Текст книги "26 - Storm Cycle "

Автор книги: Iris Johansen

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

TEN

QUANTO VALLEY RIDGE

ARIZONA

Rachel folded her map and looked at the expanse of desert before her. She and Tavak sat in an open Jeep driving toward the unobstructed horizon.

She wiped her forehead with her handkerchief and leaned forward in the passenger seat. "It must be a hundred degrees."

Tavak smiled. "Try a hundred and fourteen."

"And this woman is camping out here."

"That's what I was told."

"Is that really a good idea for an eighty-year-old?"

"From what I understand, it's her graduate students on the expedition who are having the problems. She's been doing this her whole life."

"Amazing."

"I just hope she can give us something we can use. It's a long way to go for nothing."

Two hours later, Tavak slowed as they approached a small village of tents situated in the shadow of a craggy rock formation. A dozen students worked with shovels, pickaxes, and wire brushes at various spots around the encampment.

They pulled alongside a young man with mirrored sunglasses. Tavak called out to him. "Where can I find Dr. Hutton?"

"Find her yourself." The young man plopped onto the ground cross-legged. "That lady's gonna kill me."

"So she's here?"

"Oh, yeah. She's here." He squinted at them. "Think maybe I can hitch a ride back with you guys? Maybe it's not too late to switch my major. I've got a pretty good—"

"Stop your whining, Benjamin!" A strong, sharp voice cut through his sentence.

Rachel and Tavak turned to see a woman who could only be Dr. Emily Hutton. Her tanned, weather-beaten face was creased with deep lines, but otherwise she looked astonishingly like the photo of her mother. She possessed the same angular features, and her gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

Emily took off her hat and struck the young man about the head and shoulders. "Drink some water and get back in your hole. Now!"

"I can't. Not yet."

"Sure you can. And you will. How would you like Cassie Davis to see an eighty-year-old woman taking your place because you're too much of a wuss to finish what you've started?"

The student glared at her. "You hit me. That's abuse. I could write you up, and—"

"For God's sake, you're twenty years old. You'd get laughed off the campus if you filed a report. Now get back to work."

Benjamin muttered something beneath his breath. Then he picked himself up and trudged back toward one of the dig sites.

Emily turned back toward Rachel and Tavak. "I take it you're not here to give me the extra supplies I need."

"Afraid not," Tavak said. "We want to talk to you about a discovery your mother made."

"Ah, shit. Which one?"

"Nemop, in Babylonia."

"You couldn't have called or sent me an e-mail?"

"Your graduate assistant wouldn't give us the number of your satellite phone, and she refused to pass along a message. She said it was for emergencies only."

Emily chuckled. "Good girl. I'm very busy out here. See me in my office in ten days." She turned away.

Rachel jumped out of the Jeep. "Wait!"

Emily stopped, but she didn't turn around.

Rachel ran around to face her. "Dr. Hutton, please. I'm Dr. Rachel Kirby. I'm a university professor, too. I know how important this project is to you, but if you could just give us a few minutes of your time."

Emily glanced between Rachel and Tavak. "Young lady, if you're a college professor, you know how precious my time is out here. I have to fight like hell to get the grants I need to mount these shindigs."

"I understand."

"And still you want to take some of my valuable time."

"Yes. It's important."

"Of course it is." Emily sighed. "Just a few minutes, huh?"

"Absolutely."

"Uh-huh. Okay. Come see me at the end of the day. We'll talk."

Tavak shook his head. "We need to get back right away."

Emily shrugged. "Then go. I'm not stopping you."

"Okay, okay." Rachel put a hand on her arm. "We'll stay. Thank you."

Emily's face lit with a broad grin that was definitely elfish. "Don't thank me, Rachel Kirby." She bent over, picked up a pair of shovels, and handed them to Rachel and Tavak.

Tavak looked at his shovel. "I'm afraid to ask what this is for."

