“Have you told Harper what happened that night?” asked Dafydd.
“No,” she said. “And I don’t intend to.” She laid her head back on his arm and closed her eyes.
She draped her legs across Dafydd’s, and it almost felt like this could be a real thing. She realized that it wasn’t actually Wales that she wanted to run away and hide in—it was this.
Finally, Dafydd wiggled his arm.
“I’m famished,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “I’m going to go get ready for dinner.”
They pulled themselves off the chair and walked, hand in hand, up the stairs. They each pulled out their keys to their adjoining rooms. She stood at one door, Dafydd at the other.
She slid the key into the lock. She turned it. Then she looked up at him. He grinned. She opened her door and he followed her in, and they were both naked before the door closed behind them.
“Woman,” said Dafydd an hour later as they lay in each other’s arms. “You are insatiable.”
“You’re very, very good at that,” she said.
“Why thank you,” he said. “You know, they say the Welsh have some special talents in that department.”
“Oh really,” she said, smiling at him. “Who is this ‘they’ of whom you speak?”
“Oh, everybody, worldwide,” he said. “It’s a well-known fact. I’ll bet even the squaws of the Mattakeese were twittering on about the horizontal skills of my ancestors fifteen hundred years ago when those strapping Welsh sailors came to town with Morfran. Probably got so spoiled on Welsh cock that the homegrown boys couldn’t get a piece.”
“Those poor guys,” she said. “They should never have let them onshore.”
“Ah, but they did,” said Dafydd. “And that was their first mistake.” He leaned over and kissed her. She melted into him, and she could feel him getting hard again.
Then, like a bright flash of light, she realized why the Mattakeese band was keeping the burial site of their ancient visitor a secret.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Gyles swung open the back door of his bulletproof chauffeured Mercedes SUV into another drizzly London night.
“Stay put, Kenny,” he said.
He swung both his feet out of the car, hopped down onto the curb, closed the door behind him, and strolled across the sidewalk into the white stone, brightly lit facade of the Iraqi embassy in Kensington. A young Middle Eastern man greeted him at the door and took his name.
“Welcome, Mr. Gyles,” said the man, slightly flustered once he realized to whom he was speaking. “It’s our great pleasure to welcome you.”
He nodded graciously and entered the building, already teeming with men in tuxedos and women in gowns and diamonds. Candlelight filled the main salon of the elegant drawing room, and champagne and sparkling water were being passed to the guests by waiters in white coats and gloves. The ambassador’s attaché, a large, swarthy man with a long beard, his belly barely contained behind his cummerbund, strode over to Gyles, hand extended.
“Mr. Gyles,” said the man. “Thank you for coming. I know you don’t like these things.”
“I wouldn’t miss it, Fuad,” he said, smiling and shaking the man’s hand. “We have a lot to celebrate.”
“We couldn’t have done it without your help,” said Fuad. “It’s a great triumph against the thieves who are raping my country of its past.”
“Indeed,” he said. “A great triumph.”
“I assume you’d prefer to avoid the photo session, as usual,” said Fuad.
“I don’t wish to be insulting.”
“Not at all,” said Fuad. “If only more people were less interested in getting their name and face in the paper and more interested in actually making a difference in the world.”
Fuad took champagne and sparkling water from a passing tray, and the two toasted.
The ceremony, which acknowledged and thanked those who had been responsible for the successful completion of a three-year negotiation to repatriate nearly one billion dollars’ worth of antiquities to Iraq, was blessedly short.
His mind wandered to more pressing matters as the ambassador read the names of the people who had been involved in the effort.
He’d had a very productive couple of days. He’d sent his second-most trusted associate, Tommy, to the U.S. to dispatch Plourde. That job would be done within twenty-four hours. It would, naturally, look like an accident. Then Tommy was to stay in the area and await further instructions.
Meanwhile, JB, through his trusted network, had hired a Boston-based guy named Patrick to tail Ms. Jones. Patrick already had eyes on her and had put a GPS tracker on the vehicle she was using to travel. The guy had been in charge of a gun-running operation between Boston and Belfast in the ‘80s, so he knew the area like the back of his hand, and he was an expert at being invisible. If Patrick ever talked to the authorities, he could still put half of the government of Northern Ireland into a maximum-security prison for the rest of their lives. He was, as they say, as silent as the grave. He was sending hourly status updates to JB via text.
Carys Jones had been joined by another man and John Harper, who, it turned out, was no longer being confined and was not quite so insane as Gyles had been told. Patrick reported that he looked just fine. It was clear—based on the gear they were toting around—that they were still hunting for the tomb.
So, the game was still afoot. Once Jones and Harper found the tomb, Tommy would take over operations from Patrick. Gyles didn’t trust anyone else to manage those logistics, which would most likely involve some wet work and the removal of the tomb’s contents. Patrick and Tommy would then transport the contents, along with the manuscript and translation, to a diplomatically registered private jet for a flight from Bedford, Massachusetts, to Saudi Arabia. He trusted Tommy to handle the details on the ground—which Gyles imagined would be formidable. Tommy had handled worse.
