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  ‘I don’t know anything about that, sir. My orders are to bring you to Langley safe and sound. Please cooperate.’

  Orville lowered his head and took a deep breath.

  ‘Fine. I’ll go with you. What else can I do?’

  The agent smiled, visibly relieved, and shifted the flashlight away from Orville.

  ‘You don’t know how pleased I am to hear that, sir. I would’ve hated to have taken you away in handcuffs. Anyway—’

  The agent realised what was happening an instant too late. Orville charged him with all his weight. Unlike the agent, the young Californian had received no training in hand-to-hand combat. He had no triple black belt, nor did he know five different ways to kill a man with his bare hands. The most violent thing Orville had done in his life was to spend time on his PlayStation.

  But you can’t do much against 240 pounds of pure desperation and fury when it slams you against an overturned desk. The agent crashed down on to the desk, breaking it in two. He twisted round, trying to reach his gun, but Orville was quicker. Leaning over him, Orville slammed him in the face with his flashlight. The agent’s arms went limp and he was still.

  Suddenly afraid, Orville raised his hands to his face. This was going too far. No more than a couple of hours ago he was getting out of a private plane, master of his own destiny. Now he had assaulted a CIA agent, possibly even killed him.

  A quick check of the agent’s pulse on his neck told him he had not. Thank heaven for small mercies.

  OK now, think. You’ve got to get out of here. Find a safe place. And above all, stay calm. Don’t let them catch you.

  With his huge body, his ponytail, and his Hawaiian shirt Orville wouldn’t get far. He went over to the window and began to hatch a plan. Some firemen were drinking water and sinking their teeth into slices of orange near the door. Just what he needed. He walked out the door calmly and headed towards a nearby fence, where the firemen had left their coats and helmets, which were too heavy in this heat. The men were busy joking around and had their backs to their clothes. Praying the firemen wouldn’t notice him, Orville took one of the coats and a helmet, retraced his steps, and headed back towards the office.

  ‘Hey, buddy!’

  Orville turned around anxiously.

  ‘You talking to me?’

  ‘Of course I’m talking to you,’ said one of the firemen. ‘Where do you think you’re going with my coat?’

  Answer him, man. Make something up. Something convincing.

  ‘We have to look at the server and the agent said we should take precautions.’

  ‘Your mother never taught you to ask for things before borrowing them?’

  ‘I’m really sorry. Can you lend me your coat?’

  The fireman relaxed and smiled.

  ‘Sure, man. Let’s see if it’s your size,’ he said, opening the coat. Orville put his arms through the sleeves. The fireman buttoned it up and put on the helmet. Orville wrinkled his nose briefly at the mixed smells of sweat and soot.

  ‘Perfect fit. Right, guys?’

  ‘He’d look like a real fireman if it wasn’t for the sandals,’ said another of the crew pointing at Orville’s feet. They all laughed.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you so much. But let me treat you to a round of juice to make up for my bad manners. What do you say?’

  They gave him the thumbs-up and nodded as Orville walked away. Behind the barrier they had set up five hundred feet away, Orville saw a couple of dozen onlookers and some TV cameras - only a few - trying to get footage of the scene. From that distance the fire must have looked like nothing more than a boring gas explosion, so he guessed they’d soon be leaving. He doubted that the incident would take up more than a minute on the evening news; not even a half a column in tomorrow’s Washington Post. Right now he had a more immediate problem: getting out of there.

  Everything will be fine as long as you don’t run into another CIA agent. So just smile. Smile.

  ‘Hi, Bill,’ he said, nodding to the policeman guarding the cordoned-off area as if he had known him all his life.

  ‘I’m going to get some juice for the guys.’

  ‘I’m Mac.’

  ‘Right, sorry. I mixed you up with somebody else.’

  ‘You’re with the Fifty-fourth, right?

  ‘No, the Eight. I’m Stewart,’ Orville said, pointing to the Velcro name-tag on his chest and praying the policeman wouldn’t notice his footwear.

