The Sacred Cipher (8 page)

Bohannon whispered loudly in Rodriguez’s direction. “Perhaps the Louvre should apply
the DaVinci Code to this Demotic. Maybe that would solve the puzzle.”

“You guys are a riot,” sneered Rizzo. “I’m just trying to help you out here. You want
to go read Dan Brown, go ahead. He’s not going to help you a bit.”

“Oh, come on Sammy, lighten up,” said Rodriguez. “You’ve got to admit, that was a
pretty good line.”

“Yeah, but you’re not going to be laughing when you realize you may never figure out
what this scroll actually says.” Rizzo pushed on the arms of his chair to gain more
height, leaning into the desk to pierce Rodriguez with his gaze. “The problem is that
Demotic has defied every attempt at translation for hundreds of years. It’s impossible.
Don’t you realize it yet? You are never going to be able to translate this. You will
never know what it says.”

Rizzo dropped back into his chair and watched as hope drained from Rodriguez’s face.

“Sammy, is it really that bleak?” he asked.

“Look, guys, I wish I could help you here. This is one of the most fascinating things
I’ve seen in years. But there are some daunting, inherent problems that anyone will
face if they try to decipher Demotic. The first thing you need to understand is that
Demotic was originally a spoken language, not a written language. As the language
became more commonly spoken, it began to be translated into symbols for written communication.
But from all of the different specimens of Demotic that have been discovered, one
of the few consistencies is that the language changes with the circumstances.” Rizzo
stopped for a breath and looked at his guests. “The language changes depending on
who was writing it, their handwriting, what they were writing. Different types of
texts—letters; economic and legal documents; administrative documents; religious,
literary, and scientific texts—were all written in differing versions of the language.
And it changed from location to location, especially around Cairo. Those differences
have stumped scholars for centuries.”

“Well, then, how did you know what this was when you looked at it?” Rodriguez asked.

“I know what it is,” said Rizzo, looking up, “but I don’t know what it means. Demotic
was unique to its time, even in its construction. Its letters are much more flowing
and joined, similar to each other—another reason it is difficult to translate. Where
something like Akkadian is all triangles and lines in differing formations and quantities,
a pattern you can follow, Demotic is beautiful but unpredictable. Look.”

Rizzo whipped around and typed into his computer. Soon, he was on the Web site of
the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and had pulled up the introduction
to the Demotic Dictionary Project.

“Look, look at this letter Q. It looks like a side view of a kid’s sled or a toboggan—with
a desktop attached to the top of the curve. There are 105 pages of definitions for
this letter and its combinations. It takes 8.6 megabytes of memory . . . just on this
one symbol. Not a word, a symbol! The first five meanings are ‘length; high ground;
a plant; work; high.’ Here, here’s another one that will truly drive you nuts. This
letter,
F
—it sort of looks like a wavy ‘x’—it can mean ‘hair, viper, lift, steal, and fly.’
How does that make any sense? And those are just the first five meanings. The Demotic
Project in Chicago started with the easiest letters. Once they translated the easier
symbols, they moved on to the more complicated. One letter,
C
, has 164 pages of definitions. They expect those that are left to decipher will have
a lot more meanings than the ones they have already done.

“This language may have represented the spoken idiom of the time, how a Southerner
sounds if he visits New York. You know it’s the same language, but it is hard to understand.
Over time, the written form of Demotic diverged more and more from the spoken form,
giving Demotic texts an artificial character.”

Rizzo swept his arm in the direction of the drafting table. “Gentlemen, the document
you copied those symbols from could be more than two thousand years old.” He paused
for effect. “A remarkable find. But its meaning? Its meaning is a secret, protected
by a lock that has no key.”

A long, deep sigh escaped from Bohannon, who rubbed his forehead with the palm of
his hand. Rodriguez had his hands clasped at his chin, fingers entwined, eyes on the
floor.

“It looks to me like we’re all running down different paths but coming to the same
conclusion,” said Rizzo. “Where in the world do we go from here?”

Two heads nodded in assent.

