The Shroud of Heaven (3 page)

Sent for me
? He blinked furiously, trying to process what Samir was telling him. “Hold it a second.” He gestured emphatically at the object. “What I meant was, how did this end up in Iraq? I thought it was in Ethiopia. Or Egypt.”
Or some US Army warehouse
, he didn’t add.

Samir pondered for a moment, then laughed. He shook his head. “None of those rumors are true. When those who ruled this land before—the Babylonians—sacked Jerusalem two thousand six hundred years ago, they took as spoil all the treasures of the Jews. This also was captured, but King Nebuchadnezzar wisely spread the rumor that it had been taken away by Jewish refugees before their temple fell. As the holiest of the Jewish treasures, it was a trophy of victory over God himself, and the Babylonians hid it in the deepest part of the Esagila—the temple of Marduk. When the Jews returned to their land after the Persian Empire conquered the Babylonians, it never occurred to them to ask for it back. They did not know it was there, and in time, it was forgotten by all.

“Even the first archaeologists to excavate the temple did not find the secret chamber where it lay, but when President Hussein decided to rebuild the glory of Babylon, his engineers—and I was part of that group—did find it.”

Kismet shook his head incredulously, his mind racing. Samir had requested him—personally. How had the defector learned about him? And why had the Iraqi believed he would know, or even care, about some three-thousand-year-old relic? He rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to banish the rampant speculations in order to form a strategy. “All right, this complicates things further. If we’re going to get this out—” he gestured at the covered artifact,“—and everyone else, then we’re going to need at least three helos and probably a shitload of close air support.” He looked thoughtfully at the truck. “Either that or drive out. Think we could make it to Syria in this?”

Samir frowned. “You would risk bringing it so close to Zionist forces? Their agents would know of it the moment we crossed the border. I would think you, of all people, would want to conceal this from the Israelis.”

Once again, Kismet got the feeling that Samir was dialed into some secret and erroneous source of information about him. He decided it was time to disabuse the Iraqi of those notions. Twisting around on the flatbed deck, he hopped backward onto the sand-covered floor to stand face to face with the other man. “Listen, Samir. My orders are to get you out—you. I am willing to risk my life to carry out those orders. I am willing to risk my life to help your family as well. But I am not about to put my life on the line for a… for some movie prop. If you insist on trying to get that thing back to friendly turf, then we are going to use the safest possible route, and if that means we drive through downtown Tel Aviv, well then I just don’t give a shit.”

Samir gaped in disbelief, but before he could even begin to frame a reply, a faint hissing sound distracted both men. Kismet turned toward the source of the noise and saw sand sliding down the face of the dune wall. His reaction was late by a fraction of a second.

He reached for the CAR15, but it was not where he expected, depending from its sling on his shoulder. Suddenly, the sand barrier erupted in a flurry of bodies and movement. Human shapes burst from the dune wall like reanimated corpses summoned from their graves. Remembering that his carbine lay on the deck of the truck, Kismet reached instead for the M9 holstered on his hip, but there was no time. One of the figures reared up before him and something hard and heavy crashed into his jaw. As he staggered back, the sound of Samir’s cries of alarm dissolved into a ringing noise that seemed to originate inside his skull. Hands swarmed over him, stripping away his pistol and restraining his arms. He hovered at the edge of consciousness, vaguely aware that his wrists were being pressed together behind his back, secured with a hard plastic zip-tie. He struggled both against the shackles that bound his hands and the darkness that was overwhelming him, but in the end both battles were in vain.

***

Kismet awoke with a start, reflexively trying to raise his hands to shield himself from the object that filled his blurry gaze; someone had peeled back his right eyelid and was tapping the sclera of that eye with a fingertip. His hands did not respond, still securely bound behind his back, but the ferocity of his reaction was enough to remove him from the immediate threat.

He now saw the instigator of his torment, a lean lupine individual wearing desert battle dress fatigues similar to his own. The man’s Caucasian features and dishwater blond hair suggested that he was a Westerner, but Kismet did not get the impression that his antagonist was there in order to rescue him. The man flashed a humorless smile, then turned to one of his comrades. The words he spoke sounded familiar, but Kismet didn't recognize the language. It might have been Hebrew, but with his head still swimming from the assault, he couldn’t be sure.

