The Bible of Clay

  Later, when he was once again alone, Enrique called Washington.

  "You're right, George," he said without preamble. "We can't afford to be weak with Alfred. He's capable of destroying everything."

  "Of destroying us. It's he who's broken the rules. I love him too, but it's him or us."

  "I say it's us."

  The helicopters were lined up on the runway of a military base under heavy watch by the Republican Guard. Ahmed Husseini was emphasizing to the base commander the prestige that the successful completion of the archaeological mission in Safran would bring to Iraq. The commander was listening with a bored look on his face. He had precise instructions from the Colonel to transport these foreigners and all their equipment to Safran, and that's what he was going to do; he didn't need any lessons on ancient Mesopotamia to carry out his mission.

  Yves Picot and a few graduate students were helping the soldiers load the cases and crates into the helicopters, as were the other members of the expedition, including the women, and that, not surprisingly in this Muslim country, was causing the soldiers to laugh and whisper among themselves.

  Picot had been adamant that everyone wear pants and boots and loose-fitting shirts—no shorts or tight T-shirts that might offend the culture. But even so, the soldiers were clearly enjoying the spectacle of these Westerners, who seemed unconcerned about anything except arriving safe and sound in Safran.

  When everything was loaded and the members of the team were divided up into the two remaining helicopters, Picot sought out Ahmed.

  "I'm sorry you won't be coming with us," he said as he shook Ahmed's hand in farewell.

  "I'll be visiting Safran from time to time, as I told you. I won't be able to stay long, but I'll try to get there every two weeks to see how things are going. Meantime, I'll be in Baghdad, where I'll be able to handle anything that might come up."

  "I hope we don't have to trouble you."

  "No worries if you do. I wish you all the best. Oh, and Yves—trust Clara. She's a very capable archaeologist and has a sixth sense for finding important things." ^ "I will."

  "Good luck."

  They shook hands again and Yves climbed into the helicopter. A few minutes later, the convoy disappeared over the horizon. Ahmed sighed. Once again, he'd lost the reins of his own life; once again they were in the hands of Alfred Tannenberg. The old man had left him no choice—either help complete the antiquities operation under way or he would be killed. Simple as that. Worse yet, Alfred had told him that it would be Saddam's secret police who would deal with him. And Ahmed knew Alfred would have no scruples about seeing him "disappear" into one of Saddam's secret prisons, from which no one ever came out alive.

  Alfred had told him contemptuously that if the operation was successful and Clara found the tablets, he'd let him go wherever he wanted. He wouldn't help him escape, but he also wouldn't stop him. One thing Ahmed was sure of was that Tannenberg was having him followed day and night. He hadn't seen Alfred's men, or the Colonel's, as the case might be, but he knew they were watching him.

  He returned to his office in the ministry. He had a great deal of work to do. What Alfred had asked him to find wasn't easy, although if anyone could access the information, Ahmed could.

  Clara felt a surge of emotion when she heard the sound of the helicopters approaching Safran. Picot would be surprised to arrive and find her team already at work excavating.

  Fabian and Marta came up behind her to watch the helicopters land. They, too, were proud of what they had already accomplished.

  When Picot jumped down out of the aircraft, Fabian was waiting, and the two men embraced.

  "Boy, I've missed you," Picot said, shaking his head wearily.

  "Same here," said Fabian, laughing.

  Marta and Clara moved forward to assist one particularly sick student, who'd just emerged from the helicopter as pale as a sheet. Clara motioned to one of the villagers to bring a big bottle of water and a plastic glass and encouraged her to drink.

  "Here, you'll feel better."

  "I don't think I can keep anything down," Magda said, separating herself from Lola and Marisa while politely resisting the thought of putting something in her stomach.

  "Come on, it'll go away—I got motion sickness too," Marta consoled her.

  "I'm never getting in one of those contraptions again as long as I live," she swore. "I'll go back to Baghdad on a camel first."

  "Me too," Marta laughed, "but meantime, drink the water. Clara's right—it'll make you feel better."

  Fabian had already begun to show Yves around the camp—the mud houses where the labs would be and where the tablets and other objects would be classified, documented, and studied; the place where the computers would be installed; the one-room meeting house where they would all gather to discuss their findings; and the showers, latrines, and weatherproofed tents most of the members of the dig would be living in over the next few months, unless they opted to stay in rooms that some of the villagers were willing to rent.

  They entered the mud house where Fabian had organized their headquarters. Magda, who was following them shakily, collapsed into a folding chair with Marta and Clara still hovering over her. Picot, at least, was more than willing to take some water, and he quickly knocked back over half the bottle.

  "Good work," Picot said. "I knew it was right to send you on ahead."

  "The truth is, we started without you!" Marta said. "For a couple of days we've been clearing the site and testing the workers to see what

  they're capable of. They range from the very good to the near hopeless, but they're all willing, at least, so I'm sure they'll be fine. They're no strangers to manual labor, that's for sure."

  "Another thing—I made Marta the overseer, and I even gave her a whip," Fabian said, laughing. "She's organized us all into a well-oiled machine. An army would be more like it. And the workers are delighted—they won't move a muscle without checking with her first."

