The Sahara Legacy

by Ernest Dempsey

A grin spread across Sean’s face. “Hank!”

  Hank’s lips creased. “In the flesh.”

  “You’re late.”

  Hank shrugged. “You know what they say about late versus never, right?”

  “Do they say be early instead?”

  A booming laugh escaped the man’s mouth, and he quickly quieted himself as he set to work on cutting Sean’s wrists loose.

  “What happened to you last night?” Tommy asked. “You were supposed to be there.”

  “Yep,” Hank said, sawing the knife edge through the rope attached to Sean’s right wrist. “And if I’d been there on time, I might well be working on my tan with you two fellas right now.”

  “Fair point. That still doesn’t explain where you were.”

  Hank freed Sean of his last bond and turned his attention to cutting Tommy loose.

  Sean worked his fingers in and out to get the feeling back in his hands and forearms. The skin on his wrists was rubbed red from the bindings.

  “I got held up. Some idiot tried to run his moped through a red light at a busy intersection and got hit. I was stuck in traffic with no way to get out. Had cars in front, back, and beside me. Must have taken them an hour to clear up the mess.”

  “You should have called,” Tommy said.

  “I didn’t know how long it was going to take them. Anyway, I think the rider survived. And the good news is so did you guys. Win-win!”

  He made quick work of the ropes and put the knife back in its sheath.

  Tommy stood up, grateful to feel the circulation returning to his extremities. He rubbed his wrists for a moment, careful not to irritate the already raw skin.

  “How in the world did you find us?”

  “Luckily, the cops showed up and started redirecting traffic. By the time I got to our meeting spot, it was too late. Fortunately, I got there as those men were putting you two in the back of their trucks. I laid low and watched, thinking there was no way I could take them all out right then and there. I followed them for a ways outside the city, but I knew they’d see me if I stayed too close. Once they turned off the main highway, there was no way I could stay on their tail. Given the direction they were going, there weren’t many places they’d venture other than into the dunes. So, I hired a friend to fly over earlier this morning. He spotted you two in less than an hour, gave me your coordinates, and the rest is…well, you know.”

  “You hired a pilot to find us?” Sean asked.

  “Yeah, and he ain’t cheap, either. I’d appreciate it if Tommy’s agency would reimburse some of that funding.”

  Tommy sighed. “Happily.”

  Hank slid the sunglasses back onto his face. “We need to get back to town. Not safe out here. If I’ve got any sense about those guys who kidnapped you, my guess is they’ll be back to finish you off.”

  Sean shook his head. “Maybe. My guess is they’re heading to Union Station.”

  Hank’s eyebrows pinched together behind his sunglasses. “Union? Why would they go there?”

  “Because we told them to.”

  “Told them to? Why’d you do that? And why would they listen?”

  “They’re after the tablet,” Tommy explained.

  “The Zerzura Tablet?” Hank asked, his tone shifting to a more reverent sound.

  “Unless there was another one we were here to ask you about.”

  Hank frowned. “But that tablet is incomplete. It’s useless without the other half.”

  “We know that,” Sean said.

  “If they get your half, though, then you’ll be up a creek.”

  “That’s why we sent them to our decoy locker.”

  “Decoy locker?” Hank cocked his head to the side like a puzzled dog.

  Sean flashed a toothy grin. “Yep. Decoy locker.”

  Chapter 3

  Dubai

  “So, you sent them to Union Station and a locker there with nothing in it?” Hank asked, still trying to piece together the story.

  “Yep,” Tommy answered. “Sean figured where we were meeting you had the makings of an ambush or at least was the perfect place for one. So, we took precautions.”

  “Rented a locker at Union Station and another one at the last station on the other end of the line.”

  “Which is where we’re going now, Jebel Ali station.”

  “Correct. So, while Dufort and his men are opening up an empty locker in the next half hour, we’ll be on the other side of town.”

  “By the time they realize what happened,” Tommy said, “we’ll be on our way to the airport.”

  Hank shook his head. “Seems like you guys thought of everything. Guess it’s not your first time doing this sort of thing.”

  “Helps to be prepared—especially when you’re dealing with something like this.”

  “The Zerzura Tablet,” Hank muttered. “Do you really think that’s what it is?”

  “If it isn’t, it’s caused a lot of trouble for it not to be.”

  “You’re sure your connection has seen the other half of the tablet?” Sean asked.

  Hank’s eyes flashed up to the rearview mirror at Sean in the back. “That’s what he said. When you guys sent me the picture and told me what it was, I had to use a bit of restraint. I mean, you’re talking about a tablet that could help us locate the lost city of Zerzura.” His voice drifted into a distant tone. “Rumor has it that city holds treasures from every ancient kingdom that ever existed.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Tommy said. “They’ve got gold discs from Atlantis and even items from the Library at Alexandria. I’ve heard the stories. Mostly as a child.” He muttered the last few words in a disparaging tone.

  “How did you come by the other half of the tablet, anyway?” Hank asked, casting Tommy a sidelong glance.

  “On a dig,” Sean answered for his friend. “Tommy was working the site of the old abandoned city near Dubai.”

  “Julfar?” Hank asked, surprised.

