Scheme

by Jennifer Sommersby

  “Absolument, mon ami,” Nutesh says, leading our party up the walkway alongside Şivan. The two seem like old friends, which, given the way things have gone for “friends” lately makes me more than a little nervous. And the fact that we’re playing the game from the very first moment—god, I hope I don’t forget my new Canadian identity. What if he asks me about British Columbia? I’ve never even been there!

  The inside of Şivan’s home is just as elegant as the outside. Rich rugs and paintings that would make even the artsavvy Lucian Dagan Dmitri envious. Honey-colored woods and lighting accents everywhere. Massive glass-and-marble kitchen. Through an expansive glass wall, a pool shimmers in the darkness, lit from the blue depths with underwater bulbs.

  Şivan introduces us to his head maid, a young woman called Gona, and we follow her down a long, wide hallway to a suite of rooms where we’ll be staying. Of course, Henry and the men are given separate quarters from Sevda and myself, which again spikes my anxiety as I consider how being apart from Nutesh may open the door for Aveline to crawl into my head.

  Once our gear is put away, Gona leads us into the dining room where Nutesh and Şivan have already cracked open the wine. We’re seated, minus Montague and Sevda—he’s helping her with a “migraine”—and a string of nameless house staff bring in dish after dish of fragrant local foods to the long wooden table that looks like it came from the heart of a California Redwood.

  “Noshî can be! Bon appetit!” Şivan says.

  Thankfully, Nutesh handles the pleasant conversation and steers most of it back to Şivan so Henry and I can avoid the shaky creative license that might come from him asking questions about our university programs. Nutesh mentions that we’ll be cataloguing major markers and mostly taking photos for survey, including river water and soil samples. Şivan knows the truth about why we’re here, but his staff, including Gona, are always standing nearby.

  I’m grateful these men don’t take unnecessary risks in conversation that could otherwise expose us.

  When we’ve eaten our fill, Şivan excuses us to freshen up, and then invites whomever is interested to the rooftop patio for a “night cap.” Though I’m underage, I’m not going to say no if I’m offered a glass of the Kurdish wine Şivan raves about, made locally by a former Peshmerga soldier who “risks everything because he loves fine wine, and he loves this country.”

  But the drink is strong, and after a few sips, I can hardly hold my head up. I lie down on my corner of the cushioned, U-shaped patio couch, warmed by the flames of the open firepit and the conversation of my traveling companions.

  For a few moments, peace.

  The predawn house is quiet as I sneak into the kitchen for juice. My tongue is like cotton and I have a headache. The kitchen staff are already busy. When one offers me coffee, I take it, even though it’s dark as motor oil.

  “Go to the roof,” she says. “Beautiful sunrise.”

  “Thank you. I will.” I gesture with my cup.

  Upstairs, I’m not surprised to find Xavier crashed out on a chaise—or Henry perched on the patio couch, sketchbook open, pencil in hand.

  “He’s serenading you?” I ask, referencing Xavier’s loud snores.

  “It’s like a symphony,” Henry teases. “They have coffee?”

  “Yeah. You can have mine.” I give him my cup. “Did you sleep?”

  “I did. You?”

  “Some. Sevda talks in her sleep.”

  Henry pats the seat next to him, and as I sit, he leans over and kisses my forehead. “Must be careful. No PDA allowed,” he says.

  “Seriously, this place is not at all what I expected.”

  “Because we’re north. And we’re used to the stuff we see on the news.” He shivers, so I grab the blanket off the back of the couch and wrap it around us both. “Feeling rebellious, are you?”

  “If we hear someone coming, you can slide a respectable distance away.”

  “Your virtue and good name are foremost in my mind,” he says, bowing his head.

  “You know, I could burn a line in this other eyebrow so they’d match,” I tease.

  “Let’s save your flaming hands for more practical purposes.”

  “Like burning some books?” Henry nods. “I can’t believe we’re going to burn books on purpose,” I say. Henry’s body language seems a bit depressed. “Hey... you okay?”

  “Mm-hmm. It’s just a lot to take in. You know, new day, new shocking revelations,” he says. “How are your injuries?”

