by James Barney
The elderly man behind the door was thin and frail. He wore a crisp white Oxford shirt and dark blue slacks with black socks and no shoes. He was a short man of about eighty, his head nearly entirely bald except for a crescent of thin, silver hair around the back. His face was deeply wrinkled and covered with silver whiskers—too thick to be called stubble but not quite a beard. His shoulders drooped forward slightly, giving him a disarming and somewhat servile demeanor.
“Good evening,” said the man in the same vague accent Kathleen had heard on her answering machine. His breathing was heavy and labored, as if the simple act of greeting her had taken great physical exertion. “I am . . . Tariq Al-Fulani.” He bowed his head as he said his name.
Kathleen nodded slightly. “Kathleen Sainsbury.”
“Yes, of course.” Still breathing heavily, the elderly man made a sweeping gesture with his hand, as if to usher her into his home. “Please, come in.”
Kathleen did not move.
“Ahhh . . . I’m sure you don’t remember me. You were much too young.” He flashed a toothy smile. “But I remember you . . . when you were just a little girl.” He paused to catch his breath. “And now I see you have grown to be such a beautiful woman.”
None of this made Kathleen feel any more comfortable. She stood motionless on the front porch, studying the man’s sad eyes and odd expression.
“Please, come in,” said the man insistently, motioning again with his hand. “I have something very important to give you.”
With trepidation, Kathleen entered the house, glancing back at her car one last time as she entered the foyer. The car disappeared from view when the old man closed the door softly behind them. He offered to take Kathleen’s coat, but she declined, stating that she preferred to wear it. Then he motioned for her to follow him to a large, rectangular room just off the foyer. She followed cautiously.
Stepping into the room, Kathleen felt as if she had been instantly transported to a different place and time. The room smelled of dust and old wool. Its walls were covered from floor to ceiling with antique Persian rugs, their stunning colors—deep crimson, cobalt blue, and dark gold—evoking the atmosphere of a Moroccan bazaar. The rugs obscured the only windows in the room and one of the two doorways, giving the room an enclosed, intimate feeling. It reminded Kathleen of a suradeq, the beautiful, embroidered traveling tents of Arabia, which she vaguely remembered from her childhood travels.
A large oval table dominated the center of the room, draped with a lavish “tree of life” medallion tablecloth in rust red and black velvet. A pair of Moorish table lamps—dancing metal figurines topped with fringed silk shades—bathed the room in soft yellow light. Surrounding the lamps was an array of rare and unusual objects, which Kathleen surmised were Middle Eastern antiques. A white alabaster head immediately caught her eye. It was a life-sized depiction of a stern, bearded man with small holes carved into its eyes and long, curly beard.
“That is from the fourth century BC,” the elderly man explained, noticing Kathleen’s interest. He stood a few feet away, near the corner of the room. “Found in southern Iraq. Most likely part of a funerary niche. The holes would have contained precious stones, or perhaps glass or shell inlays.”
Kathleen nodded in appreciation and continued surveying the astounding collection of artifacts. There was a pair of ancient Syrian mosaics, a second-century bust from Palmyra wearing a Romanesque tunic, Egyptian Pharaonic funerary pots, several gleaming pottery pieces from Persia—their blue, red, and gold patterns as brilliant today as they were in the twelfth century—and dozens of mosque lamps and other intricate glasswork from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Syria. Kathleen also noticed six or seven ornately sculpted silver boxes, some decorated with small stones and beads. She ran her fingertips across one of them.
“Quran boxes,” the man explained from the corner of the room. “From eastern Turkey.”
Kathleen nodded politely.
On the far side of the room was a low, wide sofa, upholstered in bright red velvet with gold fringed trim. A collection of embroidered pillows was scattered across the sofa. Behind the sofa, next to the wall, was a massive, hand-carved Turkish screen, its gleaming gold-leaf floral design reflecting the soft light of the table lamps. Mounted on the screen were two sixteenth-century Persian sabers, their crescent blades crossed. It reminded Kathleen of the Saudi royal seal.
