The Bible of Clay (55 page)

"I will do nothing without your consent," Tannenberg assured him as he saw the doubt cover his new friend's face.

"I will speak with our father; it is he who must grant permission. If my father wishes to consider your proposal, he will send for you."

But there was yet another surprise in store for Yasir.

"Very well, my friend, now I would like us to talk trade. I want to start a business—an antiques business—and I also want to finance archaeological expeditions. You know I'm an archaeologist—or at least I was, before the war."

During the time he'd been in Cairo, Tannenberg had taken the measure of Yasir Mubak and reached the conclusion that only profit mattered to him—the more the better. Alfred had the distinct impression that in Mubak he had found the perfect partner, the perfect means by which to achieve the objective that he, Georg, Franz, and Heinrich had set themselves—looting the archaeological treasures of the Middle East and selling them on the black market.

After five hours—Yasir had given instructions to his staff that they not be interrupted—the two men reached an agreement: They would form an antiques trading company. Yasir would continue with his own business, but he would also become Tannenberg's partner. The contacts of the one combined with the ingenuity of the other could make them both very, very wealthy. And they discovered they had one other very important thing in common: a complete lack of scruples.

The answer from Alia and Yasir's father came a week later, in a note sent by the old man. He invited Tannenberg to lunch with the family the following Friday.

At that, Alfred Tannenberg smiled in self-satisfaction. Things could not be going better: He had just formed a business, well ahead of schedule, and he was going to be married. A strategic union with Alia came with its advantages, among them becoming part of the Mubak clan, which meant he would be under the protection of one of the principal families of Egypt. He was going to need protection now that the war in Europe was in its final days. Additionally, his partnership with Yasir would open doors all across the Middle East that might otherwise have been closed to a foreigner.

Given the pressures of living in wartime, Tannenberg was able to convince Alia's father not to delay the wedding overlong—even so, he still had to agree to wait several months for traditional preparations.

The day Commander Wolter telephoned to inform him of Hitler's suicide, Tannenberg was surprised at how little he cared; in fact, his only concern was the legal obstacles that SS officers "deployed" in the Middle East might have to face. But Commander Wolter assured him that they were well prepared for this eventuality: They would all go underground immediately. They had the money and false documents to do so without a trace. And the sooner they disappeared, the better. In the closing days of the war, the Allies had discovered that hell existed on earth—in concentration camps located all over Germany, Austria, Poland . . . every country over which Hiker's boot had trod. And the Allies vowed to hunt down every German who had had anything to do with what they insisted on calling an outrage, a genocide, even a holocaust.

Alfred Tannenberg consulted with both Wolter and Yasir as to whether he should now adopt his new identity. Wolter insisted upon it, while Yasir claimed no one would come to Egypt looking for SS officers and that his father wouldn't approve of his daughter marrying a man with a false name. That argument decided the case: Alfred Tannenberg would continue to be Alfred Tannenberg. He knew there was risk involved, but he agreed with Yasir that in Egypt, and especially with his new connections, he could survive under his own identity if he exercised discretion.

A year after the war had ended, Alfred Tannenberg had married Alia Mubak and, better yet, business was booming. He had managed to contact Georg, who, with his uncle's protection, was starting a new life in the United States. Heinrich was in Madrid under the protective mantle of Franco, and Franz was living the high life in Brazil, where the SS network had shown itself to be extraordinarily efficient in protecting its own. Of course, more time still had to pass before they could comfortably embark on the actual theft of antiquities, but Tannenberg was doing everything possible to prepare for that stage of the business, identifying and seeking out the objects they would put on the market when the time came.

Yasir had introduced him to all the relevant contacts—grave robbers who knew the Valley of the Kings like the palm of their hand, gray-market excavators of archaeological sites, corrupt museum officials. . . . But it was Tannenberg himself who, applying his knowledge of ancient history, conceived detailed plans for financing expeditions in Syria, Jordan, Iraq . . . with special emphasis on his desire to personally lead a team to dig in Haran.

His great dream, still unfulfilled, was to find the tablets of the patriarch Abraham, the stories transcribed by Shamas.

Tannenberg's enthusiasm soon infected Alia, and he even convinced Yasir of the importance of the search.

