Sandstorm (29 page)

Still, in the past, frankincense was the true treasure of the country, surpassing even gold. Trade in the precious incense fueled Omani commerce, drove its seafaring dhows to as far north as Jordan and Turkey and as far west as Africa. But it was the overland route, the Incense Road, that became the true stuff of legend. Ancient ruins dotted its course, cryptic and mysterious, their histories mingled with the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The most famous was Ubar, the thousand-pillared city, founded by the descendants of Noah, a city that grew rich through the pivotal role it played as a major watering hole for caravans passing through the desert.

Now, millennia later, Ubar had become the focus of power again. Blood had been shed to discover its secret, to expose its heart.

Safia had to resist glancing over her shoulder to the silver case in back. The iron heart had come from Salalah, a bread crumb left behind, a trail marker to the true wealth of Ubar.

Antimatter.

Could it be possible?

Their Mitsubishi slowed and turned down an unpaved side street. They passed a line of roadside stands, sheltered under palm trees, selling dates, coconuts, and grapes. Their truck idled slowly past. Safia considered jumping for it, fleeing away. But she’d been buckled in place. Any move toward the belt’s release and she’d be stopped.

And then there were the trailing vehicles, full of armed men. One truck made the turn behind them, the other continued, perhaps circling around to cordon off the other end of the alley. Safia wondered at such extra measures. Kane and Cassandra seemed more than enough to handle the prisoner. Safia knew there was no escape.

It would be her death to attempt it.

A surge of fiery heat, a long-suppressed anger, burned through her. She would not sacrifice herself needlessly. She would play their game but wait for her chance. She glanced sidelong at Cassandra. She would have her revenge…for her friends, for herself. This thought sustained her as their truck pulled to a stop outside a set of wrought-iron gates.

The entrance to the tomb of Nabi Imran.

“Don’t try anything,” Cassandra warned, as if reading her mind.

John Kane spoke to a gate attendant, half leaning out the window. A few Omani rials passed hands. The gate guard pressed a button, and the gate swung open, allowing the vehicle to pass inside. Kane pulled in slowly and parked.

The other truck took a position by the roadside stands.

Kane hopped out and came back to open her door. It could be taken as a chivalrous act in any normal circumstance. At the present time it was merely a precaution. He offered a hand to help her out.

Safia refused, climbing free herself.

Cassandra came around the back of the truck. She carried the silver case. “What now?”

Safia searched around her. Where to begin?

They stood in the middle of a flagstone courtyard, walled and bordered by small orderly gardens. Across the courtyard, a small mosque rose. Its whitewashed minaret climbed blindingly into the midday glare, topped by a brownish gold dome. A small circular balcony at the top marked the place for the muezzin to sing the
adhan,
the Muslim call to prayer, five times a day.

Safia offered her own prayer. Silence was her only answer, but it still gave her comfort. Within the courtyard, the sounds of the surrounding town were muted, hushed, as if the very air had stilled at the holiness of the shrine. A few worshipers moved discreetly through the grounds, respectful
of the burial tomb that stretched along one side: a long, low building, framed in arches, painted white, trimmed in green. Within the building stood the gravesite of Nabi Imran, the father of the Virgin Mary.

Cassandra stepped in front of her. The woman’s impatience, her pent-up energy, stirred the air, leaving a wake behind her that was almost palpable. “So where do we begin?”

“At the beginning,” Safia mumbled, and strode forward. They needed her. Though a prisoner, she would not be rushed. Knowledge was her shield.

Cassandra strode after her.

Safia walked toward the entrance to the burial sanctuary. A robed man, one of the tomb’s attendants, strode out to meet their party.

“Salam alaikum,”
he greeted.

“Alaikum as salam,”
Safia responded.

“As fa,”
he apologized, and pointed to his head. “Women are not allowed into the tomb with their hair uncovered.” He pulled free a pair of green scarves.

