The Tenth Cycle: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 1) (35 page)

Naturally, Luke reported everything he heard to Daniel and Sarah. David’s confessions, while not entirely unexpected, held revelations of a conspiracy so terrible that Sarah shook in her shoes when she heard of it.

Their close call was even closer than they’d realized, and it made both Sarah and Daniel extremely nervous, especially when David was assassinated within a week of his arrest. Though he’d told them there was a mole in the CIA that turned out to be himself, David was more prophetic than he’d known. There really was another mole, and his sights were no doubt set on them.

~~~

Together, Luke, Daniel and Sarah came to some hard decisions. Now, more than ever, it was imperative that they get more of the translation done and done quickly. There was no time to waste, as they now knew that the Orion Society would stop at nothing to get their hands on the data, even if they had to destroy Daniel and Sarah along with anyone helping them, to do it. Furthermore, they now suspected there was no one they could trust, at least as far as government agencies were concerned, not to have been infiltrated by the enemy. They were on their own, with the exception that Sam Lewis had made arrangements for FBI protection for their families and Martha, vetting each assigned agent through his own trusted sources. Luke could only hope that no one in the employ of the Orion Society had slipped through.

It didn't take much discussion to determine that their best course of action would be to translate as much as they could, looking for an earth shattering discovery, and then broadcast it to the world, thus making their capture no longer of value to a criminal organization that wanted to maintain a low profile. It wasn't a surprising conclusion, considering that this was the idea they'd had for some weeks now. The question was, where would they be safe for long enough to implement this plan? And who all did they need with them?

After much discussion, it was decided that Luke would call in some favors, which he was reluctant to discuss. One by one, and for various reasons, they had rejected most of the ideas any of them could put forth. They had briefly discussed attempting to set up a safe house, such as Raj had. But then, they remembered that David had known all about Raj's safe house. They had no reason to believe that even with Luke's expertise they would be able to evade another CIA mole. The same objection came up when they discussed leaving the country. Where would they go? Of all the countries that were proposed, the only one that made any sense was Israel, for several reasons.

For one, Israel was an ally of the United States. Most Israelites spoke English, an advantage not found in a South American or Asian country. For another, Israel's not-so-secret service, the Mossad, was the best in the world; even better, some thought, than the CIA and NSA rolled together. However, Luke pointed out that expecting help from the Israelis would require that they have something to trade for it. The initial translation of the greeting message would not be enough. They needed something substantial, something that could be proved out as both viable and valuable.

"Leave it to me," said Luke. "I'll be in touch as soon as I can make some arrangements. In the meantime, pack what you need for a few weeks, as lightly as possible. You're going to have to gather some cash but I need to think about how to do it without setting off alarms."

"I wonder if Raj has any ideas about that?" said Daniel.

Luke remarked, "From what you've told me about Raj, I wouldn't be surprised. But, you wouldn't want him to be in legal trouble, would you?"

"No, but I'm still going to ask him if he has any ideas," grinned Daniel. Sarah wondered what he had up his sleeve.

"What have we decided about who needs to be physically in the same place for this caper?" asked Luke, trying for the same light mood as had overtaken Daniel despite his very real worry for his niece.

"Well, we obviously need Raj and Sinclair. Sarah and I of course. Martha has a vested interest in the outcome, as well, and I wouldn’t want her to be here alone. What about you Luke? I'd feel more comfortable if we had you with us, and I'm sure Sarah would as well."

Sarah was nodding vigorously. Luke said, "I'll be here as long as you need me. So, why don't you get in touch with those people and have them ready to go as soon as I can get back to you?"

With that, Luke left, and Daniel and Sarah drove to Martha's to persuade her to go with them.

"Oh, my dears, I don't understand why you want me along," Martha said, when they’d explained where they were going and what they’d be doing. "I can't help with the translation, I'll just be in the way."

Daniel's concern was that Martha would be vulnerable if he and Sarah disappeared without a trace, she would be all on her own. No one would know for days if something happened to her. He wanted her safe with them so that no harm can befall her in their absence. Rather than say that however, he made a joke of it. "Well if you don't come with us, who's going to keep us in baked goods?"

Martha laughed. "I know very well that isn't the reason. Do you really think it's necessary for me to come with you?"

It was Sarah's turn to exercise her powers of persuasion, though Daniel’s were legendary. "Yes, hon, we think it's absolutely necessary. If Mark was here today he would be part of this team and you would have accompanied him. As far as Daniel and I are concerned, you are part of this team and will now be continuing what Mark has started. Besides we also need a mother to look after us. Is there any reason you can't be gone for a couple of weeks without telling anyone?"

"I guess not," Martha said, "since gardening season is over. My bridge club may wonder where I got to, could I just tell one person that I'm going on an impulse trip?"

"Can you resist the temptation to tell her anything else?" Asked Daniel. "It won't be safe for her to know that it's anything but an impulse trip."

"In that case, I can certainly resist the temptation," said Martha firmly. "Is there anything in particular I need to bring?"

"Just bring a couple of changes of clothing, and your passport. Do you have a backpack?" asked Sarah.

"A rather large one, that we used to take on our back-country overnight camping trips," Martha answered.

"That's perfect," said Sarah. "We're working on how to acquire some cash. We’ll let you know if we need you to bring some."

"I have plenty in the bank," Martha said. "Mark's insurance just paid out."

The couple then made their way to the library, where they knew they could find pay phones outside. While Daniel called Raj, Sarah called Sinclair. To both, the couple communicated the same request as to Martha, emphasizing that the utmost secrecy would be required.

By sundown, Luke had scooped up Raj and Sinclair in a rented Suburban, and the four were on their way to Providence, where they would pick up Daniel, Sarah and Martha. From there, their destination was a small town on the Canadian border, called Stanstead. The border actually ran right through the center of town, and on the US side, about 2 miles out of town in a secluded spot amongst trees,  sat a spacious safe house that an old Mossad contact had made available on the strength of Luke's assurances that he would make it worthwhile.

At each stop, he took evasive action to make sure he wasn’t followed.

For the first couple of hours, the conversation centered on how each person would contribute to the translation effort in order to be as efficient as possible. They were all well aware that they were under a deadline that had no set time…whenever the Orion Society found them, they would be lucky to escape with their lives. Raj was determined to keep a regularly-updated high-capacity flash drive with him so that the data wouldn’t be lost, even if they were driven from their safe house by gunfire or other violence. Likewise, Daniel would be in charge of a separate device with the cumulative translations stored in it.

Unbeknownst to Daniel, Sarah’s gun was packed in her backpack, along with all the ammunition she had at home. She would not willingly be taken hostage again, and intended to defend herself, along with the older team members, if necessary, rather than run. It may not change the outcome in the long run, but it would make her feel much better if she could take out some bad guys before they were overrun.

Daniel, unaware of Sarah’s grim musings, tried to sleep so that he could take over the driving later on.

