The Tenth Cycle: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 1) (32 page)

“We will.”

Daniel pulled Sarah’s car up to the door of the honeymoon cabin and rushed around to open her door for her as she waited impatiently. He had with difficulty trained her to allow him to open doors for her, as she was used to doing it herself. But, she thought it was so sweet that he was old-fashioned that way. However, this time, as he gave her a hand to help her out, he swept her into his arms.

“Daniel, what are you doing?”

“You’ll see. Can you manage the key?” Awkwardly, she leaned down to work the big key into the keyhole and twist the doorknob. Her first glimpse into the cabin made her gasp. On literally every surface, fresh flowers were arrayed in glorious abandon. Roses, lily of the valley, tulips, every flower she could name and a few she couldn’t, graced the nightstands, the counters, the top of the chest of drawers, and even the shelves on the walls that she thought had contained knickknacks earlier.

“Daniel, how?”

“We have our ways, my dear,” he said, in a funny accent, waggling his brows. Setting her down carefully, he put his arms around her and kissed her. “Do you like it?”

“I can hardly take it in! Daniel, what is this all about?”

Barely taking time to swing the door shut, Daniel dropped to one knee, and Sarah’s hands flew to her mouth as tears started in her eyes. “Sarah, love of my life, heart of my heart, will you marry me?”

Overcome, all Sarah could do was nod, until Daniel stood to take her in his arms again. Then she said with a tremulous smile, “Daniel, I will marry you, yes, yes, yes.” Squeezing her tighter with one arm, Daniel slipped the other hand into his pocket and removed the ring box and pressed it into Sarah’s hand. When she opened the box, her eyes went wide and the tears that were threatening spilled over.

“Oh, Daniel,” she breathed. “This is the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen. It’s perfect! How did you know?”

He took the ring and slipped it onto her finger, whispering, “A perfect ring for a perfect woman.”

Sarah found the white teddy in her bag, and smiled at Daniel’s detailed planning. Trust Daniel to have enough confidence that her answer would be yes to bring along the special touch to start their night of love off right. She called out to him, “Don’t you have an errand to do, my love?”

“No…Oh, yes, so I do,” he said, grinning, and took himself outside so that his woman could prepare a feast for his eyes.

After a night of tender passion and not much sleep, Daniel presented his intended to the delighted proprietress, who gave them coffee and scones from her own kitchen. Sarah’s color was high, whether from being a little flustered by the woman’s attention or because her skin was still inflamed from his kisses, Daniel didn’t know. But Sarah was always the most beautiful when her soft skin had that ruby glow. He was going to have trouble driving, because he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. That she was his overwhelmed him and kept driving lumps into his throat at the most inconvenient times. Like when he thanked their hostess again for all her help.

“Dear, I was so glad to do it. You let me know when the wedding is, and I’ll make sure to have your cabin for you.”

“Thank you. We haven’t even discussed that, or where we might want to go on honeymoon. But if Sarah agrees, I’d love to spend our wedding night here.”

Sarah just smiled and nodded.

When they returned to Sarah’s house, Daniel suggested they call his family with the good news. Sarah agreed that would be a lovely idea, and so it was that they had a long Skype conversation with Ben and Nancy, Daniel’s parents, and then Nicholas and Bess. Bess insisted on going out to get Daniel’s friends, who were still on guard duty, so they could hear the good news, too. When they saw Sarah, Pierce let out a wolf whistle, while Ellis swallowed convulsively.
Sarah and her effect on the male of the species
, thought Daniel.
I’m going to have to carry a club.

After that, of course, they had to call Sarah’s parents and her sister Meg with the good news, and then Luke and Sally. Daniel’s brothers, Aaron and Josh, had missed his call and would hear the news from their parents. The person Sarah wanted to tell next was Martha, so they drove over to surprise her.

As they would have expected, Martha was ecstatic about the engagement, and she exclaimed over the beauty of the ring enough to satisfy the proudest groom and the happiest bride. “When’s the wedding, my dears?” she asked.

