Serpent nf-1 Read online

  "What a day," he fumed, slipping his helmet off. "I truly believe we'll have to burrow down another twenty feet before we find anything dating back any earlier than the Rif rebellion! And if you think working with me is a bloody trial, I dare you to go a few rounds with that pompous ass Fisel." The glee in his voice at being on a dig belied the grumbling. "Well, you certainly look comfortable," he said accusingly. "How did it? Never mind, I can see it in your eyes. Tell me quickly, Nina, or I'll assign you extra homework."

  Knox's use of her first name recalled her days as a student. Nina saw her chance to avenge the gentle taunts she had endured in the classroom. "Wouldn't you like to freshen up first?" she said.

  "No, I would not. For heaven's sakes don't be a sadist, young lady; it doesn't become you."

  "I learned my craft from a good teacher," she said with a smile. "Don't despair, professor, While you drag your chair over, I'll pour us some iced tea and tell you the whole story."

  Minutes later Knox sat attentively by her side, head inclined slightly as he listened. She described her explorations from the moment she stepped into the water, omitting only the discovery of the sculpted head. She felt inexplicably uneasy discussing it Later, maybe.

  Knox was silent during the entire account except when Nina paused for breath, when he'd impatiently urge, "I knew it, I knew it. Yes, yes, go on."

  "That's the story," she said, finishing her tale.

  "Well done. Conclusion."

  "I think this was a very old port," she said.

  "Of course it's old," he replied with mock annoyance. "I knew that when I saw the aerial photos of your little pond from an oil company survey. Every bloody thing within a hundred meters of where we're sitting is old. But how old?"

  "Remember the hungry dogs of skepticism," she reminded him

  Knox rubbed his hands together, enjoying the game. "Let's assume the dogcatcher has captured the annoying creatures and for the time being they languish happily in a pound. What, dear lady, is your educated guess?"

  'As long as you put it that way, my guess is that it's a Phoenician military and trading post." She handed over her sketch pad and pieces of the pottery she'd found.

  Knox studied the potsherds, lovingly running his fingers along the ragged edges. He put them aside and looked at the sketches, puckering his mouth so that the mustache did a little dance on his lip. "I think," he said with obvious and melodramatic relish, "that we should run your story by the esteemed Dr. Fisel."

  Gamiel Fisel sat under a large umbrella. His round body practically hid the chair it was perched on, and with his tan slacks, shirt, and matching complexion, he resembled a large caramel apple. On the table in front of him was a scattering of potsherds from the dig. He was peering through a Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass at one fragment. At his side was his assistant, Kassim, a pleasant young man, supposedly a university student, who served primarily as Fisel's tea boy.

  "Good afternoon, Dr. Fisel. Dr. Kirov made some interesting observations today" Knox said with undisguised pride.

  Fisel looked up as if an annoying mosquito had just landed on the tip of his nose. He was not unused to women in the workplace. Many Moroccan women worked as professionals. He simply had trouble dealing with a female who was his equal in academic rank, his superior in the number of degrees held, and at least a foot taller. As a nondiver, Fisel was at Nina's mercy on the underwater site, and he didn't like not being totally in control.

  Nina cut right to the chase. "I think there was a small but important port here, and that it was Phoenician."

  Fisel said, "More tea, Kassim." The young man hurried over to the camp's cooking area. Fisel turned to Knox as if Nina were not there. "Your assistant has a vivid imagination. You've told her, of course, that our excavations at the primary site have produced Greek and Roman artifacts." He had a quick, nervous way of speaking, firing off sentences like bursts from a machine gun.

  Nina had deferred to Fisel, but she could ignore his rudeness no longer. "First of all, I'm not Dr. Knox's assistant," she said coolly. "I'm his colleague. And second, while I have no doubt of Greco-Roman influence, the main center of activity was in the water, not on dry land. And it was Phoenician."

