by Nathan Swain
After only a few minutes marooned on the shoulder of the M11, which Samir spent cursing Olivia and the American and fearing the chastisement of his father, Samir heard the warm, familiar purr of a Mercedes-Benz E Class pulling up behind him.
Two men close to Samir’s age got out of the car. Without even a nod of acknowledgment, they began replacing the car’s tires and welding the busted metal siding with the efficiency of a Formula One crew.
They caught Samir by surprise. How did they find me so quickly? But the answer was obvious. His father had embedded a GPS tracking device in his car. At times he suspected that his every move was recorded by a camera inside, broadcasting in real time to his father. Reso is watching. He’s always watching.
For once, Samir was grateful for the attention. A young Arab-looking man marooned on the shoulder of the M11 with two blown-out tires and a bullet hole in the front fender of his car would have quickly brought unwanted attention—if not from the police, then from some local racist blokes eager to hold Samir responsible for the decline of the British Empire.
The car was fixed and in ten minutes they were gone. Samir was free to drive back to Cambridge as if nothing had happened. Part of him wished he could go back to London with the others. He missed the comfort of his family back home. The sense of belonging to a clan, security in numbers.
Despite his superior position to them as the son of Reso Zana, he envied the other young men. They moved as a pack; he was alone. None of them was individually responsible for a mission. Samir’s successes and failures, by comparison, were his alone. Reso made that clear.
With a sigh of resignation, Samir returned to Cambridge. He felt he had no choice. His absence at school would be noticed soon. He imagined that Cambridge police had already begun questioning Allison’s students and colleagues.
But he would not forget the shame he felt that morning, kissing asphalt on the M11 as Olivia drove away with her blonde-haired hero. The American could have killed him. It was a soft-hearted mistake that was typical of Westerners. It was a mistake that he would not make, Samir vowed. He would use his shame to harden himself. He vowed that when he confronted the American again, he would take his life.
Samir expected to fulfill his vow soon. His father warned him that Olivia and the American were too stupid to have learned their lesson, and would attempt to follow the tablet’s clues to their end point—the Garden of Eden. A place his people had guarded for thousands of years.
Even now, Samir’s men were scouring London for Olivia and the American. When they were found, he would kill the American and capture Olivia. He would protect the Garden of Eden. He would honor his family’s sacred duty. He would avenge his shame.
Chapter 44
Samir stood in front of the full-length mirror of his bedroom, fixing the collar of his top-of-the-line black pinstripe suit from Dolce & Gabbana. It was impractical and priced accordingly, and was not at all suitable to wear to Professor Allison’s memorial. But he loved it. It helped him feel insulated from the mediocre Englishness all around him: the cheap wool, corduroy, and tweed.
He ran a comb through his slicked-back hair and fixed his silver cuff links. Yes, he would stand out. But that was the point. Dressed like the privileged well-connected emissary of Arab royalty, he became a stereotype, a known quantity. All of these bright British students were quite sure they knew everything about him there was to know. Reso had told him that would be the case. He wasn’t wrong.
Samir was in fine form at the memorial reception. He mingled with the handful of Arab students at the service. He kept his distance from everyone else. An inspector with the Cambridge police force confirmed in conversation that they suspected Allison simply had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. An anonymous tip fingered someone from the building janitorial staff. The doddering professor was unlucky to be working late and got in the burglar’s way.
Samir prepared to make his exit when a clutch of white undergraduates from his program invited him to The Mill, a pub off of Queen’s Green. It was pointless and stupid for him to go, as he had learned enough about the investigation at the party, but he had become proud of his powers of deception and wanted to test them further.
He had barely needed to make conversation when, by the pub’s close at midnight, a blonde and besotted undergraduate in the Oriental Studies Department began probing his outer ear with her tongue and invited herself to his Cambridge flat.
By the time he was out of the bathroom she had disrobed and was wearing one of his t-shirts. She threw him the end of one of his neck ties and playfully lured him into one of his bedroom closets. She begged him to take her right there, inside his closet. All of the expensive clothes turned her on, she said.
The women in this country were stupid and depraved, Samir believed. But he would oblige her. If she wanted bruises on her back when she woke up, it was fine with him. As it was, he could only enjoy sex at this point if it was violent.
She passed out from the booze before Samir was finished with her. He left her there, lying in the closet.
He continued to lie in bed in the morning, even after he heard the undergraduate fumbling around in his closet. He didn’t bother getting dressed, but only directed her to the nearest bus stop. “Here’s the schedule,” he said, flipping her a paper booklet. He was being a pig, but he didn’t care. That’s the kind of behavior she expected from him. He was playing a role.
He looked at the clock on his side table. It was late morning. Soon he would be called down to London to take Olivia captive and end the life of her hero. Samir had no doubt about this. In London, they had entered a spider’s web.
Chapter 45
It had been thirty-six hours since the discovery of Professor Allison’s corpse. Pearl checked his intelligence networks for chatter about the Flaming Sword and the Garden of Eden. Nothing had surfaced. According to Pearl, it was a little peculiar. Contrary to popular belief, people in the intelligence field were indiscreet and regularly used non-secure channels of communication to brag about their work.
