The Oracle Code (20 page)

35

Kabul Serena Hotel

Kabul, Afghanistan

February 18, 2013

As it turned out, Layla couldn’t arrange a flight to Moscow immediately, but she put Anna up in the Kabul Serena Hotel until a flight could be booked. By the second day of being cooped up in the hotel, even with all the diversions that came with her comped package—and the fact that the hotel room wasn’t in her name—Anna thought she was going crazy.

She worked on stories during the day, using the phone lines to contact people and sources in Moscow as well as in Kiev and other parts of the Ukraine. She hadn’t gotten a true picture of the situation in either country, but the Russian people were apparently happy with their “regrowth,” and many Ukrainians seemed relieved that they were part of the Russian Federation once more.

“I feel confident that, once President Nevsky implements his plans for the federation, we will prosper and grow.” The speaker on television was an old man with a weathered face who was missing several teeth. Despite that, he had a genuine smile and didn’t try to hide his lack. “I will work hard under this Reunification. President Nevsky will see that he has made a wise investment in the Ukraine.”

“I am going to be sick.” Even though no one else was in the hotel room, Anna couldn’t keep her feelings to herself. She wanted to throw something through the screen.

But it had all been like that recently. Most of the people interviewed by the Ukraine media had nothing but glowing things to say about the Russians being there. The outside world called the military movement an invasion and now an occupation, but the people on the Ukraine channels—and in the newspapers—referred to the tanks and troops as the Reunification Effort.

Anna was convinced that Nevsky had branded that as well.

There were some in the Ukraine who spoke out against Nevsky, but those were few and far between. Some of the detractors had “disappeared,” and, so far, their bodies hadn’t been found. It was a very sobering thing.

Many of the Ukrainians whom Anna had tried to speak to refused to be interviewed or they wanted to speak out without revealing themselves. Getting the truth of the story from people on the ground was difficult.

Still, she persevered.

Her phone rang on the desk where she was charging it. She expected it to be Kirill. Instead, her father’s face was there.

She answered, and her heart thudded in her chest. Despite the fact that she didn’t like what he was doing, she didn’t want him to be harmed. Since the first day of the invasion—the term she was determined to use, not reunification—she’d been concerned about him. Her father appeared in many public places, becoming very prominent.

All it will take is one determined sniper. Or even a common citizen who can get close enough to him.

She had suffered through several nightmares since that first day and had not enjoyed a good night’s sleep since. Instead, she had subsisted on tea and toast, and she had researched and watched the news, and she had written story after story lambasting President Nevsky.

“Father.”

“Good evening, Anna.” He sounded tired, his voice gravelly the way it sometimes got when he had been too long without sleeping.

“You have not been resting.”

Her father chuckled. “These are not restful times.”

“Much of that seems to be your fault.”

He sighed. “Are we going to have an argument?”

Anna briefly considered that, thinking that an argument might very well be the thing she needed to relax. She had not even realized it was evening. Now, as she looked out her door and saw the dark skies hanging over the city, she realized she had lost all track of time.

“No. I don’t want to argue.”

“Neither do I. These past few days, I have had my fill of it.”

“Do you truly believe in what Nevsky is saying, Father? That this move is merely to reunify Russia and not to force those countries back under Russian control?”

Her father hesitated for a moment. “Am I talking to my daughter, or am I talking to the writer for
The Moscow Times?”

“Does it matter?”

“My answer would not be changed, but I do not wish to be quoted in a newspaper. I have had enough of that too. Even as little as I talk, so many reporters willingly take what I say out of context and use it to their own ends.”

“All you talk about is how good the Reunification is.”

He didn’t reply.

“You are talking to me, Father.” Anna sighed. “Not a reporter.”

“Good. I had hoped to talk to my daughter.” He sounded more jubilant, and that made her feel good. “You are still safe?”

“I am. Currently I am stranded in Kabul.”

“The American has gone to Kabul now?”

“No. I have gone to Kabul. I am trying to get home. Flights into and out of Moscow are very limited.”

“Ah.” Her father suddenly sounded relieved. “You have decided not to pursue the American’s story?”

“At the moment, he appears stymied. And Russia is the story now.”

“The things you have been writing about President Nevsky are very harsh.”

“I made an agreement with you. You would not be talking to a reporter. I do not wish to be talking to an editor. Or worse, a censor.”

“I am speaking as your father.”

“Then, speaking as your daughter—and respectfully, at that—I must disagree with your assessment of my view on your president.”

“He is your president too.”

“Not when he does things I disagree with.”

Her father growled, but she ignored him. He took a breath. “Perhaps we should find something else to talk about.”

“Of course.” She adopted a mocking tone of voice. “How was your day?”

Unexpectedly, her father laughed. It was deep and throaty, and it took her back to when she had been a girl and he had come home from the wars to read to her. During those times, her mother had said, her father needed to laugh, and she was the only one who could make that grim soldier step outside of the horrors he had seen to become just a man again.

“I concede the point, Anna. Perhaps, at this time, there is not much I can talk to you about. But I am very glad that you are all right.”

