The Genesis Key (7 page)

Chapter Ten

September 4, 1979. Mishkhab, Iraq.

S
argon couldn't stay long in Mishkhab. By now, Hussein and his cronies almost certainly knew what had happened on the highway south of Baghdad. At the very least, someone had surely reported the abandoned Mercedes and two dead soldiers to the authorities.
They were after him, and they knew he was heading south.

He had driven four hours in a panic-induced haze, with the bodies of Nisreen and Farhana in the back of the military van, wrapped in green blankets. He'd driven and shifted gears with one hand because his left shoulder was stiff from the gunshot wound. The bullet had nicked the soft, fleshy portion of his upper arm. Whenever he tried to move his injured arm, the searing pain made him feel lightheaded. But, in an odd way, that pain was the only thing that kept him grounded as he drove. Everything else around him seemed like a horrible dream.

He was dressed like an army corporal now, having removed the military uniform from the body of the van driver. The olive green fatigues were snug at the waist but otherwise fit surprisingly well.

Just after 4:00
P.M.
, Sargon arrived at the modest house in Mishkhab where Nisreen's sister, Aaliya, lived with her husband, Lutfi. They were not expecting him, so his appearance—in military fatigues and driving a military vehicle no less—caused a tremendous commotion.

Mishkhab was a small farming village about 150 miles southwest of Baghdad. The villagers there were blissfully unaware, of course, of the political upheaval taking place at that very moment in the Iraqi capital. Although Sargon explained as best he could to Aaliya and her husband, he could tell they did not fully grasp the gravity of the situation.

That changed, however, when they saw the bullet-riddled bodies of Nisreen and six-year-old Farhana in the back of the van.

Pandemonium erupted almost immediately. Aaliya howled uncontrollably and was soon joined by other relatives, including Nisreen's aunt and uncle, cousins, second cousins, and dozens of people vaguely related by blood and marriage. The whole village, it seemed, poured out of their houses to share in the family's grief.

Sargon stood silently by, still in shock and unable to mourn.

Once the initial chaos subsided, it was decided that Nisreen and Farhana should be buried before sunset, in accordance with Muslim tradition. Nisreen's brother-in-law, Lutfi, left to take care of the funeral and burial arrangements while Aaliya and several other female relatives carefully washed the bodies with scented water and shrouded each with a
kafan—
a clean, white linen cloth.

An hour later, Lutfi and several men from the village returned and transported the shrouded bodies on crudely constructed stretchers to an open courtyard near the town mosque. There, the local imam led the mourners—more than two hundred men and women—in a traditional funeral prayer.

Following the prayers and a long period of silent reflection, the crude stretchers bearing the shrouded bodies of Nisreen and Farhana were carried by hand to the village cemetery for burial. By Muslim tradition, only the men of the community accompanied the bodies to the gravesites.

Just before sunset, Sargon watched stoically as the shrouded bodies of Nisreen and Farhana were lowered together into a single grave, each lying on her right side, facing Mecca. By tradition, no tombstones, markers, or mementos were left at the gravesite, signifying that all ties to this physical world were now broken. The souls of Nisreen and Farhana were thus humbly submitted to Allah.

It was later that night, as Sargon lay awake on the floor of Lutfi's house, that despair descended upon him like a deluge. He wept and convulsed for several hours in the dark until, finally, he saw that the sky outside had changed from black to gray.

H
e left Mishkab at dawn, having not slept at all. Although tradition dictated that he should remain near the burial site for at least three days of mourning and prayer, he simply could not stay in Mishkhab any longer.
They were after him, and they knew he was heading south
.

He gave his wife's family ten thousand British pounds, nearly half the money he'd planned to use for his family's escape. In exchange, they gave him their rusty Datsun pickup truck. The military van was accepted in return, destined to be stripped, repainted, and converted into a farm utility vehicle.

Sargon drove south out of Mishkhab with no real plan. He was reasonably certain that Hussein's goons would be waiting for him at the Kuwaiti border. He'd changed into simple clothes, which Lutfi had provided, and had shaved his moustache, but he lacked the proper paperwork to cross into Kuwait.

