The Lucifer Gospel (6 page)

“Maybe he wasn’t,” said Hilts, lifting his shoulder. He ran a finger through the condensation on the outside of his glass. “Maybe he planned to come after you first, and when he was finished with you he’d be waiting for me back at the bike. He’d be rid of both of us, just like whoever hired him to do the job wanted.”

“And how do we find out who that was?”

Hilts picked up his glass at last and held it up in a mock toast. “By getting up bright and early tomorrow and flying into enemy territory.”

She dreamed she saw Baqir dying again and woke up in her room, the light curtains across the balcony doors blowing inward with a soft sound like ghostly wings. She lay alone in the dark listening to the distant sounds of the city and the traffic on the Corniche El Nil far below. How much death and dying had the Nile seen in all the years it had flowed through this place, on its way to Alexandria and the sea?

The curtains whispered again and she sat up a little, pulling the sheet up around her shoulders against the chill. She checked the glowing dial on her watch. Three a.m. She remembered a song her father had played to her mother once, very late one Christmas Eve when she was young, plinking it out on the old stand-up piano in one corner of the living room that nobody ever played. She’d only heard it that one time but the memory was as bright and clear as the love and affection that had prompted her father to sing it:

It’s three o’clock in the morning
We’ve danced the whole night thru,
And daylight soon will be dawning,
Just one more waltz with you.
That melody so entrancing,
Seems to be made for us two,
I could just keep right on dancing
Forever, dear, with you.

A long way from death and the banks of the Nile. Suddenly, lying there, she realized she wasn’t alone in the room. A shadow shifted, and as she stared into the far corner the shadow became a shape, and the shape became a man. He cleared his throat and a match flared for a moment, lighting up a round, sweating face wearing glasses. A man in his sixties perhaps, thin hair the yellow white of nicotine. He had fat lips and a small chin. The cigarette he was smoking was oval. She smelled strong, dark tobacco. She had an image of Hilts with the small black pistol in his hand, but Hilts was a couple of floors down. She glanced toward the bedside table. Wallet, keys, the disposable camera she’d never got around to using. Nothing even vaguely resembling a weapon. Not to mention the fact that she slept in the nude. She pushed back against the padded headboard and drew the sheet up a little higher. How the hell had he managed to get in? Like every other hotel in the world these days, the Hilton used electronic key cards.

“I bribed a chambermaid, they all have master keys,” said a voice from the darkness, reading her mind. The cigarette glowed and reflected off the man’s wire-framed spectacles. “If you stay in Egypt long enough you’ll come to realize that everyone in this country can be bribed. Baksheesh of a sort.” The man’s accent had once been British but had long since become something pale and distant, the lonely voice of the expatriate. “There are several different kinds, you know. There is the baksheesh of the beggar in which the person who offers alms obtains God’s grace, then there is the—”

Finn cut him off. “Can you tell me what you’re doing in my bedroom, and maybe who you are?”

“I haven’t introduced myself, have I? Beg pardon. The name is Simpson, Arthur Simpson. I’d give you my card but I seem to have run out.” He took another puff on his evil-smelling cigarette, then crossed his legs and tapped the ash into his trouser cuff. “I’m a guide of sorts. Tours of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, interpreting for Germans and Swiss, deciphering hieroglyphics for old dears from Upper Tooting.”

Finn stared into the darkness. He sounded like John Cleese doing some sort of bizarre monologue from an old
Monty Python
episode. “You still haven’t told me why you’re in my hotel room.”

Simpson laughed quietly. “Your virtue is un-threatened, Miss Ryan, I can assure you. I’m far too old for that sort of thing.”

“That’s no answer,” said Finn.

“Not an answer.” Simpson sighed. “Simply a statement of fact, I’m afraid.” He paused and dragged deeply on his cigarette. Finn saw that he was much older than she’d thought originally. His rotundness disguised an unhealthy complexion and dark circles under the eyes. His lips were chapped and dry and there was a sprinkle of day-old gray bristle on his chin. Finally he spoke again. “Actually, Miss Ryan, I’m here to warn you.”

“What about?”

Simpson changed the subject again. “I knew your father, you know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We were at Cambridge together.”

