Sanskrit Cipher: A Marina Alexander Adventure Read online

  Khlari detached three more nests in this same manner—bottom, larvae-laden portion first, then upper, honey-drenched section—before climbing back up and giving Viri a turn with the ladder, torch, and tangos. In all, they corrupted five nests from their positions clinging to the stony wall. Three huge baskets were filled, and one nest dashed against the side of the cliff and shattered as it tumbled down.

  Though it was mostly a loss, the destroyed nest also yielded a few hand-sized pieces for the hunters to eat. Grandfather Bhulat, pleased with the take from this springtime trip and that neither of his men on the ladder had been injured other than a multitude of stings, took the first piece of the tender, lower part of the nest and bit into the sweet larvae with a satisfying crunch.

  His wrinkled face creased with pleasure as he tasted the sweetness that Timbal knew could be found nowhere else. Soon, Timbal would eat as well and, for the first time, feel the effects of this springtime harvest of honey: a loose, pleasant hallucinogenic state that would stay with them as he and the others celebrated late into the night.

  The take was large enough that Timbal’s family would sell enough to feed them and part of the village for many moons. They would render the wax and sell that too. A small portion of the special red honey would be blessed and given to the shamans in order to assist them with their magic dreams and visions.

  And, most important of all, they would put offerings of honey and some of the bee larvae in three beautiful pots, sealed and closed. These would be offered to the mountain spirit who’d given them safe passage and a good harvest.

  Finally, Grandfather would place the last and most important offering in the sacred cave near their village.

  The cave was the place where the holy man known as Saint Issa, who traveled from a very distant country with his own small hive of bees on his back, had slept when their village was infected by a great illness. Issa was obviously surrounded by the pari’s blessing when he reclined there that night, for the next morning, he had come forth from the cave and healed the village of its plague.

  Timbal had been five winters when Issa visited, and he remembered being ill with the fever and how nothing would soothe him until the cool, calming hand of the gentle saint had touched his brow…and how the heat and pain had evaporated at his touch.

  Saint Issa had left soon after, carrying the rounded hive made from pottery on his back, but the villagers never forgot him. Bhulat and some of the other elders had marked the cave in which Issa slept with the same symbol carved on the holy man’s beehive.

  Nothing like that plague had ever come to the village again, and each spring and autumn, the bee hunters went on their quest—not only for the riches of the honey, but also to make a sweet offering to the mountain spirit who’d sent Issa to save them.

  Prelude II

  April 1897

  Paris

  It was a miserable, desperately miserable, spring day. The sky was a dull gray, the air nipped with uncharacteristic venom, and the clouds wept constantly—as if to bemoan a less than perfect April in the City of Light.

  And yet Nicolas Notovitch had no real complaints. Paris, in any weather, was a far better place to be than the stark Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, where he’d unwillingly spent half a year in a cell. And Paris was an entirely different world altogether from the wild remoteness of Siberia, from where he’d been allowed to return in March.

  Still, despite the fourteen months he’d spent exiled in Siberia, Nicolas was huddled in his greatcoat as if it were a blizzard assaulting him and not some recalcitrant spring day. He watched his feet in order to dodge puddles of water and piles of horse crap, alternating with glancing up and over his shoulder and listening for the jingle of bridles or the clomp of horseshoes.

  He’d been unable to hail a fiacre due to the ill-tempered weather, and thus he was relegated to being on foot as he returned from Île de Citie after a very unsettling appointment at the city morgue. Ducking against the splatter of rain, which followed him though he changed direction, Nicolas crossed the street and turned onto the Champs-Élysées.

  The broad avenue, capped at one end by the Arc de Triomphe, boasted the magnificent, indulgent homes of Paris’s wealthiest. Constructed of characteristic creamy blocks or, in some cases, of gray stone, a single mansion could sprawl over an entire block, decorated with twisting iron grates for balcony or portico.

