“We’re descending,” he said in a vague attempt to provoke conversation.
“So it would seem.”
He tried again.
“You ever been to the Middle East before?”
“Only when family members go missing.”
“Is that some kind of joke?” Ethan snapped.
Rachel’s eyes swiveled to peer sideways at him. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just not in the mood for talking right now.”
“Is there some kind of problem here, with me?”
“Should there be?”
“You’ve barely spoken since we met, and if this trip is going to achieve anything at all, I need your help.” Ethan leaned across the empty seat between them. “If we can’t work together and start uncovering what happened to Lucy, you know what will happen?”
“What will happen?”
“Nothing at all.”
Rachel stared ahead for a few moments before replying. “I’m not comfortable with the idea of running around a foreign country with someone I don’t know anything about and who clearly has problems of his own.”
“You think I want to be cooped up on an airliner bound for the Middle East?” Ethan challenged. “I was perfectly happy where I was.”
“Is that so?” Rachel said. “You see, that’s my point. Even Doug admitted to me that you’re troubled, and whether that’s because of whatever happened to you out here or not is irrelevant. If you’re unable to help yourself, then what use are you to me or to Lucy?”
Ethan struggled to erect a harbor of dignity around his shame.
“Do you think Doug would have asked me here if he thought that?”
“By his own admission, there was nobody else he could ask.”
Ethan gave up and stared out of the window. “Glad I could help.”
For a long time Rachel sat staring into space, but eventually she glanced across at him.
“Look, I appreciate you being here.”
“Thanks,” Ethan said quietly. “As you’ve pointed out neither of us has much of a choice, so why don’t we just get on with it?”
Rachel stared at him for a long moment with an unconvinced expression. “Fine.”
“I need you to tell me everything you can about your daughter and what she was up to out here.”
“Lucy was born in 1981, but her father Robert died when she was fourteen.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So were we,” Rachel said, her voice softening. “He died before his time. I’ve questioned a thousand times what would make God take someone from us, but I’ve never found an answer.”
“You’re Catholic,” Ethan guessed.
“I’m a theologian. You?”
Ethan held up his hands. “I’m on the fence, doesn’t interest me much.”
Rachel looked away, but he saw a ghost of a smile touch her lips. “You’d have liked Robert then. He was a humanist.”
Ethan blinked.
“A humanist, a theologian, and a scientist? Family dinners must have literally been a riot.”
Rachel smiled again and Ethan watched as her green eyes blossomed briefly with light, but the moment vanished as quickly as it had come and the smile melted away.
“How on earth did you and Robert meet?”
“He was a friend of a friend. We met at a barbeque, and he bet me ten bucks that I couldn’t convert him from his humanism over a dinner date.”
“Nice move,” Ethan said.
“It was.”
Rachel’s features were no longer strained, and though she continued to stare straight ahead Ethan could see that her mind was wandering among the phantasms of the past. She barely noticed the mechanical grind of the aircraft’s undercarriage coming down somewhere beneath them. Ethan glanced briefly out of the window at the fields and palm groves sweeping past beneath the Boeing’s flexing wing tips.
“How did Lucy end up in Israel?”
“She had been doing field research in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley near Nairobi, before moving to the Hebrew University under a new posting. She’d been awarded a grant for new research into early human evolution and was being mentored by someone called Hans Karowitz, a Belgian scientist, and a cosmologist called Hassim Khan.”
Ethan made a mental note of the names.
“Okay, so why don’t you tell me what was so important about what she found out there?”
“It was an unknown species of human,” Rachel began, “that hasn’t yet been classified by science and—”
“That the Defense Intelligence Agency for some reason wants to recover?” Ethan challenged. “I need to know everything, or this is all for nothing.”
Rachel sighed.
“They asked me not to reveal it to you unless it was absolutely necessary.”
“Is finding your daughter alive absolutely necessary?” Ethan asked.
Rachel closed her eyes and nodded before speaking softly.
“The remains that Lucy found were in a tomb estimated to have been about seven thousand years old,” she said. “But the remains were not human.”
“Not human?” Ethan echoed. “They said that the bones were humanoid.”
“Yes, they were.”
The aircraft around Ethan seemed to recede as he tried to grasp what Rachel was saying.
“So it was some kind of ape?”
“It was a species that did not originate or evolve on this planet,” Rachel said.
Ethan dragged a hand down his face, trying to conceal his disbelief.
“An alien,” he said finally. “That’s why they’re sending the DIA after Lucy, because they think she found E.T. camping in Israel and they want possession of the remains.”
“It’s the only reason they’re willing to take an interest in this case at all,” she said sadly. “If it weren’t for what Lucy found, do you think the DIA would invest in a search for her? They wouldn’t give a damn. This is about the remains, not Lucy.”
Ethan leaned his head back against his seat and chuckled in disbelief.
