by JT Osbourne
"So, it's about Tom…"
"You're getting married!" she squealed, joking.
"No," Brook said sternly.
"You sure about that?" Katy kidded.
Brook shrugged and took another sip of her martini. She had to admit, Katy made a dynamite drink. "He is good-looking," she said, wriggling her eyebrows.
"I'll say!" Katy joined in.
"All yours," Brook answered, waving him in Katy's direction with a flick of her hand.
"He's not interested in me. He's interested in you."
"You two can whisper Russian into each others' ears."
"He speaks Russian?" Katy asked, genuinely surprised.
"Uh-huh."
"So he’s a spy!" Katy replied dramatically.
"Probably," Brook agreed.
They drank silently for a minute.
"So you're thinking maybe Tom could talk to my Russian friends, right?" Katy stated finally, getting back to the subject at hand.
Brook was genuinely surprised. "How did you know that?" she asked.
"I hear things," Katy shrugged.
"He has his own Russian friends, apparently."
"I was just kidding about that spy thing," Katy said.
"Yeah well, maybe it’s not that funny," Brook replied.
"Okay, here's the deal," Katy said, putting down her glass, indicating she was now prepared for a serious conversation. "I wasn't able to persuade the Israelis to help with the scroll you have."
"Why not?" Brook wanted to know.
"They got wind that Strelov was involved."
"Oh?"
"He's been a deadly enemy of Israel since before the collapse of the Soviet Union," Katy told Brook. "Pretended to be friends to Jews, helped them emigrate to Israel, but behind the scenes confiscated all their worldly goods. Then, when that slowed up, he worked in cahoots with the Kremlin to get more of them deported, whether they wanted to go or not."
"I didn't know," Brook protested.
"I didn't know, either, but the Israelis think they do, and they won't do anything that smacks of helping Strelov. Sounds like they have other issues as well, but they didn't tell me those."
Brook took that in.
"I've got some other ideas," Katy said, observing Brook's disappointment.
"I'm going to ask Tom to give it a shot," Brook decided.
"You do what you have to do," Katy said, clearly upset.
"Thank you, Katy," Brook told her friend.
***
"Okay, dinner," Brook agreed, calling Tom from her room. "My room, room-service, and it's a working meeting, nothing else. I don't need a boyfriend, and if I did it wouldn't be you."
Tom laughed at the other end. "Wow," he said, "that's pretty direct."
"That's the way I am."
"How you roll, huh?"
"You want to be an archaeologist, or not?" Brook challenged.
"Absolutely," Tom answered.
"I need your help on something, that's all, and I need to explain it to you so you understand completely," Brook told him.
"Of course," he agreed. "Now?"
***
Tom was on his best behavior. They ate dinner—which was delicious—shared some wine—acceptable—and made small talk, each managing not to reveal anything very important about themselves. Except for opening the curtains and commenting on the "gorgeous view" and how "nice" Brook looked tonight, Tom showed himself to be a responsible adult, to Brook's relief. Without mentioning the actual name Neferu, she managed to convey the importance of getting the scroll scanned properly.
"It's key to the whole project, perhaps," she told him. She didn't mention exactly what the project's real purpose was—to uncover the tomb of Cleopatra—or how the scroll from St. Mary's fit in, just its urgency.
"I can handle the Israelis," Tom announced confidently after he learned of Katy's failed attempts, "and the Russians. Your friend was on the right track, though. I think I know what the Israelis want, and let's just say I don't think she had the clout with the Russkis to really give it to them."
Brook stared at Tom, not quite following.
"It's handled," Tom said at her look. He held up a hand, as if taking an oath, or holding her doubts back. "It's handled."
"Good. Thank you," Brook replied. She didn't know what to think. He exuded confidence and strength, and she couldn't help being attracted to that. On the other hand there was a "don't you worry your pretty little head, lady" aspect to Tom's hand in the air, which reminded her of your run-of-the-mill chauvinist. Russkis?
