The Lucifer Gospel fr-2

by Paul Christopher

  So far the flight from the civil airport in the Giza district had been uneventful. After the brief, breathtaking beauty of the pyramids there had been nothing but broken desert and sand. Now, flying over the Great Sand Sea, the monotony of the dunes seemed as relentless as any empty, windswept ocean. Achmed had fallen asleep almost immediately after takeoff, and Laval the monk had taken out his book a few seconds after undoing his seat belt. He hadn’t said a dozen words to anybody and seemed unlikely to in the foreseeable future.

  Finn glanced over at Hilts. So far she hadn’t said a word to him about her conversation with the mysterious Mr. Simpson the night before. According to the fat little man, at least one of the members of the Adamson expedition was working for the CIA, and Simpson thought there might be more espionage than archaeology involved in the dig. According to him no one could be trusted, least of all Adamson himself. Simpson knew as much about the expedition leader’s background as Hilts and more besides.

  According to the Cambridge-educated expatriate, Adamson was a secret supporter of the Tenth Crusade, a violent right-wing organization that believed that Christianity was under overt attack and had to be defended with military action. Finn was vaguely aware of the fringe group, which, unlike most of the so-called Patriot Militia, committed their violence well away from the United States. In the last few years the Tenth Crusade, with their cross and roman numeral X insignia, had taken responsibility for attacks in Baghdad, Tehran, Kabul, and Belfast.

  The spokesman of the organization was Colonel James Matoon Judd, a Vietnam War Medal of Honor winner, and now the junior senator from Colorado. A fanatic right-wing fundamentalist, Judd was generally thought to be a complete outer-limits nutcase who had been twice warned in the Senate for his racist, inflammatory remarks. The fact that Adamson had anything to do with a lunatic like Senator Jimmy “Sword of the Lord” Judd came as a complete surprise to Finn.

  Simpson wasn’t entirely sure what Adamson’s involvement with Judd had to do with the dig, but according to Simpson it was Judd’s influence in the corridors of power that had gotten Adamson’s expedition access to the Libyan site. That Judd would be rubbing shoulders with people who were the sworn enemies of groups like the Tenth Crusade didn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but according to Simpson’s sources it was unqualified fact, and that made the information all the more intriguing.

  After Simpson finally left her room, Finn had spent a confusing hour in the darkness trying to make sense of it all, and trying to make the fat little Englishman’s tale fit in with what had happened to her in the City of the Dead. What had started off as an exotic summer job after graduation was turning into something sinister, dark, and very dangerous. On top of everything else she still hadn’t figured out what Simpson’s angle was; except for the tenuous connection to her late father, there was no reason for the strange man to have sought her out for his late-night warning.

  “Holy…!”

  The Cessna suddenly yawed, turning in the sky like a windblown leaf. They dropped like a stone, surrounded by a screaming howl of jet engines on both sides that came and went in an instant.

  “Son of a bitch!” Hilts yelled, struggling with the wheel, hauling back, desperately pulling out of the sudden dive. The horizon tumbled, spun, then finally settled down. “What the hell was that?!”

  Finn tried to get her stomach back where it belonged. Achmed, wide awake, sat behind her looking terrified.

  Laval, book in his lap, looked out the port-side window, staring through the lightly tinted glass. “I believe they were Sukhoi Su-22s,” he said. “A pair of them. Probably flying out of Al-Jufra/Hun. Presumably we are now in Libyan air space. They were most likely trying to read your tail registration number.”

  “You seem to know a lot about Russian all-purpose fighter jets for a monk,” said Hilts. “Not to mention Libyan air bases.”

  “You forget, Mr. Hilts, I am French, and France had no argument with the colonel, as you Americans had. I have been to this country many times in the past twenty years; I am no stranger to their security measures.”

  “That must be nice for you,” said Hilts with a sour note in his voice.

  “It must be disturbing for a man such as yourself to realize that some of us would rather be citizens of the world than citizens of the United States.”

  Hilts muttered something under his breath.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Hilts?”

