Silver Page 3

  Skarda made a conciliatory gesture. “I’m sorry, Dr. Bennett...we’re not with the museum.”

  Again the scholar cocked his head and regarded the interlopers curiously, as if he couldn’t figure out where to place them in his personal scheme of the universe. Then a smile grew on his face. “Doctor...?” he chuckled. “Oh...don’t call me ‘Doctor’. Call me Nathaniel! Some people call me Nate, but I prefer Nathaniel.” His face reddened, as if he had made some kind of glaring social faux pas. “Although that does sound a bit formal, doesn’t it?” He darted a sheepish glance at April. “It’s just that I’ve always preferred Nathaniel.”

  Skarda took a quick moment to study him. Even he was taken aback by the beauty of the man’s eyes: a startling pale green flecked with gold and blue and a darker viridian, the color of shallow sea water rushing over stones at the shore. And they were alive with a fierce intelligence.

  “I’m Park Skarda and this is April Force. From OSR?”

  Nathaniel smiled and bobbed his head up and down. “Of course! Park and April! From OSR! I’ve been expecting you, haven’t I?” Again his face reddened. “I was going on before, wasn’t I? I apologize—you have no idea what I was talking about, do you?” He pointed at the disk. “This is a replica of the Phaistos Disk, now in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum here on Crete, found in 1908 in a Minoan palace at Phaistos, also on Crete. It dates to somewhere between 1850 and 1600 BCE. It was made by pressing pre-made seals into soft clay before firing—the way they used to do printing with movable type. To my mind, it’s definitely a syllabary. Many scholars think the symbols are Linear A, but, as I said, I think they’re ultimately more related to early Cretan Hieroglyphics and Vinca.”

  He looked at them and flashed a boyish grin. “Oh...there I go again! Back to you! When your agency contacted me, I took the liberty of looking your people up. Nothing on you was available, of course—all very hush-hush, government secrets, that sort of thing. But the agency itself is interesting. The ‘Office of Special Research’, eh? You investigate anomalous happenings all over the world.”

  Skarda matched his grin. “You make it sound like the X-Files. Let’s just say if anything out of the ordinary pops up—especially if it concerns national security—it’s our job to check into it.”

  That caused Nathaniel to nod ponderously, as if he were writing down a note to himself in his head. “Very interesting! Fascinating, really!”

  “We’re interested in the Minoan silver,” April said.

  OSR had plucked Nathaniel from his research at Catal Huyuk to bring him to Crete to examine Blackpool’s plaque. For a while the agency had been filtering intel about a huge treasure trove of ancient Minoan silver—a trove possibly discovered by Blackpool who had kept his research strictly to himself. But Nathaniel had published a scholarly article speculating that the silver had been carried off and hidden away when the Thera volcano exploded in 1600 BCE, effectively ending the Minoan civilization. And he had worked on projects with Blackpool in the past.

  “Silver...yes...yes! The treasure trove on Thera! The eruption changed the entire political and economic structure of the ancient Mediterranean world, don’t you think? What a sad event! According to the Greek historian Herotodos, Thera’s original name was Kalliste, meaning ‘most beautiful’.” He gave out a short laugh, then shifted his gaze to both their faces to see if they understood the joke. His face fell a little when he saw that they hadn’t. “Of course,” he went on, “Kalliste is a Greek word and the Minoans weren’t Greek now, were they? So that just can’t be!” He chuckled. “We have no idea what the Minoans themselves called Thera, because so far we’ve been unable to decipher their writing system.” He paused. “Although it’s possible that the word Thera ultimately derives from a Canaanite word meaning ‘furnace’—very appropriate for an island with an active volcano, don’t you think? And the DNA evidence proves that the Minoans came from Anatolia—modern-day Turkey—and even farther east from Syria—“

  He broke off, blinking, as April gave out a low growl. Academic lectures made her antsy. She preferred direct and instantaneous action.

  Skarda wanted to keep him on track. “So back to the treasure trove...” he prompted.

  For a moment, the scholar looked perplexed, as if he had no idea what Skarda was talking about. Then his face cleared and his green eyes flashed. “Yes! Thera! The silver! Yes! The Minoans established trading colonies all over the Mediterranean—in Egypt, Cyprus, Anatolia...Thera was a principle Minoan trading colony. It’s hard to believe now, but Crete in ancient times was heavily forested and the Minoans exported cypress and juniper trees, along with wine, olive oil, wool, and purple dye. In return they imported ivory, tin, gold, and—of course—silver, probably from modern Armenia. More proof of genetic and linguistic links to the Near East! There were excellent silversmiths on Thera. As a matter of fact, the tomb of the Seventeenth Dynasty Egyptian queen Ahhotep I contained a beautiful Minoan-style ship model fashioned entirely from silver—no doubt imported from Thera.

