Читать книгу Mystic Warrior - Alex Archer - Страница 12

5

“What are you doing now?” Krauzer clicked off his smartphone and walked over to Annja, who’d placed the scrying crystal on a camera tripod a short distance from the wall where pages of Julio Gris’s manuscript hung.

“Checking for a hidden message.” Annja took the high-powered miniflashlight from her backpack and shone it through the crystal, concentrating on one of the flat spots.

“Inside the scrying crystal?” Krauzer scoffed.

“The manuscript Julio Gris left indicates that the message is concealed somewhere inside.” Annja moved the flashlight and the crystal at the same time.

The diffused beam of light shone through the crystal and onto the first manuscript page.

“You need to be careful with that,” Krauzer warned. “That’s one of a kind. I can’t replace that crystal in the movie. I’ve shot too many core scenes with it.”

“If you got a 3-D modeler, you could make one of these on a 3-D printer,” Orta told him.

“Movie audiences can tell when something’s real these days. They like real stuff in their movies.”

Annja looked at him. “This is supposed to belong to an elf witch.”

“Hey, viewers want to believe in elf witches and hobbits and dragons. I’m not going to argue with them. I’m going to give them what they want. In fact, I’ll give them bigger dragons than they’ve ever seen before.”

Ignoring the director, Annja continued to shine the light across the pages. She wasn’t frustrated yet, but her options were limited. And she was constantly aware of Krauzer growing more and more impatient.

“Did Julio Gris tell you to shine a flashlight through the crystal?” Krauzer asked smugly. “Because that right there would tell you that manuscript is a fake. They didn’t have flashlights back when Juan Cabrillo sailed to California, right?”

Annja ignored the question.

“Right?”

Knowing Krauzer wasn’t going to let up until he was answered, Annja said, “Right.”

“So we’re all done here? I’ve saved you from wasting more time. I can take my scrying crystal and get back to the studio, and you and the professor can look at old crap to your hearts’ delight.”

“Gris suggested using natural light or a candle flame to reveal the message,” Orta said. “We’re using a flashlight because it’s more accurate and it’s not daylight outside.”

Krauzer folded his arms. “Shining a light through a crystal sounds really stupid, if you ask me.”

“Have you ever heard of a magic lantern?” The frustration in Orta’s voice turned his words ragged.

“Of course I have. ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.’ Aladdin’s lamp. Even Uncle Scrooge McDuck went looking for a magic lamp. That stuff’s all old.”

“A magic lantern,” Orta said in a louder voice, “was an early precursor to filmmaking.”

“So were hand puppets.”

Orta sighed. “I’m just saying that there was a basis for this use of the scrying ball.”

“Okay, but I’ve got to take that crystal and scoot. We’ve got an early shoot planned tomorrow. Morning sunlight doesn’t last forever.” Krauzer tapped his watch, then answered his ringing phone again.

Annja was thankful. The man was too accustomed to being in control. She rotated the crystal and shone the light through the other flat spots onto the pages.

Her back ached from the combination of constant bending and anticipation. Something had to be here. Unless the scrying crystal was not the one mentioned in the manuscript.

Or if the manuscript was a hoax.

Krauzer punched his phone off and returned to observe. “Well, that was good news.”

Neither Annja nor Orta bothered to ask what the good news was.

“That was Rita, my personal assistant. She had to wait until the cops left, but she got my gun back.”

Annja straightened and reconsidered the problem.

“So, you’re satisfied there aren’t any secret messages in the crystal?” Krauzer asked. “I can get back to the studio?”

The director’s words turned the possibilities around in Annja’s mind. She glanced at Orta. “I think we’ve been going at this wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Orta asked.

“Maybe the message is inside the crystal.” Annja pressed the flashlight onto one of the object’s flat areas. The light caused the crystal to glow softly as the illumination diffused through the twists and turns of the sparkling latticework contained within the thing.

“There’s nothing inside that crystal.” Krauzer shook his head and looked grumpy. “You’re wasting my time.”

