Levi began to twist alarmingly in his ropes

Annja reached up and grabbed his right boot to stabilize him. Whether the experience unnerved him or not, he didn’t continue the conversation. That suited Annja fine.

In the early afternoon the storm clouds returned with a suddenness that halfway tempted Annja to believe in Levi’s dueling mountain deities. At almost the same moment a soft cry came from above and Annja looked up to see Larry’s head silhouetted against the ominous boiling clouds. She could tell he was grinning.

Less than five minutes later Levi and Larry were helping her scramble onto the top of a gently sloping plain of ice, pierced by snow-mounded juts of rock. A mile and a half ahead of her rose the snow-covered peak of Ararat. And there, a quarter mile away to the south and west of them, the long, dark mound of the Ararat Anomaly seemed to hang over the edge of the abyss.

Paradox

Rogue Angel™

Alex Archer

www.mirabooks.co.uk

THE LEGEND

…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.

Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn….

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

1

“Such exquisite form,” Roux said. He glided to a stop easily on the ice of the outdoor skating rink. “You make falling upon your wonderfully sculpted posterior a balletic act. Pure poetry.” He kissed his kid-gloved fingertips.

“How about a hand, here?” Annja Creed asked. She sat like an abandoned rag doll with her mittened hands on the ice and her legs stuck out in front of her.

She regretted the request at once. The slim old man with the bright blue eyes and the carefully trimmed white beard began to clap slowly.

Seeing her expression start to resemble gathering thunderheads he desisted and extended an arm. All around them cheerful skaters passed by emitting dragon puffs of condensed breath against a black night sky from which the bright multicolored rink lights banished stars. She fought the impression they were laughing at her.

With the help of Roux’s strength, surprising in a man his apparent age, she found herself back upright with her feet beneath her. Temporarily, anyway. She teetered, the blades of the rental skates strapped none too comfortably to her feet that slipped back and forth over the ice. Roux held her by the arm, steadying her.

“Where is your vaunted sense of balance, which you have supposedly gained through rigorous study of your black arts?” he asked.

“Martial arts,” she said. “ And the problem isn’t lack of balance. It’s lack of friction.”

“If you say so. Now, pay attention. The principle is simplicity itself. When you go with the direction of the blades, you move without effort. If you press at an angle to the blade, you push. You see?”

Annja did. She was starting to. Sort of. She made herself draw deep breaths to the diaphragm, calming, centering herself. You can keep your head while people are shooting at you, she reminded herself sternly. So you can keep your head while doing something little children do effortlessly.

The fact was, she was determined not to let this get the better of her. She wasn’t in the habit of backing away from challenges. It made her curse Roux all the more for talking her into this despite her reservations.

As she propelled herself forward a skinny septuagenarian a head shorter than Annja easily passed her by. Not a yard ahead of her a tiny girl, elfin face bracketed by enormous white puffy earmuffs, skated fearlessly backward.

Annja sighed. “I thought the Quays of the Old Port Skating Rink didn’t open until December.”

The outdoor rink was in the old St. Lawrence River dockside district appended to Montreal’s downtown. Like every other run-down waterfront in every other major North American city, it had been renovated and gentrified at enormous expense sometime in the last quarter-century. Now the skaters glided and chattered to saucy French techno-pop before the broad, benign domed edifice of the Marché Bonsecours, the old market that once housed City Hall.

“Customarily it does not open so early,” Roux said, tipping his hat to a passing pair of handsome middle-aged women. “But the winter has come early to Montreal, as you can see. This global warming, it fails again to materialize, it seems.”

He shook his head. “I do not understand you moderns and your superstitions. Even should the good Earth be warming, why is that bad? I lived through five centuries of what your scientists now call the Little Ice Age. Including times in which it lessened. In the times it grew cooler again, the people suffered, grew sicker and poorer. Crops failed. And whenever the weather grew warmer, prosperity and happiness returned.”

She said nothing. From her own detailed knowledge of history, especially European history, she knew her mentor was right about the previous effects of climate warming.

She also knew he wasn’t kidding about having experienced it for himself. What was worse, he wasn’t even delusional.

“All right,” she said to her companion as they picked up speed. She was finding a certain degree of control. She learned things quickly, physical or mental. “You’ve brought me here. You’ve established your dominance by ritually humiliating me. What’s so urgent that you had to see me?”

“What else but the offer of a job? At a fee most welcome, given the sadly depleted state of our exchequer,” Roux said.

Annja knew Roux was fabulously wealthy but he loved to cry poor. However, she also knew for a fact that their occasional joint covert enterprises, while tending to command high fees, were phenomenally expensive. For one thing she burned through all-but-bulletproof fake identities, with attendant documentation, the way some people smoked cigarettes. Even with volume discounts, the requisite quality was costly.

“Then give,” she said. The old man loved to hear himself speak and would ramble all night, or possibly for days, if she didn’t occasionally boot him back in the general direction of the subject at hand. The trouble was, he was highly entertaining to listen to. Being a raconteur was another skill he’d had a long, long time to develop.

He clucked and shook his head. “You moderns have no sensibility of the rhythms of life. Everything is always ‘hurry-hurry-hurry.’”

“You got that right, old man,” Annja said with a grin.

Roux sighed. “A consortium of wealthy American Protestant fundamentalists are organizing an expedition to examine the so-called Ararat Anomaly, believed by many to be Noah’s Ark. They wish you to come along and direct excavation and preservation.”

“No,” Annja said without hesitation.

His fine brow creased in a frown. “Why must you always make things so difficult, child?”

“ You’re trying to hook me up with a bunch of Biblical literalists? They’re like the archenemies of anthropologists and archaeologists.”

“Why must you be so dogmatic? You really should be more open-minded.”

“The Ararat Anomaly is a total crock. The mountain’s sixteen thousand feet high, for God’s sake! How does a flood plant something up there?”

“It is, in fact, Turkey’s highest mountain at 5,137 meters. Or 16,854 feet, as you Americans would say. I’m with you, by the way—the metric system was another unlovely conceit of the French Revolution. We might as well have kept their ridiculous calendar, with its ten-day weeks and its months with names like Heat and Fog!”

“Okay. Almost seventeen thousand feet, then. Thanks for making my point for me.”

“But what of the photographic evidence? The Ararat Anomaly has repeatedly been photographed by surveillance aircraft and satellites. Some analysts claim it resembles the Biblical description of Noah’s Ark.”

“It’s just a natural formation.”

“Ah, but do you know that for a fact? How? Is this your science, to determine truth by decree like His Holiness the Pope? You’ve not been there. No one has, for very long. No expedition has ever succeeded in examining it in detail.”

“Of course they haven’t,” Annja said. “The Turkish government won’t let anyone in because of trouble with the Kurds. And with the fighting between the Turks and the Kurds continuing the way it is, the Turks are especially unlikely to let anyone in now.”

“Just so. Yet the expedition sponsors and organizers, who I assure you are serious men who are not to be taken lightly, believe they have a way to get to the mountain and climb it with ample time to perform at least a site survey and preliminary excavation.”

“You mean go in illegally, don’t you?” she asked.

“It’s not as if you are a stranger to that sort of thing, Annja dear.”

She shrugged. The motion momentarily unbalanced her. She felt proud that she managed to right herself without clutching at Roux. He had them skating in a circuit about the rink’s long oval now. She noticed he also kept them clear of the rail, most likely to prevent her grabbing it and vaulting to solid ground. Or ground with friction, anyway.

Roux had declared himself her mentor when she first came into possession of Joan of Arc’s sword through some kind of power she did not fully comprehend. Even now she didn’t really know what that meant. The sword traveled with her in another plane and was usually available to her in times of trouble. She could call it to her hands by willing it there if conditions warranted it. It was a privilege and a burden at the same time and Roux, who claimed to have been Joan’s one-time protector, came along as part of the deal. He was always pressing her, pushing her to extend her boundaries, challenge herself.

For the most part Roux seemed content to play business manager for her unorthodox archaeological services. She knew, though, that he had an agenda entirely his own. And she had no real clue as to what it was.

“Where is your dedication to the scientific method?” he asked. “Where’s the spirit of scientific inquiry? Where, even, simple human curiosity? Absent investigation, child, how can you be so sure what it is or is not?”

“Well,” she said, “I mean, how likely is it?”

“My principals claim to have in their possession relics recovered from the site. Allegedly these substantiate that it is, at the very least, artificial in origin.”

His gloved hands gestured grandiosely. Other skaters glanced their way and giggled. But it didn’t disturb his balance in the slightest. In fact he skated with the same ease with which a dolphin swam. He’s had a lot of time to practice this, too, Annja reminded herself

“Think, Annja!” he exclaimed. “Even if it doesn’t happen to be the Ark, would not a man-made structure atop the mountain be a magnificent archaeological find? Would it not also be in dire need of professional preservation? And also, the Americans offer quite a handsome fee.”

“There’s that.”

“You won’t even have to organize matters, nor run the expedition. That burden is borne by others. You’ll be there purely as chief archaeologist.”

She sighed. Roux could be devilishly persuasive.

He was right about one weakness of hers in particular. Science and the scientific method were very important to her, as was the spirit of scientific inquiry. But mostly, she was as curious as the proverbial cat.

“All right, you old renegade,” she said. “You’ve got me wondering just what is on top of that stupid mountain. I’ll agree to hear them out.”

“Splendid.”

“I’m not promising anything else,” she said, shaking her head so emphatically she blew her balance again and had to windmill her arms frantically. Her legs in their black tights slid right out in front if her. She landed on her tailbone with an impact that shot sparks up her spine to explode like fireworks in her brain.

Roux blinked down at her. “Try to contain your excitement, child. People stare.”

Grumbling, she allowed him to help her up once more with his surprising strength of grip and arm.

“Besides,” Roux said as she came back onto her skates, a little tentatively. “I can’t dally here with you forever, delightful as your company always is. I’ve got other projects to attend to. I’ll set up a meeting and will be in touch.” He skated away from her with great speed.

“Roux!” Annja called out to him as he disappeared. Once again she was left wondering what she was getting herself into.

2

“If you’d please follow me, miss?” The maître d’ was a soft-spoken, light-skinned black man, tall and slender in his white shirt and black trousers, with hair cut short.

The establishment was called, simply, the Penthouse. Its decor was as spare as its name: dark stained oak wainscoting beneath ivory wallpaper, muted chrome accents and crystal lighting. The tablecloths gleamed immaculate white; the only touches of color in the room were the long-stemmed roses—the color of fresh-spilled blood—set on each table in narrow vases.

The real interior decoration was all exterior—the glory of midtown Manhattan by night.

Four men sat at a table with an empty chair, right by one window-wall with lights glimmering in it like a galaxy’s worth of stars. The oldest man, and largest in every dimension, pushed back his chair as Annja approached behind the quietly respectful maître d’.

“Ms. Creed,” he said in a voice that boomed above the discreet murmur of conversation, the tinkle of silver on porcelain and ice in crystal. “How good of you to join us. I’m Charles Bostitch. Please call me Charlie.”

He wore an obviously expensive but somewhat rumpled brown suit with a brown string tie and an expression of jovial indifference to the stares of the other diners on his big, florid fleshy face. His hair was brown and graying at the temples; it looked natural to Annja, not that she was any judge. Seams of his well-rumpled face, exaggerated by his big grin, almost concealed his brown eyes.

