The Star of India, nestled improbably between Yip's Noodle House and the Jade Palace, was dark and virtually empty. Over tea and popadums, they scanned the menu while the latest Hindi show tunes played in the background, Isis settling for a shrimp vindaloo while Murphy acknowledged defeat before the contest had even begun by ordering a chicken bhuna.
"So, tell me about the inscription."
"I thought you'd never ask," she said, clearing a space on
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the table. She pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her bag and smoothed out the edges. "It took forever. Really quite the trickiest bit of Chaldean I've come across. But after your call, I think I finally cracked it--at least the important bits. I think your theory is right, that the high priest Dakkuri wrote this puzzle with two minds. He wanted the reader to understand how to find the rest of the Serpent, but on the other hand, he's keen that the wrong people not get their hands on it. So he wraps it all up in metaphorical language that's quite tough to penetrate. Like a sort of shell around his message."
"Who are the wrong people?"
"Hard to say. We know that Dakkuri was told by Nebuchadnezzar to get rid of the Serpent, along with all the other idols. Presumably, if someone loyal to the king found where Dakkuri had hidden it, he'd destroy it--and Dakkuri himself wouldn't fare much better."
"That makes sense. So who are the right people? Who does Dakkuri want to find the Serpent?"
"Good question." Her finger ran down the lines until she found what she wanted. "Here. There's a formal incantation. It's quite common. You see it on all sorts of inscriptions. Something like 'only the pure of heart shall find what they seek.'"
"Sounds like the good guys."
"I said it was something like that. In fact, he substitutes another word for 'pure.' It doesn't quite make sense, but the nearest I can get is 'only the dark of heart' or 'only those with darkness in their hearts.'" She smiled. "So I'm afraid that rather scuppers your chances, doesn't it?"
"You'd be surprised," Murphy said. "There's quite a lot of darkness in my heart right now." She looked at him and bit
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her lip. He nodded at the paper. "Go on. What else does the man say?"
"Well, there are some more incantations to a few of the lesser-known Babylonian gods--and then we get down to it." She pointed to a paragraph. "The pieces of the sacred snake are scattered far, yet still are joined. He who is wise enough --actually 'wily' is probably a better word-- to find the first already holds the second in his hand. Find the third, and the mystery shall return.' That last bit really had me stumped for a while. I'm still not sure I've got it right. But 'mystery' is the only way I can see of translating it."
"Mystery," Murphy repeated. "Okay. What he's saying is that each piece of the Serpent has an inscription telling you where to find the next one."
"I think so."
He smiled. "So ... where's the second piece?"
She turned the paper over. "Right at the end. I suppose he assumed that if you'd made it this far, you were definitely his sort of person. Here we are. 'Look to the desert and Erigal's master will take your left hand....'"
"What does that mean?"
"Well, Erigal is a very minor Babylonian demon. Some experts don't even include him in the textbooks. But my father was a bit more thorough than most," she said proudly. "I looked him up in one of his old notebooks. Anyway, Erigal's function was doing odd jobs for Shamash, the chief Babylonian god. Like Zeus or Odin. Chief male one, anyway. I couldn't figure out what Dakkuri was on about until I realized Shamash was originally a sun god."
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"So?"
"So, Erigal's master--Shamash--taking your hand could mean the sun rising."
"And if he takes your left hand, you'd be facing south."
"Exactly."
"And if you stood near Babylon and looked south, you'd be looking toward ... Saudi Arabia."
"The desert."
Isis snatched the piece of paper off the table as a waiter in a dazzling white shirt and black bow tie put their plates in front of them. Breathing in the aromatic fumes, Murphy suddenly realized how hungry he was. But he couldn't eat until he had the answer.
"That's a big desert," he said. "Easy to lose an army in there, let alone a foot-long piece of bronze."
"He is a little more specific than that," she said testily, as if Murphy were criticizing her personally. "He goes on to say that 'twenty days hence, the seeker shall slake his thirst. And beneath his feet it shall be found.'"
Murphy looked at her blankly.
"Don't you see? He must be talking about an oasis. Twenty days south of Babylon." She folded her arms in triumph.
Murphy grinned. "Does this place have a name?"
"Ah," she said, her face falling. "That's the problem. It has a name, all right. And a population of about a million people. If the second piece of the Serpent is under Tar-Qasir, you're going to have to dig through an entire modern city to find it."
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FIFTY-THREE
"LOOK, I'M GRATEFUL for everything you've done." Murphy was sitting in Isis's disaster-area-passing-as-an-office and feeling quite at home. "I wish there were some way I could repay you. But there's no way you're coming to Tar-Qasir. I'm going to leave the Serpent's tail here at the foundation for the time being for safekeeping, then I'm going to arrange for a trip to the Mideast to find the the rest of it. By myself."
"But what if you do find the second piece in Tar-Qasir?" Isis insisted. "You'll need me to translate whatever's inscribed on it. I'm the only one who can do it." She was aware that her voice was becoming more shrill as her anger flared, but she didn't care.
"You've walked me through the inscription on the tail. I think I've got a feel for it now. I'll call you if I get stuck."
