Chapter 1 - The Assignment
A young man in a black silk suit with expensive hair opened the ornately carved double door. “May I help you?”
The man on the other side handed him a business card saying, “My name is Ben Mitchell. Miss Stratton is expecting me.”
The servant carefully examined both the card and the man who proffered it. The visitor was unusually tall, about six and a half feet in height, and was dressed in black slacks, an inexpensive white shirt open at the collar, and a wool blazer that strained to contain his broad shoulders. His hair was groomed to something approaching military standards and his brown eyes were alert.
At length the servant nodded, recognizing the visitor as the man in the photograph his employer had shown him the day before.
“Yes, sir,” said the servant, stepping aside. “Miss Stratton is in the music room. Please follow me.”
He led the newcomer down a long corridor adorned with ancient but carefully maintained Persian tapestries and stopped at the doorway of a spacious, round room. The room’s walls were Zebrawood, the floor checkered marble, and the ceiling a dome perforated by a skylight that admitted a copious amount of light into the space. In the middle of the space was a grand piano, a harp, and a dazzlingly beautiful woman playing a violin, her eyes closed in concentration.
“My name is Mr. Fetch,” the servant whispered to the guest. “Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thank you, and please don’t disturb Miss Stratton. I’ll wait for her to finish.”
“As you wish, sir,” replied the servant, promptly exiting the room.
Mr. Fetch? Ben had almost laughed but caught himself when he saw that the servant hadn’t so much as cracked a smile. The guest wondered if there was a Mr. Driver, a Miss Gardner and a Mr. Weedwacker wandering the estate, also.
He turned his attention to the woman. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, a bit taller than average and perfectly proportioned. She wore a knee-length red silk dress and two strings of pearls. Her blond hair was elaborately coifed with a jade pin.
The composition she was playing was complex and she was completely absorbed in the manipulation of the violin’s strings. At some points she attacked the strings while at others she caressed them. While he was hardly an expert in the field, he thought Lilian Stratton might be what some called a virtuoso.
When the last movement of the bow was complete, the room became eerily quiet and the woman opened her eyes. They were a brilliant emerald green.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Mitchell. I apologize for not meeting you at the door.”
“Not at all. What’s the name of that piece?”
“Ernst’s Grand Caprice on Schubert’s Der Erlkönig.”
“Der Erlkönig. The Elf king?”
She lowered the violin and smiled a million dollar smile. “That’s right. You speak German?”
“A little.” He was trying to identify her accent, which was slight. It certainly wasn’t German.
“It was inspired by one of Goethe’s poems,” she said. She retrieved a violin case from a nearby chair and began fiddling with the clasps. “In the poem a man is riding through a gloomy forest cradling his young son in one arm. The child, who is facing the forest’s edge, sees the king of the elves and his underlings watching him from the shadows. The elves call out to the boy, promising him games, flowers, and music if only he will abandon his father and join them.”
She gently placed the violin in its case. “The son is terrified and warns his father that the elves are trying to take him, but the father sees nothing, of course. He tells his son the elves are mere wisps of fog, a figment of the boy’s imagination.”
“These do not sound like Christmas elves.”
“No, far from it. These are evil creatures that crawl up from the cracks of the earth. When the boy refuses to join them, they get angry and grab him. He wails, telling his father the elves are hurting him. Disturbed by his son’s cries, the father spurs his horse to go faster, but to no avail. When he reaches his home he discovers that his son has died in his arms.”
“I see. The hallucinations were brought on by a fever.”
The woman closed the case and perched it on a table behind the piano. “That’s one interpretation,” she said circumspectly. “Let’s go to the patio, shall we? It’s a dazzling morning and we have important things to discuss.”
The woman led him back into the corridor and ultimately through a set of French doors that opened onto a patio at the rear of the mansion that overlooked a garden. The patio, constructed of a pinkish terrazzo tile, was appropriately sized for the edifice adjacent to it. Around its oval perimeter were immaculately pruned plants of every kind in a blinding array of colors and shapes.
In the middle were a wrought iron table, painted white, and four matching chairs. A silver tea and coffee service had been positioned next to a vase of tulips. Mr. Fetch appeared and seated Lilian Stratton before gently placing Ben’s business card on the table next to her. The cool morning air was fragrant with the scent of gardenias and invisible birds chirped in the distance.
Looking up, his hostess asked, “Coffee or tea, Mr. Mitchell?”
“Coffee, please. Black. And please, call me Ben.”
As she filled the porcelain cup, she said, “Very well, Ben, and you may call me Lilian.” Without raising her head, she said quietly, “Mr. Fetch, you’ll please wait inside. I’ll ring if I need you.”
The servant bowed slightly and retreated. The woman handed Ben his coffee and then poured herself a cup of tea. Taking a sip, she picked up the business card that Mr. Fetch had placed on the table and began reading it aloud.
“Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., Epigraphist and Researcher, Ancient Languages and Writing Systems, Hittite, Sumerian, Akkadian, Cuneiform…well, the list goes on and on. I don’t know what most of this means. I’m surprised you could fit it all on a business card.”