  "You always need a good slave driver—I mean overseer," Picot said, and nodded. "The bad thing is that there's nothing for me to do now."

  Clara looked on, smiling, but beyond the greetings she and Picot had exchanged politely, she didn't quite have the nerve to join in. Over the past few days the close friendship between Fabian and Marta had become eminently clear to her. One could see how well they understood each other, how they almost read each other's minds, and she sensed the same relationship existed between Fabian and Picot.

  "So where do we sleep?" asked Magda, who was still feeling woozy.

  "There's a room for you in the house next door; Yves and I will be staying there too. It's got four rooms, so we'll fit. Or, if you prefer, look at the list of villagers who are offering to rent rooms," Fabian replied.

  "No, that's fine. If you all don't mind, I'm going to lie down for a while," she almost pleaded.

  "I'll show you where it is," Clara offered.

  When Clara and Magda were gone, Yves turned to Fabian.

  "Any problems?"

  "No, really, not a one. Everyone here has an almost reverential respect for Clara. Anything we want to do is fine with her; she's accepted all our suggestions—or Marta's orders, rather. She gives her opinion, but if she can't convince us she doesn't waste any time arguing. She's very intelligent, and she's making no show of running things or vying for the upper hand."

  "There's a woman, a Shiite named Fatima, who looks after her as though she were her own daughter," Marta put in. "Sometimes she even goes over to the dig with her. And there are also four guards who are on her like fleas on Rover."

  "Yeah, I saw that in Baghdad—she's under constant protection, which isn't surprising given the situation in Iraq. And also, I suppose, given the fact that her husband is part of the regime's inner circle," Picot agreed.

  "I think it's more than just politics," said Marta. "The other day, her bodyguards lost sight of her. She was with me—we couldn't sleep, so we got up before dawn and went out walking. When they found us, you
'd have thought they were about to go crazy—one of them pleaded with Clara that her grandfather would kill them all if anything happened to her, and he said something about 'those Italians.' Clara looked at me and told them to be quiet."

  "Which means she's got enemies," Picot mused aloud.

  "Let's not let our imaginations run away with us," said Fabian. "We don't know what the bodyguards were referring to."

  "But they were scared spitless, I know that," Marta insisted. "Scared something might have happened to her, and even more scared of what might happen to them."

  "The mysterious grandfather no one can manage to meet," Yves groaned.

  "And whom Clara refuses to talk about," Marta added.

  "We've tried to get her to tell us when and why her grandfather was in Haran decades ago, but it's useless; she won't say a word. All she does is dodge the question and change the subject. . . . Anyway, let's show you the rest of the camp," Fabian said.

  Yves congratulated them and then silently congratulated himself on managing to convince Fabian to come along on this adventure. He also praised Marta's work. She was a woman with what appeared to be an innate ability to get things organized, and she had worked wonders already.

  "I've named the houses where we'll be working and storing the material," Fabian told Yves. "The building we were just in is our headquarters. Where we'll be taking the tablets is, naturally, the tablet building. The computers will be installed over there," he said, pointing to another mud house. "I'm just calling it communications. We'll number the warehouses—one, two, three . . . and so on."

  The head of the village had invited everyone to a welcoming reception, where he had set out lunch for the team and some of his leading men. Yves couldn't bring himself to like Ayed Sahadi, the man who Fabian said had met them at the airport and who'd been chosen to be in charge of the workers. He didn't know why—Ayed seemed friendly enough and quietly efficient, but there was something about him that suggested he was more than a simple functionary. He was tall and muscular, with a slight military air, and it was clear that he was accustomed to giving orders. And he spoke English, which surprised Picot.

  "I worked in Baghdad. I learned there," was the extent of his explanation.

  Clara seemed to know him from before, and she treated him with a degree of familiarity, but he maintained a somewhat respectful distance toward her. The men obeyed him instantly; even the head of the village seemed to shrink before him.

  "Where'd this Ayed come from?" Yves asked Fabian.

  "He cleared our way into Iraq without so much as a question. He seems to know the right people. Not a very talkative chap, though. Clara says she was expecting him because he's worked with her and her husband before. I don't know what to tell you—he seems like some kind of military type," Fabian replied.

  "Yes, that's what he seems like to me too. I wonder if he's spying for Saddam," Yves speculated.

  "Well, we have to figure they're going to keep an eye on us and that there might be spies at the site. That's the way a dictatorship works— plus, we're on the verge of a war, so we shouldn't be surprised if they've planted him with us," Marta said with apparent indifference.

  "I still don't like it," Yves said.

  "Let's wait and see what he does," Marta suggested.

  That afternoon, once all the new equipment had been unpacked and operations were under way, Yves called the entire team together to review the plans for the excavation. They were all professionals; even the students who had come with them had already taken part in other excavations, so Yves didn't have to waste much time on the basics.

  The wake-up call every morning would be at four. Between four and a quarter to five, everyone was to shower and have breakfast and then, before five, be at the site. At ten there would be a short break, about fifteen minutes, and then they would work until two. From two to four, lunch and time for a nap if they needed one; at four they'd start working again until the sun went down.

