The Babylon Idol

Chapter 55

There was no mistaking what he’d found. The carving was made inside a crude rectangle hacked and chipped out of the pitted surface, roughly six feet wide by three feet high. Just about large enough for an observant spotter on the ground to pick out with modern optics, but much too small to be visible to the naked eye. The latter being, Ben guessed, exactly Ashar’s idea when he’d carved it.

Inside the rectangle was a mass of script. The stone was so weathered and eroded by endless cycles of wind, rain and sun that parts of it were smoothed away almost to nothing. The parts that Ben could make out were written in a language like no alphabet still used in modern times, made up of scratchy little wedge-shaped markings and crooked crosses and irregular arrows and squiggles that meant absolutely nothing to him, or to the vast majority of people alive on the planet. He had only fleeting memories of seeing writing like it before, long ago in his student days. Maybe if he’d paid more attention in class, he would have known whether it read from left to right, or right to left like Hebrew, or top to bottom like Chinese.

But he wasn’t here to work out what it meant, only to record what it looked like. He wiped away the dusting of snow that the wind had blown against the rock, then unzipped the small camera from its pouch on his climbing belt. It was all set up for him with flash and autofocus, so all he had to do was point and shoot. He zoomed out to take shots of the whole panel of inscriptions, then zoomed in again to take close-ups of the parts that were still faintly legible. He snapped about fifty images, working quickly but careful to miss nothing out. For the moment at least, Anna’s life depended on what he brought back to Usberti.

Once he was satisfied, Ben zipped the camera carefully back in its pouch. Job done. Now it was time to get back down there, and fast. The crashes and booms of the battle were growing constantly louder to the north. He could see the moving shapes of tanks and smaller vehicles clearly now, silhouetted against the flash of explosions and fireballs. It looked as if a whole tank company, probably Turkish Army Leopards or Sabra M60s although it was hard to tell, was pursuing a smaller enemy force across the desert. Ben guessed those would be Syrian insurgents, belonging to any one of a hundred factions. They were using armoured pickup trucks equipped with rockets and heavy machine guns. As Ben watched, one of the trucks took a direct hit from a tank missile and went up with a bright white-and-yellow flash that lit up the desert. The running battle was headed straight towards the escarpment. It was several kilometres closer than it had been just ten minutes ago. Not a healthy development.

Ben’s one consolation was that his descent would be a hell of a lot speedier than the climb. Fast-roping from helicopters and abseiling down buildings and mountains was trained into him like tying shoelaces was for normal folks. As a young SAS trooper, he’d been so agile at bounding down vertical drops that his instructors could barely keep up. Now he’d have to be even faster. He stuck the torch back between his teeth and untied the short length of rope anchoring him to the ledge. Here we go.

Two deep breaths, and he dropped like a stone over the side of the ledge. He swung dizzily in empty space for a few instants, blinded by the driving snow, then felt the rope go taut and the soles of his boots touch the cliff face twenty feet down. He kicked hard, swung out, swung back in, met the impact with bent knees, then kicked again, losing more altitude at every downward leap. With gravity working in his favour, what had taken him the best part of an hour to achieve going up, was less than three minutes’ work in reverse.

Anna rushed out of the cave to meet him as he landed on the ground. Bozza was just a step behind her, with a gun at her back. ‘Ben!’ Her cry was half drowned by another explosion. The battle was now just a couple of kilometres away, and still closing.

‘Told you I’d be back soon,’ Ben said. He clasped her hands and kissed her gently on the forehead. She pressed her face into his shoulder.

‘You feel so cold,’ she said.

‘So do you.’

‘I don’t think I can ever be warm again.’

‘Don’t be too sure,’ he said. ‘I get the feeling things are about to start hotting up around here.’

Usberti emerged from the shadows, followed by Starace and Groppione, both pointing their weapons at Ben. ‘Pardon me for interrupting this tender scene. Congratulations on a successful mission, Major Hope. I trust you have something for me?’

Ben unhooked the pouch and tossed it on the ground at Usberti’s feet. ‘Here you go, Your Grace. Now I’d suggest getting out of here, unless you want to find yourself in the middle of a tank battle.’

Starace picked up the pouch and passed it to his master. ‘It is their war, not ours,’ Usberti said, clutching the camera as though it was a gold ingot. The momentary flash of a rocket blast lit up his face, and Ben saw the crazed glint in the man’s eyes. He wanted to snap his neck. But now wasn’t the time, not with Bozza’s gun an inch from Anna’s back.

‘Cuff him,’ Usberti said. Groppione kept his weapon in Ben’s face as Starace stripped away the climbing harness, dumped it on the ground and grabbed Ben’s wrists behind his back. Snick-snack, and the hardened steel bracelets were back on, tighter than before.

‘Now let us depart,’ Usberti said. Bozza already had the RV’s side door open for him. Usberti hurried aboard first, closely followed by the silent Bellini, and headed straight for his throne. Ben and Anna were hustled unceremoniously in after them and shoved into their seats while Groppione dived behind the wheel and restarted the engine. Starace took up his sentry position on the leather sofa across the aisle. Ugo Bozza was the last one aboard, not taking his eyes or his gunsights off Ben. Ben ignored him and watched through the window as the flashes of artillery fire kept creeping closer. The ground was beginning to shake under the wheels of the RV with every percussive blast. ‘You’d better start praying this was all worth it, Usberti,’ he said.

‘Shut your fucking mouth, English,’ Starace growled, but his words were lost in another tremendous explosion that made the whole vehicle shudder. Groppione slammed the RV into gear and they began to pick their bumping, lurching way back down the track.

‘Faster,’ Usberti urged him.

‘Boss, if I go any faster in the darkness I’m gonna rip off a wheel or ground us on these rocks,’ Groppione protested in a strained voice.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for the RV to bounce and grind its way off the escarpment road and get back to level ground.

Too long, by at least five minutes. Because now the whole place was a raging war zone.