As she approached she realized he was very tall. He towered over her, which was rare: he had to be six-four or thereabouts, probably crowding three hundred pounds. He had the look of a former star college quarterback who hadn’t quite had the NFL stuff, and whose career and physique had begun their downhill slide about the same time as graduation and continued until his fifties.

He was a billionaire who had made his money the old-fashioned way—inherited it from his Oklahoma oilman daddy. But, according to the information Roux had given to Annja, he had more than doubled the family fortune despite frequent bouts with expensive bad habits. He’d supposedly cleaned himself up and was now a vigorous proponent of muscular right-wing Christianity.

Bostitch’s handshake was firm and dry and all-enveloping. Annja could feel at once how he could overpower most people without consciously trying. But Annja was not most people and she was hard to intimidate.

“It’s an honor to meet you at last, Ms. Creed,” he boomed. Two of the other men at the table had risen politely. The third sat hunched over and peered myopically at an electronic reader.

“Please allow me to introduce my good friend and associate, Leif Baron.”

“A pleasure.” Baron smiled and nodded. The smile didn’t reach his gray eyes. He was Annja’s height. He had the broad shoulders that tapered through well-developed trapezoid muscles and thick neck to the almost pointed-looking crown of his shaven head of an aging but still formidable mixed martial arts prizefighter. His suit was expensively tailored to a form as compulsively fit as Bostitch’s was sloppy, his tie muted. She could feel the callus on his trigger finger when she shook his hand. The guy was ex-military, she had no doubt.

“And this is my aide-de-camp, if you’ll pardon my French, Larry Taitt.”

This was a jockish bunch, Annja thought. Taitt was a gangly brown-haired man who was not quite tall enough for basketball and not quite burly enough for football. Maybe baseball was his game in college. Or, she couldn’t help thinking, high school; he looked seventeen, despite the ultraconservative dark suit and tie, even though he must have been in his early twenties at least.

“It’s great to meet you, ma’am,” he said, big floppy-dog amiability warring with painfully proper upbringing.

He worked her hand like a pump handle until his boss dryly said, “You can let go anytime now, Larry.” He dropped her hand and blushed.

“And you’ll have to excuse the rabbi,” Bostitch said pointedly. “He couldn’t bring any real books to bury his nose in, so he’s settling for second best.”

“Oh,” the fourth man said. “Please forgive me. I was just catching up on the latest digest from Biblical Archaeology Online. I got engrossed and forgot my manners.”

Momentarily he got crossed up as to which hand he was going to shake Annja’s with, and which he was going to use to straighten his yarmulke, which had begun to stray from the crown of his head of curly brown, somewhat scraggly hair. He had an ascetic’s face, bone-thin and pale olive, a disorderly beard and brown eyes that looked enormous behind round lenses so thick he should have been able to see the rings of Saturn with them. He looked to be in his early to mid-thirties. Finally sorting the unfamiliar mundane details out, he shook Annja’s hand as eagerly as Taitt had, if with a far less authoritative grip.

“I’m Rabbi Leibowitz,” he said. “It’s wonderful to meet you. I’m a big fan.”

“Thanks,” Annja said with a thin smile as Bostitch pulled out her chair. She sat. She was secure enough in her own strength of character not to resent what others would probably take as a male-chauvinist gesture. Even if, considering the source, it probably was one.

“You may or may not have heard of me before,” Bostitch said, seating himself. “What really matters is that I’m a rich guy who finally got serious and accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior kinda late in the game. And I’m dedicated to proving the exact, literal truth of the Bible to help save a skeptical world.”

Annja looked at him over the top of the menu. “Not just the truth, then.”

He laughed. He seemed to do that easily. “Of course I’m interested in the truth, Ms. Creed. I say we go take a look and let the chips fall where they may.”

He leaned forward. “In this case, though, I’m pretty confident what we’re going to find will confirm the Book of Genesis. And blow the world away.”

Annja glanced at the rabbi. He was lost in his reading again. Annja wondered what his role was in the expedition.

“We’ll see,” she said.

“Let me tell you a little bit about myself and my associates,” Bostitch said. “I inherited a bit of money from my dear old daddy. I did the college thing, majored in partying. Got serious enough to get my MBA and come back to the family business, which was mostly oil. We expanded into agribusiness and, eventually, into defense.

“I was a pretty wild colt as a young man, Ms. Creed. Until, as I said, I was saved. Since then I’ve been mindful of giving back. I founded and fund the Rehoboam Christian Leadership Academy for young men in Virginia, near Quantico.”

He nodded to Baron, who sat to his right. “Mr. Baron here came through that program. That’s how we met. After he went through he consented to become a volunteer instructor. Leif was quite a bit older than our usual students, actually—he’d served as a Navy SEAL and then built his own security firm into quite a successful operation.”

“Security?” Annja asked.

“Private security contracting, Ms. Creed,” Baron said. “I own China Grove Consultants.”

“Oh. Mercenaries,” Annja said, nodding.

He smiled humorlessly. “That’s not a term we’re particularly fond of. In fact we’ve devoted a substantial amount of money to lobbying the UN to closely regulate the international private security and private defense contracting business. We’d like to see the UN move away from their conventional Blue Helmet peacekeepers, who tend to be brave but ineffectual, to contracting with private agencies to conduct peacekeeping operations.”

“And you’d be the contractor, I’m guessing?” Annja asked.

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “We’d be there bidding along with the others. And we do a good job. At a lower cost to our principals than conventional military forces.”

“Leif’s taken a leave of absence in order to help with our expedition,” Bostitch said. “He’s our organizer and expediter. He’ll run the show on the expedition. And Larry, here, went through the academy. He was a star pupil and I decided to take him under my wing, once he got his law degree.”

Larry grinned and bobbed his head. “It’s a real honor,” his said, “getting to work with such great men and great Christians as Mr. Bostitch and Mr. Baron.”

Annja couldn’t help but like the enthusiastic young man.

“And Rabbi Leibowitz is a rising star at the Israeli Archaeological Institute,” Bostitch added. The man in question looked up, blinked, grinned shyly and promptly went back to his reading. Annja had known some compulsive readers in her life—she came close at times—but the rabbi definitely took best in show.

Their waiter arrived and asked her for her order first.

“How rare is your prime rib?” she asked.

“Almost bleeding, ma’am.”

“Great. I’ll take the sixteen-ounce cut with the rice pilaf and steamed broccoli. Tossed salad with vinaigrette, no croutons. And iced tea and ice water, please.” She thought about ordering wine to see if it put her hosts off balance. But she was no wine connoisseur, any more than she was a consistent drinker of any sort.

Nor did she want to risk diminishing her capacity even a little bit. It was definitely a temptation to a person of her scientific background to dismiss them all as religion-addled halfwits, especially Bostitch with his slathered-on hick accent and goofy good-old-boy manner. But Bostitch was an extremely successful businessman.

And although she had known some Navy SEALs who, while good-natured and in certain ways frighteningly competent, were not too bright, she didn’t have Baron sized up that way, either. While a lot of fairly random and even wacky types had prospered in the general rain of soup that had fallen on the defense and security industries after 9/11, she knew the mercenary business, whatever euphemism it operated under, was literally a cutthroat business. She’d heard of China Grove, as it happened; their reputation wasn’t too savory. If anything, they tended to be a bit too good at what they did. Leif Baron was not a man to be taken lightly.

“I guess you don’t worry about your weight much, Ms. Creed,” Baron said as the waiter left, having taken all the food orders.

“Constantly,” she said. “I really have to work to keep it up enough that I don’t start burning muscle mass.”

He sat back. She got a flat shark stare from those gray eyes. Then Charlie Bostitch guffawed and slapped his thigh with a beefy hand. “Good one!” he said. “Our Ms. Creed’s a woman with spirit.”

She wondered if there was more to this group than she was being told. Despite Charlie’s boisterous good nature Annja was starting to fear working with them would be a mistake. The way Baron joined in the laughter a beat late didn’t greatly reassure her.

Their food arrived. It was excellent and excellently prepared; Bostitch had decent taste in restaurants. Annja’s prime rib was rare, as advertised, which made her happy. It could be hard getting a really rare piece of meat these days.

As they ate Bostitch gave her his pitch, with occasional comments from Baron. They were brief and to the point, Annja had to admit. The former SEAL might not be likable and might be a touch too tightly wired. But he seemed to know his stuff.

“The Ararat Anomaly,” Bostitch said, “was first spotted by an American recon flight along the Turkish-Soviet border in 1949. Since then it’s been photographed on several occasions both by surveillance aircraft and satellites.”

“Most recently by the space shuttle, in 1994,” Taitt said.

“But no one’s been allowed to examine it firsthand,” Annja said.

Bostitch looked to Baron. “Not allowed to, no,” the shaven-headed man said. “But last year an expedition did manage to reach the Anomaly. Briefly.”

“And you had something to do with this?” Annja asked.

Again the unpleasant smile. “Not directly. At the time I was deployed to Kirkuk with my boys.” Annja knew he was referring to northern Iraq—the part claimed by the Kurds, as it happened.

“Let’s just say I had a hand in expediting the process,” he said.

“So what did they find?”

Under the table Charlie evidently had his hand in his coat pocket. “This,” he said, producing a plastic bag with a showman’s flourish. It contained an irregular dark brown object about five inches long and maybe an inch wide.

“What’s this?” Annja asked. He passed the bag to her. She turned it over in her hands. “It looks like a piece of old wood.”

“Very old wood,” Bostitch said. “It’s been carbon dated as just under 3,500 years old.”

“We believe the Flood happened in 1447 BC,” Taitt said.

“Interesting,” she said in a neutral tone. She passed the bag back to Bostitch. Taitt handed her several sealed plastic bags containing shards of pottery he’d taken from an attaché case.

“And here,” Bostitch said, shoving a thick manila folder toward her, “we’ve got the documentation on the artifacts. All done up proper.”

Except for the little detail about lack of official permission, she thought. Ah, well, stones and glass houses, as it would gratify Roux way too much to remind her.

She flipped through the papers inside the folder. “All right,” she admitted. “Whoever did this appropriately documented the discovery and extraction of the artifacts, and didn’t record the use of any kind of destructive practices. But these artifacts were basically found lying around in the snow. There’s nothing about the structure itself. If any.”

“Oh, it’s there, all right,” Bostitch said. His eyes shone with fervor. “The expedition members saw it plain as day, rising before them—a great ship shape, dark, covered with snow and ice.”

“And they didn’t document that?” Annja said.

“They had some…equipment malfunctions,” Baron said. “Only a few shots one of them took on his cell phone actually came out.”

Annja raised an eyebrow at him. Taitt pushed a sheet of paper at her. On it were printed several blurry photographs.

Her frown deepened as she studied them. “This could be anything.” It looked big. It even looked vaguely ship-shaped.

She shoved the printout back at Taitt. “Then again, so do a lot of things. If I understand correctly the usual scientific explanation for the Anomaly is either a basalt extrusion or some kind of naturally occurring structure in the glacier itself. I don’t see anything here to make me think differently.”

“Ah, but the men who were there, Ms. Creed,” Bostitch said, “they saw. And they know.”

