The Bible of Clay

by Julia Navarro

  For a while longer, Lion played the role of a worried newcomer to the news game, but then he said good night and went up to his room. He had to prepare for the trip to Safran, whether the Ministry of Information gave him the green light or not.

  He was awakened early the next morning by the telephone. AH Sidqui, the ministry official, sounded very cheery.

  "I have good news for you, Mr. Doyle. My superiors think it's a splendid idea for you to go to Safran to publicize a story on the archaeological mission. We'll take you there."

  "That's very nice of you; I really appreciate it, but I'd rather make my own arrangements."

  "No, no, I'm afraid that's not possible. That area is only accessible with government sponsorship. It's a military zone, in fact, and the archaeological mission is under official protection. No one is allowed to enter without permission from Baghdad and an official escort. So you must either go with us or not go."

  Lion accepted the terms. Ali Sidqui told him to come by the press center that morning to begin the arrangements.

  When Lion arrived at the ministry, Ali introduced him to his superior, who was clearly enthusiastic about the entire idea.

  "European intellectuals have not abandoned us after all," the director of the press center said.

  Lion nodded. He couldn't care less what Saddam's flunkies had to say about his mission. All he cared about was filling out the required forms and getting his passport photocopied so he could be on his way.

  "We will call you in a couple of days. Be ready. And I do not imagine you will be sick in the helicopter?"

  "Me? Dunno. Never been in one," Lion lied.

  31

  tom martin devoured the long e-mail from lion,

  forwarded by the head of Photomundi. Lion was already in Safran, and with the blessing of Saddam!

  I got into Safran today. The helicopter that flew me in was an old Soviet junk heap that roared like a freight train.

  There are over two hundred people working here. The leader of the mission, Professor Yves Picot, is obsessed with winning the race against time; he knows they don't have much left. I've met the heads of the team, who have very passionately described the importance of the work they're doing. One of the archaeologists, Fabian Tudela, explained that the temple they're digging dates to the time of a king Amraphel who appears in the Bible. I can only hope the photographs and the report are of interest to the general public.

  There has been some commotion in the camp since the grandfather of Clara Tannenberg, the other lead archaeologist, announced he will come to the camp to live, apparently for some time. The news arrived before I did, and it was the buzz of the camp. Some people seem quite agitated about it. They're readying a house for him. Furnishings have been brought in from Baghdad so that he can live as comfortably as possible.

  As a sidelight, I'll tell you that this Clara is nothing short of mothered by an old woman, a Shiite covered from head to toe in black. She's apparently a servant who also cares for the old gentleman, and Ms. Tannenberg eats only what this woman prepares for her. I was told that the senior Tannenberg will be accompanied by his granddaughter's husband, who is a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Culture, and by a doctor and nurse, for whom housing is also being prepared. A field hospital is to be set up; it was sent in from Cairo. Clearly, the old man is not well.

  I mention this because suddenly everything seems to be revolving around his arrival. With its guards and soldiers, the camp looks more like a fortress than a scientific endeavor, but I hope to be able to successfully finish my photo-essay even under these conditions.

  Tom Martin smiled. He had no doubt that Lion Doyle would be able to finish what he called his "photo-essay"—the "sanction" against the Tannenberg family.

  He'd been lucky, all right. Finding the Tannenbergs in Iraq would have been much more complicated had he not known about them through his friend Paul Dukais. Life was full of wonderful coincidences— how else could you explain the fact that Dukais had asked him for men to neutralize Clara Tannenberg, when ten minutes later the mysterious Mr. Burton had shown up offering him two million euros to kill her and her entire family?

  He still debated telling Dukais about the contract he had on the Tannenbergs, but once again, he decided against it. It was best to keep that little professional secret. Dukais might be working against the Tannenbergs, but that was a far cry from having them killed.

  He phoned his client to update him.

  "Hello?"

  "Mr. Burton, a friend of mine has located your friends, although he hasn't been able to meet with them yet. They're all fine—the grandfather, the granddaughter, and her husband. Unfortunately, the grandfather is ill; we're still not sure how seriously, but we're expecting to receive word soon."

  "And there are no other members of the family?"

  "None that we know of."

  "Will your friend be able to get our message to them?" "Of course." "Anything else?"

  "No, not for the moment, unless you're interested in further details."

  "I want to know everything."

  "Your friends are in the southern part of the country, in a charming town called Safran. The granddaughter is working. . . how shall I say ... as the leader of a large team, and the grandfather will be going there to meet with her. But they're well protected, and not just by regular army personnel; they also have private security."

  "Is that all?"

  "Those are the essential details. As soon as I know more, I'll call you."

  "See that you do."

  Hans Hausser's stomach was in knots. Tom Martin had just confirmed that Alfred Tannenberg was alive.

  He had to call Mercedes, Carlo, and Bruno to tell them that what once had been a distant possibility had become a reality. The vow they had made when they were children would be fulfilled. The sick old man Tom Martin had described could only be the monster that they had spent a lifetime hunting down.

