The Antarctic Forgery Read online

  Kotler studied her for a moment. He sipped his coffee and thought.

  Gail McCarthy was not the type of person who would make idle threats. She had something … some leverage over him.

  It could be any number of things, he realized. Though he was more or less a loner, moving about in the world without restriction or baggage, there were people he cared about. His brother and his family. Particularly his nephew, Alex. His ex, Evelyn Horelica. Even Agent Denzel, though Kotler knew that Roland would be less vulnerable than the others.

  Gail could hurt Kotler. She could find leverage.

  He felt his phone vibrate from the inner pocket of his sports coat. He resisted the reflex to check it.

  "Would you tell me the game?" he asked, confident he already knew the answer.

  "Where would be the fun in that?" she asked, coyly. "Dan, I gave you a puzzle for a reason. For many reasons, actually. But not the least of which is because I know how much you adore them. A good mystery? You'd do almost anything for that. And that's what this is. A good mystery. One you have to solve."

  “And if I can’t? I’ve tried figuring out the artifacts you gave me. They make little sense. I’m looking at them out of context.”

  “Then you’ll just have to find the context, won’t you?” she said.

  She took one last sip of her coffee, placed the cup on the table, and stood. She smiled down at him. “I appreciate that you didn’t call your FBI friend,” she said.

  “And how do you know I didn’t?” Kotler asked.

  “Because we’ve been here for quite some time and none of my people have spotted him or any other FBI agent. You came alone, and no one has come to back you up. I appreciate that, Dan. It means something.”

  “It means I’m a fool,” Kotler said, and smiled.

  "That," she nodded. "But a brilliant fool. Which is why I know you will solve this. It's been too long already, Dan. Too many months. I am patient, but not that patient. So, just to speed things along, I'll give you a deadline. You have one week to solve it."

  “A whole week?” Kotler said. “You spoil me. And what happens at the end of a week?”

  She smiled and shrugged in that girlish and coy way that had made Kotler fall for her when they'd met. "Consequences," she said, before turning and walking away.

  Kotler watched her go. He didn’t bother following her. It would do no good. He’d be stopped by her people, he was sure. Or she would have a helicopter or a private jet on standby outside or something. He wouldn’t put it past her.

  Instead, he sipped his coffee and took out his phone. He would arrange a flight home for the afternoon. He could be at the airport in a couple of hours. He wasn’t sure what Gail was planning, or what consequences she had in mind, but he couldn’t afford to waste any time. He needed to get back to his apartment, to retrieve those artifacts, and to redouble his efforts. He could study his notes on the flight back …

  He stopped, staring at the alert on his phone. It was a text from Agent Denzel.

  Your trap has been sprung. We just got multiple pings to those databases you had us watching. We’ve identified the inside man. How soon can you get back to Manhattan?

  Kotler looked up as if he might see Gail looking back and smiling at him, letting him know she was aware of his every move, that she was still several steps ahead of him. She was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't mean she didn't have eyes on him.

  The trap Denzel was referring to was meant for Gail. Or for Gail’s people, at any rate. It had been set months ago, while he’d been in Chichén Itzá. After months of no hits, he and Denzel had assumed it was a dead end. With it being tripped just as he’d finished a conversation with Gail McCarthy—that couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

  She had stepped up the timetable, inserting a deadline to create pressure. Kotler hadn't heard from her in months, and now she was pushing to have this solved in a week. Why?

  He responded to Denzel’s text.

  By coincidence, I’m already making plans to come back this afternoon. I’ll send you my flight details. Meet me at the airport. And I’m going to need you to stop by my place first.

  Chapter 3

  Denzel had made arrangements for Kotler to have access to one of the FBI's forensic labs. It was offered as the best they could manage on short notice, but Kolter was thrilled, and it was actually a good choice. Many of the tools and resources that Kotler would need were common between a forensics lab and the research labs he'd spent time in. But with the FBI's budget and consistent need for improved investigative tools, there were resources here that Kotler could only have dreamt of in an academic setting.