Finn stared across the room. The fact that her father had gone to Cambridge on a GI Bill fellowship to do postgraduate work wasn’t the kind of information one could just pick up anywhere. On the other hand, it wasn’t a state secret either. “He never mentioned an Arthur Simpson that I can remember.”

“We shared a set for two years.”

“Set?”

“Rooms at Magdalene. As in a set of rooms. Dodgy university doublespeak, I’m afraid. You can get degrees in the subject. Semiotics or semantics or some such nonsense.”

“Why don’t you try getting to the point so you can get out of here.”

“Yes, quite. Well, as I said, I knew your father and he knew me, which was much more to the point. You might even say that we became colleagues.”

“You were an archaeologist?”

“Good lord, no! I was a spy.”

Finn pulled the sheet higher. The fact that her father had worked for the CIA using his role as a research and field archaeologist as a blind was certainly not everyday information. “What does that have to do with my dad?”

“Don’t be coy, dear, it doesn’t suit you, or serve the memory of your father. You know as well as I do what he was up to in all those jungles he visited.”

“Get on with your story,” said Finn.

Simpson stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and immediately pulled out his crumpled pack and lit another one using a battered old Ronson. He snapped the lighter closed with a hard flat click, then began to talk again.

And Finn listened.

The twin-engined Cessna Caravan droned on through the overheated early-afternoon air high above the vast, rippling dunescape of the Libyan Desert. Hilts sat in the pilot’s seat, manning the controls and whistling softly under his breath. Beside him was Finn Ryan, her sunglasses protecting her eyes from the almost impossible glare. Behind them were the two other passengers, Achmed the driver, head back against the gray leather seat, eyes closed and mouth open, snoring loudly, and beside him, face buried in a book, the monk, Fr. Jean-Baptiste Laval. He was in his early forties. He wore his graying hair in a buzz cut and had a powerful physique that didn’t seem to fit with his chosen way of life. He looked more like a marine than an expert in Coptic inscriptions. The old, leather-bound book in his hands had the title
Vita S. Antoni
along the spine in gold—the Life of Saint Anthony. Behind the two men the cargo bay was packed with the last load of fresh supplies for the dig.

So far the flight from the civil airport in the Giza district had been uneventful. After the brief, breathtaking beauty of the pyramids there had been nothing but broken desert and sand. Now, flying over the Great Sand Sea, the monotony of the dunes seemed as relentless as any empty, windswept ocean. Achmed had fallen asleep almost immediately after takeoff, and Laval the monk had taken out his book a few seconds after undoing his seat belt. He hadn’t said a dozen words to anybody and seemed unlikely to in the foreseeable future.

Finn glanced over at Hilts. So far she hadn’t said a word to him about her conversation with the mysterious Mr. Simpson the night before. According to the fat little man, at least one of the members of the Adamson expedition was working for the CIA, and Simpson thought there might be more espionage than archaeology involved in the dig. According to him no one could be trusted, least of all Adamson himself. Simpson knew as much about the expedition leader’s background as Hilts and more besides.

According to the Cambridge-educated expatriate, Adamson was a secret supporter of the Tenth Crusade, a violent right-wing organization that believed that Christianity was under overt attack and had to be defended with military action. Finn was vaguely aware of the fringe group, which, unlike most of the so-called Patriot Militia, committed their violence well away from the United States. In the last few years the Tenth Crusade, with their cross and roman numeral X insignia, had taken responsibility for attacks in Baghdad, Tehran, Kabul, and Belfast.

The spokesman of the organization was Colonel James Matoon Judd, a Vietnam War Medal of Honor winner, and now the junior senator from Colorado. A fanatic right-wing fundamentalist, Judd was generally thought to be a complete outer-limits nutcase who had been twice warned in the Senate for his racist, inflammatory remarks. The fact that Adamson had anything to do with a lunatic like Senator Jimmy “Sword of the Lord” Judd came as a complete surprise to Finn.

Simpson wasn’t entirely sure what Adamson’s involvement with Judd had to do with the dig, but according to Simpson it was Judd’s influence in the corridors of power that had gotten Adamson’s expedition access to the Libyan site. That Judd would be rubbing shoulders with people who were the sworn enemies of groups like the Tenth Crusade didn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but according to Simpson’s sources it was unqualified fact, and that made the information all the more intriguing.

