Chapter 18

18

May 12, 7:34 A . M . MSK

Sergiyev Posad, Russian Federation

This is going to give me an aneurysm...

Jason ignored the chatter from the main salon as he worked at a desk in a bedroom. He had a laptop open before him, flanked by two digital tablets. Three crushed cans of Yaguár—the Russian equivalent of Red Bull—lay toppled by his elbow.

He tapped a stylus on the desktop as he glared at the laptop's screen. The image that had confounded him all night glowed in the darkened room.

Earlier in the night, he had managed to strip away more of the frontispiece's overlaying sketch of the golden book and the Trinity Lavra, enhancing what lay underneath to a slighter degree.

It hadn't helped.

He took a sip from his fourth can of Yaguár, wishing it was the alcoholic version of the energy drink.

Maybe getting drunk would help make sense of this.

For the thousandth time, he studied the arcane writing, all surrounding a compass rose that might or might not be important. He shook his head, refusing to second-guess himself. He had come to a few conclusions overnight, just not enough to put the pieces together.

A voice cleared behind him. He stiffened in surprise and glanced over his shoulder. Gray stood there, leaning down, scrutinizing his handiwork.

Even with a bum ankle, the guy moved like a shadow.

"I see you've made some progress," Gray noted.

Jason stretched his arms, then let them drop in defeat. "But little else."

"You're likely too close to the problem by now. Can't see the forest through the trees."

"Maybe."

Gray pointed to the suite's salon. "Sometimes it helps to talk it out. To share what you might have discerned."

Jason groaned, not in refusal, but in exhaustion. He gathered his laptop and tablets and followed Gray into the neighboring room.

The salon had a cluster of sofas, a bar with a minifridge—well stocked with Yaguár—and a large television. But the room's main attraction was its tall bank of windows that offered a breathtaking view of the Trinity Lavra.

Only a hundred yards away, the monastery's towering white walls glowed in the morning light. A dozen watchtowers, roofed in green slate, dotted its mile-long circumference. Within the grounds itself, bell towers, domes, and onion-topped spires—shining in gold or painted in bright blue—protruded into the sky. It all looked like something out of a fairytale, ethereal and majestic.

Yet, somewhere in those sixty acres awaited a greater wonder still to be discovered.

Hopefully...

Jason turned his back on the view and crossed to the salon's dining table. He was surprised to find only Monk and Father Bailey, along with the two Russian clergy—Bishop Yelagin and Sister Anna—in attendance. Focused on his work, he hadn't even noticed that the others had left on their own assignment, to search for those taken by Valya.

Jason grimaced. Worry for Kowalski and Elle, even Marco, had plagued his concentration. He read the same anxiety in Monk's and Gray's faces. Guilt flared through him.

They're all stuck here, waiting on me to come up with a solution.

Gray waved to the table. "Show the others your work."

"It's not much," Jason admitted. "I was able to clean up that front page and bring out more of the faded writing."

He showed them the result.

The group gathered for a closer look.

"What do you make of it?" Monk asked, leaning on the table.

Jason sighed. "Either it's all gibberish, intentionally written to mislead, or it's too complicated for me to figure out."

Anna gave him a consoling look. "Or it might take someone from the eighteenth century to even understand its intent. We may be missing the context here."

Gray turned to Jason. "What's your assessment? Is what's written here nonsense? Could we be spinning our wheels?"

Jason swallowed, knowing the others were counting on him. "No. I don't believe so. All these scribbles must be clues to the location of the library. I'm sure of it. It's just an exceptionally hard puzzle. Plus, we may be missing clues that have faded into obscurity."

"If so, then we're never going to solve it," Monk groused.

Gray ignored him and focused on Jason. "Have you come to any other conclusions after working all night?"

"Maybe." Jason took a deep breath, hoping his assessment wasn't about to lead everyone down a rabbit hole. "During the night, I got to wondering why sections of this page were blocked out by the golden book and the sketch of the Lavra. Why would they do that? It took all my skills—and Kat's back in D.C.—to strip away those layers to reveal what was obviously hidden on purpose."

Gray's eyes narrowed. "Do you have any guesses? About why that compass and other pieces were overwritten?"

"I have a theory." Jason pointed to the compass rose. "I think that's the answer to the puzzle, to the location of the Golden Library. It's right there. Or at least a simplified version of it." With growing certainty, he straightened his back. "I believe someone drew that compass, one that points to the library's location—then got cold feet."

Father Bailey glanced at him. "What do you mean by cold feet?"