“None of you was on this expedition?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” Bostitch said.

“And can I talk with anybody who was?”

“Unfortunately,” Taitt said, the young lawyer coming out, “it would be inadvisable at this time.”

Meaning, somewhere along the way they had stepped on serious toes, she figured. And they were hiding out. Or…worse? They played for keeps in that part of the world. They always had. It was something she suspected U.S. policymakers, even many of their grunts on the ground, failed to really appreciate.

It was a game Annja was far too familiar with. She’d played for such stakes before. She didn’t doubt she would again.

But not for a wild-goose chase like this.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “thank you for a wonderful dinner. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get home. I got an early start this morning.”

That was true. And while the flight from Montreal to New York had been anything but lengthy the attendant hassles and stresses of air travel constituted a sort of irreducible minimum. She always thought so-called “security” measures—which would make any serious-minded terrorist bust out laughing—couldn’t get more intrusive or obnoxious. Any kind of air travel these days was exhausting.

She rose. Larry Taitt stood up hastily, knocking his chair over. “You mean you won’t do it?” he said in alarm, turning and fumbling to set the chair back up.

“That’s exactly what she means,” Baron said evenly.

“Are you sure you won’t consider it, Ms. Creed?” Bostitch said, also standing up politely, if with less attendant melodrama. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.

3

Annja’s cell phone started ringing as she closed the door to her loft apartment behind her. As she fastened the various bolts, safety bars and locks with one hand she took the phone out with the other and checked who was calling.

“Doug Morrell,” she said aloud. “That can’t be good.” Morrell was the boy wonder producer of the television show she worked for. Although she genuinely liked Doug, he could be trying at the best of times.

Despite her better judgment she held the phone to her ear.

“Hello?” Once again, her curiosity had the better of her. Damn it anyway.

“Annja?”

“Did you forget who you were calling, Doug? Or did you hit the wrong speed-dial button again?”

“Huh? What?”

“Never mind. What do you want, Doug? It’s late.”

“If you had any kind of social life the evening would just be starting.”

“You’re starting to sound like a nagging mother, Doug. What is it?”

“I’m doing you a favor here, sweetheart. You should thank me.”

“Maybe if I knew what it was.”

“Something’s come down from Corporate. Something hot.”

“You know what they say rolls downhill, Doug. It’s pretty hot sometimes, too.”

“Annja, just, like, listen for a change.” This from Doug, who had the attention span of one of those little midges that live for six hours. “This is actually a good idea. Not like those other ones. Have you ever heard of Mount Ararat?”

She suddenly teetered over to her sofa. The end nearer the door was stacked with archaeological journals and printouts of recently submitted papers. Her legs were suddenly so shaky she sat right on top of the foot-high pile.

“Yes. I’ve heard of Ararat.”

“So, like, it turns out Noah’s Ark is on top of the freaking mountain. Who knew?”

Anyone who watches our rival cable networks, for starters, she thought. “Doug, we don’t know it’s Noah’s Ark. For one thing, the mountain’s seventeen thousand feet high.”

“Really? That’s a lot of rain. Anyway, there’s an expedition headed up it. Nothing to worry about, it’s an American operation all the way, not run by any people from Madagascar or wherever. You’d be their pet archaeologist. You’d also have a team from the show along to shoot everything. Do you hear what I’m saying, here, Annja? You’re working for them and us. You’re double-dipping, all open and aboveboard.”

“Wow,” Annja said.

“Try to muster some excitement, here. Because wait, there’s more. If the suits decide to run with this you will be talent and producer for that episode. You, in person. Annja Creed.”

That actually penetrated her fog of dismay and incipient paranoia. “You’re kidding!” It meant that the show’s coverage might actually feature her real archaeology instead of the entertainment bits that usually won out.

“Not at all, kiddo. Not at all. Focus groups say America’s getting tired of the superficial. They want their infotainment shows to be more serious.”

“Do they, now?”

“So what do you say? Yes?”

“I say I’m tired, Doug. This is a lot to heap on my plate. Let me sleep on it, at least.”

“What’s to think about?”

“Plenty,” she said grimly. “Look, Doug. Thank you. I really, really appreciate that you’re looking out for me. But I need to think about it.”

“Don’t think about it too long, babe. You know network. It’s got the attention span of a hyperthyroid weasel.”

She broke the connection, in case he had any further blandishments to offer. He really did mean well, in his air-headed way.

Her shoulders slumped. She tossed the phone on the sofa and rubbed her face with her hands.

“Is something else going on here?” she said to the half-lit room. “Am I getting paranoid?”

And the little voice in her head answered, Is it paranoid when they really are out to get you?

ANNJA HEADED OUT OF the television studio building into warm autumn sunlight. Some dried leaves skittered along the steps.

It was a little after one. She had two full hours for lunch before she was due back for a script conference for Chasing History’s Monsters on star-children—hybrids between creatures from the stars, which was an old-time way of saying aliens, and men. Some people claimed they were spoken of in legends from all over the world. Annja was almost as skeptical of that claim as she was of the alien-human hybrid thing itself. She knew that her show was fluff but it paid well and allowed her to do a lot of real archaeology that she’d never have the time or money for otherwise. And now Doug was promising to let her shape an episode entirely her way. He’d been hounding her all morning to accept the Noah’s Ark expedition. It seemed Charlie Bostitch was throwing his weight and his money around and he really wanted Annja on his team.

Annja had no idea what she was going to do for lunch. But after a morning of Doug and his antics she just had to get away from the show and everything connected to it for a while. Even if she just walked aimlessly the whole time. Actually, even if she stood banging her forehead against the corner of a building.

Her phone rang. She pulled it from its carrier. The number was unfamiliar. She thumbed Answer anyway. What the hey? She was an adventuress, wasn’t she?

“Ms. Creed?” asked a man in a slightly Middle Eastern accent.

“Yes,” she said in a neutral tone. Irrationally she started flicking her eyes all around, studying the slow-moving tourist swarms and the busy locals bustling past them with their usual welcoming snarls and occasional shouted obscenities. If anyone was stalking her they probably wouldn’t need to resort to a trick like dialing her number and seeing who answered. But she also had a well-honed aversion to taking things for granted.

“I hope you will forgive me bothering you. This is Levi.”

“Levi?”

“Rabbi Leibowitz. I met you last night at dinner at the Penthouse.”

“Oh. Yes. Rabbi. How are you?” Politeness, her default mode, took over. Very few people, herself definitely included, thought of her as a Southerner, although to all practical purposes she was, having been raised in New Orleans. She was a New Yorker through and through. She was most particularly not a Southern belle. But the sisters at the orphanage had brought her up to be polite, and on the whole, she was pleased with that. Unlike a great many other elements of her upbringing.

“Oh, I’m fine, fine, Ms. Creed. And I’m terribly sorry if I or my associates offended you last night.”

“No. I wouldn’t say offended is the word.” She could think of plenty others. But gratuitous meanness didn’t form a major component of her personality. She liked to think, anyway. Besides, there was something about the rabbi’s halting voice that struck a chord inside her. A quality of vulnerability. Of innocence.

“But not too favorably impressed.”

“Well…not with your associates. To be perfectly candid with you, Rabbi Leibowitz, I hate to think of myself as giving in to guilt by association. That said—given that you chose to surround yourself with such associates, and their project—I formed a certain impression of you. I apologize if I judged you unfairly. I guess I’m as subject to human frailties as anybody.”

He laughed. “Oh, don’t say that, Ms. Creed. And please don’t judge the men you met with me last night too harshly. They are good men, whatever their enthusiasms.”

“It’s good men I’ve learned to fear most in the world, Rabbi. Especially the enthusiastic ones. Look, I’m willing to admit I may have judged you too hastily. I apologize for that. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Please, Ms. Creed.” His voice pulsed with urgency. “Hear me out. I’m not really concerned…with your opinion of me. But I think it would be a great tragedy if you passed on participating in this project without hearing certain aspects of it that, that maybe got glossed over last night. And I’d like to ask you, as a favor to me, even though you certainly don’t owe me anything, if you would at least examine my credentials online. I’m not in fact a colleague of yours, strictly speaking—I’m no archaeologist, naked or otherwise.”

She had to laugh at that.

“I am an antiquarian, a historian, a scholar of ancient languages. I believe this expedition could add significantly to the sum of human historical and cultural knowledge.”

“Let me ask you flat out,” she said. “Do you believe in the literal truth of Genesis?”

His laugh sounded incredulous. A lot like she figured hers would have sounded if faced with the same question. “Oh, certainly not, Ms. Creed. Very few educated Jews today believe any such thing. Certainly few serious scholars, of which I flatter myself I’m one. But I ask, does that mean there cannot be something there, on that frightening mountain surrounded by very frightening people, that could still be worth unearthing?”

She felt her pulse quickening. The old atavistic joy of the hunt. Sneaking into eastern Turkey, in the heart of a war zone, and climbing to a mountain height where no official expedition had been allowed—it was hard to resist a challenge like that.

“All right, Rabbi,” she said. “I haven’t bought into this yet. But I gather you have a pitch for me. I’m willing to hear it. All right?”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Ms. Creed. Thank you so much. Are you free for lunch?”

RIGHT AROUND A CORNER FROM the television studio was a fancy coffee shop of a sort she usually avoided, mostly because they exuded a self-satisfied smugness that just scraped right up her spine. She bought a cup of coffee for a price outrageous even in the Big Apple, she thought as she walked away from the counter.

No seats were available in the crowded shop but there was some counter space by the window where she could unlimber her notebook computer and avail herself of their “free” Wi-Fi—although to her mind that was what she paid the steep coffee tariff for.

She ran Leibowitz, Rabbi Levi through Google. She would have done it the night before if she’d thought she’d ever have any more dealings with him. But when she took her leave of him and his companions nothing had been farther from her intent.

As soon as the search results began to pop up she wondered if maybe she should have checked after all. Interesting, he looks legit, she thought.

She had been inclined to dismiss him as some kind of right-wing Israeli nut of the sort who tended to run with a certain breed of U.S. militarists—ones like Baron and Bostitch. Instead, she found, he was a homeboy of hers, Brooklyn-based, a high-level genius making his name in the world as a leading authority on ancient Middle Eastern languages and cultures. If not, as he confessed, precisely a colleague of hers, he was a heavyweight in a closely related discipline. Because their areas of specialization—his the ancient Middle East, hers Renaissance Europe—lay so far apart, she’d never come across his name before.

It did surprise her that she hadn’t seen his name on any of the fringe archaeology newsgroups she followed when time and energy allowed. The possible existence of Noah’s Ark, or really any significant artifacts on the perpetually frozen top of a mountain, was right in the zone for discussion in those groups.

“I HOPE I’M NOT LATE,” Levi said, sliding into a chair across from her.

They were in a Cantonese restaurant tucked away on Mott Street above Canal, in a part of Chinatown where the locals still seemed successfully to be resisting the inroads of the hipsters. The lunch crush had mostly eased. The restaurant smelled of hot oil and a touch of spice. The soft gurgle of a fountain mostly drowned out the conversations around them.

“Not at all, Rabbi,” she told him. “I just like to get to a place early.”

