"Ah, but the men who were there, Ms. Creed," Bostitch said,
"they saw. And they
know
."
"None of you was on this expedition?" she asked.
"Unfortunately, no," Bostitch said.
"And can I talk with anybody who was?"
"Unfortunately," Taitt said, the young lawyer coming out, "it
would be inadvisable at this time."
Meaning, somewhere along the way they had stepped on serious toes, she figured.
And they were hiding out. Or…worse? They played for keeps in that part of the
world. They always had. It was something she suspected U.S. policymakers, even many of their grunts on the ground, failed to really appreciate.
It was a game Annja was far too familiar with. She'd played for such stakes
before. She didn't doubt she would again.
But not for a wild-goose chase like this.
"Gentlemen," she said, "thank you for a wonderful dinner. And
now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get home. I got an early start this
morning."
That was true. And while the flight from Montreal to New York had been anything
but lengthy the attendant hassles and stresses of air travel constituted a sort
of irreducible minimum. She always thought so-called "security"
measures—which would make any serious-minded terrorist bust out
laughing—couldn't get more intrusive or obnoxious. Any kind of air travel these
days was exhausting.
She rose. Larry Taitt stood up hastily, knocking his chair over. "You mean
you won't do it?" he said in alarm, turning and fumbling to set the chair
back up.
"That's exactly what she means," Baron said evenly.
"Are you sure you won't consider it, Ms. Creed?" Bostitch said, also
standing up politely, if with less attendant melodrama. "It's the
opportunity of a lifetime."
"That's what I'm afraid of," she said.
Annja's cell phone started
ringing as she closed the door to her loft apartment behind her. As she
fastened the various bolts, safety bars and locks with one hand she took the
phone out with the other and checked who was calling.
"Doug Morrell," she said aloud. "
That
can't be
good." Morrell was the boy wonder producer of the television show she
worked for. Although she genuinely liked Doug, he could be trying at the best
of times.
Despite her better judgment she held the phone to her ear.
"Hello?" Once again, her curiosity had the better of her. Damn it
anyway.
"Annja?"
"Did you forget who you were calling, Doug? Or did you hit the wrong
speed-dial button again?"
"Huh? What?"
"Never mind. What do you want, Doug? It's late."
"If you had any kind of social life the evening would just be
starting."
"You're starting to sound like a nagging mother, Doug. What is it?"
"I'm doing you a favor here, sweetheart. You should thank me."
"Maybe if I knew what it was."
"Something's come down from Corporate. Something hot."
"You know what they say rolls downhill, Doug. It's pretty hot sometimes,
too."
"Annja, just, like, listen for a change." This from Doug, who had the
attention span of one of those little midges that live for six hours.
"This is actually a
good
idea. Not like those other ones. Have you
ever heard of Mount Ararat?"
She suddenly teetered over to her sofa. The end nearer the door was stacked
with archaeological journals and printouts of recently submitted papers. Her
legs were suddenly so shaky she sat right on top of the foot-high pile.
"Yes. I've heard of Ararat."
"So, like, it turns out Noah's Ark is on top of the freaking mountain. Who
knew?"
Anyone who watches our rival cable networks, for starters, she thought.
"Doug, we don't know it's Noah's Ark. For one thing, the mountain's
seventeen thousand feet high."
"Really? That's a lot of rain. Anyway, there's an expedition headed up it.
Nothing to worry about, it's an American operation all the way, not run by any
people from Madagascar or wherever. You'd be their pet archaeologist. You'd
also have a team from the show along to shoot everything. Do you hear what I'm
saying, here, Annja? You're working for them and us. You're double-dipping, all
open and aboveboard."
"Wow," Annja said.
"Try to muster some excitement, here. Because wait, there's more. If the
suits decide to run with this you will be talent and producer for that episode.
You, in person. Annja Creed."
That actually penetrated her fog of dismay and incipient paranoia. "You're
kidding!" It meant that the show's coverage might actually feature her
real archaeology instead of the entertainment bits that usually won out.
"Not at all, kiddo. Not at all. Focus groups say America's getting tired of the superficial. They want their infotainment shows to be more
serious."
"Do they, now?"
"So what do you say? Yes?"
"I say I'm tired, Doug. This is a lot to heap on my plate. Let me sleep on
it, at least."
"What's to think about?"
"Plenty," she said grimly. "Look, Doug. Thank you. I really,
really appreciate that you're looking out for me. But I need to think about
it."
