Sinai Deceit: An Archaeological Thriller (A Darwin Lacroix Adventure Book 5), page 15
The statement raised the eyebrows of the three holy men, and Theophilus asked, “Why—”
“They’re also dangerously radioactive.” Darwin cut him off.
“How do you know these are near our monastery?” asked the younger monk.
Darwin summarized Henri’s alchemy notes, which led to finding the picture in the German book of the stele in London. “I went to the British Museum to see it and learned three things. One, the stele’s fracture did not happen in antiquity. And, two,” he said, laying a picture of the stele on the table, “we think these yellow and green stones represent the same diamonds we found that react to bright light.”
The monks passed around the photo.
“What’s the third thing you learned?” asked Theophilus.
“That its provenance shows someone stole it from you, and its other half is here,” said Darwin, looking at the archbishop who held the photo.
“Is this the burning bush?” said the archbishop, tapping the picture.
“Could be,” said Darwin and reached across to point out the fracture, “but if we knew which Egyptian god this is, we might make more sense of it and get a precise location.” He looked from face to face and saw the archbishop nod to the librarian, who produced a flat box and laid it on the table.
“We think this is the missing part.” Theophilus removed the lid, folded the cloth, and handed Darwin the upper piece of the stele.
“Hathor!” said Darwin, looking at the top half of the seated figure, whose long black hair draped across one shoulder. Atop her head rested a U-shaped crown whose black horns supported an orange disk. A yellow cobra looped the disk, its head facing toward the gems and bush. Blue flowers floated above Hathor’s crown.
“Do you know what it means?” asked the archbishop.
“I think so. Hathor’s either the mother or the consort of Horus and Ra, the sky and sun gods. She represents maternal care and sexuality,” he blushed, “er, joy, music, and dance. See, the headdress of cow horns wrapped around the sun disk blends the maternal and the celestial. But in our case, the Egyptians also connected Hathor with semiprecious stones.”
“Then this might be the stone missing in your picture.” The librarian laid a thumb-tip-sized piece of turquoise on the table.
Darwin picked it up and held it next to the photo. The scale was off, but its shape matched the stele in the picture. “Wait,” he paused, mentally reviewing his research before continuing, “the Egyptians mined turquoise in Sinai, and the enslaved people doing the work worshipped Hathor as their protector. The mine must be close by.”
Theophilus covered his hand with the cloth in the box and palmed the stele. “We think so,” he said, allowing Darwin to see its backside.
A demotic script ran over the top of a map, cut off by the fracture lines. But before Darwin could get a closer look, the librarian placed it back in the box and moved it off the table.
Darwin’s jaw dropped and, after a moment, he said, “Wait! That means the other part of the map ...” He let the statement hang while visualizing Giles closing the drawer a few days ago.
“Yes. The rest of the map is on the donated piece in the British Museum. Return it to us, and you may photograph the complete map,” said Theophilus.
“You mean steal it?”
“Not exactly, Darwin,” said the archbishop. “You’ve described your talent for repatriating looted antiquities. The British have never taken our requests seriously before. We’re hoping you can be more convincing.”
44
Paris
“Dammit!” Mike dropped the letter from a prestigious Paris law firm on the counter of his flat. The old man must have involved his grandson. This would much more difficult than he had imagined. Mike had figured on the local attorney in Corsica lacking the skill to fight and encouraging the family to settle. But a high-end firm in Paris could bury Mike in work.
This was a worst-case scenario: an expensive, years-long fight. He looked again at the settlement offered: €50,000 for each first-generation child of Clarice Davis to be divided among each child’s descendants.
It’s an insult. They must know Clarice was an only child.
Even if he kept it all to himself, he’d already incurred nearly $20,000 in expenses. He walked to the balcony and stood at its railing. Bastards. He stared blankly at the building across the street. After controlling his emotions, his mood lifted slightly. It’s just another round in the fight. They beat grandma once. Now it’s my turn. His hands squeezed the thick round railing as he plotted. He’d opened with a ridiculous sum. They had counter-punched low.
