Book of Stolen Tales (44 page)

As a last check I pulled up the picture of the cover design for the English book Amy told me had been copied for the gold covers of
The Tale of Tales
. Aside from the different initials, I now saw that the arabesque design was altered on the Italian version. A slight but significant change.

The original image of the gold covers was archived in my email account, so if need be, another copy could be printed. I got a pen and sat at the small table with the pages in front of me, tracing the outline of what I thought I'd seen. Shaheen came over to observe. I held up the tracing. “These aren't just designs. It's Arabic script. The arabesques cleverly hide several Arabic words.”

Shaheen took the paper from me. “I think I see what you're getting at. I can't tell what the words are. They're unfamiliar to me. Almost looks Persian.”

“We need to find a computer with broadband access,” I said.

That task proved easier than we imagined. The hotel was flooded with journalists and it didn't take long to find one who knew a Jordanian specialist in Arabic calligraphy. The reporter used his satellite-linked laptop to send the image of my tracings to his colleague and got a reply back within the hour. It turned out to be a sacred script called
Jeli Diwani
, characterized by artful, elegantly entwined letters. Turkish sultans once used the writing for secret documents.

“The script makes up three words,” I said. “
Mesopotamia
,
temple
, and
Jahannam
. All this time Basile's secret hadn't been hidden in any of the volumes but on the golden covers in plain view.”

Shaheen's eyes lit up when I mentioned the last word. “
Jahannam
—the Arabic word for ‘hell.' Did the author ever spend time in the Middle East?”

“He served as a mercenary on behalf of a Venetian noble, Andreo Cornaro, in Candia—an early name for Heraklion, the capital of Crete—and got the stone spindle whorl from an Ottoman trader he met there. Do you see the connections?
Temple
combined with the word
Mesopotamia
and a third word meaning ‘hell' indicates a temple dedicated to the god of the Mesopotamian underworld.”

“Well, that should be a piece of cake to find. After all this effort, we end up with nothing more than a fictitious reference to hell.”

“Actually, it may not be so difficult,” I said. “Several sites were devoted to Nergal, the god of the underworld, and his female consort Ereshkigal. The word Loretti was trying to say. Two of them are primary. Tell Abu Duwari, the ancient site called Mashkan-shapir, is associated with Ereshkigal. It's about an hour and a half southeast of Baghdad. The other is Tell Ibrahim, an important cult center called Kutha, between the ruins of Babylon and Baghdad. Nergal's temple site. Those are the main ones I know of; there may be others.”

Shaheen looked doubtful. “The book dates to the seventeenth century. How could an Ottoman trader possibly learn about any of those sites when in his time they'd have been long buried?”

“Local people would have known. A temple dedicated to the god of the underworld would retain enormous power in the local memory. The word for ‘hell' in Sumerian mythology was
Irkalla
. Quite a different place from the fire-and-brimstone dwelling of demons with pitchforks that we think of. The Babylonians named it something like ‘the land of no return' in their beautiful poetry—‘the house without light.' Dry and dusty although not a place of punishment. Souls lived on for eternity suspended in something like a state of purgatory. Our best bet would be to start with the two main cult centers at Mashkan-shapir and Kutha.”

“We'll give it a go,” Shaheen said. “After we stop off at Babylon.”

“You think that's where they found the stone?”

“I'm not sure. But that guide who gave the scientists a tour of the ruins might know.”

Babylon's colors struck me first. That and the ever-present dust. Pink-ocher earth tones defined mud-brick walls and buildings; moss-green palms and scrub trees dotted the landscape. As we drew nearer to the famed city the full reality hit me. This was no desert outpost but a major armed camp complete with requisite blast walls, concertina-wire rolls, heavy vehicles, and dozens of ribbed aluminum prefabs. Like giant black dragonflies, helicopters dipped and hovered above the site, the grinding drone of their rotors so loud they shook the earth. As we drew nearer we could see soldiers in full battle dress having their pictures snapped against the backdrop of an ancient statue.

In 539
B.C
. the victorious Persians marched into Babylon, taking the city without force and putting a permanent end to Mesopotamian rule. Almost 2500 years later our own troops controlled it, treading the same path as the Persians.

At the height of its powers, Babylon was the most glorious city in the world. Small wonder that Alexander, even after seeing many splendors in the Aegean and the Near East, chose it as his favorite city.

In ancient times the Euphrates bisected Babylon. Now the river ran along one flank and much of the western portion had been submerged. I could only imagine what finds awaited archaeologists should that underwater cache ever be excavated.

The great Babylonian kings Nebuchadnezzar and Hammurabi built a supremely beautiful capital, one that never deserved its modern reputation for profligate evil. With walls many feet thick, it proved impenetrable to enemy armies. Iron gates constructed at the entrance and outflow points of the river blocked invading soldiers. Cleverly, the Persians actually diverted the Euphrates and when the water levels fell, squeezed under the gates while the Babylonians were celebrating a festival. As I gazed on its forlorn remains I wondered whether someone many years into the future would be thinking the same thoughts about the dry husk of my Manhattan.