“I worry about you, Father.”

“You need not do that. I am
invincible
.”

He said that like one of the Russian characters in the Pierce Brosnan James Bond film,
Goldeneye.

“I still worry.”

Some of his levity left him. “Have you seen anything more of the man who pursued you?”

“No.”

“That is good. Perhaps it was only your imagination.”

“Or he’s out killing someone else.”

Her father growled again.

“I know you have been busy, but did you have a chance to look for the man whose picture I sent?”

“I did. I did not find him.”

“That is a surprise, because I felt certain he was Russian and military.”

“Can you tell me anything further of your adventures with Professor Lourds? The only things I have seen in
The Moscow Times
written by you have been articles bashing that president of Russia fellow.”

Anna thought about that. “Can I swear you to secrecy?”

“Of course. I am your father. And I have the most top secret clearance a man in our country can get.”

“Before Boris Glukov was murdered by this mysterious man, he found some scrolls in the tomb of a former Greek scribe named Callisthenes.” Anna was happy to find something she could talk about with her father. She was hungry for conversation with him. Especially if it wasn’t loaded with mutual castigation. And she knew telling him the story was harmless. He had no one to tell who would even care about the tomb of Alexander the Great.

She told her father much of the story as Lourds had revealed it, telling him, too, that even if the tomb were not found, the scrolls alone were an impressive find.

Finally, though, she heard her father growing more tired. She realized then that he had needed someone to talk to who wasn’t overly invested in what he was doing. He wasn’t able to talk to her mother that way because her mother would worry about her father. Katrina Cherkshan lived for her family.

“I should let you go. Conquering countries makes you tired. You are obviously not as young as you used to be.”

“And you are not so respectful.”

“You taught me to question and to be independent, Father. What I am is more your fault than anyone else’s.”

“I taught your brother the same things, and he’s turned out fine.”

“I am not my brother.”

“No, you are not. But since your father is also a very important general in the Russian Federation, I am granted special privileges, which I now share with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You remember Lieutenant Emil Basayev?”

“Of course. He has a very nice smile.” Saying that made her think of the assassin’s smile.

“You should remember that when he comes for you.”

“He is coming for me?”

“Yes. On a Russian military jet. He will also bring you back to Moscow now that you are ready.”

“You can do that?”

“Of course. What fun is it to be the general if you do not sometimes flagrantly flaunt your authority?”

Anna laughed at him, and he was once more the father she adored, the one who read to her from fairy tales and made her believe in princes. “I look forward to seeing him, then.”

“Let me know where you are staying.”

For just a moment, Anna hesitated. When she realized what she had done, she hated herself for it. He was her father. He was taking care of her. “The Kabul Serena Hotel.” She told him the room. “But I can meet Emil at the airport.”

“No. He has instructions to pick you up in a car. And to take you out someplace nice to eat if you would like.”

“A date?” She couldn’t resist teasing him.

“No. It is not a date. If it had been a date, I would have threatened him.”

She laughed at that and felt some of the tension melt away. But she only had to glance at the muted television to realize that once she was back in Moscow, it would all come rushing back.

36

Safe House

Kandahar

Kandahar Province

Afghanistan

February 19, 2013

“Good morning, Professor Lourds.” Just like yesterday, Captain Fitrat brought in a tray containing breakfast for Lourds and him. “Have you been up all night, or have you been to bed? I can never tell with you.”

Lourds leaned back from the desk, his shoulders slumping against the chair. He felt tired and drained, and his body ached from sitting for hours on end. Being still for long stretches while his body craved movement was the hardest part of being consumed by work. But when he got on a roll like this, when the ideas were flowing and some of the language he was working on was starting to unravel itself and reveal its mysteries, he couldn’t stop.

“You know, I could fix my own breakfast, Captain.”

Fitrat shrugged and set the tray on a corner of the desk that Lourds raked free of papers. “Your time is better spent working on this translation.”

“And your time would be better spent watching over Layla.”

“Yes, it would be. However, she gave me strict orders to watch over you, so I am.” Fitrat pulled over the same chair he had brought up yesterday. “I trust I am not intruding if I eat with you.”

“Not at all. I’m happy to have someone to talk to.” Lourds went to the bathroom, washed up, and returned.

In that time, Fitrat had spread out the morning’s feast. There were boiled eggs, sweet cakes, rice with meat, and fresh melon and a selection of berries. There was also a pitcher of strong
qaimaaq chai
, green tea seasoned with cardamom seeds.

“Everything is good?” Fitrat looked at Lourds.

“Everything is fantastic. Does your wife cook?”

Fitrat looked embarrassed and shrugged. “When I am not home, of course.”

Lourds took a boiled egg and salted it. “What about when you are at home?”

“Sometimes. If she wants to make something special. I prefer to cook. It gives me time to spend with the children, and I have time to teach them something important.”

“Something important?”

Fitrat poured tea. “A man should teach his children things, yes?”

Lourds nodded, bit into his boiled egg, and started chewing.

