"What about Hungarian?" asked Sir Isaac.
Kelly shook his head. "No, sir. Hungarian is Finno-Ugric. That's in the Roman alphabet, too."
Sir Isaac fired up his pipe. "So as a process of elimination, you ascertained this handwriting wasn't Eastern or Western European, Armenian, or Arabic writing?"
"Yes, sir."
Dowd's bull-like face betrayed the trace of a scowl. "So what is it? Chinese?"
"No, sir," replied Kelly. "I don't believe it is." He opened his large book to a specific page. "I could be wrong, but I think this may be written in an alphabet known as Mxedruli." Kelly spun his book around so everyone could see a chart of letters representing the foreign alphabet he'd referred to:
Dowd was starting to show his irritation.' 'Well, just what the hell is this, this Mix-a-drool-eee?"
Kelly cleared his throat. "Mxedruli is the alphabet used in the language spoken by approximately three to four million people in a region north of Armenia — specifically, in the Georgian Republic of the Soviet Union."
There was a period of silence as a host of eyebrows went up. Sir Isaac lifted Kelly's book so he could see the cover. The title was The Languages, Peoples and History of the U.S.S.R.
"In short, sir," concluded Kelly, "I think this may be written in the Georgian language."
It was another queer twist, in an affair laden with queer twists, and Whittenberg was stunned.
"Well, let's not jump to conclusions," cautioned Sir Isaac, while pulling on his hawklike nose. "If these pages are, in fact, written in Georgian, there could be a reasonable explanation for it. The paper is obviously very old. Maybe it belonged to a grandparent of Kapuscinski's who emigrated from Soviet Georgia to Poland. A family heirloom, of sorts." Sir Isaac didn't think he sounded very convincing.
Whittenberg picked up the notebook again. "Are you sure about this, Tim?" he asked gently.
Kelly sighed. "No, sir. I'm not. I'm only going on a comparison of these pages against this reference book here. As you can see for yourself, the handwriting is nothing more than a chicken scrawl, and the Mxedruli alphabet is very cursive. As this book points out, there are some hundred thirty languages spoken in the Soviet Union, from Yakut to Kurdish — and about half of those have been reduced to written form. I'm just making an educated guess."
Sir Isaac had taken the notebook from the CinC and was carefully comparing the pages against the reference book.' 'Well, Tim, you're the resident expert here. If we wanted to obtain a clarification on your thesis, who should we go to?"
Kelly didn't hesitate with his answer. "There are some fine people at the Agency who could take a pass at it. But if it was up to me, I'd run it by the guy who wrote that book," he said, while pointing at the tome. "Professor George Brennan. He's with the Averell Harriman Institute for Soviet Studies at Columbia University. There's not a man alive who knows more about Russian history and language than he does. I worked with him during the Belenko debriefing."
" Do it," ordered Whittenberg.,
Professor George Kirtwell Brennan had held the Donald Kendall Chair of Russian Language and History at Columbia University ever since it was endowed by the PepsiCo executive seventeen years before (Pepsi-Cola was still the only American soft drink you could buy in Moscow). The seventy-four-year-old scholar — known for his ever-present bow tie and domelike bald head — had written fourteen books on the Soviet Union, and his personal library in his Long Island home rivaled that of many midsized colleges. Although he was first and foremost a teacher, he'd been retained on many occasions as a consultant to the CIA, State Department, Defense Department, and National Security Agency (or their predecessors). As a newly minted Oxford graduate and "whiz kid" linguist during World War II, Brennan had landed in a place called Bletchley Park, where he'd helped decipher German dispatches with the Enigma cipher machine. In short, he'd been one of the Founding Fathers of the Ultrasecret while still in his early twenties. It was a heady experience for one so young; but now he was an old man, and he could no longer keep up the feverish pace he'd maintained for some fifty years.
It was Friday evening and Brennan was leaving his office at the Harriman Institute on the Columbia campus. The professor and his wife were departing in the morning for a four-day holiday at their vacation home in Maine, where they would get together with their children and grandchildren. The old professor was just closing the door of his office when the phone rang. He guessed it was his wife, calling to make sure he was on his way home. She'd been looking forward to the Maine trip for months. He picked up the phone and muttered, "Brennan."
"Professor Brennan?''
"Yes, that's correct. Who is this, please?"
"Professor, this is Chief Master Sergeant Tim Kelly calling from U.S. Space Command headquarters in Colorado Springs."
There was a pause as Brennan reached back into his memory bank for the name. It rang a bell, but he couldn't immediately place it.
"You remember, Professor," prompted Kelly. "I was with the Defense Intelligence Agency then. We worked together on the Belenko debriefing."
A light bulb went on. "Oh, yes! Of course! Tim, I'm sorry. My memory lapsed there for a moment. How are you? My goodness, it's been years."
Kelly laughed. "Yes, sir, it has. And I'm afraid I haven't been a very good correspondent.
The professor chuckled, too. "I'm often guilty of that myself. Well, to what do I owe the honor of this call? You know, I was always disappointed you didn't enroll in our doctoral program here. I was very impressed with your work on the Belenko affair. Not having any second thoughts about joining us, are you?"
Kelly laughed again. "No, sir, I'm afraid I'm a little old for that nowadays."
"Rubbish!" spat the professor in a good-humored voice. "You're never dead until you stop learning. But be that as it may, if you're not interested in enrolling, what can I do for you?"
Kelly cleared his throat. "Professor, I have something of a bizarre situation here. I can't tell you what it's about, but I can emphasize that it's very important… make that critically important. I have come into possession of a handwritten document that appears to be written in the Georgian Mxedruli alphabet. At least, I think that's what it is. I would greatly appreciate it if you would examine this document and give me a rough translation of its contents. I need to know if it is, in fact, written in Mxedruli. If it's not in the Georgian language, I'd like to know what you can make of it, in any case."
"Certainly, Tim," comforted the professor. "Anything for an old friend. Just drop it in the mail and I'll have a look at it as soon as I get back from my place in Maine. I was just leaving to go there on a holiday."
Kelly took a deep breath. "Professor, timing is a bit of a problem on this. I would appreciate it if you could look at these documents now."
A pause.
"Now?" asked Brennan.
"Yes, sir."
"Well, Tim, don't misunderstand me. I'd be happy to help you out. But as I said, I was just walking out the door to go on a holiday. My wife's been planning this for some time and I've strained her patience already, I don't mind telling you. But you pop it in the mail and I promise to look at it the minute I get back."