"Last time I checked, it was for digging. Which is what you're going to be doing for oh, the next seven hours or so. It so happens we can use a couple grunt laborers here today."

"Are you serious?"

Emily turned and walked away. "Talk to the tall blond girl over there. She'll tell you where to dig."

* * *

As the last rays of sunlight dipped below the horizon, the excavation site's atmosphere changed from that of a slave-labor camp to a block party. Torches were lit and folk-rock music suddenly blared from an array of speakers. Two of the students erected a long table, while another uncovered a grill pit and started a fire.

On the hill where Rachel and Tavak had worked in relative isolation, Tavak threw down his shovel. "I guess the whistle has blown."

Rachel glanced at her throbbing hands. "I hope we were really accomplishing something. I have a feeling they just put us up here so everyone could look up whenever they needed a laugh."

Tavak smiled. "I wouldn't put it past the old girl. Come on, let's find her."

They worked their way down into the heart of the camp, where they finally found Emily seated on a canvas folding chair, holding court for a half dozen of her students. She held a shot glass in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other, which she used to frequently refill her students' cups.

Rachel ventured into circle. "Dr. Hutton?

"Welcome, welcome!" Emily now appeared much looser than she had earlier in the afternoon, and her eyes appeared as two tiny slits. She smiled. "Don't worry, I'm not drunk. At least not yet. But a couple of hours from now, that'll be a different story."

The students laughed and clinked their glasses.

Emily poured herself another shot. "So tell me, why in hell would you want to know about Nemops?"

"It was a major archaeological find," Tavak said. "But little seems to survive."

"Oh, it survives. Just not anyplace where people can easily study it."

"Why not?"

"It was the deal my mother struck with the government. She could dig, study, and catalog, but none of her finds could be taken from the country. They went into storage. There was some talk of a national museum, but it never happened. Eventually, everything was either sold off or pilfered. As you know, ancient Babylon is modern-day Iraq. Some of those Babylonian archaeological sites have been paved over and have military helipads on them. Nice, huh?"

Rachel knelt next to her. "Do you know where the artifacts ended up?"

"My mother kept track of that stuff. She was hoping to interest a foundation in gathering it for a permanent collection, but she never got very far. What are you interested in?"

"The temple itself. The walls, anything with inscriptions on it."

Emily laughed so hard that the student next to her had to grab her wrist to keep her from spilling her drink.

"Did I say something funny?" Tavak asked.

Emily wiped her eyes. "Do you like monkeys?"

"Monkeys?"

"Yes. You see, that temple went on the auction block in 1939 to line the pocket of some corrupt government official. I think a few museums were in the running for it, but an American with far too much money was also there. His checkbook was bigger, so he went home with it.

"What American?"

"William Randolph Hearst. Heard of him?"

Tavak nodded. "Of course."

"He was buying art treasures all over the world for a little place he was building on the California coast."

Rachel's brows lifted. "Hearst Castle? It's there?"

"In a matter of speaking. You see, Hearst never bothered reassembling the temple. I guess he just didn't know what to do with it. The walls, floor, ceiling—the whole thing—became a sidewalk."

"You're joking," Rachel said.

"Wish I was. My sense of humor isn't this good. Those priceless temple walls became an inlaid outdoor walkway in Hearst's zoo on the property. It was the largest private zoo in the world."

"Incredible," Rachel said. "And it's still there?"

Emily nodded. "Near the monkey cages. There are no animals anymore, of course. I don't think the tours even go up there nowadays. And the whole estate now belongs to the California Park Service."

Rachel and Tavak exchanged glances.

"You never answered my question," Emily said. "Why does this matter to you?"

Rachel turned back toward her. "We think Nemop may have had an association with someone else we're studying. Peseshet."

"The lady doctor? It's possible. Timing would be about right."

"But there were no inscriptions on those temple walls that mentioned her?" Tavak asked.

"No. And my mother photographed everything. If you hunt around, I think you can find the pictures online."

