mouth, chasing the thought away. "At any rate, this would have been an almost Eden-like area, with a healthy population, farms and fields of grain, orchards, a huge lake teeming with fish, and prosperous trade."

She leaned forward, pus.h.i.+ng up her gla.s.ses, her sapphire eyes sparkling. "Now here's where it gets a bit controversial. I think this was the location of Atlantis."

___.

Grinning, she let the bombsh.e.l.l hang in the air. She was enjoying Skarda's stare of disbelief.

April let her eyes close in exasperation.

"You're right," Skarda said drily. He made no attempt to mask the skepticism in his tone. "That is a bit controversial."

Flinders laughed. "Well, hear me out. First of all, the story of Atlantis as it's come down to us is a myth, and was considered a myth by many in Plato's time, when he wrote about it in two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. It was supposed to have been located in front of the Pillars of Hercules, what we call the Strait of Gibraltar. But obviously there never was a huge island in the Atlantic Ocean in front of the Strait, sunken or otherwise. There's a very small sunken island there called Spartel Bank that was inundated about twelve thousand years ago when the ice caps melted, but it's really nothing more than a mud shoal and never could have supported such an advanced civilization. Of course, people have located Atlantis at many spots all over the world, from the British Isles to the Azores to South America and even in Antarctica.

"But the thing is, there's absolutely no mention of Atlantis in ancient literature before Plato, so he might have made up the story himself. Or all the other ma.n.u.scripts pertaining to it have been lost or just not yet found. But since his time, millions of words have been written about Atlantis, with the story growing with every re-telling, so now we have the Atlanteans using giant power crystals and piloting UFO's and shooting down their enemies with death rays.

"Let's look at Plato's description of Atlantis: a vast plain surrounded by mountains that led down to the sh.o.r.e of a sea, flowing rivers, and frequent earthquakes. After Atlantis was deluged, the once-great port became blocked by shoals of mud. All this perfectly describes the northeast sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea, where the Kerch Strait empties into the Sea of Azov. I think there was a prosperous Neolithic city there, the envy of all, with advanced language and writing skills, including the origins of the Vinca script, that sunk beneath the waves and gave rise to the Atlantis myth."

Skarda leaned forward. The subject fascinated him. But April was s.h.i.+fting in her seat. All this talk was making her antsy.

Flinders continued. "You have to realize that the designation 'Pillar of Hercules' was used in the ancient world to refer to any kind of natural gateway, like a strait. In fact, the term originally referred to the Black Sea region, before it was appropriated by the Greeks to use in their mythologies. The Phoenicians erected 'Pillars of Hercules' everywhere they traveled."

"So explain the sinking part," Skarda said.

"Well, this is where it gets really interesting. Based on archaeological evidence, in approximately 5,500 BCE the Aegean Sea overflowed, spilling over into the Sea of Marmara, and breaching the line of cliffs that held back the sea waters from the Euxine Lake. The result was a cascade of water, hundreds of times more powerful than Niagara Falls, thundering over the cliffs to inundate the great lake with sea water to create the modern Black Sea. The Neolithic settlements would have been wiped out almost overnight. 'Atlantis' would have sunk beneath the waves."

Skarda nodded, swept up in her enthusiasm. "Is this the origin of the Biblical flood stories?"

"Quite possibly! The ancient Israelites borrowed their flood myth from already-existing Sumerian-Babylonian stories, who could easily have been writing down orally-transmitted tales from prehistory. Think about it-what would happen in the aftermath of a catastrophic event like this? There would have been a great diaspora, a ma.s.sive migration of people away from the scene of the disaster to safer parts of the world. So some people traveled west to central Europe, where traces of the Atlantean language remain to this day, like Basque. Others traveled east into Mesopotamia and Sumeria, where the script they developed shows many correspondences to the Vinca symbols. And still others migrated south into northern Africa, where today the Berbers speak another language isolate that seems to be related to Basque, and where I think they originated the culture that would flower into the dynastic culture of ancient Egypt. As a matter of fact, the first century BCE Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who wrote a forty-volume history of the ancient world, describes the original Egyptians as being strangers in their land, the most ancient of men, who had settled on the banks of the Nile, bringing with them the civilization of their homeland, along with perfected writing and language skills. Of course, this is relative-we're still talking about a Neolithic culture here. And the Egyptians just seemed to have appeared overnight in the historical record. So, if you ask me, the ancient Egyptians were the survivors of 'Atlantis'. I think that Predynastic Egyptian hieroglyphic scripts took a thousand or so years to start evolving from the original Vinca script, and that's what we have here."

