‘So are you going to tell us where we’re going, Usberti?’ Ben said at last.
Usberti was sitting on his throne with its leathery back to them, so that all they could see of him were his feet and elbows. He swivelled round to face them. ‘To a place where your talents will be put to good use, Benedict,’ he replied. ‘I told you I had a purpose for you. That is the only reason I have chosen to keep you alive, for the moment.’
‘That’s very gracious of you,’ Ben said, staring at him. ‘Whatever it is, I hope I don’t disappoint.’
‘I know you will not.’ Usberti smiled, then turned his gaze on Anna. ‘And neither shall you, my dear Professor. Your own skills will soon be brought to bear, now that our quest nears its end.’ He rose from his chair and walked down the length of the RV towards where they sat side by side, steadying himself against the lurch and sway of the vehicle. ‘I suppose the time has come for me to reveal to you what your late associate was kind enough, shortly before his demise, to reveal to me.’
‘You could even have let him tell us himself,’ Ben said. ‘It would have saved you the trouble. And saved him some grief.’
‘No trouble,’ Usberti said nonchalantly. He waved Starace away, then lowered himself onto the sofa opposite them. ‘In the bitter winter of 1923 an expeditionary team of Austrian archaeologists led by one Hans Von Grüber came across a mysterious discovery, high on a rocky plateau. It was just a few hours’ horse ride across the Syrian Desert from what was then the largely abandoned excavation project at Karkemish. Their find was a set of inscriptions carved into the face of a sheer sandstone cliff, near to what they believed to be the remains of an ancient fortress. The location was extremely hazardous to access, so much so that two of their team fell to their deaths in their attempts to investigate the inscription. Von Grüber and another of his colleagues survived, however, and despite the difficult conditions they were able to record detailed transcripts of their discovery. Von Grüber later compared it to the inscriptions at Mount Behistun in Iran, discovered ninety years earlier. But while the Behistun carvings were of Persian origin, celebrating the glories of the Emperor Darius, these by contrast were writings in an obscure cuneiform language. Moreover, while the Behistun carving is a magnificent work of art crafted by skilled sculptors using the best quality mason’s chisels, the Karkemish inscriptions were relatively crude and appeared to have been made by someone in a hurry, with an implement such as a dagger or sword point.’
Anna was listening intently. This time, she didn’t interrupt Usberti to tell him he talked too much. The look of hostility on her face hadn’t softened, but her curiosity was getting the better of her.
‘Von Grüber returned to his home city of Graz in early 1924, severely afflicted by pneumonia contracted during his expedition, whereupon the transcript of the carvings was placed on display at a private historical and art collection in Berlin. Sadly, the building that housed the collection was flattened, along with so many others, in 1945 when the British and Americans bombarded that city with over seventy thousand tons of bombs. The only existing physical record of Hans Von Grüber’s discovery was among the many artefacts lost forever. Von Grüber himself had died twenty years earlier; having never recovered from his sickness he succumbed within months of his return from Syria. But in a letter written shortly before his death to a colleague, one Professor Claude Desmoines of the Sorbonne, he described the clifftop inscriptions near Karkemish and expressed his fervent and unshakeable belief that they constituted some form of map. More correctly, a set of directions which, accurately translated, could direct the seeker to unearth a great treasure. Von Grüber wrote, “Beneath every footstep in Syria may dwell the legacy of ancient civilisations, undiscovered wonders and, for the seeker who will risk all to find them, riches beyond imagining.” Like so many ancient mysteries yet to be solved, neither the nature nor the precise location of that treasure have ever been determined.’
‘It’s incredible,’ Anna said in a low voice. ‘It could really be true.’
To Ben, the idea of carving a treasure map on a cliff face seemed a little baffling. But then, he wasn’t an archaeologist. Carving stuff on rocks and stones seemed to have been the thing in those days. Plus, he supposed that if you were a desperate bandito hiding out in the hills with enemy soldiers closing in all around you, and you found yourself bereft of a convenient piece of papyrus to use as notepaper on which to scratch out your last message to your gang, you might not have any other choice.
