“Just like Chicago.”
“Just like Chicago. We know that the Persian Gulf was swampy lowland until just a few thousand years ago. Maybe it’s just still flooded, after six thousand years. You know, it might be interesting to do a careful sonar survey of the floor of the Arabian Sea, looking for a recent impact crater under the silt.”
He found he was breathing hard, that he was on his feet and pacing, instead of slumped on the hotel-room bed. He’d not wanted to discuss any of this, to discuss anything, but once the words had started, they’d tumbled out in an unruly torrent. He wondered if that had been Warhurst’s purpose.
There was a knock at the door. “You’d better get that,” Warhurst told him.
A bit unsteadily, he walked to the door, considered activating the small security display, then decided that the Marines posted outside were all the security anyone needed. He opened the door….
“Teri!”
“David!” She stepped forward, taking him in her arms. “General Warhurst told me…that they haven’t found Liana.”
“Teri…” He couldn’t raise his arms to return her embrace. He couldn’t…. He was so damned happy to see her alive…but the thought that he’d wished Liana dead would not let go.
She seemed to sense his confusion. Slowly she released him. “I’m sorry, David. I’m so sorry.”
“I…I’m going to need some time, Teri. To get my head straight.”
“I understand.”
“Dr. Sullivan, here, is the one who got you sprung,” Warhurst said, “not me. She talked with your wife, and got access to your correspondence files. Sent e-mail to every person in your address file. That happened to include a young Marine—”
“Frank Kaminski?”
“Affirmative. Kaminski took it up with his CO, who happens to be a friend of mine.”
“That would be Kaitlin Garroway.”
“And she told me.”
He looked at Teri. “Thank you.” He tried to imagine her forcing a meeting with Liana, and failed. Maybe he hadn’t known either woman as well as he’d thought.
“Come on in and grab yourself a stool, Dr. Sullivan,” Warhurst said. “What we’re talking about here will interest both of you.”
“So,” she said brightly, “what have you men been gabbing about?”
“We’re getting ready to kick the UN off our Moon, Dr. Sullivan,” Warhurst said, extracting his PAD from his inside jacket pocket and unfolding it. “But we’re going to want a couple of archeologists along, just in case we have another Cave of Wonders to deal with.”
“Billaud’s site? At Tsiolkovsky?” David asked.
Warhurst nodded, and David groaned. He was remembering the battle at Picard, the carefully excavated trenches trampled over by soldiers. He thought, too, of that French soldier in 1799, who’d uncovered the Rosetta stone and provided Western science with the key to the writing of an ancient and very alien civilization. At the same time, some of the soldier’s friends were practicing with artillery…and using the Great Sphinx, at that time showing only its head above the enveloping sands, as a target.
He’d seen two pitched battles fought on a valuable archeological site, now, at Cydonia and at Picard. He didn’t want to see a third.
“What,” Warhurst replied, reading from his PAD, “does the term ‘E-U-Nir-Kingu Gab-Kur-Ra’ mean to you?”
“Sumerian,” Teri said. “‘E-U-Nir’ is, ah, a house with raised foundations? ‘House Rising High,’ I think I’d translate it. ‘King-gu’ means a righteous emissary, but it was also the Sumerian name for the Moon.”
“And ‘Gab-Kur-Ra’ means something like ‘Chest Hidden in the Mountain,’” David added.
“A chest,” Warhurst repeated. “Or a storeroom, maybe? A place for storing records?”
Realization struck David. “Which is what Marc Billaud called the central peak at Tsiolkovsky.”
Warhurst shot him a sharp glance. “When was that?”
“When I talked to him on the Moon. At Picard. He said he wasn’t going to betray his country, but that we’d get the answers we wanted at Gab-Kur-Ra.”
“You didn’t mention that in your report.”
“I…I didn’t think of it at the time. I hadn’t made the connection with ancient Sumerian and the An tablets yet. And, well, it didn’t make much sense.”
“Maybe he was trying to tell you something he didn’t want other people to hear, or understand,” Teri suggested.
“Could well be.” David looked at Warhurst. “Where did you hear that name?”