Dead Sea Rising

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  “He is not, but he is strong and learns fast.”

  “He’d better be careful with that chariot,” Terah said.

  “And with those girls,” Wedum said.

  “Well, yes, of course. I’m feeling better, Wedum, but please do not try to match Mutuum’s speed. If there’s anything to see, it will still be there when we arrive.”

  It wasn’t long before Terah recognized what the servants had been talking about. Wedum stopped on the road, perpendicular to the activity to the west.

  “The birds do not land, Wedum. Very strange.”

  In the distance two images shimmered in the heat waves rising from the wilderness floor, but Terah couldn’t make out the details of either. The vultures seemed to endlessly circle and occasionally one or two swooped, but never far before ascending again. Did that mean their targets were alive, still moving, and they feared them?

  “If we approach, the vultures will retreat,” Wedum said. “But we must be careful not to become prey of their prey.”

  “I want to know what is dead or dying,” Terah said. “But your donkey would be no match for dogs, especially injured ones, and I don’t care to take them on again.”

  “I will get only close enough to see what the birds are after.”

  “Slowly,” Terah said.

  As the donkey tramped over the arid ground, the vultures appeared to become wary and began circling even higher. “They are not retreating, master. They see our beast and us as yet another meal.”

  “Let’s make sure we disappoint them.” Terah squinted into the distance. “A horse! Standing! That’s why the vultures are shy. He likely whinnies or stamps when they descend.”

  “What is that he’s hitched to?” Wedum said. “A wagon? No! Master, that is a chariot! A king’s chariot!”

  “Go, Wedum! Who is in the chariot?”

  Wedum clicked his tongue and snapped the reins on the donkey’s back, but to no effect. He reached back into the bed of the cart where he kept a small branch. He whipped it across the animal’s flank, and off they thundered toward the scene.

  About thirty feet from the chariot, the donkey skidded to a stop and planted its hooves, locking its knees. Terah cursed the animal and Wedum alternated lashing him with reins and branch, but the donkey would not budge. “Help me down!” Terah said. “Someone lies beyond the chariot!”

  Once Wedum had him out and onto the ground with his crutch, Terah said, “Go, man! Who is it?”

  Wedum also froze when he got beyond the horse, which was frothy with sweat. Terah hobbled up on his tender ankle. Wedum’s voice came high and panicky. “It’s Ikuppi, master, in a pool of his own blood!”

  “Dead?”

  “Covered with flies, and the blood is caked hard.”

  Terah finally reached Wedum’s shoulder. Ikuppi lay facedown, the hilt of his sword nearly buried in the rocky soil, the blade having run him through from abdomen through torso and extending more than a foot out his back. No other hoofprints, footprints, or wheel tracks in sight. The king’s guard, whom Terah had recommended for that job years before—and who had warned Terah of Nimrod’s plan to slay his firstborn son—had fallen on his own weapon.

  Everything Ikuppi lamented over the day before came back to Terah. The man had been trying to tell him of this very plan.

  For the first time since he believed the gods had imparted to him this whole scheme, Terah felt a twinge of shame, but not over the loss of a man he had considered a friend. No, he had to confess, he felt relieved. He could have used Ikuppi’s help, certainly, but now one of the only two people besides him and Belessunu who knew the truth was unable to reveal it.

  That could only work in his favor.

  CHAPTER 87

  Manhattan

  NYPD Crime Scene Unit forensic technician Pranav Chakrabarti swung the unmarked squad car into the Emergency entrance at Mount Sinai. “Let me walk you to the door, Dr. Berman.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” Nicole said, touched by his courtliness.

  “Yeah, Pranav,” Wojciechowski said. “What’re ya doin’? This is the twenty-first century and she’s a grown woman! Anyway, they’re on their way to pick up the housekeeper too. We got to get goin’.”

  “I’ll be right back, George,” he said. “Won’t be a minute.”

  “This is kind of you, Detective,” Nicole said as he hurried to her side.

