Seven Ancient Wonders (14 page)

‘If they do not wear the burqa, some men will not . . . er . . .  respect them,’ Saladin said, clearing his throat.

‘Zoe doesn’t wear a burqa,’ Lily said.

Several members of the team were eating nearby at the time: Zoe, Epper and West. Smiling, Zoe looked expectantly at Saladin, waiting for his answer.

‘Well, no, she doesn’t, because she is not a Muslim.’

‘But you can see her head, right?’ Lily asked.

‘Yes . . .’

‘Which means, according to Islam, you mustn’t respect her.’

Saladin blushed bright pink. ‘Well, no . . . I do respect Miss Zoe. Very much.’

‘Then why do Muslim women wear these burqa things?’

Saladin was helpless.

It was Zoe who saved him. ‘Not all men are as gentlemanly as Aziz, Lily. They can’t control their urges as well as he can.’

‘Urges?’ Lily asked, zeroing in on the new word.

Zoe said, ‘And
that
is a topic we will address when you’re a little older.’

All this time, a sheet of paper hung in the kitchen, attached by a magnet to the refrigerator—on it were seven boxes, filled with a strange kind of writing, reproductions of the seven main verses in the Callimachus Text.

It looked like this:

It was positioned so that Lily saw it every day when she went to get her morning juice. When she asked what it said, Doris Epper answered: ‘We don’t know. We’re hoping that one day you’ll be able to tell us.’

When she hit five years of age, Max Epper took charge of her schooling, teaching her maths, science, ancient history and languages—with an emphasis on Latin, Greek and cuneiform.

It turned out she had a singular aptitude for languages, learning them quickly and fluidly—with almost unnatural ease.

By age 7, she had mastered Latin and Greek.

By 8, she was deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.

By 9, she had outstripped Epper in his knowledge of cuneiform— translating all three of the ancient languages from the Bisitun Monument.

Not to mention the modern languages she was learning just by speaking with her multinational guardians. She particularly loved the difficult Gaelic tongue spoken by her Irish protectors, Zoe and Liam Kissane.

Epper was a wonderful teacher.

Lily just adored him—loved his wise old face, his kind blue eyes, and the gentle yet clever way he taught.

And so she renamed him
Wizard
.

Every day, she would race to his schoolroom in the east wing of the farmhouse to learn new and interesting things.

Poems like ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ were acted out with verve and energy.

Simple arithmetic was illustrated with farming examples.

And science was a blast—literally. For Wizard had all manner of crazy home-made inventions in his workshop at the farm. Gadgets
and tools that emerged from his dabblings in electromagnetism and foam epoxies.

He once told Lily that a long time ago he had worked at a laboratory called Sandia in the United States, and that it was a secret place where they made secret things.

She liked that. Secret things.

She got along with the team members in different ways.

Although she wasn’t a very girly girl, Zoe taught Lily some necessary girly things—like brushing her hair, filing her nails and how to make boys do her bidding.

Matador, the Spanish trooper, spent a lot of time in the gym they’d set up in the smaller barn. At first he let Lily watch him work out. Then, as she grew bigger, he let her sit on one end of a plank of wood while he bench-pressed it, balancing her mass with lead weights at the other end, lifting her high into the air. She loved that.

Witch Doctor, the Jamaican commando, taught her how to tread in silence—they would terrorise Doris Epper, sneaking up on her when she dozed on the veranda in the afternoon sun.

But the soldier she bonded with most was Zoe’s brother, Liam, call-sign Gunman.

Gunman was a big guy, broad and tall, easily six-foot-three— with a wide honest face, a fully-shaven head, and large jug ears.

He wasn’t all that smart, but he was a great commando.

With Lily, though, he just clicked—perhaps because they were of an equal intelligence level, even though he was 24 and she was just a kid.

They watched movies and read books together.

They played the video game Splinter Cell endlessly in dual-player mode—killing baddies left, right and centre, co-ordinating their moves with loud shouts and commands. They actually made a good team, winning the inaugural ‘Victoria Station Dual-Player Splinter Cell Competition’, defeating Wizard and Zoe in a hard-fought final.

They went on adventures around the station—including one visit to a giant hangar concealed in the western hills of the property, inside which they found the towering
Halicarnassus.

Lily gazed in awe at the great 747, and felt a thrill of excitement when she walked up to it, touched it and read a peculiar inscription on its underbelly: ‘PRESIDENT ONE—AIR FORCE OF IRAQ’.

But most of all, no-one would ever forget the famous tea party held on the front lawn one summer, with Mister Bear, Little Dog, Big Dog, Barbie, Lily and Gunman—huge Gunman, all six feet of him, hunched over on a tiny plastic chair, sipping from a plastic teacup, allowing Lily to pour him another cup of imaginary tea.

Everyone in the team saw it—watching from inside the farmhouse, alerted by a whisper from Doris. The thing was, no-one ever—
ever
—teased Gunman about the incident.

This was unusual.

They were soldiers. They could and did make fun of each other on a regular basis, but for some reason, Gunman’s relationship with Lily was off-limits.

Well, except for the time he and Lily broke into Aziz’s workshop in the big barn, took a plasticine-like substance from his lock-box and used it to blow up Barbie’s campervan.

Both Gunman and Lily copped hell for that.

And so, gradually, the team became a family—a family centred around the protection and nurturing of one little girl.

Of course, Lily loved the attention—like when she discovered ballet and put on a one-girl show to a cheering audience of seven commandos and two grandparent-like figures.

And still every day, when she appeared in the kitchen for breakfast, whoever happened to be there at the time would turn to see if she noticed the sheet of paper magnetised to the fridge.