“Shuk ran.”
Safia thanked him and quickly donned the apparel. Her fingers moved with a skill she long thought lost. She found not a small degree of satisfaction when the man had to help Cassandra.

The caretaker stepped away. “Peace be with you,” he offered as he retreated to the shaded gallery, back to his post.

“We’ll have to take off our shoes and sandals, too,” Safia said, nodding to the row of abandoned footwear outside the door.

Soon barefoot, they entered the tomb.

The sanctuary was simply one long hall, encompassing the length of the building. At one end was a raised brown marble headstone the size of a small altar. Incense burned atop the marble in a pair of matching bronze braziers, giving the room a medicinal scent. But it was the grave below the headstone that captured the immediate attention. Down the middle of the hall stretched a thirty-meter-long sepulcher, raised a half meter above the floor and draped in a rainbow of cloths imprinted with phrases from the Koran. Flanking the grave, the floor was draped with prayer rugs.

“That’s a big grave,” Kane said softly.

A single worshiper rose from his rug, glanced at the newcomers, and silently exited the room. They had the space to themselves.

Safia paced the thirty-meter length of the shrouded tomb. It was said that if you measured the length along one side of the sepulcher, you’d never get the same measurement on the other. She had never tested this bit of folklore.

Cassandra followed at her shoulder, gazing around. “What do you know about this place?”

Safia shrugged as she circled the end of the tomb and began the return journey toward the marble headstone. “The tomb has been revered since the Middle Ages, but all these trappings…” She waved her hand to encompass the vault and courtyard. “All of this is relatively new.”

Safia strode forward to the marble headstone. She placed a hand on its surface. “This was the spot where Reginald Kensington excavated the sandstone statue that hid the iron heart. Some forty years ago.”

Cassandra stepped forward with the small case. She circled the stone altar. The floating snakes of incense from the pair of braziers stirred in her passage, an angry, writhing motion.

Kane spoke up. “So the Virgin Mary’s father is really buried here?”

“There’s some controversy surrounding that claim.”

Cassandra glanced at her. “How so?”

“Most major Christian groups—Catholics, Byzantines, Nestorians, Jacobites—believe Mary’s father was a man named Joachim. But this is contested. The Koran claims she descended from a highly respected family, that of Imran. As does the Jewish faith. According to their stories, Imran and his wife desired a child, but his wife was barren. Imran prayed for a male child, one whom he would dedicate to the temple in Jerusalem. His prayer was answered, his wife became pregnant—but with a
female
child. Mary. Joyous still, her parents devoted her to live a life of piety in honor of God’s miracle.”

“Until she got knocked up by an angel.”

“Yes, that’s when things get sticky between the religions.”

“What about the statue, the one at the head of the grave?” Cassandra asked, drawing the conversation back to their goal. “Why was it placed here?”

Safia stood before the marble headstone and pondered the same question herself, as she had on the whole journey from London. Why would someone place a clue to Ubar in a place tied to the Virgin Mary, a figure revered by all three religious faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? Was it because they knew the site would be protected throughout the ages? Each religion had an interest in preserving the tomb. No one could’ve anticipated Reginald Kensington excavating the statue and adding it to his collection back in England.

But who originally brought the statue to the shrine and why? Was it because Salalah marked the beginning of the Incense Road? Was the
statue the first signpost, the first trail marker leading into the heart of Arabia?

Safia’s mind spun with various scenarios: the age of the statue, the mysteries surrounding the tomb, the multifaith veneration of the site.

She turned to Cassandra. “I need to see the heart.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re right. The statue must’ve been placed here for a reason.”

Cassandra stared at her for a long moment, then knelt atop one of the prayer rugs, snapped open the case. The iron heart shone dully within its black rubberized cushioning.

Safia joined her and lifted the heart free. Again she was surprised by its weight. It felt too dense for plain iron. As she stood, she felt the vague sloshing from within, heavy, as if some molten lead filled the heart’s iron chambers.