Most crucially, he had realized over the previous twenty-four hours, no one was to spook Jones and her hunting party. The anonymous client who’d started this whole treasure hunt—whom he had taken to calling Client A, for “annoying”—had just texted, again, to remind him that the manuscript needed to be retrieved immediately. Jones and Harper, Client A insisted, must not find the tomb. That was an ironclad condition of their deal.
That ship had sailed. Gyles had no intention of grabbing the manuscript until after they led him directly to the burial site. Let them find the damn thing and then kill them off. This would happen much more quickly if Jones and Harper didn’t realize they were in mortal danger. Client A would never know they’d found the tomb if they were dead within an hour of doing so.
The room exploded into raucous applause, and everyone turned to Gyles, who was jolted from his thoughts. He nodded graciously to the crowd, putting his hand over his heart and bowing low toward the ambassador. A moment later, under cover of the continuing applause, he placed his half-empty glass of champagne on a passing tray and discreetly headed for the exit.
Once outside, he popped the collar of his cashmere overcoat against the cool, damp night air and hailed Kenny. A BMW sedan was parked directly in front of the embassy, and he took a few steps down the sidewalk to meet his vehicle. He heard the BMW’s door open. A moment later, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He spun around.
“Mr. Gyles, may I have a word?” asked an impeccably dressed man. His accent was Middle Eastern—he couldn’t quite nail the country—and his beard and hair were trimmed and shining in the embassy lights.
“Can you call my office in the morning? I’m afraid I have an appointment.”
“I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say, Mr. Gyles,” said the man. “Or should I call you JB?”
His blood ran cold.
“Let’s take a seat in my car, please,” said the man.
“Do I look like a fool?”
&
nbsp; “Fine,” said the man. “We’ll speak here. Quietly. I would not want to compromise your…what is the English word? Facade?”
He glared at the guy. Kenny was slowly moving the Mercedes toward him. He put out his hand to tell him to stop. He didn’t want him to hear any of this conversation. The SUV halted.
“When will the sculpture be arriving in Geneva?” asked the man.
“Tomorrow,” he said calmly, as if discussing the weather. He held the man’s gaze intently. “As I mentioned several days ago, there were some hiccups at the border. I will alert your people as soon as it arrives at the warehouse.”
“It’s been two days longer than you promised Mr. Alahwi,” said the man.
“These things aren’t science,” he said. “There are variables.”
“We don’t like variables,” said the man. “The money will be transferred in forty-eight hours.”
How did this man know who he was? His mind raced, but he kept his breathing steady. How had he tracked him? It didn’t matter. There was only one way to handle this. He had to be crazier and more dangerous.
“Nice car,” he said confidently. “Diplomatic plates. Based on the number, looks like…U.A.E., yes?”
The man flinched slightly.
“They know you do side work?” he asked. “Using the embassy car?” He laughed. “The ambassador would probably waive your immunity in a heartbeat if he knew he had a jihadi working for him.”
“What makes you think he doesn’t know?” said the man with a smile.
“He’d no doubt be displeased if that fact went public. And he probably wouldn’t lift a finger to stop the Americans from doing one of their special midnight renditions on you, would he?”
The man’s smile dropped away.
“You’d rot in a cell in Guantanamo undergoing enhanced interrogation for the rest of your life—if you were lucky,” he said.
Gyles reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He held it in front of him as if to dial, then turned it toward the man and snapped his photo.
“These phone cameras are simply remarkable now. Mine is twelve megapixels,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the resolution.”
The man glared at him and then began to bare his teeth like an angry dog.
“Have you ever seen a man skinned alive?” asked the man.
Gyles swallowed but didn’t miss a beat.
“No,” he said, deepening his voice and dropping it to a confidential whisper. He leaned in toward the man. “But I have seen a man turned inside out. Reminds you that we’re all just meat. You might want to take a vacation back home. As soon as you can.”
The man stood his ground for half a second longer, but then he took a step back. He got into the driver’s seat of the car and slowly pulled away.
This one was an amateur. The next one would not be.
For a split second, he felt that old fear, deep in the pit of his intestines. He could feel the bodies in the school’s bunk room closing in on him, could hear the squeak of the bedsprings. Then he pushed the thoughts out of his mind, as he had learned to do so well over the ensuing decades. He was not going to let this become a problem.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
The three of them took their seats at a round table at a fish restaurant that overlooked the marina at Barnstable Harbor. Outside, fishing boats and sailboats buzzed back and forth in single file in the narrow, low-tide channel that led from the harbor to the marina’s docks.
When their drinks arrived, Carys was ready to explain her theory.
“I think I figured out why they are keeping everything a secret,” she said.
“What did you come up with?” asked Harper.
“They’re pretending they don’t know anything about ancient visitors,” she said. “But that Christian cross is an embedded part of their most ancient history. And the cross was inscribed on the tunic of a human figure on the rock artifact in the tribal office.”
“What’s your point?” asked Harper.
