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"We've searched through all her belongings, sir. There are no other pictures or artifacts in her possession."
"You checked everywhere?" ONeill asked the staff sergeant reporting.
"Yes, sir. She did have a laptop computer in her luggage but it's encrypted. We have some people looking at it now, sir. According to them, sir, it has a security program on it that's pretty heavy-duty, sir. There's something on it she doesn't want anyone to see."
"Thank you, sergeant. Dismissed."
Daniel looked up from where he was seated, drumming his fingers loudly as a weak form of protest. "Don't you think that was a bit uncalled for?"
"Daniel-"
"We haven't even told her what she's here for! We've violated, like, I don't know, ten civil liberties in the past half hour!" Daniel gestured wildly. He calmed himself down and folded his arms tightly across his chest. "Look. It's not like I don't understand the necessity of a degree of secrecy, but we're going to have to tell her something, Jack."
"Let me see if I can impress upon you my view of this little imbroglio you've gotten us tangled in," Jack began in a tight, soft voice that Daniel recognized as one indicative of the colonel's rising temper. "One: Someone gets in touch with you, someone who by your own account, does not know you personally, or even vaguely for that matter, but manages to get a hold of you whereas most of the wide world believes that you're dead or untraceable."
"She explained that-"
"A-ah-ah! Let me finish! Secondly: she is in possession of Goa'uld stuff-"
"Artifacts."
"Whatever, which she shouldn't have in the first place, wherever the hell it was that she picked them up- which you will presently be in charge of finding out."
"You want me to interrogate--"
"Thirdly, she herself has a questionable and oddly mysterious background what with this recluse thing and the masquerading-as-a-guy thing"
"She never that was just a silly mix-up"
"Finishing here!" Jack yelled impatiently. "And lastly, and this is the one that you really oughta pay attention to: she and now subsequently- possibly, we, were being followed by a couple of shady characters who looked like they were carrying concealed."
"What? I didn't see anybody!" Daniel gaped for a few seconds.
"You weren't there, remember?" Jack said testily. "Where the hell did you go, anyway?"
"I stopped over at Brown to see if I could find her assistant."
"Wait- I thought she didn't teach anymore?"
"She's still considered adjunct faculty. She has an office, Jack. How many times do I have to tell you, Effington translations are a big deal. They're a modern standard."
"Ooh, how prestigious. I'm trembling in my socks. All this glory and yet no one can figure out that he's a she? Real brainiacs you are."
"If you're that good, you don't need to go on the lecture circuit," Daniel commented archly, pissed that Jack was unfortunately right. "Anyway, back to my main point: I caught the assistant just as she was leaving for the day. She didn't know anything about Effington's current research. Except for the Baegundorff thing."
"The what thing?"
"There was this German archaeologist who did very little of anything really in the 1920s, who just died and had his memoirs published. According to the assistant, the book is trash- recounts more of the man's romantic affairs with native women than it does of scholarly finds of any kind- though all of his were pretty minor at that."
"Please tell me this has a point."
"She brought it up at dinner. The assistant says she asks practically everyone about it ever since the damn thing got published a year ago. Almost obsessively so."
"And? So? Point being?"
"I think there's a connection."
"Between the dirty old man's memoirs and her Goa'uld rocks?" Jack shook his head and ran a hand across his tired face. "Whatever. That can be your headache. All I was saying is: the woman was being tailed. Thus, we are not the only ones who know that the good doctor found something she shouldn't have. And thus, comprising this facility."
"Oh boy," Daniel sighed heavily, crossing his arms.
Jack sighed. "I have to brief the General on what's going on. You," he pointed a stern finger at the archaeologist, "get down to the VIP room and find out what you can. I'll be there in a bit."
"I thought I was on medical leave."
"DANIEL. Your mess, remember?"
"Yeah, going," Daniel agreed worriedly, drawing his eyebrows together.
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"Dr. Effington, we meet again," Daniel said cheerfully, entering the room with two steaming hot cups of coffee.
