The Jericho Deception: A Novel (39 page)

The sheikh, the injured boy’s father, and another Bedouin from the tribe had ridden with him for several hours. He squinted against the orange rays of light cresting the horizon. They were traveling east, into the dawn.

“The spark of Allah!” Josef exclaimed.

“Excuse me?” He turned toward the sheikh.

“The sun”—Josef pointed to the horizon—“warms us, lights our path, grows our food. The same way Allah is the essence of life itself.”

“How do you know that to be true?”

“In my prayers, I feel it.” He motioned his head to the boy’s father. “And in our children, I see it.”

Ethan adjusted the red-and-white-checkered headdress held in place by the braided cord around his forehead. The men had also given him an ankle-length white robe. His western clothes were rolled up in a cloth bag that was tied to his saddle alongside a one-liter bottle of water and several slices of pita.
“You almost look like one of us now,” the sheikh had chuckled when he’d put on the attire.

A break in the endless sea of sand caught his attention.
A mirage?
He squinted and shielded his eyes with his hand. The land, which had been barren for hours, appeared green ahead. He sat up straighter. The color stretched across the horizon for as far as he could see.

“Is that—”

“The Nile.”

The father of the injured boy turned to Ethan and gave him a thumbs-up sign. After he returned the gesture, the man yelled, “
Yulli Yulla!
”

Ethan had no idea what the phrase meant, but the camels did. They took off running. He struggled to hold on to the single rope attached to the harness around the camel’s snout while also grabbing the horn on the front of the saddle. He squeezed his legs together until they began to cramp. The last thing he wanted was to be tossed off.

Ten minutes later, he could see the water across a field of waist-high, dark green crops. The Bedouins slowed the animals. He relaxed his grip and took a breath.

“Sugarcane,” the sheikh said as he guided the group on a dirt path through the crops toward the riverbank.

The soil underneath them was almost black, manure-like, in contrast with the fine granules of beige and red sand they had abruptly left. Ethan guessed that the controlled flooding of the Nile from Lake Nasser hit the same spot every year. A few minutes later they arrived at a village of mud-brick huts. Smoke rose from two clay ovens on the edge of the village. Three sun-wrinkled women squatted on the ground as they worked dough on wooden trays. As they continued through the village, Ethan wrinkled his nose: the smell had transitioned from baking bread to the stench of decomposition. Garbage was piled outside the huts, and an open sewer ran to the riverbank.

His first close-up view of the Nile was different than he’d expected. He’d always pictured the world’s most famous river as more untamed—rushing rapids with crocodiles lounging on the banks. Two hundred yards wide at this
point, the water flowed almost without a ripple. Two old sailboats drifted across the water, while a third was tied to the shore in front of them.

They stopped at the top of the bank above the sailboat. Two villagers were readying the boat to leave. Judging from the nets they were loading into the hull, Ethan guessed they were fishermen. Each wore white, but their robes were tinted gray and needed a good washing. Their heads were uncovered. Unlike the olive-complected Bedouins, who had distinctly Arab features, these men were darker, with wider and flatter faces.

Josef called to the men and pointed to Ethan. After a discussion back and forth, with each side throwing their hands up in the air and gesturing to the American dressed as a Bedouin, the fishermen turned back to their work. Ethan looked at Josef.

“Nubians,” the sheikh said. “They’ve agreed to take you to Luxor on their felucca. You’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.”

“How much?” He guessed that he only had a few hundred dollars in the wallet Chris had given him.

“Twenty American dollars.” Josef grimaced. “I tried to talk them down, but they are busy fishing.”

Ethan tried to suppress a smile. “I can make that work.”

The sheik gave a command in Arabic, and the camels began to lower onto their stomachs. Ethan leaned backward. He’d learned his lesson when he first mounted the animal, almost falling off when it stood. The camel lowered its front legs, bending them underneath its body and pitching him forward. He jerked a second time as the creature’s back legs folded down, and then he hopped off, thankful to be on the ground again.

