The War Cloud (29 page)

“You have to admit it, Conrad,” she said. “This summit could have been a runway.”

Conrad smiled. She was trying to get a rise out of him. Since the carvings could only be seen from the air, some of his wacky archeologist rivals had suggested that the ancient Nazcans had machines that could fly, and that the particular mount on which he and Mercedes stood was once a landing strip for alien spaceships. He wouldn’t mind one showing up about now to take him away from Mercedes and the Peruvians. But he needed her. The show was all he had left to fund his research, and she was his only line of credit.

Conrad said, “I suppose it’s not enough for me to suggest that aliens who could travel across the stars probably didn’t need airstrips?”

“No.”

Conrad sighed. It was hard enough for him to contend with the sands of time, foreign governments and goofball theories in his quest for the origins of human civilization without ancient astronauts eroding what little respect he had left in the academic community.

At one time Conrad was a groundbreaking, postmodern archeologist. His deconstructionist philosophy was that ancient ruins weren’t nearly so important as the information they conveyed about their builders. Such a stand ran against the self-righteous trend toward “preservation” in archeology, which in Conrad’s mind was code for “tourism” and the dollars it brought. He became a maverick in the press, a source of bitter jealousy among his peers, and a thorn in the side of Near East and South American countries who laid claims to the world’s greatest archeological treasures.

Then one day he unearthed dozens of Israelite dwellings from the 12
^th
century B.C. near Luxor in Egypt that offered the first physical proof for the biblical account of the Exodus. But the official position of the Egyptian government was that their ancient forefathers never used Hebrew slaves to build the pyramids. Moreover, only the Egyptian government had the right to announce discoveries to the media. Conrad didn’t discuss his find with them before talking to the press, thus violating a contract that every archeologist working in Egypt had to sign before starting a dig. The head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities called him “a stupid, lazy jerk” and banned him forever from Egypt.

Suddenly, the tables had turned and Conrad the iconoclast had become Conrad the preservationist, demanding international protection for his “slave city.” By the time Egypt allowed camera crews to the site, however, the crumbling foundations of the Israelite dwellings had been bulldozed into oblivion to make way for a military installation. There was nothing left to preserve, only a story nobody believed and a reputation in tatters.

Now he was worse off than ever. Stripped of his stature. Strapped for cas. In the arms of Mercedes and her crazy reality TV show that peddled entertainment, not archeology, to the masses. He couldn’t go back to Egypt, and soon the same would be said of Peru and Bolivia and a growing number of other countries. Only the hard discovery of humanity’s “Mother Culture” could rescue him from ancient astronauts and this purgatory of cheap documentaries and even cheaper flings.

Concern clouded Mercedes’ face. “We could blow a whole day just getting a crew up here for your stand-up,” she said, brooding for a moment before her face suddenly brightened. “Much better to stick with an aerial from the Cessna and a voice-over.”

Conrad said, “That kind of defeats the purpose, Mercedes.”

She shot him a quizzical glance. “What are you talking about?”

“I see it’s time we perform a sacred ritual,” he told her, taking her hand. “One that will unleash a revelation.”

Conrad dropped to his knees, pulling her down next to him. Mercedes’ eyes widened in expectation. “Do as I do, and behold a great mystery.”

Mercedes leaned next to him.

“Dig your fingers into the dirt.”

They slowly dug their fingers through the hot, black volcanic pebbles into the cool and moist yellow clay beneath.

“This in your script?” she asked. “It’s good.”

“Just rub the clay between your fingers.”

She did, and then lifted a small clump to her nostrils and smelled it as if to experience some cosmic epiphany.

“There you go,” he told her.

A look of confusion crossed her face. “That’s it?”

“Don’t you see?” he asked. “This ground is too soft for the landing of wheeled aircraft.” He smiled at her in triumph. “So much for your fantasies of ancient astronauts.”

He should have known his simple, scientific test wouldn’t go over well with her. Her eyes turned into steely blue slits of rage. He had seen the transformation before. That’s how she got to where she was in TV, that and her father’s money.

“The show needs you, Conrad,” she said. “You think differently than others. And you’ve got credentials. Or had them anyway. You’re a 21
^st
century astro-archeologist, or whatever the hell you are. Don’t piss it away. I want to keep you on. But I’m under pressure to deliver ratings. So if you don’t play ball, I’ll get some toothy celebrity who plays an archeologist on TV to take your place.”

“Meaning?”

“Give the freaks who are watching what they want.”

“Ancient astronauts?”

A serene smile broke across her baby face as she adopted a fawning, adoring gaze. He groaned inwardly.

“Professor Yeats,” she gushed, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him on the m

Unable to extract himself, or come up for air, he kissed her back contemptuously, feeling her body respond to his own self-hatred. Obviously what the French dramatist Moliere said about playwrights applied to archeologists as well. He was the prostitute here. He started out doing it for himself, then for a few friends and universities. Hell, he might as well get paid for it.