  “I confess I have an ulterior motive,” he said as they walked. “I need you to tell me how I can join one of your digs.”

  “Oh, Detective, I don’t know …”

  “Please, I know it’s for young people and retired people mostly, but it’s long been my dream. I have the education and the interest, and I would love—”

  “You’re way overqualified, and you know it would have to be entirely at your own expense. I mean, volunteers get some food and lodging, but the big-ticket stuff would be all on you.”

  “Doctor, I have been with the department long enough that I now enjoy a six-figure income and—”

  “We dig in the summer so we can accommodate the college kids.”

  “The summer would work for me!”

  “Typically we dig five hours a day for twenty days …”

  “I get twenty-seven paid days off!”

  “And you can take them all at once?”

  “If I plan ahead. If it’s next summer, I would put in for the time now.”

  “You know there’s no glamour in it. Volunteers get the grunt work, carrying buckets of dirt and rocks, that kind of thing.”

  “I’m already imagining it.”

  “Well, don’t get your hopes up. You’d have a lot of competition and we can take only so many. Even if you made my list, you would have to be vetted by the host country.”

  “You have my card. And if I may say, Ms. Berman, as a fellow believer, I know you understand when I say I will be praying it happens.”

  Nicole couldn’t help but picture him as a delightful team member.

  But as of now, there was no dig.

  The two uniformed officers outside her mother’s door had been replaced, so Nicole had to prove who she was yet again. “Okay,” one said after checking her ID. “And we’re to inform Ms. Jefferson when you arrive.”

  “You are? What does Kayla want?”

  “No idea, ma’am.”

  They must go to school for this. Do what you’re told, but never explain.

  She found her mother sleeping, her father sitting with a book in his lap. “You look haggard, Dad. Still jet-lagged?”

  “Of course, and thanks.”

  “I’m just worried about you.”

  “I know, and I’m worried about your mom.”

  “She’s going to be fine now, isn’t she?”

  “I hope.”

  “She’s out of the woods,” Nicole said. “We just need to worry about whoever did this. If anyone can get them, it’ll be Wojciechowski, don’t you think?”

  Her dad nodded. “What’s the news from the Saudis?”

  “Would you believe I still haven’t heard?”

  He set his book down. “You opened the letter, right?”

  “You’re not going to believe this.” She brought up the photo of it on her phone and handed it to him.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he said, standing. “Wojciechowski has to see this.”

  “He just dropped me off, Dad. I called him right away. They took it into evidence.”

  “What in the world? ‘Watch your own back’? Like they knew about your mother’s back? What are we into here, Nic?’”

  A knock came on the door. “Sorry to interrupt,” Kayla said. “If you’re in the middle of something, I can come b—”

  “We kind of are,” her dad said.

  “No problem! You both have my card. Just call me when it’s conv—”

  “No,” Nicole said. “You’re here now. What is it?” Kayla looked to Nicole’s dad, who shrugged.

  “Well, it’s just such a privi
lege to have all three principals of The Berman Foundation in one place, even if our patient is sleeping. The administration wanted me to express their thanks for everything you’ve done and continue to do for Sinai, and just what you mean to all of us.”

  “Appreciate that, Ms. Jefferson,” her father said. “Do you know if there’s any official update on Ginny’s condition?”

  “I don’t,” Kayla said, “but I’m more than happy to find out. How about I check with her case manager Monday morning and—”

  “Monday morning?!” he exclaimed. “Nobody can tell us now?”

  “I’ll see what I can find out and get right back to you.”

  The phone in Nicole’s dad’s hand buzzed. “Sorry, I need to take this,” he said and hurried out.

  “Thanks for taking the time,” Kayla told Nicole. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything, but I understand everything is on pace for now.”

  “You’re here after hours again, Kayla. Why’s that?”

  The young woman smiled, perfect teeth gleaming. “The last line on my job description says, ‘Miscellaneous related duties as assigned.’ When they call me, I come in.”