Finally April chimed in, scowling. "So what does all this have to do with the Tablet and people getting killed?"

Flinders bobbed her head enthusiastically, acknowledging the point. "I've been thinking about that," she said. "Remember the power source connected to Atlantis I was telling you about? In the Critias, Plato describes a strange metal that flashed with red light he called oreichalkos-'orichalc.u.m' in English-that the Atlanteans mined. For years now scholars have been arguing about its identification. Plato himself didn't know what it was. Some scholars think it was a gold-copper alloy, or a copper-tin alloy, or obsidian, or even an element no longer known in the modern world. Again, maybe Plato invented it himself, or maybe he was handing down an embellished account of an actual element. There are also persistent stories of this strange element as a power source of some kind-the power of many suns. And there's the story of the mysterious Umim and Thummim stones mentioned in the Old Testament, a.s.sociated with Moses, and the occultus lapis, the 'hidden stone' of the Rosicrucians, which had the power to trans.m.u.te elements. As I told you already, during the second world war the n.a.z.is were obsessed with Atlantis as the original home of the Aryan master race and went to great lengths looking for an Atlantean power source they called 'Vril'. The problem is, over the centuries, stories evolve and get corrupted, so the original source material gets buried or lost. But at any rate, the papyrus is about Thoth, and Thoth supposedly wrote the Emerald Tablet, which is supposed to give the location of the mysterious power source."

"So that's why the Bad Guys want the Tablet?" Skarda asked.

"I think so."

"If something like that exists," April said, "it would be worth killing for."

Flinders pushed her gla.s.ses farther up her nose, looking baffled. "I can't be absolutely sure. I'm just speculating. All I can say is, the power source and the Tablet are pretty closely entwined. As I already told you, this papyrus is a hymn to Djehuty/Thoth. The ancient Egyptians a.s.sociated him with the moon and he was envisioned as a G.o.d of wisdom, magic, and measurement. He was also the first scribe and so was the inventor of language and writing, as well as all aspects of science, religion, philosophy, mathematics, and alchemy."

April gave out a little groan. She thought the lesson was over and now here it was going in a completely new direction.

Skarda grinned at her discomfort.

Ignoring her, Flinders continued. "And get this-he was also called 'Lord of the West' and 'Controller of the Flood', and was supposed to have led the G.o.ds to an 'eastern country' after a great flood. But before the disaster he was able to preserve his secret writings on-or in, some authors say-two pillars before the flood inundated the world. The Greek historian Herodotus said he personally saw the pillars in Phoenicia. One was made of solid gold and the other carved out of emerald. The Egyptian priest Manetho claimed that Thoth himself inscribed the pillars with his wisdom, and there are other much earlier accounts that the pillars were made of brick and stone and inscribed on the outside. At any rate, one was situated in Heliopolis and one in Thebes. They were later moved to a secret temple dedicated to the original G.o.ds."

Skarda leaned back in his chair, watching her closely. He had the gut feeling they were on the right track.

"So here's my question," Flinders said. "What if Atlantis was a real place, and what if Thoth was a real historical figure, an Atlantean, so-to-speak, who possessed superior knowledge for his time, including knowledge of this mysterious power source? And what if this knowledge was preserved on the two pillars?"

Skarda felt his pulse quicken. Even April sat up straighter.

Flinders' smile was a bit triumphant and her eyes flashed with excitement. "What's written on Dr. Cowell's papyrus is the location of the temple where the ancient Egyptians hid the pillars: the Temple of the Oracle at Siwa, where one story says that Alexander the Great found the Emerald Tablet."

TEN.

Hart Senate Office Building, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.

