by James Becker
Nevertheless, he had spent a few unproductive minutes trying to crack the code using standard Atbash, having jotted down the sequence of letters at the bottom of the sheet of paper. But that had only converted the original gibberish into a different kind of gibberish, and eventually he’d given up. He tucked the paper away into the inside pocket of his jacket, and then leaned back in the seat to stare incuriously out of the window.
His mind ranged back over the events of the day, remembering the shocked expression on Mohammed’s face as the senior archaeologist had recognized him and, probably at the same instant, had realized that his life was about to end. Khaled hadn’t wanted to massacre the archaeologists, but he had known from the first – as soon as Mohammed had told him about the carving they had discovered – that he could not afford to let any of them stay alive. The quest on which he was embarking was far too important to leave behind any loose ends.
But as he sat there, something began to niggle away at his subconscious. He pictured the archaeologists standing, confused and frightened, in that small group surrounded by Farooq’s men, as he’d been driven past them in his jeep. And then the confrontation, such as it had been, with Mohammed.
His face darkened as he realized, in that very instant, what he’d missed.
‘Tahouti,’ he muttered. It was an epithet more normally used by Iranians, and referred to a corrupt agent of Satan.
There was a walkie-talkie unit clipped to the dashboard of the jeep, and he told the driver to hand it to him. He lifted the unit to his face, pressed the transmit button and called Farooq.
‘We have a problem,’ Khaled said. ‘Not everyone was there. We missed the woman.’
‘I’d forgotten about her,’ Farooq replied from the passenger cab of the leading lorry, the bouncing of the vehicle slightly distorting his voice. ‘Do you think she was hiding somewhere? My men checked all the tents, as you know.’
‘I don’t know,’ Khaled admitted, his voice bitter. He checked his watch. He couldn’t remember exactly what time they’d left the archaeologists’ camp, but he knew it was at least two hours ago, and that meant a long diversion he could have done without. But there was no choice, and he knew it.
‘We have to find her and silence her permanently,’ he said. ‘We need to go back to the camp, right now.’
‘Ma fi mushkila,’ Farooq responded: no problem. Moments later, he ended the call, then used the walkie-talkie to issue new orders to his men.
Both the lorries slowed to a stop and then turned around to face the direction from which they had come, but for two or three minutes they didn’t move, just remained stationary as they waited for the dust clouds to diminish so that the drivers could see where they were going. Then the small convoy, this time with the 4x4 jeep leading the other two vehicles, began to retrace the route it had taken earlier.
In the backs of the two lorries, Farooq’s men checked their weapons and talked quietly amongst themselves. Perhaps Farooq would allow them to take their time over the woman. She was going to die anyway, so it really didn’t matter if it was quick or slow.
7
Vicinity of Al Muthanna, Iraq
Angela tucked the car out of sight among the uneven dunes and dips that surrounded the camp, and turned it around to face away from the tents, as Bronson had suggested.
‘Until we know what’s going on here we should try to stay out of sight. We need to know we can get in that vehicle and then get out of here really fast if needs be,’ he’d explained.
Only then had the three of them approached the silent encampment. Both Angela and Stephen had wanted to rush in there straight away, but Bronson had urged caution, suggesting that they should conceal themselves in a patch of sparse vegetation about a hundred yards from the tents and try to work out what, if any, danger lay ahead.
They had no idea what had happened in the camp, but the unmoving shapes they could now see on the ground – many of them surrounded by groups of squabbling black birds – indicated that something catastrophic had taken place.
So for several minutes they just watched and waited.
‘We have to get in there right now and find out what’s happened,’ Stephen said, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘We can’t just wait out here. We have to go and help them.’
He made as if to rise, but Bronson placed a firm hand on his shoulder and forced him to remain still.
‘Not yet. Can you both take a look at the camp and tell me what, if anything, looks out of place there. Have any of the tents been moved? Are any missing?’
‘It looks just the same to me,’ Angela stammered.
‘What about the vehicles?’ Bronson asked. ‘Is there an extra truck or anything parked next to your 4x4s? Or anywhere else.’
But neither Angela nor Stephen could see any vehicles they didn’t recognize, and after another couple of minutes of seemingly interminable waiting, Bronson finally stood up and led the way towards the camp to investigate what had happened.
Even so, they still approached very cautiously, and from slightly different directions so that they wouldn’t form such an obvious target as a group. But they saw nothing, and heard nothing, no indication at all of any movement in the camp. And then the reality became obvious, and the thing they had all dreaded revealed itself, as they stopped right beside one of the unmoving shapes.
‘Dear God,’ Angela gasped and clapped her hand to her face. She looked down at the body lying face down on the rocky ground, the man’s back marked by at least four bullet wounds, the corpse surrounded by a pool of dried blood. ‘Mohammed. I can’t believe it. Oh my God.’
Bronson shook his head and took her arm, trying to turn her away from the corpse.
‘You can’t do anything for him now,’ he said. ‘Or for any of them, I’m afraid.’
