The Bible of Clay (45 page)

Clara listened stoically as her husband began to spit out the truths that had gone unspoken for so long, truths that he thought would topple the pedestal on which she'd placed her grandfather all these years.

"Do you know what this last operation of his is about? I'll tell you. The archaeological missions he's financed have had one purpose: to steal the most valuable pieces that are found. Nor has he ever had any problem corrupting government officials who earn barely enough to live on between their paltry paychecks. They turn a blind eye to his operations and let thieves carry pieces out of the country's museums. Does that surprise you? It's a lucrative business, moves millions of dollars, and has made your grandfather and his oh-so-respectable friends very, very wealthy. They sell one-of-a-kind pieces to one-of-a-kind clients. Your grandfather runs the business in the Middle East, while Enrique is in charge of Europe and Frank handles South America. George is the spider at the center of the web. He might sell a Roman-period statue stolen from a hermitage in Castille or an altarpiece from a South American cathedral. There are a lot of very wealthy, very greedy people in the world, Clara; they see something and they want it. For them, everything is just a matter of money. A group of art hoarders. There aren't many, but they're very generous. You're pale—do you want some water?"

Ahmed poured her a glassful of water and handed it to her. He was enjoying this. For years he had been suppressing his rising rage at his wife's infantile attitude—she was purposefully blind to what happened around her. She just lived—skirting anything that stood in her way, taking what she wanted—with a willful ignorance through which she steadfastly maintained her innocence about her grandfather's activities.

"Your grandfather needs me for this last operation, so he gave me no choice but to participate. I'll tell you what it consists of. It's a caper, like one of those old American movies, but on a scale not witnessed since the sack of Rome. Alfred's men are going to break into the largest museums all over Iraq, not just in Baghdad. And you want to know who gave them the lists of these one-of-a-kind pieces whose value is literally incalculable? I did. These objects are . . . the patrimony of all humanity. But they'll wind up in the secret museums and dining rooms of a handful of art-greedy millionaires who want to drink out of the same goblet that Hammurabi drank from. But since the teams are risking their necks for those pieces, Alfred's allowing them to carry away a few items for themselves. I've made two lists: one of unique, one-of-a-kind objects, and another of merely important objects."

"That's . . . that's impossible," stammered Clara.

"It's not just possible, it's easy. On March twentieth the war will start, is that not right? Is that not what your grandfather told you? All right, then—that day, his men will break into the museums and get out as fast as they can. Each group has been instructed to reach a border— Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan—where other teams will be waiting to transport the cargo to its final destinations. Enrique has already promised certain pieces to important buyers, as have Frank and George. They'll hang on to the rest and take them out for sale as the market demands. They're in no hurry, even if they are all getting on in years." "But in the middle of the bombing
..."

"Oh, that makes it all the easier! When the war starts, nobody's going to be thinking about guarding museums; everybody will be running for their lives. Alfred's men are good, the best thieves in the Middle East."

"Stop it! Don't say another word!"

Clara stood up from her chair, pacing back and forth across the small room. She felt like running, felt like screaming. But she controlled herself. No, she wouldn't do or say anything that Ahmed expected her to do or say. She turned toward him, hating him for having brought her world crashing down around her ears—that lovely, false world in which she'd been living since she was a child, always under the protection of her doting grandfather.

"The war is really going to start on the twentieth?"

"That's right. George called to let us know. You shouldn't be here that day if you want to go on living."

"When will we have to leave Safran?"

"I don't know; your grandfather didn't tell me."

"How will you get out of Iraq?"

"Your grandfather promised to get me out; he's the only one who can."

They stood in silence. Clara felt that she'd aged ten years in the last half hour. She stared at Ahmed. How could she ever have loved this man?

Then it struck her that she didn't care what her grandfather had done. She loved him anyway and would never reproach him for anything, especially in the waning days of his life. She decided that she was going to defend him to her last breath against anyone, including Ahmed or Yasir, who wished to usurp him—who wished to kill him.

Ahmed watched her as she paced the room, and he thought that any moment she was going to collapse, break down completely. He was surprised when she brought herself under control and turned to him with ice-cold eyes. Alfred's eyes.

"I hope you and Yasir are up to doing exactly what my grandfather asks of you. I'll be watching, of course, to make sure you don't decide to change the plan. If you do . . ."

