The Tenth Cycle: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 1) (12 page)

Daniel knew the Little India, from previous outings with Raj. Indian wasn’t his absolute favorite food, but he enjoyed Indian cuisine now and then. He arrived at eight and was trying to decide between chicken tikka masala and vindaloo when Raj slipped into the booth on the other side. At least, he thought it was Raj. The apparition was dressed as a woman, with a blond wig over a patently Indian face.

“Raj, what the…”

“Shh, my friend. Call me Sushma, it is safer.”

“Does she know you’ve stolen her clothes?”

“She loaned them to me and helped me create this disguise. Clever, yes?”

“That’s one word for it. Okay, Sushma what is all this about?”

“I have come to warn you. You must take precautions and take this seriously. You and your Sarah could be in danger if you don’t.”

“Seriously, what’s happened since yesterday to get you this riled up?”

“People I know are talking about increased surveillance. It may not about us, specifically, but because of it we are all the more vulnerable.”

By now, Daniel had serious doubts about his friend’s mental stability, although he did make a pretty cute girl. But, they needed Raj, so he would play along.

“Okay, what should we do?”

“Get your data off of any computer that accesses the internet. Keep it on flash drives and be sure to eradicate all traces of it on the hard drive after you use it. If you have only one computer, don’t let it be connected to the internet when you are manipulating your data. Be careful of Wi-Fi; disable automatic connection so you won’t forget. Be very circumspect in what you say to Sarah or her colleague and what they say to each other over your phones, whether they are landlines or cell phones. Watch your text and instant messaging. Daniel, our lives are far too open for anyone who wants to read them like an open book. You must be hyper-vigilant.”

Now, there was a ten-dollar word for a man who spoke English as a second language. Raj was so sincere that Daniel was caught up in his intensity.

“Okay, I’ll let the others know. How should I do that, email?”

“Heavens no! The best way would be in person, but if you won’t be seeing them for the next few days, send a letter by FedEx. NOT the postal service—FedEx.” Raj handed Daniel a flash drive, which he said not to connect to a computer until it was disconnected from the internet. “There is a document here that explains the best way for us to communicate from now on, but it will take me the rest of this evening to set it up. I will give you the information you need when I see you at work tomorrow, and you will tell the others in person.

Raj’s method for communicating among the research team was to set up a series of free email accounts using randomly generated numbers and letters for the account names and passwords. Those he intended to list in the first account, in the Drafts folder, to be saved in a secure place by each member. The messages would never be sent, but instead would remain hidden in the email accounts’ Draft folders, accessible to read by anyone with a password, but leaving no trace otherwise. It was a method that had been used successfully by spies in the recent past without detection. They would use each account for only a week and then move to the next, unless they had reason to believe one had been compromised, in which case they’d send a text saying ‘Next!’ to each member of the team. Raj would close each account as it was retired.

“Okay, I’ll do that. Raj, you’ve got me worried.”

“That was my intention, my friend. I fear others are far more interested in your work than you believe.”

Allan Barry was a bitter man. He’d been relegated to an administrative role at the Joukowsky Institute, which, though it had attracted a remunerative side job in providing information to his shadowy employers, left him out of the loop academically. As he neared retirement, he realized that he hadn’t put away the sums he would need to retire in the style he desired. But Dr. Sarah Clarke had just handed him the remedy to that problem.

When Sarah and Daniel had left after hedging about their potential breakthrough this morning, Barry decided to think for a while before reporting to Langley. His conclusion was that if the brilliant Dr. Clarke thought there may be something to Rossler’s theory, there probably was. Accordingly, he formed a plan to grab a bigger piece of this particular pie. Executing it would require advance knowledge of what was happening, and it seemed that much of it was happening in the home office of Dr. Mark Simms. He made a call to a colleague in the secret organization he worked for, this time to New York City.

“Impes, Barry.” When making these calls, it was always best to use as few words as possible, even if he had no indication that listeners overheard.

“Go,” was the terse reply.

“Have you ever given any thought to … Oh, never mind. Probably not.” Barry was suddenly nervous that he couldn’t trust Impes. Maybe it wouldn’t be good to ask him on an open phone line whether he’d like to steal the secrets for themselves and sell them to the highest bidder.

“Say it,” Impes directed.

“I think a project I’ve been working on with our employers may break open soon, but I may be in a position to get there first. I think maybe I can break the code they’re interested in. But if I do, I’d like a bonus. A big one.”