  “I’m all right. Aveline’s carvings won’t heal. Tires me out. And this broken tooth is super annoying.”

  “It looks cute. Gives you character.”

  “What, like a peg leg gives a pirate character?”

  “A broken tooth is hardly a peg leg.” He smiles.

  “Not until I try eating corn on the cob, at least,” I say. “Nutesh’s medicine helped. He’s good at what he does.”

  “It will be a shame that he will lose that, once this is over.”

  “I’ve thought about it too. Even in the midst of all this death and terribleness, it felt so good to help all those people yesterday.”

  “You were amazing. That little baby...”

  “I know! And when she started crying because she was scared?”

  “Truly unbelievable. You saved her. Untreated, that injury would have ruined her future, if she’d even been able to survive it,” Henry says. “I don’t think you understand the impact your gift truly makes on the lives of others.”

  “I do. I saw it. It felt so warm to help all those people who loved my mother.” Henry rests a hand on my knee. “I wish we could find a way to keep all this without having to deal with Lucian and Aveline and everyone who want us dead.”

  “And therein lies the dilemma.”

  I look toward the sunrise. “Nutesh said the choice is ours, but really it’s not. You know that, yeah?”

  “We’ve talked about this, Genevieve. Except . . . a lifetime of sunsets and sunrises with you? That might be worth fighting for.” He kisses the side of my head. “Then again, the last few days have been so overwhelming—my brain is still playing catch-up.”

  “You mean Sevda,” I say.

  “Partly.” His head bounces in confirmation. “I have a sister. Well, a half sister.”

  “And she seems to be a good guy. I mean, compared to my newly discovered bad-guy sibling.”

  “She’s quite freaked out about her eyes,” he says.

  “Nutesh will fix her. Sometimes things just take a little bit longer. Aveline did a lot of damage very quickly.”

  Henry is quiet, watching the slowly lightening sky.

  “There’s something else, though . . .,” I say.

  “My mother has been flooding me with memories. Like it was when I was a kid, only times a thousand. Every time I fall asleep, I wake up with a new database of stories I didn’t have just hours before.” He lowers his voice and leans closer. “And the text—if it’s anywhere near me, even in my backpack, I can see so much. I don’t even need Alicia’s help anymore, to be honest. And they’re not necessarily memories she’s been given—they’re from everywhere. It’s weird.”

  “You heard Nutesh—the closer we get to Babylon, the stronger we are. What are you seeing?”

  He laughs under his breath. “God, everything. Alicia showed me more about her relationship with my grandfather. She seemed a bit of a rebel, like someone else I know.”

  “Umm, running off and having an affair with my father’s mortal enemy, an affair that resulted in a child? Yeah, I’m not that brave,” I say. “But the world got a Henry out of the deal, so it was an okay choice.”

  “Okay?” He laughs. “You do flatter me, Miss Gemma O’Connor from Canada.”

  “We’re a kind people, we Canadians.”

  “But wait—Lucian is your mother’s mortal enemy, and you and I . . .” Henry waggles his eyebrows.

  “Are we having an affair?”

  “As long as my wife doesn�
��t find out, we should be fine.”

  “Those teen brides are vicious. Tell her to show mercy,” I say.

  “I’ll put in a good word.” His smile is radiant, even in the low light. “It is fascinating, though, to see the memories of Alicia, alive and vibrant and full of love—and the visions of her with my father, when he looked at her like the world was made just for her to live in it. As much as she butted heads with her own father, she wanted to believe that Lucian was capable of good. For a while, she thought she had won him over. But then he found out who she was, who her family was...

  “My grandfather tried to warn her. He knew she was playing with fire, fighting a battle she could never win. He was right. She paid for it with her life.” He looks down again, his smile laced with sadness. “I’ve seen a lot of Lucian’s life—how he worked to accomplish good things for centuries, how much of the bad has been done not by him directly but under the guidance of Aveline Darrow. There is a distinct line in his history: before Aveline, and after. I know that makes it sound like I’m defending him—and I’m not. He has done some truly horrible things.”

  Like, killed Delia.

