American Hunting: Starting with Solitary Life in the Wilderness

Chapter 382 The Five-Pointed Star in the Petals

He drew the heavy curtains, plunging the room into darkness. Then, he took a deep breath, and a thought struck him.

The book he had brought out of the lead box in the temple cave, which might contain a shocking secret, appeared silently in his hands.

The book's cover is made of dark brown hard leather, and due to its age, the edges are worn very smooth.

There were no words on it. He carefully tore off the yellowed and brittle oil paper that was wrapped around it.

The pages are printed on thick Bible paper, which has also taken on an old, beige hue due to oxidation.

He opened the book, and a mixture of the sour smell of oxidized old paper fibers, the chemical smell of printing ink, and the faint camphor smell of the preservative wax on the oiled paper that wrapped it hit him.

It was an atmosphere completely isolated from the outside world, belonging only to the 1970s.

Soon, the contents of the book made Lin Yu'an frown instantly.

It was a language that used the Latin alphabet, but the letters were decorated with all sorts of strange punctuation marks (such as , , ).

He couldn't understand a single word.

"Serbian? Croatian?" Based on his knowledge of linguistics, he made a preliminary judgment.

He immediately took out his phone, opened the "photo translation" function of Google Translate, and pointed it at the book title page.

A few seconds later, the translation appeared on the screen: "The Narrative Ballads of Petritch Kalumpu"

Author: Miroslav Krlea
“Kerleza…” Lin Yu’an murmured to himself. After confirming the author and language, a huge problem lay before him.

Eastern European literature, especially the literature of a vanished country like Yugoslavia, happened to be a blind spot in his knowledge.

He knew Pushkin and Tolstoy, but he had almost no information about Krleza.

I entered the name "Miroslav Krlea" into the Google search box.

Instantly, a massive stream of information flooded the screen. He immediately opened the Wikipedia page, quickly browsing the abstracts and keywords.

Within minutes, the outline of a literary giant was clearly established in his mind.

He was the most central and greatest standard-bearer of 20th-century Croatian literature, and his status and influence were roughly equivalent to Lu Xun's in China.

He was a literary giant who enjoyed a high reputation throughout Yugoslavia and even Europe, and was on par with Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić.

Krreza's works are known for their obscurity, passion, and strong expressionism, profoundly revealing and criticizing the hypocrisy of the middle class and the darkness of society.

He was a fighter for ideas, a master of constructing labyrinths with words.

Upon seeing these keywords, Lin Yu'an's expression instantly became extremely serious.

The fact that a top KGB agent would choose the work of a literary giant known for his "obscurity" and "complexity" as a codebook is itself an extremely strong signal!

This shows that the person who created this code possessed extremely high literary skills and was extremely confident.

Therefore, he chose Croatia's hardest "thought head" to guard his darkest secret.

Having acknowledged the importance of the author and the language barrier, a huge and clear problem lay before him.

This book itself is an impregnable fortress built by a language he didn't understand at all and the thoughts of a literary giant he had just met.

“Kerleza…” Lin Yu’an repeated the name he had just learned, his eyes becoming incredibly sharp. “It seems that it is much more troublesome than I imagined.”

But he was not frustrated; instead, he was aroused by an unprecedented competitive spirit.

Because he knew that for encryption at the KGB level, the secret could not possibly be hidden merely in the translation of the language; it must follow some kind of cryptographic rule.

He sat in a comfortable leather chair and began a brainstorming session, which was also incredibly difficult and demanding.

The first round of attempts involved physical screening.

He performed a basic physical check, like a professional cryptanalyst. He carefully examined the edges of the pages; there was no microtext.

The binding and cover were checked, but no hidden items were found. Even the thickness of each page was checked, and no traces of pasting were found.

The conclusion is that, from a physical point of view, this book is just an ordinary, old book.

The second round of attempts was to look for anomaly markers.

Since it is a codebook, there must be some kind of "marker" to indicate the starting point or pattern of encryption.

He began to examine the entire book page by page, extremely carefully, trying to find any non-printed, man-made traces.

It could be an inconspicuous pinhole, a tiny mark made with a pencil, a bend in the corner, or even a drop of ink that is barely noticeable.

An hour passed, and he had practically read the entire book with a magnifying glass.

The conclusion remains the same: nothing was found. The entire book is despairingly clean. Apart from the natural signs of aging left by time, there are no human markings whatsoever.

In the third round, he tried to find patterns in the numbers.

Suspecting that the clues might be hidden in the layout, he began to count the number of words per page and the number of letters per line, trying to find some kind of "numerical anomaly" that did not conform to the usual layout logic.

