“Which is why I would prefer your cooperation. Dr. Wilde, I have made my decision, which both the surviving members of the Triumvirate have agreed to accept. I believe it is in the current interests of the Covenant for you to …” He paused. “Live.”
“Great,” said Nina, understandably relieved. “Pity Zamal wasn’t here to hear that. I’d have loved to have seen his face.”
“I would not be so smug,” said Vogler. “Zamal may find some other reason to end your life. And perhaps next time, I will agree with him.”
Di Bonaventura waved him down. “I think she understands the threat. I hope she also understands the opportunity she is being given.” He stood to address Nina. “Agree to help us find Eden, and you will go too. You will be the one to discover Eden. Imagine it, Dr. Wilde—it would be the single greatest archaeological discovery in history. Not even Atlantis compares.”
“You might be right,” she replied. “But discovering Eden isn’t much use to me if I’m dead five minutes later.”
“There may be no need to kill you. If you find Eden, and if it contains what we suspect, then you may understand why the Covenant was created. You may even agree with its purpose.”
“Somehow I doubt that. But why don’t you just tell me what the big secret is, right now?”
The Cardinal smiled. “Because then you would have no incentive to find out for yourself. I know what kind of person you are, Dr. Wilde. I understand you. You are driven by the need to know, to discover that which is hidden. You have an urge to expand the boundaries of your knowledge—of all knowledge. I understand you, because I am the same.”
“We are not the same,” Nina insisted vehemently. “I’m a scientist, I deal in fact—the tangible, the provable, things I can hold in my hand and show to the world. You’re doing the opposite; you’re trying to suppress knowledge. To protect your faith.”
“My faith is strong enough not to need protection.”
“Then why are you trying to destroy all trace of the Veteres?”
“Because not everyone’s faith is as strong as mine.” As Nina took in the implications of that, he continued: “Dr. Wilde, science and faith are not mutually exclusive. The Church is not opposed to science—far from it. Astronomy, cosmology, genetics, evolutionary biology … the Church has embraced them all.”
“After long battles,” Nina pointed out.
“Sometimes, yes. Controversial theories cannot become accepted overnight. But in the end, only a fool denies the undeniable. And that is when science and faith come together. They are two sides of the same coin: the search for truth. Through science, you can answer one question: what is this? And then through faith, you can answer the other: what does this mean? Only when you know both answers can you find the ultimate truth.”
“The ultimate truth being …”
“The purpose of the Covenant. The secret of the Veteres. And the hope …” He looked away, at the ceiling—or something beyond it. “The hope that one day, we will understand how it fits into God’s plan.”
“Cardinale,” said Vogler—and this time there was a warning tone to his voice. The balance of power in the room had subtly shifted from the Covenant’s former leader to his protégé. Had di Bonaventura said too much—or was he expressing another long-withheld regret over his actions?
His words at least confirmed to Nina that whatever the secret of the long-dead civilization might be, it did indeed conflict strongly with the words of Genesis—so much so that the Covenant was afraid of the damage it could cause to all three Abrahamic religions. But what could that secret be?
One thing was clear. For now, her only chance of survival was to accept di Bonaventura’s offer—and hope she could string out the meager amount of information she could remember from the destroyed map long enough to escape.
And there was something else. What if … what if she actually did discover the Garden of Eden? The Cardinal was right—it would be the greatest discovery of all time. And if she were the one to make it …
“All right,” she said, standing. “Cardinal? I accept your offer.” She held out her right hand.
For a moment he seemed almost surprised. But then he took her hand, shaking it. “Very well. Killian,” he said, turning to Vogler, “it was good to see you again, and I hope I was of one last service to the Covenant.”
Vogler bowed his head. “You were, Cardinale. Thank you. Though I suspect Zamal will not be pleased with your decision.”
“Zamal will see the wisdom of it. In time. He always does.”
“Yes, he does. In time.” The two men shared the smile of a private joke, then shook hands. “Cardinale,” Vogler said again; then he led Nina to the door.