Impes considered the implications, not only of what Barry had said, but how he said it. Was the man actually offering to partner in a double-cross of the Orion Society? If so, he didn’t realize just how dangerous his masters were. Now the question was whether to report it that way, or whether to let Barry think he was going to go along with it, then kill him and report the find to Septentrio himself.

“Let’s hear your plan,” he said. He could decide on the best course of action after he heard what was on offer.

After that, Barry reported to Langley just what he’d heard from Sarah; progress of some sort had been made, but she was hesitant to say exactly what until it proved newsworthy.

Before the day was out, Martha Simms noticed that her home phone wasn't working. She used her cell to call the service provider and was gratified to see that they were paying attention to customer service these days. Within an hour of her report, two service technicians in a phone company truck had arrived and checked the phone lines throughout the house. When they were done, her phone worked as well as ever. Such nice young men they were, too. By dinnertime, she'd forgotten all about the incident.

In New York, a team of listeners was assigned to monitor the conversations of a soon-to-be-retired mathematics professor. It was a boring and seemingly senseless assignment, but the team was paid no matter what did or didn’t go on, so they did their jobs. No one was at home during the day but the old woman. She had nothing better to do than talk on the phone with her cronies. On the off chance that these conversations concealed coded communications, every word was noted and analyzed for its relevance to certain subjects.

The night-time hours were a little more interesting, though the listeners had little to no desire to eavesdrop on the bedroom secrets of a couple of folks in their sixties. One, in his forties and already thinking he needed a boost, was encouraged to learn that there was, in fact, life after fifty.

Only when the visitors arrived did the listener on duty perk up his ears, recording what he picked up though it made little sense to him.

From a complex near Langely, VA, Daniel and Sarah's internet searches continued to be monitored, as they had been from the beginning. The only thing new was several searches on the term linguist. It was Sidus who put it together that the breakthrough must have given the researchers some notion that they had hit upon a code of sorts. His report to Septentrio resulted in an order to begin tracking their whereabouts at all times via their cell phones. Langley called on NSA contacts to follow that order.

Sarah and Daniel were at Raj’s apartment on the first weekend in October, deep in discussion about the numbers.

“I added new fields to the database, with the calculations your colleague applied to the data. Now we are able to see the result as soon as I have put the raw data into the record,” Raj was saying. As he typed, a dizzying array of numbers in rows and columns marched across the screen. A few more keystrokes, and the data arranged itself into a chart, showing the final calculation in colored numbers. Sarah and Daniel looked closer, to notice that the different colors always represented the same number, red for five, green for eight, and so on. The sequences, clearly Fibonacci numbers, went no higher than thirty-four.

“How many of these blocks have you finished, Raj?” Daniel asked.

“All of them in the passageway, both sides.”

“And yet, not counting zero or the repeated one, we have only eight numbers, the highest being thirty-four. Could we have been mistaken about the message? It doesn’t seem like enough.”

Raj said, “You know, it looks like we have discovered the keyboard and the screen of a computer, but where is the computer?”

Daniel and Sarah saw it almost at the same time, but Sarah found her voice first. “That’s it, it’s a sign, but it’s only pointing to the alphabet, it isn’t the alphabet itself.”

“Why do you say that?” Raj asked.

“Because, there aren’t enough letters, if we assign a letter to each number. No alphabet has so few.”

“Then, how will we discover where it’s pointing?”

Daniel took over, having grasped the same idea. “Look, the numbers up to eight are expressed everywhere in the pyramid, all the angles and measurements, everything. That was the builders saying, ‘look at this, we’ve left you a message if you can interpret this’. Now we’ve got three more numbers in the sequence, thirteen, twenty-one and thirty-four. I don’t know of any alphabet, ancient or modern, that had so few as thirteen characters, so I think it’s just that they chose Fibonacci numbers to get our attention and then point to the alphabet; the thirteen has no significance. I can’t see any, at least at this time. But twenty-one, and thirty-four, now we’re getting somewhere. We just have to find the alphabet that has one of those numbers of letters, and we’ll know what language they were speaking.”

The men turned to Sarah, the closest they had to an expert on ancient languages. Raj asked, “So, what language is it, Sarah?”

“Don’t look at me! I don’t have a clue. I do know that Sumerian is the oldest language we know of.”

“How many letters does it have?”

“I don’t know, not my field. For all I know, they used pictographs instead of letters.”