Annja continued her search, but she became quickly discouraged when nothing turned up. The light caught various facets and reflected through the glass ovoid, squirming through to another side in some places and stopping in others. Occasionally, the light snaked back on itself and became looped.

Nothing made sense.

Pausing again, Annja glanced at the manuscript pages. They have to be part of this, she reasoned.

Krauzer sifted through the food cartons and muttered in displeasure. At least he was being somewhat quiet about his irritation.

A new thought struck Annja and she glanced up at Orta. “Let’s get the pages over here.”

Orta picked up the first page. “Shine the light through the pages?”

“That’s the only thing we haven’t tried.”

“The plastic protectors might interfere.” In spite of his misgivings, Orta held the first page against one of the flat spots on the crystal.

Annja placed the flashlight lens against the laminated paper and slowly guided the manuscript page along so that every square inch was covered. After covering nearly the whole page, her hopes steadily sinking while Krauzer continued to stew, Annja blinked to clear her vision when she spotted writing in the lower right corner.

She lowered the flashlight and raised the page to examine the surface with her naked eye. Even holding the manuscript up to the overhead lights didn’t show anything. The striations within the crystal somehow translated the image, probably through various degrees of refraction.

“Did you find something?” Orta stood at her side, his chest resting slightly against her shoulder.

“Yes,” Annja answered. Her voice sounded quiet in her own ears, but her excitement thrummed like a live thing inside her.

“You’re imagining things,” Krauzer insisted. “You’re tired and you want something to be there.” Still, he came to stand on her other side and peered at the crystal. “See? Nothing’s there.”

“Look inside it.” Annja replaced the page over the flat spot and shone the flashlight against the page so the beam shone into the crystal.

Inside the crystal, the neat handwriting stood revealed, almost too small to read. The penmanship was delicate, ornate and so small. Each space between words was carefully designed.

“I don’t see anything,” Krauzer challenged.

Annja nodded to Orta. “Hold these.”

Silently, enraptured by what he was seeing, Orta held the flashlight and the page. He experimented by pulling the flashlight lens back from the paper. “I can get the writing a little larger, but pulling the light source reflects back too much and throws off the focus, causing it to disappear.”

Annja opened her backpack and took out her tablet PC and a small digital camera. She slipped on an equally small macro lens. “If someone had read the manuscript pages in that crystal all those years ago, they couldn’t have put a candle flame up against the paper.”

“Someone built this crystal to hide the message inside the manuscript pages.” Orta shook his head. “But the crystal looks so real.”

“The crystal is real. This is old, probably grown over time. I’d like to find out who created it, as well.” Annja left the tablet PC on one of the tables and brought the camera to the crystal. She experimented with angles and found the one that best revealed the message within the depths of the crystalline latticework. She snapped images.

“I see it.” Krauzer bent so low and so close that his breath temporarily fogged the crystal. Looking embarrassed, he leaned back. “You know, that’s pretty cool. I could use something like this in A Diversion of Dragons.”

Orta blew out an impatient breath. “Seriously? You see this—a secret message in a crystal that has to be at least hundreds of years old, the crystal itself even older than that—and the first thing you think of is using it in a movie? You don’t even wonder what the message is?”

“Don’t go all professor on me, Doc.” Krauzer held up his hands defensively. “I’m a movie guy. I’m one of the movie guys in this town. People talk about me the same way they talk about Spielberg and Coppola.”

“You’re an imbecile!”

Krauzer held out a warning finger. “It wouldn’t be smart to make this personal.”

“Smart? You’re not intelligent enough to know when you’re not invited to something.”

“Are you talking about the food?” Krauzer hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the takeout cartons sitting on the table. “I can pay for that. In fact, I’ll pay for it all.” He pulled out a black American Express card. “You take plastic?”

Frozen by the sudden outbreak of tempers, Annja couldn’t believe what was taking place. Male testosterone was so easily misplaced. “Guys? Maybe we could focus.”

Orta blushed a deep red. “I cannot believe the crystal ended up in your hands.”

Krauzer glared at his rival. “Yeah, well, it’s mine. Whatever secret message is in there is mine, too, so if there’s treasure, it’s mine.”