But they did come back with an offer, which means we struck a chord. Although he hadn’t expected to get anything close to what he’d asked for, he considered $1,000,000 his walk-away amount. It’s doable, he reaffirmed to himself.
Now it was his turn to fight dirty. A little bad press about the ACA’s money will increase the numbers. He fired off an email to a journalist.
Seconds later, his phone chimed, reminding him of a meeting with Ramy, who’d said something about another plan. He tucked the papers away in his case, pocketed the phone, and walked to the cafe.
Ajaccio
Darwin, Eyrún, Zac, and Siggy sat on the flybridge of Eyrún’s powerboat, Hypatia. They’d dropped anchor on the lee side of the big Sanguinaire island outside Ajaccio harbor.
While the others talked about Darwin’s visit to the monastery, Eyrún brooded about Emelio’s predicament. Earlier in the day, the Paris firm had sent their recommended responses to the lawsuits. At first, Emelio had been uncomfortable with the idea of settling. But she’d told him not to worry about the money. She would take care of it and help him explain the empty trust to Olivier and Darwin.
She left out telling him she had hired an investigator through the Paris firm. The microphone and break-in at Emelio’s house might have been coincidental, but the tracker in Siggy’s bag was not. She hated not being able to tell the others about Emelio’s lawsuits. Damn his foolish pride, she fumed, trying to cover her emotion behind her wineglass.
“What’s up, love?” asked Darwin.
“Something I forgot to tell Hérve,” she said, reaching for her mobile and messaging her assistant on an unimportant issue. She set down the phone as the first stars appeared on the eastern horizon above Corsica. Behind her, the western sky’s orange rim faded.
Siggy blurted out. “You can’t be serious. Steal an artifact from the British Museum?”
“I am,” said Darwin. “We need it. Besides, it’s looted antiquity—”
“What!” Eyrún almost shouted.
Siggy recounted the conversation for her sister.
“Just take a photo of its back,” said Eyrún.
“Won’t work,” he said. “We went over that. The monks want the whole piece reunited—in Saint Catherine’s.”
They argued about the ethics a while longer before Darwin reminded them, “Look. I get it. This isn’t just about the stele, but how else will we find the diamonds’ source?” He stood and went to the flybridge’s railing and stared at the lighthouse atop the island.
Eyrún went to him and stroked his back. “How will you do it? Break in, I mean?”
Darwin explained his idea, and Zac shook his head. “Needs some work, bro.”
As sunset neared, they went below to the galley to cook dinner. Zac switched on a reggaeton playlist, and they spent the evening refining Darwin’s plan until they thought it was good enough.
Paris
Mike sipped an iced tea at the corner cafe. An afternoon rainstorm had broken a heat wave but left a cloying mugginess. He’d been working on his response to the lawyers when Ramy arrived.
“Hey buddy, what’s up?” Ramy asked, bumping fists with Mike and taking the adjacent seat facing the sidewalk.
“Just chilling.”
Ramy ordered a drink, then said, “When I left Corsica, I saw the friend, Zac, and Darwin’s sister-in-law at the airport.”
“Did they—“
“No. They didn’t see me.” The server arrived with Ramy’s cocktail, and they waited for her to move away. “But I dropped an air tag, you know, one of those Apple devices—”
“I know what they are. What the hell are you doing? I told you if they connect me to your break-ins, the lawsuits are screwed. Hell, Ramy. I thought you were smarter than that.”
“I am,” said Ramy, placing a diamond on the table between their drinks.
Mike snatched the dirty crystal. It looked more like the quartz he’d found as a kid, but he could make out the specks inside that Ramy had described. He held it under his phone’s light, as Ramy suggested. After a minute, he closed his hands over the diamond and peeked at it.
“See, it glows,” said Ramy. “They talked about its radioactivity and acting as a superconductor.”
“How radioactive?” Mike handed it back.