  “But I’ve seen more moments of him with Alicia. He did love her. It was Aveline who convinced Lucian that my mother couldn’t be allowed to live, that there could be no more heirs in Nutesh’s line, not if they wanted to get hold of his text. God, he’s just so blinded by this bloody book.”

  “Which is why we are here.”

  “I know.” Henry swallows hard and looks down at his clasped hands. “That vision I showed you back in Washington, after we met Dr. Schuyler, of my mother dying in the hospital right after I was born? I was supposed to die that day too. Lucian stopped it.”

  “He protected you,” I say quietly.

  “He did. And he has for eighteen years. It’s why I didn’t know who Mara—Aveline—was when she showed up at your circus.”

  I wrap both of my hands around Henry’s. “And I hope that once we get to Babylon and put this to rest, Lucian will come back to you. I hope that whatever hold these books have had on him, that it dissolves and he sees what he has standing in front of him.”

  Henry leans into me, nodding. “I hope you’re right.”

  I let go of his hands and instead wrap my arms around him, speaking close to his ear. “Your father has been chasing ghosts for two millennia. He has forsaken real, here-right-now love in pursuit of a family that he can never have again. How can a person still want something that should have faded from memory so long ago, especially when he has you? And now even Sevda? He has two children here—children who could love him and bring him years of happiness, if he would just let them.”

  “I think he will see that, before the end. I really do, Genevieve,” Henry says. “Somehow, he must see through the glamour that Aveline Darrow has cast over his aspirations. And I really think that’s what it is. The memories of him being a good man, and then doing something terrible—she’s always in the terrible ones. She’s managed to get into your head lately . . . what’s to say she hasn’t been in his for all these years?”

  All I know is I will never get my mother back, and Lucian had a great deal to do with that.

  “If that’s the case, I can’t even fault him for being weak,” he says. “You’re one of the strongest people I know—and Aveline still gets to you.”

  “I don’t know, Henry. I don’t have an answer for that.”

  “Somehow he must see truth again,” Henry says.

  The key to good is found in truth.

  “Henry, remember . . .” I turn his chin with my finger so he’s looking at me. “Whatever happens, I will be your family. If things go south at Babylon, I will be your family until the bitter end. All of us will.” He looks into my eyes—really looks—and then kisses me, his lips soft and tasting of strong coffee.

  “Don’t let Gona see you doing that,” Xavier says from across the deck, rolling on to his other side.

  Henry smiles and pushes his forehead against mine. “I love you, Genevieve.”

  I flatten my hand against the side of his face, the hint of light stubble against my palm. He’ll need to shave—his beard is growing in blond.

  “I love you too, Henry. Let me be your family.” The muezzin’s haunting call cuts through the air, beckoning the devout to prayer.

  When I kiss Henry one last time before the sun cracks the horizon, I hope we are prayer enough for each other.

  40

  “OUR VOICES ARE PROTECTED IN HERE, BUT VIDEO SURVEILLANCE IS NEARLY guaranteed,” Nutesh says, turning on Xavier’s sound-masking device. We’re in a huge common room near the sleeping quarters, minus any of our host’s house staff. “And I understand that you both appreciate having a voice in our plans.” Nutesh lays eyes on me and then his grandson. “If you have anything to add, please do speak freely.”

  Xavier and Nutesh, tablets in hand, tag-team with the plan to get us into Babylon. “Aerial surveillance from a month ago shows a small airfield with what looks like two parked military helicopters directly north of the Babylon ruins. This is land currently controlled by the Iraqi military, so we can’t get clearance to land there, but our contractor—his name is James—will drop us slightly northwest, on a privately owned palm farm. Babil Governorate is a major date palm producer, and James has a connection with a farmer here—his helicopter is not unusual on the farmer’s land. He often transports goods for them back and forth from Baghdad and elsewhere, so we won’t raise suspicion.” Nutesh tightens our view with the swipe of his fingertips.

  “We land here.” Xavier takes over, pointing to a brown expanse just to the right of the deep green of the snaking Euphrates River. “And then you can see this irrigation pond, attached to a canal system that moves east toward a well-traveled road. We will go west, right to the river’s edge. You will be supplied with equipment to take soil and water samples—to look legitimate, just in case—plus we’ll need a bit of Euphrates water for the Undoing. Nutesh will cover your ‘archaeological mandate’ more specifically in a few minutes.