“Dr. Wilde?” di Bonaventura said as they reached it.
“Yes?”
“Good luck.”
Her surprise at his apparent sincerity was such that all she could think to say was “Thank you.”
As Vogler had predicted, Zamal was less than pleased about the Cardinal’s decision.
“He is wrong!” he bellowed, slamming a fist down on the table. The group had left the Vatican and gone to a large house in Rome, the dome of St. Peter’s still visible in the distance through its windows. “I knew he would side with you!”
“You agreed to abide by his decision,” said Vogler. “And now that the deadlock has been broken, we have a new objective. Dr. Wilde will guide us to Eden.”
Ribbsley snorted. “I doubt that very much. Even if she knows its location, which is unlikely, she’ll just try to delay us to give Chase a chance to get there first.”
“She knows the risks of wasting our time,” said Vogler, his gaze traveling to where Nina was sitting apart from the others, her face stony. “And surely,” he continued, turning to Callum, “the intelligence resources of the United States have been able to track down Chase and Blackwood by now?”
The white-haired man sat up stiffly, bristling at the challenge—but unable to respond to it. “Unfortunately, not yet.”
“Not yet?” echoed Zamal. “Satellites, computers, spies, trillions of dollars—and you have nothing?”
“No, not nothing,” Callum said through tight lips. “The Southern Sun arrived at the French ice station of Dumont d’Urville about five hours ago. The surviving members of the UNARA expedition are going to be flown back to Australia from there. But Chase and Blackwood weren’t aboard—and the ship’s tilt-rotor was missing. It wouldn’t be able to reach land from off the Antarctic coast, so either the ship headed north to the limits of its range and then turned back to Dumont, or they stripped out the plane and turned it into a flying gas can. Even so, the only place it could have reached is Tasmania—but so far it hasn’t been found.”
“Maybe they crashed in the sea,” muttered Zamal.
“I doubt we are that lucky,” Vogler said. “But there’s been no trace of them? Nothing at all?”
Callum shook his head. “Either they’re still in Australia or they’ve used false IDs to get out of the country.” He glowered at Nina. “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that.”
Nina leaned back and put her hands behind her head. “Law-abidin’ citizen here.”
Zamal banged his fists on the table. “I can make her tell us.”
“It’s not important,” said Vogler. “We have far more resources—we can still beat them.”
“If she cooperates,” Callum said.
“I believe she will.”
“You have a great deal of faith,” rumbled Zamal.
“Isn’t that the reason we are here?”
“It’s not the reason I’m here,” said Ribbsley, going to a window to gaze out at Rome. “And if you think I’m going to trek across the bloody deserts of Sudan, you can think again. Khartoum’s a backwater hellhole, but at least the hotels have air-conditioning and room service, even if you can’t get a drink. I’ll fly myself to the site once she finds it.” He turned, giving Nina a suspicious sneer. “If she can find it.”
“I’ll find it,” she snapped back, partly to maintain the fiction that she had both memorized and translated the map, but also out of affronted professional pride. “I’ve been doing better than you so far, haven’t I?” He huffed and turned away. “Hah!”
“In which case,” said Vogler, “it is time you gave us a starting point. Sudan, you said, but you will need to be more specific. Since it is the largest country in Africa.” He slid a map across the table to her. “So. Shall we begin, Dr. Wilde?”
THIRTY-ONE
Sudan
So, do you actually know where you’re going?” asked Tamara Defendé, T.D. to her friends, as she guided her battered Piper Twin Comanche to a landing on the dusty runway.
“More or less,” said Chase, taking in the landscape. The desert surrounding El Obeid in central Sudan looked as desolate as the surface of Mars. “Okay, maybe less than more.”
The plane touched down, wheels squawking. Chase jolted forward in his seat. “Sorry,” said T.D., braking. “I’m not exactly thrilled to be here. Hard-core fundamentalist Islamic state on one hand, independent African businesswoman on the other—not the best mix.”
