King Solomon's Curse

  ‘In the bar of a nice comfortable hotel?’

  Ziff came to Nina. ‘Can I talk to you for a moment? Alone?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll let you discuss it,’ she told the crew before following Ziff from the tent. ‘What is it?’ she asked him.

  He twiddled his beard before replying. ‘It seems you’ve made up your mind that you are going to search for Zhakana.’

  ‘That depends on the Congolese government,’ said the redhead. ‘But if they give us the go-ahead, then yeah, I want to do it.’

  He carefully considered his next words. ‘Then . . . I would like to come with you.’

  The request startled her. ‘Really? If you did, that would mean handing over the First Temple dig to someone else.’

  ‘I know. And it is not a sacrifice I would make lightly, believe me! My career – my life – has been dedicated to finding relics of King Solomon. His name is my middle name – I suppose it was my destiny!’ He chuckled, but quickly became more serious. ‘The First Temple is an incredible discovery. But you saw the other passage down there; it is completely blocked by rubble. It will take weeks to dig out.’

  ‘So you’re thinking that while the rest of your team are doing that, you could take a quick side-trip to find Zhakana?’

  ‘I know that exploring the jungle will not be easy. But at my age, nor is bending down to lift heavy stones!’ Ziff smiled. ‘Delegation is part of being a good leader, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘I dunno, I still have trouble staying hands-off,’ Nina replied.

  ‘I had noticed.’ He gazed over the sprawl of Jerusalem beyond the Temple Mount. ‘This city is full of history, Nina. But . . . it is buried. Each new generation builds on top of what was there before, and it gets harder to see what is hidden below. Zhakana, though? It could still be there, exactly as Solomon left it. And I would like to see that.’

  ‘You think it’s stayed untouched?’

  He nodded. ‘I translated more of the inscriptions. Makeda’s people never went to the City of the Damned unless they had to. They believed it was cursed. The people who built it died out thousands of years before.’

  She was intrigued. ‘How did they die?’

  ‘Solomon said that according to the legends of Sheba . . . let me think of the exact words.’ A brief frown of concentration. ‘“That which gave them their power as an empire, that which they used to conquer their enemies, brought their own walls crashing down and left them barren but for monsters and demons.” Melodramatic, but I don’t believe Solomon was exaggerating. He was reporting what he had been told.’

  ‘“That which gave them their power,”’ Nina echoed. ‘The Shamir? Or the Mother of the Shamir, rather?’

  ‘He built the Palace Without Entrance to hide the Imashamir, and to make sure that nobody without the wisdom to use it could ever reach it. So whatever it is . . .’

  ‘Could still be there,’ she finished for him.

  He nodded. ‘Solomon used the Shamir to build the First Temple. God granted him an incredible gift. The legend goes that it disappeared once its task was done, but perhaps Solomon returned it to its home.’

  ‘Or its mother.’

  ‘I do not think that we will really find a great worm inside the Palace,’ said Ziff with a wry smile. ‘But we may find something even more amazing. That is . . . if you are willing to let me join you.’

  She didn’t reply at once. She didn’t dislike the Israeli, but neither had he been the easiest person to work with. He was territorial, and she suspected was more than a little jealous of her fame. But he was intelligent, experienced, well-versed in ancient languages like Old Hebrew . . . and as he had pointed out, King Solomon was his area of expertise.

  ‘It won’t be easy,’ she finally said. ‘Do you really want to slog through the jungle looking for something that might not even be there any more?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said, surprised by the question.

  ‘Then you know why I do. You are not the only archaeologist with an obsession. Mine is Solomon, and if I discover another unknown wonder of his, then I can die happy!’

  Nina smiled. ‘I hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  ‘Ha! So do I. My grandchildren would be very sad.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘If you are still unsure if you want me to come on an expedition, I am sure I can persuade the Israel Antiquities Authority to provide additional funding. But . . . I hope you would want my help for more than mere money.’

