The Atlantis Code (12 page)

“Yes.”

“If there’s anything you find you need, Inspector, please let me know.”

“I will.” Natasha said good-bye and trudged back to the parking lot where she’d left her car. Thomas Lourds was uppermost in her mind. Even if the man wasn’t involved in Yuliya’s murder, he might know something that would lead to those who were. Natasha intended to find out everything he knew.

ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT
AUGUST 20, 2009

W
ake up. It’s on the news.”

Lourds woke slowly. A fog enveloped his mind. He knew from the uncomfortable way he was sleeping that he wasn’t at home. He slitted his eyes and saw blurry movement in front of him.

Before he could sort things out, bright light stabbed into his eyes. He growled a curse and covered his eyes with a forearm.

“Sorry. You have to see the news. They’re talking about Yuliya Hapaev. She’s dead.”

Dead?
That got Lourds’s attention and burned away the fog in his mind.

Across the room, Leslie folded herself back onto his bed and pointed the remote control at the television. The volume increased.

Blinking away the pain as his pupils adjusted, Lourds looked at the television screen. The headline,
MOSCOW ARCHEOLOGIST SLAIN
, screamed in large letters behind the male news anchor.

“—as yet Ryazan’ police officials say they don’t know why Dr. Hapaev was murdered,” the anchor said.

The television cut away to a blazing fire in a building. The dateline tagged the scene as

RYAZAN’ STATE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY
RYAZAN’, RUSSIA

“There’s still no explanation for the fire that broke out in one of the lab buildings at Ryazan’ State Medical University, destroying everything within it,” the anchor said. “The blaze claimed the life of Professor Yuliya Hapaev.”

A small picture appeared inset in the footage of the fire. Lourds saw that it was a recent photograph of Yuliya working at a dig. She looked happy.

“Professor Hapaev has been involved in a number of notable studies,” the anchor went on. “She’s survived by her husband and two children.”

The camera cut away to one of the constantly developing stories in the Middle East.

“That’s all there is?” Lourds asked.

“So far.” Leslie looked at him. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“So am I.” Lourds forced himself up from the couch where he’d spent the night after Leslie fell asleep on his bed. He retreated to his computer and quickly linked to the Internet. “Was there any mention of the cymbal?”

“No.”

Lourds brought up the news sites in quick order, sorting through them for more information. He even read through the Russian news services, but there was precious little more information than FOX News had just presented.

“Do you think the cymbal had something to do with her death?” Leslie slid from the bed and walked over to join him. She still wore her clothes from yesterday and went barefoot.

“Of course. You don’t?” Lourds countered.

“It would be a stretch.”

“Not much of one.” Lourds clicked through the news stories, saving them as documents he could review later. “You posted images of the bell, and it was only a short time before we had armed men beating the door down, ready to kill us to get it. Yuliya sent out photos of the cymbal, and she’s dead in a suspicious fire, one that destroyed her lab. It connects.”

“But she sent the pictures to you.”

“Yes. Still, I wasn’t her only resource,” Lourds said. “No archeologist or researcher exists in a vacuum. Each of us is only as good as the network we can assemble. Yuliya’s network was extensive. I’m sure she sent pictures to others beside me.”

“But if she didn’t post the cymbal publicly—”

“Then logic would dictate that someone close to her, someone she sent the pictures to, would be the guilty party for her murder. Which is why I’m going to track everything I can about that cymbal.” Lourds bent to the task.

Within a few minutes, Lourds had ascertained that Yuliya posted inquiries about the cymbal on at least five different archeological boards. All the pictures were identical to the ones she’d sent him. All of them showed the inscription that was so disturbingly like the inscription on the bell.

Part of him—the part that wasn’t consumed with the mystery of what it all meant—felt the loss of his friend.

Yuliya had been bright and witty. He’d met her and her family on a dozen different trips into Moscow. Twice Yuliya and her husband, Ivan, had put Lourds up in their home while he was there doing research.

“Is there any way to see everybody who viewed these images?” Leslie asked.

“Not everyone,” Lourds said. “These pages are open to the public.” His worst fears confirmed, he leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to put the rest of your series on hold for a little while.”

“What do you mean?” Leslie looked troubled.

“I’ve got to go to Moscow.”

“To visit the family? I understand that, but—”

“Not just to visit the family,” Lourds said. “To track down more information about the cymbal. Yuliya was a brilliant archeologist. Even though the lab burned, she never kept all her research in one spot.”

Leslie was intelligent. She read between the lines immediately. “You think she might have left information about the cymbal somewhere besides her lab.”

Lourds nodded. There was no reason to lie. Leslie didn’t know what he did about Yuliya.

“She would have kept an alternate book about the artifact,” Lourds said. “She was very careful about things like that. Sometimes it can be hard to protect research. Scholars take every precaution.” He frowned. “I’m sorry about the show, Leslie.”

“That’s no problem,” Leslie assured him. “We have a tight deadline, but I’m sure we can sweat a couple days out of production.”

“It may be more than a couple days,” Lourds said.

Leslie looked at him.

“Something ties the cymbal and the bell together,” he told her. “If I can find the trail, I’m going to try to find out who killed Yuliya, as well as James Kale and the shopkeeper’s son.”

