A few men wearing head scarves eyed me with apprehensive curiosity as I strode through the dimpled sand. Not entirely sure of the protocol regarding visits to fabric structures, I hesitated underneath the canvas door, which was held open like a canopy by two metal posts. After a few uncertain seconds, I cleared my throat loudly, hoping that would be enough to alert Nick.
When there came no reaction from the tent, I ducked to peek inside, only to recoil at the sudden burst of his voice. By the sound of it, Nick was on the phone; his speech was punctuated by silences, and although I had no idea what was being said, it sounded as if he was being chewed out long-distance.
It was by no means the first time in my life I had regretted not learning Arabic, but I had never felt the need more keenly than now. For, unless I was mistaken, in the stream of Nick’s aggressive self-defense the name “Moselane” was repeated at least three times.
Just as I was finally backing away from the tent door, realizing with some delay that I was eavesdropping, Nick came storming out and all but knocked me over. His eyes instantly narrowed.
Sizzling with embarrassment, I held up Mr. Ludwig’s photograph and blurted out, “I’ve done it. The first two sentences. I can do this!”
Without even a glance at the photograph, Nick took me by the elbow and escorted me into his tent. “Take a seat.”
I cast my eyes around his lair. Furniture was scarce, and an open laptop sat directly on a Persian rug next to a cantina plate half-filled with scrambled eggs. The only other place to sit down was the rather imposing divan, which, presumably, served as his bed.
“I just came by to tell you the good news,” I said, turning toward him. In the dimness of the tent I could see little more than the beard and frown I already knew too well. My sense of smell, however, filled in the blanks. Nick was in need of a shower, and the strong smell of his body made me almost dizzy. “Of course, if you don’t care about the inscription, it doesn’t matter, but if you do care, I suggest we start over.” I smiled as charmingly as I could under the circumstances. “What do you say?”
It seemed as if Nick had to summon his thoughts from miles away. “You’ve cracked the code?” he said at last, his eyes dropping to the photograph in my hand. “That was fast. How were you able to do that?”
I took half a step back. “I’m a philologist, remember? If you were my employer, I could explain my technique.” I let the sentence dangle in the air.
“All right,” said Nick, crossing his arms. “I apologize.”
I looked him over with measured disdain, thrilled to have the upper hand at last. “I’m not interested in apologies. What matters to me is how we proceed from here. Any suggestions?”
In the murky silence following my question, I had a distinct feeling Nick’s preferred mode of proceeding would be to break out a riding crop. Without another word, I ducked through the canvas door and started, somewhat flustered, across the sand.
It didn’t take him long to catch up and block my way. “How about ten thousand dollars?”
“For what exactly?” I shot back. “To be your punching bag?”
“To stay as planned, until the end of the week?”
Astonished and somewhat suspicious, I held up the photograph against the sun, studying his face to spot the catch. “You are offering to double my pay?”
Even in the blinding brightness, his eyes were dark. “Yes.”
“All right, I’ll take it. But … why?” My relief came with a moment’s delay and made me almost giddy. “I would have done it for free.”
Nick looked away, his profile inscrutable against the desert sky. “I know.”
AS SOON AS I was back in my trailer, I was seized by an irresistible urge to call Rebecca. Of course, during our long drive from Djerba, Nick had made it perfectly clear I mustn’t use my own phone, but following his recent boorish behavior I was hardly filled with a warm and fuzzy sense of loyalty.
Seeing that my phone was dead and my plug did not fit the socket in the wall, I walked over to the drill site office to see if Craig could help. “Don’t worry,” he said, inspecting my clunky three-prong British charger, “we’ll get you juiced up.” And after a little jury-rigging, my phone sprang back to life.
Three voice mail messages had come in since my departure from Oxford. The first was from my father, encouraging me to savor the joys of Amsterdam. I could hear my mother yelling, “Tell her we love her, no matter what!” in the background, as she programmed the microwave, and that little glimpse of home brought back the only too familiar lump of guilt in my throat.
The second message was from Rebecca, who, in her usual, breathless fashion, informed me she had something totally amazing to tell me but omitted to furnish a single clue as to what it was.
I was thrilled to discover that the third and final message was from James, and that he had left it only a few hours ago. As I listened to it, however, my delight quickly faded. “I don’t know where you are,” he said, in a voice that sounded uncharacteristically bitter, “but I thought you should know that the phone you used yesterday is registered with the Aqrab Foundation. Do you remember what I told you about the restitution fanatics in Dubai? Well, these are the people.” James took a deep breath, as if it was a struggle for him to speak calmly. “I have no idea what they want with you, Morg, but I don’t like you being out there with them. Please call me as soon as you can.”
When I hung up, my hands were shaking. If James was right—and of course he was—Nick had lied to me. He was not working for the Skolsky Foundation, which, I suspected, didn’t even exist, but for the villainous Mr. al-Aqrab—a man whose name alone sent shivers through the British museum world.
A few months earlier, over coffee, James had described in detail the Aqrab Foundation and its ruthless methods. For the past ten years, he told me, al-Aqrab’s people had been hounding British museums demanding the return of ancient artifacts to their countries of origin. Threats of violence and terrorism were not beneath Mr. al-Aqrab; apparently this shameless Dubai billionaire absolutely loathed the British—and Oxford academics in particular.
