The Bible of Clay

  Fatima was waiting for Clara at the door of their house, and she seemed to be in a good mood.

  "Your grandfather woke up hungry, and he's waiting for you."

  "I have to take a shower. I'll be there as soon as I can."

  "He wants to eat dinner alone with you tonight; tomorrow he'll see the archaeologists."

  "That's fine, Fatima—whatever he wants."

  They were just finishing dinner when Fatima announced that Yves Picot was at the door, asking to meet Monsieur Tannenberg.

  Clara was about to tell her it would have to wait until tomorrow, but Alfred interrupted her.

  "Tell him to come in."

  The two men measured each other in the few seconds it took to shake hands.

  Picot took an immediate dislike to Tannenberg. The older man's steel-blue eyes reflected sheer cruelty, devoid of any sign of human sympathy. Tannenberg, for his part, was instantly aware of the Frenchman's strength of will and character.

  Tannenberg led die conversation, so it was Picot who did most of the talking, answering the older man's pointed questions about the progress of the excavation and describing the minutiae of their findings to Alfred's satisfaction. But he was waiting for his turn to ask the questions. And at last, his opening came.

  "I've been dying to meet you," he told the old man. "I can't seem to persuade Clara to tell me how or when you found those tablets in Haran that brought us all here in the first place."

  "It was a long time ago."

  "What year did the expedition take place? Who was in charge of it? "

  "My friend, it was so long ago that I can't remember—before the war, when expeditions organized by romantics came to the Middle East more out of love of adventure than archaeology. Many of them based excavations more on intuition than research. In Haran I wasn't digging with archaeologists, I was digging with amateurs: people mildly interested in history who could afford to indulge their love of the exotic. We found two tablets on which Shamas, a priest or scribe, refers to Abraham and the creation. Ever since then, I've believed that someday we would find the rest of the tablets that Shamas pledged to make. I called them the 'Bible of Clay' "

  "That's what Clara called them at the conference in Rome when she took on the leading lights of the archaeological community. And what we've been calling it ever since."

  "If Iraq were experiencing a moment of peace in its history, half a dozen archaeological teams would have applied for the exclusive rights to excavate the Bible of Clay. With Saddam's blessing. With war about to be unleashed against Iraq ... I appreciate your commitment. It took tremendous courage."

  "Actually, I had nothing better to do," Yves replied with a cynical grin.

  "Yes, I know—you're a wealthy man, so you have no need to face the harsh reality of a paycheck at the end of the month. Your mother comes from an old banking family, isn't that right?"

  "My mother is British, the only daughter of my grandfather, who did, indeed, own a bank on the Isle of Man—a financial haven, as I'm sure you know."

  "I know. But you yourself are French."

  "My father is French—Alsatian, actually—so I was brought up shuttling back and forth between Alsace and the Isle of Man. My mother inherited the bank, and my father now runs it."

  "And you have no interest whatsoever in the world of finance," Tannenberg stated more than asked.

  "That's quite right—the only thing that interests me about money is how to spend it in the most pleasant way possible."

  "Someday you'll inherit the bank, though. What will you do with it?"

  "My parents are in excellent health, so I hope that day is far off. And luckily I have a sister—much more savvy than I—who's willing to take over the family business when the time comes."

  "Aren't you concerned about leaving something solid for your children?"

  "I have no children, nor any interest in having any." "We men need assurance that we've left something after us. A legacy, if you will."

  "Some men—I'm not one of them."

  Clara was sitting in silence, listening to Yves' conversation with her grandfather, and she noticed that the archaeologist was doing nothing to make the older man like him. It was Samira who brought an end to the volley. She came in, followed closely by Fatima, who was trying in vain to stop her.

  "Monsieur Tannenberg, it's time for your injection."

  Alfred Tannenberg looked over at the nurse angrily.

  "Out."

  The old man's tone was icy and brooked no disagreement. Fatima grabbed the nurse's arm and dragged her out, clucking and cackling at her presumption.

  Tannenberg drew the conversation out for half an hour longer, underscoring his undiminished power and ignoring the half-suppressed yawns of Clara, who was bone-tired from her work that day. Then he bid good night to Yves Picot, promising to send him a new contingent of workers.

  Minutes later, a sharp cry broke the night, followed by a woman's sobs, which grew quieter little by little, until the house was silent once again.

  Clara tossed and turned in her bed. She knew that her grandfather had made Samira pay for her temerity. The nurse would learn that Alfred Tannenberg paid his employees generously because he expected them to make no missteps. Nor was he one to forgive such mistakes. Clara imagined that he had struck the nurse—it was not the first time he had punished people who displeased him.

  Ayed Sahadi had had Lion Doyle and Ante Plaskic watched. He didn't trust either of them and was sure that neither was what he claimed to be.

  Lion Doyle, in turn, kept an eye on Ayed; the man was no mere foreman. As for Plaskic, Lion was sure he was a hit man, maybe even another operative sent in by Tom Martin. Either way, he was not the peaceable computer geek he painted himself to be.