So I can get a look at the party I’m meeting as he approaches, see if he’s acting strangely or has unexpected company, she thought. And so I have the best possible chance of getting a seat away from the windows and doors, so I’m harder to spot from the street. She’d made a practice of all of those things long since inheriting the sword had put her in almost constant danger.

He smiled cheerfully at her. “Try the wonton soup,” he said. “It’s to die for.”

“Sounds good. I haven’t been here before. It smells good, though. I’m always looking for a good new Chinese place.”

A tall, young waiter took their orders. They ordered the soup; Leibowitz specified “no noodles,” but she let it go. He ordered duck braised in soy sauce. Annja went for the crispy bean curd stuffed with chopped shrimp.

When the waiter left he smiled shyly at her. “I always order it without noodles,” he said. “You get lots more wontons that way.”

“Good thinking,” Annja said.

“Are you sure you’re not Jewish, Ms. Creed?” Leibowitz asked. The waiter returned and poured them each a cup of steaming green tea. “After all, if there’s one characteristic the Chosen People have in common, it’s love of Chinese food.”

“Not that I know of. In my case it’s more just a New York thing.”

She sipped tea. The warmth felt welcome after the day’s chill. And green tea always felt nourishing to her somehow. Although in this case that mainly served to remind her how famished she was.

“Although I guess I could be part Jewish,” she added.

The truth was, she didn’t know much about her lineage. Her parents had died when she was very young, leaving her with no surviving family and little by way of family records or possessions. None that had ever come Annja’s way, in any case.

“Please don’t be put off by Charlie and Leif and their naive enthusiasms,” Leibowitz said. “They mean well, but—” He shrugged. “I don’t think they really understand the concept of intellectual rigor.”

“Probably not,” Annja said. “It gets pretty annoying, sometimes, when amateurs get out of their depth with the science, and start talking about things they don’t really understand.”

He nodded vigorously. “That’s so true. It’s the same with scholarship—especially ancient languages. And this whole Biblical-literalness thing—” He had got himself worked up enough to be so flustered he couldn’t continue, but could only wag his head like a dog in denial.

He’s definitely a nerd, she thought. Also a bit of a fanatic. But not the sort of fanatic she’d been afraid he was at first. He was clearly fanatical on his subject: ancient languages and cultures.

Not like that’s a bad thing, she thought.

“So you were saying you don’t believe in Biblical inerrancy.”

“Oh, of course not, Ms. Creed. Stories such as the Garden of Eden and the Flood are allegories. They were written by ancient mystics who never intended for them to be taken as factual accounts. They convey profound truths about humanity and its relationship to the Creator. And haven’t fables always been a powerful tool for teaching?”

“True enough.”

“In any event, to talk about any kind of ‘inerrancy’ in the Bible, what you call the Old Testament or New, or any ancient writings really, is just absurd. Leaving aside the doubtful provenance of whole sections of the holy books, they’re filled with errors. I mean, what we’d call simple typos. Remember they were copied out time and again by hand, not always by people who were particularly literate in the character set they were using. Not always literate at all, so far as we can tell—sometimes religious communities found themselves so sorely pressed for one reason or another texts had to be copied by artisans who basically reproduced the characters as images. Pictures, not units of meaning. It’s one reason the whole Bible Code concept is so unworkable as well.”

Annja nodded. Their soup arrived. It was topped with chopped cilantro and finely sliced pickles. She tasted hers. The broth was hearty and cleverly flavored with herbs.

“This is delicious.”

He smiled. It obviously pleased him to please her. That could get to be a problem, although he didn’t seem the sort to push a schoolboy crush anyplace unpleasant.

“Yet, despite all that you tell me, you still think it’s worthwhile going up that mountain?” she asked him.

“Oh, absolutely. You saw the artifacts they had?”

“Sure. And the documentation was in order. I’m not a carbon-14 dating expert, but I know enough to recognize the numbers were all in the right column. I don’t have any reason to doubt the wood is as old as they say.”

“So how did it get there, Ms. Creed?”

She tipped her head to the side. “Not by any flood, I’m pretty sure.”

“Me, too.”

“How, then?”

He laughed. “I don’t know! But I want to find out.”

Their food arrived. In his enthusiasm the rabbi fidgeted in his seat while the waiter set down their dishes. Then he leaned forward over the table, oblivious to the way the steam rising from his duck fogged his glasses.

“What I am sure of is that whatever’s on top of the mountain—this so-called Ararat Anomaly—is a human construct. It must be of inestimable historical value.”

She drew a deep breath, heavy with the fragrant steam. “You make a compelling case, Rabbi,” she said.

“Levi. Please.”

“Levi. Okay. I just—I’m not sure about the kind of people we’d be going with.”

He shrugged. “I’ve led a sedentary life, Ms. Creed. I am a scholar, a man of books, of knowledge, of contemplation. But I am willing to undergo whatever hardships, do whatever it takes, to uncover this secret.” He gave the impression he’d be willing to take his chances with almost anyone, if that would get him at whatever knowledge lay buried in the eternal snows of Ararat.

She wondered if it were some kind of twisted prejudice of hers, to find his scholar’s zealotry so laudable, and that of Bostitch and his Rehoboam boys so scary.

He smiled. “Anyway, from what Charlie and Leif said about you, you have a reputation in certain circles for taking risks and coming back alive. I figure I’ll be all right if I just stick close to you!”

She ate as she studied him. Not much deterred her from eating when she was hungry. Her lifestyle meant she took in a lot of calories and used them all.

You’ve been taken in before, she reminded herself. But the rabbi would have to be a diabolically skillful actor to fake this goofy artlessness, this seeming fundamental decency. He strikes me as kind, she thought. There’s a virtue I encounter way too infrequently.

She sighed. “I hope I can live up to your expectations, Levi,” she said. “I’ll certainly try.”

He lit up. “You mean you’ll do it?”

“Against my better judgment,” she said, “yes.”

4

Annja was sitting at a table with a lot of men in a hotel conference room in Ankara, Turkey.

“You must understand,” said the enormously tall, gaunt man with the eagle’s-beak nose and dark circles under his eyes, “that there exist certain elements within my government who…resent American patronage of Kurdish separatists.” He wore an olive-drab military uniform with a chestful of colorful ribbons.

The room air-conditioning worked with a nasty subliminal whine. It was a race whether it would slowly but inexorably give Annja a blinding headache or drive her mad. It worked though, keeping the temperature to arctic levels despite unseasonable heat in the streets of the Turkish capital outside, almost three thousand feet above sea level in the middle of the central massif of the Anatolian peninsula.

Unfortunately, it also reacted in some insidious way with the smoke generated by their host’s harsh-smelling Turkish cigarette to produce about the same reaction as tear gas in Annja’s eyes. The Ankara Sheraton had a strict no-smoking policy. Apparently being a general of the Turkish army allowed you to opt out on that. Big surprise there, Annja thought.

“Well, General,” Leif Baron said, leaning back in his chair and tapping a pen on the polished tabletop before him. “You should understand the Kurds have been our good friends in Iraq. They’re the best indigenous allies we have there. What was that, Mr. Wilfork?”

“Nothing of consequence,” said the man he’d addressed the last question to. He answered in what sounded to Annja like an Australian accent. It had also sounded as if he’d muttered, “The only ones who don’t switch sides or bloody run away,” under his breath at Baron’s mention of the Kurds.

He wore a tan tropic-weight suit that fit his bulky frame as if he’d picked it off the rack, possibly at Goodwill: the suit was taut to near splitting at the shoulders, straining the buttons over his belly, the fabric bagging and rumpling at the chest. Despite the room’s chill he mopped at his big crimson face with a scarlet handkerchief. His hair was thinning, combed over the top and white-tinged with yellow, although Annja had the impression he was only in his early fifties. She glanced at the equally tall and out-of-shape-looking Charlie Bostitch, who lounged across the table from the general at Baron’s side, looking smug and at ease.

“Nonetheless, the United States has seen fit to provide assistance to certain Kurd groups internationally recognized as terrorists,” the general said. “Indeed, the United States itself so recognized them, before they found a use for their services. Please, gentlemen—I do not raise these points in order to obstruct or cause complications. I, too, am eager for this expedition to take place. But it must be founded on a realistic appraisal of the situation, yes?”

“We’ve paid out plenty of money,” Baron said, lounging back in his seat and crossing one leg over the other. He wore a pale yellow polo shirt, stretched tight over the bulging muscles of his chest and upper arms, and khaki trousers. “That ought to smooth our way.”

“Now, now, gentlemen,” Bostitch said, shaking his head. “Why don’t we all just try to get along, here? We’re men of goodwill. And the issues are bigger than all of us, after all.”

General Orhan Orga gazed at him with his sad bloodhound eyes for a long moment before nodding.

“It is also true,” he said, “that the army feels especially embattled now in its traditional role of maintaining the official secularity of our Turkish Republic against a rising tide of Islamism in political life. It is, I fear, a case of democracy in practice defeating democratic ends.”

“Oh, I can understand that,” Bostitch said, nodding his head. “And after all, you’re fighting the good fight against the Muslim infidel.”

“Dear Lord,” Wilfork said out loud into a sudden silence. Annja noted that even the half-dozen young men, Rehoboam Christian Leadership Academy graduates all, who made up the bulk of the expedition were staring at their leader in something like dismay.

Orga’s mouth compressed to a line beneath his magnificent brush of moustache. “Please understand that a majority of Turks, inside the army and out, are faithful followers of Islam. It is the job of the army, as outlined in our constitution, to maintain a clear distinction between religion and politics. That is all.”

“Ah,” Bostitch said, nodding and smiling. “Separation of church and state. That’s—”

He stopped and did an almost comical take. He’d caught himself just in time praising a political concept he was quite famous for denouncing back home in the States. Annja scratched her upper lip to hide an incipient grin that she just couldn’t quite hold in. She wondered if their fearless leader had been covertly hitting the bottle again.

Despite the whirlwind rapidity with which she’d been whipped from Manhattan’s Chinatown to the Turkish capital of Ankara the process had still managed to entail lots of time sitting in airports waiting for flights. Using that time and Wi-Fi she’d done a bit more research on her current associates. She had discovered some interesting things about their employer. Including that he had a reputation as a real party animal, who every couple of years made a weepy public renunciation of his bad old ways, only to be caught in a few weeks or months half in the bag with his face between some stripper’s boobs. Annja was experiencing more than a few second thoughts.

She shot a quick glance to Levi. He looked amiably befuddled. Still, he was being a good sport about it all.

He reminded her why she still felt committed to this project, increasingly weird and possibly, well, doomed as it seemed. There was his enthusiasm. And his innocence. And, oh, yes—the lure of uncovering ancient mysteries. And maybe a hint of adrenaline rush. Just a teensy, tiny bit.

“General Orga,” Larry Taitt said with horrible playful-puppy brightness, “the key point here is that we’re relying on you to smooth our way east to Mount Ararat. And I’m sure our fate, and the fate of our expedition, couldn’t be in more capable hands.”

Annja looked at the floppy kid—she couldn’t help thinking of him that way—with a certain expanded understanding. He may be a happy-go-lucky goof who’d had the bad judgment to lock himself into weird religion and weirder associates. But he clearly had something on the ball.