She bent down and stretched out her shaking hand, but Bronson stopped her with a command.
‘Don’t touch him. He’s dead, Angela. Don’t touch anything. Either of you. I know it’s hard to think like this right now, but this is a crime scene. What communication equipment do you have here?’
Angela just stared blankly ahead, clearly in shock as her mind struggled to process what her eyes were seeing.
Stephen’s face was white and his breathing shallow. He, too, seemed unable to speak, but after a moment he turned to Bronson.
‘There’s a satellite phone,’ he said, a tremor audible in his flat, expressionless voice.
‘Right,’ Bronson said. ‘You two wait over there – stay away from this body. I have no idea how thoroughly or efficiently the Baghdad police will investigate this, but we must avoid doing anything to contaminate the scene. And we must let the authorities know what’s happened out here. I’m going to check the rest of the camp to see if anyone has survived. Look after each other for a moment.’
It took him less than five minutes to confirm that every single member of the expedition was dead, and had been for at least a couple of hours, judging by the dried blood that surrounded the corpses. Each body displayed multiple bullet wounds, and some of them had clearly been shot by more than one weapon.
Bronson stopped by one body and looked down at it with a mixture of disgust and horror; even with his police background this was a sight that turned his stomach.
The wounds on this man, and the method of his death, were very different, as the sightless eyes in his severed head stared unblinkingly across the blood-soaked sands.
Bronson counted the bodies as he made his way around the encampment, trying to use his training as a police officer to think logically and work out what must have happened. Most of the corpses were lying close together in one particular area, while the body of the man Angela had identified as Mohammed and that of one of the younger Iraqi archaeologists were lying some distance away. After circling the camp, Bronson walked back over to where Angela and Stephen were waiting, the heaviness in his step making it clear that he had no good news for them. Stephen had his arm wrapped around Angela, trying to co
mfort her as they both struggled to deal with the shock of it. As Bronson approached, she looked up at him, an unspoken question in her eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was a massacre. The whole camp. And it wasn’t random – this looks like a targeted terrorist attack.’
‘Terrorists?’ Stephen Taverner asked. ‘You think terrorists did this? Why? This was an archaeological dig.’
Previously, his voice had been quiet and subdued, but the initial horror of their discovery had been replaced by a surge of anger. Anger tinged with the inescapable knowledge that he himself would certainly have been killed if he’d been in the camp when the attack took place – knowledge that would weigh heavily upon anyone’s mind.
‘I think Mohammed and one of the other men probably tried to make a run for it, and were shot down while they were trying to get away,’ Bronson said sadly. ‘Whoever did this really didn’t care about leaving evidence behind them. Every fired cartridge case and every bullet that the authorities manage to recover from the bodies can be positively linked to a particular weapon. So that means that either these killers think they’re above the law or, more likely, they’re a bunch of terrorists and they know that they’ll never be brought to justice because they expect to die fighting, so they don’t care. The vast majority of the shots seem to have been fired from Kalashnikov AK-47s, judging by the spent cartridge cases I’ve seen. And that assault rifle is the weapon of choice for most terrorists around the world, because it’s cheap, readily available and keeps on working pretty much no matter what you do to it.
‘From what I’ve seen so far,’ he continued, his voice laced with anger, ‘I think that’s the most likely scenario. There are four virtually brand-new Toyota Land Cruisers parked over there. If this had been a robbery of some sort, why wouldn’t the thieves have taken them? I’m prepared to bet that when we check the tents we’ll find that all the valuable stuff is still there. To come here, kill everybody and then just vanish back into the desert only really makes sense in two contexts. One possibility is that this was a straightforward terrorist atrocity, a group of Westerners and locals being identified and then targeted by a death squad to make a point to the world, just another unprovoked act of senseless violence and terror. The kind of action that’s intended to make headlines around the world. But as this place is in the middle of nowhere it seems unlikely.’
‘And what’s the other option?’ Stephen asked.
Bronson shrugged.
‘The only other idea I’ve got is that the archaeologists were targeted by some group because of something specific at this dig. Something you’ve discovered.’
‘But … we hadn’t really found …’ Angela trailed off.
‘I know. That’s what I mean. If that temple had been stuffed to the rafters with solid-gold relics studded with precious stones worth countless millions, then wiping out the people who discovered it and making off with the booty would make a certain amount of twisted sense. But I can’t see anybody murdering every man in this group of archaeologists because they’d stumbled across an empty underground chamber. That’s simply ridiculous. We’re missing something here. Let’s check the tents.’
Angela led the way to Mohammed’s tent. All of the archaeologists had been accommodated two to a tent apart from Angela, as the only female, and Mohammed, the most senior.
In the space that in the other tents would have been occupied by a single campbed, Mohammed had a slim desk, the top covered in a layer of folders, paper and pens, held down by the chunky shape of a satellite phone, and with a stainless-steel Rolex watch sitting at one end of it. That, as much as anything else, was confirmation that robbery had not been the motive of the unknown attackers.