The tablets were his obsession, the driving force of his life; he was certain that the day he had them, his stature as a renowned archaeologist would secure his place in history and no one would care what he once had been.

In Egypt, and later in Syria and Iraq, he found a secure refuge, as did many of his former comrades. He learned, in snatches here and there, of the Nuremberg Trials as he was excavating once again in Haran. There, Alia conceived and bore their son, Helmut, while Alfred's hands were digging in the sands of the desert of the Middle East.

45

it was sundown. clara decided to go out to the ex-

cavation site to speak with Ayed Sahadi and then invite Picot, Fabian, and Marta to dinner. She would also ask Gian Maria and Salam Najeb to join them. The doctor was exhausted, and it would do him good to relax for a while.

After changing his IV bottle, Aliya took Clara's place beside Tannenberg. She would remain there until Clara returned to her vigil after dinner.

Salam Najeb looked in on his patient before dinner. He found Tannenberg agitated, shouting orders in a strange tongue. When he went over to the bedside to administer a sedative, the old man's eyes filled with terror and he tried to fend the doctor off with the arm he could still move, but Aliya and one of the guards managed to hold him still for the injection, while he hurled obvious insults at them all. But once the sedative took effect, he fell into a fitful sleep.

"Don't move from his side, Aliya, and if you observe any change, call me immediately," Dr. Najeb ordered.

"Yes, Doctor."

The nurse sat down again beside the sick man's bed and opened a book to entertain herself as the camp began to stir for dinner. She

sighed resignedly, and as Tannenberg tossed and stirred in his bed, she turned out all the lights save for one small lamp whose beam fell squarely on the pages of her book.

She neither heard nor saw the figure that suddenly appeared, holding her tight with one hand and putting the other over her mouth. The last thing she felt was the cold steel at her throat. It sliced through so neatly that she had no time to scream or even move. She died without knowing that she'd been killed.

Lion Doyle told himself he was sorry he'd had to kill Aliya, but he'd had no choice. He couldn't leave any witnesses.

He stood over the bed in which Tannenberg was sleeping—the man's eyes, darting back and forth under his eyelids, and a quiver in his legs and hands indicated that his dreams were not restful.

Lion didn't lose a second; he cut Alfred Tannenberg's throat just as neatly as he had the nurse's, and then he made sure the old man would not survive by stabbing him just under the breastbone and slicing him from sternum to navel.

Tannenberg never awoke, never stirred. Lion crept out of the hospital tent in silence, as quickly as he'd slipped in. No one could have missed him. Picot, Fabian, and Marta were with Clara, and the rest of the team was packing, since the next day the helicopters were coming to transport them to Baghdad.

He'd be leaving with them. The truth was, he'd been stupid not to eliminate Tannenberg earlier. He'd been kidding himself that there were too many obstacles. The fact was, he'd enjoyed being there, working like just another member of Picot's team. He was sorry he wasn't who he said he was, except, of course, for the fact that he missed his farm. And Marian—but he knew that if she'd been there, she'd have been happy too.

He took advantage of the darkness and the shadows of the tents to dispose of his weapon and his bloody clothes. He'd just have a smoke until he heard the alarm.

Dinner had been pleasant, since everyone had apparently come to the same decision—it was best not to talk about any of the bad things that had happened over the last couple of weeks. Fabian had entertained them with anecdote after anecdote about his many years in the classroom.

As the rest of the group started back to camp, Clara and Dr. Najeb headed for the hospital tent. The guards nodded a greeting as they went in. Clara was first, followed by the doctor, and her scream of horror echoed throughout the camp. It was a shriek—a high-pitched, drawn-out wail that seemed to go on forever.

Aliya was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Tannenberg was as white as candle wax, his hands lying limp on the bloodstained sheets.

Dr. Najeb tried to pull Clara back out of the tent as she clawed at his face, and when she saw the guards rush in she threw herself at them, hitting them with her fists and kicking them, cursing them, her Hps covered with spittle.

"Pigs! Imbeciles! I'll kill you all!"