She carried it over to the marble altar. “The statue was said to be propped up here.” As she swung around, a few bits of frankincense dribbled from the end of one of the heart’s vessels and scattered like salt atop the marble altar.

Safia held the heart up to her own chest, positioning it anatomically—ventricles down, the aortic arch passing on the left—as it would lie in her own body. She stood above the long narrow tomb and pictured the museum statue before the explosion had blasted it apart.

It had stood almost seven feet, a draped figure, wearing a headdress and face scarf, typical of the bedouin today. The figure had borne aloft a long funerary incense burner, on the shoulder, as if aiming a rifle.

Safia stared down at the grains of ancient frankincense. Was the same incense once burned here? She cradled the fist of cold iron in the crook of one arm, and picked up a few crystalline grains and tossed them in a neighboring brazier, sending up a prayer for her friends. They sizzled and gave off a fresh whiff of sweetness to the air.

Closing her eyes, she inhaled. The air was redolent with frankincense. The scent of the ancient past. As she breathed, she traveled back in time, to before the birth of Christ.

She pictured the long-dead frankincense tree that produced this incense. A scraggly, scrubby tree with tiny gray-green leaves. She imagined the ancients who harvested the sap. They were a reclusive tribe in the mountains, so isolated and old that their language predated modern Arabian. Only a handful of tribesmen still survived in isolation up in their
mountains, eking out a meager living. She heard their language in her head, a singsong sibilance that was compared to birdsong. These people, the Shahra, claimed to be the last surviving descendants of Ubar, tracing their lineage to its founding fathers.

Had such a people harvested this incense themselves?

As she drew the past into her with each breath, she felt herself swoon, the room spinning beneath her. Momentarily unable to discern up from down, she caught herself on the edge of the altar, her knees losing strength.

John Kane grabbed her elbow, the elbow cradling the heart.

It bobbled in her grip…and fell.

The heart struck the altar with a dull clank and rolled across the slick marble, spinning on its iron surface, slightly wobbly, as if whatever liquid was inside had thrown it off balance.

Cassandra lunged for it.

“No!” Safia warned. “Leave it be!”

The heart spun a final time and came to rest. As it settled, it seemed to rock and swing slightly contrary, then stopped completely.

“Don’t touch it.” Safia knelt down, eyes even with the edge of the altar stone. The incense cloyed the air.

The heart rested in the exact position she had been holding it a moment before: ventricles down, aortic arch up and to the left.

Safia stood. She adjusted her body to match the position of the heart, again as if it were residing in her own chest. Once in position, she corrected the placement of her feet and lifted her arms, pretending to hold an invisible rifle in her hands—or a funerary incense burner.

Frozen in the pose of the ancient statue, Safia sighted down the length of her raised arm. It pointed straight along the long axis of the tomb, perfectly aligned. Safia lowered her arms and stared at the iron heart.

What were the odds that the heart would by pure chance settle into this exact position? She remembered the sloshing inside the heart, pictured its jittery spin, its final wobble at the end.

Like a compass.

She stared down the long length of tomb, raising her arm to sight along it. Her gaze traveled past the walls, out over the city, and beyond. Away from the coast. Out toward the distant green mountains.

Then she knew.

She had to be sure. “I need a map.”

“Why?” Cassandra asked.

“Because I know where we have to go next.”

DECEMBER 3, 3:02 P.M.
SALALAH

O
MAHA, HALF
drowsing in the truck’s bed, felt the telltale rattle under the seat of his pants.
Damn it…
The vibration in the flatbed grew worse, jarring. Those who had been dozing, heads lolling in the heat, glanced up, faces creased with strained worry.

From the front of the truck, the engine coughed a final time and died with a sighing gasp of smoke. Black clouds billowed over the truck, issuing from under the hood. A reek of burned oil accompanied it. The flatbed coasted to the side of the road, bumped into the sandy shoulder, and braked to a stop.

“End of the line,” Omaha said.

The Arabian stallion stamped a hoof in protest.

