by Alex Archer
“Roux!”
The old man was already in motion, rolling to the side, but Bhalla and his six remaining gunners opened fire.
Stepping from behind the column, Annja trained her machine pistol on the gunners. Bullets caught three of them and knocked them backward.
Annja reloaded her machine pistol, wishing she didn’t have to kill anyone as she listened to the grinding coming from the tunnel where the altar had vanished. She felt certain wherever it was headed was not good.
And she wanted the scroll. She wanted the story that had been left.
“Roux.”
“Go.” Safely behind the column again and facing fewer foes, Roux waved her on. Then he reached into a pocket, took out a grenade and winked at her. He pulled the pin and threw it toward Bhalla.
Bhalla yelled a warning and dove to the side, racing along the columns after Annja. She raised the machine pistol, but one of the other gunmen fired at her. Bullets struck the column and knocked the weapon from her hands, leaving her fingers numb from the impact.
The grenade blew, catching the gunman in the blast and shoving him back against the wall.
Annja ran, streaking down the tunnel where the altar had vanished. Fishing her mini-Maglite from her pocket, she pointed it ahead of her. The tunnel was just large enough to allow the altar to pass on the grooves in the stone, she realized. Then the passage widened and she spotted the opening that loomed only a short distance away. From her angle, she saw only empty space at the end of the tracks.
She ran harder, knowing that even as she caught up to the altar she was going to be unable to stop before she plunged over the side after it. She told herself that she was being foolish, that she couldn’t make it, that the scroll probably didn’t have anything worthwhile on it, anyway....
She hurled herself after the altar and scroll, anyway, leaping onto it just as the altar tilted back. Her numbed hand caught hold of the scroll just as the gems and gold tumbled into the black void beyond the cliff’s edge. She managed to get one foot under her solidly enough to push off the altar as it tumbled and push herself back toward the cliff.
Clutching the scroll, she only had one hand to catch the stone edge and save herself from falling. She hadn’t been able to get enough out of her jump to get back onto solid ground.
Gasping, Annja began to pull herself up with one hand.
Then Bhalla stepped on her fingers and looked down at her. He held a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other. “Give me the scroll.”
“You’re just going to kill me, anyway.” Annja stared up at him, thinking furiously.
“You do not want the scroll destroyed. I know that about you.” Bhalla put his flashlight down, kept his weapon leveled and held out his empty hand. “Give. Me. The. Scroll.”
She was out of options. Her arm had already begun to shake. Not certain of the grip her numbed fingers could manage, Annja raised the scroll.
Bhalla smiled.
He stopped smiling when Annja tossed the scroll past him, then slapped her left hand onto the edge while letting go with her right. Bhalla fired and the bullet whipped by her head, burning her cheek. Then the sword was in her right hand and she thrust up, driving it into the man’s abdomen, ripping into his rib cage and through his heart.
Face taut with surprise, Bhalla toppled forward and fell into the darkness.
Annja released the sword to the otherwhere and pulled herself up onto the ledge. Trying to get her breath back, she sat for a moment. Had she heard the altar hit anything on the way down? She didn’t think so.
“Annja!” Roux was running down the tunnel with his machine pistol and flashlight. “Are you all right?”
“I am.” She accepted Roux’s offer of his arm and let him help her to her feet.
Roux peered over the edge and pointed his flashlight into the darkness. “Well, I certainly didn’t expect that.” He looked at her. “Bhalla?”
“He wasn’t expecting that, either.”
“I suppose you lost everything? That’s too bad.”
Annja picked up the scroll and smiled. “Not everything.”
“But you lost all the valuables.” Roux smiled back at her. “That’s going to upset Garin. I think he rather counted on getting something for all his trouble.”
Together, they walked back into the main chamber. Annja saw that the doorway no longer opened onto the tunnel. She was just about to suggest they look for a way to change the counterweights when a section of the wall collapsed and the sound of a muffled explosion echoed in the room.
An instant later, Garin stepped into the room with weapons at the ready, blood on his face. He seemed embarrassed as he lifted his machine pistol from the ready position. “I’m late. We had to make a door.”
“It’s a great door,” Annja said.
Burris Coronet, clearly shell-shocked, stumbled through the door after Garin. “Holy crap!”
Garin looked around the room. “So this is it. What did you find?”
Annja held up the scroll. “This.”
Garin wrinkled his nose. “Plebian.”
“History. I hope.”
“What’s down the other tunnel?” Garin pointed to the tunnel at the back of the chamber.
“Gold, silver, gems,” Roux said. “Quite a haul. If you can get to it.”
Without another word, Garin headed down the tunnel.
Annja turned toward the surface. She wanted to see what she’d found. After that, she wanted a bath and a bed.
Epilogue
“Sleep well?”
Annja glanced up from her tablet PC and saw Roux at her table in the small restaurant inside the Baghdad hotel. They’d decided to stay here while she worked out delivery of the scroll to the proper authorities. Taking artifacts out of Iraq was a major crime, especially since so many had gone missing during Saddam Hussein’s reign and the wars afterward.
“I did.” Annja pulled her things out of the way so Roux had space to sit. He looked dapper this morning. “I’m surprised you’re still here.”
He shrugged and reached for a menu. “I’ve got a flight to Dubai booked this afternoon. I’ve arranged for another poker game.”
“Congratulations.”
“There’s always a poker game. What did you find out about the scroll you discovered?”
“I sent images to a friend of mine in Rio. She believes it’s a dictionary of the language the workers who built the Tower of Babel used to communicate with each other.”
Roux lifted an eyebrow. “So maybe people were speaking different languages before the tower fell?”
