‘Count them. When you tell me how many there are, you can go down to the pool.’
Andrea spread the beans on the table and one by one began counting them, putting them into a pot. When she reached twelve hundred and eighty-three, she got up to go to the bathroom.
When she returned the pot was empty. Someone had put the beans back on the table.
Dad, your hair will turn grey before you hear me cry, she thought.
Of course she did cry. Over the next five days, no matter the reason for leaving the table, each time she came back she had to start counting the beans all over again, forty-three different times.
The night before, Andrea would have considered the incident of the beans to have been one of the worst experiences of her life, even worse than the brutal beating she’d received in Rome the year before. Now, however, the experience with the magnetometer had risen to the top of the list.
The day had started at five on the dot, three-quarters of an hour before sunrise, with a series of blasts from a horn. Andrea had to sleep in the infirmary with Dr Harel and Kyra Larsen, the two sexes segregated because of Forrester’s sanctimonious rules. Dekker’s detail was in another tent, the service staff in another, and Forrester’s four male assistants and Father Fowler in the remaining one. The professor preferred to sleep alone in a small tent that cost eighty dollars and went with him on all his expeditions. But he didn’t sleep much. By five in the morning he was out there among the tents, blasting his air horn until he received a couple of death threats from a crowd of people who were already frazzled.
Andrea got up, cursing in the dark, looking for her towel and her toiletries bag, which she had left next to the inflatable mattress and sleeping bag that served as her bed. She was heading for the door when Harel called her. In spite of the early hour, she was already dressed.
‘You’re not thinking of showering, are you?’
‘Of course.’
‘You could find out the hard way, but I should remind you that the showers work using individual codes and each of us is allowed only thirty seconds of water per day. If you waste your share now, you’ll be begging us just to spit on you tonight. ’
Andrea slumped back on her mattress, defeated.
‘Thank you for screwing up my day.’
‘True, but I’ve saved your night.’
‘I look terrible,’ Andrea said, pulling her hair into a ponytail, something she hadn’t done since college.
‘Worse than terrible.’
‘Fuck, Doc, you’re supposed to say: “Not as bad as me” or “No, you look great”. You know, female solidarity.’
‘Well, I’ve never been a conventional woman,’ Harel said, looking directly into Andrea’s eyes.
What the hell did you mean by that, Doc? Andrea asked herself as she pulled on her shorts and laced up her boots. Are you what I think you are? And more importantly… should I make the first move?
Step, wait, whistle, step.
Stowe Erling had escorted Andrea to her assigned area and helped her to put on her harness. So there she was, in the middle of a piece of ground fifty foot square, marked off with string attached at each corner to eight-inch spikes.
Suffering.
First there was the weight. Thirty-five pounds didn’t seem like much at first, especially when it hung from a harness. But by the second hour, Andrea’s shoulders were killing her.
Then there was the heat. By noon, the ground wasn’t sand – it was a grill. And her water ran out half an hour into the shift. The rest periods between each shift lasted quarter of an hour, but eight of those minutes were taken up leaving and returning to the quadrants and getting bottles of cold water, and another two reapplying sunscreen. That left roughly three minutes, which consisted of Forrester continuously clearing his throat and looking at his watch.
On top of that, it was the same routine over and over. That stupid step, wait, whistle, step.
Fuck, I’d be better off in Guantánamo. Even though the sun is beating down on them too at least they don’t have to carry this stupid weight.
‘Good morning. It’s kind of hot, isn’t it?’ said a voice.
‘Go to hell, Father.’
‘Have some water,’ Fowler said, offering her a bottle.
He was dressed in serge trousers and his usual short-sleeved black shirt and clerical collar. He stepped back out of her quadrant and sat on the ground, watching her with amusement.
‘Can you explain who you bribed so you don’t have to wear this thing?’ asked Andrea, thirstily emptying the bottle.
‘Professor Forrester has a great deal of respect for my religious duties. He’s also a man of God, in his own way.’
‘An egotistical maniac, more like.’
‘That too. And what about you?’
‘Well, at least promoting slavery is not one of my faults.’
‘I’m talking about religion.’
‘Are you trying to save my soul with half a bottle of water?’
‘Would that be enough?’
‘I’d need at least a full one.’
Fowler smiled and handed her another bottle.
‘If you take small sips it quenches your thirst better.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re not going to answer my question?’
‘Religion is too deep for me. I prefer riding a bike.’
The priest laughed and took a sip from his own bottle. He seemed tired.
‘Come on, Ms Otero; don’t be angry with me for not having to do the donkey work now. You don’t think that all these squares showed up by magic, do you?’
The quadrants began two hundred feet from the tents. The other members of the expedition were spread out over the surface of the canyon, each one with his own step, wait, whistle, step. Andrea had reached the end of her section and took a step to the right, turned 180 degrees, and then began walking again, her back to the priest.
‘And there I was, trying to find the two of you… So this is what you and the doc were up to all night.’
‘There were other people there too, so you needn’t worry.’
‘What do you mean by that, Father?’
Fowler didn’t say anything. For a long while there was only the rhythm of step, wait, whistle, step.
