But she’d keep that to herself. Her father had always cautioned her and her sister about shedding tears for answered prayers. This stint in Iraq was what she’d wanted, and it was establishing her as a prime-time contender right alongside all the big boys—the older anchors who’d cemented their careers covering battlefields and the world’s hotspots.
But I won’t miss it—and I damn well won’t ever be able to forget it, she thought, gulping warm Gatorade as she leaned into the meager shade of a date palm. She’d miss Rusty, though. Having been in Baghdad a full month before Dana had arrived, her cameraman was leaving in the morning for two weeks R & R stateside.
“Done! Let’s get outta here.” Rusty slammed the trunk of the armored car. She knew he was already halfway home, envisioning his reunion with his wife and kids back in Connecticut.
After Baghdad, American suburbia would be paradise.
“Coming.” She pushed herself away from the tree, eager to be on the move as quickly as possible. A quick cell call from an insurgent spotting them out here would be enough to bring a car bomb speeding this way with their names on it.
As she straightened, the Gatorade bottle cap slipped from her fingers. Swearing, she stooped to retrieve it from the hot sand and spotted something peeking out of the explosion-rocked earth a few feet away. A patch of weathered leather, half buried in the sand. Even from a distance she could see it was decorated with a painted eye.
Dana crouched and tugged it from the sand. Yep, it was most certainly an eye. A blue eye, rimmed in black, painted on a leather pouch half the size of a playing card. A blue eye was a familiar talisman, especially in this part of the world; it was used as protection against the evil eye.
Just like this one, she thought, touching the dainty silver charm shaped like a downturned open palm dangling at her throat. Her fingers brushed quickly along the seven small amethysts edging her hamsa amulet to find the turquoise cloisonné eye painted in its center and dotted with a single pearl—her mother’s pearl. Natalie had sent this necklace to her as an olive branch right before she’d left for Iraq. The hamsa was a perfect going off to war gift from her sister, since if anyone knew about protective talismans and good luck mojo, it was Nat.
Her older sister had spent fifteen months honing her doctoral thesis on the history of ancient Mesopotamian protective amulets, charms, and talismans. Now she was a curator at New York’s Devereaux Museum of the Ancient Near East, and though her specialty was Mesopotamia, she could rattle off just about anything you’d want to know about protective charms and customs around the world—and the incantations associated with them.
Not only everyday customs, like your typical knocking on wood or carrying a rabbit’s foot or four-leaf clover for good luck, but esoterica like Arubans recoiling if a black butterfly entered their houses, fearing it portended death. And that ancient Greeks believed that owls flying over battlefields were a sign of imminent victory, while ancient Romans thought their cries foretold death or disaster. Owls were downright terrifying to the ancient Chinese, who named the summer solstice the Day of the Owl and believed children born on that day had a propensity for violence.
Dana had often teased Nat about her encyclopedic expertise, referring to her sister as “the doctor of superstitious voodoo.”
But she hadn’t teased Natalie about anything in a long time. They were barely back on speaking terms.
Hurrying toward the convoy, Dana flicked sand from the leather pouch and suddenly realized there was something inside it. She loosened the black drawstring and shook out a tarnished pendant on a gold chain. The egg-shaped pendant was decorated with blue, red, and yellow stones arrayed in the same distinctive “eye” image as on the pouch.
“Yo! Ms. Landau!” The handsome young army officer in charge of their convoy barked over the engines. “Time to move!”
Dana dropped the trinket back inside its pouch and broke into a run, stuffing her find into the pocket of her olive cargo pants. Maybe some poor tourist’s loss will be Natalie’s gain, she reflected as she ducked inside the armored car.
She didn’t give the pouch or the pendant another thought until she reached into her pocket for lip gloss after dinner in the villa.
“Damn. I almost forgot.” She tugged out the pouch and eyed Rusty Sutherland across the creaky dining table. “How’d you like to do me a little favor and deliver a fabulous treasure to my sister when you get home?”
