The Solomon Scroll

CHAPTER 42

The flight to Ethiopia was uneventful. They landed at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa early in the morning and rented a blue, four-wheel-drive Toyota Highlander, big enough for the five of them. After a stop at the embassy to pick up a trunk holding weapons and back packs they headed north out of Ethiopia's capital on Highway 1.

Nick had decided against full combat gear and everything that went with it. He hedged his bets a little with lightweight body armor. No one except Elizabeth knew they were going to Ethiopia. There was no reason to expect serious trouble. Like Harker had said, they weren't going into a war zone.

They'd take pistols and casual civilian clothes that fit with hiking in the backcountry. Pistols were less of a problem than automatic rifles if they were stopped and easier to conceal. Not to mention that it was hard to blend in when you were wearing full combat armor.

The road was a two-lane blacktop in good condition. They settled in for the ride. Lamont drove the first shift, careful to keep to the speed limit. They stopped to eat and gas up about halfway to their destination. A roadside stand offered food and something to drink.

Diego took a deep breath. "Smells good.".

"Probably give us a good case of the trots," Nick said.

Lamont laughed. "Hey, you only live once. Ethiopian cooking is really good. My grandma used to make meals that would blow your mind."

Ragged children swarmed the vehicle as they got out. Lamont spoke to them and gave them money to watch the car while they ate.

They let Lamont order for them. The man behind the counter stared at them wide-eyed. He grinned when Lamont began talking to him. Lamont bought bottles of soda for everyone. They sat down at a rickety picnic table in the shade of a large tree while they waited for the food to be ready.

The food came. Wicker baskets with plates that had a flat piece of bread on them and a large bowl of steaming stew.

Lamont said, "The bread's a kind of sourdough called injera. The stew is gonna be spicy. Could be any kind of meat in it. It's called wat."

He ladled out stew.

"I need a fork," Selena said.

"Nobody uses forks here. You scoop it up with the bread. Use your right hand. If you eat with the left people will be shocked."

"Why?"

"The left hand is for wiping your ass."

"What happens if you only have one hand?" Diego asked.

"Then you have a problem."

"This is pretty good," Nick said. He scooped up another bite of stew.

They reached Adigrat twelve hours after they'd left the embassy, just as the sun disappeared behind a high escarpment dotted with stunted trees. The ridge marked the beginning of the mountainous area where they were headed.

Selena watched her GPS. "I checked out hotels before we left. There's one in the center of town that should be all right. Take a right up there."

They turned off the main highway and found the hotel, a rectangular, two story building of yellow and red brick. Lamont parked and went inside while the others waited with the truck. He came out a few minutes later.

"All set. We've got four rooms. The place looks clean and they've got a café. It's a family operation, run by a father and son. The son seems like a nice guy. He told me we should hire somebody to watch the truck at night."

"I'll bet he happens to know someone," Diego said.

"That's par for the course. It's a good idea if we want wheels on the truck in the morning. He's happy to see us. We bring dollars instead of the local currency."

"What is the local currency?"

"It's called the birr. One birr is worth about four cents American."

"Let's get the trunk out," Nick said.

They went inside, showed their passports and signed the register.

"You are recommended to spray your room," the clerk said. "Very small charge." He took out four cans labeled Mobile Insecticide Spray. "Mosquitoes very bad, make you sick."

"Sick?" Selena said.

Lamont said something to the clerk in Ethiopian. The man answered him and swirled his hands in the air.

"Malaria and dengue fever," Lamont said.

Lamont paid him. They each took a can.

Selena and Nick's room had a big double bed and a balcony looking out over the city. There wasn't much to see, just blocks of low buildings stretching away across the plain. Compared to a European or American city, there were few lights. The air smelled of dry earth and something that might have been like sage. Hints of spices and cooking oil came from the café downstairs.

"Not exactly the Hilton," Selena said, "but it's clean."

"We've stayed in worse."

There was a private bathroom with a shower stall and a small television on the dresser. Nick turned the set on. It was a news program. Children with tear streaked faces stood in the rubble of a building somewhere in the Middle East. He clicked the remote. There were only two channels. The second channel was playing an episode of Gunsmoke, dubbed in Ethiopian.

"Makes me feel right at home. Bad news on one channel and reruns on the other."

Selena said, "We'd better get something at the café before they close."

"Shall I use this stuff?" He held up the can of bug spray.

"I'd rather take my chances with the mosquitoes."

"I'm tired," Nick said. "I hope that bed is more comfortable than it looks."

"Poor baby. How tired are you?"

He arched an eyebrow at her and pretended to twirl a long mustache. "Not as tired as I plan to be later," he said.

The next morning they left the hotel just as the sun climbed above the horizon. The rental Toyota had come with two five gallon gas cans strapped in the back. Nick bought two more and gassed up. A case of bottled water went next to the gas and the trunk with their packs. Then they headed west toward the wild country.

Selena tracked their progress on her GPS.