He untied the bag containing his clothes and food from the saddle, slung it over his shoulder, and then walked over to the sheikh with his hand out. Instead of shaking it, Josef grasped him by his shoulders and kissed both his cheeks.

“
Ma’assalama
—go in peace, my friend.”

Next, the boy’s father approached. His embrace nearly squeezed the air out of Ethan’s lungs.

“
Shukran.
”

In response to his confused expression, the man grinned, exposing several missing teeth. He placed a hand on his chest, bowed his head, and said in a thick accent, “Thank you.”

“Thank you.” Ethan imitated the gesture. “Your hospitality saved my life.”

The Nubian fishermen had finished their preparations and now stood by the wood boat. Ethan produced a twenty-dollar bill, which he handed to the first man before stepping over the side rail and into the open cockpit. He sat on a bench that had been painted blue at one time. The mast was set far forward, in front of a centerboard that was in the up position. Thick, frayed lines hung from the boom and single sail. The heavy scent of fish permeated the air.

After the Nubians pushed the boat off the shore, one took hold of the tiller while the other pulled in the sail. Ethan felt the boat glide across the flat water, a far more pleasant sensation than the camel ride. He ducked under the boom to wave good-bye to the men who had opened their tent to him and saved him from Axe, but they had already mounted their camels and were riding into the desert, where they would return to camp and take the injured boy to the hospital.

The boat seemed to drift more than sail down the great river. The serenity of the scenery struck him as surreal. Lush crops of sugar cane and alfalfa were interspersed with tall date palm trees along both banks; they contrasted the harsh desert two hundred yards farther out. Occasionally they passed laborers picking, digging, and carrying bundles of wheat balanced on their heads. The Nubians rarely spoke to each other: one tended to the tiller and sails, while the other untangled the fishing nets in the center of the cockpit.

Ethan tilted his face toward the warm morning sun. If he hadn’t been running for his life, he would have found the trip relaxing. He couldn’t shake the fear of not knowing whether Rachel and Mousa had been caught. As a scientist, his job was to know, to discover, to uncover the truth. Now he had to spend a day and a half on the river without any way to contact them and let them know he was okay and on his way.

Then he remembered—he did have a way to reach them. He opened the bag containing his clothes, pulled out his khakis, and searched the pockets until he felt the hard rectangular shape of the cell phone—the one he’d taken
from the equipment storage room. His thumb hovered over the green power button, but then another doubt intruded.

He was dealing with the CIA. Tracking one of their missing cell phones would be simple for them. He knew enough from movies and TV shows that a cell phone could be located whenever the power was on since it sent out signals to the nearby towers.
But I destroyed their server room
, he thought. Then again, this was the CIA. He was pretty sure they could track him from their headquarters in Virginia too. The question was whether, in the chaos of the explosion and the escape, anyone had noticed that a phone was missing. He might get away with a couple of quick calls if he turned the phone off between them.

He passed the smooth plastic from hand to hand. He made his decision. More than anything he wanted to call the hotel in Luxor where he hoped to meet Rachel and Mousa. Had they checked in as planned? But he didn’t know the phone number or even how to get directory help in this country, and he didn’t want to waste valuable time trying to do so. Instead, he would contact the one person who might be able to help them—the same man who had made his last few years so difficult; the same man who had suspended him less than a week ago. He would contact Sam Houston, Rachel’s father.

He carefully planned out his wording before powering on the phone and quickly typing several lengthy messages. He outlined the events of the past week: his discovery of the CIA as the funding source of the Logos, his trip to the Monastery in Aswan, Rachel’s kidnapping, the innocent Jordanian doctor, and Chris’s death. Since it was still the middle of the night in New Haven, he doubted Houston would see the messages until morning. It was fortunate that Rachel had programmed in his number.