"Yes, I've found quite a few of them," Tavak said.

Rachel stood up. "Thank you for your help, Dr. Hutton."

"You're welcome." Emily stood, steadying herself by gripping the back of her chair. "Do something for me, will you? When you find what you're looking for, let me know. My mom carried the memory of Nemop around with her most of her life, and she would have been happy that people are still talking about the guy."

HEARST CASTLE

SAN SIMEON, CALIFORNIA

"For heaven's sake, why use a boat?" Rachel asked as she helped Tavak pull the blue-and-white motorboat onto the narrow strip of white sand below the castle. "It would have been quicker to drive here."

"But not as serene or beautiful." He drew a deep breath. "Sea air, golden sunlight… It's good for the soul." He took her arm. "Come on, it's a little hike to the main gate."

Before long they were within the gates and had taken the tram from the visitor center to the main house. They stood next to the Neptune pool facing the remnants of the zoo over a quarter mile away. Rachel handed Tavak the binoculars. "The cages are to the right."

Tavak peered through the lenses. "All I can see is concrete. Our inlaid walkway must be in front of the cages, hidden by those trees."

"That's what I think." Rachel stepped back and took in the estate's massive, Spanish-style structures, clay tennis courts, and the long, winding road that led down to the Pacific Coast Highway. They had just seen the exotic gardens on the other side of the main house, and their odors blended with the ocean air in a combination she could only describe as intoxicating.

Tavak smiled. "It's easy to imagine Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, and Carole Lombard going for a midnight swim here, isn't it? Or maybe playing tennis with some foreign head of state?"

"Or going for a stroll on a priceless four-thousand-year-old temple wall?"

"That, too."

She motioned toward the long-abandoned zoo cages. "So how are we going to get over there?"

"I'm working on it."

"I guess it would be too much to suggest that we go through official channels. You know, write a few letters, contact an administrator… "

Tavak shook his head. "That's a good way to drown in red tape. Dawson isn't waiting for anyone. He won't be writing letters."

"So what's your master plan?"

"We hitch a ride. Tonight."

HEARST CASTLE

9:20 P.M.

"You okay back there?" Tavak called back to Rachel over his shoulder. He was in the passenger seat of a white-paneled van, sitting next to Paul Deakins, a stocky fifteen-year veteran of Marsh Food Supply. Deakins was making his nightly delivery to the Hearst Castle food-service kitchen, and he'd been persuaded to risk his job for a generous cash bribe from Tavak.

Rachel clung to the metal racks in the back of the van. The vehicle lurched on a steep incline as it neared the visitors' center. "Oh, I'm just great. Tell me again, why aren't you back here instead?"

"This company has never had a female delivery person. You'd stick out."

"That sounds as flimsy now as it did the first time."

Deakins laughed. "Hang on, we're almost there."

Within a minute, they were at a small loading dock at the visitors' center, a building that contained the ticket windows, souvenir shops, and restaurants. It was a waiting area between the parking lots and trams that took guests to the main houses and gardens of the estate.

Deakins backed the van into place and cut the engine. He sat in silence for a moment.

"What is it?" Tavak asked.

Deakins glanced at them. "I'm just—You guys aren't terrorists or anything, are you?"

Tavak smiled. "It's a little late for a guilty conscience, isn't it?"

"You said you just want to look around."

"It's the truth. We're not going to take or harm anything."

Deakins glanced back at Rachel, who gave him a reassuring nod. "Okay. If you got caught, remember your promise. You snuck in over the fence somewhere. Let 'em wonder why their sensors didn't pick it up." He grimaced. "And be careful. These grounds have as many security alarms as Fort Knox. Anyone thinks there's something funny going on, and that hill will be lit up like a Christmas tree."

Tavak handed him a thick envelope of cash. "We'll be careful. Thanks."

He nodded. "Okay. Each of you grab a case of hot dog buns and follow me."