His original plan had been to bribe a border guard, usually not a difficult task. But if the border guards had already been contacted and intimidated by Husseins's men, Sargon knew that
no
amount of money would get him through safely. He'd killed two soldiers, and, as he well knew, the only price that could be paid for that crime was public execution.

He considered his other options.
West to Jordan? North to Turkey?
He doubted the old Datsun would make it that far. So he continued driving south, nearly certain he was driving toward his own execution.

Then he remembered the Talbots.

Immediately, he pulled over and retrieved a tattered road map from the glove compartment and spread it across the steering wheel. Al Hilla, the town nearest to Tell-Fara, was less than fifty kilometers away. For the first time since the attack outside of Baghdad, Sargon allowed a tiny glimmer of hope to enter his heart as he turned the rickety Datsun around and veered east off of Highway 8 onto the narrow dirt road to al Hilla.

Chapter Eleven

September 5, 1979.
Tell-Fara, Iraq.

T
he first
thing Sargon noticed when he arrived at the excavation site was the Talbots'
dusty Land Cruiser parked on the side of the road. He pulled his pickup truck
alongside and got out to investigate.

The Land Cruiser was empty but running at idle.

“Strange,” he whispered to himself.

From where he stood, Sargon could not see the
temple ruins, which were obscured behind a large, rocky berm a few hundred feet
away, covered with scraggly vegetation and squat palm trees. A narrow path led
through the vegetation up and over the hill, toward the temple ruins on the
other side.

Sargon made his way along the path and was nearly
at the top of the hill when he suddenly heard gunfire. Instinctively, he dropped
to his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way to where the path crested
the berm. From there, he had a clear view of the temple site below.

He saw two gunmen dressed in fatigues, weapons
raised, running toward the excavation pit. One wore a black and white headscarf,
the other a black ski mask. He watched as they fired their weapons and then
tossed a small object into the pit.

Seconds later, a powerful explosion rocked the
entire area. Sargon flinched and dropped flat against the ground, his heart
pounding furiously.

What in Allah's name was going
on here?

When he looked up again, the gunmen were on the
move, walking quickly around the site and periodically looking into the pit,
which was now belching thick black smoke. A few moments later—to Sargon's
horror—they began walking quickly up the path.
Toward
him
.

Sargon scampered away and crouched low behind a
small stand of date palms, his gaze fixed on the path. A minute later, the two
gunmen crested the hill and passed less than three feet away from where he
hid.

They were conversing in low tones, and Sargon
distinctly heard one of them say “vehicle” in Arabic. Sargon gasped audibly.

Instantly, the man in the ski mask halted and
motioned for the other to be quiet.

Sargon held his breath.

“What is it?” the second gunman asked.

“I thought I heard something,” replied the first,
squinting and scanning both sides of the path.

Seconds passed in agonizing silence. Sargon was
sure the man in the ski mask would logically retrace his steps and, if he did,
would quickly find Sargon's absurd hiding place, just a few feet off the
path.

Several more seconds passed in silence, and Sargon
became acutely aware of his own breathing.
Had it always
been this loud?

“I didn't hear anything,” the second gunman said
finally. “Come on, let's get the vehicle.”

Those words struck Sargon like a jolt of
electricity. His pickup truck was parked right next to the Land Cruiser. As he
watched helplessly, the two gunmen turned and started back down the path.

Moments later, there was shouting and the sound of
shuffling feet near the road.
They'd spotted his truck.
He could hear them returning, their footsteps growing louder by the
second.

Sargon saw the head and shoulders of the first
gunman just cresting the hill. He pulled his Tariq pistol from his pocket,
unlocked the safety, and took aim. Without a second thought, he pulled the
trigger and fired a single 9 mm round into the man's chest, causing him to
stumble backward and downhill.

The second gunman, now visible, immediately dove
off the path and disappeared into the vegetation.

Sargon's left shoulder ached with pain, and the
rest of his body was weak with fatigue and stress. He knew he'd be no match for
the second gunman in a hand-to-hand struggle. As he considered his options, he
became acutely aware of the silence. For a full minute, there was no sound at
all, save for the soft whooshing of the
shamal
through the dry brush and palm trees. Somewhere in that thicket, however, the
second gunman was lurking.
What was he doing?

