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“Please Have you seen this before?”

“I have,” he said, setting down the pot “Thirty-five years ago when I was serving with an admiral who had once been based in India He was a collector of rare artifacts from the subcontinent, and this sye medal that he kept in a case I cleaned it every week for two years”

“Do you knohat it means?” Eric asked

“The admiral told me it represented the Nine Unknown Men He was fascinated with Indian military history, so I heard quite a lot about them from him”

“Who are they?” Juan asked

“I believe ere they would be the more appropriate question,” Maurice said “They haven’t existed for two thousand years, if they ever existed at all”

“It’s a myth?” Juan would have motioned for Maurice to sit with them, but he knew the steould never accept the offer

Maurice nodded “From the time of Ashoka Circa 261 BCE, if I’m not mistaken He was an e the deadliest war in history at that time Over two hundred thousand casualties The bloodshed was so terrible that Ashoka abandoned his warlike ways and converted the entire country to Buddhis his laws, and many of them can still be seen to this day In fact, his influence continues to be so great that his chakra sy”

Eric typed on his coe of the chakra, which was a wheel with twenty-four spokes

“That’s not the symbol Lyla saw,” Juan said “There’s no swastika, and her wheel only had nine spokes, I’ to represent the Nine Unknown Men” He looked at Maurice “Hoere they connected to Ashoka?”

“According to legend, the Eht and was afraid that the knowledge of the world at that tile man So he ordered his brother to find nine coifted each of thee in the sciences They were to protect that knowledge with their lives, so that no human would use that power to conquer the world”

Juan sat back and ran his fingers through his hair Maurice’s description of the responsibility held by the Nine Unknown Men was the exact opposite of what Lyla had said was the purpose of Project C An artificial intelligence—a font of knowledge—that could let someone rule the world

“Could this group of e over the centuries?” he mused

“There are certainly conspiracy theories that suspect this cabal could still exist,” Maurice said “But ht it made a wonderful story”

He picked up the tray “If there’s nothing else, Captain, I shall return t