Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

That W… O hadn’t fooled him for a moment. W knew he was feeling down. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen. They had gone through a lot together. He was a good comrade. As clumsy as his efforts were, he was attempting to cheer him up.

O stretched out the length of his body on the sand. They were in a hollow area at the foot of a rock formation. The cave, which was at its base, was only about one hundred feet square. O was the one who had found it three months earlier, when he was planning the operation. There was hardly enough room for them all, but even if the cave had been a hundred times bigger, O would have preferred being outside. He felt trapped in that noisy hole, attacked by the snores and farting of his brothers.

‘I think I’ll stay out here a while longer. I like the cold.’

‘Are you waiting for Huqan’s signal?’

‘It’ll be a while before that comes. The infidels haven’t found anything yet.’

‘I hope they hurry up. I’m tired of being holed up, eating out of tins and pissing into a can.’

O didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the breeze on his skin. Waiting was fine with him.

‘Why are we sitting around here doing nothing? We’re well-armed. I say we go in there and kill them all,’ W insisted.

‘We’ll follow Huqan’s orders.’

‘Huqan takes too many chances.’

‘I know. But he’s clever. He told me a story. Do you know how a bushman finds water in the Kalahari when he’s far from home? He finds a monkey and watches it all day. He can’t let the monkey see him or the game’s over. If the bushman is patient, the monkey ends up showing him where to find water. A crack in the rock, a little pool… places a bushman would never have found.’

‘And what does he do then?’

‘He drinks the water and eats the monkey.’

33

THE EXCAVATION

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

Friday, 14 July 2006. 01:18 a.m.

Stowe Erling nibbled nervously on his ballpoint pen and cursed Professor Forrester with all his might. It wasn’t his fault that the data from one of the quadrants hadn’t gone where it was supposed to. He had been busy enough putting up with the complaints of their indentured prospectors as he helped them into and out of their harnesses, changed the batteries on their equipment, and made sure that nobody went over the same quadrant twice.

Of course, no one was there to help him put on his harness now. And it wasn’t as if the operation was easy in the middle of the night, with only the light from a camping gas lantern. Forrester didn’t give a damn about anybody – anybody except himself, that is. The moment he had found an anomaly in the data, after supper, he had ordered Stowe to do a new analysis of quadrant 22K.

In vain Stowe had asked – almost begged – Forrester to let him do it the following day. If the data from all the quadrants wasn’t linked, the program wouldn’t function.

Fucking Pappas. Isn’t he supposedly the world’s leading archaeological topographer? A qualified software designer, right? Shit is what he is. He should never have left Greece. Fuck! I bust myself kissing the old man’s ass so he’d let me prepare the headings for the magnetometer codes, and he ends up giving them to Pappas. Two years, two whole years researching references for Forrester, correcting his childish errors, buying his medicine, emptying his trash can full of infected bloody tissues. Two years, and he treats me like this.

Fortunately, Stowe had finished the complicated series of movements and the magnetometer was now on his shoulders and working. He picked up the lantern and placed it halfway up the incline. Quadrant 22K covered part of a sandy slope near the knuckle of the index finger of the canyon.

The ground here was different, unlike the spongy pink surface at the base of the canyon or the baked rock that covered the rest of the area. The sand was darker and the slope itself had a gradient of around 14 per cent. As he walked, the sand shifted as though an animal were moving under his boots. Stowe had to hold on tightly to the straps of the magnetometer as he made his way up the incline in order to keep the instrument balanced.

As he leaned over to place the lantern on the ground, his right hand grazed a splinter of iron protruding from the frame. It drew blood.

‘Ouch – shit!’

Sucking on the cut, he began moving with the instrument over the terrain in that slow annoying rhythm.

He’s not even American. Not even a Jew, dammit. He’s a lousy fucking Greek immigrant. Greek Orthodox before he started working for the professor. He only converted to Judaism after three months with us. A fast-track conversion – very convenient. I’m so tired. Why am I doing this? I hope we find the Ark. Then History departments will fight over me and I’ll be able to find a tenured position. The old man’s not going to last much longer – probably just enough to steal all the credit. But in three or four years they’ll talk about his team. About me. I wish his rotten lungs would just burst in the next few hours. I wonder who Kayn would put at the head of the expedition then? It wouldn’t be Pappas. If he craps in his pants each time the professor even looks at him, imagine what he’ll do if he sees Kayn. No, they’d need someone stronger, someone with charisma. I wonder what Kayn is really like. They say he’s very sick. But then why did he come all the way out here?

Stowe stopped in his tracks, halfway up the incline and facing the canyon wall. He thought he had heard footsteps, but that was impossible. He looked back at the camp. Everything was still.

Of course. The only one not in bed is me. Well, except for the guards, but they’re bundled up and probably snoring. Who are they going to protect us from? It’d be better if-

The young man stopped again. He had heard something and this time he knew he hadn’t imagined it. He cocked his head in an attempt to hear better, but the annoying whistle went off once more. Stowe felt for the instrument’s switch and quickly pressed it once. That way he could turn off the whistle without turning off the instrument (which would set off an alarm on Forrester’s computer), something a dozen people would have given an arm and a leg to have known yesterday.

It must be a couple of the soldiers changing shifts. Come on, you’re a little too old to be afraid of the dark.

He turned off the instrument and began making his way downhill. Now that he’d thought about it, it would be better if he went back to bed. If Forrester wanted to be pissed off, then that was his business. He’d start first thing in the morning, skipping breakfast.

That’s it. I’ll get up before the old man, when there’s more light.

He smiled, chiding himself for being alarmed over nothing. Now he could finally go to bed, which was all he needed. If he hurried, he’d be able to get three hours’ sleep.

Suddenly something was pulling on the harness. Stowe leaned back waving his arms in the air to keep his balance. But just when he thought he was going to fall, he felt someone grab him.

The young man did not feel the point of the knife puncturing the bottom of his spinal column. The hand that had grabbed his harness pulled harder. Stowe suddenly remembered his childhood