Brooklyn Knight (2 page)

“Listen to me, my good woman, this conversation is costing me per minute more than your weekly salary. If you do not mind, I would appreciate it greatly if you did not further waste any of my resources with your excuses.”

The speaker was not by nature an unpleasant man.

Indeed, he was trying his best to keep from becoming one. He was also, however, famously known as being quite an excitable person.

Of course, given the reason for his phone call, anyone in his position would be understandably just as excited. Most would probably be just as unpleasant, as well, if not more so.

“So, knowing this, if you could, just find him, without any more delays, and put him on the phone—would you,
please?
”

Standing in the sands of a long-dried riverbed, a spot thousands of miles from his home, waiting to be connected to the one person who could change his mounting
anticipation and eager hunger into unparalleled joy, the caller sighed as the secretary on the other end of their call promised once more to “see what I can do.” With an audible sigh, one incapable of masking his growing fury, the man agreed, then began waiting once more, swallowing his burning frustration as best he could.

The beating sun ravaged his tall, thin body, stealing every spare drop of moisture it could wring from him. Despite the lightness of his wardrobe—white cotton shirt and socks, shorts cut just above the knees—the heat tore at him. Sweat leaked from his smooth forehead, dampening his close-cropped hair, stinging his brown eyes, dripping from his slightly hooked nose. Standing helplessly in the dry, arid breeze, the man found his body twitching, the muscles in his legs jumping, causing his feet to alternately tap the ground unconsciously, as if he were auditioning for the lead in
The Fred Astaire Story
.

And each passing second only rattled the caller further, making him more aware of his surroundings, and of those sharing them with him. Every ticking moment dragged the man away from his hoped-for dreams, turning him back toward reality, toward remembering, toward facing the horrible possibility that he might not be able to accomplish what he needed to through the person he was trying to reach.

This must work; it has to …

Of course, he knew, he was being foolish. His panic was unreasonable. Nothing more than nerves—foolishness. There was no actual reason for him to worry. He merely had to calm himself, stop worrying about the expense involved in his call, and wait. The person he was seeking would have no difficulty in delivering unto him that which he so desperately wished to acquire. That person would be happy to do so. And then considerations as vulgar as mere money would become meaningless to him.

But
, he despaired, unable to stop himself,
what if I am letting
desire blind me? What if he cannot do so? Or … what if he will not? Worse, even if he has no problem with releasing it unto me … after all, he most likely will want nothing more than to grant me complete access to it, but … the museum, they all have their bureaucracy, their red tape, the swirling nightmare of procedure—

What if there is nothing he can do? What if someone else purchased exclusive research rights?
And then, the unthinkable:
What if it is no longer within the museum?

This frightening notion made the breath freeze within his lungs. Despite the sweltering, draining heat of the desert, the tall, thin man felt a terrible chill at the all too real possibility his fears had uncovered. Museums, research centers, universities, they all engaged in such practices anymore as a matter of routine. Ever since the late 1940s especially, the infighting, the resource bundling, favorite-son packaging—all of it nothing more than blatant excuses to tie up access to valuable data for years, decades!

“Oh my God,” the man muttered, his fears gnawing through the last of the restraints his common sense had been able to provide him. Realizing how the one simple thing he needed might possibly be kept from him, he began to mutter a plaintive mantra: “Oh dear God, dear God in Heaven, oh dear God …”

The tangle of conflicting thoughts, rushing joy tumbling across a dozen different paranoid reasons for expecting said joy to evaporate made the caller’s ever-mounting tensions grow exponentially. Unable to help himself, the man tried to force himself simply to breathe regularly as his mind continued to ricochet from one extreme to the other until finally his tapping and twitches were in danger of sending him completely out of control.

“Oh, dear God, dear God in Heaven …”

Mopping at the sweat pouring down his temples and the back of his neck with his handkerchief, he squeezed out the deeply stained rag, then began again. For a moment, the small torrent surprised
him, distracting him from his worries. Having worked in desert settings for so many years, he could not understand from where so much moisture was coming.

Such a mild diversion could not capture his attention for long, however, and it was but a matter of seconds before his frightened nerves began him mumbling once more.

“Oh, dear God …”

Attempting to get hold of his runaway fears, to compel himself back to a calmer state, the wildly perspiring man broke off his frenzied mantra and closed his eyes. After forcing himself to simply stare into the darkness behind his eyelids for a moment, he then opened his eyes once more. As he purposely turned his head slowly, working at taking in all around him, a voice from the back of the caller’s mind whispered to him, reminding him of how much he had already accomplished.

You will not fail in this
, it whispered to him warmly. Comfortingly.
You will not …

And indeed, all about him, practically as far as the eye could see, stood solid proof backing up all of its whispered words. In every direction the once barren desert was alive with a steady activity, activity for which he was entirely responsible, that he alone had created through his singular vision and efforts. Workers numbering in the hundreds labored at a score of tasks—clearing heaping mounds of dirt and sand, screening recently loosened clumps of soil, relentlessly searching for miscellaneous bits of the past. Tools, cups, pots, furnishings, musical instruments—even the smallest fragments of the same—anything that had survived, anything that could be found, was treated as what it was: a treasure of incalculable worth.

You cannot fail… .

And beyond the laborers lured from every local city, town, and village, as well as the prisoners delivered unto the caller by the local
government, a legion of students from around the world labored as well, all of them a part of the caller’s great project. The soothing words whispered by the back of his mind diverted his attention away from his near-crippling fears, focusing it instead once more upon his inspiring accomplishments.

You must not fail… .

He had gone against the collected wisdom of all the greatest experts in the field. His ideas had been condemned by every major Assyriologist, and most of the minor ones as well. Their words held considerable weight with Syria’s Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums, but he had offered them more than words. He had poured the passion of his theories into his proposal, had presented his facts and the assumptions build upon those facts with a frenzied belief that one by one had seized the hearts and minds of every government official in his way.