Orga was frowning still, but now it was with a sort of generalized concern. “I will certainly do what I can for this expedition,” he intoned. “It is, after all, for science.”

“Science,” Wilfork said. He raised his glass of beer. “I’ll drink to that.”

Leif Baron, who had apparently decided to reclaim the “good cop” role, slapped his hands noisily on his thighs and stood. “We know you will, General Orga. Thanks for coming out.”

Everybody else stood, so Annja did likewise. She wasn’t sure what had actually been accomplished here. If anything. But now Baron and Bostitch were showing all hail-fellow camaraderie to the general, who himself was looking as jovial as he could with those bloodhound eyes. She was not a woman who yielded to gender stereotypes, for either sex, and if anything tended to consider herself, and be accepted as, one of the boys. But this scene baffled her. Maybe it was some male-bonding ritual she hadn’t encountered yet.

She found herself out in the curving hallway walking away. Aside from the smoking thing the Ankara Sheraton was a fabulous hotel. She felt a strong yearning to return to the extravagant comfort of a room she never could have afforded on her own. Then maybe a few laps in the huge indoor swimming pool would get her tuned up again.

“Ms. Creed,” an Australian-accented voice called from behind her. “Wait one, if you’d be so kind.”

She stopped and turned. Robyn Wilfork lumbered after her. His gait resembled that of a none-too-well-trained dancing bear. She couldn’t attribute it to alcohol: he had a long torso and short, bowed legs for his height.

Well, maybe some of it was alcohol, considering how hard he’d been hitting the beer back in the room.

“Might I offer you a drink?” he asked. “The hotel sports an altogether splendid bar.”

She was on the cusp of answering that she thought maybe he’d had enough in that department when she saw a knowing look come into his blue eyes.

“Nothing improper, I assure you,” he said hastily. “It just strikes me that, since we appear to be the odd ones out—quite a striking fact itself, in this company—we might profitably get to know one another.”

“Ah,” she said, “sure. Why not?”

THE COPPER BAR OF ANKARA’S Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center was a splendid bar, Annja had to admit. The bar proper was a highly polished teak arc beneath outward-expanding concentric rings of copper hung from the ceiling. It was such a striking effect that she actually permitted, not altogether in accordance with her better judgment, the journalist to buy her a glass of wine. Having placed her order with the bartender, who appeared to be French, she followed Wilfork as he rolled like a sailor in a high sea to one of the blue-gray chairs. These proved to be quite comfortable.

The bar was almost empty. Soft chamber music played in the background. While the afternoon view outside the tall windows was pleasant, prominently featuring an outdoor pool and the tall tower in which the rooms were located, she chose to sit with her back to them. She always liked to be able to see the entrance of the place she was in. The more so since there seemed to be some possible controversy concerning their expedition.

Which wasn’t totally surprising, inasmuch as the whole enterprise was flamboyantly illegal.

“So, Mr. Wilfork,” she said, “what brings you all the way from Australia?”

“Australia?” He laughed heartily. “Oh, no, no. My dear, you’re grievously wrong. I am a Kiwi, born and bred.”

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “I’m sorry. I guess I don’t know enough to tell a New Zealand accent from Australian one.”

“You are quite forgiven. But I must say, the question you want to ask is, what is a confirmed atheist and semi-lapsed communist doing wrapped up in all of this religious mummery?”

That made her pull her head back and blink. “You’re right. I guess that is a better question.”

“Perhaps the answer is the same as what might bring a respected American archaeologist of decidedly skeptical bent into such an operation,” he said. “Simply, money.”

She frowned slightly. “It’s not so simple,” she said. “Not in my case. And anyway, what use does a communist have for money?”

“Why, all the use in the world. That turns out, perhaps, to sum up the history of world communism in a nutshell. Besides, I told you I’ve become apostate.”

“And there you have it,” she said, laughing. “I guess that’s fair enough. And I have to admit that in my case the answer is partially money. But I’m legitimately interested in learning what really lies on top of that mountain.”

The waitress, a trim diminutive woman with a tight bun of gray hair who appeared to be local, brought their drinks. “Gin and tonic with a wedge of lime?” Annja asked. “Isn’t that rather…colonialist of you?”

“Well, I could remind you again I’m a lapsed communist.” He shrugged. “Then again, I drank the same when I was fully communicant in the faith.”

He held up the highball glass in salute. “Here’s to Thomas Friedman’s flat earth,” he said. “Also to his flat head. What on earth ever possessed you Americans to give that self-inflated buffoon a Pulitzer Prize?”

“I’m not the one to ask. They didn’t.”

He sipped, smacked his lips and sighed. “Splendid. And splendidly retorted. You display a quickness of wit that they seem to be able to conceal quite well on that television program of yours.”

“They don’t exactly encourage spontaneity. At least, not from their resident skeptic.”

“But they do in the case of the show’s lead. At least if by spontaneity one means ‘a remarkable gift for losing one’s top in the most unlikely of circumstances.’”

She laughed. She was finding Wilfork and his self-satirizing bluster not just amusing but likable. Actually she so far found everybody on this trip, bizarre as it was, basically likable. Except maybe Baron, with his shark eyes.

And maybe the other Rehoboam Academy types, although they were polite and seemed a little less manically cheerful than Larry. Even if when she had been around them so far they had mostly been subdued out of due Christian deference to their elders. She still couldn’t quite shake a distressing mental image of them as a pack of young wolves.

“So have you decided to throw over the whole voice-of-reason thing, then?” Wilfork asked.

She tasted the wine. It was sweet enough that she found it palatable. As far as wine-drinking went she was fated forever to provide a handy butt for jokes by wine snobs. She was resigned to that fate. Uncharacteristic, perhaps; but then, it didn’t matter to her much one way or another. There were lots of other, more pressing fates to rebel against.

“Not at all, Mr. Wilfork. If you’ll think back, you’ll recall I said, whatever’s really up there. Or words to that effect.”

He nodded. “So you did. So you did. What do you think’s up there?”

“If I knew, would I have to go?” She shrugged. “As you said, it’s science.”

“Did I? Ah, yes. My sardonic toast. Mostly I was trying to bait our employers.”

“Isn’t that kind of a dangerous game? Especially considering your background. What would they do if they found out about the whole ex-commie thing?”

“Oh, they’re well aware of that, make no mistake. Our Lieutenant Commander Baron has access to things like secret dossiers, despite no longer being a member of your military.”

“Is he CIA?”

Emphatically Wilfork shook his head. It made his yellow-white hair flop on his red scalp. “I’m fairly certain not. The agency rank and file seem to be quite disenchanted with ring-in-Armageddon fundamentalists of his ilk—and in any case, that lot appears on their way out. And bloody good riddance, too. But he still contrives to be plugged into a good old boys’ network. It may just be among SEALs and other special-operations types. You know how warriors are—blood is thicker than water, unless it’s that of bloody foreigners.”

Belatedly Annja was having a cold flash at the prospect of those gray flat eyes scanning her dossier.

“How did they happen to hire you as their official chronicler?” Annja asked, eager to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“Back when I was a prominent international left-wing journalist I was often critical of Mr. Bostitch’s attempts to influence foreign policy—especially since they all seemed peculiarly geared toward enhancing his own defense contracts. Also, if I may flatter myself, I proved something of a thorn in the side of special-operations murderers Mr. Baron so joyously served before deciding the grass was greener on the civilian-contracting side of the perpetual-war fence. I think it was because that established my objectivity—at least, gave credibility to the notion I wouldn’t slant my reportage to suit my employers, even though of late I’ve become noted for my harsh criticism of my former comrades. All of it quite sincere, by the way—a bunch of humorless dolts, and most of them unacknowledged fascists.

“But I digress. A frequent weakness of mine. One among many.” He sipped his drink.

“Also, in much of my recent writing I’ve been most critical of Islam, especially the more violent sectarians. That’s made me more attractive to a good many people to whom I was once distinctly persona non grata. And finally, I suspect a certain element of revenge, as it were, my former foes making me subordinate to them.”

“They must be paying you well.”

He beamed. “Oh, they are. They are.”

His expression turned troubled. He stared into his half-emptied glass as if seeking oracle there. “I only hope it’s enough,” he said. “I confess, I doubt things will proceed near as smoothly as our beloved pet Turkish army general is at such pains to assure us they will.”

He tossed back the rest of his drink. It had no visible effect on him. He set the empty glass on the table with a decisive thunk.

“Ah, well,” he said. “Our vicissitudes should make a ripping story, anyway. Perhaps I’ll win a journalistic prize of my own. Or at least get a bestseller for my pains. A decent return on the sale of one’s soul, wouldn’t you say?”

5

The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations was a beautiful museum converted from an old covered marketplace situated close to the Ankara Citadel. It contained samples from Asia Minor’s long cultural history, specializing in artifacts from the Paleolithic through Classical periods. Annja was admiring an ancient Hittite statue of a highly stylized deer of some sort, whose rack of antlers totally dwarfed its actual body, when her cell phone rang.

She flipped it open. “Yes?”

It was her team from Chasing History’s Monsters, who had just arrived at Ankara’s airport. Imagining what sparks might fly when a trio of doubtless liberal young New Yorkers came in contact with Charlie Bostitch’s born-again culture warriors, she hastily offered to meet them at the hotel to help get them settled in.

Three hours later they were all sitting on the big mossy stone foundation blocks of the ruins of the stage area of Roman Theater. It also stood near the castle on its lava outcrop atop one of Ankara’s many hills. Excavation of the theater’s seating area was still ongoing; Annja hoped she’d have time before they took off for the wild, wild east to pay a visit and see if she could schmooze her way into the dig as a visiting archaeologist. She might even be able to make use of it for Chasing History’s Monsters. The team told her they were looking for local-color shots to establish setting at stages of their journey to the forbidden mountain.

“I always thought Ankara was kind of a pit,” Trish Baxter, the soundwoman, said. She was a pretty, medium-size blonde with a snub nose and ponytail. She dangled legs left bare by her cargo shorts over the edge of a block. A green slope stretched down toward the city center below them. “But it’s really kind of pretty.”

“There’s a lot of green here,” Annja said. “I was surprised the first time I visited Istanbul by how much greenery there was. I expected something more of a blend between desert desolation and cement-canyon modernism.”

“Ankara doesn’t seem to be much of a tourist Mecca,” Tommy Wynock said. He was a stocky blond guy of medium height with a Mets cap turned around backward. He was the chief techie and secondary cameraman.

“So to speak,” said lead cameraman Jason Pennigrew. A wiry black kid an inch or so taller than Annja, he had a brash but engaging manner and an olive-drab do-rag tied around his head. He sat with his back to a pillar and his long legs drawn up before him. “I wonder how much of that might be because of problems the government’s having with Muslim fundamentalists.”

“Actually, the government kind of is the Muslim fundamentalists,” Annja said. “The democratically elected civilian government, anyway. They’re in a state of more or less perpetual confrontation with the army, which turns out to be the guardian of Turkey’s officially secular status. The religious-minded members of the government insist they don’t want to turn Turkey into a full-on Islamic state. But it seems like a lot of people in the street do.”

“I thought Turks were supposed to be, you know, kind of lax in their observance,” Trish said. She’d impressed Annja as the most bookish and widely knowledgeable of the bunch. Television production types didn’t always have the deepest understandings of foreign affairs or foreign cultures, even when they spent a lot of time traveling overseas, Annja had found.

