The Bible of Clay

  "I don't care," she said finally, reaching for the phone. "I'm going to call him."

  She rang the front desk and asked to be put through to Baghdad. It was several minutes before she heard Fatima's voice. "Fatima! It's me, Clara!"

  "My darling girl, how wonderful to hear you! Let me call the master."

  "He's not asleep?"

  "No, no—he's reading in his study. He'll be so happy to hear you." Over the phone, distantly, she could hear Fatima calling Ali, her grandfather's manservant, telling him to call the master. And then he was on the line. "Clara, my dear ..." "Grandfather ..." "You're in Amman?"

  "We just got in. I'm dying to see you, to be home again. To be honest, Rome didn't go very well." "I know." "You know?"

  "Of course I know, Clara." "But how?"

  "It surprises you that I know things?"

  "No, of course not, but..."

  The old man sighed wearily. "Where's Ahmed?"

  "Right here."

  "Good. I've prepared a wonderful welcome for you both. Now let me speak to your husband a moment."

  Clara held the telephone out to Ahmed, and he took it and spoke for a few seconds with his wife's grandfather. Alfred wanted them back in Baghdad as soon as possible.

  First thing the next morning, Clara and Ahmed were in the lobby, waiting for the car that would drive them to Iraq. Neither of them noticed the four men watching them, scattered around the busy lobby.

  The night before, the men had sent their report to Security Investigations, straight to Luca Marini. So far, everything looked perfectly normal. Crossing the border presented no problem to Ahmed and Clara, though it did to Marini's men. They'd decided to divide up into pairs and hire drivers to take them across. It hadn't been easy— only Jordanians with family in Iraq, or smugglers, had any interest in going into Iraq.

  The drivers had been recommended by the hotel, and Marini's men had managed to persuade them by paying very generously—and sweetening the deal by offering them a bonus if they never lost sight of a green Toyota SUV that had left the hotel ahead of them.

  There was not much traffic on the highway to Baghdad, but enough to let them see that it was a conduit for just about anything imaginable.

  It was night when they reached Baghdad. One of the cars followed the Toyota to a neighborhood in the city, while the other headed for the Hotel Palestina. They'd been told that was where most Westerners stayed, and they were presenting themselves as businessmen, however suspicious it was under the circumstances that anyone would be going to Baghdad on business.

  The green SUV pulled up in front of a pair of wrought-iron gates and waited for them to open. Marini's men didn't stop. They now knew where Clara Tannenberg lived. The next day they'd scope the place out more thoroughly.

  The two-story Yellow House, named for its always freshly-painted golden hue, stood proudly in a wealthy residential neighborhood, in the midst of a well-tended garden. Once the residence of a British businessman, it was now guarded by a complement of unseen, heavily armed men in the employ of its current owner.

  Fatima was waiting in the entry, sitting in a chair, dozing. The sound of the car door woke her. Clara ran to her and hugged her tight. The woman was a Shiite and had cared for Clara since infancy.

  Fatima had been very young when she'd lost her husband and had to go to her mother-in-law's house to live, where she was never welcome, never well treated. But she bore her destiny without a word while she raised her only son.

  One day her mother-in-law sent her to the Yellow House, where a foreign gentleman lived with his young wife, an Egyptian woman named Alia. And there Fatima had remained. She served Alfred Tannenberg and his wife, accompanied them to Cairo, where the couple had another home, and above all took charge of the couple's son, Helmut, and then their granddaughter, Clara. At first, the little girl had been frightened of Fatima's black clothing, but she grew used to it and soon found in her the sweetness and affection that her mother lacked.

  Now Fatima was an old woman, who had lost her son in the terrible war with Iran. She had nothing now but Clara.

  "My girl, you do not look well."

  "I'm tired."

  "You should stop traveling and start having children—you are growing older, you know."

  "You're right, Fatima," Clara replied, laughing.

  "Ay, my girl, be careful that what happened to me doesn't happen to you! I had just one son, and when I lost him I was left alone."

  "You have me."

  "Yes, my darling, I have you. If I did not, I don't know what there would be to live for."

  "Oh, Fatima, don't start. I just got here! Where's my grandfather?"

  "He's resting. He was out all day, and he came in tired and worried."

  "Did he say why?"

  "No, just that he didn't want any dinner. He shut himself up in his room and ordered that he not be disturbed."

  Clara knew that Alfred's orders were to be respected by strangers and family members alike. "I'll see him tomorrow, then," she said.

  Ahmed went to his room while the two women talked. He was tired. The next day he would go to his office in the ministry, where he had to present a report on the conference in Rome. What a disaster! But he was privileged. He couldn't forget that, no matter how nauseating it was to find himself in such a position. For years now he had been uncomfortable, first when he discovered that his family belonged to a dictatorial regime's elite. But he hadn't had the courage then to renounce the privileges; he'd preferred to blind himself to the consequences of his status by believing that his loyalty was to his family, not to Saddam. Then he had met Clara and Alfred Tannenberg, and his life had fallen irretrievably into the abyss. He had become more corrupt than he'd ever imagined. And he couldn't blame Alfred. Ahmed had voluntarily entered Alfred's organization, voluntarily become Alfred's heir, knowing exactly what that entailed. If his position vis-a-vis Saddam was solid because of his own family ties, he became untouchable when he joined forces with Alfred.