I found myself staring absentmindedly at Craig, trying to make sense of it all. The kind Scotsman had evidently decided to use my presence as an incitement to clean up his desk and was currently inspecting the mold growing in a mug. To what extent was he in on the swindle? I wondered.
But more important: Why was I here? If Mr. al-Aqrab really saw Oxford as his enemy number one, why had he sent Mr. Ludwig all the way up there to hire me? For all my expertise, I was not the only philologist in the world.
Granny’s notebook flashed before my eyes. But that was absurd. I was confident her Amazon delusions were a well-kept family secret.
I fully intended to call James back right away, from the privacy of my own room. But I never got that far. As soon as I emerged from Craig’s office, I noticed two men snapping to attention across the sandy yard, and moments later Nick intercepted me just as I was climbing the steps of my trailer.
I knew what he wanted as soon as he held out his hand. But I resented the suggestion that ten thousand dollars had bought him the right to bully me—never mind lying to me about his employer—and looked into his sunglasses with feigned bafflement. “Can I help you?”
“Your phone,” he said, skipping any pretense of nicety. “I thought I made it absolutely clear—”
“You did,” I assured him, taking a bold step up the staircase. “And I heard you. Am I to understand you do not trust me?”
He merely snapped his fingers to let me know he was still waiting. The gesture made my cheeks flood with fury. “What is this? A gulag?”
“With one exception. You are free to leave anytime you want.”
There was something about the way he said it that made me realize he secretly wished I would. Despite his halfhearted efforts to make up and move on, it was not Nick who had offered me ten thousand dollars to stay the week. It was someone else. But who? And why?
I placed m
y phone in the palm of his hand with as much dignity as the situation deserved. “Thank you,” he said, slipping it into his pocket. “You know what is down there. You know why I have to do this.”
“Quite frankly”—I rolled up the wire from the phone charger with angry fingers and stuffed it into my own pocket—”I’m having some difficulty understanding why your Mr. Skolsky”—I resisted the urge to grimace at the fallacious name—”believes this temple belongs to him personally.”
“Is that what you think is going on?”
“What other conclusion can I possibly draw?” I looked at him as earnestly as I could, but the small window of synergy he had just opened was, once again, hermetically sealed.
All he said was, “That is precisely why I have to take your phone.”
LATER THAT NIGHT, CRAIG took me out for an evening walk under the stars. Although he did not mention anything about it, I suspected he knew about the phone incident and was trying to cheer me up.
As we walked, I was sorely tempted to confront him with questions about the Aqrab Foundation, but knew it would be a mistake to let on that I had discovered the truth. Even if Craig was not on the Aqrab payroll, he was on their team. Why else had he alerted them—and them alone—when his drilling crew found the temple?
“So, what company do you work for?” I eventually asked, endeavoring to sound as if I were merely making conversation. “And what about Nick? Are you two working for the same people?”
Craig drew on the pipe a few times. “Better ask someone else. I’m just a grease monkey.” When he saw my disappointment, his smile turned wry. “Look, I don’t know what they’ve been telling you. I prefer to stay out of it.”
“Here’s what they’ve been telling me,” I said, a little irked by his cowardice. “They told me this was about the Amazons. That somehow”—I threw a hand in the direction of the buried temple—”this place was proof they really existed. But as you heard this morning, Nick didn’t get that memo.” I looked at Craig with whatever hope I had left. “What about you? Have you heard any mention of the Amazons? By anyone? At all?”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “Sorry, lass. I’m not the one to ask.”
We walked on in silence and ended up by a plain metal gate. Because of the darkness it took me a moment to realize we had arrived at an enclosure, and that there were other people there, too, leaning silently on the fence posts.
Craig nodded without a word, and I looked into the paddock to see two forms moving about slowly—a black horse on a rope and a man dressed in nothing but a pair of white trousers. It took me a moment to recognize the man as Nick, and despite my growing cynicism with regards to his person there was something about this slow, moonlit dance that was utterly mesmerizing. “Look,” mouthed Craig, without a sound.
Inside the enclosure, Nick knelt down in the sand. The black horse moved around a bit, then came closer, and eventually stretched its neck to rest its head on his naked shoulder.
A collective hum went through the men gathered at the fence, and Craig beamed at me, the pipe bobbing delightedly at the corner of his mouth. “I put my money on ten days. He did it in five. It’s in their bloody genes.”
“What is?” I asked, barely able to wrest my eyes from Nick.
Craig gestured with his pipe, a private smile playing in his eyes. “Arabian horses are very clever. They second-guess you. You don’t break them; you wait for them to adopt you. Look!”
“Well—” I turned away from the spectacle, the events of the day dragging at my every limb. “I’m afraid I’m more than a five-day job.”
Craig’s smile disappeared. “If you want my advice—”
“Please!”
“Take the money, do your job, and go. Don’t look back. And no matter what happens”—he looked deeply into my eyes, making sure I heard him—”don’t mess with these people. They wouldn’t be nice about it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TEMPLE OF THE MOON GODDESS
THE ATTACK CAME AT NIGHT.