SINKING into his hand-st.i.tched leather chair, Texas Senator Austin Tomilin stared for a moment through the thick gla.s.s of his office window at the snarl of traffic on Maryland Avenue. From his desk he could see the a.s.s end of the Supreme Court Building, its marble Corinthian columns looking like a relic from a forgotten age. The Philip A. Hart Senate Office Building was a bit too sterile for his taste-the more than one million square feet of white Vermont marble just sat there, glaring at you in the sun, a monument to government excess. And every time it rained, the d.a.m.n thing leaked. No wonder critics called it the "marble barn".

Tall and sinewy, Tomilin was in his early forties, with carrot-colored hair, a broad wedge of a nose, and steel-gray eyes with just a hint of frigid blue. He had a full head of hair, but its flaming color embarra.s.sed him so much that he kept it shaved to the roots on his skull.

A light rap sounded at his door and his secretary entered from an adjoining suite. "David Charbonnet is here."

Tomilin acknowledged her. "Send him in."

A man in his mid-thirties entered the office. An ex-Green Beret, Louisiana Senator David Charbonnet had a rock-hard physique coupled with the kind of boyish good looks that made women want to mother him and thick, curling, dark brown hair that made them want to drag him into bed. For that, Tomilin hated him, but for his politics, he couldn't have found a better soulmate.

Lowering himself into a chair, Charbonnet looked into the steely eyes of the older man and waited for him to speak.

"One of the DRO satellites picked up a transmission from a Danish-American research s.h.i.+p in the Arctic Ocean before it disappeared," Tomilin said. "It reported seeing a hulk icebreaker in the area of the Gakkel Ridge."

The DRO was the Defense Reconnaissance Office, established by Tomilin after the 9/11 attack. The office operated an ultra-secret grid of modified NROL-41 spy satellites, disguised as...o...b..ting s.p.a.ce junk from an old Atlas rocket, that circled the Earth in high-alt.i.tude, elliptical Molniya orbits that allowed the satellites to hover over designated areas of the planet for long periods of time.

Charbonnet leaned forward, his face growing serious. "The oil fields?"

Tomilin nodded gravely. "And the Russians intercepted the transmission. Tried to block it. But ECHELON managed to pick up a fragment."

A knock sounded and the secretary cracked open the door. "Rachel DiMarco is here," she announced.

"Send her in," Tomilin said.

Seconds later the door opened to reveal a slightly broad-shouldered woman in her early thirties with a narrow waist, a long patrician nose, blue eyes, and dirty blonde hair that looked permanently windswept. Her surname had been gained by a very short marriage-it was one of the few things she had walked away with in her divorce.

Rachel crossed to the desk and sat down next to Charbonnet, nodding a curt greeting to the men. She was the human link between the DRO office at Fort Meade and Tomilin. Officially, the office was in the wing that houses the Central Security Service, an agency established to partner the NSA with the Service Cryptologic Elements of the United States Armed Services.

And officially, the DRO didn't exist.

Opening her laptop, she tapped the keyboard, prompting the wall-mounted LED monitor to blink into life. Displayed on it was a seismic map of the Arctic Ocean floor in varying tones of blue. She pointed to a mountainous area in the center of the pole.

"This is the Lomonosov Ridge," she began without preamble, pointing to a long rocky undersea formation running from southwest to northeast at a forty-five degree angle off the northeastern coast of Greenland. Tomilin's steel-gray eyes were locked like laser beams on the monitor. "And this is the Gakkel Ridge." She indicated a lozenge-shaped area running north and parallel to the Lomonosov. "It's an underwater volcanic mountain chain. ECHELON intercepted some COMINT signals from a Russian sub in the Arctic Ocean. The message was in Ruthenian, a rare Russian dialect spoken in southwestern Ukraine. Lucky for us, one of the crypto boys speaks Ruthenian. The official story is that they sent an ROV down to the Gakkel Ridge looking for active volcanoes. But what the cameras picked up were what looks like the hulks of six decommissioned icebreakers sitting upright on the bottom, spread out around the ridge about two miles down. The problem is, it's hard to see down there because there's absolutely no light and lots of geothermal venting and particulate matter in the water."