第6章 The Second Reading

Nikolai did not sleep that night. He sat in the small cabin that served as his office and his quarters, the brass cylinder resting on the desk in front of him, and he tried to make sense of what he had seen. The map had been clear — extraordinarily clear, as if Azarov had known that whoever found it would need every advantage he could give them. But the red marker, the location that was not on any modern chart, meant nothing to him. He had spent twelve years studying the Black Sea floor, and he had never seen that location marked on any survey, any sonar map, any geological report. The cipher had mentioned a final hour. What did that mean? Was it a time of day? A tidal condition? Or was it something else entirely — a metaphor, perhaps, or a reference to some event that had not yet happened? He had copied the map as carefully as he could, drawing every line and curve from memory, but he knew that memory was an imperfect instrument. The map had been there for three hundred years, and it had chosen him to read it. He could not afford to get it wrong. At 02:00, there was a knock at his cabin door. He looked up from his notebook, surprised. The Akademiya was quiet at this hour, the crew spread out in their bunks, the ship rolling gently on the swell. No one visited at this hour unless it was important. Come in, he said. The door opened, and Volkov stepped inside. He was wearing a clean shirt and trousers, his dark hair still damp at the temples. He carried a bottle of something clear and a pair of glasses, and he set them both on the desk without asking permission. I could not sleep either, he said. I thought you might want company. Nikolai studied him for a moment. There was something in Volkov's expression that was not quite hostile, not quite friendly, but somewhere in between — the look of a man who had spent too long alone with his thoughts and was ready to talk to someone, anyone, about the thing that had occupied them both. You found the cipher first, Nikolai said. It was not a question. I found fragments of it. Pieces. I spent five years trying to put them together, and I could not. The code was designed to resist exactly that kind of approach. It required someone who understood the tidal component, who could read the sea as well as the text. Volkov picked up the brass cylinder and turned it over in his hands. You have what I did not. I am not angry about that. I am relieved. Relieved? There are things in this world that are too dangerous for one person to know. Things that are too dangerous for one person to find. I have been carrying the knowledge of the Azarov Map for seven years, Nikolai. Seven years of knowing that it exists and being unable to access it. Seven years of watching every low tide in the Black Sea, hoping that someone — anyone — would come along who could read it. Nikolai set down his pen. And now you have found that someone. Now I have found you, Volkov agreed. And I am asking you to let me help you. The request hung in the air between them, fragile and dangerous. Nikolai wanted to refuse. He wanted to tell Volkov to go back to his ship and stay there, to leave him alone with his discovery and his secrets. But he also knew that Volkov was right — the map was too important, too complex, too dangerous to be studied by one man alone. And Volkov, for all his flaws and his history, was the best archaeologist in the Black Sea, the only man whose knowledge of the region matched Nikolai's own. What do you know? Nikolai asked. Volkov sat down in the chair across from the desk and poured two fingers of whatever clear liquid he had brought into a glass. He offered it to Nikolai, who declined. I know that the Azarov Map does not merely show the location of a treasure. It shows the location of something that Lev Azarov believed was too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands. He encoded the map in such a way that it could only be read at low tide, at a specific location, by someone who understood the relationship between the tide and the coordinates. And he buried the treasure in a place that could only be reached at low tide, in a wreck that only appeared when the sea was low enough to see it. The final hour, Nikolai said. Yes. The final hour. I believe it refers to a specific tidal condition — a spring tide, perhaps, or a neap tide, or some combination of lunar and solar alignment that creates a window of opportunity that opens only once every certain number of years. Nikolai looked at the brass cylinder, at the faint grooves that held the map within them. How many years? Volkov set his glass down and met Nikolai's eyes. Three hundred and seventeen years. The cipher was written in 1762. The next window that matches the description opens in 2079. But there is something else — something Azarov did not include in the cipher, something he kept for himself. What is it? I do not know. But I think it is in the wreck. The Svetlana was not merely a carrier. It was a vault. And I think the vault is still sealed. Nikolai felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the cabin. The Svetlana had sunk in 1762, and its wreck had been sitting on the Black Sea floor for three hundred and sixty-three years. If there was something inside it that had been designed to remain sealed, then opening it could be the most dangerous thing either of them had ever done. We go back down tomorrow, he said. When the tide is right. Yes, Volkov agreed. We go back down tomorrow.