Must not fail… .

Relaxing finally, the caller nodded as he looked upon the details of his vast and ever-unfolding accomplishment. His tired brown eyes scanning the great activity stretching all about him in every direction save upward, a certain smugness descended upon the perspiring man. A smile finding his parched lips, he suddenly relaxed, wondering;

Why? Why am I so worried? Who could possibly scoff at us at this point? At this?
he thought, his free arm sweeping the vista of labor and discovery before him,
At all this?

No one …

What I have uncovered here, this find, it is among the absolute greatest ever made. Archaeologically speaking, of course, it might very well be the most important discovery of all time. Tell me, in all of history, what rivals it?

Nothing …

Taking a deep breath of the dry desert air, the caller finally felt
his usual calm descend upon him. So far, he had made not a single error. His proposal had been correct in every detail. The remains he had uncovered—the ruins to which his own, often-challenged vision had led him, despite the opposition of the supposed best minds in the field, were undoubtedly going to prove to be not only the first major city ever built but also the most fabulous the ancient world had to offer.

Nothing at all… .

And, as each day, as every passing hour, was proving, “ruins” was not even a word one could apply with any degree of accuracy. What he had found, that to which his pure and true vision had led him—these were not ruins. As foot after foot of earth was stripped away, every new building uncovered proved to be in the most remarkably well-preserved shape. It was as if the ever-farther-sprawling metropolis of Memak’tori had been emptied, wrapped up, and left waiting just for him.

“Hello,” the American accent sounded again finally, disturbing the caller’s thoughts, capturing his attention, “Dr. Ungari? Are you still there?”

“Yes, yes,” he answered with near-paralyzing excitement, his heart rate jumping, “I am here. I am. Do you have him? Let me speak to Professor Knight.”

“I’m sorry; he isn’t here at the moment, Doctor.”

“What?!” The single word was a half-screamed, half-strangled noise, a burning thing of confused hatred so overwhelmingly intense it literally frightened the woman half a world away to the point where she nearly dropped her phone.

Before Ungari could add anything further, though, the secretary blurted;

“Please, sir. He isn’t in the museum right now, but I was given permission to release his cell phone number to you. That’s what took me so long. I apologize, but—”

“No, no,” Ungari cut the woman off, his voice dropping to a far more pleasant tone, the terrible pressure that had seized his chest dissipating. “Forgive me, please. I am most terribly sorry. I do not know what came over me.”

As the woman made her own polite noises, the doctor scrambled through his vest pockets, searching out the pad and pencil he always kept on his person. Then, as the woman gave him the number she had found for him, Dr. Ashur Ungari smiled. Nothing, he knew—

You will not fail… .

—could stop him now.

“All right, my dear, finally, to begin our little introduction,” the man standing ever-so-proudly on the observation deck of the Empire State Building instructed, “look in that direction. Take it all in.”

As he pointed, the young woman with him stared off over the side of the building. Before and below her stood quite a few skyscrapers along with numerous smaller buildings, all leading to the water’s edge nearly a mile away. Pressing as closely to the restraining fencing as she could to enhance her view, her simply cut shoulder-length red hair rippled in the crisp breeze. The color of her wavy tresses screamed out that they were dyed, but none of the men present on the observation platform seemed to mind the fact. For that matter, none of them seemed to be spending all that much time staring at her hair, either.

“Now, of course, understand that all that you can see before you, every building and warehouse, every street and lane and alley, indeed, every inch from here to the
water’s edge, all of that is New York City, or as we here humbly, but correctly, like to call it, the greatest city in the world.”

“And what’s the land on the other side of the water?”

“Oh, that’s Jersey. That’s unimportant.”

The young woman smiled. Even though originally from Montana, she got the joke. Also, coming from such a mountainous, underdeveloped state, she was quite accustomed to both heights and the wide-open spaces they could reveal. Nor, despite her rural upbringing, was she completely what one might label a “small-town girl.” She had begun her studies in the west coast’s Portland, completed them in Chicago, and in her junior year had even taken a road trip with two girlfriends to Las Vegas, with a stopover in Denver. Thus she possessed more than a touch of familiarity with what her relatives back home would call big cities.

“That’s a lot of city, all right,” she admitted in a tone that implied she believed her tour was over. Grabbing her wrist, her companion gave her a gentle tug, shouting;

“Come on now; as I said, this is just the beginning.”

The man was tall enough, over six feet, but by no more than an inch, possibly two. His hair was longer than his companion’s, but cut so that when pulled back it appeared quite conservative. It was for the most part extremely dark, but run through in several spots with streaks so blond they looked to be as unnatural as his companion’s shade of red. Closer examination revealed numerous ebony strands mixed in with the straw-colored ones, however, leaving most women envying his distinctive mane. Throwing in the seductive shade of blue Nature had granted his eyes did not help very much in negating such jealousies.

“Now, this side, again, as far as the eye can see,” the man pointed toward the south of Manhattan Island this time, “here as well, everything stretched out before you, this is also our beloved New York City.”

“All the way to the water?” she asked with surprise. After a moment’s consideration, she added, “Why, that must be miles away.”

“Oh, it is,” the man responded, grinning. Delighting in showing off his city to a newcomer, he added in a playfully casual tone, “Oh, and that rather formidably large landmass out there beyond the water?”

“Yes … ?”

“That’s Staten Island. That’s part of the city as well.”

“I have heard of it.”

“As well you should,” admonished the professor. “Onetime home to famed photographer Alice Austen, as well as Antonio Meucci, the actual inventor of the telephone, and, of course, still home to Fresh Kills, although now closed, still the largest landfill in the world.”