The wolfish man leaned close again, thrusting something against his jaw. The object was frigid but yielding—an instant cold compress. “I told him he is lucky he didn’t kill you,” the man volunteered in English.

Kismet couldn’t fathom why. He thought about Samir’s words. “Israelis?” he croaked.

The man chuckled, again without a trace of humor. “Do you think you can stand?”

“Not without help,” he replied, honestly.

Grasping the front straps of Kismet’s combat harness, the man shifted his weight backward, lifting him from his supine position. Pain radiated from Kismet's bruised jaw and stabbed through his head. Bright sparks of light swam in his field of vision and for a moment, Kismet feared he would lose consciousness again. The man continued to hold him erect as his legs buckled, his head swooning, until the fog gradually receded. The ice pack slipped away from his cheek, but remained tucked in the space between his neck and the stiff collar of his flak jacket.

He saw that he was once more in the antechamber where he had first encountered Samir’s family. They were all there, including the defector himself, lined up against one wall of the room in a classic hostage pose: kneeling with fingers laced together behind their heads. Some of them, mostly the children, were weeping and ululating. Half a dozen men in desert-pattern uniforms were spread throughout the room, each wielding a small submachine gun. Kismet easily recognized their arsenal: Heckler & Koch MP5Ks, the first choice of hostage rescue and commando teams worldwide. Unlike the man who held his load straps however, the rest of the combat force wore camouflage mesh screens over their heads, obscuring their faces, and soft boonie hats that matched their fatigues. One of the men also had Kismet’s carbine slung over a shoulder.

He returned his gaze to the man before him. “You didn’t answer my question.”

His captor, judging that Kismet now stood on his own, relaxed his grip on the LBE straps. He maintained his silence a moment longer, reaching out to grasp the hilt of the Ka-Bar knife which hung from an inverted sheath on the front of Kismet’s harness. As he drew the blade, Kismet shifted his eyes downward, surreptitiously checking the rest of his equipment. He immediately saw that, in addition to the knife, his other defensive weapon, the M9 Beretta pistol, had been removed from its holster. There was no sign of his helmet or night vision goggles, but every other piece of gear he carried seemed to have been left alone.

“Since I have no doubt that you and I will eventually meet again, and since it will not benefit you in any way, I will give you my name.” He spoke with a faint accent that Kismet couldn’t pin down.

The man circled behind him, deftly cutting through the zip-tie with the razor-sharp combat blade. As Kismet’s hands broke free, the man resumed talking. “I am Ulrich Hauser. And lest you take the wrong impression, I am not a member of the Bundeswehr, or any other recognized army. I am not, I might add, an Israeli. Be thankful for that.”

Kismet did not question why this distinction was important, but took note of it; Samir had made a similar statement. He turned his head, following as Hauser continued his orbit, but resisted the impulse to massage his wrists, letting his hands hang loosely at his hips. “Should I take from your comments that you’re not going to kill us?”

Hauser returned to his starting point directly in front of Kismet. He held the Ka-Bar contemplatively between them for a moment, then slipped the naked blade into his own belt. At that instant, for no apparent reason, Kismet felt raw adrenaline dumping into his bloodstream, a premonition of something terrible about to happen, perhaps already beginning.

Hauser took the CAR15 from his accomplice and turned toward the line of hostages. It seemed to Kismet that he was moving in slow motion, but that was simply a trick of hyper-awareness. He didn’t even have time to open his mouth in protest.

The carbine erupted in a spray of fire and noise. Hauser moved it from side to side, hosing Samir and his family with an unceasing torrent of 5.56 millimeter ammunition. Kismet felt hot bile flash into his throat and he involuntarily jerked toward Hauser, hands reaching for the gun even though he knew it was too late. Three of Hauser’s men intercepted him, locking their fists around his biceps. He knew the air must be filled with the screams of the dying but all he could hear was the endless roar of gunfire. A chaotic pattern of gore and pocked brick now decorated the wall of the chamber, a carpet of corpses spread out beneath, yet Hauser did not relent until the last round was fired. Only when the final brass cartridge was ejected, landing with an inaudible tinkling sound in the eerie silence of the aftermath, did Hauser raise the barrel of the weapon.

