The Oracle Code

15



39 Miles Southwest of Herat

Herat Province

Afghanistan

February 14, 2013

Anna Cherkshan strode through the dig camp and felt the excitement in the air. The emotion was like a live thing, a tiger that thrummed through the atmosphere. That was how she would write it. That the discovering was a living thing ripped free of a dead husk. Only she would use words that would turn Boris Glukov’s find into poetry, into something solid and enduring—something like Russia could be if they could only unclasp the dead fingers of the Old Regime once and forever.

Perhaps the piece would go beyond the simple news of an archeological discovery by a Moscow professor, but she knew her editors at The Moscow Times would enthusiastically embrace the idea. They would understand what she was saying about the world and about her place in it. That was something her father never understood.

General Anton Cherkshan, to Anna, was the epitome of the Old Regime. Her father wanted nothing to change. He claimed that capitalist freedom was something that the Russian people would never understand. The Americans had over two hundred years to experience and master freedom and its attendant prices.

The Russian people only had a little over twenty years. And this was now the twenty-first century, not the eighteenth. Things happened more rapidly now. Situations changed more rapidly. The Russian people had only thrown off the yoke of the Tsarist government less than a hundred years ago.

Anna sighed. She could hear her father ranting and raving about the story already. Over the years, she had grown tired of his voice in her head. It wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t shut it off. Sometimes she thought that if she didn’t love her mother so much, she would never see her father again. Then, when the anger and the frustration were not so deep in her, she knew that was not true. She loved her father. He had taught her so much of what she knew.

It was just a pity that he didn’t agree with how she used that knowledge.

Adjusting her sunglasses, she stared through the bright reflection of the snowdrifts surrounding the dig site. In many places, the snow was three or four feet deep, and trails had been made by people passing. Now, much of the snow in front of the cave had been flattened. So many people had braved the cold and gathered outside the opening, beyond the sawhorse barrier the Afghanistan National Police had erected, waiting expectantly for news of Boris Glukov’s discovery.

“Excuse me. Miss Cherkshan?”

Anna turned at the voice.

A tall, dark man with short-clipped hair and a beard that was more a neatly trimmed five o’clock shadow than anything else approached her. He wore boots, khaki pants, and a Russia Today Television coat with the distinctive RT rendered in gold and black on green.

Petite and slender like her mother, Anna only came up to the man’s shoulder. Also like her mother, she had strawberry blond hair, but she had gray-hazel eyes like her father. Her blue parka hung to her knees.

“Yes, I am Anna Cherkshan.” Anna stood her ground. All her father’s old warnings about talking to strangers echoed in her head, too, but these days, she mostly laughed at them. A news reporter could hardly talk to only people she knew. She would never learn anything that way. Or she would learn only what people wanted her to know.

“I am Yakov Fursin. With Russia Today.” He smiled, and it was a nice smile, but he was too old for her. She was only twenty-six, and he had to be nearly forty.

She took his proffered hand and smiled back at him. “Russia Today, eh? I think I got that from the coat. What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

“I suspected as much, Comrade Fursin. I don’t run into many fans this far from Moscow.”

“Well, you have today. I read your pieces in The Moscow Times on a regular basis.”

“Oh really?” Anna cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

Fursin put his hand over his heart. “Truly. I do. You wound me. I especially loved the piece you did on President Nevsky’s comparisons of himself to Alexander Nevsky. The artist you had working with you on that piece has a fantastic eye.”

“Zagnetko? Yes, she is wonderful. Very witty all on her own as well.” Anna warmed slightly to the man as he mentioned other articles she had written. “What can I do for you?”

“I am told that Professor Glukov is only allowing select members of the media in to the cave.”

“That’s correct.”

“I’m also told that you are one of those members.”

“I am.”

“You also did the piece on the dig months ago not far from here where Professor Glukov first picked up the trail to this place.”

“You are very well informed.”

He smiled again and appeared even more dashing than ever. “I would like very much to get inside that cave when Professor Glukov performs his unveiling.”

Anna smiled and shook her head. “Sadly, that is beyond my power to do.”

“Please.” He placed his hand over his heart again and looked entreating. “This will mean very much to my career.”

“You can be charming all you want, Comrade Fursin. I will enjoy your efforts, but in the end it will be for naught. The passageway, I am told, is very small, and Professor Glukov is keeping a short list of attendants. I am sorry. But hopefully this story will be big enough that you will get something that helps your career.”

Fursin nodded. “I completely understand. Please do not hold my need to ask against me.”

Anna laughed. “You were very pleasant. You should see how much I push, beg, shove, and plead to get my foot in the door for a story.”

“Be well.” Fursin bowed his head and walked away.

For a moment, Anna watched the man. There was something about him that caught her subconscious attention. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she thought that beneath that charming exterior, there was a very hard man.

In that way, he reminded her of her father.