You and me both, Omaha thought. He stood along with the others, dusted off his cloak, and crossed to the drop gate. He yanked the release. The gate fell away and crashed with a clatter into the sand.

They all clambered down as Captain al-Haffi and his two men, Barak and Sharif, vacated the cab. Smoke still billowed, smudging into the sky.

“Where are we?” Kara asked, shielding her eyes and staring down the winding road. To either side, sugarcane fields climbed in swaths of dense fronds, obscuring distances. “How far are we from Salalah?”

“No more than a couple of miles,” Omaha said, punctuating with a shrug. He was unsure. It could be twice that.

Captain al-Haffi approached the group. “We should go now.” He waved an arm toward the smoke. “People will come to see.”

Omaha nodded. It wouldn’t be good to be found loitering around a stolen truck. Or even a
borrowed
one.

“We’ll have to walk the rest of the way,” Painter said. He was the last out of the flatbed. He had the stallion in tow on a rope lead. He led the skittish horse down the dropped gate. It shook and danced a bit once on solid ground.

As Painter consoled it, Omaha noted the man’s left eye had begun to purple but appeared less swollen. He glanced away, balanced between shame for his earlier outburst and the residual anger he still felt.

With no gear, they were soon under way, trekking along the road’s shoulder. They moved like a small caravan, in twos. Captain al-Haffi led them. Painter and Coral trailed last with the horse.

Omaha heard the pair speaking in whispers, strategizing. He slowed to drop beside them. He refused to be left out of the discussion. Kara noted this, too, and joined them.

“What’s the plan once we get into Salalah?” Omaha asked.

Painter frowned. “We keep low. Coral and I will go to—”

“Wait.” Omaha cut him off. “You’re not leaving me behind. I’m not going to hide away in some hotel while you two go traipsing about.”

His angry outburst was heard by all.

“We can’t all go to the tomb,” Painter said. “We’ll be spotted. Coral and I are trained in surveillance and intelligence gathering. We’ll need to reconnoiter the area, search for Safia, stake it out if she’s not arrived there yet.”

“And what if she’s already been there and gone?” Omaha asked.

“We can find that out. Ask some discreet questions.”

Kara spoke up. “If she’s gone, we won’t know where they’ve taken her.”

Painter stared. Omaha noted the worry shadowing the man’s eyes, as dark as the bruise under the left one.

“You think we’re already too late,” Omaha said.

“We can’t know for certain.”

Omaha stared off into the distance. A few buildings could be seen near the horizon. The city’s edge. Too far. Too late.

“Someone has to go on ahead,” Omaha said.

“How?” Kara asked.

Not turning around, Omaha pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. “The horse. One of us…maybe two…could ride the horse into town. Go straight to the tomb. Check it out. Keep hidden. Watch for Safia. Trail her if she leaves.”

Silence answered him.

Coral met his eyes. “Painter and I were just discussing that.”

“I should go,” Painter said.

Omaha stopped, turning to face the man fully. “And why the hell’s that? I know the city. I know its back alleys.”

Painter stared him down. “You haven’t the experience in surveillance. This is no time for amateurs. You’ll be spotted. Give away our advantage.”

“Like hell I will. I may not’ve had any formal training, but I’ve had years of fieldwork in places where it’s best not to be seen. I can blend in if I have to.”

Painter spoke bluntly, no bravado. “But I’m better. This is what I do.”

Omaha clenched a fist. He heard the certainty in the other’s voice. A part of him wanted to pound it out of the man, but another part believed him. He didn’t have Painter’s experience. What was the best choice? How could he walk when he wanted to run to Safia? A cord of pain wrapped around his heart.

“And what will you do if you find her?”

“Nothing.” Painter continued, “I will study their manpower. Find a weakness. Wait for the proper moment.”

Kara spoke up, hands on her hips. “And what about us?”

Coral answered her as Omaha and Painter continued their standoff. “We have a safe house prearranged as backup in Salalah. Cash and supplies.”