  “Yep,” Tommy said. “We thought most of that area had been searched. Then recently, I got a call. Another team was there and said a section of land collapsed near one of the ruins.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “That’s why they called us. Ordinary researchers aren’t as inclined to go jumping into mysterious holes without things being checked out first. Since we keep a team of engineers pretty much on retainer, we had the area checked out pretty quick. When they gave us the all-clear, we went in and started looking around.”

  “What we found,” Sean added, “was an underground labyrinth that predated the city of Julfar. From the looks of it, we think it goes back to around 3,000 BC. Most of the tunnels had been rigged to take out intruders.”

  “Booby traps?” Hank asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Luckily,” Tommy said, “those traps had either deteriorated or been so badly damaged in the collapse that they didn’t function anymore.”

  “So, that’s where you found the tablet?”

  “Yeah, we found a burial chamber deep underground at the back of the tunnel system. The sarcophagus only identified the interred person as Priest, carved into one end of the long sandstone box.”

  “Priest?”

  “From the looks of it and all the other inscriptions painted on the walls, we think he was a priest from a culture that was a precursor to Mesopotamia.”

  “Assyrian?”

  “Earlier. Also, much farther south than the Assyrians.”

  “You don’t think it’s an Egyptian colony, do you?”

  “No,” Tommy said. “The site didn’t have anything we could link back to the first Egyptian civilizations. The language and images used were far too different. Whoever these people were, they were ancestors of modern-day Arabia.”

  Hank’s SUV rumbled down the road and merged into another lane that led toward the southwest side of the city.

  The gigantic skyscrapers of downtown Dubai soared into the air. The largest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, towered ov
er the landscape. Construction on the massive hotel began in 2004 with an ambitious plan to make it taller than anything else on the planet. At just over twenty-seven hundred feet, the mission was an astounding success.

  Sean stared at the building. A tremor of fear crept into his chest.

  “You guys been up in the Khalifa?” Hank asked, pointing at the structure in the distance.

  “I was just thinking about that,” Sean said.

  Tommy chuckled. “No way you’ll get him up in that thing, Hank. Sean has a legendary fear of heights.”

  “It’s not legendary.”

  “Fear of heights? But you’re a secret agent. I thought you guys weren’t afraid of anything.”

  “Was a secret agent,” Sean corrected. “Even Superman has his weaknesses.”

  The other two erupted in laughter.

  “Okay, Superman,” Tommy joked.

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Sounded like you were comparing yourself to a superhero,” Hank ribbed.

  Sean sighed and looked back out the window at the desert on the horizon. Such a stark contrast, he thought, between the innumerable wealth and opulent luxury of the city and the vast nothingness beyond its borders.

  “Seriously, though,” Hank said after he managed to quiet his laughter, “you’re working for your friend here?”

  “Yeah,” Sean said. “I quit Axis a while back. Worked for Tommy for a few years, took a little time off from that. Now I’m back on board with IAA.”

  “That IAA is no small operation,” Hank said to Tommy. “Impressive work you guys do. I checked out your website. You’ve got people all over the planet.”

  Tommy blushed. “Pretty much. Uncovering history is a nonstop gig.”

  “I can imagine. So, back to the tablet,” Hank said. “Once we secure the piece you guys have, we’ll meet up with my connection and see what he has for us. Speaking of, how in the world did you convince the Emirates government to let you take that piece you found in the tunnels?”

  Tommy looked over his shoulder at Sean and then over to the driver.

  “Oh no. You didn’t steal it, did you?” Hank asked, suddenly horrified at the consequences. “Surely you guys know better than that.”

  “Relax,” Tommy said. “We have clearance from the government. They’re the ones who called us, remember? We’re to secure the artifact, take it in for study and evaluation. Then we’ll clean it up and bring it back here to Dubai so it can be put on display at one of their museums.”

  Hank let out a breath of relief. “You had me going there for a second. Last thing I’d like to do is have a run-in with the law.”

  “Shocker,” Sean said.

  “Hey, I’ve kept my nose clean since I got here. I’ve got a good thing going, a legitimate business. I sell antiques.”

  “And how did those antiques come to be in your possession?”

  “Bought ’em,” Hank said. “At auction.”

  Sean raised an eyebrow, pressing his friend for more information. He knew Hank wasn’t giving the whole story. It was something Sean picked up about the guy within the first minute or two of meeting him in that Mexican cantina years before.

  “Fine,” Hank relented. “I get most of them at auction. The rest I get from this guy you’ll meet tonight. Don’t worry, you can trust him.”

  Tommy looked puzzled. “We can trust the underground artifact dealer?”

  “I know. I know. It sounds shady.”

  “It is shady,” Sean corrected.

  “Okay, fine. It’s shady, but I’ve been using this guy a long time. He’s got a good eye for fakes, too. He knows when someone is trying to screw him.”

  “That must come in handy when he’s doing business with you.”

  “Ha, ha. All I know is that when I showed him the tablet picture you sent me, he recognized it immediately. The only thing that concerns me is he said the symbols on the right side of your tablet are different than the ones on the left side of his.”

