Read Icefall (Dane Maddock Adventures) for Free Online

eyes. Dane thought the man need not bother. The place was packed, mostly with young people overindulging in ale and holiday cheer, and no one was paying them a bit of attention.
    When Otto ’ s eyes fell on the three hares, he gaped. He turned it in his hands, gazing at the ancient symbol. Apparently satisfied there was nothing more to see there, he turned it over. “ Latin? ” he asked as he once again turned the disc, his eyes following the writing that spiraled in toward the center.
    “ That ’ s what we thought. ” Jade sounded annoyed. “ But nothing translates, at least not on any of the websites I tried. ” She shrugged and made an apologetic face. “ My specialty is the native tribes of the southwestern United States, and I ’ ve branched out into eastern Asia. My knowledge of this part of the world is comparatively small. ”
    “ I think, ” Otto said, a ghost of a grin materializing on his face, “ that it is Latin, but in a cipher. ”
    Now it was Dane ’ s turn to grin. He had suspected the same thing and had sent photographs of the disc to his friend Jimmy Letson, an accomplished hacker and a computer whiz of the first order. Jimmy had replied with a text that read, I do have a life, you know , but if Dane knew Jimmy, he was already hard at work cracking the code. Like Dane and Bones, the man relished a challenge, though his specialty was of the cyber realm rather than the archaeological.
    “ Any idea what kind of cipher it might be? ” Dane asked Otto, who was fixated on the text.
    “ I cannot say at first glance, ” he mumbled. “ The Caesar shift cipher was commonly used in the church. One simply chooses a number to shift the letters, either to the right or to the left. A shift of one to the right and the letter ‘ A ’ becomes ‘ B ’ and so on. It is simple enough for a priest who was not a cryptographer to use, but complicated enough to fool the average person. ”
    “ Could the average person even read back then? ” Angel asked.
    “ We do not, of course, know the time period when this cipher was written, if that is indeed what it is . I f it is more than a few centuries old, you are certainly correct, particularly for a message in Latin. ”
    “ Any chance it ’ s a fake? ” Angel asked.
    Otto tilted his hand back-and-forth. “ It is possible, but the temple and the Madonna suggest otherwise. ”
    Dane nodded. It was the same conclusion they had drawn. He was looking around for a server from whom to order another round of Kolsch when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. It was Jimmy.
    “ W hy don ’ t you give me something that requires neurons next time, like a ten-piece kindergarten puzzle? ”
    “ I take it you ’ ve deciphered our cipher. ” At those words, all eyes at the table turned to Dane.
    “ If you can call it that. ” Jimmy was clearly disappointed at the lack of challenge posed by the text on the disc. “ It was one of the most common ciphers ever. ”
    “ The Caesar shift? ” Dane asked. Relishing Jimmy ’ s sudden silence, he caught the eye of an attractive blonde waitress and signaled for five more drinks. S he nodded and gave him a wink tha t did not escape Jade ’ s notice. She arched an eyebrow at him, but then smiled.
    “ You ’ re smarter than you look, Maddock, ” Jimmy finally said, sounding even more disappointed. “ Want to take a guess at the key? ”
    “ The what? ”
    “ The number of the shift. How many letters over you count when substituting the new letter. ” A bit of Jimmy ’ s cockiness was returning.
    Dane thought immediately of the Wise Men. “ Three. ”
    “ All right, Carnac, which direction? ”
    Dane decided not to spoil all of Jimmy ’ s fun. “ No idea. ”
    “ The right. You should have known that. This is more of that ancient church crap. Right hand of God. Left hand is unclean... ”
    “ True. I ’ m a little distracted right now. I ’ m sitting in a pub in Cologne, downing a few brews with a couple of