“I’m being sent halfway across the world to dig up some bones for the DIA,” he murmured, “that’ll probably turn out to have belonged to a frickin’ rhinocerous or something.”
Rachel shot him a toxic look.
“My daughter is still missing out there, whatever you think about this, and she’s smart enough to be able to tell a rhino from a human.”
Ethan shook himself from his torpor of disbelief.
“Okay, indulge me. Why would she have found something like that out there?”
“There’s a big problem in human history that nobody has been able to explain,” Rachel said. “The ancestors of modern humans, people essentially identical to us in every way, had existed in a hunter-gatherer state for at least sixty thousand years. But suddenly, out of nowhere, mankind began building cities, forming agriculture and producing advanced technologies. And that growth blossomed simultaneously in vastly separated geographical areas, from the Indus Valley to the Levant to the Americas.”
Ethan leaned back in his seat.
“Surely that’s just natural growth after the end of the Ice Ages?”
Rachel shook her head.
“There had been some developments, of course: simple dwellings, domestication of animals, and rudimentary agriculture. But then the people of the Indus Valley in today’s Pakistan began the construction of major cities around five thousand years ago. At the same time the Sumerians began to build cities in Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. The point is that there is no record of gradual development or progression—the cities sprang up almost instantaneously. Both civilizations supposedly independently invented the wheel and a script called cuneiform. The Indus Valley script, known as Dravidian, hasn’t been fully deciphered even today.”
“How big were these cities?” Ethan asked.
He was surprised by her answer, never having known that such ancient cities could harbor populations of up to forty thousand people. Nor had
he known of the complexity of their technologies: that the Indus civilization had built domestic bathrooms, flushing toilets, and drains using burned and glazed bricks; or that it built public basins with two layers of bricks with gypsum mortar and sealed by a layer of bitumen, a remarkably astute method. The Mesopotamians had built docks and seaworthy vessels for trade, and had developed extensive irrigation comparable to modern agriculture.
“Okay,” Ethan said, “but so did the Egyptians, right, and they came later?”
“The Egyptians rose at about the same time,” Rachel said. “Egypt’s first king, Menes, ruled some five thousand years ago in its capital Memphis, but the kingdom was ancient even then and had already developed its hieroglyphic script, again apparently out of nowhere.”
Ethan frowned.
“And you don’t think that this could have happened naturally?”
“It’s possible,” Rachel conceded, “but it should have taken longer than it did, and it seems that the ancients suddenly acquired knowledge sufficiently advanced to still be used today.”
The Babylonians, Rachel explained, were descended from the Sumerians, and their mathematics was written using a sexagesimal numeral system: one which has as its base the number sixty. From this derived the modern-day usage of sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, and three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle.
“Which remains after almost eight thousand years,” Ethan said.
“Along with various customs and traditions,” Rachel agreed, “which are continued today in recognizable forms.”
“And Lucy thinks that another species,” Ethan guessed, “perhaps an extraterrestrial species, gave them knowledge, which they then passed down through time ever after?”
“If it seemed crazy before, it doesn’t now after what Lucy found,” Rachel said. “I’ve spent some time researching all of this since Lucy first mentioned it months ago, long before she disappeared. There have been many books written in the past that have attributed all manner of activities to alien visitors from distant planets, from the founding of Atlantis to building the pyramids. All of it was rubbish, of course.”
“So what’s the difference here?” Ethan asked.
“Real historical events that match the supposed myths of a thousand religions,” Rachel said. “We are familiar only with the religious histories that survive to this day, but they have existed in many differing forms for millennia. Oral tradition was the only way for ancient civilizations to record their past until scripts suddenly appeared simultaneously around the world: the Neolithic script, Indus script, Sumerian and Bronze Age phonetics all appeared around six thousand years ago. In all of their creation myths, these early civilizations almost identically describe Gods who came down from the skies and passed to them great knowledge.”
Ethan himself had read of the legends of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Amerindians, and Japanese, describing such visitors as traveling in fiery chariots, flaming dragons, or giant glowing birds that descended noisily from the sky.
A loud thump reverberated through the fuselage.
Ethan looked at the sun-baked runway flashing past outside. “So we don’t know who hired Lucy to go digging in the Negev for alien remains, but whoever it was must have known what they were looking for.”
“I doubt that she would have abandoned her original research on a whim.”
Ethan unbuckled his seat belt and turned to face her.
“I need to know everything you know about this,” he said. “When someone vanishes, the first forty-eight hours are the most critical and they’ve already passed. Knowledge is our only resource now because X never marks the spot.”
Although Ethan could still see doubt shadowing her expression, Rachel unbuckled her seat belt and looked at him expectantly.
“What do you want to know?”
BEN GURION INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
ISRAEL
That’s crazy,” Ethan said.
“Why?” Rachel challenged. “Just because it sounds ridiculous doesn’t mean it’s not correct or even likely.”
