Solomon's Throne (32 page)

“Let us go,” Abdul said, and began walking westward. Gideon and Asim walked beside him, with Rei a few paces behind. Gideon wasn’t happy with this arrangement—he wanted to keep his eyes on his wife. Asim reassured him.

“I will see if anyone comes. She will be safe. That is my duty.”

They walked west for an half hour, and then turned north. The Tigris River was visible at times as a winking, sparkling line. As they got closer, they could see the trees and green that flourished along the banks, and farther north the smoke rising from the village fires. Small boats were fishing in the river.

After another half an hour they turned back to the southeast, and came across a hard packed trail through the hills and scrub. They went up a small rise, and from the top, they could see the ruins.

“Oh!” gasped Rei. “That’s beautiful! Look at that huge arch!”

Their guides just nodded and kept walking. They had not seen anyone yet, and Gideon was praying that they would be able to get in and out of the site without encountering another person. His senses were on high alert, and he had the now familiar flood of adrenalin keeping his heart rate up. Abdul sensed it, and lay a reassuring hand on his arm.

“Calm now. I can see no one, and if we meet someone here, it is unlikely to be rebels. There are some places that are still sacred, even in Iraq.”

They approached the enormous arch from the front. Abdul told them that the right wing of the palace had collapsed in an earthquake in 1880, but that the remaining ruins had been stable since then, and largely exempted from the strife that had ravaged the country. There were rumored to be spirits about the place, and no one was keen to stir them up, no matter what else was going on.

Rei craned her neck as they passed under the entry of the arch. They wandered in the room that had once been the kings’ court, enormous with its barrel vault ceiling. The left side of the palace still had rooms, although walls were crumbling and the roof was gone. Rei could see that there were carvings in the stone throughout the site, but that they were concentrated mostly in the kings’ court.

“Asim, can you stand guard near the front of the arch? I think what we’re looking for is in here somewhere. Gosh, it’s just so huge…” She looked around at the enormous space. “What was this place called? Not the town, but this palace?”

“Taq-i Kisra. The Palace of the Great Kings.”

Gideon and Rei started at the left side of the arch and began working their way down the wall. The Persian kings had apparently loved wall carvings, and it was a long, slow process. The sun was beginning to set, and the shadows were growing long inside the stone room.

Gideon said, “I
really
do not want to spend the night here, or anywhere near here. All the hairs on the back of my neck have been standing up for six hours. Let’s keep going until we can’t see a thing…” Rei agreed. She did not like being a woman—an American woman, at that—in a Muslim country illegally.

They got to the corner and could barely see in the darkness.

“Do you have your flashlight?” Gideon asked.

“Yes, but I think it’s almost dead.” She unzipped a small pocket in her backpack and handed it to him. “Here.”

The beam was indeed much dimmer than it had been on previous days, and it was doubtful that it would hold out much longer. It had just begun to flicker intermittently when Rei saw it.

“There! Look, Gid, there!” She pointed to a spot on the wall that the beam had just passed over. Gideon brought the light back to where she was pointing. An X was chiseled onto the helmet of a fallen soldier whose face appeared to be resting on a narrow brick ledge.

“Are the stones loose?” Gideon began to press on them. The light flickered and went out.

“Crap! Ok, we know about where the X is,” Rei said. “Jiggle the stones on the ledge. If one of them isn’t loose, we’ll just have to dig. But don’t take a step! If we lose it now, we’ll have to come back tomorrow. We know from the other ones that he always puts them right under the mark… It’s got to be here!”

They both planted their feet solidly so they weren’t tempted to move, and began trying to rock the stones on the ledge.

“They’re solid,” Rei said. “Let’s dig.”

Gideon handed her the trowel but kept working on the stones. “You dig. I’ll keep trying these. I feel like that X being right above this ledge must mean something…”

Rei carefully knelt straight down, cognizant of her position next to the wall. She put her fingers on the now invisible ledge, and traced a vertical line down to the sand. She carefully started digging with her right hand, her left resting on the wall for perspective. It was incredible how fast and how completely the darkness had fallen.

She had dug about six inches deep in the soft sand when she heard the stones above her head shift. Gideon grunted and then she heard the sound of a rock scraping against another rock.

“Head’s up!” Gideon said.

A rock landed on her knee.