  It was impossible to know for sure what Gail meant with her warning of "consequences." It could be a threat against Kotler personally, or maybe against the people he cared about. Or it could be much more significant in scope.

  Gail had the resources to do something genuinely horrific if she were of a mind. She had once aided Garret Chandler, former COO of Ashton Mink Sound Labs, in a plot that would have endangered millions, mainly as a way to get Kotler involved in this very case. The lines she was willing to cross were as blurry as they come.

  Whatever the mystery was with these three artifacts, Kotler was confident that it wouldn't be the best outcome for Gail to get her hands on what she was after.

  Here in the FBI's forensics lab, Kotler had access to an array of sophisticated analysis and scanning equipment. Here he could put the artifacts through their paces, maybe crack whatever code Gail had handed him. He had some of the best tools on the planet at his disposal. He also had some help from a friend.

  Dr. Liz Ludlum had recently joined Denzel's team, as his Lead Forensic Specialist, only a few months earlier. She'd formerly held the same post and title with the NYPD, but after the events in Central America Agent Denzel had invited her to be a part of the growing Historic Crimes division. Kotler couldn't have been more pleased.

  Liz was brilliant. With a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and a background in Forensic Anthropology, she'd proven to be an invaluable resource in the field. She was equally skilled in the lab. Since coming to work with the FBI, she'd already made significant dents in the caseloads of numerous agents. Denzel was quick to point out to everyone that she was on loan, not a permanent resource for the rest of the department. He had dibs.

  Kotler was happy to be working with her. Maybe a little too happy, if he were honest. He had a great appreciation for brilliant women. He was, he would admit, also quite fond of beautiful women. Liz happened to be both, and Kotler could easily allow himself to be distracted by her presence.

  So far, in all their work together, the matters at hand were enough to keep him focused. There were hints, from time to time, of a mutual attraction. Kotler had so far remained detached, in part out of professionalism but also for more personal reasons.

  For a start, Gail McCarthy—a beautiful and brilliant woman herself—had given him enough of a blow that he’d withdrawn from the romantic landscape for a time. Betrayal can have that effect.

  Even before Gail, however, Kotler had been involved with Dr. Evelyn Horelica, who had eventually grown impatient with his boyish pursuit of a deeper understanding of humanity, and his admittedly aloof nature when it came to personal relationships. The final straw in that relationship, however, had been her abduction at the hands of a revenge-crazed billionaire. Abduction tended to be a romance ender. Or so Kotler surmised.

  Kotler wasn't exactly celibate by nature. Quite the opposite, actually. Of late, however, he was having a string of incredibly bad luck on the dating front. The sort of bad luck that led to abduction and torture and running for his life while dodging a hail of gunfire.

  For the moment, he’d stick to staying focused on the work. One harrowing challenge at a time.

  Denzel entered the lab and stood over Kotler as he was peering through yet another microscope at yet another cross-section of the thin, brass plate, puzzling over the etchings once again.

  “Any luc
k?” Denzel asked.

  “No,” Kotler said, not looking up. “Still no.”

  Denzel nodded. “Sorry. It’s just that we got that ping, and we’re watching the guy, but he hasn’t made any moves yet. He accessed all the databases you said he would, pulled all the information you said he’d pull, but he’s just sitting on it.”

  Kotler finally looked up and rubbed his eyes. He took a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh. "I really don't know what to expect from him," he said. "But he has to be Gail's contact."

  “What about these things?” Denzel asked, waving to the table.

  On the workbench before Kotler was a microscope and a rubber mat. Set below the lens was the small brass plate that Kotler had been examining. It was approximately the size of a credit card and had a hole the size of a dime in one corner. Etched around that hole was a series of symbols that Kotler had, at first, thought might be Phoenician.