"I think someone—someone likely brilliant—concluded that this first encryption was too easy to solve, so they covered it up, and constructed a more convoluted puzzle around it, one that would challenge all but the greatest minds."

Jason stared around the table, daring anyone to discount his theory.

Gazes returned to the screen as everyone considered his words.

Gray simply picked up one of the tablets and tapped at its screen.

Monk shook his head. "This compass is the easy version of the puzzle?"

Jason shrugged and glanced at Anna. "Maybe for someone in the eighteenth century."

The nun leaned close to the screen, squinting at the page, as if struggling with something.

What is she doing?

Gray drew back Jason's attention. The commander pointed at a few icons drawn in various spots on the page. "Jason, can you bring up these small drawings onto my tablet?"

"Not a problem." He picked up a stylus and stepped to the laptop.

Sister Anna shifted out of his way. As she did, she retrieved the second tablet from the table. "May I?" she asked him.

"Of course."

While Jason set to work, the nun joined Bishop Yelagin and whispered in Russian, clearly consulting with him about something.

Jason used his stylus to circle the icons that Gray had pointed out. He had chosen tiny sketches of what appeared to be onion-shaped images in varied levels of detail. They were spread across the page, but Jason lined them up in a row and dispatched them to Gray's tablet.

Monk and Father Bailey stared over Gray's shoulder at the small icons.

"What are you thinking?" Monk asked.

Gray lowered the tablet and returned to the laptop. "That drawing in the center of the page. It's not a compass."

Jason stepped next to the commander, leaning shoulder to shoulder with him. "Then what is it?"

Gray pointed to a final sketch, just below the center one. "Here is another example of those orb-like drawings. Only this one is slightly more detailed in its functional design."

Monk stared over their shoulders. "That sketch looks like a crude version of the larger one in the center. Like a first attempt at drawing it."

Jason nodded. "But if it's not a compass, what is it?"

Gray turned to them both. "We've seen something like this before. Just a couple years ago." He nodded across to Father Bailey. "You did, too."

Jason shared a confused look with the other two men.

Gray straightened and brought up a new image onto his tablet, one he had already pre-loaded, as he had clearly come to this conclusion when he'd first picked up the tablet.

The picture he showed was of a tarnished brass globe, about the size of a baseball, engraved with symbols and Arabic numbers, all encircled by arched arms and etched bands.

"The hidden sketch on the page is not a compass," Gray impressed upon them. "It's a drawing of a spherical astrolabe, like the one shown here."

Jason understood, appreciating how much the photo matched the 2D sketch.

Anna and Yelagin came over to look, too.

The bishop frowned. "But what does it do?"

Gray explained. "This brass artifact dates to the fifteenth century, to the Middle Ages. It's part cosmic map and part analog computer, one capable of calculating nautical positions."

"But why draw an astrolabe," Yelagin asked, "then hide it?"

"I may know," Anna said, drawing all their eyes. She returned to the laptop and ran a finger around the circumference of the sketched astrolabe. "Mister Carter, there are symbols written along here. Can you make them more discernible?"

"I can try."

He took over her spot and boxed off each symbol, then tasked his AI program to bring those particular icons into better focus, to bring to life any hint of ink in the faded page.

Everyone gathered as the result slowly resolved into view.

Once done, Jason zoomed in on the astrolabe and its surrounding symbols, each one set off in its own assay box.

"I still don't get it," Jason admitted. "Those symbols... they look like arcane scribbles."

"They're not arcane," Anna explained. "They're just old."

"You recognize the writing?" Gray asked her.

"I do. So would my brother Igor." She lifted a hand and made the sign of the cross in the memory of Monsignor Borrelli. "As part of our studies to become archivists, we were exposed to all forms of Russian script."

"This is Russian?" Monk asked. "But it doesn't look anything like Cyrillic."

"It's not," Anna said. "It's Glagolitic, the oldest known Slavic alphabet, created sometime in the ninth century. It was eventually supplanted by Cyrillic. Though, many of Russia's oldest religious texts can still be found written in Glagolitic."

"Can you translate these glyphs, Sister Anna?" Bailey asked, half breathless. "Maybe they spell out the name of a church or structure."

"I should be able to, but from the little that I was able to discern earlier, I think they're mostly numbers , not letters."

Jason remembered her consulting with the bishop a moment ago.

Anna continued, "During the reign of Peter I—Peter the Great—Russia changed from Cyrillic numerals to the more common Arabic numbering system, to match the Europeans." She pointed to the screen. "Centuries prior to that, though, Glagolitic numerals were used."

