Nordhausen was very pleased with himself, but he would have had a lot to think about if he had seen what actually happened after he left Reading Station. If he had seen the dusky stranger shuffle into the refreshment room, he might have thought it odd how the man singled out one isolated table in the corner and stooped to look beneath it, as though he expected to find something there. He might have been surprised at the look on the fellow’s face when the bag he expected to find was not sitting there. He might have wondered at the curse the man uttered beneath his breath, in a strange and unfamiliar tongue, and the odd way in which he surveilled the room, his eyes laden with hostility and suspicion. There was no one else there for him to blame. Nordhausen was already ninety-one years away, with a glass of good Chianti in his right hand and a self-indulgent gleam of satisfaction in his eye.
Part I
The Ammonite
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
1
The helo swooped low, its turbine engines whining with the descent as it made its way along the crest of a jagged ridge of weathered rock. All about them the desert was broken by fantastic shelves of striated stone erupting from a barren plain. The sun cast an amber hue on the red and black stone as they circled, painting the landscape in dark shades of scarlet and orange.
“How you got permission for this is beyond me.” Paul Dorland was seated in the comfortable back seat of the helo next to Professor Nordhausen, his long time friend and associate.
“It wasn’t easy,” said the professor over the noise of the engine. “The Jordanian government isn’t very fond of Americans these days—not after the mess we created in the region with that business in Iraq. It took some doing, Paul, but I pulled on a few favors I was owed by associates in the Middle Eastern Archeological Society. They have digs going on out here all the time: the Buller excavations at Aliba, the resources project out at Kerak, the Madaba Plains outfit near Tel Jalul—just to name a few. I convinced them to slip one more permit through the system, that’s all. If you want to get anything done in this world you never make much fuss about it. Just be as inconspicuous as possible. “
“And the helicopter?” Paul tightened his grip on the arm rest as the chopper swirled about, low to the ground now for its landing.
“Money talks, my friend.” Nordhausen smiled at him. “Particularly out here in the middle of nowhere. I rented this rig for one thousand dollars. It belongs to an independent oil drilling concern about fifty klicks east of here in the volcanic flats region.“
Paul nodded, as he ran a long fingered hand through his medium brown hair. The professor had enlisted him in this safari over a month ago, saying that it would be a good excuse for him to get out of the office and see a bit of the world. Paul had seen quite enough, but he was only too glad to join his comrade. He secretly loved the desert climes, and had looked forward to getting decked out in his khaki explorer clothing, complete with a floppy canvas archeologist hat that sat on his lap while he struggled to force some order on his hair.
Nordhausen smiled at him. “Why do you bother to try and comb that mop?” he asked with a hint of a tease in his voice. “You need a haircut.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Paul. Nordhausen had lost his battle against a steadily receding hairline long ago. Paul still rinsed out the emerging gray and tried to keep some sense of order on the top of his head. In this instance, he gave up, and put his canvas hat back on in disgust.
“You say you have people working out here in this heat?”
“Three interns,” said Nordhausen. “It’s a wonderful way to get some experience. Many students would jump at the opportunity. “
“But how did you arrange the passports, travel expenses and visas?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Paul. You act as though no one ever does anything but sit at home and watch TV. Jordan issues at least a thousand reciprocal student visas through the university. You hire them, tell them where they’re going, buy them a plane ticket and they do all the rest. It’s really quite simple.”
Paul nodded, turning his gaze to the rocky desert floor beneath them. They were hovering in a gentle downward glide, and soon the downdraft of the chopper began to kick up dust and debris.
“There!” Nordhausen leaned across Paul to point out his window. “See the campsite?”
“I don’t remember it looking like this,” said Paul.
“Of course not. There’s been plenty of erosion in these landforms over the years. You won’t recognize anything, but believe me, this is the place. I got the numbers from Kelly’s data run on the first breaching point. This was the only hill within walking distance, so I put my people in here with some nifty ground penetrating radar, and they found it!” The professor rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
The helicopter landed with a gentle thump, its bright silver blades whipping up a cloud of reddish dust. The pilot, an Arabic man, turned and flashed the two men a toothy smile from under the headset of his flight helmet.
“Wait for us,” Nordhausen yelled over the deafening noise. “We won’t be long.”
The pilot indicated thumbs up and the professor unlatched his door. “Come on!” He yelled at Paul over the swirling din.
The two men leapt out, hunching low to evade the rotating blades as they gradually slowed. Once they were away from the helo they saw three shadows emerge from the sheen of dust. The interns were out to welcome them, two young men and a woman, all of college age and decked out in khaki shorts and pith helmets.
“Greetings, professor!” The woman was the first to speak, brown ponytails tossing about under her helmet as she ran up.
“Good day, Janice. How are things going?”
“Everything is fine here, sir. “
The two men came up and there were introductions all around. “Paul Dorland,” said the professor as he draped his arm over Paul’s shoulder. “He was with me when we found the damn thing. Paul, this is Bill here with the good looks and that’s Bob with all the muscle. Now then: we haven’t much time. I’ve only got this bird for another six hours, and we have a long way to go yet. Is everything ready?”
“We have it isolated and mounted on a sturdy pallet,” said Janice.
“Was the extraction difficult? Is it well protected?”
“Came out with no trouble at all,” said Bill. “We used acetone to strengthen the tendril areas, and got a good plaster on the main segment. The moorings and cables are all in place. All we have to do is hitch everything up.”
Nordhausen clapped his hands together. “Fantastic! Let’s get started. I’ll help you two with the cables. Janice, why don’t you show Paul the dig site. I’m sure he’ll have a few fond memories.”
They started away from the helo, off through the subsiding dust until they came to the low edge of a shelving ridge. The site was very clean, well marked with stakes and string, and cleared of all the broken desert stone that had been eroding from the shale and basalt landforms for centuries. Paul saw the bundled pallet with thick mooring cables attached to the corners as the other men began dragging the lines toward the undercarriage of the helo. He was only vaguely aware of the woman trailing in his wake. She was saying something about the dig site and the weather, but Paul wasn’t listening. An inner eye was replaying scenes in his head now as he scanned the landforms about him, and he had a prickly sensation of déjà vu.