“Do you have a problem with the Sudanese?” Sophia asked from the Piper’s second row of seats.
“Yes, if they’re paying the Janjaweed to rape and murder African women,” T.D. said with angry sarcasm. “Maybe you hadn’t heard in your cell, but there have been some problems here. A little place called Darfur.”
“We’re not going to Darfur,” Chase said, trying to head off any further conflict between the two women. T.D. was an old friend, who at first had been happy to fly to meet him at Nairobi, in Kenya—but she became less keen when she learned his intended destination, and outright appalled on discovering the identity of his traveling companion. He got the feeling that T.D. disliked Sophia more for betraying him personally than for any of her crimes.
“Close enough. That part of the desert you showed me on the map, it might look empty, but it’s still Janjaweed territory.” She mimed spitting. “You should stay well away.”
“We don’t have a choice, unfortunately,” Eddie answered as T.D. turned off the main runway. Several planes were parked on the dirt, white-painted trucks and Land Rovers lined up nearby. “Those are U.N. trucks. What’s all this?”
“Relief effort,” T.D. told him. “It’s supposed to be going to Darfur. But, quelle surprise, it has stopped here.” Her attractive face took on an uncharacteristic hardness. “I hate this country.”
“Just another African basket case,” Sophia said dismissively. “The entire continent was much better off in the colonial days.” T.D. gave the other woman a look suggesting that had she not been occupied with the controls, she would have reached back and hit her.
“Soph, shut up,” Chase said, tired. The last few days of traveling on false passports, using bogus credit cards, had been long and tense, the possibility that they might be identified and captured—or killed—constantly hanging over them. And with Sudan being run by Islamic fundamentalists, there was a danger that the Covenant, at least Zamal’s branch of it, had influence. He patted T.D.’s shoulder. “Thanks for doing this for us.”
“I’m doing it for you, Eddie,” she replied pointedly. “And Nina. I hope she’s okay.”
He put on a stoic front. “So do I. But they took her prisoner when they could have just killed her, so hopefully she’s stringing them along about the map. The farther away she tells them Eden is, the longer we’ll have to find it.”
“You really believe that?” T.D. asked. “The Garden of Eden, the actual one from the Bible? Here, in Sudan?”
“That’s what Nina thought, so yeah. No idea what we’re going to find, though. If there’s some magical oasis out in the desert, I’m pretty sure it’d have shown up on Google Earth by now.”
“There are only two things you can be sure of finding out there,” said T.D., bringing the plane to a stop. “Sand and death.”
“I can cope with the first one, even if it’s a pain when it gets in my arse crack,” said Chase, the deliberate crassness of the comment producing a hint of a smile from his pilot. “Second one, though, I’d rather be the one causing it. Will your mate be able to sort something out?”
T.D. switched off the engines, the silence unsettling after the continuous buzz of the flight. “I spoke to him before I met you in Nairobi. He’s got you a jeep and some guns. I don’t know what state they’ll be in, though.”
“So long as the wheels turn and bullets come out when I pull the trigger, they’ll do. Thanks.” He kissed her cheek. “What’re you going to do now?”
“Personally, I’d like to fuel up and get as far from here as possible. But …” she tipped back the bill of her baseball cap, “I might stay around for a couple of days. Just in case you need me.”
Chase grinned. “Appreciate it.”
“Try not to get killed, Eddie. I hope you find what you’re looking for. And Nina.”
They climbed out and headed for the run-down terminal building.
A hundred and fifty miles to the north, a convoy of five Humvees pulled off a rough dirt road and came to a stop. Painted black rather than in camouflage colors, the oversized 4×4s appeared to be civilian vehicles. But beneath the paint, its gloss dulled by dust following the westward drive from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, they were ex-military M1114 models, armored and powerful.
