Gorgon: An Alex Hunter Novel (9 page)

Colonel Jack Hammerson made notes as he watched the VELA satellite images of Uli Borshov and his men jumping from the truck and entering a small apartment in Istanbul. Hammerson was familiar with the way the men moved, their kit, and the size of each individual –
a Spec Ops strike force
, he thought.
Could Graham be in there with them?
He pondered the question for a few moments, then dropped the pen and folded his arms.
Unlikely.

‘Well, something’s going down’, he said aloud to the empty office.

Hammerson knew that if Borshov had abducted an American scientist one day, and then turned up in goddamn Turkey within thirty hours, there had to be a connection. The guy had been under a rock for two years, and now he was all over the place.

He tapped his chin with one callused knuckle, thinking.
Where’s Graham then? Offloaded somewhere?
If Borshov had stayed on US soil, he’d have made a run at Alex Hunter. Instead he’d been rerouted – which meant a higher priority had arisen. Hammerson reached across to a pile of string-tied folders on the corner of his desk, and sorted through them until he found the one he was looking for. An entire Turkish SFC squad had recently been reclassified as inactive – code for taken out. Seeing it had happened within their own borders, he hadn’t given it too much attention. This time he read further, until he found the location … just a few blocks from where Borshov was dug in now. In this game, there was no such thing as coincidence.

He read the intel about the blackout cordon around the Basilica Cistern, and bodies being removed in contamination bags. He also read about the strange indecipherable script within the newly discovered caverns. The intel report was detailed, but Hammerson also had another information source – MUSE, the trillion-dollar Military Universal Search Engine that was a lot more technologically accurate and invasive.

He dropped the folder – he needed to take it down another layer. He reached for the phone and dialed through to Gerry Harris.

‘Gerry, it’s Jack. Good work on the Borshov images, but it invites a truckload more questions.’

‘Yeah, I figured that,’ Harris said. ‘And still no sign of Captain Graham. We’re keeping eyes on them 24/7.’

‘There’s something else. What the hell is that big bastard doing in Istanbul?’ Hammerson stared at the image of Borshov in the darkened street. ‘This is getting weird. See if there’s anything else in the Askeri Komandos’ or Special Forces Command’s secure databases. Look at the interaction site in those chambers below the ground – I want to see it all.’

‘When?’

‘Now … I’ll wait,’ Hammerson said.

‘Give me ten – I’ll do it myself.’

Jack Hammerson could imagine multiple keyboards and screens being attacked furiously, and knew his wizard of a technical officer would be slipping under, around or punching straight through firewalls, data silos, and directory mazes to dive deep into databases on the other side of the world. He’d be using MUSE, probably the world’s most powerful penetration technology.

While Hammerson waited, he turned to his large window overlooking the training grounds at the USSTRATCOM base, and let his mind sift through the facts. Borshov had been acting alone when he was in the States, but something was important enough for the Russian high command to rush him and a team to Istanbul. Hammerson’s mind worked to connect dots – real or imaginary.
At least Alex and Aimee are safe from Borshov for the time being
, he thought.

Harris came back on the line. ‘Jack, got something.’

‘Go, Gerry.’

‘Okay, managed to pull a few interesting things from the Turkish Special Forces’ database. At the Basilica Cistern, the site where the operatives were taken down, they’ve recovered a backpack from the upper chambers, and now have a suspect in a robbery or act of terrorism. Unclear which they’re trying to hang on him, but they want him, bad – name’s Janus Caresche. I’ve also grabbed an informal autopsy report on one of the recovered Spec Ops agents. And as icing on the cake, I’ve got images of the writing or symbols they found in the deeper tunnels. You can read the notes yourself – some are in English – but the gist is that these catacombs seem newly discovered. Not even the Turks knew they existed until a few days ago.’ Harris exhaled. ‘And, Jack, they found something … well, not sure what, but it’s some pretty weird shit. Sending through to you now. Anything else, you know where to find me. Good luck.’

‘Thanks, Gerry.’

