“Of course not, Boris. I would never think that of you.” And in truth, Lourds never would. Boris didn’t follow his explorations for the money. He just wanted to know things. Lourds understood that implicitly.
“Good.” Boris gestured toward the wall. “‘My son, I love you, and if you would have your inheritance, you must seek beyond these words.’” He shook his head. “How can you have had an epiphany about this while you were with Dominique?”
“Because she surprised me, and I realized that she was more than meets the eye.”
Boris rolled his eyes, and they glowed white in the reflected flashlight beam. “If this is going to get into sexual athleticism, I will not be able to restrain myself. They will find your corpse stretched out in this cave on the morrow.”
“No. But realizing that Dominique held qualities that most men wouldn’t see because they were too busy taking in her beauty led me to thinking about the message here.”
“Perhaps I am just tired, because you are making no sense.”
Lourds knelt to his pack and brought out a special plaster mix he’d had in his tent from earlier casting duty to get copies of some of the clay tiles that had been written on. “I think there’s a message beyond the message the merchant left for his son. Something that probably his son would understand when no one else would.”
Boris trained his light on the cuneiform writing and stepped closer to the wall to see the inscription better. “Beyond the message?”
“Yes. Actually, I’m thinking underneath the message.” Lourds took a small tray from his backpack, poured in some of the plaster mix, then added water and mixed it into a gray-white paste with a trowel. He scooped some of the plaster onto the trowel and approached the wall.
“Wait! What are you doing?”
“Going to see if I’m right.” Lourds smoothed the plaster onto the wall, totally covering the message and extending beyond the edges of the cuneiform to make certain it was all covered.
He spent the next several minutes making sure the plaster was thick. When he was finished and he’d used all of the mixture, he stepped back and admired his handiwork.
The wall looked like it had a huge Band-Aid in the center of it.
Lourds cleaned the tray and the trowel with water from his canteen.
Boris surveyed the patch job. “What is this supposed to mean?”
“Remember when we did an analysis on the carving? Testing to see the depth to which the cuneiform had been cut into the rock?”
“Yes. They’re of various depths.”
“Right. That was the first clue. I just missed it. I blamed the differing tolerances on the carver. Totally my bad. As you can see, the carving is very accurate, almost machined in. The cuneiform is spaced precisely, and the symbols are all uniform. A very, very skilled craftsman created this. So, I reasoned, the tolerances had to be equally planned.” Lourds scratched his goatee and stood. The plaster was supposed to be a quick-drying compound, and it turned out that it was.
“Well, I still miss it.”
Lourds took out his Swiss Army knife and flicked the smaller blade open. “Give me a hand with this, and I’ll show you.” He set the flashlight on the ground on its butt so the beam would diffuse against the ceiling and fill the cave with light. Boris did the same.
Working carefully, Lourds inserted the blade under the edge of the plaster and gradually made his way around. Boris drew a pocketknife of his own and started doing the same on his end.
Gently, they pried the patch free and pulled it from the wall, lowering it to the floor.
The plaster form had reached into the cuneiform cuts, but the whirling spikes forming the layers of the depths of the carved niches could be plainly seen.
“I still do not see it.”
“Patience.” Lourds reached into his backpack and withdrew a roll of paper. “Let’s see if my theory is correct.”
4
32 Miles Southwest of Herat
Herat Province
Afghanistan
June 18, 2012
Just as Dmitry was about to enter the cave after the two professors, shadows flitted across the incline ahead of him. He still wasn’t using a flashlight because he hadn’t wanted to alert Glukov and Lourds. Reaching back unerringly with his left hand, he caught Chizkov’s wrist and held the young lieutenant in place.
Chizkov froze instantly.
Dmitry’s hand closed around the butt of his pistol. He whispered almost in the lieutenant’s ear. “Be very still and do not say a word. Do