Despite their size, each Humvee had only four seats. Nina rode in the lead truck, accompanied by Vogler and two of his men, more former Swiss Guards replacing the ones killed in Antarctica. She had noticed, however, that Vogler’s contingent consisted of just four men, rather than the five he’d had before. Did the Covenant have only limited manpower remaining? The absence of a new leader to replace Hammerstein, despite the presence of another group of six hard-faced Israeli troopers, suggested that this was the case; if so, then the Covenant had its limits, and was far from the omnipotent organization it had once seemed to be.
Zamal’s squad was at full strength, however. His men emerged from their Humvees, forming an armed cordon as the Arab strode across the sand to meet the four horsemen waiting for them. “So who are those guys?” Nina asked. “The apocalypse?”
“Our guides,” said Vogler. “The Janjaweed.”
Nina knew the name: the United States government had declared the militia group to be guilty of genocide in Darfur. “The Covenant sure is friends with some really nice people,” she said, not concealing her disgust.
“They would not have been my first choice. But this is their territory; we will need their support. Get out. They want to see you.”
“I don’t want to see them,” she said. Vogler had already exited, however, rounding the Humvee to open her door. She reluctantly left the cabin.
The Humvee’s interior was air-conditioned; opening its door was like opening that of a furnace. She hurriedly donned a floppy-brimmed hat to protect her pale face and neck from the sun’s searing glare, tugging her sleeves as far down as they would go. The occupants of the other Humvees also emerged, all in desert camouflage except for Callum, who was wearing civilian khakis. He regarded her from behind the blank quicksilver of his sunglasses.
Zamal was talking to the riders in Arabic. All wore thick head scarves and layered clothing to protect themselves from the sun, the top layer military fatigues in green-and-brown camouflage patterns. Their guns were AK-47s, the nearly universal rifle of the Third World. One man had a rocket-propelled grenade launcher slung from his saddle—brand-new military equipment in the hands of a purportedly civilian militia. Despite the heat, there was one cold thing in the desolate landscape: their eyes, the narrow, unblinking gaze of men who expected to be feared and had done much to justify it.
All four pairs of eyes locked onto her.
One of the riders said something to Zamal. He replied, his sneering smile directed at Nina. The four men all laughed malevolently.
“These are the Janjaweed,” Zamal said, turnin
g to stand imperiously before her. “I can tell from your expression that you have heard of them.”
“Yeah, you could say that. At the United Nations. Usually in connection with words like ‘mass murder,’ ‘gang rape,’ ‘genocide’…. Real good company you keep for a supposed man of God.”
“They serve a purpose. They will take us across the desert to where you say Eden will be found.” His lips curled back, exposing his teeth in a sadistic grin. “And if it is not there … I will give you to them.”
“I’ve heard it all before,” said Nina, outward defiance not quite concealing her dread. The horsemen were still watching her, leering. “And it’ll be there.”
“Perhaps you should show them where we are going,” said Zamal, producing a map. “Before we meet the rest of their group.”
“There’s more of them?” she asked nervously. Four Janjaweed—the name literally meant “devil on horseback”—were ominous enough, but an entire militia group …
“Oh, yes. Many more.” He placed the map on the Humvee’s hood, Vogler and Callum coming to look. “So. We crossed the Nile at Khartoum …”
“So they crossed the Nile,” said Chase, holding a digital print of the map from the frozen city. “Then if we backtrack west, they started from an oasis between three mesas.” He looked at one of the satellite images Sophia held. “I don’t see an oasis, but they can come and go in a couple of years, never mind a hundred thousand. But the mesas … it’s got to be these.” He tapped at a trio of formations on the printout.
Sophia gazed into the shimmering desert to the northwest. “We’re at the end of the road, then. Literally.”
“If you call this a road.” Chase looked back along the rutted track they had followed after heading north from El Obeid. “Going off-road’s not going to be any worse for the truck.” He banged the hood of the rusting, sand-scoured, 1980s-vintage Toyota Land Cruiser that T.D.’s contact had acquired for them.