  The Welshman had a feeling the group was reaching its breaking point. They still hadn't found the Bible of Clay, and the excavation was moving ahead at punishing speed. No one would be able to keep up the pace for much longer, and there was more tension in the camp every day. The news from overseas didn't help: At any moment, tons of U.S. bombs would start falling on Iraq.

  The workers joked that they'd be hunting Americans like rabbits— that they would never let an American soldier set foot on the sacred soil of Iraq—but they knew that their braggadocio was just that: blustering to keep up their spirits. Many of them had lived through the war with Iran, and they knew how quickly, randomly, life could be taken.

  Clara seemed not to distrust Lion. His veneer as site photographer made him an important member of the team. She never avoided his company, and during the day she patiently showed him the shards and fragments of clay objects the team unearthed, explaining the importance of each piece while they mutually chose the best angle to showcase the photograph. Scientific Archaeology would be the perfect conduit through which she would demonstrate to the world the massive archaeological value of the dig.

  Lion had laughed to himself when the head of Photomundi informed him that his pictures of Baghdad had been bought by a news agency. Their first report in Scientific Archaeology had been a success as well, in large part due to the photographs that accompanied Picot's text. Assassination or no, Lion had already turned a profit on this job. The only problem was that the publication prompted several TV channels to post their own correspondents to Safran to report on the ragtag international group of archaeologists excavating despite the drumbeat of war that was sounding ever louder. They had captured the public imagination.

  So Lion Doyle wasn't the least bit surprised when he saw Miranda show up with Daniel, her cameraman, and another group of reporters who, under the auspices of the Ministry of Information, had landed in Safran.

  "So, Mr. World-Famous Photographer!" Miranda greeted him.

  "Good to see you too. Things must be slow in Baghdad if you've come all the way out here!"

  "Slow is an understatement. Conditions are bad—really, really bad. People are at their wits' end. Your friend Bush keeps insisting that Saddam has weapons of
mass destruction, and a couple of days ago,

  Colin Powell went to the UN Security Council with satellite photos purporting to show sites housing WMDs."

  "The proverbial smoking gun. Which you don't think exists."

  "You don't either."

  "Me? I have no idea."

  "Come on, Lion, don't play innocent!"

  "I don't feel like arguing, Miranda. You've only been here a few minutes!"

  Daniel intervened to change the subject. "How was Christmas out here?" he asked.

  "Christmas? We didn't have any bloody Christmas out here, pal. Nobody takes an hour off, let alone a day—these people work eighteen hours straight, seven days a week. The food tasted slightly better that night, but that was it."

  "In Baghdad, we managed to throw together a party; we all brought whatever we could find."

  Miranda, filled with curiosity, left the two men talking while she wandered through the camp. She'd heard Yves Picot and Clara Tannenberg mentioned as the co-leaders of the expedition, and she hoped to be able to interview them both.

  Picot and Clara very hospitably made themselves available to the troupe of reporters, although they couldn't disguise the fact that they were eager to get back to work—any interruption in their very tight schedule would cost them, and all hands were needed.

  Nevertheless, as the day progressed, it didn't escape Clara's notice that Picot was a bit dazzled by Miranda, whom he trailed like a puppy. Clara saw how they laughed and talked, oblivious to everyone around them. It occurred to her that they might have known each other from before, and she felt a pang of jealousy. Miranda, like Marta, was everything Clara wasn't: an independent, self-made, self-assured woman who owed nothing to any man. Miranda was accustomed to being treated as an equal, without conceding an ounce of her femininity. It didn't surprise Clara that she seemed to know Lion Doyle too—they were both, after all, reporters.

  At lunchtime, Miranda shared a table with Marta, Fabian, and Gian Maria, along with Daniel and Ayed, who watchfully sat next to Clara herself. Lion soon joined them, despite the condescending look Miranda shot him.

  "There are demonstrations all over Europe," Daniel was saying. "The people are against this war."

  "What war? We're not at war. Bush won't attack—he's just trying to scare Saddam," Ayed said boldly.

  "Oh, he'll attack, to be sure," Miranda said. "It'll happen in March."

  "Why in March?" asked Clara.

  "Because he wants to have his operation completely mounted before summer. His troops couldn't handle fighting in this kind of heat. So they come in March, April at the latest."

  "Let's hope it's later rather than sooner," said Picot.

  "How long will you be here?" Miranda wanted to know.

  "According to your calculations, about a month," Picot replied.

  "What's your exit strategy? The army won't protect you once the bombing starts; Saddam will need every available man, and sooner or later they'll mobilize your workers."

  Miranda's hardheaded observation plunged them into silence. Suddenly they were all too aware that the world was moving at a rate very different from theirs, in this village in which they had spent the last several months searching the sand for a secret as old as time, a secret that might only be a chimera.

  Marta broke through the gloom.

