The Trespass(98)

“Spot on. And whoever hired him had some other work for him to do. Something closer to home. Their home.”

Yvonne paled. “Natasha’s abductors? Malcolm knew?”

“I’m afraid he not only knew, Mrs Dracup. He’s been actively working for them for the past few months – if not longer.”

“I can’t believe it.” Yvonne felt paralysed, unable to take it in. “Their home?” she repeated, staring at the print.

Moran nodded. “A strange home, I’ll grant you, but a home nevertheless. And a very old one at that.”

“The ziggurat?” Yvonne was incredulous.

“The ziggurat.”





Chapter 34





The interior of the aircraft had more in common with an executive lounge than a flying machine: comfortable seats, individual mahogany tables, what appeared to be a cocktail bar, two widescreen television monitors and subtle lighting. Dracup thought of his stomach-churning Channel crossing in Charles’ two-seater and shook his head at the contrast. This was straight out of a Harrison Ford movie.

“Something the matter, Prof?” Farrell asked him. “Get yourself strapped in. We’re clearing for take-off.”

Dracup saw Farrell place a box carefully on the floor beside him. He didn’t have to open it to know what was in it: Alpha. His heart beat slowly in his chest. He now knew Natasha’s whereabouts and would shortly close the distance between them. That made all the difference to his exhausted mind. He had a chance. A small one, maybe, but a chance at least. Dracup felt a frisson of fear override his exhaustion. He buckled his seat belt and tried to concentrate.

Potzner appeared, his whole body vibrant with nervous energy. Farrell pointed to the seat belt signs and to his own secured strap. The engine note increased in pitch and Dracup felt an invisible pressure push him firmly back in his seat.

Farrell grinned and shouted over, “A lot more thrust than a conventional airliner, huh? It’ll settle once we reach altitude.”

When the scream of the turbines had quietened the seat belt signs flicked off and Potzner was immediately at the bar. He poured two shots of malt and sat next to Dracup. “Here’s to a successful mission, Prof. Glad you could come along.”

“I don’t recall accepting an invitation.”

“Sure you do. You want your little girl back, don’t you?”

Dracup studied Potzner’s face. He had lost weight and there were deep bags under his eyes. “Of course I do. But that’s not why you want me on this trip, is it?”

Potzner looked at him with an amused expression. “Are you sussing me out?” He looked down at his hands. “Not giving anything away, right? No readable signals – isn’t that what you guys call it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re an anthropologist. You study behavioural patterns, check out body signals, right?”

“You mean interpret gestures? Yes, it’s an unconscious habit. But there’s a little more to anthropology than that. Broadly speaking it encompasses the origin and behaviour of the human race plus physical, social, and cultural development.”

Potzner leaned in close, the whisky on his breath a sour waft. “I’ll bet you’re having to do a little reconstructed thinking around that area now, huh?”

Dracup conceded the point with an irritated shrug. “So why do you really want me here?”

Potzner settled back in his seat with a sigh. “Because I’m willing to bet that whatever else you found up in Scotland is going to come good for you again. For us.”

Dracup maintained a blank expression. Of course Potzner knew. The wax tablet was too bulky – and too fragile – to carry around indefinitely, and so Dracup had painstakingly copied Theodore’s abbreviations to a thin piece of card and concealed it under his watchstrap. The truth was that he had despaired of making any sense of the final letters of the tablet.

Until Fish had come up with the translation. And then the cryptic K. zig of Theodore’s tablet took on a whole new meaning. Dracup had, by necessity, a working familiarity with the ancient world, but even if this had not been the case he had heard of Kish. And he had heard of the Tower of Babel – and of other Mesopotamian constructions that had been built for the same purpose: places of worship. A place where men could reach up to God… Most of these buildings were ruins, of course, their composition of baked mud unable to withstand the harsh conditions imposed by the relentless passage of time. But it seemed that one had survived – fashioned perhaps from more enduring material because of its special nature. It was buried now, Dracup theorized, under the sand and dust of the Iraqi alluvial plain, but was very much a going concern. They had an unusual name, these stepped pyramidal structures, a name that had made Dracup’s heart dance when he remembered. They were known to historians and archaeologists as ziggurats.