Bourne told him to go ahead.
Giles took the ring to a curious mechanism, which looked like the end of a fiber-optic cable. He carefully clamped the ring so that the filament was in its center. Then he handed them goggles with treated dark lenses, slipped on a pair himself. When he was sure they were protected, he typed two commands on a computer keyboard. A series of mini-flashes of blinding blue light ensued, and Bourne knew that he had activated a blue laser.
The silent outburst was over almost as soon as it had begun. Giles removed his goggles, and they did the same.
“Brilliant,” the professor said as his fingers flew over his keyboard. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”
He turned on a plasma screen inset into the wall, and a series of high-definition photographs-close-ups of the engraving-appeared. “This is how the writing appears to the naked eye, being engraved on a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree surface. But what,” he said, “if it was meant to be read-or seen-on a flat surface, like most writing?” Here he manipulated the digital images until they merged into one long strip. “What we’re left with is what appears to be one long word, which seems improbable.” He zoomed in. “At least, that’s how it appears on the circular surface of the ring. However, now, in its flat form, we can see two breaks, so that what we’re actually looking at are three distinct groups of letters.”
“Words,” Bourne said.
“It would seem so,” Giles said with a mysterious lilt in his voice.
“But I see some cuneiforms,” Chrissie said. “I reckon they’re Sumerian.”
“Well, they certainly lookSumerian,” Giles said, “but in fact they’re Old Persian.” He slid one of the open texts toward her. “Here, take a look.” As she was doing that he addressed Bourne. “Old Persian is derived from Sumero-Akkadian, so our dear Christina can be forgiven her error.” The affection with which he said this punctured the pompousness of the statement. “However, there’s a crucial difference between the two without which decipherment is impossible. Akkadian cuneiforms represent entire syllables, whereas the cuneiforms of Old Persian are semi-alphabetic, which means each one represents a letter.”
“What are the Latin letters doing mixed in?” Chrissie said. “And those unknown symbols, are they a language?”
Giles smiled. “You, Mr. Stone, have presented me with a most curious-and I must say damn exciting-mystery.” He pointed to the screen. “What you see here is a composite of Old Persian, Latin, and-well, for lack of a better term, something else. I reckon I’m familiar with every ancient language mankind has discovered and cataloged, and this one is a definite outlier.” He waved a hand. “But I’ll get back to that presently.”
He moved his mouse pointer horizontally just below the engraving. “The first thing I can tell you is that there is no such thing as a composite language-cuneiform and letters just don’t mix. So if this isn’t a language,per se, exactly what is it?”
Bourne, who had been studying the line of the engraving, said, “It’s a cipher.”
Giles’s eyes widened behind the lenses of his glasses. “Very good, Mr. Stone. I applaud you.” He nodded. “Indeed, this seems to be a cipher, but like everything else about this engraving, it’s of a curious sort.” Here he once again manipulated the image, literally rearranging the blocks, separating the Old Persian cuneiforms and Latin letters into two distinct groups, the third group being the “letters” of the outlier language.
“Severus,”Bourne said, reading the Latin word from the scramble.
“Which could mean any number of things,” Chrissie said, “or nothing.”
“True enough,” Giles said. “ Butnow we come to the Old Persian.” He manipulated the cuneiforms. “See here, now we have a second word: Domna.”
“Wait a minute.” Chrissie thought for a moment. “Septimius Severus was made a Roman senator by Marcus Aurelius in about 187. Subsequently he rose to become emperor in 193, and he ruled until his death eighteen years later. His reign was a strict military dictatorship, a response to the horrific corruption of his predecessor, Commodus. On his deathbed he famously advised his sons to ‘Enrich the soldiers and scorn all other men.’ ”
“Lovely,” Giles said.
“Some interesting things about him. He was born in what is now Libya, and when he increased the size of the Roman army he added auxiliary corps, soldiers from the far eastern borders of Rome’s empire, which must have included many from North Africa and beyond.”
“How is that relevant?” Giles said.
Now it was Chrissie’s turn to have a mysterious lilt to her voice. “Septimius Severus was married to Julia Domna.”
“Severus Domna,” Bourne said. Something went off in the back of his head, deep down, beyond the veils his memory could not penetrate. Maybe it was a flash of déjà vu, or maybe a warning. Whatever it was, like all the free-floating bits of his previous life that suddenly, mysteriously surfaced, it would become an itch he couldn’t scratch. He’d have no choice but to run it to ground until he unearthed its link to him.
“Adam, are you all right?” Chrissie was looking at him with a puzzled, almost alarmed expression.
“I’m fine,” he said. He’d have to watch himself with her; she was as perceptive as her sister. “Is there more?”
She nodded. “And it gets more interesting. Julia Domna was Syrian. Her family came from the ancient city of Emesa. Her ancestors were king-priests of the powerful temple of Baal, and so very influential throughout Syria.”
“So,” Bourne said, “here we have an engraving-both a cipher and an anagram-made up of an ancient Western and Eastern language, merged.”
“Just the way Septimius Severus and Julia Domna merged West and East.”
“But what does it mean?” Bourne mused. “It seems that we’re still lacking the key.” He looked at Giles expectantly.
The professor nodded. “The third language. I reckon you’re right, Mr. Stone. The key to the meaning of Severus Domna must lie in the third word.” He handed the ring back to Bourne.
“So the language is still a mystery,” Chrissie said.
“Oh, no. I know exactly what it is. It’s Ugaritic, an extinct written proto-language that arose in a small but important section of Syria.” He looked at Chrissie. “Just like your Julia Domna.” He pointed. “You can see here-and here-and again here-that Ugaritic is an important link between the earliest proto-languages and the written word as we know it today because it’s the first known evidence of the Levantine and South Semetic alphabets. In other words the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin alphabets find their sources in Ugaritic.”
“So you know that this word is Ugaritic,” Bourne said, “but you don’t know what the word is.”
“Again, yes and no.” Giles walked up to the screen, and as he pointed to each Ugaritic character he pronounced the letter. “So I know all the letters, you see, but like the two others, this word is an anagram. Though Ugaritic appears briefly in the study of Middle Eastern languages, the study of Ugaritic on its own is quite a specialized field, and rather a small one, I’m afraid, because of the prevailing belief that it is a dead end-a facilitationlanguage, rather than an activeone. There are only two or three Ugaritic scholars in the world and I’m not one of them, so for me to decipher the anagram would take an inordinate amount of time-which, frankly, I don’t have.”
“I’m surprised there’s anyone studying it,” Chrissie said.
“Actually, there’s only one reason there are any scholars at all.” Giles walked back to his computer keyboard. “There is a small group that believes Ugaritic has, uh, shall we say magic powers.”