“You recognize the writing?” Gray asked her.
“I do. So would my brother Igor.” She lifted a hand and made the sign of the cross in the memory of Monsignor Borrelli. “As part of our studies to become archivists, we were exposed to all forms of Russian script.”
“This is Russian?” Monk asked. “But it doesn’t look anything like Cyrillic.”
“It’s not,” Anna said. “It’s Glagolitic, the oldest known Slavic alphabet, created sometime in the ninth century. It was eventually supplanted by Cyrillic. Though, many of Russia’s oldest religious texts can still be found written in Glagolitic.”
“Can you translate these glyphs, Sister Anna?” Bailey asked, half breathless. “Maybe they spell out the name of a church or structure.”
“I should be able to, but from the little that I was able to discern earlier, I think they’re mostlynumbers, not letters.”
Jason remembered her consulting with the bishop a moment ago.
Anna continued, “During the reign of Peter I—Peter the Great—Russia changed from Cyrillic numerals to the more common Arabic numbering system, to match the Europeans.” She pointed to the screen. “Centuries prior to that, though, Glagolitic numerals were used.”
Gray nodded. “Then whoever encoded this cipher, they had clearly wanted someone to know Russia’s history, a history even further back than Peter the Great, to solve it.”
Anna lifted her tablet toward Jason. “Mister Carter, if you can help me, I have a conversion chart. We should be able to quickly transpose these Glagolitic symbols into their modern equivalent.”
“Gladly.”
Working together, comparing the chart in hand to the symbols on the screen, Jason replaced each glyph with its corresponding equivalent. He stepped back and allowed everyone to see.
“No wonder the designers hid this work.” Jason smiled. “It is rather simple.”
“Perhaps for you, young man,” Yelagin scolded.
Jason shifted back to his computer. In a corner of the screen, he lined up the Glagolitic symbols, splitting them into two halves, corresponding to the upper and lower hemispheres of the astrolabe—then matched them with their corresponding translation.
He showed his work to Yelagin.
“They’re longitude and latitude designations,” Jason explained. “Nautical positioning like you might work out with a spherical astrolabe.”
Monk’s brow furrowed. “But does it truly mean anything? Did our counterparts in the eighteenth century have accurate enough measurements to be of any use to us today?”
Gray answered, studying his tablet. He must have researched this very question before Jason had finished clarifying matters for the bishop. “Catherine the Great was a great advocate of science and innovation. By her time, latitudes were easily calculated and had been for millennia, all the way back to the ancient Phoenicians. Determining longitudes had been more problematic, requiring precise timepieces. It wasn’t until John Harrison, a clockmaker from Yorkshire, developed the marine chronometer that longitudes could be accurately worked out. That was in the middle of the eighteenth century.”
“So, a new invention of Catherine’s time,” Bailey said, “which, considering the empress’s interest in the sciences, would have garnered her attention.”
“But what about the prime meridian?” Monk asked. “Our longitudes are based on the one passing through Greenwich in London.”
“True,” Gray said. “It became the de facto standard a century later, but it was Harrison who recommended that the meridian be set at the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich—where it remains today.”
“Why there?” Bailey inquired.
Gray smiled. “Harrison invented his chronometer to win a prize of twenty thousand pounds. It was offered by the English Parliament to anyone who could invent a practical method for determining longitudes. Britain’s chief astronomer handed Harrison his prize money—during a ceremony held at the Royal Observatory.”
“And that’s why he picked the location for his meridian,” Monk mumbled.
“It makes sense that Catherine would follow his example,” Anna added. “Besides being an advocate for the advancement of science, she was also an Anglophile. She would’ve found this discovery astounding and would have likely adhered to the standards set by the British inventor.”
Gray turned to the puzzle on the laptop’s screen. “It’s as if Catherine coded her cipher using a combination of science, history, language, and the arts.”
Anna nodded. “A true test of all that she loved. She would want only the most brilliant minds to know the location of the Golden Library.”
Monk sighed. “Then let’s test how brilliantweare.” He pointed to the tablet in Gray’s hand. “Can you pull up the coordinates?”
Gray simply lifted a brow.