“That’s true, traditionally,” Annja said. “And there’s still a solid sentiment with the public for Turkey to maintain its secular status, even with a lot of very religiously fundamentalist Turks. Or that’s the impression I have. Listen to me, sounding like Ms. Turkey Expert. The truth is I only know what the other members of the expedition tell me, and what I read on the Internet.”

She nodded at Trish’s bare legs. “You might want to change out of those shorts, just to be on the safe side. Ankara’s a lot less cosmopolitan than Istanbul. And even if the real crazies are still a marked minority—well, it only takes a run-in with one to spoil your day, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh,” Trish said, “yeah. I wasn’t thinking. It was so hot and stuffy on the plane, and then when it turned out to be hot here, too, I just wanted to kind of, well, air out.”

“You’re not going to have much opportunity to do that anyway,” Jason said. “Ankara seems to be the only place in the Northern Hemisphere that’s getting unseasonable warmth. Everywhere else it’s even colder than last year.”

“Great,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “That’s all we need. We already have too many people questioning global warming.”

Jason unfolded himself from the stone pavement. “Okay, Annja. We’ve stretched our legs, which I gotta tell you was welcome after all those hours sitting around in airports and on airplanes. We should probably get back to the hotel. I could use a shower anyway.”

“I think Annja wanted to prep us to meet the rest of the crew first,” Trish said.

Annja made a humorless noise in the back of her throat. “And prep myself. This is liable to be a pretty hazardous undertaking. I hope that was all fully explained to you in advance?”

The new arrivals looked at each other and laughed. “Are you kidding?” Jason said. “Dougie? He assured us this was all going to be a piece of cake.”

“My uncle back in Waco always used to say, ‘Don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining,’” Trish said, allowing a touch of Texas Panhandle she’d obviously been carefully suppressing before to slip into her voice. “It’s like he knew Doug.”

“Doug did admit this whole trip might be just a tiny bit illegal, once we got to Ararat,” Tommy said. “But he tried to make it seem like it was really all just kind of a joke the locals like to play on tourists. You know how he is.”

“I sure do,” Annja said grimly. “There’s a real-life war going on in eastern Turkey between the Turks and the Kurds. At the moment it’s sort of…contained. But it could blow up at any minute into a serious conflagration involving Northern Iraq. And if that happens who knows where it’ll go?”

“To hell in a hurry, sounds like,” Jason said. He didn’t appear overly concerned.

“So it’s way important that everybody gets along. Let me stress that—everybody. I suspect that’s not going to be easy on either side. So I wanted to get together with you guys off by ourselves, get to know each other, before we all walked into the lion’s den.”

“Are they that nuts?” Trish asked. “I mean, I thought the big guy, Bostitch, was pretty easygoing. I read up on him a little bit on the way out. Seems like he was the original good-time Charlie—never met a shot of booze or line of coke he didn’t like.”

“Or a babe,” Jason said.

“He really isn’t that bad. But he is deadly serious about his beliefs,” Annja said.

She paused to inhale and marshal her thoughts. In general the crew made a good impression on her. But as she’d suspected, they were of a bent to see right-wing Christians the very same way the right-wing Christians saw them—the embodiment of dangerous evil.

“Listen. Everybody’s polite as hell. Especially the rank-and-file expedition members, who it turns out all came out of this Rehoboam Christian Leadership Academy Charlie runs. And I’d like to keep things polite as much as possible,” Annja said.

“How about this Baron guy?” Tommy said. “Even I’ve heard of him. He’s supposed to be implicated in all kinds of war crimes.”

Annja shrugged. “He’s a bit tightly wrapped, I have to warn you. Seriously, seriously, do not tease the animals. But…please don’t take this the wrong way. I don’t condone war crimes—and I also don’t know enough of the facts to have any idea of what he’s guilty of, or whether he’s guilty of anything at all except pretty vigorously waging an unpopular war. But the places we’re going, he might turn out to be just the kind of guy we need to keep us alive, war crimes or no.”

“The places we’ll go,” Jason paraphrased. “You make it sound like we’re headed into an evil Dr. Seuss book.”

“Hold that thought,” Annja said.

“NOW FROM THE SMALL AMOUNT of research I was able to do before we set out,” Jason Pennigrew said, “I understand that there are at least a couple of alternate sites for the Ark that’ve been proposed recently.”

Annja was impressed by the crew chief’s professionalism. The loosey-goosey black kid from Memphis and the University of Tennessee was gone. Jason hadn’t quite gone so far as to put on a coat and tie, but he did wear a dark blue shirt and dark pants. His two companions went for a more informal, blue-jeans look. Annja wore her usual cargo khaki trousers, practical rather than fashionable, and a light blouse in abstract streaks of cream and yellow and rust and orange.

With the sun sinking behind the wooded western hills the view from the expedition’s tower suite was spectacular. Orange light filled the room. Maps had been spread out on the large table. Charlie and most of his posse were there along with Annja and the recently arrived Chasing History’s Monsters crew.

“That’s right,” Leif Baron said, sitting on the couch. He wore tan trousers, a white polo shirt and tan boots with pale crepe soles. Annja suspected the shirt was deliberately tight to emphasize his ripped physique. It was ripped, no denying—so much so that Annja suspected it wasn’t entirely natural development. “A guy named Ron Wyatt was a big proponent for the so-called Durupinar site, eighteen miles south of Greater Ararat, where our Anomaly lies.”

“Wyatt’s great discovery is a big boat-shaped object, sure enough. Zeb, can you find us a photograph?”

Two of Charlie’s Young Wolves—as Annja couldn’t help thinking of them—stood side by side with their backs to one of the big picture windows. They looked as if reality had stuttered and produced the same image twice. Both were an inch shorter than Annja, athletic, their eyes blue in wide fresh faces with freckle-dotted snub noses. Like Baron they currently affected a casual style, salmon-colored shirts and khaki trousers. Everything about them lined up identically, from their blond crew cuts to the creases on their pants. Annja had a horrible sensation that if she examined them under an optical comparator they’d be identical to the microscopic level, as if made by machine instead of nature.

Since like their packmates the twins responded slavishly to Bostitch and Baron’s every word, the one who came forward to the table was pretty much by definition not Jeb. She suspected uncomfortably that if Baron had said, “Jeb, do you think you can throw yourself into that molten lava?” he’d have complied with the same strutting alacrity.

Zeb bent over and searched through a number of large photographic prints from a folder. Straightening, he proffered one to Baron with a smile. Then in response to a slight inclination of Baron’s shaved skull he handed it to Annja instead.

“Ms. Creed, I believe you have some training as a geologist,” Baron said, smiling at her. “Maybe you could tell us what you think?”

Annja accepted it and scrutinized it under the light of the lamp on the table beside her. After a moment she looked up.

“That’s a good shot,” she said. “I’d say it’s definitely a natural rock formation that looks a lot like a ship. I’m guessing it’s basalt.”

“You’re good, Ms. Creed,” Charlie said, nodding his head and smiling his big goofy smile. He sat sprawled comfortably in one of the black leather chairs, almost as if he’d been spilled there. “The samples Leif and I brought back from our little visit there last year have been scientifically confirmed to be basalt. No Ark. Unless it was a mighty heavy one.”

“About what you’d expect from a nurse-anesthetist,” Baron said. “Which is what Wyatt was.”

Annja passed the print on to Jason, who pulled a long face and nodded, impressed. “Isn’t there a supposed Ark site in Iran?” Trish asked.

“Oh, yes,” Larry Taitt said, when Baron and Bostitch said nothing. He was dressed, as he always seemed to be, in a dark suit and tie. “There are several purported sites. We’ve investigated all of them thoroughly.”

“We did produce some photographs of the site,” Larry said. “Zeb, if you could please find those for Ms. Creed, thanks.”

The blond twin handed her more prints with what seemed to Annja a lack of grace. The Young Wolves seemed willing enough to accept Bostitch and Baron’s alpha and beta status. But having one of their own jumped over them in pack precedence didn’t seem to be sitting too well.

“The one on top purports to be a view of the Ark itself,” Larry said. “The other is of bits off stone they cut that some think are petrified wood planks from the Ark.”

The first photo showed a ridge or saddleback, with snow drifts to one side and cloudy sky to the other, and slanting gently down to the snow a slope dotted with small rocks and dark green bunch grass. Jutting from the middle of the photo, right below the ridge-crest, was a dark outcrop with a pointy top that might have been a single big boulder. Annja made a face.

“This could be anything,” she said. “Even some kind of hard volcanic extrusion with softer rock eroded away around it.”

She handed it back, shaking her head. “I can’t tell you much more about it. I doubt anybody could, on the basis of that picture alone. But I’d be extremely surprised if it was anything but natural rock.”

“And these planks?” Bostitch asked.

“Look, I can’t pretend to be a fully qualified geologist or anything. I took some courses—I have plenty of experience on digs. But I’m no expert. Still, what these look like to me are just slabs of some kind of fine-grained sedimentary rocks—shale or sandstone. Because of the way they’ve been cut out they look like planks. But see—” she pointed to some detail in the photo “—I think these patterns that look like grain in wood are probably a result of layers of deposition in some kind of marine environment. Like basically, years of silt filtering down out of the water.”

“Nailed it again,” Bostitch said from his throne. “That’s just what the geologists we hired to look the pictures over said. One said he reckoned the so-called Ark was just a basalt dike—igneous, just like you said.”

“Maybe we should have contracted with Ms. Creed earlier and saved ourselves some money on consultants,” Baron said with a smile toward Annja.

“Not a good idea,” Annja said hastily. “If you have real experts in a given field, you should listen to them.”

“So what makes you think you’ve got a better candidate for Noah’s boat?” Tommy asked, sitting perched on a table with his elbows propped on his knees.

The twins and the other two Young Wolves in the room, who’d been introduced as Josh and Eli, gave him slit-eyed looks as if not appreciating an outsider butting in. Annja was about to leap to his defense when Charlie spoke up.

“Well, that’s a right good question there, Mr. Wynock. Luckily, we got us some good answers. And we’d better—otherwise we’d look like a bunch of damn fools coming over here and spending all this money.”

At the pained looks that flitted across his acolytes’ faces he blushed and added, “If you’ll pardon my French.”

Annja quickly outlined the evidence as they had presented to her. When called upon, Levi, who had gotten interested and sat leaning forward with his clasped hands between his wide-splayed knees, agreed that, at the very least, there might be a very valuable historical site on Ararat.

Jason looked to his companions. Annja caught a bit of an eye-roll from Tommy, but the others didn’t notice. She hoped.

The television crew chief slapped his hands down on his thighs. “Well,” he said, standing, “it does look as if we’re in for some interesting times.”

The intonation he gave the last two words suggested to Annja that any resemblance to a mythical Chinese curse was strictly intentional.

6

“It’s bat-shit crazy,” Tommy said. “But no worse than most of the wild-goose chases we get sent on.”

“If the Kurds don’t kill us,” Trish said. “Or the right-wing fundamentalists.”

