The Bible of Clay

by Julia Navarro

  Bruno Miiller had just turned seventy. His hair was as white as snow, and his eyes as blue as the sky. He limped, aided by a silver-headed cane. He'd been born in Vienna. He was a musician, an extraordinary pianist, as his father had also been. His was a family that lived for music and earned their livings by it. When he closed his eyes, he could see his mother smiling as he performed four-handed pieces with his older sister. His son, David, too, had dedicated his body and soul to music; his world was the violin, that delicate Guarini that was always almost literally within his reach. Bruno had retired from concert touring three years ago; until then, he had been considered one of the greatest pianists in the world.

  Hans Hausser had arrived at Carlo Cipriani's house half an hour earlier. At seventy-two, Professor Hausser was still impressively tall, over six foot three, and his extreme thinness made him look fragile, though he was anything but. Over the last forty years he had been teaching physics at the University of Bonn, theorizing on the mysteries of matter, peering into the secrets of the universe. Like Carlo, he was a widower, and he allowed himself to be cared for by his only daughter, Berta.

  The two friends were enjoying a cup of coffee when the housekeeper showed Mercedes and Bruno into the doctor's study. They wasted no time on formalities. They had met to kill a man.

  "Well, I'll explain where we are," Carlo began. "This morning I came across the name Tannenberg in the newspaper. After speaking with you all, I called Security Investigations. As you all know, I've hired them in the past to try to track down Tannenberg—to no avail, of course, beyond strong indications that he was involved in high-level archaeological transactions from time to time, but at a shadowy remove. At any rate, the president, a patient of mine named Luca Marini, called me a few hours ago to tell me that there is, indeed, a Tannenberg at the archaeological conference being held here in Rome at the Palazzo Brancaccio. But it's not our man—in fact, it's a woman named Clara Tannenberg, an Iraqi. She's thirty-five years old, an archaeologist who studied in Cairo and the United States. Despite her youth, she's directing one of the few excavations still going on in Iraq, no doubt thanks also to the influence of her husband, Ahmed, an Iraqi archaeologist himself connected to the Hussein regime. He studied in France and received his doctorate in the United States, where he lived for several years. They met there and were married. This is her first trip to Europe."

  "Does she have anything to do with him?" Mercedes asked.

  "With Tannenberg?" Carlo answered. "Like you said, it's quite a common name. But it's possible. The investigators found links to the Middle East in the past. A Tannenberg of Iraqi heritage making her way into archaeology: That's more than just a coincidence. She may be his daughter, for all we know. And if she is, I imagine we can get to him through her. I don't think he's dead."

  "No, he's not dead," declared Mercedes. "I know he's not dead. I would feel it in my bones. So Clara may be his daughter?"

  "Or granddaughter," added Hans. "He must be close to ninety."

  "Carlo," Bruno asked, "what are we going to do?"

  "Follow her no matter where it takes us. Security Investigations can send men to Iraq, although it will cost us a small fortune. But let's be clear about one thing—if that madman George Bush invades Iraq, we'll have to find another company."

  "Why?" Mercedes' voice was impatient.

  "Because pulling off a job in a country at war requires men a bit. . . less scrupulous than those employed by Security Investigations."

  "You're right," Hans agreed, crossing his legs uncomfortably in

  Carlo's leather office chair. "What happens if we find him, if this Clara Tannenberg actually has some connection to him? We need a professional—someone who doesn't mind killing. If he's still alive . . ."

  "And if not, then we'll find his children, his grandchildren, anyone related to him, just as we swore." Mercedes' voice was filled with barely contained rage. She was unwilling to admit the slightest impulse of mercy or compassion.

  "I agree." Hans nodded. "What about you, Bruno?"

  The most admired concert pianist of the late twentieth century did not hesitate to answer with another decisive yes.

  "All right, then. What other company could do the job?" Mercedes asked Carlo.

  "Luca has assured me that there are a couple of British companies that hire former members of the SAS and other special-forces groups from armies all over the world. There's also an American company, a security-specialty multinational—although security is a euphemism. They hire private soldiers who'll fight for any well-paid cause, no matter what country. He's going to give me two or three names, and we'll decide about that tomorrow."

  "Good," Mercedes shot back. "Because if we don't find anyone, I could kill them personally."

  They all believed her. They had felt the same hatred, a hatred that had grown hotter and hotter the longer they had lived in the monster's hell.

  2

  "... i have the pleasure of introducing clara

  Tannenberg."

  Ralph Barry, the moderator of the Mesopotamian culture panel, left the lectern to a dull round of applause as the small, determined-looking woman, clutching a sheaf of papers to her chest, approached to begin her speech.

  Clara Tannenberg was nervous. She knew how much was at stake. Her eyes sought her husband in the audience; he gave her a smile of encouragement. For a moment she lost her concentration in his dark eyes. Ahmed was tall, thin, handsome. Though he was older than her by fifteen years, their passion for archaeology connected them deeply. Gripping the lectern to steady herself, she began.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, today is a very special day for me. I have come to Rome to ask for your help, to plead with you to raise your collective voice to avert the catastrophe that hangs over Iraq."

