Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) (25 page)

“My mother gave it to my father as a present when they got married. He always wanted me to give it to the man I decided to share my life with.” Mary took his hand, squeezing it tightly against hers. “James, I have very strong feelings for you. You’re a very special person and the one who I want to spend the rest of my life with.” She looked at the flowers that lay on top of the bedside table, and then the breakfast on the tray. James followed her eyes. “I think you feel the same way about me, otherwise you wouldn’t have done all of this. I’d just like you to take it for the time being, and we’ll talk about everything when all this is over.”

Before James had a chance to speak, they heard shouting coming from the corridor. Someone was pounding their fist against the door, they seemed worried.

“Mary? It’s Richard. Are you there?”

“Yes,” replied Mary. “Wait a minute, I’m just getting dressed.”

They both exchanged a knowing look, clear enough to show that they agreed to keep everything secret, for now at least. James gathered his things and went into the bathroom, switched off the light and hid behind the door.

“What’s the matter Richard?” asked Mary as she opened the door, threading her belt through the loops on her pants.

“I called James’ room at nine this morning, but nobody answered. I asked the cleaner if she had seen anyone leave, but she looked at me all surprised and said that nobody had spent the night in that room. When she went in, the bed was still made. Do you think those two bastards have found us?”

Mary didn’t seem impressed by his story. “Don’t worry, he’ll be downstairs. Did you call his cellphone?”

James realized that his phone was in his pants pocket; an inconvenient call from his friend at that moment would give the game away. He reached into his pocket and took it out.

“Yeah, about ten times but it’s switched off.”

James sighed.

Mary, who was walking completely carefree to the other side of the room, picked up a maroon jersey and pulled back the curtains. Just then, Richard laid eyes on a beautiful bunch of flowers which was sitting on one of the bedside tables, as well as a tray left on the floor, the coffee still steaming. Suddenly it all made sense. He gave a devilish grin while Mary still had her back to him and he tried to feign ignorance as long as he could.

“I’m going to ask at reception, perhaps the porter knows something.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in the cafe in five minutes.”

When he had left the room, James emerged from the bathroom. They stared at each other before bursting into laughter. It was obvious that Richard had caught them.

“You go down first, he’ll be waiting for us in the cafe. I’ll come down in ten minutes. I think he’s looking for you to tell you something about the book. He must have spent all night reading it.”

The vast majority of hotel guests were still asleep. The night before they had organized a massive event somewhere nearby; circus games, clowns and magicians had all made the evening unforgettable. The last big surprise was a grand finale with fireworks against a backdrop of the three pyramids, which rounded off the event in the early hours of the morning.

In the dining room, breakfast was still being served. Aware of the long night enjoyed by the tourists, they had decided to offer breakfast for an extra hour. Richard was reading a copy of an American newspaper, apparently much calmer than before and his face more relaxed, treating his taste buds to a coffee and a few delicious muffins.

James sat down on one of the empty chairs. “Where did you get that paper from?”

“Apparently, the hotel is crawling with Americans. An old guy left it on that table a while ago. It’s from yesterday, but there’s a very surprising article inside.”

Richard folded the newspaper on page thirty and dropped it into his friend’s hands. It was a rather short report but the headline was no less shocking:
THE IMMORTAL ANIMAL
. On the right, a color photograph of a jellyfish illustrated the page.

James paid particular attention to the photograph. He was familiar with the story. “Several television channels have already been quick to raise the alarm in their daily bulletins, but this is the first time I’ve seen something written about it.”

It was a small article. It simply hinted at how many investigators were left astonished by their rapid expansion through the whole world, so James read it while his friend gave him a brief summary of the topic.

“The jellyfish is the only animal on Earth which is immortal, and it might even have existed here since time immemorial. It has the ability to reset its cells after an indefinite number of years, so it becomes young again and starts a new life. It is as if a butterfly, before it dies, went back to being a caterpillar and was then reborn as a completely new butterfly.”

“So it would repeat that process
ad infinitum
and never die,” said James, looking up from the newspaper.

“Exactly!” beamed Richard.

“According to the journalist who wrote this article, its natural habitat used to be the warm Panama coast, but due to climate change it has adapted perfectly to almost all the seas in the world. Their appearance in other ecosystems is largely due to boats. When they take large quantities of water onboard for cleaning purposes, these creatures get inside the hold. After using that water, they throw the surplus overboard along with the jellyfish, which start to colonize a habitat which is not theirs.”

“James, don’t you realize that climate change spells the end for us? We’re looking at a future invasion, on all our coastlines, of an animal which is difficult to get rid of and yet our leaders are more worried about airing out their dirty laundry than solving problems which really concern us.”

James completely agreed with his friend. The good thing about working in a university was the fantastic and never-ending vacations they had, and he always spent them at the same place: the beach. He was fanatical about the sea, and of course he couldn’t go a day without his regular two hours in the water, or doing some kind of watersport to burn off his adrenaline. Never in the world could he imagine an invasion of jellyfish along every coastline in the world. It would be a real tragedy.

“Anyway, tell me.” Richard’s eyes lit up at the thought of what he was going to ask. “Where did you spend the night?”