“You probably got a chest x-ray worth just now. That’s why it’s best to keep it in here,” he said, closing it in a metal box. “One x-ray isn’t bad, but continuous exposure would take a toll.”
“Shit.” Mike rubbed his palms against his jeans, then realized the stupidity of the motion. Radiation wouldn’t rub off. He gulped his tea, then asked, “What do we do with it?
“Sell it.” When Mike’s face screwed up, Ramy added, “It’s got to be weapons-grade. They took it to a German NATO base after they visited a Russian nuclear bomb expert in CERN.”
“Jesus, Ramy. Keep it down,” Mike hissed. He glanced at the building and nearby lampposts for cameras. Paris wasn’t as bad as London's surveillance, but the French anti-terrorist teams remained on high alert, especially after the 2015 attacks in this arrondissement.
“This area’s clean, Mike. That’s why we’re at this cafe.” Ramy pocketed the box. “But you’re right, walk with me.” He left a twenty euro note under one glass, and they headed down the street. A block later, he said, “I got in contact with Ali.”
Mike flinched.
“Relax, I used Proton.”
Mike’s stomach sagged. Memories of the heroin bust made him want to turn and run, but at least Ramy had the good sense to use a point-to-point encrypted email service.
Ramy continued, “Ali replied that the Iranians or North Koreans might be interested. The Chinese bureaucracy’s too big to get through. Pakistan maybe, but they might not have the tech.”
A few strides later, Mike played along. “What next?”
“That’s more like the old Mike.” Ramy punched his arm, and when Mike shrugged, he continued, “Ali said to give him a week.”
Ajaccio
The following day, Eyrún lay wide awake before sunrise, the details of the lawsuits buzzing in her brain. She slipped out of bed and quietly padded up to the main deck. The kettle was already hot, and a light bergamot fragrance hung in the galley. Wet footprints on the deck led up to the flybridge, and she guessed Zac must’ve made good on his commitment to a morning swim. She popped a new bag in a cup, poured over hot water, and mounted the steps.
“Morning,” said Zac, towel around his shoulders. His curly wet hair sparkled in the sun, spilling over Corsica’s granite spine.
“I couldn’t sleep any longer,” she confessed before being asked.
“Hmm.” Zac sipped his tea.
Eyrún smiled. He deserves to meet someone nice. Zac had confessed in Berkeley that he’d stopped dating to clear his head. She’d thought about girlfriends she could introduce, but all were in committed relationships. She sighed.
Zac had been looking out to sea and missed her sad moment. He turned back. They both spoke simultaneously, “Something’s been bothering—“
They stopped. “You first,” he said.
“Erm.” She stared into her cup. “I need you to promise you won’t say a word of this to Darwin. I can’t keep it to myself any longer.”
“Why not tell Siggy?”
“I can’t. She doesn’t have the context. Not like you.”
“Okay.”
Eyrún told him about the lawsuits, Emelio’s financial situation, and how she had hired the Paris law firm.
When she finished, Zac smirked and wagged his head. “Gotta love Emelio, but he can be stubborn. And I thought the Lacroix boys got over their feud?”
“They have. This is a case of Emelio’s pride.”
“How can I help?” he asked.
“You already have. I needed to get it off my chest. What did you want to tell me?” asked Eyrún.
“About the turquoise mines Darwin’s looking for. The diamonds don’t fit the scenario. I mean, not unless somebody dumped them in the mine.”
“Yeah, I thought about that, but was so wrapped up in the lawsuits. Could they have been traded from elsewhere in Africa?”
“Possibly,” said Zac, “All the kimberlite in this part of the world’s sub-Saharan. What about a meteorite?”
Eyrún listened while he laid out a theory of an extraterrestrial impact that brought perovskite-laden diamonds to Earth.
“But wouldn’t the impact destroy the diamonds?” she countered.
“True,” he conceded, “but the entire peninsula’s been subject to plate tectonics between Africa and Asia. Suppose part of the mantle extruded into one of the rifts? Then a meteorite blows away the surrounding rock, and the wadis erode it for the next million years, exposing a deposit.”