Another minute passed in silence, and Sargon began
to think maybe—
just maybe
—the second gunman had
fled.

Suddenly he heard rustling nearby. He peered into
the brush but saw nothing. Off to one side, a palm frond moved.
Was that the wind
? A tense moment passed as he
strained to hear any sound.

Then, without warning, an explosion of automatic
gunfire erupted to Sargon's left, and the tree he was leaning against shook
violently as several rounds slammed into its trunk. Splinters and bits of plant
material flew all around. Crunching footsteps were now coming toward him.

Sargon had only one option. He rolled left onto his
wounded shoulder, raised his pistol in his right hand, and fired two quick shots
in the direction of the rustling noise. His bullets whizzed into the palm forest
and disappeared.

A split second later, more automatic gunfire
erupted from the brush. One of the rounds whizzed so close to Sargon's ear that
he could feel the heat and disrupted air. But he didn't flinch. Instead, he
remained in his firing position, raised the pistol firmly, and fired repeatedly
in the direction of the automatic gunfire. He kept firing until his clip of 9 mm
rounds was empty. This would be his last stand.

When the chaos ended, the only sound left was the
whooshing of the
shamal
. Sargon did not hesitate
before venturing into the brush.
If he was going to die
today
,
there was no reason to delay the
inevitable.
Twenty yards into the thicket, he found the second gunman
lying awkwardly on his back, his black-and-white headscarf soaked red with
blood. One of Sargon's shots had slammed into the man's head.

Sargon's next thought was about his friends, the
Talbots. He rushed down the path and approached the edge of the archeological
pit adjacent to the temple ruins. Thick plumes of black smoke were still
billowing from the pit. He couldn't see much through the smoke, but he could
tell the scaffolding was completely demolished, and some of it was still on fire
at the bottom of the pit.

“Daniel!” he screamed into the pit. “Rebecca!”
There was no answer.
He had to get down there!

He ran back to the vehicles, carefully stepping
over the body of the dead gunman in the path. He reached the rusty Datsun and
searched in the back for something useful. But all he found were old oil cans
and greasy automotive parts.

He then searched the Talbots' Land Cruiser, which
was still idling on the side of the road.

“Aha!” he exclaimed as he spotted a large coil of
high-quality nylon rope in the back compartment. Grabbing the rope and a large
flashlight, he rushed back up the path toward the temple.

S
argon
worked quickly, believing his friends might still be alive. It had been more
than fifteen years since he'd done any actual fieldwork, but his archeological
training came back to him quickly. He tied a series of square knots in the nylon
rope at intervals of approximately three feet, doing his best to ignore the pain
in his left shoulder.

Using a sturdy half-hitch knot, he secured one end
of the rope to a nearby palm tree. Then, peering over the edge of the pit, he
tossed the other end of the rope into the hole and watched with considerable
concern as it disappeared into the swirling cauldron of black smoke. Near the
bottom, he noted a few areas of flickering flames where the remains of the
wooden scaffolding were still burning.
He had to keep the
nylon rope away from those flames
. Carefully, he swung the rope to
the far side of the pit, away from the charred and burning remains of the
scaffolding.
Would that be far enough to avoid the heat of
the flames?
There was only one way to find out.

The climb down was excruciating and terrifying.
Sargon slid down the rope with one hand, using the knots to brace his feet as he
did. As he descended, the smoke and dust became almost unbearable. He coughed
and winced as he dropped, knot by knot, deeper into the pit. Near the bottom,
the heavy smoke and dust stung his eyes so badly that he was forced to close
them completely. He descended the last fifteen feet with his eyes shut, barely
able to breathe.

Finally, his feet touched rubble. With his eyes
still shut, he felt his way toward the wall of the temple, stumbling several
times over loose stones, broken wood, and twisted metal. After some moments of
struggling forward, his hands touched the smooth, glazed bricks of the temple
wall. Then, with some effort, he pressed his back flat against the wall and
opened his eyes, for the first time assessing the situation around him.

A small amount of sunlight filtered through the
smoke and dust, dimly illuminating his surroundings. He could see that part of
the temple's north wall had collapsed, creating a huge pile of loose bricks and
rubble, upon which he was now standing. With a sinking feeling, he realized that
his friends, Daniel and Becky Talbot, were trapped somewhere below.