‘There is more, my dear Professor Manzini. I told you that Kavur had recently been in contact with a fellow archaeologist. Dr Serge Munoz of the Joint International Syrian Expedition is a highly respected authority; he is also, like your late colleague and, I believe, you yourself, an expert on ancient cuneiform languages. He claims to have seen not only a copy of Von Grüber’s 1924 letter but a rare pre-war photograph of the Berlin exhibits themselves, which he was able to partially decipher. Following his discussion with this Dr Munoz, Kavur became convinced that the clifftop inscriptions near Karkemish almost certainly point to the exact whereabouts of a fabulous buried secret.’
Usberti’s eyes gleamed. He went on:
‘Thanks to you and Signor Kavur, who alone among historians have traced the path of the exiled Muranu dynasty from Babylon, there can be little doubt that we stand on the brink of finding the great lost treasure of Nebuchadnezzar.’
Chapter 53
Ben could see the internal forces splitting Anna in two. She was face to face with the man who had personally sanctioned the murder of Theo Kambasis and Ercan Kavur, ordered the attack on Gianni Garrone at her villa, and who had been trying to kidnap her since Olympia. Yet she’d come this far and been through so much to find the Babylon idol – and if what Usberti was saying was right, the nearness of its discovery was driving her wild. She was thinking so fast that her eyes were darting.
‘Now I understand what Ercan wanted to tell me, and why he had to share the secret with me in person,’ she said. ‘Ashar the Babylonian, the fort at Harran, was only the beginning of the story. It all makes such sense. Ashar was constantly at war with the Persians. If anything had happened to him, if he was killed or captured, he knew the idol must be preserved at all cost. Perhaps he left the inscription as a message to his followers when he realised he was about to be caught. That would explain why the work was crude and done in a hurry, carved with whatever weapon he carried with him. And also why it was so high on the cliff, to keep it hidden from enemy eyes. And it must also mean—’
She hesitated, glanced at Usberti. Ben read her expression of self-annoyance for letting her passion for her subject make her say more than she should have.
‘What must it mean, Professor?’ Usberti asked with a gloating kind of smile that Ben wanted to slice off him with a knife.
She paused. ‘I was going to say … it must mean that the idol is nowhere near Karkemish. I mean, the Persian soldiers were all over the region.’
Usberti went on smiling. ‘You try to deceive me, Professor. On the contrary, and as I know perfectly well you were going to say before you checked yourself, the idol’s guardian would have wanted to ensure that it was safe. To that end, he would have visited its location frequently, in secret, and in person. Which would imply that it was concealed within convenient travelling distance from his base, as too much time spent journeying back and forth would have constituted a risk of capture. Say, half a day’s ride, there and back, and possibly much closer. In any case, the map will soon provide all the information we need.’
‘That’s if you can find it,’ Ben said. ‘You might not be so lucky this time.’
Usberti waved a hand. ‘Luck will not be necessary. The account in Von Grüber’s letter was detailed enough for Serge Munoz to pinpoint the precise navigational position of the cliff.’ He took a small GPS device from his pocket and held it up. ‘Once again, Signor Kavur’s assistance proved most useful in providing us with the coordinates.’
‘Isn’
t that handy,’ Ben said.
‘Indeed it is most fortunate,’ Usberti replied, smiling even more broadly now. ‘One might say, serendipitous. An act of fate, even, that the wheels of discovery should have been set in motion at exactly the right moment for us – or should I say, for me. It was only a matter of time before some other intrepid scholar picked up the trail and followed it to its fabulous end. The idol of King Nebuchadnezzar, a magnificent statue of pure gold, sixty cubits tall, buried beneath the sand. But I will get there first and stake my claim. If my calculations are correct, and I am confident they are, such a quantity of gold will make me one of the richest men in the world.’
‘Now we get to it,’ Ben said. ‘And there was I thinking this was all about the pursuit of theological truth.’
‘Even if you found it,’ Anna said to Usberti, ‘you can’t know what to expect. Nothing in archaeology is ever certain.’
