Paul Christopher - The Lucifer Gospel

Laval shook his head. He gave Finn another one of his small, patronizing smiles. A little girl being patted on the head. “Laszlo Almasy wasn’t a count at all. His father was a high-level government official in Budapest. A fonctionaire, as it were, that’s all. The way Germans are all herr doctor or herr professor. He fled to the desert because he’d had an affair with a politician’s wife. He was paid to stay there. He was a dilettante, Ms. Ryan, nothing more.”

“I thought he was a spy during World War Two,” said Hilts flatly. “He used what he knew about the desert to bring a spy across from Morocco all the way to Cairo, right?”

“There are many stories about Laszlo Almasy,” said Laval with a faint smile, “and most of them are just that, stories.”

“And none of them have anything at all to do with Coptic monasteries in general or Deir el-Shakir in particular,” said Adamson. He made an imperious little motion with his hand. “Come along.”

They followed Adamson along the gently curving passageway, finally exiting into a large living area complete with tables, chairs, a portable kitchen with a refrigerator, and both a Ping-Pong and a billiard table. There were several people in the large, domed room, some reading or talking together. An Asian man and a black woman were playing a spirited game of Ping-Pong. Everyone was dressed casually. The atmosphere in the dome was cool, and Finn suddenly realized that it was air conditioned. Light came in through half a dozen translucent triangles set into the walls. Somewhere nearby she could hear the faint hum of a generator.

Adamson guided them to one of the tables and they sat down. A few moments later another uniformed steward appeared with a tray loaded down with a jug of iced tea, sprigs of mint, and glasses that looked as though they’d been stored in a freezer. The steward was dark-haired and olive-skinned. His name tag read “Badir.” A local like the ones in the helicopter hangar. The steward withdrew silently. Playing the host, Adamson poured iced tea for everyone and sat back in his chair.

“There are ninety-two people on site at Deir el-Shakir,” he said. “Of those, twenty-five are actually on the archaeological staff, fifteen are interning graduate students from universities around the world, twenty more are volunteers who pay for the privilege of being here, and the rest are support staff. This is one of the most sophisticated and expensive archaeological sites on the planet. In addition to the services of Mr. Hilts, we have a complete remote-sensing department, which includes hookups to SPOT, French Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre archives, NASA Landsat, and ASTER. We also have full side-scanning radar facilities, computer imaging, and real-time access to some of the world’s most comprehensive archaeological archives. In short, if you want information, we can get it for you.”

“Good to know,” said Hilts, looking around at the dome.

“You will be running a number of low-altitude surveys using both film and digital cameras. We have the plots and charts any time you’d like to see them,” offered Adamson.

“Satellites don’t give you enough?”

“A great deal of data, but not much detail. We’re particularly interested in the location of old caravan trails and the wells that were used by pilgrims coming to the monastery.”

“Seems straightforward.”

“Hopefully.” Adamson turned to Finn. “You, Ms. Ryan, will be spending most of your time doing in situ drawings of artifacts before their removal, then placing those locations on the overall site grid. I understand from your rйsumй that you have some experience with computers.”

“Some.”

“PitCalc? Altview?”

“Yes.” PitCalc was one of the earliest pieces of archaeology software written and one that she’d learned on her mother’s computer in the field when she was a teenager. Altview was the same kind of wire-diagram program draftsmen used. It was one of those times when she was glad she hadn’t fluffed her rйsumй like a lot of her friends, some to the point of adding entire degrees or past job descriptions.

“Good,” said Adamson. He drained his iced tea and stood. “Achmed will have taken your luggage to your quarters. As staff members you both have private quarters in the residential quadrant.” A white-coated steward silently appeared at the table. Adamson laid a paternal hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Farag will show you the way.” Finn was surprised that Adamson knew who the steward was until she noticed the plastic name tag pinned to his jacket. “Until dinner this evening,” Adamson said and smiled. Then he turned on his heel and left. They watched him go.

“I wonder what Deir el-Shakir means,” said Finn, taking a sip of her iced tea.

“Monastery of the Skull,” supplied Hilts. “The skull in question was supposed to have belonged to St. Thomas the Apostle. That’s what the Copts meditated on here. There’s also a theory that the skull was made of crystal, like that Mayan one, except the skull here was supposedly that of Baphomet… the Knights Templar version of Satan. Spooky if you’re a fan of that kind of thing.”

Finn laughed. “You’ve been watching X-Files reruns, haven’t you?”

“If you’ll follow me, please,” murmured Farag, their steward.

And they did.

True to Adamson’s word, Finn’s luggage had been delivered to her quarters in the residence quadrant, a long domed yurt like the others but with individual rooms jutting out from the main tent like the legs of a centipede. By her count there were twenty-five of these cells, each one equipped with electricity, a gravity-fed water tank, and a small chemical toilet cubicle. The quarters also had a smaller version of the triangular windows in the recreational area. She had a camp bed with an inflatable mattress and matching pillow, a tubular steel and plastic desk, a lamp, a Local Area Network Internet connection for a laptop, and a chair. She even had her very own air-conditioning duct. For communications there was a headset Motorola ten-channel walkie-talkie outfit with a five-mile range and a buzzer system for calling a steward if necessary. Everything she needed to know about the site from a plan of the “moon base” to instructions for flushing the chemical toilet was contained in a loose-leaf binder lying on her bed. Adamson had clearly spared no expense, and Finn found herself wondering what he was hoping to get for all his money. It seemed like overkill for a few Coptic inscriptions, since according to Hilts the monastery was far from a newly discovered site.

The evening meal was held in the dining hall, a large yurt like the recreation area with two dozen tables, including a large one for the actual staff in an area separated from the rest of the tables by a high, white nylon barrier. Finn found herself seated between a ceramic expert from the Royal Ontario Museum named Adrian March and Hilts. Adamson sat at the head of the table beside a small dark man he introduced as Mustapha Hisnawi, their liaison with the Libyan Office of Antiquities. Directly across from her was Fritz Kuhn, the heavyset man Hilts had said was the grandson of Hitler’s archaeologist. Beside him was Laval, the monk from l’Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. The meal was a variety of Libyan dishes, lamb, chicken, and vegetarian. The conversation was mostly about the dig and mostly technical. Finn waited for an opportune moment and finally managed to ask her question.

“Is there any real focus to the dig?” she said. Across from her the German, Kuhn, frowned. Adamson just shrugged.

“Does there have to be a focus?”

“Usually for a project like this you’d expect some sort of ultimate goal.”

“What would you know about projects like this,” Kuhn snorted, digging around at the sauce-covered lamb and rice on his plate. His face was flushed. He picked up his wineglass and drained it. A steward appeared at his back and refilled it from a cloth-swathed bottle. Finn ignored Kuhn’s rudeness and waited for Adamson’s answer.