The main terminal of Ben Gurion International was dominated by a circular glass-vaulted ceiling from which poured a cylindrical sheet of glittering water. The waterfall drained into a pool that reflected light across the domed roof in a shimmering kaleidoscope of color. Ethan had the impression that he was passing through a giant fish bowl as he walked with Rachel toward the airport meeting point.
“Yeah,” Ethan conceded, “but UFOs in the Bible?”
“And in all other ancient creation works. Ezekiel speaks of such events in the Bible,” Rachel said, and her expression became distant as she spoke. “‘And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.’”
“Could have been a meteorite,” Ethan suggested.
“‘Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures,’” Rachel continued. “‘And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man.’”
Ethan looked at her for a long moment.
“I’d have thought Lucy would need more to go on than that.”
Rachel was about to reply when a thunderous voice boomed across the terminal.
“Ethan!”
Ethan saw Aaron Luckov the moment he entered the terminal, a bearded and barrel-chested man who swept through the crowds like a tornado through an olive grove. The man possessed shoulders like a harbor wall and a grip that felt as though Ethan’s hand was being stood upon.
“Aaron, been a long time.”
“Too long, Ethan!” The towering Israeli swung an arm around Ethan’s shoulders, one hand clapping loudly against his back.
“Is everything ready?” Ethan whispered as he returned the embrace.
“It is prepared,” Luckov replied equally quietly.
Aaron Luckov had served as an Israeli Air Force fighter pilot before starting up an air charter company with his wife. Ethan had known him for over a decade, and together they had shared both the best and the worst of times out in the ancient cities and deserts.
“Aaron, this is Rachel Morgan,” Ethan introduced them.
“Ah,” Aaron said, gently shaking Rachel’s hand. “I have heard much about you. I am so sorry to hear of your loss.”
Rachel flushed. “Hopefully, it’s not a loss.”
Aaron took Rachel’s bag in one meaty fist.
“I hope so too. Come, I have a ride waiting for us outside and we’ll need to hurry.”
“Why?” Rachel asked in confusion.
“Because we’re not alone,” Ethan said, glancing across the terminal to where two suited men stood and observed them with fixed gazes. “How many?” he asked Aaron as they began to walk.
“Two inside, two outside,” Aaron replied.
“Why are they watching us?” Rachel asked.
“They’re not,” Ethan said. “They’re watching me.”
Ethan felt his lungs spasm reflexively as Aaron led them out of the air-conditioned terminal into a merciless heat. A white convertible jeep was parked by the sidewalk, a petite and dark-haired woman sitting behind the wheel. Safiya Luckov was Aaron’s wife, a Palestinian with dark olive eyes and a bright smile. She got out and helped them with their bags before driving them out of the terminal and east toward Jerusalem.
Ethan leaned back in the rear seat, finally able to stretch out after the long flight. “What’s the situation in Jerusalem?”
Aaron’s rolling basso profundo voice carried easily above the wind.
“Fragile, how else would it be?”
Ethan had spent several months living within the disputed territories. He had seen the shattered, scarred wreckage of the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinians lived in a near-permanent state of squalor and oppression. And he had friends in the West Bank who had lived under Israeli military occupation for more than forty years since the Israeli
-Arab War. Likewise, he knew many Israelis who lived under the constant threat of terrorism, their lives dominated by the wailing sirens warning of unguided Qassam rockets being fired into their backyards from the Gaza Strip by “freedom fighters” of a dozen obscure sects sworn to Israel’s destruction.
“This doesn’t make our job any easier,” Ethan said, glancing over his shoulder. Behind them, a pair of glossy black SUVs followed at a short distance. “Are those guys Mossad?”
“Just an NGO,” Aaron said, glancing at the following vehicles in his side-view mirror with a wry smile. “You’re not that important, Ethan.”
“Surely if the authorities are following us, then we’re being protected too?” Rachel said.
Ethan turned to her.
“The authorities don’t like me here,” he said simply.
“Why not?”
“This discovery that Lucy supposedly made,” Ethan said, ignoring her question. “You really think it’s real?”
“You’re not buying into this, are you?” Rachel muttered. “Even the Defense Intelligence Agency is showing an interest, regardless of their motives.”
“I doubt they’re holding their breath,” Ethan pointed out.
“No?” Rachel challenged. “NASA launched its Voyager space probes in the seventies with solid gold discs aboard, bearing greetings in fifty-five different languages. One of those was ancient Sumerian. Why else would they include a script that is several thousand years old and no longer used by humanity?”
Ethan shrugged.
“Not for me to say. Why would Lucy have been looking for alien remains out here?”
Rachel gestured to the parched land around them as she spoke above the wind.
“Israel is part of the Levant, the cradle of civilization.”
Ethan glanced across the barren landscape baking beneath the equatorial sun.
Covenant Page 5