‘But God’s word is,’ Usberti said. His smile fell away and irritation twisted his face. ‘It is the most certain thing there is. And the Bible is God’s word. If the Bible says the king of Babylon created a golden statue sixty cubits tall, then that is what I shall find there. To doubt that is to doubt the Holy Creator Himself. To question God is to be a heretic, and heretics shall be punished with death. Is that not so, Ugo?’
Bozza made a single up-down motion of his head.
‘Then we mustn’t doubt the Creator,’ Ben said. ‘You’ll be the wealthiest man in the loony bin and the world will be a happier place for it.’
‘Major Hope thinks he can provoke me with his taunts,’ Usberti said to Anna. ‘His ploy is that, if he can anger me sufficiently, it may trigger some reaction on my part which he can exploit to his advantage. For your own sake, Professor, and for his – as it has not escaped my notice that you have some inexplicable degree of feeling for him – please impress upon him that such an attempt would not only be quite futile but also counterproductive, in that it would produce only a worsening of the means by which he is to die, when that time arrives, as it will soon enough.’
Anna looked at him. ‘I was right, Usberti. You do talk too much.’
The sun was sinking lower over the desert as they slowly ground towards their destination. Usberti and Groppione had worked out a route using GPS to get them there without skirting too closely by the town of Jarabulus itself. So far, the plan had worked and they’d seen no sign of trouble. No sign of anything at all, or any living person. Just sand and rock and the increasingly difficult terrain that was becoming more challenging with every passing kilometre. For most of the journey the landscape had been flat and endlessly wide and almost featureless except for undulating hills and clumps of scrubby, stunted vegetation eking out an existence in the sheltered dips and hollows. A hard place to survive: seared by brutal heat for two-thirds of the year, while the winter months brought blasting winds and temperatures that could sink far below zero.
Which was exactly what was happening out there right now. Strong gusts of icy wind rocked the RV and the darkening sky seemed to threaten snow. Ben couldn’t tell exactly where they were, but judging by the lie of the land, Jarabulus was somewhere to the east of their position. To the west the horizon grew wilder, overshadowed with rocky escarpments that were turning to purples and blues in the fading light. And it was into the high country that the GPS was directing them, tracking the same approximate route that had led Hans Von Grüber’s expedition to the site of their discovery – for two, their deaths.
The RV had long since left behind anything resembling a road. It was lurching and pitching and rocking crazily as it crawled over the impossible terrain. Groppione was no kind of an expert off-road driver, but even if he had been, the size and weight and low ground clearance of the vehicle was a major handicap. Three times in succession, he ploughed them into rocky hollows that had the suspension jarring against its stops, the wheels spinning for grip, and Ben almost certain that they wouldn’t get out. But Usberti’s luck was holding.
Now they curved due west, away from the falling sun and the flat desert panorama that dropped away behind them as they climbed into the rocky escarpment. It was like navigating a ship through a frozen ocean, with lanes of open water ever-tightening into narrow fissures and icebergs looming on all sides. The long, low chassis scraped and clanged and dragged painfully over ruts and boulders. The way ahead became steeper, and steeper, until they were down to first gear and the engine was straining badly and sounded as though it was overheating. Ben could smell diesel fumes and hot oil, and hear the whirr and whine of the cooling fan struggling to pull enough air through the radiator.
Undeterred, Massimiliano Usberti stood behind the driver’s seat, clutching his GPS device, pointing ahead and urging Groppione onwards with terse commands and threats of what would happen to anyone cowardly enough to refuse to keep going. Groppione was hunched over the wheel, looking as if he hardly dared to breathe. They squeezed through a pass that was almost too narrow for the RV’s bulk, sheared off one of its mirrors and crumpled their flanks and left deep gouges in the Perspex windows.