‘How did you know?’ said Andrea anxiously.
‘I suspected it. Now I know.’
‘Fuck.’
‘I’m sorry for having invaded your privacy, Ms Otero.’
‘The hell you are,’ Andrea said and bit her fist. ‘I’d kill for a smoke.’
‘What’s stopping you?’
‘Professor Forrester told me that it interferes with the instruments.’
‘You know something, Ms Otero? For someone who acts like she’s on top of everything you’re pretty naïve. Tobacco smoke doesn’t affect the magnetic field of the Earth. At least, not according to my sources.’
‘The old bastard.’
Andrea dug around in her pockets then lit a cigarette.
‘Are you going to tell Doc, Father?’
‘Harel is intelligent, much more so than I am. And she’s Jewish. She doesn’t need advice from an old priest.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well, you’re Catholic, right?’
‘I lost confidence in your outfit fourteen years ago, Father.’
‘Which one? Military or clerical?’
‘Both. My parents really screwed me up.’
‘All parents do that. Isn’t that how life begins?’
Andrea turned her head and managed to see him out of the corner of her eye.
‘So we have something in common.’
‘You can’t imagine. Why were you searching for us last night, Andrea?’
The reporter looked around before answering. The nearest human being was David Pappas, locked into his harness a hundred feet away. A blast of hot wind gusted from the entrance to the canyon, forming beautiful whirlpools of sand at Andrea’s feet.
‘Yesterday, whe
n we were at the entrance to the canyon, I climbed up that enormous dune on foot. At the top I began taking shots with my telephoto lens and I saw a man.’
‘Where?’ Fowler blurted out.
‘On top of the cliff behind you. I only saw him for a second. He was wearing light brown clothes. I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t know if it had something to do with the person who tried to kill me on the Behemoth.’
Fowler squinted and ran his hand over his bald head, taking a deep breath. His face looked troubled.
‘Ms Otero, this expedition is extremely dangerous and its success depends on secrecy. If anyone knew the truth about why we’re here.…’
‘They’d throw us out?’
‘They’d kill us all.’
‘Oh.’
Andrea lifted her gaze, acutely aware of how isolated the place was and how trapped they would be if someone broke through Dekker’s thin line of sentries.
‘I need to speak to Albert immediately,’ Fowler said.
‘I thought you said you couldn’t use your satellite telephone here? That Dekker had a frequency scanner?’
The priest simply looked at her.
‘Oh, shit. Not again,’ Andrea said.
‘We’ll do it tonight.’
32
2,700 FEET WEST OF THE EXCAVATION
AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN
Friday, 14 July 2006. 1:18 a.m.
The tall man was named O and he was crying. He had to get away from the other men. He didn’t want them to see him showing his feelings, much less talk about it. And it would have been very dangerous to reveal why he was crying.
It was really because of the girl. She had reminded him too much of his own daughter. He had hated having to kill her. Killing Tahir had been simple, a relief, in fact. He had to admit that he’d even enjoyed playing with him – giving him a preview of hell, but here on earth.
The girl was another story. She was only sixteen years old.
And yet, D and W had agreed with him: the mission was too important. Not only were the lives of the other brothers crowded in the cave at stake, but all of Dar Al-Islam. The mother and daughter knew too much. There could be no exceptions.
‘Meaningless shitty war,’ he said.
‘So you’re talking to yourself now?’
It was W, who had come crawling over. He didn’t like running risks and always talked in whispers, even inside the cave.
‘I was praying.’
‘We have to go back into the hole. They might see us.’
‘There’s only one sentry on the western wall, and he has no direct line of vision over here. Don’t worry.’
‘What if he changes position? They have night-vision goggles.’
‘I said don’t worry. The big black one is on duty. He smokes the whole time and the light from the cigarette stops him seeing anything,’ O said, annoyed that he had to talk when he had wanted to enjoy the silence.
‘Let’s go back inside the cave. We’ll play chess.’
That W… O hadn’t fooled him for a moment. W knew he was feeling down. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen. They had gone through a lot together. He was a good comrade. As clumsy as his efforts were, he was attempting to cheer him up.
O stretched out the length of his body on the sand. They were in a hollow area at the foot of a rock formation. The cave, which was at its base, was only about one hundred feet square. O was the one who had found it three months earlier, when he was planning the operation. There was hardly enough room for them all, but even if the cave had been a hundred times bigger, O would have preferred being outside. He felt trapped in that noisy hole, attacked by the snores and farting of his brothers.
‘I think I’ll stay out here a while longer. I like the cold.’
‘Are you waiting for Huqan’s signal?’
‘It’ll be a while before that comes. The infidels haven’t found anything yet.’
‘I hope they hurry up. I’m tired of being holed up, eating out of tins and pissing into a can.’
O didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the breeze on his skin. Waiting was fine with him.
‘Why are we sitting around here doing nothing? We’re well-armed. I say we go in there and kill them all,’ W insisted.
‘We’ll follow Huqan’s orders.’
‘Huqan takes too many chances.’