“That could be dangerous.”

“Oh, I don’t intend to be foolish about this,” Lourds told her. “Once I have enough to go to the police with, I fully intend to do that. I’m a linguistics professor. If Yuliya hadn’t been a friend, if I wasn’t certain that I might be able to do more at this juncture than the police can to track her killers, I wouldn’t try.”

Later, after Leslie had gone, Lourds turned his attention to scheduling an immediate flight to Moscow. Unfortunately, he didn’t meet with any great success. Russia, even these days, wasn’t the hottest of destinations, the kind that had flights leaving every thirty minutes.

After dealing with three airlines and not getting much in the way of satisfaction, he turned his attention to getting packed. One way or the other, he was going. He also knew he was going to need to buy clothing because he had hardly packed for the current Moscow temperatures.

As he stowed his gear, he grieved for Yuliya and her family. He didn’t know what Ivan and the children were going to do, and he couldn’t imagine the pain they were going through.

Thinking about their loss sparked Lourds’s own determination. He couldn’t allow the killers to go free. With renewed deliberation, he turned his attention back to the travel agencies.

Standing in the hotel lobby, Leslie felt uncomfortable, feeling she stood out like the Sunday morning date still in her Saturday night clothes. She wanted a shower and a change of attire, but her reporter’s instincts were firing on all cylinders.

So was her paranoia.

While waiting for the connection to be made over her sat-phone, she tried to organize her thoughts. When the switchboard operator answered, Leslie asked to be connected to Philip Wynn-Jones, her supervisor.

“Wynn-Jones,” he answered in that quietly controlled voice he had.

“Philip,” Leslie greeted. “It’s Leslie Crane.”

Wynn-Jones’s smile sounded in his voice. “Ah, Leslie. So good to hear from you. I was so sorry to hear about Kale. Thanks for your work down there in keeping our crew alive. Your heroics have generated a lot of publicity for the coming program. Speaking of which, I’ve been looking at the dailies on your program there. Cracking good job. I think it’s going to be absolutely brill. Your Professor Lourds is quite cinematic. The camera seems to love him.”

“Thanks,” Leslie said. “I think so, too.” She hesitated, unsure of what to say next or how to get there.

“What’s on your mind?” Wynn-Jones asked. “I can always tell when you’re trying to work out an approach. It’ll save us both some time if you just spit it out.”

“There’s a new wrinkle. The show may be on hold for a few days,” Leslie said.

Wynn-Jones became quiet. He didn’t like going over budget or past due dates. “What’s going on?”

Quickly, Leslie outlined the events of the latest tragedy in Russia.

“Are you sure these two artifacts are related?” Wynn-Jones asked when Leslie had finished.

“Lourds thinks so.”

“And he’s going to Moscow to follow up on this?” Wynn-Jones asked.

“Yes.”

“Hmmmm.” Papers shuffled at the other end of the connection. “This affair seems to be getting interesting. We do have some leeway in our schedule, I suppose. You’ve actually gotten ahead of production. Do you know how long the professor’s trip will take?”

“I want to go with him.”

That seemed to have shocked Wynn-Jones for a moment. “You?”

“Yes. Me.”

“Whatever for?”

Leslie took a deep breath. “Think about it, Philip. I found a mysterious artifact, and armed hooligans showed up to steal it as soon as I brought it to the one man who could decipher it.”

“You’re putting an awful lot of stock in this professor of yours.”

“Yes, and you know why. You liked his credentials, even before the chance to cover a big story was presented to us.”

“ ‘A big story?’ Aren’t you being a little premature?”

“Think of it. Two unusual ancient artifacts surface, half a world apart, maybe related somehow. Two murders occur in less than a week, along with armed break-ins and the thefts of those very same artifacts. If it’s the same person responsible, or even two groups that were sent by the same person, they’ve killed professionals connected to the artifacts on two different continents.” Leslie stared at the hotel desk and mentally crossed her fingers. “It’s a
huge
story. So far, nobody but us has connected it. Philip, we’ve got the inside track on this so far.”

Wynn-Jones sighed heavily. “We’re not a news agency.”

“I realize that.” Leslie scarcely contained the excitement that clawed at her.
He hasn’t said no!
“What we do have here is a chance to seize the spotlight for a moment. If Professor Lourds is able to ferret out the secret of the bell and the cymbal, wouldn’t that be a fabulous piece of luck? Plus if we have a criminal conspiracy surrounding these artifacts, it would certainly bring more attention to the series we’re doing on the show, wouldn’t it?”

“Possibly. But I don’t like the sound of criminal conspiracy—especially with you in the middle of it.”

Leslie couldn’t hold back. Nervous energy cascaded over inside her. She paced in a small oval, aware that she was drawing attention from hotel guests in the lobby. “Please don’t be obtuse, Philip. You know this could potentially garner a lot of attention.”

“Does the headline, ‘Esteemed American Linguistic Professor and Desperate British Television Personality Meet Their Doom’ do anything for you?” he said.

“I want this, Philip. I have a good feeling about it.”

Wynn-Jones remained silent.

“Furthermore, I think Professor Lourds is holding something back,” Leslie said.

“If he’s holding secrets, what makes you think he’s going to tell you?”