Up, and up. And up some more. To their left, the escarpment formed a sheer cliff face almost touching the side of the coach. To their right, across the aisle from where Ben and Anna were sitting, was a vertical drop to the desert below. To the front, what little track there was to follow was narrowing into a rubble-strewn mountain path where even a Syrian Awassi sheep herdsman would have hesitated to take his flock. It seemed to Ben that if it narrowed any more, the coach would topple off its precarious edge and go hurtling down to its destruction. And he was supposed to be the crazy one. Starace looked about ready to collapse from terror, darting pug-eyed glances out of the window every few seconds and pouring with sweat. Bellini was sitting near the front, head bowed in grim silence, his fingertips white where they clutched the arms of his seat.
Usberti scrutinised his GPS one last time, held up a hand and said, ‘That is far enough.’
Groppione braked to a halt and fell back in the driver’s seat, as limp and pale and spent as a man running a high fever. Starace let out a wheeze of a sigh and rubbed his eyes. Bellini let go of the arms of his seat and looked at his employer in bewilderment. Even Ugo Bozza seemed relieved.
They couldn’t have travelled any further in any case, even if the track had gone on and on. The way ahead was completely blocked by the rubble of a rock fall. Just before that, there was a large craggy opening in the cliff face to their left, easily the height of the RV, deep enough for two nose-to-tail and wide enough for three, side by side. Groppione’s driving duties weren’t over yet.
‘Turn us around,’ Usberti ordered him, circling a finger in the air. Groppione suppressed a groan, engaged reverse, backed up a few yards with a careful eye on the remaining mirror, then gently eased the RV inside the cave. The rasp of its engine was suddenly amplified and echoey. Groppione had to spend the next few minutes pulling a complicated multi-point turn to get the RV reversed out of the cave mouth without backing right over the edge and killing them all, then turned around and straightened up to point the opposite way down the track. By the time he was done, the cave reeked with sickly-sweet diesel exhaust fumes.
‘Thank you, Aldo,’ Usberti said. ‘You may kill the engine now. Everyone, please disembark.’
Bozza activated the hydraulics to open the side door, which was now on the RV’s inside flank, between it and the cliff face. The gap was a tight squeeze as, one by one – Ben first, then Anna, and Usberti last – they all stepped down the gangway. After so long inside the warm vehicle, the freezing, whipping wind cut like a razor. Anna immediately began to shiver despite her heavy jacket. Usberti seemed unaffected by the chill. His men gathered round him. Ben watched. And listened. He could hear something over the fluting note of the wind. A distant sound that his ears were attuned to by virtue of oft-repeated experience.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, there was a fight happening.
Usberti frowned up at the sky. Particles of moi
sture too slow and heavy to be rain were drifting diagonally on the wind. The temperature was dropping perceptibly now that the sun had sunk all the way behind the broad western horizon. ‘There is not much time,’ he commented.
‘Not much time for what?’ Ben asked. Though he was afraid he already knew the answer to his question.
Usberti turned, gazed at Ben, and a look of cruelty and triumph split his face into a crooked grin. He pointed a finger straight up into the air.
‘Time for you to show your mettle, Benedict. You are going to climb the cliff for me.’
Chapter 54
Ben craned his neck to peer upwards in the direction of the pointing finger. The cliff loomed over them. Maybe a hundred feet, maybe three times that. Hard to tell. The angle of the rock face was past vertical, so he couldn’t see the top.
He normally enjoyed climbing. Now and then, on a Sunday morning when the schedule at Le Val allowed, he would take the old Land Rover to a Normandy beach near a place called Étretat, with a sea kayak strapped to the roof, paddle out to the base of the famous chalk cliffs of the so-called Alabaster Coast and relish pitting himself against the challenge.
This was a whole other proposition. Ben didn’t like to use the word ‘impossible’. But if there were an enemy position up there on top, and orders dictated that it were imperative to capture that position, the SAS would have looked for another way.
‘Now you see my purpose in keeping you alive,’ Usberti said. ‘Why should I risk the lives of my own men, when I have you? Aldo, you may uncuff him. No tricks, Major, I beseech you.’
‘You can’t make him do this,’ Anna said.
‘Of course not. He will make the climb by his own will. Because he can all too well imagine the harm that may come to you, my dear, if he refuses.’
The Babylon Idol Page 29