“Sorry, hon! I thought the rocks would be elongated, but they’re really pretty short. And there’s a big space behind here… Hang on…” She stood up and heard his robes scraping against the stones.

“Got it! Feels just the same as the others—metal tube, leather strap. Thank God our Father Eduardo was a creature of habit! Here.” He handed it to his wife and slapped his hands together, trying to remove the dirt.

“I’d better try to put that stone back,” he said, as he reached down to find it in the dark.

Walking back to the truck in the near total darkness seemed incredibly dangerous, not to mention impossible, to Rei. They had filled in her small hole and put the loose stone back in the ledge as well as they could, and groped their way to the opening of the arch, the now-dark sky giving only the barest outline of the roof line as they walked along the left wall. They could see a very faint difference where the arch was, and as they approached they saw the form of a man rise from the ground.

“Success?” Abdul asked.

“Yes. Thank you! Will we be able to get back to Kuwait tonight?” Rei asked anxiously.

“We shall try. We have diesel in the back of the truck to refill the tank, and we will have a small meal before we set out. I shall have to drive without lights, and that will be slow, but I believe we can still cross the border before it is light. Come.”

He led the way to Asim, and the four started back the way they’d come. Since it was dark, Abdul didn’t insist on Rei following behind. Gideon had already decided he wasn’t leaving her to walk back there alone, so he was glad that the discussion didn’t arise. Asim chambered a round in his rifle.

“Do you see someone?” Gideon asked in alarm, drawing his own pistol.

“No. There are jackals.”

“Great. Creatures,” Rei grumbled. She held Gideon’s arm in a death grip as they walked.

They didn’t bother with the roundabout route they had taken to get to the Taq-i Kisra. Abdul led them unerringly straight back to the truck. The moon was a sliver, and the stars were bright. Their eyes had adjusted and Rei no longer tripped over every stone, but she was completely turned around and knew that she and Gideon would never have found their way back without the Bazzis.
I guess we’d just fall in the river, eventually,
she thought.

The truck was just as they’d left it, and the Quinns visited the makeshift privy again before being stuffed back in their hiding place. Abdul reminded them that they would be traveling at a slower pace than on the way north, as he would be running in the dark, without headlights.

Once they were as comfortable as they were going to get, Asim closed the hatch, the truck doors slammed shut, and the engine fired up. The first few minutes were on very soft sand, but the ride smoothed out as they reached a dirt road. Gideon and Rei both drifted in and out of sleep, awakened periodically when a rut threw them in the air and they landed hard on the metal truck bed.

Time seemed to move at a fluid pace. On one hand, it seemed shorter than the ride north to Ctesiphon. It was cooler, and the slower pace made a more pleasant noise inside the smugglers’ hole. On the other hand, the coming illegal border crossing, their last known hurdle, made them much more anxious than on the outbound journey. They had the letter now. They didn’t dare think about it being taken away by some authority claiming it was an antiquity of Iraq. Nor that same authority arresting them for all kinds of illegal activity.

They had been on a fairly smooth road for some time, and both had drifted to sleep. Suddenly Abdul slammed on the brakes, sending their heads into the front wall of their chamber, and the truck slid sideways before bouncing to a halt. Other vehicle doors slammed, and they heard yelling in Arabic. The doors of their truck opened, but didn’t close, and they could hear Abdul and Asim speaking in a conciliatory way. More yelling. More attempted appeasement.

Rei grabbed Gideon’s hand. He squeezed it, and put his other hand on the butt of the Glock in the top of his waistband. He raised his head as much as he could to try to determine a line of sight, and realized he’d have to move his feet or he’d shoot them off. He experimented with pushing his toes to the side like a dancer, and thought he could probably get a couple of rounds off before he and Rei were either killed where they lay, or pulled out onto the sand.

The angry voices got closer, and they could hear people rummaging through the junk all around them on both sides of the truck. The doors squealed as they were pulled all the way open, and they could hear banging from the cab. Soon they heard knocking underneath the carriage. They barely dared breathe, and Rei had her eyes closed, mouthing silent prayers.

Finally, after twenty minutes, the search ended. One of the strangers barked something, and Abdul answered in a subservient voice. They heard the truck doors slam again. After an endless quiet moment, the engine turned over, and the truck started to drive slowly, gradually picking up speed.

“Oh, thank God! Thank God!” Rei said, tears running down her cheeks. Gideon couldn’t agree more.