Hammerson hung up, and almost immediately his computer pinged with an incoming message from the technical officer. He opened the files, spreading them on his screen. He found the name of the suspect and copied it into MUSE; it immediately returned both a public and private profile of the man. Hammerson sat back and folded his arms. The man that stared back at him was young, confident and good-looking, with slightly olive skin and a healthy jawline. His public bio had him as an antiquities dealer and archeological detective; his unofficial bio said black-market antiquities thief, and persona non grata in several European countries.

Hammerson flicked to the next file, the autopsy report on the SFC agent, and read what he could of the mixed English–Turkish notes. He dragged the images up onto the screen, and leaned forward. ‘What the fuck?’

One image showed what looked like several broken statues; however, the details were too perfect, and close-ups of the facial areas showed imperfections like scars and raised moles. There were even individual strands of hair. The more he looked at them, the more they seemed like a person made from something like plaster. As he stared, a thought started to form. He grabbed the image of the statue onto the screen and rotated it slightly. Then he moved Janus Caresche’s image next to it, increasing the size so it matched the other image.

He sat back. ‘You gotta be shitting me.’

The images matched, right down to the small mole on Caresche’s lip.

‘What the hell happened in there?’

He exhaled and reached forward to enlarge Caresche’s face. There was pain etched into the frozen features, and even what could be a tear on one cheek.

‘Poor bastard.’ Hammerson clicked his teeth. ‘I don’t think they’re going to find you at home, are they, Mr. Caresche?’ He folded his arms. ‘What did you discover down there?’

Hammerson continued to stare at the image. He knew down in their own R&D labs they were working on pulse weapons to pulverize bones, or microwave devices that could cook internal organs hard but leave the outer skin intact. But this … this defied belief.

He quickly read through the attached data. The man had been super-calcified – turned to stone – source, initiator, method, promotion, all unknown. The next few pictures were a montage of the strange writing newly scratched into the cavern walls. It was indecipherable to him, but a mystery to the Turkish experts as well. Notes beside the images offered suggestions:
Zoroastrian, Sumerian, proto-Greek … nonsense?

Hammerson steepled his fingers, and spoke to the screen. ‘So, Mr. Caresche opened up a new level in the Basilica Cistern catacombs and found something that turned him and an entire Special Ops team to rock. Then vanished.’

He read the last few lines of the local police notes:
It is on the move. Atsubay Kemel Baykal has assumed control and is commanding the search. Police are now under SFC sequestration orders.

Good
, Hammerson thought. He knew Baykal.
And now Borshov is in the mix.

 He drummed his fingers on the desk, letting his mind work. New weapon? But why test it in such an obscure place? He drummed some more. Unless it was biological or chemical and needed an enclosed environment for testing. Aum Shinrikyo had used the Tokyo subway for its sarin gas attack. Maybe Caresche was after the tourists as test subjects and the SFC team just got in the way.

His fingers stopped and he frowned. Something was bugging him. He looked back at the notes. That was it … the police notes, the way they’d phrased those last lines: they’d written ‘it’ was on the move, not him or her or them.

Hammerson sat forward again. ‘And you want
it
, don’t you, Borshov? You son of a bitch.’

He exhaled angrily.
Look out, Kemel – shark in your pond.

He looked back at the picture of the calcified body and narrowed his eyes. ‘What did you find down there, Mr. Caresche?’

*

Hammerson waited for the call to be routed through several different filters and code scramblers before Turkish Commander Kemel Baykal finally picked it up. He smiled as he heard the familiar deep voice’s heavily accented English.

‘Colonel Jack – I thought you were dead years ago. Perhaps you are, and this is a call from hell.’

Hammerson laughed. ‘Hell would send me straight back. Besides, only the good die young, you know that, Kemel.’

A snort. ‘Perhaps that is why I too am still here.’ There was a pause. ‘So, long time without speaking, and then you call me out of the air. What is it that brings us to your attention, Colonel Jack?’

Hammerson gripped the phone and glanced at the frozen images of the corpses on his computer screen. ‘You have a problem, Kemel … a bigger one than you realize. We know about the deaths of your soldiers, and the inscription in the cisterns. And we know a Russian Spetsnaz squad has moved into your neighborhood. There’s a gathering storm, and it’s forming up around you, my friend.’

