The Temple Mount Code (2 page)

‘Have to have them in this business.’ Anders glanced around. ‘I’d’ve thought someone woulda noticed us by now, but I don’t see anyone saddling up to come out this way.’

‘We can’t let them get to the truck. Whatever they have might be lost forever.’

‘Okay, hang on.’ Anders increased the throttle speed and leaned the helicopter forward.

‘Can you put me on the ground?’

‘You want to go down there after them?’

‘Might give us a better chance. If you can put me down near the vehicle, I might be able to disable it before they make their escape.’

‘They’re not going to just sit back and watch, you know.’

Lourds nodded and felt slightly sick to his stomach. He wasn’t an action hero – he preferred to read about those kinds of people. And he was perfectly content to see any physical confrontation in his imagination as he turned the pages of a book. But he couldn’t just sit by and watch as perhaps priceless artifacts disappeared before the world got a chance to see them.

Adroitly, Anders maneuvered the helicopter straight for the waiting pickup. ‘I’m going to stay with the bird. For when you need to beat a hasty retreat.’

‘All right.’ Lourds took a couple of quick breaths to settle his nerves. It didn’t work too well but helped clear his head a bit.

‘I’m gonna drop you on a touch-and-go, mate – the moment I stop moving, you start. When you get out, keep your head low till I take off again. I don’t want to decapitate you by accident.’

‘No, we definitely
do
not want that.’ Lourds unbuckled his seat belt and opened the helicopter’s side door. He watched the pickup grow steadily closer.

‘Don’t forget they have guns.’

Lourds glanced at the starred imperfection on the cockpit nose. ‘Trust me, there’s no chance of me forgetting
that.
’

Slowing his forward momentum, Anders dropped the helicopter to a point a little more than three feet above the ground. He slapped Lourds on the shoulder. ‘Go! But if you need me, run north. Put as much difference between them dingoes and yourself as you can.’

‘Right.’ Lourds clapped a hand on his Australian Outback hat and narrowed his eyes against the violent stir of dust kicked up by the spinning rotors.

‘When you need help, I’ll be there in a jiff.’

Lourds nodded, then hopped out of the rocking helicopter. He landed on both booted feet, gave thanks that neither of them twisted on the uneven ground, and got his bearings. The battered pickup sat about twenty yards away.

As soon as Lourds started for the vehicle, Anders throttled up, and the helicopter lifted into the air. The dust cloud stirred by the rotorwash grew huge, obscuring his vision and whipping into his face. Pulling his shirt over his nose and mouth to keep the dirt out, he ran for the pickup.

When he reached the vehicle, Lourds pulled a mini-Maglite from his pocket, switched it on, and peered inside. The flashlight was a primary tool for him to have out in the field, but he’d let the batteries go nearly dead. Only a weak light was emitted, but it was enough for him to see the that keys hadn’t been left in the ignition.

Cursing the luck, Lourds turned to find where the tomb robbers were. Noting their arrival in just a few seconds, he reached inside the cab, popped the hood release, and ran around to the front of the vehicle, drawing his pocket tool as he shoved the hood up.

Lourds didn’t know much about vehicles, but he knew enough to sabotage the pickup. He shined the Maglite over the engine and spotted the sparkplug wires immediately.

The men approaching the truck screamed curses at him. One of them fired, the bullet pinging off the truck’s hood and sending a vibration stinging through Lourds’s hand and arm.

Holding the Maglite in his teeth, he flipped out the tool’s blade, grabbed a plug wire in one hand, and sawed at it, cutting through the plastic and wire.

Another bullet smashed into the engine and created a torrent of sparks. The pickup must have been leaking fuel through the carburetor because the exposed fuel immediately caught fire. The grave robbers yelled even more curses at Lourds.

Lourds dropped the severed wire and ran north, his long hours spent playing soccer paying off hugely. He streaked across the uneven terrain toward Anders and the helicopter, about a hundred yards away. The robbers were closing the gap and were about thirty yards behind him.

One of the men took a shot at Lourds as he ran. The bullet dug up a furrow in the ground right next to him, making Lourds put more effort into his stride.

Anders had put the helicopter down with the pilot side facing the three angry grave robbers. Shots slowly cracked, letting Lourds know that the men carried single-action rifles.