Of course they would, Omaha thought.

“Guns?” Kara asked.

Coral nodded. “We’ll go there first. Load up. I’ll make contact with Washington. Debrief them on our status. Arrange for additional—”

“No,” Painter interrupted. “No communication. I’ll contact you all as soon as I can. We’ll move forward from there on our own. No outside help.”

Omaha read the silent discourse that passed between Painter and his partner. It seemed it was not only the Omani government that Painter suspected of leaks, but also their own government. This woman, Cassandra Sanchez, had been one step ahead of them all along. She must be getting inside information.

Painter’s eyes settled back to Omaha. “Are we straight with this plan?”

Omaha slowly nodded, though it was like iron bars had been rammed down the back of his neck. Painter began to turn away, but Omaha stopped him, moving in closer. Omaha pulled free the pistol from inside his cloak and passed Painter the gun. “If you have a chance…any chance…”

“I’ll take it,” he said, accepting the weapon.

Omaha stepped back, and Painter mounted the stallion. He rode bareback, using a makeshift rein of towline. “I’ll see you all in Salalah,” he mumbled, and kicked the horse into a trot, then a full gallop, crouched low.

“I hope he’s as good a spy as he is a rider,” Kara said.

Omaha watched painter vanish around a bend in the road. Then the group set off again, moving slowly, too slowly, toward the waiting city.

3:42 P.M.

S
AFIA LEANED
over the topographical map of the Dhofar region. It lay spread over the hood of their truck. She had a digital compass resting in the center, along with a straight-edged plastic ruler. She made a subtle alteration in the ruler’s position on the map, aligning it exactly along the same axis as the tomb of Nabi Imran. Before leaving the vault, she had spent several minutes using the laser-calibrated compass to get the precise measurement.

“What are you doing?” Cassandra asked at her shoulder for the fifth time.

Still ignoring her, Safia bent closer, nose almost to the paper.
This is the best I could do without computers.
She held out a hand. “Pen.”

Kane reached into an inside jacket pocket and passed her a ballpoint. Glancing up, she caught a brief glimpse of a gun holstered at his shoulder. She took the pen cautiously from his fingers. She refused to meet his eyes. More than Cassandra, the man made her edgy, shook her resolve.

Safia concentrated on the map, focusing her full attention on the mystery. The next clue to the secret heart of Ubar.

She drew a line along the edge of the ruler, then pulled it away. A blue line arrowed straight out from Nabi Imran’s tomb and shot across the countryside. She followed the line with her finger, noting the terrain it crossed, searching for a specific name.

She had a good idea what she would find.

As her finger followed beyond the city of Salalah, the lines of the topographic map began to multiply as the landscape rippled up into foothills, then mountains. She followed the line of blue ink until it crossed a small black dot atop a steep-sided mount. Her finger came to rest and tapped the spot.

Cassandra leaned closer and read the name printed beneath her finger. “Jebal Eitteen.” She glanced to Safia.

“
Mount
Eitteen,” Safia said, and studied the small black dot that marked the small mountain. “Atop here lies another tomb. And like the one here, this spot is also revered across all faiths—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.”

“Whose tomb is it?”

“Another prophet. Ayoub. Or in English: Job.”

Cassandra simply frowned at her.

Safia elaborated. “Job appears in both the Bible and the Koran. He was a man rich in wealth and family, who remained steadfast in his devotion to God. As a test, all was stripped from him: wealth, children, even his own health. So horrible were his afflictions that he was shunned and forced to live in isolation here.” She tapped the map. “On Mount Eitteen. Still, despite the hardships, Job continued in his faith and devotion. For his loyalty, God told Job to ‘strike the ground with your foot.’ A spring was called forth from which Job drank and bathed. His afflictions were cured, and he became a young man again. He lived the rest of his life on Mount Eitteen and was eventually buried there.”

“And you think this tomb is the next spot on the road to Ubar?”