  Hans knew Mercedes hadn't slept and had hardly eaten since the day Carlo had called them from Rome to tell them he thought he'd found Tannenberg.

  As Mercedes listened, Hans could hear her breathing growing harsh.

  "I need to be there," she told Hans.

  "That would be crazy and you know it—besides, there's nothing you can do."

  "We ought to kill Tannenberg with our own hands, tell him who we are, let him know his past has at last caught up with him." "My God, Mercedes!"

  "There are things one should see to personally."

  "Yes, Mercedes, yes. That would be better. But he's in Iraq, in a town in the southern part of the country, guarded by dozens of armed men. It's enough that he will pay."

  "You have a daughter and grandchildren; Carlo and Bruno have children and grandchildren too. But I have no one, and at my age the only thing the future holds is getting older alone. I have nothing to lose."

  Hans felt a sudden shiver of terror. He had no doubt that Mercedes was actually capable of getting on a plane and trying to kill Tannenberg personally.

  "Mercedes, listen. I—we—will never forgive you if Tannenberg survives because you fouled this up. If you turned up in Iraq you'd be detained before you got within a mile of him, and the whole thing would fall apart—everything we've worked toward for so many years. The only thing you'd manage to do is put him on the alert, while you'd be thrown in an Iraqi jail, and we . . . we'd be arrested too."

  "That's pure speculation on your part. It doesn't have to happen that way."

  "Are you so consumed with hatred, so filled with self-importance, that you can't think straight?"

  Mercedes fell silent. She had spent her entire life dreaming of the moment when she would plunge a knife into Tannenberg's belly. She had had so many nightmares, so many dreams of walking up to that monster and gouging out his eyes with her own well-manicured nails. In other dreams, she attacked him like a wolf, bit into his jugular and drank his blood. She wanted Tannenberg to feel pain, infinite pain, pain that she herself inflicted—not some str
anger. She wanted Tannenberg looking into her eyes as he died, knowing he was finally getting what he deserved.

  "Mercedes, are you listening?" Hans' voice came through the receiver, bringing her thoughts back.

  "Yes. I'm listening."

  "I'm going to call Carlo and Bruno. I'm not willing to wind up in prison because your arrogance and hate have finally driven you mad. If you go ahead with this, I'm done—I'll wash my hands of this, I'll pull out completely."

  "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying that I'm not crazy, and that I refuse to take unnecessary risks. Carlo, Bruno, you, and I are four old people, and we have to resign ourselves to letting someone else kill him for us. If you don't see things that way, tell me, so I can get out of this before you ruin us all. Think about what I'm saying. Now I'm going to call the others. Good-bye."

  Carlo and Bruno shared Hans' concern when he spoke to them. They should have anticipated Mercedes' reaction to the news that Alfred Tannenberg was indeed alive. They were afraid of her, afraid of what she might do.

  The building that housed the offices of Mercedes' company was on the lower slope of Barcelona's Tibidabo district. The receptionist showed Carlo to a chair. Within a minute, Mercedes strode in. She grabbed his arm and led him into her office. When they were alone, she wheeled on him, glaring.

  "Hans asked you to come—"

  "No." He held her gaze firmly, his expression serious, concerned. "I came on my own. What are you doing, Mercedes? What are you thinking?" Carlo's voice was filled with pain and sympathy-He took her hands in his. They talked for hours, long after her secretary put her head in to say good night, going over everything they had been through together and all the things they had talked about in the years since then.

  Finally Mercedes took a deep breath and looked into her old friend's eyes. "You're right, Carlo, I know it. But everything I am, everything I've done ..." She stopped and looked away. "So what are you going to do?" "Think, Carlo, I'm going to think." "Which means I haven't convinced you."

  "I would never lie to the three of you. I won't tell you that I'm not going to do something while I'm still thinking about it. I'd rather have you hate me than lie to you."

  "You'd rather Tannenberg live," Carlo said coldly.

  "No!" Mercedes cried. "How can you say that!"

  Carlo looked toward the heavens. "There's nothing left to say, Mercedes. We'll call off the operation. Hans will tell Tom Martin to call in his man. It's over."

  Mercedes clenched her fists. "You can't do that," she whispered.

  "Yes, we can, and we will. You're breaking our vow, everything we pledged to one another, and endangering us all. If you're not with us, it's over. We renounce our revenge from this point forward. We will never forgive you, never. After so many years of looking for him, we find him at last—Tannenberg and his granddaughter. We could have killed them; we're that close. It's hard to believe. But all right, go ahead, do whatever you want. We've come so far together, but from this point forward, you're on your own. And that means whatever road you take, you'll take it without us."

  A vein throbbed in Carlo's left temple.

  Mercedes felt a sharp pain in her chest.

  "What are you saying to me, Carlo?"

  "That we will never see each other again. That Hans and Bruno and I will have nothing else to do with you for the rest of our lives. And that we will never forgive you."

  Carlo was exhausted. He loved Mercedes deeply and could sense her suffering, but if she persisted, they had come to an end.

  "I can't accept your ultimatum," replied Mercedes, her face as white as a wax candle.

  "Nor can we accept yours."