Daniel and Sarah looked at each other and laughed. “We haven’t gotten around to setting a date yet,” Sarah explained. When they got home, though, yet another unpleasant reminder of the kidnapping was waiting on their front porch.

~~~

While Sarah was recuperating, Sgt. Jackson had not been idle. It was too much of a coincidence to believe that Mark Simms’ and Alan Barry’s deaths had been unrelated, especially since the one person who linked them, Sarah Clarke, had been kidnapped. However, nothing had turned up in the evidence to identify the perpetrators.

With the kidnappers’ deaths, Simms’ and Barry’s murders were deemed solved, but unexplained. Sgt. Jackson was livid over the unauthorized action during the exchange, but nothing could change the outcome. As the only two people on the scene who weren’t dead, Sarah and Daniel were immediately tested for gunpowder residue and Daniel’s car was thoroughly searched. Both came up negative.

No one mentioned the drones, so Sgt. Jackson was forced to conclude that David had managed to get a sniper on one of the nearby roofs. A professional, of course, since no trace of shell casings, footprints, fibers or anything else that didn’t belong was ever found despite a massive CSI effort. Jackson was also incensed that David, citing national security, declined to be interviewed regarding his role in the rescue. Everything on the persons of the dead kidnappers, plus everything from their car, was boxed up and placed in the evidence room.

Now, weeks later, Sgt. Jackson wanted nothing more than to satisfy his own curiosity. It was the best he could expect, as all leads, such as they were, had grown cold. Furthermore, he’d never had the opportunity to interview Sarah about what she remembered. As Daniel and Sarah approached in Daniel’s car, Sgt. Jackson’s lanky figure peeled away from the wall where he was leaning and he raised his hand in greeting.

“Jackson, what are you doing here?” Daniel said, only slightly less hostile than the words sounded. Jackson held up both hands now, in a conciliatory gesture.

“Just wanted a little chat with Dr. Clarke, if that’s okay. So I can wrap up my investigation and close it once and for all.”

“You’d better come in then,” said Sarah, quelling Daniel’s objection with a look. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to help much, though. I don’t really remember anything about the kidnapping until I woke up, which we’ve worked out was at least 24 hours after it happened. “

Jackson shook his head. “That’s about what we’ve got on the rest of it, too. Two dead victims, no leads, four dead kidnappers and you, Dr. Clarke. Any idea of why someone would want to kill all of those people?” Jackson trailed off, aware for the first time that Sarah was looking at him in consternation. “What is it, Dr. Clarke?”

“You said four dead kidnappers. Daniel said it was all of them, but there were five of them,” Sarah explained.

Now both of the men were staring at her. “Are you sure, darling?” Daniel asked gently. “How do you know?”

“When I was in the car, I heard them talking. I knew one was a woman, and all she said was ‘shut up’, but before that, there were four different voices, arguing.”

Daniel turned to Jackson. “One of them is still out there. You can’t close the investigation.”

Jackson answered grimly. “Damn straight.”

Septentrio stared at his recently-hired linguist in rage. “Are you telling me that everything about the data we gave you is gibberish?” he demanded.

The linguist had never seen such contained rage, and shook in his shoes as he answered. “We can make nothing of it,” he said carefully. “It seems to be deliberately randomized. Even a code we couldn’t break would be more uniform in, for example, distribution of the individual symbols. We’re fairly certain that the problem lies with the data.”

For a moment, Septentrio fought his rage, cognizant that his first thought, killing the researchers, would do no good. They’d fooled him this time, but the fact that they went to the trouble to do so meant that they genuinely thought they had something of value to hide.

The tantalizing message on the scrap of paper that Impes had retrieved from Mark’s killers confirmed it. Rather than kill Rossler and the woman, or even the data specialist, Raj, it would be better to let them continue to work while he monitored them, or rather, while Sidus monitored them. After the code was broken would be plenty of time to snatch it, and then these troublesome people would be of no further use. At that time, he could exact his revenge.

Though he had reached a sane and reasoned conclusion, Septentrio needed an outlet for his rage. He would make do by calling Sidus on the carpet for the incompetent job he’d done in not verifying that he had a true copy of the data.

“Why am I surrounded by incompetents?” he shouted as soon as Sidus’s face appeared in his screen. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t fire the lot of you and replace you with someone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground!”

“Sir, please. I didn’t have time to even look at what was on the flash drive before your courier took it. If I had, I would have known. But, there’s good news. The woman has recovered her memory and work will resume soon, you have my word on it.”

“Bah, your word. No more fuck-ups, Sidus, do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, sir.”

