Covenant (3 page)

The Bedouin glanced at the blackened void above, now shimmering with legions of stars.

“We should leave the camp. It’s dangerous to be out here at night.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Sheviz whispered reverentially, ignoring him. “This is going to change everything, rewrite the history books. We’re never going to look at ourselves the same way again.”

“We’re never going to look at anything again if we’re arrested by Israel,” Ahmed pointed out patiently. “We should return to Be’er Sheva and maybe come back tomorrow.”

“No way,” Lucy snapped. “We need to complete the excavation. Do you understand what this is? It shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither should we. You’re digging in a restricted military area.”

“This is more important than Israel’s damned restrictions.”

Ahmed struggled for words.

“Those remains have been here for seven thousand years; they’re not going to get up and run off any time soon.”

“This could be the most important scientific discovery of all time,” Lucy said.

“Perhaps,
sadiqati,
but I don’t want to be the next set of bones you dig up out here. Your camp lights are visible for miles. How long do you think it will be before Israeli soldiers notice them, or maybe even insurgents from across the Sinai?”

Before Ahmed could stop her, Lucy reached out and slid his rifle from his shoulder.

“Fine, we’ll see you back in Be’er Sheva in two days if you’re worried about guerrillas or a prison cell.”

Ahmed hadn’t expected such a thinly veiled challenge to both his authority as a guide and his courage as a man. He straightened his posture a little.

“As you say, I would not make a big deal out of nothing.”

Lucy tilted her head in acknowledgment. “Neither would we.”

Ahmed sighed heavily, shaking his head.

“I’ll radio the university from the jeep and tell them that you are safe.” He gestured to the rifle. “Six rounds. I’ll come back with supplies in the morning.
Ma’assalama.
”

Ahmed turned and strode away into the darkness, pursued by Lucy’s mysterious words.
It’s not human.
A profound thought crossed Ahmed’s mind. We are not alone in the universe. It occurred to him that the remains could be worth a fortune. He was attempting to calculate how much when a scream shattered the silence of the night behind him.

Ahmed whirled. “Lucy?”

The air burst out of Ahmed’s lungs as the weight of a man slammed into him and he fell hard to the unforgiving earth. He rolled onto his back and lashed out with one foot toward the silhouette of a man against the starlight above, slamming him hard in the groin. The man gagged and staggered backward as Ahmed scrambled to his feet.

The Bedouin lunged toward his attacker, but before he could reach him something heavy cracked across the back of his head and plunged him into a deep and silent blackness.

COOK COUNTY JAIL

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

AUGUST 24

T
he pain woke him.

He lay motionless as a throbbing began to grind around the interior of his skull. His eyes ached as though needles were being driven into his retina, bolts of nausea churning through his stomach to the labored rhythm of his heart.

Open your damned eyes.

A white wall, defaced by the remedial scrawlings of occupants gouged into the brickwork over countless decades. The creeping odors of stale food, sweat, and unflushed latrines caressed his senses as they reluctantly reconnected themselves, revealing forgotten aches and injuries. He breathed a long and weary sigh and tried to free fall back into the dreamy oblivion of sleep.

“Warner. Ethan!”

He rolled over on the hard bench to see a holding cell where about thirty men dressed in orange Department of Correction coveralls, most of them angry young gang hoods, watched him suspiciously. Something heavy clanged against the cell’s steel black gates loudly enough to send spasms of agony shooting through his brain.

“Yeah?” he uttered in a dry rasp.

The young bloods remained silent, but the portly face of a white-shirted prison officer sneered in at him from beyond the gates.

“Get off your ass and over here.”

Keys rattled as the door opened and Ethan Warner struggled to his feet. The floor heaved beneath him as fresh waves of pain scraped across his eyeballs, and he steadied himself with one hand against the wall before shuffling to the gates.

“But you haven’t served breakfast yet,” he said as he yawned.

The guard reached out and grabbed Ethan’s arm in one chunky hand.

“You’re a born comedian, Warner.”

The guard offered him no mercy, prodding him out of the cell and down a corridor lined with more identical cells holding hundreds of felons. Muffled voices called out a mixture of greetings, insults, and threats. Having spent overnight in holding, Ethan knew that he would now be processed and given his own Department of Correction clothing: standard procedure, along with the strip search and the questions.

The guard guided him to the front desk, where a young cop with tightly bobbed blond hair looked up at him with a disapproving gaze.

“Warner, Ethan. Public disorder. Again,” the guard said from behind him.

Ethan offered her what he hoped was his best smile. “Morning, Lizzie, how you doin’?”

Lizzie rolled her eyes, placing a piece of paper on the desk before her and grabbing a sealed plastic bag filled with loose change, a watch, and a packet of Lucky Strikes.

“Your belongings, Mr. Warner. Sign here.”

Ethan looked down, seeing an unfamiliar form before him.

“Signature bond?” he asked, looking up at Lizzie.

“Anonymous,” Lizzie said without interest. “Somebody obviously cares what happens to you, even if you don’t.”

Ethan reached down and scrawled something approximating his signature on the slip of paper. Lizzie handed him the plastic bag. As Ethan took it from her she gripped his wrist, catching his gaze.

