King Solomon's Curse

5

The alarm on Nina’s iPhone warbled at 6 a.m., but she was already up, making her first coffee of the day before checking her laptop. She had left the computer running overnight, a program comparing a topographical database to a set of search parameters. Said parameters were vaguer than she would have liked, as there had been no indication of the heights of any of the mountains used to triangulate the lost city’s position. She had instead been forced to input the relative bearings of each carved peak surrounding the model of Zhakana and hope there was enough data to produce a result, but had not predicted much success.

Which meant the message on the screen came as a true surprise.

She hurriedly reread it, almost expecting it to morph into something more disappointing. But it remained the same. Location found. A string of numbers followed — the longitude and latitude of the place the program had identified.

The numbers were not as long as she had hoped, though. The software was capable of deducing a location to within as little as fifty feet. The result here had only narrowed it down to an area of four square miles.

But that was more than close enough.

Nina quickly brought up the coordinates on a digital globe, zooming in on Africa, central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the huge country’s eastern region. The nearest sizeable settlement was over thirty miles away, which considering the terrain and dense jungle might as well have been a hundred. No roads were visible on the satellite imagery, only rivers winding languidly through the unbroken carpet of verdant green.

She switched to a three-dimensional view of the target zone. Terrain features sprang up. A river had curved around the base of the promontory upon which the model Palace Without Entrance stood; she used the trackpad to rotate the view, searching for places where waterways ran around cliffs.

It took several minutes to survey all the rivers. Two locations seemed promising. She zoomed in on the first.

Nothing unusual was visible on the ground, but she knew from experience that even large structures could be hidden from aerial observation by the jungle canopy. She moved the virtual camera in a full circle. The terrain didn’t correspond to the model, not flat enough to contain the city.

The second site. She immediately saw that this was a much closer match. There was the promontory, the river wrapped around its foot like a constricting snake…

And peeking through the covering of green, tantalising hints of stone.

Nina felt a little kick of excitement. She zoomed in, but the image degenerated into pixelated splodges. The satellite photography was at the limit of its resolution; with nothing there but raw jungle, none of the commercial providers had felt the need to photograph it in higher detail. Government agencies would undoubtedly have better images, but she no longer had access to them.

‘Dammit,’ she muttered. She was sure there was more on the clifftop than just trees, but had no way to confirm it. Another click to mark the exact spot, then she returned to a map view. The nearest major town with an airport was Butembo, close to the Ugandan border about a hundred miles to the north-east. Could she hire someone to make a photographic overflight?

Before she could ponder any more on the prospect, her phone rang. She was surprised; it was barely past dawn. ‘Hello?’

‘Nina, hello.’ Ziff. ‘Sorry to wake you.’

‘No problem, I was already up. I’m surprised you are, though.’

‘I had a phone call.’ He sounded concerned. ‘I’ve just been told about a news story. Are you at your computer?’

‘Yes. David, what’s going on?’

‘You should see for yourself.’ He gave her the web address of what she guessed was a Jordanian newspaper. ‘The top story, you can’t miss it.’

‘Okay, let me see — oh my God!’ she gasped as the page loaded.

The headline was in Arabic, the script unreadable… but the accompanying pictures told her everything. They showed the map room inside the First Temple, the largest image a wide shot of the model city. ‘Where the hell did these come from?’ Nina demanded, appalled. ‘Nothing was supposed to be released until — wait, son of a bitch,’ she said as a possibility occurred to her. ‘Did Mohammad Talal take these?’

‘I already spoke to him,’ Ziff told her. ‘He says he had nothing to do with it. The others deny it as well. What about your film crew?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.’

‘It may not have been anyone on either of our teams, though. Some of the diggers still had access after we left, and the security guards on the Temple Mount could have simply walked in and taken pictures on their phones.’

‘Great, so anyone could have leaked the biggest archaeological discovery of the year for fifty bucks a photo, and we’ve got no way of finding out who.’ She scrolled through the pictures. ‘Jesus, these are clear enough to read the text on the walls!’

‘I know. The story has a partial translation,’ the Israeli told her glumly. ‘It names Zhakana, describes how Solomon visited the Palace Without Entrance—’

‘There’s a — a goddamn panorama here!’ Nina cut in. Another picture showed a great swathe of the carved landscape surrouning the model city. ‘They might as well have printed a treasure map!’

‘What do you mean?’ Ziff asked, surprised.

‘I mean, I put the data from the model into a topographical analysis program. And it found Zhakana!’

He was shocked. ‘Where?’

‘Eastern Congo, the Democratic Republic. It’s in the middle of the jungle, but it should be accessible by river. And these photos tell the whole world where it is! If I could find it, so can anyone else.’

‘Just because they can find it doesn’t mean that they will. Jungle exploration is hard work, as we both know. And DR Congo is not a country many people would choose to visit.’

