Alfred Tannenberg closed his eyes as he squeezed his granddaughter's hand. For a second he was tempted to explain Operation Adam to Clara, to turn it over to her; then he'd be able to sleep. But his friends and enemies alike would interpret it as a sign of weakness. Besides, he told himself, Clara wasn't ready to deal with men who so frequently blurred the line between life and death.
"Doctor, I'd like to be alone with my granddaughter."
Fatima opened the door, ready to see that Tannenberg's order was followed. Samira walked out meekly, followed by Dr. Najeb, and then Fatima closed the door after herself.
"Grandfather, you mustn't—"
"The Americans are going to attack on March twentieth. You have only weeks to find the Bible of Clay."
The news stunned Clara; she couldn't find words to speak. It was one thing to think that the war was going to happen but another, very different thing to know exactly what day it would begin.
"Then it's inevitable," she said, the remainder of her once-high spirits depleted.
"Yes, and thanks to the war we're going to make a lot of money." "Grandfather!"
"Come, Clara, you're an adult. I can't imagine that you haven't learned there is no business so profitable as war. I've always had my hands in conflict and made my fortune thanks to other people's stupidity. I can see in your eyes that you don't want me to tell you the truth. Fine, I won't—but there you have it: The war is going to start on the twentieth. But you mustn't tell anyone that you know this."
"Picot wants to leave."
"Let him go. Let them all go, it doesn't matter. We just have to try to keep them here a few days more. They can leave on the seventeenth or eighteenth. Until then, everyone must keep working."
"What if we don't find the tablets?"
"Then we'll have lost. I'll have lost the only dream I've ever had. I'll speak with Picot tomorrow. I want to propose something to save all this work, and to save you."
"Will we be going to Cairo?"
"I'll let you know. Oh, and be careful with that husband of yours. Don't let him talk you back into your failed marriage." "Ahmed and I are finished."
"Perhaps. But I am a very wealthy man and I'm dying. Soon you are going to be a very wealthy woman. He may push for a reconciliation; my friends trust him, they know he's a very capable man, so they won't object if he succeeds me as head of the business when I die."
"My God, Grandfather!"
"My child, we have to talk about everything; there's no time for pleasant fictions. Now let me sleep. Tomorrow, offer the men twice their wages to work as hard as they possibly can. They have to keep excavating that blasted temple—until they find the Bible of Clay."
When she left her grandfather's room, Clara found Samira and Fatima waiting for her.
"The doctor said I should sit with him tonight," Samira explained.
"I told her that I could stay," Fatima complained.
"You are not a nurse, Fatima," Clara told her gently.
"But I can take care of him; I've been doing it for forty years!"
"Please, Fatima, go get some rest. This house can't function without you, and if you don't get some sleep we'll all suffer."
She hugged her old servant and motioned Samira into her grandfather's room. Then she retired to her own room.
Ahmed was sitting up in bed, reading. She saw that he hadn't put on pajamas, just a T-shirt and shorts.
"You look exhausted." He set down his book.
"I am."
"I looked for you, but they told me you were talking to the priest." "We shared a smoke outside." "You've become friends, then."
"He's a good person. I haven't known many of those in my life." "Your grandfather is worse, isn't he?"
Clara shot him daggers. "No, and I'm surprised you have that impression."
"Well, there was talk about it in Cairo."
"I imagine Yasir was the talker, but he was wrong. My grandfather is no worse than he was, if you must know."
"Oh, his mind is still clear, of course, but he looks ... I don't know, more fragile, thinner."
"If you say so. . . . His latest lab results came back fine, Ahmed. He's fine."
"You don't need to be defensive."
"I'm not being defensive; I just know that you're counting the days until he's gone, but he's not going to give you that pleasure." "Clara!"
"Really, Ahmed, it's been hard for me to see it, but I know how deeply you hate him. I suppose it rubs you the wrong way to be his employee and subordinate to Enrique, Frank, and George."
Ahmed shot to his feet, his fists clenched. Clara looked at him defiantly, knowing that he wouldn't dare lift a finger against her—he would be signing his own death sentence.
"I thought we were going to be able to get through this divorce like two civilized people, without arguments or insults," Ahmed said, crossing the small room to the bottle of mineral water. He poured himself a glass.
"I just want to know the truth."
"Well, then, maybe it's time that we started to talk openly about things. I haven't left because your grandfather hasn't let me. He threatened to have me detained by the Mukhabarat. And he'd have done it too. One phone call from him and I'd have disappeared off the face of the earth. So I accepted his conditions. But not for money, Clara—I did it for my life."
Clara listened stoically as her husband began to spit out the truths that had gone unspoken for so long, truths that he thought would topple the pedestal on which she'd placed her grandfather all these years.