  “From here, we are going to loop around the side of this pond, and back into the treed area. There is concertina wire still left in place—the Americans and Polish had set up bases here in ’03 and ’04, and they didn’t clean up after themselves. We have no way of knowing what the locals have moved or how recently they’ve moved it; our intel shifts often, depending on who we ask. Very frustrating, as you might imagine.” Xavier swipes the screen again. “Here—this grouping of uniform rectangular structures—we will be avoiding that. Tents. Military, probably Iraqi.” He then drags a finger over toward a copse of green. “Drought has wreaked havoc on this country but last year showed above-average rainfall in many parts. This benefits us—full bushes and palm trees mean better coverage.”

  Xavier then pans out a bit, showing a huge structure sitting on a massive mound of earth, a long driveway spiraling from bottom to top. “This is Saddam’s former palace—we have no business there, and security is heavy—we definitely don’t have the visas or clearance to go near it. From the sky, it looks deserted, but the Babil government has control over this area now. Definitely not deserted.

  “The actual ruins of Babylon have been reopened to local tourism, specifically the replica Ishtar Gate.” He points at its location on the aerial view. “Opens every day at 8:00 a.m. and doesn’t close until nearly midnight, which means there will be at least a few workers there early to prep for the day. Local tourists flock here”—he points to what’s called the Processional Way—“and here,” explaining that the dark blob on the screen is site of the ancient Lion of Babylon. “Lots of locals means we have to get in, do our job, and get out. If we are stopped or questioned, we have a forged permit, but again, no visas. So, our secondary plan will be initiated.” Xavier reaches into the case he pulled his tablet from and extracts another envelope of money. “Nutesh or I will handle it.”

  Nutesh takes over again. “Here is the site we will be moving to, east of th
e ruins of Nebuchadnezzar II’s palace. We will be going into the Temple of Ninmakh—the oldest temple in Babylon, named after a Babylonian goddess, often called the mother of all gods. I ask you to tread lightly—we are literally walking on history. This area has not been well excavated—cuneiform tablets, pottery, other pieces of ancient lives can still be found in the dirt. Securing this area has been a real challenge for the Antiquities folks.

  “But here is where we run into our first problem,” Nutesh says. “This temple is a re-creation. Saddam Hussein rebuilt it over the ruins of the old—and it is on the grounds where we performed the ritual that secured the magic to the AVRAKEDAVRA texts nearly 2,400 years ago, when this whole area was still a bustling city.”

  Every time I hear how old these books are, I want to laugh—it sounds so ridiculous.

  But so is mending a broken bone or electrocuting another person with my bare hands.

  Xavier stands and leans on the top of his brown leather chair. “The Ninmakh is constructed so that we will have privacy from the outside—it’s a long rectangle with very high walls. It’s our plan to call up the AVRAKEDAVRA temple on this spot so we can perform the Undoing ritual here.”

  “Buuuut, we don’t have the third part of the temple key,” I remind him.

  “That’s correct,” Nutesh says. “We don’t have it yet.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re sending us somewhere new to try and get it.”

  “No.” The tablet screen times out and goes black. “Those who have the third piece of the key will be coming to us.”

  The room is deadly quiet.

  “I’m sorry, what did he just say?” Sevda asks from the couch, moving the herbal compress over her still-troublesome eyes aside.

  “You think they’re going to show up with that third piece? It’s basically just a race to the finish?” I ask, mouth dry.

  Nutesh nods. “Our efforts to buy a little time have worked—that’s why we have had today to plan and rest. We made reservations on commercial flights under your real names departing Izmir, going to Şırnak in southeastern Turkey. They’re certainly watching what we’re doing, so now that we’ve given them something to chase, it has bought us a few hours. Dagan’s law-enforcing lackeys will think you’re landing in Şırnak where we will inevitably rent a car and drive south into Iraq—very few border crossings there, and we’d have to go through Ibrahim Khalil crossing to get visas into Kurdistan—so they will be watching for you there too.”