A strange landscape made up present-day Babylon. Saddam Hussein's extensive re-creation—an Ishtar Gate of gleaming peacock-blue tiles, new fortified walls, and temple buildings—was set against the sad refrain of the original city's crumbling ruins. On a hill, Saddam Hussein had commissioned a reproduction of Nebuchadnezzar's palace, now falling into ruin itself. All of it—the army camp, the replicas, the wasted beauty of a once great empire—seemed like a place frozen halfway through a time warp.

By now I was prepared for the interminable wait to enter a military station, but the situation here presented even more difficul-ties. We had to wade through checkpoints manned by soldiers from multinational forces—Polish, Italian, Romanian, and Spanish—none of whom knew each other's language. This on the same ground as the Plain of Shinar, home to the infamous Tower of Babel. A prescient omen, I thought, for the ultimate fate of the invasion.

In addition to Ali, who'd driven us to Babylon, Shaheen brought along two others, both private contractors, a brawny young guy named Ben and an older man who'd seen action in both Iraqi wars. I didn't catch his name. They followed us in a Humvee, a chase car for extra protection. The three men stayed with the cars while Shaheen and I went in search of the tour guide.

We approached a collection of buildings that once housed a museum and study facility. Thieves had made off with plaster renditions of Babylonian antiquities. The library and archives, however, did contain many genuine documents.

A pleasant-featured woman dressed in a hijab gave escorted tours, almost exclusively to military personnel. Doubtless she'd kept her job because she could speak English. She confirmed she'd given a tour to the scientists and Renwick.

“Do you remember where you took them?” I asked.

“I have a standard route. It was the same for them.”

Our own tour came with a running commentary, not so much about Babylon's history as the damage caused by converting parts of the ancient city into a military base. She led us along a grand processional pointing out paving stones destroyed by tons of heavy metal driving over them. “They dug eight long trenches, piled up the soil, and filled thousands of Hesco containers and sandbags with it. The soil contained many artifacts, pieces of brick with Babylonian inscriptions, ceramics. A helicopter pad three hundred feet from the Ninmak temple caused a major portion of it to collapse.”

Gouges were visible in nine of the molded reliefs of the chief Babylonian god, Marduk, the creature with a scaled body, snake head, and eagle-taloned feet. “This damage occurred long after the Baghdad museum was looted,” the guide said.

“Did the scientists or Charles Renwick attempt to dig through any of these areas?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “No. They took my tour like everyone else.”

“What about this object?” I showed her the image of the round stone spindle whorl. “Did they question you about it?”

She frowned in concentration. When she answered she refused to look either Shaheen or me in the eye. “You put me in a difficult position. I have only this job. My husband lost his. And you wish me to speak ill of Americans so you can accuse me later?”

Shaheen gave me a nudge and spoke to her in Arabic. She twisted her hands as she answered him, darting the occasional glance at me. Then she walked away, our tour abruptly terminated.

“What did she say?” I asked Shaheen.

“Loretti did show her the weight. He believed it was an ancient puzzle of some kind. He told her he planned to remove a seal on the underside of the stone. She knew he'd taken it from an ancient site and was afraid to accuse him of looting it.”

“Shit. That means he didn't admit to where they found it?”

“In a manner of speaking he did. He told her he'd just come from hell. The underworld. They called it Meslam—have you ever heard of that?”

“That's Nergal's temple district. At Kutha.”

Forty-Six

T
he road to Kutha ran parallel to the Tigris for some time. Every now and then white patches lined the riverbank like the last vestiges of snow melting under a spring sun. Except here it never snowed.

“It's salt,” Shaheen explained. “Crystallizes out of the earth when the ground dries.”

As we veered away from the river, rows of derelict tanks and trucks dotted the roadside like rusty hedges, as if a huge scrap yard had been disassembled and strewn along the edge of the road. We passed an oil tanker flipped on its side, the fronds of rubber on its tires mere threads now, waving in the wind like seaweed.

Shaheen's phone buzzed a few times. After taking one of the calls he said, “Strange vibes all around today. You ever heard of Samarra?”

“One of the oldest cities in Iraq, pre-Mesopotamian with unique pottery. I think that's where the great mosque is, isn't it? With the famous minaret like a high cone curling in a spiral. Why?”

“Big battle there yesterday. So ironic.”

“Why's that?”

“Oh, you know the story. A Baghdad merchant hears a prediction he'll die and flees to Samarra to cheat the prophecy, only to realize that's where his death is supposed to take place. So saying you have an appointment in Samarra is like saying you've got an appointment with death.”

The approach to Kutha cut through farmers' fields of flax and corn, the remnants of the harvest pale and brittle in the weak late autumn sun. In the distance two low hills rose about twenty feet high from a barren expanse of earth and scrub surrounded by a few trees, more fields, and scrubby bushes. When we reached the site we pulled off the road into a slight dip at its edge.

A wide depression separated a smaller mound from the larger fan-shaped Tell Ibrahim, the site of Kutha. The depression marked a canal that had once extended all the way from the Euphrates to the Tigris, an astounding example of Mesopotamian engineering. Ali negotiated the route slowly, trying to mitigate the damage to the site and limit the view of our vehicle from the road. The Humvee bumped along behind us.

The atmosphere was disturbingly quiet, its apparent peacefulness anything but benign. Not even the drone of insects could be detected, with one exception. Large clusters of flies. It was as if the god of the underworld still ruled here, and all life, save the buzzing harbinger of death, had abandoned this territory to him.