Clara's cries echoed like those of a wounded beast, bringing shivers to the rest of the team. Picot, Fabian, Marta, and Ayed Sahadi ran to the hospital, followed closely by Gian Maria and other members of the expedition, among them Lion Doyle and Ante Plaskic.

Gian Maria put his arms around Clara and led her out of the hospital, but only after Dr. Najeb had managed to inject her with a powerful tranquilizer.

It was a long night, filled with shouts and cries, reproaches and confusion. No one had seen anything, none of the guards who'd withstood Clara's rampage could tell them what had happened—none of them had heard or seen a thing. Neither Ayed's brutal interrogation techniques nor the no-less-brutal techniques of the commander of the guard managed to elicit any information—no one knew anything.

"We have a murderer among us," Picot declared for the second time in as many weeks.

"Yes, whoever killed Tannenberg and Aliya almost certainly killed Samira and the two guards," replied Marta glumly as she lit a cigarette with a shaking hand.

Lion Doyle listened to the speculation with the same doleful expression on his face as the rest of the members of the team, although he could feel Ante Plaskic's gaze burning coldly into his back.

"I'm ready to get the hell out of here," said Fabian.

"Me too, Fabian, me too," responded Yves Picot. "And thank God that will happen tomorrow. I wouldn't stay another minute for all the tea in China."

Clara wasn't able to see them off. Dr. Najeb had mercifully administered another tranquilizer: She was in bed, hardly aware of her surroundings. Fatima, despite her own condition, had taken charge of the situation.

Now, except for Gian Maria, all the members of Picot's archaeological team had left. They had wasted no time getting themselves on the helicopters, terrified that their exit would be blocked again, given the previous night's horror.

Lion Doyle, flying toward Baghdad with the rest of the group, knew that he still had to kill Clara, but trying to do that under the circumstances in the camp seemed logistically impossible. Ayed Sahadi had put six men at Clara's door and posted men all around the house. Lion could have kicked himself for not doing the job sooner, but it was a tough job, after all—and sometimes he felt as though killing the heavily guarded Tannenberg had made his mission a success in itself, which meant his employer ought not only to pay him full price but also congratulate him. Of course, Tom Martin wasn't one to give pats on the back; he just expected his employees to do the job they'd been hired to do.

Ahmed Husseini had arranged for the archaeological team to spend two days in Baghdad before being helicoptered to the Jordanian border. From there they would be transported to Amman, and from Amman each member of the team would fly out to his or her own country: Picot to Paris, Marta and Fabian to Madrid, others to Berlin, London, Rome.

Lion Doyle sent a short but very clear fax to Photomundi:
Returning tomorrow. Bringing a lot
of
material, but not all
of
it. It's been hard to work the last few days. But the most important part is done.

They were all experiencing what felt like a kind of claustrophobia, as though the very air was pressing in on them, and they were desperate to leave Iraq as soon as possible, but Ahmed had asked them to be patient—finding helicopters to move them just then was not easy, nor was it advisable to risk their lives by driving to the Jordanian border.

In the lobby of the Hotel Palestina, they ran into some of the reporters who'd visited them in Safran. All the international news desks at all the wire services were telling their correspondents that the war was going to start in a matter of days. Some were hurrying to return home before the invasion began, but most of them were making arrangements for when the fireworks started—arrangements not just for transportation, but also for interpreters and bodyguards, and food and bottled water, just in case.

That night, Picot and the rest of the team had dinner with Miranda and some other reporters.

"Why don't you come with us?" Picot asked Miranda.

"Because that's not what I do. I haven't sat around here this long just to bail out at the last minute."

"You could spend a few days with me in Paris—in fact, you could stay as long as you like."

Miranda looked at Picot with a conspiratorial smile. She liked this archaeologist as much as he seemed smitten with her, but they both knew they lived parallel lives that could never cross, and that if they did, they would wind up doing each other no good.

"It wouldn't work out, Yves."

"Why? You said there was nobody in your life right now." "There's not." "Then . . ."

"Then nothing. You're terrific, really, so terrific that I don't want to think of you as a one-night stand."

"I'm not talking about a one-night stand," Picot protested.

Miranda couldn't help holding out some hope for them. "When this damned war is over, I'll go visit you in Paris, or wherever you are, I promise, and then we'll laugh about this and have a drink and each either go our own way or
...
or the other."

