The Decrypter: Secret of the Lost Manuscript (Calla Cress Techno Thriller Series: Book 1) (21 page)

He shared his scribbled notes:

In three dominances you rule,

move and have your being.

1.

Tongue unites your realms.

Should it dissolve, a state of confusion erupts.

Here, I first crafted you and lay you down.

Now men seek you for all you say,

Without it, you lack sanity.

No dominance.

I lay to sleep where I first awoke.

If the riddle had not caused more perplexity, Nash’s face took on the task. The pair glared at each other with narrowed eyes.

Nash laid a hand on the manuscript scouring its delicate pages.  “What does it mean?  Why do they use the word ‘dominance’?”

Calla tugged at her ear before a wide smirk settled on her lips.  “It’s telling us that language is power.  ‘Dominance’ or ‘ruling’ is coveted by men and women.  My pages look a little different, but I think I have the other two ‘dominances’.”

Nash took the journal in his hands and studied the manuscript.  “But what is the purpose of the letter?”

Calla’s eyes lit up as she rose, enlightened by an idea.  “This is a guide to three destinations.  Your destination or the first dominance is talking about language.  It’s pointing to where language was first crafted, Babel.”

She circled the room in excitement.  “What happened at Babel that defines language today?”

Nash shrugged his shoulders.  “I’m not a religious scholar, but wasn’t Babel the place history records as the birth of languages.  Everyone spoke one language before the great flood in biblical times.”

“Exactly, some think the events at Babel were the cradle of civilization,” she said.

Nash scratched his head.  “We can’t look for a place whose very existence and actual location is debatable?”

“I think it’s merely telling us that at Babel history turned.  We as a human race began speaking different languages, yet today more and more, we’re migrating to mastering one language in order to survive.”

Nash smirked.  “English, I take it.  British or American?”

“Very funny.” Calla snickered at his mild sense of humor.  “Think of it,” she said.  “If you want to have any global influence, English would be useful.”

“But English is not the prominent language in terms of population.”

“I know, but it is, by the number of countries where it is spoken.”

“That’s true.”

“We need to find the original ‘
cradle’
or birthplace of that language.”

Calla squinted, peering down at his bright eyes.  “Nash, we’re onto something!  If this is a map, I think I know where we need to go. I’ll get the car ready.”

* * *

2:00 P.M.

Federal Criminal Police Office

Staff Apartments

Oranienburger Strasse, Berlin

Eichel was not convinced. 
The girl knows more than she recounted.

He stroked a photo taken of Calla at Tegel Airport.  She can’t be a day older than twenty-seven, he thought as he studied the passport scan provided by Berlin Tegel Police. 

She was twenty-nine, almost thirty.

His stomach rumbled, an atrocious reverberation reminding him that dinner should be ready any minute.  Not another day of coffee and pastries.  He needed a proper meal before this night shift. 

Eichel couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept.  The past forty-eight hours had included several sessions of questioning, mostly museum visitors and staff.  This had been coupled with endless periods spent poring over any police reports on the Deveron document, foreign and local. 

A dead end.

He stretched his fisted arms above his head, drawing out a lengthy yawn.  He needed sleep, badly. 

Tired lines and dark circles around his eyes made him look older than his fifty-three years.

He brought his hands down and tapped his fingers on the table as his nostrils detected a burnt smell.  When the smoke alarm went off, he shot up from the dinner table. 

Anjte had done it again. 

“Are we having burnt offerings?” he mumbled.

He crossed the hallway from the eat-in living room to the kitchen.  His boots pounded the wooden floors of his modest home - staff residence really - as he stomped to the kitchen.

  As chief investigator, he’d been bestowed an apartment on the same street as his offices.  Not exactly what he would call home.  Home would be Dresden, at least his first home.

He barged into the smoke infested room as Anjte, his dark haired-wife bent over the oven.  The sound alarm pierced through the apartment, deafening his ears.  Eichel found a kitchen stool and hopped onto it to turn off the smoke alarm. 

She shot him a contemptuous smile as she rescued the remains of her dinner. The stench of a burnt casserole consumed the kitchen as he descended from the stool. 

He traversed to the windows, flung them open and let in a waft of fresh air. “Why can’t we have a decent meal in this house?  I need to eat before I return to work.”

His mutterings were ignored, probably the result of thirty-one years in a loveless marriage.  Anjte continued about her business.

Irritated by her silence, Eichel headed back to the dining room.  “I’ll get some takeaway
döner kebab
at the Turkish place downstairs.”

Back at the dining table, he gathered his notes and paused to glimpse at Calla’s photo again.  She’d seemed honest enough when he spoke to her.  Was she telling the truth?

He couldn’t let this opportunity slip away.

He had to redeem his failure.  It had been a long investigation three years ago and he winced at the thought of a repeat.  How he regretted the events of that night.

The weather office had predicted strong gale winds, quite unusual for October.  On that drizzly, autumn night, frantic banging on his door woke him.  He remembered bemoaning his decision to take a staff apartment, doors away from the police station. 

With sleep clogging his vision, he fiddled to the door and opened the latch only to see his faithful deputy.

Peter stood at the door staring dumbfounded at Eichel, like a child who’d suddenly found answers to a treasure hunt.  “We’ve found the underground hideout.  It’s a few miles from here, in Kreuzberg.”

“I’ll get dressed and meet you in the car.”

