Paul Christopher - The Lucifer Gospel

Reaching the vehicles and the ghostly remains of the campsite, Hilts began taking more photographs, concentrating on the work unit markings on the trucks and the old equipment scattered around the camp.

“Red and black stripes with a white scorpion. Guards unit, LRDG. The truck is a thirty hundred-weight British Chevy.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I built a lot of models when I was a kid. There was even a TV series about these guys called the Rat Patrol I watched in reruns. It starred Christopher George, if you remember him. Kind of like a cut-rate George Peppard.”

“No.”

“So much for his career.”

“There’s no bodies,” said Finn, looking around the campsite. “There should be bodies.”

Hilts turned and looked back at the Italian truck. He saw immediately that the bullets that had killed the three-man crew probably hadn’t come from the direction of the camp. In the first place, the trucks and the burnt-out jeep were placed wrongly, and in the second place, the machine guns on the British vehicles were too heavy: big Vickerses and Brownings as well as an even larger Boys Anti-tank gun mounted on the rear of the second truck. Hilts looked up at the surrounding ragged walls of the steep little valley and then he knew.

“It was an ambush,” he said finally, kicking one of the old stamped tin Shell Benzene brand fuel containers with the toe of his boot. “They heard the Italians coming so they went up into the rocks and waited for them. That’s why they never got any farther into the valley. Picked them off from above.”

Finn walked through the camp, stooping every now and again to examine a rusted piece of equipment or some other faded artifact. “Two trucks and that jeep thing. How many men would that be?”

“Hard to say, as many as a dozen, but since there’s only three tents it was probably more like six-two men to each. Shorthanded. Maybe they’d lost a few.”

“Six against three and they didn’t win?”

“Who said they lost?”

“The trucks are still here. Why didn’t they leave? No fuel, no water maybe?”

Hilts shook his head. “These were pretty smart people. They had fuel dumps everywhere and they always left themselves enough gas to get to one, or back to base, whichever was nearer. And all the trucks had condensers for their radiators. Water wouldn’t have been a problem.”

“Something happened, that’s for sure.” Finn did a slow, three-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. “It’s an interesting little mystery, but surely this isn’t what Adamson was after?”

“I doubt it,” agreed Hilts.

“We should keep looking,” said Finn. “And we should keep an eye on the time.” She looked at her watch. They’d been on the ground for almost half an hour.

Hilts looked into the remains of the tents and then climbed up on the trucks. He jumped down from the bed of the second vehicle and joined Finn, who was looking into the narrow, shallow trench that stood behind the blockading row of sandbags that faced the canyon entrance to the valley.

“Find anything?”

“Tin cans-more corned beef-condensed milk, looks like a weird Birkenstock, a stove made out of a ten-gallon drum with holes punched in it, and this.” She handed up the remains of what had once been a black beret. There was a tarnished, sand-scarred badge clipped on the front.

“A scorpion in a circle.” He nodded. “Non Vi Sed Arte-Not by Strength, by Guile. It’s an LRDG cap badge and beret.” Hilts reached out and helped her up out of the pit.

“What would have made the Italians come into the canyon in the first place? How would they have found it?” Finn asked as they made their way through the camp and continued to explore.

“Same way we did, I guess,” said Hilts. “They followed the tracks of the LRDG trucks.”

“Okay, then why did the Brits come in?”

“Looking for a place to camp?”

“Or maybe they were following someone else’s tracks as well.”

“We’ll never know,” said Hilts. He stopped. Halfway up the right-hand wall of the valley they saw the wreckage of an airplane. “What the hell…?”

The old biplane looked as though it had tried to land, lost control on approach, and ran up the side of the valley before it stopped. The engine cowling had ruptured, shattering the propeller, and the lower wing had crumpled and torn, leaving half the upper wing and a few struts. The undercarriage had completely vanished. Over time the desert had taken its toll and the fabric covering on the fuselage was in tatters. What was left showed no signs of national identification.

“Maybe that’s what the Brits were after,” said Finn, staring at the ruined aircraft. The door of the plane was sagging open and she could see up into the cockpit. The windscreen was cracked but unbroken.

“Maybe that’s what Adamson was after too,” said Hilts. He climbed up toward the wreckage, pulling himself steadily up the steep slope with his hands digging into the stony sandstone.

“Why would Adamson be interested in an old airplane?”

“Because Lucio Pedrazzi was a flyer. He was one of the first archaeologists to use aerial surveys, and he flew an airplane just like this, a Waco UIC.”

“That sounds American.”

“It was,” Hilts answered. “William Randolph Hearst used to fly one. The Citizen Kane guy. It was popular all over the world.” They finally reached the wreck, and hanging on to one of the wing struts, Hilts peered into the cockpit. Finn followed suit. There were two bucket seats, the leather rotted, leaving only the springs, a Y-shaped yoke and two Bakelite wheels, one for the pilot, the other for the copilot beside him. The rear section had been enlarged and turned into a cargo bay. It was empty except for an odd skeletal cube formed out of welded aluminum. In the center of the boxlike arrangement was something that looked like a simplified version of a child’s gyroscope. At the base of the cube was a metal sleeve that led down into the fuselage.

“A camera mount?” asked Finn.

Hilts nodded. “A Bagley, or maybe a K-5. But no camera.”

“Adamson.”

“Could be.”

“I thought Pedrazzi was looking for our Coptic monastery.”

“Maybe he was looking for something else as well.”

“When exactly did Pedrazzi disappear?” asked Finn, staring into the empty cockpit.

“In 1938.”

“In a sandstorm?”

Hilts nodded. “That’s the story.”

“Was he alone?”

“Actually, no. There was a Frenchman with him, as a matter of fact. A man named Pierre DeVaux.”

“Who was he?”

An archaeologist. A monk, just like Laval. He was there to help Pedrazzi translate Aramaic inscriptions.”

“From l’Йcole Biblique? The Jerusalem School?”

“I’m not sure,” said Hilts. “Probably.”

Finn found herself thinking about Arthur Simpson, the man in her hotel room. The man who knew her archaeologist father. The man who’d been a British spy. The man whose own father had been an archaeologist as well. Three generations all digging up the same past.

“Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“After sixty years?” The photographer made a face. “Not really.” He frowned. “What are you getting at?”

“I’m not sure, but there sure does seem to be a lack of bodies. There’s no sign of Pedrazzi or the Frenchman. Just like the British soldiers. Weird.”

“This isn’t science fiction. They either walked out of here and died in the desert or they’re still here.”

“Where?”

Hilts looked around the valley. Finally he nodded to himself.

“What?” asked Finn.

“Pedrazzi took off from the old Italian airfield at Al-Kufrah. According to the reports he and DeVaux were heading off to finish a survey of some rock formation along the border with French Equatorial Africa. It was supposed to have been clear and sunny. Perfect flying weather, but a couple of hours later, which is about right, this huge sandstorm came up out of nowhere.”