Into the Black (4 page)

Lyse did not relent in her search.  "Just help me find it, will you?"

Growling, Kismet plunged his right hand into the slurry and stirred around until he encountered something hard and heavy.  He closed his fist around the object, silently praying that it was the statue, and drew it out.  Dark matter fell away to reveal gleaming gold.  She snatched it from his hand and jumped erect.  The sewage came up to her knees, hampering her steps, but she nevertheless started splashing through the tunnel.

Kismet frowned and shined the light across the surface of the effluent.  He detected a faint movement, a gradual flow of the sewage in the direction opposite that she had chosen.  "Lyse!  Wrong way.  Get back here."  He flashed the light down the passage and located her; she had turned around and was returning to the spot where they had entered.

One of the armed men dropped between them, losing his balance as he landed.  Kismet swung the MagLite like a cudgel, connecting solidly with the side of the man's head.  Dazed, the stranger fell back into the sewage with a splash.

The heavy-duty light did not even flicker with the impact, but Kismet berated himself for having used their only source of illumination as a weapon.  He glanced up and saw another man dangling into the hole, about to drop, and knew that it was time to be moving on.  He and Lyse charged into the depths of the tunnel as their foes dropped down to pursue.

If the streets of the city had been a cunning maze, then the underworld below was doubly so.  New branches appeared at irregular intervals.  Sloping conduits dripping with fecal matter and wastewater increased the volume of the muck though which they struggled.  Occasional movements, barely captured in the beam of the flashlight, revealed that other creatures called this dark place home.

Kismet led them true, following the gradual decline of the city's sewers to its eventual destination.  After several minutes of desperate wading and running, he and his companion burst out of their underground prison and into the open night.  The sewer pipe exited from a steep embankment with the city walls high above.  Below the opening however, a drop of several yards, ended in a vast cesspool.  Lyse gazed warily down at the murk, then looked to him.

"Now what?"

Kismet was already beginning to climb along the face of the cliff.  Lyse attempted to follow, but discovered that the statue she had risked life and limb to safeguard now encumbered her movements.

"Just leave it!" shouted Kismet.

She shook her head, then grasped the front of her T-shirt and untucked it from her jeans.  She placed the statue in the makeshift sling of fabric and pulled the hem of the garment up until she could hold it between clenched teeth.  Only then did she begin looking around the edge of the tunnel in search of a handhold.  Her delay was costly.  She had only reached the perimeter of the cesspool when their pursuers appeared at the opening of the sewer pipe.  Sliding down the steep face, she dropped at Kismet's side.  The weight of golden statue had stretched her shirt so that it almost covered her otherwise bare midriff.  Kismet shook his head in mock despair then silently led their flight out across the desert sands. 

The beams of their pursuers' lights danced like glowing bats in the darkness behind them.  He was amazed at the relentless effort put forth to run them down, but why they were being chased by these foreigners, he could not imagine.

He chose to stay within sight of the old city's walls.  Even at the dawn of a new millennium, people resided in the wilderness outside the city as they had for thousands of years before, living in tents and joining together in small ad hoc communities.  A column of smoke rising against the twilit sky revealed some manner of civilization directly ahead.  Kismet switched the MagLite off, hoping camouflage among the shadows would conceal them, and guided Lyse forward.

A chaotic barrier of wind-sculpted boulders blocked the way to the source of the smoke.  As he threaded through he spied a cluster of tents, arranged around a large fire in a clearing not far ahead.  A score of camels were tethered to a stake driven into the ground near the edge of the camp.  Kismet grinned triumphantly; this was their ticket out of trouble.  He grabbed hold of Lyse's elbow and dragged her into the clearing.

The camp belonged to nomadic Tuaregs, a tribe of Berber wanderers who for thousands of years had roamed the ancient caravan routes in robes dyed with indigo. Kismet knew that they were formidable adversaries when threatened and proceeded with due caution.