  “How soon before we land?” Finn broke in. The thought of these two in a fistfight at twenty thousand feet wasn’t doing much for her peace of mind.

  “Can’t be soon enough for me,” Hilts grunted.

  10

  An hour later they landed at Al-Kufrah. From the air it looked like an arid west Texas ghost town: a crossroads with a main street and a few dozen low, adobe-style buildings in the middle of nowhere. The original oasis had become one of Qaddafi’s first “modernization projects” after the revolution, and as they came in for their approach Finn saw dozens of the huge green circles in the desert that marked the deeply irrigated zones of oasis agriculture the colonel-dictator had instituted. The fact that the desert climate was totally unsuited to the crops he tried to grow and that the oasis economy had been totally upset by his efforts was immaterial. He would make the desert bloom even if what he grew cost three times as much to produce as it could be sold for. What Colonel Qaddafi wanted, Colonel Qaddafi got, no questions asked.

  Hilts put the Caravan down on the tarmac without so much as a bump and taxied along to the hardstand next to the small terminal building. The airport was an Italian leftover from World War Two and had very little over the years. The run-way had been extended slightly but the square lump of concrete that passed for a terminal was the same, and so was the squat control tower. On the hardstand next to them were two helicopters-one a vicious-looking Mil-24 gunship, squatting like a hunchbacked dragonfly in spotty desert camouflage bristling with weapons, the other a big French-made Aйrospatiale Super Puma transport. The Super Puma was white and carried the yellow, black, and red Adamson Corporation Flying A logo on its side.

  Three men were standing in front of the Aйrospatiale, two in khaki safari-style clothes that looked just a little too stylish to be true, the third man wearing a sky-blue beret and camouflage fatigues that matched the gunship helicopter. He was short, skinny, and had a face like a long-nosed ferret, complete with bushy eyebrows and a cop’s mustache over thin lips. His eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviator sunglasses.

  “With sunglasses like that he’s got to be one of the bad guys,” said Hilts. He popped open the pilot’s door of the Cessna, letting in a blast of dry, hot air that hit him like a fist after the interior air conditioning. He stepped out, dropping down onto the hardstand. Finn opened her own door and followed him out. Achmed and the monk roused themselves and came out through the rear door. One of the men in the khaki shooting jackets waved. Finn recognized him from the Newsweek profile. It was Rolf Adamson, the forty-year-old media tycoon, billionaire, possible religious fanatic, and also her new boss. He looked exactly like his photograph in the magazine: young, blond, Hollywood handsome and New York smart. The man beside him was the direct opposite, old, grizzled, and dark with the face of a worn-out prizefighter.

  “The one in the Lion King outfit beside our fearless leader Mr. Adamson is Fritz Kuhn,” said Hilts quietly. “His grandfather was a man named Gustav Kossina, sometimes referred to as Hitler’s archaeologist. Kossina was the freak who came up with all those ’scientific’ theories about Aryan supremacy.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He’s written a bunch of books about the Italian digs around Al-Kufrah before the war and about Pedrazzi, the guy who disappeared.” He held up two fingers twined together. “Kossina and Pedrazzi were buddies in the old days. Adamson’s hired Kuhn as a consultant.” He glanced at the ferret-faced man in the beret. “Presumably Mr. Gung Ho is our military escort.”

  They made their way over to the three men, wi
th Laval bringing up the rear. Achmed started unloading the Cessna. Everyone made their introductions. The man in uniform turned out to be Lieutenant Colonel Amad Nasif, Colonel Qaddafi’s personal guide and “protector” of the expedition. There was no explanation of what the man in the beret would be protecting the expedition from.

  “The Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Arab Libyan Popular and Socialist Jamahirya is particularly concerned that nothing happen to our new American guests,” said Nasif with a little bow. Finn had never heard Qaddafi’s title in full before, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Hilts trying not to laugh. It was clear that Nasif took the title seriously. His expression looked as though it was carved out of granite.

  Adamson clapped his hands together with a grin. “I don’t think we have to worry about that, Colonel. I think we’ve got everything under control.” Adamson had a deep, rich voice and a vaguely Kennedyesque accent, even though he had been born and raised on the West Coast. His smile showed off a set of expensive teeth. Everybody watched as Achmed and two men from Nasif’s helicopter loaded up the Super Puma.