"Don't think about it too long, babe. You know network. It's got the
attention span of a hyperthyroid weasel."
She broke the connection, in case he had any further blandishments to offer. He
really did mean well, in his air-headed way.
Her shoulders slumped. She tossed the phone on the sofa and rubbed her face
with her hands.
"Is something else going on here?" she said to the half-lit room.
"Am I getting paranoid?"
And the little voice in her head answered, Is it paranoid when they really are
out to get you?
* * *
ANNJA HEADED OUT OF the
television studio building into warm autumn sunlight. Some dried leaves
skittered along the steps.
It was a little after one. She had two full hours for lunch before she was due
back for a script conference for
Chasing History's Monsters
on
star-children—hybrids between creatures from the stars, which was an old-time
way of saying aliens, and men. Some people claimed they were spoken of in
legends from all over the world. Annja was almost as skeptical of that claim as
she was of the alien-human hybrid thing itself. She knew that her show was
fluff but it paid well and allowed her to do a lot of real archaeology that
she'd never have the time or money for otherwise. And now Doug was promising to
let her shape an episode entirely her way. He'd been hounding her all morning
to accept the Noah's Ark expedition. It seemed Charlie Bostitch was throwing
his weight and his money around and he really wanted Annja on his team.
Annja had no idea what she was going to do for lunch. But after a morning of
Doug and his antics she just had to get away from the show and everything
connected to it for a while. Even if she just walked aimlessly the whole time.
Actually, even if she stood banging her forehead against the corner of a
building.
Her phone rang. She pulled it from its carrier. The number was unfamiliar. She
thumbed Answer anyway. What the hey? She was an adventuress, wasn't she?
"Ms. Creed?" asked a man in a slightly Middle Eastern accent.
"Yes," she said in a neutral tone. Irrationally she started flicking
her eyes all around, studying the slow-moving tourist swarms and the busy
locals bustling past them with their usual welcoming snarls and occasional
shouted obscenities. If anyone was stalking her they probably wouldn't need to
resort to a trick like dialing her number and seeing who answered. But she also
had a well-honed aversion to taking things for granted.
"I hope you will forgive me bothering you. This is Levi."
"Levi?"
"Rabbi Leibowitz. I met you last night at dinner at the Penthouse."
"Oh. Yes. Rabbi. How are you?" Politeness, her default mode, took
over. Very few people, herself definitely included, thought of her as a
Southerner, although to all practical purposes she was, having been raised in New Orleans. She was a New Yorker through and through. She was most particularly not a
Southern belle. But the sisters at the orphanage had brought her up to be
polite, and on the whole, she was pleased with that. Unlike a great many other
elements of her upbringing.
"Oh, I'm fine, fine, Ms. Creed. And I'm terribly sorry if I or my
associates offended you last night."
"No. I wouldn't say
offended
is the word." She could think of
plenty others. But gratuitous meanness didn't form a major component of her
personality. She liked to think, anyway. Besides, there was something about the
rabbi's halting voice that struck a chord inside her. A quality of
vulnerability. Of innocence.
"But not too favorably impressed."
"Well…not with your associates. To be perfectly candid with you, Rabbi
Leibowitz, I hate to think of myself as giving in to guilt by association. That
said—given that you chose to surround yourself with such associates, and their
project—I formed a certain impression of you. I apologize if I judged you
unfairly. I guess I'm as subject to human frailties as anybody."
He laughed. "Oh, don't say that, Ms. Creed. And please don't judge the men
you met with me last night too harshly. They are good men, whatever their enthusiasms."
"It's good men I've learned to fear most in the world, Rabbi. Especially
the enthusiastic ones. Look, I'm willing to admit I may have judged you too
hastily. I apologize for that. Now, if you'll excuse me—"
"Please, Ms. Creed." His voice pulsed with urgency. "Hear me
out. I'm not really concerned…with your opinion of me. But I think it would be
a great tragedy if you passed on participating in this project without hearing
certain aspects of it that, that maybe got glossed over last night. And I'd
like to ask you, as a favor to me, even though you certainly don't owe me
anything, if you would at least examine my credentials online. I'm not in fact
a colleague of yours, strictly speaking—I'm no archaeologist, naked or
otherwise."
She had to laugh at that.
"I am an antiquarian, a historian, a scholar of ancient languages. I
believe this expedition could add significantly to the sum of human historical
and cultural knowledge."
"Let me ask you flat out," she said. "Do you believe in the
literal truth of Genesis?"
