01 Babylon Rising (5 page)

“Well, John. I must offer my apologies. Barrington was indeed an excellent choice. I’m almost surprised he hadn’t volunteered for the cause before now. He seems to positively relish his new duties.” His lilting English cadences dwindled into a soft chuckle.

Unsmiling, without turning his gaze from the chair where Barrington had moments before been sitting, John Bartholomew spoke, and his tone remained chilling. “The time for self-congratulation lies far ahead of us, I think. Our great project is just beginning, and there is much yet to be done.”

“But, John, John! Surely what we have started cannot now be stopped. Is it not written?” continued the Englishman. “I bow to your superior wisdom in the realms of finance. But as a man of the cloth, I think I can claim some special understanding of, let us say, the spiritual dimension. Think of Daniel, think of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Think of what it means!” In his excitement he gripped Bartholomew’s arm. “Surely with the plans of us Seven, the true power of Babylon—the dark power of Babylon—
will
rise, again!”

MURPHY WASN’T SURE
which was worse, the red-hot streaks of pain that crisscrossed his shoulder or the fiery blast of anger his wife was directing at him. At least the anger would burn itself out eventually. He hoped.

“So, Michael”—it was always
Michael
when he was in the doghouse—“tell me why I’m so special.”

He grunted as she swabbed his shoulder with antiseptic. A little harder than was strictly necessary, he thought.

“Other wives come home unexpectedly in the early hours of the morning to find their husbands in bed with another woman, or betting the kids’ college fund in a poker game, or just plain old dead drunk.” She paused to shake out some more of the antiseptic liquid onto a fresh cotton pad. “But
me
, lucky old me,
I
come home to find my husband has been half killed by a
lion!”
She stopped working on his shoulder for a
moment and smiled sweetly at him. “Please explain exactly what have I done to be so blessed.”

Not for the first time, Murphy said a silent prayer of thanks that he’d managed to find such a wonderful woman, and that miraculously, or so it seemed to him, she had agreed to be his wife. He was taking a verbal beating from her now—and that wasn’t a first either—but he knew that was only because she cared. And, as ever, it was well deserved.

It was also providential, to say the least, that she’d arrived home when she did. The last day of her conference on mapping lost cities had been canceled when the star of the show, Professor Delgado from the Mexican Archaeological Institute, was taken ill, and with a mix of disappointment at missing out on the great man’s legendary stories and excitement at cutting short the time spent away from Murphy, she had hopped on the first plane out of Atlanta.

“I was hoping to surprise you,” she’d said wryly. “But I guess I should have known. I’m the one who gets the surprises around here, right?”

She finished taping the sterile pads in place, and Murphy could see her in the bathroom mirror, nodding at her handiwork, before she helped him ease a clean T-shirt over his head. They both knew he couldn’t have fixed himself up alone.

Downstairs she settled him in one of the rockers, then went into the small kitchen. She came back with two steaming mugs of tea.

“Okay, Professor Murphy, it seems you’re not going to die of your wounds. Your wonderful, long-suffering wife has therefore calmed down sufficiently to listen to whatever cockamamie
nonsense you’re about to tell her. So sit there and try not to go off your rocker for the second time tonight and let me hear your sorry story.”

Murphy sighed. She wasn’t going to like it.

“It was him. Methusaleh. I got a message while I was in my office. Very attention-getting.”

“And you just dropped everything and went wherever this madman told you to go?” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, but I was forgetting, you’re Michael Murphy, the world-famous archaeological adventurer. No assignment too dangerous. And the crazier the better.”

She was just shaking her head. He waited until he was certain she was done. She finally took a sip of tea. The signal for him to go on.

“He said
Daniel
. The Book of Daniel. How could I not be interested?”

“Ah, hence the lion’s den. I get it.”

“Exactly.” Murphy put down his mug on the little coffee table between the rockers and leaned toward her. “One of the most important books of the entire Bible. The mother lode of prophecy. It’s all there, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the statue, everything.” In his excitement, the throbbing in his shoulder was forgotten. “Methusaleh was offering me an artifact that related to the Book of Daniel. Such hard evidence would certainly cause skeptics to think twice before dismissing Daniel as mere fiction. Imagine!”