“Get a grip on yourself, for God’s sake.”

The guard gave him a shove in the direction of another set of heavy-looking doors, and moments later Ethan was propelled through them and out into the cool morning air. After passing through two sets of security gates a bustling street greeted him, vehicles thundering past and cloaking him in clouds of exhaust fumes as the jail gates slammed shut behind him.

Ethan turned and trudged wearily down the street, ignoring the traffic and the hordes of people passing him by. He walked by a shop window and saw his reflection staring back at him, a cut beneath his left eye. He vaguely recalled arguing with someone in the street the previous night after drinking perhaps a little too much: a running volley of shouts, threats, and then blows as he’d punched someone, only to find himself flat on his back moments later.

Then the flashing lights and sirens, more shouting.

Then the booking and the jail.

Just another day. Nothing matters.

Ethan continued on his unsteady way, grabbing the “L” elevated train and following the Red Line south until he reached 47th at Fuller Park, getting off and walking toward a soaring housing project. Cars parked bumper to bumper lined the sidewalk of West 42nd Place, the project that had been his home for the past six months. An old man sitting outside with a cane greeted him with a broken-toothed smile as he walked inside.

As he reached his apartment door he saw a broad bouquet of carnations propped against the wall, the petals battered and wilting with age. Ethan sent them ritually once a year, every year, and they were ritually returned unopened within a few days. He sighed and grabbed the drooping bouquet. The damned things were an expense he could ill afford, and he wondered again why he sent them at all.

If you’ve got nothing, then nothing matters.

Ethan closed his eyes, his fists clenching as a wave of despair rose up from somewhere deep within him. He inhaled and struggled against an unyielding tide of hopelessness, scrambled above it, and stamped it back down into some deep place where it could no longer bother him.
Nothing to worry about. Nothing matters.
He stood in silence as the panic receded, breathing alone in the center of his universe, and for a brief instant he was asleep on his feet.

And then he heard the sound coming from within his apartment. Ethan’s eyes flicked open, his senses suddenly hyper-alert. Footsteps, crossing softly across his living room. Heavy enough to be male. Left to right. Right to left. Ethan glanced down at the door lock and saw a few tiny bright scratches against the dull steel of the barrel.

His heart skipped a beat and a hot flush tingled uncomfortably across his skin.

Without conscious thought Ethan set the flowers down in the corridor and slipped his key from his pocket, taking a deep breath before sliding it into the lock, turning it, and then hurling himself through the doorway.

E
than lunged at the form of a man standing in the center of the apartment, catching a brief glimpse of a dark-blue suit and gray hair as he swung a fist toward the man’s face.

A knife-edged hand shot into Ethan’s view with practiced fluidity to swat his punch aside into empty air, and he felt a hard palm thump into his shoulder and propel him across the apartment. Ethan staggered off balance as the man stepped neatly aside from his charge.

“You’re getting sloppy, Ethan.”

The old man lowered his guard and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the apartment door. “And your security isn’t up to much. Lucky I was here, in case somebody broke in.”

“You could have just called, Doug,” Ethan muttered, regaining his balance and ignoring the old man’s wry smile.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Ethan retraced his steps and grabbed the bouquet from the corridor outside before closing the door.

Doug Jarvis glanced curiously at the decaying flowers in Ethan’s hand.

“The bail?” Ethan asked before the old man could say anything, and was rewarded with a curt nod as Jarvis glanced around at the apartment.

A small couch, a coffee table, and a television that Ethan hadn’t turned on in a month occupied the uncluttered room. The coffee table was stacked with library books.

“How have you been, son?” Jarvis asked.

Ethan had met Doug Jarvis when the old man had been captain of a 9th Marine Corps platoon. Ethan had himself served with pride as a second lieutenant in the United States Marines after finishing college, leading a provisional rifle platoon with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit during Operation Enduring Freedom before taking up employment as a war correspondent. Despite the advice he’d been given not to resign his commission, Ethan had been driven by a desire to document the horror of war and to expose the injustices he had witnessed, to be more than just a foot soldier. He had been embedded with Jarvis’s unit in Fallujah during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and had obtained footage of the war that had helped secure his career as a correspondent. They had gone their separate ways after that, maintaining only occasional contact since. The last he’d heard, Jarvis was working for the Department of Defense or something.

“I’m getting by.”

“Sure you are.”

Ethan decided not to respond and gestured to the couch, acutely aware of his meager surroundings. Jarvis removed his jacket and sat down as Ethan discreetly tossed the bouquet out of sight into the kitchen.

“So, what brings you here, Doug?”

“There are some people from the Defense Intelligence Agency who want to talk to you.”

The DIA, that was it. “Why would they want to talk to me?”

“Because I recommended you. I need you to come with me.”

Ethan felt another wave of anxiety flood his nervous system. “What the hell’s going on?”

“How long have we known each other, Ethan?”

“Twenty years, give or take.”

“Two decades,” Jarvis agreed, and then hesitated, rubbing his temples. “Son, I know what you went through in Palestine, but so does the department, and it’s why they want to talk to you. They’re confident that you’re the man for the job, enough to have fronted your bail on my say-so.”