"Turn there."

She pointed at a dirt track leading off the highway. They followed it into the wilderness until it petered out at a wide, dry riverbed exiting a deep canyon.

"This is the canyon we're looking for."

"Beautiful country," Diego said.

"Looks a lot like Arizona," Ronnie said. "Reminds me of Canyon de Shelly back home."

"Like the Grand Canyon, only not as big," Lamont said. "Or Waimea in Hawaii."

Ronnie had a closet full of Hawaiian shirts. "I've got a shirt with that on it," he said. "Nice colors."

"Is there anything that you don't have on those shirts?"

"I don't think I've got one with elephants."

"There aren't any elephants in Hawaii."

"Sure there are. In the zoo."

Lamont sighed.

Nick turned the truck up the riverbed. It wound through tall cliffs of multicolored reddish rock on either side. The going was slow, the riverbed strewn with rocks and debris that had washed down in the years when there was rain. They bumped along and Nick watched the gas gauge dropping. He thought about how much gas they had and what it would take to get back. He'd about decided it was time to stop when the decision was made for him.

They came around a turn in the canyon floor and found the way blocked by boulders. Ahead, a high mesa that marked the head of the canyon and their destination rose against a brilliant blue sky.

Nick stopped and turned off the engine.

"End of the line," he said.

"We're not moving those rocks," Lamont said.

"Nope. We'll set up base camp here." He looked at the sky. "It's already mid afternoon. We'll hike up the mesa tomorrow."

"It'll be cold later. I'll scrounge some firewood." Diego slapped at an insect. "Why does nature always come with bugs?" He looked at Ronnie. "How come they're not biting you?"

"Because I'm an Indian," Ronnie said.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Indians and nature are friends. You don't bite your friend."

"Friends?"

"Also because I put repellent on before we left."

Diego just shook his head. Later they sat around the fire, quiet, looking into the flames. A thin column of smoke drifted into a night sky carpeted by stars. Selena broke the silence.

"I wonder if we're going to find anything," she said.

Nick got up and put more wood on the fire.

"The satellite scan says something is up there on that mesa. Whatever it is, we'll find it."

"Relics from the Temple would probably be made of gold. Even without that, the value in a religious sense is beyond price."

"It's a problem, whatever we find." Nick sat down again. "Things from the Second Temple could touch off a firestorm in the Middle East. The Israelis would see it as the final proof of their right to claim Jerusalem. As if they really needed it."

"The Arabs wouldn't like that," Ronnie said.

"Don't forget about Solomon and Sheba," Selena said. "The Israelis, the Muslims and Christians will all stake a claim."

"Sheba is important here," Lamont said. "If she's up there the Ethiopians aren't going to sit on the side and let anyone take her out of the country. Or anything else we find, for that matter."

"Great," Diego said. "We find something, everyone with a religious agenda is going to want to grab it."

"That's one way of putting it," Nick said.

"Suppose we do find Solomon and Sheba hanging out together and sitting on a pile of gold," Diego said. "What happens then?"

"I call Harker. She calls the president. It's his worry, not ours."

"Yeah," Diego said. "But he's in Washington. It's a long way from there to here."

Nick yawned. "Time to hit the rack. Who wants the first watch?"

"I'll do it," Selena said.

"Wake me in three hours."

Twenty minutes later Selena was the only one still awake. She sat on a low flat stone with her back against one of the boulders. The rock gave off faint heat from the day's sun. Moonlight filled the canyon with ghostly light. It was one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen.

It wasn't the first time she'd found herself sitting under a foreign sky filled with stars when she was on a mission. Up to now this mission had been like a glorified camping trip. The hard metal of the pistol pressing against her hip reminded her that it could explode into sudden violence without much warning.

She thought about Solomon and the Temple he'd built to honor God, described in the Old Testament. The walls and floor had been covered with gold, she was sure. For some reason she remembered that the door had been framed in olive wood.

Solomon's Temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. It wasn't until the reign of Herod the Great that it had been rebuilt. It was said that when the Romans destroyed it for a second time, molten gold had run into the cracks of the pavement when it burned.

No one knew what had happened to the legendary treasure of the Temple. Some accounts said it had been hidden beneath the ruins, others that it had been stolen by the Romans. It had all happened a long time ago, the events shrouded in the fog of time. Now she was sitting on a rock in one of the most remote places on earth, getting ready to look for something that had disappeared two thousand years ago. You could add another thousand years if you tossed in Solomon and Sheba.

Whatever they found tomorrow, she felt the weight of that history. It was more than a fascination with archaeology and ancient artifacts. It was a sense of seeking something larger than herself, one of the great stories in the human narrative that affirmed the human connection to God.

She shivered. It felt like there was a presence nearby, something watching and waiting. It was an odd, otherworldly feeling. She looked down the moonlit canyon. Nothing was looking back.

My mind is playing tricks on me, she thought.

Just the same, the feeling stayed with her for a long time.