***



As he walked away from the woman, Colonel Sergay Linko gazed in frustration around the campsite and cursed his situation. During the flight to Herat, he’d learned his orders were to get close to Professor Glukov and find out what the man had discovered.

The news stations Linko had watched had revealed that Glukov had found something related to the missing tomb of Alexander the Great. Glukov had stated as much but had given nothing further.

Linko didn’t know why President Nevsky would be interested in Alexander the Great’s tomb, and Linko hadn’t even known the man’s tomb was missing. And he was only vaguely knowledgeable about who Alexander the Great had been.

To Linko’s way of thinking, Alexander the Great had been on the same par as the bogatyr of Slavic mythology. When he had been a child, his grandmother had read him epic poems written by the storytellers of the Kievan Rus’, the old nation of Rus. Linko had liked the stories of the wandering knights, then discovered they were much like the European knights, such as King Arthur.

But it wasn’t real. And childhood things had to be put away. Just as he had put his grandmother away when it fell to him to take care of her when she grew too frail to live without assistance.

Linko’s mother and father were gone by that time, one to cancer and the other to drink, and no one had survived to take care of the old woman. After a month of assisted care and the first bill had come due, Linko had decided he didn’t want to pay the monthly fee. So he had visited her late one night, pinched her nose shut, and held a hand over her mouth.

The next month’s bill was reduced, and that was the end of it.

Calm in his frustration, Linko went to the next group of journalists and hoped he would have better luck. He would not be deterred.

***



Lourds got out of his rented four-wheel-drive pickup and walked down to the dig site. To his relief, none of the media pointed him out or came hurrying over for a quote.

During the short flight to Herat, Lourds had looked at the photographs of the tomb that Boris had sent him through e-mail. He’d downloaded them while at Kabul International Airport, then examined them at his leisure while in flight.

He was thankful for the diversion because it had kept his mind from being preoccupied with thoughts of Layla, but she was never far from his mind.

It was confusing.

And it was daunting.

He needed to get his head back in the game.

Except that he had the ring in his backpack, and thoughts of it and Layla weren’t going away.

He walked up to one of the ANP patrolmen and showed his passport to the man.

The young man nodded gravely. “Professor Lourds. We’ve been expecting you.” He made a path through the sawhorses.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Watch your step as you go up.”

“I will.” Lourds started up the incline, and then the feeding frenzy hit.

“There’s Professor Lourds!”

Lourds didn’t know who had first vocalized his arrival, but the hue and cry rose.

“Professor Lourds. Could we get a picture?”

Lourds turned back toward the crowd and waved. Several cameras and camcorders were in evidence.

“Professor Lourds, could we get an interview?”

“In a little while, perhaps. At present, I’m afraid you people know more than I do.”

The ANP talked to a lithe young woman in a blue parka for a moment then let her through. She leaped up the incline, quick as a deer, and joined Lourds.

She threw back her parka hood and revealed strawberry blond hair and an innocent face. “Professor Lourds, you may not remember me, but I’m–”

“Anna Cherkshan. Of course I remember you. Boris is delighted that you’re involved with this.”

“And you’re not?”

“Of course I am. I was deferring to Boris. This is his circus, after all.”

“Thomas!”

Gazing uphill, Lourds saw Boris emerge from the cave and couldn’t help thinking of the groundhog that came out and checked for its shadow. It wasn’t a very flattering comparison in one respect, but Boris’s presence had certainly changed the weather.

The slight noise that had started at Lourds’s arrival became an avalanche of questions and demands for information.

Anna gazed at the crowd in wide-eyed wonder.

“Shocked to see your fellow journalists worked up into such a lather, Miss Cherkshan?”

Anna turned to him, raked hair from her face with her fingers, and shook her head. “I’ve never been on this side of it, you know. It’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

“It can be.”

“Do you ever get used to it?”

“No. Trust me, you don’t see this kind of thing every day in the field of archeology.”

“You must. You have found so many amazing things.”

“Well, I didn’t find this one. I was back in Cambridge while Boris was risking the elements and a broken neck climbing this mountain.”

“Can I quote you?”

Lourds smiled. “Of course. He’s only asked me in as a specialized consultant.”

“To translate the documents he found inside the tomb?”

“Exactly.”

Boris waved Lourds up the mountain, and Lourds went. When he reached Boris, the Russian professor scooped him up in an immense bear hug that drew laughter and catcalls from the crowd of journalists.

“It is good to see you, Thomas.” Boris placed him back on the ground.

“It’s good to see you as well.”

“I see you discovered Miss Cherkshan.”

“Actually, she found me.”

“And Layla?”

“Working, as I said.”

“Ah, that is too bad.” Boris frowned, but the expression lasted only a moment before being replaced with his broad smile again. “Does she know what has been found?”

Lourds smiled. “Boris, I still don’t know what you’ve found.”

“Then come. Let me show you.” Boris made his apologies to Anna, promised that she would be the next person he brought into the tomb, and led Lourds into the cave.