  No one complained—neither the team put together by Yves nor the men from the village. The workers would be paid in dollars, ten times what they'd ordinarily earn in a month, so they were willing to work as hard as they had to.

  When the meeting was over, a young Croatian man came over to Picot. His height and everything else about him was average, but the oversize glasses he wore made him look like the perfect nerd.

  "I'm having trouble with the computer installation," he advised Yves. "The current is too weak, and the hardware pulls too much power."

  "Talk to Ayed Sahadi; he'll deal with it," Picot told the young man. The Croatian nodded nonchalantly and left.

  "You don't like him." Marta's comment surprised Picot.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I can see it a mile away. Fact is, nobody likes Ante Plaskic. I don't know why you brought him."

  "He was recommended by a friend of mine at the University of Berlin."

  "I guess we all have our prejudices," Marta said. "Ante is Croatian and I can't help thinking about the Balkans."

  "My friend said he was a survivor, that his village had been wiped out by the Bosnians in reprisal for a massacre that his compatriots had carried out. I don't know. In that damned war it was the Bosnians who had the worst of it, so maybe you're right—maybe my prejudices are coming out."

  "Of course, it's easy to oversimplify—these are the good guys and these are the bad guys. Everything black and white, no room for gray. Ante may have been a victim of the war."

  "Or he may have been a killer."

  "He's awfully young to have been a killer," Marta pointed out, always the devil's advocate.

  "I'm not so sure. He must be close to thirty now, right?" "Twenty-seven. I think."

  "Fourteen-year-olds were shooting guns when all that went down."

  "So send him home."

  "No—as you say, it wouldn't be fair."

  "I didn't say that," Marta protested.

  "Then we'll give him a chance, and if I still feel uncomfortable, I'll rethink it."

  Fabian came over. "What's up?"

  "We were talking about Ante," Marta replied.

  "Yves doesn't trust him and is beginning to regret bringing him along—am I right?"

  Picot burst out laughing. Fabian knew him too well.

  "To tell you the truth, there's something about him that bothers me too," Fabian noted.

  "Look, he's computer-sawy, and so far that's all we need to know. Let's change the subject before we get carried away," Marta said, closing the conversation.

  Ayed Sahadi was, in fact, exactly what he looked like—a soldier, a member of the Iraqi counterespionage service, a protege of the Colonel.

  Alfred Tannenberg had personally asked the Colonel to send Ayed to Safran—Ayed had taken part in some of the jobs the Colonel had helped with.

  Commander Sahadi had a reputation as a sadist, with any number of terrible stories circulating about the grisly tortures he meted out. Enemies of Saddam's who fell into Sahadi's hands prayed to die quickly.

  His mission in Safran, in addition to protecting Clara's life, was to try to uncover the men Alfred Tannenberg was sure his old friends had planted in the group to seize the Bible of Clay. Sahadi had positioned some of his own men among the workers hired for the excavation— soldiers like him, experts in counterespionage, who would earn themselves a good fistful of dollars if they found a mole.

  Clara had seen Ayed from time to time in the Yellow House with the Colonel. Her grandfather had made it clear that Ayed was going to be her shadow and that she was to put him in charge of the workers, just as he'd insisted that Ayed would coordinate with Ahmed, back in Baghdad, and with Tannenberg himself.

  And knowing it was futile to oppose her grandfather's wishes, Clara had grudgingly agreed.

  Ante Plaskic had stayed behind in his mud house as the rest of the team rose in the early hours of the morning to begin the day's work. In addition to the computer equipment, there was a room with a cot for him to sleep on. It had been
a stroke of luck that they'd given him this private space. He could sense the team's latent hostility toward him, but he'd decided to ignore it. He didn't need to make friends: He was there to get his hands on those tablets and kill anyone who tried to stop him. Anyway, it had been a long time since he'd cared whether he was liked or not. The war had desensitized him. He could live happily without the rest of humanity. If he had his way, he'd kill the entire expedition, one by one.

  He was surprised to see Ayed Sahadi enter the computer room— he'd thought he was with the rest of the workers at the excavation site. "Good morning," the Iraqi said. "Good morning."

  "Is there anything you need, or is everything okay now?" Ayed asked him.

  "Everything is all right, for the moment—I hope these things work. They should—they're the best."

  "Very well. If you have any more problems, come and find me—I can call Baghdad and they'll send whatever you need."

  "Thanks. When I finish up in here, I thought I'd go out to the site to have a look around. There's not much data to enter yet."

  "Whatever you like."

  Sahadi left the communications building, thinking about the Croatian. There was something about him, about his baby face, about the unfashionable thick-rimmed glasses, that felt fake, but he told himself not to act on intuition alone. He suspected, though, that the man had probably killed any number of Muslims during the war. Not that Ayed practiced the laws of his religion; quite the contrary. But even so, his sympathies resided firmly with the Bosnians.

  Frenetic activity continued around the crater and ancient ruins throughout the day. Down inside the hole, Ante could just make out a room where, far in the distant past, someone had lined up hundreds of tablets on dried-mud shelves. He decided not to stand there looking but to join in the work, and he took a place beside Clara. "Tell me how I can help," he said.