Daniel sucked in his breath, gaining the attention of the others. While they looked at him curiously, he gathered his thoughts. Then he gave a slow shake of his head. “We may have been going at this all wrong, thinking in terms of modern writing, where we use these symbols to mean a sound. What if these builders did use pictographs to express their language in writing? It would fit the times. Their spoken language and written language could be completely different, and unless we can find another Rosetta Stone, we could be screwed.” Daniel slumped in his chair. They had come so far, only to hit a dead-end.

“Wait,” Sarah said, “It isn’t all that bad. We just don’t know enough. You said it before, we need a linguist. Daniel, don’t give up!”

Raj, who had also slumped when Daniel pointed out their difficulty, rallied. “Yes, Daniel, do not give up. I will work on the stones from the Great Gallery next. Maybe there will be another clue.”

Slowly, Daniel gained control of his sudden depression. Forming a steeple with his hands and pressing them to his lips, he gave Raj a silent nod of thanks. Sarah moved closer to him and put her arm along his shoulders, allowing him to pull her into his embrace.

“Guys, thanks. This means, wow. This means a lot to me. I can’t believe I’m the one to give up, and you guys aren’t letting me. Sorry.”

Raj reached out his hand, and Daniel unwrapped his right one for a handshake, but Raj instead clasped his forearm. “We will see this through, never fear my friend. We are too close to give up.”

“So what do we do now?” Daniel wondered.

Sarah answered. “I think it’s best for Raj to do as he suggested, continue getting the database populated with at least the Great Gallery stones, and then if we haven’t found the key yet, maybe those in the inner passageways, and possibly the chambers. But the Great Gallery is intriguing. It’s another anomaly. No other pyramid that I know of has one. I think it’s another attention-getter.”

“You could be right, but what about the language?”

“I already said it. We need a linguist. Let’s talk to Mark, see if he knows anyone.”

Raj objected. “We cannot have too many people to keep the secret.”

“There won’t be any secret unless we get a linguist to help us crack the code. I’m sure Mark knows someone who is trustworthy.”

Although Raj continued to make dire predictions, he eventually had to bow to the majority. Nevertheless, he treated the other two to yet another long lecture on computer and communications security, and made them promise to adhere to his recommendations.

On the way back to Daniel’s apartment, Sarah asked, “What do you think Raj would do if we sent him a text saying Code cracked, they’re onto us, run?”

Daniel guffawed, “He’d probably have an accident and have to change his drawers.”

Sarah giggled. “I don’t want to do that to the poor man, but seriously, what is his problem?”

“I’m beginning to believe someone is after him.”

Sarah smacked Daniel on the shoulder, “Don’t you dare start getting me paranoid.”

He laughed. “Would it make you cling to me and say ‘Oh, Daniel, save me!’?”

“Oh, probably. You goof.”

“I honestly don’t know, Sarah, but my theory is that he has enough contact with conspiracy theorists to have a raging case of conspiracy paranoia. But it won’t hurt to go along with him.”

“Except that I have to dig that darned flash drive out of its hiding place in my sugar canister every time I want to use it.” Sarah was referring to one of the three copies of the data that Raj had prepared, given to each of them as a backup, and then told them to hide when they weren’t in use. Though everyone but Raj thought it was overkill, it was easy enough to go along with him to keep him happy.

“There is that. Maybe you should get a bushel of kidney beans, like Martha.”

“Where did you hide yours?” Sarah said.

“I’m not sure I should tell you.”

“Do I have to strip search you to find it?”

“Yes, please.”

“Funny man. Where did you hide it?”

“Oh, all right. There aren’t many places in a small apartment to hide something. I taped it to the back of my underwear drawer. There’s a trick to getting the drawer out of its slot, so anyone searching probably wouldn’t be able to, without destroying the chest. And if that happened, we’d know it.”

“Clever. They might search the bottom, but not the back.”

“Exactly. Listen to us discussing this possibility like it was something that might happen,” Daniel said.

“I know, crazy, huh?”

“Let’s change the subject.”

“Okay, what do you want to talk about?”

“Let’s talk about that threat to strip-search me,” Daniel leered.

Sarah smiled a wicked smile. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“What man wouldn’t, if you were the one performing the search?”

“Oh, now flattery might get you somewhere.”

“You fascinating, gorgeous, intelligent, sexy woman, what would you say if I told you I had hidden something you would be interested in, somewhere on my person?”

“I’d say I just might have to strip-search you.”

“Oh, goody. You wouldn’t happen to have hidden something somewhere on your person, would you?”

“I guess that’s something you’re just going to have to find out.”