His laugh sounded incredulous. A lot like she figured hers would have sounded
if faced with the same question. "Oh, certainly not, Ms. Creed. Very few
educated Jews today believe any such thing. Certainly few serious scholars, of
which I flatter myself I'm one. But I ask, does that mean there cannot be
something there, on that frightening mountain surrounded by very frightening
people, that could still be worth unearthing?"
She felt her pulse quickening. The old atavistic joy of the hunt. Sneaking into
eastern Turkey, in the heart of a war zone, and climbing to a mountain height
where no official expedition had been allowed—it was hard to resist a challenge
like that.
"All right, Rabbi," she said. "I haven't bought into this yet.
But I gather you have a pitch for me. I'm willing to hear it. All right?"
"Oh, that's wonderful, Ms. Creed. Thank you so much. Are you free for
lunch?"
* * *
RIGHT AROUND A CORNER FROM the
television studio was a fancy coffee shop of a sort she usually avoided, mostly
because they exuded a self-satisfied smugness that just scraped right up her
spine. She bought a cup of coffee for a price outrageous even in the Big Apple,
she thought as she walked away from the counter.
No seats were available in the crowded shop but there was some counter space by
the window where she could unlimber her notebook computer and avail herself of
their "free" Wi-Fi—although to her mind that was what she paid the
steep coffee tariff for.
She ran
Leibowitz, Rabbi Levi
through Google. She would have done it the
night before if she'd thought she'd ever have any more dealings with him. But
when she took her leave of him and his companions nothing had been farther from
her intent.
As soon as the search results began to pop up she wondered if maybe she should
have checked after all. Interesting, he looks legit, she thought.
She had been inclined to dismiss him as some kind of right-wing Israeli nut of
the sort who tended to run with a certain breed of U.S. militarists—ones like
Baron and Bostitch. Instead, she found, he was a homeboy of hers,
Brooklyn-based, a high-level genius making his name in the world as a leading
authority on ancient Middle Eastern languages and cultures. If not, as he
confessed, precisely a colleague of hers, he was a heavyweight in a closely
related discipline. Because their areas of specialization—his the ancient
Middle East, hers Renaissance Europe—lay so far apart, she'd never come across
his name before.
It did surprise her that she hadn't seen his name on any of the fringe
archaeology newsgroups she followed when time and energy allowed. The possible
existence of Noah's Ark, or really
any
significant artifacts on the
perpetually frozen top of a mountain, was right in the zone for discussion in
those groups.
* * *
"I HOPE I'M NOT
LATE," Levi said, sliding into a chair across from her.
They were in a Cantonese restaurant tucked away on Mott Street above Canal, in
a part of Chinatown where the locals still seemed successfully to be resisting
the inroads of the hipsters. The lunch crush had mostly eased. The restaurant
smelled of hot oil and a touch of spice. The soft gurgle of a fountain mostly
drowned out the conversations around them.
"Not at all, Rabbi," she told him. "I just like to get to a
place early."
So I can get a look at the party I'm meeting as he approaches, see if he's
acting strangely or has unexpected company, she thought. And so I have the best
possible chance of getting a seat away from the windows and doors, so I'm
harder to spot from the street. She'd made a practice of all of those things
long since inheriting the sword had put her in almost constant danger.
He smiled cheerfully at her. "Try the wonton soup," he said.
"It's to die for."
"Sounds good. I haven't been here before. It smells good, though. I'm
always looking for a good new Chinese place."
A tall, young waiter took their orders. They ordered the soup; Leibowitz
specified "no noodles," but she let it go. He ordered duck braised in
soy sauce. Annja went for the crispy bean curd stuffed with chopped shrimp.
When the waiter left he smiled shyly at her. "I always order it without
noodles," he said. "You get lots more wontons that way."
"Good thinking," Annja said.
"Are you sure you're not Jewish, Ms. Creed?" Leibowitz asked. The
waiter returned and poured them each a cup of steaming green tea. "After
all, if there's one characteristic the Chosen People have in common, it's love
of Chinese food."
"Not that I know of. In my case it's more just a New York thing."
She sipped tea. The warmth felt welcome after the day's chill. And green tea
always felt nourishing to her somehow. Although in this case that mainly served
to remind her how famished she was.
"Although I guess I could be part Jewish," she added.
The truth was, she didn't know much about her lineage. Her parents had died
when she was very young, leaving her with no surviving family and little by way
of family records or possessions. None that had ever come Annja's way, in any
case.