After Simpson finally left her room, Finn had spent a confusing hour in the darkness trying to make sense of it all, and trying to make the fat little Englishman’s tale fit in with what had happened to her in the City of the Dead. What had started off as an exotic summer job after graduation was turning into something sinister, dark, and very dangerous. On top of everything else she still hadn’t figured out what Simpson’s angle was; except for the tenuous connection to her late father, there was no reason for the strange man to have sought her out for his late-night warning.

“Holy… !”

The Cessna suddenly yawed, turning in the sky like a windblown leaf. They dropped like a stone, surrounded by a screaming howl of jet engines on both sides that came and went in an instant.

“Son of a bitch!” Hilts yelled, struggling with the wheel, hauling back, desperately pulling out of the sudden dive. The horizon tumbled, spun, then finally settled down. “What the hell was that?!”

Finn tried to get her stomach back where it belonged. Achmed, wide awake, sat behind her looking terrified.

Laval, book in his lap, looked out the port-side window, staring through the lightly tinted glass. “I believe they were Sukhoi Su-22s,” he said. “A pair of them. Probably flying out of Al-Jufra/Hun. Presumably we are now in Libyan air space. They were most likely trying to read your tail registration number.”

“You seem to know a lot about Russian all-purpose fighter jets for a monk,” said Hilts. “Not to mention Libyan air bases.”

“You forget, Mr. Hilts, I am French, and France had no argument with the colonel, as you Americans had. I have been to this country many times in the past twenty years; I am no stranger to their security measures.”

“That must be nice for you,” said Hilts with a sour note in his voice.

“It must be disturbing for a man such as yourself to realize that some of us would rather be citizens of the world than citizens of the United States.”

Hilts muttered something under his breath.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Hilts?”

“How soon before we land?” Finn broke in. The thought of these two in a fistfight at twenty thousand feet wasn’t doing much for her peace of mind.

“Can’t be soon enough for me,” Hilts grunted.

An hour later they landed at Al-Kufrah. From the air it looked like an arid west Texas ghost town: a crossroads with a main street and a few dozen low, adobe-style buildings in the middle of nowhere. The original oasis had become one of Qaddafi’s first “modernization projects” after the revolution, and as they came in for their approach Finn saw dozens of the huge green circles in the desert that marked the deeply irrigated zones of oasis agriculture the colonel-dictator had instituted. The fact that the desert climate was totally unsuited to the crops he tried to grow and that the oasis economy had been totally upset by his efforts was immaterial. He would make the desert bloom even if what he grew cost three times as much to produce as it could be sold for. What Colonel Qaddafi wanted, Colonel Qaddafi got, no questions asked.

Hilts put the Caravan down on the tarmac without so much as a bump and taxied along to the hardstand next to the small terminal building. The airport was an Italian leftover from World War Two and had very little over the years. The run-way had been extended slightly but the square lump of concrete that passed for a terminal was the same, and so was the squat control tower. On the hardstand next to them were two helicopters—one a vicious-looking Mil-24 gunship, squatting like a hunchbacked dragonfly in spotty desert camouflage bristling with weapons, the other a big French-made Aérospatiale Super Puma transport. The Super Puma was white and carried the yellow, black, and red Adamson Corporation Flying A logo on its side.

Three men were standing in front of the Aérospatiale, two in khaki safari-style clothes that looked just a little too stylish to be true, the third man wearing a sky-blue beret and camouflage fatigues that matched the gunship helicopter. He was short, skinny, and had a face like a long-nosed ferret, complete with bushy eyebrows and a cop’s mustache over thin lips. His eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviator sunglasses.

“With sunglasses like that he’s got to be one of the bad guys,” said Hilts. He popped open the pilot’s door of the Cessna, letting in a blast of dry, hot air that hit him like a fist after the interior air conditioning. He stepped out, dropping down onto the hardstand. Finn opened her own door and followed him out. Achmed and the monk roused themselves and came out through the rear door. One of the men in the khaki shooting jackets waved. Finn recognized him from the
Newsweek
profile. It was Rolf Adamson, the forty-year-old media tycoon, billionaire, possible religious fanatic, and also her new boss. He looked exactly like his photograph in the magazine: young, blond, Hollywood handsome and New York smart. The man beside him was the direct opposite, old, grizzled, and dark with the face of a worn-out prizefighter.