“We have to go.”
Bashir nodded, slowly coming to terms with it. But as McKenzie stood and gathered a few things, Bashir found his mind drifting inexplicably back to the tablet. Where had he seen that symbol before?
Jan Davis disappeared from view. McKenzie was halfway out of the tent. “Ahmad, you have to come.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said.
“You won’t,” he said. “They know you work with Americans. They’ll take it out on you when they can’t find us.”
Bashir couldn’t fight the logic, but he did not want to leave. He felt they were close to something important, something that mattered more than revolutions and guns and the ugly transfer of power.
“This symbol,” he said, pointing to the tablet. “I’ve seen it.”
The wind howled and the tent shook and Bashir’s mind whirled.
“It doesn’t matter,” McKenzie said.
“It does!”
“Not if you’re dead.”
McKenzie looked away and then stuck his head back inside. “The truck’s leaving.”
There was no choice. Bashir knew he had to go. He looked at the symbol one last time, burning it into his brain, and then he went to leave. At the last moment he turned back and grabbed the copper scroll from the skeleton’s grasp.
Stepping out of the tent, Bashir was determined not to let the revolutionaries destroy what he’d found. He ripped one stake from the ground and the wind did the rest, filling the tent like a balloon and carrying it across the desert like a kite.
Forty yards away, a big diesel truck waited. McKenzie and Davis were already running toward it.
“Come on!” McKenzie shouted.
Fighting the wind and shielding his eyes, Bashir made his way to the truck. He climbed into the back along with the two Americans and three others. The cab up front was already full.
In the distance behind them, he could see sunlight reflecting off several vehicles. There was no time to spare.
The truck lurched forward and Bashir lost his balance. He stumbled, put a hand out to brace himself, and dropped the scroll. It hit the back edge of the truck bed and tumbled out onto the sand as the truck accelerated away.
Bashir cringed. He stepped to the edge, ready to jump, but the truck was moving too fast. He grabbed McKenzie. “Tell the driver to stop. Tell him to stop.”
Between the roaring of the diesel engine and the howling of the wind, his words were barely audible.
“It’s too late!” McKenzie shouted.
“No!” Bashir said.
Desperate beyond reason, he tried to climb out but McKenzie held him back.
“Let me go!”
“No, Ahmad. It’s too late.”
By now the truck was rolling away at thirty miles per hour. The revolutionaries were approaching from the east. There would be no jumping free, no stopping or turning back.
As this reality seeped into Bashir, he stopped straining. McKenzie relaxed his grasp and then cautiously released him. Bashir squinted through the storm at the scroll, and his heart sank.
It might take hours or even days for the grave to fill with sand, but the scroll would be buried in minutes. And without any marker to lead the way, it would disappear from the world as if it had never existed.
CHAPTER 1
Claudia Gonzales flashed her ID badge at the security checkpoint outside the United Nations General Assembly building. There was no real need to do so; the guards knew her well and at this hour of the morning — just after six on the East Coast — she was one of the few diplomats on the scene.
They waved her through posthaste. With a briefcase in one hand and a tall mocha latte in the other, Gonzales made her way to a secure elevator and up to the eleventh floor of the iconic monolith.
Reaching her office before any members of her staff did was a habit she’d kept since graduating from law school. For one thing, it set a good example; it was difficult for her staff to slack off or complain when the boss was working harder than anyone else. It also had a practical purpose. Not only did the early bird catch the worm, but for the busy people of the world, the early morning hours were often the only available moment to actually look for the proverbial morsel.
In an hour the phones would start ringing. Shortly after that, the appointments would begin and then the afternoon teleconferences, followed by press briefings and public hearings. In the blink of an eye it would be closing time, and the pile of work on her desk would look exactly as it had eight hours before.
To Claudia Gonzales, that was the equivalent of running in place.
She stepped into her office, set down the latte, and turned on her computer. As the machine booted up, she stepped outside, checking the items on her assistant’s desk that had come in during the night hours. The world ran 24/7, even if government offices didn’t.
There was a report on the continuing blockade of Gaza, another on a human rights situation in East Timor, and an internal-use envelope that lay unopened.
It read “Diplomatic Materials, Private and Confidential.” It was listed as coming from the secretary general’s office, with Gonzales’s name scrawled in the recipient’s slot. She grabbed all three items and returned to her office.
Fairly certain there were no earth-shattering details in the two reports, she placed them in her inbox and proceeded to open the big manila package.
Inside was a legal-sized envelope on the secretary general’s stationery. Intrigued, she took a sip of her latte, placed it down, and used a letter opener to slice the top of the envelope. There was an odd rubbery feel to the envelope, almost as if it were waterproof. It made her wonder how much the secretary general spent on his office supplies.
She pulled out a folded sheet of paper and began to read.
You will be punished. You will all be punished. We have waited and suffered too long.
Her mood instantly changed. The UN got a hundred threats per week, mostly from crackpots and mentally unstable individuals who imagined the UN taking over the world with black helicopters. What made these people think the UN was even remotely capable of dominating the world boggled her mind. In the best of times, they had trouble keeping the peace in remote, undeveloped areas.
She read on.
Your efforts have not helped us. You plunge us deeper into despair every day. In the name of progress you enslave us, in the name of charity you starve us, in the name of peace you slaughter us. We can no longer wait for your help, we will change the world ourselves.
Normally Claudia took these threats with a grain of salt, but this letter had come to her internally. Whoever sent it had access to things they should not have had access to. She began to feel sick, her face and hands flushed and sweating.
In our pains we have grown. And you have fed off us. You think you have beaten us, but he who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.
We cannot reverse what you have done but we mete out your portion of suffering, we bring you down with us. And it is you who will deliver the master stroke for us. That is correct, Ambassador Gonzales, you are the method of our vengeance. If you have read this far, you are carrying the plague already.
Her heart went cold as she read the words. With her hand shaking lightly, she jabbed at the intercom switch on her phone.
“Security,” a voice said.
“This is—” She stopped midsentence, noticing some type of reddish liquid left behind on the phone key. She glanced at her hand, turning her palm up. The tips of her fingers and her thumb were stained reddish brown.
She noticed a strange smell and heard a quiet sizzling sound. Her left hand, still holding the sheet of paper, felt as if it were burning. She flung the letter to the floor with a shout, pushing her chair backward. She jumped up out of the seat, knocking the latte off her desk.