‘People will do a hell of a lot if they think there’s something valuable at the end of it,’ she countered. ‘One of the reasons the International Heritage Agency was set up in the first place was to control this kind of information and stop tomb raiders from looting newly found sites. But this? Anyone with a map, a computer and patience will be able to use these pictures to find Zhakana. And there’s nothing we can do to stop them.’

‘I can contact the Jordanian government. They can put pressure on the newspaper to take down the pictures.’

‘It’s too late now. Once something’s on the internet, you may as well put it on a billboard in Times Square.’

‘So what should we do?’

‘We need to have a full meeting, try to figure out damage control. Beyond that, though? I have no idea.’

‘I’ll call everyone to the site.’

‘Great. I’ll see you soon.’

Nina huffed in angry exasperation as she hung up. Finding whoever had leaked the pictures was now less important than trying to minimise the damage, both to the ongoing work at the First Temple and whatever might happen at Zhakana. But what could she do?

Contact the IHA was her first thought. But she had left the agency over half a decade ago, her last dealings two years previously, and Dr Lester Blumberg was still its director. She and Blumberg were not on each other’s Christmas card lists, to put it mildly.

So how to protect the new discovery from looters?

She didn’t know much about the Democratic Republic of Congo, other than that the first word of its name was practically ironic and that while it was rich in natural resources, it was also unstable and fraught with violence. Someone would have to locate the site on the ground, then arrange with the Congolese government to secure it.

But who could she trust to do that, and who had the contacts necessary to protect the site once it was found? And who would pay for it? She considered herself very comfortably off thanks to her television work, books and film deals, but not nearly enough to fund an expedition out of her own pocket, and she couldn’t imagine Eddie being happy about her doing so even if she could. So who…?

An idea took on form. She almost dismissed it out of hand, but then gave it greater consideration. Why not? At the very least, she had to try.

She scrolled through her phone’s contacts. The number she found was American, the area code 323: Los Angeles. There was a ten-hour time difference between Jerusalem and LA, so it was evening in Hollywood. The person she needed to speak to might still be available.

Nina gathered her thoughts… then made the call.

Two hours later, she arrived at the Temple Mount and entered the dig’s tent. Ziff and his team were there, as were Fisher and the film crew. ‘What happened?’ said the elderly Israeli. ‘We expected you over an hour ago.’

‘I know, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I had to make a call, which lasted a lot longer than I expected. But I’ve got some good news.’

‘You have found out who sold the photographs of the First Temple?’ asked Talal.

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘This leak’s kinda destroyed one of our unique selling points,’ said Fisher. ‘We could have had a worldwide exclusive — the first time Joe Public saw the map room, it would have been on our show. But now, by the time we reach the air it’ll be old hat.’

‘Well, hopefully the rest of the documentary should still draw the crowds,’ Nina said. ‘But this call was about something else.’ She addressed the whole film crew. ‘A proposition — for you.’

‘For us?’ said Lydia, confused.

‘Who did you call?’ Rivero asked.

‘Mike Konigsberg, in LA. And after he heard what I had to say, he got the network head on a conference call right away.’

Fisher was not happy. ‘Wait, you called my boss behind my back?’

‘This wasn’t about the current show. This is something new. I told David this morning that the leak of the map room pictures means that sooner or later, and probably sooner, someone will use them to find Zhakana.’

‘Because that’ll be dead easy to do,’ Lydia scoffed.

‘I’ve already done it.’

That brought surprised reactions from the documentarians, though not from the archaeologists. Ziff had been selective in sharing the news. ‘It’s in the jungle, in the Democratic Republic of Congo,’ she went on. ‘It’ll be hard to reach — but not impossible. The site is two days’ travel from the nearest airport. The problem is that now the images from the map room are out in the open, anyone else can get there too.’

‘Only if they’re crazy enough to go Apocalypse Now into the Congo,’ said Rivero.

‘Or Heart of Darkness, more accurately,’ Nina said.

‘Heart of what? Anyway, it sure as hell isn’t somewhere I’m in any rush to visit.’

‘That’s a pity,’ she replied. ‘Because what I discussed with Mike and the network — what they’ve provisionally agreed to back — is a documentary expedition to find Zhakana. They want to follow up the current series with a journey into the unknown, literally. Whatever’s out there, whatever we find, we’ll be the first people to see it for thousands of years.’

‘They already agreed to fund it?’ asked Lydia.

Fisher looked thoughtful. ‘It’s a good hook. Documentary meets reality TV. Indiana Jones, live — or live-ish. It could work.’

‘You said we,’ noted Howie.

Nina nodded. ‘That’s right. You guys are already out here, and you’ve seen everything leading up to the map room’s discovery, so you know the background. Plus you already work as a team, so Mike thought you’d be the obvious choice to do it.’