“What do I look like, a pack mule?” Rusty wadded up his napkin and stuffed it into his plastic cup. At forty-two, he sported a Yul Brynner dome, which he achieved by ruthlessly shaving any straggling strands of the reddish-blond hair that had earned him his nickname. He was solidly built but quick on his feet, and he’d been nominated for the Pulitzer not once, but twice. Dana was certain the bags under his somber brown eyes had doubled since he’d stepped foot in Iraq.
When she dumped out the pendant and held it aloft, his brows lifted.
“Worth all of two bucks max, but Natalie might get a kick out of it. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“No sweat. You never know—that thing could turn out to be the centerpiece of her next exhibit. We’ll see if anyone can tell the difference between trash and treasure,” he snorted.
“Natalie knows her stuff. She’ll know exactly what this is. I’ll stick a note inside tonight and give it to you in the morning. What time are you choppering out?”
He grimaced. “Four A.M. The hour of the revolving cameramen. Linc jumps off the plane at three—you won’t like him nearly as much as you like me, by the way—and an hour later I get on. And get out.” He shoved back his chair and stood up, stretching his arms over his bare head. “So I’m passing on the high-octane coffee tonight. If I don’t hit the sack now, I may as well pull an all-nighter.”
“See you in the morning, Rusty. Don’t forget to knock on my door before you leave.”
She lingered at the small table after he went up to his room, swallowing down an unexpected surge of homesickness. The green-tiled dining room was empty save for the skinny young Iraqi who worked in the kitchen and kept the place in some semblance of order for the network staffers bunking there. Tonight the villa felt more desolate than usual, despite the fragrance of the lush vegetation outside and the proximity of Saddam’s former palaces.
Villa. The word conjured up images of wealth and splendor, palm trees and servants. But now this villa was anything but idyllic. Would this country ever again know any luxury—even the “luxury” of peace?
After the hotels had been bombed, MSNBC and other news agencies had been forced to rent headquarters in assorted villas or large private homes within the Green Zone. All of them were in various stages of disrepair, yet they were still safer bases of operations than the hotels, which were far more visible targets.
Not that any place was actually safe here.
She thought for a moment of countless dinners in New York, of relaxed people laughing in crowded restaurants, of the festive clink of flatware and glasses, and the short walks afterward to snag a taxi or jump on the subway. She flashed on all the Friday nights she’d met Natalie for dinner after work, and the Sunday mornings she’d jogged through Central Park, and suddenly Dana became nostalgic for grass damp with dew. And for her sister. There was so much she missed, especially the normal, simple freedoms of life lived without the fear of kidnappings and beheadings.
You wanted this, she reminded herself, scooping up the pendant from the table, jangling the chain in her hand. And in only a few more weeks you’ll be done—choppering out at four A.M. yourself. So suck it up and smile for the camera, baby.
“Excuse me, Miss Landau . . .” Duoaud, the young Iraqi, leaned in to set a small cup of thick black coffee before her. “Is there anything else you need this evening?”
“I’m set for tonight, Duoaud.” She glanced up at the thin young man with the movie-star eyelashes who hovered at her elbow. “I’m turning in for the night, too.”
She angled the pendant
back into its pouch as Duoaud gathered up the plates and napkins. As he worked, his gaze followed the glint of the chain as it slid into the hollow of waiting leather.
“A most beautiful amulet, Miss Landau. Almost as beautiful as you,” he added with a flashing grin. “My girlfriend, she would enjoy wearing one like that. Did you buy it here in Baghdad?”
She scraped back her chair and turned toward the stairs. “Actually, it found me. G’night, Duoaud. Please tell Wasim the lamb was amazing this evening. The best I’ve ever tasted.”
But Duoaud didn’t tell Wasim a thing. As soon as Dana left the dining room, Duoaud raced through the kitchen and out the back door, tearing down back alleys stinking of garbage and dog piss, past tall and vacant hotels, past gas stations and trinket shops, until he stood at a stately home near the far outskirts of the Green Zone. At the door of Aslam Hameed, who was paying him to keep an eye on the Americans and to keep an ear out for whispers about the Eye of Dawn, he pummeled the thick wood with the side of his fist.