  “Of course, the inhabitants of Thera were well aware that the volcano was going to erupt before it did. No doubt a series of earthquakes preceded the eruption. That’s usually the case, isn’t it? At any rate, it’s clear from the archaeological record that they had time to evacuate the island because so far no skeletons or other human remains have been found in the excavations. So it would be logical to assume that storehouses of gold, ivory, and silver would have been transported somewhere else, loaded onto the big trading ships that were always docked at the Theran ports. As a matter of fact, a number of ancient authors—Antiochus of Syracuse, Epimenides, Athenaeus, Duris of Samos, and Pausanias in a recently-discovered work, to name a few—make reference to the evacuation of vast amounts of precious metals from Thera. And Noeitikos of Mytilene tells us about a great hoard of silver secreted away by the Cretans.”

  April shifted, finally getting interested. “Does he tell us where?”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “No. Unfortunately...no.”

  Skarda pulled out the silver finger bone and handed it to him.

  The scholar took it, turning it over in his fingers and peering at it closely, his face flushing with excitement. “Recently archaeologists here on Crete found a seventh century BCE skeleton of a woman covered in gold foil,” he said. “The gold pieces had been sewn onto the robe she was buried in, so it would have looked like she was enshrouded in pure gold. This could have been from the skeleton of a person who was buried the same way—only in silver.” He peered again. “But it looks like this finger was dipped in liquid silver.” Finally he looked up. “Where did you get this?”

  “Agia Galini Bay. It was wedged in an underwater fissure.”

  “Hmmm...yes! It might have been similar! The sacred Kamares cave system is near there and it’s possible that the burial could have been in a similar cave closer to the coast and could have fallen into the sea because of an earthquake.”

  Taking out the plaque Blackpool had entrusted to him, Skarda handed it to him. “David Blackpool gave me this.” He hesitated for a moment, debating whether he should tell him about the archaeologist’s death.

  Finally he said, “Before he died.”

  At first Nathaniel just stared. But then his face sagged, the expression in the green eyes suddenly brimming with overpowering sorrow. “Oh, no...” His voice lowered to a husky whisper.

  “I’m sorry,” Skarda said. “We think he was killed by people looking for the silver.”

  He looked up, his eyes wet. “Why?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  Emotions jumbled across Nathaniel’s face as if he were trying to fit them together like the pieces of a puzzle. Then slowly he nodded.

  He picked up the plaque and turned it over in his hands, peering at it. Then he pointed at the straight rows of symbols incised into the surface. “This is written in Linear A script, which, unfortunately, so far has eluded decipherment, except for some place names, name
s of deities, and obvious loan words from other languages. As a matter of fact, no one is even sure what language Linear A represents.”

  “Isn’t there a Linear B script that was translated?” Skarda asked.

  “Yes...of course! After the Theran eruption, Crete was invaded by the Mycenaeans—they were Indo-European-speaking Helladic tribes who also destroyed Troy, by the way—and adapted the Minoan writing system for their own language, which was a dialect of Greek. That’s why scholars have been able to decipher the Linear B script, because it was Greek. And because Linear B is an adapted form of Linear A we can read the words of Linear A, but can’t decipher their meaning. This is because the origin of the Minoan language is uncertain. As I said, recent DNA evidence has proven that the Minoans come from Anatolia—modern Turkey—and even from further east—modern-day Syria and Iraq. So here’s my two cents. I think the Minoan language stems from a common ancestor of Sumerian/Akkadian, Hittite/Luwian, Ugaritic, and the like—in other words, ancient Semitic languages spoken in the Middle East. Ultimately these derive from the Neolithic language called Vinca or Old European, which has remarkable correspondence to Sumerian cuneiform and Linear A. You can’t forget, Crete had been inhabited since Neolithic times and was isolated from contact with mainstream Europe and left to evolve with a Neolithic mindset, which included the worship of an all-encompassing lunar Mother Goddess, the same goddess whose religion originated in Paleolithic Europe.”

  Skarda smiled. “Our friend, Flinders Carlson, is about to publish a paper about her decipherment of the Vinca script. She thinks the origin of Vinca was the language spoken by the Cro-Magnons.”

  An inward smile warmed him. It had been six months since he and April and their brilliant linguist ally Laura “Flinders” Carlson had stopped an ancient cult from drowning the world in a global flood. During the chase across half of Europe and the Ukraine, he had wrestled with a growing attraction to her, but in the end decided to walk away. Not because he didn’t want to get involved—but because he couldn’t get involved. Not enough time had passed since his wife Sarah had been murdered and the wound inside him still gaped raw and bloody

  But lately he’d been thinking more and more about her...

  The scholar’s face lit up. “Dr. Carlson...yes! Brilliant woman! Yes! When she finishes her work, it’s going to change the entire landscape on Linear A, I think! Of course, one of the problems is that if the Cretan civilization got going around 3000 BCE, and the majority of Linear A writings date from around 2000 BCE, there’s a gap of a thousand years. And in a thousand years, a language can evolve at an exponential rate. Can you understand this, for example?

  “‘Whan that aprill with his shoures soote /The droghte of march hath perced to the roote, /And bathed every veyne in swich licour /Of which vertu engendred is the flour.’”

  Skarda and April just stared at him, clueless.

  He favored them with an understanding smile. “It’s the opening of the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written in Middle English a little over six hundred years ago. A thousand years ago English as a language didn’t even exist! So you can see how quickly things change! The point is, we’re dealing with a lot of roadblocks to deciphering the Minoan script.