  A murmur spread through the hall. The men and women attending this panel—twenty or so of the world's leading authorities on ancient Mesopotamia—were not about to take part in an impromptu political rally led by an unknown within the field, a woman whose reputation had been saved from obscurity only by virtue of her husband's position as director of Iraq's Bureau of Archaeological Excavations. Barry's an

  noyance showed in his face. His worst fears seemed to be confirmed: He had known the presence at the conference of Clara Tannenberg and her husband, Ahmed Husseini, would be problematic. He had tried to persuade them diplomatically not to come, at the behest of his very powerful employer, Robert Brown, president of the Mundo Antiguo Foundation, which was funding most of the conference. But Brown's influence was limited in Rome, and this Iraqi woman seemed neither to need nor to fear him.

  Robert Brown was, in fact, a legend in the world of art. He had provided museums around the globe with unique objects and artifacts. The collection of Mesopotamian tablets exhibited in the foundation's galleries was considered the finest in the world.

  He had made the business of art his life. In the late 1950s, barely thirty years old, Brown had been trying to make a name for himself as a dealer in New York when he came under the tutelage of one George Wagner, a man he came to refer to as his mentor. Wagner redirected the course of Brown's professional life by helping him set up a lucrative business: convincing important multinational corporations to donate money to a private foundation to finance research and excavations around the world. That way, the multinationals saved a fortune in taxes and acquired a degree of respectability in the eyes of ever-dubious citizens. Helped by Wagner's influence in Washington, Brown set up the Mundo Antiguo Foundation. On the board sat important bankers and businessmen, ensuring large donations. Brown met twice a year with the board, the first time to hammer out the foundation budget and the second to present the financial report. The next report was scheduled in just two weeks, at the end of September.

  Robert Brown had made Ralph Barry his right-hand man, bolstering the foundation's stature with the uncommon distinction Barry held in the world of academia. As for George Wagner, the man who had helped him to the top, Brown professed absolute loyalty. Fo
r all these years, he had carried out Wagner's orders without question, he had done things he would never have thought himself capable of doing, he was a puppet in Wagner's hands. But he was happy to be one. Everything he was, everything he had, he owed to George. Wagner rewarded discretion above all, and Brown went to great lengths to maintain his patron's anonymity. Even Barry knew little about Robert's so-called mentor.

  Brown had been adamant that Barry was to keep Clara Tannenberg and her husband from taking part in the conference, and if that was not possible, he was to at least keep Clara from speaking. The edict had seemed odd to Ralph, because he knew that his boss was acquainted with the couple through their relationship to Alfred Tannenberg. But in the end, Clara pushed hard and forced his hand, threatening to make a scene unless he allowed her a few minutes at the lectern. So here she was, against everyone's wishes.

  Now, as the murmur rose and the crowd stirred restively, Clara's face flushed with anger. She swallowed hard before continuing.

  "I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, that I have not come here to talk about politics but rather about archaeology, history, religion, culture—art. Human history began in Mesopotamia, and if there is war, much of that history will disappear. And so, I'm asking that you help us save the artistic and cultural heritage of Mesopotamia. I'm asking you for aid—nonfinancial aid."

  No one laughed at her feeble attempt at a joke. Clara realized that things were going from bad to worse, but she was determined to push on, no matter how strongly she felt the audience's intense irritation— even though the surface of her skin seemed to burn.

  "More than half a century ago, during an archaeological mission near Haran, my grandfather Alfred Tannenberg found a well-shaft lined with pieces of broken tablets. As you all know, certain artifacts— like writing tablets—were often reused to provide structural material for buildings. Even today we find tablets that farmers and shepherds used to build their houses.

  "Most of the tablets that lined this well-shaft were covered in cuneiform text detailing the surface area of fields and the volume of grain from the last harvest. There were hundreds of them. But upon farther inspection, two of the tablets seemed not to belong. Judging by the lettering, the incisions in the clay itself, it was clear that one scribe had not entirely mastered his stylus."

  Clara's voice became tinged with emotion. She was about to reveal her life's mission, the dream that had led her to archaeology, which she cherished more than anything in the world, including Ahmed.

  "For more than sixty years," she went on, "my grandfather has kept those two tablets on which someone, no doubt an apprentice scribe, wrote that a relative of his by blood—a man named Abraham—was going to reveal the creation of our world by an omniscient and omnipotent God, who at one point, angry with men, flooded the earth. You must see what this means. . . .

  "We all know what importance the discovery of the Akkadian creation poems, the Enuma Elish, the story of Enki and Ninhursag, and the story of the deluge in Gilgamesh held for archaeology and history, and also of course for religion. Well, according to these tablets, the patriarch Abraham added his own vision of the creation of the world, influenced no doubt by the Babylonian and Akkadian poems on paradise and the creation.

  "Archaeology has also proven that the incarnation of early books of the Bible we've come to know were written in the seventh century before Christ, at a time in which the Israelite rulers and priests needed to unite the people of Israel, and for that they needed a common history, a national epic, a 'document' that would serve their political and religious purposes.

  "Though sometimes it is hard to separate legend from history because they are so intermingled, it seems clear that the stories represent traditions handed down from generation to generation, tales of the past, ancient stories that those shepherds who emigrated from Ur to Haran carried still later to Canaan. ..."