‘Is anything missing?’ Bronson asked.
‘His computer and camera aren’t here,’ Angela said.
‘Would he have worked on his laptop somewhere else?’ Bronson asked.
‘I doubt it. That’s why he had this two-man tent all to himself, so that he could work in here. I never saw him take the computer anywhere else. Apart from anything else, it’s virtually impossible to see anything on a laptop screen in sunlight. We did all the work on our laptops in our tents.’
‘Okay. At least the phone is here, though.’ Bronson turned to Stephen. ‘While Angela makes the call, could you just check the other tents and see if all the other archaeologists have still got their laptops, cameras, watches and stuff?’
Stephen nodded agreement and walked away.
Angela glanced across at Bronson before she picked up the satellite phone, but he nodded for her to do so.
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘This isn’t a part of the crime scene, not really, and whatever else we do, we have to call this in. Do you know what the number is?’
Angela pointed at a printed list suspended by a length of string from part of the framework of the tent.
‘Mohammed prepared this before we even set out to drive here. It’s got every number that he thought we might need, including most of the British Embassy and consular officials based in this region.’
‘It might be worth talking to them later, but for the moment just tell the police in Baghdad. I know Kuwait City is a lot closer, but jurisdictions will be important in this, and I’m quite sure that the Baghdad authorities will want to take the lead.’
Angela dialled the number from the list and, after speaking slowly and clearly to a succession of people who obviously understood little or no English, she was finally put through to somebody who could speak her language. She was good in a crisis, and explained succinctly what had happened, and then listened to the instructions given by the Iraqi officer. Then she ended the call.
‘I presume he told us to wait here for them to arrive?’ Bronson asked.
‘Exactly, yes. And not to disturb the scene, just as you said. I suppose we really ought to tell the people at the Baghdad and Kuwait City Museums as soon as we can.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea at the moment. Our only link to the outside world is that sat phone, and we really shouldn’t use it in case the police want to contact us for any reason. Anyway, the Baghdad authorities will want to decide who needs to be told about this and when.’
‘So what should we do now?’
‘There’s not a lot we can do, but if we can find some blankets or something I’ll cover the corpses, if only to try to give these people a bit of dignity.’
Stephen reappeared while they were sorting out sheets and other coverings to use.
‘There’s not a single laptop, memory stick, tablet, mobile phone or camera anywhere here, as far as I can see,’ he said. ‘But they seem to be the only things missing. That doesn’t really make sense.’
‘You’re right,’ Bronson agreed. ‘It doesn’t.’
8
Iraq
When the convoy was about twenty miles from the camp, Khaled pressed the transmit button on his driver’s walkie-talkie and ordered Farooq to stop the lorries. If the woman had been hiding somewhere in the camp, the last thing he wanted to do was make a direct approach, and then end up chasing her over the harsh desert terrain.
And it was also possible, he reasoned, that she hadn’t been at the camp at all, but had been away obtaining supplies, in which case their best plan would be to lie in wait among the tents until she came back. He realized that neither he nor anybody else in the group had bothered counting the number of people in the camp or the vehicles parked there, which was a mistake. If they had, they would have known immediately whether or not anyone was missing.
Wherever the woman had been at the time of the attack, Khaled knew that they would have to proceed cautiously to ensure that they managed to locate her and then kill her. They could not afford to allow her to escape with the knowledge of what was in the temple. And that meant a circuitous approach to the camp.
‘Meet me at the jeep,’ he ordered. ‘And bring your map.’
Two minutes later, Farooq spread out his map on the bonnet of the 4x4, and
for a few moments the two men just stared at the largely featureless terrain marked on it, the whole sheet a uniform sandy brown. Then Khaled glanced at the coordinates on his GPS unit, took a pencil from his pocket and drew a rough circle on the map. He changed the image on the navigation unit until it showed the location of the archaeological camp, and marked that spot on the map with a cross.
‘We can’t just drive there with the lorries,’ he said, ‘because if she’s in a vehicle heading to the camp she could easily see us and just turn around and head the other way. And then we might never find her. If she’s already at the camp, there are several 4x4 vehicles there she could use to get away.’
‘The lorries will kick up a lot of dust and sand,’ Farooq pointed out reasonably, ‘even if I tell the drivers to go slowly, so we won’t be able to approach without being seen.’
‘Exactly.’ Khaled pointed at the map. ‘We will not drive to the camp at all. There’s a track here that cuts down to the south between the camp and the border with Kuwait. Send one of the lorries down there and tell them to hold position near the route over the dunes that the archaeologists have been using when they drive to Kuwait City. They are just to watch, and to take no action until I give the order.’
Farooq estimated distances on the map by eye.
‘If they stay on that track,’ he said, ‘then they’ll be about ten miles to the east of the camp, and a lot further from where we are now. The walkie-talkies only have a reliable range of about five miles, so how will we remain in contact? We only have your satellite telephone.’
