Babylon Rising Read online

  She bolted to her feet and started brushing the dust off her pants. “It was nothing. My father always said I was a reincarnation of some goddess or other. I guess it comes naturally to me.” She seemed embarrassed now, as if Murphy had seen her naked and they could never just be friends again in the same way as before. “Come on, let’s get back to the hotel,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but I could do with a large glass of scotch.”

  Murphy didn’t reply, and Isis wondered if he disapproved. She was about to tell him that she would drink a whole bottle if she felt like it, thank you very much, after what he’d put her through, when she noticed that his eyes were closed. Then, as she watched, he slid slowly down the wall until his head was resting in the dirt.

  It was only then that she noticed the blood.

  FIFTY-NINE

  “MISS KOVACS IS here, sir.”

  Shane Barrington had been looking forward to her arrival at his office. “Send her in. And I do not wish to be disturbed.”

  The woman who stood in the doorway seemed subtly different from the Stephanie Kovacs who’d first walked into his office a month earlier. She still dressed in that provocative-but-don’t-mess-with-me way, stilettos and a short skirt offset by her buttoned-up jacket and black turtleneck, and her carefully disordered hair and subtly applied makeup reinforced the image of an attractive woman who had more important things to do than look good. Her stride was still confident, assertive, stopping just short of aggressive as she walked to the single chair in front of his desk and sat down.

  But her eyes told him she had undergone a dramatic change since they had last met. Instead of shining with that morally superior glow her viewers had come to love, they were dull and vacant, as if something behind them had died. They were the eyes of someone who’d sold her soul.

  “Stephanie. Thanks for dropping by. I wanted to thank you personally for the work you’ve been doing.”

  She looked at him warily. “I’m sorry the church-bombing story didn’t pan out. The FBI were hot for it at first, but now they’ve gotten all cautious. And Dean Fallworth is just a blowhard. Nothing he gave me was enough to nail Murphy the way you wanted. Believe me, I—”

  Barrington waved a hand dismissively “It’s okay, Stephanie. You did well. We just wanted to free up some of Professor Murphy’s time, plant some seeds in the public’s mind. You’ll be uncovering more revelations about our evangelical friends in time.”

  Stephanie regarded him with the weary indifference of someone who’s already lost the most important thing she has. “You said ‘we.’ I’ve been wondering who’s really behind all this. You don’t strike me as the type who gets hot under the collar about religion, Mr. Barrington.”

  He smiled. “Ever the fearless investigative reporter. I guess that bloodhound’s nose of yours never stops sniffing. Even when I’ve got you chained and muzzled,” he added, enjoying the sudden blush that colored her cheeks.

  He got up and went to a smoked-glass cabinet. “Let me get you a drink.”

  She shook her head. “Not while I’m working.”

  He laughed. “Come on.” He took out a dark bottle and began untwisting the wire holding the cork in place. “A glass of champagne.”

  “Champagne? Are we celebrating something?”

  “I hope so, Stephanie. I very much hope so.”

  He eased the cork into a napkin with a muffled pop and poured two glasses. She accepted hers expressionlessly.

  “So what’s the toast?”

  He raised his glass toward her with a dark smile. “To marketplace domination, of course.”

  They clinked glasses. “I’ll always drink to that,” she said wryly.

  He put his glass down and leaned against the desk. She was uncomfortably aware of his closeness.

  “It could soon be a reality, Stephanie. Barrington Communications is the most powerful communications business on the planet, as you know. But that’s just the beginning. Soon there could be so much more.”

  She looked at him skeptically. “What are you going to do, run for president?”

  “I’m talking about real power, Stephanie. The sort you can only dream about.”

  She took a sip of her champagne. “Well, here’s to you, Mr. Barrington. But I don’t understand what this has got to do with me.”

  “Please, call me Shane.” He stood and walked to the window. “Power and wealth can bring you many things, Stephanie. But I’ll be honest, it can be lonely at the top. There have been women, of course, since my divorce, but when you have as much money as I do, it’s hard to find someone you can really trust. Someone you can really share with. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

  She was beginning to think she understood completely.