“It’s true. It exists—it’s here. The Eye of Dawn. I saw it with my own eyes. Tonight—at the villa.”
The words poured out of him faster than the sweat sliding down his dark, razor-sharp cheekbones. The obsidian eyes of Aslam Hameed pinned him.
“Inside.” The heavier man jerked Duoaud into the stone entryway of his comfortable home, quickly scanning the street in both directions before he stepped back inside his residence and slammed the door.
“Tell me everything. But first, tell me who has it.”
Duoaud was still panting, yet exhilarated by the full attention of Aslam Hameed.
And when Hameed reports my discovery to Hasan Sabouri himself, insha’allah, I, too, might be in line for an important position with the Guardians of the Khalifah.
“A woman has it. She is a reporter. For an American television network—MSNBC. Her name is Dana Landau.”
2
New York City
The cab lurched down the Avenue of the Americas like a fitful donkey and Natalie swayed against the backseat as if she were riding one. She was already late for her 4 P.M. meeting with Oscar Charles, chair of the Treasures of the Tombs fund-raising gala. And they only had an hour to finalize a wish list of major donors to underwrite the event. Someday, when I’m on staff at a bigger museum, like the Met, she thought wistfully, fund-raising will be handled by its own department. But the Devereaux was only a tenth the size of the Met, and its curators had to wear many hats.
She was frazzled and fatigued, despite the fact that she was doing exactly what she’d dreamed of doing ever since her grade-school field trip to the King Tut exhibit. That day, in the Sackler Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—built to house the Temple of Dendur exhibit—she’d fallen in love with the mystery of the ancient world, its grandeur and glamour. It wasn’t until years later, while in the field for hours on end digging beneath the broiling Jordanian sun, that she finally appreciated the amount of grit and grunt it had taken to unearth those ancient treasures from the bowels of the desert and get them into their neat, temperature-controlled glass-and-velvet display cases.
As the cab finally jolted against the curb at Seventy-fifth and Third, she scrounged in her shoulder bag for a twenty-dollar bill, past her penlight, her cosmetics bag, her cell phone. She stopped short at the sight of her passport, still there amid the crumpled boarding pass and the tin of Altoids.
What is my problem? Tonight this is getting put away, she chided herself, tossing the twenty at the driver. With a cacophony of horns blaring behind her and the intense pulse of the city pounding in her blood, it seemed like forever, not merely a week, since she’d departed Florence, still heady with the thrill of opening her first exhibit abroad.
Her exhilaration when Dr. Geoffrey Ashton, president of the Pan-European Association of Antiquities Scholars, called her to the podium was only a memory now. After having conferred with so renowned an expert for more than a year while she planned and coordinated her first international traveling exhibition, it had been an incomparable adrenaline rush to hear him introduce her. Now those heady moments were behind her. The exhibit of ancient Greek Orthodox tamata crafted of clay, wood, and metal was on the road now. The little tamata are still used as church offerings, only today they are made of tin, silver, or gold, and embossed with specific body parts representing an ailment. As in days past, the faithful hang them near an icon as they light a candle and pray for healing for themselves or others, even for a sick animal.
Her exhibit of rare artifacts dating back to the Bronze Age was headed next to Sydney. And she was home, swamped to her shoulders in new work—cataloging several new acquisitions, catching up on a mountain of correspondence, planning this gala—all while racing against a looming deadline for her first article in International Antiquities Journal.
Someday she’d use that passport to get back to Florence on her own dime and explore the museums and architecture like a proper tourist, but right now she couldn’t even think beyond the projects screaming for her attention, let alone remember to put away her passport.
Pushing through the door of Crush, Natalie spotted Oscar at once and waved. His mop of curly silver hair made him hard to miss in any crowd. An off-Broadway producer, Oscar Charles personified enthusiasm, and he had the connections to guarantee that they’d fill the gala venue to capacity. He was an ebullient man, a people magnet, and a stickler for perfection—and by now she knew he liked his Grey Goose dirty, with extra olives on the side.
