The Solomon Scroll (20 page)

The food came. Wicker baskets with plates that had a flat piece of bread on them and a large bowl of steaming stew.

Lamont said, "The bread's a kind of sourdough called
injera.
The stew is gonna be spicy. Could be any kind of meat in it. It's called
wat
."

He ladled out stew.

"I need a fork," Selena said.

"Nobody uses forks here. You scoop it up with the bread. Use your right hand. If you eat with the left people will be shocked."

"Why?"

"The left hand is for wiping your ass."

"What happens if you only have one hand?" Diego asked.

"Then you have a problem."

"This is pretty good," Nick said. He scooped up another bite of stew.

They reached Adigrat twelve hours after they'd left the embassy, just as the sun disappeared behind a high escarpment dotted with stunted trees. The ridge marked the beginning of the mountainous area where they were headed.

Selena watched her GPS. "I checked out hotels before we left. There's one in the center of town that should be all right. Take a right up there."

They turned off the main highway and found the hotel, a rectangular, two story building of yellow and red brick. Lamont parked and went inside while the others waited with the truck. He came out a few minutes later.

"All set. We've got four rooms. The place looks clean and they've got a café. It's a family operation, run by a father and son. The son seems like a nice guy. He told me we should hire somebody to watch the truck at night."

"I'll bet he happens to know someone," Diego said.

"That's par for the course. It's a good idea if we want wheels on the truck in the morning. He's happy to see us. We bring dollars instead of the local currency."

"What is the local currency?"

"It's called the birr. One birr is worth about four cents American."

"Let's get the trunk out," Nick said.

They went inside, showed their passports and signed the register.

"You are recommended to spray your room," the clerk said. "Very small charge." He took out four cans labeled Mobile Insecticide Spray. "Mosquitoes very bad, make you sick."

"Sick?" Selena said.

Lamont said something to the clerk in Ethiopian. The man answered him and swirled his hands in the air.

"Malaria and dengue fever," Lamont said.

Lamont paid him. They each took a can.

Selena and Nick's room had a big double bed and a balcony looking out over the city. There wasn't much to see, just blocks of low buildings stretching away across the plain. Compared to a European or American city, there were few lights. The air smelled of dry earth and something that might have been like sage. Hints of spices and cooking oil came from the café downstairs.

"Not exactly the Hilton," Selena said, "but it's clean."

"We've stayed in worse."

There was a private bathroom with a shower stall and a small television on the dresser. Nick turned the set on. It was a news program. Children with tear streaked faces stood in the rubble of a building somewhere in the Middle East. He clicked the remote. There were only two channels. The second channel was playing an episode of Gunsmoke, dubbed in Ethiopian.

"Makes me feel right at home. Bad news on one channel and reruns on the other."

Selena said, "We'd better get something at the café before they close."

"Shall I use this stuff?" He held up the can of bug spray.

"I'd rather take my chances with the mosquitoes."

"I'm tired," Nick said. "I hope that bed is more comfortable than it looks."

"Poor baby. How tired are you?"

He arched an eyebrow at her and pretended to twirl a long mustache. "Not as tired as I plan to be later," he said.

The next morning they left the hotel just as the sun climbed above the horizon. The rental Toyota had come with two five gallon gas cans strapped in the back. Nick bought two more and gassed up. A case of bottled water went next to the gas and the trunk with their packs. Then they headed west toward the wild country.

Selena tracked their progress on her GPS.

"Turn there."

She pointed at a dirt track leading off the highway. They followed it into the wilderness until it petered out at a wide, dry riverbed exiting a deep canyon.

"This is the canyon we're looking for."

"Beautiful country," Diego said.

"Looks a lot like Arizona," Ronnie said. "Reminds me of Canyon de Shelly back home."

"Like the Grand Canyon, only not as big," Lamont said. "Or Waimea in Hawaii."

Ronnie had a closet full of Hawaiian shirts. "I've got a shirt with that on it," he said. "Nice colors."

"Is there anything that you don't have on those shirts?"

"I don't think I've got one with elephants."