“Please, sit down,” the man urged, gesturing to a spot on the sofa directly below the swords.
Kathleen did not move. Something about the old man’s voice and mannerisms seemed overly anxious, almost . . . desperate. She didn’t like it.
“May I offer you some tea?”
Kathleen grew more uncomfortable by the second until, finally, she could no longer ignore the alarm bells in her head. “I should go,” she announced, turning quickly toward the foyer.
“No!” the old man exclaimed. “Please don’t go.”
Kathleen ignored him and walked briskly toward the front door.
The man followed her into the foyer. “Please, this is very important!”
Kathleen turned suddenly to face him. “What is very important? Who are you, and what is so damned important?”
A tense moment passed as the old man obviously struggled to find the appropriate words. When none came, Kathleen turned once more to leave.
“Wait,” said the man softly. He released a heavy sigh. “My real name is . . . Hakeem Abdul Sargon.”
Kathleen stood motionless, facing the door.
“I was the Director of Antiquities in Iraq under Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr until 1979, when he was ousted by Saddam Hussein. I knew your parents well. They were . . . great scholars. And friends.”
Kathleen turned slowly to face him.
“I remember you, too,” Dr. Sargon continued. “You sometimes played with my daughter, Farhana.” At the mention of his daughter’s name, he looked down, evidently disturbed by some distant, haunting memory. “Please, stay and allow me to explain.” He once again motioned with a sweep of his hand toward the living room.
Kathleen stood with her back to the door, her coat still on, car keys gripped tightly in her hand. If she wanted to go, she had only to turn around and walk out the door. She stared into Dr. Sargon’s eyes for several seconds, uncertain of what to do.
Suddenly, her cell phone rang, piercing the uneasy silence. She fished it out of her purse and answered on the second ring. “Hello?” she whispered.
“Are you okay?” Carlos Guiterez asked in a concerned voice. Kathleen had called him earlier, while she was sitting in the car in front of the house, and had asked him to call her back in ten minutes. She hadn’t explained why.
With the phone still pressed to her ear, Kathleen studied Sargon’s face carefully. He seemed frail and sincere. Or was it desperation and fear she sensed? Either way, she decided she could trust him. For now. She whispered into the phone, “I’m fine, Carlos, thanks. See you on Monday.” Then she tucked the phone back into her purse and gave Sargon a thin, nervous smile. “I will have some tea,” she said finally, removing her coat.
Dr. Hakeem Abdul Sargon smiled eagerly and took her coat. Then he hurried off to the kitchen to fix some tea.
“I’m fine, Carlos, thanks. See you on Monday.”
Semion Zafer closed his eyes and listened intently to Kathleen Sainsbury’s voice emanating from a pair of noise-cancelling headphones secured tightly over his ears. The headphones had the effect of putting her feminine voice directly in his head, a sensation he found very pleasant. He turned up the volume on the specialized scanner/receiver to which the headphones were connected.
From Zafer’s location at 16th and U, the modified Watkins-Johnson HF1000A scanner/receiver had no problem picking up Kathleen’s cell-phone signal as she conversed briefly with her office manager, Carlos Guiterez.
Zafer jotted down some quick notes about the call and then settled back into the plush leather seat of his Lincoln Navigator.
He needed a
drink. Badly. But then he thought about his boss, the man he knew only as “Joe,” and recalled what Joe had told him nine months ago when he’d first entered his employ. “You’re a drunk,” Joe had said. “I’ve known plenty of men like you, and they usually end up dead. If I catch you drinking on the job, I’ll cut your throat myself and dump your body in the Anacostia River. Understand?”
Zafer understood. And believed him. After nine months of working for “Joe”—the perquisites of which included a rent-free apartment, unlimited use of the Lincoln Navigator, and bi-monthly envelopes of cash delivered to a Mail Boxes Etc. mailbox—all he knew of his mysterious boss was a single prepaid cell-phone number and an anonymous e-mail address.
And that’s all he wanted to know.
Chapter Seven
K Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.
