The Atlantis Code (19 page)

Lourds sat at the dinette table with his notebook computer open before him. The flash drive Yuliya had left was connected through a USB port.

“Copy the information from the flash drive to your computer.” Natasha stood behind him. He felt the heat of her body radiating against his back.

“Why?” Leslie sat on Lourds’s left so that she could see the screen.

“In case something happens to the flash drive.”

Although he was certain he knew what Natasha planned to do, Lourds did as the Russian suggested. As soon as the task bar showed complete, Natasha took the flash drive from the notebook computer and pocketed it.

“So much for trust,” Leslie commented bitterly.

“Trust goes only so far,” Natasha said without animosity. “It’s also not mutually exclusive of good sense. You have been robbed, yes? And followed? Having two copies is smart. Having them kept separate is smarter.”

Lourds declined to comment. He agreed with Natasha, but didn’t think saying so would improve matters between the two women. He fingered the mouse pad and brought up the directory he’d created for the flash drive’s contents.

One of the folders was marked
OPEN FIRST
in English. Lourds did so, knowing that the action would forestall any further argument on the part of the women. They were both too curious about what Yuliya had left to waste time arguing.

Gary had more important matters on his mind than the contents of the flash drive. After ascertaining the presence of a well-stocked pantry—small but effective—Gary had declared himself the cook of the group and set to the task. Judging by the aroma coming from the kitchen, the young man had a flair for his chosen contribution.

A video window opened on the notebook computer. Yuliya Hapaev’s image blurred for a moment, then took center stage. She sat at her desk with the camera obviously propped before her. She wore a lab coat over a pink sweatshirt.

Natasha’s breath drew in sharply, but she didn’t say anything.

Lourds felt bad for the young woman, but at the moment it was all he could do to keep his own emotions in check. Yuliya had been a vibrant woman and a good mother. Knowing she was gone hurt him deeply. His eyes misted and he blinked them clear.

“Hello, Thomas.”
Yuliya smiled.

Hello, Yuliya,
Lourds thought to himself.

“If you have this little parcel, then I have to assume something has happened to me.”
Yuliya shook her head and grinned again.
“It sounds so silly saying that, but you and I both know I don’t mean something as outlandish as in a spy novel. I have to assume that something happened to me in a traffic accident.”
She frowned.
“Or perhaps I was mugged. Or my bosses shut me down.”

Lourds forced himself to watch her trying to muddle along, knowing she’d felt foolish trying to find the words. A lump formed in the back of his throat.

“This is only the third time I’ve made one of these little presentations,”
Yuliya admitted.
“We agreed to do this all those years ago over cognac while at the archeology retreat in France.”
She smiled.
“We were so serious about it when we were drunk.”

In spite of himself, in spite of the loss, Lourds smiled. They had met a handful of times before that encounter in France. But the friendship they shared had seemed to cement there.

“You probably considered the deal we made to be merely a lark,”
Yuliya said.
“A joke summoned up by too much to drink, good companionship, and the fact that we both love the same tawdry spy novels. But I hope you find this.”
Seriousness hardened her face. She picked up the cymbal and held it for display.
“My inquiry into the nature of this artifact has turned out to be quite interesting. I think it would be a shame if no one found out the truth of it.”

Especially since it led to her murderer, Lourds thought.

Yuliya put the cymbal aside.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for a couple of days.”
She smiled ruefully.
“I have to assume you’re out on some junket the university has insisted on. Or perhaps you’re chasing some big find. A book from the Alexandrian library, hopefully. I know you’d like that. And I know nothing else would take you away from your students.”
The image on the computer screen paused.
“At any rate, I’ve arranged the files on here to show you what I’ve learned from the cymbal. Where it was found. How it was found. And what my conclusions are.”

Though he didn’t want to, Lourds checked the meter at the bottom of the video screen and saw that the presentation was almost finished. He wasn’t ready to just see Yuliya fade away. He had to restrain himself from pausing the video.

“I hope what I’ve put together helps,”
the image of Yuliya said.
“I hope you figure out the significance of the cymbal.”
She smiled and shrugged.
“Who knows? Perhaps someone from my department will have all the answers before you find this. But most of all, I hope that I’m simply discussing this with you in a few days. Over a cognac. In front of the fireplace. And with my husband and children watching us and thinking we’re the most boring people on the planet.”

Lourds’s throat grew impossibly tight. He felt a tear at the corner of his eye. Unashamed, he let it fall.

The screen blanked.

______

No one talked after the video finished. There was too much pain and regret in the room. Leslie left Lourds and Natasha alone with their tears and regrets, but she didn’t leave the table.

Lourds shook away the ghosts of his friend and colleague.

He had a murderer to track and a mystery to solve. Moping did Yuliya no good.

Taking out a yellow legal tablet, his favorite tool for free-form associating his thoughts, Lourds wrote down the architecture of Yuliya’s documents. He made note of the dates of their creation, then of their updates as Yuliya had discovered more information.

In that way he was able to retrace her thinking and her chain of logic.

“Is there anything you need?” Natasha asked after a while.

“No.” Lourds flipped through screens of text Yuliya had prepared on the cymbal. “I just need to get through this material.”

“All right.” Natasha fell silent again, but she never left his side, watching every keystroke.

Within the hour, Gary laid a feast upon the table around Lourds’s computer and tablet.

The young man hadn’t had any fresh vegetables to work with, but he’d still cobbled together a thick hearty stew from canned potatoes, carrots, beans, and corn. He’d put it together with some kind of beef stock. Panfried bread slathered in olive oil accompanied the big bowls of stew.