"There aren't any elephants in Hawaii."

"Sure there are. In the zoo."

Lamont sighed.

Nick turned the truck up the riverbed. It wound through tall cliffs of multicolored reddish rock on either side. The going was slow, the riverbed strewn with rocks and debris that had washed down in the years when there was rain. They bumped along and Nick watched the gas gauge dropping. He thought about how much gas they had and what it would take to get back. He'd about decided it was time to stop when the decision was made for him.

They came around a turn in the canyon floor and found the way blocked by boulders. Ahead, a high mesa that marked the head of the canyon and their destination rose against a brilliant blue sky.

Nick stopped and turned off the engine.

"End of the line," he said.

"We're not moving those rocks," Lamont said.

"Nope. We'll set up base camp here." He looked at the sky. "It's already mid afternoon. We'll hike up the mesa tomorrow."

"It'll be cold later. I'll scrounge some firewood." Diego slapped at an insect. "Why does nature always come with bugs?" He looked at Ronnie. "How come they're not biting you?"

"Because I'm an Indian," Ronnie said.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Indians and nature are friends. You don't bite your friend."

"Friends?"

"Also because I put repellent on before we left."

Diego just shook his head. Later they sat around the fire, quiet, looking into the flames. A thin column of smoke drifted into a night sky carpeted by stars. Selena broke the silence.

"I wonder if we're going to find anything," she said.

Nick got up and put more wood on the fire.

"The satellite scan says something is up there on that mesa. Whatever it is, we'll find it."

"Relics from the Temple would probably be made of gold. Even without that, the value in a religious sense is beyond price."

"It's a problem, whatever we find." Nick sat down again. "Things from the Second Temple could touch off a firestorm in the Middle East. The Israelis would see it as the final proof of their right to claim Jerusalem. As if they really needed it."

"The Arabs wouldn't like that," Ronnie said.

"Don't forget about Solomon and Sheba," Selena said. "The Israelis, the Muslims and Christians will all stake a claim."

"Sheba is important here," Lamont said. "If she's up there the Ethiopians aren't going to sit on the side and let anyone take her out of the country. Or anything else we find, for that matter."

"Great," Diego said. "We find something, everyone with a religious agenda is going to want to grab it."

"That's one way of putting it," Nick said.

"Suppose we do find Solomon and Sheba hanging out together and sitting on a pile of gold," Diego said. "What happens then?"

"I call Harker. She calls the president. It's his worry, not ours."

"Yeah," Diego said. "But he's in Washington. It's a long way from there to here."

Nick yawned. "Time to hit the rack. Who wants the first watch?"

"I'll do it," Selena said.

"Wake me in three hours."

Twenty minutes later Selena was the only one still awake. She sat on a low flat stone with her back against one of the boulders. The rock gave off faint heat from the day's sun. Moonlight filled the canyon with ghostly light. It was one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen.

It wasn't the first time she'd found herself sitting under a foreign sky filled with stars when she was on a mission. Up to now this mission had been like a glorified camping trip. The hard metal of the pistol pressing against her hip reminded her that it could explode into sudden violence without much warning.

She thought about Solomon and the Temple he'd built to honor God, described in the Old Testament. The walls and floor had been covered with gold, she was sure. For some reason she remembered that the door had been framed in olive wood.

Solomon's Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. It wasn't until the reign of Herod the Great that it had been rebuilt. It was said that when the Romans destroyed it for a second time, molten gold had run into the cracks of the pavement when it burned.

No one knew what had happened to the legendary treasure of the Temple. Some accounts said it had been hidden beneath the ruins, others that it had been stolen by the Romans. It had all happened a long time ago, the events shrouded in the fog of time. Now she was sitting on a rock in one of the most remote places on earth, getting ready to look for something that had disappeared two thousand years ago. You could add another thousand years if you tossed in Solomon and Sheba.

Whatever they found tomorrow, she felt the weight of that history. It was more than a fascination with archaeology and ancient artifacts. It was a sense of seeking something larger than herself, one of the great stories in the human narrative that affirmed the human connection to God.

