Tucking a pencil into the dark knot of hair at the nape of her neck, Sydney Fox sighed, stretching to relieve the kinks from sitting too long at a desk. She was a teacher, yes, and she wouldn't trade the job for anything; but she was also a woman of action, and the relative inactivity of the past few weeks was beginning to wear on her nerves. She needed a quest, a diversion, something to get her mind off of the mundane.
She glanced again at her assistant, the young Englishman who had become her sidekick and best friend. He seemed perfectly content to confine himself to academia. Here in the halls of Trinity University he could easily pass for an American student, except for the giveaway accent. He looked much younger than he was, and to watch his sheepish grin you'd never guess he was fluent in five languages and a virtual fount of obscure facts. When it came to antiquities, it was an understatement to say that Nigel Bailey was an expert.
The jangle of the phone broke her reverie and she swooped up the receiver, silently praying for some reprieve.
Please let someone give me a lead on a missing relic, an artifact from a long-departed civilization, she thought. Hell, at this point send me one of Heyerdal's ancient alien connections!
The voice at the other end of the line was grim, the masculine anguish coming clearly over the phone despite the distance. "Sydney, it's Mike Van Loo. We... I need your help. Carol's gone."
Not the diversion I had in mind. Sydney knew Carol Van Loo. The woman was a world-class beauty and she unfortunately knew it. Carol was a woman who thought nothing of juggling four or five lovers simultaneously, all the while posing as a happily married woman. If she was gone, it was probably another fling. "Gone?" Sydney asked simply, not willing to give anything away.
"She's dead, Syd. We were working on a dig in Ethiopia, found the most incredibly beautiful artifacts, and our workers started dropping like flies. They'd become deathly ill, and from their symptoms we thought it might be the bubonic plague. It was truly awful. I wanted to shut down the dig until the epidemic passed, but Carol refused. We were working on a limited permit. We both knew if we stopped, even for a day, our permit could be revoked. Then she uncovered the globe and we knew... It wasn't the plague that was killing everyone, it was the Angel Sword."
Sydney sucked in her breath. "Damn! That was supposed to be the most cursed object in prehistory!"
Weariness tore at Mike's voice. "You might say that. When she found it, Carol was overjoyed, so much so that she hugged the thing to her chest. She died within minutes. The sword was removed from the site and transported to a quarantine area for analysis. We expected it to read radioactive. It wasn't. Sydney, there was nothing - nothing about it that could have caused this level of damage. But the scientists in the decon area are all dead, despite all the protective gear and all their precautions. We have to find the Pillars of Eden and send it home."
They talked back and forth for a few more minutes, and Sydney replaced the phone, tapping her fingers on the desktop. "Nigel," she announced at length, "Pack your suitcase. We're going on the mother of all relic hunts. We've got to find the Garden of Eden."
The plane touched down on a dirt runway so narrow Nigel swore he could hear the wings brush against the leaves surrounding them. He swallowed, fully cognizant of the risks in this particular job. Back on U.S. soil, he'd given Sydney his perfunctory speech about not going. It was a suicide romp, he'd declared with all the sensibility he could muster.
And just as predictably, Sydney had overruled his objections, though this time she'd thrown in a twist he hadn't expected.
She'd told him she was going alone.
In their two years together, that had never been a consideration, not unless she'd assigned him to something at least equally dangerous. Now, as they landed in Ethiopia, he was wondering if it was too late to plead insanity. He'd declared that he wasn't going to let her go alone, that she couldn't leave him behind. But here they were in a country where any white man was an automatic enemy, and a woman - even Sydney - could be killed for any infraction, real or perceived.
They stepped off the twin-engine Cessna into more oppressive heat. The small plane had theoretically been air-conditioned. It was a theory that wasn't backed up by reality. A jeep waited for them, with Mike Van Loo gesturing toward his friends. The tall blond man managed to befriend everyone he met, even in this region where color could get him killed. It wasn't a very reassuring thought, that their lives could well hang on the charms of this Nordic giant.
"The locals have gotten nervous. Can't say as I blame them. We've had a few more workers die and at least a dozen more are hanging by a thread. We have to get this thing back where it belongs. I have all the photographic evidence I need to recreate it for the museum. We measured every detail." The big anthropologist's contrabassoon boomed out over the creaks, groans, and rumble of the four wheeler as they bounced over deep ruts.