  But it was becoming harder and harder for Ahmed to live with himself and even more so with a woman like Clara, who refused to see what was going on around her, living in ignorance rather than facing the truth about those she loved.

  Finally he had come to the realization that he didn't love her anymore—perhaps he never had. When they'd first met, in San Francisco, their Arabic heritage united them. They spoke Arabic to each other, had mutual friends in Baghdad, were both archaeologists, and enjoyed the same feeling of freedom and adventure in the United States, although they both missed their country and their people. Clara had had money—a great deal of money—in her checking account, and he himself had more than enough to live comfortably in a spacious loft from which he could watch the sun rise over San Francisco Bay.

  Eventually, they moved in together.

  When Ahmed's father visited him in San Francisco, he ordered Ahmed to marry Clara. It was a marriage of many conveniences, and Ahmed's father sensed that things in Iraq were about to change. Among diplomats, information flowed freely, and it was clear that Saddam was no longer favored by the U.S. administration. One had to think about the future, and so Ahmed married the grateful, immensely wealthy, spoiled, and overprotected girl.

  Clara came into their bedroom, and Ahmed jumped.

  She launched right into him. "How can you not say hello to Fatima, Ahmed? You walked right past her without saying a word." "I said good evening. I have nothing else to say to her." "You know what Fatima means to me." "Yes, I know what she means to you." "What's wrong with you, Ahmed?" "I'm just tired."

  Ahmed's tone surprised Clara. Lately her husband had been behaving as though he was always upset, irritated with her, and as though she was a burden increasingly hard to bear.

  "I know you, and I know something's wrong," she pressed.

  Ahmed stared at her. He felt like telling her in no uncertain terms that she didn't know him, that she'd never known him, and that he was sick of her and her grandfather. But it was too late now to
escape. "Let's go to bed," he said, turning away. "We both have to work tomorrow. I have to go to the ministry, and I've also got to get started right away on serious preparations for the excavation. Everything I heard in Rome only confirmed there will be a war, even if no one here wants to believe it."

  "My grandfather does."

  "Yes, your grandfather does. Come on, let's go to bed. We'll unpack tomorrow."

  Alfred Tannenberg was in his study the following morning with one of his Egyptian business partners, Mustafa Nasir. They were in the midst of a heated argument when Clara came in. "Grandfather . . ."

  "Ah, you're here, my dear! Come in, come in."

  Tannenberg's icy eyes fixed on Nasir, and Nasir broke into a broad smile. "My dear girl, I haven't seen you in ages! You no longer do us the honor of visiting Cairo. My daughters always ask about you."

  "Hello, Mustafa." Clara's tone was unfriendly, echoing the manner in which her grandfather had been addressing him.

  "Clara, we're working. As soon as we've finished I'll call you."

  "All right, Grandfather. I'm going out shopping."

  "Take one of the guards."

  "Yes, yes, of course. Fatima is going as well."

  Clara left the house with Fatima and Yasir, one of Alfred's most trusted men, who acted as a chauffeur-bodyguard. They drove in the green SUV to the center of Baghdad.

  The city was a pale shadow of itself. The blockade imposed by the United States had impoverished the Iraqis, who now were forced to live by their wits. The hospitals were still functioning, thanks to the help of a handful of XGOs, but the need for medicines and food was increasingly urgent.

  Clara harbored a deep hatred toward Bush for what he was doing. She didn't like Saddam either, but she couldn't forgive the people who were strangling the very life out of her homeland.

  She and Fatima, accompanied by Yasir, wandered through the bazaar until Clara found a gift for Fatima—it was her birthday. Neither of the women noticed the presence of the foreigners who seemed to be following them through the narrow, labyrinthine streets of the bazaar. But Yasir detected them pretending to be tourists browsing through the stalls, trailing them at every turn. He didn't say anything to the women, so as not to alarm them.

  When they drove back to the Yellow House, he went straight to Alfred Tannenberg before Clara could reach him. Mustafa Nasir had gone.

  "There were four men, two and two," the bodyguard explained to his employer. "They were following us; there is no doubt. The way they dressed, their faces—I am certain they were not Iraqi, or Egyptian, or Jordanian. But they didn't speak English. I believe it was Italian."

  "What do you think they wanted?"

  "To know where Miss Clara was going. I don't think they intended her harm, although ..."

  "One never knows. Be certain she goes nowhere alone, nowhere, and that two men, armed, are always with her. If something happens to my granddaughter, neither you nor they will live to tell it."

  There was no need for the warning. Yasir had no doubt that if something happened to Clara he would pay for it with his life; he would be neither the first nor the last man to die at the express orders of Alfred Tannenberg.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Add more security around the house. Inspect everyone who comes in and goes out. No unknown gardeners replacing sick cousins, no irresistible street vendors. I don't want to see a single unfamiliar face unless I personally authorize it. We're going to turn the tables on these mysterious men who are interested in my granddaughter. I want to know who they are, who sent them, and why."

