throat.
'Zoe doesn't wear a burqa,' Lily said.
Several members of the team were eating nearby at the time: Zoe, Epper and West. Smiling, Zoe looked expectantly at Saladin, waiting for his answer.
'Well, no, she doesn't, because she is not a Muslim.'
'But you can see her head, right?' Lily asked.
'Yes...'
'Which means, according to Islam, you mustn't respect her.'
Saladin blushed bright pink. 'Well, no ... I do respect Miss Zoe. Very much.'
'Then why do Muslim women wear these burqa things?'
Saladin was helpless.
It was Zoe who saved him. 'Not all men are as gentlemanly as Aziz, Lily. They can't control their urges as well as he can.'
'Urges?' Lily asked, zeroing in on the new word.
Zoe said, 'And
All this time, a sheet of paper hung in the kitchen, attached by a magnet to the refrigerator—on it were seven boxes, filled with a strange kind of writing, reproductions of the seven main verses in the Callimachus Text. It looked like this:
It was positioned so that Lily saw it every day when she went to get her morning juice. When she asked what it said, Doris Epper answered: 'We don't know. We're hoping that one day you'll be able to tell us.'
When she hit five years of age, Max Epper took charge of her schooling, teaching her maths, science, ancient history and languages—with an emphasis on Latin, Greek and cuneiform.
It turned out she had a singular aptitude for languages, learning them quickly and fluidly—with almost unnatural ease.
By age 7, she had mastered Latin and Greek.
By 8, she was deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.
By 9, she had outstripped Epper in his knowledge of cuneiform— translating all three of the ancient languages from the Bisitun Monument.
Not to mention the modern languages she was learning just by speaking with her multinational guardians. She particularly loved the difficult Gaelic tongue spoken by her Irish protectors, Zoe and Liam Kissane.
Epper was a wonderful teacher.
Lily just adored him—loved his wise old face, his kind blue eyes, and the gentle yet clever way he taught.
And so she renamed him
Every day, she would race to his schoolroom in the east wing of the farmhouse to learn new and interesting things.
Poems like 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' were acted out with verve and energy.
Simple arithmetic was illustrated with farming examples.
And science was a blast—literally. For Wizard had all manner of crazy home-made inventions in his workshop at the farm. Gadgets
and tools that emerged from his dabblings in electromagnetism and foam epoxies.
He once told Lily that a long time ago he had worked at a laboratory called Sandia in the United States, and that it was a secret place where they made secret things.
She liked that. Secret things.
She got along with the team members in different ways.
Although she wasn't a very girly girl, Zoe taught Lily some necessary girly things—like brushing her hair, filing her nails and how to make boys do her bidding.
Matador, the Spanish trooper, spent a lot of time in the gym they'd set up in the smaller barn. At first he let Lily watch him work out. Then, as she grew bigger, he let her sit on one end of a plank of wood while he bench- pressed it, balancing her mass with lead weights at the other end, lifting her high into the air. She loved that.
Witch Doctor, the Jamaican commando, taught her how to tread in silence—they would terrorise Doris Epper, sneaking up on her when she dozed on the veranda in the afternoon Sun.
But the soldier she bonded with most was Zoe's brother, Liam, call-sign Gunman.
Gunman was a big guy, broad and tall, easily six-foot-three— with a wide honest face, a fully-shaven head, and large jug ears.
He wasn't all that smart, but he was a great commando.
With Lily, though, he just clicked—perhaps because they were of an equal intelligence level, even though he was 24 and she was just a kid.
They watched movies and read books together.
They played the video game Splinter Cell endlessly in dual-player mode—killing baddies left, right and centre, co-ordinating their moves with loud shouts and commands. They actually made a good team, winning the inaugural 'Victoria Station Dual-Player Splinter Cell Competition', defeating Wizard and Zoe in a hard-fought final.
They went on adventures around the station—including one visit to a giant hangar concealed in the western hills of the property, inside which they found the towering
Lily gazed in awe at the great 747, and felt a thrill of excitement when she walked up to it, touched it and read a peculiar inscription on its underbelly: 'PRESIDENT ONE—AIR FORCE OF IRAQ'.
But most of all, no-one would ever forget the famous tea party held on the front lawn one summer, with Mister Bear, Little Dog, Big Dog, Barbie, Lily and Gunman—huge Gunman, all 6 feet of him, hunched over on a tiny plastic chair, sipping from a plastic teacup, allowing Lily to pour him another cup of imaginary tea.
Everyone in the team saw it—watching from inside the farmhouse, alerted by a whisper from Doris. The thing was, no-one ever—
This was unusual.
They were soldiers. They could and did make fun of each other on a regular basis, but for some reason, Gunman's relationship with Lily was off-limits.
Well, except for the time he and Lily broke into Aziz's workshop in the big barn, took a plasticine-like substance from his lock-box and used it to blow up Barbie's campervan.
Both Gunman and Lily copped hell for that.
And so, gradually, the team became a family—a family centred around the protection and nurturing of one little girl.
Of course, Lily loved the attention—like when she discovered ballet and put on a one-girl show to a cheering audience of seven commandos and two grandparent-like figures.
And still every day, when she appeared in the kitchen for breakfast, whoever happened to be there at the time would turn to see if she noticed the sheet of paper magnetised to the fridge.
But then one day, when she was seven, there was a commotion.
As the team was eating breakfast, a radio squawked:
Everyone leapt up, alarmed at the presence of an outsider, worried that other nations might know of their mission.
The intruder turned out to be a lone man—tall and thin, with a sanguine face—walking casually down the dirt road from the main gate.
Three hidden guns were trained on him as he rang the doorbell.
Wizard answered the door. 'Can I help you, young man?'
'Indeed you can, Professor Epper,' the thin man said. He had a dry pale face, with high cheekbones and deep hollow eye sockets.
Wizard blanched, did a double-take.
The intruder's grey eyes never blinked. He knew that he had just chilled Wizard to the very bone.
'Professor Max T Epper,' he said, 'Professor of Archaeology at Trinity College, Dublin, and the representative of Canada on a secret eight-nation task force protecting the daughter of the Oracle of Siwa, with a view to obtaining the lost Capstone of the Great Pyramid. My name is Lieutenant Benjamin Cohen, call-sign
