Artifact

by Vaughn Heppner

  Jack yawned.

  “Stay with me,” Selene said. “The Ismaili never had a big country, but a bunch of hilltop castles controlling certain areas. Alamut Castle was the strongest. After a time, it sported one of the biggest libraries around. Scholars and philosophers would go to Alamut. I bet medieval scientists hung out there as well.”

  “Okay.”

  “Alamut means ‘Eagle’s Nest.’ Since the Ismaili lacked armies, they did their fighting through assassins, trained men called fida’i, which meant self-sacrificing agents. Anyway, the Old Man of the Mountain ran these assassins. Sometimes, to convince others to leave them alone, an assassin would sneak into an enemy leader’s bedroom and leave a wavy dagger on the pillow, saying in effect, ‘See, we could have killed you if we wanted.’”

  “Clever,” Jack said. “I like it. Did it work?”

  “According to the article I read, it did for a time.”

  “What happened in the end?” Jack asked.

  “Ever hear of Hulagu Khan?”

  “One of your relatives?” Jack asked.

  “I doubt it. He was a grandson or great-grandson of Genghis Khan. Anyway, he marched through this area in 1256. Hulagu destroyed the Assassins, besieging Alamut Castle until they surrendered. In the process, the great castle library was burned down.”

  “This is the Alamut Mountain Souk visited?” Jack asked.

  Selene nodded.

  “The leader of the castle—”

  “Of the Ismaili,” Selene corrected.

  “He was called the Old Man of the Mountain?”

  “There’s a legend he would drug his best assassins,” Selene said. “When they woke up, the assassin found himself in a perfect garden with grapes, wine and nubile women to use. After a time of enjoying paradise, the young man would find himself drugged once more. Upon awaking, the Old Man told him he had tasted paradise, and he could return, but only if he followed the Old Man’s instructions to the letter.”

  “That’s dirty,” Jack said.

  “By what I read, it worked. The Old Man’s assassins were fearless, striking terror into the heart of Saladin, for instance. That’s the Muslim leader who fought Richard the Lion-Hearted during the Third Crusade.”

  Jack glanced at her. “For a geologist, you certainly know a lot about history.”

  Selene felt herself blushing. She was curious about things.

  At that moment, a loud report from outside gave Selene a second’s warning. Then, the steering wheel spun out of her grip. The car swerved with the tires skidding across the road.

  -55-

  NORTHWESTERN IRAN

  Jack watched as Selene clutched the steering wheel, fighting for control. He knew what had happened. The right front tire had blown. Under normal circumstances that wouldn’t have been too much of a problem. This wasn’t ordinary.

  They were in the hills, the road curving back and forth, now beside a mountain and now near an edge that tumbled down thirty or forty feet. The car skidded toward an edge.

  “Hang on!” Selene shouted.

  Jack grabbed the dashboard.

  The tires skidded as Selene slammed on the brakes. The steering wheel jerked back and forth in her white-knuckled hands. She kept the car from going sideways over the edge. They would have tumbled over and over then. Instead, the front tires went over, the car tipping almost straight down. The rear end followed the front, and Selene fought the steering wheel as they plunged down the side of the hill. It was a wild, jerky, boulder-slamming ride. Metal screeched as she barely avoided crashing head on into a boulder. A sharp turn to the right kept them from a huge divot that would have flipped the car for sure. They rode out the steepest part, gravel crunching and another nearly bald tire exploding. With a sharp jerk that hurled Jack against his shoulder strap, they came to an abrupt stop.

  He panted. He was in one piece. Turning, wincing at a pain in his neck, Jack saw Selene pry her fingers from the steering wheel.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He studied her. She was pale and trembling.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said.

  She brushed hair from her eyes. “That…that was nuts.”

  Jack unbuckled his seat belt and tried the door handle. It moved, but the door refused to open. It was crushed into place. “We’ll have to go out your side,” he said.

  “You want to give me a minute?” she asked.

  “I’d love to,” he said. “But we don’t have the luxury. We have no idea what the authorities are like in Iran. Once they check the registration…”

  “Right,” she said. She undid her seat belt, twisted around and grabbed her gym bag from the back seat. Afterward, she opened the door as if nothing was the matter.

  He winced climbing over her seat.

  “You look stiff,” she said, giving him a critical once-over. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t have a choice. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we headed?” she asked. “What’s the plan now?”

  “It hasn’t changed,” he said. “We’re heading to Alamut Mountain.”

  “Ah…we don’t have a car anymore. I screwed up.”

  “No. You did great. You kept us in one piece. That was fantastic driving.”

  She gave him a grateful look.

  “We’ll hitch a ride or steal another car,” he said. “The thing is to get moving so nobody links us with this wreck.”

  “We’ll have to hike a long way for that.”

  Jack eyed the wreck. “At least there’s no smoke trickling into the sky. That’s in our favor. People on the road aren’t going to see this right away either. We might have caught ourselves a break.”

  Selene said nothing.

  “Let’s go,” he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. His neck was beginning to hurt and the strap had strained his chest. The worst, though, was his head. It was beginning to throb again. A long hike up and down these hills wasn’t going to help it.

