Cross hadn’t spoken a word since they vacated the scene. Now, he latched on to the inquisitive faces as if seeing them for the first time in a week.
“How do you mean? Sorry, no. Yasmine is a long-lost friend. Very long lost. I couldn’t imagine meeting her now in the Swiss Alps. I had… forgotten about her.”
Bodie wanted to respect Cross’s privacy, but saw right away that Cassidy would not. The redhead was itching to get down to the raw, penetrating questions.
“Is that it?” he asked.
Cross nodded, more distracted than Bodie had ever seen him. In the end, though, the career thief closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. “Damn, I realize you need to know this. We work primarily from information. We need information. It’s wrong of me to hold it back, but…” He trailed off, lost again in another world, another time.
Cassidy stepped in, handling the situation in her own inimitable way. “Dude.” She walked down the aisle until she stood right before Cross. When he didn’t look up immediately, she reached out, caught hold of his shirt, and shook him.
“Who’s the old flame, Eli?”
Cross snapped out of it. “Stop fishing. I’m thinking it through. Just… just give me a minute. I’m not zoning out; I’m putting the story together.”
“Yeah, you appeared to zone out for a while, mate,” Bodie said, worried for his closest friend. He’d never seen Cross so upset, so obviously off-kilter.
Cassidy laughed. “I’ve seen men zone out during battle, in the ring, on the streets when their courage gets tested, but I’ve never seen a man zone out after meeting a woman. And what was all that stammering, spluttering claptrap? She got you tongue-tied?”
Cross took the barrage and then sat back. Eventually, he eased around Cassidy and poured himself a stiff drink. With the whisky glass half full, he faced them with an awkward, strained expression.
“Right, I guess you guys deserve some kind of explanation. I love my family, you know I do, but before them, before everything, there was Yasmine. She was eighteen, fiery, hot as hell, and wise as the world. I was in my early twenties and completely bowled over. First time I’d ever been in love.” Cross drained the glass and poured another, three fingers high. “We shared a year, I guess. One of those times that passed me by when, later in life, you look back and see all the big opportunities you missed. But that’s just part of living. We all have those. And it wasn’t just for fun.”
Cassidy sat herself down in an aisle seat. Bodie wasn’t sure whether to feel pleased that Cross was sharing or uncomfortable because he felt he had to.
“This wasn’t just Morocco — Marrakesh, Casablanca. It was Seville and Lisbon. Gibraltar, mostly. Memories everywhere.”
“And what were you doing there?” Cassidy asked. “I mean apart from the obvious?”
“I’m a career thief, Cass.” Cross took a sip. “You figure it out.”
Jemma spoke softly. “At that age I’m guessing you learned the trade with her. You figured out the ropes.”
“I lived and died with her. Took it to the next level. Failed and failed some more and barely escaped prison, twice… It became… incredibly complex. We did everything together.”
“You never speak about your family,” Jemma said. “Ever. For a year I thought you’d never married, let alone had a son. I understand this must be very personal, Eli.”
“Damn right.” Cross stared into his glass. “Damn right. But everything passes, doesn’t it? The good and the bad. Change is always just around the corner.”
“What happened?” Cassidy, when she spoke this time, was as gentle as Bodie had ever heard.
“Maybe it was the age gap, I don’t know. She was eighteen, flighty, still in love with the world and all it could offer. But later, I noticed she wasn’t quite the same. I noticed it for almost two months. Something was on her mind. In itself, that was odd, because we shared everything. I pressed her, but she never told me. I came home one day to find her gone. I waited, and she never came back.”
“You didn’t try searching for her?” Cassidy’s question was laced with steel.
“Of course I tried…” Cross paused, then finished his second drink and turned toward the small window. “But I never found her. Since then, many times I’ve been forced to wonder what happened to Yasmine. But now”—he held out his free hand—“I can find out.”
Bodie regarded his old friend compassionately. “If I can, I will help you,” he said.
“Right!” Lucie Boom’s voice cut across the profound, sad silence. “Now that’s out of the way, can we get to work?”
Bodie winced. “So, Lucie, in addition to your other striking traits, you also have little access to emotions?”
“Emotions are for children, Mr. Bodie, not historians. And what other traits do you mean?”
“Nothing. I’d rather help the CIA one more time and then get back to my life. It sounds like you have an idea?”
“Our big question — was the compass made by the same man? Very probably, but the runes upon it are completely indecipherable.”
Bodie hadn’t expected that. “What? You’re kidding me! The same man wrote in a different language?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s not an entirely different language. You have to remember the earliest known alphabet is Phoenician, known as the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. It was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew letters, and more. Latin stemmed from Phoenician. But”—she checked to make sure the students were all watching—“if your theories about Atlantis are true, we have to assume they developed what we call the Phoenician alphabet many thousands of years before that.”
“It makes sense,” Gunn said, relaxed and back to his normal self now that they were safe.
“Good to hear we’re on the same page. Well, Danel was clearly an educated man. I believe he carved these runes with vagaries to purposely test those who chased his secret. He changed the script. Deliberately. To make the cipher harder to crack.”
“Vagaries?” Heidi questioned.
“Yes, vagaries. It means there are slight modifications to the Phoenician alphabet, but those differences are crucial to help us figure out the text.”
“So that’s it?” Gunn looked like he wanted to open his laptop and start a new search for “vagaries.”
“Luckily, historians never give up.” Lucie tugged at today’s woolly sweater, all black and sporting the head of a moose. “I know an ancient-language expert who lives in Milan.”
Heidi looked dubious. “I’d prefer to do this in-house.”
“That does surprise me.”
“Civilians add risk, not only to the mission but especially for themselves. The Chinese Special Forces team, working in Europe, remember, had no qualms over committing murder. Their government gives them deniability and, even if they were caught, would never admit sanctioning their actions. So… they’re a splinter group. That’s how it has to be. And a damn deadly one at that.”
“Then tell me… who in the CIA can decipher a ten-thousand-year-old language created by a culture that never existed?” Lucie crossed her arms expectantly.
Heidi kept her mouth shut, knowing the answer and exactly why Lucie had asked the question.
“Wait,” Bodie butted in. “You’re not making sense. How could your Milan guy know the language?”
“A good question,” Lucie acknowledged. “Alessandro is widely regarded as the leading expert in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Phoenician, and Hebrew. It’s his calling, his lifelong career. If anyone can help us, he can. Even better, I know him and can arrange a meeting.”
Bodie stared at the computer screen and the mix of runes. Would this potential dead end fool both the Bratva and the Chinese, put them out of the chase? Were the Bratva even bothered about Atlantis, or was it just Bodie they were hunting? He wasn’t surprised when Heidi acquiesced to Lucie’s demands and asked her to arrange a meet.