  That had turned out to be a dead end, however. The markings shared characteristics with Phoenician writing, but they translated as complete gibberish. And there were symbols he didn't recognize and couldn't source. His best guess was that the symbols shared a root source with the Phoenician alphabet. Which, while intriguing from an anthropological standpoint, was not much of a lead.

  On the mat were two other objects that were equally enigmatic. The first was a shaped piece of Iceland spar, or what was often referred to as a Viking sunstone. It was a navigation tool. The Vikings used it to navigate the seas even on cloudy days by holding it up and peering through it to see the position of the sun. This stone was rectangular, coming to pyramidal points on either end. There was a single black mark on one side, to help with sighting. Kotler had studied the sunstone, had scanned it with every conceivable technology, had even bounced light from a variety of sources through it, at a range of intensities. So far it had revealed nothing.

  The final object was the most intriguing to Kotler. It was a compass made of brass and glass, dating perhaps to the early sixteenth century. It was round, approximately the size of Kotler’s palm, and had a nice heft to it. There was an arrow-shaped sighting piece that could be folded up to rise like a fin from the top of the device.

  The most fascinating thing about it, in Kotler’s estimate, was the engraving around its edge.

  Hic sunt dracones

  It was Latin, translating loosely as “Here there be monsters.”

  Kotler had recognized the phrase immediately. He'd seen it on hundreds of ancient maps. It was usually used to denote on a map an unknown and unexplored region of the ocean, as a warning to sailors. "Go lightly, go with caution, unknown dangers here" might have been a fair translation. To the ancient world, the unknown represented the habitat of monsters and demons and all manner of frightening creatures. Entering the unknown required courage, if not blatant insanity.

  The fact that the phrase appeared on a compass was an intriguing enigma. It implied something fascinating, in Kotler's view. Inscribing the phrase on a map would allow a mapmaker to denote a region that might be dangerous or at least unexplored and might best be avoided out of caution. Inscribing it on a compass—a tool used for navigation in both explored and unexplored regions—implied that everywhere was dangerous. As if the entire world presented a threat, that monsters were everywhere.

  The maker of this compass had been afraid of the entire world. A strange position to take, for someone whose work would be used in exploration.

  Kotler nudged the compass with the knuckles of his right hand. “No headway,” he said. “If I didn’t respect these things as historical artifacts, I’d throw them off of the roof.”

  “Not an ideal solution,” Denzel shook his head.

  Kotler chuckled. “No, I guess not. I’m sorry, Roland. I’m stuck. I was really hoping that finding Gail’s inside man would lead us to something that might break this open. Now I’m wondering if she had him trigger that trap on purpose.”

  “You think she knew about it?” Denzel asked. “You said she wouldn’t be able to figure it out.”

  “I said she was monitoring my email and other communications, and that I hoped she wouldn't figure it out. But she's smart. And she has unlimited resources. It's entirely possible she figured it out and saved it for a time when it would give her the best advantage."

  “So, she may have tripped it just to get you back here, and back to work,” Denzel said.

  Kotler nodded. “She had just walked away from me before I checked your text. It’s possible that timing wasn’t an accident.”

  “Yeah, about meeting her without telling me…” Denzel said.

  Kotler held up his hands in surrender. "I've been duly reprimanded, remember? Repeatedly."

  "Because it bears repeating," Denzel replied. "Don't let that happen again."

  Though as Kotler was sure Denzel would know, it was of course bound to happen again. Kotler wasn't exactly fond of his every move being monitored. He didn't like it when the FBI did it, and he certainly resented it when it was Gail McCarthy's people.

  Kotler wasn't a part of traditional academia for a reason—he wasn't fond of following rules for rules' sake. He preferred having latitude.

  Of course, that latitude frequently made him vulnerable to setups and traps, so maybe he should rethink his position.

  Was that what happened here, then? Had Gail asked her man to access those databases just to light a fire under Kotler, to get him back to Manhattan? He wouldn't put it past her, but he still held out hope that it was a slip. They could use a break in this case.