  Nicolas was, as always, struck by how very different these maisons were from the mean and simple brick house of his youth as a Jew in Russia—and how they were almost otherworldly in comparison to the huts, caves, and block-built structures he’d experienced when living with the Buddhist monks in Tibet and Nepal.

  Yet Nicolas wasn’t bitter about the vast wealth and carelessness demonstrated by the very rich. After all, he himself had risen well above the mean little house in which he’d been raised. And despite the difficulties (if one could call being imprisoned, then exiled to Siberia a mere difficulty) related to his recent book, it was still making him hundreds of francs a week and an even tidier sum of dollars, thanks to his American publisher.

  Nicolas might have been utterly complacent about being back in his favorite city but for the lingering unpleasantness of the meeting at the morgue.

  For most Parisians, a visit to the city morgue was a social event, akin to a tourist attraction. Located in the shadow of Notre Dame, adjacent to La Sûreté where the officers de la paix and homicide inspectors worked, the morgue opened its doors to the public every day of the week. A steady stream of people—pairs or trios of men brandishing walking sticks and hats, clusters of chattering women in fine dress, even entire families in more drab clothing—flowed in one door and out the other.

  Inside the morgue’s main entrance was the display area, where unidentified bodies that might have been pulled from la Seine, discovered in an alley of Monmartre, or encountered beneath a pile of leaves or refuge beneath a bridge were arranged on tables in hopes that some bystander would identify the unfortunate soul.

  Shrouded to cover all but face, shoulders, and arms, the corpses—cleaned up, but in various states of decay—were accompanied by whatever clothing or possessions had been found with them. These pathetic items—sagging coats, empty dresses, battered shoes; in some cases horribly small ones—hung above the slabs on which their respective owners were displayed.

  Nicolas himself had gone through those doors when, only a few years ago, a wooden trunk had been on display in relation to the celebrated murder case against Gabrielle Bompard.

  A body—that of a Parisian bailiff named Gouffé—and the trunk had been discovered twenty miles from Paris. Because of the publicity over the case, the authorities had decided to display the trunk in hopes that someone could identify it—then hopefully lead to the murderer.

  Tens of thousands of people viewed the infamous wooden chest, and the display had been such a popular attraction that palm-sized souvenir copies of the trunk were sold on the quai across from the morgue next to the Pont Notre-Dame.

  Until today, that was the only time Nicolas had been to the morgue. He’d seen enough death and destruction during his life, not to mention while traveling through India and the Orient.

  But it was his journey into the Himalayas that had truly altered his life—changed him from a brash, obnoxious young man to a more careful, thoughtful one.

  He knew the truth.

  He knew what he’d seen, what he’d been told, what he’d discovered in the shadow of the Himalayas in Tibet—and he’d be damned if anyone would make him forget about it, even if they decried his book. Especially since he had proof—carefully hidden behind a poster in his rooms.

  Certainly, Nicolas must be less vociferous about what he knew, now that the Catholic Church had had its say by sending the Third Section—the Russian secret police here in Paris—after him.

  And so the appointment at the morgue…it had greatly unsettled him.

  When he descended to the basement of the building in the comp
any of two officers—one from la Sûreté and one from the Third Section—Nicolas feared he was about to be arrested again. Or worse.

  Instead, the two officials brought him to a laboratory where an American pathologist was doing the postmortem on a man—a man who’d obviously been murdered by a slit to the throat.

  Actually, it wasn’t a slit, Nicolas realized once he understood he wasn’t being arrested and was able to calm his nerves. It was a cut in the shape of a Y that went up from the bottom of the man’s breastbone and veed out toward the shoulders. He shivered deep inside.

  “Make it quick,” said the American, ignoring even a basic, polite “bonjour” first. The pathologist stepped over a massive dog that lay sprawled and snoring on the middle of his laboratory floor. “Death was from a bullet to the back of the head. Damned obvious.”

  Only then did Nicolas look closely enough at the corpse to see the circular wound at one temple where the bullet must have exited.

