Forty-Eight X (17 page)

“What the hell are you doing?” Maggie yelled at him and ran to the refrigerator.

Nate looked the professor straight in the eye and held up his fist. “I want to know about Lemuria.”

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said, coming back with some ice in a glass and putting it to the professor’s swollen cheek. “That won’t happen again,” she said, glaring at Stumpf.

Evans took the cold glass in hand and held it to his cheek himself. They all sat there quiet for several minutes. Evans was too afraid to speak aloud. Stumpf had effectively been told to shut up, and Maggie, now she was the impatient one. Then Evans set the glass down and, holding up both hands in a gesture urging calm, stood up and walked to a desk. Stumpf trailed him like a shadow. The professor picked up a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and handed it to Stumpf. In just the moment that Stumpf glanced at what he’d written, the professor bolted for the door. Stumpf rushed to give chase, but the professor was racing down the street with long limbs and a big stride. Stumpf knew he would never catch him, and anyway he was too tired. He looked at the paper the professor had scribbled on and handed it to Maggie. It had four letters written on it:
B I O T
.

“He wanted to tell us something, but for some reason, he couldn’t,” she lamented.

“BIOT,”
Stumpf muttered. “What’s that? Short for bio or biotech something?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “But you will find out, won’t you?”

Stumpf nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

“I’m depending on you,” she said and proffered the first friendly smile she had ever given him.

I
should’ve finished college
, Stumpf thought to himself. He desperately wanted to please her, and not just for the payday.

T
hey reclined back in their seats, napping side by side, her hand resting atop his.

Fala opened her eyes as a rumble disturbed the quiet din of engine noise and clinking glasses. She looked over at Krantz as his stomach growled loudly again.

“Sorry,” he apologized, glancing over at the rest of the passengers in first class who were sipping on California cabernet and carving through Kobe beef filet mignons. An aroma of gustatory delights permeated the air and teased him.

Fala smiled and kissed him gently on the cheek. The colonel was hungry. It was late afternoon, and their flight from Paris was about to land in Teheran. They had not eaten since five a.m. It was Ramadan, and Fala was fasting. Muslims practiced sawm, or fasting, for the entire month of Ramadan. They ate and drank nothing, not even water, during daylight hours. Fala got up early for suhoor, the meal eaten before dawn. She broke her fast again at sunset with a meal known as iftar. The rest of the day, according to her faith, she fasted.

Although Krantz was Jewish, he didn’t feel right eating in front of her, tempting her. Go ahead and growl, he spoke to his innards. We’re a couple, and if a billion Muslims can fast for a month, so can one Jew. While Krantz was a secular Jew, he admired the Islamic devotion to Ramadan. The upcoming Christian Christmas and Jewish Hanukkah holidays were religious events that had become excuses for consumerism. Ramadan, on the other hand, remained focused on its theme of self-sacrifice and devotion to Allah. He respected that.

Joshua Krantz had come to know many Muslims while growing up. He went to school with some, did business with others, but none had ever been his friend. So, he never really learned much about their faith and never cared. He had been stuffed too full of the religious fables of Judaism during his youth to be interested in hearing about the tales and allegories of Islam—until he met Fala. He was receptive to listening to a lot of things while cuddled next to her warm body.

“Around 610 AD, a caravan trader named Mohammad was heading to Mecca thinking about God,” she explained during one of their pillow talks.

“There’s not much else to do when you’re wandering in the middle of a desert on a camel,” Krantz had responded.

She ignored his snide response. “One night a voice called to him. It was the angel Gabriel.”

“Is this the same Gabriel that appears in the book of Daniel? The one Christians believe foretold the birth of Jesus?”

“Same one.”

“He got around,” Krantz joked. He’d always preferred to joke about religion rather than ever talk about it seriously. It was like a third rail. Step on it wrong and it would kill you, or a relationship.

“Gabriel told Mohammad that he’d been chosen to receive the word of Allah. It was during this month, the month of Ramadan, that Allah revealed those words to Mohammad, which would later be transcribed as the Qur’an.”

