The Key

117

Dr Harzan paced around the rim of the pit where the Sikorsky lay buried.

Most of the relics had now been retrieved and were ready to be shipped to Turkey where they would finally enter the great library, as they should have done twelve years earlier. The sense that this long-unfinished business was about to be resolved gave him huge satisfaction.

And yet…

They had all heard the distant gunfire coming from the direction of the compound. Since then he had been unable to raise anyone on the radio. All he got was a whispering static. It made him uneasy. Maybe their radio was faulty; the damned sand got into everything. His encounter with John Mann earlier had also unsettled him. It was a potent reminder that history could return to cause trouble, even when you were sure it was dead and buried. These relics, with their alternate telling of the stories enshrined in the Bible were solid proof of that. The sooner they were locked away, where no one else could get them, the better.

His head recoiled as the round hit him in the eye and took away most of the back of his head. He toppled over and slid to the bottom of the pit, coming to rest against the metal fuselage of the dead dragon just as the sound of the gunshot caught up with the M4 round then echoed away across the desert.