  ‘I would, yeah.’ She cocked her head. ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to come?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was no hesitation.

  ‘Okay. Then . . . welcome aboard, I guess!’ She extended her hand; he shook it.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet. We might spend two weeks in the jungle being eaten by mosquitoes and find absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Let us hope we find something more worth our time.’

  ‘Yeah. We should let the others know.’

  Inside the tent, they found that the documentary crew had reached a decision. It was unanimous, though Lydia and Rivero’s trepidation suggested both had come close to dissenting. ‘I just got off the phone with Mike,’ said Fisher. ‘We’re in – with certain provisos.’

  ‘Which are?’ Nina asked.

  ‘You said two weeks. That’s too long. We’re saying eight days in-country. So if you’re right and it takes two days to reach the place, and it takes another two to get back, that gives you four days to explore.’

  Nina had wanted more time, but reluctantly nodded. ‘Okay. Eight days in the DRC. What else?’

  ‘Pay and conditions we’ve already agreed with Mike and the network. The issue I want addressed up front, right now, is: who’s in charge.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning I’m the director, and I call the shots. Off-screen as well as on. If I decide we need to pull out, for any reason, then we go. You don’t get to make us wait because you’ve found a particularly interesting piece of pottery. We won’t have hospitals just a phone call away – we’ll be in the middle of nowhere in an unstable Third World country. Everyone in the team is my responsibility, so my top priority is keeping us all safe. Including you.’

  ‘And including me too,’ said Ziff, to much surprise from both the film crew and the other archaeologists.

  ‘I know what I’m doing, Steven,’ said Nina. ‘I have done this before. A lot. You don’t need to take on extra responsibilities.’

  ‘That’s the deal, Nina,’ he insisted. ‘Mike already okayed it. You want us, then you accept it. Otherwise you’ll have to wait to find a new crew – and I know you’re not the patient type.’ He indicated the tunnel entrance. ‘What we found down there isn’t a secret any more, and like you said, if you can figure out how to find the lost city, so can someone else.’

  She struggled to contain her irritation. The proposition felt more like blackmail, and she had often felt Fisher was more interested in using the series to boost his résumé than showcase her discoveries.

  But he was right about her concerns; the longer it took to get the expedition moving, the greater the chance that Zhakana might be looted first . . . ‘Okay,’ she grumbled. ‘We do it your way, Steven. But I still decide what’s important archaeologically, okay? It is kinda my area of expertise.’

  Lydia rolled her eyes, but Fisher nodded. ‘If we’re all in agreement . . .’ He regarded his crew, who one by one gave their assent. ‘I’ll call Mike, get the lawyers to draw up contracts.’

  ‘With danger money,’ said Rivero.

  ‘Hell yes, with danger money! We’re not filming this on Malibu Beach.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ Lydia muttered.

  ‘But yeah, we’re good to go. So Nina, I think you need to make some calls yourself.’

  ‘You’re right,’
Nina replied. ‘I’ve got to contact the Congolese government and actually get permission to visit the country in the first place – although I won’t tell them straight up that we’re looking for a lost city housing a palace built by King Solomon. We don’t want to draw that much attention. I’ll also have to arrange the logistics, security . . .’ She stopped as she realised that in her excitement and focus on one objective, she had overlooked something equally important. ‘And . . . I really should tell my family.’

  6

  England

  ‘You want to do bloody what?’ Eddie barked.

  He was in Larry and Julie’s luxurious home outside Southampton, Macy reading a book with her grandparents

  while he took the phone call. ‘What’s Mommy doing?’ she asked, worried. ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘Yeah, love, she’s fine,’ he assured her. ‘At least, until I get hold of her!’

  ‘I heard that,’ said Nina.

  ‘You were meant to!’ He went into the adjoining room to continue what he knew would be a heated discussion in privacy. ‘Okay, say that again, so I can be sure I didn’t just have a massive brain fart. You want to go to . . .’

