Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [96]
Zaeed piped in: ‘Unless I’m mistaken, you were never invited to join this mission, were you, Israeli? I would say Saladin is perfectly within his rights to question your loyalty.’
‘This does not concern you!’ Stretch said. ‘Bite your tongue, murderer!’
‘An Israeli calls me a murderer!’ Zaeed stood up. ‘Count the innocents your country has murdered, you—’
‘Quiet!’ West called, silencing them.
They all retreated, sat down.
West addressed them. ‘The Americans now have four of the seven Pieces of the Capstone. And if they get the Artemis Piece from the Europeans—and we must assume they have a plan to do just that—they’ll have five.
‘As such, they need only two more Pieces to complete the Tartarus Ritual at the Great Pyramid and rule the world. Now, the two Pieces left to find are those of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Great Pyramid itself—’
Zaeed said, ‘You can forget about obtaining the Great Pyramid Piece. It is the First Piece, the most highly-prized, the pyramidal peak of the Capstone itself. It was buried with Alexander the Great and the location of his tomb will only be revealed at dawn on the final day.’
‘When the Sun shines through the obelisks at Luxor?’ Pooh Bear said.
‘Yes.’
‘Which leaves us the Hanging Gardens Piece,’ West said.
Zaeed said, ‘Of all the Wonders, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon have proved to be the most elusive. All of the other Wonders, in one way or another, survived into the modern age. But not the Gardens. They have not been seen since the 5th century BC. Indeed, observers in the ancient world questioned whether they even existed at all. Finding them will be exceedingly difficult.’
West frowned.
Maybe Judah was right.
He honestly didn’t know if he could do this.
Not without Wizard. And certainly not when his only companions were a known terrorist, a constantly feuding Arab and Israeli pair, a slightly crazy New Zealand pilot and one little girl.
The thought of Lily made him turn to her.
Her face was still red from crying, dried tear-marks lined her cheeks.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
She returned his gaze with bloodshot eyes, and when she spoke, she spoke with a new maturity.
‘Before he died, Big Ears made me promise him something. He asked that when the time came, I’d do what I was put on this Earth to do. I don’t really know what that is yet, but I don’t want to let him down. I want the chance to do what I was put on this Earth to do. Give me that chance, sir. Please.’
West nodded slowly.
Then he stood up.
‘The way I see it, folks, we have our backs to the wall. We’re down on people, on options and on luck, but we’re not out of this game. We still have one option left. We find the one remaining Piece of the Capstone still available to us. The Piece hidden in the only Ancient Wonder never to have been found. People, we have to locate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.’
IRAQ
19 MARCH, 2006
THE DAY BEFORE TARTARUS
NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S PARADISE
Of all the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, none retains more mystery than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
There is a simple reason for this.
Of all the Wonders, only one has never been found: the Hanging Gardens. Not a single trace of them has been unearthed: no foundations, no pillars, not even an aqueduct.
In fact, so elusive have the Gardens been throughout the ages that most historians believe they never even existed at all, but were rather the product of the imaginations of Greek poets.
After all, as Alaa Ashmawy, an expert on the Seven Ancient Wonders from the University of Southern Florida, has pointed out, the Babylonians were very careful record-keepers, and yet their records make not a single mention of any Hanging Gardens.
Nor did the chroniclers of Alexander the Great’s many visits to Babylon mention any kind of Gardens.
This lack of evidence, however, has not stopped writers throughout the ages from creating all manner of fabulous descriptions of the Gardens. On these facts, all agree:
1. The Gardens were constructed by the great Mesopotamian