  ‘Go ahead,’ the man said, moving the Do Not Cross barrier a little so Orville could pass. ‘Bring me back something to eat, OK, buddy?’

  ‘No problem!’ Orville replied. He left behind the smoking ruins of his office and disappeared into the crowd.

  23

  ABOARD THE BEHEMOTH

  THE PORT AT AQABA, JORDAN

  Wednesday, 12 July 2006. 10:21 a.m.

  ‘I won’t do it,’ said Andrea. ‘It’s crazy.’

  Fowler shook his head and looked to Harel for support. This was the third time he had tried to convince the reporter.

  ‘Listen to me, dear,’ said the doctor, squatting next to Andrea, who was sitting on the floor against the wall, clutching her legs to her body with her left hand and smoking nervously with her right. ‘As Father Fowler told you last night, your accident is proof that someone has infiltrated the expedition. Why they attacked you in particular escapes me . . .’

  ‘It may escape you, but it’s extremely important to me,’ Andrea muttered.

  ‘. . . but what’s key for us right now is to get our hands on the same information Russell has. He’s not going to share it with us, that’s for sure. And that’s why we need you to take a look at those files.’

  ‘Why can’t I just steal them from Russell?’

  ‘Two reasons. First, because Russell and Kayn sleep in the same cabin, which is under constant surveillance. And second, because even if you managed to get in, their quarters are huge and Russell probably has papers all over the place. He’s brought quite a bit of work with him in order to continue managing Kayn’s empire.’

  ‘All right, but that monster . . . I’ve seen the way he looks at me. I don’t want to go near him.’

  ‘Mr Dekker can recite the entire works of Schopenhauer from memory. Maybe that will give you something to talk about,’ Fowler said in one of his rare attempts at humour.

  ‘Father, you’re not helping,’ Harel scolded him.

  ‘What’s he talking about, Doc?’ Andrea asked.

  ‘Dekker cites Schopenhauer whenever he gets worked up. He’s famous for it.’

  ‘I thought he was famous for eating barbed wire for breakfast. Can you imagine what he’d do to me if he caught me snooping around in his cabin? I’m out of here.’

  ‘Andrea,’ said Harel, grabbing her arm. ‘From the very beginning Father Fowler and I have been uneasy about you being on this expedition. We had hoped to convince you to make up some excuse to quit as soon as we docked. Unfortunately, now that they’ve told us the aim of the expedition, nobody’s going to be allowed to leave.’

  Damn! Locked up with the exclusive of my life. A life, I hope, that won’t be too short.

  ‘You’re in this, whether you want it or not, Ms Otero,’ Fowler said. ‘Neither the doctor nor I can get near Dekker’s cabin. They’re watching us too closely. But you can. It’s a small cabin and he won’t have much in it. We’re sure that the only files in his cabin are the ones pertaining to the briefing on the mission. They should be black with a gold logo on the cover. Dekker works for a security outfit called DX5.’

  Andrea thought for a moment. As much as she feared Mogens Dekker, the fact that there was a killer on board wasn’t going to vanish if she simply looked the other way and continued writing her story, hoping for the best. She had to be pragmatic, and teaming up with Harel and Father Fowler wasn’t a bad idea.

  As long as it suits my purpose and they don’t get between my camera and the Ark.

  ‘All right. But I hope that Cro-Magnon doesn’t cut
me up into tiny pieces, or I’ll come back as a ghost and fucking haunt the both of you.’

  Andrea headed for the middle of passageway 7. The plan was quite simple: Harel had located Dekker near the bridge and was keeping him busy with questions about vaccinations for his soldiers. Fowler would keep watch on the stairs between the first and second decks - Dekker’s cabin was on level two. Unbelievably, his door was unlocked.

  Overconfident bastard, thought Andrea.

  The small, bare cabin was almost identical to her own. A narrow bunk made up tightly, army style.

