Robsham led the way into the study and motioned for his friend to take a seat. From a crystal decanter on a low table, he poured two fat fingers of Armagnac into a pair of snifters. Then he settled into a stuffed leather chair.
“Since time is short, I’ll do this the way I deal with my more prolix students,” he said. “State your premise in twenty words or less.”
“I only need five words.” The man smiled, “I have done it again.”
“I don’t—”
“The second script. I’ve unlocked its secret.”
“What?” Robsham set his snifter down on the table. “Are you saying you’ve deciphered Linear A?”
His friend nodded.
“I’m speechless, Michael. This is stupendous. No, it’s beyond that. Please don’t hold back, young man. Tell me how you succeeded where others failed. Did you use the grid approach that worked with Linear B?”
“I tried that method, but this script is in a class by itself.”
“How, then?”
“I had the help of the Rosetta Stone. Partial, imperfect and incomplete, but it held the key to my findings.”
Even someone without Robsham’s scholarly credentials would know the Rosetta Stone was the artifact inscribed with a message in three different languages that had allowed the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
“If what you say is true, the translation of Linear A could tear away the curtain of secrecy that has hid so much of the marvelous Minoan civilization. Finally, we would be able to know everything about those amazing people. Not just through their ruined palaces. Their words would tell us what they were thinking. I’ve got to cancel my trip.”
“No need to cancel, Professor. You can do far more to advance my research in Greece than here in London.”
Robsham saw the unwavering determination in the calm eyes that gazed out from under the arching brow and wide forehead. He glanced at the clock. “Very well. You have ten minutes.”
“I will take you on a shortened version of my linguistic adventure,” Michael said. He unzipped the portfolio and extracted two photocopies. He moved the brandy snifters aside and placed the first copy on the coffee table. “I enlarged these with my architectural camera. What do you make of them?”
Robsham read a few paragraphs. “My Spanish is rusty, but this appears to involve the transfer of property belonging to a heretic. Something to do with the Inquisition?”
“Exactly. Now this.”
Michael Ventris set two more pages covered with pictographs next to the first. Robsham tapped a page with his finger. “Linear A. What does this writing have to do with the Spanish pages?”
“They are one and the same, Professor. I’ve used the few Linear A symbols that have been deciphered, along with some that I have analyzed. They gave me enough traction to know that both texts are talking about the identical subject.”
The professor felt as if the room were spinning. He gulped down his brandy to steady his nerves and glanced at the clock. Five minutes before the taxi arrived. Damn. He had told the driver to be prompt.
“Despite my excitement, I must be frank with my scholarly skepticism. This document would mean that someone knew, and used, Linear A script, thousands of years after it had vanished from all knowledge.”
“My conclusion as well.”
“Impossible, but there it is, right in front of us. Where did you find this material?”
“I was exhausted after my Linear B translation, but the problem of the second script still intrigued me. I engaged a book agent who was instructed to ferret out examples of the ancient script. I wanted a library in place, for me or other scholars who might take up the translation. The agent found a Spanish dealer in antique documents who had discovered the script clipped to legal papers involving a transfer of real estate property under the auspices of the Inquisition.”
“But Michael, the juxtaposition of these two documents simply doesn’t make sense. The Minoan civilization disappeared thousands of years ago. No one even knew the blasted Minoans existed until Evans started poking around.”
“That’s why I have put aside the question of how until I deal with what. I will use the documents to establish a lexicon. Then I can decipher this fully and perhaps it will tell us who.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“I corresponded with a historian at the University of Seville who is an expert on the Minoan colonization of Spain. I wondered whether there was a linguistic link, similar to the way Greek had become the basis for a Minoan script. He encouraged me to continue my research and I’ve kept him up-to-date.”
The honk of a car horn interrupted their conversation.
“Blast it,” the professor said. “Cab is right on time. Quickly now, tell me what I can do.”
“Your trip to Greece must be the handiwork of the gods. The photocopies are for you to keep, but I need more examples of Linear A script to provide context for my translation. You have contacts in Athens and Heraklion.”
“And I’ll be happy to use them to get what you need.” The professor stood and braced his friend by the shoulders. “The professional naysayers in academia will resist your findings as they did before. You know how they howl when amateurs like us beat them at their own game. But if you succeed, young man, this will far eclipse your debut.”
“I’m aware of that, which is why I have been nervous and depressed even on the verge of success.”
The horn honked again.
“The cab driver is getting impatient,” the professor said.
They carried the bags out to the curb. While the driver packed the boot, the two men shook hands and the professor said he would call his friend after the conference. He got in the back seat and flashed his friend a Winston Churchill victory sign as the cab drove off. Michael smiled and returned the ‘V.’
Robsham sat back in his seat and pondered the implications of his brief conversation. If there was one person on earth who could translate a script that had, thus far, defied all attempts at decipherment it was Michael Ventris. Once he set his mind, he pursued his goal to the end. There was no disputing the man’s brilliance.
Ventris had been only fourteen years old when he went to a lecture given in London at the 50th anniversary of the British School of Archaeology. The speaker was Arthur Evans, the amateur archaeologist who had excavated the palace at Knossos, discovering the long-lost Minoan civilization that once ruled the eastern Mediterranean before slipping into oblivion.
Evans had talked about his unsuccessful attempts to decipher two different Minoan scripts, which he had labeled Linear A and Linear B. Ventris was a prodigy who possessed a photographic memory and would become fluent in several languages. As he sat, spellbound in the auditorium at Burlington House, the teenaged Ventris vowed that he would one day decipher a Minoan script.
He went on to become an architect, and was a Royal Air Force bomber navigator over Germany during World War II.
After the war he’d resumed his architectural career, but had devoted most of his energy to deciphering the ancient script. He brought cryptographic techniques to his work and gathered together a work group that corresponded on their findings. He drew heavily upon the notes of Alice Kober and Emmett Bennett, Jr.
Sixteen years after hearing Evans, he announced his controversial finding. The script known as Linear B was a Greek dialect, apparently used mainly for keeping trade records.
It was the archeological discovery of the century.
Robsham chuckled with amazement. Now three years later, the young genius was poised to do it again.
CHAPTER TWO