  The sketch pad plopped onto the table, and Nina tapped the drawing of the cothon. "The Phoenicians were the only ones who cut artificial harbors like this out of dry land. I believe these shards will provide the dating to back me up:"

  She dumped out her pottery fragments, not caring that they might be mixed with the others. Taking his time, Fisel picked up a piece, examined it, then studied another one. After a few minutes he looked up. His moist brown eyes boggled behind the thicklensed glasses, but he was trying hard not to show his excitement.

  He cleared his throat and addressed Knox. "Surely you're not going to accept this as definitive proof of Dr. Kirov's theory."

  "Of course not, Dr. Fisel. There's much work to be done, and Dr. Kirov knows that as well as we do. You must admit it's an intriguing beginning, however.

  Assuming he had detected a crack in Knox's advocacy, Fisel's putative scowl turned into a fourteenkarat smile. "I am compelled to admit nothing until the case is made."

  Kassim arrived with a glass of hot tea. Fisel nodded and picked up his magnifies The audience with the cousin of the king had ended.

  Nina seethed with anger as she and Knox walked away from Fisel's tent. "Imperious little bastard! He knows damned well that I'm right."

  Knox gave an avuncular chuckle. "My guess is that Fisel agrees entirely with your findings and will waste no time reporting them."

  She grabbed the professor's arm and peered into his dusty face. "I don't understand. Why the act?"

  "Oh, it's perfectly dear. He wants to claim the credit for discovering your Phoenician port."

  "That's it!' She started back toward Fisel's tent. "If he thinks he's going to get away"

  "Hold on, my dear. I promised you'd get credit for all underwater finds, and I meant it. Remember, we hold the important cards. You're the only one on this expedition who knows how to dive."

  "He can bring in other divers."

  "Yes, he can. Short, plump, bald, and nearsighted though he may be, Fisel swings a lot of weight, figuratively and literally, within his antiquities department. He can bring in all the resources he will need. In the meantime, I want you to finish your sketches, classify what you've found, and continue your survey using scientific methods."

  She was still unconvinced. "What if he tries to stop me from diving?"

  "This is a joint expedition. I am equal in command to him. He can only go so far until he gets permission. It will take days. If you think our red tape is formidable, remember Morocco is heavily influenced by the French, who invented the word bureaucrat. I will massage his ego, but I want you to do a very difficult thing. Consider giving Fisel some credit for this coup, if it truly turns out to be Phoenician. This is his country that we're digging up, after all. He may have some Phoenician forebears." .

  Nina calmed down and allowed herself a laugh. "You're right. I'm sorry for the outburst. It's been a long day."

  "No need for an apology. He is a bastard, but I'll remind him that if he doesn't have our cooperation in making this a joint find, he will have the credit taken from him by one of his own bastards at a higher level."

  Nina thanked the professor, kissed him on the cheek, and returned to her tent. She worked on her sketches until the dinner bell rang. Fisel avoided her eyes at the table. The Iowa couple, who had dug up an intact water jug handle, held center stage. No one paid attention when Nina excused herself and went back to her tent.

  After she finished writing a report of her findings on an IBM laptop computer, Nina propped up her noted and shot some pictures of the sketches with her digital camera. Then she fed images from the camera into the computer. The photos and sketches were razor sharp.

  "Okay Fisel, let me see you try to get a jump on this. "

  The computer was hooked up to a small suitcase that
contained a satellite phone. The solarpowered package cost her an arm and a leg, but it put her in touch with her home base from anywhere in the world. She punched out a number and sent the electronic packet of words and photos winging through the ether until it bounced off a loworbit Inmarsat global communications satellite, which inlayed it to a dish that fed the information at the speed of light into the database at the University of Pennsylvania.

  Nina clicked off her computer, satisfied that her reports and pictures were safely in the databank at the university. She was unaware that even on the 'information highway, there are such things as dangerous detours.

  San Antonio, Texas

  3 ON OFFICIAL BLUEPRINTS THE WINDOWLESS room near the top of the glass office tower overlooking the peaceful waters of the San Antonio River did not exist. Even the city inspectors had no idea it was there. The subcontractors who installed the soundproof walls, the separate electrical conduits, and the voiceactivated security locks were paid well to keep their mouths zipped. If they thought it strange to build a secret door through the shower stall of a private bathroom, they kept their opinions to themselves.