  Like my father’s. Fucking militaristic assholes.

  A metal cabinet, a small bathroom, and a desk. On it a pile of black folders.

  Bingo. That was easy.

  She was reaching her hand towards them when a silky voice almost made her spit out her heart.

  ‘Well, well. To what do I owe the honour?’

  24

  ON BOARD THE BEHEMOTH

  THE PORT OF AQABA PIERS, JORDAN

  Wednesday, 12 July 2006. 11:32 a.m.

  Andrea struggled not to scream. Instead she turned around with a smile on her face.

  ‘Hi, Mr Dekker. Or is it Colonel Dekker? I was looking for you.’

  The hired hand was so big and stood so close to Andrea that she had to tilt her head backward to avoid speaking to his neck.

  ‘Mr Dekker is fine. Did you need something . . . Andrea?’

  Think of an excuse, and make it a good one, Andrea thought, widening her smile.

  ‘I came to apologise for showing up yesterday afternoon while you were escorting Mr Kayn from his plane.’

  Dekker limited himself to a grunt. The brute was blocking the small cabin door and was so close that Andrea could see more clearly than she wished the reddish scar across his face, his brown hair, blue eyes, and two days’ worth of stubble. The smell of his cologne was overpowering.

  I can’t believe it, he uses Armani. By the litre.

  ‘Well, say something.’

  ‘You say something, Andrea. Or haven’t you come to apologise?’

  Andrea suddenly recalled a National Geographic cover she had seen of a cobra eyeing a guinea pig.

  ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘No problem. Luckily your friend Fowler saved the situation. But you should be careful. Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.’

  Dekker took a step forward. Andrea backed up.

  ‘That’s very deep. Schopenhauer?’

  ‘Ah, you know the classics. Or are you getting lessons on the ship?’

  ‘I’ve always been self-taught.’

  ‘Well, the great teacher said: ‘A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth.’ And your face looks guilty.’

  Andrea glanced sideways at the files, although she regretted doing so immediately. She had to avoid suspicion, even if it was too late.

  ‘The great teacher also said: ‘Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.’ ’

  Dekker showed his teeth as he smiled in satisfaction.

  ‘Very true. I think you’d better go and get ready - we’re going ashore in about an hour.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Excuse me,’ said Andrea, attempting to go past him.

  At first Dekker didn’t budge but finally he moved the brick wall of his body, allowing the reporter to slip through the space between the desk and himself.

  Andrea would always remember what happened next as a piece of cunning on her part, an ingenious trick to obtain the information she needed from right under the nose of the South African. The reality was more prosaic.

  She tripped.

  The young woman’s left leg caught on Dekker’s left foot, which didn’t move an inch. Andrea lost her balance and fell forward, bracing her arms against the desk to avoid slamming her face against the edge. The contents of the files spilled onto the floor.

  Andrea looked at the ground in shock and then up at Dekker, who was staring at her, smoke coming out of his nose.

  ‘Oops.’

  ‘. . . so I stuttered an apology and ran out. You should’ve seen the way he looked at me. I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stop him,’ Father Fowler said, shaking his head. ‘He must have come down through some service hatchway from the bridge.’

  The three of them were in the infirmary, Andrea seated on a bed with Fowler and Harel looking worriedly at her.

  ‘I didn’t even hear him come in. It seems incredible that someone his size could move so quietly. And all that effort for nothing. Anyway, thank you for the Schopenhauer quote, Father. For a moment there he was speechless.’

  ‘You’re welcome. He’s a pretty boring philosopher. It was hard to recall a decent aphorism.’

  ‘Andrea, do you remember anything you saw when the files fell to the floor ?’ Harel interrupted.

  Andrea closed her eyes in concentration.

  ‘There were photos of the desert, plans of what looked like houses . . . I don’t know. Everything was a mess and there was writing all over it. The only folder that was different was yellow with a red logo.’

  ‘What did the logo look like?’