He even took photos of the entire book with his mobile phone and used OCR to try to analyze whether there were any hidden numerical patterns.

Two hours later, the computer analysis showed that everything was normal.

The layout of this book is that of a normal poetry collection, with no difference from the historically published versions. You can even buy the same used book online.

Time passed by minute by minute.

The room was unusually quiet, with only Raven's steady breathing and the faint sound of the central air conditioning.

Lin Yu'an felt as if she had fallen into a huge mental maze. This collection of Croatian poems was like a sleeping beauty under a spell.

He didn't even know her name, let alone find the kiss that had awakened her.

Lin Yu'an slammed the book shut with a "bang" in frustration, got up and walked to the window, pulling open a crack in the curtains. Sunlight streamed in, causing him to squint.

Downstairs, by the pool, hot bikini-clad women are laughing and playing; in the distance, white yachts are tracing graceful arcs across the sea.

This is a world brimming with sunshine, wealth, and hormones, which stands in stark contrast to the book of poems in his hands, a collection born from the shadow of the Cold War and exuding an aura of death.

"There must be something I've overlooked... there must be..."

He returned to his desk and picked up the book of poems again.

This time, he didn't try those complex cryptographic theories again, but instead focused all his attention on the only anomaly outside of the book itself.

The "Operation Swift" plan that he left in the lead box!

"Why? Why put a top-secret operation plan together with a book of poems?"

He began to force himself to think like that KGB agent: if the plan and the poetry collection were two completely unrelated things, they should be stored separately for the sake of secrecy.

The fact that they were placed in the same lead box can only mean one thing—there is some necessary connection between them!
His brain began to work at lightning speed.

"Could it be... that the key isn't in the poetry collection at all, but in the project plan I didn't take with me?"

"For example, a specific page number in the plan, a military serial number, or even a variation of the issuance date '1973'?"

"Or perhaps, the word 'swift' is the key?"

Countless thoughts flashed through his mind, but he quickly rejected them one by one.

He finally turned his gaze back to the book's title page. There he remembered his initial, sole discovery.

That extremely inconspicuous flower sketch, hand-drawn with a black pen, has faded somewhat.

"Six petals, slender in shape... the stamen is a five-pointed star..."

After ruling out all other possibilities, this single, man-made trace once again became his only hope.

He took another picture of the pattern with his phone and began a new, more in-depth search.

This time, all my energy was focused on identifying this mysterious flower.

He first precisely narrowed down his search to the region most relevant to the book's background—Eastern Europe.

He opened Google Image Search and began systematically searching and comparing flowers from all Eastern European countries, as well as plants that have special cultural symbolism.

From the pansies of Poland and the roses of the Czech Republic, to the tulips of Hungary, and then to the jacarandas of Serbia and the irises of Croatia...

He compared the simple sketch with hundreds of real flower photos one by one.

The flowers of the genus Lily are somewhat similar in shape to the petals in a simple line drawing, but there are always differences in the details.

Most importantly, the "five-pointed star" symbol located in the stamen of the flower cannot be found in any real plant.

One hour... two hours...

The sky outside the window had gradually changed from the golden hue of the afternoon to the crimson of evening. Raven turned over in her bedroom and murmured softly in her sleep.

In front of Lin Yu'an were still countless flower pictures that he had marked as "excluded".

I feel like my eyes are hallucinating; everything looks like it's covered in flower petals and five-pointed stars.

He also found dozens of images of Yugoslavia's national flower and coat of arms, as well as countless analyses of Krleza's life and works. He even found some declassified documents about the struggle between the UDBA (Yugoslav intelligence agency) and the KGB in the Balkans.

However, no information effectively connects "Krleza's poetry collection," "a lily with a five-pointed star," and "the code of the book pages."

What he initially thought was a promising path ultimately led him into a dead end.

In the end, he gained nothing.

Lin Yu'an leaned back in his chair, feeling a deep sense of frustration.

This was the first time since his rebirth that he had felt so powerless in a purely intellectual duel.

He was not facing an enemy he could crush with force, but a ghost left behind by a top cryptography master from fifty years ago.

That KGB agent used a book he couldn't understand at all and a seemingly simple but inexplicable pattern to build a maze that he couldn't yet overcome.

He gazed at the solitary, mysterious flower on the title page and murmured to himself, "What... exactly are you?"

We know the answer is right there, but we're missing the last, most crucial key.

This key obviously cannot be easily found in a Miami hotel room using only a mobile phone and internet access.