“Normally, a man teaches his son, and maybe his daughter, about the job that he does.” Fitrat gave a small smile devoid of humor. “My job is killing people, and to keep other people from killing people. A necessary thing, but not one I would want to teach my children.”

“Yes, but I thought you enjoyed your job.”

Fitrat paused to sip his tea and think. “I see the need for my job. I have an aptitude for this kind of work. So I learned to be very good at it.”

“But you don’t enjoy it?”

“I save lives. I like saving lives. That part I enjoy very much.”

“From what Layla told me, your parents wanted you to be a doctor. You could have saved lives doing that.”

“Perhaps. But I have discovered I have another side. One that enjoys chasing bad people.” Fitrat grimaced. “Sometimes, when I was younger and thought more about such things, I wondered if perhaps something was wrong with me. That in some ways I was a bad person.”

“I don’t see that.” Lourds spooned up the rice and spicy meat, which was delicious. “I think what you’re experiencing is a sense of competition. Man against man.”

“I have come to this conclusion as well. It is this competition that draws me so fiercely. I enjoy winning.”

“That’s part of the warrior spirit. It’s why we insist on playing games against each other. Baseball. Football. Soccer.”

“Layla mentioned that you were a soccer player.”

“I enjoy the game very much.”

“Plus, it gets you out of work so you can come back to it refreshed.”

“That, too.”

Fitrat nodded toward the scrolls. “How are you coming with them?”

“The translation is taking shape slowly. The final scroll is written in code, as I said, and it’s very complicated. Almost every paragraph has got some new twist to it that requires further refinement.” Lourds picked up his notepad. “Callisthenes says that Aristotle felt his young protégé was marked for greatness as soon as he laid eyes on him. So Aristotle set out to make him the best student he could be.”

Fitrat broke a piece of flat bread and took a bite.

“But early in their relationship, Aristotle took Alexander to Delos in Greece.”

“You said a few nights ago that Delos was one of the most important sites in the Greek islands because so much of the Greek history and mythology took place there.”

Lourds nodded. “Exactly. According to Callisthenes, Aristotle took Alexander there when he was sixteen to get a better accounting of him as a man.”

“What does that mean?”

Lourds shrugged. “The scroll isn’t clear about that, but I get the sense that Aristotle wanted to make sure Alexander cherished the Greek ways. According to Callisthenes, Aristotle felt that Alexander was
too inured to Greek life
and was starting to look for something new. Remember, Alexander was Macedonian by birth. He’d adopted the Greek ways, too, looking to enrich his life.”

“That would explain why Alexander was so taken with Persian customs.”

“In the other scrolls I read, Callisthenes pulls apart from Alexander over that very trait of embracing the Persian culture. He felt that Alexander should remain a true Greek. He didn’t.”

“I took the liberty of looking up Callisthenes.”

Lourds was pleasantly surprised. “So what did you find?”

“That he was supposed to have died five years before Alexander. And that Alexander himself might have ordered the execution of Callisthenes or caused him to be locked up where he died of sickness or torture.”

“Yes, but history also holds that Callisthenes wrote the history of Alexander from beginning to end. We don’t know if there was more than one historical scribe named Callisthenes who worked with Alexander, or if later historians simply attributed their works to Callisthenes so the whole body of records would remain intact. That secret may have died when the Library of Alexandria burned to the ground. What we do know is that Callisthenes—whoever he, or
they,
were—is accepted as the official scribe of Alexander the Great. In fact, many of Callisthenes’s works were later translated into what became known as the
Alexander Romance
. Some of them by Callisthenes himself.”

Fitrat nodded. “I read about that too. Those were supposed to be fictions written about Alexander.”

“Exactly. And some of those stories ended up scattered throughout literature as well as religious documents.”

“Like the Koran.”

“Yes. The story of Dhul-Qarnayn, The Two-Horned One.”

Fitrat shook his head. “Dhul-Qarnayn lived. He was a prophet, and he was known to Alexander. Dhul-Qarnayn ordered the wall built that kept Gog and Magog from the people he met on his trip to the East.”

Lourds decided not to go into the possibility that Cyrus the Great was also the source for Dhul-Qarnayn. That was a different matter anyway. He had his hands full trying to figure out where Alexander’s tomb lay. “Getting back to Callisthenes’s story about Aristotle taking Alexander to Delos, Callisthenes—whichever one it turned out to be, and the one usually attributed to keep the records at that time was Aristotle’s nephew—claimed Aristotle walked his young charge across the island and extolled upon him the virtues of the Greek culture.”

“All to brainwash Alexander?”

“According to what I’ve deciphered, that wasn’t all. You didn’t happen to look up Delos, did you?”

Fitrat shook his head and picked up another boiled egg.

“That’s fine. I’ll tell you about it when we get there.”

Surprise lifted Fitrat’s brows. “We’re leaving the safe house?”

“Yes.” Lourds glanced irritably at the scrolls. “Whatever merry little chase this scroll is leading us on, it points to that place. That’s where the Delian League met, and that’s where we will find some of the answers we seek.”