always been so successful at covering up the incident, I didn’t think anyone ever would.”
“I don’t think that the US government is behind the attack.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. Any time someone has gotten close to revealing the truth about the Roswell incident, the US has hidden the evidence and labeled the person a nut or worse. Mac Brazel — remember the foreman of the ranch in Roswell? — he got the worst of it.”
Until the events in Queenstown, Jess had never given much thought to Roswell except when Fay would retell the story about the alien or her trips to Peru to decipher the engraving’s clues. Jess would listen politely because she knew it was important to her grandmother, but it wasn’t something she took seriously. As long as the travel kept Fay busy and happy after her grandfather’s death, that’s all Jess cared about. Now she wished she’d paid more attention.
“I didn’t tell you this morning,” she said, “but I stayed up last night researching the Roswell incident. Did you know there was a book out recently about Area 51? The author claimed a source told her that Stalin created child- sized people with grotesque features. They were sent over to the US in a top-secret Soviet airplane to crash and cause hysteria in the populace.”
‘That sounds more ridiculous than an alien spacecraft landing.”
“I know. It sounds insane, but we just heard that the men who attacked you killed five Russians. Could there be some link between Roswell and the Soviets?”
“But I saw the alien with my own eyes!”
“Maybe you were supposed to think it was an alien.”
“Well, it wasn’t child-sized, I can tell you that for sure. It picked me up and put me on Bandit like I weighed nothing.”
“Even outlandish stories have a kernel of truth to them. What if the Russians are involved? We won’t know until we figure out what that piece of wood from Roswell means and why it depicts the same figures found in the Nazca lines. And I think the key is what the creature told you. Can you repeat it?”
“
Jess opened her cell phone and dialed a number in her contact list.
“Who are you calling?” Fay said.
“Michael Silverman. He’s a professor of Russian at the University of Auckland, and a well-known authority on its different dialects. I confer with him from time to time when I need something translated.”
He answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Mike, it’s Jess McBride.”
“Hey! How’s my favorite codebreaker?”
“I’m fine. Listen, I don’t have much time and I need to ask you a favor.”
“Find another Russian virus on your system?”
“No, but I do need something translated.” Jess put the phone on speaker. “Mike, I’ve got you on the line with my grandmother, Fay Turia.”
“The one who does all the adventures around the world?”
“The same.”
“Hi, Fay. Jess talks about you every time she calls.”
Fay smiled. She leaned over and talked loudly into the phone. “Nice to talk to you, Michael.”
“So what do you need translated?”
Jess nodded for Fay to speak. “
“Say that again?”
Fay repeated it, and they heard typing. The phone went silent for a minute.
“Mike, you still there?” Jess said.
“I’m here. You sure that’s Russian?”
“That’s what we were hoping you could tell us.”
“Well, the pronunciation is way off if it is. I parsed the sentence into its syllabic components. The only part of it that could be remotely Russian is
“So if it’s Russian, it means ‘
“The last part might be a single word. Zaynobium. Don’t ask me what it means. I just tried plugging several different spellings of it into Google and got nothing except a link to a video of your grandmother.”
The word was meaningless to Jess. She looked at Fay, who shrugged back at her.
“What about the first part?” Jess asked.
“That’s interesting. The first thing that popped into my head was a slightly different pronunciation. Rapa Nui.”
“As in Easter Island?” Fay said, her eyes shining with revelation.
“It’s just a guess,” Silverman said. “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.
“No, Mike,” Jess said. “You’ve been very helpful. Thanks.” They said goodbye and hung up.
Jess was mesmerized by the chain of events. A supposed alien crash-lands at Roswell, hands Fay a wooden engraving showing figures from the Nazca lines, and utters a phrase implying that the map on the other side depicts Easter Island.
“What do you think Zaynobium is?” Fay said, but Jess couldn’t even hazard a guess.
Fay thought about it for a moment and then bounced in her seat with excitement. “Maybe that’s the alien home planet!” She took the wooden tablet out of her bag and looked at it again with new eyes.
“Let’s talk about it over lunch.” Jess moved to get out of the car, but Fay put her hand out to stop her.
“Where are you going?”
“To that restaurant.”
“But we have to find Tyler and tell him what we found out.”
“Nana, you need to eat.”
“I can eat later. Do you realize this is what I’ve been searching for the past five years? Rapa Nui could be the missing piece of the puzzle!”
“But how could Easter Island be linked to both Roswell and the Nazca lines?”
“Some anthropologists think the Nazca people could have migrated from South America to Polynesia.” Fay removed the ancient engraving from her bag and reverently ran her fingers over the grooves etched into the wood. “The person who made this map might be a descendant of those voyagers. If he left clues to the lines’ true purpose, it would mean that somewhere on Easter Island lies the answer to one of the world’s greatest mysteries.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Tyler and Grant had spent the last hour seated at a conference table, reciting to Morgan, Vince, and Kessler the sequence of events over the past two days that led them here. They included everything, including the cryptic items that Nadia Bedova asked about outside the warehouse.
“Do you know what Bedova meant by Icarus?” Morgan asked.
Tyler knew the myth to which it referred: the boy who escaped Crete only to fly too close to the sun, which melted his waxen wings and caused him to fall to his death. “Sounded like a code name to me,” he said. “Maybe it’s a Russian spy.”
“Or a secret project,” Grant said.
“And you don’t know what’s happening on July twenty-fifth?” Vince said. His eyes had flinched noticeably when Tyler had told them that part. It obviously struck a nerve.
“No idea,” Tyler said.
“What about Wisconsin Avenue or the Baja cartel?”
Tyler shook his head. “Perhaps if you shared some information about the Killswitch, we could be of help.”