James had rehearsed the lie he was going to tell him since he had left Mary’s room. He took a deep breath and started to spin his yarn, trying not to put his foot in it. “Yesterday we drank a little more than normal, and before I went to sleep, I came down for a stroll to see if I could clear my head. When I got here, I sat down on one of the sofas and fell asleep. I woke up at eight in the morning.”

“What a pitiful lie!” replied Richard, taking James by surprise so much that he choked and broke into a coughing fit. “You had half an hour to come up with something more convincing. I expected more from the future president of our university.”

James smiled. It would be ridiculous to try and deny the evidence, even more so before Richard who would continue to twist his arm until he scooped an exclusive. “To be honest - ”

“Good morning.” Mary had just arrived. James could breathe easy, at least for the time being. “Well, Richard? What did you find out in the end?” she asked, breaking the ice.

The paleographer grinned. “I was just explaining everything to James. I’ve managed to decode the third chapter. It actually doesn’t contain anything interesting, or anything we didn’t know already, except for the last few pages. There it mentions a possible location for the second piece.”

“Which country does it mention?”

“It doesn’t refer to any country, but it talks about an expedition carried out around 200 BC. Starting from the Red Sea, the purpose was to find an area far enough away to hide the next piece of the
Trifariam
. They were searching for a place which would be inaccessible to looters.”

“Didn’t you tell us a similar story a few days ago?” asked Mary, getting excited.

“Yeah. The expedition I told you about crossed the Pacific Ocean until they reached America. In fact, the dates given in the book could match perfectly. I guess they may have sent two expeditions; the first would have found the ideal place and the second would bring the fragment.”

“It must involve the Mayans,” said James with certainty. “As you well told us, there are characteristics which are common to both civilizations which go beyond coincidence.”

“That was my first impression. But we can’t base everything on mere hypotheses and head off in search of an object without any irrefutable proof of its location. So I kept searching, until last night I discovered a hidden message in the text itself.”

A special glint was in Richard’s eyes. His body was overwhelmed with anxiety and a fervent desire to share his findings with his friends. Meanwhile, both James and Mary held their breath waiting for their friend to spill his secret.

“Last night when I was asleep, I woke up tossing and turning about an idea that I couldn’t wait to check out the next day. I sat at the desk, switched on the lamp and pulled it as close as I could to the book. I spent over an hour researching; I didn’t want to miss the slightest detail. Did you know that the writing on the last page of the chapter is different from that of the rest of the book? What if this was another clue, this time in the text itself?”

They both analyzed the writing at once. He was right - it had completely changed. This time, unlike the other pages of the book, the space that each character occupied was exactly the same, regardless of the letter used. Looked at it in an abstract way, without trying to understand the meaning, the letters are grouped together in well-defined rows and columns, just like a word search.

“I was shocked by that arrangement of letters and I wondered if Simone Di Benedetto could be directing our attention to that piece of text in particular. Given that we normally read in rows and I already knew what it said, I began to read the text in columns, but they didn’t make any sense until I got to the twenty-fourth column.”

Just then, James’ cell phone began to ring; it was Anthony. Most likely, he had arrived at the hotel and was waiting for them in the entrance hall.

Before he left to look for him, Richard passed James a piece of paper. It was a sheet containing all the columns of the original message, spaced out across the page. His indifference after reading it made the paleographer furious. “Read the twenty-fourth column!” he exclaimed in disgust.

Right away, a string of expletives burst out of James’ mouth. He was completely taken aback by what his friend had discovered. Just towards the center of that column, two words could be made out from everything else -
SUN
and
MOON
.

Richard smiled when he saw the look of astonishment on James’ face, but there was more to come. “Simone usually hides messages in the last blank pages of each chapter. That was the case for the last chapter, but what about this one? I rubbed with a pencil over the last pages of the chapter until I found another alchemical symbol scrawled in the bottom right corner of the page. The alchemical marking was,
, which literally means ‘burn or cook the substance in fire’. What Simone undoubtedly wanted to tell us was not to burn or cook the page, but instead that we should apply heat to the paper in order to see the contents of the message. I grabbed the lamp right away and held it as close as I could to the page without damaging it. Something shocking developed right before my eyes which rooted me to the spot. It was incredible.”

“What happened?” asked Mary nervously.

“In the margins at the side of the page, I could make out three paragraphs and a drawing which were startlingly clear. I picked up the book and studied it as I paced around the room, but imagine my surprise when I noticed how the text was fading away little by little. I was sure that a chemical reaction had taken place, the catalyst of which had been the heat applied to the paper by the lamp as it lit up the page.”

“Paracelsus’ marvelous invisible ink!” cried James.

“Precisely!”

“What?!” asked Mary.

“It’s an invisible ink which is obtained when you mix four grams of cobalt chloride with another few of gum Arabic in 100ml of water. Any writing done in that ink remains invisible until heat is applied. In fact, if the heat isn’t excessively high, the text disappears again as the paper cools down. But anyway, what did the text and the picture show?” he asked, euphoric.

“The texts appear separately on the page but when they are put together, the following riddle appears. Meanwhile, the drawing is even more surprising. See for yourselves, because I don’t know what it could be talking about.”