There was a grunt on the line. ‘I cannot discuss this.’ Then a sigh. ‘Spetsnaz … here? I won’t ask how you know all this, but the investigation is ongoing. We have good leads, and we are sure we will make an arrest soon.’

‘Janus Caresche? Forget it; he’s dead. They’re all dead.’

‘No formal identification of the bodies has been –’

‘No. Look at the faces, Kemel.’ Hammerson knew the soldier on the other end of the line needed facts, not more theories. ‘Kemel, your chief suspect is standing right there, and he’s a block of stone.’

There was silence for a moment, and Hammerson heard Baykal’s bulk shifting in a leather chair. The words, when they came, were slow, as though fatigue had attached lead weights to every syllable.

‘This is a lot worse than you think, my friend. My superiors think there may be foreign forces involved in the … attacks. Now would not be a good time for me to be running to the Americans. The West is always a suspect. Leave it alone for now, my friend. I think we must deal with this on our own.’

The call disconnected.

‘Ah, shit!’ Hammerson hung up, and stared again at the images. ‘We’ll see.’

*

‘Sir.’

Hammerson turned to the hulking man standing at attention in the doorway and waved him in. ‘At ease.’

Sam Reid joined him in front of the computer screen. Hammerson hoped that one day the military’s regeneration work would give Sam back his own mobility. But for now, he could do anything he could before … with the additional bonus of being able to run at fifty miles per hour and kick a hole in a metal door.

‘MECH framework okay?’ Hammerson asked.

‘I forget it’s there most times.’ Sam grinned. ‘Unless I try and jump for something and end up ten feet in the air.’

Hammerson nodded. ‘Good, because we got work to do.’  

‘Still no sign of Graham?’ Sam asked.

‘Not yet, but Borshov has just turned up with a bunch of heavy-hitters in Istanbul. His time of arrival, and the place, coincides with a local Spec Ops team mysteriously being taken out. Might be a new weapon – and might be Uli Borshov has dropped in to acquire it.’ Hammerson sat back. ‘We need to know what’s going on – firsthand.’

Sam pressed his large knuckles down on the desk and frowned. ‘Borshov the beast is in Turkey?’

Hammerson pulled up the VELA images of the Russian assassin in the Istanbul street. Even though it was dark, the bearded face and his size was unmistakable. Hammerson smiled without humor. ‘Like I said: we got work to do.’

Sam nodded. ‘Oh yeah, count me in.’

‘Knew you’d say that.’ Hammerson pulled up another screen. ‘Now take a look at this.’

Hammerson flicked through the range of images that Captain Gerry Harris had just sent through to him.

Sam read quickly. ‘Zoroastrian, Sumerian, proto-Greek … they’re all long-dead languages, or languages that have evolved into something linguistically different. I can read a few of the words, and some of it certainly looks like Greek, but I don’t recognize all of it … maybe it
is
nonsense.’

Hammerson sat back with crossed arms. ‘Maybe, but I don’t think so. The Turks are stumped. You know, if we can decipher some of this, we’ve got something to offer the Turkish Special Forces … something to trade.’ He looked at the big HAWC. ‘So who do we know who could possibly read this, hmm? Who’s helped us in the past, and I’m sure would be just dying to come and give us a hand again?’

Sam smiled. ‘Why, young Professor Matthew Kearns.’

Hammerson pointed a finger at him, gun-like. ‘Bingo. So let’s get him in here.’

The front door opened and the Turkish policeman was led in, looking confident and brash. Borshov hung back in the shadows of the darkened room and examined him: young, handsome, shiny wedding ring – perhaps he had been passed over for an expected promotion, or had a new wife who liked gifts that were a little beyond his policeman’s wage. A little extra spending money might be welcome.

Borshov moved out of the shadows, and the young man stepped back, his face immediately losing its grin.

The giant Russian stuck out one enormous hand. ‘English?’

The man nodded warily, ignoring the Russian’s hand. ‘English … a little.’ He held his finger and thumb about an inch apart.