Rachel and Tavak each picked up a white carton, climbed out of the van, and followed Deakins to a door on the other side of the loading dock. Deakins glanced around, but there didn't appear to be anyone around. He whispered, "There's a Lakers game on, so the guards will probably be pretty scarce for the next hour or so." He motioned for them to put down the boxes. "If you walk through that path, the trees will give you some good cover."

"Right." Tavak and Rachel sprinted toward the path and moved through the dense foliage.

In less than ten minutes they found themselves standing among the curved white structures that once housed Hearst's collection of monkeys, cougars, and even grizzly bears.

Tavak shined his flashlight toward the walkway in front of the cages. "Check it out."

Even from a distance of thirty yards, Rachel could see the ornamental carvings that reminded her of other Babylonian artifacts she'd seen. They ran toward the cages and stepped onto the walk made from the former temple of Nemop.

Rachel felt a twinge of guilt. Oh, what the hell. She wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last to violate this ancient Babylonian treasure.

Tavak reached into his knapsack and produced a metal box attached to a silver sensor wand.

"What's that?" Rachel asked.

"It's a sonar reader. Short of X-raying these slabs, it's the best way of seeing if there's anything else hidden inside."

Tavak waved the sensor over each section of walkway. After he reached the end, he switched off the device and shook his head. "Nope. These slabs are solid. Nothing hidden inside."

Rachel stared at the inlaid walls. "You told me that Kontar's tomb in Egypt said that the message was written in fire in this temple."

"I took that to mean the passion and conviction of the person passing the message along."

"That's what I thought, too." She studied it for a moment longer. "Which of these stones was the floor of the tomb?"

Tavak aimed the flashlight down the walkway. "That large one over there."

She and Tavak stood over it. "Notice how all the carvings are etched in varying depths. They're carved almost an inch deep in some places, maybe less than an eighth of an inch in other spots. Even sometimes within the same figures."

Tavak studied them. "You're right. That's not something we could see in the photos."

"But on the wall slabs, the depths of all the lines and flourishes are perfectly uniform." Rachel squatted next to the stone floor slab. "And look at this figure holding the torch. The flame is indented, with carved-out channels that connect to adjacent areas." She looked up at him. "In the carvings back in Egypt, how much sillicyprium oil did it say was Nemop to take with him to the hereafter?"

"The equivalent of about twenty-two ounces."

"What was it used for?"

"It's basically castor oil."

"Was it used for lamps?"

Tavak nodded as he followed her train of thought. "I'm pretty sure it was."

Rachel stared at the torch etching. "If we were to pour that amount into the torch, the oil would run to the surrounding lines. It would pool in the deeper cut areas, and drain away from the shallower lines… "

Tavak gazed at her and then nodded slowly. "A message written in fire."

"Exactly." Rachel's heart was pounding with excitement. "If we lit the oil, those pooled areas might form our message… "

Tavak smiled. "It might. Aren't I lucky to have you here to supply the brainpower in our little enterprise?"

"And you'd probably figured out this possibility yourself. So stop being sarcastic."

"I'm not being sarcastic. I feel very lucky to night… and very proud."

There was something in his tone that made her eyes fly to his face. No, there was no mockery in his expression, but there was something else there that disturbed her. She glanced away from him back at the walk. "It's a possibility, but it doesn't mean I'm right. We need to see if it actually works."

He nodded. "Yeah. Trouble is, there's never twenty-two ounces of sillicyprium oil around when you need it."

"How about a substitute?"

Tavak thought for a moment. He unzipped his knapsack, pulled out a bottle of water, and emptied it on the ground. "Wait here. I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?"

He was already moving through the trees. "Wait here!"

Less than ten minutes later, Tavak returned with the bottle and a paper cup.

Rachel sniffed the air. "Gasoline. Where did you get it?"

"I used a garden hose to siphon it out of a landscaping truck. This water bottle holds twenty ounces, and I can pour another two ounces from this paper cup I found in the trash."