Running around the side of the helicopter, Lourds grabbed the door and pulled it open. As soon as he had one foot in the helicopter, Anders nudged the craft into the air.

Just as he was about to haul himself inside, Lourds’s foot slipped on the landing gear. He fell and flailed for purchase. ‘Help!’

Surprised, Anders threw out an arm, grabbed Lourds’s chambray work shirt, and hauled him inside the cockpit. ‘C’mon, Professor. I don’t want you to fall and end up in a million little pieces.’

‘Me neither.’ Lourds clambered into the copilot’s seat and buckled in.

The shots came again, another weak fusillade around the helicopter. This time, however, several jeeps topped the ridge, with armed men riding shotgun. Handheld spotlights caught the surprised thieves in their bright glare.

‘Well, that’s obviously not going to end well for them.’ Lourds smiled, pretending that he did this kind of thing every day and that his heart wasn’t jackhammering in his chest.

‘You did good, Professor.’ Anders smiled. ‘You run a lot faster than I thought a professor could.’

‘Thanks.’ Lourds decided not to mention that the bullets fired at him had been one hell of a motivator.

Below, the three grave robbers scattered in different directions, but it did them no good. Lourds watched the confrontations play out. The jeeps split up, each one pursuing a fleeing criminal. The thieves all gave up after a short run and planted their faces in the ground until the dig’s security people arrested them.

Lourds happily clapped Anders on the back. ‘Well, my friend, we’re going to be heroes in the morning. After saving whatever it is we saved down there, I think people should at least buy us breakfast.’

At that point, Professor Gao woke up with a bleat. He’d slept throughout the encounter, but the intense jockeying of the helicopter hadn’t agreed with his stomach.

‘Grab him, mate!’ Anders frantically dove toward the ground again, which only made matters worse. Gao bent forward, his face a sickly shade of green. Lourds unfastened his seat belt, then the one restraining Gao, holding the small man steady.

‘
Don’t
let him throw up in here!’ Anders reached for his door with one hand. ‘I don’t need the stink for the next week.’

‘Short of ramming a towel down his throat, I don’t see how that’s possible for much longer.’

‘When I get us down, you get him out of here pronto.’

Setting the helicopter down on the makeshift landing pad, Anders reached across the passenger seat and shoved the door open. ‘Get him out of here, now! No one throws up in my bloody heli!’

Grabbing Gao by one arm and his belt, Lourds hurled the sick man toward the door. Gao went out unceremoniously, looking like a stilt-legged stork. He plopped onto the ground hard enough to make Lourds wince in sympathy.

Gao sat up and looked dazed. Then he threw up into his own lap.

Anders punched Lourds in the shoulder. ‘Well, mate, if nobody recognizes you as a hero tomorrow, I will. That was a very near thing there.’

Lourds agreed as he watched the security vehicles hauling the three grave robbers into camp. ‘Do you believe in omens, Robert?’

‘Never had much use for them myself.’

‘Nor have I.’ But Lourds couldn’t help feeling that something was coming. After days of relative peace and quiet, he felt certain he was on the verge of something big.

2

Jiahu Dig

Henan Province

People’s Republic of China

July 22, 2011

‘You have that whole “distracted professor” thing going on, Professor Lourds.’

Thomas Lourds glanced over his shoulder and smiled at the pretty, young Peking University student assigned to him by Professor Hu. Gloria Chen was a graduate student of linguistics with a minor in archaeology. The emphasis in both fields of study centered on the Neolithic Yellow River Period. Jiahu was one of the most important, and, until recently, largely unexplored sites that had been discovered. Lourds and Gloria were both there to further the study of evolutionary linguistics, trying to unlock the mystery of how human language was created over the millennia. In particular, Lourds hoped to find clues to some of the earliest protolanguages in existence.

‘Sorry, Gloria. Still recovering a bit from last night.’ Lourds spoke in Cantonese, which was Gloria’s first language. He squatted at the soft edge of the grave he’d been contemplating. Dirt tumbled into the hole from his movement, and he slid his foot back, fearing the lip might crumble and send him sprawling.

The original resident lay inside the rectangular hole. The grad assistants working on the project with the Peking professors had partially excavated the skeleton, but the bones lay semisubmerged in dirt, dust, and debris.