They had gathered in Annja’s room in the Sheraton Tower, just around the curving corridor from the suite where they held their meetings—or “briefings,” as Bostitch preferred to call them. Annja wasn’t sure whether he was following Baron’s ex-military lead or his own inclinations. For all that Bostitch presented himself as an aw-shucks folksy businessman, the graduates of his leadership academy sure seemed to see themselves as holy warriors.

Though smaller than the suite, Annja’s room was hardly less luxurious. She sat cross-legged on the wide bed. Tommy perched on the desk. Trish sat in one of the comfy chairs while Jason alternately paced like a caged leopard and stood gazing moodily out at the lights of the city.

“Might that mean it’s a good idea to try our best to get along with the others, then?” Annja asked.

“Hey, we weren’t that bad,” Tommy said. “Don’t bust our balls.”

“I don’t know whether to thank you or call you a pig,” Trish said, laughing.

“Whatev. You know what I mean.”

“Actually, you did fine,” Annja said. “I just want to encourage us all to keep that up. You guys have been in the field. You know how once you start getting tired and thirsty and sick of being either too hot or too cold all the time, tensions tend to rise. So either we need to just bail on this or do our best to keep things from getting too tense.”

“You’d do that, Annja?” Trish asked. “You seem to have, like, the most at stake here.” She seemed honestly surprised.

In a heartbeat, Annja almost said. She decided it would be unwise. And anyway it wasn’t really true. Although what Trish probably thought she had at stake in this expedition—the prospect of her own show on the network—barely registered in Annja’s determination to see this through if possible.

“If I thought it was the right thing to do, yes,” Annja said and that was true. Annja always did what she thought was right, whatever it cost her. And there had been times when it cost her greatly.

“What I don’t see,” Tommy said, “is how they can take all this Creation shit seriously.”

“No kidding,” Jason said. “Was it a pair of each kind of animal that went onto the Ark? Or seven of some and two of others? Doesn’t Genesis do it both ways?”

“Yes,” Annja said.

“Isn’t the Bible, like, full of contradictions?” Trish said.

“It is. And I have to hand the literalists credit for their ingenuity in dreaming up explanations for a lot of them. Or maybe intellectual double-jointedness.”

“I thought a lot of the fundamentalists just got by with announcing every word of the Old Testament is true, without actually reading much of it,” Tommy grumbled.

“That’s true, too. I don’t know how well that applies to our employer and his associates, though. They seem to be a studious bunch.”

“Huh,” Tommy said. “Maybe they should study the evidence a little closer. I mean, look at the pictures they got.”

He pulled his phone from its hip holster. “I was looking at some of the pictures online on my own. Take this oblique shot here from 1949. Tell me it doesn’t totally look like somebody used Photoshop to add a toy tugboat in among some rocks. Badly.”

“Dude,” Jason said. “I could be wrong, here, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have Photoshop in ’49.”

“Whatever. You know what I mean. Cut-and-paste job with scissors and glue then. And what about this overhead from a satellite, with the so-called ‘Anomaly’ conveniently outlined in red pen? Give me a break. This just looks like someone took a picture of a random ridge and drew a boat shape around it. It looks like a fucking whale. Using that technique you could demonstrate that anything longer than it is wide is Noah’s Ark.”

“All right, you’re right,” Annja said. “All this is true. We do still have some fairly good artifacts that somebody close to Charlie brought back. And Levi—Rabbi Leibowitz—thinks there’s something up there, if not a stranded ship.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “But what about this rabbi guy, anyway? What’s his story?”

“I think that’s more a marriage of convenience. But Levi’s based in Brooklyn. I think he’s basically apolitical. He’s into this because he thinks there is a mystery up here that could be really, really important to history. And I do, too.”

“Whoa,” Tommy breathed, mock-reverent. “Annja Creed, Chasing History’s Monsters’ resident buzz-kill specialist with all her skepticism, thinks there’s really something there?”

Trish hooted. “Could you try to be more insulting, Tommy?”

He huffed and shook his head. Annja found herself just naturally envisioning him with a baseball cap turned backward on his head. “Sorry,” he said.

“Speaking of climbing to the top,” Jason said, “what do you make of the chances of old Charlie making it up alive? He looks like he’d be all out of breath walking across the room.”

“Well, he did say he’d been climbing around Solomon’s Throne in Persia—I mean Iran,” Annja said. “Also illegally, by the way. He’s tougher than he looks. I think he actually goes through his own academy physical-training courses in the summer.”

“He must do a lot of training to keep that shape, then,” Tommy said. “Like, at the buffet tables.”

“And happy hour,” Trish said.

“And what’s with this Wilfork guy?” Jason said. “He looks worse if anything.”

“Tommy says he smokes like a chimney,” Trish said. “He always sees him when he sneaks out for a smoke.”

“Dude,” Tommy said aggrievedly.

“He’s probably tougher than he looks, too,” Annja said. “When he was filling me in on the whole Turkish political situation, he said he’d spent his whole career chasing from one trouble spot to the next.”

“Yeah,” Trish said. “He’s a pretty famous crisis journalist.”

“As long as he doesn’t have a crisis with his heart halfway up the damned mountain and we have to beg the Turkish army for a medevac chopper,” Tommy said.

Jason grunted. “Be lucky if we didn’t get a helicopter gunship,” he said.

“Also, what’s up with that whole mountain-peak thing, anyway?” Tommy said. “Fifteen thousand feet? God’s supposed to have flooded the Earth three miles deep?”

“That’s what our associates believe,” Annja said.

Tommy shook his head in wonder. “Whoa,” he said.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED slowly for Annja. It was a relief not to have the hassles of organizing and outfitting an expedition into hostile territory as her responsibility. Ankara’s unseasonable warmth gave way to the equally unseasonable chill that had already descended on the rest of the country. Yet not running the show had one big drawback—it left her without much to do.

Although a vast and highly modern mall, the Karum, stood right across the street from the hotel, Annja had never bothered to venture inside. She didn’t feel enough attraction to brave the crowds. She was not a shopping goddess, nor even particularly interested in shopping beyond what was necessary to keep her clothes from wearing out to the point of falling off her body. She’d rather be sitting on her couch in her apartment poring through her stacks of printouts of papers submitted to obscure journals of archaeological arcana. Like Rabbi Leibowitz, basically, but with a few more social skills.

But she could always wander the archaeological sites and museums. Fortunately, as she’d mentioned to the CHM crew, the city abounded in those.

Even they palled eventually. Two days after the CHM team’s arrival from New York she decided to head south on foot through the section called Kavaklidere, which was a former vineyard. Its most prominent features now were her own enormous hotel, the high-rise Karum and, several hundred yards south, the equally ostentatious tower of the Hilton.

She spent a pleasant, if cool and windy, day in the botanical gardens. The park occupied a hill south of the big hill, Kale, on which the Ankara Citadel stood a few blocks north of the Sheraton. Hill and park alike were dominated by the Atakule Tower, named like so many things for Kemal Atatürk, founder of the modern Turkish republic. The tower was a spindly white four-hundred-plus-foot spire with a sort of space-needle flying saucer at the top—a similarity acknowledged by the presence of the UFO Café and Bar within, along with two more upscale-looking restaurants.

After the brief warm spell autumn had returned with vindictive force that hinted at a truly brutal winter to follow.

In her puffy down jacket Annja found the breezes blowing down from the Köro lu Mountains to the north, already well-socked-in with snow according to the Internet, bracing rather than uncomfortable. Although no blossoms survived in the park’s beautifully designed and tended gardens, and the merciless winds had stripped the leaves from the deciduous trees, the park was planted thickly with evergreens, tall pines and fir trees. And even the bare limbs beneath which the numerous hill paths twined created interesting, intricate shapes against a lead-clouded sky.

Having spent so much time indoors of late Annja was content to walk briskly with no fixed goal in mind, stretching out her long legs. When she grew tired and chilled she bought a steaming cup of cocoa from a kiosk and then sat in the lee of the small building to read e-mail and check the latest news on her BlackBerry.

Nothing seemed likely to impact her situation directly—although as always the pot of occupied Iraq seethed on the verge of bubbling over, as did the U.S.’s perpetual grudge match with an Iran now backed openly by China and a resurgent Russia. If either of those situations did explode the best and possibly only shot at survival for the expedition would be to run like hell for the Bosporus. But Annja saw no reason to expect they would do so now.

Still, she felt a tickle of unsourced unease in the pit of her stomach. That’s probably what I get for reading the headlines, she thought, and put her phone away.

The park closed at sunset, which came early this time of year. Ankara lay at about the latitude of Philadelphia, though considerably farther from the weather-tempering influence of a big ocean and considerably nearer to the monster-storm hatchery of the Himalayas. She had just reached the exit when a voice called, “Annja Creed? A word with you, please.”

She stopped. Does every sketchy character in the world know my name? she wondered. Although she tried to keep her face and posture as relaxed as possible her body badly wanted to tense like a gazelle that thinks a wind shift at the watering hole has just brought a whiff of lion. The range of people who might conceivably wish her harm, or even just to talk to her in a none-too-friendly way, ranged from Turkish civic or military authorities less well-disposed to their endeavor than General Orga to any number of unsavory characters from her past. Among whom, of course, was the ever-prominent if publicity-averse billionaire financier Garin Braden, who might have felt a cold wind of mortality blow down his spine as he lay in his huge canopied bed that morning. When Braden wasn’t trying to get the sword from her he was battling with his long-time nemesis Roux and dragging Annja into the battle.

Her interlocutor appeared to be no more than a solidly built man of intermediate height and apparently advanced age who stood by the white-enameled wrought-iron gates dressed in a camel-hair coat and a fedora that clung, despite the wind’s best efforts, to a head of hair that, though as gleaming white as his trim beard, still managed to suggest it had once been blazing red. He smiled a bit grimly as she looked at him, and nodded.

“I have information that might prove vital to you. It concerns the expedition you are involved with.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Please believe me,” he said, holding up gloved hands. “I assure you I have no official capacity in this country. Nor in any other, for that matter. Nor have I any financial propositions to make to you. Nor any other kind, should you be worried about that.”

His manner was disarming. Annja wasn’t so easily disarmed. Then again, that was literally true; and her ever-active curiosity was excited. As for his disavowal of official standing she was far from willing to take that at face value. He spoke with an accent she couldn’t identify—which itself was strange, given her expertise in languages, and wide travels.

Then again if he were some kind of Turkish secret cop all he’d have to do was snap his fingers and burly goons would magically appear on all sides of her, she thought. She knew it from past experience.

“Please allow me the honor of buying you dinner,” he said. “In a suitably public place, of course. That should reassure you as to my intentions—although I doubt you have much to fear from the likes of me.”

Her stomach growled. Her metabolism required frequent feeding. It hadn’t gotten one in too long. Still, she was wary.

“All right, Mister—”

“You may call me Mr. Summer.”

“Where did you have in mind?”

“Where but in the tower?” he said with a twinkle in his dark green eyes.

THE LIGHTS OF ANKARA by evening rotated almost imperceptibly by outside the window beside their table.

“It is good of you to indulge an old man’s whimsy,” her companion said around a mouthful of grape leaf stuffed with ground lamb and pine nuts. “The fare in the restaurant at the pinnacle, above us, is of higher quality. Or at least greater pretense. But this establishment, I daresay, offers quite acceptable local cuisine.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I can get French-style bistro cooking anywhere. Good Turkish food, not so much.” Although I halfway wish we’d stopped at the UFO Café, just on general principles, she thought.