  “Did they call you in tonight?”

  “Not specifically, but I am often asked to work after hours when we have VIP patients, and they don’t come any more important than her. So, if you need anything …”

  “I just hate causing you extra, and unnecessary, work.”

  “Glad to do it. And I’m also grateful for the chance to tell you again that I was serious about joining one of your dig teams some day.”

  “I know you were, but that’s strange.”

  “Just didn’t want you to forget or think I was merely saying it to be polite. And what’s strange?”

  “You’re the second person who’s said that in the last few minutes. I can go a month without someone doing that.”

  “Who was that?”

  “You wouldn’t know him.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll meet him on the dig.”

  “Ha! Maybe you will.” Having a native Indian and an African American woman on her volunteer team would check off a lot of boxes.

  When Kayla was gone, Nicole tiptoed to her mother. Her vitals all read normal on the monitors, and she seemed peaceful. Nicole glanced at her chart at the end of the bed and noticed a nurse had been in to check on her about a half hour before. Nicole decided she could leave her briefly, just to see what was up with her dad.

  She found him about a hundred feet down the corridor, studying his phone. He was ashen. “Dad, what is it?” she whispered.

  He looked both ways, slipped the phone into his pocket, and said, “Tell me about Mustafa.”

  “What do you mean tell you about him? You introduced him to me twenty years ago, and getting to be his trench supervisor in ’16 was a dream. He was great. He always was.”

  “You get much time with him?”

  “Almost as much as Moshe did, and he was the assistant.”

  “You mean Greenblatt from Israel?”

  “Yeah, I’d been his trench super at Hazor in 2010. The three of us made a good team at Mada’in.”

  “Mustafa knew what you’d found and why you wanted to go back?”

  “Of course, but I figured it would be under Moshe and him again. Who knew? I just wish I could’ve been there for his funeral.”

  Ben nodded, his gaze miles away.

  “What’s going on, Dad?”

  He pulled the phone out. “You need to see this.”

  “Dad! That’s my phone!”

  “Oh, so it is. Then this was to you, not me.”

  It was a text in Arabic from a number she didn’t recognize—in fact, a number that didn’t resemble a phone number, international or not.

  هل كنت حقاً تعتقد أن مغادرة مصطفى بن علوي للحديقة كانت عرضية؟

  Nicole translated. “‘Did you really think Mustafa bin-Alawi’s departure for the garden was accidental?’ It has to mean the Islam afterlife, Jannah, right? Doesn’t that literally mean ‘garden.’”

  Her father nodded. “Nicole, do not let this make you withdraw your application from the Saudis.”

  “Are you kidding? And let whoever this is win? This has to be the same person who told me to watch my back. I’m tempted to answer it.”

  “And say what?”

  “Either ‘No, tell me more,’ or ‘Yes, I knew.’”

  “You’d be playing right into their hands.”

  “But whose hands, Dad?”

  “Whoever doesn’t want you digging in Saudi Arabia again—enough to attack your mother and threaten you. We’ve got to get this to Wojciechowski.”

  “What’s he going to do with it?” Nicole said.

  “They’ve got phone techies who can work miracles.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Crime shows on TV.”

  CHAPTER 88

  Ur

  “We must deliver his body to the palace,” Wedum said.

  “No!” Terah said. “Think, man! Isn’t it clear what’s happened here?”

  “He’s killed himself, master. But why?”

  “That is not for us to know, but imagine the disgrace, the dishonor, the humiliation of his family. And if the king learns of this, there will be no imperial funeral, only ignominy.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Remove his sword. Place it in his hand as if he used it to protect himself. Then roll him onto his back. Move the chariot far enough away that the vultures will not be scared off by the horse. Once they have begun to devour him, his scent will draw other predators.”

  “You would have him torn to pieces out here?” Wedum said. “A king’s guard?”