Laura sat back in her rocker, out of reach. “And all you had to do to get it was to go three rounds with a man-eating lion.” Her tone was icy.

“Now, sweetheart, it could have been worse,” Murphy said with a grin. “If it had been the Book of Revelation, I could have been going head-to-head with the Beast himself.”

The look she gave him was icier still. Not funny. Not funny at all.

Murphy tried a different tack. “Honey, the point is, Methusaleh may be crazier than a bucket of snakes, but he always plays by the rules—”

“His
rules,” Laura interrupted. “The rules of a crazy mystery man who has nothing better to do with his money than to lure you into risking your life. And you’ve fallen for it each time!”

“Yes, because his rules say,” Murphy continued, unfazed, “that if I win his game, I get the prize. Look, we’ve talked this over before, Laura. I know this sounds insane, but it’s true. I’m just not a half-measure kind of man. I love my work full tilt, I try to love God full tilt, and above all else, I love you full tilt. It’s a package deal, sweetheart, even on nights like this, when you feel the prize package you’re stuck with is the booby prize.”

Laura frowned in defeat. She’d said her piece. She knew Murphy could no more resist the lure of Methusaleh’s artifacts than decide not to breathe. And though she was not about to tell him, Murphy’s fearless passion for bringing the truth of the Bible to light was a big part of why she loved him.

She dragged it out for ten more seconds and gave in, reaching around to hug him. “Michael Impossible Murphy,” she whispered, calling him by the middle name she had given him several years earlier, “you know too well that the most impossible thing about you is still the fact that I can’t stay angry
with you for longer than it will take you to get into trouble the next time.”

He nodded toward the table. They both looked down at the red tube as it lay innocently, like an un exploded bomb, between them. “Okay, then, Murphy.” She smiled her sweetest smile, and he wondered what was coming as he saw her smile turn into a worried frown. “This bleeding is worse than I thought. That lion got deeper into your shoulder than it looked. I am driving you over to the hospital to get you stitches. No argument.”

Though he had rejected her earlier insistence on getting him to the emergency room, now Murphy did not even offer the meekest resistance.

Laura softened again. “Hey,” she said, wrapping her hands around Murphy’s good shoulder, “since you went to all the trouble of getting this thing, tomorrow, after your lecture, how’s about I come to your lab and help you look at what’s in there?”

“
SO, YOU PUT
your life on the line every day?”

“That’s right, my friend. One slip, and
splat
!”

The bartender, who stood just close enough to his only customers to hear their conversation, shook his head and kept flipping through the newspaper. Here on a slow Tuesday afternoon in this dingy neighborhood bar in Astoria, in the shadow of a not-too-distant Manhattan, he felt a million miles away from the excitement of the big city.

He had been listening to these two guys rattle on for twenty minutes and with only one beer between them. That was for Farley, the big hero, one of his regulars.

The other man was a stranger. He would have to be, to be talking to Farley this long. Every other regular knew that Farley was a bore who would talk on and on about how risky his job was. The guy was a window washer, not a combat marine!
The bartender eyed the stranger again. He would have thought the man must be deaf to listen to Farley drone on, but the stranger was lapping it up. And he wasn’t even drinking anything stronger than water.

When the stranger had asked for a water—not even sparkling water—the bartender had started to give him his standard rebuke about this being a bar, not a public drinking fountain, but there was something about the stranger’s manner that stopped him. Not because he looked threatening. Farley was a drab-looking, doughy kind of figure, and if anything, this stranger was even plainer-looking—gray-haired, clunky glasses, a thick, pockmarked nose, a pronounced slouch to his stance. However, while Farley was a threat only to bore you to death, there was something about this meek stranger that made the bartender not want to challenge him.

“Hey,” he heard the stranger ask, “you want to go get a burger?” Then, showing that he was a quick study, since everyone knew Farley was the cheapest man in all of Astoria, the stranger added, “I’m buying.”