  ‘The Democratic Republic of Congo.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. You haven’t got a talking gorilla or Tim Curry, so why the’ – he lowered his voice – ‘fuck do you want to go there?’

  ‘The map room I found in the First Temple? I figured out where it leads. There’s a lost city, somewhere in the jungle in the eastern Congo. King Solomon visited it three thousand years ago and built a palace to protect a biblical relic. It might still be there.’

  ‘And it might not! Three thousand years is a long time.’

  ‘The Atlantean temple we found in Brazil had been there even longer, and it was still intact.’

  ‘And it’d been looked after by a tribe who tried to kill us, remember?’

  ‘I can hardly forget,’ she said. ‘But someone leaked photos of the map room online – with enough detail for anyone else to find the city the same way I did. If looters get there first, they’ll destroy the site.’

  ‘So? Tell the IHA where it is. I know you think Blumberg’s a cock, but he’s on the same side as you.’

  ‘Lester’s too by-the-book. He’d tell the Congolese government everything up front – and I’m not sure I’d trust them to protect the site. There’s a high level of corruption – and right now, there’s a lot of conflict with a secessionist movement in the east.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Eddie, unimpressed. ‘And whereabouts in the country is this place again?’

  Her voice became almost apologetic. ‘The . . . east?’

  ‘Right. So you want to search for a lost city full of treasure during a civil war in a country that’s famous for violence and corruption?’

  ‘Well, when you put it like that, of course it makes me sound crazy,’ she said sarcastically. ‘But we won’t be near the conflict zone, because we’re going into the jungle.’

  A humourless laugh. ‘Where do you think rebels go and bloody hide? They’re not working out of their bedrooms.’

  ‘Eddie, I already checked all this,’ she protested. ‘Most of the secessionist violence is in the population centres along the eastern border. We’re going much farther west, into an uninhabited part of the country.’

  ‘Oh, “we” are, are we?’

  ‘Not we-us, obviously. You’ll stay with Macy, because I sure as hell don’t want her coming to the Congo! But the network has already agreed to fund the expedition. The documentary crew is coming with me.’

  ‘Great, so a bunch of rich Americans with expensive camera gear want to trek through one of the world’s poorest countries, that’s full of men with guns?’

  Nina made an irritated sound. ‘We’re not all Americans, and that’s not the point anyway! I certainly wasn’t intending to go out there without help. That’s actually something you can help with.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I can’t think of a better person to arrange international security. You’ve got friends and contacts everywhere, and you’ve worked in the business – from behind a desk and on the front line. You must know people who can protect us.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ he told her. ‘There are people in Congo and the countries near it who I’d trust. Question is, whether any of ’em’d be available. Especially on short notice.’ He thought for a moment. ‘How short notice?’

  ‘I want to start as soon as possible.’

  ‘Why am I not bloody surprised? And for how long?’

  ‘Eight days in the DRC. Two days to reach the site from the nearest airport, two days back, and four to explore.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what about the time it’ll take you to get to and from that airport? Airlines don’t do direct international flights to piddly-shit little airstrips. What you’re actually saying is that you want me to look after Macy on my own for another two weeks on top of the time you’ve already been away!’

  ‘I thought you loved looking after her?’

  ‘I do! But it’s her I’m thinking about, not me. She hasn’t seen her mum for three weeks, and now you want to extend that by another fortnight?’

  ‘I know it’s a long time, and I know it’s not what we planned,’ said Nina. ‘But this is a big deal for me.’

  ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘I mean, you’ve just found the original Jewish temple – and you found that because you also found the bloody Ark of the Covenant! And you found Atlantis, and the Garden of Eden, and all the other stuff you got books and movies and TV shows out of. And you did all of that before you turned forty! So why’s it so important that you find this city, right now?’

