‘Well, yes.’
The monsignor stood from the table. He eyed Hazo’s crucifix again. ‘As you wish. Come. I will show you.’ He rounded the table and set off down the aisle.
19
BOSTON
The Concorde’s frigid engine turned over with a grinding cough. The interior was so cold that Thomas Flaherty’s breath crystallized the instant it came into contact with the windshield. He clicked on the defrosters, blew into his hands a couple times, then grabbed his trusty scraper off the floor.
Hopping out, he cursed the Boston winter a few more times while he swept snow and wet ice off the windows. It took him another three gruelling minutes to chip away at the stubborn ice encrusted on the windshield’s wiper blades. Back inside, the artic freeze had barely budged, so he gave the accelerator a few pumps to warm up the engine and speed things along. He blew in his hands again before burying them in his armpits for a long minute.
Once his fingers had thawed to an itchy tingle, he took out his BlackBerry and started thumbing his preliminary findings into a secure e-mail message addressed to his boss, with a CC to Jason Yaeger.
Jason Yaeger. They’d met during orientation at Global Security Corporation only two years ago. That high school valedictorian from Alpine, New Jersey, was meant to teach some arcane history course at an Ivy League university or find a cure for cancer - not scour the Middle East for terrorists. But Jason Yaeger was out for vengeance. In his eyes, that hard determination glimmered like a razor’s edge. To lose a brother the way he had …
Composing the e-mail helped Flaherty formalize his initial assessments: Professor Brooke Thompson had been forthright in answering questions about her involvement in an excavation that had taken place in northern Iraq in 2003; though Ms Thompson was unwilling to breach her confidentiality agreement about the findings in aforementioned project, the nature of her involvement seemed consistent with her expertise in deciphering ancient languages; and though her back-story would require verification, he would not consider her a flight risk should further inquiries be warranted. Flaherty did, however, emphasize that the excavation’s implied covert coordination by the US military merited further investigation.
He fixed a couple typos, then sent the report off into space.
A more comprehensive summary would be required. That would happen tonight, on his laptop, at Doyle’s Cafe over a pint of Guinness and an order of steak tips, with the Celtics hoopin’ it up on the big screen. And all the snow in the world wasn’t going to put the kibosh on that.
He pocketed the BlackBerry and put the car in drive. The mounting snow constricted the street, making a U- turn impractical. So he continued straight on Museum Road and made a right at the T intersection. As he started along The Fenway, a splash of happy pastel colours set against the dreary grey museum edifice caught his eye. He glanced over to the steps leading up to the columned portico overhanging the building’s north entrance. Immediately he recognized the puffy sky-blue ski jacket, pink wool cap and rainbow-striped scarf that had been hanging on the back of Brooke Thompson’s chair.
Oh yeah, she’s definitely from Florida, he smiled.
The sidewalks had yet to be shovelled and she was having a tough time getting the wheels of her rolling attache case to spin. The snow won, and she settled for dragging the case over the fresh powder. En route to her car, he guessed.
Luckily, she didn’t spot him cruising by, because he certainly didn’t want to come off as a stalker.
As Flaherty continued slowly along the slippery roadway, he noticed the north door open a second time. Out came another familiar face: the nosy guy with the Dumbo ears from the cafe. The guy’s beady eyes immediately went to Brooke Thompson, scanned the area, then snapped back to Brooke Thompson. They were the leering eyes of a
Bundled warmly and revelling in the beauty of the fresh snowfall that blanketed the Fens, Brooke Thompson plodded through the snow while towing her attache case like a dog pulling a dogsled.
To her right, she noticed that the reflecting pools had frozen over and the snow now reached up to the nose of Antonio Lopez Garcia’s monumental bronze doll’s head, crowned with a dollop of pristine snow. If there was artful expression in plopping a huge head on to the museum’s lawn, the message was lost on her. Seeing it today did manage, nonetheless, to evoke a deep response - it jogged memories about the etchings Brooke had studied in that Iraqi cave, which included a graphic retelling of a woman’s beheading. Those images, though masterfully crafted, were not intended to illicit artistic appreciation. They were meant to convey a warning.
Maybe if Brooke had been allowed to decipher the entirety of the story chronicled on those walls, she’d know it completely. And she was certain that it was there, deeper in the cave’s recesses. During the excavation she’d been told that other writings and images had been discovered in the protected areas for which she lacked proper clearance. Perhaps if she hadn’t been able to crack the language using only the writings found in the cave’s entry tunnel, they’d have let her examine those other finds.
She had figured out enough of the story to know that whoever the beheaded woman had been, the devastation that followed her into that ancient Mesopotamian settlement was of a grand scale. And those ancient storytellers had attributed all of it to her.
During the dig, one of the commissioned archaeologists had come outside the cave entrance to get a clear satellite signal for a phone call. She’d overheard his conversation concerning some carbon-dating results. Though he’d not specified the types of organic specimens that had been dated, she’d guessed at some traces of food, flowers, or maybe bone. Certainly plausible since the famous Shanidar cave, also in Iraq’s Zagros Mountains, had yielded ten Neanderthal skeletons, as well as decayed flowers used during their ritual burial.
The archaeologist had specifically mentioned ‘a tight confidence interval around 4004 BC’. In the context of Iraq, this date was impossible for Brooke to forget since a seventeenth-century Irish archbishop named James Ussher had meticulously reconstructed the chronology of biblical events to come up with a very precise date for Creation: Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC. And like most theologian scholars, Ussher placed Eden’s locale in ancient Iraq, land of the four rivers mentioned in Genesis 2 - the Tigris and Euphrates, plus the long-ago dried-up Pishon and Gihon.
What could they have found inside the cave that could be so important … and so ancient?
The secrecy of the excavation never sat well with her, particularly since nothing she’d witnessed there had ever surfaced in academic journals. And being that that cave was easily the most important archaeological discovery of the last hundred years, such a withholding seemed downright criminal. Who was really behind the dig? And why had the operation been conducted by the US military so soon after the invasion of Iraq?
It wasn’t all that uncommon for benefactors sponsoring excavations to remain aloof. But recalling the extensive background check she’d gone through with the facilitator known only as ‘Frank’, now she couldn’t help but think she might have taken part in something nefarious. And this Agent Flaherty who’d just bought her tea and quizzed her on stuff
She continued past the museum and clambered over a dirty snow berm that lined the kerb along Forsyth Way. Across the street, the only car that remained was her Gumby-green Toyota Corolla. Thanks to a snow plough the car had practically been buried beneath ice and snow.
‘Great,’ she mumbled, making her way across the slushy street. Luckily, by now she’d learned to keep a shovel in her trunk for just such occasions.
Pulling out her car keys, she went to the rear of the car and tried working the key into the frozen trunk lock. But since she’d refused to take off her mittens, she fumbled the keys and they plopped into the snow. When she dipped down to fish them out, she heard a small popping sound. Something whisked overhead an instant before the lamppost behind her let out a resounding clang.
Startled, she spun to look at the post. She remained in a low crouch. ‘What the hell …?’
Another small pop sounded and something thwacked into the Corolla’s rear quarter panel, hit the inside of the trunk, and dimpled the sheet metal outward right in front of her face. She screamed and tumbled back into the snow.
That was when she realized that somebody was shooting at her.