“Either these guys are real pros,” Pearl said, “or too scared to talk.”
“Are we clear to get going then?” Eastgate asked.
“I think so. They’re probably searching for you in London, but it’s a big city with lots of apartments and lots of windows to look through.” Pearl wanted to end on a silver lining, but he couldn’t omit one crucial detail. “Unless of course they have access to CCTV.”
“What’s that?” Eastgate asked.
“The UK’s version of the police state,” Olivia said. “The police have cameras on virtually every street corner of London.”
“It’s probably the greatest intelligence gathering tool since the wiretap,” Pearl said.
“Yes, and a massive violation of our civil liberties. Not as though anyone cares anymore.”
“Huh, I remember when I was liberal,” Pearl said. “I think it was sixth grade.” Pearl threw his head back, snorting and honking in what Olivia inferred was his version of laughter.
Pearl opened another carton of Chinese food. For a skinny man, Pearl’s appetite was extraordinary. Since the moment Olivia had met him, a fork seemed to be going into or coming out of his mouth at all times.
A wad of sticky white rice dropped onto a map of the Middle East that lay on the table before them like a placemat.
“What happens when you stop eating?” Olivia asked. “Do you implode or something?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Pearl responded.
Eastgate cleared his throat. Amusing as it was to listen to Pearl and Olivia exchange jibes, they couldn’t afford any more delays.
“Why don’t we figure out our next move,” Eastgate said, tapping his index finger on the map.”
“Right,” Olivia said, finishing off the remnants of her Diet Coke. She placed the unfolded 3D printout of the tablet on the table. Next to it she placed a printout of the New Oxford translation of Genesis 2.
“We have extraordinary e
vidence of the location of the Garden of Eden,” Olivia said. “Each of these documents is a primary source document, the author of which had little reason to fabricate. Genesis 2, beginning with verse 4, was written in approximately 600 BCE during the exile of the Jewish people in Babylon. It refers to God as the Lord God, or Yahweh Elohim, in contrast with the preceding verses, which refer to God as Elohim only. The effect is to create the image of a God with human characteristics. It also is written in normal prose, while the preceding verses are poetic. Thus, the chronicler of the Garden of Eden purposely sought to ground his story in facts, tied to actual human experience, not the metaphorical poetics of the earlier verses.”
Pearl yawned audibly.
Olivia raised her eyebrows at the interruption, but pressed on. “Keeping with this theme, the chronicler chose to specifically identify where the Garden was, to the ‘east’ of Israel at the spring of a river that went out of Eden and ‘divides and becomes four branches.’ It’s so specific that it suggests an actual location of a real place. Indeed, as many have noted, the Bible’s description of Eden’s location almost reads like directions, inviting the reader to set out to find it.”
Glancing at Olivia, Eastgate continued: “Genesis 2 also specifically names the rivers, identifying one of them as the Euphrates and another as the Hiddekel, which we know to be the Tigris River.”
“Correct.”
“The other two rivers mentioned—the Pishon and the Gihon—are really anyone’s guess,” Eastgate said.
“Technically true, but we’ll get back to that.”
“Guys, I got most of this in Sunday school,” Pearl said, looking at his watch.
Eastgate rolled his eyes. He couldn’t believe Pearl ever went to Sunday school. He was probably the least religious person he knew.
“We next have our miracle tablet,” Olivia said, “which we know people are willing to kill to obtain. But fortunately, we—Professor Allison, in fact—acted swiftly to make a 3D copy of it. We know from carbon dating—also courtesy of Professor Allison—that the tablet dates to approximately 3,800 BCE, at the dawn of Sumerian civilization. It refers to a plain, which in the original Sumerian is identified as edin. The tablet then refers to a water spring that flows through many caves. This could be the same spring that gives birth to the Euphrates and Tigris—two of the four rivers referred to in Genesis 2.”
“What about the other two rivers?” Pearl asked.
“The Euphrates and Tigris have their origin in the mountains in the Anatolia region of Southeast Turkey,” Olivia said, pointing to Pearl’s map. “Both are connected to and fed by several smaller rivers that flow down these mountains southeast into Iraq. Based on all the evidence at hand, it’s possible the two other rivers referenced in Genesis—the Pishon and Gihon—are among these tributaries.”
“That fits the verses in the tablet,” Eastgate said.
Pearl pushed back. “Really, how do you arrive at that conclusion?”
“Caves don’t just sprout up in the middle of an empty field,” Eastgate responded. “They’re in mountains. And the mountains of Anatolia would have been familiar to the exiled Jews who wrote Genesis 2.”
“OK, that’s a colorable argument,” Pearl said, “but hardly a slam dunk.”
“There are few slam dunks in archaeology, Mr. Pearl,” Olivia added. “But in this case, I believe we can give you one that is rather rim-shaking.”
Olivia removed her transcription of Rich’s journal from her rucksack.
“What’s that?” Pearl asked.
“That, Mr. Pearl, is our third source.”
“It’s an account by a British amateur archaeologist,” Eastgate said. “He writes of a journey through caves filled with water leading to a meadow and a tree.”