~~~

Sarah had been looking forward to a conference that she had planned prior to the murders, as something normal for a change. Though Daniel insisted on accompanying her everywhere, it still felt good to begin to get back into work mode. Technically, she was still on leave of absence, but she insisted on returning to campus to conduct the conference. The guests of honor were several of her colleagues from the University of Cairo, distinguished Egyptologists she’d met in her studies for her doctoral thesis. Between lectures and after hours, Sarah and Daniel had the opportunity to socialize with these men, and carry on some stimulating discussions.

One of the more interesting of the many discussions Sarah and Daniel had with her friends had to do with the timeline of human history. Without begging the question of what attributes constituted a human being, Ahmed Mustafa, a professor of archaeology specializing in pre-historic Egyptian studies, mentioned in passing some scholars who shared his specialty theorized that human civilization had to have predated the accepted 6000 BC mark, perhaps by tens of thousands of years. The couple were fascinated to hear his thinking on the subject, but Sarah couldn't help asking, "Where is the archaeological evidence, Ahmed?"

"We believe the Great Pyramid is part of it," he replied. "However, you must understand that we believe the destruction of each cycle of human civilization also wipes out most of the other evidence, such as buildings and monuments. Think of the Colossus of Rhodes, destroyed in an earthquake before the birth of Christ. If a local earthquake can destroy one of the wonders of the world, think what world-wide catastrophe would do."

Daniel's mind had seized on the phrase 'each cycle'. Now, he asked for an explanation of what Ahmed was talking about.

"Before I begin, I must ask if you are familiar with certain scientific facts," Ahmed answered. "You are aware of the precession of the equinoxes, yes?"

"Wasn't that what all the Doomsday prophets were on about a couple of years ago?" Daniel answered. Sarah's expression indicated her confusion, so Ahmed answered by expanding Daniel's statement.

"Yes. Many people in your country confused it with the end of the Aztec calendar," he said, making the hand sign for quotation marks as he said the word 'end'. "However, some of us recognized that the most recent end of the precession was in 2008, and believe me, some of my colleagues were very disappointed that the world didn't come to a disastrous end. Many genuinely expected it."

Seeing Sarah's shock, he went on. "No, my dear friend, they are not, how do you say, crackpots? I must explain another scientific fact. First, let me just say that the precession of the equinoxes is nothing more than the phenomenon caused by the earth's axis describing a circle as it rotates. Because of the tilt of the earth, as well as the gravitational pull exerted by the sun and the other planets, in a marvelous ballet of the universe, our earth is a ballerina, twirling in place, you see."

Sarah smiled, entranced by the analogy. Daniel was nodding, impatient to hear the rest of the story.

"Now, she does not just twirl, but sways, so that if her arm were pointing upward, it would describe a circle around her, do you see?"

Sarah nodded eagerly, finally able to picture what Ahmed was describing. He went on, "This means that the equinoxes rotate as well, and what I mean by 'cycle' is that the circle takes approximately 26,000 years to complete. During that time, if you were to graph the equinoxes, they would show as the spokes of a wheel. Each spoke will be in the same place every 26,000 years."

Now Sarah had it completely, her agile mind moving on to a conclusion. "If that's the case, how do we know where the circle begins?" she said. "Couldn't we simply pick any given year and say that the cycle was complete, because the equinoxes are now in the same place as they were 26,000 years ago?"

"Ah, I see you have discovered the reason so many Doomsday prophets are disappointed in their predictions," laughed Ahmed.

"Then I don't see what merit this has, vis-a-vis the pyramid builders," she observed.

"But wait, friend Sarah. You have not heard the rest of the story. Do you know about tectonic plates?"

"The theory that the land mass of the earth used to be all in one piece, and that plates below it move?" Sarah ventured.

"Yes, but I must protest the word theory. This is a scientifically proven fact. Once, the entire land mass of the earth was jammed together like a large ball of clay. Imagine how that might have affected the tilt of the axis, the weight of it causing a rotational pull like that of a gyroscope that is out of balance. We believe that this condition of being out of balance is what began to break up the plates, and that it would have had more force as precession of the axis tilted along the leading edge of the bulge."