  “Do you recognize this man, M. Notovitch?” asked Auchaud, the officer from la Sûreté.

  “I’m sorry to say I don’t, inspector.”

  Why had the Russian secret police and the Parisian authorities brought him here to identify a dead man?

  His question was answered when the inspector handed him a small brown quarto. “This was found in his pocket.”

  Nicolas took the copy of his own controversial and bestselling book, lifting his brows and offering a quiet smile. “But, monsieur, it is impossible for me to know everyone who is in possession of La vie inconnue de Jésus—”

  “Look inside if you please, monsieur.”

  When Nicolas flipped open the book, he saw that his name and the address of his new apartment had been written inside—the apartment he had let since his return, only three weeks ago. And below it was some small, rustic doodle. A bird…no, perhaps an insect. It appeared to have a rudimentary set of wings.

  A bee.

  Shaken, Nicolas closed the book. So this must be a recent purchase. Or, at least, a recent notation. A little quiver of nerves shot through him. Not many people knew he was returned, and even fewer knew where he lived.

  And even fewer would know the meaning of the tiny doodle.

  “No, inspector, I still do not know this man.” He handed back the quarto with a steady hand.

  “It appears he may have been interested in contacting you, at least,” said the agent from the Third Section, speaking for the first time. Watching him closely. “About your book.”

  Nicolas merely bowed his head in acknowledgment, but said nothing more. Now his pulse had increased and his mouth dried. Would his answer be enough, or would they arrest him again?

  “Very well then, monsieur,” said Auchaud.

  To his utter shock and wild relief, Nicolas was allowed to leave the morgue. And so he did, with hurried steps up from the basement laboratory before they changed their mind.

  After that, he could have waited on the quai to try to hail a fiacre, but the meeting had so disturbed him that he needed to put as much distance between it and himself, and so he walked. And now he had turned off the Champs-Élysées and onto Avenue Carnot, being within three blocks of his rented rooms.

  Why had they called him in for this? Was la Sûreté simply trying to identify the man, and the Russian had been there because of Nicolas’s past troubles? Could it be that simple?

  Or was it a veiled—or perhaps not-so-veiled—threat that he’d best remain silent about his book; that he’d best cease promoting the truth?

  Had the man’s body had been nothing but an excuse to make the threat? For there was no proof the book had actually been in the dead man’s possession; it could have been planted in his pocket—

  “M. Notovitch?”

  Jolted from his thoughts, Nicolas turned to the voice, his knees weak with fear. At the sudden movement, a slew of collected raindrops slid off the edge of his hat’s brim. He saw two men approaching; one had been the man who hailed him.

  Neither were of the Russian secret police, but nor did they look Parisian.

  Stunned, he realized the two men must be from Tibet. It would have been immediately obvious had he not been so certain that Rachkovsky’s officers had come after him, for the two men standing there in front of Ste Ferdinand wore Western-style greatcoats…but the saffron robes of their religion were obvious, flowing from beneath the coats’ woolen hems. And he could see no glimpse of hair from beneath their bowler hats. Their faces were also clean-shaven.

  “Yes, I am he,” Nicolas replied. He was intrigued but no longer apprehensive. The Buddhists were nonviolent, and the ones he’d met during his travels—most of them—were kind and friendly.

  “We require a word with you, please,” said the one who’d originally spoken. Now Nicolas could hear the accent thickening his French. The speaker was older and slighter than the other, and his mahogany skin was crisscrossed with wrinkles. A square emerald winked from his ring as he made a gesture toward the street that would take them to Nicolas’s apartment. “In private.”

  “Of course.”

  He mulled over the appearance of a Buddhist monk and his companion in the middle of Paris, but had no qualms about leading the men into his rooms.

  “Please, make yourselves—”

  Nicolas didn’t get the words out before the younger man shoved him across the threshold. Before Nicolas could react, his assailant closed the door sharply. Now he stood in front of it, arms crossed over his middle. The hem of his robe fluttered below the greatcoat he still wore.