  “That would make sense,” Tommy said. “There are seven symbols in all.” He pulled out his phone and eyed the image of the tablet stored in his device’s camera.

  Seeing the images took him back to the first night he’d found them in his parents’ study. It didn’t matter how many times Tommy looked at it. The result was the same every single time.

  He remembered seeing the stacks of paper, the books, the maps, and the symbols tacked onto the wall, attached by long colorful strings to one symbol in the center, the seventh symbol that represented immortality.

  Tommy had been only nine years old at the time, but that moment made an impression on him. Long after his parents gave up their search for the secret behind the symbols, he kept it in the back of his mind, always watching—listening for a clue that would rise to the surface and shed new light on one of the biggest mysteries in Earth’s history.

  At least he considered it to be one of the biggest.

  Most mainstream history books never mentioned Zerzura. From time to time he’d find a reference to Shangri-La or another famous lost paradise, but information on Zerzura was sparse—less than sparse. It was virtually nonexistent.

  It took him years just to make the connection between the symbols on his parents’ wall and what he believed was a map to the lost city.

  Where his parents failed, Tommy would succeed.

  Part of their problem was that they never narrowed down what all their information pointed to. Zerzura was one of the possibilities, but due to its mythical nature it was among the first hypotheses they eliminated.

  So, when Tommy found the tablet inside the tomb of the priest at Julfar with an inscription mentioning the name Zerzura, he knew the path had just gotten a whole lot clearer.

  He slid the phone back into his pocket and looked out the windshield again. “Once we know what is written on the other half of the tablet,” Tommy said, “we’ll be one huge step closer to finding the lost oasis city and whatever wonders it still may possess.”

  Hank’s eyes grew wider at the possibility, but he said nothing. The other occupants in his SUV were more concerned with the historical value of ancient treasures than the monetary worth. Of course, if he tagged along it was entirely within reason for him to get some kind of reward.

  “Except there’s still one giant problem with all this,” Sean said.

  “And that is?” Hank asked.

  “If there was a lost oasis city somewhere in the Sahara, it would have been found a long time ago. Heck, random nomads would have discovered it, not to mention satellites, aircraft, you name it.”

  “So, you don’t believe it exists?” Hank did his best not to sound too crestfallen.

  “If I didn’t believe it was out there, I’d still be in the States right now. I believe Zerzura was a real place. Too many eyewitness accounts to dispute that. I just think we’re going to have a difficult time locating it since it’s probably buried under three thousand years’ worth of sand.”

  “Have a little faith, buddy,” Tommy said. “If we can find the location, we’ll figure out how to dig it out later.”

  Sean didn’t say anything else. He knew his friend’s motivations. A big part of finding the lost city of Zerzura was to finish a journey his parents began long ago. Tommy wondered openly about the project on numerous occasions, even asking his parents about it from time to time.

  “A quest like that,” his father said, “is a young man’s game. Not to mention I sank a lot of my life into the search for the lost desert city. The time I spent working on that was time I could have spent with you and your mother.”

  Tommy hadn’t brought up the fact that his mom was heavily involved with the project, too. He didn’t need to. He understood what his father was saying.

  That didn’t stop Tommy from trying to finish the job.

  Hank turned off the highway and onto an access road leading toward a large train station to the east. The huge skyscrapers loomed in the distance behind them, giving way to the mor
e modest accommodations on the outskirts of town. Rising just above the apartments, businesses, and houses in the industrial district was the Jebel Ali train station just to the north.

  The station looked like some kind of giant space ship, birthing two railroad tracks out from either end. While it was the last stop on the line, expansion was always on the table with the Dubai city planners, though their focus was on creating three new railways before extending the current ones.

  The golden glass dome stretched from the ground on one side all the way over to the other, overlaying on a pattern of regular glass windows arching directly over the tracks.

  “I’ll say this about Dubai,” Hank said, “they don’t do anything halfway. When they set out to build something, they really go after it.”

  “You can say that again,” Tommy said as he admired the train station through his window.

  Hank weaved his way through traffic, stopping several times for red lights. Finally, after navigating the stop-and-go mayhem, they reached the station. Hank pulled the car into an empty spot a hundred feet from the station entrance. There were dozens of empty parking spots to choose from since the last stop on the line was usually the least busy.

  Sean stepped out of the vehicle and immediately began assessing their surroundings. The parking lot was flat and fairly open. Lots of places for a gunman to take a position behind one of the other cars. From his initial reconnaissance, he didn’t see anything like that. Still, best to keep his eyes peeled.

  He’d also kept a close watch on the road behind them as they left the desert and returned into the city. They hadn’t been followed, of that Sean was certain. If they did have a tail, the pursuers were using something other than line of sight to keep up. Doubtful since that would mean they’d have anticipated everything that happened with Hank coming to the rescue.

  No way Dufort was thinking that far ahead.

  In Sean’s limited encounters with the man, he’d learned that Dufort wasn’t anything if he wasn’t confident. The Frenchman had slipped through Sean’s fingers in Morocco. Before that, he’d narrowly escaped by sheer luck from the basement of a castle in Denmark.

  Now he was back and, apparently, trying to make a play for the Zerzura Tablet.