  “But that being said, I think I see something here. As I said, we can pronounce Linear A—we just don’t know what the words mean. The Minoan writing system is basically a syllabary, meaning that written symbols stand for syllables, rather than individual letters, as they do in the English alphabet. As I look at the inscription I’m finding the same word repeated several times: ‘SA-RA-PU’. To me, it sounds a lot like the Akkadian word for silver: ‘sarpu’. Whether it’s an authentic Minoan word or a loan word, I don’t know.” He paused as a thought struck him. “Or maybe not, come to think of it! The Mycenaean Linear B word for silver is A-KU-RO, becoming argyros in ancient Greek—so it seems to be an entirely Indo-European word. Not that that rules it out, since, in my opinion, the Minoan language was heavily influenced by Indo-European, and all their silver was imported from Indo-European-speaking areas. Although, the Linear A word KU-RO seems from its context to mean something like ‘total’, which possibly could have something to do with the weighing and paying out of precious metals. Still, I’m betting on SA-RA-PU, especially since it’s so much in evidence here on the plaque.”

  He looked up at them. “So I think what we have here is an inventory list for the silver hoard when it was moved from Thera.”

  Skarda felt a flush of excitement. He sensed they were on the right track. “Does it say where it was moved?”

  Nathaniel shrugged. “It might. There’s just no way of telling.” He turned the plaque over and held it out so that they could inspect it. “But this is very interesting.” He pointed to the bottom of the artifact.

  Skarda and April peered at it. Inscribed close to the bottom edge was an embossed oval seal etched into the metal. Inside it, a bare-breasted woman in a long, flounced skirt stood holding snakes in each hand. Above her head, a crescent moon rode the sky next to the labrys, the Minoan double-headed axe, and all around her stylized poppy flowers had been bunched along the edges of the oval.

  “Who is she?” April asked.

  “She’s the Minoan Snake Goddess, whom I believe was the lunar Mother Goddess of the Minoan religion.”

  She scowled. “So how will this help us find the silver?”

  For a few moments Nathaniel just looked at her, blinking, his expression bewildered. Finally he said, “I don’t know.”

  Skarda moved closer to the plaque, bending over to study it at close range. He could see what appeared to be imperfections in the surface of the silver—streaks of a silver-colored metal that appeared wet and shiny and not at all tarnished.

  Just like on the finger.

  This bright metal was the reason OSR had sent them to Crete in the first place.

  He turned to Nathaniel and said, “Look at the metal on the finger, and then on the plaque.”

  Scooting his chair closer to the table, he did as Skarda requested. Then he turned and stared at both of them. “They’re both the same! These areas are completely non-tarnished after millennia! That’s impossible! What kind of metal would do that?”

  Footsteps banged at the entrance to the lab and a stentorian voice rang out. “Neosamarium.”

  Skarda swung around to see a bull-shouldered man in his mid-forties marching toward them, wearing a United States Army colonel’s uniform and carrying a steel briefcase. He was a few inches shorter than Skarda, with sawed-off brown hair, shot with gray, and eyes the color of a rifle bore.

  Skarda knew who he was from the OSR file: Colonel Craig Turner. He’d spent many years in the Aegean islands and was acting as military advisor to this mission.

  “Colonel Turner,” he said as the man walked up. “I’m Park—“

  The general cut him off with a slash of his hand. “I’ve been briefed on who you all are,” he said. His voice was flat and clipped—a voice used to issuing direct orders. He stood with his fists on his hips, shifting his cold scrutiny from Skarda to April. “I don’t like spooks running the show. They’re not proper military.”

  April gave out a low growl.

  The colonel’s gaze focused on Skarda. “And especially not rich spooks. Too goddamn independent.”

  He was referring to Skarda’s immense wealth. On the day Sarah had been killed, he had found a seventeenth-century pirate’s treasure cache in the Azores, worth many millions of dollars.

  Skarda’s cerulean eyes narrowed to icy slits. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, Colonel, that April and I have Yankee Black, Category One security clearances. Which means, we outrank you. If you’d like, I can pick up the phone and have you speak directly with the President.”

  Turner made a point of ignoring him. “I’ve been sent here in an advisory capacity. So I’ll advise. Thirty years ago, the U.S. had a lock on rare earth element production. REE’s are metals on the periodic ta
ble with numbers 57 through 71, plus scandium and yttrium. They’re vital for the production of military weapons, like guidance systems for cruise missiles, smart bombs, drones, laser weapons, submarine communications systems, high-tech magnets, and computer systems.

  “Stupidly, we turned the business over to the Chinese to save money on labor costs. Now it’s China that has the lock on the rare earth market. They control over ninety-five percent of world supply and they’re using it against us. A virtual monopoly on the global supply. Last year they cut export quotas by about eighty percent, and very soon they plan to cut it even more. They’re putting a stranglehold on our ability to defend ourselves. This could mean disaster for our military. Let me make no bones about it—the safety of our country is at risk.”

  Skarda already knew this—it was the reason he and April were here. But he wanted the man to go on, in case he knew something that OSR didn’t. So he kept quiet.