"Well, I guess I better go," Tom said, and began cleaning up after dinner.
"I can get that," Brook offered.
"No sweat," Tom told her, gathering all the dishes out into the hall on the cart like he'd had a great deal of hotel experience, which Brook guessed he did.
"Tomorrow," Tom said, grabbing the notes he'd taken on the scroll, holding them up. "And thank you for trusting me with this."
Brook didn't know what to say. It obviously meant a lot to him, and Brook didn't see she had much choice.
"No problem," she answered meekly.
"Tomorrow," Tom concluded.
He was out the door quickly. Strangely, Brook missed him a little already. She tried to remember the last time she'd had dinner with a man, though this was hardly a date. Ali, I suppose. She had a few friends, like Katy, but they were loners like her. She knew it was wrong. Friends keep you alive. Social interaction lets you live longer.
Laughing at herself and shaking her head, Brook decided to tackle that problem later—like maybe "never" later. She popped open her laptop and started on Muller's diaries. She'd begun to zero in on certain area along the western side of Egypt. It has to be an area only about the size of Wyoming.
On a hunch, she began at the beginning and looked for any reference to Jaghbub, the closest town on the map to where Professor Green's Italian friend had indicated Neferu's statue was found.
Jeez, Brook couldn't help thinking, if old Stu Green has a friend, why don't you?
Italian girlfriend? Brook shivered to think about it. "Lucia!" she repeated over and over with a thick Italian accent, hand motion and all. "Lucia, I'm so bored!"
Back to business, Brook began scanning, using her finger on the screen, to go down each page of Muller's diary. She didn't speak German, but she was pretty sure "Jaghbub" would look the same in any language. She wrote down anything capitalized. Her impression was that Muller was a stickler, and would certainly capitalize the name of a town. She jotted down anything that might be a place-name, though she didn't recognize any except El Alamein, Alexandria, Cairo, and a few German cities and towns.
Her eyelids sagged; she regretted drinking the wine. It had been a long day, much of it out in the sun doing physical things, much of it emotionally draining. Impatient, Brook wrote down the number of the last page she'd scanned, then went diving into the other documents, making a wild stab, but all too aware that she'd be asleep in twenty minutes no matter what she did. If she was lucky—
Was that it!? In the middle of Muller's sixth diary: "Giarabub." Close enough to deserve an extra minute of research.
A quick search showed that Giarabub had been occupied by the Italians between 1925 and 1941, but its name was later changed to Jaghbub. It must have been the same place!
Brook made a note of the page and a copy of the scan, and sent off an e-mail to Marta to "translate this page ASAP, please," before she flopped back on the bed, falling asleep just as she realized she should tell Marta to look for other pages that mentioned the town.
40
Boğazkale, Turkey, 1991
The journey by freighter from Lisbon to Istanbul would have been a pleasant one if Cale Burlington hadn't been so preoccupied with the problems at the various digs around the world. He would have preferred to fly, but his inner ear problem made that impossible.
"They're pretty sure my head will explode," Cale often bragged when he'd had a few. "The brains blow right out the eye-sockets,
apparently." he would shake his head, soak in the sympathy and laugh at the possibility of his own gruesome death. His many friends found it highly entertaining. Fortunately, Cale still kept his contacts among the various shipping companies worldwide from his salvage days, and he was generally welcome on any freighter he chose.
A few days earlier, Cale had taken the call from the site supervisor for the Hattusa dig, central Turkey, on the Anatolian Plain; the citadel of the Hittite Empire, parallel in time to the Pharaoh Khyan in Egypt.
"We may have some trouble here," the site supervisor warned Cale.
"What kind of trouble?" Cale asked.
"Our expert thinks there's been some funny business."
"Meaning what?"
"He hinted somebody's been salting the dig," the supervisor said, voice cracking.
"Salting the dig?" Cale was in disbelief.
"Yeah. Putting stuff in there for the others to find—"
"I know what 'salting' is."
"I told him he was nuts."
"Put him on the phone."