~~~

It was four a.m. when the weary group straggled into the house from the large attached garage where Luke pulled up in the Suburban. They quickly spread into the four bedrooms, Luke and Sinclair sharing one, though Luke would remain awake throughout the nights and sleep in the daytime. They had two hours to sleep, then Raj would awake the others and they’d get to work. During the drive, they’d discussed how to blend into this tiny town without attracting notice. It was decided that Daniel and Sarah, as the ones least likely to be needed at any given time, would take turns going about what appeared to be normal business, rather than excite comment by staying indoors with the blinds closed as if they were hiding. Accordingly, they would do the food shopping, spreading their business out among several nearby small towns so as not to have anyone notice they were shopping for more than the two of them. Otherwise, they would have little business in town other than filling the Suburban gas hog, which they’d also do in several different small towns.

The group was strictly off the grid. Cell phones were off and the SIM cards removed, wi-fi disabled on all laptops. They’d sent word to both families letting them know that they’d be unreachable for a while, and that in the case of any problems they would be in touch, otherwise not to worry. Martha and Sinclair had no one to notify, of course, and Raj had arranged for vacation time from the Times, so he wouldn’t be missed, either.

The next few days were a flurry of work, Raj completing all of the data sets in the first group, those that used each Fibonacci number as a skip sequence, starting with the first symbol. He also arranged the entire data set into eight by eight by eight cubes, with no skip sequences designated. Sinclair would use them to start new skip sequences with each successive symbol if he needed to, although the exploration of the sequences in three dimensions would have to wait.

At this point, they all believed that Sinclair wouldn't be able to translate even a small fraction of the information in the time frame they were thinking, less than a week. His focus turned to searching for an index of material. Once they located that, they’d search it for something that seemed more advanced than current science, though still understandable, and that could be quickly proven. That would be the evidence Luke and Daniel presented to Luke’s Mossad contact when they asked for asylum while completing the work.

Daniel was also crafting a Times story that hopefully would afford their group some measure of protection by being too much in the public eye to just be killed or abducted. Daniel still hoped to be with Sarah, the rest of the core group and preferably his and Sarah's extended families in a safe place when the story hit. It was going to be controversial, to say the least. He wasn't sure whether he was more leery of bad guys with guns or the academic community.