"Two ounces? Are you sure? If we're even a little off, the wrong etchings might fill up and totally throw off the message."

"I've mixed enough drinks to know what I'm doing. Trust me, I know what two ounces looks like." Tavak leaned over and poured a small amount from the cup into the carved-out flame on the walk. "There." He handed the bottle to Rachel. "Would you like to do the honors?"

"Yes." Rachel took the bottle and poured the gasoline into the same place. The liquid ran through the adjacent channels and settled in the deeper-set lines and carvings.

Tavak produced a lighter and a Hearst brochure, lit it, and dropped it on the slab. The gasoline ignited and raced through the lines. The shallower parts quickly burned off, but deeper lines held the flame.

Several recognizably Egyptian characters suddenly appeared, etched in fire.

"Holy shit!" Rachel gasped.

"I see it, I see it." Tavak was already snapping photos with his digital camera.

"Can you read those characters?"

Tavak shook his head. "Not immediately. And if it's in code, it may be a job for your Jonesy."

What had she been thinking? Of course it wouldn't be that simple. Nothing had been easy or simple since the moment she had received that first e-mail from Tavak.

"I'll transmit these pictures to Val at the lab as soon as we get back to the car."

Tavak leaned over for a closer look.

A bullet whistled past the place where his head had been. A tree branch splintered behind him.

Rachel's head lifted. "What's hap—"

Two black-garbed figures were running toward them.

Another gunshot.

"Down!"

Whoosh! The sidewalk exploded into flame.

Before she could register what was happening, she was thrown to the ground only inches from the wall of flame.

Tavak. He'd tackled her, she realized. And even as he'd brought her down, he'd tossed the rest of the gasoline onto the flame, erasing the message.

"Get the camera!" one of the men shouted.

Tavak rolled across the walkway with her, then pulled her to her feet. "Come on!"

Another bullet whistled past them.

They ran through trees, down a steep incline.

"Faster!" Tavak said.

"Dammit, I'm going as fast as I can. I can't see where I'm going."

"Neither can they."

Branches cracked behind her. They were gaining on them.

Tavak yanked her to the left. "This way."

How did he know where to go? He hadn't seen any more of the place than she—

"Get down!" He pushed her to the ground, half beneath an outcropping of earth on the hillside.

She twisted to see Tavak kneeling, lifting something long and snakelike from the ground. Was that a—

"Aughhh!" A scream issued from the throat of one of the men as they both tripped, appeared to take flight over the embankment, then disappeared into the darkness far below. The next moment Rachel heard cursing and the crunch of foliage coming from the area where they'd fallen.

"A water hose." Rachel gazed at Tavak still holding the end of the water hose two feet above the ground. "You led them here to make sure they tripped on that water hose. How did you—"

"It was the landscape hose I used to siphon the gasoline." His gaze was on the hillside to the west. "Oh shit."

Blinding white lights were dotting the darkness. Suddenly shrill, earsplitting alarms sounded from the trees.

"Those gunshots screwed us. It's a security alert. We have to get out of the park, or we'll be sitting ducks."

"Then stop talking and move." Rachel was on her feet. "The main entrance. And we'll have to steer clear of the trails."

They worked their way down the hillside, dodging the glaring security lights shining down from the trees. Security vehicles were driving slowly down the roads. Tinny voices blared from radios and walkie-talkies.

"We have to be close to the main gate," Rachel said. "I hear the sound of cars on the highway."

"We are." Tavak was peering through the brush. "Wait."

A white security pickup truck was parked at the main entrance. Two officers were standing by the truck surveying the hillside with their high-powered flashlights.

"We have to go for it," Tavak said. "The local police could be here any minute. Are you ready?"

"Hell, no." But she was already slipping through the brush and sprinting across a dark stretch of the highway. She heard Tavak right behind her.

Had the guards seen them?