  He’d bought her soul, and now he wanted the rest of her. Her first instinct was to panic, but then she started to think about it. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad deal. If she was going to sell out, she might as well get the best price. Barrington seemed to think he was going to be king of the world. She could do worse than be his queen.

  She walked over to him and together they looked down over the city. After a while an image from her recent bout of Bible study came into her mind. Satan and Jesus on the mountaintop. Hadn’t he offered Him the kingdoms of the world if He would just bow down and worship him?

  She leaned her head on Barrington’s shoulder. Well, she was smarter than that. Mr. Barrington … Shane … wouldn’t even have to ask her twice.

  SIXTY

  ISIS WATCHED DR. AZIZ disappear into the elevator, bulging black bag tucked under his arm, and closed the door behind her. At the last count she spoke a dozen varieties of Arabic as well as another ten distinct Near and Middle Eastern languages, adding up to who knew how many millions of words. But she was beginning to realize that only one really mattered.

  Baksheesh.

  For a few dollars, the young man at the front desk had been happy to call Dr. Aziz, assuring them he was “very discreet.” And the doctor himself, for another reasonable consideration, had been delighted to patch Murphy up. As she ushered him out, he’d given Isis an old roué’s gold-toothed grin. “No police, no police!” he said, putting a finger to his lips.

  Whether she could trust either of them not to play both ends of the street and bring the cops running, she didn’t know. If it came to it, she and Murphy hadn’t done anything illegal, had they? As far as she knew, they hadn’t killed anybody, and as for taking the belly of the Serpent, it was hard to say whom it really belonged to. She was beginning to think Hezekiah had had the right idea: It would be better if no one had it.

  She leaned back against the door, her body suddenly heavy. “You’ll live, apparently. He’s given me some nasty-looking painkillers which I think are probably for horses, but seeing as you’re stubborn as a mule … Murphy?”

  His eyes were closed and he looked very pale, but she thought she could see the slow rise and fall of his breathing. She approached the bed and felt an impulse to touch him. Just to make sure he’s really alive, she told herself.

  His skin was cool but she could definitely feel the blood pulsing just above his collarbone. “Good night, Murphy,” she whispered. “Pleasant dreams.”

  Returning to her own room, she lay on the bed and closed her eyes for a few minutes, letting the confusing rush of emotions swirl around her head. Eventually she took a long breath, blew it out slowly, and sat upright. Work. That was the only way to regain her equilibrium.

  She poured herself a glass of Famous Grouse, arranged a dozen sharpened pencils next to a stack of yellow legal pads, then placed the belly of the Serpent in the pool of light cast by the desk lamp. It was going to be a long night.

  She awoke to the sound of glass breaking. Yellow pages blew around the room in gusts as the wind poured in through the open window. The bedclothes had been blown aside, leaving her shivering. The lamp lay on the floor, flickering on and off with the fizz of frayed circuits.

  Someone was hammering on the
door and she instinctively reached down to cover herself. Her hand felt the soft cotton of her nightgown. Confused, she reached for the bedside light.

  Everything was in its place. The lamp was on the desk. The pages in a neat pile, with the Serpent on top. The window was closed. Apart from her ragged breathing, all was silent.

  Laughing with relief, she went to the desk and read what she’d written on the top sheet. At least she hadn’t dreamed that. She read it through one more time, trying to fix it in her mind, then climbed between the sheets. She was asleep before she could recite it to herself.

  The next morning Murphy showed no signs of his ordeal. As she joined him at the only occupied table in the cavernous restaurant, he was happily feasting on rolls and coffee.

  “You seem very chipper,” she said.

  He winked. “Sleep of the just.”

  “Well, take it easy. Dr. Aziz said you should stay in bed for a couple of days at least.”

  Murphy snorted. “He was just hustling you for a few more bucks, making it look like it was life-and-death. It’s just a scratch. Anyhow, we have work to do.”

  She reached into her bag with a look of triumph. “Relax. All done.”