She plunged through the jammed, dimly lit restaurant, then stopped short, her attention diverted by the sound of her sister’s voice flowing from the television perched high in the corner of the bar.
Dana was reporting from the site of a roadside bomb attack in Iraq. It was a repeat of the broadcast Natalie had seen on this morning’s news. Still, her head swiveled up to her younger sister’s image, and she felt the same pang in her gut she’d felt on learning that Dana had snagged the Iraq assignment.
Get the hell out of there, baby, she thought, staring hard at Dana’s small, serious face, trying to reconcile the whiny kid sister who wouldn’t step outside in the rain without an umbrella to the petite, poised woman speaking calmly in the godforsaken desert without a flak jacket. God, I miss you.
“. . . and in other Mid-East developments, Israeli police today fired tear gas to break up a demonstration by the right-wing Jewish extremist group Shomrei Kotel, which is protesting next week’s historic summit in Jerusalem. Security is already tightening in preparation for the arrival of UN Secretary-General Gunther Ullmann, who brokered the deal between Hamas and—”
Suddenly, static filled the screen and the audio turned into an irritating rasp.
“This is the third time today it’s gone out,” the bartender griped.
“Someone forget to pay the cable bill?” a woman at the bar drawled, eliciting laughter.
By then the transmission had been restored, but Dana was gone. Her report was over.
Still, an eerie chill swept along Natalie’s nape. Her shoulder-length dark hair, caught loosely in a barrette, seemed to crackle with an odd electricity. She knew what her childhood friend Kara’s grandmother would have said. She’d have clucked that someone had just walked over Natalie’s grave.
Natalie shook off the thought, and the chill with it. Dana was fine, no doubt sound asleep by now. And Oscar was standing there waiting, offering her the chair opposite his.
She relaxed her shoulders and leaned in to greet him with a two-cheeked European kiss, reminding herself that by the night of the gala, two months from now, she wouldn’t have to worry about Dana being stationed in Iraq anymore.
Two months from now Dana would be done with this assignment and home, safe and sound.
3
Baghdad
Rusty Sutherland struggled to keep his eyes open. Waiting for his boarding call, he slouched against the airport wall with a copy of Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence tucked under one arm and his duffe
l at his feet. All around him U.S. military personnel waded with authority through the stream of journalists, diplomats, and wary travelers eager to exit the war zone.
Flights here were few and far between, and often canceled at a moment’s notice. He felt too fuzzy-headed this morning to read, but he wouldn’t be able to close his eyes and relax until he was on that plane and the boarding door had been bolted shut.
He could almost smell Elaine’s hair as he stood half a world away from her. She had the softest brown hair, and it smelled like ginger. He was sure the kids had made a homecoming sign for him, as big as the one they’d drawn for his fortieth birthday, and he found himself grinning at the memory.
When his flight was announced he stooped down quickly to grab up his duffel, and the book tumbled to the floor. Grabbing it up, he tried to jam it inside the canvas bag already bulging with his cameras, lenses, journal, and an assortment of honeyed Arabic pastries to tide him over on the long flight. As he searched for a free corner to shove the book into, his watch caught the drawstring of the pouch Dana had given him, dragging it out and spilling its contents at his feet.
Rusty swore in exasperation. Clumsily, he extricated the pouch from his wrist. People were surging past him toward the boarding gate. Impatient just to get on the damned plane, he snatched up Dana’s note and pendant, cramming them back into his carry-on. With loping strides, he hurried toward the gate.
Behind him the gray eyes of a tall fair-haired man narrowed like a falcon’s on Rusty’s retreating back, watching until he disappeared through the door. Then Elliott Warrick, U.S. Assistant Undersecretary of Defense, lifted his cell phone and punched in a series of numbers known only to a select few in the world.
Dana dozed fitfully in the armored car shuttling her and the new cameraman back from Kirkuk. The sun boring through the windshield all but negated the fan she’d positioned to blast chilled air straight at her face. The long dangerous drive out to the north and back—coupled with abandoning her bed at an ungodly hour to see Rusty off—had depleted the last of her energy.
The Illumination Page 2