Borshov nodded. ‘Good. We must hurry. Please sit and make comfortable.’ He motioned to one of two heavy wooden chairs his men were bringing into the room. ‘Tea, coffee?’ he asked the policeman and raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes; coffee.’ The man sat down with legs splayed, confidence returning to his young athletic frame. He grinned. ‘This … ah …’ He sniffed as he searched for the right words. ‘This secret information is gold for you, yes?’

Borshov shrugged, then laughed darkly. He held up a thick wad of Turkish notes. ‘Gold for us, and maybe gold for you,
da
?’

The policeman allowed his turned-down lips to express his disappointment at the sum of money. ‘I could lose my job or go to jail if anyone finds out I tell you this. I think is very high value … maybe to others as well.’

Borshov smiled, dragged the other chair closer to the man and sat down facing him. One of Borshov’s agents brought a single mug of steaming coffee and held it out.

Borshov raised his eyebrows. ‘Hot?’

The agent nodded once.

‘Good.’ Borshov threw the boiling liquid into the young policeman’s face, eliciting a howl of surprise and pain.

Immediately a Spetsnaz agent grabbed his shoulders and held him in the chair. The policeman’s hands were over his face, and his skin had turned an angry red. His screams turned to sobs. ‘My eyes.’

Borshov nodded and his men grabbed the man’s hands away from his face and held them flat against the chair’s wooden armrests. In a few savage motions, they drove large nails into each hand, pinning them flat.

Borshov threw the empty cup to the side of the room and sat forward, gripping the man’s knees. ‘So, I think you might lose more than your job today,
da
?’

The man moaned and tried to hunch over, but Borshov’s men now held him securely in place again, as did the thick nails spiking his hands.

The big Russian patted one of the man’s knees. ‘Okay, no more playtime. We understand each other good now, okay?’

The policeman sobbed again, but nodded.

‘Good. Now, you tell me everything about the attack on your police, and the weapon that was used.’

Within fifteen minutes Borshov had what he needed. He knew that the man the Turks believed responsible for the attack was also killed – some sort of petrification disorder. Whether it was caused by a radiation, biological, or chemical weapon was still unknown. He stood in the front doorway, watching the dark street. Muffled screams still emanated from inside, but he knew anything else that dribbled from the man’s mouth would be less reliable and more a result of the madness caused by pain. He puffed on a cigar, and blew a plume of smoke out into the dark. The man responsible, Janus Caresche, an antiquities thief, had gone down there looking for something.

Borshov grunted. ‘Found more than you bargained for,
da
?’ His laugh sounded like two metal plates grating against each other.

He dropped the cigar and ground it out. He would contact his command, and find out more about this man and what he was looking for deep down in a 2000-year-old drain.

*

Matt Kearns tried to concentrate, but he couldn’t help staring at Sam. His head turned from the hulking HAWC to the computer screen, back to Sam, and then back to the screen, as if he couldn’t quite make his mind up what to do next.

He cleared his throat. ‘You look … well.’

Jack Hammerson smirked. Sam just nodded.

‘You’re standing … by yourself,’ Matt went on. ‘And I heard you …’

Sam half-smiled. ‘The wonders of science, Professor.’ He motioned to the screen. ‘We got work to do.’

‘O-kay.’ Matt swiveled back to the computer and the images. ‘And this was recently found written, um, scratched into a wall in a newly discovered chamber beneath the Basilica Cisterns of ancient Constantinople?’ Matt rubbed his temples as he frowned at the computer screen. ‘You know, this new antechamber could be 2000 years old … or even older.’

Hammerson remained silent, watching the languages professor examine the data. He knew the young man hadn’t wanted to come, but he’d personally pulled the guy out of a pretty sticky situation in the Appalachians last fall. Kearns owed him. Normally, Hammerson kept those kinds of debts on ice, but he needed the man’s expertise, and he needed it now.

