The Babylon Idol

Chapter 42

Ben said, ‘Put yourself in his shoes. Think like him. By the age of thirty-one, Ashar would have risen up to be a fairly senior member of the Muranu clan. From what we’ve learned about him, he must have been a pretty strong personality, probably with a lot of influence within the family. Yet he broke with family tradition in a big way. He could have chosen the easy path and become a merchant trader like the whole dynasty before him, but instead he chose a life of hardship, war and risk. To make that kind of sacrifice, he must have been highly driven. And nothing drives a guy like that more than ideological ambition. Then there’s the value of symbols. Ancient people placed far more importance on them than we do.’

Anna looked puzzled, studying Ben’s face intently in the firelight. ‘I’m not sure what you’re telling me here,’ she said.

‘Say the idol was still in the family’s possession, still intact after all those years. A vast, magnificent monument to the fallen king they’d once revered, under whose reign Babylon had flourished. To a dedicated freedom fighter locked in a death struggle against the hated Persian oppressor, it would have been more than just a heap of gold. It would have represented more than just wealth. It would have been a massively powerful political icon, symbolising a future return to the glory days of Babylon under the rule of a mighty king like Nebuchadnezzar. Darius wasn’t a popular sovereign, or else there wouldn’t have been revolts sprouting up like mushrooms all over his empire. What if Ashar’s dream was to overthrow it altogether, rallying together all the discontented and disenfranchised peoples of the empire under the symbolic totem of the golden idol?’

‘Then he would have kept it carefully concealed until the time came when he could use it. If my theory is right about its modular structure, he could even have scattered its parts in various secret hiding places.’

‘That’s what I would have done,’ Ben said. ‘And I would have been extremely cautious about who I trusted with the knowledge of those hiding places. Maybe just a handful of my closest and most faithful followers. I certainly wouldn’t have allowed my family to know. For their own protection as much as anything else.’

‘That makes sense. Go on, I’m listening.’

‘He had a lot to lose. And a lot to gain. When the day finally came when the idol could be reassembled in its proper home, the guy who could pull off a coup like that would be sure to become the new king of Babylon. Except it never happened. Ashar’s dream fell apart when his rebels were decimated and he became just another renegade fugitive. What if he was the only one left who knew where the pieces of the idol were hidden? Or, what if he was killed too, in some skirmish with imperial forces that never made it to the official record?’

Anna had her head bowed in thought, beginning to nod to herself as she gradually came round to Ben’s idea. ‘Or that did, but the official record is still lying in a storeroom of the Persepolis Fortification Archive with a thousand others, waiting to be translated? I told you, there are still years of work left to be carried out.’

‘In which case’, Ben said, ‘he’d have taken the secret to his grave. And if he’d chosen his hiding places half as carefully as I would have done—’

‘It could still be there,’ Anna finished for him.

‘Not just the single piece you were hoping for. But the whole thing. You’d just have to know where to dig.’

Her eyes sparkled from the flames. ‘You’re right. This changes everything.’

‘It’s just a theory,’ Ben said.

‘But an excellent one. All the more reason why we need to go to Harran.’

Ben thought back to his mental map, picturing what the vast territory of the Persian Empire looked like in ancient times. Then he set it side by side in his mind with a modern map of what the region looked like in the present day. ‘My ancient geography’s a little rusty after all these years.’

‘Like your Bible knowledge.’

‘But if I’m getting it right, our destination is right here in Turkey.’

Anna nodded. ‘I already worked out the location. Harran is about forty kilometres from Sanliurfa, which is just six hundred kilometres to the south and west of Ankara, with a motorway connecting them. Except we don’t have a car. How are we even going to get out of here?’

Ben kept the wood burner going all night. When he ran out of logs he smashed a chair for firewood, taking it outside first so as not to wake Anna who was sleeping peacefully in the glow of the fire with his jacket over her as a makeshift blanket. After the last spar of the chair was burned up, he carried out the wooden table and broke that up too, then tiptoed back inside carrying an armful of splintered pieces. Being on fire duty kept him from thinking too much about all the things that would have crowded his mind and kept him from sleeping anyway.