Under cover of a cloudy sky, five foreign ships forced their way through the great marsh and drew up on the shore near the Temple of the Moon Goddess. Had they come three months earlier, they would never have made it across the shallow water; they owed their success to a particularly wet rainy season, which had ever so briefly restored the old coastline.
Even as the tarred keels plowed into the sand, no dogs barked, no geese stirred. All sounds were dimmed by the heavy dampness of the air, so characteristic of that time of year, when heaven and earth were at last saturated with moisture. Into this treacherous mist did the five ships disgorge their lethal load: men armed with refined weapons and brute desires, men whose needs had been whetted by long weeks at sea.
So silent was the invasion that Myrina did not apprehend the danger until she was woken up by a small elbow wedged in her ribs. “Did you hear that?” hissed Lilli, sitting up abruptly. “Listen.”
Completely against the temple rules—but with the secret blessing of the High Priestess, who appreciated the idea of Myrina keeping watch—the two sisters spent most nights on the roof, preferring the open air to the vaulted safety of the dormitory. Lilli had been hesitant at first, naturally afraid of the perilous climb up the rope ladder. But once she had learned where to put her hands and feet, and with Myrina right behind her, she soon grew to like the nightly escape. For up here, alone on the roof, the sisters could speak privately about the events of the day.
Even during the rainy season they continued to sleep in their high perch, huddled under a small tarp and wrapped in the same blanket. As the much-longed-for water kept rising, the shoreline crept so far inland as to make the vast, green swamp of the ocean visible from the temple roof. Occasionally, in the early morning, Myrina would sit and enjoy the sunrise over the water, trying to describe the changing colors to Lilli, and they would remember their friends the fishermen and speculate about whether their catch had been improved by the weather.
But the rising sea had inspired more than just memories.
As of late, Lilli had been having nightmares about foreign ships, and had woken up crying more than once, convinced the temple was about to be attacked. “It is not a dream!” she kept insisting, whenever Myrina tried to calm her down. “It is a vision. A warning.”
The Moon Goddess had given Lilli the gift of prophecy in return for her lost eyesight. At least, that was what the High Priestess had maintained ever since it became apparent that the girl would never see again. Lilli, blind to all things material, could see the future. And in that future she saw blood.
Whenever these nightmares occurred, Myrina simply enfolded her sister in a silent embrace and rocked her back to sleep, just the way their mother used to do. Lilli had always had vivid dreams, and for as long as Myrina could remember the girl had woken up at least every second night, trembling with fear. It was therefore no great surprise to her when Lilli suddenly, on this particular night, sat up on her knees on the temple roof and hissed, “What was that? Do you hear voices?”
Myrina dutifully sat up, too, and looked around. “It is probably—”
She was silenced by a frightened hand on her shoulder. “Men. Weapons.” Lilli listened intently. “They are here. The black ships. I have felt it all day.”
Still half-asleep, Myrina stood up and squinted into the darkness, trying to make out the coastline. Only when the clouds parted, allowing the moon a brief burst of warning, did Myrina see them—the contours of vessels pulled ashore and the shadows creeping up the bank toward the temple entrance.
“Do you not hear that?” urged Lilli, mistaking Myrina’s horrified silence for disbelief. “It is them!”
“Quiet!” Myrina sat her sister down and out of sight. “I must go and warn the others. Stay here and be quiet! Understood?”
As soon as Lilli nodded her frightened assent, Myrina darted off across the roof tiles. There was no time for the rope ladder; instead she jumped down into the courtyard the way she had done on that firs
t day, six months ago.
How sinister the courtyard looked tonight, shrouded in shadows … and this time it was she who came for the eunuchs, not the other way around. “Get up!” she cried, banging on their closed shutters as she ran by. “Get up and guard the front door!”
As she passed the tiled basin, Myrina was puzzled to glimpse a series of rhythmic ripples on the water. Stopping to listen, she heard distant thuds of wood against wood, and although she did not know what caused the sound, she understood that its aim was destruction.
When she finally arrived at the dormitory it was completely empty, with sheets and clothes scattered everywhere. Relieved to see that the priestesses had been so swift to perceive the danger and take up their positions, Myrina ran over to check the secret box … only to groan with defeat.
There they were, all the weapons, precisely where she had put them after the last training session, four days earlier. Wherever her fellow priestesses had disappeared to, they were as unarmed and defenseless as ever.
Picking up as many spears and bows as she could carry, Myrina continued apace down the corridor to the main temple, pausing now and then to get a better grip. Not until she reached the inner sanctum was she finally met by a squall of shrieks and tearful pleas. Stretching to see, she caught sight of the High Priestess behind the altar, arms crossed in defiance, surrounded by a cluster of wailing women.
“What goes on here?” Myrina dropped the weapons in a pile on the floor. “Make haste and arm yourselves!”
All heads turned at the clatter, but no one motioned to heed her demand.
“She says the Moon Goddess commands her to stay,” cried Pitana, towering over the others and waving her long arms fretfully at the High Priestess. “And they will not abandon her. Oh, Myrina, do talk to her and change her mind!”