The professor pushed his long hair back from his face and shook his head as he read the Turkish notes. ‘Nope, nope, nope – not Zoroastrian. It doesn’t have this tight curling form, and its glyphs are more like Egyptian.’ He half-turned to Hammerson. ‘Way too sophisticated for Sumerian either. Who wrote these notes – some grad student?’ He shrugged. ‘However, I can see a lot of similarities to proto-Greek … Still, there’s too much circular imprinting of the letters that doesn’t exist in that early alphabet.’ He sat back. ‘As for it being nonsense, I can tell you right now, that’s wrong. It’s a language, all right.’

Jack Hammerson walked around the desk to stand directly in front of Matt. ‘If it’s a language, you can decipher it, read it, right?’

Matt shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He looked back at the screen. ‘I’m not surprised they thought it might be an early form of Greek … I think they were close. Look, this is right out there, and just my own view … but I believe it could be Eteocretan, or perhaps even an authentic representation of Minoan, and if it is –’

Sam scoffed. ‘Minoan? Theseus and the Minotaur Minoan?’

Matt turned. ‘Got a better suggestion?’

Sam held up his hands. ‘Not yet.’

‘Well, let me know. And everyone knows those pumped-up Hollywood stories, but that was only one of their legends. They had mermaids, Cyclopses, Gorgons, dozens of light-and-darkness-dwelling entities – Crete is riddled with limestone caves that were inhabited for tens of thousands of years. In fact, the first real humans left traces there as far back as 130,000 years ago … that’s Paleolithic. On other continents, Neanderthals were still cracking heads with bone clubs.’ Matt sat back and folded his arms. ‘It was a strange thing. The Minoan civilization, one of the mightiest in the world, simply collapsed, and no one really knows why.’ He indicated some of the strange markings. ‘Whoever wrote this into the wall was a scholar of antiquities or a specialist in paleolinguistics – and I mean a real specialist. No one has spoken this language for about 5000 years, and only a handful of people in the world would even know what it is.’ He glared at Sam. ‘With even fewer being able to read it.’

Sam slapped him on the shoulder, making Matt wince. ‘And I’m betting you’re one of them?’

Matt rubbed his shoulder. ‘Ouch … Yes, but not well, and mainly by fluke. My first languages professor was captivated by Minoan art and culture, and taught me how to appreciate it, first, and understand it, second.’

Hammerson looked hard at Sam. ‘It’s okay, Matt – we appreciate and value your opinion. Where’s your professor now?’

‘Dead, I’m afraid.’ Matt sat back. ‘You could try Professor Gerhard Reinhalt in Germany, Doctor Francis Lin Bao in China, whereabouts unknown, or maybe the great Margaret Watchorn in England. She’s pushing ninety, but she’s recognized as the pre-eminent Minoan expert living today.’ He tilted his head. ‘She’s also the undisputed expert in their theological mythologies.’

Hammerson grunted and shook his head. ‘No, we’re happy to have you assisting us.’ He began to pace. ‘So, the million-dollar question – what does it say?’

Matt turned back to the screen, and adjusted the contrast and magnification. ‘Unfortunately, it’s what we call Linear-A form – classed as near unreadable. Basically, all we can do is take the later Linear-B form and use the Greek Euboean-derived alphabet as a guide. Not perfect, and far from exact.’ He sucked in a deep breath, and after a few moments shook his head. ‘Not a lot that makes sense, but from what I can make out it says:
Fear is risen again, children of Zeus, slayers of …
’ He turned. ‘
Children of Zeus
– that’s us by the way. According to ancient Greek mythology, we mortals were created by Zeus when he gave us the Earth as our home.’ He turned back to the writing. ‘…
shall be forever locked in stone … Magera will consume
… Hmm, Magera, that rings a bell. Obviously ancient Greek, but can’t place its significance.’

Hammerson stopped pacing. ‘That’s it?’

‘Pretty much,’ Matt said. ‘The rest is either undecipherable or obscured. Some of the words could be slightly wrong, but that’s the gist of it.’

Hammerson grunted. ‘Not a lot to go on.’ He paced some more. ‘Another question for you. Janus Caresche – heard of him? Could he understand it? Write it?’