“I suppose that might make more sense than traders packing a bunch of diamonds,” she said.
“Exactly. I’ll put a query out to the OSINT. Tell them we’ve found microspherules and nanodiamonds in the soil of an ancient settlement and seek satellite data on an impact.” The Open Source Intelligence community used publicly available satellite feeds to ferret clandestine activity, from smuggling to illegal military movement. “I’ll offer a bitcoin bounty for data. That should get us a fast result.”
“Sure—” Eyrún stood at a loud splash off the swim deck.
Siggy had dived in. Her long pale form glided beneath the azure water before surfacing and stroking away from the boat.
“Hey, you two. There you are,” said Darwin, walking up from the galley, coffee in hand.
“Your secret’s here,” said Zac to Eyrún while tapping his heart. “I’ll let you know what I find with the sats.”
45
Algiers, Algeria
Ramy’s flight landed that afternoon at Houari Boumediene Airport. He’d expected nothing from the lawsuits and, figuring they needed another option, taken matters into his own hands. Besides, in his view, Mike had always been reluctant to join in risky ventures.
After passing through border control, he hired a taxi that dropped him off eight kilometers away along the Bay of Algiers. He watched the taxi drive away on Rue Verte Rive before entering a restaurant. He wove his way past the tables and the kitchen before exiting in a rear alley. Pausing long enough for a cigarette and checking whether anyone had followed him, he walked three blocks up the passage to a car park. Ramy tapped the dark-tinted passenger window of a white BMW M5. The door unlocked, and he got in.
“Were you followed?” asked Ali, a bull-necked man whose meaty hands strangled the steering wheel.
“No.”
Ali rocketed out of the car park, made a series of rapid turns, and entered the N1, where he paid little attention to the speed limit. Ten kilometers later, he braked hard onto an exit ramp, then kept to the posted limit as the road arced toward the Hilton Algiers. He drove around the large hotel and picked a spot in the car park.
Knowing Ali as a man of few words, Ramy had said nothing during the drive, and, besides, most of what they had in common was a past Ramy cared not to dwell on. Yesterday, when he’d laid out the barest of explanations, Ali said he knew a North Korean who had been sniffing around. Now, with the engine idling to keep the air-conditioning on, Ali turned and, holding out a hand, said, “Show me the diamond.”
Ramy dropped it in the colossal palm and waited.
“What do you know of it?” Ali held the diamond up, the waning daylight pouring through the windscreen.
Ramy explained the fleck inside the gritty, unpolished crystal as best he could.
“Sounds like guessing.”
“No. They took it to nuclear research facilities in California and CERN. Then went directly to the American base in Spangdahlem, Germany. That tells me it’s dangerous.”
“Hmph. We need more for this guy. He says the American sanctions have hurt them and their glorious leader’s looking for ways to make a statement.”
“Then we show him this,” said Ramy, unfolding a paper. As Ali studied it, Ramy described the blue donut shape. “It’s called a tokamak. I’m no physicist, but I heard them describe it as a magnetic field containing high-energy plasma. Break the field, and boom.”
“How big?”
“Enough to take out the hotel.” He thumbed at the building behind them and held up a USB stick. “All their conversations and data are on this.”
“Let’s go.” Ali stuffed the diamond and USB stick in his pocket, ignoring Ramy’s comment about not keeping it close to his family jewels.
“Wait.” Ramy grabbed Ali’s forearm, not allowing his brusque colleague to control his deal. “What do you know about this guy?” Ali crunched his brows, and Ramy felt the ropey muscles tense. “C’mon Ali, the more I know, the better we can play this guy. You know that,” he said, releasing his grip.
“He’s been westernized. Went to the university in Beirut. Speaks fluent Arabic. Officially, he brokers contracts for raw materials.”
“And unofficially?” Ramy probed.
“He’s like any other agent for the hermit kingdom, looking for access to military technology.”
Paris