“I did some research of my own,” she said. “The aboriginals didn’t wear decorated garments during the Woodlands period. They didn’t know about weaving or fabric. They didn’t have that technology—that was European technology. The tribe surely knows this. If they still have the sword that Morfran left behind, they know that that was European technology as well. My point is that they probably don’t know who was buried in that tomb, but they have to know that he was European—in other words, white.”
“That doesn’t explain the secrecy,” said Harper.
A light went on in Dafydd’s eyes, and he smiled at her.
“The Morfran manuscript says that many of his men stayed behind after Morfran returned to the east, right?” asked Dafydd. “You best believe those Welshmen didn’t stay behind so they could become celibate.”
Harper sat motionless, processing. Slowly, realization crossed his face.
“Imagine what it would do to the tribe if it were ever revealed that they have been partially white since a thousand years before the official arrival of white men,” she said.
“Probably nothing,” said Harper. “Tribes get to determine the rules about who is a member and who isn’t.”
“But if the Mattakeese have had white blood in their veins for fifteen centuries, the surrounding tribes likely would have it as well,” said Carys. “They all intermarried. Every tribe in the Wampanoag nation would have their sovereignty questioned. Everything they have would be at risk. Any federal money they receive, all the sovereign lands they hold, the right to build casinos, everything. Their entire identity, their entire history, would be questioned—very publicly. It could affect all the native people in this part of the U.S. I’d bet the Mattakeese would do anything to hide the truth.”
“Every native tribe in America has been intermarrying with white people for centuries,” said Harper. “Why would it matter?”
“Because this would rewrite their most ancient origins, their most sacred legends,” she said. “Their very foundation. Their creation legend is Maushop. What do you think would happen if they found out their great creator was, provably, a white guy? And not just any white guy, but the son of King fucking Arthur?”
“I didn’t get into this to destroy an aboriginal people’s identity,” said Harper. “But we’re so close. There has to be some way to get them to give us the location of the tomb without damaging them.”
“We can’t claim credit for discovering Arthur’s tomb unless we also reveal the two manuscripts to the archaeological community,” she said. “Without them, our claims would be entirely invalid.”
“I know,” said Harper. “Jesus.”
“Maybe we should blackmail them,” she said. “Show them the Morfran manuscript and tell them what it says and threaten to reveal it if they don’t cooperate.”
Dafydd started to laugh. “Oh, that’s a great idea. Blackmail Indians. You’ll get yourself killed.”
Just then, heaping plates of fried food appeared before them.
“Can I get you kids anything else right now?” asked the server.
“No, thank you very much,” said Harper. “This is great.”
As hungry as Carys and Dafydd had been before they got to the restaurant, neither touched a bite. The waitress nodded and moved briskly away.
“Dafydd’s right. That’s a bad idea,” said Harper.
“But what other bargaining chip do we have?” she asked. “If we show them the manuscript and explain what it says, at least we’ll have some leverage.”
“They’ll never believe us,” said Harper. “They’ll never believe it’s authentic. We have nothing to negotiate with if they won’t even acknowledge that Morfran’s manuscript is real.”
“They will,” she said. “All I have to do is read them a few paragraphs. If those paragraphs even remotely match their
tribal legends, they’ll know we’re not making it up. And if they continue to pretend they have no idea what we’re talking about, we’ll let them know we can have the book carbon-dated, made public, big announcement, most important historical find, blah blah.”
“And then what?” asked Harper. “Their options are literally to tell us the location and rewrite their entire history, or don’t tell us the location and rewrite their entire history when we reveal the manuscripts to try to strong-arm them. What incentive do they have to cooperate?”
The three of them sat silently. Dafydd finally dug into his plate of fried scallops.
“I suppose it depends on what they want,” said Carys. “Besides us going away.”
4
Wednesday, June 27
Carys rolled out of bed into the cool grayness of her room, leaving a snoring Dafydd wrapped in the duvet. She crept into the bathroom and looked out the window into a thick white mist that shrouded the view of the surrounding yard. She could barely see twenty feet. It was pure and silent.
She took a quick shower, and Dafydd was still asleep when she emerged. He looked like a young boy in the bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets. She felt a pang of something in the center of her chest, something warm and electric that seemed to expand when she looked at Dafydd. At its center was a desire to protect, to never be without, to entwine. She enjoyed it for a moment, then inhaled it away. There would be time for that later. She put on some jeans, a T-shirt, and a cardigan and went downstairs for coffee.
Harper was already up and working on his laptop in the parlor.
“Sleep well?” she asked. His head popped up, and he smiled at her.
“Nope,” he said. “Not a wink. Couldn’t stop thinking. We need to set up a meeting with the tribe today. Let them know we have proof. Then we can start negotiations to get to the tomb. I have an idea.”
“What if they still insist they don’t know what you’re talking about?” she asked.
“Call their bluff, like you said last night,” he said. “We could let it leak to the press that we uncovered some ancient artifacts found in a cave in Wales that have been traced to a Native American tribe. We can have your father deliver the jewelry to the Welsh antiquities authorities, reveal the location of the original tomb. We slowly ratchet up the heat until they agree to play ball.”
The Ghost Manuscript Page 35
