Covenant

15

The golden dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque shone like a second sun against the hard blue sky in the distance as Ethan hurried Rachel through the Old City. While Rachel was distracted by the sights and sounds around them, Ethan instead struggled to conceal conflicting emotions that rushed upon him in waves. Long forgotten images of these packed streets and the throng of life in a city where the three great monotheistic faiths met in a potpourri of holy worship and primal hate flushed through his mind.

Orthodox Jews in black coats and fox-fur hats weaved their way toward the Western Wall past Palestinian street hawkers touting their wares. Tiny shops wedged into recesses in alleys sold Jewish menorahs, olive-wood crucifixes, and ornamental plates depicting the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The air was filled with the hushed murmur of Hebrew and the musical ripple of Arabic echoing down endless alleys. Amid the human traffic darted dozens of cats, and the meat market scented the air with the odor of a bewildering array of foods. Incense wafted from churches and the potent aroma of roasting Arabic coffee drifted through the narrow walkways, competing with the pungent reek of rotting vegetables and all of it filling Ethan with a regret-stained nostalgia.

Forget it, Ethan. There was nothing here but misery then and there’s nothing new here now. This is a city of suffering and always has been.

Ethan’s perception started to change. Groups of different faiths walked together for safety under the watchful eyes of Israeli soldiers cradling assault rifles. Children skittered on bare feet through the alleys, their faces smudged with grime. Ethan heard the sounds of the city haunting his past; the warbling Muslim call to prayer drifting from minarets at dusk across the ancient rooftops, the bells of the Holy Sepulchre Church, and the mournful horn announcing the start of the Sabbath.

As he turned a corner, he looked up past the bobbing swathes of turbans and Hasidic Kipots and saw a brief flare of blond hair. Ethan froze, his eyes locked onto the shining hair as an image of Joanna blazed brightly in his mind. He changed direction, lurching through the crowd toward the woman drifting past stalls near an ancient stone wall.

“Ethan?” Rachel grabbed his arm, hauling him to a stop. “Where are we going?”

Ethan blinked, turning to look to where the woman was still standing beside the stall, her face turned toward him now, deeply tanned, middle-aged. A tourist, maybe a local or one of the countless European Jews who had returned to Israel after the diaspora.

Ethan shook himself and pointed down one of the myriad alleys toward a small square that buzzed gently with the conversation of tourists sitting outside cafés in the bright sunshine. A group of Israeli-Arabs smoked aromatic hookahs and bartered gifts from makeshift stalls, all under the watchful eye of heavily armed Israeli troops manning a checkpoint nearby.

Ethan negotiated his way between the tables outside one of the restaurants, moving toward a stocky man sitting with a newspaper and wearing a broad-rimmed hat. A glass half-filled with ruby-colored drink glistened before him on the table.

“William Griffiths?”

Ethan stood in front of the man, who made a show of finishing reading his sentence before squinting up at him from beneath the shelter of his hat.

“You are?”

“Ethan Warner, and this is Rachel Morgan.”

Bill Griffiths folded the newspaper he was holding and set it down on the table before lazily gesturing for them to join him. Ethan ordered drinks from a passing waitress, and regarded the man opposite him.

Griffiths looked every inch the outdoorsman, with a broad and thickly forested jaw, his shirt undone at the neck and the sleeves rolled up his chunky arms. His weather-beaten skin told of countless years spent toiling beneath the burning sun, as did what appeared to be a permanent squint. Dirt was encrusted under his fingernails, and his heavily creased shorts bore patches of recent dust and sand.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Warner?” he asked without apparent interest.

“I understand that you have something for sale?”

Griffiths squinted at Ethan behind the rim of his hat. “For sale?”

Ethan got down to business.

“I thought that it might be worthwhile me coming to you directly, rather than wandering around fossil markets looking for trinkets.”

Griffiths regarded Ethan and Rachel for several long moments, as though trying to size them up.

“I don’t deal. I work privately, and right now I’m on vacation.”

Ethan nodded as he glanced around at the square.

“Nice spot. You always take vacations in war zones? I thought you’d be better off down in Eilat?”

Griffiths let his gaze return to his newspaper.

“I like the architecture here. What do you want?”

