Bracing himself against the battered wooden end table he'd been using for a desk, Sokolov rose, wincing at a pain in his hip. He turned off the light and moved to the window. Careful to stay to the side, he pulled back a flimsy curtain and looked out onto the street and canal three stories below.
It was past midnight. On the other side of town, in the red light district, there were crowds and police everywhere. In this part of the city the streets were deserted. All the good citizens were in their beds.
Yuri wasn't looking for good citizens.
He couldn't see anyone watching. A flicker of hope fluttered in his chest. It was possible they didn't know where he'd gone when he left Moscow.
The postbox was two blocks away, next to a newsstand on the other side of the canal. He shrugged on his long overcoat, thankful for the warmth of the fine wool fabric. He stepped into the hall and closed the door to his room behind him. The elevator was broken, forcing him to take the stairs. They were narrow and poorly lit. His heart pounded against his ribs as he thought about who might be waiting for him on the next landing. On the ground floor, the concierge slept in his metal cage. Yuri slipped out the entrance into the raw night. A thin mist shrouded the city.
He glanced to the right and left. Still no one. Wisps of fog rose from the black waters of the canal. He hurried to the footbridge spanning the canal and crossed to the other side, his footsteps sending muffled echoes from the sleeping buildings lining the canal.
Sokolov's destination appeared in the mist. The stand was closed at night but the bright orange TNT box was on the outside, where he could get rid of his burden. With a gasp of relief he reached the box and thrust the envelope into the left-hand slot, reserved for mail leaving the country.
Now he would go back to his room, gather his few things together, and head for the train station. By tomorrow he would be in Paris.
The concierge was nowhere to be seen when Yuri entered the hotel. The lift was still broken. He began the climb back to the third floor.
Later, when the police questioned the other guests of the hotel about events that night, no one had anything useful to say about the man in room 314. No identification had been found on the body. No one had heard cries coming from the room, though the victim had been brutally tortured before he died. The only other occupant of the third floor was an elderly lady who kept asking investigators to repeat what they'd said.
A tenant on the second floor reported loud music playing for a while but had heard nothing else. Nobody knew anything, which was often the case in hotels where the residents wanted to avoid the police at any cost. The arrests of a minor drug dealer and a petty thief were small compensation for the failure to identify either the murder victim or his assailants.
The morning after the murder, the postal box was emptied. The envelope was sent on its way to America.
CHAPTER 2
"Ouch."
Nick Carter set his razor down on the edge of the sink and dabbed at the cut with a shred of toilet paper. He gave himself a once over in the mirror. The nightmares had started again. He wasn't sleeping well. Dark shadows under his eyes brought out their gray color and the flecks of gold hidden in them.
A fresh shave, and he could already see the next beard ready to spring out. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered. His face was still pretty much the way it had been yesterday, barring the cut making a red spot in the bit of white paper he'd laid on it. It was a strong face, not particularly handsome, but not ugly either. He thought he could see some new signs of aging. Or was he imagining it?
He needed a good workout in the Project gym, something to relieve the tension he'd been feeling for the last few weeks. He wasn't sure where it was coming from.
It was early morning on what promised to be a beautiful spring day in Washington. Nick dressed in comfortable slacks and a light gray cotton shirt. He walked into the kitchen, took a cup from the cabinet and filled it with black coffee from a pot brewing on the counter. He took the cup over to a table littered with mail delivered the day before, sat down and started sorting through it.
Selena came into the kitchen. She poured a cup and joined him.
Selena was a woman people noticed. She had intense eyes that changed color from violet to deep blue and back again, depending on the light. Either way, they were a perfect match for her red-blond hair. Two inches shorter than Nick's six feet, she was sixty pounds light of his two hundred. The amount of body fat on her didn't amount to much but it was there in the places where it mattered.
"You have a letter from Amsterdam." Nick passed it over. "Your agent sent it over. It's addressed to Selena Connor."
There was nothing unusual about getting letters using her maiden name. Selena still corresponded with some of her former academic acquaintances. Sometimes she got invitations for appearances and guest lectures, though there were fewer of those these days. She usually had to turn them down. It had been some time since she'd last given a formal lecture, but her international reputation as an expert in ancient languages still brought requests. They came by way of an agent who handled professional correspondence for her.
"Amsterdam? I don't think I know anyone there. It's probably someone who wants me to give a talk."
"There's no return address."
"That's unusual. Let me see it."
The only writing on the envelope was a spidery scrawl with her name and the address of her agent. She used a table knife to slit open the envelope.
"It's an old photograph and a map. And a letter."
"A map of where?"
She unfolded the map. It was creased and worn, as if it had been carried in someone's pocket for many years.
"Egypt, when it was still a British protectorate. That would be the first part of the last century."
She set the map aside and picked up the photograph. It was yellowed and torn on one corner.
"What does the letter say?"
"I'll read it out loud."
Dear Dr. Connor,
My name is Yuri Sokolov. I am a senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. My field is Middle Eastern archaeology. I am writing to you because of your unique reputation as an expert in Linear A.
"A Russian?" Nick said.
"You're interrupting."
"Sorry."
Selena continued reading.
The photograph was taken sometime in 1912 by Mikhail Popov, an archaeologist friend of Czar Nicholas III. I found it in a file of Popov's correspondence, along with the map of Egypt. There's a mark on the map near the coastal city of Marsá Matruh. I suspect that is where the picture was taken.
Selena picked up a magnifying glass and studied the picture.
"Interesting," she said.
"What's interesting?"
"It's a picture of a stone pillar, lying in sand, inscribed with hieroglyphics and what looks like Linear A. I've never seen those two languages combined before. It has to be very old."
She turned back to the letter.
You can see two kinds of writing on the pillar in the photograph. The hieroglyphics are a very early style. The other is a variant of Linear A.
I was able to translate only part of the inscription but was greatly surprised by what I discovered. I gave a copy of the picture to a colleague, seeking a second opinion. That was a mistake. There have been rumors my colleague is an informant for the security services. The same evening a friend called to tell me the FSB were on their way to my apartment.