Kismet’s mouth worked, trying to form words, but there was only rage and futility in his throat. Hauser faced him now, his lips drawn back in a fierce grimace, his eyes dancing hungrily. Without warning, he thrust the gun sideways at Kismet, who reflexively caught it, his left hand grabbing the stock while his right fingers wrapped around the shortened barrel of the carbine. He felt the sting of hot metal scorching his skin but did not release the now-impotent weapon.

“Why?” he whispered, finding at least that single word. It seemed inadequate, but it was all he could manage.

Before Hauser could reply, if he intended to at all, a voice called out from the far end of the antechamber where it passed into the main area. The words were in the same unrecognizable language, but the commando leader understood. Nodding, he fired back a quick response in the same tongue, then addressed his sole remaining captive.

“This prize is not for you, Kismet. Not now.”

The short declaration was not at all what Kismet was expecting. “What the hell are you talking about? You did all this for…for that thing?” He gestured toward the main chamber where he had last seen the truck and its mysterious, ancient cargo.

“One day, you will understand what we have done, and why it had to be done.” Despite his earlier, almost gleeful reaction to his act of violence, Hauser now seemed more subdued. He turned without another word and began striding toward the exit. His men followed, keeping wary eyes on the one man who did not belong to their number.

Kismet glanced down at the CAR15 in his hands, feeling the throb of pain in his right palm. Blue smoke continued to waft from the barrel and the air was heavy with the smell of burned cordite. He knew without looking that Hauser had shot off every round in the magazine, rendering the weapon temporarily useless, but there was something Hauser either did not know or had forgotten about. In two clip-on pouches, one on either side of his combat belt, Kismet carried spare magazines. He tried to estimate exactly how long it would take him to eject the spent clip, tear open the clasp on the ammo pocket, extract a spare and jam it into the magazine well. Two seconds?

Time enough for the cautious commandos to take preemptive measures; their weapons were already loaded.

As he weighed his options, the last of the men exited the antechamber, leaving him alone with the dead. He moved toward the passageway, walking slowly enough that he did not alarm the gunmen.

The commandos had made short work of the sand barrier Samir had used to cover the main entrance. The far end of the ruin was exposed to the chilly desert night, illuminated now only by the stars. Their work finished, the assault team began climbing into the rear of the truck. Hauser lingered behind them, catching his eye once more. “Do not fear, Kismet. It will be kept safe until the world is ready.”

“Safe?” he echoed hollowly. “With you? You’re a fucking psychopath.”

Hauser hopped onto the rear bumper and pulled himself half inside the truck. He then turned to Kismet and grinned, shifting his head back slightly, like a werewolf ready to howl. Kismet shook his head to clear the image. “Who are you?”

“I’ve given you my name,” Hauser replied, elevating his voice to be heard as the diesel engine rumbled to life. “Anything else I could say would only serve to confuse you. However, this much I will reveal: We are the chains of God, sealing Pandora’s box for the preservation of mankind. We are Prometheus, guiding the destiny of the world until humanity is ready to ascend Olympus.”

The words sounded like a mantra; a pledge learned by rote. The truck lurched into gear, spinning its wheels for a moment before finding purchase in the loose sand. Hauser steadied himself, then shouted over the din. “Do not try to follow us, Kismet. I have done what I can to spare you, but I will take no responsibility for the fortunes of war.”

Something Hauser had said earlier now echoed in his mind.
I told him he is lucky he didn’t kill you
.

“Why?” he shouted as the vehicle moved away from the chamber. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

Hauser broke into unrestrained laughter; his first honest display of emotion. “Kismet, if I killed you, your mother would have my head.”

If Hauser had anything more to say, it was lost as the truck moved away, threading the narrow alley between brick structures and sand dunes. Kismet took a step after them, then stopped as rage built in his chest and arms.