She shivered. It felt like there was a presence nearby, something watching and waiting. It was an odd, otherworldly feeling.  She looked down the moonlit canyon. Nothing was looking back.

My mind is playing tricks on me,
she thought.

Just the same, the feeling stayed with her for a long time.

CHAPTER 43

They stood some distance away from the foot of the mesa. Nick scanned the massive formation with binoculars, looking for a way up. The day was clear, the sun bright in a cloudless sky. The morning was still cool before the heat of day. The mesa was hundreds of feet high, formed of reddish stone streaked with lighter colored rock.

"Looks like there's a goat track going up the side."

Nick handed the binoculars to Ronnie.

"You would need to be a goat to go up it," he said.

Selena took the binoculars and studied the narrow track as it crawled up the side of the mesa. About two thirds of the way to the top it curved around the edge of the sheer rock wall, out of sight

"I don't think that path is natural," she said. "Look where it curves around out of sight. There are steps cut into the rock."

She handed the binoculars back to Nick. He focused on the spot.

"I think you're right."

"The tomb is up there," Selena said, "I know it is." Her voice was excited.

"Something is, anyway."

They found the beginning of the trail, crude steps cut into the side of the mesa. They were little more than depressions, rounded and treacherous, eroded by time and weather. Nick put his foot on the first one. Bits of rock crumbled away under his weight.

"Been a long time since somebody went up these," he said.

"We go slow, it should be all right," Diego said.

"Stick close to the wall. I'll lead. Diego, you take our six."

"Hey, this is a walk in the park. Nobody shooting at us."

They headed up the side of the mesa. The ground fell away beneath them. Nick was used to heights but he knew better than to look down. He kept his eyes on where he put his feet. There were places where all that remained of the steps was a short slope of crumbling rock, a trap waiting to send one of them to certain death below.

After what seemed like a long time they came to the spot they'd seen from below where the steps went around the side of the mesa. Around the curve the steps led to a wide, flat shelf shaded by a rock overhang. A dozen feet back from the edge was the outline of a cave, filled in with a wall of rock that blended in with the rest of the cliff face.

"Got to be a reason for blocking off that cave," Diego said.

"It must be the tomb," Selena said.

"Only one way to find out." Nick laid his pack on the ground. He took a long drink from his water bottle and walked over to the sealed cave. He took out his knife and began digging into the packed dirt around the rocks.

"Let's open it up."

An hour later the rocks were piled to the side, revealing an ancient wooden door.

They stood together looking at it.

Diego looked up at the overhang. "No way you'd spot this from the air."

"This might not be the tomb," Nick said. "It could be an old monastery. Either way, it's what the scan picked up."

Lamont sat down and massaged his leg.

"How's it holding up?"

"Nothing to worry about. I thought you said we were going for a stroll."

"We are," Nick said. "It's just a little more vertical than I'd figured."

"I wouldn't want to try those steps in the rain," Selena said.

"Or wind." Diego opened a bottle of water and drank.

Nick activated the comm link.

"Director, do you copy?"

A click, hissing atmospherics. Harker's voice came through after the satellite delay.

"5 x 5 Nick."

"We've reached the objective. There's a door closing off a cave in the side of the mesa. It could be a tomb or something else. We haven't gone inside yet."

"Good work."

"Once we're inside, we'll be out of contact. No way a signal is getting through this rock."

"Understood. Report back when you know what you've found."

"Will do. Out."

Nick looked at the ancient door. "Let's see if the King and Queen are receiving," he said.

CHAPTER 44

Nazar Al-Bayati was a man of many resources. One of those resources was embedded in the heart of Israeli intelligence, a man who seemed to all outward appearances a Jew. In reality he was a Shia Muslim. Jibril was circumcised, something no Muslim would have permitted, the result of a childhood mishap that had required the simple operation. It had been a source of shame in his childhood. Now it was proof of his falsely proclaimed religion. He'd been raised on the border with Lebanon and recruited by Hezbollah in his teens by a man who saw the potential in his unfortunate accident.