  “All right,” she said, turning away, scampering over some rocks.

  Jack picked his path more carefully. It took him longer crossing the rocks, too. Not only did his head throb, he was beginning to feel dizzy and nauseous again. Soon, he was in his own world, climbing, wheezing, pausing and forcing himself to start again.

  “Jack.”

  He heard the word, but it didn’t penetrate his fuzzy world of exertion.

  “Jack Elliot.”

  Hmm, this rock would take a bit of work. Something stopped him. He tried to keep going.

  “Jack, look at me.”

  He focused, and he made out a woman staring in his face. She was good looking. He liked the hair.

  “You have to sit down,” the woman said, sounding as if she was far away.

  “Move,” he said. “We have to keep moving.”

  “I hear a car coming. Maybe I can flag it down.”

  For a moment, his thoughts cleared. “Don’t do that,” he said.

  Selene stared into his eyes. “You can’t keep hiking in your condition. You’re beat.”

  “No,” he whispered intently. “I am not beat.”

  She gave him a shrewd study. He hadn’t liked her saying that. This man didn’t like to lose, ever.

  “I think you’d tell me that no matter what shape you were in,” Selene said.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “Let the car pass. We can rest and then climb back up to the road. We’ll catch a ride later. You have to trust me.”

  “I would, but not when your eyes are moving crazily like that. You need some real rest, Jack. If you don’t rest, you’re not going to be any good to me later when I need you to fight.”

  She had a point, but he didn’t trust this car. “Listen, you’re the brains to figuring out this puzzle. I’m counting on you.”

  “Okay?”

  “I’m the muscle. I’m the movement specialist. You have to listen to me when it comes to getting from C to D. Do you understand?�
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  “We’re in deep shit, aren’t we, Jack? Sorry. I don’t like talking like that. But we are in trouble, right?”

  He decided to tell her the truth. “Yes,” he said.

  “Okay, Jack. I’ll listen to you as long as you don’t lie to me.”

  “Deal. Now, let’s go.”

  He moved uphill with her help. Splotches appeared before his eyes, making it harder to see. He ignored those. The worst part of the climb was coming.

  “Oh, oh,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I hear a truck stopping. I think someone spotted the wreck. What do we do now? They’re going to know we wrecked the car. I hear a truck door slamming. What do we do?”

  As Jack stood there trying to think, he figured that was a damn good question.

  -56-

  NORTHWESTERN IRAN

  The goats kept staring at Selene, bleating from time to time.

  Jack and she leaned against the back of a cab, sitting in an ancient truck bed with a dozen goats watching. The machine rattled constantly, swaying from side to side. Old crisscrossed slats kept everyone from falling out of the truck bed. The highway had gotten steeper, and the old truck kept grinding gears as if searching for exactly the right one.

  A few times, Selene looked up as the old woman in the cab tapped on the window, smiling encouragingly at them outside. Her husband, an even older person with threadbare garments, drove the truck. They’d been on the highway for twenty minutes already.

  The old people didn’t speak English and neither Jack nor she spoke Farsi. They had communicated by sign language. Finally, the old man had gestured at the back of his truck. It had been a heck of a time getting Elliot up there. He had groaned, stretching as he climbed, and for a moment, the gun tucked in the back of his pants had been visible. Neither of the old people had seemed to care about it.

  Presently, Jack snored softly beside her.

  Selene had been watching the terrain, noting the thickening trees. It felt quite a bit hotter than earlier. Was that right for this time of year up in the hills?

  Selene studied the clouds. It must have been at least a hundred degrees. At least it wasn’t humid.

  What would the old people say once they reached a town? Should she wake up Elliot and ask him their plan? No. The man needed rest. He also needed medical attention. He must have a concussion. Clearly, Elliot was one of those tough guys that never quit. He was so deadly serious. What had happened to him to make him like that? She couldn’t recall having seen him smile once.

  Enough about Elliot, already, I need to figure out a plan.

  She had one lead: Souk’s notebook. It behooved her to study it until it made sense. Souk had been a nut, all right. He…

  “He found a hidden chamber under the Temple of Ammon.”

  That was the critical fact to remember. How had he found the chamber in the first place? He’d been a priest of Ammon. Okay. That kind of made sense. He’d been part of an ancient fraternity that had passed along ancient and rather harmless secrets. This one secret had involved hidden passages.

  Selene zipped open the gym bag, taking out the notebook. She zipped the bag closed so the old woman wouldn’t see the tuning fork device inside.

  She paged through the notebook, going over every line. She had spent countless hours in her life reading, endless reading. She agreed with Nikola Tesla when he’d said, “Of all things I like books best.” The miles slid away as she perused the coded writing. This wasn’t making any sense, this—

  “Hello,” Selene said, softly. This was a diagram, right? She’d been thinking it was of the Temple of Ammon in Siwa. Now, she wasn’t so sure. This was on the page…

  She flipped back several pages, reading with renewed interest. Yes. These pages concerned Alamut Castle, not the oasis temple. But that meant—

  Selene flipped back to the diagram. Yes! It showed another hidden chamber. Was this a metal chamber or an old secret passage the real Old Man of the Mountain had built in his Assassin hideaway?