She did not move from her seat on the opposite side of the room. "You've got a hell of nerve doing this to me," she stated coldly.
He deposited the cups onto a table and drew up a chair towards where she sat. Sitting down and clasping his hands in front of him, he attempted reconciliation. "Dr. Effington," he sighed her name sadly, "I realize you've been badly mistreated. And I am very sorry. But believe me when I tell you that none of this," he gestured to the nondescript surroundings of the room, "is a long-standing arrangement."
"Well I should hope not!"
"But it is unfortunately necessary."
"Necessary? To confine a citizen against her will, to have a military escort abscond with her person and her belongings to some remote outpost, to have her belongings rifled through (for I am sure that is what you are doing at present), all without legal representation or any kind of explanation at all?"
Daniel looked at her for a moment, then got up to retrieve a coffee cup. "Want one?"
"Coffee- no," she said in the same cold tone, glaring at him. "An explanation, yes."
He sighed again, and took up his former position, steeling himself with a couple large sips from his steaming cup. "There is only so much I can tell you before I get myself into more trouble than I'm already in. It has to do with the photos you gave me- the artifacts."
"I told you before--" she began to rifle through her purse. "I have papers right here, signed by the Director himself" She flung a series of papers at him spitefully. "In black and white."
He hastily collected the papers and with a slight nudge to his glasses, read over them quickly. Everything correct and above board. The pieces were hers. Antiquities of little value, stones and papyri His eyes grew wide as he read the document more closely.
"This says you own thirteen papyri. The photos only showed three," he said hollowly.
She raised an eyebrow and shrugged, looking away from him.
"Were the other nine like the three you showed me? Did they use the same system of pictographs?" he asked urgently.
She returned her gaze to him, her eyes narrowing as if she were attempting to read his face. Reluctantly, she nodded slowly. "Yes. They did." She seemed to expect a reply to this confirmation.
"And-where are the artifacts now?"
She huffily turned away again.
"Doctor Effington, this is extremely important. Where are these pieces?"
She glared at him peripherally. "Safe."
"O-kay," he sighed heavily. "Let's try something else. Where did you find them?"
She stared resolutely at the opposite side of the room, her lips tightening down upon each other, stubbornly refusing to speak.
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Daniel exited the VIP room to join Jack in the hallway.
"So, how goes it?"
"Outside of the odd fit of rage and the silent treatment, just fine," Daniel sighed wearily, flattening himself against the opposite wall and tilting his head all the way back.
"That well, huh?"
"My one consolation is that she hates you more than me," Daniel remarked, closing his eyes before tilting his head and rolling his shoulders experimentally. "What did the General say?"
"He's very concerned about the tail. Could be NID. If it had been them, they wouldn't have needed to follow us, they've of known we were headed back here. If it wasn't, then let's hope that their trail went dead. Does she," the colonel nodded his head toward the closed door, "know anything about 'em?"
"We haven't broached the subject as yet. Jack- there were more papyri. Thirteen in all," he handed over the papers she had produced to him.
"Oh, for cryin' out loud," Jack said, rifling the papers violently. "Okay, okay. Let's go," he pushed Daniel in the direction of the door.
"Hello again!" Jack said cheerily, following Daniel into the room. She scowled eloquently at him. "You know, if you do that often enough, your face'll freeze that way."
She muttered something in Mittlehocdeutch, which Daniel recognized as a particularly scathing insult to one's manhood. He opted not to translate it for Jack and merely cleared his throat loudly. "Okay. So we're all here."
"Right," reiterated Jack, clearing a slightly confused expression. "So then, you're going to answer some questions for us, and if you're nice, we'll answer some for you and then we'll all get to go home. Sound like a plan? Good," he said without waiting for comment, clapping his hands together loudly. "I'll go first, since I thought of the game. Where did you find the artifacts?"
"Egypt." Daniel was surprised to find that she answered him so readily.
"You're gonna need to be a bit more specific than that," Jack said sweetly.
"And you should have delineated that as one of the rules. My turn," she replied in the same saccharine tones. She turned to Doctor Jackson. "Are the pictographs on the papyri a narrative?"
