by C. S. Graham
“Never let a few facts get in the way of a good story.” Bubba tapped his controls. “That’s weird. Everything just sorta froze up. Only time I ever saw that happen was the last time I flew y’all.”
Tobie quietly went to sit at the back of the plane.
“Huh. Weird and weirder. Everything’s okay again.” He glanced back at Tobie. “Buckle up tight; we’re ready to rock ’n’ roll.”
She put her head down between her knees and groaned.
The two men walked along Pennsylvania Avenue. The headlights of the cars swishing past stabbed the gathering gloom to reflect off the falling snow.
The younger man, his straight blond hair ruffled by the icy wind, said, “Mr. Carlyle has some concerns.”
“We’re closing in on the girl,” said Davenport. “It won’t be long now.”
“Good. Nevertheless, we have decided the cleanup needs to be expanded.”
Davenport cast his companion a quick, sideways glance. “To whom?”
Casper Nordstrom swept his hair back in a fastidious gesture. “Dr. Salah Araji.”
“Who?”
“The Iraqi paleographer who published the first reports on the codex. He has knowledge which might prove awkward.”
“He’s in fucking Iraq.”
Nordstrom drew up outside the Department of Justice. “Are you saying you can’t handle it?”
“No. I can contact some guys at GTS.” GTS, like Blackwater, was a private security company that supplied the Defense Department with mercenaries. “It’s just . . . Why?”
“Mr. Carlyle didn’t ask for your understanding. Only your cooperation.”
“He’s got it,” snapped Davenport.
“Good. See to it.”
Davenport was standing on the corner watching Nordstrom’s slim form disappear into the snow-filled gloom, when Agent Laura Brockman came up to stand beside him.
“Problem?” she said.
“A new target. Only, this one’s in fucking Iraq. Which is going to mean farming it out to some GTS guys.”
Brockman said, “I can go. Make sure the job gets done right.”
“No. I have another mission for you.” He started across the avenue. “You do have a passport, don’t you?”
“I do,” she said, stepping off the curb beside him. “Several. Where am I going?”
“Morocco.”
Chapter 46
Najaf Province, Iraq: Monday 5 February 7:15 A.M. local time
Before they landed in Najaf, Jax used Bubba’s satellite phone to make arrangements with a friend at the embassy’s CIA station to send a car and driver to meet them at the airport.
Bubba gave a loud snort as he banked into a curve and circled around toward the runway. “Guy must not know you well. Otherwise he’d have more sense than to lend you his car.”
Jax grinned. “Why do you think he’s sending a driver?”
The city of Najaf stretched out below them, a huddle of flat-topped concrete and stone-fronted buildings blasted by sandstorms and three decades of nearly continuous warfare, murderous economic sanctions, and bombings. At its center rose the great golden dome of the Imam Ali Shrine, one of the most sacred Shi’ite holy places in the world. Beyond that stretched the Wadi as-Salam, the Valley of Peace, the largest cemetery in existence.
According to legend, Najaf was, like Jerusalem and Mecca, one of the portals to heaven, which meant that a lot of people wanted to be buried there. To accommodate the steady stream of pilgrims—and corpses—the Iraqis had built a gleaming new terminal of glass and steel.
“Okay,” said October, peering out the window at the lines of jets from Syria and Lebanon, Pakistan and the Gulf. “That’s not what I expected.”
“I told you,” said Jax. “Now that we’re pulling out our troops, things are getting better.”
October grunted.
Bubba dropped out of the sky and touched down on the dusty runway of Forward Operating Base Endeavor, which was separated from the civilian airport by a barbed wire fence. Bristling rows of Apache and Blackhawk helicopters, Humvees, Bradleys, and M–1 Abrams tanks stretched across the desert.
October put her head down between her knees again. “I think I’m hyperventilating.”
Jax clapped her on the shoulder on his way to unlatch the door. “You’re going to be just great.”
