Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

“You did it,” Sasha said, almost breathlessly.

He savored the rare praise. Despite all that he had done for her, Sasha still seemed unable to think of him in anything but the most utilitarian terms. He was a tool to help her accomplish her purpose, just as the CIA, the Delta team and even Rainer and his triad allies had been, each in their own way and without even suspecting it. This wasn’t a cynical calculation on her part; it was just how she was.

Driven.

His initial physical attraction to her had cooled somewhat over the course of their days together, but his fascination with both her intellect and her personality had grown stronger. She was an enigma, a puzzle even more intricate than the Voynich manuscript, and just as he had solved it, he would also solve her. He would give her what she wanted, and when she had it, he would unlock that part of her that was capable of compassion, friendship…and love?

Well, he could hope anyway.

Her elation faltered. “But I don’t understand. We have to go down? How is that possible?”

He scooped the array up and tucked it under one arm, then picked up the computer. “Let’s go find out.”

They left the road, skirted a small field of grape vines, and pushed into the pine forest. Parker thought he could feel the crystals vibrating against his skin. It was probably his imagination, fueled by the anticipation of success, but with each step forward, he could sense the energy of the Prime rising out of the ground, invigorating him and filling him with possibilities.

The woods ended abruptly at the foot of the cliff. Parker checked the array again; if the crystals were to be believed, the Prime lay somewhere within the limestone wall, perhaps fifty feet below them.

“Do you suppose this is as close as they got?”

Sasha’s brow furrowed, as if she had never considered this possibility.

“We could test it here,” he continued. “Try one of the formulae from the book. If it works, we’ll have our answer.”

She shook her head. “No. They found it. The book said they found it. You read it, too.”

He knew she was right. While the Voynich manuscript had been short on details about what and where the Prime was, nothing in the account suggested that Bacon and al-Tusi had been stopped short of their ultimate goal. They had found it; somehow, they had found a way into the Earth’s interior.

They skirted along the wall, scanning the rough limestone face for some shadowy niche, crevice or crack that might conceal a cave entrance. What they found instead, barely a hundred yards from where they started, was a door.

It was so incongruous that, for a few minutes, Parker could only stare in disbelief. There was a gray metal door with a U-shaped handle above a metal box with numbered buttons, pasted into a gap in the cliff face with dark concrete. It looked like the entrance to a utility corridor at a mall or an amusement park. Then he remembered where they were, and he realized what lay on the other side of the door.

He turned to Sasha, unable to contain his excitement at this revelation. “This is Chauvet Cave.”

She blinked at him, the name evidently ringing no bells.

Parker laid an almost reverent hand on the door.

Discovered in 1994, Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave was the site of what was arguably the most impressive example of paleolithic art on Earth. Carbon dating of charred timbers—wood used for fires to illuminate the cave for the artists—dated back more than thirty thousand years, making the paintings in Chauvet Cave the oldest known examples of human artwork. The walls of the cave were adorned with extraordinary detailed images of horses, bears, panthers—more than a dozen different species of animals, many extinct. Some of the paintings seemed to represent mythical creatures, chimera combinations of beasts that had never actually lived on the planet, or perhaps, like the plants painted in the Voynich manuscript, had existed only here and only for a brief time.

He had read about this place in National Geographic. What was truly remarkable about the cave was how well it had been preserved. Similar discoveries across Europe, such as at the one at Lascaux, had been severely degraded by thousands of visiting tourists, but almost immediately after its discovery, Chauvet Cave had been locked up tight. Even the scientists authorized to conduct research on the site had to observe stringent procedures to minimize their impact.

Parker felt his excitement roll back like the tide. “‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further,’” he muttered.

“What’s that? Something from the manuscript?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s from the Bible…the Book of Job. Bacon and al-Tusi might have been able to get closer, but this is the end of the line for us.”