The restaurant revolved once every hour and a half. It seemed to give Mr. Summer the pleasure a thrill ride gave an addict.

“I love the toys of our modern era,” he said, green eyes gleaming, as if to confirm her impression.

“So what’s this vital information you have for me?” Annja asked. Mr. Summer had made light conversation, mostly asking how she found the city and eliciting her views on the city’s historical artifacts. His own knowledge of these seemed beyond encyclopedic; she wished she were able to take advantage of his knowledge. But she sensed that this meeting would be their one and only. She had carefully eaten until her hunger was almost assuaged before bringing up anything potentially controversial.

“Simply that your expedition poses great danger.”

She frowned. “To me?”

“To you and to your companions, yes. To be sure. But also, quite possibly, to the world.”

Her frown deepened. “Isn’t that overstating things just a bit?”

He smiled thinly. “I wish I thought I was. For if your employers find what they seek it can be used to start the third—and likely final—world war. All the elements are in place, awaiting only a sign. Do you understand?”

She took another bite of rice and chewed slowly to give herself time to think. “Maybe,” she said in a neutral tone. “I’m aware there are Christian millenarialists in my country who believe that Jesus Christ is waiting for a particular set of prophesied conditions to come about in order that he can return.”

“And bring the Armageddon.”

She shrugged. “That seems to be the general plan.”

“You realize that certain such people are in what we might call a position to expedite the Last Battle?”

“Too well, as it happens. Are you telling me my employers are some of those people?”

“Not necessarily. But regardless of the particulars of their own belief, or their own degree of influence for that matter, if they conclude they have found that which they seek it could be more than sufficient for those who unquestionably do hold such beliefs and power.”

She sighed and put her fork down. “If I let myself be intimidated out of an expedition,” she said, “what kind of an archaeologist am I?”

“Spoken like the true heiress to Indiana Jones and Lara Croft,” he said, shaking his head with a sad smile. “Unfortunately, this is not a movie.”

“I can’t bring myself to accept the argument that there are some things humankind was not meant to know, Mr. Summer. However it’s couched.”

“There is a certain nobility in your position, Ms. Creed. Even if it arises from a courage born of ignorance. Have you considered what the consequences might be if you learn a truth your employers don’t like—for you and your friends?”

Anger stabbed through her. She let it pass without grabbing onto it. He seemed to mean well. He was clearly well educated and well-off—like some kind of Middle Eastern magnate, in fact, although he didn’t strike her as Arab or Persian.

He had a most convincing manner. He also knew way too much. Yet words could never hurt her. Could they?

“Yes,” she said, more tightly than she intended. “I have. But I’m just not prepared to throw over a commitment, professional and personal, simply because some mystical stranger utters Apocalyptic warnings. Please understand that.”

He finished his food and laid knife and fork carefully across his plate. “I do,” he said. “I also hope, most urgently, that you will reconsider. You are a most estimable young woman.”

“Thank you. But I have to tell you it’s highly unlikely. Thank you for the dinner, though. I enjoyed it thoroughly. The company as well as the scenery and the food.”

He smiled and rose, taking up his hat and coat. “Please give my regards to young Roux and his apprentice Garin.”

A light went on in Annja’s skull. If that was the proper metaphor for something that felt like a hefty whack with a sledgehammer. Had that garrulous old fart Roux been running his mouth to his poker buddies again? she wondered furiously.

The man with the silver-brushed red beard was laughing and holding up his hands. “Peace, please. Don’t be so hasty to blame Roux. Although indeed, it’s easy enough to do. I come entirely on my own initiative. And he’s not breathed a hint of your secret to me, although he’s far too enamored of mystery and mumbo jumbo for their own sakes not to drop heavy hints. Unfortunately he’s also so cagey that he never goes further, no matter how drunk one gets him. I will confess I’ve tried.”

“Then how?”

“My dear child, when one’s eyes have seen as much as these eyes have, one need see little indeed to discern the truth.”

He touched his hat. “I bid you good evening, and leave you with my sincere wish that the gods go with you and keep you. I fear you shall need it.”

He was gone then, disappearing around the curve of the corridor, before Annja had untangled his cryptic statement well enough to notice what else he’d said.

“Who calls Roux young?” she wondered aloud. She shook her head. “The old dude’s got to be delusional. It’s the only possible explanation.”

LIKE A LOT OF OLD CITIES Ankara had narrow twisty streets right alongside broad well-traveled thoroughfares, giant skyscrapers rubbing glass-and-steel shoulders with brick tenements and blocks of modest shops. Some of that could be found in the Kavaklidere south of the Sheraton.

Annja preferred the dimmer backstreets to the bright modern lights. They allowed a more pleasant walk with a degree of solitude. Even if her thoughts were too roiled and dark for her to enjoy walking through the exotic Turkish capital as much as she usually would. She still found it both odd and pleasing that she had these streets, even this particular relatively long and straight uphill stretch, pretty much to herself, when just a few blocks away on Talat Pafla Boulevard the traffic was flowing bumper to bumper and the nightspots were hopping.

A brisk wind edged with cold like broken glass sent dry leaves from the avenue’s many trees skittering along past Annja’s feet like small frightened animals. Not all the trees were bare; some were evergreen here, too, as in the botanic garden, and most impressive in size. The smell of spices and boiling water was stronger here than the inevitable city-center diesel stink. Floating from somewhere came the faint strains of Turkish music.

She didn’t know what to make of the aged Mr. Summer. It was tempting to dismiss what he said as nonsense. But there was the fact that he knew Roux. And Garin.

And also that she was off on a quest to prove the literal truth of the Old Testament, totally against the laws and wishes of their host country. Surreal? The whole damned thing was surreal.

She trudged up the hill toward the light-encrusted tower of the Sheraton. It was steep here. It didn’t tax her particularly. In fact she was thinking of hitting the hotel’s beautiful and well-equipped exercise room when she got back—maybe take a few laps in the indoor pool afterward. She was wary of jogging on the street under the circumstances; best not to attract undue attention to herself….

Striding down the hill toward her from the hotel she saw a familiar figure: the lean, beak-nosed general Orhan Orga. For all his near-depressive appearance at the negotiating table he walked with erect military bearing, looking taller than normal in his high-peaked cap, with his black leather greatcoat flapping around his stork legs. Behind him, and seemingly having to hustle to keep up, were a pair of huge and burly plainclothes goons. Apparently a Turkish army general worried more about being mugged on the Ankara streets than Annja. Then again, he probably had higher-level enemies than random street criminals on his mind.

A black SUV with dark tinted windows waited gleaming by the curb, nose toward Annja and two blocks uphill. Its lights flashed and its alarm system beeped reassuringly twice as Orga gestured grandly with a gloved hand. He thoughtfully slowed enough to allow one bodyguard to scuttle ahead of him to open the driver’s door and lever his bulk inside. The other stepped fast to open the passenger door for his master, then clambered into the backseat.

She heard the car’s big engine growl alive. The SUV rolled away from the curb toward her like a big black cat headed out for a nocturnal prowl.

Then it exploded with a brilliant yellow-white flash.

7

The heavy car flew skyward on a column of yellow flame.

At the same instant a sharp crack hit Annja’s eardrums. She was already dropping onto her palms on the sidewalk, preparatory to flattening herself like a lizard on a hot rock. As a louder, heavier boom rolled over her on a breath of hot wind she realized she’d just seen a two-stage explosion going off. The first, sharper blast had been to rupture the car’s fuel tank and turn the gasoline inside into an aerosol—which when ignited itself served as a high explosive.

The movies loved using two-stage blasts because they were showy, with lots of bright yellow fire. But out in the big bad world Annja knew they were relatively rare because they took extra effort and knowledge to plant. That meant they were reserved for those people who had really annoyed somebody who was really, really skilled.

I guess this means the Turkish government disapproves of our little scheme, she thought as chunks of debris began to rain down around her.

The blasts were still echoing around Kavaklidere when she thrust herself upright. She wasn’t superstitious but she sure believed in bad luck. As in, it was bad luck to be the only person visible on the street when a car containing a reasonably major public figure blew skyward atop a pillar of fire.

With her usual gymnastic grace she snapped to her feet in a single spasm of effort. Time to get off the street and find a nice dark corner to fold myself into, she thought. She figured her next priority after that was a call to the Sheraton to let her friends know they needed a brand-new set of plans. In one heck of a hurry.

Before she could take a step a heavy hand clamped her right bicep. Another got her left one. They felt like iron bands.

Despite the length of her legs and her lean muscle weight, she felt herself picked up bodily off the ground. She smelled stale male sweat and harsh tobacco. Not a good sign. Not one little bit.

Looking hurriedly around, as she was dragged back down the street and around the corner, she saw she’d been seized by a pair of burly, swarthy goons in ill-fitting suits. One had a shaved head; the other took the opposite tack with a shaggy head of hair. Both had thick moustaches. Both also wore impenetrably dark mirror shades.

“I don’t suppose the fact I’ve got an American passport will make much of an impression on you gentlemen, huh?” she said. “Huh. No. Thought not.”

It had been purely quixotic to ask—mostly to reassure herself with the sound of her own voice, and assert her personal power with a smart-ass remark.

They bundled her into a four-door Mercedes sedan, black and shiny and imposing. Keeping a low profile didn’t seem to be high on the agenda for this team.

One of Annja’s captors slid in beside her, staying firmly latched to her arm while the other went around to the other side and got in, pinning her between their bulky bodies. The car slid away from the curb.

“Just to be fair,” she said, “I’m giving you gentleman one last chance to let me go. Fair warning.”

Dark sunglasses still on, they exchanged looks past her. Then as one they started laughing.

Annja formed her right hand into half a fist. The sword’s hilt filled it with cool reassuring metal hardness. She leaned back against the luxuriant leather-upholstered seat, and jabbed before either man could comprehend what they had just witnessed.

The man to her right screamed shrilly as the blade’s edge bit into his face. The man to her left was struggling to shift his bulk. She felt him bunching to deliver some kind of retaliatory attack. She couldn’t get much hip into her own blows but she did the best she could, swinging her body hard to ram the sword’s pommel into his face. She felt teeth splinter.

The other guy was thrashing and bellowing. Glancing back she saw his face fountaining blood from a long gash. Seizing the hilt with both hands Annja did quick nasty work in the tight confines. Periodically she gave his partner a quick slam with the hilt. The man on her right shrieked and convulsed. The inside of the driver’s-side window and the rear window were sprayed with blood.

As he slumped into a bubbling mass of torn cloth and violated flesh his compatriot recovered from his facial battering enough to grab Annja’s arm again. He was still strong; she couldn’t break free, especially with too little room to really get her hips into it.

She opened her hand. The sword vanished. The astonishing sight made the assailant relax his grip slightly. Then she turned and jabbed him in the eye. He squealed.

His shades were broken and askew on his face. Half-blind he tried to grab her again. He still hadn’t given up the notion that he was big strong man and she was mere weak woman; he was relying on muscles and now adrenaline rather than going for the gun whose butt she could see tucked beneath his left armpit.

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