The Oracle Code

3



32 Miles Southwest of Herat

Herat Province

Afghanistan

June 18, 2012

The cave tunnel was tall enough for Lourds, and it was wide enough for Boris and him to walk side by side. The walls were worn smooth from the passage of time, but probably from lots of human traffic as well. Those caravans that crisscrossed the country had to stop somewhere, and the cave would have been a good campsite. Bandits had probably taken refuge there as well.

Phosphorescent chalk marks stood out on the walls after the flashlight beams passed over them. There were several tunnels throughout the cave system. The majority were natural, but some were man-made.

Lourds and Boris followed one of the natural ones.

“You know, Thomas, the scroll mentioned there was a treasure.”

“I know. I read it. I also noticed that it didn’t mention what the treasure was.”

“So?”

Lourds glanced at his friend. “You and I both know that a document that tells about a hiding place generally also mentions what is being hidden. If it is legitimate.”

“Not always.”

“At least it would mention who hid it.”

“Possibly, but that isn’t an ironclad law.”

Lourds took the next left from memory but confirmed the choice with the chalk mark on the wall. Now that he was moving and they were in the cold cave, he discovered he was sobering up rather quickly.

As ever, the excitement of incipient discovery made his pulse race. If they actually found a treasure, they wouldn’t be leaving the country with it, because anything they found belonged to Afghanistan, but—for a time—they would be royalty among the dig teams.

“How did you get on this dig?” Lourds took another left. “The last I heard, you’d been condemned to teaching at the university. And that’s your description, by the way, not mine. I enjoy teaching.”

“As to what I’m doing out in the field once more instead of spending my time in a classroom, I have the newly elected president of Mother Russia to thank for that.”

“His people aren’t as tight with a buck now when it comes to research?”

“Not his people, my friend. Mikhail Nevsky himself signed off on my funding. I even got to meet him. Briefly.”

“You met Nevsky? The man who said he was above kowtowing for backing?”

Wearily, Boris shook his shaggy head. “I grow tired of the classroom. It is four walls and dreary. These days I find myself gazing out the windows as much as my students. It is no place to be. I need to be rejuvenated. I need to...discover.”

“So what’s Nevsky’s angle?”

“Angle? Why an angle? Must he have an angle?”

“Ancient history.”

Boris grinned good-naturedly at his companion. “What possible interest would the president of Russia have in this stuff? For all I know, perhaps my grant writing caught his eye.”

“I’ve seen your grant writing. In Russian and in English. I wouldn’t be so quick to laud your abilities.”

“Faugh.”

“But why would Nevsky fund your work?” Lourds was curious. Nevsky was still somewhat of a cipher. The new Russian president was recalcitrant and talked only of Russia. “Nevsky is Old School Russian. From the talks I’ve seen him give, he wants to see Russia pulled back into the Communist way of life.”

Boris shrugged. “I have lived with Communism, and I have lived with capitalism. I have to say, the Communist way was a lot less complicated.”

“But what is Nevsky’s interest in your work?”

Boris sighed. “Thomas, what is the last thing a needy research scholar asks?”

Lourds smiled. “Why someone decided to donate money to fund that research.”

“Exactly. You’re supposed to thank your blessings and your good fortune, then go cash the check as soon as is politely possible.”

“You know, the old line about being wary of Greeks bearing gifts seems very opportune at this time, given the bit of history we’re studying.”

“Nevsky is a strange man. I watch him posture and preen, and I see him trying to convince Russia that he is the leader they have been waiting for. The scary thing is, there are several in the Russian military who like his points of view.”

“I don’t see Mikhail Nevsky as the kind of man who would waste his time with those who don’t share his views.”

“No, but the man can be rather charming.”

“When he’s funding a grant.”

“Obviously most appealing at that time.”

***



“So here it is, my friend. The riddle that has stymied me for weeks.” Boris shined his light over the dead-ended tunnel.

The beam picked up the engraving on the wall. There were two lines on the wall, all of them written in Old Persian. The cuneiform had been cut into the stone a long time ago and had gotten smoothed over during the years.

Lourds had first seen a copy of it, a rubbing Boris had shown him, at the Herat Airport upon his arrival. They had sat in a small café next to a group of newly arrived ISAF replacements and talked, in Russian, about what the engraving meant.

Boris, though he was no mean linguist, hadn’t been able to make a complete translation. Lourds had solved it—even though some of the cuneiform had worn away in places—within a couple of hours over three beers and a sandwich.

Looking at it now, Lourds smiled.