He smiled. “Anything is possible with the right font. So what can I do for you, Lilian?”
She returned the card to the table, saying “A close family friend by the name of Ridley, who has an estate in the mountains, has some stone tablets bearing inscriptions that he would like your assistance with. He says to tell you they are quite ancient and that this something of an emergency.”
Ben swallowed his first sip of coffee before saying, “The translation of ancient tablets is rarely an emergency.”
“And yet,” the woman replied, “Ridley assures me that is the case. He is, you see, very elderly and is cataloguing his estate in preparation for the inevitable. He believes the tablets are valuable and wants to ensure they end up in the right hands.”
“They’ve never been examined before?”
“Not by an expert.”
“Interesting. What can you tell me about them?”
In a banal tone, she replied, “Ridley says they contain the oldest human writing system ever discovered.”
Ben coughed, cleared his throat. “Excuse me. That is…well, a rather spectacular claim, Lilian.”
“Is it?” she asked, as if it meant nothing to her. Seemingly out of nowhere, his hostess produced a large manila envelope sealed with red wax, which she extended to him. There were odd imprints in the wax. Cuneiform, the man thought immediately, but then saw he was wrong. The characters weren’t quite right.
“A few photographs,” she explained.
Ben broke the seal with his fingers and peered into the envelope. There were about a dozen portrait-sized color photos inside. He withdrew one and placed it in his lap. It was of a black stone tablet, perhaps a foot square in size, inscribed with thousands of densely packed lines, swirls, and irregular shapes in a variety of colors. The individual inscriptions appeared no more than a millimeter or two in width. He couldn’t determine from the photographs what gave them their colors.
“Where were the tablets found?” he asked, placing a pair of spectacles on his nose before scannin
g the next image.
Lilian shrugged. “You’d need to ask Ridley.”
“Uh-huh,” said the researcher distractedly. After taking a few minutes to review the rest of the photos, he said, “To be frank, Lilian, I have some concerns, foremost among them being the physical properties of the inscriptions. My impression is that they are too intricate to be ancient. Also, the engravings might be decorative or ceremonial glyphs. There are no distinguishable graphemes so I’m not sure why your friend Ridley believes the inscriptions constitute a writing system. I’ll need to study these photos and do some research before agreeing to take the job.”
Lilian shook her head. “You won’t find anything like them in your reference books, Ben.”
He removed the spectacles and squinted. “Why do you say that?”
“All tablets of this variety are in the possession of Ridley. There are no others, I can assure you, and only his closest friends are aware of their existence - at least, until now. Don’t you think a man in your field would have seen similar tablets already if they were in the public domain?”
“Not necessarily. I deal in languages and writing systems. It’s possible that there are artifacts with similar markings that I haven’t seen simply because the engravings were classified as decorative or ritualistic and have never been brought to the attention of someone in my field.”
“I see,” the woman said, looking mildly disappointed.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he added, “I am interested in the job. I just need to do my due diligence. I’ve got appointments in New York and Istanbul this week, but as soon as I return I’d be happy to meet with your friend to examine the tablets in person.”
Lilian frowned. “Oh, no, Ben. I’m sorry, but that won’t do. Ridley would be furious with me. He wants you to examine the tablets tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? I’m afraid that’s not possible. As I said-”
“You will be well-compensated, I promise.”
“It’s not that, Lilian. I have commitments to long-standing clients.”
A long silence followed as the prim woman studied her manicured nails. At length, she said, “What if you didn’t?”
Ben didn’t understand the purpose of the question. “Well, obviously, I’d then be happy to examine the tablets, but that’s not the situation I’m in.”
Lilian took another sip of her tea, looking at him over the lip of the delicate, translucent cup. Lowering it, she asked, “Have you checked your messages recently?”
Ben eyed her skeptically before warily pulling out his phone. He saw that six texts had arrived in that last twenty minutes. Each was from a client he was supposed to perform work for that week, including a prestigious New York museum, and each client said that due to events beyond their control they would be unable to keep their appointments with him.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he said, staring at the screen.
“You have an opening, then?”
He looked at her accusingly. “You’re behind this?”
“I am.”
The man struggled to reconcile his anger and disbelief. “I’d like to know how you gained access to my schedule and what you said to my clients to persuade them to cancel. You may have significantly damaged my reputation, Lilian.”
The woman sighed. “Ben, your principles and indignation aside, how much would I have to offer you to get you to meet with Ridley tomorrow?”
His anger winning out, he said loudly, “I don’t put my principles aside, Lilian.”
“Ten million dollars.”
The anger vanished like a whiff of smoke in a hurricane. “What?”
“Ten million dollars for one day of work. If you determine the tablets are authentic and agree to decipher them, that figure will be far higher.”
The researcher said nothing for a long moment. Then, “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m quite serious. In fact, I’ve already taken the liberty of having the funds deposited into your account.” She nodded at the phone he still held. “I don’t mind waiting while you verify that.”