A few dark figures moved between the tents, but none seemed to take note of the foul smelling pair that crept toward the camp.  Although he and Lyse were upwind, Kismet figured that the nomads had already grown accustomed to the stink of the nearby cesspool, and thus would not detect the stench they emitted.

A sentinel had been stationed near the camels; a young man Kismet presumed, though his
alasho
, the traditional swath of indigo fabric that served as both a turban and a veil for male Tuaregs, concealed anything that might have given his age away.  The unsuspecting youth was huddled against the cold of the desert night.

Reasoning that the scarf limited the sentinel's field of view, Kismet gestured for Lyse to stay hidden then set out to flank the watch-post.  The camels began snorting as he approached, and he immediately dropped flat on the sand.  The young man noted the behavior of the herd, but could not comprehend the reason for their agitation.  He nervously glanced around, fearful of an intruder, but was unable to distinguish Kismet's dark, earth-colored clothing.  Moving slowly and stealthily, Kismet crept behind the guard.  He reached out and tapped him on the shoulder, and as the veiled head turned to look, Kismet struck.

The blow stunned the young man for only a moment, but it was enough for Kismet to leap forward and seize hold of his
alasho
.  A yank on the fabric loosened the wrap, and before he knew what was happening, the sentinel was hog-tied with his own turban.  The young man writhed and moaned on the ground, but the blue cloth between his teeth muffled his cries for help.  Kismet rose warily and advanced on the herd.

Lyse stepped from her hiding place and jogged over to join him.  "Nick, they cut off body parts when people steal camels around here."

"Have you got a better idea?" 

She shrugged.

"I didn't think so," he continued.  "But if it will make you feel better, leave that statue behind as payment."

"Absolutely not."

Kismet sighed, then delved into his satchel and extracted a handful of traveler's checques. He wondered if the nomads would understand the value of the currency vouchers, but nevertheless scribbled his signature on several of the documents and stuffed them into the folds of the sentinel's garment.  "Better?"

Lyse nodded.

"Then let's get out of here. Can you ride one of these things?"

"Is it anything like a bicycle?"

He shook his head in despair. "Not remotely."

"Good, 'cause I never learned how to ride a bicycle."  She kept a straight face for a moment, and then cracked a grin—that winning smile that swept away all resistance.  "I'm kidding, okay?  Yeah, I can ride a camel.  I don't like them, but I can do it."

She walked over to the camels, picked a smaller one out of the group and stroked its nose.  After a few seconds it knelt, allowing her to step on its knee that she might ascend to the saddle high above its humps.  With unexpected ease, she swung into riding position as the beast rose to full height.

Kismet laughed in spite of himself and went to join her.  After selecting a mount for himself he untethered both of their rides and walked his chosen camel away from the campsite.  A warm sirocco had picked up since the fall of evening, blowing a haze of dust in its vanguard.  "We should rig some kind of safety line so that we don't get separated."

She glanced back hesitantly. "Then what?"

"We ride for the coast. Then we catch a flight back to the States."

Lyse inhaled deeply and let her breath out slowly. "I can't go yet, Nick. I still have things to do here."

"Lyse, if we go back, we're dead. If those guys—Germans, or whatever—don't get us, the Fat Man will."

"I have to go alone. I need you to take the statue back and keep it safe for me. It's important, Nick."

"You're going to have to do better than that if you want my help."

"I'm sorry, but I can't tell you any more than I already have.  I'm sworn to secrecy."  She winced, as if embarrassed by the declaration.  "Look, just take the statue back to the States.  Put it somewhere safe until I can catch up with you.  I'll pay for all your expenses."  She unrolled the relic from her disfigured shirt and tossed it to Kismet.

He caught the statue with his left hand.  He knew from experience that if she was intent on returning to the city, further discussion would be futile.  He stowed the artifact in his bag, taking something out at the same time.

"Hey Lyse."  He held up his Glock.  "You might need this."

Her face broke into a smile of sincere gratitude.  She slid a hand down the inside of her left thigh, separating the fabric with a rasping noise that could only be the halves of a Velcro closure.  A compact automatic pistol--a Glock 26, nearly identical to his only much smaller--appeared in her right hand.