  “My people tell me you can fly one of these,” said Adamson to Hilts, nodding at the French chopper.

  “I can fly anything,” the pilot answered, smiling and looking pointedly across the hardstand to Nasif’s sinister-looking Mil-24.

  “Show me,” said Adamson. “The charts are in the door pocket. I’ll fly the copilot’s seat.”

  “You’re rated on this?” Hilts said, surprised.

  Adamson smiled. “If it’s got my name on it, I’m rated for it.” The two men stared at each other briefly. Finn felt as though she was in the middle of a pissing contest and it surprised her. She didn’t think Hilts was the type, and Adamson should have been too rich to care.

  Boys will be boys, she thought with a sigh. She pulled open the big sliding door, climbed up the single welded step, and ducked into the lavishly appointed passenger cabin of the transport helicopter. A few minutes later, following Nasif in the gunship, they rose heavily off the hardstand and took to the air once more.

  11

  From the air the site at Deir el-Shakir looked more like a science-fiction moon base than an archaeological dig. Two dozen huge, white nylon high-tech yurts, or domed tents, were scattered across a plateau above a narrow sandstone valley that marked the ancient bed of a long-vanished river. The yurts, each with a forty-foot diameter, were connected by arched nylon tunnels. There were several more lozenge-shaped arch-roof tents that served as living quarters, offices, and even as garages and maintenance sheds for the expedition’s fleet of Range Rovers and Hummer Alphas. The domes and tunnels all had a single purpose: to protect the occupants-man or machine-from the constant winds and the eroding, choking, ever-present dust and sand. The two largest structures, anchored, guy-wired, and lag-bolted into sunken concrete columns, were the two hangars used to house Adamson’s transport chopper and the single-engine Polish PZL “Wilga” that Hilts would be using as his aerial photography platform. With a takeoff requiring only five hundred feet of run-way, the PZL was just about the only aircraft available that could fly in and out of the site. Between the two hangars was a GFI portable helipad to smooth out the rough, pitted area of rock and sand and to keep down flying debris.

  Hilts put the big transport down without a quaver, then switched off. As soon as the rotors slowed, four men in white uniforms like cruise ship stewards appeared, and without waiting for the passengers to climb down they rolled the helicopter into the big hangar tent and pulled the Velcro closers on the hangar doors. Like the helipad outside, the floor of the hangar was covered in heavy-duty composite mats to create a stable, clean area. The passenger compartment door slid open and Finn and the others climbed out. Achmed and the men who’d rolled the helicopter inside began unloading.

  “Well, Ms. Ryan, what do you think?” Adamson asked, smiling proudly.

  Finn wasn’t quite sure what to say, or why she was being singled out by the expedition leader for attention. “Impressive,” she answered.

  “Expensive,” added Hilts.

  “Very,” Adamson said and nodded. “At last count it was several million dollars.”

  “I’m not sure the Copts would approve,” said Hilts. “If I remember right, they took a vow of poverty.”

  “True enough,” put in Laval. “On the other hand, most of the hermetic Copts, such as the ones who lived Deir el-Shakir, were fleeing debts.”

  “People have always run into the desert in the hopes of disappearing.” Adamson laughed. “That’s what the French Foreign Legion was designed for.” They walked across the hangar and went into one of the connecting tunnels. The steady wind outside whispered against the heavy nylon, rippling the fabric slightly and making a faint slapping sound.

  “Almasy,” said Finn. It was just about the only concrete thing she knew about this part of the world.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Adamson, stopping to turn and stare at her. The blood seemed to drain from his face. For the first time Finn knew what people meant when they said someone went white as a sheet.

  “Almasy,” she repeated. “The Hungarian count from The English Patient.”

  “The English Patient was a novel,” snapped Adamson.

  “Pretty good movie too,” put in Hilts. “Willem Dafoe was really terrific. Not as good as he was in Spider-Man, but still terrific.”