"Do you know what this last operation of his is about? I'll tell you. The archaeological missions he's financed have had one purpose: to steal the most valuable pieces that are found. Nor has he ever had any problem corrupting government officials who earn barely enough to live on between their paltry paychecks. They turn a blind eye to his operations and let thieves carry pieces out of the country's museums. Does that surprise you? It's a lucrative business, moves millions of dollars, and has made your grandfather and his oh-so-respectable friends very, very wealthy. They sell one-of-a-kind pieces to one-of-a-kind clients. Your grandfather runs the business in the Middle East, while Enrique is in charge of Europe and Frank handles South America. George is the spider at the center of the web. He might sell a Roman-period statue stolen from a hermitage in Castille or an altarpiece from a South American cathedral. There are a lot of very wealthy, very greedy people in the world, Clara; they see something and they want it. For them, everything is just a matter of money. A group of art hoarders. There aren't many, but they're very generous. You're pale—do you want some water?"
Ahmed poured her a glassful of water and handed it to her. He was enjoying this. For years he had been suppressing his rising rage at his wife's infantile attitude—she was purposefully blind to what happened around her. She just lived—skirting anything that stood in her way, taking what she wanted—with a willful ignorance through which she steadfastly maintained her innocence about her grandfather's activities.
"Your grandfather needs me for this last operation, so he gave me no choice but to participate. I'll tell you what it consists of. It's a caper, like one of those old American movies, but on a scale not witnessed since the sack of Rome. Alfred's men are going to break into the largest museums all over Iraq, not just in Baghdad. And you want to know who gave them the lists of these one-of-a-kind pieces whose value is literally incalculable? I did. These objects are . . . the patrimony of all humanity. But they'll wind up in the secret museums and dining rooms of a handful of art-greedy millionaires who want to drink out of the same goblet that Hammurabi drank from. But since the teams are risking their necks for those pieces, Alfred's allowing them to carry away a few items for themselves. I've made two lists: one of unique, one-of-a-kind objects, and another of merely important objects."
"That's . . . that's impossible," stammered Clara.
"It's not just possible, it's easy. On March twentieth the war will start, is that not right? Is that not what your grandfather told yo
u? All right, then—that day, his men will break into the museums and get out as fast as they can. Each group has been instructed to reach a border— Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan—where other teams will be waiting to transport the cargo to its final destinations. Enrique has already promised certain pieces to important buyers, as have Frank and George. They'll hang on to the rest and take them out for sale as the market demands. They're in no hurry, even if they are all getting on in years." "But in the middle of the bombing ..."
"Oh, that makes it all the easier! When the war starts, nobody's going to be thinking about guarding museums; everybody will be running for their lives. Alfred's men are good, the best thieves in the Middle East."
"Stop it! Don't say another word!"
Clara stood up from her chair, pacing back and forth across the small room. She felt like running, felt like screaming. But she controlled herself. No, she wouldn't do or say anything that Ahmed expected her to do or say. She turned toward him, hating him for having brought her world crashing down around her ears—that lovely, false world in which she'd been living since she was a child, always under the protection of her doting grandfather.
"The war is really going to start on the twentieth?"
"That's right. George called to let us know. You shouldn't be here that day if you want to go on living."
"When will we have to leave Safran?"
"I don't know; your grandfather didn't tell me."
"How will you get out of Iraq?"
"Your grandfather promised to get me out; he's the only one who can."
They stood in silence. Clara felt that she'd aged ten years in the last half hour. She stared at Ahmed. How could she ever have loved this man?
Then it struck her that she didn't care what her grandfather had done. She loved him anyway and would never reproach him for anything, especially in the waning days of his life. She decided that she was going to defend him to her last breath against anyone, including Ahmed or Yasir, who wished to usurp him—who wished to kill him.
Ahmed watched her as she paced the room, and he thought that any moment she was going to collapse, break down completely. He was surprised when she brought herself under control and turned to him with ice-cold eyes. Alfred's eyes.
"I hope you and Yasir are up to doing exactly what my grandfather asks of you. I'll be watching, of course, to make sure you don't decide to change the plan. If you do . . ."
"Are you threatening me?" Ahmed asked, incredulous.
"No, Ahmed. I'm not threatening you. I'm telling you. But I don't imagine that will surprise you, coming as it does from a Tannenberg."
"You want to make a name for yourself in the big business of crime?"
"Spare me the irony I don't think you know me, Ahmed; you underestimate me, you always have, and you could pay for that mistake dearly"
Ahmed shook his head; he was beginning to think that the woman he'd slept with for the last ten years was a total stranger. But he did believe her—as he'd listened to her talk, he knew that this woman was capable of anything.
"I'm sorry to have upset you, Clara, but it was time that you knew the truth."
"I'm going to sleep in Fatima's room; it stinks in here—it stinks of you. Get out of here, leave Safran as soon as you can, and when the operation is over, try not to bump into me somewhere—I won't be as generous as my grandfather has been."
Clara left the room, gently pulling the door shut behind her. She felt nothing, absolutely nothing for Ahmed; she only regretted the years she'd wasted with him.
Fatima was startled to hear the soft knock at her door. She got out of bed and pulled the door open a crack.