  The room's decor was as clinically functional as a laboratory. Uncluttered beige walls. A bank of oversized IBM computer monitors and hard drives, a document safe, and a center worktable. A man sat in front of a computer, his hardened face washed by the cold light from the oversized monitor. He scrolled down several pages of type and photos and stopped at a series of line drawings.

  With a click of the cursor he enlarged one particular sketch and zoomed in on a section of the screen, hard blue eyes taking in every detail. Satisfied he had seen the entire file, he saved it on a floppy disk and pressed the print command. As the highspeed printer whirred away, he put the disk in an envelope and locked it in the safe. He gathered the printed file into a manila folder, stepped through the shower stall, went through another door into his office, and switched on an intercom.

  "I'll need a few minutes. Right away" he said.

  "He has time now," a female voice replied. "Ten minutes in between appointments."

  He left his office with the folder and walked through a maze of thickly carpeted hallways. He was tall, at least six feet, no longer young, but the only concession to age was his close-cropped silver hair and a slight stoop to his muscular shoulders. His athletic body was still limber and rock hard thanks to a Spartan regimen of diet and exercise. Because he rarely smiled or frowned, his face was relatively unlined around the mouth and eyes, as if the skin had been lifted off and stretched over the square jaw and high cheekbones.

  The floor held the company's administrative offices arid could be entered only by those with hand and voice ID: The work spaces were all on other levels, and he saw nobody until he came to the spacious reception area.

  The highceiling space was done in burnt red, brown, and green earth colors, repeating a stylized arrow and square Indian pattern on floor and walls. Behind the receptionist was a semiabstract mural whose brownskinned figures and giant sprouting quetzal feathers were so intertwined it was hard to tell whether the painting depicted a human sacrifice or a cocktail party. The receptionist sat at a desk that seemed to float on a carpeted sea of burnt orange, unmindful of the painted drama behind her head.

  The man stopped in front of the desk and without speaking glanced toward a thick, darkwood door carved with dozens of writhing figures being tormented in a peasant artist's depiction of hell.

  "Mr. Halcon will see you," said the receptionist, a middle-aged woman chosen for her blandness; efficiency, and unquestioning loyalty.

  The carved door opened into a corner office that was almost as big as the reception area and repeated the Central American theme. Halcon stood at a floor-to-ceiling window, his back to the door.

  "Sir, if you have a moment"

  Halcon halfturned, displaying the aquiline nose, set in a pale, narrow face, the profile that had earned him his nickname in the bullring. "Come here, Guzman," he said.

  Guzman crossed the room as ordered and stood beside the younger man. Halcon was in his forties, taller than Guzman by an inch or two. He was ascetically lean, almost delicatelooking. Like everything else about Halcon, appearances were deceiving. In a concession to his role as a businessman he had long ago cut off the matador's pigtail, trimmed the Valentino sideburns, and set aside the glittering uniform of the bullring. Yet under his expensive tailored suit still lurked the cruel body of the matador known as the Hawk, who had used his quickness and power to dispatch dozens of brave bulls. If there had been any complaint from the aficionados who followed his brief but illustrious career, it was that the Hawk's kills were coldly efficient and lacked passion. In another age he would have been a deadly swordsman whose blade would have found the beating hearts of men, not bulls.

  "Do you know why I chose to build this particular office in this particular location, Guzman?"

  "If I would venture a guess, Don Halcon, it offers a good view of many of your company's holdings."

  Halcon chuckled at the response. An honestly blunt answer, as I would expect from my old guardian, but hardly a flattering one. I am not some burgher keeping an eye on his fields."

  "My apologies, Don Halcon, I did not mean to offend."