  "It will be hard to grab them all."

  "I don't need them all—one will be quite enough."

  "Yes, sir, but we will need Miss Clara to leave the house again."

  "Yes, Yasir, that is true. My granddaughter will be the bait."

  Yasir nodded solemnly.

  Tannenberg called in his granddaughter. For an hour he listened to her complaints about what had happened in Rome. He had known that things would not go well. His friends had wanted him to wait until Saddam fell before uncovering the rest of the site the U.S. bomb had exposed. It would be a mission to uncover not just the Bible of Clay but other tablets, perhaps a statue or two, like so many other missions he had financed.

  He would not wait this time. He couldn't. He knew that he was living the last days of his life. He had four, six months at the most. He had demanded that the doctor tell him the truth, and the truth was that he was approaching the end. He was eighty-five years old, and his liver was covered with small tumors. Less than two years ago, almost half of it had been removed.

  Clara would have Ahmed and enough money to live comfortably the rest of her life, but he wanted to give her a real gift, the gift she'd been asking for since she was a child: the glory of discovering the Bible of Clay. That was why he'd sent her to Rome—so it would be she who publicly announced the existence of the two tablets he had found when he was younger than she was now.

  They might laugh about the story of Abraham's tablets, but at least the members of the archaeological community had been notified of their existence, even if most considered them a fantasy. No one could take away his granddaughter's glory now, no one, not even his closest friends.

  He had already written the letter that one of his men would take to Amman and deliver to a courier, who in turn would take it to Washington to the home of Robert Brown, so that he, in turn, could deliver it to George Wagner. But before he sent it, Alfred had to tend to these meddlers who were following Clara—he might have to add a postscript. And he'd speak to Ahmed in the evening, when he returned from his office. This morning when he'd brought in the letter from Brown, he'd seemed tense.

  Alfred trusted Ahmed because he knew how ambitious the younger man was and how desperate he was to escape Iraq. But Ahmed could escape Iraq only with Alfred's money, the money that Clara would inherit and that Ahmed would enjoy only as long as he was with her.

  9

  MARINl's SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS TEAM HAD BEEN IN

  position since dawn. They had found a good spot from which to watch the comings and goings of the Yellow House: a cafe on the corner on the other side of the street. The owner was friendly, and although he was constantly asking them why they had come to Baghdad, the place was perfect for surveillance unobserved by the men guarding the house.

  At eight, the two men stationed in the cafe saw Ahmed Husseini leave in the green SUV He was driving, although beside him, in the passenger seat, was a burly man clearly on the alert; his head seemed to swivel in all directions. Clara didn't leave the house until ten. She was accompanied by the old woman swathed in black from head to foot. The same man accompanied them again today, and the threesome drove off in a Mercedes SUV.

  There was a crackle of walkie-talkie chat and the other team, sitting in a rented car two streets away, was alerted. They pulled out behind the Mercedes as it passed, with the first two following in another car not far behind.

  The Mercedes headed toward the outskirts of Baghdad and traveled for over a half hour before finally turning down a dirt road bordered by palm trees. The men from Security Investigations were uneasy but

  pushed on, staying back at a prudent distance as the Mercedes sped up. They weren't willing to lose sight of the woman who was their only link to the old man they'd been sent to find and photograph.

  The Mercedes raced down the unpaved road, raising a cloud of dry dirt and dust, and then a second later, from two side roads, a swarm of SUVs appeared, apparently intent on crashing into the first of the pursuing vehicles. Marini's men realized too late that it was a trap, as the SUVs surrounded the first car and forced it to stop. The second car stopped short several yards behind the first and backed up fast to a safer distance, keeping their comrades in sight. None of them carried weapons, and the two men in the trailing car had no way of confronting the armed men who raced to their teammates' car, pulled them out, and threw them to the ground. They watched helplessly as the two were beaten and
kicked, then they wheeled their car around to return to the highway for help. They weren't running away, they told themselves, although deep inside they knew they were.

  They were well out of sight by the time one of their teammates was forced to his knees and shot in the back of the head, while the other vomited. Five minutes later, both were lying dead in the ditch.

  Carlo Cipriani covered his face with his hands. Mercedes was sitting pale and impassive beside him, while Hans Hausser's and Bruno Miiller's faces reflected their anguish at Luca Marini's news.

  They had been called to the office of the president of Security Investigations. Marini had insisted that they come to him. The entire company was in mourning—the employees' silence was eloquent testament to that.

  The plane with the two bodies was due back the next day.

  Murdered. They had been murdered after being brutally beaten. Their teammates didn't know what they'd told their assailants or who those assailants were. All they knew was that ten SUVs, five from each direction, had forced them to stop. They saw them beaten; when they came back later with an army patrol they'd met on the highway, they found the lifeless bodies. They demanded an investigation but were instead detained as suspects. No one had seen anything, no one knew anything.

  The police had interrogated the survivors efficiently, which translated into bruises and cuts on their faces, chests, and stomachs. After several hours they were turned loose and encouraged to leave Iraq as soon as possible.