‘Nice of him to ask us first,’ Lydia objected. ‘And you, too!’

‘I did tell him you’d probably want to think about it,’ Nina assured her.

‘Aw, that’s real good of you!’ The sarcasm was biting.

‘It’s definitely worth considering,’ Fisher said to her. She was not convinced.

‘How long would this take?’ asked Rivero. ‘We’ve been out here for almost three weeks already. I kinda want to see my girlfriend again.’

‘I don’t know,’ Nina admitted. ‘I’d guess we’d be on the ground for about two weeks.’

‘You would be going as well?’ asked Ziff.

‘Well, yeah. I mean, it’s my series, it’s about the things I’ve discovered. And I found the map room.’

‘We all found it!’ Talal protested.

‘You wouldn’t even have looked at that wall if I hadn’t been there. But the main reason the network was willing to consider this is because I proposed it, and it’s conditional on my involvement.’

‘So they won’t do it without you, but they will do it without us?’ said Lydia.

‘Pretty much, yeah. Mike wants to know if you’re interested. But we’re kind of on the clock,’ she warned. ‘The main reason I proposed this is so we can find Zhakana before anyone else — looters, treasure hunters, even locals out for a quick buck. So don’t take too long thinking about it, because if it goes ahead, it’ll be soon.’

‘How soon?’ Fisher asked.

‘As soon as everything can be arranged. We’ll have to deal with the Congolese government, hire guides and porters. And we’ll need security too. The DRC isn’t super-safe right now.’

‘No shit,’ muttered Rivero.

‘So decide whether or not you want to be involved as soon as you can,’ Nina told them. ‘If you want to stay together as a team, that’s good. But if the network has to hire replacements, they need to know.’

A discussion began amongst the film crew. Lydia and Rivero appeared the least enthusiastic, Fisher undecided, while Howie was positively excited at the prospect. ‘We get to explore an uncharted jungle?’ he said, grinning. ‘With a lost city in the middle of it? C’mon, that’s awesome! Imagine seeing that model spread out ahead, only for real. That would be…’ He struggled to find a suitably hyperbolic word, settling for one he had already used. ‘Awesome!’

‘It’d be a hell of a feather in our caps,’ mused Fisher. ‘If we actually did find the city, it could be Emmy material. This could really boost all our careers. What do you think, Lids?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the New Zealander uncertainly. ‘I get what you’re saying, Steve, but it’s another two weeks. And we’d be roughing it in the jungle too.’

‘Come on!’ Fisher said with a smile. ‘Where’s that Kiwi spirit?’

‘In the bar of a nice comfortable hotel?’

Ziff came to Nina. ‘Can I talk to you for a moment? Alone?’

‘Sure. I’ll let you discuss it,’ she told the crew before following Ziff from the tent. ‘What is it?’ she asked him.

He twiddled his beard before replying. ‘It seems you’ve made up your mind that you are going to search for Zhakana.’

‘That depends on the Congolese government,’ said the redhead. ‘But if they give us the go-ahead, then yeah, I want to do it.’

He carefully considered his next words. ‘Then… I would like to come with you.’

The request startled her. ‘Really? If you did, that would mean handing over the First Temple dig to someone else.’

‘I know. And it is not a sacrifice I would make lightly, believe me! My career — my life — has been dedicated to finding relics of King Solomon. His name is my middle name — I suppose it was my destiny!’ He chuckled, but quickly became more serious. ‘The First Temple is an incredible discovery. But you saw the other passage down there; it is completely blocked by rubble. It will take weeks to dig out.’

‘So you’re thinking that while the rest of your team are doing that, you could take a quick side-trip to find Zhakana?’

‘I know that exploring the jungle will not be easy. But at my age, nor is bending down to lift heavy stones!’ Ziff smiled. ‘Delegation is part of being a good leader, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I dunno, I still have trouble staying hands-off,’ Nina replied.

‘I had noticed.’ He gazed over the sprawl of Jerusalem beyond the Temple Mount. ‘This city is full of history, Nina. But… it is buried. Each new generation builds on top of what was there before, and it gets harder to see what is hidden below. Zhakana, though? It could still be there, exactly as Solomon left it. And I would like to see that.’

‘You think it’s stayed untouched?’

He nodded. ‘I translated more of the inscriptions. Makeda’s people never went to the City of the Damned unless they had to. They believed it was cursed. The people who built it died out thousands of years before.’

She was intrigued. ‘How did they die?’

‘Solomon said that according to the legends of Sheba… let me think of the exact words.’ A brief frown of concentration. ‘“That which gave them their power as an empire, that which they used to conquer their enemies, brought their own walls crashing down and left them barren but for monsters and demons.” Melodramatic, but I don’t believe Solomon was exaggerating. He was reporting what he had been told.’

‘“That which gave them their power,”’ Nina echoed. ‘The Shamir? Or the Mother of the Shamir, rather?’