Luce Venfeld carefully studied the file on Dr. Kathleen Sainsbury for a third time, making a few additional notations in the margins of some of the pages. His spacious office was lit by the soft glow of a single desk lamp. It was quiet. Indeed, at this late hour on Saturday night, the only occupied offices in the entire building were those on the eleventh floor belonging to the LHV Group, Venfeld’s consulting firm.
Satisfied that he now knew Kathleen Sainsbury better than she knew herself, Venfeld closed the manila folder and placed it neatly atop a foot-high stack of similar folders, each profiling the life and daily habits of a different molecular biologist.
Including Kathleen’s, there were nine such files in all. Although one of them no longer mattered.
Venfeld pulled the file on Dr. Michael Kim from the bottom of the stack and flipped it open. Across the first page of Dr. Kim’s curriculum vitae, a large “X” had been scrawled in black marker. The word “DECEASED,” in neat block letters, ran diagonally across the page.
An unfortunate incident.
Venfeld tossed Dr. Kim’s file to one side and placed his palm on the remaining stack of eight files, each more than an inch thick. Eight horses left in the race.
Venfeld stood and gazed out the window of his K-Street office at the nighttime sky. He stood perfectly still, hands clasped behind his back. The top button of his starched white shirt was undone, his tie loosened slightly. His gaze shifted momentarily to his own reflection in the window. Fifty-four years old. Wealthy. Handsome.
A sly smile crept over his scarred face.
Eight horses in the race; who would win?
That was the beauty of his plan. It didn’t matter. Whichever horse crossed the finish line first, he stood to earn a fortune. He liked those odds very much.
He turned and strode casually across the plush Turkish rug to the six framed pictures near the door. His gaze fell on the photograph of him and Guillermo Gomez shaking hands at Gomez’s sprawling coastal estate in Quintana Roo, Mexico. He vividly recalled the night, five years ago, that he’d crept into Gomez’s private villa, intending to kill the man he’d befriended just a few years earlier. It would have been a sanctioned execution, of course. Part of the CIA’s secret war on drugs. Very secret. Just “Joseph Browning” doing his job, once again.
But, as Venfeld eavesdropped that night via a collapsible antenna no bigger than a cereal bowl, he overheard something quite extraordinary. A secret meeting among seven wealthy men was taking place in the villa’s library.
They called themselves the “Olam Foundation,” and the topic of their meeting that night had nothing to do with cocaine or marijuana, or even money laundering.
This was something entirely different. Something momentous. Something life changing. World changing.
And Venfeld wanted in.
Chapter Eight
U Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.
“How much do you know about your parents?” asked Dr. Hakeem Abdul Sargon. He was seated in an ornately carved high-back chair a few feet from where Kathleen sat.
Kathleen sipped Turkish black tea from a clear, slender glass and reclined against the couch’s oversized pillows. Two hours ago, she’d never heard of Dr. Sargon (at least not that she could remember), and now she was sipping tea on his couch. She felt a little ridiculous, aside from being apprehensive about the entire situation.
“I know they were archeologists,” she replied.
“Yes, your father was an archeologist,” Sargon said with a nod, “and a very good one at that. Your mother, however, was an anthropologist. And also quite an expert on Assyrian mythology.”
At that moment, Kathleen reflected on how little she actually knew about her parents, especially her father. Practically everything she knew about them came from her maternal grandfather, and that information had come only in small, pasteurized bits. Through the years, the whole concept of her parents had taken on a synthetic gloss—like a Disney movie. She knew the basic story but few meaningful details. To Kathleen, her parents had never seemed . . . real.
“I first met Daniel—your father—in 1972,” Dr. Sargon continued. “At that time, my main responsibility as Director of Antiquities was to oversee the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, as well as other regional museums throughout the country. I was also in charge of issuing permits for excavation of historical sites in Iraq. Your father had written to me from Harvard University, where he was a professor. He wanted to excavate the Tell-Fara temple.”
Kathleen interrupted. “Tell-Fara?” She’d heard that name before but never knew what it meant.
Sargon looked at her with sorrowful eyes, obviously surprised by the question. “Yes, dear, Tell-Fara. That’s where your parents were killed.”
