Billie took the wand, shined it over the stone tablet, and gasped.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Small markings and lines of purple luminescence lit up across the ancient stone.
Someone had used ink made of fluorite to make notes and markings throughout the stone. Billie glanced at the sapphires. Most of the blue precious gems had been visibly crossed out with the strange purple ink. Her eyes stopped at the four unmarked sapphires. Next to each one, was a symbol for one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, followed by their respective Greek letters — identical to the ones she’d seen on the MRI scans of the stones hidden inside the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone.
It made her think about the Sacred Stones — the name Sam had started using for the four stones still locked inside the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone. It begged the question, what was so special about these stones? And were they supposed to be taken to each of these four temples? Billie thought about it for a moment. She still didn’t have a clue where any of those temples belonged. When she’d first studied the stone tablet, she was certain it was an obvious map of the world. But since then, she’d discovered that none of the sapphires led to any temples. There was no benefit knowing that the sacred stones needed to be taken to specific ancient temples, if she had no way of finding the temples.
She put the thought out of her mind and continued studying the stone tablet. A line had been formed between ten sapphires, which looked like stars imbedded in the jet-black lignite. Without the lines, the gems appeared to be placed at random, but now stood out as a constellation of a bird. Although which constellation, she had no idea. Inside that set of ten stars were the four unmarked sapphires.
Billie smiled. She was making progress.
It was slow, but it was movement. The new revelation said to her, find the constellation and you’ll find the four temples where the sacred stones need to be laid to rest. She continued searching. In her right hand she held the black light wand, and in her left hand, a magnifying glass.
There were fifteen new meridian lines that ran vertically and horizontally throughout the stone. Each line was only slightly off the previous line that had been etched into the stone. She sighed. What the hell did that mean? Had someone decided to move the shape of the earth?
She took several photographs of the stone, and made full-size prints on A4 paper. She then walked upstairs to Elise’s office.
Inside, Elise was working at tracking down the man who had attacked Sam.
Without preamble, Billie said, “You have a photographic memory. Tell me you were paying attention in school when you were introduced to geography!”
“Technically, it’s considered eidetic, but yeah, my memory’s good, and I studied geography at school. What do you want to know?”
“How many meridian and parallel lines are there in total?”
Elise answered without hesitation. “Three hundred and sixty, but most standard maps have fifteen.”
“Are you sure?”
“We just agreed I have an eidetic memory, didn’t we?” Elise looked up at her, with those intense purple eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Why? What are you trying to work out?”
Billie placed a full-size print of the stone tablet on the table next to Elise. Its background was colored black as the night’s sky. The image of twenty-two blue stones speckled the paper, and there were five empty spots roughly the same size. Fifteen fine lines, marked in red to emphasize their visibility, ran lengthways and vertically. The Greek symbols for Theta, Sigma, Phi, and Omega were etched in gold, with one at each corner. Below each of those were four horses, intricately carved out of stone or ivory to represent the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“When Sam and I looked at this, we were certain it matched a standard world map. All we had to do was work out the locations these stones correlate with, and we find the temples.”
Elise ran her eyes across the paper. “Okay, so what’s the problem?”
“No matter which way I looked at it, none of these stones seemed to match any corresponding locations with temples.”
“Are you certain?”
Billie nodded. “Most of them are in the ocean somewhere.”
“They might be submerged temples, like the one Sam and Tom found in the Gulf of Mexico?”
“No. I could have believed that for one or two of them, but not all of them.” She looked at Elise. “I need to understand more about how latitude and longitude work. I’ve placed this next to a world-globe map and tried to estimate where each of these blue stars correlate to.”
“And?”
“None of them seemed to correlate to anything. But then I ran the stone tablet under a black light. It revealed that someone had made notes using purple ink of fluorite. All of the sapphires were crossed out, except these four.” Billie pointed to the four sapphires at the center of the constellation of a bird. “These are the only unmarked sapphires left. My guess is this constellation might lead us to the four temples.”
Elise smiled. “Astronomy’s not really my strong point.”
“It’s all right. We’re seeing the astronomer who’s examining the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone tomorrow afternoon. I’ll talk to him about how we can locate the constellation, and more importantly, where it could be viewed from.”
“So, what do you want to know?”
Billie placed a second A4 piece of paper on the table in front of Elise. This one had been shot under natural light. “What do you see?”
Elise studied the two images. “With the exception of the missing purple phosphorescent marks, they’re identical.”
“Is that all that’s different?”
Elise ran her eyes across the two images again. Her lips formed a curious smile, revealing a set of evenly spaced, white teeth. “The meridian lines have shifted.”
“Exactly!” Billie held her breath. “I was hoping you could tell me why?”
“There’s a number of reasons the person who marked this might have changed the placement of the meridian lines.”
Billie raised her left eyebrow, slightly. “Really?”
“Yes. But the most likely reason is simply that the meridians have moved over time.”
“The shape of earth moves?” Billie was incredulous.
“Sure it does. Not much, but over thousands of years, there’s definitely likely to be some sort of change.”
“Based on the new position of the meridian lines, can you recalculate the location of each of these four sapphires?”
“That, I can do.” Elise took the piece of paper and placed it in the scanner. “What I can do is superimpose this on an identical scaled world map on my computer, using my Global Information System software. Then I can tell you precisely where each of those dots correlate to.”
“That would be perfect, thanks.”
Elise waited as the image uploaded, pointing to a saved document that displayed a visual map of the earth over a rectangular image. Although it looked like any other map you’d find in a geometry classroom, it was an advanced Global Information System, based on software developed for the US military, with the ability to change the scale constantly and zoom into any given location, like Google Earth.
Elise pointed to the outline of the image on her laptop, and said, “Graticules are lines showing parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude for the earth, like a grid map. Latitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the north — south position of a point on the Earth's surface. Latitude is an angle which ranges from 0° at the Equator to 90° at the poles. Lines of constant latitude, or parallels, run east — west as circles parallel to the equator.”