"He won't come. He'll only talk to you in person."
"In person? Does he know where I am?!" Cale shouted.
"I told him."
"At the other end of Europe!"
"I told him!" the supervisor protested.
Cale sighed. There was no point getting angry. "It only hurts you," the doctors had informed him. Already, he felt pressure behind his eyes.
"Did you tell him that wasn't possible?" he asked calmly.
"He insisted," the supervisor complained. "He said what he had would blow the lid off the whole scam worldwide."
"Scam? He said 'scam?'"
"Yessir. That's when I figured this was above my pay-grade.”
"So you called me in," Cale finished the thought for him, wondering why he even bothered to hire people if they couldn't handle these situations themselves. Sure, he understood middle management—the workers hate you, the bosses despise you—but that was the job, wasn't it? "I'll call you back," he told the man simply. "Don't do anything till I call you back."
Cale considered his options. The mere hint of foul play or corruption could taint the academic legitimacy of the entire enterprise. Archaeology had a history to live down—treasures from one site combined with treasures from another to exaggerate a find; artifacts planted in unlikely places to enhance careers, or fund further exploration. Then there was downright thievery.
You wanted to go visit anyway, Cale reasoned that afternoon in his hotel room in Lisbon. Why not just go? It's probably nothing, but why not nip it in the bud?
The Hittites were fascinating; settling down on the trade route between Eastern Europe and the Middle East in a place that had been settled by even older civilizations in the past. The interaction of the Hittites with ancient Egypt had been well-documented, but this latest dig had revealed connections down to southern Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.
If it's all not some huge fake, Cale cursed to himself. After making arrangements and calling the supervisor in Turkey back—"keep that whistle-blower under wraps till I get there, hear?"—Cale was on board a ship that very afternoon.
"So, where's this trouble-maker?" Cale asked the supervisor when he arrived.
"He's over at the pension," the man told Cale. "I told him to wait there. I didn't want you two talking in front of the others."
"Good man."
"I do my best."
That’s to be determined. "Well, let's see what he has to say. Get it straight from the horse's mouth, I always say."
"Yessir."
"What did you say the man's name was?"
"Green. Stuart Green. Post-doctorate. Here on a Guggenheim."
41
Alexandria, Egypt
The next morning, Katy waited out front of the hotel for Brook. Ali and Tom had already driven off to the site with Grekov.
Katy's phone rang.
"Yes?"
"You got your passport on you?" Brook asked at the other end of the phone.
"Yes, actually, I do."
"And your camera?" Brook wanted to know.
"Absolutely."
"You want to go on a little field-trip with me?"
"Uh-oh," Katy chuckled uncomfortably.
"Walk down the walk, facing traffic."
"Okay..." Katy replied, heading down toward the corner of the hotel.
"Just pretend you're talking on the phone."
"I am talking on the phone."
Katy glanced back at Rabbit, who was waiting next to the SUV, a puzzled look on his face. Katy pointed to her phone, as if that explained her little stroll.
"I'm right around the corner in the white rental car."
Katy spotted the car, and Brook, and when she was around the corner—
"Run! Run!"
Katy ran, jumping in the passenger's seat as Brook hit the gas and jerked the wheel, screeching out from the side of the hotel before heading down the road.
Rabbit was already in the SUV, careening backwards, palm on the horn, warning drivers behind, who scattered, hitting their own horns. Rabbit's skill at a three-point turn was sensational, but he'd also successfully piled up the traffic in the direction that Brook's vehicle sped away. Without killing or maiming any number of terrified motorists, Rabbit would not be able to follow. Showing great restraint, he pulled over and grabbed his phone.
"Where are we going?" Katy asked, putting on her seatbelt and checking the speedometer before looking out of the back window. "He's not following, you know. You can slow down now."
Brook eased off the gas.
"Where are we going?" Katy repeated.
Brook hesitated, not sure how much to say. After all, it was just a hunch really, though one she shared with Marta, who had called Brook earlier.