  Lines radiated downward from the diagram. Did that indicate some deep underground structure? Would that link it to the underwater dome in the Indian Ocean?

  The questions flooded her mind. She knew so little. What if she went with the idea of high technology, assuming these people could do things no one else could on Earth?

  “How did they get the knowledge?” she whispered.

  Selene glanced at Elliot, wanting to wake him up more than ever. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go there in her thinking. People—especially conspiracy theorists—could come up with some wild ideas.

  She glared up at the sun.

  How about we catch a break for once?

  She shifted around Elliot, sliding into the little shade she could. Once properly situated, she studied the diagram in the notebook. It was too bad she couldn’t have spent more time with Souk. Could he have discovered the metal chamber under the Temple of Ammon because the Old Man of the Mountain had shown him one at Alamut Castle?

  Was that a silly idea?

  Selene closed the book. Maybe it was time to toss out the idea of any of this being crazy or too far-fetched. An underwater dome, mass bird suicide, a secret chamber under an ancient temple, new hums and 900 grams of antimatter secretly produced in the Ardennes…

  Maybe the only right answers were wild. What have we stumbled onto anyway?

  Selene glanced at Elliot. He frowned in his sleep. What did he dream about? She bet it wasn’t nice.

  The truck lurched. A few of the goats bleated in complaint. The old woman tapped on the back glass. Selene looked up at her. For once, the old woman wasn’t smiling.

  With a bad feeling creeping into her, Selene half rose and peered through the windshield. Several cars blocked the road with military men holding machine guns.

  The ancient truck swayed as the brakes squealed. They were coming to a stop. What did the Iranian military men want with the truck?

  “Selene,” Jack whispered.

  She looked down at him.

  “Why are we’re stopping?” he asked.

  She told him about the roadblock and the Iranian soldier.

  “Listen to me,” he whispered.

  She slid down beside him. “What?”

  “Listen,” he said, with greater urgency.

  “What is it? Tell me already.”

  “If we’re separated, don’t say anything.”

  “What?” she asked. Fear began to trickle its oily tendrils into her stomach.

  “Tell them I’ve forbidden you to talk,” Jack said. “They’ll understand that.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She might as well have spoken to a corpse. Elliot was unconscious again. Had he been delirious or did the man actually have a plan? If she kept quiet, it wouldn’t spoil anything he made up on the spot. Had that been his idea?

  Oh, this was terrible.

  -57-

  REGION 1 MILITARY DISTRICT

  IRAN

  Two burly Iranian soldiers deposited Jack on a chair inside a detention cell. A table was before him. On the other side, an officer sat on his chair sideways, with his legs crossed at the knees. The officer smoked a cigarette.

  Jack rested his chin on his chest. They hadn’t beaten him yet. They wanted answers not just a mewling pile of bruised flesh. He should have ditched the revolver when he had the chance. Jack was certain they had used it to trace his attack against the Basij in the Tehran hotel room.

  The officer spoke in Farsi. The two soldiers left the cell, closing the door behind them.

  “Well, well, well,” the officer said to Jack with a British accent. “What am I to make of you?”

  Jack raised his chin, focusing on the man. He wasn’t a combat officer, but belonged to the Intelligence Unit of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army. The man was a captain, and he had a shrewd manner about him.

  The captain took a drag on his cigarette before removing it from his lips, exhaling smoke.


  “I can understand your hesitation to speak,” the captain said. “Once our session is over…” He shook his head. “Your next few days will be an ordeal, I assure you.”

  “Why’s that?” Jack asked.

  The captain smiled in an urbane manner. “There’s little to like about you other than your efficiency. You strike me as a brutal, dishonest man.”

  “I have my faults.”

  “Yes, one of them is poor timing. Tell me. How did you acquire your firearm?”

  “I took it from a Basiji in Tehran,” Jack said. “First, I beat the man into unconsciousness.”

  The captain’s eyebrows rose. “I see. You’re hoping to startle me with your honesty. Why did you take it from him?”

  “I thought I’d need it.”

  “Let me rephrase the question. Why did you attack the Basij team, putting two of them in the hospital?”

  “They broke into my hotel room. I believed they were getting ready to beat us, maybe jail us.”

  “I doubt that. Maybe they would have fined you, pushed you around—”

  “It hardly matters what they would have done,” Jack said. “They never got the chance. Do motives really matter in this?”

  “For you, an American, in this situation, I’m afraid not. I doubt you shall ever leave Iran. I’m curious about your reason for coming.”

  Jack began to recite a litany of numbers.

  The Intelligence officer crushed the stub of his cigarette in an ashtray. “What am I to make of those numbers?”

  “Punch them into your cellphone. Ask the person who answers what you’re supposed to do with Viktor Konev.”

  The captain frowned. “If I called the number, who would I reach?”

  “IZENOV,” Jack said.

  “Can you elaborate?”

  “They’re a Russian consortium.”

  “Please,” the captain said. “Do not strain my credulity. You are an American.”

  “What is an American these days?” Jack asked. “Many Russians have immigrated to North America. I could easily be working for IZENOV.”