  Carlo rose from his chair. "I'm leaving. If you change your mind, call us, but do it before tonight. Tomorrow Hans will be flying to London to cancel the contract with Martin." He walked out the door.

  He called his friends from a public phone at the airport. They agreed to meet in Vienna, at Bruno's home, the next day.

  Deborah greeted Carlo and Hans coldly. It was obvious that she and Bruno had been arguing.

  "Deborah's so damned pigheaded. She doesn't understand what we're doing," Bruno muttered when they were alone.

  "Does she know what we're doing?" asked Hans with alarm.

  "No—I didn't mean that. But she knows what we've found. And she's lived with me for a long time. . . ." Bruno didn't need to explain any further.

  "I'd have told my wife too," Carlo consoled him. "Me too—don't worry," Hans said.

  Deborah returned to the living room with a tray of coffee. She put it down without a word and turned to go. Then she turned back, glaring at them.

  "Deborah, leave us alone, please, we need to talk," Bruno asked her.

  "I'll leave you alone, but first I want you to listen to me, all of you. I've suffered just like the rest of you. I lived in hell too. I lost my parents, my uncles and aunts, my friends. I'm a survivor, just like the rest of you. It was God's will that I be saved, and I give thanks for that. My whole life I've prayed to be strong enough to keep grief and hatred from rotting my soul. It hasn't been easy—I won't even claim that I've succeeded. But what I do know is that we can't take revenge into our own hands, because that makes us as bad as them. There are courts, there are places to go for justice here in Austria, in Germany, all over Europe. You could denounce him, bring him to trial. What do you make of yourselves if you have a man and his family killed?"

  "Nobody says we're going to kill him," Bruno replied very gravely.

  "I know you—I know all three of you. You've spent your whole lives waiting for this moment, feeding one another's thirst for revenge because of a pact you made when you were children. Now so much hatred has built up among you that none of you is able to stop. God will not forgive you."

  "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," Hans replied.

  "Useless," muttered Deborah, leaving.

  The three men remained in silence for a minute. Then Carlo recounted in full detail his impasse with Mercedes. They agreed to make one last attempt to reason with her.

  Bruno got up and went into his office. He wanted to talk to Mercedes where Deborah couldn't hear him. He reached her at home.

  "Bruno?" she asked. He had never heard her sound so frail.

  "Yes, Mercedes, it's me."

  "I'm a wreck."

  "So are we. Mercedes, I want you to know that I've never suffered as much as I did when I was a child. Carlo and Hans feel the same way. And we know you do too. But now all these years will have come to nothing—you have destroyed our reason for living. Your grandmother would never have acted this way, and you know it."

  Silence fell between them again. Bruno felt wrung out. It was hard to find the right tone—he wanted to leave Mercedes room to reconsider, but he also could leave no doubt as to what her actions would mean.

  "I'm sorry for what I'm making the three of you go through," Mercedes finally whispered.

  "You're literally taking years off our lives, Mercedes. If you go ahead with what you want to do, I'll have nothing left. What would there be? Everything would be over."

  Bruno was speaking from the depths of his soul. He was giving words to his anguish, his friends' collective anguish, and Mercedes knew it.

  "I'm sorry. Forgive me. I won't go—I don't think I'll go."

  "It does me no good to hear you say you think you won't go. I need a promise," Bruno demanded.

  "I won't do anything. I give you my word. And if I change my mind, I'll tell you."

  "You can't leave us hanging like that. ..."

  "No, I know I can't, but I also can't lie to you." Mercedes paused again. The silence stretched between them. "All right, Bruno," she finally whispered. "I won't do anything. I'm not going to do anything."

  "Thank you, Mercedes."

  "How are Carlo and Hans?"

  "They're terrible, like me."

  "Tell them that everything is all right—I won't do anything. I promise."

  32

/>   "mercedes, don't cry; please, darling, don't cry."

  The little girl, shivering with cold and hunger, barely mustering the strength to stand, clutched her mother's hand as she wept quietly. The guard had shoved her—hard— for not standing still in rank with the other women and their children.

  She'd fallen to the ground, and her face had landed in a cold puddle of mud. Chantal, her mother, terrified by what the guards might do, had yanked her up by the arm immediately. In the camps, the first rule of survival was to remain unnoticed.

  Mercedes felt her mother squeeze her hand. The guard who had pushed her had immediately been distracted by another child squirming in the line, and in those precious seconds Mercedes fought to hold back her tears, as her mother had implored her to do.

  She watched some of the SS officers from the camp merrily hugging the men who had arrived with the procession of black cars. They were laughing and slapping one another on the back; they all looked happy, one of them telling another that it was going to be an unforgettable day.

  For a few seconds, Mercedes thought about what those men might do to make today so special, and again she shivered.

  One of the kapos—as the common criminals who served as guards

  were called—a man named Gustav, came over to the row of prisoners and ordered the children to form another row in front of their mothers. The youngest children didn't want to let go of their mothers' hands, until one of the SS officers prodded them with the grip of a whip, and the mothers begged them to stand where the guards told them.