Gray nodded. "Then whoever encoded this cipher, they had clearly wanted someone to know Russia's history, a history even further back than Peter the Great, to solve it."

Anna lifted her tablet toward Jason. "Mister Carter, if you can help me, I have a conversion chart. We should be able to quickly transpose these Glagolitic symbols into their modern equivalent."

"Gladly."

Working together, comparing the chart in hand to the symbols on the screen, Jason replaced each glyph with its corresponding equivalent. He stepped back and allowed everyone to see.

"No wonder the designers hid this work." Jason smiled. "It is rather simple."

"Perhaps for you, young man," Yelagin scolded.

Jason shifted back to his computer. In a corner of the screen, he lined up the Glagolitic symbols, splitting them into two halves, corresponding to the upper and lower hemispheres of the astrolabe—then matched them with their corresponding translation.

He showed his work to Yelagin.

"They're longitude and latitude designations," Jason explained. "Nautical positioning like you might work out with a spherical astrolabe."

Monk's brow furrowed. "But does it truly mean anything? Did our counterparts in the eighteenth century have accurate enough measurements to be of any use to us today?"

Gray answered, studying his tablet. He must have researched this very question before Jason had finished clarifying matters for the bishop. "Catherine the Great was a great advocate of science and innovation. By her time, latitudes were easily calculated and had been for millennia, all the way back to the ancient Phoenicians. Determining longitudes had been more problematic, requiring precise timepieces. It wasn't until John Harrison, a clockmaker from Yorkshire, developed the marine chronometer that longitudes could be accurately worked out. That was in the middle of the eighteenth century."

"So, a new invention of Catherine's time," Bailey said, "which, considering the empress's interest in the sciences, would have garnered her attention."

"But what about the prime meridian?" Monk asked. "Our longitudes are based on the one passing through Greenwich in London."

"True," Gray said. "It became the de facto standard a century later, but it was Harrison who recommended that the meridian be set at the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich—where it remains today."

"Why there?" Bailey inquired.

Gray smiled. "Harrison invented his chronometer to win a prize of twenty thousand pounds. It was offered by the English Parliament to anyone who could invent a practical method for determining longitudes. Britain's chief astronomer handed Harrison his prize money—during a ceremony held at the Royal Observatory."

"And that's why he picked the location for his meridian," Monk mumbled.

"It makes sense that Catherine would follow his example," Anna added. "Besides being an advocate for the advancement of science, she was also an Anglophile. She would've found this discovery astounding and would have likely adhered to the standards set by the British inventor."

Gray turned to the puzzle on the laptop's screen. "It's as if Catherine coded her cipher using a combination of science, history, language, and the arts."

Anna nodded. "A true test of all that she loved. She would want only the most brilliant minds to know the location of the Golden Library."

Monk sighed. "Then let's test how brilliant we are." He pointed to the tablet in Gray's hand. "Can you pull up the coordinates?"

Gray simply lifted a brow.

Jason knew the commander already had. "Where is it?"

Gray pointed toward the panoramic view. "The coordinates mark a spot along the walls that surround the Lavra."

"If so, that makes sense," Yelagin said. "It was Ivan the Terrible who, back in the sixteenth century, converted the Lavra's old wooden palisades into the stone fortifications that stand today."

"The same Ivan who hid the Golden Library," Jason added.

Monk pressed Gray. "But where along that wall do those coordinates point to?"

"At one of its twelve watchtowers. The Zvonkovaya Bashnya —or Ringing Tower." Gray lifted his tablet and tapped at it. "I'll pull up a picture."

Once he found one, he passed around his tablet, which showed a stretch of wall with a prominent tower, steepled with what looked like a belfry at the top.

Still playing the skeptic, Monk questioned Gray. "But how can we be certain that's the place?"

The answer came from Yelagin, who, after viewing the photo, had returned to the laptop. "Because of a unique aspect of the Lavra's towers. All twelve are different—varying in size and shape—depending on their specific use."

"Why's that significant?" Monk asked.

"Because it appears someone left us a clue. In case there was any doubt."

The bishop pointed to a small sketch on the lower right of the page on the screen. It showed a crude sketch of a tower that bore a strong resemblance to the one in the photo. In the foreground, a robed figure—maybe a monk—was drawn running toward it, as if late to ring that steeple's bell.

"That must be the place," Gray said.

Monk nodded. "You'll hear no argument from me."

About time , Jason thought.

Still, this raised a concern of his own. "Where could someone hide a vast library in that tower? One that's remained lost for centuries?"

Gray stared out toward the glorious spread of the Trinity Lavra. "Only one way to find out."