The Atlantis Keystone (22 page)

“Her”, Erik added. “I think you’ll find that Professor Brown is a woman”.

“How do you know that?”

“Remember I told you about the professor in Athens who Paul and I met up with. I believe this is her. Professor Mary Brown.”

“But how can you be so sure, Brown is a very common name?”

“I think I just saw her, just now when we arrived. She’s here in Oxford and I can only assume that she’s the Professor Brown who’s now your new professor. I didn’t tell you about it when I saw her as I wasn’t sure but now it seems almost inevitable.”

“Is she not also the Professor Brown who told you not to trust Paul?” Emma recalled with a frown.

“She certainly is. And following our meeting I’ve not been able to get hold of her. All very strange. And we also know that Paul has told her his theory about the tablet.”

“Well, that should make my meeting with her tomorrow all the more interesting…”

H
er shoes against the aging stone steps made a familiar echoing sound. For some reason Emma was nervous as she climbed the stairs to Paul’s office on the third floor of one of the older University buildings. Not only had she not made enough progress on her dissertation, she also had to come face to face with Paul’s temporary replacement who Erik had been sure was the woman who had warned Erik about Paul on his visit to Athens. To make matters worse, she was in fear of breaking down in tears at the sight of Paul’s desk, occupied by someone else only a few days after his disappearance.

As she approached the closed door to his office she hesitated. Paul had always left his door wide open and Emma was already then forming a disliking towards Professor Brown for not being approachable. How was she supposed to act meeting this person? She took a deep breath and knocked on the door. She almost jumped as a pleasant sounding woman’s voice urged her to come in.

“You must be Emma”, she said with a smile. She had a friendly face, Emma noted. She stood up and shook Emma’s hand.

“Yes, pleased to meet you Professor Brown”.

“Call me Mary,” she said immediately, confirming once and for all that Erik had been right. “I’ve been keen to meet you. I know Paul well and he told me a lot about you and your extraordinary linguistic talent.”

“I’m sure that…” Emma started to say but was interrupted.

“No, no need to deny it. I know your background and what you’ve achieved in your years here. All very impressive. I have to say that I’m more than a little eager to hear about your dissertation. We share an interest in Linear A. I’ve spent a few years at Athens University and it’s almost impossible to avoid getting into the whole Linear A and Linear B debate. Please, sit down.” Emma hesitated, wanting to leave the room but sat down.

“To be completely honest with you, I wish I had made more progress on my dissertation. You might know that I recently accompanied Paul … Professor Simmons … on a research trip to Crete. I spent some time there translating original Linear A texts using Linear B values and made some good headway on that but unfortunately I didn’t get any closer to decipherment and I felt as if I was wasting time, to tell you the truth.” Emma fell silent. Mary looked surprised but seemed to compose herself quickly. Emma was unsure what had prompted this reaction.

“I understand. Your achievements in Heraklion were good and I think Paul was right to take you. I’m not going to blame you for not having made progress on your dissertation during this time. It’s perfectly understandable.” She hesitated. “But I have to confess that I’m a little surprised. When Paul came to visit me in Athens, I got the impression that some significant progress had recently been made in the decipherment work. Paul gave me that impression. I thought you would have been involved.”

Emma regained the feeling of having been betrayed by Paul. Had he really made progress without telling her? Had he perhaps had the tablet to help him?! Emma did her best to conceal her inner turmoil. “If he had, he didn’t tell me.”

Mary didn’t even try to hide her disappointment. “That’s a shame but let’s talk about what you’ve achieved so far and what I can do to help.”

This was the enquiry Emma dreaded but she gave a summary of the limited progress she had made. To her surprise, Mary’s guidance was helpful and she left Paul’s old office with a feeling of renewed energy to do more work, with some new avenues to think about. Just before she left, she had asked the question which had been constantly on her mind. “I just thought I might ask. Do you have any idea where Paul could be? The police believe he could have had an accident, or may even be dead.”

“I really don’t know, Emma. All I know is that he asked me to contact the university to offer to cover for him. I agreed of course. I was just about to return to the UK anyway. He said he had to go away for a few weeks but didn’t say where. I didn’t ask. Knowing him he’s probably engulfed in his research somewhere. It wouldn’t be the first time.” She laughed a brief dry laugh, deep in thought for a moment. “Rest assured he will come back soon.”

Her response was comforting. At least Professor Brown didn’t think Paul was dead.

Walking home, she was feeling somewhat disgruntled but determined. Mary had sown a seed of doubt in her mind about Paul’s honesty. She didn’t like this at all but it made her resolute to find out who had conducted the Torpa break-in, simply to prove that it wasn’t Paul. But first, she decided, she would pay some attention to her dissertation. Erik had gone to London to see a client and she spent the rest of the afternoon working alone at her desk in her unusually tidy flat. It was late by the time Erik got back, looking drained.

“Clients!” he said with a sigh. “Looks like my team in Sweden have a busy few days ahead. I need to get back soon unfortunately, in the next few days.”

In spite of his tiredness he looked stunning, Emma noted. He was still wearing his suit but had taken off his tie and undone the top buttons of his shirt. Having been away from him all day, it was as if she was looking at him with a fresh pair of eyes. He walked over to one corner of the room and started to change clothes. Emma suddenly had a strange flashback to the lake in Sweden when he had been swimming naked.

“How was your day?” he asked. “Any exciting news about Mary?”

She told him all about her conversation with Mary. “I would say, either Mary is not telling the whole story or Paul is hiding something,” she finished.

“I’d probably say it’s both.”