  “Better than to embarrass his family. Someone will find his bones and the chariot and deduce he was another victim of the dogs. He will be lauded for his years of service to the realm.”

  “I’ve known him only a few hours,” Wedum said. “But I could tell he was a good man. I don’t know if I can—”

  “Of course you can! Just roll him up on his side, withdraw the sword, and then leave him on his back.”

  “Oh, master, don’t make me …”

  “I’d do it myself if I were able. Think of his reputation, his family. Now move!”

  Convinced as he was that he had made another prudent decision, even Terah found it hard to watch as Wedum rolled Ikuppi’s bloated body on its side to free the hilt from the ground and allow him access to the sword. Wedum gagged as he set his feet and bent to jerk the blade until it wrenched free.

  “Now roll him onto his back and place the weapon in his hand.”

  “Forgive me, master,” Wedum groaned, “but I cannot. I already feel I have violated the man.”

  “Out of the way, coward. A dead man feels nothing, and you know this was his choice.”

  Terah tottered to the body, put his weight on his left leg, and poked at Ikuppi with his crutch. The man proved heavier than Terah expected. He pushed harder, and though the body rocked, it would not roll over. “Help me, man!” Terah said. “We must be gone before we’re seen.”

  Wedum placed his foot on Ikuppi’s hip and pushed him onto his back.

  “Now put the sword in his hand.”

  “Oh, master …”

  “Just do it!”

  Tears rolled down Wedum’s cheeks as he obeyed and retreated to Terah’s side.

  “Now move the chariot and we’ll go.”

  But Wedum found the horse as stubborn as the donkey had been. The whites of its eyes showed terror, and it would not budge. Terah cursed them both. “Help me up in there,” he said. “I will hold the reins, and you get out and make the horse move.”

  When they were in place, Terah leaned precariously on his crutch and Wedum grabbed the horse’s bridle. The steed yanked its head back, lifting Wedum off the ground and flinging him aside. “Make him move!” Terah shouted. “Hang on!”

  “I need the switch,” Wedum sai
d, and he ran back to the donkey cart to retrieve the gnarly branch. He brandished it in front of the horse and raised it as if to strike. The horse reared, nearly hurling Terah from the carriage.

  “Give me that and get out of the way, Wedum!”

  Terah wrapped the reins around one hand, held his crutch under his arm, and beat the horse’s flank with the branch until it nickered and whinnied and finally stomped off in fits and starts. Satisfied he was far enough away from the body to allow the vultures their meal, Terah beckoned to Wedum to help him down.

  In the process he nearly tripped over something on the floor of the chariot—the ivory model he had carved of Marduk, the patron deity of Babylonia. It was still intact and as beautiful as the day he had made it. Though it had been a gift to Ikuppi, he certainly had no use for it now. And Terah needed something to begin his new collection.

  That night at the cave, Belessunu seemed lethargic and pale in the light of the torches.

  “Fortunately, the light cannot be seen from outside,” Terah told her. “But you must resurrect that poison you concocted for the wild pigs that ravaged your garden.”

  “And threatened us,” she said weakly. “It was just bat excrement I collected and added to meat I allowed to go rancid. I believe the pigs found it delicious.”

  “But it left them rotting in the sun.”

  “Bats live deep in this cave,” she said, “so I could collect what I need. But what am I to do with this poisoned meat?”

  “We cannot risk wild dogs picking up your or Abram’s scent. This place that protects you from the throne also makes you easy prey for dogs.”

  “Or jackals or hyenas,” she said.

  “I don’t even want to think about it. You deposit the bait around the entrance. Belessunu, are you all right?”

  “No, I am not. I’m exhausted and sore and need help here. I know we can’t let servants know where I am, but could not Ikuppi bring me—What, Terah?”

  “Hmm?”

  “At the mere mention of his name you turned white. What is wrong with Ikuppi?”

  “Did I say something was wrong with him?”

  “Terah, don’t insult me. Do you think I don’t know you after all these years? What has happened?”