‘I know. But he’s clever. He told me a story. Do you know how a bushman finds water in the Kalahari when he’s far from home? He finds a monkey and watches it all day. He can’t let the monkey see him or the game’s over. If the bushman is patient, the monkey ends up showing him where to find water. A crack in the rock, a little pool… places a bushman would never have found.’
‘And what does he do then?’
‘He drinks the water and eats the monkey.’
33
THE EXCAVATION
AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN
Friday, 14 July 2006. 01:18 a.m.
Stowe Erling nibbled nervously on his ballpoint pen and cursed Professor Forrester with all his might. It wasn’t his fault that the data from one of the quadrants hadn’t gone where it was supposed to. He had been busy enough putting up with the complaints of their indentured prospectors as he helped them into and out of their harnesses, changed the batteries on their equipment, and made sure that nobody went over the same quadrant twice.
Of course, no one was there to help him put on his harness now. And it wasn’t as if the operation was easy in the middle of the night, with only the light from a camping gas lantern. Forrester didn’t give a damn about anybody – anybody except himself, that is. The moment he had found an anomaly in the data, after supper, he had ordered Stowe to do a new analysis of quadrant 22K.
In vain Stowe had asked – almost begged – Forrester to let him do it the following day. If the data from all the quadrants wasn’t linked, the program wouldn’t function.
Fucking Pappas. Isn’t he supposedly the world’s leading archaeological topographer? A qualified software designer, right? Shit is what he is. He should never have left Greece. Fuck! I bust myself kissing the old man’s ass so he’d let me prepare the headings for the magnetometer codes, and he ends up giving them to Pappas. Two years, two whole years researching references for Forrester, correcting his childish errors, buying his medicine, emptying his trash can full of infected bloody tissues. Two years, and he treats me like this.
Fortunately, Stowe had finished the complicated series of movements and the magnetometer was now on his shoulders and working. He picked up the lantern and placed it halfway up the incline. Quadrant 22K covered part of a sandy slope near the knuckle of the index finger of the canyon.
The ground here was different, unlike the spongy pink surface at the base of the canyon or the baked rock that covered the rest of the area. The sand was darker and the slope itself had a gradient of around 14 per cent. As he walked, the sand shifted as though an animal were moving under his boots. Stowe had to hold on tightly to the straps of the magnetometer as he made his way up the incline in order to keep the instrument balanced.
As he leaned over to place the lantern on the ground, his right hand grazed a splinter of iron protruding from the frame. It drew blood.
‘Ouch – shit!’
Sucking on the cut, he began moving with the instrument over the terrain in that slow annoying rhythm.
He’s not even American. Not even a Jew, dammit. He’s a lousy fucking Greek immigrant. Greek Orthodox before he started working for the professor. He only converted to Judaism after three months with us. A fast-track conversion – very convenient. I’m so tired. Why am I doing this? I hope we find the Ark. Then History departments will fight over me and I’ll be able to find a tenured position. The old man’s not going to last much longer – probably just enough to steal all the credit. But in three or four years they’ll talk about his team. About me. I wish his rotten lungs would just burst in the next few hours. I wonder who Kayn would put at the head of the e
xpedition then? It wouldn’t be Pappas. If he craps in his pants each time the professor even looks at him, imagine what he’ll do if he sees Kayn. No, they’d need someone stronger, someone with charisma. I wonder what Kayn is really like. They say he’s very sick. But then why did he come all the way out here?
Stowe stopped in his tracks, halfway up the incline and facing the canyon wall. He thought he had heard footsteps, but that was impossible. He looked back at the camp. Everything was still.
Of course. The only one not in bed is me. Well, except for the guards, but they’re bundled up and probably snoring. Who are they going to protect us from? It’d be better if-
The young man stopped again. He had heard something and this time he knew he hadn’t imagined it. He cocked his head in an attempt to hear better, but the annoying whistle went off once more. Stowe felt for the instrument’s switch and quickly pressed it once. That way he could turn off the whistle without turning off the instrument (which would set off an alarm on Forrester’s computer), something a dozen people would have given an arm and a leg to have known yesterday.
It must be a couple of the soldiers changing shifts. Come on, you’re a little too old to be afraid of the dark.
He turned off the instrument and began making his way downhill. Now that he’d thought about it, it would be better if he went back to bed. If Forrester wanted to be pissed off, then that was his business. He’d start first thing in the morning, skipping breakfast.
That’s it. I’ll get up before the old man, when there’s more light.
He smiled, chiding himself for being alarmed over nothing. Now he could finally go to bed, which was all he needed. If he hurried, he’d be able to get three hours’ sleep.
Suddenly something was pulling on the harness. Stowe leaned back waving his arms in the air to keep his balance. But just when he thought he was going to fall, he felt someone grab him.
The young man did not feel the point of the knife puncturing the bottom of his spinal column. The hand that had grabbed his harness pulled harder. Stowe suddenly remembered his childhood when he went with his father to Chebacco Lake to fish for black crappies. His father would hold a fish in his hand and then, in one swift motion, gut it. The movement made a wet, whistling sound very similar to the last thing that Stowe heard.
Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition Page 14