Daniel looked to Jack who merely threw his hands up in the air. "No," he replied.
Her eyes grew wide. "But the coverstone-"
"A-ah-ah! My turn," Jack interrupted, mimicking her. "Where specifically in Egypt did you find them?"
"Specifically?" she asked, her lips curving into a mischievous smile. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" Jack repeated incredulously.
"I do not know the exact provenance, no," she continued, and decided to elaborate upon seeing Jack struggle with his temper. "But in the vicinity of Abusir. That's near Giza, where the pyramids are," she added patronizingly to Jack. She turned to Daniel again, her voice tinged with excitement. "The glyphs on the coverstone are different, aren't they? Is that a separate pictorial language then?"
"Yes. Why don't you know the exact provenance?" Daniel asked, taking Jack's turn for him.
"Because as I told you before, Doctor Jackson, I am not an archaeologist. I am a linguist. I was not the one who dug them up."
"Don't like getting your hands dirty, huh?" Jack interjected.
She ignored him. "By the time I was made aware of them, any traces of the dig site were wiped out by a sandstorm."
"Oh, how terribly convenient for you."
"Having, of course, both the abilities to foretell the future and control the weather, I knew that it would irritate you."
"If you didn't find them originally, then who did?" Daniel asked, ever the peacemaker.
"It's my turn and I wouldn't answer that question even if you did pull out the thumbscrews," she said indignantly. "Do you think I would want them to suffer the same hospitality?" she gestured at the sparse room. She was quiet for a moment, choosing her next words wisely. "Doctor Jackson, if you can read it, and I assume that you can, tell me what the coverstone says."
Daniel shifted his weight in his chair uncomfortably. "But- I don't remember without the photograph" he turned to Jack, questioningly. How the hell do I get out of this? he telepathed.
"Oh, I've had enough of this game," he said bitterly.
"You thought of it," she countered dryly.
"Look, obviously, you and Daniel can play twenty questions on your own time and have lots of fun doing so. I have an issue of security to deal with here. Now you can talk to me or to Daniel, but either way you're going to tell us everything you know about those pieces, where they've been, who you've told about them, EVERYTHING, you got it?"
"You are really the most smug, presumptuous-"
"Listen, lady! When I say security, I'm not just talking about my health! I'm talking about yours too," he pulled a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his bomber jacket. It was a printout of the feed from the airport security cameras, showing two slightly blurry and sinister countenances. He unfolded it and thrust it into her hands.
"Recognize either one of them?"
She nodded no, a confused crease appearing across her forehead.
"Well, you should. They were following you back at the airport and were it not for the evasive tactics of yours truly, they would have followed you here. You're welcome, by the way."
She seemed startled and glanced down again at the paper, slightly shaking in her grasp. "I-I don't I don't know who these men are," she said in a choked voice. She closed her eyes tightly for a moment, and shook her head. "I don't understand. You would have me believe that I don't understand what's this what's going on."
"Neither do we, exactly," said Daniel in a soft voice. "That's why we need you to cooperate with us. Please, Doctor Effington. I promise you that I will translate the coverstone for you," he vowed, eyeing Jack warily out of the corner of his eye, "if you just tell us what we need to know."
She sat with her head in her hands for a minute that seemed like a lifetime. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay," she reiterated, lifting her head to make a clearer response. "Is that offer of coffee still available?"
"Yeah, sure," Daniel said, and pulled up his chair again after passing it over to her.
She took a few grateful sips and shuddered. Licking her lips, her gaze darted between the two men, both watching her with intent and grim countenances.
"I first saw the pieces roughly two years ago. I was in Egypt, on personal matters, and was visiting a friend. No, I'm not going to tell you whom- this is on a no-name basis. Only if, and only if, you believe their personal safety could be threatened, will I give you names, understood? Good. My friend had dug up the pieces with his son- his wife asked me to take a look at them as a favor." She shook her head slowly, staring into space with a faraway look. "I had never seen anything like them"
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