Suddenly the wind picked up and Mercedes’ ponytail slapped him across the face. A gleaming metallic object hovered in the sky. He shaded his eyes and recognized the shape of a Black Hawk military chopper fitted with sidemounted machine guns.

Mercedes followed his gaze and frowned. “What is it?”

“Trouble.”

Conrad reached behind her and pulled out a Glock 9mm automatic pistol from her backpack. Mercedes’ eyes grew wide and said, “You sent me through customs with that?”

“Nah, I bought it in Lima the other day.” He pulled out a loaded clip from his belt pack and rammed it into the butt of the pistol. He tucked the gun behind his belt. “I’ll do the talking.”

Mercedes, speechless, nodded.

The chopper descended, the wind from its blades kicking up red dust as it touched down. The door slid open, and six U.S. Special Forces soldiers in green field uniforms stepped down onto the summit and secured the area before a lanky young officer in a blue USAF flightsuit clanked down the metal steps to the ground and walked up to Conrad.

“Doctor Yeats?” the officer said.

Conrad looked the officer over. He appeared to be about his own age, a slim, easy-going man Conrad had seen somewhere before. He also wore a single black leather glove on his left hand. “Who wants to know?”

“NASA, sir. I’m Commander Lundstrom. I work for your father, General Yeats.”

Conrad stiffened. “What does he want?”

“The general needs your opinion on a matter of vital interest to the national security.”

“I’m sure he does, Commander, but the national interest and my own are two different things.”

“Not this time, Doctor Yeats. I understand you’re
persona non grata
at the University of Arizona. And in case you hadn’t noticed, an armed goon squad is climbing up that cliff. You can come with me, or you could spend a few weeks in a Peruvian jail cell.”

“So you’re saying I can either see my father or go to jail? I’ll have to think about it.”

“Think about this,” Lundstrom said. “Your little friend here might not want to bail you out of jail when she discovers you’ve been using her to smuggle a stolen Egyptian artifact into the country so you can pawn it off to a wanted South American drug lord.”

“Another lie coming out of Luxor. Where did I allegedly find this artifact?”

“The Egyptians say you looted it from the National Museum of Baghdad when the city fell to invading American forces during the Iraq war. They got the Iraqis to confirm it. At least that’s what’re telling the Peruvians, Bolivians and anybody else who will listen.”

Conrad tried to muffle his rage at the Egyptians even as he calculated the chances of Mercedes letting him rot in prison. He concluded she’d probably let the guards have a few whacks at him before bailing him out.

“Very nice,” Conrad told Lundstrom. “But all the same I’m going to have to pass up this wonderful opportunity.” Conrad offered his hand to wish Lundstrom a hearty goodbye.

But the commander didn’t budge. “There’s more, Doctor Yeats,” he said. “We’ve found what you’ve spent your whole life looking for.”

Conrad looked him in the eye. “My biological parents?”

“Next best thing. You’ll be briefed when we get there.”

“’There’ almost got me killed last time, Commander. Look, why don’t you find somebody else?”

“We tried.” Lundstrom paused, letting the reality sink in that Conrad wasn’t at the top of anybody’s list these days. “But apparently Dr. Serghetti has already been retained by another organization to investigate this matter.”

“Serena?”

Lundstrom nodded.

Conrad’s mind raced through a number of scenarios, all of them entirely unpleasant and utterly thrilling at the same time. Just hearing her name made him come alive. And the thought that he and Serena and his father and the distinct worlds each of them inhabited would for the first time collide made him wonder if the space-time continuum could handle it or if the universe itself would explode.

“This isn’t going to end well, Commander, is it?”

“Probably not. But General Yeats is waiting.”

“Give me a minute.”

Conrad turned and walked back to Mercedes, who had been watching the exchange with a furrowed brow, and kissed her. “I’m sorry, baby. But I’m going to have to go.”

“Go?” she said. “Go where?”

“To visit a real ancient astronaut.”

Conrad reached into her pack again and took out a gold Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian statuette of Ramses II, who was pharaoh during the alleged Exodus. He had found it in the slave city, and it was the one thing left in his life that proved he wasn’t insane. He gave it to Mercedes.

“Now you never knew where this came from, just in case the nice gentlemen coming over the ledge ask you when they escort you back to Lima.”

Mercedes’ mouth dropped as Conrad and Lundstrom climbed into the Black Hawk. The door shut and the military chopper lifted up and away.

Conrad looked down at the shrinking plateau. By the time he remembered to wave good-bye to Mercedes, the militia men had reached the summit and the chopper was over the side of a mountain.

Conrad turned to Lundstrom. “So what on earth does my father want with me

“It’s where on earth,” said Lundstrom, throwing him a white polar “freezer” suit. “Catch.”