Drawn by the heavenly scent of food when he hadn’t eaten in nearly a day, Lourds pushed back from the computer. As soon as he did, though, he was hit by questions.

“Did Yuliya know who killed her?” Natasha asked.

“I don’t think so,” Lourds replied. “I found no mention of anyone stalking her in the text. She didn’t seem to be worried about anyone—just political issues over the artifact. The usual fears of any academic.”

“No collectors or antiques traffickers were mentioned in the papers?”

“Not that I’ve seen so far.”

“But it has to be someone from that world who took it,” Natasha insisted.

“Why?” Leslie asked.

“Because of the way they located the cymbal,” Natasha answered. She made notes in Cyrillic on her PDA. Lourds read enough of them to realize they were shorthand notes for herself that he couldn’t really make head or tail of.

“I still don’t see how you inferred that,” Leslie pressed.

Gary broke a piece of pan bread off and dunked it into the stew. “Because the killers learned about the cymbal from the Web site, man. Either they were looking for that piece or they were watching Professor Lourds’s e-mail. Otherwise they would have taken it when it was first found at the dig site.”

Everyone looked at him.

“Hey,” Gary said, looking slightly unsettled, “I’m just saying is all. It’s what I’d do if I wanted something bad enough to kill for it. Grab it before it gets around. Doesn’t take much of a brainy bloke to figure out how the murderers happened to turn up at Professor Hapaev’s lab.” He paused. “Besides, they were looking for that bell Leslie found down in Alexandria, too. That was also listed on a Web site. The bad guys have a pattern.”

“Professional collectors, then?” Leslie said.

“Or professional thieves,” Natasha replied.

“Either way,” Gary said, “you’re looking for someone who knows a lot about what’s going on in the antiquities arena. They swooped down on the goodies long before you professional blokes knew what you had.”

“The bell and cymbal don’t offer much of a draw for collectors. They’re clay, not precious metal, they have inscriptions that haven’t been translated and maybe won’t be, and they come from a culture that seems to be unknown. Collectors love ancient objects, but they gravitate to the familiar and the coveted—Shang and Tang Chinese bronzes, Ming vases, Egyptian royal funerary items, Greek marbles statues, Mayan turquoise and gold, Roman bronzes and inlays. Things like that. Collectors love objects associated with powerful or famous rulers. I know people who would happily kill for a life-sized bronze charioteer from the tomb of Emperor Chin, for example.

“These objects are different; they’re ancient and mysterious, so they appeal to scholars and historians. But it’s not like they’re the kinds of items that will attract the interest of rich or obsessed collectors. They have no provenance. They have no certificate of authenticity. We don’t even know what culture they come from. They’re old, and they’re interesting, but they’re not some kind of Holy Grail.”

“If they aren’t after the instruments,” Leslie asked, “then what are they after?”

“I think they
are
after the instruments,” Lourds said. “I believe Gary is right: I believe they have been looking for those instruments. But I don’t think it was for the instruments themselves. Rather, it was for what the instruments represented.”

“So we’re looking for a specialized interest,” Natasha said. “And for the people that have it?”

“Yes. I believe so.” Lourdes noted the cold glint in the woman’s eye. He had no doubt she could be a cold-blooded killer if she so chose. But he had no pity for the men who killed Yuliya. He wished her a clear shot, in fact.

“Did Professor Hapaev have any clues as to the origins of the cymbal?” Leslie asked.

“She did,” Lourds said. “Yuliya believed that the cymbal came out of West Africa. More than that, she was certain it was made by the Yoruba people. Or their ancestors.”

“Why?”

“The Yoruba people were noted for trade,” Lourds said. “They still are.”

“They were also captured and sold by slavers by the boatload,” Gary put in.

Everyone looked at him again.

“Hey, I watch a lot of Discovery Channel and History Channel. Since we were going to do this special with Professor Lourds, I boned up on some of the material we might touch on. Cool stuff. It didn’t turn out like I expected it to, though. I figured on more digging, fewer bad guys, man.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Lourdes said. “According to Yuliya, the language of the Yoruba people is widespread as a result of the slave trade,” Lourds went on. “The language follows the AVO pattern.”

“Now that one I don’t know,” Gary said, then stuffed more stew in his mouth.

“Trade shorthand,” Lourds said. “AVO means agent-verb-object. It’s the pattern—the order, if you will—in which words appear in the spoken and written sentence of a culture. It’s also known as SVO. Subject-verb-object. The English language, as well as seventy-five percent of all the languages in the world, follow the SVO pattern. An example sentence would be
Jill ran home
. Do you understand?”

Everyone nodded.

“The Yoruban language is also tonal,” Lourds continued. “Most languages in the world aren’t tonal. Generally, the older the language, the more likely it is to be tonal. Chinese, for example, is a tonal language. Fewer than a fourth of the world’s languages exhibit that feature. Yoruban’s fairly unique in that regard.”

“Why did Yuliya think the cymbal came from West Africa?” Leslie asked. “It was found here, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but she was sure it was a trade item, and that it wasn’t made here. The pottery doesn’t relate to the local types at all. Also, some of the inscriptions on the cymbal were done at a later date,” Lourds replied. “To denote ownership. Yuliya made note of that in her files. You can see those inscriptions in some of the pictures.”

“They were in the Yoruban language?” Natasha asked.

Lourds nodded. “I read enough of that language to recognize it. But the original language on the cymbal, what Yuliya believed was the original language, isn’t Yoruban. It’s something else.”

“Must have been maddening for her,” Leslie said. “And it’s why she was trying to contact you.”

“Yes.”

“Can you decipher the language on the bell and the cymbal?” Leslie asked.