As the bartender watched the two men shuffle out of the bar, he knew better than to check to see if Farley had left him a tip, but raised an eyebrow when he saw a five-dollar bill sitting next to the stranger’s empty water glass.
Man
, the bartender thought,
I hope I see him again soon
.

He had no way of knowing he would never see either man again.

Outside the bar, the stranger said, “Why don’t we take my car? It’s just around the corner.”

Farley nodded and followed him. “Say, friend, tell me your name again.”

“I didn’t tell it to you the first time.” He stopped in front of a dark green Jeep, and Farley paused, a puzzled look on his face.

“Hey, that’s right. So, what
is
your name?” The stranger gave him no notice, darting his head from left to right to survey the deserted street. Then Farley saw the stranger make some quick movements around his head. “Huh?” Farley looked even more puzzled.

Only then did the stranger turn to look at Farley. But the face that Farley saw before him now was an entirely different one. Gone were the gray wig, the glasses, and the nose. “You’ll never need to know it.”

Almost too quickly to see, the stranger swept his right hand in front of Farley’s throat. A thin line of blood appeared there before Farley could cry out. Now, as he tried to make a sound, nothing came out.

“You’ll never need to know anything again.” He reached over to grab Farley and threw his limp body into the car. “Now that I know the only things you knew that were worth knowing.”

The stranger got behind the wheel. He wiped some blood off his right index finger on the shirt of the dead man beside him. Farley would not mind, he thought. He took out his cell phone and looked at the index finger in the greenish light from the phone panel as he dialed. The finger looked like a normal index finger until you looked more closely and saw that it was an artificial digit, carefully sculpted and tinted to look real.

Except for the very tip, where the nail should be, which was honed to a deadly edge.

His call was answered with a single word. “Status.”

The stranger replied in a cold, deadpan, accentless voice, quite a change from the hearty tone he had used with Farley. “I am ready to proceed at your order.” He straightened in anticipation.

“Go,” he was told. “And, Talon, do not fail—and do not fall.”

The man known as Talon clicked shut his phone, taking a split second to make sure all of the blood had come off the digit that gave him the name he went by. He pushed Farley down below the car window sightline and headed for the spot where he would dump the body. A place where it would never be found.

He allowed himself a grim smile. Failure or falling were not options for him any more than breathing would ever again be an option for Mr. Farley.

THE KING AND
the captive of Judah looked each other in the eye, and the king was intrigued to find that the slave held his gaze. True, there were no guards at his side to intimidate the man with their swords and murderous looks. But wasn’t his royal presence alone, the majesty and power of Nebuchadnezzar, whose name made kings and princes quake, enough to terrorize a humble Jewish slave?

And yet the man seemed calmness itself as he waited patiently for the king to speak. It was strange indeed. These people had a reputation for cleverness. Yet this man seemed not to understand that his own life would be forfeited if he could not give the king an answer. An answer the wisest men in the kingdom had so far not been able to provide
.

The king took in the simple woolen robe, the relaxed posture-neither arrogant nor submissive-and the blank, patient gaze, and wondered if this could really be the man to reveal his dream. If he failed
like all the others, then one thing was certain: Daniel would be only the first of many to feel his anger. The gutters of Babylon would be awash with blood before his wrath was spent
.

The king shifted in his carved cedarwood chair and broke the silence. “Well, Daniel.” His pronunciation of the slave’s Hebrew name was mocking, as if he had alluded to some shameful secret. “No doubt I do not need to explain why you are here.”

“I am here because you commanded it, my king.”

Nebuchadnezzar scrutinized him for signs of impudence. His tone was as maddeningly neutral as his expression in the flickering torch-light
.

“Indeed, Daniel. And I’m sure in your wisdom you understand why I commanded it. And what it is I would have you do.”

Daniel bowed his head slightly. “You have been troubled by a dream, my king. An awesome dream that stirred your spirit, and yet when you awoke, not a fragment, not a shred of it, remained. Only an empty echo, like the sound of a word in a strange tongue.”