He wearily rubbed his sore eyes, took the Croatian poetry collection under the lamp, and tried to find the last possible clue from a physical perspective.

He pulled the lamp arm down to its lowest position, allowing the light to sweep across the surface of the title page at a very small angle, almost parallel to the surface.

Under this type of illumination, known as "grazing light," any extremely minute bumps, scratches, or fiber differences on the paper will be magnified to the point of being visible to the naked eye due to the shadows cast.

This is a classic method used by all document examination experts to look for signs of forgery or erased writing.

Lin Yu'an's gaze was like the most precise microscope, scanning the yellowed title page inch by inch.

Most of the area was flat and natural, but when the light swept across the area below the flower pattern drawn with black pen ink, Lin Yu'an's breath caught in his throat!
He saw it!

In that area, some extremely faint, irregular shadows appeared!
Those were indentations finer than a hair, which, under the grazing light, resembled craters on the surface of the moon, creating a contrast of light and shadow!
These dents are definitely not defects in the paper itself. Their direction, turns, and arrangement show clear patterns of human writing!

Lin Yu'an's heart skipped a beat! He instantly understood what it was—it was a typical "embossed handwriting"!
Someone once used the title page of this book as a backing board and wrote something on a piece of paper on it!
The paper may have been destroyed after it was written, but the pressure of writing remains on that paper forever, like a ghost!

Under normal top lighting, these marks will completely disappear into the texture of the paper itself and will be undetectable!
A surge of electric excitement struck him! He immediately took out his camera, turned on the "macro shooting" mode, and turned his phone's flashlight to its brightest setting to provide supplemental lighting from the side.

Under the high-definition image magnified several times by the camera, by constantly adjusting the angle and contrast of the light, those ghostly characters finally revealed their blurry but discernible outlines!
That wasn't Croatian, nor Russian. Lin Yu'an held his breath, relying on his knowledge of the alphabets of various languages ​​to identify each letter one by one.

“V ergissmeinnich t.”

He entered the entire string of letters into Google Translate on his phone.

He was stunned when the translation results appeared.

Language: German.

Meaning: Forget me.

"Forget-me-not..."

An unprecedented sense of immense chaos enveloped his mind like a thick fog!
Why German?

Why forget-me-not?
He decided to start with the most basic process of elimination, opening Google Image Search and entering the keyword: "forget-me-not".

Countless images immediately appeared on the screen, depicting a small, usually blue or pink flower composed of five round petals that looked cute and delicate.

Lin Yu'an carefully compared these photos with the hand-drawn "lily-like" flower with six slender petals on the title page of the poetry collection.

Although both convey a hint of melancholy, their forms are completely different. The flower on the title page is definitely not a "forget-me-not" in the botanical sense!
This new discovery, instead of bringing Lin Yu'an a sense of enlightenment, opened a door to an even deeper and more complex labyrinth!
He felt as if he had been thrown into a blender made up of countless chaotic clues, and for the first time, his proud brain was showing signs of "overload".

He stood up and paced restlessly around the room, trying to piece together these seemingly unrelated fragments into a complete picture.

Soviet KGB, nuclear weapons. Project Swifts (1973), Croatian poet Miroslav Krlezza, mysterious hand-drawn flowers, the German word "Forget-Me-Not".
These words, like countless frenzied bats, were colliding wildly in his mind. What was the connection between them?
Why would a KGB agent leave a German phrase "Forget-me-not" on a book of Croatian poetry? Was he a double agent?
This is like a puzzle set up by a madman!

Each clue points in a completely different direction, and there are huge contradictions and gaps between them.

"This is a complete mess..." he muttered under his breath, feeling a deep sense of exhaustion and frustration.

He even had an absurd thought: Could this all be a hoax? A joke deliberately set up by that KGB agent that could never be solved?
No.

Lin Yu'an quickly dismissed the idea; the KGB never joked. Every seemingly unintentional detail inevitably points to a logical endpoint.

The confusion stems from the fact that he hasn't yet found the "thread" that can string all the pearls together.

He forced himself back to his desk, took a deep breath, and cleared his mind of all the chaos. The more chaotic things were, the more he needed to return to the most basic starting point.

He wrote those key words on a hotel notepad:

南斯拉夫
德国
Do not forget me

Bosnian lily
“Forget the KGB, forget the nuclear bombs, forget the poetry collections…” he told himself, “First, figure out what exactly happened between these words.”

He focused all his attention on that most crucial moment in time—World War II.

During World War II, Yugoslavia was occupied and dismembered by the Axis powers (mainly Nazi Germany and Italy). Tito led the Yugoslav partisans in a hard-fought and arduous resistance war!
Krlezza himself was persecuted by the Nazis multiple times because of his left-wing ideas.