‘He built the Palace Without Entrance to hide the Imashamir, and to make sure that nobody without the wisdom to use it could ever reach it. So whatever it is…’

‘Could still be there,’ she finished for him.

He nodded. ‘Solomon used the Shamir to build the First Temple. God granted him an incredible gift. The legend goes that it disappeared once its task was done, but perhaps Solomon returned it to its home.’

‘Or its mother.’

‘I do not think that we will really find a great worm inside the Palace,’ said Ziff with a wry smile. ‘But we may find something even more amazing. That is… if you are willing to let me join you.’

She didn’t reply at once. She didn’t dislike the Israeli, but neither had he been the easiest person to work with. He was territorial, and she suspected was more than a little jealous of her fame. But he was intelligent, experienced, well-versed in ancient languages like Old Hebrew… and as he had pointed out, King Solomon was his area of expertise.

‘It won’t be easy,’ she finally said. ‘Do you really want to slog through the jungle looking for something that might not even be there any more?’

‘Do you?’

‘Well, yes,’ she said, surprised by the question.

‘Then you know why I do. You are not the only archaeologist with an obsession. Mine is Solomon, and if I discover another unknown wonder of his, then I can die happy!’

Nina smiled. ‘I hope it doesn’t come to that.’

‘Ha! So do I. My grandchildren would be very sad.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘If you are still unsure if you want me to come on an expedition, I am sure I can persuade the Israel Antiquities Authority to provide additional funding. But… I hope you would want my help for more than mere money.’

‘I would, yeah.’ She cocked her head. ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to come?’

‘Yes.’ There was no hesitation.

‘Okay. Then… welcome aboard, I guess!’ She extended her hand; he shook it.

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me yet. We might spend two weeks in the jungle being eaten by mosquitoes and find absolutely nothing.’

‘Let us hope we find something more worth our time.’

‘Yeah. We should let the others know.’

Inside the tent, they found that the documentary crew had reached a decision. It was unanimous, though Lydia and Rivero’s trepidation suggested both had come close to dissenting. ‘I just got off the phone with Mike,’ said Fisher. ‘We’re in — with certain provisos.’

‘Which are?’ Nina asked.

‘You said two weeks. That’s too long. We’re saying eight days in-country. So if you’re right and it takes two days to reach the place, and it takes another two to get back, that gives you four days to explore.’

Nina had wanted more time, but reluctantly nodded. ‘Okay. Eight days in the DRC. What else?’

‘Pay and conditions we’ve already agreed with Mike and the network. The issue I want addressed up front, right now, is: who’s in charge.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning I’m the director, and I call the shots. Off-screen as well as on. If I decide we need to pull out, for any reason, then we go. You don’t get to make us wait because you’ve found a particularly interesting piece of pottery. We won’t have hospitals just a phone call away — we’ll be in the middle of nowhere in an unstable Third World country. Everyone in the team is my responsibility, so my top priority is keeping us all safe. Including you.’

‘And including me too,’ said Ziff, to much surprise from both the film crew and the other archaeologists.

‘I know what I’m doing, Steven,’ said Nina. ‘I have done this before. A lot. You don’t need to take on extra responsibilities.’

‘That’s the deal, Nina,’ he insisted. ‘Mike already okayed it. You want us, then you accept it. Otherwise you’ll have to wait to find a new crew — and I know you’re not the patient type.’ He indicated the tunnel entrance. ‘What we found down there isn’t a secret any more, and like you said, if you can figure out how to find the lost city, so can someone else.’

She struggled to contain her irritation. The proposition felt more like blackmail, and she had often felt Fisher was more interested in using the series to boost his résumé than showcase her discoveries.

But he was right about her concerns; the longer it took to get the expedition moving, the greater the chance that Zhakana might be looted first… ‘Okay,’ she grumbled. ‘We do it your way, Steven. But I still decide what’s important archaeologically, okay? It is kinda my area of expertise.’

Lydia rolled her eyes, but Fisher nodded. ‘If we’re all in agreement…’ He regarded his crew, who one by one gave their assent. ‘I’ll call Mike, get the lawyers to draw up contracts.’

‘With danger money,’ said Rivero.

‘Hell yes, with danger money! We’re not filming this on Malibu Beach.’

‘More’s the pity,’ Lydia muttered.

‘But yeah, we’re good to go. So Nina, I think you need to make some calls yourself.’

‘You’re right,’ Nina replied. ‘I’ve got to contact the Congolese government and actually get permission to visit the country in the first place — although I won’t tell them straight up that we’re looking for a lost city housing a palace built by King Solomon. We don’t want to draw that much attention. I’ll also have to arrange the logistics, security…’ She stopped as she realised that in her excitement and focus on one objective, she had overlooked something equally important. ‘And… I really should tell my family.’