"Are you threatening me?" Ahmed asked, incredulous.

"No, Ahmed. I'm not threatening you. I'm telling you. But I don't imagine that will surprise you, coming as it does from a Tannenberg."

"You want to make a name for yourself in the big business of crime?"

"Spare me the irony I don't think you know me, Ahmed; you underestimate me, you always have, and you could pay for that mistake dearly"

Ahmed shook his head; he was beginning to think that the woman he'd slept with for the last ten years was a total stranger. But he did believe her—as he'd listened to her talk, he knew that this woman was capable of anything.

"I'm sorry to have upset you, Clara, but it was time that you knew the truth."

"I'm going to sleep in Fatima's room; it stinks in here—it stinks of you. Get out of here, leave Safran as soon as you can, and when the operation is over, try not to bump into me somewhere
—
I won't be as generous as my grandfather has been."

Clara left the room, gently pulling the door shut behind her. She felt nothing, absolutely nothing for Ahmed; she only regretted the years she'd wasted with him.

Fatima was startled to hear the soft knock at her door. She got out of bed and pulled the door open a crack.

"Clara! What's wrong?"

"Can I sleep here?"

"Yes, of course. Sleep in my bed; I'll make a bed on the floor." "Just move over, we both fit."

Fatima's presence calmed her. Clara fell into the bed and closed her eyes. She slept deeply until the first ray of sunlight shone brightly through a crack in the blinds.

39

fatima entered the room with a tray.

"Hurry and eat; Professor Picot wants to see you." By the time Clara got to the dig, the team had been excavating for hours. Marta came over to her, holding a shard of clay that was clearly distinct from their previous findings.

"Look at this. There was a fire here, in the temple; there's no way to know whether it was an accident or torched on purpose, though when we cleared off the perimeter of another courtyard, this morning, we found a set of stairs and some weapons—swords and spears. They're not terribly well preserved; the ground wasn't dry enough to keep them perfectly. But some of them seem to have been deliberately broken—it looks like the temple was attacked and looted in some battle." "Temples are usually respected," Clara replied, mystified. "Yes, but every so often kings overrode the sanctity of the religious establishment out of greed. For example, Nabonidus' plundering caused irreparable changes in the relationship between the throne and the temple. He replaced the temple scribe with a royal administrator, the resh sharri, who was in charge of commercial activities. The priests who oversaw the temple, the qipu and the shatammu, were subordinate to him. Or perhaps there was an invasion, a war between kings, and the temple suffered the same fate as the cities and other sites."

Clara listened attentively to Marta's theorizing. She had developed enormous respect for Marta over the course of their work together, not only for her expertise but also because of her behavior toward everyone on the dig. And Clara envied the deference everyone paid Marta, even Picot, who always treated her as an equal, and the genuine affection in which she was held.

It struck Clara that she'd never earned that kind of respect. In the final analysis, she told herself, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, on her resume worth noting except her name, Tannenberg, which in the Middle East was respected and feared in equal measure. But even that stemmed from her grandfather's reputation; she just benefited from it as his heir.

"Has Professor Picot seen it?"

"Yves? Yes, of course, and we've decided to allocate more men to this sector. We'll work as late as we can today. We have to make every minute count."

Fabian, dangling by a rope from an improvised crane, its pulleys manned by workers under the close watch of Picot, was being lowered into a hole that seemed to lead into a room buried underground. Everything below was dark.

"Be careful, it looks deep," Picot was saying.

"Don't worry, just let the rope out slowly. We'll see what's down here."

"I am worried—turn on that flashlight. If there's enough space down there, I'll come down too."

The workers slowly lowered Fabian into the hole. They were hoping that this was a lower story of the temple, though it might be just a well. They couldn't be sure until Fabian resurfaced. Picot looked nervous as he peered down into the darkness.

"How is it down there?" he called out to Fabian.

"Lower me a little more—I haven't touched ground yet," Fabian called back, although his voice sounded far away.

They heard a dull thud and then silence. Picot started getting into a harness, as Fabian had done.

"Wait—let Fabian tell us what's down there," Marta told him.

"I don't want to leave him there by himself."

"Me either, but waiting two minutes won't kill anyone. If he doesn't signal us, then we'll go down," she said.