“There may be a third option though. She might just suspect Paul of something, without knowing for sure whether it’s anything inappropriate or illegal. Maybe she’s looking into it as well”. Erik had finished changing clothes. Wearing grey cotton pyjamas he sat down on the sofa and Emma got up from her desk chair to sit next to him. “Whatever you say Professor Brown has been acting strangely,” she said. “And she basically got Paul’s job at Oxford after his disappearance. She had everything to gain from getting Paul out of the way,” She hesitated for a moment and continued. “She might have had an ulterior motive; to find out more from me about Paul’s progress on Linear A. When I met her today, she said she was surprised that I had not been involved and that I didn’t know what Paul had discovered.”

“Alright, say she’s involved and that she hired the burglar to steal the tablet at Torpa and at the same time framed Paul, what possible motive could she have had?”

“The obvious motive would have been to get priority access to the tablet and be the first to decipher Linear A,” she responded quickly. “And to get Paul’s job.”

“But why frame Paul; I thought they were friends? When I met them in Athens they were very friendly… until Mary started to warn me about Paul behind his back that is. But anyway I don’t think it’s a good enough reason.”

Emma hesitated. “I suppose, Mary actually seemed like a nice person. I can’t believe she would have committed a crime in pursuit of her own fame and fortune. She simply doesn’t seem like that sort of person.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Erik agreed. “I had the same impression of her, even though I found it a bit strange the way she warned me about Paul and then disappeared from the face of the earth without returning my phone calls.”

“But what about that Professor in Crete? What was his name?” Emma searched her brain.

“Professor Palaikastro,” Erik said. “What about him?”

“Well, he’s another person in all this who may have had an interest in finding the tablet and who also knew Paul”, she suggested. “Who knows what dealings they might have had and what he thought of Paul? For all we know he could have had a particular grudge against Paul for some reason.” She paused and stood up to get her laptop on the desk. “He’s not a pure linguist though, I don’t think. I’m not sure why he would suddenly want to be the first to decipher Linear A, when he’s not within that field and wouldn’t have had the ability to crack the code even with the tablet!”

“I agree,” Erik said before Emma continued, arguing against herself.

“But could it be that he was interested in the tablet for the sake of its contents, the possible references to the ten plagues, Atlantis or anything else which he may have read into the half tablet? Or could he have had a particular desire to prevent other people from seeing the other half? He would have known about the ‘opening of the wall’ at Torpa and would have been in close contact with Paul. He would also have known, similar to Mary, of any progress Paul had made. To me, Professor Palaikastro should be a key suspect.”

“Hm, yes we should consider this,” Erik said. “Thinking about it, why would Professor Palaikastro have lent Paul his yacht? He could have done it to incriminate him – to make it look as if Paul was avoiding flying which would involve scrutiny, hiding and keeping a low profile! That Paul was trying to avoid the authorities certainly crossed my mind when he came to Crete in the yacht.”

“But what interest would Professor Palaikastro have had in the tablet?” Emma asked, playing the devil’s advocate. “How about we check his background.” She opened her laptop. Erik made himself comfortable on the sofa, leaning back and resting one of his legs on the table. His eyes were bright and he looked at her logging in. She couldn’t believe it was only Monday and that she had only arrived in Oxford the day before. Their eyes met for a split second. He smiled, making his dimples in his cheeks appear. She smirked back. She got her computer up and running and Googled ‘Professor Palaikastro’. The amount of hits was staggering. He had certainly been a busy man over the last twenty or thirty years. Erik looked over her shoulder at the screen. One of the more recent hits which caught their eye was the mention of the professor’s name in connection with a recent study on the origins of the Phoenicians. This study focussed on verifying, by pursuing DNA tests, whether there was any truth in the assertion that the Phoenicians had emigrated from various places to the eastern Mediterranean. Professor Palaikastro had been referred to as one of the authorities in the historical analysis of their findings.

They continued searching through the hits on the name of the professor but couldn’t find anything which seemed remotely controversial or connected to the messages of the Torpa tablet or Linear A. They found out he was in his sixties, a bit overweight, balding and wore thick glasses. Not exactly pin-up material. His career seemed to have gone up and down with a few highs prompting the mention of his name in the press. He was mainly known for his work on the history of the Mycenaeans but had also done a lot of research on the Phoenicians. Once again they had reached a dead end… In spite of Professor Palaikastro’s dealings with Paul and his yacht, they had not been able to find a strong enough motive for him to somehow steal the tablet or frame Paul. They decided to keep him in mind though. Erik suggested that they should ask Mary about his relationship with Paul and to discuss their thoughts with Laura when they met up with her the following evening.

They never got a chance to… It was past midnight when Erik’s mobile phone rang. They looked at each other wondering who would call at this hour. Emma’s immediate thought was to Paul. She thought maybe he was trying to get in touch again. She hoped he was ok. She was disappointed when Erik answered in Swedish. It was his mother.

After a very short conversation, Erik hung up the phone and simply stared out of the window, his face impassive, emotionless except for a slight glistening in his eyes as they reflected the streetlights outside. He didn’t turn his head, he just said: “They have found Anna…”

E
rik was surprised at his mixed feelings as the plane approached Landvetter airport outside Gothenburg. Hundreds of dark calm lakes were breaking up the green pine tree lined landscape. With his eyes fixed on a few houses next to a lake below them, he found himself struggling not to think about Anna. The shocking news from his mother the night before was still at the forefront of his mind. He had taken the decision to fly home immediately and await the return of Anna’s body. After over a year her remains had been identified among the forgotten bodies of the Tsunami disaster – in Sweden! Not long ago finding her body had been his most urgent wish, save for finding her alive. He had thought that being able to bury her in Sweden near his family at Torpa would have been the only event allowing him to find some sort of closure. But now, after he had finally been able to move on with his life, the news of the find of her remains had ripped open a wound which had only just started to heal. He was once again crying inside, feeling guilty that he had allowed himself to have feelings for someone else.