  A long pause, enough that he wondered if they had lost the connection, then Nina spoke again. She sounded almost sad. ‘It’s because I did all that stuff before I turned forty, Eddie.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean . . . I know when you turned forty, you didn’t treat it as a big deal. But for me . . .’ Another lengthy silence. ‘Maybe this’ll sound silly and petty. But I found Atlantis when I was twenty-eight. In academic terms, that’s still practically just a kid. I hadn’t even had my PhD for long. But then there was this mad rush, all these incredible discoveries, fame of a sort, running the IHA . . . and then it stopped.’

  ‘But you did plenty even after you left the IHA,’ he said, puzzled. ‘You found the Ark of the Covenant, and then after that you found the Midas Cave. And while you were at it you saved a load of world leaders from being gassed and stopped North Korea from shipping out a plane full of nukes. That’s not bad going.’

  ‘I found the Ark five years ago, Eddie. The Midas Cave was two years ago. What have I done since then?’

  ‘You made a TV series? Two, actually. And you wrote your books about everything you’ve done—’

  ‘Exactly!’ she cut in unhappily. ‘That’s all I’ve done – I’ve gone back over things I already did when I was younger, regurgitated my own work for a new audience. I haven’t done anything new. And that’s been making me think lately: what if I’ve already done everything I’m ever going to achieve? I’m not a wunderkind any more. I’m forty, and I’ve accomplished so much already that I’d wondered if there isn’t anything left for me to find. But this city, Solomon’s palace . . . that’s something. And this time, it’ll be documented on camera. Nobody’ll be able to doubt it.’

  He was puzzled. ‘Nobody does doubt you.’

  ‘Are you kidding? Do you know how many emails I get accusing me of being a fraud, an agent of the New World Order, the frickin’ Antichrist? I got some abuse right to my face here in Jerusalem from some fundamentalist types who think that because I wasn’t struck dead on the spot when I opened the Ark, I must have fabricated the whole thing.’

  ‘They did, eh?’ said Eddie, feeling a flash of anger that someone had threatened his wi
fe and he hadn’t been there to force an apology. ‘They really thought we’d blow Macy’s college fund on a fake Ark?’

  ‘People believe all kinds of things, and they get very angry when someone challenges them. But this is one discovery nobody will be able to deny. So that’s one reason I want to do this. And another is . . . to prove that I’ve still got it, I guess. Yeah, I’m forty, I’m a mom, I did all these things when I was younger – but I can still do them now.’

  ‘Who do you need to prove that to?’

  ‘Myself, as much as anyone,’ she admitted. ‘Consider it my mid-life crisis.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just buy a sports car? Although wait, that’s what men do. Women have boob jobs.’

  ‘I know you’d rather I had a boob job – and you can stop smiling!’ she added in faux outrage.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Eddie, smiling.

  ‘This is what I want to do, though, Eddie,’ she continued, serious again. ‘I need to do it. Not just for myself, either – I really do think a major archaeological site will be looted if I don’t get to it first.’

  ‘You always have to do everything yourself, don’t you?’ he said. ‘But I won’t talk you out of it, will I? I can tell.’

  ‘You know me.’

  ‘Yeah, I do. And that’s probably going to knock twenty years off my life . . .’

  ‘Don’t say things like that. You need to be around for Macy for a long time yet.’

  ‘And so do you! Wandering around the Congo jungle isn’t the best way to guarantee that, though.’ Now it was his turn to fall silent, as he made a decision he suspected he would come to regret. ‘Okay. You go and find your bloody lost city.’

  She was delighted, but also surprised. ‘Really? Are you fine with this?’

  ‘No, but I’m going to do everything I can to keep you safe.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect anything less.’

  ‘Two things I want. First, I need to know what your plan is so I can figure out who to contact in Africa. So, start at the beginning. When are you going?’

  ‘As soon as possible – in the next few days, if we can. I need to get permission from the Congolese government, but I can use my United Nations connections for that.’