"Forget-me-not"... "Don't forget me"...

Could this word not refer to the flower called forget-me-not? Is it a metaphor? An unknown code or symbol associated with World War II Germany and the Yugoslav resistance movement?
Lin Yu'an's thinking completely transcended the realm of botany and entered the more obscure field of military history.

He opened Google and entered a more targeted search term: "Yugoslavian lilies symbolize military strength".

After poring over a lot of useless information about medieval heraldry and modern national emblems, a post from a military history enthusiast forum suddenly caught his attention.

The post is titled: "Seeking high-resolution images: the flag of the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army 'Storm' Brigade."

“Stormbringer…” Lin Yu’an’s eyes lit up! He immediately clicked on the post.

In the post, a netizen replied and uploaded a high-resolution color photo taken from the Sarajevo Military Museum, full of vibrant colors.

The photo shows a military flag, carefully preserved in a glass display case, its edges slightly damaged but still bright red.

The flag was made of heavy velvet and covered with indelible traces of war.

At the very center of the flag, a pattern embroidered with thick gold thread using an extremely exquisite embroidery technique instantly captured Lin Yu'an's entire attention!
That was a blooming Bosnian lily!
It is no longer just a few simple lines on the title page; the lily on the flag has petals that are outstretched and full of power, with golden tassels embroidered along the edges.

The stamen is a full and sharp five-pointed star composed of five golden rays!
The entire design is imbued with a Slavic sense of heroism and a strong socialist spirit, despite the more refined and complex embroidery techniques.

However, the outline of its composition and the elegant yet slightly aggressive "charm" are almost identical to the simple line drawing with just a few strokes on the title page of the poetry collection!
At this moment, Lin Yu'an finally equated that abstract flower symbol with a military unit with a specific unit number!
However, in the instant when I could see the flag and the flower clearly...

Lin Yu'an's brain buzzed, and an indescribable sense of familiarity, like a flood bursting its banks, instantly overwhelmed him!

It's a very strange feeling, like in real life, you have a name or word that you are very familiar with, it's on the tip of your tongue, you can even feel its vague syllables and shape, but you just can't say it or remember it no matter what.

He was certain he had seen this flower before! He must have seen it somewhere else! This was definitely not the first time he had seen it!

Lin Yu'an forcibly suppressed the strange tremor in his heart. He knew that now was not the time to delve into his memories.

He immediately began the next, decisive step in information mining, focusing on this significant discovery, the "Storm Brigade."

He conducted a final cross-search with the Stormbringer, along with another crucial clue he had previously discovered—the German phrase “Vergiss mein nicht”.

This time, on the third page of Google search results, there was a link pointing to an online oral history archive of the British World War II Veterans Association.

The link is titled: "Snowy Mountains and Secret Codes: Excerpts from the Memoirs of Former MI6 Liaison Officer Captain Norman Davis".

Lin Yu'an's heart began to race. He clicked on the link and quickly browsed the old liaison officer's rambling recollections of the arduous years in the Bosnian mountains.

When the article reached the section about "Operation Vault," he precisely captured that decisive passage:

"The rendezvous with the Storm Brigade was always nerve-wracking. German infiltration was everywhere, and we had to use a very special double password."

I need to ask in German: 'Vergiss mein nicht?' (Forget-me-not?), and their people must answer with a specific line from Kröller's poem.

At the same time, as a visual confirmation, they would paint their unit's emblem, that beautiful golden lily, on any makeshift items…

—I don't know!

—Bosnian lily!
—A line from Krleza's poem!
At this moment, all the fragments, under the solid and progressive chain of evidence, finally pieced together into a complete and magnificent picture that spans decades of historical events!

Looking at the pattern on the title page of the poetry collection in his hand, Lin Yu'an knew that he had finally found the truth.

That KGB agent was not just a Soviet spy; he/she was very likely... an elite member of the Storm Brigade, the Yugoslav partisan unit that survived the war!

That flower is a code!
That German phrase was a password!

And this collection of poems by Krleza contains the answer to that "specific line of poetry" that needs to be answered!
But another question arose in Lin Yu-an's mind: why would a rendezvous token from 1944 be connected to a KGB document from 1973?

But at this moment, the immense excitement of solving the mystery temporarily overshadowed his doubts.

He was only one step away from the ultimate secret...

Now all he needs to do is find this pattern he has seen before in his memory palace!

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

(That pattern, can you guess where you've seen it before? I think you should be able to guess.)
(End of this chapter)