Jax’s friend at the embassy had sent a top-of-the-line Range Rover, all gleaming champagne metal and tan leather seats. A slim, wiry Iraqi named Tareq al-Mukhtar leaned against the side of the SUV smoking a cigarette. According to Jax’s contact at the Embassy, Tareq had been a mineral engineer with a degree from the Colorado School of Mines. Now, he earned a living however he could.
“Joe says I’m not to let you touch the steering wheel,” said Tareq, an ironic smile lifting the edges of his thick dark mustache as he blew out a final stream of smoke and ground his cigarette butt under his heel. “He says the last time he lent you a car, in Cairo, you brought it back looking like a lump of Swiss cheese.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” said Jax.
Behind them, Bubba snickered. But all he said was, “If y’all want a ride home, you gotta be back here by one. I got a schedule to keep.”
Tobie said, “If you leave me here to die, Bubba, I’ll never talk to you again.”
Bubba laughed. “One o’clock. Be here.”
They hurtled north beside the blue waters of the Euphrates, cruising along at a horn-blaring, vision-blurring 120 mph. “The faster you go, the better chance you have of getting there,” Tareq told them, stomping on the gas.
Tobie—who’d elected to sit in the backseat—cast an eye over the jumble of cardboard boxes and red plastic cans that half filled the rear. “What’s all this stuff?”
Tareq glanced back at her and grinned.
“Uh . . . goats,” warned Jax.
Without letting up on the gas, Tareq swerved around a herd of dusty brown and white goats that had strayed out into the road. Over the squeal of tires, he said, “The jerry cans are insurance. If you’re driving any distance in Iraq, you learn to take your own gasoline with you. Thanks to Halliburton and Keefe, the supply lines are a mess.”
“And the box of what looks like wine?”
“The finest Côtes du Rhône, flown in direct from France this morning, just for the ambassador. He’s very particular about his wine.”
“Nice to be the ambassador,” said Jax.
Tobie said, “Not to Iraq.”
They hurtled on through the flat, open landscape. Nearer the river stood date palm groves and wide fields of vegetables and barley greening under the strengthening sun. But to the west stretched a vast, windswept desert, harsh and deadly.
“Have you ever been to Babylon?” asked Tareq, lighting another of his foul-smelling Turkish cigarettes and exhaling a stream of blue smoke through his nostrils.
“My dad brought me here when I was really little,” said Tobie. “But my memories are kinda blurry. I remember being disappointed because I expected the Hanging Gardens to still be there. And the Tower of Babel looked nothing like the picture in my Illustrated Children’s Bible.”
“Believe me, it looks even worse now.” Tareq rolled down his window, letting in a deafening blast of desert air. “The American forces turned Babylon into Camp Alpha.”
“They what?”
“That’s right. They took one of the greatest archaeological sites in the world and converted it into a military base. They brought in bulldozers and leveled the ‘hilltops’—which were really the unexcavated parts of the old city—to make parking lots and helicopter pads. They drove their tanks over the Processional Way and smashed the ancient paving. They pounded stakes into the fragile tops of four-thousand-year-old walls so they could string their concertina wire, and ripped deep, wide trenches through the heart of the city center. Then they filled their sandbags with the archaeological material because it was just lying around, easy to pick up.”
Tobie shook her head. “I d
on’t understand. Why would anyone do something so . . . unforgivably barbaric?”
Tareq took a deep drag on his cigarette. “They claim it was to ‘protect’ the site.”
Jax huffed a soft laugh. “Sorta like ‘We had to destroy the village in order to save it’?”
“Pretty much.” Tareq ground out his cigarette. “Me, I think it was deliberate. You don’t destroy one of the Wonders of the Ancient World by accident.”
Tobie looked from one to the other. “So why did they do it?”
Jax said, “Religiously inspired revenge for the Babylonian Captivity described in the Old Testament was probably part of it. Or maybe cultural jealousy—a desire to wipe out all evidence that the Iraqis were once the most highly advanced civilization in the world. Then again, it could be because according to certain Christian fundamentalists, the Antichrist will arise in Babylon.”
“Revelation again,” said Tobie.
