The Babylon Idol

Chapter 63

The first crimson-hued streaks of dawn were breaking over the horizon behind him as Usberti sped due west with the GPS device on the seat beside him, guiding him on. The snow had resumed, whirling down in gusts from the grey sky and making the flat desert appear even more featureless.

It had been so long since he’d driven any kind of motor vehicle, let alone a primitive militarised four-wheel-drive truck, that he’d barely remembered how to operate one. Similarly — even if he’d been able to grab one as he made his hasty escape earlier — he’d never used any sort of firearm in his life and would have had no idea about its functioning. Leadership and power had rendered him aloof from the realities of the world and utterly dependent on the men who had followed him, out of loyalty or out of fear.

Now, for the first time in his life, more so even than when he’d lost everything in his fall from grace years before, he felt utterly alone, defenceless and frightened.

Lord, keep me safe and protected.

He had another cause to feel afraid, and it wasn’t just the prospect of running into more Syrian troops, or even Ben Hope. It was the private terror he’d harboured for months and confessed to nobody, whose existence he’d tried hard to deny even to himself. The tremors were back, and they were growing worse. So was the nausea that plagued him day and night, and the dull ache he could feel burning sometimes in his shoulder, spreading down his arm. Feeling it now, he reached for his pills as he drove, shook one out and swallowed it dry.

How, how, how had that pestilential man Hope been able to thwart him yet again? Why had Silvano been there with him? Usberti had scarcely been able to believe it when, secretly spying on Groppione in the hopes of catching an eyeful of what he was getting up to with the Manzini woman, he’d spotted Hope and Bellini suddenly appearing from nowhere, looking for all the world as though they belonged on the same team.

Had Silvano betrayed him? Had the insidious Hope somehow persuaded him to go over to his side? Or paid him to do so? Which would mean that Hope must be working for Them. Perhaps he had been all along: an enemy agent, sent to do Their evil work. Usberti knew all about Them. They were the Darkness, the powers of Satan, gaining control of the world step by step. Dark times indeed, if God’s chosen few failed to stand and fight.

Where, also, was Ugo? If the unthinkable had happened and Hope had managed to defeat and kill him, that was all the proof needed that he must surely be backed by devilish powers.

And if his loyal, devoted Ugo was gone, now he, Massimiliano, was completely alone. It was all up to him now.

‘So be it!’ he yelled out loud into the snow-dusted emptiness of the desert. ‘I will show them, Lord. I will not let you down!’

The GPS on the seat by his side was his last remaining ally, and proving extremely useful. Using the coordinates of Ashar the Babylonian’s cliff as his starting point, Usberti had calculated fresh coordinates of his new destination lying sixteen kilometres west of that location. The tank battle and chase with the rebels had driven his quest a long way off course, but he would soon make up the distance.

However, when he got there not long afterwards, Usberti could see nothing but bare terrain in all directions. Not a marker, scarcely a bush, in sight. Something was terribly wrong; and yet the technology was insisting they were exactly sixteen kilometres west of Ashar’s cliff.

Usberti was gripped by sudden doubts. Had that bitch Manzini lied to him after all? Given him a false translation, so that she and Hope could make their way to the right place and steal the treasure that was rightfully his?

The thought made his heart thump. He wiped the cold sweat from his brow. Calm, Massimiliano, calm. Steadying his mind, he remembered that the measurement of one and a half beru equated to a little over sixteen kilometres: a margin of error allowing for the inexact distance calibrations of the day, which could add as much as two, three hundred or more metres to the figure. That would take him over the crest of the rise he could see ahead, a long north — south ridge glowing crimson from the rising sun at his back.

Bolstered with renewed optimism, he gunned the truck towards the rise, reached its apex –

And there it was. Standing like a monolith in the middle of the emptiness, bathed red by the dawn, the tall solitary rock could be nothing if not some kind of manmade marker. X marks the spot. He’d found it at last!