"You had that the whole time?"

"Nick, you know I hate violence. This is for emergencies; a last resort."

Kismet let out a frustrated sigh. "Just be careful, will you?"

"Always." She smiled and turned the camel to ride away.

"Wait a minute. There's something I need to tell you."

She gazed back. "What's that?"

"The statue.  There's no way it's an ancient artifact.  Whoever made it did an expert job, but the inscription is a style of Hebrew that wasn't used until about three hundred years after the end of calf worship in Samaria.  In short, the statue that you refused to leave behind is a fake."

Her reaction left him dumbstruck.  Lyse did not protest or question his appraisal, nor did she fly into a rage at having been tricked by a forger.  Instead, she simply laughed. 

"Nick, I knew that."

She laughed again then urged the camel to a gallop.  When the cloud of dust left by her exit had been swept away by the desert winds, Kismet, with a fixed look of disbelief, climbed onto his camel and rode toward the last gleams of sunset.

It was not the blowing sands of the Sahara that tapped lightly against the windowpanes of Nick Kismet's office, but rather a dusting of grainy, New York City snow.  Though it was only five o'clock in the evening, the stormy December sky over Manhattan was already dark. The snowflakes were visible only in the glare of street lamps.  Kismet gazed absently out the tiny window a moment longer, and then turned away.

The official presence of the UN's Global Heritage Commission was located not in the legendary United Nations building on 44th Street overlooking the East River, but instead several city blocks away in an inconspicuous corner of the American Museum of Natural History.  Its extensive collection of anthropological artifacts had made the AMNH one of two locations considered for the dubious privilege of hosting the GHC, the other being the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Natural History had drawn the short straw and grudgingly made room in the lower level of the massive edifice, giving Kismet a converted supply closet just down the corridor from the school lunchroom.  It wasn't much of an office, but for Kismet's purposes it was more than adequate. 

The Global Heritage Commission had been created in the early 1980's as part of the UN's effort to remodel UNESCO—the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.  Established in 1946, UNESCO had set forth noble goals for itself—the elimination of illiteracy, the free exchange of scientific ideas, the protection of historical locations and art treasures—but decades of Cold War politics had undermined those lofty intentions.  In 1984, the United States of America had withdrawn from membership, removing a cornerstone of financial and political support.  Nevertheless, it had taken the United Nations more than fifteen years to address the issues that created the schism in the first place.  The Global Heritage Commission had begun as an interim compromise, addressing a narrower band of issues without being subject to the whims of an international governing body.  The efforts to repair UNESCO had ultimately paid off, culminating with the official renewal of the United States' membership in 2003.

Despite the reestablishment of its parent organization, the GHC continued to perform a valuable function on the international playing field. Kismet's duties typically involved random inspections of American sponsored archaeological sites, advance negotiations on behalf of pioneering scientists, and acting as a liaison with law enforcement agencies investigating the illicit antiquities trade.  In the big picture, it probably wasn't a very important job, and it certainly didn't pay very well, but Kismet found his vocation desirable for one simple reason: answers.

Nick Kismet didn't know a great deal about his own origins.  A foundling, he had been raised by Christian Garral, a globetrotting adventurer and a self-made man of means, who had adopted the boy as his own son.  His name was itself a relic of his post-natal abandonment—Garral, on one of his adventures, claimed to have encountered a young woman in the throes of child birth and assisted her
in extremis
.  Almost immediately following the birth, the mother had slipped away, leaving only a single word, written in the blood of her womb and in a strange alien script.  Garral had eventually deciphered it--the Arabic word:
qismat
.  To Westerners, it transliterated as "kismet." An ancient and powerful word, its earliest meaning was the portion of land given to the firstborn, but later came to be associated with fate and destiny.  Taking this as omen, Garral had elected to adopt the boy and ascribed him that distinctive surname. "Nick" was chosen for more prosaic reasons; Garral's own father was named Nicklaus.