“I want you to be honest with me,” Ethan replied. “You’re not on holiday, you’ve been working. You’ve got dirt under your nails, which suggests to me that you’ve only recently finished an excavation, probably worked through the night to complete it.” Griffiths looked back up as Ethan went on. “I represent a collector, and I think that you’ve happened upon a specimen that he may be interested in.”

Griffiths shook his head. “As I said, I work privately.”

“Whatever you’ve been offered, he’ll beat.”

“I doubt that.”

“So you have found something then.”

Griffiths sighed as though tired of the game already. “Who are you representing?”

“That’s not important,” Ethan replied smoothly. “What is important is that they are willing to pay handsomely for the specimen.”

Griffiths shook his head again.

“You know nothing of what we’ve found, you don’t know where it is and you have no idea of its value, yet you’re sitting here trying to cut a deal with me over it.”

Ethan leaned back in his chair, taking a sip of his drink. “Alien fossils are hard to come by.”

Griffith’s squint vanished completely and hard gray eyes bored into Ethan’s.

“How did you—”

“We have people,” Ethan cut across him, forestalling his question.

“Who’s we?” Griffiths asked, glancing at Rachel.

Ethan gestured around the square.

“We’d like to see the remains before making a bid. If they live up to expectation, then I’m sure that you’ll find our offer to be extremely generous.”

Griffiths stared at Ethan for a long moment, apparently unable to weigh up whether he was being played or had just walked into the deal of a lifetime. Ethan pushed harder. “Come on, you know that you’re sitting on a fortune. Why reserve it for one client when an auction would be far more lucrative. It’s not like we’re in Montana: you’re not going to be arrested for theft as long as nobody knows about what you’ve found.”

“My client is reliable and I am not greedy,” Griffiths said.

“I’m sure,” Ethan agreed, “but money is money and these remains are going to be in high demand if you open them up to the market.”

“You want me to make you bid against others for it?” Griffiths muttered. “Why would you do that instead of pushing for a bargain here and now?”

“Because we would win. Price is not an object, Mr. Griffiths. It is the quality of the specimen that counts.”

Griffith’s eyes narrowed.

“And if the remains are of sufficient quality and I was willing to sell?”

Ethan took a breath.

“Five million dollars, delivered in bonds or wire transfer. Anything you want.”

Griffiths promptly got up from his seat.

“Not even close, Mr. Warner. My client has already paid a deposit greater than that.”

Damn. “A deposit? So he has seen the remains, in person?”

“Not yet,” Griffiths replied, shoving his newspaper under his arm. “But images were sent.”

“May I see them? It will affect our offer.”

“Client confidentiality,” Griffiths muttered as he turned away. “And your offer was shit.”

Ethan stood as Griffiths walked away, ignoring Rachel’s dismayed expression.

“You’re not a trained paleontologist,” he said. The fossil hunter kept walking. “Which makes me wonder, how did you know where to look to find such a magnificent specimen? It’s almost as if someone else had to find it for you.”

Griffiths slowed, standing for a moment with his back to Ethan before turning and looking at him. “What do you mean?”

Ethan was no longer smiling, and spoke loudly enough for people at other tables to hear him. “Doesn’t it make you wonder, who it was who found the remains and what happened to them?”

Griffiths looked about anxiously and then paced back toward the table, muttering under his breath.

“They were found by a security company conducting trials in the Negev using explosives. They turned something up and called us in to examine the remains.”

“Wonder why they didn’t call scientists instead, or the police?” Ethan mused out loud. “How would ordinary soldiers have known that they were looking at ancient bones that had such value? It could have been a murder scene for all they knew.”

Griffith’s features creased with irritation. “I have no idea and it’s none of your business. Stay out of it.”

The dealer turned away, but Ethan carried on talking loudly.

“Pretty convenient, too, those explosives perfectly excavating the remains without damaging them.” Griffiths kept on walking, but Ethan managed to get one last sentence in before he was out of earshot. “Although if somebody else, a scientist, say, had found and excavated the specimen, I’d be wondering what on earth happened to them. Worried, even.”

Rachel watched the fossil hunter vanish beyond the milling tourists, and turned to Ethan.

“Brilliant work so far, I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

“He knows something,” Ethan said.

“And he’s told us nothing.”

“Didn’t need him to,” Ethan said. “Just needed to plant a seed of doubt in his mind for now is all.”

“So now what?”

Ethan finished his drink and stood up.

“Now we go and find Lucy’s dig site.”