Jax nodded. “We just can’t seem to get away from it, can we?”
Marrakech, Morocco: Monday 5 February 6:45 A.M. local time
The first rays of the rising sun were just breaking over the Atlas Mountains when Noah’s train pulled into Marrakech. As his petit taxi sped toward the mighty gates that guarded the medina, the golden light hit the pisé walls of the city’s medieval ramparts, turning them from a warm ochre to a vivid burnt orange.
It was a place of magic, Marrakech. Of magic and mystery, of towering intricately carved minarets and tangled souks scented with all the spices of the ancient silk route—cinnamon and cloves, frankincense and myrrh. They wove through narrow winding streets, past crowded markets selling reed baskets and hammered brass plates and sticky pastries sweetened with honey.
Then his taxi drew up at the mouth of a dark passage and the driver said in French, “From here, you must walk.”
“Walk?” said Noah, fumbling for his wallet.
The driver made a sweeping motion with a knifelike hand. “Walk.”
Paying off the taxi, Noah hugged his backpack close and cast a quick glance around. Two ragged boys skipping along the gutter stopped to stare at him and laugh. He felt conspicuously out of place and, as he plunged into the shadowy, cavernlike alleyway, more than a little afraid.
Chapter 47
The ruins of the once mighty city of Babylon rose before them on the banks of the Euphrates River, its crumbling walls and silent tells softened by the morning mist. Once, 3,700 years ago, this had been the largest city in the world, a vast metropolis of temples and palaces, libraries and markets, theaters and public parks. Now it was all but deserted, home only to a handful of Iraqi soldiers in dusty camouflage and burgundy berets, and a few determined volunteers desperately trying to limit the effects of the destruction wrought by the latest band of conquerors.
Tareq parked the Range Rover in the shade of a grove of date palms, where a boy of about twelve dressed in a ragged brown sweater pulled over a white dishdasha was selling chai and kufta—tea and a kind of spiced meatball on skewers—from a stand fashioned of crudely lashed poles roofed with dried reeds.
“He says Dr. Araji is working on what they call the Eighth Trench,” said Tareq, munching on kufta as they walked up the dusty road toward the site. “In the religious section of the city. The boy says you don’t want to go anywhere near the professor when he’s working on the American trenches.”
“Sounds promising,” said Tobie, squinting up at the black Apache helicopter that hovered above them like a malevolent insect, its blades beating the morning air with an ominous-sounding whomp-whomp. She’d thought at first it was a U.S. Army chopper, but it wasn’t. It was a transport, the Circle K logo on the tail identifying it as a Keefe Corporation asset.
Tareq, too, watched the helicopter fly off toward the landing pad in the distance, but said nothing. The so-called private security forces, or mercenaries, had a reputation for being even more trigger-happy than the regular troops. And they were essentially accountable to no one.
“So,” said Jax, rubbing his hands together as if in anticipation. “Where is this despoiled religious section?”
Tareq grinned. “This way.”
They found Dr. Salah Araji standing at the top of a loose mound of sand mixed with smashed bricks and pottery shards. He had a clipboard in one hand and wore a fierce scowl that pulled down the corners of his mouth and drew his eyebrows together into a knotted V.
“I’m going to go take a look at the Ishtar Gate and smoke a cigarette,” said Tareq.
“Coward.”
Tareq smiled and sauntered away.
“Let me do the talking,” Jax whispered as they walked toward the professor.
Tobie said, “I always do.”
“No you don’t.” He raised his voice and shouted, “Marhabah.” Hello.
The Iraqi turned toward them, his scowl deepening. He was a stocky man of medium height, probably somewhere in his late forties or fifties, with several days’ worth of gray stubble covering his craggy face. “Where are you from?” he demanded in Arabic.
“France,” said Jax without missing a beat.
“You’re a liar. You’re Americans,” said Araji, turning away.
Jax laughed. “How did you know?”