“Well, I know one place we’re going. C’mon,” said Sammy, whipping his chair behind
his desk again and shutting down his computer. “C’mon, let me buy you a beer. We’ve
got a lot to talk about.”

Bohannon’s mind was reeling that week, trying to remain balanced between his responsibilities
at the Bowery Mission and the remarkable discoveries connected with the mysterious
scroll. Even though it was deep into Friday evening, Bohannon felt obligated to return
to the mission and finish his final tasks for the week. As he walked up Madison Avenue
and turned right on 32nd Street, he was oblivious to the soft April night, the exotic
bird store on his right, and the constant stream of people in and out of Artisanal,
the popular restaurant and cheese shop.

Bohannon swiped his MetroCard in the turnstile entrance, turned left on the subway
platform, and then instinctively walked to the far end of the platform where he’d
be in the best position to disembark right at his exit. He dodged an obvious tourist,
head buried in a foldout map, and squeezed himself into one of the typically packed
rush-hour trains—the 6 Downtown. Bohannon held firmly to the stainless steel pole
in the middle of the train, completely encased in other bodies without making eye
contact. In a city of more than eight million people, eye contact could often be misinterpreted.
And who needed that hassle? Waiting patiently for his Spring Street stop, Bohannon
was pounded into by a body from behind, driving him into the pole. At the same time,
he felt two hands slip under his arms from behind, lightly groping for something.

“Hey!” Bohannon shouted, alarming those around him and spinning quickly to confront
his assailant. Facing a middle-aged man with Middle Eastern features, Bohannon went
on the offensive. “What do you think you’re doing? Keep your hands off me,” he said
menacingly. “What are you trying to steal?”

Bohannon was agitated, angry, and feeling superior. That ended.

“Are you accusing me?” the man said through a thick accent. “Are you accusing me?”
he said again, his voice rising to a shout. “You call me thief? You call me thief!
Who are you to call me thief, you persecutor? You white Americans, ever since the
planes you are convinced that all Arabs are murderers and thieves.
I am no thief!
” he screamed, his diatribe continuing without letup. The commotion was so disturbing,
there was now space around Bohannon and this man as the other riders pressed farther
and farther away from the threat. “Prove it. Prove it. You want to call the police?
Come, let us call the police. I will call them myself,” he screamed.

The train doors opened, Spring Street. Bohannon made sure his wallet was still in
place, then pushed past the man, disgust in his eyes and relief in his gut, happy
to get out of the train along with a score of others. “
I am no thief!
” followed Bohannon through the turnstile exit.

God help me
, he thought as he ascended the steps to Spring Street.
That was crazy. What a madman. You never know what you’re going to find on the train
. He stood at the corner of Spring and Lafayette, waiting for the light to change,
running his hand through the thick, copper-colored hair at the nape of his neck.

Lafayette was a busy, four-lane street, a major feeder route for taxi cabs heading
uptown for the more lucrative fares around Lincoln Center or the Theater District,
as well as for delivery trucks and commercial vehicles. Bohannon’s mind was spinning
with images from the confrontation on the train, wondering what the man had been after.

He had no consciousness of a truck picking up speed on Lafayette Street, a truck that
veered to the far left and began bearing down on the crowd waiting at the corner of
Spring Street. His mind focused inward, he didn’t register his fellow pedestrians
fleeing, not until the last possible moment. The headlights, too close, were caught
in the side of his eye, massive motion closing fast. Bohannon recklessly threw his
body forward and to the left, stepped on a box at the curb, vaulted over a green postal
storage box, and rolled over the trunk of a parked car, falling into the street. As
he scrambled for his life, he heard screams cut short and the sickening, crashing,
smashing of metal-against-metal as the truck exploded into the newspaper and magazine
store on the corner, crushing some bodies beyond recognition, impaling others with
flying shards of broken plate glass.

