Seven Ancient Wonders

one. 'The life-givers' is the name the Mesopotamians gave to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This must be a reference to the point where they meet.'

'Baghdad?' Pooh Bear asked. 'It stands at a point of convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates. Isn't it the site of ancient Babylon?'

'Actually, no,' West said. 'Babylon lies underneath the modern-day town of Hilla, to the south of Baghdad. And your theory doesn't strictly obey the verse. The two rivers bend very close to each other at Baghdad, but they don't become one there. They actually come together much further south, at the town of Qurna. There they become one big super-river—the Shatt al-Arab—which flows south through Basra before draining into the Persian Gulf.'

Stretch said sourly: 'I can't believe the Americans haven't found the Gardens already. They must have over 150,000 troops in Iraq right now. They could easily have sent huge forces of men to check out every waterfall in the Zagros Mountains due east of Baghdad, Hilla and Qurna by now.'

West paused, an idea forming in his mind. 'Unless . . .'

'What?'

'The modern town of Hilla does indeed stand on the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon,' he said. 'But now that I look at it closely, our verse does not refer to 'Babylon' at all. It mentions the Hanging Paradise of Old Babylonia. Old Babylon.'

'Meaning?' Pooh Bear asked.

'Consider this,' West said. 'New York. New England. New Orleans. Today, many cities and regions are named in memory of older places. In some ancient texts, Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon is actually referred to as New Babylon. What if the Gardens were never in New Babylon, but were, rather, built in an older city also named 'Babylon', but built far from the newer city that adopted its name. The original Babylon.'

'It would explain why Alexander the Great's biographers never mentioned the Gardens when he passed through Babylon and why no-one has found them near Hilla,' Stretch said. 'They would only have seen New Babylon, not Old Babylon.'

'Two Babylons. Two cities.' Zaeed stroked his sharply-pointed chin. 'This is a good theory . . .'

Then suddenly his eyes lit up. 'Of course! Of course! Why didn't I think of it before?'

'What?'

Zaeed dashed to his trunk and scrounged among the notebooks

there.

As he did so, he spoke quickly, excitedly. 'If I may take Captain West's theory one step further. Modern logic assumes that the Tigris and the Euphrates follow the same courses today that they followed back in 570 BC. They flow down from Turkey, through Iraq, before joining at Qurna in the southern marshlands.

'Now consider this. Mesopotamia is the birthplace of all flood myths. Why, the tale of Noah and his Ark is but a flimsy retelling of the story of Zisudra and his animal-carrying boat. Why is this so? Because Iraq's flood myths stem from very real floods: of the Persian Gulf breaking its banks and flooding far inland, ripping apart eroded land formations and, on occasion, diverting the courses of the two great rivers of the region, the Tigris and Euphrates. A Westerner named Graham Hancock has written about this very convincingly in a marvellous book called Underworld. Ah-ha! Here it is!'

He produced a battered book, opened it to a page containing a map of Iraq. Prominent on the map were the two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, that joined in a V shape in the south of the country:

Zaeed had scribbled the locations of Hilla, Qurna and Basra on the map.

He explained. 'Now. As we continue to do today, people back in ancient times built their towns on the banks of the two great rivers. But when the rivers diverted onto new courses due to flooding, it follows that those same people would have abandoned the old towns and built new ones, the ones we see on the banks of the rivers today.

'Many years ago, in my search for lost documents relating to the Hanging Gardens, I mapped the locations of abandoned towns, towns that were once situated on the banks of the rivers, but which, once the rivers diverted, were simply deserted. From these locations, I was able to reconstruct the former courses of the two rivers.'

'So where did they converge back then?' West asked.

Zaeed grinned. 'See, that was what I did not know—that their point of convergence was the all-important factor.'

With a flourish, Zaeed then flipped the page to reveal a second map of Iraq, only on this map, an additional dotted V had been drawn directly beneath the present-day one:

Zaeed pointed at this new river junction—it lay south of Qurna, roughly halfway between it and Basra.

'The rivers,' Zaeed said, 'used to meet here, at the town of Haritha.'

The Halicarnassus shot into Iraq, heading for the southern village-town of Haritha.

As it did so, everyone prepared for their arrival—prepping guns, maps, helmets and tunnel gear.

Alone in his office, with Horus perched on his chair-back, West kept one eye on a laptop computer that Wizard had set up soon after their mission in Tunisia had gone to hell.

It was the microwave communications net he had instructed Wizard to create, to scan for any signals emanating from, or coming to, the Halicarnassus.

As they crossed the border into Iraq, the laptop pinged.

Someone on board the plane had sent out a homing signal.

HARITHA, IRAQ

19 MARCH, 2006, 0900 HOURS

1 DAY BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS

To get to Haritha, the Halicarnassus had to skirt the port-city, Basra.

As it soared over the outskirts of Basra, Sky Monster's voice came over the PA. ''Hey, Captain West, you better come up here and see this.'

West went up to the cockpit and peered out the windows.

A long column of heavy-duty vehicles was rumbling out of Basra, heading north toward Haritha.

It was a gigantic convoy. Of American military vehicles.

Troop trucks, engineering vehicles, Humvees, jeeps, motorbikes, plus no fewer than ten Abrams battle tanks and several Black Hawk helicopters, prowling overhead.

In all, it amounted to maybe 5,000 troops.

'How can this be?' Zaeed asked, appearing behind West with Pooh Bear.

'How can they be onto us again?' Pooh Bear asked.

West just stared at the convoy, trying not to betray his thoughts: Who gave us away?

'Oh, shit!' Sky Monster exclaimed, hearing something through his headphones. 'The Yanks just scrambled fighters from Nasiryah. F-15s. We better find this place fast, Huntsman.'

A few minutes later, they arrived above the dusty town of Haritha, situated on the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arab River about fifty kilometres north of Basra.

'Okay, Sky Monster, swing us due east,' West said.

Sky Monster banked the Halicarnassus above the town, but as he did so, he and West glimpsed the highway coming from the north, from Qurna—

—and on that highway, they saw another column of American

vehicles.

It was almost identical to the first—lots of troop trucks, Humvees and tanks; and another 5,000 men, at the very least.

West's mind raced.

'Judah must have had people at Qurna, searching for the waterfalls,' he said. 'But Qurna is the wrong junction of the rivers. He was searching too far to the north.'