But then one day, when she was seven, there was a commotion.

As the team was eating breakfast, a radio squawked: ‘
All units. This is Sentry One, I have an intruder coming in through the main gate.
’

Everyone leapt up, alarmed at the presence of an outsider, worried that other nations might know of their mission.

The intruder turned out to be a lone man—tall and thin, with a sanguine face—walking casually down the dirt road from the main gate.

Three hidden guns were trained on him as he rang the doorbell.

Wizard answered the door. ‘Can I help you, young man?’

‘Indeed you can, Professor Epper,’ the thin man said. He had a dry pale face, with high cheekbones and deep hollow eye sockets.

Wizard blanched, did a double-take.

The intruder’s grey eyes never blinked. He knew that he had just chilled Wizard to the very bone.

‘Professor Max T. Epper,’ he said, ‘Professor of Archaeology at Trinity College, Dublin, and the representative of Canada on a secret eight-nation task force protecting the daughter of the Oracle of Siwa, with a view to obtaining the lost Capstone of the Great Pyramid. My name is Lieutenant Benjamin Cohen, call-sign
Archer
, formerly of the Sayaret Matkal, now of the Israeli Mossad. I’ve been sent by my government to join your task force.’

West stepped out from behind Wizard.

‘Why hello, Jack,’ Archer said familiarly. ‘Haven’t seen you since Desert Storm. Heard about what you did at that SCUD base outside
Basra. Very nice. And Israel appreciated your efforts; although we still don’t know how you got out. My bosses said you were involved in this, which was why they sent me. They thought you would accept me more than you would a total stranger.’

‘They were right, Ben,’ West said. ‘It’s the only thing keeping you alive right now.’

‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’

‘Why not?’ West said and for the briefest of moments, Archer’s confident air fell.

West said, ‘I don’t like having my hand forced, Ben, and you’ve got us over a barrel here.’

Archer said seriously, ‘This is big, Jack. Affairs of state. Fate of the world and all that. This confrontation between Europe and the US has been coming for a long time. Let’s just say, Israel always likes to be involved. If it makes you feel better, I have orders to place myself under your direct command.’

West pondered this a moment.

Then he said, ‘No contact with home. No reporting back to Mossad until the mission is achieved.’

‘I
have
to report back sometime—’

‘No reporting back to Mossad until the mission is achieved or I blow your brains out right now, Ben.’

Archer held up his hands, smiled. ‘Can’t argue with that. You’ve got a deal.’

The team was stunned—but they knew they didn’t have any choice in the matter.

Either they allowed Archer to join their team or the Israelis would just advise the Americans of their mission.

How the Israelis had discovered them, they didn’t know—but then the Mossad
is
the most ruthless and efficient intelligence service in the world. It knows everything.

What was also apparent, however, was that Israel did
not
want to see the Capstone fall into the hands of either America or
Europe—which meant Israel had an interest in the mission succeeding. That was good.

The big question, however, was what Israel planned to do at the end of the mission. Could Archer and Israel be trusted then?

At first, hardly anyone even spoke to Archer—which the ever-cool Israeli didn’t seem to mind at all.

But no man is an island, and one day he joined West as he carried out some repairs on the station . . . and so began the process of becoming part of the team.

And slowly, over the course of many months, by working and sweating and training with the others, he became accepted as one of them.

One member of their little community, however, always regarded Archer with great suspicion.

Saladin.

As an Arab and a Muslim, he distrusted the Israeli intensely, but he also knew that Archer’s presence in Kenya was now a given.

He would often say that while he had to accept Archer’s presence, he didn’t have to like it.

As all this was happening, Lily’s development was proceeding apace.

She was always inquisitive, always watching.

Watching Saladin go off into the big barn and disappear inside his explosives workshop. He was so sweet and cuddly, she renamed him Pooh Bear.

Watching the new man, Archer, go out to the western paddock and practise firing his ultralong Barrett sniper rifle at far-off targets—and hitting the target
every single time
. She watched him closely, even when he disassembled his rifle. He was so tall and thin, she started calling him Stretch. (She also noticed that Pooh Bear and Stretch hardly ever even spoke. She did not know why.)

Watching Witch Doctor do chin-ups. From an early age, she had loved his wild dreadlocked hair. He became Fuzzy.

Watching the two youngest troopers, Matador and Gunman, jog together, train together and drink together. This earned them their new callsigns: Noddy and Big Ears.

And, of course, watching Zoe.

Idolising Zoe.

Being the only twenty-something female Lily knew, it wasn’t unexpected that Zoe would become her feminine role model.

And Zoe Kissane was a good role model. She could outlast the men in fitness tests, outwit most of them at dinner-table discussions, and she could often be found studying history books deep into the night.

It was not uncommon to find Lily sitting in an armchair late at
night beside Zoe, fast asleep with a book open, trying to imitate the pretty Irish woman.

Naturally, Lily called her Princess Zoe.

But above all, the one person Lily enjoyed watching most was Jack West Jr.

She would never forget the day in 2000 when Wizard had presented West with a shiny new silver arm.

With Zoe assisting, Wizard spent the whole day attaching the high-tech arm to West’s left elbow, pausing every now and then to frown and say something like, ‘The arm’s CPU is experiencing interference from somewhere. Aziz, would you turn off the television set, please.’ Eventually, he changed some frequencies on the arm’s central processing unit and it worked to his satisfaction.

The four-year-old Lily had watched them keenly as they worked.

She was aware that West had lost his arm on the day she was born, in the process of saving her life, so she really wanted his new arm to work.

At the end of the day, the arm was on, and West flexed his new metal fingers. His new hand could actually grip things far more tightly and firmly than his natural right hand could.