  ‘What difference would it make?’

  ‘You’d be surprised how many wars are won because of unimportant details.’

  Andrea concentrated again. She had an excellent memory, but she had glanced at the scattered sheets for only a couple of seconds and had been in a state of shock. She pressed her fingers on the bridge of her nose, screwed up her eyes and made odd little noises. Just when she thought she couldn’t remember, the image appeared in her mind.

  ‘It was a red bird. An owl, because of the eyes. Its wings were open.’

  Fowler smiled.

  ‘That’s unusual. It could help.’

  The priest opened his briefcase and took out a mobile phone. He pulled out its thick antenna and proceeded to turn it on while the two women watched in astonishment.

  ‘I thought all contact with the outside world was forbidden,’ said Andrea.

  ‘It is,’ Harel said. ‘He’s going to be in real trouble if he’s caught.’

  Fowler peered closely at the screen, waiting for coverage. It was a Globalstar satellite phone; it didn’t use normal signals but instead linked up directly with a network of communication satellites that had a range covering roughly 99 per cent of the earth’s surface.

  ‘That’s why it’s important we check something out today, Ms Otero,’ said the priest, as he dialled a number from memory. ‘At the moment we’re near a big city so a signal from the ship will pass unnoticed among all the others from Aqaba. Once we reach the excavation site, using any kind of phone will be extremely risky.’

  ‘But what—’

  Fowler interrupted Andrea by holding up a finger. The call had gone through.

  ‘Albert, I need a favour.’

  25

  SOMEWHERE IN FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA

  Wednesday, 12 July 2006. 5:16 a.m.

  The young priest jumped out of bed, half asleep. He knew straight away who it was. That mobile rang only in an emergency. It had a different ring tone than the others he used and only one person had the number. A person Father Albert would have given his life for without a second thought.

  Of course Father Albert hadn’t always been Father Albert. Twelve years ago, when he was fourteen, he was called FrodoPoison, and was the most notorious cyber delinquent in America.

  Young Al had been a lonely boy. Mom and Dad both worked and were too busy with their careers to pay much attention to their skinny blond son, despite the fact that he was so frail they had to keep the windows closed in case a draught of air carried him away. But Albert didn’t need any draught to soar through cyberspace.

  ‘There’s no way to explain his talent,’ said the FBI agent in charge of the case after his arrest. ‘Nobody taught him. When the kid looks at a computer he doesn’t see a device made of copper, s
ilicon and plastic. He just sees doors.’

  To begin with, Albert had opened quite a few of those doors just to amuse himself. Among these were the secure virtual vaults of Chase Manhattan Bank, the Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group and the BNP, the national bank of Paris. During the three weeks that his brief criminal career lasted, he stole $893 million by hacking into the banks’ programs, redirecting them to credit commissions to a non-existent intermediary bank, called Albert M. Bank, in the Cayman Islands. It was a bank with only one client. Of course giving the bank his own name wasn’t the brightest thing to do, but Albert was barely a teen. He noticed his mistake when two SWAT teams broke into his parents’ house during supper, ruining the living-room carpet and stepping on the cat’s tail.

  Albert would never know the inside of a jail cell, confirming the saying that the more you steal the better they treat you. But while he was handcuffed in an FBI interrogation room, the meagre knowledge of the American jail system that he had acquired through watching TV kept running through his head. Albert had a vague notion that jail was a place you could rot in, where you could be somonised. And even though he wasn’t sure what the second thing meant, he guessed it would hurt.

  The FBI agents looked at this vulnerable broken child and sweated uncomfortably. This boy had shaken up a lot of people. It had been incredibly hard to hunt him down, and had it not been for his childish mistake, he would have kept on fleecing the megabanks. The corporate bankers certainly had no interest in bringing the case to trial and having the public find out what had happened. Incidents like that always made investors jittery.

  ‘What do you do with a fourteen-year-old nuclear bomb?’ asked one of the agents.