Clive Cussler - Lost Empire

THEY FOLLOWED HER through the kitchen and down a set of narrow steps near the back door. Predictably, the basement was dark and dank, with rough stone walls and a veined concrete floor. Using the light streaming down the stairs, Miss Cynthia found the light switch. In the center of the basement a single sixty-watt bulb glowed to life. The walls and floor were stacked with cardboard boxes of all sizes and shapes.“You see the three shoe boxes there?” Miss Cynthia said. “Beside the Christmas-tree box?”

“Yes,” said Sam.

“That’s them.”

Back in the parlor, Sam and Remi opened the boxes and were immediately relieved to find the letters had been divided and stored in gallon-sized Ziploc baggies.

Sam said, “Miss Cynthia, you’re our hero.”

“Nonsense. Now, I have one condition,” she said sternly. “Are you listening?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sam. “Take care of them and bring them back when you’re done.”

“I don’t understand,” Remi replied. “You’re letting us-”

“Of course. Julianne said you were decent people. She said you were trying to find out what happened to Uncle Blaylock in Africa-or wherever he ended up. It’s been a mystery in our family for a hundred twenty-seven years. It would be nice to have it solved. Since I’m too old for that kind of adventure, at least I can hear about it later from you. Providing you promise to come back and tell me everything.”“We promise,” Sam said.

LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA

“PETE, WENDY, GET THESE INTO THE VAULT AND DO A QUICK assessment,” Selma said. She slid the shoe boxes across the worktable, and her assistants picked them up and disappeared into the archive chamber.Unsure of the Blaylock letters’ condition, Sam and Remi had resisted temptation and refrained from opening the Ziplocs before they got home.

“A fruitful trip, it seems,” Selma said.

“Your friend Julianne is one of a kind,” Remi said.

“Tell me something I don’t know. If I’m ever hit by a bus, she should be your first call for a replacement.”

“Before or after we call 911?” Sam said.

“You’re a funny one, Mr. Fargo. This Ashworth woman . . . she seemed genuine?”

“She did,” replied Remi. “Between Blaylock’s journal and Morton’s biography we should be able to definitively prove or disprove the letters’ bona fides.”

Selma nodded. “While Pete and Wendy are working with those, care to see what progress we’ve made on the journal?”

“Can’t wait,” said Sam. The three of them sat down at the worktable facing the nearest LCD screen, and Selma used the remote to scroll into their server. She located the file she wanted and double-clicked it. It filled the screen:

“Wow,” Sam murmured. “That’s a busy mind. Could be the thoughts of a genius or a nut.”

“Or someone who did a lot of daydreaming,” Remi said. “But in this case Blaylock doesn’t strike me as the fanciful type. He was a type A personality before the term was coined.”

Selma said, “This is a fairly representative page. Some have nothing but writing, but the majority are a mishmash of notes and drawings, some freehand and some probably done with a template or drafting tools.”

“Clearly the image in the upper left-hand corner is a hand-drawn map,” Sam said. “And some text in the middle of it . . . ‘Great green jeweled bird.’ To the right of that, some more text-can’t make it out-then some geometric symbols in the corner. Have you tried enlarging the text?”Selma nodded. “I had Wendy work on it-she’s the graphics wizard. The more we enlarged it, the fuzzier it got.”

“What’s at the bottom right? Was ‘Orizaga’ there? Selma, have you seen that elsewhere?”

“The name? In many places.”

Remi stood up and walked closer to the screen. “In the middle, on the left and right . . . ‘Leonardo the Liar’ and ‘63 great men.’ Between them, these numbers here . . . ‘1123581321.’ Boy, talk about cryptic.”“The bottom right is clearly a bird of some kind,” Selma added.

“The ‘great green jeweled bird’?” Remi suggested.

“Could be. As for two images in the middle-the one that looks a little like a cave painting and the arc below it-they’ve appeared on dozens and dozens of pages so far.”

The three fell silent, staring at the screen for several minutes. Eyes narrowed, Sam stood up and walked to screen and tapped the number sequence Remi had pointed out. “I must be more tired than I thought,” he said. “These numbers are the Fibonacci sequence.” Knowing his wife didn’t share his love of math, Sam explained: “When added together, the sum of the first two digits equals the third digit. You add the third and fourth digit together and get the sum of the fifth digit, and so on.” He walked back to the worktable and scribbled on a pad:

“You get the idea,” he said. “It’s also the basis of what’s known as the golden ratio, or the golden spiral, or even the Fibonacci spiral. Here, I’ll show you.” He walked to one of the computer workstations, did a quick Google search, and double-clicked a thumbnail. It filled the screen:

“You simply build a grid with whatever Fibonacci numbers you choose and overlay it with an arc,” Sam said. “Your first box could be an inch square or a foot square. Anything.”“That’s what’s on the journal page,” Remi said. “A Fibonacci spiral.”

Sam nodded. “Part of one, at least. The spiral is central to a lot of sacred geometry theories. You see the spiral in nature-the way shells form, in the buds of flowers. The Greeks used the spiral in a lot of their architecture. Even Web designers and graphic artists use it to create layouts. There’ve been scientific studies that show the golden spiral is inherently pleasing to the eye. No one’s exactly sure why.”“The question is,” Remi said, “why was Blaylock obsessed with it? What else can it be used for, Sam?”

“Anything to do with geometry, really. I read that the NSA uses the Fibonacci sequence and the spiral in cryptography, but don’t ask me how. That’s far outside my wheelhouse. Selma, are there any more images that repeat?”

In response, Selma picked up the phone and dialed the archive vault. “Pete, do you remember image twelve-alpha-four? Right, that’s the one. How many repeats so far? Have you digitized it yet? Good, put it on the server, will you? I want to show it to Mr. and Mrs. Fargo. I’ll hold.” A few moments later: “Thanks.”

Selma hung up, grabbed the remote, and used it to scroll back into the server’s file system. “The image we’ve named twelve-alpha-four has repeated nine times so far, usually in the margins but sometimes as a central image. Here it is. Wendy worked her magic and plucked it off the page. It’s still pretty messy.” On the screen, Selma moved the pointer over a thumbnail and double-clicked it. The image enlarged:

“Looks like a skull,” Sam said.

“My thought as well,” replied Selma.

Sam looked at Remi, who was staring at the image, her head cocked to one side, eyes narrowed. He said, “Remi . . . Remi . . .”

She blinked her eyes and looked at him. “Yes?”