“Why are you smiling?” Boris seemed a little irritated.

“You will too, once you know the secret.”

“The secret? Do you mean to tell me that you translated the writing incorrectly?”

“No. Not at all.” Lourds shot his friend a grimace. “Truly, Boris? A wrong translation? From me? You doubt my abilities?”

“No.” Boris held up his hands. “You did not hear me say this.”

“Not in so many words.” Lourds looked at the inscription again. “The document you discovered—”

“Ransomed.”

“—at the marketplace told briefly of a merchant determined to hide his profits from the tax collectors during the Persian Empire.”

“The Achaemenid Empire.” Boris corrected Lourds immediately.

“I beg your pardon. The Achaemenid Empire, which everyone else knows as the Persian Empire.”

Boris blew out an irritated breath. “Inaccuracies and shortcuts abound. This is one of the reasons no one gets a decent education these days.”

Lourds took a pass on the verbal sparring for the moment. His argument was that information was passed on best these days when it presented quickly and understandably. “According to that document, the merchant hid a portion of his profits within this cave, always packing it away while he was on caravan returning to Herat. Unfortunately, the merchant died and was unable to reclaim his treasure.”

“It’s not the promise of gold and lucre that drives me, you know.”

“Of course not, Boris. I would never think that of you.” And in truth, Lourds never would. Boris didn’t follow his explorations for the money. He just wanted to know things. Lourds understood that implicitly.

“Good.” Boris gestured toward the wall. “‘My son, I love you, and if you would have your inheritance, you must seek beyond these words.’” He shook his head. “How can you have had an epiphany about this while you were with Dominique?”

“Because she surprised me, and I realized that she was more than meets the eye.”

Boris rolled his eyes, and they glowed white in the reflected flashlight beam. “If this is going to get into sexual athleticism, I will not be able to restrain myself. They will find your corpse stretched out in this cave on the morrow.”

“No. But realizing that Dominique held qualities that most men wouldn’t see because they were too busy taking in her beauty led me to thinking about the message here.”

“Perhaps I am just tired, because you are making no sense.”

Lourds knelt to his pack and brought out a special plaster mix he’d had in his tent from earlier casting duty to get copies of some of the clay tiles that had been written on. “I think there’s a message beyond the message the merchant left for his son. Something that probably his son would understand when no one else would.”

Boris trained his light on the cuneiform writing and stepped closer to the wall to see the inscription better. “Beyond the message?”

“Yes. Actually, I’m thinking underneath the message.” Lourds took a small tray from his backpack, poured in some of the plaster mix, then added water and mixed it into a gray-white paste with a trowel. He scooped some of the plaster onto the trowel and approached the wall.

“Wait! What are you doing?”

“Going to see if I’m right.” Lourds smoothed the plaster onto the wall, totally covering the message and extending beyond the edges of the cuneiform to make certain it was all covered.

He spent the next several minutes making sure the plaster was thick. When he was finished and he’d used all of the mixture, he stepped back and admired his handiwork.

The wall looked like it had a huge Band-Aid in the center of it.

Lourds cleaned the tray and the trowel with water from his canteen.

Boris surveyed the patch job. “What is this supposed to mean?”

“Remember when we did an analysis on the carving? Testing to see the depth to which the cuneiform had been cut into the rock?”

“Yes. They’re of various depths.”

“Right. That was the first clue. I just missed it. I blamed the differing tolerances on the carver. Totally my bad. As you can see, the carving is very accurate, almost machined in. The cuneiform is spaced precisely, and the symbols are all uniform. A very, very skilled craftsman created this. So, I reasoned, the tolerances had to be equally planned.” Lourds scratched his goatee and stood. The plaster was supposed to be a quick-drying compound, and it turned out that it was.

“Well, I still miss it.”

Lourds took out his Swiss Army knife and flicked the smaller blade open. “Give me a hand with this, and I’ll show you.” He set the flashlight on the ground on its butt so the beam would diffuse against the ceiling and fill the cave with light. Boris did the same.

Working carefully, Lourds inserted the blade under the edge of the plaster and gradually made his way around. Boris drew a pocketknife of his own and started doing the same on his end.

Gently, they pried the patch free and pulled it from the wall, lowering it to the floor.

The plaster form had reached into the cuneiform cuts, but the whirling spikes forming the layers of the depths of the carved niches could be plainly seen.

“I still do not see it.”

“Patience.” Lourds reached into his backpack and withdrew a roll of paper. “Let’s see if my theory is correct.”