by J C Ryan
“The third is he knows everything about this Council.
“I don’t need to tell you the consequences if they interrogate one of our own council members with extreme measures.”
A long silence descended as everyone ruminated on the implications of Graziella’s words.
“May I give my opinion?” Mathieu asked carefully when he was sure his mother was finished speaking.
“Please do.” She nodded slightly.
“Sullivan is still of use to us. Right now, the Devereuxs are fugitives under suspicion. Their escape has all but sealed their fate. The government officials, up to and including the President, are angry and confused as to the source of the leaks.
“Therefore, I suggest that until they start pointing fingers at the National Security Council, we leave Sullivan in place. We can still get good mileage out of him.”
Graziella put it to a vote, and Sullivan was granted a stay of execution—for the time being.
“While we are on the topic, we might as well discuss one of our longstanding risks,” Graziella announced after they’d voted on Sullivan’s temporary reprieve.
“We still have not had a lead on our original library. Since it disappeared around 106 AD, we have been searching for it, and never more thoroughly than in recent years. I probably don’t have to tell you what a disaster it will be if that library is discovered by anyone other than us.”
Historians had been speculating for ages about the absence of written records of Nabatean history. They’d just accepted that none existed because the Nabateans never wrote anything down. That was the easiest way out but, of course, ignored the fact that the Nabateans, during their heyday, were the most literate and advanced group of people of the era.
The Council knew different. The written record did exist. That knowledge and a few other bits and pieces of information were passed on to the successive generations of their leadership through the millennia. What was lost over time was how, when, and where that information was concealed.
The Nabateans had preserved some of their myths, legends, secrets, and what was believed to be accurate information through oral tradition. Among their secrets was that gigantism was over-represented in their bloodline, leading the council to the conclusion that they were descendants of the Giants. Those very Giants whose libraries Carter Devereux had flagrantly stolen.
Another secret was that some of them lived to a very old age—beyond the presumed maximum human age of 120. Graziella had a particular reason to keep this secret. She had just passed her one-hundred fiftieth birthday, though everyone presumed she was at most fifty-five, and a very beautiful fifty-five to be sure. Mathieu was one of the beneficiaries of his mother’s secrets—celebrating his ninety-fifth birthday a week before this meeting, but officially he was only in his mid- to late thirties.
Their savants were yet another of those secrets.
But the true prize was the location of their library. It had been front and center on Graziella’s mind since they’d lost the E- and A- Codices to that damned Carter Devereux.
May he rot in the worst level of hell.
“We all know Carter Devereux has a habit of finding artifacts no one believes exist to be found in the first place. If, by some miracle, Devereux escapes the ambush we’ve laid for him this time, it will be imperative to kill him immediately.
“No more indirect actions and elaborate schemes. We hire assassins and get rid of him.
“I can only imagine the calamity if he finds our library before we do…”
“I’m almost sure we’ve got him this time,” Mathieu said with confidence.
Chapter 30 - What Kelly White was supposed to do
March 16 about 11:00 a.m.
“Have we covered everything?” Sean asked.
Bill looked at his watch. “Affirmative. The seventy-two hours started fifteen minutes ago. Get your ass in gear and sort this out, Walker. If anyone can do it, it’s you and Dylan. Make it happen.”
Sean snapped off a mock salute with a grin, turned on his heel, and made a show of racing out of the office. Bill shook his head. He knew Sean took it seriously, all right. But it was obvious that some of Carter’s humoristic streak had rubbed off on him.
Sean hated to do it to them with no notice, but with the no-electronic-communications rule in place, he’d get to the safe house where Carter and Mackenzie waited without prior warning that they had to move again. This time, he wanted them farther outside the boundaries of the District. It’d be less convenient for him to get to them but more secure.
He took them to Severna Park, a bedroom community to the south of, and more closely associated with, Baltimore. It was only about an hour away from Washington.
To his relief, Carter and Mackenzie had already packed the evidence into two of the briefcases and were calmly waiting for him—as if they expected the relocation.
Mackenzie asked if there would be an opportunity to purchase some clothes and other necessities.
Sean smiled. “If you write your sizes down, I promise I won’t look at them, and I’ll get someone to do some shopping on your behalf.”
“Thanks, Sean. You’re such a gentleman. No wonder Samantha’s got the hots for you,” Mackenzie teased.
Sean laughed. “Nothing of a romantic nature will ever escape your notice. Will it?”
“You’ve got that one nailed buddy.” Carter chuckled. “But you must admit, there’s been plenty to notice lately.”
Sean pretended to look innocent. “I have no idea what you mean, buddy.”
Mackenzie broke in with a wide smile. “Your excursions with the lady in question haven’t gone unnoticed. Horseback rides, long walks in the woods...”
Carter got a mischievous expression and added, “Calves’ eyes at each other and deep sighs.”
“All right, you two. So, I’m attracted to her. What’s wrong with that? She’s smart, witty, easy on the eyes—”
“Don’t forget that killer smile,” Carter added.
Mackenzie smacked him on the shoulder with the back of her hand.