Bohannon’s mind struggled, unable to focus either on the disaster facing him or whether
he was still in danger from oncoming traffic. Using the fender of the car he had rolled
over, Bohannon pulled himself to his feet, knowing for sure he had seriously sprained
his weakened left ankle again—too much volleyball in college. He edged behind the
car and looked at what, a few moments ago, had been a place he had passed thousands
of times and just took for granted. Now, the missile of a truck was halfway into the
store, its right front wheel up in the air, still spinning, as the truck was perilously
tipped to the left. Already, people from every direction were responding. Two firemen
from the Ladder 23 Station House a few hundred feet up Lafayette Street were already
crawling through the ragged metal that was once the store’s facade, first-aid bags
over their shoulders, another half dozen of their mates not far behind.

Dazed, uncertain of what hurt, wondering how he had physically managed to launch himself
over this postal box, Bohannon turned to see pedestrians swarming around the truck’s
cab, trying to extricate the driver . . . or were they trying to kill him? Uncertain
of why, but certain of the necessity, Bohannon shakily made his way around the remains
of the truck to the driver’s side and pushed close as civilian rescuers drew the limp,
bloodied body of the driver out of the cab. Beginning to succumb to the loss of adrenalin,
Bohannon felt foggy, but his mind did register that the dead driver was of Middle
Eastern heritage. And there was something else. What was it? Bohannon’s half-working
mind focused on the unique amulet hanging around the man’s throat, a Coptic cross
with a lightning bolt slashing through it on the diagonal.

Funny
, Bohannon’s brain transmitted.
Where have I seen that before?

“Sir, are you okay?”

Bohannon focused on the present. In front of him stood a fire lieutenant, a young
man with a concerned look on his face. “Sir, do you hear me?” Bohannon’s mind retreated.
The amulet, where have I seen it?

“Sir . . . sir, can you respond to me?”

Not that long ago
.

“Medic!” the fire lieutenant shouted.

The volume clicked with Bohannon.
The train . . . the man . . . that man . . . he had an amulet on, too. Yeah, . . .
same cross . . . same lightning bolt. Strange. Two men, same necklace, a few minutes
.

“Sir, we’re going to give you something to make you comfortable until the ambulance
can take you to the hospital. Sir? Sir . . . are you with me, sir?”

What’re the chances?
Bohannon began to drift off.
Two guys . . . some club . . .

Red lights were flashing in all directions, paramedics, police officers, and firefighters
running back and forth. The critical, the bleeders went first, those with a chance
for survival. Then the walking wounded, many glassy-eyed and disoriented clutching
broken or crushed limbs, their hands gently resting on a heavily bandaged head. In
their midst was Bohannon, bruised, scraped, limping on a rapidly swelling ankle, full
of questions without answers. The body bags came last. For them, there was no hurry.

Bohannon lay down in his bed, hoping that he would be asleep as soon as his head hit
the pillow. His body still bore the bruises and wounds of his near-death experience
with the runaway truck ten days ago, but his schedule had given him little time to
recover from the accident or process much of anything. So he lay awake again, his
mind betraying his body as it raced over the events since the scroll had been discovered.

The days since his accident had been a numbing blur. Monday through Friday, he tackled
his usual responsibilities for the Bowery Mission, overseeing the operation of its
four ministry sites, pursuing several strategic options while keeping a steady hand
on the organization’s administrative functions. Determined not to shortchange the
mission with his time, Bohannon kept to his normal schedule, in the office by 9:00
AM,
out of the office somewhere around 7:00 or 7:30
PM.

But that wasn’t the end of his day.

Leaving the office, Bohannon would then jump on the Uptown 6 at 33rd Street and travel
just one stop, to Grand Central Station at 42nd Street. Up the escalator and out the
doors into Pershing Square, he crisscrossed the streets depending on the “walk” signs
and quickly made his way over to Fifth Avenue and the staff entrance to the Humanities
Library. Joe had supplied him with an “all access” pass that was valid twenty-four
hours a day, and even though by now Bohannon knew all of the guards who manned the
staff entrance, he was closely scrutinized each time he entered the library, and nearly
body-searched each time he left. But leaving didn’t come for several hours.