Sarah started working on a white paper to be used for presentations to scientists and academics and with the help of Martha a few different length PowerPoint presentations to be used when they had to “tell” the story.

~~~

Sarah had told him before they left that she was content they were doing the right thing, no matter what happened to her career because of it, good or bad. In fact, she said, she would never again be able to confine herself to her narrow specialty, with so much material to study. But, she believed that it would be difficult for the Institute or the University to fire her, since she would be a public figure, too prominent, again, to deny her tenure simply because they’d discovered something that was outside the pale of the academic community. If necessary, she'd fight, rather than rolling over and taking it or even pre-empting the issue by resigning. No legitimate field of study should be suppressed because of academic politics. That's what had gotten them into this in the first place.

Daniel thought she was the bravest person he'd ever met. Of all of them, she had the most to lose career-wise. He could always make a living writing, even if he had to turn to fiction. Raj's career would be untouched, since his role was merely data analysis and he'd be able to get even higher-paying jobs when it was revealed. The others were retired. But Sarah had worked hard for her degree and for tenure. To be willing to give it up for something he had brought into her life was beyond what he expected of her. He loved her all the more for it.

~~~

Raj was explaining to Sinclair all the steps he had taken to develop the data set that they would see as soon as he had finished setting up the twin monitors on his laptop. Sinclair, having taken the time since being asked to participate in the project to learn all he could about the pyramid, listened carefully. In a matter of a few minutes, Raj had the equipment connected and was powering it up as they spoke. The two men recognized immediately that they were well-matched in computer skills, despite the age difference. Raj was delighted to be able to say what he did without having to explain why, as Sinclair got it immediately. It was far more satisfactory even than bringing his friend Daniel up to speed, which did require more explanation. With each point Raj made, Sinclair nodded, approving of the process and recognizing that much of the work he would have had to do was already done, thanks to Raj's program.

However, he had an idea to take it further.

"Raj, what do you make of the significance of the Fibonacci numbers?" Sinclair asked, not wanting to step on the man's toes if this was old ground.

"That there is some. I have been thinking perhaps that different messages can be made of these blocks of data, depending upon where we start and whether we read linearly or in a skip sequence." Raj had forgotten the word, but he understood that their thinking was now that each unique stone represented a syllable. Aha! That was it...a syllabary. Now he corrected his statement. "Different messages, depending on how the syllables are strung together into words."

Sinclair had followed it even without the clarification. It was what he'd been thinking. Now the other three got it, because they had talked before about skip sequences, someone having brought up the idea in conjunction with a distantly-remembered conversation about the Bible Code material. But, Sinclair had more to add.

"I'm thinking along the same lines. But, I think we have to start somewhere with a more compact chart of the syllables. Raj, did you run a comparison of the number of instances of each separate formula against the Linear A and Linear B languages?"

"Yes, I did, although Daniel could not explain to me why we should be using a Greek dialect."

"Nor can I. It's a gut feeling, based on the fact that we think it's a syllabary we're dealing with, but that's Linear B. As of yet, no one has translated Linear A. It's an unknown language, called Minoan only because of the location of the first place archaeologists found it. It does seem to share some characteristics of Linear B, though. I'm thinking we can use it as our Rosetta Stone if my gut feeling is correct."

New understanding bloomed in Sarah's eyes, as she was a little more familiar with the scholarship around the ancient languages than the rest. "You're thinking, compare the formulas with the highest number of instances with the corresponding Linear A symbols, and try them as a direct correspondence."

Sinclair looked at her with approval. "Yes, my dear, exactly. Now, when researchers have previously compared Linear A texts with known word values for Linear B, which as Raj said was an early form of Greek, they haven't had much luck. It produces unintelligible words. Clearly, it's a link to a language we don't know, but we have our ways of cracking a language like that if we have a large enough data set. Yours is huge." Sinclair turned to Raj with admiration. "Son, you have done an outstanding job on a very tedious task. Congratulations, your work will probably have been key to our successfully translating what these ancients had to say to us."

Raj, though excitable and demonstrative in the presence of good friends, was more reserved among these near-strangers. He showed his pleasure at the compliment, however, by blushing and lowering his eyes. Sarah thought it was charming. She was beginning to warm to this strange friend of Daniel's.

Sinclair had continued to talk, and Sarah schooled herself to pay attention. "Now, once we have the syllables, we'll have to arrange the data in some way. I suggest that the Fibonacci numbers that are found everywhere in the pyramid are an indication that they should be used somehow, beginning with the fact that the pyramid has eight sides, rather than the normal four."

His words electrified those who heard him. Eight! How could they have missed the significance of that? Of course it meant something! Eight was a Fibonacci number, probably THE most important one. If that were the case, they should arrange the values in their original order, but broken in lines and columns of eight, at least for a start.