  All of a sudden, Nicolas’s comfortable room became much smaller. When he looked at the older man who’d hailed him on the street, he saw that he held a pistol.

  “M. Notovitch, if you would take a seat there.” The monk removed his hat and the greatcoat, revealing a shaved head and flowing robes. Nicolas hardly paid attention, for the gun barrel glinted wickedly and the green stone on the heavy ring the Buddhist wore shone dully in the dreary light. “We have much to discuss.”

  Nicolas sank into the chair and resisted the urge to stroke his beard nervously. “Who are you?”

  “I come from His Holiness at Hemis.”

  Hemis. That was the monastery in Tibet where Nicolas had made his earth-shattering discovery. His Holiness was the lama there, who’d spent much time with Nicolas.

  “My blessed greetings to His Holiness,” Nicolas began, trying to regain control of the meeting that had somehow overtaken his personal rooms and put him in danger. “I—”

  “I bear a message,” continued the old monk, moving closer with his pistol still trained on Nicolas.

  Now that the emerald ring was directly in front of Nicolas’s eyes, the scent of incense clinging to the man wafted to his nostrils. It was a scent Nicolas had experienced many times during his journey in the Himalayas and throughout India. Nam chala.

  “Heed his message well, or your body will be the next one found with a bullet hole in the back of its skull.”

  Nicolas blinked and a cold sweat broke out over his body. Whatever happened to the Buddhist tenet of nonviolence?

  “What is the message?” he managed to ask—and then he noticed the engraving on the large emerald directly in front of his eyes.

  It looked like a bird…or an insect. And, God help him, did it resemble the rough drawing beneath the notation of his name and address inside his book? Or was terror blinding him? He blinked, trying to focus, to think—

  Not a coincidence.

  That body with my book was not a coincidence.

  The monks here, not a coincidence.

  A shaft of cold anxiety pierced him.

  “Forget everything about Hemis,” said the monk. The pistol was suddenly pointed directly at Nicolas’s forehead, just above the space between his eyes. “Renounce what you have written, and forget it all. None of it existed—it was all a lie. None of that tale you spread will ever be seen nor heard of again from anyone of the West. If you persist…” He didn’t finish the words, merely mo
ved the gun so the barrel kissed Nicolas’s clammy skin.

  He closed his eyes and waited.

  Of course they would kill him now. There was no sense in giving him the warning, but then leaving him to do as he might.

  He closed his fingers tightly over the arms of his chair and prayed, prepared to meet God.

  But then, a small shift in the air, a slight waft of nam chala, alerted him to movement.

  When he at last had the courage to open his eyes, the monks had gone.

  And, to his great relief, the painting that hung in front of his hidey-hole remained undisturbed.

  They hadn’t found his papers.

  But now Nicolas knew what he must do with them.

  The truth must be protected. He had to send his papers, and the proof, somewhere safe. To someone who believed in him, but who was safe from the Russians and their Parisian cohorts.

  And he knew just the person.

  Prologue

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  January 10, present day

  Allen Schleuter was a well-groomed yet undeniably homely forty-five-year-old. He had sparse hair that waffled in color between corn-chip yellow and gingerroot, and it was a sad sort of frizz that had neither body nor shine. His nose was broad and misshapen. His skin was light with an underlying gray cast, and age spots and so-called beauty marks dotted his face in the most unfortunate locations. His eyes were too small for his face, but they were intensely blue and sharp with intelligence. His chin was weak and his lips thin and narrow.

  Nonetheless, Schleuter’s lack of physical attractiveness had done nothing to dampen his professional success. For the last fifteen years, he’d held high management or executive-level positions in four different companies—each move being a higher step up the chain. Ironically, one of his most successful stints had been EVP of product development at a beauty and skin care company.

  Schleuter was savvy, strategic, and intelligent, and most of all, he had vision and charisma. All of these attributes had brought him success upon success, and whenever he’d been ready to move to a new position, there’d been more than a handful of corporations ready to talk.