As the red tendrils of dawn came creeping in over the eastern forest skyline, he quietly left the cabin and went exploring about the smallholding. He took the hatchet with him, partly for wanting some kind of weapon just in case, and partly for its usefulness in helping him to get inside the chained-up barn, which was what interested him most. Specifically, what he might find inside. The snow had stopped; the rising sun shone its ruby glitter across the hard-frozen white ground. It was going to turn out a gloriously crisp, perfect winter’s morning. You could almost forget you had a bunch of crazed murderers after you, and a best friend back home who was deep in a coma.

The rural property was too far out in the middle of nowhere to have been of interest to vandals and thieves. Judging from the thick rust that had seized the padlock, the barn hadn’t been opened since the day the smallholders had departed. Ben used the shaft of the hatchet like a crowbar to prise the rusty screws holding the hasp to the rotted wood of the door. The chain fell away, he creaked the door open and sunlight shone inside for the first time in years. The floor of the barn was covered in musty straw. Shovels and rakes and a pickaxe leaned against one wall. A small tractor stood partially dismantled, never to run again. Next to it, tucked away behind piles of old boxes and crates and covered by a dusty tarpaulin, was a large object whose shape there was no mistaking.

The old sedan was a Peugeot 404, the car whose design the East Germans had pinched for their papier-mâché Trabant. It was about the same age Ben was, though it had been enjoying a far more restful existence for quite some time, doing little except provide a home for generations of mice. The key was in the ignition but the battery was totally dead, its terminals badly corroded, which Ben guessed might have been the reason why the smallholders had abandoned it.

Ben had never been much of a car person but he did happen to know something its former owners might not have been aware of: that this model was one of the last saloon cars to incorporate a manual starting crank. Hence, it didn’t need a battery or a starter motor to turn the engine over. Knowledge like that was the kind of thing Special Forces soldiers found useful on occasion, such as when commandeering improvised transport in tricky situations in Third World countries where such ancient vehicles tended to proliferate. He’d once seen a pickup version of the 404 in Yemen, carrying two live camels in the back. These old crates could survive just about anything.

He smiled when he found the crank handle buried under a heap of junk in the boot, still in its original plastic pack. The smallholders might have dismissed it as some kind of oddly shaped wheel brace or other tool whose purpose they couldn’t figure out, or they might never have spotted it at all. Along with the crank handle Ben found a tatty, mouldy old road atlas of Turkey and a battered but serviceable pair of wellington boots. Where they weren’t caked in old chicken shit they were pink, with flowers all over them. Fashionable footwear for a farmer’s wife or teenage daughter.

Ben walked around to the front, found the hole below the rusty front grille where the handle could connect to the crankshaft, gave it a turn, and the engine coughed into life amid a massive cloud of blue smoke. Now he was smiling even more. He tossed the crank handle and the map on the back seat, along with a shovel and the pink rubber boots. Brushed the mouse droppings from the driver’s seat, climbed in and engaged the steering-wheel gearstick, and the car rattled out into the morning sunshine, tyres crunching on the snow.

He parped the horn twice. Moments later, Anna appeared in the doorway of the cabin, wide-eyed in amazement.

He stepped out of the car and leaned on the door. ‘Did you say something about a motorway trip to Sanliurfa?’

‘In that?’

‘It’s a classic.’ He slapped the bodywork. ‘No recycled Coke tins in there.’

‘It looks like something we could have excavated from the ground in Iraq.’

‘Suits me fine,’ he said. ‘These modern cars, a couple of little knocks and they just fall to pieces.’

‘How are we going to drive in deep snow?’

‘We’ll dig our way out, if we have to. That’s what you have me for.’

She ventured out onto the veranda, stopped short and looked down at her feet. I’ve got no shoes.’

Ben grabbed the rubber boots from the back. ‘Sorted,’ he said, tossing them to her. They landed on the veranda. She bent to pick them up, tentatively sniffed them, pulled a face and held them at arm’s length as though they were two dead fish.

‘I’m supposed to put my feet into these?’

‘Might not cut the mustard on the Florence catwalk, but at least now you’ll be waterproof. Now let’s grab our kit and get out of here. Next stop, Harran.’