“The message isn’t in the crystal, you idiot. It’s on these pages. Which I have.”

“Yeah, well, I own the decoder ring. Try to figure out your secret message without that.” Krauzer shrugged. “I don’t need the secret message. It’s probably ‘Juan Cabrillo was here.’ Or maybe ‘Today the chef’s mystery meat was particularly horrible.’ You think Twitter and Facebook invented boring self-indulgence? Try reading some of those classics college professors cram down your throat.”

“Have you even wondered why anyone would go to the trouble of putting a secret message in these pages and that crystal?”

“I don’t care. I’ll just take my crystal and be going. I’m making a movie. I don’t have time for this crap.” Krauzer started to reach for the scrying crystal, then stopped when Annja narrowed her eyes.

“Not yet,” she told him.

“It’s mine.”

“Not until I’m done with it,” Annja said. “We agreed.”

Glaring at her, Krauzer backed away. “Hurry.”

Annja nodded to Orta. “Ready?”

Breathing out slowly, Orta picked up the flashlight and manuscript page to return to their joint task. It took him only a moment to find the hidden writing.

Peering intently at the handwriting, Annja said, “Looks like calligraphy that was made with some kind of tool.”

“Probably jeweler’s instruments,” Orta replied. “The Portuguese were constantly looking for treasures. Gold, silver and gems. For the message to be rendered so small, I’d say the writer used a jeweler’s loupe, too, though I’m not certain those had been invented at the time this was made. Some type of magnifying glass at the very least.”

Adjusting the magnification of the image on her camera viewscreen, Annja tilted it toward Orta. “This looks like Latin.”

He peered more closely. “Yes, it is. But see the name?”

“Julio Gris.”

“Yes.”

“And unless I’m mistaken, this says it is the last will and testament of Gris.”

“Let’s see what’s on the next page.”

* * *

IN LESS THAN an hour, Annja and Orta had the hidden messages from the manuscript pages shot and mostly decoded. She loaded the images onto her tablet PC and enlarged them. She’d shot them so they could be enhanced. Compiling the images into a single file she could flip through with the touch of a button took only a few minutes.

The person who had written the message had a fine hand at calligraphy. The whorls and loops looked as though a machine had punched them out.

“Well?” Krauzer sat on a stool on the other side of the large table. His arms were folded across his chest and his lips were pursed into a petulant frown.

“What?” Annja asked.

“Isn’t somebody going to read the message?”

“I thought you weren’t interested.”

Krauzer shook his head in irritation. “You know, you might want to borrow my crystal again at some point.”

That was true. Annja focused on the message. “‘This is the last will and testament of Julio Gris, second mate of the good ship San Salvador. 1542.

“‘In my life, I have been many things before I took my post on Captain Juan Cabrillo’s ship, may God rest his unfortunate soul. If I had been caught for many of the things I did, I would have been shot by jealous husbands or hanged for thievery or murder.

“‘Captain Cabrillo only knew me as a mate aboard his ship, and I worked hard for him because I have always loved the sea. Even more than I loved the sea, though, I have loved the idea of treasure.

“‘God knows of the larceny in my darkest thoughts, and He has taken pains to see that I am properly punished, for it seems I may never claim this prize. I heard the story about the lost treasure of the Merovingian kings from a man who knew György Dózsa, a warrior from the Kingdom of Hungary. According to the man who gave me the story, Dózsa read the pages from the Bibliotheca Corviniana himself.’”

“Wait.” Krauzer held his hands up. “Just hold on. You’re throwing too much information out too fast. Who are the Merovingian kings?”

Before Annja could answer, the room’s main door opened and two armed men strode inside. They wore black clothing with abbreviated Kevlar armor and carried H&K MP5 machine pistols with thick sound suppressors. Dark eyed, the men looked related, but one of them was easily ten years older than the other. He was clean shaven with a well-kept mustache, while the other man had deliberate scruff. Both moved economically, spacing themselves out so they commanded the room.

“Put your hands in the air,” the older man commanded. His accent echoed faintly of French.

Not having any options, Annja did as she was told.