The Genesis Plague - Michael Byrnes [31]
‘You have a number for this middleman, Frank?’
She shook her head. ‘Everything was handled by e-mail. The couple times he did call, the number came up “restricted”.’
‘Of course it did.’
‘Cloak and dagger. Just as you guys like it.’
‘You can give me this e-mail address?’
‘When I’m back to my computer, I suppose.’
He dug in his pocket and pulled out a business card, slid it over to her. ‘If you could forward it to me, that’d be great. And try not to lose the card, please,’ he taunted.
‘Funny,’ she said. She dropped the card into her clutch purse and snapped it shut like a clamshell. ‘I remember when I lost that ID. Frank freaked out when I couldn’t find it. There was so much equipment in the cave, debris too. Lord knows where it wound up. But he got me a new card within minutes. Super-tight security there. Guys with guns outside, the works. Lots of crazy stuff going on. I’d hear the fighter planes flying overhead … bombings, gunfire off in the distance. Not the safest place to be at that time.’
‘Any other scientists there?’
‘A handful of others on rotation. Some coming, some going. Archaeologists, mostly. But we were kept apart, no consorting or information sharing. Really frustrating way to work. The others had higher clearance than me. I was only allowed in the entry passage - the first leg of what was probably a maze of tunnels. There was a guard stationed where the entry tunnel forked, scanning IDs. Like a checkpoint.’
He needed to fish for a connection to the Arabs who were now holed up in the cave. ‘Any chance it had something to do with Islamic militants?’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
Flaherty shook his head sharply.
‘What I saw in that cave had been there over 4,500 years before Muhammad was even born. Terrifying, yes. Terrorism, no.’
A few tables away, Flaherty noticed a man, with a thin face and Dumbo ears, sipping coffee. The guy seemed preoccupied with their discussion, but quickly diverted his attention back to a museum map laid flat on the table. Flaherty lowered his voice. ‘Anything else?’
‘I was only there a few days, taking pictures, making rubbings of the walls. Once I cracked the alphabet, I was asked to give all the materials back. Then they put me back on a plane, no pictures, no records, no copies, nada. The most incredible thing I’ve ever seen and all I’ve got to show for it is up here.’ She tapped her temple. ‘But memories don’t offer a high degree of provenance,’ she said with great sarcasm. She watched him scrawling more chicken scratch, his fingers pinching the Bic way too tightly in a crooked grip. ‘I’m not in any trouble, am I?’
Flaherty’s eyes didn’t move from the notepad. ‘I’ll need to report this all back to my boss, see what she has to say. There’ll be some fact checking, of course.’ He finally looked up. ‘I’ll keep you posted. But we’ll probably need to meet again. So try not to skip town,’ he said with a smile.
‘Not even for some sunshine?’
‘Not unless you bring me.’ He said it too fast to catch himself, and he felt the blood rush into his cheeks. ‘You know, because we may need you to answer more questions …’
‘Of course,’ she said, grinning.
16
LAS VEGAS
Finished with cleaning the carpet, Stokes took a breather next to a metre-high display case shaped like an obelisk. The artifact contained in its pyramidal glass tip captured his attention: a clay tablet, no larger than a hymnal, etched in lines, pictograms and wedge-shaped cuneiform. An amazing work created by the first masters of celestial study - the ancient Mesopotamians.
He’d never divulged to anyone how he’d truly procured this treasure map to the origins of Creation hidden deep within the Zagros Mountains. Even his closest confidants, like Frank Roselli, had clung to the story that he’d recovered the relic from an antiquities smuggler who’d looted it from the vaults beneath the Baghdad Museum after the capital first fell. Amazingly, everyone had accepted the story.
But that explanation - the lie - was far too simple.
This