  Clara paused, waiting for some reaction. Her audience had been listening to her in silence, some people doubtfully, others with some interest.

  "... Haran . . . Abram ... In the Bible we find a detailed genealogy of the 'first men,' beginning with Adam. That list takes us down to the postdiluvian patriarchs, the sons of Shem, one of whose descendants, Terah, begat Nahor, Haran, and Abram, whose name was later transformed into Abraham, father of nations.

  "Despite the detailed story in the Bible in which God orders Abram to leave his house and his lands and go into the land of Canaan, no one has been able to show that there actually was a first migration of Semites from Ur to Haran before they arrived at their destination in Canaan. And the encounter between God and Abraham had to have occurred in Haran, where some biblical scholars maintain that the first patriarch must have lived until his father, Terah, died.

  "The Bible tells us that when Terah moved to Haran—and I am now going to quote from Genesis 11 — Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. We know that at that time families were much like small tribes, who moved from place to place with their flocks and their possessions and who settled down periodically and farmed a piece of land to meet their needs. Therefore, when Terah left Ur to settle in Haran, he did so in the company of many members of his family, more or less closely related. We think— my grandfather, my husband, Ahmed Husseini, and I—that a member of the family of Terah, no doubt an apprentice scribe, may have had a close relationship with Abraham, or Abram as his name was then, and that Abraham explained to this apprentice scribe his ideas of the creation of the world, his conception of that one God, and who knows how many other things. For years we have searched in the region of Haran for other tablets by the same scribe. Our searches have been unsuccessful. My grandfather has devoted his life to investigating an area a hundred kilometers around Haran, and he has found nothing. But the work has not been entirely without its discoveries—in the Baghdad Museum, the Haran Museum, and the Ur Museum, and many others besides, there are hundreds of tablets and objects that my family has unearthed down through the years, but we have not yet discovered those other tablets that bear the stories of Abraham—"

  With a brusque, irritated gesture, a man in the audience raised his hand and waved it about. Clara broke off, disconcerted.

  "Yes? You wanted to say something?"

  "Yes, just to be clear about this—you're saying that Abraham, the patriarch Abraham, the Abraham of the Bible, the father of our civilization, told an anonymous somebody, an apprentice scribe, his ideas of God and the world, and that this anonymous apprentice scribe wrote it down on clay tablets, like some reporter, and that your grandfather, whom none of us has had the pleasure of meeting, has found these tablets and held on to them for more than half a century?"

  "Two preliminary tablets, on which the scribe declares his intention to record Abraham's dictations, yes."

  "I see! So tell me—why has this discovery never been reported until now? In fact, would you be so kind as to tell us who your grandfather and father are? We already know something about your husband. At this conference, we all know one another, and I'm sorry to tell you that to us you are a complete stranger, whom I, for one, on the basis of your presentation, would categorize as uneducated, infantile, and—to put it mildly—overimaginative. Where are these tablets you're talking about? What scientific tests have they been subjected to in order to guarantee their authenticity and the period to which they belong? Scientists and researchers come to conferences such as this one with solid evidence, not with family stories—family stories from a clutch of amateur archaeologists."

  A murmur ran through the auditorium; Clara, flushed with anger and embarrassment, froze. She took a deep breath, struggling to recover her composure. And then she saw Ahmed stand and glare at the man who had interrupted her.

  "My dear Professor Guilles ... I know that you have had thousands of students in your long career at the Sorbonne. I wa
s one of them; in fact, throughout my years of study you always gave me the highest marks. In five years I graduated summa cum laude. Later,

  Professor, I had the privilege of accompanying you on excavations in Syria and Iraq. Do you remember the winged Hons we found near Nippur in a temple dedicated to Nabu? What a shame that the figures were not intact, but at least we were lucky enough to find a collection of cylinder seals dating from the reign of Ashurbanipal. ... I know that I have neither your knowledge nor your reputation, but I have been directing the Bureau of Archaeological Excavations in Iraq for several years—though today it is inactive, because we have been the victims of a cruel blockade, and the oil-for-food program yields barely enough money to survive as a nation. Iraqi children are dying because there are no medicines in the hospitals and because their mothers cannot afford to buy them food, so there is very little money left for digging into our own past—or, I should say, the past of all humanity, of all civilization. All our archaeological missions have halted and are waiting for better times.

  "As for my wife, Clara Tannenberg, she has been my assistant for years; we have excavated several sites together. Her grandfather is a man who is passionate about the past and who has helped to finance a number of important archaeological excavations—"

  "Tomb robbers!" someone in the audience called out.

  That voice, and the sound of the nervous laughter in the audience, were like knives through Clara's heart. But Ahmed continued impassively.

  "As I was saying, we are reasonably certain that the scribe who made the two preliminary tablets discovered by Clara's grandfather also went on to transcribe the stories that he says Abraham told him. Other research—including tablet fragments—hint strongly at this. We could be talking about one of the most important discoveries in the history of not just archaeology but also religion and biblical study. I think we should allow Dr. Tannenberg to go on. Clara, please."