Gray frowned at the news. It sounded like an evacuation. Were they already too late?
In the bed of the truck, four men lounged, half covered in blankets. Gray had been impressed with their arsenal hidden under the blankets: boxes of assault rifles, scores of handguns, even rocket-propelled grenades.
Luca had explained the lax control of such weaponry on the Russian black market. The small army, gathered from local Russian Gypsy clans, had met them in Kyshtym. They swelled the ranks of the men Luca had brought with them from the Ukraine. Gray had to hand it to Luca Hearn: if you needed to gather a fast militia, he was the Gypsy to call.
In the trucks behind them, Kowalski and Rosauro followed. They had left Elizabeth back at the jet, safely out of harm’s way, guarded by a trio of British S.A.S soldiers.
Everyone had to move swiftly. Speed was essential. The plan was to strike the underground facility, lock it down, and stop whatever was planned. The nature of Operation Saturn remained a mystery. However, considering it was in the heart of the former Soviet Union’s plutonium production facilities and uranium mines, it had to be radiological in nature.
Senator Nicolas Solokov’s words still haunted him.
Millions will still die.
Gray had learned the man was born about ninety miles from here, in the city of Yekaterinburg. This was the region the man represented in the Russian Federal Assembly, which meant he knew the area and its secrets. If someone wanted to plot a nuclear event, here would be a great place to do it.
But what was planned?
Back in Kyshtym, Elizabeth paced the length of the jet. Her arms were folded over her chest, her chin low in concentration. She was worried for the others, fearful after hearing what Gray and the others sought to stop.
Millions will die.
Such madness.
Anxiety kept her on her feet, for the team, for the fate of millions. She had a laptop open on a table. She had tried to work, to keep busy. She had begun downloading her digital pictures from her camera. Professor Masterson had kept her camera safe after she was kidnapped by the Russians. He had returned it to her following their escape from the jail in Pripyat.
On the screen, the photos scrolled as they downloaded into the laptop.
Pacing past, she caught a glimpse of the omphalos, resting at the center of the chakra wheel. Despite her worry, her heart still thrilled at the thought that the stone was the original Delphic artifact. For two decades, historians knew the smaller stone at the museum was a copy, the fate of the original a mystery. Some scholars hypothesized that perhaps some oracular cult had survived the temple’s destruction and that they’d stolen the stone for their secret temple.
Elizabeth drew back to the laptop. She stared at the omphalos. Here was that proof. She sank into the chair as a sudden realization struck her. She remembered what was carved inside the museum’s copy: a curving line of Sanskrit.
It was an ancient prayer to Sarasvati, the Hindu goddess of wisdom and secret knowledge. No one knew who inscribed it there or why. But it was not unusual to see religious graffiti from one religion marking another.
Still, Elizabeth began to suspect the truth. Perhaps the copy of the omphalos had been left behind like a road marker. She scrolled through the images and came upon the photo of the wall mosaic, depicting a child and young woman hiding from a Roman soldier underneath the dome of the omphalos, where the Sanskrit poem was written. It read, “She who had no beginning, ending, or limit, may the Goddess Sarasvati protect her.” It could definitely be referring to the last Oracle, a prayer to protect her lineage. Lastly, the goddess Sarasvati herself made her home in a sacred river. Many religious scholars believed that this mythical river was the Indus River, where the exiled Greeks made their new home.
Elizabeth suspected that someone had left that secret message for others to follow. As she and her father had.
She brought up the image of the original omphalos again. She had taken several pictures, including the triple line carved upon the stone that warned of the trap—written in Harappan, Sanskrit, and Greek. She brought up that image.
There had been another example of this triple writing on the chamber walls. Beneath the figure of the fiery-eyed boy. She brought that up, too. Beneath the mosaic, the line of Harappan was intact, but half of the Sanskrit and Greek and been worn away. Only a letter or two remained legible.
She read what she could. “‘The world will burn…’”
The line nagged, reminding her of what Gray and the others sought to prevent. She stared at the image of a boy rising in smoke and fire from the omphalos and felt a chill of concern. But what was the rest of the message? The only intact line was the one written in indecipherable Harappan. It was a challenging word puzzle.
Unless…
Elizabeth jolted upright and leaned closer, her earlier worries forgotten. She glanced between the two images on the screen. She began to understand what she was looking at. She had lines of Harappan translated into Greek and Sanskrit. Translated. She breathed harder. On the computer, she had the beginnings of a digital Rosetta stone for this lost language.
She returned back to the broken line of passage beneath the smoky boy. She studied it, compared, and pulled up pictures of the writing on the stairwell wall, too. She began to spot commonalities.
Could she translate it?
Sensing something important, she set to work.
12:45 P.M.
General-Major Savina Martov studied her adversary. She stared at the American on the screen. He remained stopped within the pool of light by the tunnel lamp. She lifted the microphone to her lips.
“Move to the doors now!” she barked sharply.
From the way he jumped at her words, the man had heard her. There was no problem with the speakers near the blast doors.
“General-Major,” the engineer said. “I have a priority call for you from the Arkhangelsk Missile Base.”
Savina tilted back and picked up the handset. One of her contacts was established at the base there. “Martov here.”
“General-Major, some disturbing intelligence is coming out of the Ukraine. It seems that Senator Nicolas Solokov is dead.”
Savina inhaled sharply. She kept any stronger reaction in check. Still, her throat tightened. Her contact did not know Nicolas was her son, only that he was intimate and supportive of her operations here.
The contact continued speaking. “Rumors are still swirling as to the details surrounding the events. Some say he was killed by terrorists, while others say he may have had a hand in the actions there. All that is certain is that he is dead. Cameras from inside the sealed Shelter show his body, along with his assistant. He was shot in the head. Radiation levels are still too high to safely remove his body, but measures are under way. I can’t say…”