He fumbled with the flashlight for several seconds
before managing to turn it on. Surveying the damage around him, he spotted a
tiny opening near his feet.
He might be able to reach the
Talbots through that space!
Dropping to his hands and knees, he began
removing bricks and debris, widening the hole. When it was big enough to fit his
hand through, he shoved the flashlight into it and pressed his face close to
take a look. He saw what seemed to be a small cavern beneath him. Encouraged, he
quickly removed more debris until the opening was about two feet wide.

“Daniel! Becky!” he screamed into the space below.
No reply.

Carefully, and with considerable pain, Sargon
inched, feet-first, into the cavity until his entire body was crouched inside.
“Daniel!” he screamed. “Becky!” He swept the flashlight beam around the small
cavern and gasped at what he saw. Instead of being surrounded by loose rubble as
he'd expected, he was instead surrounded by structural mud-brick walls. This was
not an accidental space formed by the crumbling wall;
this
was a man-made internal chamber of the temple!

Sargon, at five foot eight, was just barely able to
stand up inside the low-ceilinged chamber, which measured about six by eight
feet. It appeared to be an anteroom of some sort, with a passageway at the
interior end that led farther into the temple. He was just making his way toward
that passageway when he heard a noise behind him. He turned with a start and
trained his flashlight on a pile of bricks and rubble. In the beam of the
flashlight, he saw the head and torso of a man, whom he recognized
immediately.

“Daniel!” Sargon shouted incredulously, recognizing
his friend Daniel Talbot lying helpless beneath a pile of bricks and debris.

Talbot responded in a series of shallow, wheezy
spurts. “How . . . did . . .
you
. . . get . . . in here?”

“I . . . I climbed down on a rope I found
in your truck,” Sargon sputtered. “Where's Becky? Who were those men? What
happened?” He asked these questions in a bewildered staccato.

Talbot, however, did not respond.

Frantically, Sargon began removing the debris that
was piled high on Talbot's body. As he did, he repeatedly asked, “Daniel, can
you hear me? Are you okay? Daniel?”

But there was no longer any response.

Sargon could not budge the largest of the boulders
that lay across Talbot's legs, pinning him tightly to the floor. At this point,
however, he was quite sure Talbot was dead.

Exhausted, frustrated, and deeply saddened, he
dropped to his knees and said a silent prayer for his friend Daniel Talbot from
Harvard University. As he did, he recalled that the Talbots' young daughter,
Kathleen, had recently returned to the United States to visit her grandparents
and to start first grade. He thanked Allah that at least
she
was safe.

Then, looking up, Sargon turned his attention to
the passageway at the far end of the anteroom . . . and the interior
chambers of the temple that lay beyond.

He moved cautiously across the anteroom toward the
passageway on the other side, concentrating intensely on his surroundings,
willfully pushing everything else out of his mind. At this moment, he was simply
an archeologist, seeing something incredible and wondrous for the first
time—something that had likely not been seen by human eyes for more than
five thousand
years.

His thoughts were everywhere at once.
A chamber inside the Tell-Fara temple?
It was utterly
inconceivable and contrary to all conventional wisdom. Tell-Fara, after all, was
a ziggurat, not a tomb. Or so most Assyriologists believed.

Everyone, that is, except the
Talbots.

Sargon inched forward, awestruck by his
surroundings. The walls of the anteroom were bare and formed of flat, baked
bricks like those on the exterior of the temple. The room was entirely empty,
but for the rubble and debris that had been pushed in by the explosion. Sargon
tried not to think about the body of his friend, Daniel Talbot, lying just a few
feet behind him under a massive boulder.

Having crossed the anteroom, he now stood at the
entrance to a narrow passageway, which led to what appeared to be another,
larger chamber. He trained the flashlight on the corridor and stared in wonder.
It, too, was constructed of baked brick, stretching straight before him a length
of some twenty or thirty feet.

He focused for a moment on the contours of the
passageway's entrance, marveling at its intricate brickwork. The entryway had a
horseshoe shape, often seen in later Moorish architecture but hitherto unknown
before about the fourth century
BC
.