“A tree, according to Rich’s own sketch, marked by the same, mysterious symbol at the bottom of our tablet.”
“An incredible coincidence, wouldn’t you say?” Eastgate asked.
“I don’t suppose this gentleman archaeologist left a street address.”
“According to his journal, it was a villager who led Rich to the meadow with the tree.”
“And where did he meet this villager?”
“Anatolia, Turkey.”
Chapter 46
Eastgate thought back to a recent news story locating an ancient shipwreck in Anatolia that some theorized could have been Noah’s Ark. In his mind, it didn’t make Olivia’s theory any more plausible. But the “Mysteries of the Bible” conspiracy theorists would love the connection.
“OK, we can get you to Turkey, no problem,” Pearl said. “Ankara is playing nice now. They finally agreed to the deployment of US troops to Iraq through Turkey.”
Eastgate shifted in his seat. “What did you have in mind?’
“Well, I’m guessing you have some buddies in the Army,” Pearl said. “They should be able to arrange passage for you two into Turkey.”
“That’s not going to work, Pearl. The Army, the CIA, they can’t know about this.”
“Nor can the UK,” Olivia said. “If my father finds out he’ll divert a battalion of soldiers to bring me home.”
“Your father is—”
“Dashni Urias Nazarian, UK Foreign Secretary.”
Pearl smiled nervously and adjusted his seat. He was accustomed to strange coincidences in this business, but this was a first for him.
“How about al-Qaeda?” Pearl asked. “They’d be the perfect Trojan Horse. No one would expect it.”
Eastgate was aghast. “Pearl, you’ve got to be kidding. I’m a Captain in the US Special Forces.”
“So?”
Pearl really had allegiance to no one. Especially his own country. “Have you heard of 9/11 Pearl?”
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
Eastgate’s steady gaze reached across the table and placed a mental chokehold on Pearl’s frail neck. By the looks of the vein popping out of Eastgate’s forehead, Pearl realized he had crossed a line. “Politically sensitive, I get it.”
Pushing his plate of food away, Pearl sat with his head tilted upward, as if he was looking at a spider web on the ceiling. But he wasn’t looking at anything. Eastgate surmised that he was visually combing through a database of contacts. He remembered him doing the same thing when the frat was choosing which sororities to invite to mixers.
“I’ve got it. Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad,” Pearl said.
Eastgate nodded. “Interesting choice.”
“I thought so.”
“Their goal is to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy, if I recall. I saw one of their training camps in Afghanistan. Nasty guys.”
“Right.”
“Lead by someone named al-Zarqawi.”
“Right again. They have one of the best intelligence networks in Iraq. The Baathists went to Syria after the US purged them. Al-Tawhid runs their operatives back into Iraq. It might be the perfect cover.”
The strength of these groups was growing fast. Eastgate had heard reports of their numbers multiplying as rumors spread that the US was about to disband the Iraqi military.
But groups like al-Tawhid and al-Qaeda were not just home grown. Their membership was surging with the influx of jihadists and guns for hire from all over the Arab world. Eastgate had seen the same thing happen in Afghanistan.
What was happening in Iraq was even worse. These men became more radicalized with each conflict, living on the brink of great triumph or death, rising each day contemplating the fate of empires. They couldn’t adjust to normal life again. How do you go from armed jihad to working as a clerk in a video store in Amman? After Afghanistan, they were looking for another cataclysmic battle. They found it in Iraq. Eastgate wanted nothing to do with these guys.
“Creative idea Pearl, but how about another option?”
“That pretty much gives you one last choice,” Pearl said.
“What’s that?” Olivia asked.
“Iran.”
Olivia was not
enthused. “Oh brilliant. Maybe Ayatollah Khamenei will personally take us across the border in his family station wagon.”
Pearl emitted a cascade of honks and hisses. Olivia looked at him askance. “Is he laughing?” she asked Eastgate, “or having an aneurysm? I can’t tell.” Pearl started laughing harder. Olivia looked away.
Eastgate handed Pearl a box of Kleenex. “Dude, collect yourself.”
Pearl blew his nose and took a few deep breaths.
“Iran is a closed society,” Pearl said, composed again. “It’ll be as tricky to navigate for the Flaming Sword as for you two.”
Eastgate hated the idea, but Pearl was right.
“Oh, and it’ll also give you an excuse to drop in on that professor you were looking for?”
“What do you mean?” Olivia asked.
“That guy, Sandwich,” Pearl said.
“You mean Sandwith?”
“Yeah, that’s the guy. I tracked him down for you. According to a friend in Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate, he’s living in Tehran.”
“That sounds rather unlikely.”
Pearl rooted around his pockets and took out a piece of paper. “I’ve even got his home address,” he said, offering the white post-it to Olivia.
She was dumbfounded. She had a hard time believing that a tenured historian would exchange the resources of the ivory tower for the intellectual straight-jacket of Iran, a veritable police state with close to zero academic freedom. But Pearl’s information was so exact.
She looked at Eastgate. Can we trust him?
Eastgate took the paper from Pearl’s hand. Iran sounded like a terrible idea. But he had shot down all of the rest. Maybe it was the least bad option they had.