Usberti went skidding down the slope towards it. He halted the truck and scrambled out, virtually babbling with excitement. The rock was more than twice his height, solidly planted in the ground. He hardly dared to touch it, in case it was some strange vision dreamed up by his fevered imagination — but, no, it was real. He ran his hands over its craggy face. As he wiped away the snow and dirt, he realised with a shock of pure joy that it was carved with markings that — once he’d examined them more closely through his half-moon spectacles — looked just like more of the same kind of cuneiform patterns as the cliff inscription. They were illegible to him, but he could imagine their meaning: ‘Here lies the fabled treasure of dear old King Nebuchadnezzar; congratulations, friend, you’ve hit the jackpot’.

‘Thank you, Lord!’ he shouted up to the sky. Almost weeping with happiness now, he ran back to the jeep and dragged out the bag he’d managed to salvage in his escape. He tore open the zip and pulled out the folding shovel.

Massimiliano Usberti had never performed any kind of manual labour in life, and so it took him a while to understand how to unfold the shovel. Finally, he picked a spot at the foot of the standing rock, stabbed the pointed end of the blade into the ground, and began to dig frantically. He soon scraped through the thin layer of snow to expose the sand underneath. It was harder work than he might have imagined, made even more frustrating by the way the sand and stones kept sliding back into the hole. But he would not be deterred from this glorious moment. He stabbed and dug as fast as he could, grunting like a wild man, sweating profusely despite the freezing wind.

The hole grew deeper and longer, until he’d excavated a trench large enough to bury the truck in. He paused, gasping for air, then went back at it even more ferociously. He had little sense of time, but it must have been another hour of frantic digging before the shovel blade hit something solid under the sand. A larger rock? No, it couldn’t be. It mustn’t be.

Lord, don’t let it be a rock.

Usberti hurled away the shovel and threw himself flat on his belly at the edge of the trench, using both hands to dig like a dog. As his fingers came into contact with the buried object he scraped more furiously still, expecting at any moment to see the magnificent glint of gold sparkling up at him in the dawn’s red glow. Gold! His gold!

This was it.

This was the moment where everything would change for him.

He’d won.

It was a while after sunrise when they found him. Ben was the first to spot the empty truck parked at the foot of the rise. As they came closer they could see the trail of footprints in the thin snow, leading from the vehicle towards the tall standing rock. At the foot of the rock was a large trench some thirty yards long by four wide. Judging by the hills of freshly dug sand, dirt and stones that stood heaped all around its edges, it looked as though someone had been busy.

Janssens pulled up, killed the engine and yanked on the brake. He and Ben looked at each other and climbed out without a word. Ben had Bozza’s Glock, Janssens had Groppione’s Walther, and each man was ready to open fire as they advanced cautiously.

Ben’s leg wound was aching badly now that the painkiller was starting to wear off. Anna remained curled up in the truck with her eyes closed. Her system was still comfortably pumped with the effects of the morphine, along with the past-date antibiotics Ben had dosed her with out of the Syrian rebels’ med kit. She’d spent the drive drifting in and out of consciousness, making it hard to get coherent directions out of her. That, combined with the fresh snow gradually obscuring the tracks of Usberti’s truck, had slowed their pursuit.

But here they were. And so was Usberti.

He was lying still at the edge of the enormous trench, as though asleep. He didn’t stir at their approach. Janssens shot Ben a puzzled look as if to say, ‘What the hell—?’

As they stepped closer, Ben noticed the military-style metal folding shovel lying in the dug-up sand nearby. It looked new and relatively unworn, except for the blade which was all scuffs and paint chips. There were no other tracks on the ground. Usberti had clearly done all this digging himself.

And he’d evidently found something down there as a result.

Ben peered into the trench and became the second living person to bear witness to the ancient, historic object that had, until now, lain buried in this remote spot through most of recorded history.

Janssens looked down into the trench and whistled. ‘Wow. I think maybe Anna would want to see this.’

‘Yes, I think she would,’ Ben said.

Anna must have read their thoughts, because she’d already clambered gingerly out of the truck and was making her unsteady way towards them, pale and fragile and clutching her bandaged hand, but her eyes filled with wonder. She said, ‘Is it—? I mean, did he—?’

‘It is, and he did,’ Ben said. He put an arm round her shoulders to steady her, and led her to the edge of the trench.

‘There you have it,’ he said, pointing. ‘You were right, Anna. It did exist, all along. The lost golden idol of King Nebuchadnezzar, lost for thousands of years and now rediscovered in all its glory.’