"Please don't be put off by Charlie and Leif and their naive
enthusiasms," Leibowitz said. "They mean well, but—" He
shrugged. "I don't think they really understand the concept of
intellectual rigor."
"Probably not," Annja said. "It gets pretty annoying, sometimes,
when amateurs get out of their depth with the science, and start talking about
things they don't really understand."
He nodded vigorously. "That's so true. It's the same with
scholarship—especially ancient languages. And this whole Biblical-literalness
thing—" He had got himself worked up enough to be so flustered he couldn't
continue, but could only wag his head like a dog in denial.
He's definitely a nerd, she thought. Also a bit of a fanatic. But not the sort
of fanatic she'd been afraid he was at first. He was clearly fanatical on his
subject: ancient languages and cultures.
Not like that's a bad thing, she thought.
"So you were saying you don't believe in Biblical inerrancy."
"Oh, of course not, Ms. Creed. Stories such as the Garden of Eden and the
Flood are
allegories
. They were written by ancient mystics who never
intended for them to be taken as factual accounts. They convey profound truths
about humanity and its relationship to the Creator. And haven't fables always
been a powerful tool for teaching?"
"True enough."
"In any event, to talk about any kind of 'inerrancy' in the Bible, what
you call the Old Testament or New, or any ancient writings really, is just
absurd. Leaving aside the doubtful provenance of whole sections of the holy
books, they're filled with errors. I mean, what we'd call simple typos.
Remember they were copied out time and again by hand, not always by people who
were particularly literate in the character set they were using. Not always
literate at all, so far as we can tell—sometimes religious communities found
themselves so sorely pressed for one reason or another texts had to be copied
by artisans who basically reproduced the characters as images. Pictures, not
units of meaning. It's one reason the whole Bible Code concept is so unworkable
as well."
Annja nodded. Their soup arrived. It was topped with chopped cilantro and
finely sliced pickles. She tasted hers. The broth was hearty and cleverly
flavored with herbs.
"This is delicious."
He smiled. It obviously pleased him to please her. That could get to be a
problem, although he didn't seem the sort to push a schoolboy crush anyplace
unpleasant.
"Yet, despite all that you tell me, you still think it's worthwhile going
up that mountain?" she asked him.
"Oh, absolutely. You saw the artifacts they had?"
"Sure. And the documentation was in order. I'm not a carbon-14 dating
expert, but I know enough to recognize the numbers were all in the right
column. I don't have any reason to doubt the wood is as old as they say."
"So how did it get there, Ms. Creed?"
She tipped her head to the side. "Not by any flood, I'm pretty sure."
"Me, too."
"How, then?"
He laughed. "I don't know! But I want to find out."
Their food arrived. In his enthusiasm the rabbi fidgeted in his seat while the
waiter set down their dishes. Then he leaned forward over the table, oblivious
to the way the steam rising from his duck fogged his glasses.
"What I am sure of is that whatever's on top of the mountain—this
so-called Ararat Anomaly—is a human construct. It must be of inestimable historical
value."
She drew a deep breath, heavy with the fragrant steam. "You make a
compelling case, Rabbi," she said.
"Levi. Please."
"Levi. Okay. I just—I'm not sure about the kind of people we'd be going
with."
He shrugged. "I've led a sedentary life, Ms. Creed. I am a scholar, a man
of books, of knowledge, of contemplation. But I am willing to undergo whatever
hardships, do whatever it takes, to uncover this secret." He gave the
impression he'd be willing to take his chances with almost anyone, if that
would get him at whatever knowledge lay buried in the eternal snows of Ararat.
She wondered if it were some kind of twisted prejudice of hers, to find his
scholar's zealotry so laudable, and that of Bostitch and his Rehoboam boys so
scary.
He smiled. "Anyway, from what Charlie and Leif said about you, you have a
reputation in certain circles for taking risks and coming back alive. I figure
I'll be all right if I just stick close to you!"
She ate as she studied him. Not much deterred her from eating when she was
hungry. Her lifestyle meant she took in a lot of calories and used them all.
You've been taken in before, she reminded herself. But the rabbi would have to
be a diabolically skillful actor to fake this goofy artlessness, this seeming
fundamental decency. He strikes me as kind, she thought. There's a virtue I
encounter way too infrequently.
She sighed. "I hope I can live up to your expectations, Levi," she
said. "I'll certainly try."
He lit up. "You mean you'll do it?"
"Against my better judgment," she said, "yes."