The Oracle Code

5



32 Miles Southwest of Herat

Herat Province

Afghanistan

June 18, 2012

They found the third cave on the east readily enough. It was a large room, at least sixty or seventy yards across. Not big enough to get lost in but certainly large enough to stash a house. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, and stalagmites stood up from the ground. Several scars that had been smoothed over in the center of the floor showed where other stalagmites had been removed to make room, presumably, for people who had spent the night in the cave.

Boris looked around madly. “I don’t understand. I have been in this cave several times while looking for clues. I never found anything before.”

“Were you looking for a camel before?”

“No.” Boris sounded exasperated. “There is no camel in this room. Not a living one and not a dead one either. Don’t you think I would have noticed a camel?”

“Perhaps a pictograph.” Lourds moved off and began shining his light over the walls. The rough surfaces were clear except for phosphorescent chalk marks on the floor that declared the area as CAVE ROOM #16. The chemicals would easily wash off later, but for the moment, it helped with cataloging everything.

Lourds’s beam froze on two stalagmites against one wall. “Boris, when you think of a camel, what do you imagine?”

“An ugly, ungainly-looking beast with a savage temperament and a stench that absolutely reeks. What do you imagine?”

“Aside from those things, what do you think of when you visualize a camel?”

Something in Lourds’s voice drew his friend around. “Humps, I suppose. Why?”

Lourds waggled his flashlight beam over the two stalagmites he’d spotted. “One hump or two per camel?”

“The stalagmites?”

“Yes.”

“No way.”

“The writer did mention ‘between the camel,’ so maybe we’re not looking for a whole camel.”

Boris flicked his light around the room, but Lourds already knew there wouldn’t be another set of stalagmites that looked the same. These two were rounded on the top, as if the ends had been artificially knocked off and sanded.

As if hardly daring to believe what he might find, Boris closed in on the stalagmites. The light caressed the dark gray-brown color of the stone. Boris halted at the pair and stared at them. “These have to be the camel’s humps the message was referring to.”

“I think so as well.” Lourds stood beside Boris and looked around some more.

“What are we supposed to find?”

“Perhaps whatever was here has already been taken. It has been hundreds of years.”

“No.” Boris stubbornly shook his head. “Whatever the author of that carving had hidden, it wouldn’t be hidden in plain sight. There has to be a trick.” He knelt and began feeling around on the humps.

Lourds knelt beside his friend. “The message said between the humps.”

“Well, there’s the floor.” Boris slammed his fist into the floor a few times experimentally. “But that appears to be solid enough.” He switched his attention to the wall and banged the butt of his flashlight against the stone surface in a few areas.

Some of the flashlight’s thumps sounded hollow.

“Let me see your canteen, please.”

Unslinging the canteen from his shoulder, Lourds passed it over.

Taking his time, Boris poured water along the wall at shoulder height, then watched it run down the stone. As the water ran along the surface, it unveiled a horizontal groove that hadn’t been visible to the naked eye. Two other lines ran vertically on either side of the horizontal line.

“Look.” Boris could scarcely speak.

“I see it.” Lourds’s pulse beat at his temples, and he couldn’t help smiling. This was what he lived for.

Boris stuck out his hand. “Could I borrow your knife?”

Gently inserting the blade into the horizontal gap, Boris pried at the crack, slowly opening it. A whole section of the wall popped out, leaving an opening three feet across and three feet tall.

For a moment, Boris froze. “Me first?”

“It’s your discovery.” Lourds gestured the man forward. “I’ll gladly follow you into the promised land.”

Lourds gestured with the flashlight. “Are you going to go? Or do you want me to take the lead?”

“I’m going. I’m going.” Diligently, Boris surveyed the tunnel again. “Why couldn’t they have made this big enough for a grown man?”

“Because it’s supposed to be hidden.”

Footsteps scraped the stone floor behind Lourds. He turned swiftly and shined his flashlight toward the center of the cave.

Six men dressed in dark desert clothing that looked black in the shadows stood behind them. The men looked hard and worn. They carried packs over their shoulders and rifles in their hands. Three of them carried small oil lanterns, and Lourds realized that he hadn’t seen their light because he’d been blinded by his own.