Nigel glanced nervously at the start contrasts in their surroundings. They were following a narrow stream bed, the six-ply tires navigating over and round sand, mud, and rock. Only a thin trickle of water glistened in the runnel. During the monsoon season, though, the trickle would swell into a broad lake that spread in a wide swath over the surrounding grasslands. Yet it wasn't their surroundings that unnerved Nigel, nor even the glimpse of a lioness lounging freely only a few yards away. It was the fact that Van Loo seemed indifferent to the fact that his wife had died before his eyes mere days earlier.
"Mike, you've told us how you found the sword, but you still haven't told us how we're supposed to find Eden. You said over the phone that you discovered a map?" Sydney's brusque professionalism suggested that she, too, found Mike Van Loo's cavalier demeanor less than desirable.
Bravo, Syd, thought the little Englishman.
Sydney continued, "The sword, if it's authentic, is thousands, maybe millions of years old. Nothing contemporary with it could possibly survive, not unless it's carved in stone. What makes you trust anything you found? It's probably a diversionary tactic."
The wind picked up, whisking dust and grit into their faces, and all three of them squinted at the sudden onslaught.
A chuckle from Mike sent an involuntary chill up Nigel's spine.
"But that's the beauty of it, Sydney. The map is written in stone. The crystal ball embedded in the hilt is actually a flawless crystal globe. Sydney, it's etched with microscopic precision. Of course we haven't yet been able to decipher most of the hieroglyphs that identify the various population centers. But the symbol for Eden is unmistakable. The pictograph for God is almost identical to the ancient Hebrew character for Jehovah."
The archaeological dig was marked by bodies moving slowly over the dusty landscape and a scattered dozen or so tents. No buildings broke the barren horizon. Here, the only greenery clung to the line of the stream, a trickle of precious moisture they'd left behind some half an hour earlier.
Native workers moved listlessly in the fading sun, their bodies glistening with sweat. There was little reaction as the four-wheeler rumbled into camp. Apparently it was a common enough sight that even new faces meant nothing special. There weren't many workers left. From what Mike said, more than three-quarters of his crew had deserted him after the discovery of the sword. Not surprising, all things considered.
"Where is the sword now?" Sydney asked absently as her dark eyes scanned the site.
"In my tent. Nobody will have bothered it," he assured her hastily. "They're afraid of it. It's gorgeous, though, Sydney. It's everything legends called it, and more."
The female relic hunter drew herself up at that statement, her eyebrow jumping in skepticism. "The legends say the sword was pure gold. If that's true, it's a safe bet that greed will overcome fear. That's all the more so for the workers who haven't already been frightened away."
She cast a quick glance back at her assistant. Nigel had lapsed into a pensive silence quite a while back. He wasn't exactly the strong silent type, and his reticence piqued her curiosity. They had worked together for a little over two years now, developing a sort of psychological rhythm. This was a sudden counterpoint in Nigel's normal beat, enough so to let her know something was churning in his brain. That thought brought a hint of a smile to her lips.
"Oh, don't worry," Mike added smoothly. "If superstition doesn't dissuade them, and the law doesn't do it, I have other means of convincing them it's not worth their lives and the lives of their families."
Sydney said nothing, filing away that uncomfortable bit of trivia in her mind. Like Nigel, she knew something was amiss with Mike Van Loo. His callous response to Carol's death was only a part of Sydney's concern. She didn't frighten easily, but Mike Van Loo scared her. The big man's eye devoured her when he looked at her. Whether it was sexual or something else, it sent a shiver up her spine each time it happened. This latest remark simply added another piece to the dark puzzle she was putting together.
"Aren't you afraid of the sword?" Nigel asked quietly.
Van Loo grinned. "Not at all. The legend says the sword won't hurt the man who returns it. It hasn't hurt me yet. I guess that's a sure sign that I'll be the first man to step foot in the Garden of Eden since the time of Adam and Eve."
"Yeah, maybe," mused Sydney. Her mind was beginning to fill in a few more blanks, and the picture taking shape wasn't a pretty one at all.