"Clara! What's wrong?"
"Can I sleep here?"
"Yes, of course. Sleep in my bed; I'll make a bed on the floor." "Just move over, we both fit."
Fatima's presence calmed her. Clara fell into the bed and closed her eyes. She slept deeply until the first ray of sunlight shone brightly through a crack in the blinds.
39
fatima entered the room with a tray.
"Hurry and eat; Professor Picot wants to see you." By the time Clara got to the dig, the team had been excavating for hours. Marta came over to her, holding a shard of clay that was clearly distinct from their previous findings.
"Look at this. There was a fire here, in the temple; there's no way to know whether it was an accident or torched on purpose, though when we cleared off the perimeter of another courtyard, this morning, we found a set of stairs and some weapons—swords and spears. They're not terribly well preserved; the ground wasn't dry enough to keep them perfectly. But some of them seem to have been deliberately broken—it looks like the temple was attacked and looted in some battle." "Temples are usually respected," Clara replied, mystified. "Yes, but every so often kings overrode the sanctity of the religious establishment out of greed. For example, Nabonidus' plundering caused irreparable changes in the relationship between the throne and the temple. He replaced the temple scribe with a royal administrator, the resh sharri, who was in charge of commercial activities. The priests who oversaw the temple, the qipu and the shatammu, were subordinate to him. Or perhaps there was an invasion, a war between kings, and the temple suffered the same fate as the cities and other sites."
Clara listened attentively to Marta's theorizing. She had developed enormous respect for Marta over the course of their work together, not only for her expertise but also because of her behavior toward everyone on the dig. And Clara envied the deference everyone paid Marta, even Picot, who always treated her as an equal, and the genuine affection in which she was held.
It struck Clara that she'd never earned that kind of respect. In the final analysis, she told herself, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, on her resume worth noting except her name, Tannenberg, which in the Middle East was respected and feared in equal measure. But even that stemmed from her grandfather's reputation; she just benefited from it as his heir.
"Has Professor Picot seen it?"
"Yves? Yes, of course, and we've decided to allocate more men to this sector. We'll work as late as we can today. We have to make every minute count."
Fabian, dangling by a rope from an improvised crane, its pulleys manned by workers under the close watch of Picot, was being lowered into a hole that seemed to lead into a room buried underground. Everything below was dark.
"Be careful, it looks deep," Picot was saying.
"Don't worry, just let the rope out slowly. We'll see what's down here."
"I am worried—turn on that flashlight. If there's enough space down there, I'll come down too."
The workers slowly lowered Fabian into the hole. They were hoping that this was a lower story of the temple, though it might be just a well. They couldn't be sure until Fabian resurfaced. Picot looked nervous as he peered down into the darkness.
"How is it down there?" he called out to Fabian.
"Lower me a little more—I haven't touched ground yet," Fabian called back, although his voice sounded far away.
They heard a dull thud and then silence. Picot started getting into a harness, as Fabian had done.
"Wait—let Fabian tell us what's down there," Marta told him.
"I don't want to leave him there by himself."
"Me either, but waiting two minutes won't kill anyone. If he doesn't signal us, then we'll go down," she said.
Minutes later, the rope jerked a couple of times. Yves inched closer to the hole, but all he could see was a shaft of light in the blackness.
"Are you all right?" he shouted down, hoping that Fabian could hear him.
They felt another tug on the rope.
"I'm going down. Help me here, and get some more lights so we can see what's down there," Picot grumbled, as he checked his attachment to the crane rope. "Marta, you're in charge."
"I'm going down too."
"No, stay here. If something happens to us, who's going to run the show?" "I am."
Marta and Picot turned to look at Clara, whose ton
e left no room for argument.
"I remind you, Professor, that this mission belongs to us both. I'll make sure that nothing happens to you while I'm here."
Yves shrugged and motioned to Marta to follow him.
Some thirty feet down, his feet touched ground. He felt the clamminess of the earth and saw Fabian, on his hands and knees, a few yards away, scraping at a wall with a spatula.
"Nice to have some company," said Fabian without turning around.
"So what are we looking at?" Picot asked.
"I think this is a door—there seems to be another chamber through here. And there's also some sort of fresco—look here, you can see it. It's a winged bull. Beautiful."
"What's this?" Marta said, joining them.
"It appears to be a room. There are some wooden shelves over there—see that wall? The shelves sticking out? It may have been the room where the tablets were held; I don't know, I haven't had much time to look around," Fabian said.
Marta untied two large lanterns from around her waist and placed them on the floor; Picot did the same. The light seemed dim in the large room, but it illuminated what appeared to be a rectangular space that contained, as Fabian had told them, the remains of wooden shelves.
The ground was covered in shards of clay and pieces of ancient wood, as well as vitrified sand.
Picot helped Fabian clean off the section of wall where the traces of the winged bull were painted, while Marta continued to study the floor, where she found pieces of clay tile with bas-reliefs of bulls, Hons, falcons, ducks. . . .