  He took the wrinkled piece of paper and read it through. “I’m beginning to think your father was right about you. Didn’t you sleep at all?”

  She studied the tablecloth. “It didn’t take long.”

  “And you’re sure you’ve got it right?”

  She tried to snatch the sheet of paper back, but he whisked it out of reach. “Just kidding.” He read it through again. “In the land of the flood, it rests with a queen. ‘The land of the flood.’ That could be the Biblical Flood.”

  She nodded. “Plenty of references to that in Babylonian literature. The question is, where exactly is it?”

  “A lot of people think the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat. Maybe Anatolia, then. Any queens we know of in that neighborhood?”

  “Not in the right time frame. Too far north.”

  “Okay, maybe he didn’t mean the Flood, just a place where it floods regularly.”

  She poured herself a cup of tea and stirred in some milk. “Like where?”

  “How about Egypt? The Nile floods every year like clockwork. Without it there would have been no Egyptian civilization. No Sphinx, no pyramids.”

  “Makes sense. Read the next bit.”

  “Entombed by stone, it floats in the air.” Murphy shook his head. “Beats me.”

  She put down her cup. “Hold on. If you’re right and Dakkuri’s talking about Egypt, then entombed by stone, resting with a queen, that must mean it’s in a pyramid, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Come on, you’re the archaeologist. How many pyramids are there?”

  “More than you’d think.”

  “But this is no ordinary pyramid.”

  He slapped his hand on the table and a waiter scurried out of the kitchen to see what was wrong. Isis waved him back with a frown.

  “Ever heard of the Pyramid of the Winds?”

  “Can’t say that I have. Are you sure you haven’t just made it up?”

  He grinned. “It exists all right. On the Giza plateau just west of Cairo, all by its lonesome. Not close enough to the big three—Khufu, Khafre, and Menkure—to get onto the postcards, so no one pays it much attention.”

  “So how come the fancy name?”

  “According to legend, there’s supposed to be some sort of updraft in the center of the pyramid, so powerful it could keep a man suspended above the ground forever.”

  “A man … or the head of a bronze Serpent,” she said.

  “Why not. If I remember correctly, it’s also the last resting place of Queen Hephrat the Second.”

  “Bingo! Entombed by stone but floating in air. So what do we do now?”

  “We take a look inside, of course. Come on.”

  Back in Murphy’s room, she watched over his shoulder as he fired up his laptop and logged into a database in the Preston University mainframe. After a few seconds, a complex diagrammatic of the Pyramid of the Winds unfolded across the computer screen, revealing the interior in three dimensions.

  Isis pointed at the series of square holes ringing the base of the pyramid. “What are those?”

  “Air shafts. Air is drawn into the great chamber—that’s the big empty space at the center of the pyramid, above Hephrat’s burial chamber—and it comes out here, these smaller holes two-thirds of the way up.”

  “That’s very impressive. Trust the ancient Egyptians to invent air-conditioning three thousand years before the fact.”

  “Only for royalty,” Murphy said. “And even they had to be dead first. Maybe that kind of logic explains why Egyptian civilization didn’t last.”

  Isis gave him a wry smile. “So where does the legend about things floating in midair come from?”

  “I barely remember my high school physics, but here’s my theory. The air is drawn in through the shafts at the bottom. Inside the great chamber it heats up, rises, and gets compressed as the pyramid narrows. That increases its velocity and sends it rushing out of the shafts at the top, at the same time sucking in more air from below. Kind of an endless cycle.”

  “So you think the head of the Serpent is going to be floating in midair in the great chamber?”

  “I doubt that. My bet is it’s either in the burial chamber or more likely one of the air shafts.”

  Isis studied the screen with a skeptical expression. “You know I said I wasn’t claustrophobic, but those air shafts look rather narrow to me. How are we going to…?”

  Murphy tapped some more keys and the Pyramid of the Winds disappeared. In its place a rotating graphic of what looked like some kind of high-tech vacuum cleaner filled the screen.