Minutes later, the rope jerked a couple of times. Yves inched closer to the hole, but all he could see was a shaft of light in the blackness.

"Are you all right?" he shouted down, hoping that Fabian could hear him.

They felt another tug on the rope.

"I'm going down. Help me here, and get some more lights so we can see what's down there," Picot grumbled, as he checked his attachment to the crane rope. "Marta, you're in charge."

"I'm going down too."

"No, stay here. If something happens to us, who's going to run the show?" "I am."

Marta and Picot turned to look at Clara, whose tone left no room for argument.

"I remind you, Professor, that this mission belongs to us both. I'll make sure that nothing happens to you while I'm here."

Yves shrugged and motioned to Marta to follow him.

Some thirty feet down, his feet touched ground. He felt the clamminess of the earth and saw Fabian, on his hands and knees, a few yards away, scraping at a wall with a spatula.

"Nice to have some company," said Fabian without turning around.

"So what are we looking at?" Picot asked.

"I think this is a door—there seems to be another chamber through here. And there's also some sort of fresco—look here, you can see it. It's a winged bull. Beautiful."

"What's this?" Marta said, joining them.

"It appears to be a room. There are some wooden shelves over there—see that wall? The shelves sticking out? It may have been the room where the tablets were held; I don't know, I haven't had much time to look around," Fabian said.

Marta untied two large lanterns from around her waist and placed them on the floor; Picot did the same. The light seemed dim in the large room, but it illuminated what appeared to be a rectangular space that contained, as Fabian had told them, the remains of wooden shelves.

The ground was covered in shards of clay and pieces of ancient wood, as well as vitrified sand.

Picot helped Fabian clean off the section of wall where the traces of the winged bull were painted, while Marta continued to study the floor, where she found pieces of clay tile with bas-reliefs of bulls, Hons, falcons, ducks. . . .

"Come look at this!"

"What is it?" Picot asked.

"Bas-reliefs, or what's left of them, but they're gorgeous!" But the two men remained intent on their work at the doorway. "What's wrong with you two? Don't you want to see this?" Marta was puzzled.

"There's something here, Marta. Beside the fresco of this bull, the wall sounds hollow—I think there's another room," said Fabian.

"Have it your way, but we ought to let them know up top that we're all right."

"Could you do it?" Picot asked, completely absorbed.

Marta tugged three times at one of the ropes dangling from above to tell the team up at the surface they were all right. Then she went back to her examination of the floor.

An hour later, the three of them reappeared on the surface, smiling in delight.

"What's down there?" Clara asked.

"More rooms in the temple," Picot told her. "So far we've seen the two upper floors, but there are more—exactly how many I can't tell, but there are more for sure. The problem is that we need to shore up from below, because they could collapse and fall in. It won't be easy, and in the time we have left
..."
Picot shook his head dubiously.

"We can get more men," Clara suggested.

"Even so
...
it will be dicey. Normally, it would take months, even years, to do this right," Fabian said.

"And, Clara, I still need to talk to Ahmed and your grandfather," Picot added. "I wasn't able to see them last night, and this morning they were both still asleep when I went over to the house."

"You can see them tonight. For now, tell me what we need to do here."

"We'll do what we can to investigate what's here and to shore it up. But there's no guarantee that we'll find anything at all, and time is against us."

That afternoon, Fatima sent a man to bring Clara back to the house.

When she entered, the eerie silence drew her immediately to her grandfather's room. She took a place quietly just inside the door, watching Dr. Najeb place an oxygen mask over her grandfather's face while Samira changed the intravenous drip bottle. Fatima waited at Alfred's bedside, her eyes brimming with tears.

The doctor whispered to Samira to stay with Tannenberg while he motioned Clara to follow him into the living room.

"I don't think I can go on with this charade of 'medical care,' " the doctor told her without preamble.

"What happened?"

"This morning Mr. Tannenberg lost consciousness—he had a mild coronary. Fortunately, we were able to react quickly. I tried to transfer him to the hospital tent, but he wouldn't hear of it. He insists on hiding his condition, so he's forcing me to treat him in his room. As you saw, I had some equipment brought in, but if we don't take him to a real hospital, he won't last much longer."

"He's dying," Clara said in a tone of voice so calm that it frightened the doctor.