“Maybe. Or maybe the regions had so many differences that a common language had to be constructed. After all, British speakers and American speakers don’t always understand one another, and they speak the same language.”
“People have a tendency to make language their own. Take a look at the rap stars that plague your country?”
“Plague?”
“Yes. I’ve heard them.” Roux frowned. “Nearly all of it is annoying. Loud, brassy, narcissistic.”
“You can say that about a lot of things. And even about old men who have little patience with the rest of the world.”
Roux harrumphed, but clearly his heart wasn’t in the effort. The server returned and he gave the young man his order in Arabic.
“So you found something special?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Congratulations.”
“What is there to be happy about?” Garin demanded as he walked over to them. He didn’t look so dapper. He was dirty and looked as if he’d been up all night. He sat and picked up Annja’s coffee, downing it in one long swallow. “The hole in that mountain goes down at least a half mile. We found a few gems and some coins, but it’s not going to be worth the reclamation effort to find the rest of it.” He glanced at Annja. “So you’re buying breakfast this morning.”
“All right. We’re friends again? Because I’m not buying breakfast for people who
aren’t friends.”
“For the moment. Although I don’t care for your new friend at all.”
“What new friend?”
“Burris Coronet. The mouth. He’s back at his room talking about the discovery he made.” Garin took his iPhone from his pocket, laid it on the table and punched an app. “He’s on satellite radio, you know.”
“I believe he mentioned that.”
An instant later, Burris’s voice broadcast from the iPhone. He was talking fast and excitedly. “And that’s how I found the Tower of Babel scroll you people are hearing so much about. From what I know, my discovery is going to set the archaeological community on its collective ear, and you heard it here first. Annja Creed and her grandfather would have missed out on this one if I hadn’t—”
Annja tapped the iPhone and closed the app. “I’m trying to enjoy breakfast.”
“Grandfather?” Roux looked like he couldn’t believe it. “Grandfather! Where is that blathering idiot?” He looked at Garin. “And why isn’t he mentioning you in all of this?”
“Because I told him I would kill him if he did.” Garin took a piece of Annja’s toast. “What does it take to get service around here?”
“They’re probably still deciding whether to serve you or throw you out,” she told him.
“They’re not throwing me out on an empty stomach. I’ll buy this hotel and fire them all.” Garin glanced over his shoulder and spoke in fluent Arabic to the server as he thumped a pistol on the table.
The server nodded quickly, disappeared and just as quickly returned with a carafe of coffee.
Annja looked at the pistol. “Or maybe they’ll throw you in jail.”
Garin shook his head. “That’ll never happen. I’m a licensed security consultant in this country.” He poured coffee all around, then gave his order in Arabic to the server, speaking at length. Roux joined in, then the server went away.
Garin took another piece of toast, put jelly on it, folded it and wedged it into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, sipped coffee and asked, “What’s next on your to-do list, Annja?”
“After I get the scroll delivered?” She shrugged. “I’m sure Doug has something lined up for me. There are a half dozen articles I’ve been asked to write and a couple seminars I could do at any one of a dozen universities.”
Garin grinned, baring his white teeth. “Not afraid of getting bored, are you?”
“My life is never boring. Especially not around the two of you.”
Garin picked up another piece of toast. “Well, maybe I have something you’ll be interested in. There’s an artifact dealer here in Baghdad right now—I saw him this morning. I’ve got a history with him, so I can’t get close to him, but he likes a pretty face.”
“I’m the pretty face?”
“You are.”
“Why, thank you. And why should I be interested?”
“Because supposedly this artifact dealer has a lead on some astronomy manuscripts that were thought lost when the Mongols sacked the House of Wisdom.”
She sat back in her seat and stared at him. “Really? Because they created the first observatory in the Islamic world. Heck, Sind ibn Ali was an astronomer there. You know, the engineer who helped build the canal to al-Ja’fariya? The guy who created the decimal point?” She shook her head, lost in remembering.
Garin smiled and shared a look with Roux.
“When the Banu Musa brothers sent Sind ibn Ali away so he couldn’t work for Caliph al-Mutawakkil, Al-Farghani—a rival engineer—was appointed lead on the project. Al-Farghani screwed up and made the start of the canal deeper than the end, so the water never got there. Sind ibn Ali saved Al-Farghani’s life and the Banu Musa brothers’ lives....”
Garin glanced at Roux again, rolled his eyes. “She knows more than we’ve ever forgotten.”
Roux sipped his coffee. “Is this artifact dealer Qushji?”
Garin hesitated.
“He is,” Roux said with a scowl. “He tried to kill me in Dhi Qar province.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t anything personal.”
Roux drummed his fingers on the table. “Probably not. Still, I’ve never liked that man. Putting him out of business would be a service to the world.”
“Exactly, but he knows your face, too.” Garin switched his attention back to Annja. “So what about it?”
“Astronomy scrolls from the House of Wisdom? Sacked so badly by the Mongols that no one knows exactly what they did there?”
Garin held up a hand. “The scrolls might not be real.”
“Much of Qushiji’s artifacts are not. But he manages to stash some really good stuff,” Roux added.
“And he can be very dangerous,” Garin went on.
Annja smiled. “How can I resist?” More than anything, though, she knew she wanted to hang on to her family just a little longer before they went their separate ways.
She suspected Roux and Garin felt the same way, though she knew neither of them would admit it.
* * * * *
A local superstition or one of history’s monsters come to life?
If you enjoyed “The Babel Codex” be sure to catch the action-packed tale Blood Cursed by
Rogue Angel author Alex Archer. Available now wherever ebooks are sold!
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ISBN: 9781459253988
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Mel Odom for his contribution to this work.
THE BABEL CODEX
Copyright © 2013 by Worldwide Library
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