  "No offense taken. It was a natural assumption, but an erroneous one." His smile vanished, and his words took on the quiet, steely edge dangerous people give their voices. "I chose this office for one reason: the view it offers of the Mission San Antonio de Valero. It reminds me of what. is past, what is present, and what will be." He gestured out at the sprawl of the city visible through the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows. "I often stand here and think of how history can veer off in unexpected directions, drastically changed by the actions of the few. The Alamo was a defeat for its defenders, but it was the beginning of the end for Santa Anna. He was captured at San Jacinto, and in one decisive engagement Texas became independent from Mexico. The lesson of history is clear, is it not?"

  "It wouldn't be the first time the death of martyrs brought down the powerful."

  "Precisely. Nor will it be the last. What happened once can happen again. The Alamo had one hundred eighty three defenders against six thousand Mexican troops, showing that the determined few can transform the world for the many" He paused, alone with his thoughts, staring out at the sprawling city. After a moment he turned to Guzman like a man emerging from a dream.

  "Why did you want to see me?"

  "There's a matter of some importance, sir. I just intercepted this transmission from Morocco to the University of Pennsylvania." He handed the file over.

  Halcon leafed through the material, finally fastening on the sketch, and murmured, Astounding." He looked up. "There can be no mistake?"

  "Our surveillance system is practically foolproof. As you know, every archaeological expedition in the world sends proposals to our Time-Quest foundation asking for funds and volunteers. Those with serious potential are assigned priority. The computers automatically access all transmissions from the field to their home base and search for preprogrammed keywords, or fax, telex, and email messages."

  "Los Hermanos has a watcher on site?"

  "Yes. Gonzalez is there."

  "Excellent," Halcon said. "He knows what he has to do."

  Guzman nodded and clicked his heels softly As he turned to go his lips seemed to curl in a lopsided smile. But it was only a trick of the light and shadow caused by the white scar that ran from his right cheekbone to the corner of his mouth.

  Morrocco

  4 NINA BROUGHT THE CAMERA UP TO her face mask, framed the foundation wall in the viewfinder, and squeezed . the shutter release on the waterproof housing. The motor drive whirred softly. The last shot she needed for the photomosaic. Finally.

  With a quick, sharp expulsion of air she cleared the water from her snorkel. Using an easy sidestroke, she swam toward the stairs. Mapping the bottom singlehanded had been tedious.. She first laid out a number of small, spherical plastic buoys in a tic-tae
toe pattern as a guide. Then it was swim, stop, shoot. Again and again. She carried a mental blueprint of the port in her head. Had the water miraculously receded, she could have strolled blindfolded on the old quay and not bumped into a wall or fallen into a piscina or cothon

  The task of assembling dozens of photos into a composite map would be formidable. She had tried to match the photos using the buoys coupled with distinctive bottom landmarks. A crude system at best, but fine for now. Nina wasn't looking for scientific precision, she wanted a dramatic package that would have the tightfisted bean counters who controlled expeditionary money dreaming of frontpage headlines in USA Today and feature stories in Time and on Unsolved Mysteries.

  She hoisted herself onto the steps and got out of her dive gear. As she toweled her body dry, she looked out over the lagoon and decided to put off the buoy removal until the morning. She'd be as wrinkled as a white raisin if she spent any more time in the water. Minutes later she was loping along the path to the camp with a discernible jauntiness in her stride. There was good reason to be pleased. She had accomplished an incredible amount of work in a short time.

  People were still working on the excavation, and the camp was deserted. Well, almost. As she neared the tents she saw Gonzalez at the periphery of the campsite talking to someone in a Jeep. As she approached, the Jeep drove off before she got a look at the driver's face.

  "Who was that?" she said, watching the dust cloud thrown out by the departing vehicle.

  The automatic Gonzalez smile clicked on as if somebody had pressed a switch. "Someone who was lost. I gave him directions."

  Lost?. What was Gonzalez talking about? This wasn't like taking a wrong turn off a freeway The camp was miles from anywhere or anything. It was lonely country with nothing to attract anyone except a bunch of crazy bonediggers. You'd have to want to get lost out here. When she first saw the man in the Jeep she thought he might have been called in by Fisel, so while she didn't buy the explanation, she was relieved to hear it.