"So, you mark the beginning and end of a cycle at the point where the gravitational pull is greatest, causing some disturbance of the tectonic plates, have I got that right?"

"Precisely. Naturally, as the plates have redistributed the land mass, the effect is diminished. But, we still have cycles of weather disturbances accompanied by movement in the plates that, while they may be minuscule on a world scale, cause catastrophic events such as typhoons, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes."

"But those occur all the time," Daniel protested.

"Yes, however, on a cyclic basis, they cluster. Each year, the events become larger and occur closer together until, a shift occurs that almost instantaneously wipes out most of the life on earth. We can predict approximately when that will occur if we take note of the clusters of natural events and look back over the past, to see when an event such as, say, the disappearance of the dinosaurs, is large enough to show in our geologic record. That is the end of a cycle."

Daniel sat back, stunned. It made too much sense to dismiss it, but he needed time to absorb the idea and think it through. The burning question was, if this was known, why wasn't it taught in schools, discussed in scientific research papers? Why had he, an investigative journalist with fairly broad knowledge of archaeology, not read or heard a peep about it? Before he could ask the question, Sarah brought up another point.

"Would this explain how it could be that a large animal such as a mastodon would freeze instantly, so quickly that the food in its stomach is as fresh as if the animal had eaten it only minutes ago?"

Ahmed nodded with approval. "Yes, we believe so. Furthermore, we think that the occasional confusion of the magnetic poles is another key to understanding these disturbances, though it happens much less frequently, and is much less dramatic than your popular science fiction writers would have it."

"Well, you have certainly given us food for thought. Could you sum it up for us, in terms of what we're researching?"

"Gladly. We are convinced that the Great Pyramid is a survivor from the last catastrophic destruction of human civilization, built to withstand the natural disasters that would have accompanied such an event. If we're right, then we can think of only one reason for the civilization that came before us to build such a thing, and that would be to record their existence, as well as hopefully their knowledge. Clearly, they were more advanced than we are today. This begs the question of how many times this has happened. In light of recent discoveries of 400,000 year-old humanoid remains bearing DNA that is too close to ours to dismiss, we have to believe that many such civilizations could have arisen and been destroyed."

"How do you account for the last six thousand years, then, when our civilization hasn't been destroyed?"

"I would simply believe that we find ourselves near the beginning. However, we must look a bit further back, because we don't find the evidence of massive destruction six thousand years ago. No, I believe we are closer to the end."

A shiver went through Sarah as her friend said the last words, her knowledge of the end times described in the Bible paralleling some of the events of the times too closely for comfort.

Ahmed ended their meeting by saying, "I am not one who wishes the secret to remain secret. That makes no sense to me. How is it to open 'in the fullness of time' if we do not at least try to understand it? And, when we understand it will be the proper time to understand it. How can it be otherwise? May Allah grant you the wisdom to complete your mission, my friends."

Sarah stood, and then Daniel, who held out his hand to Ahmed. Ahmed hesitated, shook it briefly, and then touched his hand to his heart. Sarah understood that if she held out her hand Ahmed would be put in an awkward position, so she simply nodded to him. Ahmed said, in English, "Go in peace."

Sarah completed the ritual by responding, "May God protect you." Daniel, having been in an Arabic-speaking region during his time as a journalist with the Marines, spoke a passable Salaam.

Later, at home and with the jamming device deployed, Daniel and Sarah spoke of the ideas Ahmed had put forward. In the light of the partial translation of what they could only assume was a greeting message, displayed as it was in the entrance passageway of the pyramid, it made perfect sense. If it were indeed true, what they were on the verge of discovering could be even more dangerous than two murders, a hostage-taking and Sarah’s kidnap indicated; something of such massive danger as to be truly a matter of national or even world security.

This was too big to set aside, and yet, too big to handle on their own. It was time to call in reinforcements, and not just a couple of Marine buddies. Talking late into the night, Daniel and Sarah decided to bring in older and wiser heads, knowing that it was dangerous, but these were people who were already involved to some extent. Tomorrow, they would call Sarah’s dad and uncle as well as Nicholas and possibly Sinclair.