"Something took place there that changed Muller," Marta had reported. "I can't put my finger on it, but he was not a happy man after that. The war was getting to him, I think."
"Does he say what actually happened in Giarabub?"
"No, not that I've found yet," Marta told Brook. "The way he mentions it is unusual. The name is buried in the text all by itself, unrelated to anything else, like he wanted to make a note of it to remind himself, but he also didn't want to tell anyone else, or leave any kind of record."
"Brook?" Katy asked again, bringing Brook back to the present. "We're going where?"
"It's a place called Jaghbub. Known as Giarabub during the war." She handed Katy a large map with the town circled on it.
"That's in Libya!" Katy exclaimed.
"Yeah."
"That's why you asked about the passport?"
"That's right."
Katy swallowed hard. Instinctively, she pulled her scarf up around her head, hiding her hair. Brook did the same.
"This is a crazy thing to do," Katy hissed.
"You can say that again," Brook agreed.
"No, you say that again," Katy replied, suddenly a whirlwind of activity, pulling her camera out of her bag and turning it on; checking the settings and inserting a data card before pointing it at Brook. "Go. Narrate. Go."
"What do you want me to say?"
"What you said before," Katy directed. "Where we're going, the fact it's in Libya, which is completely insane, and how we're definitely going to get killed. You know—drama."
"Maybe I should have asked Tom instead," Brook complained.
"Asked Tom to do what?" Katy urged.
"Go on this insane mission into Libya."
"Better. Now the whole sentence," Katy demanded.
"I'm sorry, I can't do this," Brook replied. "I'm not an actor."
"Okay, okay," Katy agreed, "I got a better idea anyway." She gripped the camera between her knees and turned it back on, whispering dramatically. "So now Brook Burlington and I are in a rental car, on our way to a secret rendezvous across the border in Libya; a dangerous mission for two women alone in a hostile country—"
"Not exactly," Brook interrupted
.
Katy looked up as Brook pulled into a parking spot in an industrial area, still well within the urban sprawl of Alexandria itself.
"What's this?" Katy wanted to know. "Why are we stopping?"
Saa stood with a coffee cup in hand, leaned against a monster truck. His cab sat nearby, engine warm, having just made the two-hour journey from Cairo.
"Our driver and interpreter," Brook announced.
The truck was a good choice, they all realized quickly. The road disappeared, and all that was left was a slight hardening of the sand. With oversized tires, sitting high above the desert, they couldn't move quickly, but at least they could move.
Saa checked his phone. So did Katy and Brook.
"If we have to, we can call for the camels," Saa told his passengers in the crowded cab.
Brook checked her watch, and the sun. She wouldn't want to be out here at night.
"It's full moon tonight," Saa assured her, as if reading her mind. "Full moon in the desert is same as daylight. No problem."
"Nobody knows about this, right, Saa?" Brook asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Grekov and Rabbit—you didn't tell them, did you?"
"You hurt me deeply," Saa replied. "Why would I do that?"
"For money—again," Brook accused.
Saa waved away the past unpleasantness.
"I work for you now only, Miss Brook, you crazy Canadian cousin," Saa insisted.
Katy and Brook exchanged glances and smiled.
"Okay, Saa. You're a lousy spy anyway," Brook told him.
"Thank you, Miss Brook." Saa checked his phone again. Without a real road, he was strictly on GPS.
"We're in Libya, my friends," Saa whispered after a while. "If we're stopped, you're both my crazy cousins from Canada."
Brook smiled.
"Sure, why not?" Katy agreed.
There was no need for a cover, it turned out; there were no checkpoints out in the middle of nowhere. Though the political turmoil in Libya was substantial, and its tentacles reached into every corner of society and every place on the map, they eventually drove into Jaghbub without incident. It was still the isolated little desert town Brook supposed it had been during World War II, though she noticed everybody over the age of ten carried a cell-phone, and TV sets and radios could be heard as she, Katy, and Saa drove in. This was an oasis town; a way station on a trade-route not entirely forgotten.