Krantz was thinking about his lessons on Islam as their plane descended into Teheran’s Mehrabad Airport. He remembered other lessons he had learned in school as a child, the story of Daniel in the lions’ den. There the Bible referred to the messenger Gabriel as the “Left Hand of God.” And here he was about to enter a lions’ den to look for the “Right Hand of God.” Is this my reward for loving history, he thought, to risk being eaten alive?

They both wore traditional Egyptian dress, the gown-like galabiya. His was simple gray; hers, black with some embroidery about the neck. Disembarking, Fala adjusted her head scarf, or hijab. This time they both held Egyptian passports. Krantz’s was an exquisite forgery. A taxi drove them from the airport and through the capital’s mishmash of skyscrapers and mosques. A religious parade snarled traffic in midtown before they broke through to the desert highway on the way to Qom, 130 kilometers to the south.

Although Fala knew little about modern Iran, she knew Islamic history.

“Qom is one of many Shiite desert shrine cities that stretch from Najaf in Iraq to Mashhad in eastern Iran,” she explained. “Each is a crumbling old city with narrow alleyways surrounding a holy site. Qom’s sacred site is a ninth-century golden-domed mosque built as the tomb of Fatima, the sister of the Eighth Imam.”

“And that’s important?”

“If you’re a Shiite, it is,” Fala went on. “Sunnis have traditionally followed a more secular view of leadership, a caliph-ruled one. Shias, on the other hand, believe that the Prophet designated Ali to be his successor, to be the imam or spiritual and secular leader of all of Islam, and that imams should rule. Ali was the first of twelve imams. Because the caliphs knew they were a threat to their power, they kept them secluded in Medina, a long way from their capitals. But in the eighth century, a Sunni caliph decided to put an end to the conflict between the two sects and asked the Eighth Imam to become his successor.”

“So then why are the Shias and Sunnis still at odds?” Krantz asked.

“Somebody poisoned the Eighth Imam.”

“Islam—I think it would make for a great soap opera,” Krantz remarked, shaking his head. He should have known better.

“And Judaism wouldn’t?” Fala countered. “What with King David killing off his mistress Bathsheba’s husband; one son raping a sister; another, Absalom, killed trying to usurp his father’s throne.”

Krantz kept quiet and turned to simply watch the passing scenery, the silver mirror-like reflection of one of the many salt lakes between the Teheran and Qom. Never parry swords over religion, he reminded himself. It would always be a losing battle.

Qom’s golden dome of Fatima wasn’t the most dramatic landmark that caught the eye of Joshua and Fala as they drove into town. Two grand amusement parks were built on each side of the holy site, and it was surrounded by dozens of tacky neon-lit shops selling Qom’s specialty,
sohan
—a saffron-flavored candy embedded with pistachio nuts, similar to peanut brittle.

While Teheran was the capital and home of government bureaucrats, the real power was held in Qom by the Grand Ayatollah. Qom was also the country’s most prominent educational center for Shiite Islam. It had the largest
madrasa
, or religious university, Howzeh-ye Elmieh. The founder of the Iranian theocracy, Ayatollah Khomeini, had studied there. And so, it attracted Shiites from around the world who wanted to become mullahs, Islamic religious teachers. It would be a mullah who could tell Krantz if this new and ancient weapon, Alexander’s battle scythe, was one of their creations and if the
Maimun
, the Right Hand of God, was also their doing.

They checked into a small hotel near the Fatima shrine. The streets were crowded with people shopping for
if tar
, their break-the-fast celebration. Turbaned clerics meandered among young men in American-style blue jeans, bearded and grimy Afghan migrant laborers, and women in modest but elegant long, embroidered jackets and designer head scarves. Qom, population one million, was a religious but eclectic city.

Among her peers in the world of Egyptian archaeology, some were religious. Fala had used one of those connections for an introduction to a prominent mullah in Qom. Krantz was confident of the outcome. The mullah would either provide them insight or shout to the crowd “Kill the Jew!” No matter, he was too hungry to worry. The sun was setting and the streets were emptying as people rushed home to be with their families when he and Fala sat down at an outdoor café for their
if tar
.