  Liz came into the lab carrying an iPad. She slid it in front of Kotler. “This is the spectral analysis you asked for, on all three objects. There are anomalies, but nothing I’d get all that excited about.”

  Kotler took the tablet and looked over the results, his eyes a bit bleary and aching. He’d been at this for hours without a break. He’d had more coffee than was likely to be a healthy choice for anyone, even a coffee aficionado such as himself.

  He was feeling frayed and exhausted and even a bit anxious. Whatever Gail was planning, it wouldn’t be good. If Kotler couldn’t solve this before the end of the week, those “consequences” she mentioned could make things a lot worse.

  He looked over the data on Liz's iPad and shook his head. The anomalies in the spectral analysis could just as easily be chalked up to the age of the items, as to anything else. There wasn't much to go by there.

  That was depressing. Between Kotler, Liz, and the FBI's lab team, they had looked at these three objects at the deepest levels that modern science would allow, down even to their atomic structure, and they'd found nothing.

  Kotler closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. It wasn't working to relax his growing agitation, but at least he was doing something. He was getting nowhere and had looked as closely as he could manage.

  He opened his eyes.

  “Too close,” he said quietly.

  Denzel had been fumbling with one of the microscopes, looking through it and shifting around as if trying to get a better view of whatever was on the slide. He looked up, lifting his hands away from the instrument. "What's too close?"

  Kotler looked at him, and then up at Liz Ludlum. “We are. We’re looking too closely. We’re looking at these from the perspective of modern science and technology.”

  Liz caught on instantly. "But these are ancient artifacts," she said, nodding. "The people who made these wouldn't even have a concept of subatomic structure or metallurgy. Not at the modern level."

  “How does that help us?” Denzel asked.

  "Context," Kotler said. "It's the one thing that's been missing from the start." He thought for a moment, then lifted the brass plate from the microscope he'd been using. He placed it alongside the sunstone and the compass. He then smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand.

  “We know the purpose of two of these objects,” he said to Denzel and Liz, both of whom were watching him, confused. “In fact, those two serve essentiall
y the same purpose.”

  “Navigation!” Liz said, smiling.

  Kotler nodded and nudged the sunstone closer to the compass. "Both of these were used on sailing vessels, to provide navigation. It's reasonable to assume the brass plate served a similar purpose. I've never encountered anything like it as a navigation tool, but that doesn't mean it wasn't used as one, somehow. I'm no cartographer."

  "So, what does knowing that do for us?" Denzel asked.

  Kotler thought for a moment. “When Gail gave me these artifacts, she said that if I solved this, we’d find her. And then she showed up in San Francisco.”

  “So, no need to find her,” Liz said.

  “Except she reinforced that,” Kotler said. “She stuck to it. Solve this, and we find her.”

  “So, it was a clue?” Denzel asked.

  “A riddle,” Kotler said. “A puzzle.”

  He looked around and spotted the plastic evidence bag that contained the note he'd received back in San Francisco. He put this on the table next to the artifacts. The hidden message Kotler had revealed with lemon juice and a blow dryer was still visible.

  "Gail knew I'd solve this. She could have just had me grabbed off the street and taken me somewhere, but she gave me a trail to follow, and then met me in a specific place."

  “The bookstore,” Denzel said.

  Kotler thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No.” He paused, shook his head again. “Well, yes, the bookstore. But not just any bookstore. Passages.”

  “Does that mean something to you?” Liz asked.

  Kotler nodded, smiling. “Passages. It’s a play on words, of course. Book passages, but also booking passage. As you’d do for the ferry or …”

  “For a ship,” Denzel said.

  Kotler waved at the table. "These things are all navigation tools for a sailing vessel. Well, I'm making an assumption about the brass plate. But I think we're safe with that. We have here a collection of tools for finding our way. And I think these are specific to something. We're just missing one last piece. The context of it."