“You see, Ghairat, I told you I heard someone inside the caves.”

One of the men dropped his pack, and all the other men did too. “Get your hands up.” He gestured with the AK-47 he held. “Get your hands up or I will shoot you.” He spoke in broken Russian.

“Boris...” Lourds elevated his hands.

Awkwardly, Boris clambered back out of the tunnel.

“Are you spying on us, Russian dogs?” Ghairat strode forward with more confidence.

Lourds cleared his throat. “No.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“We are archeologists.”

One of the men snorted derisively. “More of the dirt diggers. I say we kill them now and be done with it.” He spoke in the Turkmen language, which Lourds knew well enough to understand.

“Young fool.” Another man cuffed the speaker on the head. “If we kill them, the other dirt diggers will start looking for who killed them.”

“If we don’t kill them, they will tell others they have seen us. They will come into the cave and find the opium we have stored here.”

The leader, Ghairat, turned to the young man. “Close your mouth.”

The young man bowed his head in obedience.

“It is a simple solution.” Ghairat grinned. “We will kill them here, then stuff them in that convenient hole in the wall they found.” He raised his rifle.

Lourds grunted at Boris under his breath, “The tunnel. Now!”

Boris didn’t hesitate. He threw himself into the tunnel like a mouse returning to its home ahead of the cat. Lourds dropped as well, expecting to feel a bullet between his shoulder blades at any second.

Ghairat opened fire, but the bullets slapped against the wall Lourds had stood in front of, then tracked down. For a moment, the camel hump-shaped stalagmites offered protection from the bullets, but Lourds knew that was fleeting at best. The men were already jockeying for new firing positions.

One of the ricochets caught a man and knocked him down.

“Brothers! Help me! I am shot!”

Ghairat stopped firing and screamed in frustration. “Get them!”

Lourds dropped behind Boris and hurled himself through the small passageway. Another thing the men hadn’t thought of was that the small arms fire would carry out of the caves and alert the camp. He didn’t know if they were using drugs or were truly just dim-witted, but hanging around to find out wasn’t an option at the moment.

Even a fool’s bullets could kill him. And he was certain the men wouldn’t be without the long, curved herdmen’s knives so many carried out in the wilderness.

***



Heart pounding, Dmitry stood in the passageway leading to the cave where he’d followed the men. He hadn’t known the men had reached Glukov and Lourds until he heard one of them speaking to the pair. Then there had been exchanges in a language that Dmitry couldn’t understand, but none of it sounded good.

Quietly, he stole up to the cave entrance. He took a fresh grip on his pistol. During his time with the SVR, he had killed sixteen men. Most of those had been shot while trying to kill him or his partners. He had mortally wounded his first man when he was twenty-three.

One of the men inside the cave cried out in pain. Since it was in the language that he didn’t understand, Dmitry was certain that neither Glukov nor Lourds had been shot.

However, that didn’t mean they weren’t about to be.

Dmitry drew in his breath and let it out, then he flicked on his flashlight in his left hand, placed it under his pistol in his right, and swiveled so he faced the opening in profile.

The flashlight beam caught the black-garbed men flatfooted. One of them lay on the floor, and two others administered to him. They looked at the opening, holding up hands against the brightness of the light, and tried to see.

One of the men in front raised his rifle to fire.

Dmitry focused on that man first, firing three bullets into the man’s body and noting with professional satisfaction the way the target staggered back. Then he fired several shots into the knot of men trying to boil into action.

He went through the door at a steady run, committing himself to his action. Targeting the men who were still moving, Dmitry kept walking toward them and shot them in the head, one after the other.

Heart still beating rapidly, Dmitry kept the pistol at the ready in both hands. He still had twelve rounds of the eighteen in the magazine in his weapon. Looking around, he saw that no one else was in the cave.

“Put the weapon down! Do it now!”

Even with his ears ringing from the thunderous noise trapped inside the cave, Dmitry recognized the threatening timbre of a professional soldier’s voice. Quietly, he bent and placed the pistol on the ground.