  “Behold the Pyramid Crawler. A remote-controlled robot specifically designed for navigating the air shafts of pyramids.”

  “You’re joking. Somebody actually makes these things?”

  “Sure. I don’t know if it’s the iRobot Corporation’s biggest seller, but right now it’s just what we need. What color paintwork do you want? I think the choices are dark gray or a slightly darker gray.”

  Isis was reading the product specifications: a computer-controlled, quadra-tracked vehicle with two sets of tank treads arranged one on top of the other, so one set was pushed against the floor of the shaft and the other against the ceiling, providing stone-gripping traction. An array of sensors, lights, and miniature TV cameras completed the picture.

  “Let’s say you can get hold of one of these things. I still don’t see how we’re going to get access to the pyramid. I know you’re not a stickler for red tape, but you can’t just hire a camel or two and start digging, you know.”

  He looked offended. “You think I don’t have connections? Ever heard of Dr. Boutrous Hawass, the director of the pyramids? Well, my best buddy at grad school was a man called Jassim Amram. Now he’s a professor of archaeology at the American University in Cairo and just happens to be Hawass’s right-hand guy. If I know Jassim, he’s already got one of these Pyramid Crawlers trained to mix a decent martini and bring it to him in front of the TV.”

  “All right,” Isis said, opening the door. “You fix things up with your friend Professor Amram and I’ll track down our pilot and tell him to get us ready to depart for Cairo.”

  Murphy had closed the laptop and was already throwing clothes into his backpack. “Sounds good.”

  The phone rang. It was a secretary’s voice. “Oh, thank God, Dr. McDonald. Please hold for Chairman Compton of the Parchments of Freedom Foundation.”

  “Isis.” Harvey Compton sounded rather tense, Isis thought. He was probably worried that she had scuffed up the interior of his airplane. She rushed to assure him he was getting his money’s worth. “Harvey, we’ve got the second piece and have our eyes set on the head of the Serpent.”

  “Yes, well, never mind that. I’ve been trying to reach you. Two people have been murdered
here and the tail of the Serpent has been stolen. Isis, you and Professor Murphy must abandon your trip and come home immediately.”

  SIXTY-ONE

  STRANGE. STRANGE AND horrible. The murders of the two guards had occurred literally a world away, yet, because they were the real lives of men she had worked with, she was devastated.

  “Isis, I’m sorry I got you and the foundation into this.” Murphy knew it was no consolation. “Chairman Compton is right, of course, we must head back.”

  Isis sat staring at the wall. “Murphy, we’re not going back. Not now. Especially not now. Whoever, whatever force is trying to take over the Serpent must be stopped.”

  “Isis, you’re in shock. You are in greater danger than we even knew here in Tar-Qasir, and that was no kindergarten outing. Pack up.”

  “No, Murphy. We’re staying the course. Chairman Compton is too far away to shut us down now. Besides, there is something I haven’t told you about the scene at the foundation.”

  “What?”

  “Murphy, whoever took the Serpent’s tail was pretty brazen himself. He took the time to leave what could only be a taunting message for you. He carved the symbol of a snake into the metal shelf on which the tail had been kept. It was a snake broken into three pieces.”

  Murphy walked to the window. After a few moments’ reflection, he turned and said, “Well, whoever came after the Serpent’s tail is well aware of our quest. Of the few people whom we have confided in about the details of what we’re seeking, none of them are murderers or thieves.”

  “At least up to now, you mean. There’s obviously something about this Serpent that over the centuries has made lots of people do lots of strange things.”

  “Yes, you would have to think that it’s not some rival archaeologist who would murder and steal for that tail. So, we can assume that whoever is onto us is working the decidedly dark side of the street.”

  Isis had a worried look in her eyes as she reached for Murphy’s hand before she added the final news. “Murphy, there’s something else I have to tell you about the scene at the foundation. Remember what you told me about the cross necklace you gave Laura, and how someone had broken it at the funeral when you took your last look into her casket? Well, carved right next to the snake on the PFF shelf, the same maniac carved a cross broken into three pieces.”