“I was getting there, Maddock.” She blushed, giving her almond-colored skin a warm, pleasant hue. “But you go ahead.”
“You’ve got the disc. You tell the story.” Dane took a long pull of his Kolsch, savoring its sweet, almost fruity flavor, something between ale and lager. He glanced at Otto, whose eyes sparkled as he leaned in close, his beer forgotten, as he waited for the rest of the story.” Bones smirked and Angel grinned behind her mug.
“But you’re the one who found the compartment inside the Milan Madonna.” Jade played along. “You should tell him.”
“Disc? Milan Madonna?” Otto sounded like a little boy, early on Christmas morning, begging to open his gifts.
They all took long pulls of Kolsch, prolonging the moment as Otto’s pleading eyes darted around the table, eager for someone to let him in on the secret.
“It was nothing much,” Jade said, placing her mug on the table and reaching into her purse. “We found the original Milan Madonna and this was hidden inside of her.” She handed Otto an object wrapped in a handkerchief.
He held it gingerly and unwrapped it with care, holding it close to his chest and hunching over as if to hide it from prying eyes. Dane thought the man need not bother. The place was packed, mostly with young people overindulging in ale and holiday cheer, and no one was paying them a bit of attention.
When Otto’s eyes fell on the three hares, he gaped. He turned it in his hands, gazing at the ancient symbol. Apparently satisfied there was nothing more to see there, he turned it over. “Latin?” he asked as he once again turned the disc, his eyes following the writing that spiraled in toward the center.
“That’s what we thought.” Jade sounded annoyed. “But nothing translates, at least not on any of the websites I tried.” She shrugged and made an apologetic face. “My specialty is the native tribes of the southwestern United States, and I’ve branched out into eastern Asia. My knowledge of this part of the world is comparatively small.”
“I think,” Otto said, a ghost of a grin materializing on his face, “that it is Latin, but in a cipher.”
Now it was Dane’s turn to grin. He had suspected the same thing and had sent photographs of the disc to his friend Jimmy Letson, an accomplished hacker and a computer whiz of the first order. Jimmy had replied with a text that read, I do have a life, you know, but if Dane knew Jimmy, he was already hard at work cracking the code. Like Dane and Bones, the man relished a challenge, though his specialty was of the cyber realm rather than the archaeological.
“Any idea what kind of cipher it might be?” Dane asked Otto, who was fixated on the text.
“I cannot say at first glance,” he mumbled. “The Caesar shift cipher was commonly used in the church. One simply chooses a number to shift the letters, either to the right or to the left. A shift of one to the right and the letter ‘A’ becomes ‘B’ and so on. It is simple enough for a priest who was not a cryptographer to use, but complicated enough to fool the average person.”
“Could the average person even read back then?” Angel asked.
“We do not, of course, know the time period when this cipher was written, if that is indeed what it is. If it is more than a few centuries old, you are certainly correct, particularly for a message in Latin.”
“Any chance it’s a fake?” Angel asked.
Otto tilted his hand back-and-forth. “It is possible, but the temple and the Madonna suggest otherwise.”
Dane nodded. It was the same conclusion they had drawn. He was looking around for a server from whom to order another round of Kolsch when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Jimmy.
“Why don’t you give me something that requires neurons next time, like a ten-piece kindergarten puzzle?”
“I take it you’ve deciphered our cipher.” At those words, all eyes at the table turned to Dane.
“If you can call it that.” Jimmy was clearly disappointed at the lack of challenge posed by the text on the disc. “It was one of the most common ciphers ever.”
“The Caesar shift?” Dane asked. Relishing Jimmy’s sudden silence, he caught the eye of an attractive blonde waitress and signaled for five more drinks. She nodded and gave him a wink that did not escape Jade’s notice. She arched an eyebrow at him, but then smiled.
“You’re smarter than you look, Maddock,” Jimmy finally said, sounding even more disappointed. “Want to take a guess at the key?”
“The what?”
“The number of the shift. How many letters over you count when substituting the new letter.” A bit of Jimmy’s cockiness was returning.
Dane thought immediately of the Wise Men. “Three.”
“All right, Carnac, which direction?”
Dane decided not to spoil all of Jimmy’s fun. “No idea.”
“The right. You should have known that. This is more of that ancient church crap. Right hand of God. Left hand is unclean…”
“True. I’m a little distracted right now. I’m sitting in a pub in Cologne, downing a few brews with a couple of beautiful women.”
“You’re such an ass, Maddock.” Jimmy chuckled. “Of course, Bones is probably there too, which sucks all the fun out of everything.”
“I’ll tell him you said so. Can you send me the translation?”
“Sure. The last word was partially rubbed out or chipped away or something, so I didn’t get it all. Emailing it to you right now. And, of course, you owe me a meal… again.”
“What would I ever do without you? Thanks Jimmy.”
Dane ended the call and punched up his email on his phone. Everyone leaned toward him as he began to read.
“As the lion roars for the king, the peacock be your guide into the depths of the well. The kings point the way to the falling ice that hides eternal l…”
It ended just as Jimmy had said— with an incomplete word.
“There it is again,” Bones said. “You know, we figured the priest just didn’t manage to get the last word out, but if he knew the words on this disc, maybe he was trying to tell us all he knew.”
“Maybe.” Dane looked up as their next round of drinks arrived. He found he had lost his thirst, though, and drank mechanically as he pondered the words. “It’s a far cry from step-by-step instructions.”
“And this should lead us to the missing skulls, you think?” Jade leaned over to read Jimmy’s email. She shook her head. “The wording makes it sound like there’s something more. But what?”
“Should we go to the police with this?” Angel asked.
“I don’t know.” Bones spoke slowly, absently spinning his beer mug as he thought the problem through. “What do we really know? The killers want the skulls of the wise dudes. I’m guessing you told them as much.” He looked at Otto who nodded. “We could give them this clue but what would they do with it? Can you see a cop who’s probably got a ton of cases on his hands taking the time to trying to figure this thing out? That’s what we do.”
“I could share this with the police,” Otto volunteered. “I will tell them it is something I found in my research. I suspect it will all be meaningless to them, but at least we will not be holding back anything significant.” He frowned as he said the last.
Dane nodded. It made sense. Still the fact that they were hiding their presence at a murder scene, though they arrived after the fact, felt wrong. He remembered that the killers had left no footprints, and he had a hunch they’d been careful not to leave behind any fingerprints or DNA.