  "As you've seen, we've discovered a temple, apparently part of a ziggurat. We believe that it dates to two thousand years before Christ. What we're sure of is that no one in the modern world was aware of its existence until now. We're also uncovering the outlines of houses from the same period, although unfortunately only traces of them remain. We're studying the hundreds of tablets we've found in two rooms of the ziggurat. We've also uncovered two statuettes in good condition and a number of bullae and calculi. ... I want to tell you, Miranda, that the progress we've made is extraordinary considering the length of time we've been here. We've done in four months what would have taken years under normal circumstances. Given that we're on the brink of war, I realize that the work of a handful of archaeologists couldn't matter to people. But if the bombs don't destroy what we've found and we're able to come back next year, I assure you this will be one of the most important archaeological sites in the Middle East. I think all of us can be proud of what we've done."

  "You've had Saddam's permission to work," Miranda responded.

  "Yes, of course. You can't dig in any country without the government's permission. He's allowed us to excavate, and thanks to the resources Professor Picot has paid for out of his own pocket, we have the supplies, equipment, and personnel to do it," Fabian interjected.

  "I thought that Madam Tannenberg was the co-leader and financial co-sponsor of the expedition. ..."

  Clara decided to seize that opening to make it clear that this was her expedition and that everything that might come of it belonged to her as well as to Picot.

  "That's right—this is a project that Professor Picot and I put together. It is an extremely costly and difficult one, but, as Professor Gomez explained, it has already borne extraordinary fruit."

  "But you were looking for something else, weren't you? Didn't you announce at that conference in Rome that you'd found tablets promising the story of the creation as told by the patriarch Abraham? And that there were other similar tablets in the same area? Am I mistaken about that?"

  This time it was Picot who answered.

  "No, you're right. Clara has in her possession two tablets—which I've studied and dated myself—on which a scribe named Shamas says that a man named Abram is going to tell him the story of the creation of the world. Clara maintains the hypothesis that the Abram referred to by Shamas is the patriarch Abraham, and if her theory is confirmed, the discovery of that story would be groundbreaking. No pun intended, of course."

  At that, Fabian jumped in. "Bear in mind, though, that science and history have called into doubt the historical existence of the patriarchs. No one has ever been able to produce evidence about their lives, other than what the Old Testament tells us. If we find these tablets, it would show that the Bible accurately recounts history. You can't imagine the importance that that would have for archaeology, science, even religion."

  "But you haven't found them yet," parried Miranda.

  "No, not yet," Marta replied, "but we have found many tablets bearing the name Shamas, so we still have hopes of finding the Bible of Clay."

  "The Bible of Clay?"

  "Miranda, what else would we call tablets containing the story of creation?" Marta shot back.

  "You're right, and I like the name—the Bible of Clay. And what do you think about all this? Aren't you a priest?"

  Miranda's question was directed at Gian Maria, who swallowed hard as his face turned bright red.

  "Well, that's a first. I've made a man blush!" Miranda laughed.

  Gian Maria remained tongue-tied. As everyone looked at him, waiting for him to answer, Fabian interceded.

  "Gian Maria is our resident linguist—his knowledge of the ancient languages of the region has been invaluable. He's been working night and day deciphering and translating tablets. Without him, we wouldn't have been able to make such progress. But until we find those tablets and analyze them—not just us, I mean, but also independent third parties—we won't be able to say we've found the Bible of Clay. So we're still in the realm of speculation. But as Marta said before, what we've already uncovered here more than justifies our work."

  "And the two tablets that brought you all here were written by a relatively untrained or inexperienced writer?" asked Miranda, staying on the trail. "How do you know?"

  "You can tell by the markings. It's clear that this Shamas wasn't yet well trained with his stylus, which as you probably know was a reed that made incisions in the clay. Additionally, the tablets bearing the name Shamas that we've found here don't look anything like the writing on the tablets that Clara has had in her family's possession for decades. The Shamas from here was a very experienced scribe. And he
was something of a naturalist as well, because he left a wonderful list of the region's flora," Fabian, again, answered.

  "It's possible that the Shamas who wrote the tablets from Haran and the Shamas from here weren't the same person, although Clara contends he was," Marta added.

  "And why do you think it's the same person?" Miranda asked, turning to Clara.

  "Because while it's true that the markings on the Haran tablets are different from the ones we've found here, the lines do seem to be made by the same hand, although these are firmer, surer," Clara answered with remarkable self-assurance, given the challenge implicit in the question. "My theory is that Shamas wrote the Haran tablets as an adolescent and inscribed the tablets from Safran as an adult."

  Clara knew the tablets so well that she carried them as a photographic image in her mind. And the team's analysis seemed to confirm what she already knew: The two sets of tablets had almost certainly been produced by the same hand.

  "But I'd like to know what the Church thinks about all this," Miranda insisted, turning again to Gian Maria.

  The priest, recovered from the initial discomfort of being the center of attention, tried to satisfy the reporter's curiosity. "I can't speak for the Church; I'm just a priest."

  "So tell me what you think about all this."

  "Well, the Bible tells us of the existence of the patriarch Abraham. Naturally, I believe that he did exist, that he was a real person. I myself have no need for archaeological proof."

  "And do you believe that Abraham revealed the story of the creation to someone?"