What he wanted was a beer or glass of wine. But he knew that not only were alcoholic beverages not served in restaurants, they were strictly forbidden in the entire country. He could order a nonalcoholic beer or a soft drink, but decided to stick with the national beverage and ordered
ckai
, a sweet tea sipped through a sugar cube. The menu had the classic Middle East staples—assortments of lamb, eggplant, yogurt, and wheat bread.

A young cleric, who could barely have been twenty, entered and sat across from them. He was turbaned but so young that his beard was only an irregular curly stubble. He sipped his tea quietly and said nothing as they devoured their meal. Only when they had finished did he speak.

“You are the friend of Mustafa Khalil?” he asked Fala.

“Why, yes,” she answered, surprised. They had supposed that their contact would meet them later at their hotel.

“I am Danush,” he introduced himself in Arabic. “You are Fala al-Shohada?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you from?” the young cleric asked, turning to Krantz.

Krantz spoke a bit of Arabic, poorly. He intended to let Fala talk, and if spoken to, provide single word responses.

“Al Kahira,”
Cairo, he answered in Arabic.

The cleric simple shook his head no.

“He’s British,” Fala cut in. “We work together in Cairo.”

The cleric smiled and again shook his head. He handed each of them his card. He was the Grand Ayatollah’s secretary.

“You are very young to have such an important job,” Fala commented. “You must be very smart.”

The young man smiled. “There is perhaps a little nepotism. I am his son-in-law.”

This young man must, indeed, be very smart
, Krantz thought. The Grand Ayatollah would not allow his daughter to marry for love or marry just anyone. This mullah had to have wisdom and potential to perhaps someday become an Ayatollah himself. Krantz realized how exceptionally bright this kid was with his next sentence.

“M’davar Ivrit?”
he asked. “Do you want me to speak in Hebrew?”

Krantz jumped up from his chair. They knew who he was. He was an Israeli in Iran, and he didn’t plan on be shackled and tortured. While the Israeli government had often bartered for the return of their prisoners, he detested that policy. He didn’t intend on being traded for some bomber who had killed dozens of innocents. He looked frantically about for the best direction to flee.

“Calm. Calm,” Danush, the young mullah, said in English. “Please sit. I can guarantee you are safe here. Although you have been less then honest with me, I assure you I am being truthful.”

Krantz sat again, slowly. The mullah poured him another cup of ckai.

“You will come to no harm—not in this holy city or in my country. The Ayatollah promises it is so.”

The tension he had felt since arriving in this country passed like a great relaxing sigh. He had no reason to doubt this cleric’s sincerity. He went from one moment feeling like a spy sitting on needles to a tourist pleasantly dining at an outdoor café enjoying the charms of an ancient city.

The cleric retrieved a small box from a leather satchel by his foot. He set it on the table and opened it. Inside was Alexander’s battle scythe. This one, however, was clearly very old.

“Where did you get this?” Fala asked.

“May I?” Krantz asked, reaching toward the weapon.

The mullah nodded his consent.

“It is part of our collection of antiquities in the National Museum, from an excavation near Tabriz.”

Krantz delicately examined the 2,300-year-old artifact. Only fine threads of its original leather remained, and the bladed fingers were broken or pitted with centuries of rust. But clearly the modern weapon and the old were of the same design.

“I have read your books, Dr. Krantz,” the mullah smiled. “I found them very interesting.”

They even know my name
, Krantz thought.
Good intelligence
.

“I know very much about my country from the time of the Hijra—Mohammad’s journey from Mecca to Medina. But I do not know very much about Al-Iskandar.”

“Then you should ask Miss al-Shohada,” Krantz replied.

The imam politely nodded to Fala.

“Alexander the Great conquered Persia in the fourth century BC,” Fala began. “Qom was supposedly a great city even then, the center of the Zoroastrian religion. On his march to India, Alexander destroyed the city, and Qom wasn’t fully restored to its former prominence until the seventh century, when it became a religious center for Shi’ism.”