‘I can do it, sure,’ said Howie. ‘Boss, do you want me to?’
Fisher gestured impatiently for Nina to return the walkie-talkie. ‘Yeah, go ahead,’ he said. ‘Once you’ve got your current shot.’
‘No problemo.’
‘Where is he?’ Eddie asked.
‘Over by the cliff,’ said Lydia, pointing. ‘He wanted clear space for the drone to take off.’
Nina started in that direction. ‘Let’s see what he’s got, then.’
Eddie and the documentary crew followed, Ziff joining them. Fortune and Paris stayed with the porters at the camp. ‘You not coming?’ Eddie called back to them.
‘Sure we’ll know soon enough if you find anything interesting,’ said Paris, stretching out on Fisher’s newly vacated chair.
Fortune gave the Englishman a shrug of exaggerated apology. ‘He is good at his job when it counts, I assure you!’ Paris threw a plastic fork at him, the smartly dressed man easily catching it.
Eddie smiled. ‘So what do you think of Paris?’ Nina asked him. ‘Is he good at his job?’
‘Fortune wouldn’t let him piss about like that if he wasn’t,’ he replied, nodding. ‘He trusts him, so… I trust him, yeah.’
‘Fortune’s a tough boss? He seems so laid back.’
‘Remember how he scared those militia arseholes? He doesn’t need to make a scene to stay on top of a situation.’
They rounded a ruin to find Howie perched cross-legged on a fallen stone block, controlling the quadcopter from his laptop. ‘Hey, there you are,’ he said, glancing around. ‘I’m bringing the drone through the trees now. We’ll see the roof in a sec.’
‘I’ll let you concentrate, then,’ said Nina. ‘I don’t want you to crash!’
‘Won’t happen, I’m a good pilot. Although,’ he admitted, ‘I did have a hairy moment when the drone went around the palace’s far side. Started to get a load of interference from something.’
‘What would cause that?’ asked Fisher. ‘If it gets broken, we’ve got no way to fix it out here.’
‘Dunno. It was like the signal was being blocked. She dipped a little low, and boom! Huge dropout, and I almost lost control. Good thing is that if there’s a major glitch, the drone’s programmed to retrace its route until it gets a solid signal again. Only took a few seconds, so after that I kept her higher.’ Howie nodded at the screen. ‘Anyway, here we go.’
The view from the drone showed it descending beneath the tree cover over the palace’s southern end. Nina saw that the roof was not flat. Between the ranks of towers on each side it was vaulted, curving up to a line of keystones running the building’s length. ‘Solomon knew how to build ’em,’ she said, impressed. ‘It’s survived this long, and I don’t see any signs of damage.’
Ziff nodded. ‘A roof like that would be self-supporting as long as the lower walls remained intact. How large are the individual blocks?’
‘Probably a couple of feet long…’ She frowned, leaning closer. ‘What’s that? Howie, hold position.’
The production assistant set the drone to hover. ‘There’s something on that block,’ said Ziff, pointing out a detail. ‘A carving?’
‘Hard to tell with all the crap on the stonework.’ The palace’s upper aspect was covered in detritus that had fallen from the overhanging trees. ‘Howie, can you get closer?’
‘Sure can.’ The young man’s fingers played over the keyboard. The drone descended. Features upon the block became clearer.
‘It is a carving,’ Ziff said, entranced. ‘I can’t tell what it is, though.’
‘You know what it looks like to me?’ said Eddie, tilting his head. ‘A bird.’
Nina gasped as she saw what he meant. ‘My God. It really is! Howie, turn the drone ninety degrees to the right.’
Howie did so. The image on the screen rotated through a quarter-turn — and what had seemed abstract took on form. Enough of the carving was visible through the decaying leaves to show its true nature: a stylised bird, wings spread wide. ‘It’s not just any bird,’ the redhead went on. ‘It’s an eagle!’
‘Then that means—’ stammered Ziff.
‘The legend is true!’ she cut in.
Fisher hurriedly checked that Rivero was filming the discussion. ‘Okay, hold on,’ he said. ‘Quick recap for the benefit of everyone who isn’t an archaeologist?’
‘The Hebrew legend of the Palace Without Entrance,’ Nina said, addressing the camera. ‘It said that to find the way in, Solomon questioned eagles that lived on its roof. Well, there are the eagles!’
‘Are they going to do “Hotel California”?’ asked Eddie.
‘Shush! And the other blocks around it have eagle carvings as well.’ She looked more closely. ‘And… see that? They’re not the same.’
She darted a fingertip between details of the two carvings. ‘You’re right,’ exclaimed Ziff. One eagle had its left claw raised higher than the right and its beak tilted downwards, but both its neighbour’s feet were level while it was looking up. ‘What about the others? Are they all different?’
Howie moved the drone to examine other blocks. There were indeed more subtle variations between each bird; heads looking left or right, wings extended or drawn up, claws open or closed. ‘So what does that mean?’ said Eddie.
‘It means,’ Nina said with delight, ‘it’s a puzzle. A puzzle that tells you how to find the entrance!’
‘According to the legend,’ continued Ziff, ‘Solomon first spoke to one eagle, who directed him to his older brother, who then directed him to its older brother, and so on until they found the oldest of them all — the only one who knew the location of the entrance.’
Nina nodded. ‘My guess is that certain eagles point to other similar ones. You look for—’
‘Sorry to butt in, but the drone’s almost out of power,’ said Howie with sudden urgency. He quickly swept the little aircraft off the roof. ‘I need to land it.’
‘Oh…’ — Nina was about to swear until she realised Rivero’s camera was still focused on her — ‘… dammit. How long to recharge?’
‘Just gotta swap in a new battery. Then we’ll have another twenty minutes of flight time.’
‘Is that all? Really? We’re a fifth of the way through the twenty-first century and batteries still suck?’ She glowered at the drone as it buzzed down to land, then turned to regard the looming palace. ‘I’ll need to look at the carvings for much longer than that.’
‘How?’ asked Fisher.
She addressed the camera. ‘Isn’t it obvious? We’ve got to get up there ourselves!’
As Eddie had thought, the folding ladders the team had brought did not reach all the way to the roof. The Yorkshireman reluctantly ended up climbing as high as he could, then tossed a grappling hook on a rope over the edge above. It took a couple of attempts, but finally held firm. ‘Sorted!’ he called down to the others before ascending the final stretch. ‘I’ll fix the rope so everyone else can climb up.’
Fisher was not enthusiastic. ‘I haven’t climbed a rope since gym class. And I wasn’t good at it even then.’
‘We can push you up if we have to, Mr Fisher,’ Fortune told him.
Rivero grinned. ‘Can’t wait to get that on camera.’
Nina inevitably was the first to follow her husband. Eddie helped her on to the roof. ‘Ay up. Fancy meeting you here.’
‘Hi,’ she said, grinning, before hurrying to the arched section. She brushed dirt from one of the blocks to reveal the eagle carved into it, then did the same to its neighbours.
By the time she had cleared the images, Howie, Rivero, Ziff and Lydia had also made the climb. ‘Wait, don’t do anything until I’ve got the camera running,’ puffed the sweating Rivero. He turned to receive it from Paris, who had carried it up behind him. ‘Okay, what we got?’