She snorted in derision. "Hah! You wouldn't know where
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to start. I don't think you'd know this kind of cuneiform from a hole in the ground--which, considering that you're an archaeologist and I'm a philologist, makes a certain amount of sense, don't you think?"
He sighed. "Look, I don't understand why you're making such a big deal out of this. It's not like you're a field researcher."
Actually, she didn't really understand either. Up until a few days ago, the closest she came to field research was trying to unearth some books or papers from the dusty piles in her office. Now she was volunteering to travel halfway around the world on a bizarre quest for an artifact that, if not actually cursed, certainly seemed to have a distinctly unpleasant aura around it.
She took a deep breath and tried to get a fix on the mix of emotions swirling around inside her. "I'm sure you're trying to be chivalrous and all that nonsense, but I wish you would just admit that if you're serious about finding all the pieces, you're going to need me."
Murphy stayed tight-lipped.
"I know you think I'm just some weak-kneed woman who's spent her life with her head stuck in old books." She caught the beginnings of a smile on Murphy's face. "And maybe you're right. But maybe I've decided it's time to blow away the cobwebs a little. Maybe I've decided it's time to show the world my father wasn't the only Dr. McDonald who was willing to take a few risks to get what he wanted."
Murphy stopped himself from saying And look what happened to him . "You're a very stubborn woman, you know that?"
"Yes. Stubborn--and resourceful. I took the liberty of
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talking with our PFF chairman yesterday. He has agreed that the Parchments of Freedom Foundation will provide their plane and support funding for your expedition--for our expedition--in return for being able to exhibit the Serpent here at the PFF Museum. That is, assuming there is a body and head to this Serpent, and we find them, and we can bring them home."
"Isis, you know you were way out of line going for the funding before I agreed you were going." Murphy gave a long sigh. "But thank you, because I don't think I would be getting to Tar-Qasir without the generosity of the foundation."
Isis watched him with nervous anticipation. "All right." Murphy smiled. "We go to Tar-Qasir. But if things get out of hand, and I say so, you're on the first plane back. Deal?"
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FIFTY-FOUR
ON THE AFTERNOON of the day Isis McDonald and Michael Murphy flew to the Mideast, the guard in the security booth of the PFF entrance did not notice the pair of peregrines emerging from the roof of a black van in the parking lot. But his job required him to concentrate for long periods with little in the way of stimulation, and it's possible that as dusk fell at the end of a long day, he was beginning to glaze over from the stultifying routine of watching the monitors and checking the hourly logs.
If he had noticed the falcons, he would have seen the slim, dark shapes powering their way skyward in a classic spiral ascent, using the warm updrafts from the sun-beaten asphalt below to augment the regular beats of their muscular wings. Had he been a birder, their elegant silhouettes would have been
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instantly recognizable and he might well have smiled to himself as he watched, his spirits lifted by the unlooked-for sight.
Peregrines were in some way the epitome of wild, untamed beauty, and it was no surprise that the greed and rapacity of man had driven them from many of their natural habitats. And yet, they were surprisingly well adapted to living in the heart of the most modern and densely populated cities. In the wild, they were happiest nesting on tall cliffs and preying on other birds; in cities, skyscrapers and pigeons provided for their needs in almost supernatural abundance.
Perhaps, had he been of a spiritual turn of mind, the guard might have reflected that a time would come when many cities were abandoned as the world was plunged into conflict and chaos, and the falcons would inherit the empty skyscrapers as if they had belonged to them all along.
What he would not have imagined was that in a matter of minutes, one of the birds was going to kill him.
His colleague, stationed in front of the door from which Murphy and Isis had exited the building, was equally unaware. At the moment the two birds reached their pitch, approximately a thousand feet above the ground, his mind was chewing over a familiar puzzle. His meager salary was not enough to cover his gambling debts, let alone support a wife who seemed to blame him for the way time was ravaging her face and figure and took her revenge out on his credit cards.
And yet here was the guard, literally sitting on a gold mine. A gold mine to which he had the key--or at least some of the many keys--in his hand. Deep down he knew that it would take someone far smarter and more inventive than he would ever be to parlay his security access into hard cash, but in the
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same way that some people chew tobacco or whittle away at sticks, he found the seemingly pointless process relaxing.
He was very relaxed when the larger of the birds, the female, steadied herself in the air with a flick of her wings and turned her piercing tunnel vision on the tall figure standing in the parking lot a thousand feet below. He was dressed from head to toe in black, and to anyone looking across the lot, he might easily have merged into the lengthening shadows. But to the falcon, he stood out like a beacon. Partly because of her extraordinarily acute vision--and partly because she knew him so well.
She also knew what he expected of her.
The man was holding a falconry glove high over his head. To anyone passing, he would have looked like a man hailing a cab. A strange thing for someone to be doing in the middle of a parking lot, no doubt. But he was in fact doing something much stranger.
He was calling death down from the air.
Talon looked up and saw the speck of black against the delicate pink of the early-evening sky. She seemed to be perched weightlessly in the upper air, and he could almost feel her impatience. She wanted him to cut the invisible thread that held her fast and set her free.