“If the
first
signpost was erected at this tomb, it only follows that the next would be in a similar location. Another gravesite of a holy personage revered by all the religions of the region.”

“Then that’s where we must go next.”

Cassandra reached to the map.

Safia slapped a hand atop the paper, stopping her. “There’s no way I can be certain what, if anything, we’ll find there. I’ve been to Job’s tomb before. I saw nothing significant related to Ubar. And we have no clue where to begin to search. Not even an iron heart.” She again pictured the way the heart had wobbled atop the marble altar, aligning itself like a compass. “It could take years to discover the next piece to the puzzle.”

“That is why you’re here,” Cassandra said, snatching up the map and waving for Kane to get the prisoner back into the SUV. “To solve this riddle.”

Safia shook her head. It seemed an impossible task. Or so Safia wanted Cassandra to believe. Despite her protests, she had a distinct idea of how to proceed, but she was unsure how to use this knowledge to her advantage.

She climbed into the back again with Cassandra and settled into her
seat as the truck angled through the entry gate. Out in the street, the vendors were beginning to load up their wares as the afternoon waned. A lone stray dog, all ribs and leg bones, wandered listlessly among the strip of stands and carts. It lifted its nose as a horse passed slowly along behind the row of makeshift shops, led by a man draped from head to toe in a bedouin desert cloak.

The truck continued down the lane, aiming for another Mitsubishi parked at the end. The procession would continue into the foothills.

Safia stared at the GPS navigation system on the dashboard. Streets radiated outward. The countryside awaited.

And another tomb.

She hoped it wasn’t her own.

4:42 P.M.
MOUNT EITTEEN

D
AMNED SCORPIONS…

Dr. Jacques Bertrand crushed the black-armored intruder under his heel before settling to the rug that cushioned his workspace. He had been gone only minutes to fetch more water from his Land Rover, and the scorpions had already invaded his shaded alcove in the cliff. In this harsh landscape of hardscrabble, bitterbrush, and stone, nothing went to waste. Not even a spot in the shade.

Jacques sprawled on his back in the niche, faceup. An inscription in Epigraphic South Arabian had been carved into the roof of the niche, an ancient burial crypt. The surrounding landscape was littered with them, all overshadowed by Job’s tomb atop the mount where he labored. The entire region had become a cemetery. This was the third crypt he had documented today. The last for this long, interminably hot day.

He already dreamed of his hotel suite at the Salalah Hilton, a dip in the pool, a glass of Chardonnay.

With this thought firming him to his task, he set to work. Running a camel-hair brush over the inscription, he cleaned it a final time. As an archaeologist specializing in ancient languages, Jacques was currently on a grant to road-map early Semitic scripts, tracing their lineage from past to present. Aramaic, Elymaic, Palmyrene, Nabataean, Samaritan, Hebrew. Gravesites were great sources of the written word, immortalizing prayers, praises, and epitaphs.

With a prickly shiver, Jacques lowered his brush. He suddenly had an
intense feeling of being watched. It welled over him, some primeval sense of danger.

Raising up on an elbow, he stared down past his legs. The region was rife with bandits and thieves. But in the shadow of Job’s tomb, a most holy shrine, none would venture to commit a crime. It would be a death sentence. Knowing this, he had left his rifle back in the Rover.

He stared out into the brightness.

Nothing.

Still, he pulled his booted feet fully into the niche. If someone was out there, someone meaning him harm, perhaps he could remain hidden.

A
tick-tick
of a pebble rolling down a rocky slope sounded from the left. His ears strained. He felt trapped.

Then a shape moved across the entrance to the crypt.

It padded past, sauntering, lazy, but confident with power. Its red fur, speckled in shadow, blended with the red rock.

Jacques held his breath, trapped between terror and disbelief.

He had heard tales, been warned of their presence in the wilds of the Dhofar Mountains.
Panthera pardus nimr.
The Arabian leopard. Nearly extinct, but not extinct enough for his tastes.