Read Online The Atlantis Code by Charles Brokaw - Free Book Online
Authors: Charles Brokaw
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Science-Fiction, Fantasy fiction, Thrillers, Excavations (Archaeology), Atlantis (Legendary place), Treasure Troves, Code and Cipher Stories, Linguists
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RYAZAN’
RUSSI
AUGUST 19, 2009
Frustration and excitement chafed at Professor Yuliya Hapaev as she sat at the tiny desk in the basement office she’d borrowed at Ryazan’ University while she worked on a pet project. The underground room held a chill she hadn’t been able to shake, even with a sweater under her lab coat.
Without any real hope of finding an answer, Yuliya checked her e-mail. Again. She stared at the industrial gray walls and waited for her mail client to pump out the latest messages.
She checked the time, discovering that it was almost 11 P.M. She groaned. She’d promised herself she would get back early tonight to the dorm she’d been assigned while she was working. The feeling that she’d forgotten something else nagged at her, though she couldn’t imagine what that something was. Her family was in Kazan. She had no meals to prepare, no laundry to do, nothing outside of her work to distract her here.
Working fourteen and fifteen hours a day in her chosen field was almost like being on vacation for her. Her husband didn’t like that so much, but he understood because he felt that way about some of the construction projects he worked on.
Fortune had smiled on her when her grant had been approved to study the recently uncovered artifacts found in the archeological dig on the hill between the Oka and Pronya Rivers. Although the area had been sealed off in 2005 and further digging banned, a number of things hadn’t been properly cataloged from the original excavations.
And despite the ban, a few items had wandered in after the fact.
The area between the Oka and Pronya Rivers had been a meeting place or melting pot of a myriad of cultures from the Upper Paleolithic times to the early Middle Ages. A wooden structure that had resembled Great Britain’s Stonehenge had been uncovered in 2003 by Ilya Akhmedov, an archeologist and contemporary of Yuliya’s. Scientists believed that the structure, too, had been used for mapping the stars.
The thing that had interested Yuliya most—and infuriated her beyond all measure—was the cymbal made of clay that currently lay on one of the tables out in the lab. It was definitely celadon pottery, reminding her of delicate Chinese and Japanese musical instruments. But the cymbal had writing on it that she couldn’t decipher. Nor could any of the Russian linguists Yuliya had access to.
In the end, she’d shot some pictures of the cymbal and sent them to Thomas Lourds, hoping his expertise in ancient languages would churn out an answer to the puzzle that faced her.
When the cymbal had been discovered at the site, it was locked away in a protective bone case. Remnants of that bone lay around the cymbal now. The case had either been shattered or had simply decomposed with the passage of years. Yuliya wasn’t sure which. She’d sent fragments of the bone off for carbon dating, and was waiting for the answer. The artifact was old. Maybe even impossibly old.
Her mail client dinged, letting her know the contents had come through. This time Yuliya received a response from Lourds’s graduate assistant, Tina Metcalf.
Her hands trembled as she moved to open the file.
Dear Yuliya,
Sorry. The prof’s not in. And you know how he is about
checking his e-mail.
Yuliya did know how Lourds was about e-mail. She’d never met anyone who detested electronic communications more. She often exchanged long letters with Lourds, snail mail, of course, discussing various finds they’d both taken part in, as well as the ramifications of those studies. Over the years, she’d saved all those letters; had, in fact, used some of the materials in graduate-level archeology classes she taught at Kazan State University.
She loved his letters, and she loved Lourds’s mind. That was something Yuliya’s husband, a mason, was sometimes jealous of. But Yuliya also knew that no woman was ever going to completely claim Lourds’s heart. The professor’s true love was knowledge, and
RUSSI
AUGUST 19, 2009
Frustration and excitement chafed at Professor Yuliya Hapaev as she sat at the tiny desk in the basement office she’d borrowed at Ryazan’ University while she worked on a pet project. The underground room held a chill she hadn’t been able to shake, even with a sweater under her lab coat.
Without any real hope of finding an answer, Yuliya checked her e-mail. Again. She stared at the industrial gray walls and waited for her mail client to pump out the latest messages.
She checked the time, discovering that it was almost 11 P.M. She groaned. She’d promised herself she would get back early tonight to the dorm she’d been assigned while she was working. The feeling that she’d forgotten something else nagged at her, though she couldn’t imagine what that something was. Her family was in Kazan. She had no meals to prepare, no laundry to do, nothing outside of her work to distract her here.
Working fourteen and fifteen hours a day in her chosen field was almost like being on vacation for her. Her husband didn’t like that so much, but he understood because he felt that way about some of the construction projects he worked on.
Fortune had smiled on her when her grant had been approved to study the recently uncovered artifacts found in the archeological dig on the hill between the Oka and Pronya Rivers. Although the area had been sealed off in 2005 and further digging banned, a number of things hadn’t been properly cataloged from the original excavations.
And despite the ban, a few items had wandered in after the fact.
The area between the Oka and Pronya Rivers had been a meeting place or melting pot of a myriad of cultures from the Upper Paleolithic times to the early Middle Ages. A wooden structure that had resembled Great Britain’s Stonehenge had been uncovered in 2003 by Ilya Akhmedov, an archeologist and contemporary of Yuliya’s. Scientists believed that the structure, too, had been used for mapping the stars.
The thing that had interested Yuliya most—and infuriated her beyond all measure—was the cymbal made of clay that currently lay on one of the tables out in the lab. It was definitely celadon pottery, reminding her of delicate Chinese and Japanese musical instruments. But the cymbal had writing on it that she couldn’t decipher. Nor could any of the Russian linguists Yuliya had access to.
In the end, she’d shot some pictures of the cymbal and sent them to Thomas Lourds, hoping his expertise in ancient languages would churn out an answer to the puzzle that faced her.
When the cymbal had been discovered at the site, it was locked away in a protective bone case. Remnants of that bone lay around the cymbal now. The case had either been shattered or had simply decomposed with the passage of years. Yuliya wasn’t sure which. She’d sent fragments of the bone off for carbon dating, and was waiting for the answer. The artifact was old. Maybe even impossibly old.
Her mail client dinged, letting her know the contents had come through. This time Yuliya received a response from Lourds’s graduate assistant, Tina Metcalf.
Her hands trembled as she moved to open the file.
Dear Yuliya,
Sorry. The prof’s not in. And you know how he is about
checking his e-mail.
Yuliya did know how Lourds was about e-mail. She’d never met anyone who detested electronic communications more. She often exchanged long letters with Lourds, snail mail, of course, discussing various finds they’d both taken part in, as well as the ramifications of those studies. Over the years, she’d saved all those letters; had, in fact, used some of the materials in graduate-level archeology classes she taught at Kazan State University.
She loved his letters, and she loved Lourds’s mind. That was something Yuliya’s husband, a mason, was sometimes jealous of. But Yuliya also knew that no woman was ever going to completely claim Lourds’s heart. The professor’s true love was knowledge, and
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