Picot seemed satisfied. He knew that Miranda was going to stay on in Baghdad and could only hope she'd be safe, so she could make good on her promise.

Ahmed Husseini, who had come to dinner with them, was drinking one whiskey after another despite Fabian's attempts to slow him down. The secure, elegant director of the Bureau of Archaeological Excavations they had first met was now unkempt, unshaven, and clearly sleepless. He had dark rings around his eyes, and there was pain, anxiety, grief, anguish—Fabian didn't know what to call it—his restless eyes, which darted nervously from one place to another, as though he feared for his life.

"Are you going back to Safran?" Marta asked him.

"I'm not sure. Clara won't speak to me, but certainly I'll go if there's anything I can do to help her."

"She's your wife!" exclaimed Marta. "How can you not go to her at a time like this?"

"I don't know, Marta, I don't know. . . . I. . . Everything that's happened . . . It's so terrible, and now the war
...
I don't know what's going to happen. . . . Clara should come back to Baghdad, though she's chosen not to; I don't think she can stay there much longer alone."

Fabian made a sign to Marta not to pursue the subject, and he turned the conversation to the exhibit they were planning.

"We're grateful that you were able to convince the authorities to let us mount this exhibition."

"Yes, Professor Picot has already signed all the papers." Ahmed nodded.

"What about you? When will you be joining us?" Fabian asked.

"Me? I'm not sure. It all depends on Clara; I'd like to leave now, tomorrow, if I could, but it's not easy to leave Iraq, and now that Tannenberg is dead they may not let me."

Ahmed's cell phone interrupted him. He didn't get up to go talk more discreetly somewhere else, though—he listened in silence to the voice on the other end, which seemed to be giving him orders.

He nodded over and over, his face pale and his expression tense.

"Who was that?" Marta asked, not caring in the slightest if she was being nosy.

"It
...
it was the Colonel. He's very important." "He seemed terrible," Marta murmured.

"I'll be heading back to Safran first thing tomorrow to attend Alfred's funeral. The presidential palace wants him buried with full honors. I've been ordered to go, to be with Clara, and to convince her to return to Baghdad."

"That's the most sensible thing," Lion Doyle declared.

"What about us, though?" asked Picot with a note of worry.

"You will be leaving Baghdad the day after tomorrow at first light. Karim, my assistant, is the Colonel's nephew, and he'll make sure you run into no problems; he'll accompany you to the air base if I don't get back in time. But I should be back tomorrow evening—with Clara, if possible."

Ahmed then excused himself. He had drunk too much—his head was spinning, he felt like throwing up, and his eyes burned. He knew that the best thing he could do was try to get some sleep.

Picot suggested that the group retire to the bar for a nightcap, and almost everyone came along. Only Ante Plaskic refused. He said good night and went up to his room.

"What a strange guy," Miranda said as she watched him cross the lobby toward the elevators.

"He is," agreed Picot. "I think my intuition about him may have been right all along. All these months he hasn't made one attempt to be pleasant or sociable with the rest of us. He's been totally distant."

"He was good at his job, though," said Marta, in his defense. "Without him, none of the data would have been catalogued. And he's always been polite; he's done everything we asked him to do. I don't think it's fair to criticize him for not being friendly, especially when no one seemed to like him from the start. It's not as though any of us went out of our way to make him feel welcome," she insisted.

"Whatever," Picot said. "I still think he's strange."

They sat up until late, drinking and talking about the war.

Three helicopters hovered over the yellow sand, just a few yards from what remained of the archaeological camp.

Clara, standing beside the Colonel, waited with a distracted look for the delegation to land. She'd been informed that the government had sent its most distinguished representatives to attend her grandfather's funeral: several generals, two ministers, and several members of Saddam's own family.

As they filed toward her from the helicopters, they all grasped her hand and expressed their condolences. Iraq, they said, had lost one of its best friends and most distinguished citizens. But Clara hardly heard their words of comfort; in fact, it was hard for her to understand what they were saying at all. She was so overcome with grief, her heart so dulled, that she found it almost impossible to concentrate on what was happening around her.