  Adamson glared at him.

  “Almasy was based on a real person though, wasn’t he?” insisted Finn, surprised and more than a little curious at Adamson’s reaction.

  Laval shook his head. He gave Finn another one of his small, patronizing smiles. A little girl being patted on the head. “Laszlo Almasy wasn’t a count at all. His father was a high-level government official in Budapest. A fonctionaire, as it were, that’s all. The way Germans are all herr doctor or herr professor. He fled to the desert because he’d had an affair with a politician’s wife. He was paid to stay there. He was a dilettante, Ms. Ryan, nothing more.”

  “I thought he was a spy during World War Two,” said Hilts flatly. “He used what he knew about the desert to bring a spy across from Morocco all the way to Cairo, right?”

  “There are many stories about Laszlo Almasy,” said Laval with a faint smile, “and most of them are just that, stories.”

  “And none of them have anything at all to do with Coptic monasteries in general or Deir el-Shakir in particular,” said Adamson. He made an imperious little motion with his hand. “Come along.”

  They followed Adamson along the gently curving passageway, finally exiting into a large living area complete with tables, chairs, a portable kitchen with a refrigerator, and both a Ping-Pong and a billiard table. There were several people in the large, domed room, some reading or talking together. An Asian man and a black woman were playing a spirited game of Ping-Pong. Everyone was dressed casually. The atmosphere in the dome was cool, and Finn suddenly realized that it was air conditioned. Light came in through half a dozen translucent triangles set into the walls. Somewhere nearby she could hear the faint hum of a generator.

  Adamson guided them to one of the tables and they sat down. A few moments later another uniformed steward appeared with a tray loaded down with a jug of iced tea, sprigs of mint, and glasses that looked as though they’d been stored in a freezer. The steward was dark-haired and olive-skinned. His name tag read “Badir.” A local like the ones in the helicopter hangar. The steward withdrew silently. Playing the host, Adamson poured iced tea for everyone and sat back in his chair.

  “There are ninety-two people on site at Deir el-Shakir,” he said. “Of those, twenty-five are actually on the archaeological staff, fifteen are interning graduate students from universities around the world, twenty more are volunteers who pay for the privilege of being here, and the rest are support staff. This is one of the most sophisticated and expensive archaeological sites on the planet. In addition to the services of Mr. Hilts, we have a complete remote-sensing
department, which includes hookups to SPOT, French Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre archives, NASA Landsat, and ASTER. We also have full side-scanning radar facilities, computer imaging, and real-time access to some of the world’s most comprehensive archaeological archives. In short, if you want information, we can get it for you.”

  “Good to know,” said Hilts, looking around at the dome.

  “You will be running a number of low-altitude surveys using both film and digital cameras. We have the plots and charts any time you’d like to see them,” offered Adamson.

  “Satellites don’t give you enough?”

  “A great deal of data, but not much detail. We’re particularly interested in the location of old caravan trails and the wells that were used by pilgrims coming to the monastery.”

  “Seems straightforward.”

  “Hopefully.” Adamson turned to Finn. “You, Ms. Ryan, will be spending most of your time doing in situ drawings of artifacts before their removal, then placing those locations on the overall site grid. I understand from your rйsumй that you have some experience with computers.”

  “Some.”

  “PitCalc? Altview?”

  “Yes.” PitCalc was one of the earliest pieces of archaeology software written and one that she’d learned on her mother’s computer in the field when she was a teenager. Altview was the same kind of wire-diagram program draftsmen used. It was one of those times when she was glad she hadn’t fluffed her rйsumй like a lot of her friends, some to the point of adding entire degrees or past job descriptions.

  “Good,” said Adamson. He drained his iced tea and stood. “Achmed will have taken your luggage to your quarters. As staff members you both have private quarters in the residential quadrant.” A white-coated steward silently appeared at the table. Adamson laid a paternal hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Farag will show you the way.” Finn was surprised that Adamson knew who the steward was until she noticed the plastic name tag pinned to his jacket. “Until dinner this evening,” Adamson said and smiled. Then he turned on his heel and left. They watched him go.