‘I heard about your little adventure.’ Gloria’s tone was neither fawning nor disapproving.

‘Did you?’

‘Oh yes, it was the talk of the camp this morning. This might help.’ She joined Lourds and handed him a bottle of chilled water, which he took gratefully.

‘What can you tell me about this person?’ Gloria was slim and beautiful, in her midtwenties. She wore her black hair short, and it only brushed her shoulders. Prescription sunglasses covered her eyes, but Lourds had noticed they were a peculiar yellow hazel. She wore canvas pants and a T-shirt.

Lourds grinned, set the half-empty bottle of water down beside him, then lifted his battered Australian Outback hat and ran a hand through his black hair. ‘I’m not a forensic anthropologist.’ He replied in English. ‘You’d have to ask Professor Chaoju or one of his grads for information like that.’ He looked back at the skeleton. ‘I can speculate that this was a man or a very young girl because the hips are too narrow for a mature woman. But I could be wrong about that. Probably am.’

The young woman laughed. ‘Somehow, after the way Professor Hu talked about you, I just expected you to know everything.’

‘Not hardly. Professor Hu is too generous with his praise.’

‘But you’re the man that discovered Atlantis.’

‘I also lost it. Never forget that.’ Lourds had had the find of a lifetime in the palm of his hand, and it had slipped away to the sea bottom.

Lourds finished the bottle of water and slid it into the cracked leather backpack containing his tools, books, and cameras. Then he stood and stretched. Despite the fact he was tall and lean and stayed active, his body didn’t always meet the demands he put upon it the way it once had.

Lourds looked around. A lot of people from all over the world were working the Jiahu dig. He’d already seen a number of archaeological teams he knew from past acquaintance and from reputation. As far as he knew, he was the only Harvard University professor currently on-site. And that had been at Professor Hu’s express invitation, which Lourds hadn’t hesitated to accept.

‘Where’s Professor Hu?’ Lourds shaded his eyes with his hat as he scanned the various dig groups.

Hu had a tendency to wander off and socialize. The man was a Facebook demon and seemed to have the ability to keep up with the whole world. But it had been Hu’s reputation that had pried Lourds free of Harvard and sent him off to Peking.

Gloria pointed. ‘There. Why?’

‘I want to get someone who knows what they’re doing to exhume this skeleton.’

‘I think they plan on doing it soon.’

‘I know, but I’d rather they get to this one sooner.’ Lourds walked in Hu’s direction.

Professor David Hu was a small, slight man. His black hair had gone gray years ago, but hadn’t completely given up. Strands of charcoal black threaded through the shoulder-length mop. He was talking quickly to a group of fellow archaeologists. Spotting Lourds coming over, Hu waved at him to join them.

‘For those of you who haven’t had the great fortune to previously meet my colleague, this is the world-renowned Thomas Lourds, Professor of Linguistics at Harvard, and the hero of the Jiahu dig, after his exploits of last night.’

The introduction embarrassed Lourds, but he’d learned to endure the attention. His translation of
Bedroom Pursuits,
a journal regarding the amorous adventures of a merchant in the fourth century, had garnered praise and damnation, depending on who voiced the opinion. However, the discovery of Atlantis had served him up into the public eye in a way he was still trying to deal with.

He shook hands all the way around, called by name the men and women he knew, and was introduced to those he didn’t know.

The conversation quickly turned to questions directed at Lourds, but he held up his hands to deflect them. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d be only too glad to entertain you at our tent tonight if Professor Hu is all right with that – ’

Hu nodded happily.

‘In the meantime, I need to borrow Professor Hu.’

Good-byes were quickly said, and Hu fell into step with Lourds and Gloria.

‘Sorry.’ The professor looked a little embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean to be away for so long, but I just got to talking.’

‘Not a problem.’ Lourds clapped the man on the shoulder and smiled. ‘If I hadn’t found something, I wouldn’t have bothered you.’

Gloria looked surprised. She took a quick step in front of Lourds and put a hand on his chest. ‘Wait. You found something? And you didn’t mention it?’

‘I didn’t. I felt Professor Hu should see it first. And if the object turns out to be worthwhile, I don’t want to disturb it until we can get a cameraman to record the event.’