“Spot on. And whoever hired him had some other work for him to do. Something closer to home. Their home.”
Yvonne paled. “Natasha’s abductors? Malcolm knew?”
“I’m afraid he not only knew, Mrs Dracup. He’s been actively working for them for the past few months — if not longer.”
“I can’t believe it.” Yvonne felt paralysed, unable to take it in. “Their home?” she repeated, staring at the print.
Moran nodded. “A strange home, I’ll grant you, but a home nevertheless. And a very old one at that.”
“The ziggurat?” Yvonne was incredulous.
“The ziggurat.”
Chapter 34
The interior of the aircraft had more in common with an executive lounge than a flying machine: comfortable seats, individual mahogany tables, what appeared to be a cocktail bar, two widescreen television monitors and subtle lighting. Dracup thought of his stomach-churning Channel crossing in Charles’ two-seater and shook his head at the contrast. This was straight out of a Harrison Ford movie.
“Something the matter, Prof?” Farrell asked him. “Get yourself strapped in. We’re clearing for take-off.”
Dracup saw Farrell place a box carefully on the floor beside him. He didn’t have to open it to know what was in it: Alpha. His heart beat slowly in his chest. He now knew Natasha’s whereabouts and would shortly close the distance between them. That made all the difference to his exhausted mind. He had a chance. A small one, maybe, but a chance at least. Dracup felt a frisson of fear override his exhaustion. He buckled his seat belt and tried to concentrate.
Potzner appeared, his whole body vibrant with nervous energy. Farrell pointed to the seat belt signs and to his own secured strap. The engine note increased in pitch and Dracup felt an invisible pressure push him firmly back in his seat.
Farrell grinned and shouted over, “A lot more thrust than a conventional airliner, huh? It’ll settle once we reach altitude.”
When the scream of the turbines had quietened the seat belt signs flicked off and Potzner was immediately at the bar. He poured two shots of malt and sat next to Dracup. “Here’s to a successful mission, Prof. Glad you could come along.”
“I don’t recall accepting an invitation.”
“Sure you do. You want your little girl back, don’t you?”
Dracup studied Potzner’s face. He had lost weight and there were deep bags under his eyes. “Of course I do. But that’s not why you want me on this trip, is it?”
Potzner looked at him with an amused expression. “Are you sussing me out?” He looked down at his hands. “Not giving anything away, right? No readable signals — isn’t that what you guys call it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re an anthropologist. You study behavioural patterns, check out body signals, right?”
“You mean interpret gestures? Yes, it’s an unconscious habit. But there’s a little more to anthropology than that. Broadly speaking it encompasses the origin and behaviour of the human race plus physical, social, and cultural development.”
Potzner leaned in close, the whisky on his breath a sour waft. “I’ll bet you’re having to do a little reconstructed thinking around that area now, huh?”
Dracup conceded the point with an irritated shrug. “So why do you really want me here?”
Potzner settled back in his seat with a sigh. “Because I’m willing to bet that whatever else you found up in Scotland is going to come good for you again. For us.”
Dracup maintained a blank expression. Of course Potzner knew. The wax tablet was too bulky — and too fragile — to carry around indefinitely, and so Dracup had painstakingly copied Theodore’s abbreviations to a thin piece of card and concealed it under his watchstrap. The truth was that he had despaired of making any sense of the final letters of the tablet.
Until Fish had come up with the translation. And then the cryptic K. zig of Theodore’s tablet took on a whole new meaning. Dracup had, by necessity, a working familiarity with the ancient world, but even if this had not been the case he had heard of Kish. And he had heard of the Tower of Babel — and of other Mesopotamian constructions that had been built for the same purpose: places of worship. A place where men could reach up to God… Most of these buildings were ruins, of course, their composition of baked mud unable to withstand the harsh conditions imposed by the relentless passage of time. But it seemed that one had survived — fashioned perhaps from more enduring material because of its special nature. It was buried now, Dracup theorized, under the sand and dust of the Iraqi alluvial plain, but was very much a going concern. They had an unusual name, these stepped pyramidal structures, a name that had made Dracup’s heart dance when he remembered. They were known to historians and archaeologists as ziggurats.
To Potzner he simply smiled and said, “I’m as much in the dark as you are.”
“Oh yeah,” Potzner said. “I’ll bet.”
In a corner of the cabin a fax machine hummed into life. Farrell wandered over and gathered the transmitted papers together. He scanned the documents and looked up with a frown.
“Fish is checking out the lie of the land. He’s done a satellite scan — nothing new so far, just the known archaeology. ‘Important remains still standing at Kish — yada yada yada — include the city’s red-bricked ziggurat built perhaps by Nebuchadnezzar — yada yada — on a rectangular base. Also the grand palace and two other ziggurats —’”
“Give me that.” Potzner snatched the documents and read them briskly. “This is crap. We’re looking for something else — something subtle. Get Fish on the phone.”
Fish was on within seconds. “You’ve got nine square miles to check out, Fish.” Potzner bent and peered out of the jet window as he listened to the response. Dracup caught a glimpse of the sun, a red disk on the horizon, the clouds a scattering of grey and white cotton.
Potzner was pacing the small space now, glass in hand. “They’ve only excavated three out of forty mounds? So the other thirty-seven should keep you busy for a coupla hours.” Potzner sat down heavily, his face contorted with frustration. “Uh huh.” His voice took on an exaggerated emphasis, as if he was talking to the most challenging pupil in a remedial class. “Anything unusual. That’s right, Fish. No, I don’t have any clues either. Just get on with it.”
Dracup watched the sun reflecting on the surface of the cloud. He was so tired he had forgotten how it felt to be rested, or what it was like to wake up with nothing more than the mundane activities of a University lecturer to inform his mind for the day. He found himself thinking about the number seven. Seven. What was it Sara had said? Seven sevens — the square root of your age is seven. Seven sevens are forty-nine. Forty-nine. He closed his eyes as the figures jumbled and swirled with the clouds, like a white alphabet soup, but with tumbling numbers that refused to add up or make any kind of sense.
Dracup woke to the jolt of the undercarriage on tarmac. He groaned and rubbed his eyes. Farrell was looking at him with a thoughtful expression.
“Welcome to Baghdad International Airport, Prof. You’d better prepare yourself for a few surprises.”
Dracup squinted out of the window and saw a vehicle moving alongside, shadowing their arrival. He felt rather than saw the glint of gunmetal from the vehicle’s cabin. A helmeted US soldier, chewing vigorously on a stick of gum, kept his shaded eyes on the plane as it came to a standstill. The door hissed open and heat invaded the interior. Dracup was wearing a heavy jacket and thick shirt in keeping with a British autumn.