“Amen to that truth.” Heidi scooted toward the window for privacy and started tapping at her cell phone.
Bodie settled with Cassidy, happy in a shared silence. In ten minutes he had almost fallen asleep, but then Lucie Boom announced that she would be sharing her findings.
“Sounds like an invitation you’re not allowed to turn down.” Cassidy yawned and turned in her seat. “You’d best hurry on up to the front of the plane, hon. I’m not planning to get a crick in my neck from looking at you.”
“That’s where I was going, actually.” Lucie’s precise tones pierced Bodie’s cloud of introspection. Maybe now they would learn where they were going.
Lucie stood at the front of the plane, hands behind her back, a teacher addressing a new class. “Straight to it, then. The first formal writing system that we know of is roughly five thousand years old, discovered in Iraq. Hieroglyphs and symbols such as this can be complex too, and when man started leaving triangles, circles, and other squiggles on cave walls forty thousand years ago it could be said that this was the first form of code. We’re talking hand stencils, penniforms, other signs and symbols. There is even enticing evidence that Homo erectus carved a zigzag into a shell some five hundred thousand years ago…”
Lucie took a sip of water and continued. “There are etched teeth. Strangely consistent doodles all around the world. I posit this to give weight to my belief that writing and coding, in some form or other, existed nine thousand years ago.”
She paused. The team stared. Heidi jumped in. “You don’t have to prove your theory to us,” she said. “We believe you.”
“You believe me without a significant offering of evidence?” Lucie looked shocked. “Are you all mad? Or stupid?”
“I think what Heidi’s trying to say is — time is short. Get on with the bloody story.” Bodie used Lucie’s own bluntness against her.
“Right. Well, this symbolic script can be deciphered. The key to deciphering it lies on the arms of all nine statues; the actual message lies around their heads and bases. The Phoenician alphabet is the oldest known alphabet, consisting of twenty-two letters, all of which are consonants. Of course, it derives from Egyptian hieroglyphics, but it’s like the chicken and the egg here. Which came first? But it also harks back to the Rosetta Stone, remember that? It was carved with the same text in two languages and three writing systems: hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek alphabet. Scholars were able to unlock the code, and without the stone we would know nothing of the Egyptians and their three thousand years of history. So, the five are the key, and the four are the message. Of course, it is obscure, as you would expect.”
As Lucie paused for breath, Bodie wondered if she imagined everyone knew the things she knew and everyone had been educated the way she had. He also wondered if she was one of those critics that assume her point of view was both perfectly correct and at the peak of importance.
Lucie then took a breath. “The message goes like this:
Parted, my nine were assigned
Different soils, earth, different climate,
By me, for mine purpose which is remembering and rediscovering,
But now upon the Syrian sea the people do live,
The first noble forefathers of the world,
Who forged a new life for the next sons of men
Who found the path through vast seas unknown,
Using mine own ore, lodestone, and brass plate.
Whose true purpose remains remembering and rediscovering.”
Heidi coughed. “I hope you’re all writing that down.”
Jemma tapped her armrests, thinking. “Don’t have to.”
“It is a dry, old portion of text,” Lucie admitted. “But also, it is telling. This person, the man who made the statues, freely admits he not only fashioned them but left the message for future generations in the hope that they would ‘remember and rediscover.’ I don’t like to jump in feet first, but I think it could be a way to find Atlantis. The start of a cipher. The first clue is right there. The poor man could never have imagined the destruction wrought on Atlantis a few years later or that his statues might survive, but look at the human race of today. We bury time capsules. We plant flags and build furiously. We leave our wills and hide sentimental items in safes or bank vaults. We want to remember. We want to be remembered. Maybe this man used the only tools at his disposal to do the same.”
“That’s all good,” Cross said from the back, “the deciphering and all. But what the holy hell does it all mean?”
“It’s a telling of his time,” Lucie said, folding her fingers together and looking every inch the high school teacher. “A short telling, yes, but he didn’t exactly have much room.”
Bodie narrowed his eyes just slightly. Was that… was that an attempt at a joke? Somehow, he doubted it. He wondered if any words that weren’t neat, well pruned, and precise had ever escaped her mouth, but then criticized himself. Being precise didn’t preclude making jokes.
“You’re wondering how it helps us.” She was staring right at him. “I can see. If we’re hunting for the fabled Atlantis, the stakes will be incredibly high. Men and governments kill for far, far less. Think of the wealth, the power it would bring, not to mention the enormity of wisdom, history, and technology within. A country may become a superpower overnight. Or a superpower may cement its international standing even further. But first we have to discover the true identity of this man. And then we have to find his compass.”
“You got all that from that dry, old verse?” Cassidy asked.
“That verse is ancient history, incredibly valuable. Potentially, it holds the power to reshape our thinking.”
“Wow.” Cassidy sat back. “I didn’t catch that. Maybe it’s the way you tell it?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. What I do know is that ore, lodestone, and a brass plate mean a compass and that this man made that too.”
“Nine thousand years ago?” Jemma asked. “I thought compasses didn’t exist until around the fifteenth century.”
“That was the first compass known to navigate the sea,” Lucie said. “And that’s where our story gets really interesting.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lucie began to pace, but the slight roll of the plane made it too difficult and she grabbed hold of a seat back.
“Remember I stressed that the Atlanteans were an advanced seafaring people? Well, through history it has often been believed that the mariner’s compass existed long before we thought. It seems as far back as you can study ancient races of the world there is some knowledge of the magnetic stone. Europeans routinely claimed new inventions that were in fact just plagiarized from older populations. First, the compass was believed to be invented by Amalfi in 1302, but an Italian poem from 1190 refers to its use by sailors. And, of course, it is now known to have been used by the Vikings back in AD 868—five hundred years earlier than we first thought. Sanskrit has been a dead language for twenty-two hundred years but refers to ‘the precious stone beloved of iron,’ and ‘the stone of attraction.’ And even the Phoenicians placed a representation of the compass at the prow of their ships. Again, I mention this to back up my findings.”
The team drew a collective breath, but said nothing.
“There is a clear line of progression here that passes the compass from the Atlanteans to the Hindus to the Chinese. But this is the one thing everyone is clear on — all civilizations where the compass has been found associate it with territories where Atlantean myths prevail. The compass is older than we have been led to believe, people, much older.”