Matt scoffed. ‘Janus the Anus … sure I’ve heard of him. He’s a liar, a thief, and an asshole. The guy’s responsible for the theft of dozens of high-value artifacts all around the world. He’s rumored to have removed an entire wall of Egyptian crypt art. He’s got a bounty on his head, and he’s –’

Hammerson held up one hand. ‘Okay, we get it, he wasn’t a great guy … but was he capable of writing it?’

Matt shook his head. ‘Absolutely not, no way. Understand it? Still no way.  Could someone like Caresche recognize it? Maybe … that’s his job. He could have copied it from another source, I guess, but why would he?’

Hammerson shrugged; he didn’t have any answers.

‘I’d love to send some of this to Margaret Watchorn,’ Matt started, but Hammerson shook his head. ‘Okay, well then … next option is I need to see more. If you can get me more shots, maybe different angles, I might be able to be a little more conclusive.’ He looked at the writing again. ‘Interesting thought … it could be a warning. But if so, why write it in a language that hasn’t existed for thousands of years? That’s what’s so weird; whoever wrote this went to a lot of trouble to make sure it only a few people could ever read it.’ He looked up, his face excited. ‘Or they assumed more people could understand it … Fascinating, and intriguing. I’d love to see more.’

Hammerson was pacing again. He still didn’t have enough information … yet.

He heard Matt snort, then the professor said softly, ‘I’ll tell you one thing. If Caresche was down there, he wasn’t there as a tourist – he was after something. I wonder if he found it.’

Hammerson turned, frowning. ‘You think he went there for something specific – an artifact?’

Matt nodded. ‘Like I said before, that’s his job. He went down into those catacombs with a brief. That’s how he works. I think he was filling an order for someone; you just need to find out who that was.’

Hammerson looked at Sam, and the big man smiled in return. ‘Yeah, we can do that.’

‘Make it happen, Lieutenant,’ the HAWC commander said, then turned back to see Matt leaning in close to the screen, his forehead creased. ‘What is it – you got something else?’

Matt leaned back a few inches. ‘Maybe … something weird. Check this out.’ He enlarged one of the characters that had been gouged into the wall. Hammerson and Sam crowded in close. ‘You see that? Just at the edge of the letter stroke?’

Hammerson shook his head.

Sam pushed Matt along and took over the keypad. ‘Let me do this.’ He opened a box around the character, and the computer immediately zoomed in and digitally cleaned up the image.

Jack Hammerson leaned forward and squinted. There looked to be a few quarter-sized chips or flakes stuck into one of the grooves in the stone. ‘What is that … a fingernail?’

Matt shook his head. ‘That’s what I thought, at first. Call me crazy, but I think a hand of sorts made these marks.’

‘Jesus, what sort of hand could make those gouges … in solid stone?’ Sam said, tidying up the resolution even more. The objects came into sharper focus.

Hammerson frowned at him. ‘You’re showing me how you do that before you get outta here, Reid.’ He stared at the image. ‘Could be nails. But I think you’d lose more than just a few of them if you raked your hand down a solid wall.’

‘You’re right; so I don’t think they’re nails at all,’ Matt said softly. ‘I think they’re scales. See the uniform size? But thick, like armor plating.’

Sam grunted. ‘Makes sense; there’s carp in the cisterns. Maybe they –’

‘Nope. That’s not a fish scale. I still remember my senior biology classes. C’mon, think, Sam.’ Matt nudged the big HAWC. ‘Fish have scales embedded into their dermis, deep but thinner; they also have slime glands. These babies are more rounded, thicker, and there are growth marks. I bet if we got a better look at one of those, we’d find it was pure reptilian keratin. Reptile scales actually grow like hair.’

‘What sort of reptile?’ Sam frowned, and folded his huge arms across his chest.

Matt snorted, and swung around in his chair. ‘Well, I’m not talking alligators in the sewers. I’m betting this is a reptile that knows Minoan, and, according to where these scales are located, stands about seven feet tall.’

Hammerson clapped his hands together. ‘Good work, Matt. Good information. I agree with what you said before – it is fascinating and intriguing. Hang around for a day or so, and we might have something even more interesting for you.’ He pointed to Sam. ‘Lieutenant, find me Caresche’s paymaster.’

*