The Last Oracle (Sigma Force 5)

Luca ran a hand along the wall. Gray could read his thoughts. Was this the ancient symbol that was the source of the Romani emblem?

Had Archibald Polk wondered the same?

Kowalski sighed, clearly not impressed with the room. “What a let-down.”

“What are you talking about?” Elizabeth chided. “This is the archaeological and anthropological discovery of a lifetime.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, but so what? Where’s all the gold and jewels?”

Gray hated to admit it, but he agreed with Kowalski. He stepped away. He swung the flashlight in a full circle around the chamber. Something was missing, but it wasn’t gold or precious gems.

Rosauro joined him. “What’s wrong?”

“Something’s not here,” he mumbled.

“What?”

Others heard them in the confined space. They stared over.

Gray made one more circle. “On the coin…there was that prominent E? The Greek letter epsilon.”

“He’s right,” Elizabeth said.

Gray wiped drips of rain from his face. “Everything on the coin is found here—the temple facade, the chakra wheel—so where is the Greek letter?”

“It’s one minor detail,” Masterson said. “What does it matter?”

“It’s not minor,” Elizabeth argued. “Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to mimic the temple complex at Delphi. What we saw outside…the temple in antis was the shape of the Delphi’s treasury buildings, the round tholos temple looked like a fair facsimile of the one built to worship Athena at Delphi. And this place here. The exterior and interior are how the Oracle’s temple was laid out. And the E was one of its most prominent decorations.”

Gray recalled his discussion with Painter, about how the Delphic E grew to symbolize a cult of prophecy, a code trailing throughout history in art and architecture.

Luca stepped forward. “I may also know of this letter.”

Gray turned to the Gypsy clan leader.

“I told you of the children who were stolen from us,” he said. “Those of my people who first came upon the massacred camp spoke of a stone church there. The door had been broken open, but upon the shattered planks a large bronze E was found. No one knew what it meant. The only ones who knew were buried in that mass grave. The secret died with them. Perhaps this is the same E?”

Marking the chovihanis, Gray thought. Gypsy fortune-tellers. Another cult of prophecy.

“All well and good,” Masterson persisted, plainly growing tired, too. “But what does it matter if the E is missing here?”

“Maybe nothing,” Gray admitted, but he said it with little conviction. He turned to Abe. “When did you first show Dr. Polk this site?”

He shrugged. “I took Dr. Polk here the first time a year ago. He looked around, took notes, and left.”

Elizabeth’s eyes looked wounded. “He didn’t tell me anything about this discovery.”

“Because he respected our secrets,” Abe said stiffly. “He was a good man.”

Gray studied Masterson’s sour expression. The professor had initially been surprised by the discovery, but after the shock faded and he found no real worth to his own line of research, his interest had waned. Had Dr. Polk experienced the same? The archaeological discovery was significant, but because he couldn’t connect it to his own research, he’d respected the achuta’s secret and had kept quiet about it.

If so, why the sudden urgency to come out here just before he disappeared? He must have discovered some new connection, something bearing on his own line of study.

Gray asked Abe, “Was there anything that triggered Dr. Polk’s sudden need to come here? Anything unusual that led up to that day?”

The man shook his head. “He came to visit the village. Like he had done many times. We were talking about an upcoming election where an achuta candidate was up for a mayoral position. I had found a new coin and showed him, but he asked to see the one with the temple on it again. He glanced at it without too much interest, even spinning it on the table as we spoke. Then suddenly his eyes got huge, and he jumped up. He wanted to immediately come here, but I had obligations with the election. I asked him to wait until I returned…”

His voice trailed off and was picked up by Elizabeth. “My father was not known for his patience.”

Masterson nodded. “That was the day I got the frantic call from him. He claimed that he had discovered something that would shake our understanding of the human mind once it was known.”

As an idea jangled through him, Gray turned to Rosauro. “Let me see that coin again.”

She passed it over.

Gray examined it: temple on one side, chakra wheel on the other. “Elizabeth, you said your father obtained that position for you at Delphi so you could explore how it might connect to his own research. What did you end up telling him about Delphi’s history?”

“Just the basics,” she said. “He was less interested in the history than he was in the discovery of ethylene gases near the temple site. My father wanted more details into the Oracle’s rituals, looking again for physiological support for her intuitive powers.”

“So if he wasn’t interested in the history, when did he learn about the significance of the Greek letter epsilon?”

“I sent him a paper on it.”

“When?”

“About a month before he—” Her eyes suddenly widened.

Gray nodded. He knelt on the marble floor and placed his flashlight down. Propping the coin up on its edge, Gray flicked it and sent it spinning on the floor, lit by the flashlight beam.

He leaned down, studying it.

The spinning coin formed a blurry, silvery globe. The E, positioned in the center of the coin, now rested at the core of the whirling globe. Gray sensed the symbolism. Painter had said that the E may have had its roots in the earliest worship of the Earth mother, Gaia. Now it rested at the center of the silvery sphere, like Gaia herself in the physical world. But the letter also represented human’s intuitive potential, rising out of the core of the human body, out of the brain.

Gray let his own mind relax, seeking significance.

What had Archibald Polk realized?

The coin spun, a silvery mystery, hiding an ancient secret.

But what—?

Then Gray knew.

Reaching out, he slapped the coin flat against the marble.

Of course!

11:35 P.M.

Pripyat, Ukraine

“The Americans have Sasha,” Nicolas said sharply as he stepped into the bedroom. He was naked under an open robe, but his anger kept him warm.