Kathleen blanched. “You mean where they died in the accident?”
Sargon held her gaze for a moment then shook his head slowly from side to side. “There was no accident.”
Kathleen suddenly felt lightheaded. For as long as she could remember, she’d been told her parents died in an “accident” while excavating ruins in Iraq.
“Shall I explain?” asked Dr. Sargon delicately.
Kathleen nodded.
“As I said, your father had written for permission to excavate at Tell-Fara, which I initially denied. At that time, the policy was not to allow foreigners to excavate historical sites in Iraq. I assumed I would never hear from Daniel Talbot or Harvard University again. But . . .” He smiled. “I was wrong.”
Kathleen sat motionless, absorbing this new information with a mixture of fascination and trepidation.
“Your father wrote to me several more times, urging me to allow just a small exploratory excavation of the Tell-Fara site. He was quite persistent.” Sargon chuckled and took a long sip of his tea. “In the summer of 1972, he and your mother, Rebecca, came to visit me in Baghdad. I must say, that was quite a surprise. They had just been married and were on their honeymoon.” He raised an eyebrow and added, “Of course, that was before you were born.”
Kathleen shook her head in amazement. She vaguely recalled her grandfather once telling her that her parents had spent their honeymoon in the Middle East. Now, that random bit of information suddenly had context. For the first time, she was beginning to visualize them as real people.
Sargon continued. “It was no surprise, of course, that they’d come to ask for permission to explore Tell-Fara. This time, however, when I heard their ideas about the site, I must say I became very intrigued. Your mother, in particular, had some very interesting theories about the temple.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” said Sargon, holding up his hand politely, “first, there is some history you need to understand.” He rose to his feet slowly, his aged body clearly causing him great discomfort. “But before we get to that, may I offer you some more tea?”
Kathleen nodded.
Sargon refilled her tea glass, carefully pouring from two separate containers, a custom he had learned in Turkey. “As a young man, I spent five years near Izmir helping excavate the Temple of Artemis in Sardis, once a mighty city in the late Roman Empire. I became virtually addicted to Turkish black tea.”
Kathleen thanked him for the tea and took a small sip, savoring the unusual, spicy flavor.
“Now,” said Sargon in a slightly more animated tone, “let’s discuss Mesopotamian history.” He stooped down and carefully pulled a framed antique map from beneath the oval table in the center of the room. Leaning the map against the table, he spoke as if he were addressing his old Assyriology class at Oxford.
“The name Mesopotamia is derived from the Greek,” he explained. “It means the land between the rivers. And from this map you can see why—Mesopotamia was situated between the two great rivers of the Middle East, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The land between those rivers was fertile farmland, much sought after in the ancient world. This area of land, which we now call Iraq, has been continuously populated for more than ten thousand years. It is, quite literally, the birthplace of modern civilization.
“Starting around thirty-five hundred BC, a great culture arose in Mesopotamia called the Sumerian civilization. It was centered in the cities Ur and Uruk.” Dr. Sargon pointed to where those two cities appeared on the map, near modern-day Basra and Warka in southern Iraq. “The name ‘Iraq,’ by the way, comes from the word Uruk. These were the first modern city-states, where government, art, agriculture, and commerce flourished.”
“As you can imagine,” Sargon continued, “Sumerian civilization was heavily influenced by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which provided irrigation for crops and drinking water for people and animals. They also provided a mode of transportation throughout the region. And, of course, they caused periodic floods, which were also an integral part of Sumerian life, much the way they are today along the Nile.”
Sargon looked up from the map and met Kathleen’s eyes. “But some floods were worse than others.”
Kathleen sipped her tea and nodded politely.
“In about twenty-nine hundred BC, a massive flood inundated the entire Sumerian plain. None of the city-states up and down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was spared. We know from archeological evidence and from written records—clay cuneiform tablets—that the rivers crested anywhere from ten to twenty meters above their normal levels, which would have put nearly every city in the region completely under water. We have to imagine that tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people died in that flood.”