Bringing the glove down sharply to his side, he did just that. Seeing his gesture, she swiveled once to set herself, fixed her eyes on her target, and tucked her wings under her. Gravity did the rest.
A falcon descending from such a height can accelerate to speeds of almost two hundred miles an hour. Too fast for the human eye to follow, the best guide to her progress is the
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sound of the air being sliced apart by this speeding bullet of muscle, feather, and bone. Talon preferred to watch her target and simply wait for the inevitable.
As his mind wandered through familiar get-rich-quick fantasies, the security guard noticed that a dark-clad man standing between two rows of cars was looking directly at him. Was it his imagination or a trick of the fading light, or was there a look of amused expectation on the man's face? A look that seemed to say I know something you don't .
He instinctively turned to his right as a blur of movement registered at the edge of his vision, and then the razors attached to the peregrine's talons tore through his throat with blinding speed. Carotid arteries draining, he staggered a couple of steps, a hand clutched to his shattered larynx, then collapsed in a heap of twitching limbs.
Talon waited until it was over, then walked over and examined the corpse, careful to avoid the spreading pool of blood. Sliding his hand inside the jacket, he removed a set of keys and started feeling for the shape he wanted. Behind him he could hear footsteps coming from the direction of the security booth, slow and deliberate at first, then accelarating into a trot as they came closer. He put the keys in a pocket and waited.
"Okay, buddy. Stand up slowly and turn around. Keep your hands where I can see them."
Talon raised his hands and gave him his best Who, me? smile. The guard held him at the end of his revolver and sneaked a look at the body on the ground. Realizing he couldn't help his colleague and keep watch on Talon, he reached for the radio at his belt. Talon let one of his arms drop sharply to his side.
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"I said keep your hands--" But the words died in his throat as the second peregrine slammed into the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord with a single punch of its talons. Talon stepped aside as the guard dropped heavily onto the tarmac. Opening a plastic Ziploc bag, he took out a couple of dead mourning doves and held them at arm's length. After a few seconds, both peregrines swooped out of the shadows and settled on his wrists, chewing happily on the unexpected treat as their talons dug into the leather armbands he wore under his jacket.
He walked back to the van and settled the female onto her perch. She hissed angrily as he slipped the hood over her head, then instantly quieted, soothed by the cocoon of darkness that suddenly enveloped her. He held the smaller male by his jesses and turned toward the booth, clucking softly. "You still have work to do, little one." Inside, he quickly found what he was looking for.
The door to the museum at the Parchments of Freedom Foundation opened with a satisfying click, and Talon slipped inside.
It was Saturday, but Fiona Carter had decided to take advantage of Dr. McDonald's absence to try to organize the office. She did treat herself to lunch out at an actual restaurant, something she rarely got to do when she was keeping tabs on Dr. McDonald. Fiona wondered how her boss and Professor Murphy were faring out in the field and wondered which of them was in for the greater shock.
Her mouth dropped open at her own discovery. The bodies
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of the two security guards were horribly mutilated and tangled together as if they'd been doing a gruesome tango when the killer had struck. Fiona bent down and tried to make sense of their wounds, but could not, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming and fleeing. Instead, she forced herself to enter the building to call 911.
Inside, the corridors were eerily quiet. There was no reason to expect anyone else to be working at this hour on a weekend, but the silence was somehow too thick, as if the whole building had stopped breathing.
Instinct made Fiona head for the secure storage area. Turning the corner, she could see the wire mesh door was open. When she got to the vault, the heavy door was open. Fiona l
ooked inside, knowing what she would find. Or, more accurately, not find.
The tail of the Serpent was gone.
In its place, cut with deep, fresh slashes into the metal shelf of the storage room, was a quickly carved rendering of a snake. The snake was cut into thirds--head, middle, and tail. Next to it was an even more disturbing symbol. She was going to have to page PFF chairman Compton. And then she was going to have to try to track down Professor Murphy and Dr. McDonald. She hoped it was not too late for them to turn back.
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FIFTY-FIVE
THE FIRST LEG of the flight had taken them from Washington to London Heathrow, where the plane was refueled and the crew was changed. Murphy and Isis quickened their pace toward their departure gate. Her slim frame weighed down by a voluminous leather briefcase stuffed with books--rare editions she simply couldn't bear to check--she was struggling to keep up. But repeated offers to carry it for her had met with stiff resistance. "I can manage quite well, thank you. And anyway, you have your own precious cargo to contend with." It was true, the competition bow in its impact-resistant case wasn't exactly heavy, but it was awkward to carry, and she was determined she wasn't going to add to Murphy's burdens.
At least he had stopped arguing about her coming with him. While she thought of herself as a professional equal of
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Murphy's, and while she could not match his most recent personal loss, when she thought back to the death of her father, she felt she could empathize with him personally as well.
Murphy and Isis didn't talk much during the long journey to Tar-Qasir. Murphy slept for most of the flight to London, unconsciousness unexpectedly settling on him like a blessing almost as soon as he was buckled in. While they waited for their plane to refuel, he paced Heathrow's cavernous corridors and malls in silence, like a man trying out a new pair of shoes. He wasn't thinking about anything. He was just getting used to his new life, his new existence: the one without Laura.
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