Though he’d sounded awake, earlier, he’d masked his distresses by consuming six beer cans and downed a bottle of Red Label, another night of immersing his mournful marriage in liquor.  In no condition for police work, groggy-eyed and barely able to walk straight, he made it down to the car within ten minutes. 

Why had he not told Peter the truth?

Fifteen minutes later, they steered into Kreuzberg and what used to be the impoverished district of Berlin.  The dregs of its past still resonated in the quarter’s streets, characterized by high levels of unemployment and some of the lowest income earners.

Eichel said very little until they stopped outside the detained apartment block.  “Who are we after?”

“A thirteen-year-old.”

“That young?”

When Eichel and Peter stormed into the room, three other officers interrogated the boys who’d been instructed to sit on the floor. 

It was a huge case. Everyone had said so and Eichel was at the helm. He’d spent months investigating smugglers who brought young boys into Germany from less fortunate milieus, transforming them into criminals.  Eichel had always maintained that it was a sickening case of organized crime.  That night, they’d failed yet again.  Not one ringleader was among the detained adolescents.

Eichel swore under his breath.  Stumbling towards one of the boys who’d been notorious for supplying drugs on the U8 metro-line, Eichel’s anger consumed him.  He grabbed the youth, thrust him to the ground and threatened to beat him senseless.  The on-looking team of police officers accustomed to seeing Eichel collected, shuddered with remorse. 

Peter and one other cop held him back. A redeeming action, but not for long.  Suspended and subjected to months of anger management, Eichel bore the weight of humiliation.

The case lingered, as police couldn’t arrest the adolescents until they turned fourteen and corruption continued with impunity under his nose. 

Peter took over the case and found the drug lords.  The boys were arrested almost eighteen months later, leading to several convictions.  The Berlin chief of police, knowing Eichel was to thank for the case’s successful conclusion, shortened his suspension from a grueling three years to sixteen months on one condition.  Eichel was ordered to attend an alcohol addiction program. 

That had been twenty months ago. 

The fact that he was in charge of the Deveron case spoke volumes. He’d proved himself and most importantly, no one matched his investigative expertise.

Eichel shut off his computer returning to the evening’s case.  He mentally organized his perplexing tasks.  He knew his office needed him.  Otherwise, why place him in charge of one of the biggest cases at the station? 

He would prove himself again.

Eichel slid on his black leather coat that hung over one of the dining table chairs.  He reached for his cigarettes from the table and stashed them in his pocket.  Looking over the notes he had gathered the day before, he shook his head in frustration. 

He understood how chemical vaporization due to radiation worked.  He’d seen this when he spent time as a young cop working with the Russians as part of the
Stasi
, the former East German, Ministry for State Security, in East Berlin.  He’d been too junior to access confidential files.  Even then, those bold enough whispered about Sanax, a chemical being developed in Russia.  He wondered if that was what had been used on Allegra Driscoll.

What was Cress running from? 

Or, towards?

* * *

1:15 P.M.

Nash furrowed his eyebrows. “Where exactly are we going?”

Calla’s face beamed.  “To Oxford.”

“Why?”

“In 1762, the ‘Short Introduction to English Grammar’ by Robert Lowth was published.  Robert Lowth was a Church of England Bishop, an Oxford Professor of Poetry and,” she paused, “the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar.”

“But why is that the ‘
cradle’
of the English language?”

“Because grammar is the framework of any language, the starting block.”

“But this Robert would have died centuries ago.”

“True.  But, he’s been named as the first in a long line of English usage commentators known for judging and describing the English language.”

Nash tilted his head. “Okay?”

“We’re not after him, we’re after something related to him.”

Nash rubbed his creased forehead.  “Perhaps the city in which he was born?”

Calla shook her head.  “Not the city, but the place of work.  The person currently doing his job may be able to tell us more.”

“So we walk right into Oxford University and tell Mr. Robert’s replacement to give us whatever this map is pointing to?”

“The manuscript clearly says we’re after something the human race has panted for like water for centuries.”

The mid-afternoon sun struggled to seep through the blinds. Calla marched to the windows and dragged the blinds upward.  “If we leave now, we won’t be able to see anyone by the time we get there.  I suggest we leave in the morning.”

Pearl crossed the hallway and stuck her head through the door crack.  “Will you be dining here tonight, Mr. Shields?”

Calla crossed to where she stood and let her in.  “Pearl, please put Nash in one of the guest rooms.  We have an early start tomorrow.”

As they exited the den, Nash bent down and whispered in Calla’s ear.  “How does she know my name?”

“Hm…she must like you.”

The den lay still, abandoned except for a silent witness on the desk.

No one had paid attention to the smart phone Pearl had brought into the room earlier.  The light from its monitoring device blinked red.

It kept recording, having registered every word, syllable and breath.

* * *

Eichel pushed open the front door and stood by it.  “I’ll be back in the morning before six,” he called to Anjte.

He made his way back to the Pergamon Museum.  If nothing stuck out in his mind, he’d follow his only lead.

Calla Cress.

The artifacts belonged to the Pergamon.  However, he too was no fool.  There was little evidence that the Deveron Manuscript was actually robbed from the museum during the raid in 1945. 
Who am I to judge?  I only have to make sure it gets back.

If anything, Priam’s Treasure had been brought back to Germany to strengthen ties between the Russian and the German governments.  Both sides now agreed that Priam’s Treasure belonged to Germany.  His assignment was to ensure the inauguration went smoothly.  So far, that had not happened.  Bringing the stolen items back would redeem his position.