“Well, it is,” Carter defended himself.
***
As they drove through a maze of backroads toward the Chesapeake Bay, Sean filled them in on the conversation he and Bill had that morning. He didn’t tell them about the tone of the conversation or the near physical encounter.
“It’s hard to believe the President and Bill were so quick to condemn us,” Carter said, his voice heavy with disappointment. “But I guess I can see what pressure they were under, now that we know how it all went down.”
“I’m worried about James and Irene,” Mackenzie said.
Sean replied, “Me, too, but they’re not in imminent danger of arrest. I’ll let them know about the latest developments as soon as I can.”
The safe house in Severna Park was a typical suburban three-and-two, with eat-in kitchen and small living room, furnished as it had been in the 1970s when it was new. Not very different from her parents’ house in Boston, where Mackenzie grew up.
Sean had set up his laptop and portable printer on the dining table. Carter and Mackenzie helped him word the letters his deputy, David Longley, would carry to Freydís the next morning. The first was official orders David would hand to Dylan. Dylan was to hand over the reins to David and get back to DC immediately for an updated briefing and to help Sean with the investigation.
A second letter was to Mackenzie’s parents. It would assure them, and they were to pass on the assurances to the rest of the family and staff, that Carter and Mackenzie were safe. It asked them to cooperate fully with the CIA team, try not to worry, and as much as possible, relax and wait. It urged them not to believe anything they saw in the media, and that all their friends in DC were working to resolve the issues.
Sean then explained to Carter and Mackenzie that he would need some recordings, pictures, and videos of the two of them for the CIA forensics team. He asked each of them to speak normally, read from a book, and perform oth
er actions. He recorded their voices and made some video clips on the equipment handed to him by one of the forensics experts before he left CIA headquarters.
“Why are you doing all this?” Mackenzie asked.
“Voice and facial recognition,” Sean replied unhelpfully. “I don’t know how the technology works, but the geeks told me this is what they need to do their analysis.”
“In other words, exactly what Kelly White was supposed to do before jumping on the bandwagon and accusing us of treason,” Carter mumbled.
“Yep.” Sean nodded.
Telling Mackenzie, he’d bring the personal necessities when he came back, he put the briefcases with all the evidence back in his SUV and headed for Langley to see the forensic experts.
When he’d gone, Mackenzie explored the bedrooms until she found a loose robe, which would do to wear until Sean brought what she asked for.
She was dying for a long, hot shower, and Carter could use one, too. She wrinkled her nose as she kissed him before disappearing into the bathroom. He got the hint.
Chapter 31 - The library of the Nabateans
Afternoon March 16
Wearing her borrowed robe, Mackenzie poked around the kitchen for something they could eat while Carter took his shower. She had to laugh despite their circumstances when he appeared wearing a pair of pants that were far too large and a Henley that might as well have been a tent.
“I’m guessing the last guy they had here was a bit portlier than me,” he said, joining in her amusement.
“At least you smell a lot better,” she replied. “We have tuna or tuna. What do you want for lunch?”
“Do we have any tuna?”
By two p.m., they’d had enough of going in circles about what they could do to prove their innocence. They’d aired and considered every possibility. Every single option hinged on one starting point—the forensic analysis of Kelly White’s “evidence” had to exonerate them before they could do anything else. They could only hope the CIA’s technology was sophisticated enough to achieve that.
Without electronic communication devices, and with nothing but soap operas and political drivel on TV, not to mention having to watch their names and faces splashed on all but the kids’ channels, there wasn’t much to do besides talking and waiting.
For the two of them, used to being part of the action, the sad reality was they had to take a passive role, stay out of sight, and wait for others to do the work for them.
The irony wasn’t lost on them. They were now responsible for proving their innocence in a country where people were considered innocent until proven guilty. The age of the internet with no measures of control over what people said and no system that held people accountable for what they said had turned the tables on that notion. Now everyone believed anything they saw, and anyone accused of anything was guilty until proven innocent—and sometimes remained guilty even after proven guiltless.
They might as well have been in Saudi Arabia or some other dictatorship.
When they’d talked that concept to death, Mackenzie said, “I wish there were a way to turn the tables on them.”
“On whom, Mackie?”
“The Nabateans. You and I both know beyond a reasonable doubt it’s them behind this.”
Carter fell silent. Mackie, you beauty! A quirk of his eidetic memory was to throw related images to his mind just when he needed an idea, and Mackenzie’s whim had triggered it.
The Nabatean library! He’d read about it on Algosaibi’s laptop after Perrin Durand turned it over. It had been in the back of his mind as something to search for ever since, but he had to put it on the back burner then.
His mind was now working overtime. If they could dig that library up, it could give them an advantage over the Nabateans. Their superior resources might be neutralized if the library contained some secret that revealed a vulnerability or even gave them a clue to help them track the modern descendants. At the very least it could be such an embarrassment to them, if someone else found it, they might just overreact and blow their own cover.
Carter sighed. There was nothing they could do in their present circumstances, and where and how to start looking for it was the first obstacle. But if Sean’s plan worked, and he could get them out of their current predicament, finding that library was his next target.