The Yale administrator had never understood the Logos, and he now suspected Ethan of embezzling money from the project. But he couldn’t ignore his daughter’s peril. Houston also had the ear of the university’s president, and they needed help from a powerful ally. The CIA was chasing them, and he didn’t know how far up in the government the conspiracy went. Having a senior administrator from Yale contact a member of Congress, or maybe the
New York Times
or CNN, was their only hope of escaping the country.

But will he even believe me?

He pushed the thought aside. He had no choice. He hit the “send” button.

“You lost them!”

Axe refused to meet Wolfe’s eyes as his boss paced around his office. He stood with perfect posture, his chest inflated, his rib cage expanded, his lats flexed so that his arms were held away from his sides, his legs apart to make room for his tree-trunk thighs. Mastering the art of appearing relaxed while displaying his superhuman physique had taken him years to perfect, but he wasn’t feeling superhuman at the moment. The op was FUBAR. A black hole widened in his chest. Wolfe had rescued him from his dead-end Navy career. He’d believed in his abilities more than his own father had, and he’d given him the freedom to run security how he thought best. Now he’d lost his respect.

“I think they’re traveling north to Luxor.” His voice was unusually subdued. “We’ll need to put in a ground team if we hope to find them among the thousands of tourists.”

His boss shook his head in disgust.

“That’s odd,” Dawkins called out. The operative was hunched over two laptops on the conference table beside a young CIA tech who’d come with Wolfe from Cairo. Upon arriving, he’d set up a mobile workstation and established a satellite feed with Langley.

Wolfe faced them. “What now?”

“We just received a pop-up notification. One of our cell phones just logged onto the network.”

“One of the prototypes?”

“It appears so.”

“Here in the Monastery?”

Dawkins clicked several keys, then shook his head. “I’m trying to run a trace but”—his hands paused over the computer—“damn! It’s gone. Whoever used the phone powered it off.”

Wolfe rubbed his chin. “Axe, go take inventory of the prototypes.”

Then Axe remembered. “I caught the professor in the supply room—that’s when he saw the church pews. The phones are charged in there.”

“Can you track it if he turns it back on?” Wolfe asked.

“I can pinpoint a general region within about forty seconds,” the tech said, “but it will take longer to get a precise fix.”

“Can you remotely activate the protocol?”

“Yes, sir,” Dawkins said. “We just have to send the code to the number when the power is on. If the professor has the phone, he won’t even know what’s happening.”

Wolfe leaned over the table. “Don’t take your eyes off of that screen. Have the code ready the second he turns the phone back on. If it works like it’s supposed to, we may buy ourselves enough time to trace it precisely.” He paced back to the sofa and sat. “We may have a chance to test our latest device sooner than we expected.”

E
than wished for his sunglasses as he reclined in the bow of the boat. The afternoon sunlight reflecting off the surface of the river seemed to pierce directly into his brain. At least he didn’t feel a headache developing; he didn’t have his meds with him. He drank warm water from the bottle given to him by the Bedouins while the two Nubians spoke in hushed tones in the stern, occasionally glancing in his direction.

He watched two other feluccas tack back and forth across the smooth water ahead. Further downriver he spied a much larger boat: a three-story-tall Nile cruise ship. He tugged the headdress over his ears to hide his American features. They’d passed another one of these tourist boats earlier in the morning, and he’d felt exposed on the small sailboat. It was only a matter of time before Wolfe’s men started combing the river. The desert was expansive, but they’d soon realize that there was just one realistic destination that would work as an escape route.

Waiting was the hardest part. He wouldn’t arrive in Luxor until the following day. He reached under his robe and produced the cell phone. He’d resisted the temptation to turn it back on since he’d sent the text hours earlier.
But Houston should have received it by now,
he thought. He flipped the hard case in his hand, opened it, and pressed the power button.
Just for a few seconds.
He wiped his brow, waiting for a signal. The air was still and dry.