"Yes, he's dying. You've known that for some time—but if he stays here, he's going to die that much sooner."

"We will respect my grandfather's wishes."

There was nothing more Salam Najeb could say, no way to fight the extraordinary irrationality of these two people. They were both so strange to him, following a code of behavior that was beyond his experience or understanding.

"You will be responsible for what happens," the doctor said.

"Of course I will. Now tell me whether my grandfather is able to talk to me."

"He's fully conscious now, but in my opinion he should rest." "I need to talk to him."

The doctor's expression reflected utter defeat; he shrugged his shoulders, knowing it was useless to argue. All he could do was accompany Clara back to her grandfather's room.

"Samira, Madam Tannenberg wants to talk to her grandfather. Wait at the door, please."

At the same time, Clara motioned to Fatima to leave too. When they were alone, she went over to the bed and took her grandfather's hand. She made an effort to smile.

"Don't try to talk, Grandfather; I want you to rest. I think we've found something—another level to the temple, several more floors. Picot went down with Fabian and Marta, and when they resurfaced they were smiling from ear to ear."

Tannenberg made a motion as though he was about to start talking, but Clara stopped him.

"Please, just listen. You don't need to say a thing. I need you to trust me the way I trust you. I spoke to Ahmed last night and he told me everything."

The old man's eyes filled with rage as he struggled to sit up in bed, tearing the oxygen mask off his face.

"What did he tell you?" he asked furiously, though his voice was barely audible.

"Let me call Samira so she can put this back on you. I
...
I want us to talk, you and I, but you need the oxygen.
..."

"Stop!" he commanded her. "We'll talk now—then you can call in that idiotic nurse or whoever else you want to. But now tell me what that husband of yours told you."

"He told me about the operation that. . . that's under way, and about George, Frank, and Enrique. About the fortune involved."

Alfred Tannenberg closed his eyes as he gripped Clara's hand to keep her still. When he'd brought his breathing back under control, he opened them again and glared at Clara.

"I told you. Keep your nose out of my business."

"Do you mean you can trust someone else more than me? Please, Grandfather, think about the situation we're in. The war is almost on us. You're . . . you aren't well, and
...
I think you need me. I've heard you say more than once that sometimes, to ensure the success of a business deal, you have to buy loyalties. And if they know you're sick, some of your men are capable of selling you out to the highest bidder."

The old man closed his eyes again. He was surprised by Clara's coolness, the ease with which she'd accepted the fact that they were about to undertake an operation that would leave Iraq stripped of its artistic legacy forever. This young woman, who loved her country, who'd grown up dreaming about discovering its lost cities, who treasured anything from the past, suddenly appeared before him as a woman ready to take over the reins of a business that consisted purely and simply of robbery, theft, looting.

"What do you want, Clara?"

"I want to keep Ahmed and Yasir from taking advantage of our situation. I want you to tell me what I should say to them, what you want me to do."

"We are going to strip Iraq of its past."

"I know that."

"And you don't care?"

Clara hesitated a few moments before answering. She cared, yes, but her loyalty to her grandfather came first—not to mention that she didn't believe that Alfred's men would actually be able to get away with everything. It wasn't easy to empty one museum, let alone ten.

"I won't lie to you. I didn't want to believe Ahmed—I wanted to think he was lying. But I can't change things, or change you either. The sooner this is over, the better. What matters most to me is that you're sick, and they may try to take advantage of you—that I will not allow."

"You can start. . . taking some responsibility. But no mistakes—not from you, or anyone. There are no changes in the operation. I've told Ahmed what I expect of him, Yasir what I expect of him . . ."

The old man's voice trailed off. His eyelids fluttered and his eyes grew dim; Clara could feel his ice-cold hand, almost lifeless. She screamed, and it sounded like a howl.

Dr. Najeb and Samira ran into the room and pushed Clara aside. Fatima followed them and put her arms around Clara.

Two men with drawn pistols burst into the room right on their heels.

"Out—all of you!" the doctor ordered. "You too," he told Clara, somewhat more gently.

Clara gathered herself and motioned to the two men who'd rushed in. Others guards gathered around as they stepped out into the living room.

"Everything's fine—just a little accident. I tripped and almost fell; I think I twisted my ankle. I'm sorry that I alarmed you." The men clearly didn't believe a word of it.