“You’re dressed like Americans. You even walk like Americans.” He nodded to the great gash before them, a gaping trench some ten feet wide and six feet deep that extended for nearly 500 yards across the ancient site. “See this? You did this.” He kicked at the broken artifacts that littered the earth at his feet. “See that glazed brick? It has an inscription. It says ‘I, Nebuchadnezzar, built this.’ You? You destroyed it.”
Jax and Tobie exchanged glances.
Dr. Araji rolled on. “Just digging this trench was enough of an abomination. But then you went off and left it open, exposed to the wind and the rain. Now the sides are starting to collapse, doing even more damage to the site.”
“I agree with you,” said Tobie. “It’s sickening.”
Jax hissed at her.
Tobie ignored him. “It’s also a violation of the Hague Convention. The people who did this ought to be tried as war criminals.”
Araji stared at her a moment, wide-eyed. Then he laughed and swung away to slide down the mound of rubble. “What do you want?”
They scrambled after him. “We want to know about the extra verses you discovered in the Babylonian Codex. What they say.”
“Really? And why should I tell you that?”
Tobie threw Jax a panicked look.
He said, “There are people in the United States who believe the Book of Revelation is a literal description of what is going to happen at the end of the world. And now they’ve convinced themselves the newly discovered verses in the Babylonian Codex are like secret instructions left just for them.”
Araji continued walking. “Telling them what?”
“We don’t know. We think they have a plan to take over the U.S. government. That’s why we need your help.”
Araji drew up at the base of the pile of rubble left by the American bulldozers. “Do you know something?” he said, switching unexpectedly to flawless English. “A few years ago, a National Geographic team came in here and conducted DNA tests on today’s Iraqis so they could compare them to the bones of the ancient Babylonians. You know what they found?” He thumped his chest. “We are the descendents of the people who built this.”
He spread his arms in a wide sweep that took in the towering ramparts, the walls of glazed brick decorated with relief sculptures of lions and serpents. “Look around you. Five thousand years ago, my ancestors created the world’s first cities. The world’s first government. Once, we had a bicameral legislature with an elected leader. Hard to believe, isn’t it? A democracy that existed five millennia before the world ever heard of the United States! Yet it’s true. Then came many years of war, and in order to better protect themselves the people made the role of the leader permanent. After that, it wasn’t long before the kings became hereditary. Bu
t it didn’t really buy them safety. Invaders came, and in time the desert covered our cities.”
He let his arms fall back to his sides, his voice dropping. “All great empires eventually fall. Perhaps it is your turn, now.” He smiled. “Didn’t last too long, did you?”
“Dr. Araji—” Jax began.
The professor cut him off. “No. You tell me some crazy religious fanatics are planning to take over your country? You know what I say to you? Good! I hope they do to your country what you have done to mine. Lay waste your cities. Burn your libraries. Poison your soil and water. Rape your women. Kill your—” His voice broke, and he had to stop and swallow before he could continue. “Kill your children.”
“I think they’re the same people,” said Tobie quietly.
He swung to face her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that these people have been directing U.S. foreign policy for years, from the shadows. They’re the ones who pushed for the invasion of Iraq and manufactured the ‘evidence’ that was used to sell the war to the American people. They’re the ones who turned the ancient ruins of Babylon into a military camp, so that they could destroy it in some kind of crazy act of revenge for Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem. And they’re the ones who helped organize the looting of the National Museum and Library, so that they could get their hands on the codex.”
Araji’s face had gone ashen.
“Please,” said Tobie. “If you want revenge for this”—she swung her hand in a wide arc that took in the cracked walls, the collapsed temples—“give us the verses of the lost chapter.”
Chapter 48
Dr. Araji scrubbed a trembling hand over his haggard face. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t. I don’t have it anymore.”
Jax said, “But you must have made digital copies. Photographs. The notes from your translations—”
“All were lost when the archives were burned. And my personal copies were destroyed just two weeks later. A band of contractors—from Keefe—broke into my house. Machine-gunned my wife and children. Set fire to our home. Afterward, they said ‘sorry’. They said they got the address wrong. Sorry.”