He told Mackenzie what he was thinking. “It’s frustrating, though, having to just sit here and wait. “
“We don’t have to just sit here, though. We can work on a plan and be ready to implement it as soon as Sean gets back with good news. Let’s brainstorm it,” Mackenzie said. As far as she knew, it would just be mental exercise, but it beat watching Judge Judy or Dr. Phil on TV. And she knew from experience how to stimulate Carter’s mind—it always produced positive results.
“If there’s one thing I know would seriously worry the Nabateans, it’s that their written record, if it exists, hasn’t been discovered yet. I believe it does exist and that it contains at least one secret—but I would bet on many—they want to keep hidden for some reason.”
Mackenzie encouraged him, though she now remembered having heard it before. “Why do you believe that, Carter?”
“Because, in a time when everyone loved to write things down about themselves—on clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, and temple walls in ancient graffiti— the Nabateans, the most educated bunch of their time, wrote nothing down.
“I find that improbable.
“The answer is more likely to be found in the fact that the Nabateans specialized in the covert, and they hid that information from the Romans—anything that could give them an advantage or that would make them vulnerable if known.”
“Just like they’re doing now,” Mackenzie remarked.
“Exactly. The current Council of the Covenant of Nabatea must be desperately worried that someone will find it. I’m thinking they haven’t yet, or they wouldn’t be so eager to get their hands on the older knowledge—the Codices.
“It must be embarrassing for them. After nineteen hundred years, they still haven’t found it. Somehow, the location wasn’t passed on, or it got lost, and they have no idea where to look for it.”
“We’re in danger of the same thing happening to us,” Mackenzie said.
“How do you mean?”
“No one writes anything down anymore. Not on paper, which has a limited lifespan in any case, and certainly not on clay tablets, and walls, and copperplates. Everything is stored on computers, and these days in the Cloud. If a calamity hits us and wipes us out, in two thousand years’ time, someone will dig up our civilization and find a bunch of plastic, wires, and electronic garbage, but no written record.”
Carter stared at her. Could that have been it? The modern Nabateans had been on his heels for every discovery of ancient knowledge. Had they really left a permanent written record, or did they have access to more ancient technology, something to store their information electronically?
A nomadic civilization probably wouldn’t have stored it on clay tablets and scrolls. That would have been too difficult to transport and even more difficult to hide from their own people so thoroughly it wouldn’t have been found after all this time.
The most pressing question—what was in that library? He could only speculate, and hope, it was significant enough to be used as leverage against the Nabateans.
Maybe so significant it could destroy them.
Chapter 32 - As long as it fits
Sean met Bill at Langley and was escorted to the forensic labs. Bill gathered everyone who would be involved into a small conference room, where he had Sean introduce the problem and the evidence. Once he’d described what he wanted, the experts assured him it would be a relatively easy task to do what he was asking.
The lab supervisor summarized, “You’d be surprised at how near perfection voices, videos, and images can be engineered. But our technology is sophisticated enough to pick up voice tampering. Videos and images are even easier. We don’t have to work th
rough enormous databases, just compare the sets of recordings. We’ll be able to give you answers soon enough—with ninety-five percent accuracy.”
Sean handed over the equipment.
If the lab techs were curious about how Sean got recordings of wanted fugitives, they didn’t voice it.
“Ninety-five percent?” Sean asked
“I say ninety-five percent accuracy because we couldn’t record this in a properly setup studio.”
“Close enough for reasonable doubt,” Bill interjected. “If you can get to within ninety-five percent certainty, I’ll wring the other five percent out of Kelly White’s neck if I have to.”
The lab techs didn’t ask who Kelly White was either.
“Give us a few hours.”
With time to kill, Sean picked up a CIA make-up specialist he’d dated in the past. That was until he found out she was old enough to be his mother. She’d gotten quite a laugh at his expense, but they were good friends now. She was happy to help him out. They made a stop at a Wal-Mart on the way back to the safe house.
Sean handed her the note with Mackenzie’s sizes and laughed. “Greta, just one favor, please. Make sure you emphasize the fact that I haven’t looked at the inside of that note when you hand the clothes to the woman for whom you are buying.”
“Sean, are you in some kind of lady trouble I should know about?”
“No, nothing of the kind. You’ll understand when you see her. She’s married, and she’s got red hair.” Sean winked.
“Aha, I see. Sean Walker finally found someone that scares him.”
“Yeah, well… let’s just leave it at that.” Sean chuckled.
When they arrived at the house in Severna Park, Sean burst out laughing at Carter’s attire. He knew better than to tease the redhead, and besides, she looked as beautiful as ever in her robe.
Two hours later, Carter and Mackenzie were different people. Neither their family nor their friends would have recognized them without hearing them speak. Thanks to the latex film Greta used and showed the Devereuxs how to use, neither would most facial recognition software. It wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, nor to the sophisticated techniques of the NSA, CIA, and other security agencies. But they’d be able to get around without having to worry about traffic cameras and other low-tech surveillance.