No, she realized with relief. No shouts. No blaring horns.

They ran past the hotel, the restaurant, and finally to the narrow beach. The blue-and-white motorboat rested on the sand where they had left it.

Rachel and Tavak pushed the small boat into the water and climbed in. Tavak started the engine, then motored quietly away under cover of darkness. "I think we're okay. We should be back to our car within the hour."

Rachel looked back at the hillside, where the lights indicated that even more security vehicles had joined the search. "This is why you insisted on taking the boat to the estate. What are you? Psychic or something?"

"Just an eternal pessimist. I always operate on the theory that what could go wrong, will go wrong."

"And it did. Were those Dawson's men?"

"Who else? One of them may have been Dawson himself. He's a smart man with a lot of resources. Since he already had my original info in the hard drive, he had a head start. But if we're lucky, Dawson is still stymied about the decoder, and we were just followed."

"I don't think that's lucky. Do you think they saw the message?"

"Hard to say. I threw the rest of the gasoline on it as soon as I saw them, but they could have been watching from the trees."

"They wanted the camera."

"And they wanted us dead. But barring that, they may have wanted the camera to keep us from having the message. Get the camera out of my knapsack and take a look. Unless you'd rather take time to get your breath. We could wait until we get back to the motel."

"No way." Rachel had the camera out of his bag and was flipping through the pictures on the tiny screen. "You can read hieroglyphics. I know the cure portion is probably in code, but can you see anything else that would give us any lead about Natifah's next piece of the puzzle?"

"It's actually fairly easy to read, but I don't know what the hell it means. That will take time and research." Tavak ran his finger over the top edge of the fiery message. "This refers to a stoneworker of some kind, and this indicates that he built great cities."

"That doesn't narrow it down much."

"No, but there's something else there." Tavak tapped the screen with his forefinger. "What does that hieroglyph look like to you?"

Rachel squinted at the image. "I'm not sure. Maybe a dog?"

"It looks a little too squat to be a dog. The Egyptians usually made their dogs tall and thin. Perhaps a pig?"

"A pig that built cities?"

He shrugged. "As I said, we'll need to research."

She was suddenly panicked. "Dammit, what happens if we can't figure out who it is? Or if it's a monument or tomb that hasn't been discovered yet?"

"Then maybe we'll have to discover it ourselves."

She wanted to hit him. "Just like that."

"Just like that. If that's the only way."

"You're nuts. I don't have time to go exploring. Allie doesn't have time."

"Look, you're jumping the gun. I guess I'm not the only one who's a pessimist. I can't promise anything else, but I will manage to figure it out. I have Jonesy on my side." He stared out at the water. "And I have Rachel Kirby. That's a double whammy."

She stared at him for a moment, then looked away. "Don't try to con me, Tavak."

"I wouldn't presume. But I believe it's time that you started to trust me. Think about it. Have I given you reason to doubt me since we came together?"

She shook her head. "Other than being what you are."

"And being what and who I am, do you think I couldn't have slipped away from you and disappeared? It wouldn't have been that much of a challenge."

"I had Norton to use as a threat."

"And?"

She was silent. "You're deranged. You'd probably have enjoyed trying to wriggle out of the noose Norton would tighten around you."

"Perhaps. Then we're back to square one. Haven't I kept my word to you?"

She didn't speak for a moment. "Yes."

"Then trust me. It will be easier for both of us."

He was right. It was difficult to give up the anger and suspicion that she'd felt from the moment she'd realized he was the one who had stolen those cycles. Added to that known criminal act, she had come to realize just what a multifaceted and dangerous man he could be. One moment she was put on guard by some act of violence, and the next she was being swept along by the sheer power of his personality. Yet he had kept his word so far, and it would easier to trust him, at least tentatively. She felt an unexpected rush of relief at the decision. She slowly nodded. "On one condition."

He gazed at her inquiringly.

"You find me the pig that can build cities."