The Pharaoh Key

3

AS THEY ROUNDED the corner of 13th Street, Garza let out a cry of dismay. “Closed!”

Indeed it was. The Spice Market, where they had occasionally gone for drinks, was padlocked.

“The story of our life,” said Garza bitterly. “Shuttered.”

They wandered down the street to another watering hole, Catch. At five it hadn’t gotten going yet, and they found seats at the bar. Gideon ordered a Hendrick’s martini, dirty, while Garza took a pint of craft beer.

The bartender served their drinks, and Garza raised his glass. “To…what the hell, I can’t think of a good toast, I’m still too pissed off.”

“To being pissed off.”

They clinked glasses.

“Okay,” said Gideon, “now tell me about this Phaistos Project.”

“One of Eli’s crazy shots in the dark.”

“How so?”

“For the past six years, since the sinking of the Rolvaag, he’s been desperate for money. He had to raise two billion for his white-whale project, you see: to return to the Ice Limit and finish what he started. All those intervening years, he tried to scrounge up funds wherever he could—and some of those areas involved treasure hunting. The Loot of Lima, the Lost Dutchman Mine, the Victorio Peak gold…shit like that.”

“Did he ever find any?”

“Hell, yes! Remind me someday to tell you the story of the Caves of Asphodel. My God, when we entered that antechamber…!” He whistled. “So anyway, Glinn launched a whole bunch of speculative projects that he hoped might lead to a payoff. That included trying to decipher various ancient inscriptions. One of those, in fact, led to your own assignment on the Lost Island. There were others. He had his cryptanalysts and historians trying to crack the Voynich Manuscript, the Shugborough Inscription, the Dispilio Tablet, the Rohonc Codex…and the Phaistos Disk.”

He took a long draw on his beer.

“So here’s the story.” He paused a moment, as if sorting out his thoughts. “The Phaistos Disk was found in 1908 or thereabouts in the ruins of a Minoan palace on the island of Crete. It’s three thousand five hundred years old, made of fired clay, and is covered on both sides by a dense spiral of stamped hieroglyphic figures—heads, people, helmets, gloves, arrows, shields, clubs, ships, columns, fish, birds, bees—all tiny little pictures. It seems to be the script of an unknown language. Since its discovery, everyone and their sister has tried to decipher it, to no avail, and today it’s the most famous unsolved inscription in existence. Many claimed to have translated it, of course, but all those solutions have been discredited.”

“So how is it supposed to lead to a treasure?” Gideon asked.

“We couldn’t be sure that it would. Like I said, it was a shot in the dark, one of many. About five years back, Glinn dedicated a single high-powered computer to cracking the code. Over time, the project was basically forgotten as other projects took priority. I sure as hell forgot about it. But all that time, the computer must’ve been cranking away, patiently trying one cryptanalytical approach after another.”

“And finally it succeeded?”

Garza retrieved the USB stick and held it in his hand. “It’s right here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, it’s the translation, all right. Eli put his best cryptanalyst, philologist, and coder to work, creating the program for that computer. If that computer says it finished, it finished. We just have to figure out what it’s telling us.” He took another pull at his beer, draining it.

“What do you think it means?”

“We’ll find out. Maybe a thirty-five-century-old message from one Greek king to another, something like, Give me back my wife Helen or I will kick your ass.”

Gideon chuckled despite himself. “Why was Glinn interested in it, specifically?”

“Because of its fame. And he was a gambler of sorts, always putting a chip down on one long shot or other.”

“If it’s such a gamble, why did you just bother downloading it?”

“Are you kidding? The gamble wasn’t the secret the Phaistos Disk contained—it was thinking he could ever decrypt it at all. But that program succeeded—and the joke’s on him.” He waggled the USB stick in front of Gideon. “Whatever the message on this tells us, whatever it leads to, there’s one thing for sure: it’s got to be worth money. Probably a hell of a lot of money. It might make us famous—and we’ll have done it right under Glinn’s nose.”

“I need another drink.”

They ordered a second round. When it came, Garza raised his glass. “My turn for a toast. To fame, glory, and riches.” He took a deep swig. “And it’s ours, Gideon—yours and mine. Finally: a chance to get some of our own back! We’ll take our time, do it right, translate that hexadecimal file, and—”

“No,” Gideon interrupted.

“What do you mean, no?”

“We’re not going to ‘take our time.’ If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it now. Like, today.”

Garza began to object, then suddenly shut up. “Right. I forgot. Two months.”

“I’ve just been given a prescription from a neurologist: enjoy every sandwich. Well, for better or worse, life just served me up this particular sandwich. So let’s go up to my suite and put that USB stick into my laptop and see what the Phaistos Disk has to say after all these centuries of silence.”

“Fair enough. We’ll do it now. But I have a condition of my own.”

Gideon, who’d been about to stand up, went still. “Yes?”

“We both agree that whatever this Phaistos Disk leads to, it’s worth money. Right? It might be Homer’s lost work, Margites. It might be the keys to a spaceship. It might be the proverbial diamond as big as the Ritz. But it’s going to have value.”

“And your point?”

“My point is, I’m sick and tired of finding something and then turning it over to somebody else. When—if—we find whatever pot of gold is waiting at the end of this rainbow, we’re keeping it. Agreed? We’re not giving it to some museum, or donating it to the Library of Congress, or whatever. We’re turning it into cash—whether that means breaking it up and selling it piece by piece, or auctioning the thing off to the highest bidder.”

“But…” Gideon began, then fell silent.

“But what?” Garza replied, his tone shading toward the belligerent.

“We don’t know what it is. It could be anything. It might be of great historical or cultural value. It might be the patrimony of some civilization that—”

“Now you’re sounding like Glinn. I’m not doing this for the good of humanity—I’m doing it for myself. I don’t care if it’s a centerfold of the Mona Lisa—we’re selling it for the most dough we possibly can, and then splitting the proceeds. You can always donate your half to—well, to medical research, maybe. I just want to be crystal-clear about this: if it has value, we’re gonna steal it. Are you with me?”

This was followed by an awkward silence. Then Gideon shrugged. “What the hell. The worst that can happen is I have a few weeks to feel guilty about it.”

“Good man.” And with that they stood up and shook hands.