Raj's fingers flew over the keyboard as he performed the first task Sinclair had asked of him, that of determining the Linear A symbols that should correspond with the block values as they had calculated them. Hoping that they hadn't performed too many calculations, or followed that notion down a wrong trail, he made the two-step comparisons as quickly as the laptop could work. In far less time than anyone but he and Sinclair expected, they were looking at a chart of about two hundred signs that corresponded with the same number of values in the blocks. However, there were hundreds of signs left over, as well as an approximately equal number of block values. These they would set aside until they had dealt with what was already known. Quickly, Raj added the corresponding signs and meanings from Linear B. Eighty-seven of the signs were syllabary in nature, building blocks of other words. A hundred more were ideograms, signifying objects. Commodities, probably, Sinclair explained, but it gave them a group of nouns--the names of everyday objects--to work with, and that was a start.

Sinclair had Raj add a column with the transliterated pronunciation of the syllables and the English name of the objects corresponding with the Linear B ideograms. The makeshift Rosetta Stone emerged as he watched, fascinated, muttering the Greek sounds under his breath. Time stopped for the others, though in fact the progress was rapid, thanks to the powerful server and Raj's expertise in using the Oracle sort functions. When they came to the end of the known symbols, everyone heaved a sigh as if they had been holding their collective breath. Only Sinclair, his eyes dancing down the column of Greek syllables, was too wrapped up in memorizing the pyramid values associated with them to realize they had reached a climax of sorts.

Raj broke the silence. "What would you like me to do next, sir?"

Absently, still intent on his memorization task, Sinclair said, "Call me Sinclair." Then he looked up, smiled and said, "Sorry, I was woolgathering. What did you ask me?"

"What would you like me to do next?" Raj replied.

"Can you bring up on the left-hand screen the stone values arranged in their natural order, but grouped in rows and columns, as we talked about? And leave this chart up on the other; I want to be able to compare the values with the syllables easily."

"Yes, of course, just a moment." Raj answered, bringing up the base data set on the left-hand screen. He selected a block of about five hundred values in their natural order, that is, as they lined up in the construction of the pyramid, and then gave a couple of new commands. The screen refreshed and in place of the original long column a set of values appeared in an eight-by-eight grid. Sinclair ran his eyes over it, flicking now and then to the left side of the screen where the syllabic comparisons still showed. His eyes widened as he studied, then a grin spread over his face and he exclaimed, "Jaysus!", then immediately apologized when he saw Martha’s hand fly to her mouth.

"What is it, Sinclair?" Sarah ventured.

"I know now why no one could make anything of it before." Sinclair mused, running his finger back and forth over the natural-order text lines without touching the screen.

Impatient, Daniel started to say something, but Sarah put her hand on his arm, seeing that Sinclair was still thinking about his discovery, whatever it was, and would clue them in when he had come to a conclusion.

Sinclair, unaware of the agitation of the others, finished traversing the lines with his finger and nodded with satisfaction. "We always thought this was a progression from early right-to-left writing, like Phoenician." Shaking himself out of his solitary ramblings, he addressed the group. "Or Hebrew. Everyone understands that not all languages are written left-to-right like modern English or Romance languages, yes?" Seeing everyone nod, he went on. "At some point, Greek began to be written in a pattern called Boustrophedon. That meant, the first line was written right-to-left, and then the second went left-to-right, with all the words in a mirror image of how they would have been written on odd lines."

Various expressions met his words as the others struggled to visualize what he meant. In an effort to clarify, Sinclair again pointed at the screen, demonstrating that the words would be read as he had described, first traveling from right-to-left, and then reversing the direction on the next line, so that his finger zig-zagged as it progressed down the rows. Comprehension dawned on each face, seconds apart, as each got it.

"What does it mean?" Daniel asked first.

"It means that when other researchers tried to make Linear A manuscripts make sense, they assumed right-to-left for each line of script, because it was thought to be older than Linear B, and Linear B was still written that way. It was only later, as Greek developed, that their script took on this pattern. But what we have here is proof that Boustrophedon was actually a return to an old pattern, rather than development of the new."

Fascinating as this was, Daniel had a burning question. "But, how do you know that, when you haven't translated the message yet?"

Sinclair looked surprised. "Oh, didn't I say? Sorry. And, forgive me, I haven't fully wrapped my head around the fact that we have a Linear A-like script transliterating the ancient Sumerian, but this first part is an index of the subjects that are covered in the code, and where you'll find each." He pointed to the lines of values, reading now as if it were nothing to him to transliterate twice and then translate as he went.

"See here, mathematics, history, astronomy..."

His words were drowned by the others shouting in amazement. Sarah's scream brought Luke running, gun drawn, to the dining room where they were working, to behold Daniel and Sarah dancing in a circle, with Raj staring at Sinclair as if he had seen a ghost, his mouth open, and pounding Sinclair on the back violently.

"What is it?" cried Luke? His initial impression was that Raj was giving Sinclair some weird kind of CPR, while Daniel and Sarah had lost their minds. Finally, he went to stand directly in front of Sarah and shout in her face. "SARAH!"

That served to bring the chaos to an abrupt end as Sarah looked at Luke sheepishly. "Yes, Uncle Luke?"