Free The Hunters by Chris Kuzneski Page A

note associated with two young girls who had recently been kidnapped, but they couldn’t make head or tail of the language used. He knew I had a knack for that sort of thing and thought I might be able to help.’
    Garcia wrinkled his brow. ‘He asked you to translate? Why didn’t they use computers? Just scan it in and
presto
! The program spits out the translation.’
    ‘No,’ Jasmine assured him. ‘A computer translation wouldn’t have worked. The document was written in five distinctly different languages. Not colloquial slang or dialects, but languages that grew from entirely separate roots. What’s more, their syntaxes were blended.’
    ‘I don’t follow,’ McNutt said.
    ‘The conjugations and grammatical structure were a combination of the various languages represented. Greek words were rearranged into Gaelic formations. Sometimes the sentences themselves were inconsistent. Phrases that began in Italian ended in Swedish. It even included defunct language concepts that have long since been lost to cultural evolution.’
    ‘Like Middle English?’ Sarah asked.
    ‘No, like ancient
Andorran
,’ Jasmine replied. ‘Middle English is easy. Anyone who’s ever studied Chaucer has dealt with that. But some of the words in the document were taken from languages that were only briefly spoken in their prime. Today, they have been absorbed into neighboring languages or discontinued altogether. No one studies them, because understanding them doesn’t provide any more information than understanding the languages they became. The history of these places has been passed down in much more accessible documentation.’
    Jasmine caught herself. She could go on with the explanation, but she doubted that the others shared her fervor.
    ‘No one studies them, but you do?’ Cobb asked. His tone stressed curiosity, not ridicule.
    Jasmine shrugged. ‘What can I say? I like history, and words, and the history of words.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ Cobb replied. ‘So, what did the document say?’
    Jasmine’s eyes lit up. ‘It revealed the supposed hiding place of the girls. When I offered my translation to my editor, I insisted that he introduce me to his connection, in case there were follow-up questions that needed immediate answers. At the time, I thought two young lives hung in the balance, so he arranged a meeting.’
    Every eye in the room turned toward Papineau.
    He met their collective gaze with a guilty smirk.
    Sarah glanced back at Jasmine. ‘You played right into his hands.’
    ‘My driver transported Ms Park to this location,’ Papineau explained. Before Cobb could challenge his statement, Papineau anticipated his question. ‘No, Jack, her editor has no idea concerning our whereabouts. His instructions were handed down from his superiors, namely, the newspaper’s board of directors.’
    ‘Namely,
you
,’ Cobb surmised.
    Papineau smiled.
    ‘You control a newspaper?’ McNutt asked.
    ‘I control several newspapers,’ Papineau answered. ‘Among other things.’ He turned to address Cobb. ‘If her editor is questioned, he is simply to respond that Jasmine is “on assignment”.’
    ‘Must be nice to control the flow of information and have it reported to you before it’s ever made public,’ Cobb said.
    ‘Quite,’ Papineau replied.
    Cobb and Papineau stared at one another, each trying to better understand the man across the table. The moment lingered a little too long.
    To break the tension, McNutt pointed at Garcia’s shirt. Outside in the sunlight, it had appeared to be a normal T-shirt with an ironed-on Wi-Fi symbol. But now that they were indoors, McNutt realized that the decal was actually animated.
    ‘What’s up with your shirt?’ he demanded.
    Garcia glanced down at the symbol. At that moment, it was glowing green. ‘My shirt is actually a battery-powered Wi-Fi detector. Depending on the signal strength, the number of bars that are glowing on my chest will fluctuate between one and four.